2.29.2004 What had I really wanted? I thought--We live in fantasies like wet shells: sometimes the sea comes in with the sound of the universe. Soon it would destroy us.
2.28.2004 I shaved off my beard today, after growing it out for what felt like forever and was probably two weeks. Everyone seemed to like it. One of my housemates offered me money to keep growing it. I imagine this is because my face is boring to look at, and any change is welcome. I, on the other hand, was never a particularly large fan of the beard. It was warm and it was scratchy and it was contributing greatly to a shy, sleeve-biting personality I think I began to develop last week. I'd like to think I've shaved off that personality. We'll say I have.
2.24.2004 Earlier today, while I was sitting in my car, cinematically watching Annie walk away and imagining some sort of sad, orchestral music, Raizin destroyed my moment by knocking on my car window, which threw me into a small and temporary panic that I hid extremely well. We made small talk for a few minutes: he about his day, me about the problem with women, when he asked, "Oh, by the way, are you going to the hospital today?" I paused for a long moment and raized one eyebrow, showcasing both my confusion and one of my few talents. "Why?" I asked, fearing he was about to do something horrible to me, "Do you know something I don't?"
2.22.2004 When the party died down, and all the yelling men had left, I went back to my room to sleep. I had predicted earlier in the evening that I would be going to sleep with at least six beautiful women--maybe seven--a luxury afforded to me by my new king-size bed, and guaranteed to me by my dashing good looks. However, despite the claims of one of Bard's cafeteria women, who insists on a regular basis that I look like David Duchovny, at the end of the night I found myself predictably without a harem. Also, I was hammered, nauseated, and fairly non-communicative. All those sad details aside, I trudged up our stairs, sticky from spilled drinks, to sleep away the poison I had spent the night ingesting.
I opened the double doors of my room to find, to my surprise, a body in my bed. "Dgfnhttkyn?" I asked myself, drunk, before realizing that the girl in my bed was a friend of mine who had earlier failed to find a ride home. Calmed, I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and prepared myself for bed (I don't own any pajamas, I don't know why I lie).
Before crawling into bed, I turned on the light for a second, perhaps to admire my beard in the mirror, only to find that the girl asleep in my bed wasn't my friend at all, or even a girl, but actually a french boy I had gotten into an argument with only half an hour before. There weren't many disappointing moments in my evening, but this was certainly one of them.
"Hey," I said, assertively, "you're sleeping in my bed." He mumbled something in french, though it may have just been mumbling. "Pardon moi," I repeated, ridiculously, "you're sleeping in my bed." He scratched his leg for a moment without regarding me. I went to the computer and turned on a track from the Junior Senior album. I find their music grating even when I'm awake. Now with a soundtrack, I barked, "The bed you are in, it is not for you." This was as plainly and monosyllabically as I could express myself without filling a trash can with water and pouring it on him. To my delight, he opened his eyes, put his hands over his ears, and began to collect his things.
2.19.2004 As a sidenote to my last post, which was the invitation for our upcoming house party, here is the invitation we showed our neighbors when we went door to door apologizing for any noise we might cause.
It seemed less probable that the police would be called over adorable Kristin's birthday party.
2.17.2004 Something about February makes it not only Black History Month, but also Vagina Month. February is apparently a month that is extremely celebratory, just in the boringest ways possible. In Bard's campus center, where you won't find any black people, there are three large, interactive posters commemorating Vagina Month, each of which poses a different question that passerbys answer in the space below. One day, last week, I read the entirety of the first poster, "What does your vagina smell like?" before throwing up in a recycling bin and spending the next three days in bed.
Today, passing by the posters quickly on my way to the post office, I chose a favorite from each of the two remaining posters:
"What would your vagina wear?" A ball gag. "What would your vagina say?" It can't talk, it's wearing a ball gag!
One of my favorite things about New York City is that every time I go there I run into at least one person I know. There have been--at most--three instances in which this pattern has failed to hold true, and all of those times have all been negated by this weekend, during which I ran into not one, but seven people I know: two of which I live with, six of which I know by name, and one beautiful but nameless girl on the train I recognized as having gone to Bard. I pretended not to have deliberately sat adjacent to her, so I could say, casually and surprisedly, "Hey! What are you doing here!?" Hey beautiful girl I need an excuse to talk to, what are you doing on this transport vessel between your college and the most exciting city in the world? I wonder what percentage of my day I spend pretending to be a total moron. Though it does make conversation easier.
2.5.2004 If you had gotten in to Vassar, and had gone there, and were a student there right now, you would have received this letter:
Vassar population, Bard has challenged vassar to a four square game and I'm looking to put together a team to go and play them next wednesday. If anyone is interested in joining, please come to the josselyn MPR on saturday at 2 for a meeting/practice (mostly just playing some four square). I hate to use the big header like this but I was notified of the challenge on short notice and I really want to show Bard up. So come, bring your friends, play some four square. Patrick Murray
Last night at four square, I turned to a girl standing next to me in line, whom I recognized as being in my playwrighting class, and asked her a very boring question about an assignment we had been given. She looked at me very confusedly, and then said, "Umm...I'm not in a playwrighting class."
In moments like that, when it's just too embarrassing to be involved, I tend to leave my body. I move about two feet to my right--though not physically--and monitor the embarrassment, which I no longer feel involved in, from what I feel is a safe distance, thinking things like "Geez, I'm glad that didn't happen to me." I imagine Freud would high-five me for this. I remember thinking, "Wow, that's gotta be awkward," and then realizing, "No, that is awkward. And it's happening to you! Right now!"
As a conclusive sidenote in my own defense, it turned out that she was in my playwrighting class after all, even though she initially denied not only that fact, but also that I had any class with her, or even that we know each other from somewhere.
2.3.2004 I live in yet another house on the outskirts of Bard, and this time my room has a king-size bed. I mention this to everyone when I describe my new room, because, besides me loving my tennis-court-sized sleeping surface, there is very little else about my room worth describing. The room itself is very large, and since the walls are cleanly painted white, disturbed only by very sparcely-placed miniature artwork, it seems even larger than it is. This all-powerful, undecorated whiteness seems to make those that visit me uncomfortable. Were my eyes not fixed to the monitor for the full duration of the waking time I spend in this room, I imagine that it would bother me as well.
I don't know who in their right mind would leave their beautiful mansion in the hands of six college students, but I certainly am glad that I go to school near some of them. However, before leaving, they left, among a long list of others, two rules which I consider to be outstanding--both for different reasons.
The first rule is that we have to pay any heating bills incurred during the period of our living here. But because we're cheapskates, and because it costs so much to heat a house of this size to any reasonable temperature, we simply don't heat the house to a reasonable temperature. We live our lives at 54 degrees.
Also, even though we're house sitting, the house still has a caretaker who stops by occassionaly to collect our rent payments and to make sure we haven't converted the oven into a super-amazing bong that I'm totally sure would work. On her most recent visit, she was so bothered by the cold condition of the house that she appealed to the owners to pay the heating bill, lest one of my housemates or I should freeze to death while sitting around chatting about celebrity dating circles.
The second rule--and remember, there many more rules--is that we're not allowed to use push pins in the walls. This rule naturally brings me back to my large, empty canvas of a room. Now, I know that there are several common alternatives to pushpins in considering how to affix a poster to a wall, and I've proven just how much I know that by purchasing one--a non-marking, already-chewed-bubble-gum-like fixative. Unfortunately, it turns out that the amount of energy I have for decorating my room is just a little less than the energy required to open the packet of fixative, so it doesn't look like I'll ever decorate my room. Every time I even consider decorating, I remember, "But that would require opening the fixative!" and then I go back to my game of Waste Your Life.
I shaved off my beard today, after growing it out for what felt like forever and was probably two weeks. Everyone seemed to like it. One of my housemates offered me money to keep growing it. I imagine this is because my face is boring to look at, and any change is welcome. I, on the other hand, was never a particularly large fan of the beard. It was warm and it was scratchy and it was contributing greatly to a shy, sleeve-biting personality I think I began to develop last week. I'd like to think I've shaved off that personality. We'll say I have.
