Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Part 7

She sat up. "I need the bed," she snapped.

"Oh, sure." I backed out onto the floor. "Right, I'll just, I guess, see what's going on."

"Cool." She instantly fell back asleep. I quietly dressed and crept out of the room, and stepping over a few sleeping figures on the living room floor, I slipped out of the mod. Outside the ground crackled from the morning dew frozen on the sidewalk. The campus was still bitter cold. I wandered around, wondering how many hours it would be before Zach and Nathan awoke and I could tell them what had happened. I ended up sitting in the Bridge Cafe, trying to make sense of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and reflecting that all in all, I did, in fact, feel very much a different person, although I couldn't quite say how.

When I returned later that morning, my bed was empty. I went up to Susie's room to see if Angela might be there, but the second floor was still. I didn't see her again until five that night when Angela slunk into the living room and flung herself down in the only unoccupied spot available, on the arm of the couch next to me, without a glance my way. As she slumped against the wall behind me, saying nothing, I studied the faces around me for any glimmer that someone else noticed that the fabric of my universe had been torn open, but no one registered a thing.

Later, as Angela stomped up to Susie's room, the journey to Denny's still hung in the air, resisting all of our attempts to change the subject and remaining at the front of our minds. But even as Denny's seemed the only solution to our growing hunger pangs, the fact loomed that there were only five seats in Jon's car and there were twenty-nine of us. The thought must have occurred to many that we would need another plan, but having put an idea on the table we were powerless to alter or even abandon it. Suggesting a solution to the problem would have made one appear all horrible things at once-anxious, nervous, practical, out of sync. So the wet clay of the Denny's trip hardened, its impossibility paradoxically sealing its dominance.

Finally, it was Ox who offered a solution. "I think only people with pure blue orgone should be allowed to go."

There were ahhhhhs and nods around the room. "Totally." "That makes sense."

"But how"-a brazen fit of curiosity impelled me to open my mouth-"how do we know what color everyone's orgone is?"

Ox nodded and stared at me. "Right. Right. Really. Well, everyone who has been militant in their celibacy and vegetarianism should be blue, or mostly blue."

I gulped, wondering if that had been directed at me. But Liz broke in, "Well, Tom can't go, then!"

"And Angela's door was locked last night!"

Accusations flew of failed celibacy and hamburger sightings. As the conversation grew heated and fingers were pointed, several stomped out in anger. Susie sneered that celibacy was just some joke Jon had thought up because he was afraid of girls. Friar Tom announced that he had never claimed to be celibate and none of us understood anything, that "Reich was about love," and much more importantly, Brooke from the Black Light mod was having a photo show in the library and he was going to check it out all by himself and if he ended up in anyone's bed, we'd see whose orgone was stronger tomorrow.

As Friar Tom left the mod in a swirl of scarves and sequins, I counted the number of people remaining; we were down to twenty-five. So I had a one-in-five chance of getting a ride to Denny's. But could I go without Angela? I still wondered.

While I contemplated, a hush had fallen over the room. Next to me on the couch, Meg muttered, "I didn't know Brooke Jen nings was having a show. . . ."

"Is she good?" I whispered.

"The Black Light mod, they are all these really rich New York club kids."

"Ahhh . . ."

"So they always have really good hors d'oeuvres."

I looked around the room. Everyone seemed lost in contemplation. "I mean, really good," Liz said. "Like this artichoke dip with baked Brie on top. . . ."

One by one, people silently rose and began the long work of layering on sweaters, jackets, scarves, hats, gloves, overcoats, leg warmers, boots, and face masks. By this time, and after a few trips with Jon and Ox to the Salvation Army store in Northampton, I, too, was wrapping myself up like a middle-aged vagrant in Depression-era New York.

Looking like a runaway breadline, two dozen of us staggered and slid over the frosted path. We spilled into the library building's downstairs gallery and found the party well past its height. A few disdainful double takes greeted us as we drifted among the crowd dressed uniformly in black miniskirts, black jeans, black scarves, black tights, black leather jackets, and black leather shoes, quietly chattering, sipping white wine, and studying the black-and-white photos of what appeared to be body parts-knees, earlobes, and I thought I made out a tongue, blurry in intense close-up.

Our group marched directly through the room straight to the hors d'oeuvre table. As we climbed over each other to grope at the remaining vestiges, conversation halted completely, the only sounds coming from the New Order alb.u.m playing on a boom box in the corner. Locustlike we quickly demolished every bit of food left from a spread that, to our disgust, turned out to be only carrot and celery sticks and cheese cubes.

The hush was broken as Tim Fall finally called out, "Brooke, where's the baked Brie? This show sucks!"

A nervous t.i.tter ruffled the room. I tried to ignore the stares of annoyance, but my friends seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. "If you can't afford a decent spread, you shouldn't be showing your work," Arthur barked, his mouth full of carrots.

Brooke, the artist, slinked her way over to Jon. Pet.i.te and elegant in a black microminiskirt, leggings, a baggy black sweater, and pixieish asymmetrical blond hair, she had poise that made her seem like a creature from another planet, or another generation at least.

"Jon," she said. "So lovely to see you."

"Hi. Great art, Brooke."

"Tell me, Jon, darling, haven't I always stuck up for you guys?"

"Totally. We just wanted to support your opening!"

"Uh-huh."

"Yeah, we love art."

Brooke looked exasperated and stared at him. Jon smiled and reached for a handful of celery.

Struggling to maintain her air of nonchalance, she smiled up at Jon, holding his gaze. He smiled back, his hulking frame, bound in an overcoat and several sweaters, towering over her.

"Enjoy the party. Thanks for coming, really. Really, I mean it," she finally said.

"Oh, really? Thanks, Brooke. Oh, actually we were just about to leave. I guess you don't really have much food here." Jon giggled.

"Oh, no. Please, stay. Come, let me show you around." She proceeded to give us all a tour of her work, describing, one by one, the motivation behind each piece. "In this one, I wanted to decontextualize Man Ray. To be Man Ray's gaze, without being Man Ray, if you follow me. To show that the owners.h.i.+p of the gaze, separated from its artistic pretensions, derives from a fascist impulse to colonize that which it beholds. Do you love it?"

Five minutes later we filed upstairs into the Airport Lounge, which in the winter was the school's central (and only) common area. Located just outside the library and snack bar, the Lounge was so named because it resembled a circa-1973 TWA waiting area one might find in the Evansville, Indiana, airport. The lounge was built around a conversation circle of orange foam couches, which we flung ourselves on, shedding layers of clothing and scaring off the half-dozen people who had been there studying.

"Can you guys be quiet?" one girl hissed at us.

"Who studies at nine o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day?" Liz asked.

"Who studies ever?" Arthur said.

"I'm still hungry," Tim moaned. Heads nodded. The snack bar where we could buy (or "liberate" in the pockets of an overcoat while the student clerk read a magazine) cellophane-wrapped tempeh burgers and tofu pitas, we quickly noticed, had closed. People glanced nervously at Jon, having a harder time now disguising their growing desperation for a solution.

"I guess we could go to Denny's," he said softly.

"Yeah, definitely," many agreed, while no one stirred from their place.

"Maybe we should vote for who gets to go in your car," Meg suggested.

Election fever swept the lounge as everyone agreed this was the most equitable system. "All right," Ox announced. "Who votes for Meg?"

Meg's hand went up. "You guys suck," she spat, grabbed her coat, and stormed off.

"How many vote for Michael?" Michael's hand went up.

"How many vote for Angela?" I considered for a moment raising my hand in support of her, but in the end let her nomina tion go forward with only her own vote. She made no acknowledgment of my betrayal, which confused me all the more.

At the end of the balloting, we were all tied with one vote each, except for Tim, who got no votes after having given his own to Friar Tom, who had stormed off hours before and wasn't there to vote for himself. We broke into bickering about how to conduct another round of voting before conversation drifted to the topic of Steve Shavel's return. Jerome had heard a rumor that he had been spotted in Northampton, supposedly having dinner at Beardsley's, the town's expensive restaurant, with a table of Smith girls and, it seemed, their parents. While it was considered possible that he was hiding at Smith, people were incredulous at the idea that he would so brazenly wander around Northampton.

"He really does love Beardsley's," Ox said.

The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of Annette, a second-year who was universally noted as the most beautiful girl at Hamps.h.i.+re, famed for her resemblance to Cleopatra. Annette lived in the Critical Theory Mod, and her group, along with the Black Light kids, was one of the few still more or less tolerant of the d.i.c.ks. Despite her renown, Annette, for some reason probably having to do with her perpetual air of disgust with life itself, was friendly with us and had even dropped in at 21 on occasion. If you thought life was that miserable, Steve Shavel later theorized, where better to spend it than with us?

"Are any of you going to kill yourself tonight?" she asked, looking us over with approving distaste.

"Maybe. It's looking like we're never going to eat, so we might have to," Jon answered. "What about you, Annette?"

"I've vowed never to kill myself before midnight. That way I won't have to wonder if the day could get any worse."

Annette told us that there was a "truly horrible party" going on in Prescott, and suggested we go play music there.

"Really?" Jon asked. "Are they d.i.c.ks fans?"

"I'm sure they despise you."

"We should check it out, then. I guess we can head to Denny's after that."

Everyone nodded at the good sense of the plan, hunger notwithstanding.

An hour and a half later, having been ejected with our instruments from yet another party, we huddled at the bottom of the Prescott canyon as tiny flakes tumbled down from the sky. Next to me, Angela was panting from the stumble down the stairs, her face flushed with excitement.

"I've never seen snow before," I murmured to her.

She stopped smiling and looked me dead in the eye. "I don't really need for us to talk now, okay?"

"Yeah, totally."

We all stood and looked at each other, arms full, s.h.i.+vering and unsure of what to do.

"I guess we could go to Denny's, maybe," Jon said.

But before we could revisit that question, we marched back through to 21 to drop off the instruments. By the time we unloaded, it was half past one and I noticed now that I was really, truly hungry. The adrenaline of the past hour had masked my empty stomach, but now I was aware of a deep pain and looked vainly around the room for food, seeing only plates of half-eaten tofu scrambles perched on the edges of sofas and the floor. By now I had learned better than to look in the refrigerator or cupboard for food-having been attacked by the creatures dwelling inside more than a couple times.

I glanced around the room and caught others with looks of unease on their faces. It occurred to me that the dining hall and tavern were now closed. And there were still sixteen of us.

"Well, I guess we probably should think about going to Denny's now," Ox said. We all nodded and then sat down to reclaim the seats we'd been in when the Denny's subject had first been raised seven hours before.

With a solution still impossible to conceive, random topics again drifted through the room. The hungrier we got, the more ridiculous it became that we weren't moving, and the harder it became to resolve the issue. The more desperate the cause was, the more anxious one became about it. That anxiety caused an inversely proportional need to keep your mouth shut so as not to allow yourself to look at all anxious. The room was engulfed in manic chattering about school gossip while we fought to steer clear of the subject on our minds.

As we discussed Susie's upcoming meeting with her advisor (the first in a year; in her third year at Hamps.h.i.+re, Susie was widely celebrated for never having completed a cla.s.s or a Div I), I began to feel I might be going insane. The thought of getting to Denny's gnawed away; I could feel the hunger circulating around the room, and yet no one would mention it.

Finally Jon said, "Well, I don't really need to go to Denny's. It's cool if you guys want to go without me."

"n.o.body wants you to come, but we need your car," Marilyn reminded him. Jon would never in a million years let anyone borrow his car.

"Oh, right. I guess so." He sat thinking. Eyes turned attentively to him. "You guys know Larry Ogletree is going for the world's hot dog eating record?"

We had heard that. Larry Ogletree was the immensely large (six-foot-three and many hundreds of pounds) bearded fourth-year, famed for the vast trays of food he demolished at the dining hall every night. He had recently declared his intention to break the world's record for most hot dogs consumed in a minute. The local Stop & Shop had been signed on to sponsor his heroic attempt, hosting the event in its parking lot and supplying the hot dogs.

"He's doing it tomorrow. We should check him out," Jon continued.

"Don't you think he's sleeping before the big day?"

"He's probably up training all night. . . ."

Slowly we rose again, gathering ourselves for a trip to the Merrill House dorm where Ogletree lived.

"Maybe if he's training, there'll be a lot of leftovers around . . . ," Ox threw out.

"Yeah, but what are we going to do with hot dogs?" Monica said, referring to our vegetarianism.

"Yeah, that's a good point." Ox nodded. Inexorably we redressed ourselves for the cold and filed out the door.

At two A.M., all was quiet in Merrill House. We caused a sizable racket climbing the stairwell, as the fifteen of us stomped in, in our boots, laughing and hooting. When we filed into Ogletree's hall, C-3, we were amazed to find his door closed and no sign of life anywhere.

Our group barely squeezed in, and the noise of our t.i.tters and embarra.s.sed chuckles resounded off the walls, making the s.p.a.ce roar like the Indianapolis Speedway. We squeezed in to stare at Ogletree's door. No sound came from within. We stood in silence for a moment, searching for a next move. Finally, Ox solved the problem by knocking.

From behind the door, we heard what sounded like a stampede of miniature buffalo. And then a deep, booming bellow called out, "What the h.e.l.l is it?"

"Ogletree!" Jon said. "Are you up?"

A minute later the door flew open. Ogletree, a blanket wrapped around his ma.s.sive frame, stood panting before us, looking a bit like the animated version of Bluto from the Popeye strips. He eyed us with such hate, I started to back away toward the door.

"What are you f.u.c.king doing here?"

"Oh, Ogletree." Jon smiled. "We thought you'd be training."

"Training? I'm sleeping! Tomorrow's the day!"

"Well, we just wanted to come and support you."

His hallmates began waking up, hollering at us to get out or they'd call security. Ogletree, set off balance by Jon's forward manner, invited us in to hang out and hear about his preparations. Six of us squeezed into the room with him while the rest stayed in the hall, bickering with the hallmates.

"Don't you guys have anyplace to go?" one girl in a bathrobe yelled.

"Oh, no. Not really," Ox said. "Our mod is really depressing."

The girl looked at me with a face wrenched up like she was about to spit out the sour taste in her mouth. "You a.s.sholes are pathetic. Why didn't you all kill yourselves with your friend?"

I recoiled and glanced at Ox, hoping he'd explain what that meant, but he merely nodded and said, "Oh, right. We should. Definitely."

About ten minutes later, two members of campus security pushed their way into the hall. A Tweedledee, Tweedledum pair, both shortish, with faces bright pink from the night air, they nodded sagely to each other when they saw us. "Where's Jon?" said the shorter of the two.

We directed them to Ogletree's room, which they somehow shoved inside. "I shouldn't get my name taken again this semester," Marilyn said, and walked out of the hall. A couple others followed.

"What happens if they take your name?" I asked Angela, who was again standing beside me, having rejoined the group.

"You've never had security take your name?" she cooed. "Oh, this is exciting!" She gave my arm a little rub and I looked at her. She smiled at me and I became very confused.

From inside Ogletree's room we heard security arguing with Jon and Tim. "Why do you guys always have to start something? Why can't we have just one night without trouble from you?"