Newly revised

Bedroom

     I remember the light bouncing off the wall as having a mute orange glow. Which can’t be true, I know which lamp sat on the floor next to my bed. It was a cheap Walmart desk lamp with a clear plastic covering and a white incandescent bulb. I had it pointed towards the wall and it sat beneath my double bed. So the light couldn’t have been orange.

     My computer created creases on the inside of my legs where the metallic edges rested. To my right was my college-issued desk. It was covered in loose papers and a novel I hadn’t touched in weeks. To my left was a blonde curl of my roommate’s hair, the heat of her sleeping mass created a run of sweat down my rib cage.

     I sat sideways at the foot of the bed with my body pillow behind me. The walls were cold for my exposed skin. The opposite wall was bare but for a laminated Irish Writers poster. An English teacher in high school gave it to me. She was a kind Italian woman and I hung it mainly as a joke.

     The light on the wall could not have been orange but perhaps the walls were a light tan and the light was so dispersed I couldn’t tell the difference. She must’ve already taken her glasses off; I could see them on the windowsill at the head of the bed. The window was open a crack, the room had been getting unbearably hot at night. One of my roommates kept turning the thermostat up and I was waking up sweating. My eyelids tapped together.

      I had asked her to leave but she lay on my shoulder, her hand on my chest. I had told her not to look at what I was typing. This had been going on for weeks.

    Later that month she would storm out crying, only to return for the glasses she left on the windowsill. I had kept my eyes closed when she came back in.

     Later that year she would say hello and not much more. I found out she was the one who was turning up the thermostat.

     After I moved away for a time she warmed up to me again. She would get drunk and ask me about my post graduation plans. We would talk on the path well behind our friends as we walked back from illegal swimming holes. I pray she never texts me again.

     But the night with the orange light bouncing off the wall, she stayed. I closed my laptop and placed it on top a pile of textbooks on the desk. I arranged my pillows and turned off the lamp on the floor. I could still see the room; the blue public safety light outside bounced off the snow and into my window through the crooked blinds. Cold air hovered by my head. I had left her where she had curled up like a dog by a fire. Now she adjusted herself, turned all the way around to lay her head on my chest. She did not open her eyes. She was not wearing a bra. It was at least 2 am.

    “It’s too hot in here,” she said. I lay now in just shorts. She was under my thick blue comforter. “I’m going to take my shirt off.”

    She got on her knees. Under the public safety light her white skin became a soft blue, like the dark water directly beneath a pier. Her blonde hair waved as she lifted her shirt above her head.

    “Can I lay on top of you?” she asked.

    “Ok,” I said.

    The light that bounced off the wall was blue. Her skin was hot and white. My sheets were stiff and warm. She was soft. I wasn’t sure how someone could be so soft.

     I woke up sweating.

the fountains

     The water reflected the walkway lights ineffectively. The fountain pool was black and still like an oil puddle in a parking lot. The streams were turned off so the metallic poles that normally transformed the campus into postcard level scenery now stood stiff, unwavering it seemed.

    We had driven up in a friend’s Jeep. I had just met her and she said she had stopped drinking hours ago. It was unclear as to how we had never met, it seemed as though we both knew everyone there. Plus she wore caps that were too big for her head and laughed loudly at boys wrestling each other with solo cups in hand.

     The parking lot we used was empty and I stood at the lip of the water for a moment. A single streetlight shown on the empty campus road and the cement was cold beneath my toes. We took off our clothes and jumped in. There were five of us. Me and Tim and three girls I knew from documentaries and parties and serious talks with acquaintances.

     The water was cold and my legs quickly went numb. I wrapped myself in a towel, which must have required some premeditation by our driver. It was 3 am and I had just graduated. I had nowhere to be.

    The campus sat dark and unwavering. The buildings were designed in the sixties and the jagged stone did not seem dated enough. As if it were a collection of banking offices.

     I stood and look out at the campus as four people I didn’t know rubbed towels down their thighs. I wondered if I’d ever see this place again.

Fight 5.2

     The shouting came from the white house to my right. They were all white houses, or off white houses. It was St Patrick’s Day and a Thursday and about 10 pm. Albany was already drunk. Children crossed slowly in the middle of the street, cop cars idled at stoplights, and the fluorescent lights of the dollar pizza place on the corner illuminated a swarm of white legs like moths around a porch light.

    All the houses looked the same. Full recycling cans sat on the island of grass between the street and the cracked sidewalk. The shouting came from the house with the garage in the back of the driveway with its lights on. I could make out a small gathering of people I couldn’t see but for the red light of a burning spliff.

     We were walking to the bar I believe. My friends moved ahead, their arms swaying but I stopped to listen to the man yell at this girl. I stopped and tapped the toe of my boots on the cement. It was warm for March but I still shivered in my t-shirt.

      He was screaming now. Something about her being out late or the dress she was wearing. I can’t remember. I couldn’t see who they were but they had given themselves a considerable distance from their friends, making their way down the driveway and away out of the light. His back was to me. He suddenly got very quite.

     I put the bottle I was walking with down on the lawn. I bopped a bit on my toes.

     “Oh you’re gonna cry like a bitch,” she said. “That’s right. This is how it always goes. I do something and you get upset and cry like a baby. You do not deserve me.”

      He was still backing up and she was right, I could hear him quietly crying. I picked my beer up off the mixture of thin dirt and grass and I left. I walked without really knowing where I was going, I was told the bar was on Edwards but I couldn’t read the signs. She was right. He was crying. A soft whimper, like a dog yipping in its sleep. Its legs twitching slightly but its deep breaths making its chest expand and contract on the floor.

     I wonder why I had left. But all the houses looked the same. So I finished my beer and kept walking.

Fight 5.1

     The shouting came from the white house to my right. They were all white houses, or off white houses. It was St Patrick’s Day and a Thursday and about 10 pm. Albany was already drunk. College kids crossed slowly in the middle of the street, cop cars idled at stoplights, and the fluorescent lights of the dollar pizza place on the corner illuminated a swarm of white legs like moths around a porch light.

    All the houses looked the same. Full recycling cans sat on the island of grass and dirt between the street and the cracked sidewalk. The shouting came from the house with the garage in the back of the driveway with its lights on. The lights backlit a small gathering of people I couldn’t see but for the ember of a burning joint.

     We were walking to the bar I believe. My friends moved ahead, their arms swaying but I stopped to listen to the man yell at this girl. I stopped and tapped the toe of my boots on the cement. It was warm for March and I had only a long t-shirt on.

      He was screaming now. Something about her being out late or the dress she was wearing. I can’t remember. I couldn’t see who they were but they had given themselves a considerable distance from their friends. His back was to me; he must’ve backed away slowly throughout the fight. He suddenly got very quite.

     I pushed my hair back form my eyes and put the bottle I was walking with down on the lawn.

     “Oh you’re gonna cry like a bitch,” she said. “That’s right. This is how it always goes. I do something and you get upset and cry like a baby. You do not deserve me.” He was softly crying.

      He was still backing up, farther away from the garage light. I picked my beer up off the mixture of thin dirt and grass and I left. I walked without really knowing where I was going, I was told the bar was on Edwards but I couldn’t read the signs. Plus, all the houses looked the same.

     I finished the beer and kept walking.

Treadmill 4.2

    My wet hair kept bumping into my right eye until I pushed it back into the flopping wet mop. It was harder to do this on a treadmill, my feet gaining traction on the rubber as I flicked my hand up quickly. I pushed my earbuds deeper in.

     A line of black, mechanical treadmills faced the glass wall. There were only a few treadmills taken, girls in spandex and bright blue tank tops walking with their ipads in front of them. I wondered if my shoulders bounced too much, if I looked like a slinky rolling down a staircase. I began to forget what I was doing with my hands.

    

    It was harder to see the freshman on the quad. The sun was setting now, catching on the tall dorm buildings. The grass wasn’t the lush green I had remembered it and the shirtless boys jumped for Frisbees as their girlfriends sat in sundresses under the tree. Their bodies seemed like rubber bands that stretched and coiled, snapping back to their bare white ankles.

     I would have to stop listening to this album in a couple weeks, the songs becoming more of a narrative than an anthem. The lyrics were shouted and vague and the lines of drinking beers alone made more sense every step. Every time my foot thudded on the rubber.

     I would wake up with my hands curled under my quads and my stomach a weight and my body pillow tucked behind me. I’d throw up in the bathroom upstairs whose floors were painted with pubic hairs and spilt toothpaste. I’d throw up because of the combinations of alcohol, the smell of the house, and the fear I would bump into her on my way to class. I’d started entering the cement building at odd hours through back doors and taking curlicue routes to my room.

    As the sun clipped the edge of the dorm and the Frisbee throwers walked to grab their tossed aside sandals that my hand reached out and turned the dial of the treadmill. The quad was dark and the buildings remained, stone and resolute as the orange lights began to flicker on around them. I turned up the speed on the treadmill.

     Soon students would be emerging with water bottles full of neon liquid. I turned up the speed on the treadmill. Soon I would collapse in the locker room bathroom and use toilet paper to wipe the sweat from my eyes and back of my neck. I would use the toilet to stand and I move myself to the mirror, my legs heavy but the ground light as if it were sliding beneath me. Sweat would drip from the end of the bangs in front of my eyes and I would push them back, noticing the thin stretch of skin receding back on my scalp. I would run my fingers through my hair and rub the part of my skull that seemed to have given up.

     I turned up the speed on the treadmill.