Chapter 6: College

EMETT

Let's back up a bit. Uhhhh, let's see. I graduated from community college, or I should say, I should have. I think that I was technically short one class. I never took a water colors class, of all things. Yeah, but anyway, I technically never graduated community college, but it was good enough to transfer into college (moving forward, filling out job applications was a mess, as my education was a cobbled together mess that didn't look good on paper). I moved into my dorm, and after a day, the roommate that I had basically asked if he could move nearby (so he could pork his girlfriend). I had no objections because I wanted privacy. He only came in when he heard there was going to be a room check. After that year, I always got a single room, so I was always in a quiet room, but also always alone. Thankfully, I did manage to find friends within the first year.

I met Will and his friends when I was looking through clubs. I ultimately didn't join the computer club that he was in, but I stayed in touch. He introduced me to a lot of anime, and I occasionally hung out in his room. It was more of frenemy relationship, but he did help me out when my truck basically shut down.

As far as driving to college went, it was a seven or eight hour drive, and I was unsure how to get there and back. I never had to worry about it though. In the first year, I decided while I was wondering and worrying about it to donate blood. I remember the blood not going out of me easy, and it taking a long time. I don't know if it was because I was holding my breath because I was nervous or whether it was some deal where I wasn't feeling charitable, but it seemed very hard to give blood for some reason. The gal that was in charge of this had an alliterative name like Lindsey Laughlin or Lora Lemons or Leslie Lukeamos. Anyway, she told a gal named Kelly that I was needing a ride home, and she happened to live close by. This was a contrived coincidence if I ever saw one, but it really happened. But then, this is part of when I started not believing in coincidence.

I hung out with Kelly mainly only when she picked me up, as she was kinda a cheerleader type and had not much going on in common with me. Even so, we more or less more or less were able to have long conversations in the car about virtually anything. So even though it was an awkward crush, there was a sort of feeling where she had seen this sort of thing before and had come to expect it. I couldn't really explain it, but I sort of felt a same twinge of familiarity from her. In particular, the sense of déjà vu increasingly pervaded my life. I felt like I had seen my meeting with Kelly, seen part of a job that I had during the summer at Purdue, seen certain classes and tests, and certain meetings with friends. Sorta like this stuff with elemental energy and the heart sense thing had tapped me into strange energies where I was connected to the past and future. I was excited at the idea that maybe I had some kind of destiny with Kelly (not quite), but somehow afraid that maybe my life was written out for me. Ultimately, I decided that fate (if there was such a thing) must go hand in hand with choice. That is, if some prophet could predict the future, the only way such a gift could be relevant is if by telling others there was some kind of impact on the future.

Viewed in the context of my infatuation with Kelly, knowing that potentially I could end up together with her or screw things up, I did the only right thing to do. I screwed it up, of course. First, I made her mix tapes filled with love songs. Then when her boyfriend broke it off with her because he was a douchebag and got in a bar room brawl (cementing in my mind the suspicion that maybe he was abusive), instead of being a shoulder to cry on, I tried to make it about me and my needs in an attempt to get her to forget her boyfriend and date me instead. Then when I saw her care parked near the curb, I waited for her near her car. Some police lady came up, and talked to me. She was nice yet firm, talking me out of stalking Kelly or anything like that. But now I was crushing on her instead. Oh yeah, and when she visited her boyfriend in prison, she had gotten a dog named Buddy because she was lonely. Unfortunately, she was inside for a good 45 or so minutes, and the dog looked like it needed to pee. I'd like to say that I didn't make a dog walk in the rain, but I kind of did. That day, she was very angry with me. Anyway, my clinginess and weirdness was something that I didn't really tolerate in myself, but I couldn't really do much about it because I had the choices between being completely alone and being neurotic while trying to cope with poor interpersonal ability. And so, I just tried to do my best at a skill that I had no real understanding of.

In college, I wound up majoring in History and minoring in Horticulture. I guess I thought about mycology after looking at some book, but my mom Bianca said to "Stay away from that, as people might think you are into growing those types of mushrooms." And so, I was talked out of a promising career as a professional mushroom grower. As it was, I found out that I was getting overwhelmed between labs, tests, and essays so I wanted a light course load. Since two-thirds of my effort was actually coming from my minor, I switched to Religion as a minor. Since I pretty much thought of myself as a Druid anyway, now I had a degree to prove it. I didn't need to take English or mathematics, having pretty much completed two years of community college, so I pretty much was able to skip math altogether (which is good, because my math is very terrible). As a result of good planning (by that, I mean expert-level slacking), I was for the most part able to have most of my nights free until it was time to write essays or take midterm and final exams. As such, I was more or less free to hang out with friends or watch watch television I wanted.

My last year, I had an extra semester so I was able to pick whatever classes I wanted. I had two leftover history classes (Civil War and Russian History), but I decided to take Philosophy, a class called The Search for Meaning, and two acting courses (Acting Appreciation and Introduction to Acting). The Philosophy course focused mainly on existential stuff like the problem of mind and body, talked about whether a tree made a sound if it fell in the forest, the brain in a vat, and eventually worked up to Descartes. It seriously made my think about the reality that I live in and how real it is. The Search for Meaning was a rather strange course, as we searched books, movies, or other things for an idea of meaning in life. For my final project, I decided to watch random movies and try to come up with a common theme. Acting Appreciation was a sort of history of theater, and the various aspects of lighting, sound, and scene. For the final test, we designed and wrote a play. I had forgotten one of the characters though, so I had to rewrite the play and add in her scene. The play turned out really dark, just from a change in tone of the lines. The female lead had amnesia, and the way I wrote it, I fully intended the male lead to start over after her amnesia, but the way the main actor read it turned out to be disturbing. Or maybe I didn't have a good sense of what was romantic and what was creepy. It happens, an entire genre of love songs in the 1950s had morbid romances where one or both lovers died.

As for Introduction to Acting, it was seriously hardest course I'd ever had. I was just so deadpan all the time. I never could figure out why. Maybe it was because I was sort of a grey person who didn't really think of the world in terms of strong emotions, maybe it was my shyness. I later found out after college that I was depressed. I suspect it has a lot to do with all those prophetic incidents where things that I'd seen or dreamed about came to pass, but each time I seemed to have dropped the ball. I wasn't rich, powerful, or successful. I suppose that got me down, at least as much as feeling transgender. But at the time, I couldn't feel anything strongly, and thus acting courses were harder than math or science, harder than Organic Chemistry (one of the reasons that I wanted to leave Horticulture), and harder even than Calculus. Between memorizing lines, trying to make facial expressions for the part, and body language, I had a shocking lack of normal mannerisms to even act like another human being. It felt like junior high all over again. The last class, I actually got it right. It was called The Importance of Being Earnest. We did a very stripped down version, where a guy had a gal in the country and in the city. I agreed to crossdress as the country girl, and did an okay job reacting to his comments, but especially crying and leaving in a huff when it turned out that he wasn't interested in me.

On my way to the guidance counselor one day, a saw a girl sitting there in a nearby chair. Only, they weren't really a girl. They had long hair and no facial hair or obvious genitalia, but no real breasts or wide hips. They were the closest person that I'd ever seen to what I'd consider an angel. Not because they were beautiful, but because they were so lacking in sexual traits. Like some kind of shapeshifter superbeing or something. Anyway, after looking at them for awhile, I had to get to guidance counseling.

THE ANGEL

He... he noticed me! That wasn't supposed to be possible! All this time watching him, and he saw me! Was it finally time for the plan? No... we should give it some more time, to make sure. But he's definitely starting to remember.

EMETT

I had a close call for two of my classes. One required a paper that I'd somehow not paid attention for, so I had to rush it to the teacher's office before it closed. The second was Russian History, where I kinda stayed up too late and overslept the entire exam. The Russian teacher wanted to give me a zero, but I begged and pleaded and they agreed that I could show up to the last class he had and take my exam there. Both of these were very close, but ultimately I did graduate, though probably not with honors. As for Kelly, I got to say hi to her at graduation, along with a few other people that I graduated with.

Things had been awkward between us, as you can imagine. One time, when she was about to pick me up for winter break, but she was at least an hour late. I finally wrote a note on my door, and instead stayed at the dorm and played the Civilization board game with Will and his friends. It was over three hours of gaming, and I remember deciding not to add income tax to my civilization, which meant that my group was stuck in the Dark Ages. The fun part was that I got a bonus to population somehow, so I had like hordes of sword-wielding barbarians giving loads of trouble until about the space age, where they just ray-gunned them all. I had about two weeks where I lived on ramen and foraged crab apples and chestnuts, because the dining hall was closed for the winter. Another time, some guy named James or something picked me up, since he was the only other person who lived on the Eastern Shore to the best of my knowledge. Talking to him was kinda gruffer and less talkative, but it felt sorta the same as riding with Kelly somehow. In any case, Kelly and I were mostly okay by graduation, so I assume somehow things worked out. I don't remember if I just gave her time or what.

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