I remained motionless, lying on my back high aloft.
Duncan threw away some tissues in his trashcan, minimized the porn window on his computer and went to the door.
Flask burst through with the click of the lock and hallway light snuck in. Duncan shielded his eyes, pretending to have been asleep.
“What the hell, Dunk? You disappeared earlier,” Flask said. He flicked the lights on himself and instantly the dark room was bathed in yellow fluorescent glow. He rushed to the couch, all hyped up for a reason he was about to recount to Duncan in truly embellished fashion. “Were you sleeping? Already?”
“Yes. What do you want?” Duncan said.
“That shit you gave me was awesome, kid. It totally worked. I had that blonde from the soccer team back to my room in about five minutes.”
Duncan acted intrigued but was trying to block Flask’s view of his computer.
As Flask started to recount his female conquest a low moan suddenly crept out from the big black headphones on Duncan’s keyboard.
Flask stopped mid-sentence and stared at Duncan who was leaning against the desk, trying to pretend nothing was unordinary.
Realization dawned on Flask’s face and he instantly looked uncomfortable.
From my perch, I watched a string of emotions unfurl: awkwardness, discomfort, anxiety, pure horror and ultimately, unfathomable embarrassment. The entire scene, from porn to present, mixed all the drama of Romeo and Juliet, all the tragedy of Othello and all the comedy of Animal House. From Duncan’s stupidity to Flask’s obvious use of some sort of foreign female-getting substance to Duncan’s lame attempts to hide his scandalous activity, I was in the midst of pure irony; pure hilarity; pure retribution.
Flask stood up from the couch, seemingly to wrap up his tale and get the hell out of the room. His voice started to waver as he clearly rushed along, skipping the more elaborate details.
“Yeah, so she sort of came to when we got back to the room man and then, ya know I gave her another drink and took her pants off. So that shit was the shit, I’ve been trying to . . .” Coming to the climax of his story Flask had gotten animated and in doing so his line of vision landed on me up in bed. My eyes were closed but the lump of a human being under blankets was unmistakable.
“Awe shit, man, I’m sorry I didn’t know Shaw was sleeping,” Flask said. He looked a little more relieved, like what he thought Duncan was doing couldn’t be right if I was in the room.
Duncan’s expression went from anxiousness to anything but relief.
“What?” he said, almost in a whisper as if his voice was snatched away by an invisible hand. “Shaw’s not here.”
Flask’s smile, ear to ear, matched my own. That was the point of climax. The entire dorm room was set to explode in laughter.
“Yeah, man, he’s right there,” and he pointed up to me. At which point I sat up, rubbing my eyes.
“Hey Dunk,” I said, “Could you toss me my socks? After you wash your hands.”
Flask and I exploded in laughter. Flask guffawed like an idiot.
My laughs were more directed, heavier and vicious. They were different; they were laced with anger. Every vitriolic chuckle burst out of me like I had bitten a cyanide capsule and spewed the mocking poison across the room at Duncan. His face screwed up in pain, tears forthcoming. I felt the sickness of it all seeping backwards into my own throat; I’d be poisoned too. But as is the purpose of a cyanide capsule, I had no other choice. I needed to regain control, even if the guilt killed me. It was a last ditch effort for the social upper hand. It was a long, slow suicide of the soul that hastened with each sneer at Duncan’s exposure. Duncan’s face flickered and burned from pain to embarrassment to rage.
The fact that his big, tough guy friend figured out the situation made it ever more satisfying.
“Hey Shaw, were you up there for the whole thing?” Flask snorted between laughs.
“Yeah, all minute and half of it!”
“Fuck you!” Duncan screamed, loud enough for people in the hallway to peer in through the open door. “Fuck you,” he yelled directly at me, eyes boring holes into mine. He pushed Flask, who wasn’t even phased by the small hand on his broad chest and ran out of the room like a ten-year-old boy who was just scolded by his mother. I couldn’t see his face but I imagined tears streaming down.
Flask, still chuckling, repeated, “priceless,” to himself and walked out after Duncan.
I hopped down from the bunk, laughing so excessively a sour taste crept into my mouth. I ran down to the bathroom with a sudden urge to vomit, either from laughing so hard or because of what just occurred a few feet away.
Duncan was nowhere to be found.
Duncan disappeared for the rest of the weekend. Either he knew when I was in the room and came and went when I was gone, or he just avoided the room altogether. No matter, the story spread around our hall like herpes on the men’s hockey team. Flask was at fault, mostly. I recounted it to my friends and a few others but by Sunday night Dunk had a few new nicknames.
Chapter 24
Shoddy defined irony as, “God’s little practical jokes.”
Shoddy was also the least religious person I had ever encountered. The Catholic Church, Protestantism, Judaism and Islam were simply variations of the same fantastic story used to manipulate mortals into giving of themselves and their wallets.
He was an indefatigable cynic.
Seeing the RA out at a bar getting hammered the night after breaking up a dorm party; the director of the Student Program Board forgetting an extension cord for the outdoor Spring concert; the local Irish tavern running out of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. These were the little “practical jokes” Shoddy enjoyed. I called them fate, karma, bad luck, good luck. He said it was the truth—the little slipups that showed you who someone really was, and someone, somewhere (perhaps a higher being) was watching and laughing.
If Shoddy believed in anything, it was this credo. He loved exposing people: his passive-aggressive revenge. A large percentage of his acquaintances held Shoddy in very low esteem. Enemies outnumbered friends but Shoddy never cared. He was still usually the life of a party, mostly due to his charismatic ability to spark or fuel a conversation (for better or worse).
In a crowd, Shoddy was an instigator. But he also played the agent, manager and referee all in one. He could set up the prizefight, draw in the spectators, square off the opponents, and then sit back and watch the chaos, controlled at intervals by his own skilled conversational manipulation. He almost always walked away the winner, usually without ever throwing a punch himself.
Shoddy liked to test common sense versus book smarts and it became a hobby. To his credit, he overflowed with both; which is really what pissed off his detractors. They never understood that he was examining human behavior; prying and poking around the little intricacies that make us individuals; attempting to rip away those facades we all erect to keep out unwanted advances on our real vulnerabilities. Maybe he thought he was doing God’s work, in his own twisted sense of the deity. Maybe he just got a kick out of making smart people stumble over themselves.
I understood all that about Shoddy. Most everyone else did not.
Shoddy’s favorite instance occurred when someone, usually a classmate in the middle of a highfalutin rant about some chapter in some novel, made reference to “irony” or something being “ironic” when, in Shoddy’s opinion, it was merely sarcasm, facetiousness or pure coincidence. Whatever it was, whether he was right or wrong, Shoddy made his disagreement known. He was neither just nor kind.
However, this same person that relished in the ignorance of America’s young adults and called out anyone that he thought was using less than his required amount of intelligence, was the same person who was going to risk his life so those people had the right to be that way. He insulted them and then insisted on their right be insulted (one of Shoddy’s favorite arguments for liberty was its comedic value).
“Hey, if God’s playing
a little practical joke, who is it on?” he would say. “You, because you don’t know what irony means? Or me, because I finally get to see how stupid you are.”
But he never pushed it too far, which was something he would need to control in the spittle-spewing hierarchy of the United States military. For all their bravery, valor and honor, soldiers were not famous for their Shakespeare recitations and flawless diction. Shoddy was well aware and to a degree, it excited him. He was to be a wolf in a land plentiful with sheep. But he must take heed the shepherd.
I always imagined him as Hamlet being ripped from Denmark and dropped into Othello’s world. With his melancholic, observant intellect came Shoddy’s knack for recognizing someone’s triggers, anticipating the breaking point and removing himself from an interaction before the explosion.
Shoddy saw life as a great experiment and those around him were his unwitting and sometimes unwilling participants. All he had to do was manipulate the variables. But what it was he hypothesized or sought to discover never really became clear to me. The strange relationship we shared was possible because to me, he dropped the tests. I don’t know how I did it, but I passed them way back when we met. Or perhaps it was because, as he put it one night in a drunken emotional rant, he knew I was thinking the same way he was. I just had the tact or respect to not vocalize it to the world.
Despite the cynicism and the disparaging remarks to stupid people, Shoddy exhibited one character trait that outweighed everything else, both in quantity and value: loyalty. Very few people knew it, and I was certainly the only one not blood related to him who was a benefactor. Shoddy was simultaneously the cockiest asshole on campus and the personification of semper fidelis.
He may have been blind to all these little circles of irony: his hatred of religion while constantly using non-secular language, his criticism but staunch defense of ignorance and his bad reputation yet undying loyalty. Somehow, though, I always thought he simply relished in their genius.
When Ben and I returned to our dorm room the final weekend after the masturbation incident, we found Duncan’s belongings strewn down the hallway and Shoddy moved comfortably into his spot. We both started to believe that maybe Shoddy was a genius.
“Hello gentlemen,” Shoddy said, standing up from his desk chair with a can of Pabst in his left hand. “My name is Marcus Shodowski, I’ll be your new roommate,” he laughed.
“What the hell happened here?” Ben asked.
Shoddy answered him by slugging down an oversized gulp of beer, crushing the can and tossing it into the barrel.
“Follow me,” he said, and strolled out into the hallway. He took a left and headed towards his original dorm room, pointing to the boxes of junk and some bedding strewn about the hallway. He arrived at his old door, punched in the combo and kicked the door open.
In the far corner was Duncan, trying desperately to pull a sheet over the top bunk mattress of his new bed. He looked up and scowled.
Shoddy reached deep into his cargo shorts’ pocket and produced another Pabst can. He cracked it open, took a small swig and pointed at Duncan with an accusatory, outstretched arm as if to yell, “he did it!”
It took Ben a moment but upon realization, he grinned. “Hey neighbor,” he said, “congrats on the new home.”
“Sorry,” I added, “We forgot a housewarming gift.”
All we got in return were squinted eyes and low, growled, “fuck you.”
“Let’s let him finish his interior decorating,” Shoddy suggested as he pulled the door closed and started back to our room. “He’s going to have a hell of a time with Flask. That kid is a mess.”
Shoddy reached into our fridge and pulled out two more beers. He kicked his one box of possessions out of the middle of the room and under his desk and handed us the Pabst.
“So roomies, a toast,” he said, raising his can to eye level. “To new beginnings, fresh start, another chance—a rebirth, if you will.”
He tapped his can to ours and took a drink. Ben and I followed suit, still somewhat confused as to how this situation came to fruition.
“One question,” Ben said after downing half his can. “How’d you pull this one off?”
“Ha, how? That was nothing. I mentioned it to Flask this morning, that Duncan and I should switch rooms. Basically I told him I was going to do it whether or not he helped me. You know how Flask sucks at that little weasel’s teat, so he immediately jumped in to help me move Duncan’s crap. Trying to brown nose for some odd reason. But anyway, we figured it’d be easier to just get in and move the stuff rather than get the RAs involved. Fuck paperwork. Who cares if I can’t get my phone messages in your room? So I broke into your room—I watched Shaw punch in your combo a few weeks back and remembered it. We pulled all of Duncan’s shit out, moved me in and here we are.”
“Duncan didn’t know?” I asked.
“Oh he knew, when he came home and half his stuff was in the hallway. Flask told him what we did, said it was his idea so that Duncan didn’t have to live with you anymore.” Shoddy tipped his can in my direction.
“Surprisingly, Duncan was pretty pleased with the situation. He said a few things to me about his shit being dirty from the hallway floor but he was just flexing his muscle in front of his new roommate.”
“OK, follow up question,” Ben asked. “Why did you do all this?”
Shoddy had flopped back into his desk chair. He reclined onto the back legs, propping his feet onto his computer keyboard that lay among the strewn papers on his desk.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love not having Duncan in here. I’m just curious as to why?” Ben reiterated.
Shoddy took a drink and stuck out the same accusatory finger, this time in my direction.
“Because one of you was going to kill that little fucker, and my money was on Shaw. And for the record, I don’t want Shaw to go to jail unless it’s for something worthwhile. Snapping that little bastard’s neck is definitely not worthwhile.”
“Well, thanks I guess,” Ben said.
I, for some reason, was speechless. I hadn’t known Shoddy for six months and he was pulling tricks to protect me. No other friend I ever had would have even thought to switch rooms, let alone actually done it.
“Yeah. Thank you,” I said. Shoddy stared at me and tipped his beer in my direction again. He understood my sincerity. And he appreciated it. That moment was the start of a mutual loyalty; an unspoken agreement that I would put my faith in him and he in me; that from then on, there was no pithy argument, senseless squabble or slutty freshman girl that a cold beer together could not fix.
“Anytime bro,” he said. “Plus I really couldn’t stand living with Flask anymore. I saw or heard that kid do some pretty fucked up stuff, especially to girls. I’m no Boy Scout but that kid has issues.”
Shoddy really did hate Flask, but I knew he only mentioned that to give our two rooms a more us versus them feel. He painted them the bad guys. The three of us were now a team.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I have something to celebrate the occasion. My older brother is an Army specialist—Task Force Odin.”
He reached under his desk and pulled out a paper bag, from which he extracted a golden bottle with a raven on the label.
“He sent me this at the start of the year, as a college move in gift. I never had anybody to drink it with.”
Ben and I sat down. It seemed like the right thing to do. The bottle was clearly important to Shoddy, as we determined from the change in his voice as he uttered ‘my brother.’
“What is it?” I asked.
“Mead. Honey wine. Like they used to drink in the old days. Knights, Vikings, you know, all those great warrior types. What better way to celebrate our recent victory?”
He cracked it open and poured a glittering golden liquid into three dusty glasses.
He again raised his to eye level. Ben and I followed suit. This was becoming a ritual.
“Love, loyalty and life—to you my friends,” he said
, and we all gulped down some mead.
Our three faces reacted the same. First a one-eyed squint at the strength, a half pucker at the bitter start and finally, a mellowed calm from the sweet, honey finish as the warm liquid trickled through the body.
We poured three more glasses without talking and raised them to the gods. I reclined and relaxed and when Shoddy broke the silence to tell us about his brother’s task force, it set off a discussion that lasted until three in the morning. We talked about war, about mythology and Norse gods and about some crazy girl that wouldn’t stop calling Ben and how Shoddy should handle the next psychotic late night phone ring.
Duncan’s name wasn’t mentioned.
Chapter 25
As Shoddy had suggested, second semester was a new beginning.
Duncan had moved out, Shoddy had moved in. Ben and I were taking a few classes together and I had taken on a second major—psychology. Combined with my English major, I thought I’d be able to finally start figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I quickly realized the two subjects had a lot in common. In English, I studied language. In psychology, I studied the people who use it. I would come to see both disciplines in action very shortly thereafter and continue evermore.
When we had all left for winter break, the mead-colored sun and situation shifts left my room a little more content. It was believed that Duncan was now an afterthought.
Despite the new knowledge and new potential, the semester began unexpectedly.
Prior to returning in early January, our first ever college grades arrived home in the mail. I was proud that my academic achieving carried over from high school. Ben, however, was not as consistent. He received an incomplete on his grades and was put on academic probation.
“Can you believe this?” Ben screamed as he burst into our room the first day back. “I can’t even start classes until I figure this out.”
I was confused until he explained to me that the Dean of Academics and Student Affairs, Dean Midland, had called his house over winter break and said Ben was part of a plagiarism incident and that he would be investigated for his role.
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