ベーシェヅ

Two girls, sick and passed out in the back seat, were unable to go on. Earlier they had smoked something out of a plastic bottle and so they decided to end the night there. They made the escape the rest should have. The escape they should have all made months before when this Sunday tradition started. A couple girls and a boy were the few that remained, and at this point there was no turning back. They snorted a Vicodin in one of the stalls of the girls bathroom. Boys in the girls bathroom were the norm, as they often borrowed eye liner from girls who wore far too much of it. While fixing their hair with one hand in front of the large filthy mirror, they struggled to keep their cigarette stable in the other. Girls in the boys bathroom was the norm too, of course. They were pushed up against the wall by boys in torn up jeans and whatever else would follow they would quickly regret the next morning, even though they could barely remember anything. Maybe they would say it was rape and stick to their story after even they realized it was a lie.

One of the girls had a hand stamp that was still wet from the door where she got through as 21 with her fake ID regardless of her french braid pigtails and lack of makeup. She pressed it up against the others after they washed the thick black X's off. They all went to the bar and started double fisting PBR and Sparks tallboy's, sharing drinks, kissing each other, and big red hickeys that wouldn't fully blacken until they had to attend class early the next morning... early being 10am, of course. The rest of the night would be a blur as it always was. A few girls would scream "mozoltov" and break light bulbs in the middle of the dance floor. Glass shards would embed themselves into soles of Chuck Taylors where they would stay for years; a reminder of the mess they were once in. Lights, dancing, music, tongues, hearts, fists pumping, some chick trying to sell everyone cocaine, all right there, all so routine by then. Every week, every single sunday, all night long. Yelling "I wish i could buy back the woman you stole," they would all fall into each other's arms, completely oblivious to anything else. The music stopped at 2am and yet they wouldn't leave.

None of them knew who they were.

英文学！！

Most of my days at school are spent hiding somewhere amongst the top floor of the O'Malley Center. We call it "The OC."

The big, comfy, low chairs are surrounded by little tables covered with old Carroll Reviews, Carroll News, or anything else that may end up there, literary or not, throughout the course of the day. I scroll through old Reviews from 2002 and look at my pictures that made it on the cover and within Spring 2007 edition. I join in on conversations such as how ridiculous the editorials are in the new Carroll News that week.

The writing center is filled with the vast contrast between grad students and naive freshman, or upperclassmen who are required by their Professors to submit to the embarrassment of having their papers ripped apart. Some are just stopping by to check their Facebook between classes or talk to people who care about things like how Langston Hughes exactly felt about Walt Whitman.

In the hallway of offices, there are numerous bicycles propped up against walls and papers strewn about boxes on the floor. Posters are up on doors with millions of quotes. Everyone is there all the time, I swear. Babies are sometimes heard crying and Professor's children spend the day at the college rather than at school sometimes. The Decemberists plays from a corner office and NPR from another.

So today there was hail (or snow or something) pounding down on the skylights and I was in the iMac classroom up there quickly typing up a feature story for Journalism. Listening to others talk, I decided to finally send the e-mail to my academic advisor that I've been meaning to send for a while now. "I'm changing my major!" Not much else to say and no need to give reasons, because i could give a million.* It's just all exciting and I'm now anxious for what is to come. Relieved, rejuventated, hopeful, determined... well, as determined as I will ever be.



*Here's some... my Education classes suck majorly and I've realized that there is no way I want to go through this for nothing and no personal gain, I want to study Japanese again, I want to study more than this stupid shtuff again and graduate on time without the fuss of student teaching the fall after I graduate, and it's just the right thing. I just propped a Banana Yoshimoto novel under my door to keep it closed, okay?