I have no idea what brought this up yesterday, but as RDC and I were eating sandwiches at Heidi's Brooklyn Deli before funding another Home Despot timeshare, a couple of our acquaintances at UConn came up.
Oh no. Now I remembered, so I'm going to do that thing that my sister hates.
Like all good campuses, UConn's had its characters. A street person wandering by in Denver reminded me of whatever his name was who panhandled at the Willi Food Co-op. He reminded me of Paul, a fixture at any food function, who would often pay to eat in the cafeteria at Shippee--a women-only dorm--who walked as if on Thorazine, always wore a parka no matter the weather, and was off-putting in several ways. Although not as many ways as Physics Phil, who was as much of a lech as Paul was but for men instead of women (UConn had equal opporunity sociopaths), and whose untrimmed beard he groomed only with his overgrown nails.
Physics Phil reminded me of ROTC Rob, of whom RDC didn't know at all until Rob hooked up with our neighbor a few doors down from our first apartment, the tenement. When we first moved into the tenement, my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend were living in that other apartment--and when they left it, these acquaintances--the ones who sparked this entry, I'm circling around--moved in.
RDC, being not as much of a gossip as I am, was unclear on all the drama attendant on this couple. But when they came up, neither of us could remember if they got married because they were pregnant or if the pregnancy just happened really fast. I suppose I should be proud of myself that I cannot remember such a meaningless detail ten years old and so far outside my own life. It's either that or my brain is decaying.
Anyway, I looked them both up. The things you find on the web. Like me. Hi lurkers!
Can I just say, because I haven't told a story in so long, that the man, whom I'll call Faun because The Marble Faun was the one Hawthorne text he hadn't read, had Liked me when he first arrived at UConn? In his first days at UConn, he took a temporary job for my office’s beginning-of-semester cattle call, and that’s how we met and when he vaguely crushed (as he told me later). It was my senior year and I was newly single, but a much different single than my naïve freshling self--instead of looking for men to crush on, I was oblivious to those who liked me. My attention, it’s true, was elsewhere, and my singlehood didn’t last long.
Our casual acquaintance happened in the humanities building, where he and I were English students, graduate and undergraduate. Two years later I was a graduate student myself, single again, and friendlier with Faun. He was interesting and attractive but intimidating and not among that year’s noncommittal yet fraught with baggage dating victims. Late in the fall he hooked up with another English department acquaintance of mine, and the usual amount of time later she told me she was pregnant with intent to keep.
It didn’t take much imagination for me to consider what the implications my own dating Faun might have been. I was fond of him, because he was brilliant and weird and opined that the ties of an ex-friend of mine ran the gamut from A to B, which I cracked up at and failed to recognize as Dorothy Parker. But if I had, might I have wound up pregnant instead? Or as well. Yii. A lesson, not that I needed one, that casual hook-ups were not my way.
A month after that child was born, a new school year was beginning. The first time I met a new graduate student, she had lovebites all over her neck and shoulders and I was impressed at her wearing a boat-necked shirt without embarrassment. The biter had been Faun. Two years to the due-date after his daughter was born, he had another with this woman. What RDC and I couldn’t remember is how many months before the son was born they got married.
Anyway, what I found on the web suggests that he is still interesting and brilliant and that they are still married though each now to someone else. Tex called me scary, and I’ll cop to scary for remembering and being curious about people whom I have not seen or communicated with for a decade, but I don’t consider googling for three minutes and skimming publicly posted, personal pages scary stalking. Just mildly stalky curiosity.
ROTC Rob, though, he was a scary stalker. He, like Paul, would eat in Shippee caf because it was a single-sex dorm, although since he lived in a large dorm and therefore had a meal plan, at least he didn’t have to pay extra for commissary chow. After the first incident--leering, immature flirting, deep breathing, inappropriate remarks, cornering a hallmate in the elevator, whichever it was--that brought him to our attention, my next-door friend Michelle told me she knew him as Grocery Boy, because he worked in the supermarket she shopped in and would utter cheesy come-ons to her as he stocked tuna cans even when her mother was right there. My roommate took Tae Kwon Do and during stretching exercises was randomly partnered with someone who caressed her feet in a non-stretchy, non-Tae Kwon Do manner, didn’t stop when she told him off, and showed no remorse when she asked to be repartnered; he turned out to be ROTC Rob. He leered--focused, menacing scoping with pouting and tongue--at every (white) woman in my hall, all ten of us, before first semester was out, and I’m sure the entire dorm knew about him and avoided him.
After my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend, after Faun and the mother of his son, the next tenant of the nearby tenement was a woman I didn’t know. She looked fairly skanky but even so, when I noticed ROTC Rob there regularly--that apartment was two buildings from mine and between it and campus--I was surprised anyone would find him that worthwhile.
Worthwhile enough to reminisce about but not to google.
The hood is up. It is not wired or vented, but it is on the wall, fitting exactly between wall cabinets exactly as it's meant to. Also it is no longer on the living room floor.
I am not unpacking more kitchen because we are going to remove cabinet doors before to paint walls, and let us not dwell on the painting drama, and anything not behind a door will get dusty. But we can walk through the kitchen and use its sink and the dishwasher and if I finished painting their doors we could put stuff back into the pantries.
I was kinda thinking of having one utter Unveiling but no more. Two months is fucking long enough to wait. I will use each bit of kitchen as it becomes functional.