it is snowing. hard. like Erie, PA hard. i motion to go back inside. i can see the faint light of the lounge. but the corner is too severe to see Auverin. is she there? i can only imagine now. she's a smart girl, she managed to wither the unforeseen and unexpected tides of college, she's probably off to her first rave by now. well her first real one, that high-school starter one in her bedroom never counted. things came easy to her. is this a byproduct of her looks? sure but not everything. the thing about Auverin, she always divulged, even her struggles. that's what made her an actor. i could never bring myself to conceal. that's what made me a writer.
i've been forgetting a lot throughout this wave of encounters. which is unfortunate. most of my uni experience i wanted to forget, tried hard to, but something happens when you scratch a locked box, you discover the gold foil, it gets stuck under your fingernails. one thing i knew i'd regret was not handling that feeble door. it was a closed gate to me. now. and forever. i would never anchor my weighted sandal on those erudite marble floors again. those floors were never cleaned that was the beauty of them. never again as a naïve wide-eyed and fried-tail student assuming the best, patterning his path on his parents, not his protégé. regarding it all as so much escape rather than the most terrifying freedom that exists in space.
two things i did remember. they came back like dull teeth. the day. the day was Friday. today is Friday. the last one before the three-day weekend that introduces the spring semester on Tuesday. the ultimate election day for the leanings of your soul. and some time tomorrow, which was already today, the sun would peek through the clouds, there was never rain when i wanted it, and i would run out of excuses to attend my last final. a final i had not prepared for. not one page. a stack of putrid books on mechanics or something was piling on my couch in the lounge, ripping the seams off the pillows. i hadn't read all semester, they were cracked shut, diversion was my drug. this was a required class, i had to take it to graduate, which is arbitrary and the product of an angry system. points too powerful in public. it was as if i was coasting till i realized you can't defy the establishment. you can't get a job as a rock guru in this society. a guru who prays over rocks upside-down, with the rocks stacked high on my erect penis.
it's all so easy, isn't it, me? to study is to succeed. a surge came over me, rendering me full of inside speech but no outward action. the snow. i blame the snow. like i tried, i really tried, to lift the boot over the icy mound that was the granite stairs, i used both hands, but i got drunk on my own immobility. this time it was different. something has washed over me, and hardened. i simply can't bear to do this anymore. something has happened, an accumulation of somethings, and i am systematically rejecting all standardized schooling. for spirituality. really for slouching. i am no longer a student. of the world. i am a student of my own mind, i shall live in there for all eternity, eons after my eventual death. it's good that they never got around to laminating my final student card. a bureaucracy can help to shade the abetting of an escape. student aid. i can't go back in there. even if i wanted to. i don't want to. i can't hold another paid book in my soft hands. not one more test. not one more light-blue essay book where i scribble some savage shit for two hours that is so filled with my bullshit i have to take a literal shit afterwards. this is the end. the end of it all. the termination of a dream first thunk up over a baptism font. the abortion of the 21-year plan.
i am negating everything. every combination of who i was and who i would have become. to center who i will actually become. but i am an artist so i must make a final gesture. even if i have spit out the tower. i could never spit on the tower, it's too big and i'm too small. the lions! the lions which guard the gate! the library lions. i caress each's mane like i'm at a petting zoo closed for a snow day. or a tome of children's fantasy, that makes it more noble. speaking of noble, the lions don't mind my silly human, they're hearty. the garlands of Christmas lights around their flowing carved manes are too small for their noble necks, the lights are as tiny as they come in sizes. i remove the lights from off each of their necks, both of them, and bury them in the snow, planting my boot over their grave.
if only i could feed them. if only i could hide in their mouths.
i turn around and face the street, my beloved street, the one which divides the institution from the limits of a city. i do not say goodbye to Auverin. like i didn't say goodbye to my opposite-street neighbor. i don't even have the guts to wave. they were both my next-door neighbors.
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President Bump is hiding in the pot party bus on New Year's Eve. you know, the one that doesn't move cos what's the point. full of stoners from out-of-state and Alabama who can only get their stuff legally here in this state. can't think of a better time for a special occasion.
Bump: can i bus? heehee. i came up with that and i'm not even high yet.
the mellow crowd of sad sacks sit in their assigned seats on the bus, smoking, hitting, blunting, trying not to let their lives get any sadder.
Bump: guys, guys, hey guys, don't blame me for Sessions. i wanted that imp gone stone ages ago. he's like the ogre who keeps all the Lucky Charms for himself. RANDI KAYE?!! as i live and breathe.
Randi Kaye: oh no. it's not me, you're having Parkinson's hallucinations.
Bump: oh Randi. you were always my favorite. you're the reason i watch CNN 24-7, as a hope to maybe catch a glimpse. you're way hotter than those other gilfs on tv.
Randi: i think you mean the internet.
Bump: wrong. i mean right. gilf gifs. i would fuck you so hard on this Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test bus your brittle bones would break and your seat would rip and spill its stuffing. puff pass paint. i'm seeing you in a new light. my small grande blonde espresso roast. i'd offer you some THC-infused cocktails but i fear they'd just go right through you, you hot skeleton grandma.
Randi: your wife is right here. on this bus seated right next to me in her assigned seat.
Gina De Vecchio: i didn't want to come.
Bump: that's the problem. honey you're old news, which is worse than fake news. look i learned a lot from you on our relationship. like shag twisters and stuff. i recognize although Michelle surprisingly does in fact have the biggest tits she wears those dowdy grandma skirts. weather needs to be wet. but then you introduced the hydrophobic layer. how can you have a bong without the hydro?
the bus fills to the inside roof with mud. the stoners cheer.
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