Peter (my bf) is coming to town - tonight. I’m breathy with excitement.
My energy is so sick. “Someone scrape her off the walls,” Leong remarked, as I bounded out of my room this morning.
Lisa winced, holding her hand up, as if to block the sun, “You never smile in the morning.”   “And she’s humming,” Sunny observed.
“I’m not,” I started, then after a pause I amended, “yeah, I guess I was.”

I’m not just happy, I’m some new kind of happy. It’s been too long.
I’m swinging a school’s-out, pre-Christmas, free iced-latte vibe.
I’ve been on the busiest stretch, clearing my schedule. I have to define my thesis this semester. Argh!

But I’m ready for some bf fun. I’ve changed my sheets, hidden the general mess and God, even vacuumed.
That’s very un-university-like behavior - believe me.
As down as I was last Friday night, from tanking that quiz, that’s how up I am now.

Speaking of that quiz, the only way to deal with a fret is to exorcize it, defeat it, vanquish it. I stalked the TA after class last Tuesday, finally cornering him, like a wounded animal at his desk.
“I tanked last week’s quiz,” I admitted, which sounded way more whiny out loud than it did in my head.
“Vionet, right?” He’d asked rhetorically, already clicking his keyboard to bring up the grade sheet.
“Are there any extra cred..” I began. “You got an 88,” he interrupted me. “Yeah, but,” I’d begun again
“That’s a B,” he’d deadpanned in a low, ‘why do I have to talk to idiots,’ voice.
“Yeah, but,” I’d began freshly, only to be re-interrupted.
“A weekly quiz,” he’d said, “like a hundredth of your grade.”  
“A B,” I began, shaking my head side to side in a ‘no’ way, but I’d smiled ingratiatingly too - I was going to win this guy over.
“You’re way too tightly wound,” he’d snarked, insensitively.
I opened my mouth to speak again when he said “OUT,” twisting his head to nod towards the door.
“You don’t,” I began, only to have him give me a teen-like, wide-eyed look as he nodded again at the door.
So, I flounced out, giving a silent voice to my indignation.
Bureaucracies.
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Songs for this:
Take Off Ur Pants by Indigo De Souza
Kool Thing by Sonic Youth
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Our cast
Peter, (My bf), is a bearded, 27-year-old from the sage hills of Malibu, California. He’s 6’1, too thin, his jet-black hair is perpetually uncombed and his skin is pale from over exposure to fluorescent lighting. He earned his PhD in Applied Physics last year and now he works for CERN in Geneva. He’s smart, quiet, awkward and he can be too serious. I’m unreasonably cRaZy about this guy.

Lisa, (roommate) 21, my bff and Manhattanite ‘glamor girl’ (who’d bristle at that description but it’s hundo-p true.) who grew up in a 50th floor Central Park South high-rise. A (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Leong, (roommate) 21, a ‘molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major,’ is from Macau, China - the Las Vegas of Asia and she’s a proud communist (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it). Growing up, I lived in Shenzhen China (about 30 miles from Macau) we both speak Cantonese (maybe why we were paired?) and we're able to talk a lot of secret trash together.

Sunny, (suitemate) 21, a (pre-med) molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major, is a cowgirl from Nebraska (seriously, she has a quarter horse and barrel races). She’s an outspoken fem-facing ladies-lady.

Your author, a simple country girl from Athens, Georgia is also a (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Here’s to scrumptious nights.
cats and boots and cats and boots
We went clubbing last night, to recalibrate
ourselves on the dance floor, where magic happens.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
To focus on sensory experiences, the beat,
and share in the fun and tangible sense of freedom.
cats and boots and cats and boots
Feel the wave, show your energy, be the wave
cats and boots and cats and boots
be disheveled, swing your hair like a weapon
abandon, silly, self-protecting vanities
cats and boots and cats and boots
flashing lights on dancing figures
make it all seem slo-mo and extreme.
cats and boots and cats and boots
It’s been too long since we’ve done it like this.
Work-worn, I’d lost my lucidity and stumbled badly on a quiz.
Lisa pushed my books onto the floor, declaring, “Get UP, we’re grabbing some bliss.”
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
failure has a reality, a gravity and pull all the more shocking in relief.
I’d started out the evening gloomy and ashamed - a figure of regret -
but I’m better now, buoyed and recharged and soon I’ll have a plan - hopefully.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
There was a guy there, on the dance floor, who looked like a young Leonardo DiCaprio.
We made eye contact, nodding and smiling at each other in motion.
We gyrated, together, sort of, for a second, in our separate orbits - no conversation
I just watched him for a moment or two, sexualizing him like eye candy.
Just seeing him was sensual fun and I wondered what he smelled like.
He had a gritty, sweaty, idealized beauty, like a dancing ‘David’
that no Michelangelo could ever capture in stiff granite sculpture.
The music ended - momentarily - we knew it would start up again
and we were there for it - til 1 or 2 am anyway - then it recranked.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and..
Lisa grabbed my hand, jerking me onto the dance floor almost
before I could set down my drink. Eeek! “Slow Down!” I yelled,
but my complaint was lost in the din and my involuntary laugh.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and..
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Songs for this:
Dance To This (feat. Ariana Grande) by Troye Sivan
Good Time Girl (feat. Charlie Barker) by Sofi Tukker

I’m taking control, making changes.
Some for the worst, others for the best.
I don’t like to evade or retreat.
My secrets are inconsequential.
I’m taking things into my own hands
- I kissed my therapist. On the lips.
Life is but a game of ‘Smash or pass’
and I hate waiting for ice cream.
“I like the way you move,” he said, “I like your skin.”
“It’s what people notice first” I admitted, “want to see it?”
Or maybe I dreamed that - I dream about him, sometimes. shrug
I think the helpless, astringent, professional intimacy fires me.
I want him to ask me about my jerkwater *** life, he has a concomitant
passport, but he never does. Isn’t that important - what about Freud?
What do you think you inherited from your parents? He asked.
“What a question!” I observed, “You mean genetically?”
“Come on,” he prompted, and I thought for a long minute.
“I have my mother’s impatience, her drive to succeed
and her thick blonde hair that seems to dry instantly.”
He nodded, indicating he liked where I was going.
“I have my father’s eyes, his flashing temper and flat chest.”
He chuckled, but I could tell he wanted me to stay serious.
“Then there’s my Stepfather (Step), he taught me humor,
patience and self-control - oh, and how to drive.”
He ****** on his pencil eraser and nodded.
He always blurs the line between performance and approval.
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Songs for this:
Secrets (Your Fire) by Magdalena Bay
The Spot by Your Smith

I have a couple of ‘research for credit’ classes this semester and I’m spending a lot of time with my TAs. Teaching Assistants (grad students) are essentially approachable professors with longer office hours, faster response times and a willingness to spend a little time walking me through options, so I understand the material and don’t charge-off in some crazy direction. I have a flawless record of wasting time on the wrong things at the wrong times, so I never feel silly or dumb asking questions.
AM I having fun yet? Yeah, I am.

A bell dings. Let the fighters enter the ring.
There’s a gathering of things, then we rush for the wings.
Students are bolting from classes, like riders out of rodeo shoots.
Focused faces, off to the races, phones appear from a hundred places.

Outside, a cool, brisk breeze moves paper-mâché clouds, across the blue-dome sky.
Squirrels freeze from their thieving, and watch this sudden, noisy invasion of their world.  
There’s a bee-like buzz of conversations, from ahead, behind and in doppler passing.
“Question six - was that right - what are you wearing to the thing tonight?”

My tummy growls for some lunch time relief - a plea for a snack - or coffee’s appeasement.
I glance at my watch, there’s no time. I leave the path for the grass;
I have an immediate class! Why are people so slow?
I get heinous looks - it’s grass people - kiss my *** people.

I squeeze sideways in the crush to enter the Kline Biology Tower, atop science hill.
In the hallway I find Lisa, we share the next class. “Do you have a granola bar?” I ask.
“I’ve got two,” she brags, fishing one out, as we drop our bookbags.
As I moan with pleasure, she chuckles at the relief on my face.
The TA announces, ”You should have papers, pass ‘em, please.”
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Songs for this:
Home by Luke Chiang
No Other Plans by Sunny Levine

We’re coming up on the spooky pumpkin-latte season, when days suddenly end, while I’m busy in some sterile, fluorescent chemistry-lab and there’s nothing to do but walk down dark science-hill to the dorm.

Is that rustling the sound of leaves or footsteps?  The most effective horror stories come from spaces of doubt and hover between reality and possibility - but no fears, this isn’t my Halloween story.

Apparently, there was a scandal last year, about underage girls being served at bars around Yale - I mean, seriously, who knew? Sunny’s still having fun. She’s out every other night like a hunting cat ‘meeting’ all these new freshie girls. She has the best takes. Her hungover Sunday morning debriefs are not to be missed.

I’ve gotten comments that suggested that the party lives of U-girls are seen as dysfunctional, but to me they’re perfectly normal. Everyone seems to want college life to be saccharine and sanitized. I figure most students live highly stressed lives. We’re expected to show up to multiple classes, on time, prepared and be ready to perform at the highest levels academically - then add to these pressures our elaborate social and study demands. Young adulthood is strict in ways you may not remember. Poor us. sigh So we have a little fun.

I’ve been bottled-up, by and large, this semester - mostly by my own twisted need to get ahead in every subject and I joined a Yale Society - dumb, I know, like I have the time. But I was tapped and Annick (my sister) said “DO IT!” I bet I quit when the going gets tough.
Why did I think senior year would be easier?  

Fall semester is a time famous for freshmen heartbreak - with everyone newly away from home and old boyfriends. About that...

I hate it when boyfriends get old
and you have to get rid of them.
Not chronologically old - don’t call your lawyer,
this isn’t ageism rearing its ugly head.

There’s the chafing-like pre-breakup irritation,
because you’re suddenly separated by distance
and experience. it’s easy to feel out of touch and
unable to voice your joy about the new life you’re living.

It’s the little things that tend to bother you first, like the sudden
strangeness of lingering silence on the once-exciting video calls.
Ugg, breakups - the subject freaks me out - I get shivers up my spine
and feel nauseous, just thinking about them - I’m not mocking heartbreak.

Where was I? Oh, yeah.
Adolescence should feature at least one earth-shaking, world-shifting, heartbreaking first love - unless, of course, covid happened.
Do I harp back to covid lockdown too much?
Well, it happened. It was our Vietnam, and we were unprepared.

There’s a guy showing me some persistent interest - something I have no time for - or interest in. He’s a tall, sporty, transfer student from Princeton. Not unattractive, in a sort of eager, and dense, hipster way.
“I have a boyfriend,” I told him, hoping he'd lose interest.
“He must be invisible,” he observed, several days later.
Then, “If you’d give me a chance, you’d soon find out I’m a sparkling conversationalist.” He updogged.
“Introverts,” I said, “we should be running the world, but no one listens to us.”
“I like a woman with ambition,” he said, encouragingly.
“Go away,” I replied, and he did.
But he was back in the morning because he’s in my residence and we share a shuttle bus stop. sigh

Question: Why are they still calling storms hurricanes?
I mean, now that they can have male or female names, shouldn’t they be themicanes?
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A song for this:
Alfie by Cilla Black
Does Everyone Stare by The Police

The evening stars were gone, replaced
by a spreading, ominous purple bruise of cloud.
When the wind rose, in sudden violent
crisscrossing gusts, everything went into motion.

White cabanas shook, like staked swans
flapping to fly, lavender bushes thrashed
their thorny arms as if in panic, umbrella pines
creaked and writhed like tethered balloons.

Lightning lit the winding, stony stairs, like ornamental
neon lights, as we’d run up the path from the beach.
Shockwaves of thunder accompanied the flashes
- there was no lag - the storm was there and upon us.

We were laughing and screaming, like children
chased through a dark Halloween funhouse.
The first, fat drops of rain popped behind us,
like a giant’s, arrhythmic, snapping fingers.

As we reached the open, French, louvered doors,
that led from our suite down to the shoreline,
we body-slammed them against the tempest.

And braced them fully closed with our backs, as if to vilify the
natural courses of wind and rain with an animal will to break in.

The lashing monsoon heralded our urgent, stormy union.
We were like the storm - insistent, wild and untamed.
All was revealed in that flashing, tempestuous darkness
as need, euphoria and lightning lit the naked night
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A song for this:
Walk Between Raindrops by Donald Fagen
Hurricane Waters by Citizen Cope

“How does it feel, studying for your first exam of the semester?” My sister Annick dug at me, via Facetime.
“Oh, I’m miserable and no one even knows!” I exclaimed excitedly.

I already miss summer’s sense of infinite time and space, and life on the lake, with its big, wet, melancholy summer rains. But most of all, I miss the travel and delicious, swirling, excesses that form the dark side of long holiday freedoms.

I’ve been called excessive, I accept that and I have to check that aspect of my nature, from time to time.
“Don’t you have any brakes?” My roommate Leong once asked me, like I was some runaway train.

I remember last summer, how we almost eased into fall. As summer had faded, things changed and slowed down, as the European students turned back to their serious, ordinary lives. The bars and streets became deserted, carousels stopped spinning, arcade games were turned off, yachts sailed away, the eager summer wait-staff vanished from the elegant hotels. Brightly lit, summer-gaudy Saint Tropez became just another faded seaside town, where the paint everywhere suddenly seemed chipped and cheap.

This year, we sped up, by spending the last couple of weeks in flashy, frantic, fluorescent Manhattan - oh, man.

Then BOOM, we were dropped, as if from a great height, back into university life, back to cafeteria lines, shuttle buses and the scholastic gridiron - which oddly enough, has a lot in common with the teenage world. It was going from a-hundred-mile-an-hour adult freedom, to dealing with all the old teenage issues, like homework, tests, studying, the endless clock-watch scheduling of to and from classes - you know, the physicality of academics.

It sounds rough, I know. We’ve been told that as seniors, we can expect an even more important and frenetic emphasis on social life. Yep, we’ll be stepping things up to a whole new level this year!
Woot!! Maybe I’ll even get to wear some makeup!
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A song for this:
September by Earth Wind & Fire