00 Departure
01 Initiation
02 Crossing back the Threshold
—————— a (Goodbye Shyness)
—————— b (Girls)
—————— c (Gwen — Prelude)
☞————— d (Sportsman Inn Bootybanger)
—————— e (Gwen)
03 Rebuild of Evangelion
College of Dramatic Persons
Toma — college friend
Dorothea — dining-hall crush
Molly — Dorothea's friend
Mel — Dorothea's friend
Pepe — best buddy
Gwen — wooed one
Kerenza — Gwen's friend and Kanika's roommate
Karol — Suitemate and Corey's roomate
Corey — Suitemate and Karol's roommate
Kanika — Friend, next door neighbour and Kerenza's roommate
Edna — downstairs suite neighbor
Rosa — friends' friend
Sid — friend
Sportsman Inn Bootybanger — Intro
Or: V. The Road of Trials
A crowded car left towards Red Hook, to the Bootybanger taking place at the Sportsman Inn. Toma sat on my lap and an Italian girl who fit herself in the trunk asked to hold someone's hand, I gave her mine. The Sportsman Inn was packed with Bard students. I danced on my own in the crowd. I had noticed Emily noticed me. Was it the same Emily as the one from one day earlier? Apparently I had been on her Facebook page though I had forgotten her name. Every second girl in Bard was Emily. Bootybanger was known for Dubstep, where I first heard the name and the music. They must have played occasional pop and perhaps house music too. What if a different song played just then, or the same song but a few seconds earlier or later? I was wading through the crowd, intending to pass over Emily, not because I was not interested, but despite or even because, when a guy stopped me. He put a hand on my shoulder and sang along, “I'm sorry Ms. Jackson, ooh,” a song that even I could respond to in kind. He continued on his way. I didn't dare do such a thing otherwise, but as I was already before her I turned towards Emily and danced. I saw she was cool with it and said, “I'm a shy guy but you're really cute” or something likewise uncouth. She said “what?” This was repeated a couple times more. She asked my name and I asked hers. We danced and I cautiously touched her. I came to embrace her and she did me back, though perhaps with less certainty. Encouraged by her eye contact and ear to ear smile, I brought my nose —of what predatory behaviour I feel like I'm reporting!— to hers, and we kissed. We did so on and off. We were dancing tête-à-tête but not touching when Dorothea appeared. She danced alone on the same half of the room, closer to the DJ stage. Emily told me she was just going for a sec to the bathroom. Dorothea didn't look my way but I was tempted by the opportunity. I was waiting for Emily, whom I had kissed, so I held fast. I danced alone. I went to look for Emily. You might have guessed, too, that she was not in the bathroom queue. The score seemed clear when I finally saw her but still I tapped her shoulder. I didn't catch was she said but the meaning was clear. She continued walking away into the crowd with a friend. I looked for Dorothea here and there. I danced some more. I left the dancefloor and when I passed through the front room on the way outdoors I had thought Dorothea was already gone but there she stood against the empty bar, on her phone. Later I came back in with renewed resolve to find her but I couldn't.
VI. The Meeting with the Goddess
Dorothea had been my dining-hall crush since freshman year. I saw her only during meals, on remote tables, and became infatuated. She was always sitting within a trio of friends: Dorothea, who reminded me of Ellen Page, one of the few celebrity crushes I had had; Molly, Scarlett Johansson like; and a tall bear like Mel. One time she stood next to me by the food trays and I wondered what food to pick to make a good impression. I believe she got housing off campus one year and got off the meal plan, but she remained in my mind. I had no idea who she was. I first learned her name at the campus kiosk. Behind me Mel entered with friends and one of them called him. I found his Facebook and there also photos Dorothea was tagged on.
In sophomore year I heard from a friend about a vulnerability in the college's grade reports online system. A back home in Israel friend Yami's conscience rejected rendering the favour his friend asked for, despite his prevarication, but he did as much as point me to AutoHotKey, a “free, open-source scripting language for Windows that allows users to easily create small to complex scripts for all kinds of tasks.” Give a man a fish, give a man a fishing rod etcetera. I wrote my first ever computer program, let the machine crunch the data (as they like saying) for a few nights, and got access to everyone's transcripts, including Yeah Yeah Yeahs' class '98 Nick Zinner's. I found out Dorothea was a C student, which admittedly blemished her lustre.
On the first class of a computer science course I ended up not taking there was a “one truth one lie” ice-breaker. My heart palpitated as the turn moved from one student to the next, considering telling this hacking anecdote, first as a truth, then with a twist that would make it a lie (though or since the professor was the same one from which my friend heard of the vulnerability). By the time the torch reached me I had gotten cold feet and substituted the lie with a story about catching but not properly saving the Higgs Boson on my first ever program. The class laughed but I felt like an ass.
Dorothea had been long a secret matter, for shame. When I reasoned to myself about this secrecy of the “heart,” its motivation appeared to be the expectation that once my object of infatuation knew, they would run for the hills. Notions of modesty or privacy, not talking about that which was not yet quite real, were intermixed. Still, I had had contrary experiences, albeit from the other side of the confessional booth. In high-school a good friend told me he was interested in me in that way. I would later observe that this was followed by a distancing between us, which I then attributed to a change in my attitude, later reasoned it might have been him. We did eventually get back together. On sophomore year my suitemate done similarly but used a past-tense formulation, “I had a crush on you.” It was unexpected and since I did not see her face I thought she was joking. She said it behind my back as I crouched at the mini fridge. When I was done I reckoned she was not joking but it had been a moment too long to reply. In this case too the feelings were not reciprocated, but this confession didn't make me regard her any worse nor made me want to avoid her. And then there was Pepe, who became a best friend.
I told someone about my dorotheic crush. It was not a close friend and it did not feel like a big deal. I would have forgotten about it had it not supposedly led to consequences, indeed contrary to all theory. I must assume that my little confession turned into gossip. Events wouldn't make sense otherwise. Could it have happened as early as fall semester of junior year? I took then a fiction writing workshop which Molly the Scarlett Johansson also attended. Late in the semester the students held an uncommon chat in the hallway after class. I looked aside and saw her, standing quietly against the wall, likewise outside the talkative circle, staring at me. Staring as if she knew something.
A year later, two weeks into senior year and a day before my pitiful graveling, I came with friends to a party at Smog, a former campus car garage whose eviscerated concrete box was used for concerts and parties. I barely joined the dance floor when I felt I was grinded on. I looked down and saw Dorothea looking up at me, smiling. I did not reciprocate but stood deer in the headlights like. Not far before me was Pepe, not actually paying attention, who had threatened to smack any girl who would dare come near me.
Likewise a class '13 international student, Pepe was in the background of my first days at college. Our first memorable interaction happened in junior year. An irregular aggregation of tables at lunch accommodated an extended social circle. He sat on the other shore of that island. My phone left me on some pretext and returned with a changed background, a common prank of Pepe's. Soon he was hitting on me, boldly. He sat down before me at the dining-hall, took my hand in his and asked me when I was going to invite him out on a date. I was embarrassed. I was not interested but I also didn't want to appear an homophobe. I avoided him, changing my route when I saw him down the corridor I was about to take. Thus until I told him that I was not interested, categorically. It was a relief and the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Still he took me in the summer to pick blueberries and blackberries, as a date. I felt protected by my definite rejection and did not mind his repeated requests that I would be gay for him and I let myself be extorted the promise that had I ever slept with a guy, he'd be the first.
One time we were at the closed campus post-office. I intimated something had happened between a girl and me which prompted him, his earlier suggestion to help me with Gwen notwithstanding, to react with perhaps humorous rage-anger, cornering me against the wall, hitting the metal postal boxes over my shoulder, asking me who that bitch was, not thinking, I imagine, that it was his friend. And though years later I'd remember that it was that scene which was on my mind during Dorothea's lacklustre reception, really it had not yet happened then. I'm not sure that he really had already threatened to smack any girl who dared to come near me. Perhaps I just had in mind the yank he had given me at the music festival. Was I respecting his emotions or feared a reaction?
VII. The Magic Flight
Before I finished to consider Pepe, Dorothea, unrequited, fled.
I'm shocked to find in my journal the incomprehensible following: “At this point I kinda wanted to call it a night as far as skirt-pursuing [went] but then I said that fuck it, I [couldn't] just do this again — I already abandoned a girl two years ago at a block party who started grinding against me and with whom I started to make out, just to find Dorothea at the same party.” Who the hell was she? I thought I've remembered everybody I have ever kissed, and would have thought it inconceivable that I'd forget an incident such as this. I find it literally incredible but have no reason to doubt that it was true. What implausible occurrences the past hides in its lap!
Dorothea was not to be refound. I put my eyes on somebody who wandered around. I had an inkling that there was reciprocal interest but I knew that none of us would make an approach. She used to be a neighbor of mine in Freshman year, a transfer student, pretty and classy, and I felt too shy even to turn to her.1 On the way out of Smog I saw what I thought was a wasted girl being treated by security and medics. It was the very same girl, butt on the ground and legs slightly bent, conscious, probably had just fallen or something, I reasoned twelve years ago. I wonder if it was that sight that inspired me within a few days to post on Facebook a suggestion, with an air destined to be ironic, that water was made available on parties at Smog, to reduce, let's put it this way, the pressure on medical services.
Back at my suite I sat down and wanted a hug. Almas was listening to a composition of Dunya's in her room. I knew Pepe would eventually come to pick up his bag from the opposite suite. I opened the door wide. I mixed myself a drink and decided to wait on the bench outside. It was not empty. Edna sat with two guys, one of them dozing off. She wanted a sip of water, said mine must be water because she knew me. I let her smell the mug, she said she hated gin. I went up and back down and Edna was surrounded by other people. When they left to walk a girl home I remained with her, both of us with our arms around the knees. I mentioned frustrations. Is it about a girl? Yeah. She talked of family; her old and forgetful father. Her older siblings. How she became an aunt when she was preteen. How her sister didn't get children from her immature husband who didn't want to have kids, then got breast cancer whose treatment had likely dissolved her ability to conceive. I wanted to tell Edna of what had happened that night but instead I pitched my yoyo idea. Smoking offered an opportunity to meet people. It rallied them outside building entrances, by cigarette bins, and rendered them simultaneously occupied and available. They could talk or not talk to each other, neither was awkward. Playing with a yo-yo could render the same function sans lung cancer. Edna wished for ramen. I obliged her with a package and after we parted I sought her out on Facebook chat. On the following day I had no appetite and made my formal acquaintance with Gwen.
A week later I went to another party at Smog. I saw no familiar faces outside. I went in, looked for Dorothea. I danced. I had already drunk a mug of gin & tonic. I began sipping it as I worked on abstract algebra homework and was done at twenty to midnight. I decided I was not drunk enough given my desperate longing for the debauchery I thought could be my lot. I went back dormwards. Edna sat on the bench with company. She told me to do whatever I needed to do in Village F and return to Smog. Upstairs I poured more than half a mug of aqua vita of the juniper fruit and chugged it. I've remembered two mugs but you cannot rely on my memory here. Outside the bench was empty. I caught up with them on the dirt road to Smog. On the right was the dark soccer field, on the left trees. Edna asked me if she was there. I said I didn't know. We stopped at the gravel outside Smog. Edna was chatting with her friends and I felt out of place. I began striding towards the gaping hollow of Smog's entrance. Began and supposedly finished although midway, I could point you to the exact spot, my memory stopped recording. My first and last blackout experience, a phenomenon I had considered to be an exaggerated urban legend.
Midway it came to nothing.
VIII. Rescue from Without
There was nothing. Neither a thing or a while.
There was an opening of the flesh thereunder, a sensation unpleasant, suspended in nothingness the spirit of God fluttering over the tohuvavohou like.
There was more nothing.
Then there was light. I was in bed. We were in the hospital, Pepe told me. He told me it was, surprisingly, seven or so in the morning. He put mellow music on his laptop. He had brought a change of clothes from my room and presented me a plush doll of a ghost, just like the teddy bear in a German children's picture book I had in youth, about a boy who scratched his knee and got a shot by a nurse. Against tetanus, it occurs to me now. At the time what relation a shot could have with an injury was opaque to me. Pepe lay down beside me and snuggled me and I held his hand tight.
There were no other patients. It was quiet and empty. The doctor, supposedly, he didn't look the part, came. He said I could check out. He put a clipboard in my hands which I signed without reading, but perhaps I shouldn't have. He said my blood alcohol content had been three times the threshold for legal driving. The next day a girl calculated it as 0.24%. That would be about 9.5 gram of alcohol in total. I was always amused that Russians measured ethanol in grams.
Pepe and I stopped at the bakery on the way from the hospital. I felt fine then, but woke up nauseous in the arvo. I made breakfast —brunch is not just the timing but the state of mind— but couldn't eat it. I phoned my parents to ask about getting rid of post-heavy-drinking-nausea. I thought Soviet-born and -raised would know about it. I listened to music in bed and by the evening the nausea subsided.
On the way to dinner I reclaimed the misfortune as an asset. I drew an idea for a novel from the affair. It seemed precious enough at the time to offset the costs of my folly. At the dining-hall a girl I didn't know smiled at me and I smiled back. She said hi and I wondered if we met the night before. Another girl, who had tapped my shoulder for attention during the memorable first half of Smog looked displeased when she was made to wave back at me. Ding dong, ying yang.
I would hear of what I had missed. Some of it, anyhow. I had allegedly said, in a dancing circle, that it was the best Smog party ever. Brian had condoned my picking up of stubs. Apparently I had wanted to light myself a cigarette. The only thing that could have inspired such a behaviour was one Israeli children's illustrated riddles book that contained one about a bum who could form a cigarette out of three stubs; how many cigarettes could he smoke if he had obtained 7 stubs? Brian had deemed the party over for me. Brian, a smart but I'd say a guy of a peculiar naïveté, had called the nocturnal security drop-off service. Security had arrived, had deemed that I needed more than a taxi and had called the campus student medics. The medics had arrived, found me on the side of the road, sitting, laughing and throwing up, all at the same time. They hadn't been able to open my eyes. Alarmed they had called an ambulance. Pepe's friend had told him about the situation and he car chased. Later the four figure medical bill came in the email. It was followed by reminders, their paper changed from yellow to red.
I returned from dinner alone. Edna sat smoking on the bench. I sad down next to her. She said it was chilly and invited me into her suite, right below mine. A party was imminent. Somebody set up a bedboard as a beerpong table. When Kerenza arrived I chatted mostly with her until she left for a conservatory party at Village H, a neighboring dorm. Later outside I found Kanika and asked her if she'd come with me to that party. Another girl joined. On the way they asked me if I knew anyone there and I said no. I knocked. Haely opened the door and before I could string an excuse she widened the door and stepped aside. Beerpong was played, a variation with cup flipping. Kerenza saw us and came to chat, Corey did too. Gwen stood at a distance talking. I invited a couple of more friends to come per text.
I left with my friends to watch bands play at the dining-hall. We ended at the bench outside my dorm. We pondered what to do. I wanted to get laid with Kanika. Mine is scarcely a Romeo and Juliet story.2 A headache befell me. Rocky, a classmate, physics major, A student, Ultimate Frisbee player and the student residential liaison with the college administration, however that role was called, let's say he was the student sheriff of my dorm, passed by. I approached him. He told me he did the Graduate Record Examination the previous day and just came back from doing lots of work. It made me think that I had not done lots of work and that I should get my academic act together. I returned to the bench. We sat and pondered what to do. I bid them good night and left.
IX. Others' Crossing or Man as Tempter
An evening a month later I sat with Sid and another guy at the dinning-hall. Emily (a different one) was looking for Sid, absent just then, and joined us. She was the ex-girlfriend of a good friend but not somebody I often saw. One time, before or after, likewise at dinner, or possibly exactly then, she declared surprise at my expression of depression, said that it added a layer to her conception of me or something of that sort. Made my character more complex. Something naively funny. Now she told me that she wanted to hang out. I said I needed to do work. She said I never wanted to hang out with her and I relented. Sid left to finish his shift as a computer lab monitor. Emily invited us to a contra dancing class. The guy said he'd go, I said I'd come to the campus center but not to the dancing. At the campus center the contra dancing seemed fun and I joined. I left after a while and found Emily, Sid and others sitting at the cafeteria. While fetching Emily a glass of water I bumped into Rosa, who told me I had a doppelgänger, a professor, visiting professor perhaps, who looked exactly like me but for the moustache. I wanted to ask if he was hot but didn't. From her I learned of a party going to a bar off campus (or that's what I believe “the Swan” was). Sid turned an invitation to me. I said I needed to work so he decided to stay on campus to work, too.
Sid and I accompanied Emily to the shuttle stop. She asked him to hang out with her until nine twenty. I said they could come in the meantime to my suite. She proposed to go from the back, to walk along the soccer field where Edinaldo, a good friend of her ex, was in practice. We stood by the soccer field and watched. Emily said she just discovered that the boy she was in love with was in the team. I asked her if she hadn't known and she said it was love from afar. We stood there a while and watched the team play. Then the players all walked towards the fence where we stood, it looked like practice was over. They were actually about to be talked to by the coach but we couldn't tell. Emily said to Edinaldo, “hey baby,” and some of the players chuckled. “Say it louder,” Edinaldo answered, eliciting more boyish laughter. They were being coached and the three of us left, stopping at the Village parking lot. I said I needed to go, invited them to the suite, told Emily she could invite Edinaldo but eventually I left alone.
There was a party in my suite coming up in two days but there was a party already that night in my dream. That dream party also was at the Village, but the location manifested as a mesh of a Village dorm building, Smog and a barn. There were lots of people. I snuck out with others, to pee or to get food. Went to the supermarket with someone. We reached the back entrance of the supermarket but we couldn't enter since these were automatic doors that didn't detect us. Inside was a rebellious unhappy employee who approached to make the doors open for us. I or we went to the shelf where a particular product was usually kept but it wasn't there. I kept looking and found it. I felt that I had forgotten that they changed its location, like it was the second time it had happened to me. We got chips though I had been looking for something else.
Back at the party only a handful of people remained, because the beer was out, though it wasn't really. It was warm inside. I saw Dorothea among the remaining. I sat down at the bar. Dorothea approached with a friend. “Hello,” she said and, as if to her friend, “is that a good opener?” I was about to answer but a guy on my other side did as if it was directed at him. Dorothea talked with him but as she did she leaned back on my stool. Her hair changed from black to ginger and her face changed, too, perhaps to the face of a girl whose name I didn't know who caught and held my hand for a few seconds at a party in Smog once.
In the opposite suite from mine Kanika lived with Kerenza, a conservatory student, and with two seniors. Kanika and the two seniors were part of my extended social group. Could it be somehow designated? At the end the edges of the tribe were fuzzy but it consisted mostly of international students, but not of all of them. There were Russian speakers and Spanish speakers and alumni of United World Colleges. The suite was a rallying point for that international student tribe. Somebody, perhaps Kanika or one of the guests, had the idea of holding a party that stretched over the entire floor, on both of our suites. It was organized. I put up an event on Facebook and then, it seemed like the right thing to do, invited everyone. Not everyone I knew, but everyone at Bard who was Facebook friends with me.
My usage of Facebook had three stages. For years I used Facebook as anybody did. Then, at the end of the summer before senior year, I befriended everybody that “I may know.” I got temporarily suspended several times. Many whom I had not known and likely did not know me confirmed me as a friend. I was working that year on a novel, one of whose two timelines took place in college, and I had the idea that this would center me at a panopticon-like Bard, whence I'd be able to observe the drama and hidden currents of that microcosmos, a nourishment for literature. Later, but not yet, I said screw Facebook and shut my account down.
This inclusiveness shifted the party off whoever's original vision. The other suite was doing its own exclusive thing but ours, mine, was saturated with people and dancing. It was dark but for the LEDs Pepe had stringed earlier over the common-room ceiling. I had a case of beer in my room reserved for special guests and whoever asked for it. There was not much space to move at the common-room but it was merry.
X. The Call to Adventure or Master of neither World
Haely found and asked me if I knew Isabelle, who was her suitemate, also whether I knew one Loni, who was the younger sister of a Nori who will step into the story later. Haely invited me to a party at their suite Friday a week later. Rocky appeared in his capacity as the sheriff, called the party off, presumably for underage drinking, in the US the bar was 21 years. I imagine the party could have infringed on fire safety regulations too. When he returned in 15 minutes as promised, the party was still going on. I sent everybody to Smog at the end of the next song and that was that. I presently expected security to make an entrance, my memory lying in the middle between reality and fiction. In The True Shenanigans of Alvin Bender our protagonist had to make an escape from his party. It got out of hand. He opened the window —letting in the echoes of helicopter chopping— and slipped out on a rag rope to land too early on the roof of a SWAT van.
Nothing was going on in Smog. The expedition dispersed. I went with Norann to the soccer field and we lay down supine on the grass. There were shooting stars to be seen. A James found and joined us. I held Norann's hand. We went to my suite. Norann put music and ate rice. I wanted to be with her but she left with James, leaving a comment that remains incomprehensible in her wake, that I was the only toy for Kanika to play with, or something alike. Kanika was at her suite with Oliver. It seemed to me that she didn't want to be alone with him so I came to talk and asked them if they wanted to go to Village K and they did. A group sat there on a slope playing guitar. So until a girl came and said she slept, or tried to, behind the window above.
I got up early the next morning . The common-room floor was not to be seen under a layer of gray. I put “Do, Make, Say, Think” on the great loud-speakers that were brought in for the party and mopped the floor with water and shampoo. I felt very happy. Kanika came to pick me up to go to the bench outside. She smoked and talked to me about the night before. Said she felt like a dog chasing cars that didn't know what to do when a car stopped.
I don't know if I knew Isabelle by name but I knew her face. She was an eye-catcher. I was teased by her friend Haely's question, a variation on that “people you may know” event. Why would someone you virtually had never spoken with ask you if you knew their friend? I can come up with theories now but back then I did not look for alternative explanations. No, what I did do the Friday a week later was study while the party's music tickled into the confines of my room, sirens' song like. At 23:00 East Coast Time I slammed the textbook shut and left diagonally across the path to the other dorm. Karol and Corey were there. Through the door to one of the single rooms I saw Nori, wanted to say hi but didn't. Haely was there, wearing a baseball cap backwards, the way I'd forever remember her. In the sophomore double room was a metal keg of beer. People drank the beer with a thin long hose while doing an armstand on its rim. What can I say, parties of native American students don't have class but they have production and spunk. Isabelle was absent. I drank from the keg being supported upside down. The party was past its bloom when I arrived and when it further petered out I heard from my suitemates that Isabelle had gone away after making out with some “Russian guy.” Facebooking two days later I'd identify a strong suspect, who is the same person who managed to vie better than me over Rosa the previous summer. The three of us returned home together, talking on the way about how hot Isabelle was. At our common-room I told them about my desperate infatuation for Gwen. It did not produce the impression I had expected. They remained poker faced. I suspected they did not grasp the profundity of the confession confided in them.
I asked what they thought of her. Karol said that she was weird but nice. Corey said she was super nice but eccentric.
Sportsman Inn Bootybanger — Outro
Or: XI. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
A month earlier I went with friends to the Sportsman Inn in Red Hook. I danced, alone and with Emily, who smiled, whom I kissed, who fled. Dorothea appeared and then she disappeared and when I saw her again, I was not ready. She stood by the empty bar facing the exit where I was going. I think I remember her glancing at me but perhaps I'm making this up. There's this picture in my mind of us looking at each other but as a picture it's not clear if it was a point or an interval, whether I was moving or standing, whether it was a memory at all or an imagination of something that might have been. More clearly I remember that, having already exhibited audacity once, I expected or hoped Dorothea would say something to me. It would be many years before I'd comprehend that she must have felt humiliated by the cold response her bold move received. In my head I was meek and all the girls were full of confidence. The good looking ones especially. I now understand it's not at all the case.
Our delegation assembled outside to drive back to campus. Rosa told me that there might not be enough space but still included me in her head count. Seven of us fit into a sedan. Toma sat on my lap and Kanika sprawled across the back seat. Toma and I walked with Kanika to her suite, neighboring mine. One of them invited me to sleep at the suite and I said yes. I thought to myself, why the hell not. Toma offered me to cuddle, and as an alternative the sofa-bed in the common room. We ate grapes. They sat on the sofa and I sat across the coffee table. I talked about Dorothea and Toma talked about a guy. I announced that I was tired and that I'd go to my suite, and I did.
I met Toma a year earlier. Regina introduced us when I first visited her that year, Toma was one of Regina's two sophomore suitemates. She struck me immediately as attractive, out of my league. For a period later that year my heart ached for her. Affected by girls' seductive signs but oblivious to their agency, I interpreted mine to be a spontaneous infatuation. Now I can say it was actively evoked by her but at the time, despite any previous experiences, the notion that I might be an object of attraction to women was if not completely unfamiliar then still literally unthinkable. By senior year, on the landing between the two suits' doors, mine and Kanika's, the infatuation had long dissipated. On the landing where I discovered that I didn't have my key. I stood staring at the door. On my first two years of college I regularly skyped with Kosta. By senior year it was only occasionally, but we had spoken recently. Perhaps I wanted to talk to him about Dorothea. I stood at the door and Kosta had recently told me that he had never regretted sleeping with somebody. Soon it would change but not yet. I could have called security to open my suite door but it would be a hassle in the middle of the night. I turned around, walked back and knocked.
Toma opened the door. Just inside behind the near door Kanika could be heard showering. I told Toma I didn't have my key. It could have been a lie but it was true. She let me in. Toma offered cuddling or the sofa-bed. I said I'd cuddle. We went to the empty room. We slipped into bed and spooned. I shifted my hands around her some. Then we lay motionless. She might have been asleep when I kissed between her shoulderblades.
One scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion was repeated but altered in the Rebuild tetralogy. In the original TV series, while the two are housed at Misato's apartment, Asuka sleepwalks into Shinji's room and lands on his futon. She is tantalizing to him in her negligee. Shinji resolves himself, brings his face slowly towards Asuka's for a kiss, stops when suddenly she whispers, asleep, for her mother. Dafna asked me in the hallway, in middle school, to close my eyes. The move that turned Lauren and I from friends to a couple was a kiss I gave her in my and Jamie's room, when she was already asleep, under the blanket fort the three of us had built after watching Where the Wild Things Are in the cinema. And now I kissed the perhaps sleeping Toma's back. It sounds rather underhand to kiss sleeping beauties except that these instances I knew were welcome. And I wonder now about the fact that people generally close their eyes when kissing. If eye contact is the establishment of an interpersonal connection, is it that kissing, a shedding or trespassing of physical personal boundaries, is a transcendence of the individuals into a sensual experience of unity that is in a manner too shameful to be observed not only by third parties, who would avert a gaze from public displays of affection, but even by the participants themselves? As if being a first hand spectator calls the act into question, implicitly draws attention to the inherent real separatedness, to the mundane presence, or turns the kiss into a kisser, an agent with an unknown agenda. So we close the eyes, like the Jews noddling before the wall, their faces covered into the ecstasy of prayer, to separate the profane of the body and the sacredness of the mind, as do the prostrating Muslims, the meditating Buddhists, the clasping Christians, the gyrating Sufis and all the other mystics of our earth.
Toma turned to me. We kissed. I regret to say that she had bad breath —whether it was already transformed by that fouling of sleep or acquired by having eaten sour grapes, I don't know— which turned me off at an instant. I felt obliged to carry on with the motions, or at least let them be carried out. She was energetic and I was laid back. She asked if I had a condom and then asked a question that is too explicit for my delicate soul to put down in writing. I'm ashamed of my disengagement. I owe her an apology. Thereafter I couldn't sleep and left in the early morning. We never spoke of it.
A scholarly note. There were at the time two students at Bard who shared their first name and whose last names shared acoustic qualities. My memory suggested that the one at the party was the one from my freshman dorm, though I then discovered that the recorded last name was in fact the other's, slightly garbled. An adjacent question mark indicated that I was aware of my uncertainty about the last name's spelling at the time of recording. I don't know if the confounding happened first nowadays or already back then, i.e. whether I was not only off with the spelling but with the matching of name and person. I don't remember who the other one, the one who did not live in my freshman year dorm, was, and have nothing to prod my memory with.
Though, on a second thought, Romeo first met and fell in love, as they say, with Juliet when he had gone to a ball in the hopes of meeting one Rosaline. Who knows, perhaps his eyes strayed between the published acts.