The
window screens in the dorm rooms have 'Do not remove' stickers on
them now.
Such
stickers did not exist a year ago, when I first moved in. I was an
awkward Indian freshman, not ready to experience a foreign country or
its people. Social interactions seemed like a very complicated
phenomena, especially with people who wiped their butt with paper and
called football 'soccer'. So it was a relief when my first roommate
left after his first month in college, realizing college just wasn't
his type of thing. I would like to believe that I was a big part of
what drove him away though. The rest of Fall semester was uneventful.
Everyday, I would return from class as soon as I could, watch illegal
internet streams of a couple of Bollywood movies, skype with my mom
and put off doing homework until I passed out from boredom and home
sickness. It was nice to have the room to myself though. I could be
naked when I wanted to and watch porn without headphones on.
Sometimes I would sing loudly, belting out rock ballads from the
seventies, hoping that the pretty girl on the floor above would hear
and knock on my door. I would enchant her with my snake charmer-like
charm and then we could make love to the rhythm of the strong winds
that blew into my 8th
floor dorm room. But that never happened.
By
the time Spring semester rolled around, I had forgotten that I was
still paying for a 2-person room. I had gone home for Winter Break,
so when I returned, following a 22 hour flight sequence, I was
looking forward to collapsing onto the squeaky bed that awaited me.
As I unlocked the door I found out that I couldn't. The beds were
bunked and the lower bed had boxes lying on a star wars bedsheet. I
stumbled over this huge black gourd shaped container. As I did my
best impression of the Heisman to keep from falling face first into
the wooden floor, I heard a voice that seemed to come from outside my
window.
“Hey,
Are you alright bro?”, questioned a lanky figure sitting on the
ledge outside of the window. Panic and shock shivered through my
spine as he stepped in and re-attached the screen to the window
behind him.
“Yeah,
I am fine. I just stumbled over this thing.”
“O
yes, Sorry about that. I need to find a better place to keep my Tuba
than right in front of the door”, he chuckled in sheepish
embarrassment. “I am Jon by the way. Jonathan Dean Duhamel. You
must be Neil?” I was still too shaken up by everything to add to
the conversation, but I did respond to his inviting hand by shaking
it.
“I
suppose you didn't read the email about you new roomie. Well, its
me”, he said with a smile stretching from one unkempt side burn to
another. He wore a plain T-shirt, so black that his pale white skin
really popped out. His spiky gelled-up red hair were a weird contrast
to his tsunami hit side burns.
“Nice
to meet you.” I finally spoke. “Were you just on the ledge
outside?” I hoped the answer to that question would help me judge
how crazy this new chapter of my life was going to be.
“O
yeah. Had a long day moving in and all, so was just smoking a joint
with the wind and the stars”, he looked at me expecting me to share
his enchantment with weed and the universe. I responded with a blank
look of disbelief. The disbelief you would experience when you just
noticed someone sitting on a 3 ft wide ledge on the 8th
floor of a building.
“Sorry
I did not mean to freak you out. You are welcome to smoke some with
me.” He put down the window screen and was back on the ledge. I set
my bags down and sat in the chair. As I calmed myself down I looked
around the room. It looked much fancier then how I had left it. It
had a microwave, a mini fridge. I saw biology books on his desk, next
to some rolling paper and filters. There was also a very strange
glass case like the ones in which you would store a baseball signed
by Pete Rose. Only this just had a ball of crumbled up paper in it.
I
realized my inadequacy in conversation might have come of as rude. I
disliked interactions with humans, but I did not want to come of as
rude to someone I would be living with. I slowly made my way to the
window, leaned against it and blurted. “So are you pre-med?”
“Pre-nursing.
I would like to wipe crap off of old saggy butts when I grow up.”
He welcomed my conversational advance. I did not know sarcasm well
enough yet to know whether he was really excited to be a nurse or
not. Nonetheless, I found his comment moderately funny.
“Ah.
Why nursing?”
“You
see that glass case on my table. The paper inside was the last letter
my grandma wrote from her senior living facility before she died from
a heart attack. They said that the nurse refused to give her CPR
because it was against policy.”
I
was a little taken aback by the sudden change of tone in his voice.
For a few minutes he was silent and so was I. I peeked my head out of
the screenless window. The wind was strong, and the stars were
needles poking through the infinite blanket of cosmic darkness.
The
excitement of experiencing new things in a completely new world, kept
me going during the first few months in college. But by the time
March rolled around, I was missing home a lot. The more accustomed to
the environment I got, the more alien it seemed to me. The roads were
too smooth, and the cars too big. I thought the world is about to end
when I saw the moon during day time for the first time in my life.
Talking to people and making friends was a tiring process – the
translator in my mind was constantly at work translating American
words into Hindi thoughts and back to English sentences. I am sure I
sounded like an British robot or that guy they heard on customer
service. It was easier to talk to Jon though. He spoke less and
really slowly, probably because he was high all the time. And most of
it was vague poetic reflections, that could mean almost anything you
want them to mean. It was entertaining to hear what he had to say to
the questions I asked. I came to the room before him most nights,
because he practiced with the jazz band. Most nights he would smoke
weed on the window ledge. One night, I came back from a midnight
hunger run to McDonalds, and found him outside with his Tuba.
“Playing
to the wind again?”
“Always”,
he replied as he moved his lips from the mouthpiece to the filer on
the weed joint. He told me once that these were called roaches.
“So
why the Tuba?” I had always been curious about that. For some
reason my prejudiced mind always connected that instrument to some
bulky music snob, not a scrawny punk rock ginger kid.
“You
see that glass case on the table. The paper inside is a piece of
sheet music for a Tuba. My dad once went and saw Miles Davis in
concert. He was his favorite. At the end, the orchestra through its
sheet music into the crowd. My dad caught that paper.”
Wait,
What? I was rather confused. “I thought it was your grandma's
letter”. He said nothing and went back to playing music. It is
worthless to reason with a pothead I thought and left it at that. But
this was not the last time this happened. Anytime he would find an
appropriate opportunity, he would change the contents of the glass
case. One day he would stare at a shooting star and tell me the paper
wraps the meteorite rock he found while backpacking through Arizona.
Another day we would be talking about women, and he would say the
paper was a letter from his first girlfriend, listing all the things
that were wrong with him. And I was not the only one. I would over
hear the glass case story some times when he had a girl over. Most
times he would text me “Peaches”, before I got to the room, which
meant I needed sleep on the couch in the lobby that night.
Every
night, I saw Jon on the ledge, staring into space. Space that, from
his serene, content expression seemed like something really
comforting. He never invited me to smoke with him after the first
day. Though there was always an empty spot next to him on the ledge.
April
13th
was Baisakhi
– the
Indian festival which celebrates harvest and also the Hindu new year.
My mom called me and told me all about the celebrations. She told me
about the music, the food, the huge bonfire, and how the family was
sitting outside where the elders are telling the stories of the
harvest. She also told me that my sister-in-law was pregnant. I
talked to my brother, conveyed my congratulations and how happy I was
for him.
“So
what have you been upto?”, he asked in response.
I
wanted to say something but I couldn't. There seemed to be nothing to
talk about. I searched for a good story, long and hard in my mind but
I couldn't find it. “Nothing much. Just classes and work.”
When
the call ended, I walked towards the window, then leaned against it.
Jon had just bought a pipe. He was getting ready to put it to test.
“Everything
okay Neil?”
“Why
do you smoke Jon?”, I ignored his question.
“I
brings me at peace with reality.”
I
chuckled my pothead disclaimer chuckle.
“I
am telling you man, this way my life is a glass case”, he coughed
out through the smoke. And turned back to glance a look at his desk.
“What's
in it anyways?”
He
said nothing.
Reefer-talk
has the opposite effect to alcohol. It will lay low and simmer in
your head for a few hours and then show its effect. The next morning
when I woke up, I felt high on reefer-talk. All day I thought about
what he said and what he meant. Did it mean anything? I was jealous
of his lack of restlessness. As I walked back from class towards my
dorm, I had decided that I wanted to know what I feels like to be on
that ledge. I speedily walked up the hill and as I approached the top
of the hill where my dorm was, I saw a crowd of people gathered in
the front lawn.
I
cut through the bodies and the voices and reached the yellow tape.
Jonathan Dean Duhamel lay there dead in a pool of blood, his body
twisted at an odd angle. The police said he fell from his window on
the 8th
floor.
I
stood still. For a while, I closely looked at his face, to find the
contentment that it usually had. There was inexplicable anger – as
if he had robbed me of something. I stood there until my eyes were
red and wet from soaking up all that blood. I ran up to my room which
was being inspected by policemen. I was dazed. I couldn't hear
exactly, but I think they wanted to question me about the marijuana
found on the ledge. The window was open and the ledge was empty. I
walked straight to his desk and opened the glass case. I straightened
out the paper. It had writing on it.
Dear
Jon,
When
you read this I will be gone. They will tell you that you will never
be able to see me, touch me or hear me. That we will never sing
together, laugh together or cry together. That I will never hold you
in my arms and you will never hold me. They are wrong. I will be
where you want me, when you want me and what you want me to be. Just
think of me and I will be there.
Don't
let anyone else tell you what you can or cannot have. Don't let
anyone else make your memories. Be your own man, Write your own
story.
I
Love you so much.
Mom
Jon wrote his own story - the jazz loving, punk-rock pot head who
fell to his death. He even sold it for some money. From then on they
put stickers on the windows, the removal of which would end up in the
two hundred and fifty dollar fine for the resident.
I
could never go onto the ledge. I moved into an apartment. This one
has a balcony.
