affection. It’s how they show they like you, which is very confusing, because it’s also how they show they don’t like you, and they’re just never going to tell you which it is.
A local cover band played the hits of the day, and the one sort-of hippie girl in our class danced blissfully. She had brown curls down to her breasts and looked a little like Edie Brickell, and she twirled and she smiled and her paisley skirt caught the sunlight. She was happy.
I watched. A group of kids from my hall walked up, watched me watch her, and then watched her. Rich, an ROTC guy, spoke up: “What is she,
retahded
?” And everyone laughed. Twirling, even from a hippie girl, was not a thing that would be tolerated here.
4. “One Wind Blows”—Toad the Wet Sprocket
Situated as it was on the side of a massive hill, the campus received two radio stations, the college radio station WCHC and Worcester’s hair metal station WAAF, and 90 percent of the students opted for the latter. The two most significant bands in my life as a freshman became Toad the Wet Sprocket and Warrant.
The campus was full of the kind of people I wanted to be and devoid of the kind of people I was, and if anyone else felt the same way, they were hiding it better than I knew how to. This was the kind of place where people got dressed up to go to class, and then went home, showered, and changed into a nice clean outfit for dinner and study. Everyone was putting his or her best foot forward, and I had forgotten how to walk.
It was this kind of place: once a month, someone would run out from the student center, where our PO boxes were, and shout “It’s here! It’s
heeeeere
!” And people would sprint inside to get the hot item of the day: the new J.Crew catalog. The students were generous and thoughtful: if someone knew their roommate would already have brought one home, they’d leave theirs out on a table near the mailboxes for someone less fortunate. Everyone would make their selections, and eight to ten business days later, everyone would model their new barn jackets or wide-wale corduroys.
5. “Cuts You Up”—Peter Murphy
Holy Cross was homogeneous to the extreme, and everyone seemed to know the rules of survival except me. I got a weekly DJ shift at the campus radio station WCHC and I was there all the time. Music was my drug and I needed relief, so I was always using. I worried I had made the wrong choice, and I didn’t know how to go about fixing it.
Freshman year, our social options were limited unless we had fake IDs, and mine was questionable: I was David Knight from Simsquix, Montana, standing in front of what is clearly a posterboard backdrop in the rough shape of a Montana driver’s license. It only worked in the most rugged of townie bars that were the most desperate for business. You didn’t want to go there unless you were in a pack, and you couldn’t assemble a pack because most people didn’t have fake IDs. So unless there was an off-campus party and the news trickled down to us, we were stuck watching Blockbuster rentals in our rooms. When we finished our movies, we rewound (because we were kind) and we left them by our front doors, just in case anyone else wanted to watch them during the three-night rental period. The first time I did this, the guys across the hall grabbed my movie, and then two hours later there was a knock on my door. I answered, and they were all there, wearing faces of agitation. “What is
wrong
with you, Holmes?”
“Excuse me?”
“That is the weirdest movie we have ever seen.” They handed it back to me and left, and I looked down at it. It was John Waters’s
Hairspray.
I was on a campus full of eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who had never seen—and never would—a weirder movie than
Hairspray.
Oh, dear God,
I thought,
what have I done?
6. “You Happy Puppet”—10,000 Maniacs
I was afraid and lonely and I was tired of being afraid and lonely, and I needed a plan, because I
A local cover band played the hits of the day, and the one sort-of hippie girl in our class danced blissfully. She had brown curls down to her breasts and looked a little like Edie Brickell, and she twirled and she smiled and her paisley skirt caught the sunlight. She was happy.
I watched. A group of kids from my hall walked up, watched me watch her, and then watched her. Rich, an ROTC guy, spoke up: “What is she,
retahded
?” And everyone laughed. Twirling, even from a hippie girl, was not a thing that would be tolerated here.
4. “One Wind Blows”—Toad the Wet Sprocket
Situated as it was on the side of a massive hill, the campus received two radio stations, the college radio station WCHC and Worcester’s hair metal station WAAF, and 90 percent of the students opted for the latter. The two most significant bands in my life as a freshman became Toad the Wet Sprocket and Warrant.
The campus was full of the kind of people I wanted to be and devoid of the kind of people I was, and if anyone else felt the same way, they were hiding it better than I knew how to. This was the kind of place where people got dressed up to go to class, and then went home, showered, and changed into a nice clean outfit for dinner and study. Everyone was putting his or her best foot forward, and I had forgotten how to walk.
It was this kind of place: once a month, someone would run out from the student center, where our PO boxes were, and shout “It’s here! It’s
heeeeere
!” And people would sprint inside to get the hot item of the day: the new J.Crew catalog. The students were generous and thoughtful: if someone knew their roommate would already have brought one home, they’d leave theirs out on a table near the mailboxes for someone less fortunate. Everyone would make their selections, and eight to ten business days later, everyone would model their new barn jackets or wide-wale corduroys.
5. “Cuts You Up”—Peter Murphy
Holy Cross was homogeneous to the extreme, and everyone seemed to know the rules of survival except me. I got a weekly DJ shift at the campus radio station WCHC and I was there all the time. Music was my drug and I needed relief, so I was always using. I worried I had made the wrong choice, and I didn’t know how to go about fixing it.
Freshman year, our social options were limited unless we had fake IDs, and mine was questionable: I was David Knight from Simsquix, Montana, standing in front of what is clearly a posterboard backdrop in the rough shape of a Montana driver’s license. It only worked in the most rugged of townie bars that were the most desperate for business. You didn’t want to go there unless you were in a pack, and you couldn’t assemble a pack because most people didn’t have fake IDs. So unless there was an off-campus party and the news trickled down to us, we were stuck watching Blockbuster rentals in our rooms. When we finished our movies, we rewound (because we were kind) and we left them by our front doors, just in case anyone else wanted to watch them during the three-night rental period. The first time I did this, the guys across the hall grabbed my movie, and then two hours later there was a knock on my door. I answered, and they were all there, wearing faces of agitation. “What is
wrong
with you, Holmes?”
“Excuse me?”
“That is the weirdest movie we have ever seen.” They handed it back to me and left, and I looked down at it. It was John Waters’s
Hairspray.
I was on a campus full of eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who had never seen—and never would—a weirder movie than
Hairspray.
Oh, dear God,
I thought,
what have I done?
6. “You Happy Puppet”—10,000 Maniacs
I was afraid and lonely and I was tired of being afraid and lonely, and I needed a plan, because I
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