Faust in his element, The boy under the bed, Buxton one-hand-cigarette-dancing, Boosfest, Lauren, The Hurricane, Mother Fate, the tight knit web of the universe, inescapable.

There is the unique question of where to begin. The notion of the narrative is suddenly challenged by readings in the post modern and my concerns that though I have all day, I still don't have enough time.

I could make it interesting. I could begin with the girl rolling out my bed this morning and laughing as she went looking for her shoes and a sweatshirt she could borrow.

Faust is playing Rachmaninoff in the background. It soothes the soul. I pity the time in my life when these hung-over, still high mornings will have disappeared beneath the pavement of a civilized life. What will I do then? Will I connect the dots and follow life to its inevitable conclusion? (oh do not ask 'What is it?') Will I reject the Americana that reared me and disappear into the jungle of the third, unexplored, uncared for world?

I will live. And I will write today. And the conclusions/actions of the distant future will have to remain the concerns of those temporalities. My life is busy enough, I might say. My experience is clouded and convoluted enough. I need no concerns of futurama. The present and the past are enough to occupy my mind thoroughly.

Saturday morning broke like a scene from the Perfect Storm. Wind and Water everywhere. Up the quad, down the quad, wind was funnelling autumn leaves like lost children into a crusade they would not survive. I see the lines marching down George Street clearly. It was 8:33 in the morning. There was no one in the Ratty. Tranquility pervaded. Brown was how the viewbooks might prefer it to be. Life was slow, rainy, and self-reflexive.

By the time we got down to Rhode Island Yacht Clud, we were all convinced that it was not windy enough and that fate would force us to sail. We resisted. No! It was windy. It was scary. We were hung over, and sailing in a nor'easter with hurricane winds is no way to start a saturday.

Like it was a snow day, we had all drunk heavily the night before. There was a party at Machado. Faust, Sky and Myself shotgunned Busch Lights on the Patio. Anne was across the party. I didn't care. It was clear that she wanted no part of me, and by prideful equaniminity, I wanted no part of her. She was a lost cause- A femme perdue- the cause was not worth it.

The juice was not worth the squeeze.

But I digress. Machado was a decent party. I was dressed as a cyclist with my wallet and my cell phone padding the crotch of some tight underarmor shorts. I had a Ben & Jerry's Cycling Jersey to boot.

It was all fun and games. We left by jumping over the highest wall in the patio and running to The Gate where sweet Hindi girls served me sandwiches that might have been made for the gods themselves.

Sky took us back to the room. We were still recovering from Thursday night sheningans with Godrey and Bramie. Three Joints, Two rounds on the Vaporizer. Thursday was lethal.

In Sky's room, I picked up the Admiral and we smoked another J. Kate, sweet girl and true, was invested in protecting her sobriety and smoke-free living. Unfortunately, the corruption was too strong. We won her over to the realm of the sith and the pot fiend positing her failure on our raw evil and her intrinsic goodness.

But that was Friday. And I was writing to recollect Saturday. The Autumn Tempest raged far and wide throughout New England, and only with the coming of twilight did the foul storm desist. I had the faint notion and recollection that the storm might sacrificed itself for the glory on Halloween Weekend partying.

Saturday night left me in the room tripping on Postmodern theory and reviewing New Media Artwork for an online exhibition. The project was titled "Interfaces of Imagination" and I was frankly getting way too into analyzing digital artworks that others could not understand without an introduction.

As a means of checking my analysis, I subjected the Hindu prince to the project as a whole. He struggled with the artwork but accepted the writing as 'good' and 'informative'. I had a terrible headache. Faust was at Jo's obtaining a necessary bottle of coke for mixing. Goethe was not partying. Sky was still working on his MCM project. Godfrey and Bramie were in Vermont. I was alone, cold, and with a pounding headache.

Things did not look good.

But the human spirit has a strange ability to recover even under the most extraordinary conditions. Within the conviction of my exasperation, I collapsed onto the floor and begin weeping gently about the failure of the Universe to allow its participants the occassional departure.

But fate, the cold knife in the night that stabs souls who are content to die, had a few twists and turns it wanted for me.

I threw on the preppiest clothing I had at my disposal. I popped the color of a white polo. I put on some boat shoes and draped an argyl sweater over my shoulders. I made a note, in italics, trying to emulate some sort of Greenwich scrawl that might ensure my costume's authenticity. "Ask me about the TEA PARTAY".

I set out. Alone. This level was a solo mission. Faust was a half hour late on the coca cola. I took a shot of Admiral than thanked the sailor for his hospitality and did one again.

I went over to try my luck at D Tau but there were about a hundred people waiting in line.
I did a 180 and snuck into Buxton where it was all house music, cheap wine, and cigarettes.

I have tried my best not to judge the Buxton crowd or to reduce them to their classic "Eurotrash" moniker. But unfortuantely, this has grown impossible. Not only is just about everyone in Buxton overtly pretentious, but they also dance with one hand in the air while the smoke a cigarette or holding onto a glass of luke warm, weak Californian wine. Last night, the people in charge of the party in Buxton wouldn't let a song finish. The sneered on Americana and changed tracks more often than Fabio at a fashion show.

I couldn't handle the scene. It was bullshit. The dancing was weak and uninspired. They had the music but lacked the movement. In the definition of fullest irony, they played techno remixs of great American acid-rock anthems. They thought they were avant-garde and lightyears ahead of the culture Americana. I laughed because they had not spent four hours narrating a collection of Video Game art for a class that was so absurdly post modern you had to check your old books at the door.

I bailed on Buxton with Sky Sky and made a go of D Tau from every which way. We tried the backstairs, the upstairs, the backdoor and the window. Fortunately, right as I was makign my last go at the fortress, a friend caught my hand and led me down the stairs right into a steady handshake with a boy I had gone to High School with.

I got on the dancefloor fast. I ran into some friends and smiled with them over 'Gansetts and flashing disco lights.

I was about to leave the party when I ran into an old friend who hooked me up a beautiful blonde girl who look curiously like someone else I knew. Foolishly, I supposed it was this other girl (it wasn't). We danced hard and long, throbbing and grinding on expertly mixed beats from the Fishco DJ. I lost my sunglasses, or rather Faust's sunglasses, somewhere their on the dancefloor. It might well have been my virginity. The pulsating strobes and shimmering neon lights disoriented me from the moment. I looked down and saw a beautiful blonde schoolgirl gyrating somewhere around my waist.

She was wrapped in apron of neon lights. The techno was glowing all around her. I had her name was Lauren when I was introduced. The process had gone something like this:

Friend: ZACK!
Me: Hey!
Friend: Meet my friend here. This is LAUREN and she is (muffled voice with deep bass overlay) my girlfriend. Why don't you dance with her.

I did. We danced all night. I was with her on the dancefloor for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours. It was unbroken and quasi-mystical. We approached one another in the same instant. We were kissing for the rest of the night.

We went back to my room with trail of friends for shots from the Admiral. When I got back to the room Faust and Blessing were out of control. Faust had clearly smoked WAY too much. He was ranting and raving about savage burns he had employed on the women who had come down to Poland looking for me.

Lauren was looking pretty and sexually-charged. I asked her mutual friend for more information. She explained that Lauren and her had gone to boarding school together. I laughed and turned to Lauren.

"You go to Ethel Walker?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Do you know AJ Callie from Trinity?"

She nodded again now blushing.

"That kid and I were best friends." I explained. "He's my boy."

The mutual friend started laughing uncontrollably.

"Zack you idiot," She explained. "This is AJ's girlfriend. Didn't I tell you that?"

*************************************************

Go back to the beginning. Go back to this morning. A girl rolled out of my bed and went laughing after her shoes and my sweatshirt. Think about it.

Character Studies in the Modern Vernacular, Sculpting Time, Aftermath, Drugs and Drunkness subsides to Shangrai-la, Voices of Artists, The objectification of Knowledge.

Character Studies occupy my mind. A couple of weeks ago, Faust and I took the ferry back from Newport up Narragansett Bay and back into Providence. A French couple sat behind us, kneeing me in the back and speaking French in hushed overtones.

We fell asleep, and forgot about the tourists until we got off the ferry in its obscure , post-industrial terminal, and set about trying to figure out a way back to Brown. There was supposed to be a bus that went into Kennedy Plaza, and perhaps, by College Hill.

There was no bus. Faust and I stood there like homeless people pondering our next move. We considered walking back, but it was too far.

"Besidees" Faust added. "Is there even a sidewalk around here?"

The French Couple was equally concerned about getting back to central PVD. Disturbed, the man walked over to us and asked, in broken english, if the bus was coming.

"We hope" I responded.

He looked confused.

I repeated myself slowly. Taking the time to sound out my germanic-latinate language for his untrained ears " That's what we hope." I said again.

His wife came over and asked what we had said.

His response was forward and easily understood for us preveyors of the Brunonian Dream.

"Esperamus" he repeated. Faust and I laughed ourselves to sleep.

Hope is everywhere in Rhode Island. State Motto. School Motto. First College Dormitory. Name of Public High School. Cornerstone of Rhode Island history and heritage.

We hoped the bus would come, and it did.

***********************************************

Today's adventure took us to the RISD Museum for a solid dose of modernity.

We got in for free waving our Brown IDs like valid press passes. We hadn't been in the first gallery for more than five minutes before we were swept into a tour of the Gallery's modern collection and a 60 minute survey of 20th century art.

At the time when Margaret Stills, Associate Curator for the RISD Museum and RISD Alum, made her calls for the "tour," Faust was engaged one on one with a painting called "The Mountaineers and the Bears." Some woman behind him was explaining in that the painting was a proto-cubist work that Braques and Picasso had actually emulated. Its author was a remote Parisian Bohemian who chose love-making with a Russian Princess to humping fame and celebrity in the celebrated world of the Electric Revolution.

We were swept up into the dialouge of Ms. Stills, and forced to read small quotes from the Gallery's artists whenever we neared some of their works. Stills maintained that she loved hearing the voice of the artist when she was near their works.

"I need to hear Duchamp when I see his work. I hear them calling to me, and their voices inform the art's authenticity."

Her eyes fluttered like a drug addict behind half-moon glasses. She seemed like some sort of failed artist caught up in the body of Harry Potter's Professor Trelawney.

The tour was Faust, Me, and a Knitting Circle of six geriatrics who nodded in intellectual agreement with Margaret Stills. We sampled some van der Zee, some Cezanne, some Jasper Johns, and some works that challenged our understanding of art as a whole.

There was a piece labelled ready-made that was composed of a rock and some hair clippings collected from a Harlem barbarshop. Stills laughed and maintained that she knew the artist well.

"He won that genius grant a couple of years ago." she explained. "You know, the MacArthur Grant?"

The knitting circle of art historians nodded. I spaced out. Across the Gallery was a television set with a string of texts repeating across the top of the screen.

"PEOPLE ARE THE PRODUCT OF THE TELEVISION.
THE TELEVISION DELIEVERS YOU TO THE ADVERTISER
THE ADVERTISER CONSUMES YOU
HE IS THE CONSUMER
YOU ARE THE CONSUMED
THE TELEVISION MAKES PEOPLE THE MASS MEDIA
AND CONSUMES THEM."

I started tripping out. Was it hot in here? Or was I up to my neck in Modernism. This rock with some hair glued on was doing nothing for me. Jasper Johns was dodgy enough. This was out of control. I was on the verge of tripping out noticeably. If only I could get back to "Bears and Mountaineers." I be fine if I could get there. This stuff here on the other hand...

Faust and I escaped to posters of Olneyville Art-Rock concerts and raves. Had I again missed the cultural renaissance I was convinced was coming. I am a renaissance man without my renaissance. When/Where will it come? Is Providence the cradle that shall bear me?

We wandered through a tripped out exhibit called Shangrai-la la land. There was an alien in a bathtub melting through a spickot as he remained torture by a TV set. I was instanteously aware of the words scrolling across the TV downstairs.

I AM A PRODUCT
THE TV MAKES ME TO BE CONSUMED
THE MASS MEDIA IS THE CONSUMPTION
OF THE MASSES

More craziness inside of the Exhibit reminded me of our mantra. When things get too weird, Faust and I remind ourselves that it was "A GOOD THING WE DIDN'T DO ANY DRUGS."

It was that sort of an experience.

We got out fast. No sort of Classical Art could make up for this insanity. We went back to room and I pounded 150 pages of Lolita. No hope for the restless. Goethe fast asleep next door. Faust on the phone with a friend from Fordham.

I want somebody to love- whether or not I have found truth. Rain consumates happiness and lethargy.

"Just give in you fool...this will only take a moment."

Beauty, Living through the Speakers, Higher and Higher, iPod = iGod, Federal Hill, Contentment

I am in love again, could I say it was for the very first time? A solid dinner in Federall Hill left me full and contented. I fell asleep after I had to abadon my Father on the road to the Expressway as Grady was demanding service. Dad and I had a great meal up in a locale that was at once kitsch and fundamentallytrue.

In the aftermath of a drunken night, I am find myself trying to convert. It is a 2:30 in the morning and all I need is a field goal to solidify the evening.

Mis-steps at every possible avenue allow me to believe that Karma owes me a good turn. I have watched the night find its way into the dark corners of the world and re-emerge triumphant. Smiling like a Count Dracula with fangs dripping blood in the midnight air.

I wanted her, and her, and her over there. Its as if, if I decide I want them, fate decides they shall never want me. I piece together a quiltwork of oops and what-ifs in the fairy-inspired drunkness of the night.

We never got to the real party. We were in the wrong room. The real party was dancing 35 deep in a room across the quad. We were deep in the Rugby Lesbian Frat and wondering which way was out. Goethe emerged like the messiah amongst the trash and bile that surrounded the rooms. It was all techno and lingerie and women you preferred to see in clothes.

I took a hug from a distant friend in the corner and introduced myself through her to the only other attractive women at the party. Goethe came from the same backdoor I had taken in.

He and I crossed through a hallway that was fundamentally sacrilegious. It was all graffitied and a tagged up every which way. On the walls proclaiming "ZDI" and "Brown Women's Rugby" was the phrase "Crotch Munchers '06".

I vomited falsely in the midnight, flourescent air. What the fuck were they talking about. I had the feeling that some sort of sick sexual degradation was necessary to gain entrance to this women's frat.

I needed out.

Goethe and I took the nearest exit to the frat across the hall. I thought it was Sigma. It turned out to be A E Pi, a Jewish establishment well-known for throwing mediocre parties and holding it down for the glory of Hilliel.

Caleb hit us up with Dodgy cheap beers called Genesees. Goethe and I made do while a fellow Jewish A E Pi-er explained their maintance of the frat's Shukkot despite religious code against such behavior.

I smiled, and joked. Goethe pounded 'Gansetts on my behalf and explained that I was already past due.

There is no need to elaborate on the details herafter. It was all "Goodnight", cokes, smiles and hugs. Girls went by with water bottles winking at destiny and promising no hangovers in the morning.

I went after Dallas as though I was Santa Anna. I could never succeed. She was promised to a jock somewhere above my stature, and the radical writer/poet element was not enough to win her over.

I could not woo Anne either. She was drunk. She was disobedient. I wished that she would come back to Poland with me and talk with Emme. But she wouldn't.

I curled up in a sheet listening to Death Cab and praying that death would take me quickly. Another wasted Saturday at Providence. What the fuck do I care if there were parents and the Beirut?

I wanted something. But Brown gave me nothing. Like before, only again. Nothing was different. Thayer Street means nothing to the sober and saddened. I was alone and isolated.

What does it even matter?

Sadness, The girl and the Athaeneum, Letter to an imagined friend, Tetris for your girlfriend, mood lighting.

There is a girl here that I like who goes everyday to the Athaeneum. It's a short walk. Out of Keeney you take a left on Benevolent, walk a block down to Benefit, and then take a right straight on to the Athaeneum.

When I see her and she smiles at me, I have dreams that we are in love, and that she only smiles that way at me. I dream that we are both in the Athaeneum on a windy autumn afternoon. I go to find a book in the high stacks in the old second story and find her nestled in a corner reading a poem that I am extremely knowledgable about. I take the poem from her and read it beautifully, eliciting smiles and winks and love eyes that are only meant for me. The librarian comes upstairs to quiet me, because I have grown loud and impassioned. She has no choice but to hurry us both from the building. I make apologies about my behavior, as my library love laughes and laughes again. She is uncontrollable. We walk down the narrow Providence streets arm-in-arm like postcards of students that Hallmark deseminates for aging academics. We are perfect, and the day neither ends nor begins.

It exists only as the palpable reality of imagined conciousness that is available to those who are in love.

Monday mornings are lonely in the Brown Computer Science labs. At these times past the witching hour, its just the purists and freshman hacks like me. It thought you might be interested to know that we had Barak Obama ( Democrat Senator from Illinois) to Brown this past week. I waited in the line on the Green for four hours, and still did not manage to get in (more on this later).

In anger, I teamed up with a certain St. George's alum and my roomate to lead a brief, but glorious riot on the steps of the auditorium. We had about two hundred angry disappointed Brunonians chanting in unison. About 1500 more students who also were waiting in line hurried to join or to watch the simulcast in Sayles Hall next door.

They sent the police in, and tried to calm things down. When they dispersed the crowd, the nameless St. George's alum managed to get in on the last handpicked ten students for the last row. Disappointed, I walked around the building with two friends, and tried to appropriate a new way in.

We got our chance when an elderly VIP made her way in one of the "EXIT ONLY" doors on the far side of the building. It lead to the front row and to the RESERVED seating section. Catching the door just before it slammed, I made my way into the reserved seating. My friends and I busted out pens and notebooks, and began explaining to whoever asked that we were with the Brown Daily Herald. A couple friends of mine starting yelling my name across the auditorium and asked how I had got reserved seats. I tried to ignore them, and pretend I didn't know them but it was no use. An informed usher checked our names against the press list and escorted us to the foyer.

We were supposed to be kicked out completely, but thanks to some clever new excuses, a ten-minute hideout in the bathroom, and some solid acting, we managed to convince the ushers that three students who "snuck in the front of the auditorium" had taken our seats. The ushers took pity, and let us stand in the back of the auditorium when Obama finally arrived to talk.

The next morning (friday 13th) the George's student came by with the ProJo. Our riot was a central component of the article on Obama.

The Candid and the Contrived, Gfx, Going to far, Pirates of the Caribbean depression, Post-it notes for life, 2 pounds for a dollar, Stella.

It is a beautiful afternoon. I have the strange foreboding that days like these are numbered in the autumn annual for fairness and equality of distribution. This might be our only one.

Fear and Loathing everywhere last night. Fear and Loathing at the French House. Fear and Loathing in Keeney. Fear and Loathing at the Avon with a hint of acid-freaks in the front and a bottle of rum and coke in a Newbury Comics nalgene near the back.

Thayer Street is decadent and deprived.

I had strange experiences last night. I fell in love. And I didn't know her name.

Twilight cliches will not excuse my night of impropriety for the singular sensation of being lovestruck. I have been in love before, and this, in comparison, was tepid. Nevertheless, the warming sensation in my body when I saw her, the uncanny inability to speak when I hugged her. My sudden seizing up, my instaneous lack of witticisms, my tongue hardening up-- it was all new and unexpectedly paralyzing.

A few flashes of time and space later, and I was at the Avon for a midnight movie. It was hot. I was drunk and tired. I was hungry. I got up suddenly and made my way over to the concession stand.

The fuckers at the snack bar said the concessions were closed. I started waving a 20 and demanding popcorn. They told me again that the vending of movie concessions was over.

I asked where I could find a bathroom. They laughed and shoed me away. I went back into the theater and thought about peeing on the wall. Fuck these people I thought. Screw these goddamn independent film-I'm-too-cool-for-you concession nazis.

At that very moment, I spied a sign on the staircase somewhere near the left side of the theater. It looked like it had been made of bakelite sometime during the height of the art noveau movement. "Rest Rooms" with an arrow going up the stairs. I was halfway there.

I went up the film noir staircase at a hop. Suddenly, halfway up the stairs, I stopped. There were lights flashing behind me. They caught me. I could make a run for it or give myself up. I decided on the later and turned around to expose myself to their guns and ammo, germs and steel.

It was an old vaudevillian theater sign with lights running a set pattern around the prephierary, and the words "AVON THEATER" written in some sort of classic italicized script. I smiled and continued upstairs, around the corner, into the men's bathroom.

It was loud as all hell in there. There was a speaker hidden behind a door, and I could find it. It was somewhere in the ceiling like a big electric snake in the sky.
"Pretty we would both be completely twisted" it whispered, "but there was no going back, (back, back, back on echo), WE WOULD HAVE TO RIDE OUT."

I went over to the urinal. It was one of those classic six foot solid cast numbers that dropped all the way into the floor like some sort of well.

I came out of the bathroom, there was a candy machine that had not been there before. It was one of those old cigarrette vending machines with the rods. I dropped in 50 cents and pulled on letter e, two mini-toberlones dropped into the tray and I released the device.

I put another 50 cents in. I pulled on letter e, it refused to budge. I pulled the other rods to make sure they worked. letter b worked fine. Two York peppermints dropped into the tray and I stashed them away.

I was out of quarters now. I went back down stairs adn slivered down the row until Io got to where Joy was sitting. I handed her a York peppermint and threw one at Evan. he flipped out, and began screaming I hushed him and went back to watching the film.

We were twisted, but no one cared. I was pretty sure that soemday, in someway, I would be watching a film made by one of us, and with any luck, I would be even more thrashed then I was on that night.

Karawane becomes Eskimo Video Game, Late back to Keeney, Screw your Crew, Four Square was only the Beginning, Two and Oh, Doug Interrupts, Cleaning up licentiousness.

Screw your Crew.

The party was called Screw Your Crew. You were paired with your crew and you were meant to find them a date that they could 'screw'. It was a sort of voyueristic, vicariousness that I liked and looked forward too. We had to dress up with ties and khakis- I felt like I was going home. I was going to an upperclassman party that I held keys to- I was out of my mind.

But the night did not start at S your C. No, it started somewhere further down Thayer at the MCM house where I was busy chugging out an intimidating art project with little time to go. It was called 'Karawane' or rather, it was based on Karawane, a sound poem concocted by Hugo Ball in 1917, at the dawn of the Dadaist Revolution. My simple task was to 're-interpret it using New Media technologies.' What this basically meant was that I need to re-invent the avant-garde.

I have a hard time re-defining re-definition.

On Tuesday, after completing my studies in Computer Science and taking off on a trip to Rome with Godfrey, the idea for my re-intrepretation became shockingly clear. I would make a video game. I would put Hugo Ball's classic dadaist piece inside the framework of childish, video entertainment. And this would cheapen it. This would trivialize it to a point that might be misunderstood as parody but in essence would de-value Karawane in the same way it tried to de-value conventional art.

It was some sort of a vision, and I spent Wednesday and Thursday night fleshing this out. I got a free video game maker called Power Game Factory and used its default (only) characters to stage a strange neo-dadaist one player, scrolling scenery SNES classic.

Hugo Ball was defaulted to an armed eskimo. His critics, or what I might attribute as his critics were supplied by snowmen that were more than metaphorical. This was Switzerland after all. This were not as simple as they seemed.

But this was just the creation element. By the time Thursday rolled around. I had Evan down in the MCM studio with me testing out the game and giving me his feedback. We were pushing through and Evan liked it.

He told me that Faith, my crew, had screwed me with a date that I had explicitly requested not to have. I had respected her wishes for not matching her up with a friend, but apparently these things were not going to go both ways.

I hooked her with Sky Sky, and upon learning that her and Tucker were having a thing, brought the Swim Team Legend as well. He was dressed for the occasion and even lent me a tie. He and Sky were great friends and we cautiously made our way up Thayer with a singular goal in mind:

Screw your Crew.

The Keene Street abode already had near Camelot-like prestige in my heart. It was home. It was protected. It was safe and well-armed. You could roll into the Sailing House for a beer and a cheeseburger and roll out with a life vest and a crew of your own. It was cozy, and so past disrepair that we constantly referred to it as the Animal House.

I remember once giving someone directions to the house during a routine visit to the premises.

My directions were short and sweet.

"Go way up Thayer past the CVS and take a right on Keene Street. Look for a house that has a ton of people in it and looks pretty wrecked... no, that IS the sailing house."

I got there at 11:00. We were a little late. The girls had been curling their eyebrows and what not for an additional hour and a half. I was just happy to arrive at the debauchery. I took the first drink that I was offered and did not look back.

Sky and I held down the bar in the basement with Charm and affability. We were serving Rum and Cokes, Cider and Schnapps, Vodka and anything, Jager and Anything, and the Mystery Special that people kept asking for. The house also had its own signature cinnamon punch, four kegs of beer and Gin and Tonics floating around upstairs for those who knew what was goign on.

The bar itself is worth mentioning. It was construct from the hull of a Laser sailboat and used the cockpit of the boat as a hold for the alcohol. I had heard about this legendary component of the Sailing House far before I ever reached Brown. At my Level I's the instructor knew Stoner very well, and laughed over his use of a broken down laser as the means of a bar.

It was still considered genius however, and Brown's sailing reputation of late was tied uncannily to this sort of architectural genius.

I called up the girls who were back in my hall, and invited them up. I was dressed to the teeth and proud of it. I was in a Po Ab school blazer from freshmen year, a standard blue button down, Berks, Khakis, and a pink tie that Tucker had lent me for the occasion. Sky was in a kick-ass argyl suit. Godfrey was in St. George's apparel, and was almost comatose by the time the Upperclassmen on the team came down and start demanding that we take shots of Jagermeister on the whistle.

I love Jagermeister.

We kept pushing it in the basement. There was a long thin table down the eastern-side of the basement that was designed for flip-cup. We had 25 people to a side at one point. 25 People vs. 25 People.

It was incredible.

It was at this point that the girls started to show up. I was serving drinks at the bar when a bunch of old friends came in and started demanding drinks. I told them that if they didn't like their bevarages, I would drink it.

I drank about three different drinks that I had made for Dallas alone. She smiled and winked at me, but still refused to drink.

I got my friends together upstairs and we started a dance party. Godfrey was past due. He was grinding with about five different girls at one time. His eyes were 100% closed and he may have been unconcious.

Nevertheless, the Sailing Team was busy taking snap shots of Godfrey and preparing to torture him with photographic evidence the next day.

Midway through dancing with my date, I skipped out to go try a shotski, a ski that had six shot glasses glued to it.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to the Shotski there was no one else willing to take a hit. I saw the upper classmen and demanded a Jager on the whistle. They gave me a good long upwind beat, and I stumbled out of the withdrawal.

Shannon, a beautiful girl who I had been serving earlier downstairs, caught me. She was looking angelic. She always looks angelic. She told me she was drunk, but I doubted it. There was still the twinkle in her eyes that you lose when you've been drinking. There was still the mystery of sobriety mixed lightly in the stratosphere of her eyes. She was not quite gone yet.

She told me that she had to go. I thanked her for staying or coming or whatever. I was happy she was there right then and I explained that she probably should not leave. She smiled and kissed me. I kissed her back and pretty soon, we were kissing right there on the dancefloor.

Doug 'Fuck Moderation' came up behind me smelling like a Central Park hobo. He started rubbing my head, (AS I WAS FUCKING KISSING THIS BEAUTIFUL GIRL), and laughing in a high pitched squeal. HEEHEHEHEHEHEHE!

She didn't want to kiss anymore. She explained again that she was drunk and that she needed to go. I kissed her on her cheek and asked for her number. She gave it, winked and me and asked me to come see her sometime soon.

And she was gone.

I started punching Douggie. He told me that his intervention had made the kiss happen. I stormed off disgusted toward the front room. Then I found a four-square ball and started playing. We were all having a good time, and I was on the 4-square rampage.

In the middle of a game, Godfrey ran outside and started vomitting. Conservative estimates explain that he hooked up with anywhere from 3 to 7 girls on the dancefloor.

He was now blackout drunk.

I too progressed toward that event horizon. I was suddenly walking down Thayer with Dallas and screaming at the people in Via Via to open up.

"All we want is some pizza sir, we mean you no harm"

We were further down the street and Dallas' friends were explaining that she had a boyfriend. I was out of luck with that girl. And I quickly wound up angry and alone on Wriston trying to remember where exactly Keeney was.

I ran into Liz, and important element for Later stories, who told me that I looked beautiful. She gave me a black and mild and told me to finish it. I smoked it to the plastic.

She laughed and started groping my face she told she was at Brown to find a rich man and marry him. I asked her if she would be happy. She said yes.

She laughed and made ago on a passing security gaurd. I winked at her and at destiny and walked back to my room.

Yes Virignia, Ninja's in Keeney, Phyton by the backdoor, Rome in the Rain, Dreams of Brave Ulysses, Enlightenment through Cream.

Occasional sobriety leads to a rationality that clears the mind wonderful. The lucid, understandable state of thing presents itself as a time to review what my body has been up to. My memory alone seems to have remained intact, my mind having lost since lost control of motor reflexes, and given up on moderating tomfoolery.

This will be the week in review then. I am currently back at home in the NPT after another week on insanity in the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. It is the time to recover and recollect.

(I let Cream's Tale of Brave Ulysses drone on the macbook behind me.

...now, sing in me muse.)

Tuesday is a good place to start. Monday was mundane and uneventful. I went to classes and took notes, and learned. I finished my computer science assignment with the help of a skilled CS tutor. This is important to note. If I did not finish this Comp Sci stuff a full three days before it happened, then none of the wonderful things that I am about to relate could possibly have happened.

Tuesday, though, I was talking about Tuesday. On Tuesday Mr. Knowles dropped by for a casual smoke and some weed at Rome. We were under the lattice in a steady rain packing bowls and smoking until we literally could not smoke anymore.

The feeling came on soft and fell like a crescendo. We were lit somewhere outside of Keeney and needed to put things together.

We were back in my room watching Flying Circus with the girls from across the hall. They reported that there were ninjas stealing across the quad. We didn't believe them. We went outside and discovered six Japanese assassins climbing up a drain pipe and into the second story window over the door.

We ran upstairs, chasing them around the building in our elevated fashion, wondering if the god damn ninjas were real or if we were just simultaneously concocting the most powerful vision of our lives.

Confused, Evan grabbed one of them and held him against the wall.

"Who are you guys?" Evan demanded.

The ninja refused to speak. He pushed Evan back and assumed an attack stance. Evan fought him off and pushed him back against the wall.

"What the fuck are you guys doing?" He continued.

Knowles pulled Evan off the Ninja and let the ninja tear up the stairs to Archibald. Laura took the trail and rushed up the stairs after him, we caught up and chased these characters until they barricaded themselves in a room on the second floor and we assumed that were waiting until we lost interest.

We tried to smoke them out- like dogs. We thought about lighting up but there was a sprinkler overhead. There was a rumor that they didn't work, but who wanted to test it out?

It dawned us slowly that these guys might not be just waiting inside. They had scaled drain pipes in, they could kung fu their way out.

hello

Amborsia by the backdoor, Sleepy Hollow in the MCM, October, If Your Going to San Francisco by Trance, Hunter S. Thompson/Jefferson Airplane Techno.

After definitive misadventures on Friday night, I was dedicated to a sober saturday. The regatta at Yale had not gone particularly well. Nick G, my Hanover, NH skipper, and myself were WAY too heavy for the 3-5 knot breeze we found at Yale Corinthian Yale Club.

Fortunately, Will "Turbo" Turnbull, dropped some serious heat and won the A division. We finished third over Yale, Harvard, and Salve, but below Conn. College and URI.

We booked it back to Providence in time for me to spending 3 hours cleaning up my room and doing laundry. I scrubbed my floor with a sponge, then with resolve cleaning spray and finally with Clorox bleach wipes. It was spic and span. I was absolved of my great sin by cleaning so thoroughly.

The night grew later. Knowles got back from MIT, and we talked over Riots in Keeney with Evan at the Ratty. It was inevitable that some serious carnage go down a Brown. It was inevitable that radical freshmen, (i.e. me, Evan, and Jeff) holed up in Keeney and brought national media attention by rioting in the dorm and demanding withdrawal from Iraq and bigger cups in the dining hall.

We decided that we would request water from the government, hit it with high amounts of acid and then distributed it to the detriment of our classmates. Things were turn ugly, people would begin tripping out evil. We would leak a story to the press that the government had given us acid-laced h2o. We will embroil the world in cynicism and controversy.

We would prevail, and when the citadel fell, there would be no leadership nor retribution we would part of the maddening crowd, incapable of leading a riot or of any culpability.

We got back to my room and drank a six pack of Newport Storm while watching an episode of Family Guy that featured Brown University heavily.

Theresa showed up at 11:30 and demanded to know what we were doing. She told us about Ambrosia, the top-notch party that was going on in Faunce House. It was the definitive hipster-cognazanti-rave. It was upstairs, and there was a line of more than 200 people waiting to get in. The line went up the stairs and onto the Main Green. There was no way that I was waiting in this line.

Jeff and Evan abadoned me to the dream that I would get into a party people had been waiting for two hours to enter. I snuck halfway through the line on the cause of bathroom needs and then switched to the far stair-case and tried the backdoor. It was a no-go. There was heavy security and the GHM staff wouldn't have anyone up the stairs.

I explained that I had already been up. They explained that I needed to go around.

Pretty soon, I was going to be completed twisted. I had one more shot for the killer rave before I gave up, called it a night and slept in my recently cleaned sheets or played Pacman on the screen at the MCM.

I went into the mail room and checked my mail. There was nothing in the box. I remembered a second stair case near the mailroom. I tried a few doors. There was nothing. Then I found the stair case at the far end of the mail room with the words "FIRE DOOR" stenciled in red-lettering onto the hunter green metal door.

I pushed through. There was no alarm, but there was a stair case. It looked like an abadoned access shaft in an old mine. I climbed to the second floor pushed my way down the Chaplin's hallway and through another door that said "DO NOT OPEN BETWEEN 1 am and 6 am - ALARAM WILL SOUND."

I was at the top of the line to the party. Three or four guys were suppreseign the top of the line that was surging forward for admission. I walked up to the cashiers and gave them my money. A guy asked for my ID and then asked if I had already shown it. I said yes, and he hit me up with a red bracelet for buying drinks.

I walked into the party able to do more than most of the people in there. I had not waited in any line. I had outflanked the insanity of waiting it was nothing but dancing ahead.

I went over to the bar and bought a drink called "God on the Beach." It was a combonation of cranberry juice, orange juice, and tequila. I couldn't deal with it. I threw it away.

*******MAJOR SIDENOTE HERE***********
*I have only thrown away three drinks in my life. The first was a WRETECHED tequila *that Tom Rodelli of Sherman Street, Newport and Paris, France mixed. The second was *a Mount Gay Rum at Marisa's house on Spring Street, Newport. This drink, this *terrible concoction- was the third.
*************************************

I went back to the bar and bought another drink. It was called "Hades Hjinks." It was Red Bull and Vodka. It was delicious and it glowed like enriched uranium under the blacklights. I saw a TA and bought her a drink. We danced for a long time until I had to go to the bathroom and found Schuyler.

It was a beautiful evening. It was the best party I had been to in my life. I wasn't drunk, though I had been drinking. I was depressed, though I had been thinking. I was out of control on the dance floor. I was dancing for truth and happiness. They were one and the same. I didn't care about the girls or the glow of dance lights around the room. I dropped my scarf onto my eyes and danced blind. There was more than enough guidance in the music.

I saw friends and waved, blissfully happy in Ambrosia. I saw Gillian in the midst of her 20th birthday. I saw Caroline dancing with an alumni and former TA. I saw Jamie snapping photos with a Digital Rebel XT. I saw Schuyler with a posse of potentials. I saw Mara and welcomed her with a huge hug.

They closed the bar at 1:30 and then dropped a blazing set of tech-house and trance. It was seemlessly mixed. It was hipster-rave music of remixed Jefferson Airplane and "If you're going to San Francisco." I went into the bathroom looking for Hunter S. Thompson. He is my virgil. He is my Whitman.

Ginsberg needed an idol too. He confessed in poems what he owed to the Brooklyn poet.

"What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman." What thoughts I have of you tonight, Hunter Thompson.

I sang out the words to "San Francisco," and wished that the Jefferson Airplane would never stop.

I left with five minutes to two because I knew the end was near and I wanted to revel in the glory of an unrivalled party.

I tripped on joy across the green and down to Keeney. There were policemen on corners looking concerned. I didn't care what they were doing. I was safe, sober, and sublime. It was all so surreal.

I got back to the room and downloaded the Anthems of Ambrosia. I danced with Laura, the Louisville, Kentucky belle, and enjoyed the returned melodies of remixed 60's counterculture classics.

I loved the moment and wished it would never end. I promised to stay up until at least 4:00.

We went to the MCM building at 3:00 and started to watch Sleepy Hollow. It was a tribute to New England and October. The month of memory, and of fall. There will be great beauty here. We all knew that. So we slept on and off through Tim Burton's masterpiece and Evan alone was glued to the pixels. He screamed out "Oh my GOD!" with plot twists and bizarre imagery. He ohhed and ahhed like a girl at her first horror movie.

We finished a five and walked back to Keeney straight down Thayer. There was no traffic. The lights changed at their leisure and we were alone in the world.

We got back to Keeney and broke apart. Moira (r unpronounced) went upstairs to sleep. Joy was already unconcious. Evan gave in and crashed.

I did not go to bed. Neither did Laura.

We waited out the sunrise.

Black and White, Dallas and Libraries, New England Anthanaeums, Gin & Tonics, Prophets in the bathroom from the desert of the real, cliched ultimate misadventures.

Friday had left me with much to mull over. The Black and White Party at Sigma Chi had been pretty solid. Something like 1/3 of the sailing team was in the house. I was taking strong drinks and pats on the back like the good 'ol boys had something planned for me.

"Yo, it seems like EVERYONE is sigma chi."

"There is a reason."

Smile, Wink, Handshake, Laugh.

"Here, grab a drink."

I drank through two rum and cokes that were sugar hinted karkov with cola food coloring. They were thick and I wasn't really feeling it. I made the switch to a gin and tonic but that wasn't much better. What kind of crazy, self-righteous WASP partier would cruise around a dance event throwing back G & T's anyway?

The apparel was formal. Hence the name, Black and White. I was in my ubiquitous Emmanuel Pinstripe suit. I had already worn it three or four times but did I care? These people wouldn't remember my clothes. We were all moving toward that event horizon were what you were wearing was irrelevant. On the dance floor, people were grinding up against each other everywhere.

It was incredible.

I dance with Dallas. We had talked earlier about libraries and anthanaeums. Now we were dancing intoxicated like the bacchites she might of read about.

The place was out of control. I had two more beers, and found preston to give him an extra on the dance floor. Andrew Brainerd showed up and in order to get him in, I told the brother at the door that he was pledging to Sigma at MIT. They bought it, and quizzed him hardcore while I sat drunk off my ass in the door jamb gesturing jeff and julie in.

I went back to the room at 2:00. I had to race at Yale at 7:00. I needed to sleep. I ran into an old friend in the hallway. She looked lost and confused.

"My roomate sexiled me!"

I laughed and gestured her into my room. I told her that she could sleep with me and she agreed.

This is where things began to get interesting. My invitation to sleep over was a literal one. I was not reading anything into it, and I certainly did not expect any sort of serious thing to go down. Evan was in the room for fuck's sake.

NOTHING was going to happen. I feel asleep with this beautiful girl and felt happy.

I was drunker than I thought. About 15 minutes later, I was projecting over my sleeping fellow and throwing up on the floor. It was disgusting. I was unprepared. There had been no time to think this out. I was blackout unconcious until the floor was in focus and vomit was streaming out of my nose.

Not cool.

The poor girl under my arm who was evidently sober at the time and had no laugh method built into an intoxiation to laugh away this ridiculousness.

I picked up her shoes and threw them to the door.

Evan woke up and asked if was OK. I said no, and he went back to sleep. I went to the bathroom to wash off and recover. It was 3:00, when I went back to the room the girl was getting up to leave.

What the fuck could I say.

"Sorry, I'm an idiot," might have been appropriate. Or maybe, "I am so embarassed."

But I don't think that I said anything. What could you expect me to say!

I mopped up the floor with a towel and waited for the 7:00 am alarm. I wished the morning would never come. I hoped that this was all part of a vivid drunken dream and that I would awake with the floor clean and without the stench of vomit in the nostrils.

It was real. I found out at 7:00 when I woke up hung over, and mopped up the floor some more.

I felt bad leaving the room like this for Evan, but I had no choice. I had a regatta at Yale in two hours, and I needed to leave now.

I left a note for him to figure things out simply.

"Evan-

Be Liberal
w/ the febreeze.
I will fix this
when I get back
from Yale.

Z"