Green Books

“Would you like a new copy of the Testament?” the man in the gray tweed jacket asks me.

I recognize him instantly: this is the man who in my sophomore year of high school chased me down the sidewalk in front of the administration building, waving a small green book. He looks a little more rickety now, momentarily risen from his folding chair.

“No thank you!” I snap, shifting the laptop case on my shoulder.

He is at the bottom of the stairs. At the top, but seconds ago, I was asked the same thing by two men in navy blue suit jackets. Three blocks away, upon leaving the parking lot, I said “nuh uh” to two men with a card table.

I am now at the point of “no’s” and “thank you’s” and shifting shifting shifting.

The socio major in me calls. Question – prod and poke his ideals. Raise his hopes and dash them with the line “Thanks, you just gave me the example of ‘weapons of the weak’ that I’ve been needing.”

But I’ve heard his spiel before, and I have a thesis about Egyptian coffins to write.

 

Aw, fuck it.

I glance at the clock: quarter to nine. Okay.

I pick up my cellphone and turn it on: 8:45.

…

Shit.

The difference between traditional clock hands and the blaring pixeled digitalness is obvious – one seems safe, the other doesn’t. Why? Because I told myself that I would leave at “8:45″. That’s in numbers. I didn’t think, “quarter to nine,” which is how I read clocks. Nope. For six hours of subconscious awareness, “8:45″ was branded into my eyes and ears and thoughts.

I pause to wonder if I can make it to class on time. My cellphone now reads “8:46″. I’m still in my pajamas.

“Aw, fuck it,” I mutter and toss the phone back into my purse.

It isn’t that I’m lazy. Nor is it that I’m unenthusiastic about the subject. It’s because I received an e-mail from the instructor last night:

“Hi Everyone,
The discussion is going very well. Your posts are thoughtful and reflect content from the book and additional sources. “

Eh? …EH??

I log on to the class forum and find a week of work and discussions, as well as a grade scale based on that week. My stomach turns. I have an ‘F’ and no way of making it up.

See, I have been checking the forum off and on for two weeks, making absolutely positive that I wouldn’t be caught off-guard, but I was on the road all Sunday and have been sick since Monday. And in those four days, the entire class has discussed half of the first assigned book. A book I haven’t even been able to purchase yet.

I blink at the screen. My eyes kind of burn.

I stand up and pace back and forth within two square feet. It’s more like just turning in circles. I begin to hyperventilate. “No!” I think, “No no no NO! You can’t have a panic attack! It isn’t that bad, you fucking moron! NO!” I regulate my breathing and sit down again. Phew.

I am afraid of having panic attacks, almost as much as I am afraid during them. Panic attacks are a complete loss of control. For me, everything moves in slow motion because I am moving so fast. My vision becomes blurry, wavy, and walls close in. My body becomes numb and warm and I can’t feel anything I try to grab onto. I can’t breathe; I gasp for breath. I try to talk or call out, but I can’t even feel the words in my chest. One thought cycles through my mind: “I am going to die.”

There is nothing quite like the conflict of believing you are going to die but knowing that you will not. I use the term “believing” instead of “thinking” or “feeling” because it is a belief. There is nothing more true to you at that moment. But, logically, you know that a panic attack will not kill you. This is where the terror sets in. Think of a nightmare in which you fend off invisible monsters. Imagine fighting for your life against air. The struggle is futile: there is nothing to defeat.

Facing ordinary stresses such as 15 minutes to get ready and run across campus, only to enter class (failing or not) late, would be like injecting mercury into my bloodstream. Usually, I force myself to charge head-on, but I don’t plan to stay here anyway, right?

I sit down and play WoW for a few hours.

 

A Cozy Tavern

I am playing World of Warcraft. This means, of course, that I have no idea what is going on around me. Because when I am playing a game there is no “around me.” You could shoot me in the chest and I wouldn’t even flinch.

“It’s stopped popping,” Kalissa’s voice echoes somewhere from the abyss. “We should probably take the bag out now…”

“Uh…uh…huh? Yeah. Okay.” I glance at her without registering the motion.

I’m sitting on the ground, leaning against the mini-fridge. The microwave is right above my head and I am “keeping an eye on it.” You ask, which eye? The one that cares more about popcorn than Warcraft… Hahaha…ha.

Trying to open the bag, Kalissa rips it wide open, spilling burnt popcorn all over the floor.

“Smooooooooth,” I laugh and look back at my game.

…

My head snaps back up. “Is…that…going to set off the smoke detector?” She looks up in horror at the smoke detector three feet above her head. She stumbles away from it.

Phew, I think, we’re-BLEEEPBLEEPBLEEEEEEEEEP!

Not again. Oh God. Not again. PLEASE.

I clutch my hands to my ears. My first thought is, ‘Is my character on Warcraft stopped in a safe place?’ I pause.

I care more about Aoisa’s safety than my own.

My mind returns to the present crisis as I envision the building being evacuated. I envision the irritation, the questions, and the confession. This has to be a felony, this burning of popcorn in a crowded college dorm. My thoughts race.
Others on the third floor are beginning to emerge from their rooms to investigate. There is no evacuation, but they give me a scare. The story travels throughout the entire building in a few minutes. As I run around, trying to find an R.A., strangers laugh with me. “Burn some popcorn?” they joke. “Haha, yeah,” I reply and keep running. The conversations are all the same. And there are half a dozen of them.

I find an R.A., but he tells me that…well, they’re too frikin busy right now and we’re just going to have to wait it out.

Ehem. Okay.

I deliver the bad news to Kalissa and Tony. We hear the sirens coming up the road. We retreat down the hall, away from the noise. The noise stops. We return to the room and hastily clean up the popcorn on the floor, only to discover that much stepping upon has occurred. We’re partially deaf now, but there is a new noise…

“Is that…did I… Ha! I left the sound on,” I laugh as I turn my laptop around and see my character AFK-ing in the middle of a cozy tavern.

Two seconds later, there is a knock on the door. “Fire department,” says a deep, husky voice that knows it’s just popcorn.

The firefighter and a policeman make a quick investigation: they take a few steps, try to open the windows further but fail, and accept our profuse apologies. They leave.
“I was going to abandon you guys,” I tell Kalissa and Tony, “if we evacuated.”

“Yeah, we don’t blame you.”

 

I will stand in the cold for hours.

I look at the woman behind the counter. She has black, purposefully poofy hair and I think, “Your hair sucks. What were you thinking?” She tucks a loose strand behind her ear.

“Have you applied for residence hall access with us yet?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I have. Several times.”

The woman asks for my last name and flips through a wad of papers. “Well, looks like you’re on my big list. So…we’re looking at access maybe later today.”

“That’s what I was told on Thursday.”

“Well, yes, and it hasn’t changed. There are three hundred people on this list and he has to manually input all of them.”

“I meant, I was supposed to have access on Thursday. And there were three hundred people then too.”

“That isn’t to say none of them have been helped yet. Trust me, there are a lot of people coming in here about the same thing.”

So?

“Do you have the number for your on-duty RA?”

“No.”

“Do you have the number for your service desk?”

“No.”

You were supposed to give me those when I moved in, I seethe.

As she scrounges in a closet for a new pad of post-its, I stare at the betta fish on the counter. He is quietly floating around the bottom of the lonely plastic tank. A sticker on the side proclaims, “Hi! My name is ‘Dude’!” Dude, I think, you poor, sick bastard.

Finally, after answering two telephone calls, the woman finds the post-its, carefully opens the package, and writes down the telephone numbers.

“If you knock on the door before 10PM, there should be someone right there,” she adds.

You have never been inside the halls have you?

I thank her without a smile. I slam my body against the door and exit.

My best friend waves a yellow piece of paper at me as I rant.

“That’s cool,” I say. I don’t really look.

“What!? It’s a $25 ticket!”

“Fuck.”

“$25!!!“

“Bastards.”

 

Death Becomes Her

A shrill beep summons me from, well, not sleep, but from the dull stupor befalling one about to sleep. As I reach for my pajamas (toasty from the laundry), there is a flashing white light out of the corner of my eye. The sound does not bother me as much as this pulsating light. ‘And now I find out that I’m eptileptic,’ I bemoan. The beeping light continues. “Woh! Woh! Woh!” I noticably flinch every time. And then, I spy the source, hanging just inside the bathroom door, a red box. A red box with the word “FIRE” neatly printed in white.”You have got to be kidding me,” I say, staring at the box and trying to will it out of existence. “It’s…” I look at the clock. “It’s a quarter to eleven!”

My door is propped open and I can see everyone beginning to walk past, towards the emergency exits.

“You have got to be kidding me!” I say again.

My first instinct is to cover my laptop with a pillow to protect it from the sprinkler five feet away and then I look around. Where the hell are my shoes? I’m not going outside without shoes. I get one foot in and someone gives me an odd look. ‘Fine!’ I think. ‘Is this weird? Fine!’ I tear off the first shoe and stand up. I hear a voice down the hall: “If this were a fire, you’d all be dead by now.”

I stop.

This is a drill?

I look back at my shoes. I look back at the clock. I am barely coherent as it is.

I walk down the hall in my socks. I walk down the emergency stairs in my socks. I walk down the sidewalk in my socks.

“Everyone needs to get on the grass!” an R.A. orders, motioning his hands as if to push us all back at once. “Come on now!” He almost knocks me over.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mutter, taking off aforementioned socks. The grass is cold and wet, just like grass at 11:00pm should be.

“It will protect us from the fire!” a friend proclaims.

“It had better,” I say. “Because if I get sick out here, I’m going to kick their asses.”

The entire building is standing on the grass now. I have lost the feeling in my toes. And I am not enjoying the knowledge that my door is still wide open and I have a fortune in technology, games, and books in there.

Fifteen minutes later, “All right! Good job, everybody!”

What? I thought we were dead.

 

James Lemke

I cannot for the life of me pronounce the word “hajimemashite” without stumbling over the first three sylabols.

“Ha-gee-may…Ha..Ha-gee-may..maash-tay,” I mumble. “Leh-muh…key dess.”

In essence, I’m introducing myself. “Yo!” I’m saying. “Name’s Lemke. James Lemke.”

Except, if someone came up to me and said “yo” I think I would spit on them. Just because, well, that word is aggravating.

Of course, I’m God, so I can say it all the time.

I stare at my Hiragana practice sheet for “a”, “i”, “u”, “e”, and “o”. I pick up my pencil; it hovers a few inches from the paper. Hesitantly, I lower the lead to the surface. It snaps.

Fuck.

Okay, maybe I’m a little tense… Let’s try this again:

I successfully sketch the first line.

SNAP.

…

“Dude, you want me to kick your ass?” As if I ever carry through on that threat.

“Yes,” it replies. “Just you try: kick my shiny, pointy lead ass!” Indeed, inanimate objects are real snobs.

I throw it at the sterile, white wall on my left. It bounces and stabs me in the arm. Rolling, it falls onto a pillow and glares up at me.

Oh, it definitely needs to die.

“Just you wait,” I tell it. “There once was a bonsai tree that tried to kill itself. So I lit it on fire. You have done me actual physical harm. Just wait and see.”

It seems not to hear me, and then, “Crap.” Good, it understands.

 

Halifax Sux

I am sitting on my bed, cross-legged, laptop between my knees, and the cat beside me. I am listening to that Halifax cd I got yesterday; it isn’t very good. My bedroom floor is aflood with plastic bags, papers, books, clothing, and boxes. In 24 hours, I realize, I will not be here anymore. In 24 hours, my room will no longer be my room and I will be sitting on a new bed, raised high off the ground so that I can fit a dresser and small bookcase beneath it. My laptop will have a cable lock, and my cat will be a photograph on my bedstand. Instead of looking out a basement window at a carport and a propane tank, I will stare down three stories at a dusty campus.

I am crying because the thing I will miss most is this room.

It will not miss my family or friends or cat as much as I miss this place. I will not miss opportunities I didn’t seize, chances I didn’t take. Instead, I will miss the hours I spent in this room, through five years of depression and happiness. I will miss the days of hunting for that one poster, for that one calendar. I will miss watching my pile of cds and dvds climb.

I am material. So these things are important to me.

My relief was enormous when I called my roommate yesterday, because there is a chance of having a single room now. I won’t have to sacrifice all of it too quickly. But I’m also angry. I’m fucking furious! I wanted a roommate so that I would have to make choices. So that I would have to limit my possessions.

I have been trying to reach Kimberly for three weeks. I’ve called a dozen times and left four messages. Finally, I make my last ditch effort to contact her. The phone rings twice.

“Hello?”

Oh crap. It’s actually…a person. What do I do?

“Um, er. May I please speak to Kimberly?”

“She’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”

“This is Alisa. I’ve been trying to reach her for a while. I’m her CSUMB roommate.”

“Oh… She’s not going to Cal State anymore.”

…I beg your pardon?

“She’s actually already at her new college.” I don’t catch the name. This woman is a mumbler.

“Okay…”

“Sorry for the confusion. But maybe you’ll get a single room!”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.”

“Yeah. Well, bye!”

Click. It was all too cheery.

I look at the phone in my hand. I look out the window. I look back at the phone. The thing seems vile to me now.

“What did she say?” my best friend asks from the front seat.

“She’s not going to CSUMB. She’s already at her other college…something that starts with a ‘P’. Um, yeah. …Yeah.”

The drive continues. But. Dude. I’m kind of frazzled.

An hour passes. We are walking into the mall.

“I can’t believe she’s not going to CSUMB,” I blurt. “Can you believe it? I can’t believe it.”