Octopodial Chrome

Every year Austin College offers a January Term during which each student takes an intensive three-week course. One is encouraged to study outside of one’s major if possible; JanTerm is in many ways very representative of AC’s focus on the liberal arts. These classes can be academically serious, actually serious (one was called Death and Dying) or fun to one extent or another. In 1997 I was serious and studied J.R.R. Tolkien; in 1998 I decided to have fun and took a course in bridge. I figured that I’d taken golf in the fall and with bridge in my repertoire I should be well-prepared for the life of leisure I imagined I would one day lead.

I studied bridge under Professors Jim Knowlton and Truett Cates (both of the German faculty). It was a remarkably rigorous course for one which was about a game: every evening we had homework which consisted of playing online games; we had to get our rankings to a certain point; we had to play in a local league’s tournaments at least twice; and the game itself requires no little bit of skill to play.

All in all, it was a great time. I can’t really remember all the details of bridge bidding conventions, so I’d be a rotten player now, but it was a great introduction to trick-taking games. My favourites now would be whist and tarocchi. If it hadn’t been for that bridge class, I might never have found them.

During Christmas Break my sophomore year, my friend Rabab had gone home to Egypt and brought back for me a hookah. It was a cheap bazaar one, but it was still a genuine Egyptian hookah. I sealed up the joints with sewing thread, notebook paper and poster putty, loaded it with cherry pipe tobacco (yes, yes, I once smoked that dreck) and was very proud of myself.

Here’s a picture of me at a Tri-Gam party called GTE:

GTE officially meant Gams on Thursday Evenings, but it really meant Get Trashed Early; it was held on Thursday nights whereas most parties were on Fridays. It was a great party and the Tri-Gams were great guys; I really wish that I'd pledged. Note the date on that picture? It was 22 January 1998—ten years and two days ago; tonight they’ll be holding that same party, a decade since.

I still have that tweed coat, that bow tie, that vest and I’m pretty sure those pants are still in my closet somewhere. The hookah, too, is sitting in a different closet. I think the other fellow on the couch was named Josh, but I’ve not seen him since I graduated. Thankfully, the black cherry pipe baccy is nowhere to be found.

Through all my life, I’ve generally had one good friend at a time. When I was in kindergarten there was my friend Russell; later in grade school it was Scott; still later it was my next-door neighbour Chris; in high school it was my buddy Dean. My first year of college I didn’t really find a new good friend; I hung out with the guys in my dorm wing (Baker Third Floor North forever!) but I wouldn’t say that I was particularly close with any of them.

The first semester of my sophomore year (a decade ago) I had to fulfil Austin College’s physical fitness requirement (it was two-part: take Physical Fitness freshman year and then take some physical fitness class later on); I chose golf, under the theory that it’d be useful professionally and is a solo sport (being hollered at by teammates for not being any good is both no fun whatsoever and my standard experience with team sports).

It turned out that almost all the classes were held off-campus, at a nearby driving and baseball-cage place. It wasn’t more than a mile or two away, but this being Texas when gas was under a dollar (and my clubs were rather heavy…) I hunted down someone to carpool with: a fellow I’d known from my dorm wing freshman year.

Every Monday, Wednesday & Friday (IIRC) morning we’d drive over to the range and discuss girls, beer, politics, beer, science, girls and beer—the standard stuff. Phil had been a member of the 9-hole Bonham Golf & Country Club since high school, so about once a week we’d drive up to Bonham, he’d drop off his dirty clothes at his folk’s house, pick up a fresh homemade pie (or two—sometimes his mother would bake me one too) and we’d head over to play a half-round of golf. It was a good bonding experience.

That was an eventful fall. I was was head over heels over a girl and Phil was getting over his first serious girlfriend and then finding the woman who became his wife. It was the autumn that I competed in a mock male beauty pageant. It was that fall that I started brewing at college: Phil and I (being only 19) figured that it was easier to turn apple juice or wort into cider or beer than to buy the already-fermented stuff. I remember how we threw out two batches because they looked & smelt bad, not realising that fruit wines always go through a period of smelling bad, and that the colour always drains from strawberries and cherries (those would have been incredible fruit ciders). It was the autumn that my pipe collection finally started filling out nicely. I suppose in a way that it was the last fall of my boyhood or the first of my manhood. It was a wonderful semester in a lot of ways.

Phil and I would become very good friends throughout the rest of college; I’d visit his and his girlfriend’s folks with him; he visited Colorado with me one spring break; we were roommates our junior and senior years. His then-girlfriend and now-wife Jess’s parents had a piece of land in southern Oklahoma about an hour from school; every few months a bunch of us would go up there for a weekend to fish, shoot and just chill. Phil was always there for me when I was moping about one thing or another, and I think I was generally there for him when he needed a hand. Friendship is a fine thing.

I’d be lying if I said that Phil and I are as close friends now as we were during those golden years of college (at one point we were as close as brothers). A large component of friendship is shared experience, and as time marches on we each add our own separate experiences to life. Our paths have diverged: where once we were a pair of beer-drinking, girl-chasing, golf-playing, Macintosh-using college students, now Phil is a beer-drinking, married, golf-playing, Mac-using doctor of chemistry and I’m a beer-drinking, girl-chasing, many-hobbied, Linux-using sysadmin. We don’t speak or email nearly as often as we did ten—or seven, or even three—years ago. That’s the way life goes.

As the years have passed and other claims on our time have increased we’ve seen less of one another, but it still generally works out that we get to hang out at least once a year. A few years after graduation Phil even ended up getting a year-long internship in Boulder, about half an hour away from where I was living in Denver. That was a great year: about once a week I’d go up to Boulder and once a week he’d come down to Denver. We’d hit the bars and the breweries and the brewpubs and the concert-halls and just hang out; every few months Jess would visit and it’d be like being in college again. He and Jess throw an amazing Christmas party every year which I’ve managed to make twice now; I crashed at their place when I was in town for our five-year reunion. This summer I saw them both in Chicago and then later on Phil and our mutual buddy Darren visited for a concert and a beer tour of northern Colorado.

Despite the fact that we’ve gone separate ways for much of the past seven-and-a-half years, we still take an interest in each other’s doings: I was there when he called Jass’s dad to ask for her hand; he was there when I had my first house blessed; he’s been there when I’ve needed someone to confide in and I’ve been there when he’s needed a sounding board. If all the money I spent on my four years at AC had brought me nothing more than Phil’s friendship, it’d have been a bargain.

A decade ago today I was a contestant in a mock male beauty pageant put on by the Thetas (a sorority with which I had a slight connection). The girl I’d been chasing was good friends with many of the Thetas as well, and persuaded me that it’d be a good idea to enter; thus I did.

It was actually pretty fun. There was a J. Crew bit, where one was supposed to look as though one had stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue; I think I just wore khakis and a white shirt with a coat slung over my shoulder. There was the stupid human trick; for mine I lit & smoked a pipe (I even had a cool little Zippo pipe lighter). Then there was the underwear bit; I wore silk long-johns over boxers & an undershirt.

My favourite was the lip-syncing contest. There were a lot of funny songs I thought of doing, but I eventually settled on Monty Python’s Bruce’s Philosophers Song. I strode on stage in the remnants of a three piece suit: bow tie unstrung, vest undone, one shirt cuff opened, hair mussed and a Pilsener glass full of non-beer in my hand, and proceeded to sing:

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away—half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle. Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart. I drink, therefore I am.
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.

It was a hit; the entire audience was rolling in the aisles. The judges (two or perhaps all three were professors) loved it (although they did send for my glass to assure themselves that it wasn’t real beer). It was perfect, perhaps my greatest moment on campus.

The finale was an evening dress competition—really, all of us were supposed to be in drag. Well, I’ve never worn women’s clothing in my life and don’t plan ever to, so I was in a bind. I finally hit on a clever solution: I had the MC do a special intro:

When the occasion calls for jeans & a t-shirt he shows up in a coat and tie; when the occasion calls for a swimsuit he shows up in a coat and tie; when the occasion calls for evening wear he shows up in…a coat and tie!

And then I came out wearing a coat and tie. It at least got a laugh out of the audience, and managed to preserve at least a portion of my dignity.

I didn’t win, but I believe I placed. Given the reception of my song, I think I could have won had I done the drag bit, but some things aren’t worth winning. As it was, it was a blast. Even backstage it was fun.

The one annoying thing was that the girl who’d suggested I compete didn’t show up. I’d thought she’d be there, so was more than a little pissed. But all my friends who did attend had a great time.

I still remember where I was when I heard that Princess Diana had died in a car accident. I was at a start-of-school party at the Tri-Gam house, sitting on the front porch enjoying a beer and smoking my pipe when Kevin Craig ran out shouting Princess Diana just died! My response? Good riddance to bad rubbish.

She was an adultress and an accomplice to treason (sleeping with the Princess of Wales has been high treason since 1351). That wouldn’t have been so bad, but she was indiscreet, which is worse. After her divorce, she entertained New Age gurus and was thoroughly unrespectable, finally ending up involved with a department store owner’s son.

The massive maudlin display of grief on her death is yet another indication that England has fallen quite far from the nation which ruled the waves and on whose empire the sun never set.

A decade (and a few months…) ago I finished my freshman year of college and got a summer job at what was then called ResNet. I figured it’d give me a chance to save some money and hopefully gain a little independence from my folks—as I recall my goal was to by all my books for the ’97–’98 year.

After getting the job, I had to find a place to live. I don’t remember now if I checked the classified ads or not, but I do know that I spent several afternoons walking around the neighbourhoods near AC looking for places to rent. I was actually getting quite panicky when a friend mentioned that his girlfriend was looking for a housemate for the summer, and so I ended up moving into 820 N. Crockett St. in Sherman, Texas. My parents were pretty upset; they thought I was shacking up with the girl. Which is pretty funny in hindsight: how could they be so clueless as to not notice that I simply don’t understand girls enough to have any success with them? But they sure were convinced I was going off to live in a den of iniquity. Sigh—I haven’t the luck!

It was a wonderful summer. I had no money to speak of ($4.75/hour, IIRC) and managed to spend, so I spent but $7/week on food. Back then Lipton Noodles ’n’ Sauce were 85¢ apiece; I’d buy 7 of them, leaving me $1.05 to splurge on a bag of pork rinds, or some sodas or whatever. I’d no car, so I couldn’t go anywhere my bike or feet couldn’t take me—and there’s nothing to in Sherman anyway. So I’d go to work, ride home at lunchtime to grab a granola bar or just relax, ride back to work, ride back home, make dinner, then relax on the back porch reading a book of philosophy, smoking a pipe and drinking a snifter of brandy.

I had to sit on the back porch, you see, because we didn’t run the air conditioner, as it was too expensive. The house baked like an oven; it was miserable inside. So I’d sit out back watching the sun set—it was a very nice time, actually.

Sometimes I’d walk to Sherman’s downtown: motley collection of lawyers, land agents and furniture stores. But that summer a great little coffeehouse opened up, and the owner & I would smoke cigars and discuss the world. Sometimes I’d walk by the storefront black church, with the people interjecting amen, ah-huh, hallelujah &c. as the preacher spoke. Or, if I had a little bit of extra money, I’d get an ice cream cone at the Braum’s.

I had two housemates: Lara & Alicia. Alicia was pretty unhappy to share a house with a guy, and a week or two after I moved in she moved out; we were fortunate enough to pick up another renter instead, a fellow named James. He was 24 or 26, in the master’s programme and was engaged: he seemed a very old man to us. After all, he’d actually worked after college!

Lara’s boyfriend—my buddy—was away in Mexico for the summer, and the girl I’d been pining after was home on vacation, so the two of us spent a good time moping. One time it got so hot inside that we walked downtown, then back home, and for some reason decided that starting a fire would be neat. So we did, on the sidewalk in front of the house. Not, perhaps, the best idea ever. She ended up marrying her boyfriend, and is now rather an accomplished photographer.

James had worked at a video store, so he had a huge library of old display videos (they scroll THIS VIDEO NOT FOR RESALE every five minutes or so, but are otherwise great); he even had the uncut version of Branagh’s Hamlet, which was a treat. He had also been an actor, and had a tape of perhaps the worst film ever, Gay TV, in which he played a part. It was so bad that Lara & I pretended to be asleep halfway through it. He’s now married and has a few daughters, and teaches and directs.

Sherman in the summer was something else; I actually grew to appreciate it. The city hosted concerts on the lawn of high school; a good chunk of the townsfolk would attend, and since many of them were faculty, staff or students one was sure to spot someone one knew. The few students in town bonded more than during the school year; parties which in term would have been quite exclusive were much more inviting. It was really nice; I’ve often wished that I’d spent the next two summers there. But of course, the internships I pursued instead led to the job I work now, which is what affords me the opulent lifestyle I enjoy, so I guess it all works out in the end.

All in all, that was an excellent summer. At the end of it, I was 140 pounds and in excellent shape from the combination of too little food and all my cycling. It was grand!

This month marks ten years since I began to go insane. I’d always preferred to dress somewhat more formally than my peers, and indeed during my first semester at Austin College I tended to wear slacks and a button-down shirt (this at a time & place when jeans & t-shirts were the norm), but then I went home for Christmas and my parents gave me a choice: I could get a stereo or a coat from Brooks Brothers. What self-respecting young man wouldn’t go for the coat?

I returned to school for my first JanTerm; that year I took a month-long intensive course in J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth writings (taught by Prof. Bill Moore, a fairly old-school professor). So I owned a tweed coat, it was grey & blustery, I had several pipes and I was studying Tolkien: no-one needed to draw me a diagramme. And so I started to wear coat, tie & sweater-vest. It was a blast: walking across the quad on a cold January morning, smoke streaming from my pipe, looking forward to another day of musty old Oxford dons—add in the fact that the girl I thought the finest in all the world was in the same class, and life was pretty much perfect.

And thus began my long sojourn in the land of the mildly deranged. For the next three and a half years I was the guy in the coat & tie. I loved it, pointing out that I was the real non-conformist; after all, if everyone else is wearing rainbow tie-dyed shirts then they’re hardly radical, are they? That’s quite true; what I’d not realised is that no-one should want to be different; it’s the normal guys who get girlfriends, the non-eccentrics who advance in the world. It wasn’t until I’d graduated and been working for a few years that I quit the coat & tie thing, too late to have any real understanding of style. Oh well.

Incidentally, if you’ve never had the chance to study Tolkien on a grey day, wearing a tweed coat with a pouch in one pocket and a tamper in the other, a tie on your neck, a sweater over that and a pipe twixt your teeth—you really haven’t lived yet. It is more than cool.

Today marks ten years to the day since I met Karen, ten years since I fell hard for her—and almost exactly eight¾ years since I recovered.

I was in Abell Library (amusingly, the library home page is exactly as it was a decade ago) that evening, and saw a guy from my wing of Baker Hall; he was studying Kafka with a pair of girls. I got to talking with one of the girls: talking, and talking, and talking. She was fascinating: religious (like me!); a fan of Tolkien (like me!); a history geek (like me!). And although far from classically lovely, there was something about her I found attractive. No doubt it was the hunter green sweater & red hair pulled into a ponytail which together gave her a faint English look. I vaguely remember, once I’d left the library and she was out of sight, leaping into the air and clicking my heels together. Yup, I was well-and-truly smitten.

Hormones exist for several purposes, many quite useful (it’d get quite cold here in Denver without the beard I possess courtesy of some hormones which started their work almost twenty years ago), but they serve one end which is quite pernicious: they addle the brain. Our minds rely on our brains to process data for us; the brain is the mind’s calculator, its web browser, its interface to the body and through the body to the outside world. Under the influence of hormones the brain’s workings are confounded and the mind no longer perceives the truth. This is a good thing for the species as a whole, for otherwise no-one would marry. Women and men are fundamentally incompatible, and only through intoxication—whether by chemical or biological means—can we persuade ourselves otherwise. Eventually we sober up, but by that point it’s too late: we’re married, with children and mortgages and throw pillows and curtains and sleeping next to someone whose vocabulary possesses sixteen different words for the colour white.

It’s amusing how hormones persuade us that the object of our affections is exactly what we want. If one wishes an active mate, his brain fails to perceive that his beloved would really rather stay at home and read a good book; his hormone-addled brain sees the two skiing trips and the disused bicycle and ignores the bookshelves and the literary reviews. Likewise the girl who wants a scholarly young man: her hormone-intoxicated brain sees only the unread copies of Aquinas, Newton & Gould (inherited from his flat’s former owner) and completely overlooks the football jersey, the Playboy centrefolds on the wall and the C average. Hormones are brain damage.

In my case I had been taught to put friendship and intellectual & philosophical similarity at a premium and discount physical attraction—and I was only to happy to perceive exactly that. Why, Karen & I were practically identical! We read the same books; we thought the same things; we could sit and talk for hours (over twelve hours in one memorable instance). Why, we agreed on everything. Well, everything important. Well, almost everything important. And I could convince her on the outstanding issues. And besides, we were so similar on the big political issues of the day, e.g. we both opposed gun control. Even the fact that she wasn’t a classic beauty was a mark in her favour, for it proved that this was an authentic love. Hormones are brain damage.

In reality, we were similar insofar as we were both intelligent, quirky, middle-class, American teenagers of the 1990s who had both read the books that intelligent, quirky, middle-class, American teenagers read back in the 1990s. Sure, she wasn’t fanatically anti-gun, but that’s hardly rare in Texas. While we did have interests in common, we came at them from different angles and for different reasons: the boy who reads about Sts. Nicholas & Alexandra because they are the Royal Martyrs has little in common with the girl who reads about Tsar Nicholas & Tsaritsa Alexandra because they were famous historical failures. Hormones are brain damage.

But my hormone-addled senses convinced me that dating Karen made sense, that it was a logical, rational thing to do. There was one hitch, though: she had a boyfriend—but he went to a school roughly six hours away. I figured that I had a pretty good chance; after all, don’t most high school relationships break up once they become long-distance in college? I’ve often wished that he’d gone to Austin College as well, for then it’s likelier that I’d have given up. Instead, I persisted for over a year, in defiance of all logic & reason. Hormones are brain damage.

Karen is blameless in all this: she mentioned Scott the evening we met and never led me to think she would break things off with him. If anything, she was very clear that they were quite fond of one another and that she & I had no romantic future. Despite the evidence, I was convinced that I could somehow win her affections. Hormones are brain damage.

I was a lovesick pup for month after month; I spent every possible minute with her; I bored my friends with talk of her; I spent the summer break of ’97 pining after her; I contacted her immediately after she got back on campus; in short, I made a complete and utter ass of myself. I alienated my friends and neglected my studies. Hormones are brain damage.

It’s odd how quickly these things can start & end. I fell for Karen in an instant, and I fell away almost as quickly. I still remember the day: it was the end of the 1998 Jan Term (very possibly 23 January, which would be nicely symmetrical) and my best friend Phil & I were sitting in his dorm room polishing off a magnum of hard cider we’d made. I can still see the winter sun slanting in through the blinds, and can still remember saying, You know, I don’t think I’m in love with Karen anymore. It was as simple as that, like a light switch being flipped on.

For a time after my brain cleared I strongly disliked her, although it wasn’t really her that I hated; it was the error of which she reminded me. Eventually that shame subsided and we became decent acquaintances. Karen’s married to Scott now, with one son and another child due in a month or two, and I’m quite happy for them.

I wouldn’t have things turn out any other way. Karen & I would have been a big mistake even if she’d be amenable: we’re just not anywhere a good match, but hormone-drunk I was convinced we were. Hormones are brain damage.

Sometime around this week marks a full decade since I started college. It was the happiest day of my life: as I watched my family's van drive off into the long August evening, I felt very strongly the old words of Martin Luther King, Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last!. After 18 years of bondage, I was finally free (this wasn't a particularly mature attitude, but it's the one I had at the time).

As soon as they had disappeared, I ran up into my dorm room, tore into my boxes and produced my corncob pipe and some truly foul peach tobacco which I though was the bee's knees back then; then I went outside and enjoyed my first pipe as a free man. It was truly glorious.

Looking back on it all now, it's amazing how much I can still easily remember, and how much I've forgotten. I can recall the second-rate jellybeans at the Hopper Store, but not getting my photo made for my student ID; I can remember listening to The Edge (back when it was 94.5), but not meeting the guys who are now my best friends.

Looking back on it now, I realise that my major failing was treating college just like the previous dozen years of my education. Ever since the abominable Mrs. Freeman in fourth grade, school (life, really) had been a matter of cost-benefit maximisation, of seeing how well I could do for a minimal amount of effort. That's probably not an entirely inappropriate way to handle middle school, but it's utterly wrong for college.

College is a golden opportunity: one gets to deal on a one-on-one basis with experts in their fields---one's field, but I didn't realise that. Instead, I saw it as something like high school without parents: I had to do well enough academically to stay in, but there was no need to do better. Tests were not useful gauges of my progress, but instead hurdles to be overcome. Grades were not my friend but my enemy.

It wasn't until my senior year that I really got it and started to do well not because I needed to but because I wanted to---but by then it was too late. It's funny: senior year I partied more, did more, had more fun and got better grades than ever before. Unlike some, it wasn't partying which did me in, but attitude.

Socially, college was the best time of my entire life. I formed excellent friendships, many of which persist to this day. In college, one is surrounded by members of one's age cohort: never again will a young man have so many young women around him, nor will he ever have so many friends.

Life after graduation is inevitably downhill: one gets older; the body which once supported one now needs support; work sucks out what idealism and optimism one had and replaces it with the worst kind of cynicism. How could it be otherwise? What can be better than to be young & foolish, unaware of life's limitations? Age and wisdom may be better for one's character, but they aren't very fun.

And yes, gentle readers of this humble blog, prepare for four years of reminiscing, all leading up to my ten-year reunion. It was a fine thing to be a young man in the twilight years of the twentieth century, and I plan to recount it all.