It’s a Saturday afternoon worth waiting for. It’s 52°f and the sky is clear except for a scattering of popcorn clouds. I’m eating lunch with Sophy, Lisa, Anna (my roommates) and Peter (a friend) at one of the two residential dining halls that have the best pizza (yeah, you KNOW who you are).

We’re touching base before we scatter, shrapnel like, for the night. I’ll be hemmed-up by circumstance and in my most diligent work-mode. I have a presentation due Monday.

Sophy says, reading from at her laptop, “Research suggests that cat owners are seen as better looking and have more ***.”

“I have two cats,” I say, “at home.” I preen in my double-catness.

“I’m a cat owner!” Anna announces.

“My cat DIED.” Lisa reveals sadly.

“THAT cat did its JOB,” Sophy pronounced saliently, as if proving the studies validity.

“I grew up in a cat house,” Peter says.

“Ooo! YOU must have learned a LOT!” I say, batting my eyes seductively.

“Maybe we should get a cat HERE!” Sophy suggests.

“To cement our status!” Anna laughs.

The pizza was really good.

Lisa comes into my room and flops on the bed. The day had been uncompromisingly gray, windy and cold. The night sky was a snowy, blowing darkness, an absolute void that absorbed the campus lights and reflected nothing back. “I’m missing Spring Break,” Lisa she says.

“It doesn’t even seem like Spring Break happened,” I say. “Most Yalies went to Puerto Rico this year, I think, from my sampling.”

“RIGHT?” Lisa said, “EVERYONE says that - we’re in sync. But I enjoyed Paris,” Lisa continued, “I liked your family - no - I LOVED your family,” she amends.

“THAT’s a strong take,” I say, chuckling.

“I watched basketball with your uncle (Rémi) and cousins and helped your grandma cook,” she explains, “I felt like a part of your family.”

“Aww,” I say, “You ARE part of my family now - you’re TRAPPED,” and we laughed.

They invented spring break because after several months, the student mind starts to notice a harsh reality - how much their dorm room resembles a cinder-block jail cell - and starts to wonder how a lifetime of study and stress over grades has gotten them no further in life than the average felon.

We’re at lunch. Lisa says, “Ok, what’s new with you?” Keep in mind we see each other ten times a day.

“Well,” I say, I’ve decided that “The Beatles are for spring.” Lisa laughs. “Stop!” I demand, “I’m going deep. Today’s song is Julia,” I say, “It’s John Lennon’s song to his mom who was run over by a car when he was a child.”  “I love that song,” Lisa says.

“Ok, what about you?” I ask.
“My song right now is “Move like a Boss,” Lisa says, “When I’m walking across campus, with my air pods on - I’m intense, don’t get in my way - I’m dangerous, I’ll Will Smith you - I scare me.”

“Good to Know,” I say, wishing I’d gotten a lemon brownie.

Then I add, “I’ve got this presentation on Monday that I haven’t even had time to look at yet. If I don’t get on it by this weekend it’ll be a nuclear-level disaster. I started on it yesterday and the Internet went down for 20 minutes. It was stressful - of course, you don’t know how long the outage is going to be when you’re IN it - and I had THINGS to do - is that convoluted? ”

“No,” Lisa says, nodding in agreement, “losing the Interweb’s traumatic.”

I love the way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences let Will Smith sit there, for 40 minutes, preening in the front row, in plain sight, after he assaulted a black man at the Oscars.

I know what you're thinking - wait, isn’t Will Smith black? Well, obviously NOT. In an America where black men are routinely murdered for selling cigarettes or having a broken taillight, Mr. Smith got to commit his crime in front of millions of people. Then sit around like a three-piece suited sultan for over a ½ hour to receive an Oscar and a (reflexive?) standing ovation.

Will, in an effort to make his violence palatable said, in his tearful acceptance speech, that he was protecting his wife. Chris Rock made a joke about her hairdo. Was she actually in some kind of unseen danger? Perhaps this is some kind of new, Muslim “honor” slapping?

The very function of comedian hosts and presenters at the Oscars is to take-the-**** out of these overpaid actor-celebrities. If you multi-millionaires can’t take a joke, stay home or wear a **** wig.

I’m curious, we know Jada and Will have an “open” marriage - because they have said as much. Does that mean, in “Smith” logic, Chris could have *** with Jada but not comment on her looks?

How far does Will’s privilege extend - could he have *****-slapped Betty White (she was pretty salty sometimes) - for instance? I mean, Chris Rock is half Will Smith’s size. Do you think he would have launched up at Dwayne Johnson, Idris Elba or Jason Momoa? I doubt it, even if Will did get to pretend, he was Mohamid Ali for a while.

Chris Rock is a trooper, he took the hit and carried on like a professional. He’s going to be ok. Chris is in the middle of a national comedy tour, and it completely sold out the night of the assault. Even with ticket prices jumping from $49 to $340 per seat. I can’t wait to hear his new bit. I’m fairly sure every comedian in the world will now make a point of making vicious fun of Will - who’s made himself a punchline.

Will Smith will now start an apology tour. “It was a momentary lapse,” he’ll say - like every guy who ever slapped his wife or punched-down on someone weaker than themselves. From now on, whenever Jada’s invited anywhere, she’ll be asked if her husband is coming too and if he can be counted on to behave himself.

Chris Rock generously declined to press charges, but the LAPD doesn't need him to charge Will with assault. I know he’d only get a slap on the wrist, but someone should hold him accountable.

I was a Will Smith fan once.

We were at a club in Paris called L’Arc. It’s an outdoor club (spring break plus covid safety) that’s underneath the Arc de Triomphe. It’s 10PM and we’re coming from a night tour of the Louvre. The night sky was clear and it was 65°f.  I was with my posse of (3) roommates and two guardiennes (provided by my Grandmère) who travel with us at all times.

The man chatting me up was as hot as middle-school but honestly, it was hard to fake an interest in whatever he was saying. Was my ½ interest going to ruin us - this thing we’d shared for 5 minutes? No, he seemed to say, our connection was stronger than that.

Finally, I focused on his WORDS. It was hard because the music was so loud. Hey, this is off-topic but who’s your favorite French band? You don’t HAVE one, do you? No, because they ALL positively felate.

It turns out that he was a tiger - inviting me home for a respectfully quiet banging session - because he lived with his mother. I reacted like any college freshman would at first by thinking I was about to be sick.

Don’t flag me as antisex (If we’re flagging), I like a joystick now and then. They’re cute and like dogs, they’re always glad to see you. But the idea was disgustingly retro - my parent dodging days are over. Besides, our (roommate) agreement for this trip ostensibly forbids random hookups and did I mention our two escorts in tow?

I kept my cool. After all, we had another tray of shooters coming - staying put was clearly the right decision. He took my semi-blank reaction for the rejection it was and disappeared back into the crowd. C'est la vie

For the last five hundred years, posh “society,” is where the wealthiest and most influential people in the world mingled, inter-married and conducted business. If you’ve ever watched “Downton Abbey”, “The Gilded Age” or even “Crazy Rich Asians” you’ll know what I mean.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - a psychological pyramid that describes human fulfillment - states that part of our human nature (once your basic needs are met) is the desire to attain social position. Having mere wealth is just not enough once you are in the top levels of achievement.

In the 1970’s Arab money started pouring into the west. Arab petro-dollars bought swaths of land in the UK, in London and New York. The Arabs dazzled everyone with their wealth and bling but they never penetrated posh society.

Then in the 90s the second, Asian wave, of new wealth washed eastward and they had a bit more success in society. But starting about 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians started coming to the west with new money to invest - in the UK, in particular.

Russia became the billionaire capital of the world, oligarchs were everywhere buying anything not nailed down and eventually trying to insinuate themselves into posh “society”. Tatler (THE magazine of society) even began publishing a Russian version. If you were a wealthy Russian, you were moving up. By 2022, they weren’t too far from the edge of REAL success.

That’s what evaporated three weeks ago - with the invasion of Ukraine - Russia’s luxury infrastructure and their hopes of acceptance into posh society. Gucci, Chanel, Hermès, Dior, Apple and Tatler (just to name a few luxury brands) have left Russia to rot. If you’re Russian now, the chances of being admitted into posh society are gone for the next 20 years - at least.

You may say “so what?” Well, one way a dictator holds onto power is through mercantile largess. The granting of rights within the Russian sphere of influence - to control and distribute goods and services - is how oligarchs are created. The support of these oligarchs is important and transactional.

A man with a 100-million dollar yacht - looking at what chunks of their wealth may well be confiscated in the west - or lost to the Ruble’s collapse - could easily offer life-changing wealth to any henchman willing to end Putin one way or another.

Will this happen? I don’t know. But this is the system they’ve set up for themselves.

“***”. I said, looking at my phone with wide eyes, “***”.
“What?” Anna, asked, blowing on her too-hot pop-**** breakfast.
“Tony, my ex-boyfriend’s coming - TOMORROW - for the university tour. - He’s asking if I want to meet up with him.” I said, twiddling my thumbs over my phone keyboard. Tony’s ID had flashed on my phone last week - but I hadn’t picked up. His tour was set for 8AM.
“Did EVERYONE at your high school get accepted here?” Anna asks.
“Apparently.” I moaned and found myself biting my lip in concentration.

Last summer, before I’d left for college, there’d been a brief window, when the pandemic looked beaten - if you were vaccinated. There were parties upon parties after the long virus lockdown. I’d decided it was time - I wasn’t going off to college as the only ****** in the ivy league. It was a summer of kisses and other things - with Tony.

In the end though, we never even got a chance to say goodbye because his dad, who lived in Arizona, was in a car wreck. Tony had to escort his little brother out there. We were pickpocketed by circumstance and parted on imperfect terms.

Now, suddenly, as if it were a surprise - there I was - and there he was, stepping out of an Uber. I moved toward him, tugging at my hair that chose that moment to writhe, like a live thing in the wind. I cursed myself for not digging my best clothes out of the trunk under my bed. I’d told myself that I didn’t need to - I wouldn’t - put on a show for him but now I was sure my reward for stubbornness was looking like a scarecrow.

His parents were climbing out of the other side of the car. His dad first, whom I liked and then his mom, who is a straight up *****. I overheard her sourly calling my family “foreigners” once. For some reason I hadn’t pictured them there.

Tony reached me first. My initial response to seeing him was joy, then it turned to a vague dismay. Tony, who’d stepped forward for a hug, noticed the shift and faltered. Our hug was off-kilter, as stiff as the embrace between two mannequins. Still, He managed to lean in and kiss me on the cheek, without saying anything.

When I’d imagined our meeting, I hadn’t accounted for adrenaline, for shaking knees and sweaty palms. I gripped my skirt with my hands, to stop them from quivering and dry them.

“I’m nervous. Why am I so nervous?” Tony said, laughingly.
“Don’t be,” I replied, trying to sound casual, “we’re old friends.”
His face showed a flash, a microexpression of annoyance at the word “friends,” and he said, “Old lovers, actually,” low enough that his approaching parents couldn’t hear it. He towered over me, could he have gotten taller?

As we walked across campus, to the welcome center, there were a lot of other groups of parents and students. Spring break is when most tours happen, when nascent, ivy league dreams come to be evaluated. Tony and I walked in front, and I fell into tour-guide mode, trying to entertain. “Yale’s old campus follows the pseudo-Gothic style, like Oxford University, in England - but the style originated in France - with cathedrals and abbeys.”

After a couple of minutes of similar pablum, I asked, “Where are you guys going next?”
“Harvard,” his mom said, adjusting her purse proudly, as if she’d personally been accepted. “Ahh,” I said, Tony and I exchanged a look rich with silent communication: “Ignore her, please,” he said with his eyes.

“Harvard is built in a flat, ugly, red-brick, neo-Georgian style that was originally used for colonial outhouses.” I mocked. Tony and his father chucked - instantly getting the ivy league rivalry humor. His mother pursed her lips and soldiered on.

After a moment she said, “It just goes to show.” I waited to hear what it went to show but the thought would remain forever incomplete. I finally delivered them into the custodianship of professional tour guides - right on schedule - and took my leave to meet Leong for coffee.

As I settled in, Leong asked, in Chinese (our private gossip language). “Zenme yàngle? (How's it going?)”
I started to give her a rote answer, but posturing, with Leong, would be dumb. “Zhè shì yi chang zhèngzài jìnxíng de zainàn ” (It’s a disaster in progress), I answered, despondently.

Why was I doing this? It was full-on awkward. But deep down I knew. I’d wanted to see him again, badly enough to endure seeing his mother (who, on some unconscious level, I had to know would come too.).

Later, as we waited for their Uber, Tony studied me and Yale’s manicured lawns. “I tried to picture you here,” he said, “and couldn’t. What’s it like here?” He asked.
“Oh, I’m livin’ the good life,” I answered at first, but then I added, “Everyone studies hard, hardly sleeps and is ravenous for fun.”
“Oh, like everywhere,” he says grinning.
“Like everywhere,” I agreed, and we laughed.

“Now that I’ve seen you here - you fit - you seem at home.”
After a moment of silence, I admitted, “I couldn’t stay, and risk another lockdown.” I didn’t know if I wanted him to exonerate me or confirm my guilt over leaving.

“I get it, I’d have left too,” he shrugged, “forget about it.” Hearing him say that brought tears to my eyes, we clasped hands and after a moment, the Uber arrived, and we hugged goodbye.

As they drove away, I felt a relief. You have to live in the moment here, not in the past. Summer kisses only last as fond memories.

Besides, we’re headed for spring break in Paris in - I checked my watch - 2 hours!

Yesterday’s weather was squallish, so Mich and Lisa were posted-up all day. They’ve been hanging together lately but tolerhate each other - I don’t get it.

Mitch, a Junior, is the snippiest man I’ve ever met - except for my brother, when he’s actively trying to be a ****. Everything Lisa does seems to rub him wrong, but he’s got a massive ***** in her direction.

Sometimes Lisa lets him intersperse his harsh music and we get “Neural Milk Hotel” or “Bikini ****” - screemo tracs that set me pinching fingers close together THIS close to unplugging the **** router. I don’t think he’s a comfortable fit.

So, the three of us were going to pick up dinner at “Charley’s Place” and bring it back for the room. We get about ten feet out in the rain and Lisa says, “Argh! My Phone,” holds up the “1-second” sign and turns back.

Mich, with the rain lashing down, is clearly irritated. He turns to me, looks me up and down and says, “Should we sleep together and see what it’s like?”

I decided that either his irritation with Lisa was emboldening him - or more likely, he was making a joke. “Wow, you’re really smooth with the seduction thing,” I say, hoping he takes the joke path.

“I’m being direct,” he says, bending his legs or something to look me more directly in the eyes. “I like you, I’m attracted to you.” I looked away. Then turn back.

“It’s wrong. The whole idea. Deeply wrong,” I say, deciding that he’s serious and starting to get mad, “Lisa’s my friend,” I say, wondering how I can tell her about this, “die for that.”

“We know each other - it wouldn’t be like sleeping with a stranger,” He says, trying a logic so odd I almost laugh.

“Collapse already,” I say, dryly, as the dorm door opens and Lisa emerges.

I put Lisa between us. “You know,” I say, sweeping my hair back from my forehead but keeping my palm pressed there like I’m taking my temperature, “I think I’ll call it a night.”

“Awww,” Lisa says, grimacing disappointedly. “Really?” Tilting her head in concentration as she searches me for reasons, symptoms, or a change in heart.

“Yeah,” I say, giving her a hug, “see ya later.” I turn and go in, as they walk off arguing.

I decided to work on an essay I’d been putting off, but my heart wasn’t in it - I couldn’t concentrate. Everything was irritating me - my clothes felt like wool - thinking I was going to have to tell Lisa about Mitch’s proposition.

Forty minutes later Lisa’s back home - with sandwiches for both of us. I’m sitting on my bed playing Animal Crossing when she scooches onto the foot of my bed and tells me she decided the Mitch thing wasn’t working anymore.

“Thank God,” I say, letting my head fall back on my pillows, “You couldn’t trust him.”