First I stopped by the English department to drop off this paper I'd written for my Elizabethan lit class, due yesterday, about how Antonio and Bassanio were Totally Doing It, which I don't really believe but my professor does. Yeah I don't really expect to finish out the semester, but I'd already written the thing so I figured I might as well hand it in. While I was standing in front of the TA mailboxes trying to remember the name of the grad student who leads the discussion section I've only been to twice, I ran into this girl Shirley who's also in that section. I've been in a bunch of classes with her and she's wicked smart. She also has that thinly fruity ketone breath of a person who's starving to death, the way you did during your worst times. And she's so thin you can see through her skin to the bowed shape of her sternum, and she always brings diet green tea to class with various infusions of fruity flavors—little things, things that I associate with you. Anyway she pulled one white headphone out of her left ear long enough to say hi, and I did the same. Then she was like, I totally didn't start this till last night, and I was like, Yeah, me too, I was up till four, which was just a congenial lie since I wrote it last weekend on a Sober Day and spent last night watching all the High School Musical movies back-to-back with Andrew. But while we talked about that I watched her hand in her paper which she pulled all crumpled out of a beat-up designer purse, and slid mine into the same mailbox, all nonchalant, feeling clever. Turned out the guy's name is Stewart Mackintosh, which didn't sound even remotely familiar.
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We both turned to leave at the same time and Shirley was like, So what are you listening to, and I let her listen but it was Bob Dylan, and from her face I could tell she'd heard it a million times before, enough to make her blasé about it, since she probably went through a whole Dylan phase back in high school and loved him more intensely than she would ever love another musician, only the phase was over now and she didn't like to think of it too much. She just kind of shrugged and handed me back my headphones all, Oh I like that one, The Times They Are A-Changin' right? I had thought about switching really quick and subtle before I let her listen, to something a little cooler like Neutral Milk Hotel or Sufjan Stevens or something, so she'd know that I listen to quirky shit and that we have that in common, but I like the Dylan song. It makes me think of impossibly thin chain-smoking rebel-poets with wardrobes full of black T-shirts, inspired and unstoppable like the people in the song, like you were before we met, in high school, like this girl Shirley probably was too. Oh yeah, you may never have known because you were supposed to be the emotional one, but I loved Dylan too. Shirley must have hit up a CVS sale of leftover Easter candy or something because she stuck her hand in her purse and pulled out this huge bag of yellow-and-white sugar-free lollipops shaped like chicks coming out of their eggs. Want a lollipop? she said, and I wasn't sure I would really enjoy stale fake-lemon-and-Splenda-flavored candy but I said yes anyway because after all I might never see her again, and plus: free food. She unwrapped one for herself and walked away sucking on it like a little kid, putting her own headphones back in her ears. At the same time I also put my headphones back in, and I tucked the lollipop into my spare boxers, to avoid breakage. Then I headed towards the river.
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On the way I stopped at that chocolate place on Brattle Street and managed to find a seat even though it's so crowded on Saturdays. I know it's supposed to be a place where you take your date not a place where guys eat alone, but I don't care. The waitress, a cute girl with dyed black hair and a bright green plastic cocktail ring, brought my hot chocolate, thick and frothy, in a mug so big I felt like I had a bowl of chocolate soup, with biscotti on the house. It was manly. I come there often enough I guess I qualify as a regular and probably even have a nickname, Fat Guy Who Eats Alone, maybe. I don't know, you might think maybe if I stopped smoking all the time I would be healthier, but actually I just love chocolate. It's funny, you never ate, which I wasn't supposed to notice but I did; and now I eat like it's my job, anything in reach, donuts, chocolate, cheese, and I'm still hungry all the fucking time. Weird. Anyway, I dug into the biscotti happily and told myself to remember to tip nicely. Across the room was a couple that looked just awkward enough to be on a first date. He had a unibrow so thick and unabashed it was weirdly appealing and a general nerdy grad-student aura, and she looked like she was maybe nineteen, with unbelievable legs and a biochem textbook of some sort poking out of her messenger bag. I think she caught me staring at her legs, because she got this tired indulgent look on her face like a mom with a toddler, and I guess she was justified in feeling tired, and I was justified in feeling a little embarrassed. Anyway I started thinking about our first date, and how we walked home instead of taking the subway, just because it was a warm April and we could. I thought about first kisses stolen on tree-lined streets, sweet like milk chocolate, magical like spring. It got to be depressing so I scarfed down the last biscotto and got up, leaving a cool thirty percent tip. Before leaving I bought a ridiculously overpriced thermos so that I could get coffee on the road, whatever road I ended up on, and drink it in an environmentally responsible fashion. I never said I didn't care about the world.
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Then I got to the river. I went to the far half of the footbridge, maybe five yards from the end, and looked over the thick stone railing at the dirty water. It was a little too tall, the railing I mean, to comfortably lean on and have any decent view, and when I first started college I would sometimes climb up and perch on it, legs dangling, and think and think. But now it seemed like kind of a daunting task to get up there. If you were actually going to read this I would maybe try to come up with an excuse for how I've been gaining weight steadily for a long time, so I'm always out of breath and lethargic and I'm bad at lifting myself lately, which are all things I would work on in a perfect world where I gave a shit, but I always seem to end up getting high instead. So I stood like that for awhile but it really didn't appeal to me like this, and I wanted my old habit back. Not being entirely sure that I could have it back, I started out by lifting one foot up and wedging it into the space between two columns, and then planted my two hands on the stone and tried to lift myself. I ended up making this big old grunt noise and got to a standing position with my weight supported by one foot in the railing, and muttered So far so good to myself, and then was a little puzzled by how to finish the job. Eventually I sort of got my left ass cheek up where I needed it and then swiveled my body around till I could face out at the river again. And you know, from that perspective, on a sunny day, it never looks dirty, that water. It glitters, and with the boats and stuff on it you would think you were looking at an establishing shot for a New England movie. But I won't wax poetic about it, that's your thing not mine, I just like to look. And look I did. My iPod played "Hallelujah," Leonard Cohen's original of course, which is the only version I have, because even though I know Jeff Buckley covered the shit out of it and his version was probably better, there's a big difference between a person who's seen the light and someone who only claims to have seen it. Well as it turned out I was pretty fucken glad I wasn't all that far above the surface, because I don't like heights. Being up high reminds me of how when my mom used to take me to church once a year on Easter Sundays, I would always get this crazy urge to let my farts go even though I also totally dreaded farting in a quiet church. It's the same with heights, you could always jump off, even though you know you won't. Well of course you would, the personal you, but I meant the hypothetical you... After all, you gave me the idea, and I'll never be able to get rid of it. And when I'm really stoned, like I still was after the morning session with AJ, of course I get even more worried about what I might do. So I only lasted a few minutes like that and then, after getting more and more nervous and twitchy, I sort of flopped myself back down to where I found my footing again. Then as I straightened up these two women, one with a buzz cut, one with like twenty piercings in her ears, passed me holding bouquets of purple daisies and the one with the earrings stopped and handed me a daisy and said, We're giving them out to everyone because our friends got married on the river banks this morning, have a magical day! I didn't come up with anything original to say before they moved on but I held tight to the daisy as I walked back up towards the subway stop.
