Snowbound and Irate

First, a disclaimer about the last: I'm not diving out a third story window, or planning on finding a convenient rafter to hang myself by my belt from, or going to shove ice down the back of Dot's shirt, or any of the dozens of other methods of suicide I can conceive of. So stop fretting about the title, and let me write this in the right order.

I've been simply thinking for days, ever since Vinny left. For those who didn't know, my ex-girlfriend came to visit for Christmas. Actually, she came to scope out Icaria, and tormenting me was just a handy side benefit. Seems The Powers That Be have their long fingers and watchful eyes on her as well, and sent her the usual lure of a scholarship. I'm not sure she could have picked worse timing for when to actually find me, or a worse convocation of circumstances to get tangled up in the middle...

Actually, scratch that. I've a wild enough imagination that I can picture it, and with my luck, it'll come to pass when she decides to drop in again now that she's pinpointed me on her radar. Let's pray that never happens.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Thinking. Vinny was here in a whirlwind -- found me staggering between a blow to the nose and an apology on Christmas, Lunch onward on Boxing Day, and then gone before I'd even woken up the day after. I imagine there's a section of the audience laughing their asses off now. After all, that's two girls lost inside a month, and one of them was stalking me. I must be some catch, huh?

Except the second left a letter, at least, along with some cold clarity that I've spent the last few days processing. Which is why Miss Scarlett, the Round Table, and Lust are now carefully pinned up over my desk, as a reminder. (Thanks, guys, again.) Vinny's letter is pinned up as well, closed so the lipstick shows, just beneath them.

Because I've been loved. Screwed up, messed up, mixed up mess, but still love...and from what I've seen, I'm not sure love is ever anything but. And I nearly loved, was starting to love, a girl who didn't love me back. Or maybe she was afraid to love me back, afraid to even consider the possibility. It amounts to the same thing now, as there's no chance to break down the walls and see where possibilities will take us. There's too much ocean in the way, for one thing, and she didn't brand me as hers clearly enough before she left. My heart broken, but with no formal bill of sale before she fled the store.

So my heart's broken. Congratulations, Billy Boy, you join the ranks of a million, billion other people who've come before you, poets and artists and writers and mailmen and accountants and meter maids and farmers and all the rest. Doesn't make you special...or does it? It's not a very exclusive club, and it doesn't give me right to run off and be a self-absorbed ass (at least, not for any longer than anyone's got that right for a bit at points in their lives), but it's still...a step. A test. Every day's a test, sure, but sometimes you pay attention to certain tests more than others.

It boils down to a question: how do I want to pass this test?

I've loved, and lost, and went rampaging in a brief but colorful dance along the edge of the dark. I find myself glad at times that my vices are wine, women and song...though I'm sure my neighbors are sick of my musical tastes. I am, I think, a courteous drunkard; no public displays of unfortunate affection, no flirtations I regret in the morning, no drunk dialing, no attempting to hit on my best friend just because I'm sauced. (Because, of course, I like to remember when I hit on my best friend.) So while it could all be a whole hell of a lot worse? I'd like to be a little bit better.

I must, therefor, reneg on giving up women, and giving up on the human race. Because I've had reminders the last few days of why I feel the way I do about both, and coupled with that aforementioend introspective haze I've been in I feel like...well. It hurts, it still hurts, but it's not a hurt I regret. I try not to regret even the mistakes.

But this is still the end...the end of the year, and the start of a new one. I don't know that I want to make resolutions, exactly; someone once said that promises were just made to be broken. But...well, let's just say I have bullet points:

• I'm grateful, and thankful, and all that mess, for the friends I've made in the three short months I've been up here in wintry exile. Dot, Emi, Anne, and Mikhail get top billing, but they're not the entire roster.
• Dot? Special recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty, more than once. I can't make it up, but you know I'd do the same for you without hesitation. Or I hope you know. I even have spots ready to help you hide the bodies.
• Thank you, Tanne. Because there were good times.
• Yes, I did give Byron the clap and the pox, and I'm fucking PROUD. So there. OMG, ourloveissopure.
• I'm not giving up on girls, but I am...well, let's say I'm giving up lust for lent. Yes, even if the closest I come to being Catholic are a few similarities between Krishna and Christ.
• Watch this space for geekery of the highest degree, to be announced formally before the semester starts. I'm still reading the books, but...ideas are forming.
• The past is the past, and can stay right the fuck there, thanks.

That last one, in particular, I know is harder put into practice than simply said, but...it's a sort of goal to aim for, I think. There are too many ghosts.

Oh, and as a final closing note: I hear there's a party tonight, to celebrate the new year. While I'm not doing my best hermit impression anymore, I'm not quite recovered enough to feel like I'd manage in a crowd. So instead, I'll be hosting a tiny little celebration in MacArthur. If anyone wants to drop in and give a toast, either before or after the main event over at Geoffrey's, feel free. That goes double for you, Dot and Hemi, if you guys make it back in time.

Whatever your choice of venue, whoever you choose to spend it with: have a lovely New Year's Eve, kiss the person you want to kiss at midnight, and may the year to come be fucking spectacular.

PS -- Because I can't help but play DJ for a moment or two, I leave you with appropriate tunes from some boys from Seattle I'm a little fond of.

Death Cab for Cutie, "The New Year"

(This is locked down to Dot only.)

Had another vision. No drowning or lashes this time. I snuck back here to MacArthur during lunch; had a phone call that completely killed my appetite. The moment my head hit the pillow, there was...an eye. Not flaming, nor stuck at the top of a tower, just an eye. Like someone was inches from my face, staring at me.

Only it wasn't just an eye. There was...as crazy as this sounds (and that's saying something, when all of this sounds insane)...there was a crow, or a raven. I can never tell the difference. But it was -inside- the eye, staring back at me.

What the hell does that mean?

And on a different note...just what did you tell Hem to make him curious?

Things I can do without: visions in the shower. I had another one -- they're coming faster. This time, I nearly thought I was going to drown. Things I don't like, number 2053: salt water up my nose. Followed shortly by storm-tossed waves, getting hit by bits of the rigging, and last but not least? Thrown overboard.

It already hurt to take a shower in the first place, after Friday night. Which was fucked up enough as it is. And now this? I don't know. Throwing up what I swear tasted like salt water while kneeling on the tile floor, not the way I want to start today or any day.

I'd be more pissed off if I wasn't worried sick at this point.

It happened again. It wasn't in the shower; I was actually laying in bed, trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself for Thanksgiving. I didn't even close my eyes...or if I did, it was a blink, a matter of an instant.

But it was long minutes, blood suddenly pounding in my veins, the smell of the sea around me again. It was night, the stars spread like glitter across black velvet above us, and blacker than pitch down in the hold save for the single lantern I was carrying. There was a scuffle in the dark, and a protesting squeal from the rats before he was on me. I couldn't see his face, the darkness casting dizzying shadows as the lantern swung desperately as a shield in front of me as I fumbled for my knife. There was the clank of metal-on-metal, and then we fell in a heap of limbs and steel. His breath was rank in my face, the smell of my own sweat almost overpowering as I fought for my life.

Almost as suddenly as it had begun, there was a rush of hot blood over my hands and a gurgle from the man who'd attacked me. I sat up panting, and stared down at my knife, shoved up under his jaw. The ship was suddenly rocked by a wave...and I blinked again, and was back in my bed.

On the one hand, I hope Dot is right. This is close enough to madness as it is, but at least it's not my madness, and it has a source. On the other...well. After that, how the hell can I do anything but worry?

I wish I knew what the hell was going on in this place.

Fuck. I...fuck, I don't know what the hell that was.

Right. I've taken a few more dozen deep breathes. I'm recording this for me, just in case we need a record of my slide out of sanity. Neela, you may be getting more company than you expected soon.

Fuck.

All right: after I finished practicing, so I'm not going to be a total rusty bastard when Slutty Moll has a rehearsal, I went to grab a shower before bed. Everything normal. Water warm, soap sudsy, me naked, yadda yadda yadda. Only when I closed my eyes to lean back into the water to rinse my hair? Suddenly it was...vertigo. The world spinning under me. Because I swear I could feel the wind in my hair, and the spray wasn't coming from overhead. It was coming from the waves as the bow crashed through them. I can still remember the rough bite of the rope under my hand, and the sway of the ship under me. I can taste the salt tang from the breeze. I could, if you set me down, sketch the outline of the islands we were sailing past. Tropical coves, waiting for buried treasure.

And when I opened my eyes again? Gone. As if it had never been.

I don't know what it means. Why the hell am I dreaming of sailing ships? And while I'm awake? I haven't been binging on either PotC or Horatio Hornblower, for gods' sakes.

I'm going to sleep, and hope I dream of large women. Or sun god robes. Or...fuck. I don't know. Anything but that.

(All right. Not anything. Not that again, but not this either.)

After two and a half days of busting my hump, I emerge from the Mines of Moria...otherwise known as the grindstone of back homework...triumphant, and I didn't even have to sacrifice Gandalf to the Balrog to do it. I consider two evenings and most of a morning a small price to pay for academic peace of mind. At least from this point forward, I'll be muddling along with the rest of you at proper pace. In those circumstances, I can procrastinate with the best!

However, I've not just been an academic dynamo. No, ladies and gentlemen, I've actually finished cleaning in here too. Not that I have much to clean, but I desperately needed to get stuff put away. I suppose I could have kept fooling myself; there's something comfortingly transitory about living out of a suitcase, at times. But it's a bit depressing to never be at home, either. Weighing the options, it turns out that puncturing the bubble of my self-delusion won the coin toss. Who would have thought.

But this meant that it was time to return cleaning supplies. I started with a quick stop at Emi's room, which lead to my introduction to 'Fingers'. Because every pirate ship needs a monkey. I think it's in the part of the code that isn't so much suggestion as 'absolute', but I couldn't be certain. However, he was full of excellent advice before I braved my true destination, the dark pit of despair for many a man...

Delaney.

I know, I know, half of you are laughing at me for being a melodramatic coward. And yet the other half are nodding their heads knowingly. It's hard approaching a sacred bastion of the fairer gender alone. What if it turns into a bacchanal suddenly, in the most classic sense, and they tear you limb from limb? I mean, there are ways to go and there are ways to go, and that one sort of misses the point of the better options.

But I was brave. I took a deep breath, and with Lysol and Oxy-Clean in hand, I braved the upper floors of that dangerous place and sought the inner sanctum of my quarry -- Dot. You can torture it out of me, but I won't reveal what I found when admitted inside to return her supplies. Name, rank, and serial...okay, I can't keep it up. She's a girl, it's her room, I'm still not telling but it was hardly as if I crawled through Shelob's Lair.

However, I did come out of it with something unexpected. Namely, a date for the Halloween dance. (And I'll reiterate here: No, Dot. Emi did not put me up to asking you.) Strangers have to stick together; it's that, or plot each other's demise. We may get to that too, but for now I think we'll be too distracted by our costuming plans. I will say nothing, in case prying eyes are reading, but only note that I'm going to have to make a trip down to Boston tomorrow to shop. Insert your standard mad cackle here.

Boston comes tomorrow, however. For now, I'm back in my room and pacing. Tanne's on her way over for dinner, and I'm noticing just how pathetically slim my hosting abilities are in this room. I'm going to have to do something about that, and soon, but there's just not been enough time.

Sometimes, I wonder where this host 'twitch' came from. It's not as if either of my parents were very big on parties or the like, so I don't see how it can be learned behavior. Maybe I just read the right (or the wrong, depending on how you look at it) things during my formatives years. That, or as I'm sure a certain someone will intimate, it's simply a manifestation of my swishy side. As if it's my fault that girls appreciate someone who actually remembers to shower more than once a week?

Speaking of girls, time to order dinner so it gets here in time. Note to self: find a kitchen I can use sooner than later, and start ordering the proper spices. Second note to self: Knock off a fellow student so I have enough room to put all this stuff. Preferably in the room next to mine so I can take out the wall. Third note: Not Emi.

So, I'm officially here, finally. Not just in Icaria, but in my room in MacArthur Hall at Eupheme. Nothing's unpacked but my laptop for the moment, but at least that much is done. Currently, I'm braving the chill evening breeze to air the room out. I'd almost believe I was a responsible student if I walked in on me, at this point.

Finding the school after leaving the B&B was pretty easy, especially with directions from my secret admirer after I complimented her muffins (the blueberry sort, you perverts.) It's hard to get lost in a town this size, though; I swear, all I'd need to do would be to climb the nearest tree, and I could probably get a birds-eye view of all the major streets from there. It wouldn't even need to be a particularly tall tree.

First obstacle successfully completed: find the school. Which lead directly to the second obstacle: negotiate the administration, and explain why I was a day late in arriving. Thankfully, with my parents entirely out of a reasonable time zone to contact in a reasonable manner, I was able to reasonably explain that there had been simple, reasonable miscommunication, and today was actually the day I was meant to get to town. Isn't it grand, living as we do in the Age of Reason? You can get away with a lot, as long as you know that fine line between buttering up your school officials and too obviously kissing their well-educated asses.

Having made it through both of those rings of fire, it was a cakewalk to find MacArthur Hall. Ah, home sweet home, at least for the next nine months or so. I'm also reassured: there were sane people there. At least two -- Emi, who apparently has the room next to mine, and Sam, who was moving out of the room I was moving into. Emi had a cold, apparently, which does wonders for reassuring me that he's not really a cyborg plant. (We're close to Stepford, after all; it was worth considering as a possibility!)

There were then the traditional offerings to new blokes: a cup of tea, and a few hits on the shared blunt. Aside from Emi's apparent pirate fetish (which hey, can you blame a guy?) they both seemed pretty normal. Though the stereo warning that "Lucy" -- whoever she is aside from the hot date Emi was having to miss -- wasn't looking for a boyfriend? Pretty damn funny. Even if I did let my lack-of-sleep slip show and mangle us into a digression on girls being girls versus girls being guys.

Aside: what is it about androgyny that comes in and out of fashion? Is it the mystery? Is it the fact that Julie Andrews was pretty fucking hot as both Victor and Victoria? And how about the issue that I don't really care how butch Shirley Manson is, I'd still do her in a heartbeat if given the opportunity? Maybe this is a side effect of that whole thing where sexuality isn't an absolute, but a spectrum, and I'm just further to the side of "hey, I'd totally get in the middle of a Rufus Wainwright/Alan Cumming sandwich if given the opportunity" than most other guys. Of course, in my experience, most other guys are absolutely desperate to prove they're not gay, not quote-unquote "weak", not standing out from the sheep's herd. Baaaa.

Sam's apparently in a band. Ska. And looking for a brass player. Conveniently enough, I did remember to bring my trumpet. We'll have to see just how things go once I can settle in and give them a try-out.

Sam is also, apparently, a bigger pothead than South American drug smugglers flying planes into Miami. That, or he's been hotboxing guys with the tolerance of bull rhinos up in his room. Emi took me upstairs to my room after Sam left -- which is probably good, because it kept me from staring at the man openly, given the sheer imbedded funk in the room. I'm surprised there wasn't resin caked on the walls in layers thick enough to scrape off and re-smoke.

After Emi abandoned me to the imposing reality of my situation, and I ascertained that the crap they had for cleaning in the Hall wasn't up to this particular challenge, I went in search of the first place I could think of where I could find them: the girls' dorm.

You can all point and laugh now at me being a sexist pig.

And this, of course, is the point in which I ran into Dot. At least, she didn't deny that she was Emi's Dot -- Dorothy, Diva of Delaney Hall. I'm not quite sure I trust Mon Capitan's position that she's the best girl on campus, even if he did offer me a position in the crow's nest. Actually, I will say that the girl thinks quick on her feet, and doesn't take shit -- even if I wasn't trying to give her shit. Go me and my first impressions, huh? And she owns me a raincheck. Note to self: make sure it's worth it when you cash it.

Ah well, at least she had lysol and that Oxy-clean stuff. Which, in combination, have done wonders for getting this place so that it doesn't smell like a Rastafarian Shrine. But now I'm so tired that the thought of facing class tomorrow makes me whimper. I cling to the bright spots: tomorrow night I can properly unpack, and in the morning? I think I actually have a date for coffee. Let's hope I can find the place.