by Mark Tufo
Dennis exited the hospital the very next day, the lucky bastard; we made him swear to us that he’d sneak us up some Chinese food from the Kihei. I stayed in Jell-O hell for another six days, but Paul took the prize at a whopping two weeks. It was during those healing times that we stumbled upon probably one of the greatest board games ever created, Risk, the game of global domination. Some might have thought we were crazy to stay in on a Friday night to play a board game, but Paul couldn’t fart without crying, my arm was locked from the shoulder down and Dennis occasionally suffered from some mind numbing headaches. We could usually rope a couple of our other friends in to join the fray. We spent many a recuperative night learning the ins and outs of strategy and tactics and I guess diplomacy. Hell, nobody wanted to go out first. I loved those times, they were the most unhindered aspect of our young lives. We were in the company of great friends and we were alive. You always hear the clichés about people who say they have a renewed sense of what was truly important in life when you come face to face with death, and for the most part they were right. The bond between myself, Paul and Dennis had become rock solid. What I lost that night, though, was the feeling of invincibility, which all teenagers seem to have innately built within them. Maybe that was a good thing, the jury is still out.
CHAPTER 10 – Journal Entry 10
Senior year came and was blurring by. The Friday night Risk games turned into the Thursday night occasional Risk games so as not to interfere with senior partying times. My love life had taken a twist that not even Paul or Dennis saw coming. For the most part I had flitted from girl to girl without so much as looking over my shoulder. I guess at the time, although the term wasn’t being used yet, I was something of a player. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t any Rico Suave, I just usually let the girls do the work for me. It was so freaken easy. She would just blab away about how this or that friend thought I was sooo cute. And I’d be like ‘Oh Reeally,’ what was her name again? And then I’d just give the friend a call. Women are funny like that, they won’t think twice about stepping over their ‘friend’ to get to a guy. Guys though for the most part have an unwritten rule about seeing a friend’s ex unless it is clearly stated by the ex that he has no problem with that arrangement. Of course there are exceptions to that rule. But even so, guys will beat the tar out of each other, pick each other up, buy each other a beer and be done with the whole situation. The girls, well, they’ll pretty much be enemies for life, never going to fisticuffs but at the drop of a pin they will tongue lash each other at every given opportunity. And this is where my so-called player days came to a screeching halt. Her name was Mandy, and she just plain out floored me. The last thing I was looking for my senior year was a steady. But I just couldn’t help myself. She was gorgeous, she could cook, and she had the brains of a turnip, pretty much the three qualities any guy is looking for in a relationship. And she genuinely loved me, and I think that at that time I might have actually had some of those same feelings for her. The problem was that Mandy was a small town girl, she had no desire to go to college or even the next town over. She probably figured with my advanced degree in partyology I wasn’t going anywhere either. So when I received my acceptances from four different universities I couldn’t find the intestinal fortitude to tell her. I basically just wanted to get up one late August day and be gone. Do you think she’d miss me? I began to let everything slide once I realized that I didn’t have to impress any more acceptance boards. I coasted through the remainder of the year usually in a drug or alcohol induced daze. Two of the acceptances were from the Eastern Seaboard and never saw the light of day. I burned those into ash so my mother or Mandy would never see them. My options, as far as I was concerned, were CU in Boulder or UCLA, but I was never a warm weather fan or an earthquake fan for that matter. A lot of crazy things happen in this world. Planes crash, people die, but the Earth, well that’s never supposed to move. So CU it was.
Suffice it to say, the University of Colorado in Boulder was almost too close a distance to my mother. It came as quite a shock to her how I could possibly have been accepted to a Western State college when all the applications she gave me were for Boston based universities. With tears (of joy) in my eyes, I packed and I left. And I did tell Mandy but not until the first of August. If I had realized what her response was going to be I would have told her months sooner. Mandy tried her damnedest to get pregnant, but I wasn’t having any of that. She told me she was on the pill and that we didn’t need condoms anymore. If I hadn’t seen through that one I guess I would have been the stupider of the two. So for that month we did it like rabbits. I guess she figured that with a one percent chance of getting pregnant using condoms, that eventually she would hit pay dirt just by sheer numbers. It was a great month but I think I aged two years in that span. As the end of the month got closer Mandy became more frantic. I was afraid that she might just do it with somebody that looked like me just to get pregnant and keep me there. Would I have stayed? No, not a chance. I felt like I loved her, but what were we going to do? Live at her folks? Was I an ass? Probably, but I had just turned 18, what did I care. She called me on the day I was leaving to tell me how much she hated me. I knew she was lying but it still struck me deep in the chest. It was a long time before I got over that conversation.
I had to take a Greyhound bus out to Colorado because my mother was too pissed to spring for the airplane flight. It didn’t really bother me, three days on a bus was still better than the three days extra I would have had to spend with her. That final summer with her was a nightmare. She harangued me from the moment I got accepted till the day I left. “How could you do this to me?” “Why would you want to leave me all alone?” “Your father’s never here, why should you be!” Three days on a bus far outweighed more of the same. I guess the only thing that really began to bother me during that trip was the constant smell of urine. I don’t know do bus riders just pee wherever they are? They truly are a different class of passenger. Too cheap, poor, stupid or possibly a combination of all three to take alternate means of transportation. But that also has very little to do with the tale I’m telling. I got off the bus in Boulder, Colorado. Is it me or does the air in Colorado just smell better? Even the urine-bleach odor of the bus depot smelled a little sweeter.
I stepped out from the front of the depot and actually hailed a cab, I thought that only happened in movies, and directed the driver to the University of Colorado, Boulder. Apparently he was very familiar with college students, he hurumphed and grunted and I think actually passed a little gas before proceeding to take me on the exclusive city wide tour of Boulder, so forty-five minutes later and fifty-two dollars poorer I stepped out of the cab and right into the arms of Beth. No, literally, I stumbled on the damn curb and fell into the assistant R.A.’s arms. Maybe the oxygen was a little thinner, but I don’t know if that could even begin to explain the swoon I felt when she touched me. Her fingers were electric, I don’t know if she felt it too or she was just reacting to the goofy look on my face, but she held on to me just a little longer than she had to before she propped me back up on my semi-stable legs. She was 5’2” of pure female perfection, her auburn hair trailed down her back just to the point of caressing one of the finest sculpted buttocks (okay asses) I had ever seen. Her almost oval face was dominated by a radiant smile and eyes as blue as the sea, but not your average sea, more like the sea off the coast of Hawaii. I felt from that one look she directed at me that she could and had read my soul. (But I actually found out later that she had felt bad for me, thinking that I was part of the Special Ed class. Oh well, not every fantasy can be perfect.)
“Whoa, you alright?” she said with a gleaming smile
“Uh, yeah, I don’t think I twisted anything,” I murmured sheepishly.
“Are you part of the…?”
“Yeah, I’m in the freshman class of 1988.”
“Oh,” she said, “Do you know which dorm you’re in?”
“Yeah, uh Baker’s Hall, room 312.”
“Oh, that’s great, I’m the assistant R.A. for that floor”
“That’s awesome!” I said a little too energetically, hope and desire surging through me.
“Alright, you should probably get your stuff and get to your room so that you can get acquainted with your new roommate. Oh, and there’s a floor meeting at seven o’clock tonight in the third floor lounge.”
“Thanks, I’ll be there!” Man, could I be more lame. The girl of my dreams is standing before me and I sound like a kid at Toys R Us, even my mom knew it was better to remain silent and be thought dumb than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I proceeded up to the third floor, I was able to circumvent the elevators because everything I was bringing to college was either in the backpack I was wearing or the duffle bag I was carrying. Mother felt that I had no need to bring my stereo or any other personal belongings to school. “You need to just concentrate on your grades so that you can graduate and get back here as soon as possible.” As if I was going anywhere near the East Coast when I graduated. I guess I better get down to the registrar’s office and see which degree would take the longest amount of time to acquire. Maybe I could just stay and go for my doctorate. Deep in thought, I had my second near collision of the day, good thing I wasn’t driving.
“Whoa dude, what’s your rush?” a voice drifted into my daydream
“Sorry no rush, just deep in thought,” I replied, obviously without even considering my words.
“Are you stoned?” the voice came back.
“No I’m not stoned,” I said indignantly as I finally looked up at the voice ahead of me.
“Do you want to be?” he said.
“Paulie, how you doin’ my friend? How long have you been up here?”
“At least long enough to deseed half an ounce and roll a fattie.”
“Awesome, bud.”
“Yeah it is awesome - bud,” and we both laughed at that. And then we both stopped to admire the fine looking brunette striding on by. Man she was hot and we both knew she wouldn’t give us types the time of day unless we asked it from the posh interior of a Porsche. But it didn’t stop us from admiring the view.
So that’s how I ran into my best friend at CU. Paulie and I had planned this from the get go. We had applied for CU in secret hoping to get as far away from our parents as humanly possible and still stay in the country. I was truly glad Paul had decided to take his acceptance here. My self-esteem and confidence were shaky at the best of times. But Paul always seemed to be one of those people that you just felt good to be around. He brought out the best in the people around him. When we both decided that we were going to college we figured what the hell, let’s apply to the same school, maybe we’ll get lucky. Whereas my mother couldn’t believe I was leaving her, Paul’s parents couldn’t wait for him to go. He had just taken his final bags out of the room and his dad started stripping the wallpaper. Something about a hot tub or an office. Paul didn’t know and he didn’t care. For him also, two thousand miles might not be far enough away. He was a couple of inches taller than me, and definitely the type of guy that ladies approved of, dirty blond hair with piercing blue eyes. He was always quick with a smile and a joint. His laid back manner seemed to attract the ladies like a magnet. He was the kind of guy I had always strived to become, but I guess I just had too much of my mother’s uptightness in me.
“It’s good to see you my friend, step in to our palace.” He motioned with the wave of a hand. And unless I was already stoned I could swear he had somehow already produced the joint we were about to partake from.
“This is our room?” I asked
“What do you think man?”
“It looks like you’ve been here a lot longer than a couple of days.”
“My parents were so stoked I was leaving they would have put my ass on a Concorde if it had been an option. I’m telling you I’ve only been here for a couple of days.”
I stepped into my new abode and into an alternate universe. He had the place decked out. There was a black light on, three different black light posters, one each of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Cream. There was a strobe light going off in the far corner, and painted in glow-in-the-dark paint were stars on the ceiling. I sort of had the feeling I sometimes got when I was younger and building models and I left the glue open a little too long. The room was laid out in the shape of two squares that offset each other, giving the room the appearance of a Z shape. Of course being the last into the room I got the half that opened up to the doorway. Paul half-heartedly asked if it was okay if he got the half that faced the windows. It looked like he had been prepping his side for the last twenty-four hours with the posters and the lights and the glow in the dark nightline. I acquiesced, with the only condition being that he help me get my side to look like his. His smile spread from ear to ear. Well, I thought to myself, if being stoned could make you that happy, bring it on.
We smoked, laughed and ate; he had a box of Devil Dogs, which we devoured in record time, in four minutes if my watch was working correctly. I learned a new card game called 45’s but I wasn’t sure if I’d even remember it when we came down.
“Dude, its ten past seven, we gotta go the floor meeting,” Paul said, half smiling.
“Oh man, I have no desire to be out in public right now,” I said, slurring or at least it felt that way when it came out of my mouth.
“You’ll be fine, but you might want to wear some sunglasses.”
“Whattaya mean sunglasses, it’s seven o’clock and we’re inside.
“I know that,” he laughed “but your eyes are glowing.”
I looked in the mirror and could hardly believe the image that reflected back at me. I really did now look like a kid from Special Ed; the Devil Dog crumbs on my chin only amplified the effect. My eyes glowed like embers in a fire, and my lids drooped so low it looked like I was asleep on my feet.
“Use this, you’ll be fine,” Paul said as he threw a small bottle at me, which proceeded to bounce off of my arm and onto the floor. “Gets the red out.”
“Thanks man, I definitely appreciate this, I wish I had something that would take the buzz out, I really don’t want to act like an idiot in front of the assistant R.A.”
“You mean Beth?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sheepish grin.
“She’s out of your league, she was a counselor at a camp I used to go to during the summer. She’s a great person but she’s got more ambition and drive in her than anybody I’ve ever met. I tried to go out with her for two years, and she was having none of it.”
“Oh, so you figure if you couldn’t get her nobody could, huh?” I said nonchalantly, but in reality I was thinking to myself, if he couldn’t get her there was no way on God’s green earth that I would be able to. “How come you never told me about her?”
“There’s nothing to tell. She was a girl, alright a hot girl, that I never went out with. Not the kind of thing I like to spread around,” he said mockingly, “Naw, it’s just that she was always looking ahead. If I remember correctly, in high school she was going out with some football player in college, a big dude. She showed me his picture.”
My hopes had been dashed. They felt as if they had been literally smashed against the rocks. Paul, seeing the change in my expression, spoke hastily. “Don’t sweat it, for every girl you can’t get, there are two you can.” It was small solace but it would have to do for now. So off to the third floor lounge we went.
“So glad you could make it,” Beth said sarcastically as she glanced up at us. To me it appeared as a knowing glance at Paul and a disapproving one at me. Or maybe it was just the marijuana-induced paranoia. The only thing I remembered about the next hour was that I didn’t drool, which is a good thing, and how mesmerized I was with the way that Beth would flip her hair away from her face from time to time. I hoped it wasn’t too apparent that I was staring, but Paul noticed and would nudge me from time to time as if to awaken me from my stupor. So began my college career.