Author’s note: this is the third installment in a ten-part series.
~
After showering back at the dorm, I head over to the student union, fill a thermos with hot water, and throw in several tea bags. I smuggle the tea into the library and make my way up to the fourth floor, to my favorite study carrel far back in the stacks. Hardly anyone ever wanders back here. I take out my chemistry textbooks and notebooks, planner, and bag of pens, pencils, and highlighters. Within the brightly lighted enameled square of this desk, with only the hissing of a nearby air re-circulation vent, I am calm and centered.
I burn my mouth on the hot tea and the pain is almost a welcome relief, a sharp discomfort that pulls my awareness out of my head and into the present moment, into the world of bond-angles and chiral resolution of racemic mixtures, light-interaction and configurational entropy, information digested and organized in discrete, neat rows of writing and calculations on lined paper in my notebook.
I love everything about chemistry. I love the math involved, the balance it demands, the precision of it. I love the inherent mystery; that the arrangement of matter and energy within chemical structures belies an inherent wildness of the physical universe; that what we can measure and define is just a human-parsable facsimile of what actually is. It feels so huge and important. All I want is to get further and further into it.
Hours pass as I study and work on two problem sets, one for each of my two different chemistry classes. When I reach the end of my analytical problem set, I’m surprised to see it is almost three AM. My stomach grumbles and I realize that I haven’t eaten anything since lunch. I fumble in my bag for a granola bar but there aren’t any left. Damn. I am out of food at the dorm, too, all I have there are a couple of Gatorades.
The union isn’t open past 1:30 AM and at this hour there isn’t anything else open on or near campus. Well, there is always the 24-hour gas station about a mile and a half away. I consider making the trip. Maybe I can just go to bed. I stand up and my stomach grumbles again. Ugh. I am probably not going to be able to sleep if I am this hungry.
~
It is a warm and humid night. I trek across campus, past the looming engineering quad, then down a tree-lined residential road. I pass in and out of bright pools of light collecting under the halogen street lamps, accompanied only by the staggered cacophony of cicadas clustered unevenly in the trees. Eventually, I come to the large, two-lane road, cross it and pass under a buzzing neon sign to enter the gas station.
Inside, the fluorescent lighting is bright and harsh. The clerk, a stout brunette, gives me a skeptical look when walk in. I must seem menacing to her, a large brown guy appearing in the middle of the night. I smile and give her an innocuous little wave, annoyed with myself for going through the charade of making myself seem small and harmless. But it seems to put her at ease; she goes back to reading her magazine behind the counter.
I move through the aisles, tired and ravenous, collecting junk — a few bags of chips, some Dr. Pepper, a couple of candy bars. The healthiest thing I find is a bag of unsalted mixed nuts. I grab that, too. I am contemplating a huge pickle floating in a plastic pouch of brine when a pickup truck pulls up and disgorges three rough-looking guys. I wince as they come bounding into the shop.
At school we call these guys “townies” — local guys with tattoos, trucks, and strong regional accents. I am suddenly very exposed, bracing for them to notice me. At first, they don’t — they chat up the clerk, buying scratch-off lotto tickets and cigarettes. By the way they are talking, loud and with an exaggerated slowness, I can tell they’re drunk. Then one spots me.
“Hey A-rab,” he calls.
I don’t look at him. Luckily, they all seem to be heading toward the door, away from me.
“Hey Osama, why don’t you fuck off back to Pakistan, you fucking towel head?!” the same guy yells.
His friends howl with laughter and then they are gone, out the door. I watch them whooping it up outside in the parking lot. One of them pounds on the glass of the window, pointing at me and giving me the middle finger. I wait for them pile into their truck and roar off before I bring my items up to the counter.
Towelhead from Pakistan. That’s a new one. I doubt he was interested in having a discussion about the Pakistani Sikh diaspora. In any case, I am too hungry and tired to get all that upset. Honestly, I have heard a lot worse. In the years since 9/11, I’ve been physically threatened, pushed, spat at. Airports are misery. At school I usually feel OK, but I can never really forget that this is America, and I look like the enemy. That I am always subject to scrutiny, suspicion, interrogation.
“Don’t listen to those assholes, sweetheart,” the clerk says, ringing me up. She chuckles, gazing toward where the truck had driven off. “Bunch o’ shitheads.” She looks at me and asks, “Where you from, anyway?”
I eat a candy bar and drink most of the Dr. Pepper before I even get back across the big street. I open a bag of chips and try to eat them slowly as I walk back to my dorm. The sugar and fat floods into my bloodstream and I relax a bit. The night is quiet and beautiful. A bright, gibbous moon peeks through the trees as I walk along the dark sidewalks.
Somehow, despite having just walked from campus, I take a wrong turn on my way back. I find myself on a street I don’t recognize. The street lights are spaced far enough apart that the sidewalk becomes completely dark at the midpoints between them. Aside from the drone of the insects, there is no sound. No cars, no voices.
I’m not sure what compels me to stop where I do, but in one of the dark interstices between street lights, I put down my bag of junk food and stretch my arms over my head. I gaze up at the old Victorian house in front of me. It looms out, almost menacingly. There is no porch light on, but as my eyes adjust to the low light filtering through the trees, I am struck by a sense of familiarity, followed by certainty: this is it. The house from the party. From the dream… with Jamie.
On impulse, I walk up the steps from the sidewalk to the yard. I follow the porch, which is huge — it wraps around the entire first floor of the house — around to the right, to where I know the kitchen door must be. I see the door, and the railing, and my heart accelerates in my chest. There is railing that Jamie and I had leaned on, where we had… had we actually kissed? It was just a dream, right? But if so, how do I know this place?
I move to the spot where Jamie and I had jumped off the porch and into the trees. There is the path — I can see it in the dim light — the path through the trees. Walking as softly as possible, I follow it around to the back of the house. Emerging from the trees into the back yard, the light from the moon is brighter. It hangs in the western sky just above the treetops that ring the yard. Along the rear wall of the house are the rickety steps, a steep diagonal interrupted by a landing at the second floor.
An electric current of fear sets the hair on my shoulders and arms on end as I make out a dark mass at the top of the stairs. A red spot of light brightens and then dims, a wink that seems to register my presence.
My muscles brace to run back to the street, back to campus, but I remain rooted in place, agonizingly exposed in the open grass of the yard. The dark mass stands up, transforming into a human that descends the stairs slowly. At the base of the stairs, the human tosses its cigarette on the ground, into an explosion of orange sparks.
“Amir, is that you?” I hear him say.
The voice confirms what I somehow knew would be true, that it is Jamie, that he would be here, waiting for me. He walks toward me, and I walk toward him and then we are in each other’s arms and my mouth is on his. I taste the residual bitter smoke on his tongue and smell it on his skin as we kiss. Our hands are on each other’s bodies, my hands are on his chest and back, and I am taking off his shirt, urgently pulling it up over his head and throwing it down on the ground and he is unbuttoning my shirt but it’s taking too long so I grab the two sides of it and yank, ripping off the buttons. Then he’s pulling my shirt down off my shoulders and I feel the prickle of the cool night air on my skin before he’s in my arms again, radiating an intense heat against my body.
“Hold… hold on,” he says, quietly, between kisses.
He turns from me and grabs my hand to lead me away from the house across the yard. As I walk, I feel my erection straining uncomfortably in my jeans. Jamie is wearing shorts, maybe even his blue soccer shorts, although in the low light it is impossible to see their color. The darkness makes it impossible to see the curve of his ass, but my hands tingle with the feel of it, from moments before, the soft resilience of his flesh under sleek fabric. I am filled with happiness to be with him, a feeling so bright and powerful that it pushes all the fear and anxiety out of my mind.
He is barefoot. He leads me through another grove of trees along the back of the yard and onto another path. I am surprised that the property extends this far back away from the house. We walk down a path toward the sound of running water, across a bridge over small creek and back up along an exposed ledge of layered rock. We emerge from a stand of trees into a wide expanse of long grass. The moon is brighter now, filling the field with radiant, silver light.
In the center of the field is an old-looking wooden structure. It looks like the foundation of some sort of bandstand or gazebo, mostly open to the sky, but at the far end there is a remnant of an elaborately decorated roof supported by thick wooden beams. Jamie swings himself up onto the structure and extends a hand to help me up. I haul myself up over the edge, feeling our weight brace against each other, to stand next to him on the partially rotted wooden boards.
“What is this place?” I ask.
He is grinning at me. “I sleep out here sometimes,” he says.
He walks to the far, covered end of the structure, and starts to pull something out from under what looks like a tarp. I move next to him and reach down to help. It’s some sort of large cushion or futon, upholstered with a rough, plastic-feeling material. We haul it out into the middle of the platform.
Jamie flops himself down onto it. I stand at the edge, breathing hard. I look out at the swathe of exposed sky. The moon is going in and out of focus, as though my eyes are trying to resolve two or more moons into what I know to be a single object. The roar of the cicadas in the distant trees mixes with the sounds of crickets and other insects in the grass. I feel my awareness scattering in all directions.
Is this really happening?
Jamie rolls to his knees and grabs my legs, pulling me to him. He flicks my belt open and I feel a momentary compression at my waist as he pulls to unhook the prong from the leather. Then he pulls down my jeans and my underwear. My cock springs out. It feels incredible to be free from the restrictive confinement of my pants, hard and aching with pent-up desire. Jamie grabs my cock and feels along its length. He starts to stroke it, gently. With his other hand he reaches up and works his fingers into the fur of my belly. I hear him make a low sound of — contentment? Satisfaction? — from deep in his throat, and I realize with delight that he is turned on by me, by my thick, hairy body. I feel a sudden sense of tenderness for him, this miraculous… boy. I reach out to stroke his cheek. He looks up at me. His eyes are inscrutable dark pools.
He squeezes my cock slowly, forcing a large droplet of glistening fluid to emerge from the engorged head, which falls in a glistening ribbon onto his face, below. It coats his lips and falls into his open mouth. He hesitates for a moment, turning the taste over in his mouth with his tongue. A shiver of pleasure runs down my body and I am consumed with the desire to fill him. He has the same impulse, and takes my cock into his mouth. It feels incredible, smooth and rough at the same time, warm and electrifying.
He grabs my hands and puts them on his head, guiding me to guide him. I push my cock gently into his mouth and feel the velvety resistance of his tongue and back of his throat. He reaches for my thighs and pulls himself harder onto my cock. I feel the head of my cock start to inch deeper into his throat. By the movements of his hands on my thighs, I can tell he wants it harder, deeper.
I grab at his neck and the hair on his head and begin to thrust more powerfully into his mouth. He moans with pleasure. I penetrate him more and more deeply; I feel my cock pressing farther and farther into him, to the point where I am almost all the way into him; his lips are distended around the thick base of my shaft and I can feel the stubble of his chin against my balls. I am close to orgasm, and he must sense it too, because he suddenly pushes away from me.
“Woah, there, cowboy,” he says, and he pulls me down to lie on top of him. I kiss him, pressing myself into him, my cock grinding against his pelvis. I taste myself in his mouth, he is salt and musk and smoke, and it drives me wild with desire. His erection is straining up against me under his shorts. I roll off of him, and kick off my pants and underwear, then grab his shorts and yank them off. He’s not wearing anything under them. His cock is long and slender, a beautiful arc in the moonlight. I grab it and begin to stroke it, roughly. He grunts and grabs my hand, slowing me down, the pressure of his fingers telling me to relax my grip.
“Easy… easy….” he says.
We kiss again, and my lips move across his chin and down his neck. I continue to stroke his cock and with my other hand I track across his chest, feeling his lean musculature and soft, pliable mound of a pec. My lips find his nipple and he arches his back in pleasure when I bite it, softly. I run my hand up through the light dusting of hair on his chest and around to his back; I want to bring his body fully into mine, completely envelop him.
He pushes me off of him, onto my back, and then rolls on top of me, astride my belly. His cock arches over my chest and I grasp it, gently this time, and begin a slow stroking motion.
“You’re so fucking hot,” he says, reaching down to feel my chest, my arms, my shoulders. He runs his hands over my cheeks and I feel the slight resistance of stubble there — my beard must have grown out since I last shaved.
He bends down to kiss me, and against the hand I have wrapped around his cock I feel the slight bulge of his tummy, his skinny-fat belly. My other hand tracks up the outside of his thigh. I feel the lightness of his hair there, and then my hand is on his ass. I palm the flesh of it, feeling the delicious malleability of his butt cheek. As we kiss, I feel him move himself downward, pressing against my cock, which seems to perfectly match the curve of his ass, cleaving upward along his crack and poking into his lower back. He breaks our kiss and leans back, grinding his ass against the length of my cock. I pull his cheeks apart to let him feel the full rigid hardness of my cock against his crack, the deeply anchored, spring-loaded eagerness of it.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, exhaling deeply.
My hands go to his belly, where I can feel his trembling breath. Looking up at him, I am struck by how beautiful he is. Against the night sky, faint stars flicker in and out of my perceptible vision behind his body, which glows in the moonlight. I am free from the constant anxiety of my mind; I am outside of my mind here, just a body entwined with his. I reach up to feel his neck and jaw, feel how the lines of them connect to his collarbone, his chest. He takes my thumb in his mouth, and I feel his teeth and his tongue, the exquisite fullness of his bottom lip, swollen from how roughly I’d penetrated him earlier.
The moment seems to extend infinitely in all directions. I can’t believe this is happening and simultaneously feel that this has always been happening, that it has been inevitable.
He rocks forward onto his knees, still straddling me, reaches back and grabs my cock. He strokes me slowly, pressing along the thickness of my shaft deep within my pelvis. On the upstroke, he guides the tip of my cock into the space between the lobes of his ass. He brings my hand around to feel there, too. I feel the puckering of his hole. He presses my fingers against it, and I feel him rub slickness from the head of my cock onto his hole. I grab my cock and squeeze it to milk even more fluid from it.
Soon his hole is slick and slippery, and I press against it with a finger, and feel it give way. My finger slips into him and he tightens up, I feel a shudder run through his body. Emboldened, I push my finger more deeply into him. His buttocks are resting the palms of hands as I do this, and I feel as though I am slowly easing his ass open, pulling him apart, readying him. My cock head is pushed up against where my finger is inside him, impatient, oozing liquid. I feel harder than I’ve ever felt in my life.
“Are you ready?” I whisper.
Jamie looks down at me and bites his lip. I press the tip of my cock into his hole, working in against my finger. I feel him contract, then relax as I ease up into him. There is a pained expression in his face. He begins to make a low, gurgling sound. All of a sudden, his body spasms and he coughs violently. Black liquid erupts out of his mouth, spilling down over his body and onto me. It burns like acid. He looks down at me and there is a wild look in his face, his mouth is moving as though he is trying to speak, but more and more liquid keeps pouring out. His eyes blaze with an orange-red light. I try to get out from under him, but I’m paralyzed, unable to move or cry out.
I hear splintering as the timbers supporting the roof of the gazebo crack and split, sending the roof crashing down onto the surface of the platform. All around us, wood fractures, and I feel myself falling, tumbling through the air as the entire structure collapses. I am falling for a long time, longer than seems possible, before suddenly I hit earth, landing hard on my back. The wood from the platform crashes down around me and then everything is quiet.
Above me there is a pinprick of light. The light shines down onto me, strengthening until my whole body is illuminated. I look down at myself and I’m horrified to see the jagged edge of a two-by-four jutting up through my belly. I see blood and bone and a mass of my own entrails hanging out, pulsing with blood. There is a loud rushing noise and the light disappears.
~
I jerk awake, hitting my head hard on the side of the study carrel. I sit up in my chair. After a moment of complete disorientation, I realize where I am.
I can’t feel or move my left arm, which hangs limp from my body. Alarmed, I reach over and grab it with my right hand, feel its heavy weight as though it isn’t connected to my body. I place my limp arm on the carrel desk, and after a few moments, a prickly static of blood and sensation flows back into it. I must have been pressed onto it, asleep.
My brain is completely fogged. I touch my stomach and chest, where I have a visceral sense that I have just been impaled. There is no wound. There is a bulge in my crotch, and a dark spot where fluid has leaked through to the outside of my pants. I reach into my pants with my right hand — my whole left arm is aching and twinging now — and feel slick fluid coating the underside of my semi-hard cock. I pull my hand out and look at my fingers. Just clear, sticky pre-cum. I am relieved to see it isn’t blood. I take a deep breath.
The clock on the wall behind me reads 5:15 AM. There is dim light coming in through the narrow, slatted windows at the far side of the library. I look at my desk. Papers are strewn everywhere. As the fog swirls in my brain, I try to organize my things. I take a long drink from my thermos of tea, room temperature and bitter, now. The familiar astringency of the tea helps to coalesce my thoughts.
I was dreaming. Again.
My stomach twists in protest; intense hunger combined with a reaction to the concentrated polyphenols in the over-steeped tea. I need food. There is a dining hall that will open about half an hour from now. I pack up my stuff and head to the bathroom.
The face in the mirror looks like a stranger’s. My hair is disheveled and I have what looks like two day’s-worth of black stubble on my chin and cheeks. There are dark circles under my eyes and red indentations corresponding to the weave of my sweatshirt tracking up across my temple and forehead.
I remember the sensation of Jamie’s fingers pulling against the stubble on my cheeks. It is so vivid, the memory… the dream.
Had it happened? Had I really been with him, somehow?
I splash cold water on my face, trying to shock myself into clarity. I am desperate for my logical mind to reassert order. I am not somebody prone to wild flights of imagination. My mind is a realm in which I am used to having complete control. Again, I have the sensation of trying to grip a large, cumbersome, slippery disc — something I can’t quite get purchase on, but something I need to keep from falling. In the fog, it keeps slipping further and further from my grasp.
~
Staring at the eggs, potatoes, and pork products heaped in steaming trays in the cafeteria, I have a sudden longing for my kitchen at home, for my mom’s cooking, the simple pleasure of fresh bread and sweet tea in the morning. The stale pita they sometimes serve here at school is a shitty substitute.
I mound eggs and potatoes onto my plate and pour myself a small cup of hot, black coffee. There are only a few other students here this early. I am happy enough to find a solitary table by the window and eat in silence. I start to feel better when the food hits my stomach.
I think about my day, Friday. I have analytical chem and politics this morning, but at least I don’t have lab this afternoon. Maybe I can take a nap. I will just need to make sure I don’t miss the PSA meeting tonight. If I can just get through today, I will be able to get myself back on track this weekend, start sleeping, eating, and studying back on schedule.
By the time I am done with breakfast, the sun is up and the combination of the food and coffee has suffused me with a restless energy. I know I won’t be able to sleep before class. I go back to my dorm and try to enter my room as quietly as possible, but Pete groans and rolls over when I open the door. I grab my shower stuff and head to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower.
Every time the image of Jamie and the events of the dream try to worm their way into my mind, I beat the thoughts back. As steam coils around my body, I replace the sense-memory of Jamie’s flesh with images of elaborate chemical structures. The half-circle of his arms, braced against my chest becomes an intricate macrolide; its circularized, sinuous backbone vibrating with clouds of electrons humming between atomic nuclei. My cock, curving upward into the cleft of Jamie’s smooth, round buttocks is a stiff signaling peptide, its oily, hydrophobic tip buried deep in the binding pocket of a receptor protein. I think about the kon and koff rates that would govern such an interaction, how they would vary depending on the size, shape, and amino-acid composition of the receptor-ligand interface. Behind my closed eyelids, a stream of dissociation data flows like water over the contours of Jamie’s body.
~
After chem, I turn in my two problem sets in the drop boxes set out by my TAs. They aren’t due until the middle of next week, but I am finished with them and figure I will just turn them in early. Politics is a blur. Once again, I have a hard time keeping up with the discussion. We are seated around a large conference table, about twenty students, and ideas are zipping around the table, too many people are trying to speak at once. The discussion is about… what is it even about? I try to make notes, but the words are all jumbled in my notebook. Luckily, nobody asks me to contribute. I am relieved when the class is finally over.
After class, I hear someone yell my name in the hallway.
I turn to see Mahan jogging over to me.
“Wow, nice beard Amir. Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly found religion,” Mahan says.
I raise my hand to my chin, feel the coarseness of the hair there. Shit. I meant to shave before my shower this morning, but I must have forgotten.
“No, I guess I’ve just been busy,” I say.
“See you at the meeting tonight? Don’t forget this time. And…,” he reached up to stroke my cheek, “…maybe keep this, eh? It suits you.”
I bat his hand away, annoyed. “OK, Mahan, I’ll be there.”
Mahan is such a dick, always making fun of me for something or other. I think, deep down, it bothers him that I’m an atheist. But he channels it into passive-aggressive joking.
“Hey do you want to get lunch?” he asks. “I’m meeting a bunch of people at the co-op.”
“Nah,” I say. I just want to eat and get back to my room to sleep. “I have work I need to do.”
“Nadiya will be there,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. He is really working the Nadiyah angle this year. He fancies himself quite the matchmaker.
“Mahan…” I say.
“OK, OK, relax, man,” he says. “Go do your sad, lonely studying. But just know, you’re breaking hearts left and right.”
I chuckle as we give each other our usual light embrace in parting. He spots someone else and runs off after them down the hall. Mahan, the quintessential extrovert.
Back in my dorm, I see a note on my desk.
Went home for the weekend — Pete
I feel a small relief. I hesitate to admit it, since we are going to have to live together all year, but Pete just makes me uncomfortable. Having the weekend to myself will help me get my head back on straight. I throw my bag down and collapse onto my bed, fully clothed.
~
I am standing in a large, open space, filled with tall stalks of some sort of reedy grass. The sun is directly overhead and it is burning my shoulders, which are bare — I am naked. No, not naked. I look down. I’m shirtless, but wearing my gray soccer shorts. I can’t see my feet; they are buried in mud. I come slowly to the sensation of intense pain radiating up from my feet. The mud rises up to my mid-calf. I try to pull one foot, then the other out of the mud, but they’re stuck. I feel a surge of bile in my throat as I start to panic. It’s so hot and the mud stinks. Everywhere around me there is a loud buzzing sound.
With increasing alarm, I pull and pull and, finally, I manage to yank my right foot up out of the muck. I’m wearing cleats, and the laces are incredibly, incredibly tight on my foot. I half-sit, half-fall back in the mud and try to unlace my shoe, but I can’t find the ends of the laces to untie the knots. I look around, desperately, and see there is a large stump nearby, a massive, sun-bleached tangle of roots from a tree that must have fallen over ages before. I yank on my other leg and eventually I’m able to free it, and then, grunting, on my belly to increase the surface area of body, I’m able to sort of slither my way through the foul-smelling mud over to the fallen tree.
I pull myself up onto the bleached wood. I am absolutely covered in thick, black muck. The hair on my chest, arms, and belly is plastered to my body and my hands are caked with it, too. My feet scream with pain. My fingers are too blunt and slick with mud to pick apart the tight knots in the laces. The sun is scorching the exposed parts of my body. I arch my back and howl with frustration.
It’s then that I see the body, splayed across a tangle of roots on the other side of the tree’s trunk. The legs are all that I can see clearly. On the feet are cleats, like mine. The legs lie motionless, at odd, broken angles. The rest of the body is shrouded by an undulating black mass. I heave myself up over the trunk toward the body, despite my fear and the overwhelming stench coming from it.
The black shroud erupts as I approach and transforms into a huge buzzing cloud that swells to encompass me. It is a swirling mass of huge, black flies. The flies start to bite my exposed skin and I wave my arms frantically to get them away from me. The cloud moves off to hover somewhere in the middle distance.
The body is large, bulky, and male; the legs are thick and hairy and I see a distinct bulge in the gray shorts. The torso is rent horrifically, there is an exposed rib cage and light pick tissue protrudes from a gap where the bones have splintered apart. The neck is twisted such that the face is turned away from me, but the features and the hair are unmistakable.
It’s me.
Wobbling on my throbbing feet, I move to stand over my wrecked body. I turn the head toward me and flinch when I see that the face has been mostly torn off. The eyes and forehead are crusted over with blood, but the way that the flesh around the mouth has fallen away, the jaw, set with gleaming teeth suggests an exaggerated grin, as though he were laughing at me.
Inside the chest there is something glinting — a metallic object. In spite of my fear, I reach through the shattered ribs to grasp it. I feel something cylindrical and elongated, and when I manage to pull it out, I see it is a metal nail, long and thick and tinted slightly green, almost iridescent. I sit for a moment staring at the the nail in my hand. It flashes brilliantly in the sun.
I reach down with the nail and with the sharp end I attempt to cut through the laces of my right shoe. Eventually, the shoelace frays and splits; the leather of my shoes pops open. With my hands shaking, I pull my foot out. The relief I feel at freeing my foot is replaced with panic as I see that my sock is soaked with blood. Slowly, I inch the elastic of my sock down until almost past the heel. The skin of my exposed ankle looks raw, completely rubbed off. I can see sinewy tendons flexing. It looks wrong, though. With a start, I realize that it’s not a tendon moving in my ankle but a fat, yellow maggot, partially burrowed into my foot. A scream wells up from my throat and erupts into the air.
~
I wake up sweating, in my dorm room. My feet throb with the memory of intense pain. I sit up and reach down to feel them and realize that I am still wearing my shoes. I stand up from the bed and in the mirror I see I am still dressed for class. I remember, then, coming back to my room, seeing Pete’s note, and collapsing into bed. I check the clock. It is 7:45 PM. I am relieved I didn’t sleep through PSA again. The vision, or dream, or whatever it was sweeps through my head, but I don’t have time to stop and think about it. I have to get ready for the PSA meeting.
I change out of my sweaty shirt and into a clean one. I run my hands through the bristly growth on my face. Ugh. I would love to have a shower and a shave before the meeting but I don’t have time.
It is mist-raining as I rush over to the student union. I’m super hungry, but it’s fine — we had voted to provide dinner for our Friday evening meetings as compensation for meeting at such an undesirable time. I arrive at the third-floor conference room with about a minute to spare, grab a plate and load it up with curry — Indian food, tonight — naan, salad, and rice. The scent of the rich food soothes me. It occurs to me that I haven’t eaten anything truly satisfying in a long time.
I wedge myself into a seat between two other PSA members, people I had met a few times last year but don’t know too well. We make small talk for a few minutes until everyone is settled with their food.
I’ve never been Persian Persian like Mahan or some of the others here. I am proud of my heritage, of course, but Persians are just so social, and I have always been more of an introvert. I was the kid who brought a book or a Game Boy to family events and would slink off to an empty room to avoid having to talk to people. My sister, the life of any party, more than made up for my reticence. In that way, I was happy to have her around as the token “display” child of the family and cover for my shyness.
By chance, last year, Mahan and I wound up sitting next to each other at the first meeting of an intro politics class. When he found out I was Iranian — that is, within ten seconds of meeting me — my fate was sealed. He dragged me to all sorts of parties, organization meetings, and events, oblivious to the fact that I was miserable in large groups. Eventually, I agreed to join the PSA in exchange for him leaving me out of most of his other activities.
Introversion aside, I generally enjoy being part of this group. Our meetings are high-spirited — you had to hand it to Mahan — he is an entertainer. As president, he has us all cracking up the whole time. Today’s business is all about the big annual pan-MENA Halloween party, and, as usual, everyone has a strong opinion. This year, we have money to bring in a famous DJ for the event and a majority of the members think that this means we should have more say in planning the whole thing. However, a vocal sub-faction doesn’t think we should be celebrating Halloween at all, etc., etc. The history, politics, and nuances involved in coordinating with the other groups on campus, a few representatives from which are here tonight, are daunting.
As usual, I stay out of the fray. Even if I wanted to jump in, though, there is something off tonight. I just feel… foggy. I am having a hard time keeping up with the discussion and all the cross-talk. At one point, I am surprised when Mahan calls out my name.
“Amir, remind us, what is our balance?” he says.
“Our balance?” I say, confused. What does he mean?
“You know, money. As in how much we have. You are the treasurer. How much treasure do we got?” He is annoyed, the discussion isn’t trending his way.
“Oh,” I say. I check the printout of our financial spreadsheet I have in front of me. Numbers swirl on the page. “Well, we under spent last year, um, by about… fifteen hundred dollars… so… we have almost, um…”
Where is the right line? I trace down the summation column with my finger, not remembering how I’ve organized the spreadsheet. I find it after a long, awkward pause. “We have almost seven thousand dollars to spend this year.”
“See?!” Mahan says, addressing the room. “We have plenty of cash, let’s spend it. I want this party to be epic.”
Immediately, someone challenges him, talking about wanting to reserve money to bring a speaker from Beirut later in the semester. I look down at the sheet again, and feel the chill of fresh perspiration cooling on my neck. The numbers are printed so small. The black edges at the periphery of my vision seemed to pulse.
In the minutes after I speak, I start to see sets of eyes turning to look at me from all around the room. I avoid making eye contact with anyone, training my gaze on Mahan, or the wall, or the clock. After a few minutes I start to sweat again. Eyes keep turning toward me. Stressful thoughts start to run through my head.
They think I’m stupid. They must have had a discussion about me before I got here. I don’t belong here. I dig my fingernails into my knees under the table. The panicky feeling starts to subside. After a minute, it’s almost completely gone. I can breathe again.
The rest of the meeting flies by in a flurry of animated discussion. As usual, no big decisions are made, but everyone seems satisfied having gathered in the same space to argue, yell, and joke, which is the main reason I think the PSA exists at all.
After most of the people leave, I stay behind with Mahan and the other board members to help clean up. Everyone is talking about a party they are going to tonight.
“Amir, dude, you look like shit,” Mahan says, cutting through the chatter. He walks over and grabs my arm. “You, my friend, are working too hard. You need to come have some fun. You are coming to this party, if I have to knock you out and drag you there!” His face is friendly but his tone is stern.
“No, I need to study,” I say. A chorus of jeers and boos filled the room.
“I don’t care, man. Mr. straight-A genius boy can afford to take one night off,” Mahan says.
“Mahan, I — ”
He cuts me off. “Enough. You’re coming.”
I stop arguing. Maybe I do need a break. I haven’t been to any parties since being back at school this year. I am caught up on all my work, and it is only Friday. I have the whole weekend to re-focus. Maybe having some fun will finally allow me to shake off whatever this craziness is… surrounding Jamie. Mahan is right. I am going to the party, and I am going to get wasted.