I graduated from college. I had spent my time, three years in, one year out, and was finally able to leave to standard liberal arts college. A school with one hill, one Carnegie hall, a dorm that looked like a low income housing construction and the new dorm that is completed just as you are leaving with the plasma screen televisions and the air conditioning and heating that actually works. This was all I was leaving behind, beside the usual repressed memories of being hazed through fraternal ritual and the momentary glory of being inducted into a secret society that is protecting and harboring no more than a private underwear party and a steaming pile of refuse idealistic exclusive bullshit.
So needless to say this was the end of the line for me. My parents, siblings, and/or grandmother arrived on the seen to watch their fortune be culminated with a piece of paper and a burnt red nose. I wore flip flops, cliche, and in addition a pair of dark Persol sunglasses. I awaited the end, where my name would be called, a couple of people would clap and I would sit down, ultimately wishing that I was somewhere else, asleep, drunk, or inside the cool confines of a movie theater, laughing or feeling a little bit better than I usually would sitting in a ridiculous, "hollow" that rested adjacent to the Carnegie hall where I had my final classes.
In preparation of this final day, I was required to write a thesis, something that demonstrated what I had learned throughout my years. Since I learned very little besides how big of an asshole I was in Ohio, I wrote about my time in the Czech Republic and Vietnam. It was to be a memoir, and the night before it was due I wasn't close to finish. To tell the truth I did not start late on it, but I poured into it for hours, typing and typing. I sat up late at night, drinking coffee, chewing adderall, and eating cold dried up pieces of spaghetti to fuel the moments of this exhausting ritual that most have to endure whether it be at Witt(shit)enberg, Denison, or Kenyon.
The Sunday that it was due I went to the local coffee shop, took the pill to keep me awake and then drank tons of coffee. The shop had one side that was a bar and the other side was a coffee shop, the one I sat in at the beginning, typing furiously without a clue of what I was actually saying to anybody about anything, but it seemed like a mess, a coherent mess if there is such a thing. I ended up finishing the remainder of it on the bar side, going home around 1 am to edit the pages. It totalled around 152 by the end, I eventually got it down to 147 when all was said and done.
The editing process consisted of me sitting in a chair reading the whole thing out loud. I read, my voice grew hoarse, and I watched that with each new cup of coffee I would add a little more than a shot of hazelnut syrup, till eventually it seemed that the viscous fluid was being poured down my mouth. Molecules of sugar bursting, igniting any kind of energy just to finish the hulking mass. When I finished editing around nine in the am, I worked on printing it out at the local kinkos. Smelling of last night and worse I printed out the work and put it into four different binders for four different people. Three professors and one administrative. I then drove a rental car; my jeep was in the shop. Through the cold snow I delivered the package to all involved. It was received with canned laughter and all of the pages. Few joked that they would not even bother to read it. I couldn't have been more r when this joke turned true.
The sum of my college career, the only thing, good or not, I had put love into only to see it as kindling for the fires of tweed jackets. I waited for some sort of confirmation. Not of it being good, not of it being bad, but simply just being acknowledged. That day never came, I heard once from the administrative side saying it looked exciting and long. I did not reply to this email and waited further from the professors. Nothing, no defense and this was in February. I waited and nothing, and eventually we were at the beginning of the story in Ohio and the sun blasting with relatives sitting somewhere I could not see.
I sat next to people I did not know, and realized I was leaving school with maybe only a small handful or friends and the majority of the rest angry with me for various mistakes I had made over time. I was aware that I was also leaving for Budapest shortly after so my interest was in after the graduation, the parties or the dinner that was planned where we would eat courtesy of a chef that had study with an Michelin rated technique.
They called my name, I sat back down. The president of the school spoke. It was a combination of a third grade book report and the Spiderman 2 script. Our guest speaker made a muffin metaphor and the bridge of my nose sizzled red. I looked around at people I didn't know. One couple proposed marriage and it felt quite sitcom. However they defied everyone by making their marriage contract kiss last for what seemed to be five whole minutes, the other stuffing the opposites head inside their mouth. Then their was clapping, then caps were tossed, then I looked for my parents.
The Dr. presiding over my thesis met me in a hurried frenzy to see all the students who wanted a picture. He then told me he had not read my thesis, he had just given me an "A" because that seemed easier, but he had scanned the first five pages briefly.
"What did you think?" I asked him.
"Eh" He shrugged.
147 pages, and he shrugged. Just tell me it was bad, horrible, like looking at a fetid wound or a masterpiece, which I doubt was the case. Eh, a shrug, with obviously had a negative connotation, I just wanted to know why it was a shrug? These were my friends, odd delicacies, and the mass graves of thousands of Cambodians who he was just shrugging off. I needed to know whether I represented and respected them at least half decently.
I never did find out, there were other students who needed a picture. Other fathers to take a picture of a check book, the humor of the senseless amounts of money that well to do families spend on an education. I rolled down to the one graduation party I was invited too and ate a hearty mound of potato salad. I smeared it against two pieces of a potato bread bun and chewed it, thinking of what the fuck was I doing here. I neglected to notice that I had friends from South America and Asia, and Cincinnati all in one place, living and eating in peace under one roof.
My parents left. I bought alcohol, Grand Marnier, and I began to mix that with Cranberry Juice, my empty stomach ( I had since passed the starchy mass of P. Salad) giving the go ahead into being just plain drunk. This seemingly making it easier to be on campus. I put in some phone calls, ended up at a bar, talking to people I had never met. I watched my friends fuse with the blurry mass of hairy heads, some hairlines receding including mine. I saw it was over, and I was indifferent. I hated this place but it gave me no reason to blast off back to my hideaway in the capitol.
I seeped into a drunker state, passed out phone numbers and ended up in a foreign bed. I woke up at eleven, said goodbye to someone I didn't know, and she smiled, the last person I saw at school, I don't know you and you didn't know me, but I sure enjoyed our conversation and what followed after.
I got into my car, turned the ignition, put the roof done, bought my mother a mother's day present with her own money from her credit card. I got a phone call for a favor and I blew it off. I filled up my car with gasoline and drove back to the capitol to meet up for the mother's day lunch. Grand Marnier slowing my thoughts from the night before, I had completely forgotten all that time I had spent jotting down things that made me happy, moments I had remembered.
I just didn't know, and as it got easier to accelerate from a state road to a highway, I left without knowing whether to hate myself or to keep blaming everyone else for my own decisions. Not knowing made it easier to tell the final part the foreign bed as the only moment I tell my friends about now, they think its cool. A good story of a final hoorah. However, the moments after and before seemed to be dropped. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
