Life Worth Living

Yesterday Leone took me for a ride up in the beautiful Berkeley hills along tree-lined roads with neat houses tucked between them, each more beautiful than the next. We stopped at a lookout and gazed down at the bay below us, and then we took the long way home. As we were making our way through Frat Row to my apartment in order for me to pack an overnight bag, we were slowed to a near-stop by the early evening traffic.

I hadn’t been up here since last summer, notably on my way to and from The Chemist’s in the evenings. I glanced up at the house he had lived in, spotting the window that had been his last year and imagining myself and him just under it on his mattress on the floor, then looked away, not wanting to think about it. Leone inched his motorcycle slowly down the street. I craned my head to see a match of beer-pong going on in one living room. A couple houses down, loud hip-hop was playing, and a group of students were sitting with their feet dangling off the upstairs balcony of a frathouse, swaying to the beat and sipping beers. One shaggy-headed brother was especially getting into the music; when he saw me looking up at them, he raised his arms and bobbed his head rhythmically. I grinned widely up at him, sharing in his mirth.

The brothers in the house across from the balconied one were bbq-ing on the porch, sending a haze of smoke wafting through the street. As I turned to look, a toned, bikini-clad girl with long blond hair—the quintessential sorority sister—and a equally attractive brunette only slightly more modestly dressed skipped out from the house to join the guys on the porch. The blonde looked up and spotted the shaggy-haired guy on the balcony across the street. She smiled and waved both hands at him happily, calling out a greeting, which he returned. As we inched slowly away, the brunette strode across the street to greet the shaggy-haired guy, and the blonde had turned to give one of the brothers on the porch a bear hug. The shadows on the sidewalk were lengthening, although there was still plenty of light left, and the evening was warm and still. The air smelled of summer and smoke.

These are the days I love, and miss, and long for. I wanted to be that blonde girl in a bikini. I wanted to be that brunette waltzing across the street. I wanted more than I can say to bbq on the porch and just sit on a balcony in the summer air with loud music pulsing through me. I wanted to be on Frat Row that day and live like a college student instead of motoring off to far away Albany, quiet and still and beautiful, full of suburban families walking their dogs and young children along streets lined with boutiques and cafes. I wanted loud, not peaceful. I wanted to wear a bikini and strut around a house full of attractive guys, to dance, and to sit outside under the stars and cool with the pavement. I wanted to enjoy the summer like it was meant to be enjoyed.

I know people often look down on the Greek life, but I find myself wishing for it more often than you would know, especially on these lazy summer days. At that moment in time I would have almost traded going home with Leone for being able to join that group on the porch. Almost. And only almost, because grill or no grill, when it comes down to it I would rather have Leone than twenty Frat brothers.

My papers are due tomorrow, and while I know I’ll pull them through, the quantity of sleep I’m going to get tonight is questionable. Instead of trying to maximize that amount during my break today by reading, I sat at a cafe and wrote this:

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I started this post in Tidbits form on Tuesday, finished it and then just let it sit without posting it. Usually when I do this it isn’t a problem, except when I get lazy and dont actually post it, but usually that causes only a few days’ delay. This time Firefox suddenly stopped working on me, and since I still had the window open I could’ve copied & pasted what I’d written into a Word document or something similar before I restarted my laptop, but I thought it’d be autosaved. Well, it wasn’t, and here I am typing it all up again.

Except that I’m going to write it like a normal blog post and not as a Tidbits/Quick-Hits, because some of the things I was talking about got too long for that and were all interconnected anyway. So here:

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I realise I have posted absolutely nothing in over a week, and when I noticed how quiet I’ve been I started trying to think up of interesting things to say, but I didn’t have any. I still have nothing to say, because no one wants to read (and I dont want to write) about sleeping in until 1 everyday then crawling out of bed, grabbing Starbucks, and spending the rest of the day fiddling on my brother’s Wii. But I figured I should at least check in for the sake of checking in.

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I haven’t been writing much. It’s a far cry from a few weeks into the summer, where one or even two posts a day would be my fortress into which I fled from inevitable boredom. It’s nice to be busy again…although ask me at a time I’m in the actual throes of said business rather than coming off my first week of it and I’ll share a different sentiment. Ask me two weeks from now—at any time of day—and I’ll smack you, then go back in time via sheer force of will and smack my past self for ever feeling pleasantly busy.

I had to keep reminding myself that despite the papers, the foot’s worth of reading (in thickness of texts, I mean), and the midterms, it’s still summer. I’d thought I’d be here among older people, grad students, and summer exchange students, and not many potential friends. Instead, I’m already making one and remaking another. This friend I’m remaking I knew from FPF, back in the first semester of my first year here. I used to refer to him as Crew Guy to Aster, back when we giggled and whispered and I-know-more-guys-than-you’d at each other over aim every night (sometimes I wish we still did that. I now rarely speak to her). Crew Guy used to like me.

Now, I never had any confirmation that he did, and if I’m right, still, it was probably no more than a casual interest developed and ended all within two months. But I recognized the signs—the flirtation, the glances, the boyish awkward nudging as we sat side by side in a scene rehersal waiting for our lines to come up. It was there, but it never amounted to anything.

He came up to me during a 10 minute break in class today, although I would’ve gone to him if he hadn’t come over anyway. We talked a little, and then he invited me to his friend’s birthday party. Tonight. A casual invite: this is where I live, this is the time, come if you want. For a moment I was tempted…but I don’t know his friend. I hardly know him. It’s bound to be awkward…yet I’d come out of it with new friends, and hadn’t I been the one moping about wanting to meet new people? It was an opportunity.

I’m not going. Besides that I’ve already forgotten where he lives, I’ve only seen Crew Guy twice since not seeing him for over a year. Whatever friendship is there to re-establish, whichever new friends are there to meet, they can wait. It’s not a very hard decision. I can wait. I just hope I’m not waiting for something that’ll never come.

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I was waking down Telegraph after getting frozen yogurt with Rosemary. Or something like that. I lay there staring up at the ceiling and I missed it. Goddamn, one day back in SJ and I’m missing it already.

It’s like up there my life is Go, Go, Go! And now? Imagine the sound of one of those cartoon-y screeching halts. Yep.

I haven’t sunk into summer yet. I want to munch on bacon burgers and cheer on Adam Lambert. I want to get my tattoo. I want to do it. My mind’s going at a million miles per second but none of what I’m thinking about matters because of this damn stop summer has put on my life. I go out and I think—where are all the hot guys I put this skirt on to impress? Where are all the brilliant, bold, quirky college kids milling about on skateboards with backpacks and cups of cold coffee?

I want to be able to go out at midnight and not have to ask anyone. I want to get texts from The Chemist and roll around with him on his mattress on the floor. I want to walk home alone afterwards thinking what a jerk he was. I want to try to figure him out. I want to end things with him. I want to continue things with him to see where the heck its going. Every time I start thinking about it all I have to stop and remind myself that thinking is futile because it’ll be 3 months before anything that I think, any conclusions I draw, will matter anyway. And that just makes me impatient, angry, and exhasperated all at once. I was in the middle of something, damnit!

But such is the way of things. God has a way with timing that some would call fickle, others cruel. I call it him being an ass for the sake of being an ass, or so that he’ll have something to show his friends to make him laugh every Sunday when they get together to watch the game: “Hey man, check out what I did to this poor mortal today. King of the rock!” Yeah, I’m on to you, big man. Hide all you want; you can’t fool me. (By the way, when I use “God”, I do it sarcastically, to make fun of the belief of him, in a way, and not because I believe he exists. I’m an atheist.)

What can I do but stop, wait, and enjoy the sun and the leisure time? Soon enough you’ll find me back here whining about how wonderful summer was and how I dont want to go back (check for my “Summer Went All Too Soon” post) and how I’m considering dropping out of school and becoming a traveling songstress just so I wont have to go back again. I wish I was kidding.

Actually, I am. But you cant blame me for being dramatic.

There’s a party going on next door/across the alley/downstairs. A bunch of whooping, cheering fratty boys and screechy girls being very loud at a time when no one who doesn’t live in a vacuum has a right to be very loud.

Other, sane, people would want to scream at them to shut up. Me? I just want to join them.

Ever since my initiation into the world of This-Is-Where-The-Cool-Kids-Play, ever since I went in eager and excited and more than a little nervous and came out bristling with delight and positively glowing, I’ve been wondering, “All Right, what’s next?”

But that’s just the thing: Nothing’s next. Nothing but my own person has changed. I’ve no new friends (possibly because we were too Goddamned drunk to understand what we were saying, let alone know to exchange contact info), and currently no plans to re-enter that world again. I used to be (moderately) okay with that. I’ve never been one of those girls who knows ten million other girls and ten million other boys and who goes out with a different group every Friday night partying and drinking and dancing until the dawn, who will come out of college fresh with stories and memories. I’m the kind of girl who has one, maybe two close-knit groups of friends with whom she goes out and only a loose network of acquaintances outside that. I’ve always preferred the small groups to the big, I’ll-be-meeting-new-people-all-night rooms-full of parties I’m not a partier. I’m not a big drinker. I just don’t do that.

Except that now a big part of me wants to do that. Since Friday I’ve felt something within me shift. Change.

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I went to my first themed party yesterday. Fine, I’ll admit it: I went to my first college party yesterday (here I am in the second half of the second semester of my second year of college and I’m just now losing my party virginity. The patheticness is not lost on me). Buttercup invited me. The theme: cereal box heroes.

I went as Toucan Sam. I dressed in his colors–white and blue–streaked purple and pink all through my hair, made a belt of construction paper cutout froot-loops, and slapped some more all over me. I was beautiful. I was ready.

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Spring Break was unremarkable, but fantastic all the same, if only because it gave me a chance to be with my friends again, some of which I haven’t seen since December. Mostly I hung out with JT; I saw him every weekday except Thursday, and briefly on Sunday. For all intents and purposes (and minus Prince), it felt like High School again.

Except that it was only a week, over in two leaps and a bound. And before I could even blink, I find myself tucked neatly away in Berkeley again. Since, I’ve just about settled back into my old routine–and I’d forgotten how good it was to be a college student again, walking to class, walking to The Starbucks–and it’s one last rush before summer (and who knows what that has in store for me)

Honestly, it all went by a little too fast. Give me a week, and it’s too short, give me a month, and I start to feel listless, restless, idle…two weeks is just about perfect–but alas, they’re not that generous.

So here I am again. And the work has already started, the reading, the writing, the endless thought. But you know what? That’s really okay. I did enjoy break. Oh, so, so much…but in the end, this is where I belong.