The Undergraduates

by Steven Snell

  “Cathy has a new arrival.”

  “Cathy?”

  “Cathy, you know, the ski instructor, large breasts.”

  “Yes, yes I’m aware of Cathy.”

  “So yes yes let’s do this!”

  “No no I shan’t.”

  I try to think up an excuse but I have no obvious one. I’ve been making excuses to Alex since grade school. We were best friends, lived down the street, same social network, had everything in common, now we don’t; we’re just different now, but still close.

  Drugs, Alex tried them first, I soon followed, enough times to have taken a hiatus and then returned for another trip and lost my passport and ended up thumbing for rides in Siberia. That’s a metaphor.

  “You’re on your own, mate,” I say.

  “You’re such a bitch,” he laughs.

  I got high the first time at summer camp. Alex and I shared a bunk bed. There were six or eight of us in total. The counselors were at the main lodge planning our canoe trip. We stood over the fire pit and took quick breaths and just when we began to get light headed we put our faces into the tumbling smoke and took a long slow inhale and as if some force entered us and weighted us rearward we collapsed backwards. A spotter helped mitigate forward falls. Smothering a camp fire with a wool sweater and a limp body tends to kill a cheap high.

  His latest medication he calls Creative Destruction: snorting a Hollywood-size line of cocaine and downing three shots of Nyquil. He got the term reading Schumpeterian economic innovation theory: waves of technological progress destroying the decaying industries. The paradigm of new obsoletes the old, good-bye horse drawn carriages, hello the automobile. Goodbye smoke inhaling; hello blow snorting.

  The first time we creatively destroyed we were paranoid about getting busted. I walked the aisles of a pharmacy looking for Nyquil with Alex faking a cough, sniffling, trying to look as though he had the flu. I looked at Alex and said, “You’re such a loser.”

  Alex recommends the drowsy formula. The one not to take when operating heavy machinery. The one that could put you into a coma. The one that has the opposite effect of the Hollywood line of blow. Alex may call it Creative Destruction but I call it a medieval torture device. A horse tied to the frontal lobe, the other tied to the medulla oblongata. When the martyrs slap the horses the mind rips apart dragged through dirt and dung past the screaming mob reeking of rotting bodies waving their stale bread.

  I hear Alex walking around, as though sorting through something.

  “Are you calling me from the pharmacy?”

  “Don’t judge me.”

  “You’re a prize.”

  “Full on Sea Biscuit.”

  “I should go.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay, see you –”

  “Shawn…?”

  “Yah?”

  “You’re a bitch. Laters.”

  I shake my head and push End on my phone and go to my room. I sit down on the edge of the bed and let out a long breath. I say inside my head: I’m bored bored bored. The music coming from the other room. Ethereal and melancholic. Maybe I’m melancholic too.

  I look at the pictures on the walls, the clothing in the closet, the matching sheets and two pillows that Gabriella bought, a stack of books in the corner. Beside them a framed interpretation of an Impressionist painting, a vase with wilted lilies. Emily brought it back from London for me. It was in a poster roll. We were in her car and she passed it to me. “Here, I carried this in my backpack for three weeks. If you don’t like it, I want it,” she said with a smile.

  I unrolled it. “It’s brilliant.”

  “Well done with the Londoner speak.”

  I smiled and hugged her.

  On the bookcase, another stack of books and under them my university degree still in an envelop. A cactus beside it. A small box with old pictures beside the cactus. I can’t remember where the cactus came from.

  On the chest of drawers is a Lego set of an elephant standing in a room. Jacob brought it back from Norway. The elephant is pink and standing on a bare floor and there’s a window in the wall where his trunk sticks out and the wall extends up to a pitched roof but there’s only one wall and part of the roof, giving the sense of a room but the focus is the elephant in it. “It’s 800 pieces,” he had said. “If you give up before completing it, maybe the metaphor is a little too close to home.” I’m not sure if he meant that seriously when he said it.

  I lay back and think about sleeping, sleeping away the rest of the evening. But I don’t want to be awake at three AM. I stare for some time at my motionless ceiling fan.

  I sit up, put on my shoes and sweater and go for a walk.

  It’s dusk but it feels grey more than simply a lack of sunlight.

  A girl walks her dog.

  Two teenage boys skate past me.

  Cars drive by.

  A few people are standing outside of a pub smoking, talking, saying nothing.

  A piece of public art in the middle of a small courtyard. LED lights chase each other going on and off wrapping around a large metal sphere.

  Everything seems to be moving but nothing seems to be happening.

  I return home.

  I wander aimlessly about my apartment.

  I clean the kitchen.

  I sweep the floor.

  I water the three plants.

  I have no mood.

  I clean the bathroom.

  I do two loads of laundry: darks, cold water; whites, warm water. No more complex than that.

  I sit on the couch.

  I feel lonely.

  I get ready for bed. I get in and pick up my phone. I scan the news. Wife kills her husband by poisoning his bowl of cereal every morning. Russia’s gas reserves are down. New enzyme will be the next wave in biofuels. Stories that are only headlines.

  I put my phone face down on my bedside table, roll towards the window and close my eyes.

  I wake to the alarm. 7:01 am. I lay here for a moment and go over my sensations. I have a headache. My tongue feels large. My shoulders feel stiff. I open my eyes.

  I get ready for work. As I’m towelling myself I open the cupboard below the sink and look at my medication. I close the cupboard.

  I leave for work.

  I arrive at work.

  I think about leaving work.

  I go for a coffee.

  The curvy girl isn’t working.

  I return to work.

  A last day of work thing for a colleague is happing in the kitchen. I stand in the corner and drink tea. People smile and say congratulations! and exclaim where are you off to? and I wish I was you! and I’m so happy for you! I nod when looked at. I take a sip of tea.

  I return to my cubicle.

  I answer phone calls and fill in another form another form another form. Then it’s 4:59 PM.

  I leave work.

  I don’t take the train home. I walk.

  I go into a neighbourhood of gentrifying wartime housing. There are large trees a canopy out over the streets. There are cars parallel parked. There are manicured front lawns and gardens for front yards. There are homes that are all right angles. There are homes with pitched roofs and wood shingles. There are for sale signs and a laundry mat and an ice cream shop and a sandstone school. A boy on a tricycle on the sidewalk as his mom watches him talking on her phone. A woman in black tights and a black sweater walks her small brown dog towards me. She passes me as though I don’t exist; her dog sniffs my leg; she pulls at him.

  I walk through the neighbourhood and into another one, the only difference the style of housing, the period of housing, more in-fills, more expensive cars parked on the street.

  More streets and then I’m at the river and along it a pathway. The water is low and looks cold and I watch the ducks, admiring how they withstand the cold.

  I continue walking and walk and walk and there’s not one person around, not a cyclist, not a runner. I can’t remember the last time I opened my mouth to speak. I sa
id something at work, but to customers. I said hello to Tim this morning. We sat across from each other and didn’t say anything else for the rest of the day except into the phone. We’d just exchange expressions of intolerance or annoyance, a threshold of good customer service that our email signatures say we provide.

  It’s getting darker.

  I take my phone out of my pocket. No messages.

  I message Laura. I wait. She doesn’t respond.

  I message Karen.

  “I’m shopping with Jim,” she replies. That’s her husband.

  I walk home, night finishes. I go to bed.

  I wake up. I look at my pills I go to work I leave work I go to bed. Repeat. This continues for a week. Karen comes over. Karen leaves. I go to work, leave work.

  Now I’m just sitting here on my couch feeling wasted and sick and my head hurts and my legs ache and there’s a feeling at the back of my mouth like my throat has narrowed and I could throw up but I don’t want to throw up but a small part of me wants to throw up to release the sickness stewing in my stomach. I yawn into my elbow and my mouth waters and my throat constricts more. My eyes ache. My body aches, calves, back, neck. My lips feel heavy. A dull headache I notice when I focus on it; and I focus on it. I can’t concentrate. I watch TV. I can’t concentrate. I go online and skim the news sites. I can’t concentrate.

  I feel empty. Another evening passing by without event.

  My phone rings. It’s Alex.

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know where you are?”

  “Physically? Inside.”

  “So you know where you.”

  “Yah, I guess.”

  “That’s worth something. What’s going on?”

  I squeeze my eyelids tight and pinch the bridge of my nose. “… I’m just feeling off.”

  “That’s it?”

  “… I don’t know, maybe.”

  “Have you fallen?”

  “Not that kind of off.”

  “Are you in a hospital?”

  “No.”

  “A psyche ward?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  “No.”

  “Diarrhea?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sound tip top to me.”

  “Thank-you, Doctor. I’m just feeling, I don’t know, off. My head feels heavy. My throat feels constricted. I’m feeling slightly nauseous … just empty. I feel blah.”

  “Yawn,” he replies.

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Shawn, it’s the 21st Century. There is no plague. You don’t walk miles to harvest water. The country you live in has a stable government. You’re employed. You have shelter and food and clothing and are kinda pretty and not retarded. You eat healthy, which I find such a bore – would it hurt if you had a burger every once and a fucking while? … The Romans don’t want to crucify you. You still have your foreskin – don’t act surprised that I know that, we went to camp together and bathed in the river with everyone else. … You have ten digits and get laid by a wife who has the most luscious breasts I have ever seen in a tight sweater. And this is coming from a man who likes women and men. You work in a sweat factory but really that’s more of a figurative statement for being underemployed. You aren’t single and pregnant. You don’t have lice or a tape worm. You aren’t stricken with ticks. You haven’t acquired an STI, yet. … You’re not dead so lighten up you snatch and let’s go skiing in Hollywood!”

  A passenger jet falling from the sky and slamming into a glacier and everything is in flames but one survivor stumbles out and walks and walks out into the frozen night and dies of exposure.

  “… Okay,” I reply.

  4.

  My pants are wet. I’m on someone’s lawn. Drizzle falling and I hear tires. Vehicles up and down the street. An engine roars and I roll from my back to side turning away from it.

  A siren opens my eyes.

  “Fuuuck,” moans out of me.

  I lift myself up off the grass into the night and run my hands down the back of my pants. “Fuuuck,” I moan again.

  I get my bearings and start walking home.

  Last night, I can only recall fragments. Me, Alex and Cathy. Skiing down her bare breast the white cocaine powder, a mouthful or two of Nyquil. Me and Alex kissing her on the cheek. Then there was a bar. A girl I used to sleep with. … A girl I used to sleep with and her new boyfriend. Me talking to her, or her talking to me. Then Alex pulling me away. Then my phone buzzing in my pocket and me taking it out and Alex saying, “Never talk on your phone while skiing, it’s against the law!” Then he’s taking my phone and hanging it up. He passed it back to me but it slipped from my hand breaking open on the concrete floor as if a bird had just flown into a window, it now with a broken wing dragging along the ground. I bent down, collected the pieces and slid the battery back in and clicked the plastic back onto the phone and stood and looked up and the girl was standing there looking at me. Her boyfriend wasn’t.

  I take a deep breath through my mouth as if out of shape. A sharp wave of dizziness. My feet are heavy. My hands are heavy. My body heavy. I feel like I haven’t walked in years. I’ve just been released from a tiger cage in a prison camp. I just want to get home.

  I picture myself lying in my bed staring at the ceiling finding something in the shapes of the stipple to settle me.

  I want to be home. I want. I want something solid enough to stop my head from this spinning. I want. I want to let go, get rid of this. This. This, fuck. Fuck. Somebody hold me. Help me.

  I think I’m hallucinating. I hope I’m hallucinating. Maybe I’m here, or maybe I’m already home. Images and thoughts collect in my closet hamper and seep under the door and spill out on my cold wood apartment floors. I’m lying there, naked, between the entryway and kitchen sprawled out like a snow angel or road kill. I sweep my right arm up and down brushing away snow or the last few convulsions before death. I moan something to the ceiling. I open my eyes, Galileo discovering the Medici satellites of Jupiter but after years of staring at the sun everything is blurred and haloed in blue and amber and what I see is no theory but only observations. Galileo disproved geocentricity. I snorted coke and shot Nyquil. Six more blocks to walk home.

  I want.

  Focus Shawn.

  I want.

  I want her and to have her sex and penetrate her and sweat on her and orgasm in her and wade into her body as if the first discovery wishing the sun to stop and the moon to stop and a full day stopped for her and me. Me and her and my fingers in her mouth and her tongue to my neck and her breasts pushed against me shoved up against the wall moaning into my earing wanting me taking me. Help me.

  Some girl, we were in the bathroom at the bar in a stall my hands up her skirt and her tongue in my mouth and her hand in my pants. The stall door kicked open and Alex grabbing me and me yelling something and him slapping me and her saying something and Alex saying “fuck off” and me saying “what” and Alex saying, “The second law is no touching! No touching, Shawn!”

  I want to be home.

  I regain my balance.

  I walk.

  I pull a leaf from the lower branches of a tree. I squeeze shut my eyes and open them and stare at it. I pinch the stem spinning the leaf back and forth like a wind vane in a storm. I lift it and smell it and place it on the hedge I walk past.

  Another wave of nausea.

  Five more blocks.

  Four.

  Three. I stop and sway. Three. I stop again and lean over a bus stop bench and throw up. I hold onto the bench to stop the swaying. Fuck. Another deep breath.

  Three blocks.

  Two.

  Two, two, two.

  I push open the door into my apartment.

  I’m home.

  I take off my wet shoes and wet pants and wet sweater and shirt. I leave them at the front door and go to my bedroom and lie down. I close my eyes and feel
them shudder under my eyelids. I open my mouth and breathe out something to the darkness.

  Five minutes, ten, more. I’m motionless. My mouth still open and no movement but air in and out of me.

  How long have I been here? This room? Pictures on the walls. Clothing in the closet. Matching sheets and two pillows. A few hours? A few years? Long enough to have a stack of books in the corner and pictures on the wall.

  My entire body hurts, my stomach hurts, my head hurts, my toe nails hurt, my enzymes hurt, capillaries, DNA. Help me.

  I blink, refocusing my eyes and my cold hands and my body on the mattress thinking needing wanting to lie on a great beach fingering the sand working the granules between my fingers. But my bed a beached sperm whale dying slowly for the whole world to watch on live newsfeed.

  I sit up and my torso sways and I consciously stop it and lean forward to take a sip from the cold mug of tea on my bedside table and put the mug back down and my head falls back onto the pillow. I roll and my reflection in the window shows my hair a turbulent mess and that picture on the wall above me, a clay vase and leaves and petals on the table and the stems dried and breaking, a re-creation of Monet’s impressionism a gift from Emily. I wonder where she is right now, this exact moment, some other bed, some place exotic. Somewhere else. Sober. I want to be sober like her.

  Laying here a person before dialogue.

  I shake and jolt up and try to quickly labour to the bathroom and lift the toilet seat and grab the sides of the bowl and cough and cough and deep in me my stomach recoils and my esophagus expands a balloon on a helium tank and I purge and hack and purge and cough and hack and cough what undigested parts remain in my gut and I cough again and spit those chunks lodged between my teeth and cheeks. I cough. I wipe my nose and mouth with my palm and lay down on the bathmat. I lie here. Here. I think about standing and walking to the kitchen and taking a glass from the cupboard and putting it under the tap and turning it to cold and filling it and lifting that glass to my lips and drinking that glass of water, water, water, water where life began some cosmic element in me to help alleviate these symptoms of darkness, to crawl out from the ocean, grow legs and arms and hands to till the earth and store food and roam the lands and build bunkers and housing and mold weapons to hunt and defend and conquer. Discover metals and gold and paper and rape and pillage and pray and fuck my way to power. Fuck like an animal with a bone in my cock. Spew a virus into the bowels of the indigenous and their magic and stone gods. Build temples of worship and mind-fuck them into forgetting their false consciousness. Control through fear and red amber alert and I’ll condemn their gods and impregnate their wives and annihilate their impure children. I’ll fuck so much perpetuating my concurring genes and spread a plague breeding insatiability. I’ll create disposable products and regulate their self-esteem through marketing campaigns and guide them a cortege into a volcano an abyss and watch them ignite and I’ll hold my belly and laugh a triumphant laugh echoing throughout their mold-ridden homes. The world now one epic homogeneous race I’ll seek artifacts through archeological digs and light them all on fire and erase history and fables and memory and I’ll strip naked from my material wealth and avenge my very history. I’ll wander to the sea and hack off my limbs and hold my breath and slide back into the salt water enveloped safe, pre-Modern man, pre-Homo Erectus, pre-. Crawling, protected, returned. Safe, sober. Help me.