To me, U.Va. is...
Accidentally dying your roommate’s hair purple in the Watson-Webb bathroom, under harsh fluorescent lights.
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Accidentally dying your roommate’s hair purple in the Watson-Webb bathroom, under harsh fluorescent lights.
I’m writing the morning after a loss.
“I love you.”
“I mean, it’s not like I care,” she said to me as we walked down Rugby Road one Friday night, heading home in the crisp fall air. “It’s just, I don’t know. Strange.”
A month ago, I felt the now-familiar tightness, the now-routine clenching of my throat. Another wave of hushed conversations, another empty space in a familiar, yellow house. Another vigil, more prayers. Another loss of a bright ray of light, of sunshine, in my ordinary, predictable day. The strange loneliness of losing someone, of watching my friends struggle to make the winding walk to class on drizzly days. The struggle to fall asleep, to stay asleep. A good friend passing away on her afternoon run.
We walk quietly together, the lights and warmth of the Lawn behind us, through the construction and past the deepened slopes of Mad Bowl to our homes. Pairs of drunk girls and lone boys in fanny packs walk up and down Rugby. It’s 2:07 a.m. and a cry resembling a Southern general extends down the street, chorused and joined by howling packs of drunken fraternity men calling out into the gloomy Wednesday night.
A crowd of buzzing nerves and cargo shorts fills into lined chairs for a convocation of honor, tradition, buzzwords and ideals.
My friend sat down across from me in a corner of Newcomb, hair unbrushed, belt forgotten. It was late March and tendrils of spring had began to sneak into our routine walks from Watson-Webb to the Chem building.
One-hundred twenty polished and confident girls with shiny Pantene hair and clear smiles stare at me. I don’t recognize most of them, but they form a mass of perfection, of poise. This was my first experience walking into my sorority on Bid Day. Though I now know and love these people, I was first intimidated walking into a room full of accomplishment, surrounded by leaders of CIOs and aspiring engineers — girl after girl with both physical and inner beauty.
My inbox is filled with messages from the head of my new major and subject lines which read, “Sign-Up for Honor Week” or “Attend a Philanthropy!” Another email reads: “Can we reschedule the meeting from 2:30 to 3? Let me know!”
I pull down the top of my iPhone screen and a cartoon yak turns around on itself. I look around Alderman’s map room to make sure no one sees, and the lowered eyes spur my investigation. Tens of messages pop up as the yak stops its turns, and I quietly, secretly read the competition between fraternities, pithy observances of O-Hill lunches and shout-outs to “TSull,” Joe Harris and Double-Swipe Dean.
I show up to my class 10 minutes early for the exam. I wait for the rest of my 25 classmates to arrive. The fluorescent lights of Dell melt the slush of dragged-in snow. It’s a Tuesday, and two students are absent. I recognized their faces at the few games I attended, proudly projected onto the flashy screen and yelled out by the baritone announcer. However, so far this semester, I have failed to see them attend more than 50 percent of this class. My professor doesn’t say anything – she already knows they won’t be coming.
“Hey, bitch, give me your number,” one yelled.
The congregation filters by the altar, the pulpit and stage, and we creep through the back entrance. We’re surrounded by students in sweatshirts and families scrubbed clean, twin boys in plaid button downs, a coloring book in one’s lap and a racecar on the other’s. The preacher speaks of communion with God, and when it comes time for my approach to receive the wafer and wine, the body and blood, I stay seated.
Kendrick Lamar blasted above a buzzing Prius full of five second-years, crammed in a backseat next to Pop-Tarts and Chex Mix and Pringles and crumpled candy wrappers as they wound through Pennsylvania. After too many verses about money and sex and trees and growing up in Compton, the speakers went silent, and each of us returned to tiny spots of light pouring from mobile phones.
Walking from 15th St., we trundled over the train tracks, tipsy and giddy in Thursday night laughter, donning cowboy-themed attire. We arrived to our destination, only to find a large, bearded 20-something guarding the entrance. Three others sat on a moldy and weathered yellow couch at the top of the stairs.
It’s 12:04 a.m., and I cling to life with “Breaking Bad.” Brains and blood and buckets of ketchup textured blood coat my screen and I feel more. Surrounded by tame and listless orchids, soft yellow light and pastel colors — yet in the clutches of fictional meth, I awake.
I wake up with the sounds of the dump truck beeping below my open window, cooling air fluttering the leaves of my dying white orchid. A pack of athletes follow the dump truck’s departure, a silent morning compared to the floor-stomping pregame last night that I heard while decoding Chaucer. Instead of writing, I sit, procrastinate and peruse Facebook, stalking those more involved, more social, less strained.