Circumstantiality

Sometimes people still ask what it was like to be his roommate. Still. After all this time. It’s been many years and for some reason no one seems to want to forget what happened to Charles, except his family of course. And me. I guess that’s the world though. Everybody loves a good tragedy. Watching the high and mighty take their falls. For some reason, people love that. And that’s exactly what happened the year we were together. I’ll never forget it. Sometimes if I’m drifting off long enough, I can hear him laughing. Still laughing at me. * * * I still remember the walk down the hallway into our dorm room, the first time Charles and I would meet. It was my first year at the University and I was going to be the roommate of the son of one of the wealthiest men in our country. My family lived on Stratton Street. Charles' family lived on Glen Falls Drive. If one were to compare our respective neighborhoods to a Monopoly board, I would be stuck somewhere on Baltic Avenue, Charles undoubtedly perched on Park Place. If you wanted to look at it that way... Stratton Street was considered to be pretty much in the slums of our town. Ancient buildings, run down apartment complexes, and homeless people loitering around decaying corner shops. Nothing truly horrible, and nothing very notable either. Unless someone were to find the occasional drunk vagrant shouting in the streets about how he shouldn’t have trusted his whorebag of a wife Millie with his bank accounts in the dead of the night notable. The Mayor used to gently refer to the neighborhood as Old town, adorning our festering side of the tracks with a nickname of charm…charm and authenticity. It might have comforted some of the residents into believing that their homes and schools and jobs were located in the heart of town, the only true-blue remainder of our city, untouched by technology and newfangled architecture, but I wasn’t one of them. The only authentic thing in our neighborhood were the damned storefronts, fading, eroded, having been the exact same for the last forty or fifty something years. I didn’t think Charles Gardensen and all his grandness would even know that Stratton Street existed. But he ended up surprising me on that one. The way his eyes glinted with delight when he surprised you- it would only be the first of many times Charles would surprise me. When I found out we were going to be roommates, I had my guard up all right. I spent my youth growing up with just enough, never more. My mother didn’t need to lecture me any; I knew what happened to people who spent their lives screwing around. They lived all around us. I saw it every day in the eyes of the listless cashiers, the sluggish stockers at the department stores, the gum-chewing sales associates at the Salvation Army. Eyes glued to the clock. Eyes filled with apathy, regret. Eyes drifting far over me, over the scanning of an old sweater with a slight hole in the sleeve, over me counting the exact change in my hands, far over me, somewhere I can't see. People whose qualifications didn't stretch over a napkin. I was well aware. My mother's routine chidings throughout my adolescence were more than mere words; they were the people I saw every day. She raised me single-handedly. My father disappeared before I was even born, which was too much of a cliché in our situation to even allow us to pity ourselves appropriately. If she missed him, I never knew; she acted like he never existed. The two of us formed an invisible wall to the world around us, shutting out the painted-up girls with short skirts, the needles on the floor, the people sleeping in doorsteps. Even at a young age, watching a neighbor once dig through a trash can to fish out a battered pair of shoes, try them on, and then walk away in them, I knew. I had to do something. I had to get out of...this. Perhaps at a very young age, I knew this right away. And so I played smart. Studied my ass off. Year after year of pencils, books, tables, charts, index cards, and the occasional Playboy magazine stuck in between the folds of a thick textbook. Area. Integral. Derivative. Thesis. Onomatopoeia. Hemingway. Darwin. Newton. Habeas Corpus. Plessy V. Ferguson. Jefferson. Franklin. Brahms. Daguerreotype. Rule of Thirds. I knew those -I knew them all. I knew the only way out of this apartment, this neighborhood, and the inevitable shitty customer service job at minimum wage would be based on one thing and one thing only: my education. I had no other connections whatsoever. My mother knew this earlier than I did, and I think that’s why even at a very young age she thrust me so strongly into my education. When other six year olds where watching the Power Rangers and playing Cops N’ Robbers, I was given a battered packet of Flash Card Math and a 250 piece jigsaw puzzle. When you only got one card to play, you play that card. You play it damn well. I ended up as the Salutatorian when I graduated High School. Got accepted into every university I applied to, full scholarships all around. My mother was so proud. Looking back, I wish I had given myself more credit. I brushed away the compliments, handshakes, and honors- in my mind I wasn’t even close yet. I was only interested in the next step, growing up, getting the fancy degree, walking out the door and making a success out of myself. Looking back now I wish I had relished my youth a bit more. Spent more time being a kid. Consequently, I never truly had any friends growing up. Many nights were spent indoors, alone, with a library book tucked under my arm. Other nights I'd spend hours battling the antennas of our ratty television, trying to get a few clear stations. Sometimes I just lay in bed, imagining I was hanging out with the popular kids from school doing...whatever they did for fun. Like I said I didn't really have friends, ergo I didn't really have any girlfriends. Imagination was required in that area as well. My mother noticed my loneliness some nights, and when the air must have been particularly potent with it, she would knock on my door and offer me five dollars from her faded little clasp purse. "Brian, I passed by a few shops on Main Street and they're having some great sales on books and other knick knacks like that. Maybe you can meet some friends down there?" I would smile, and sometimes I went. Sometimes I didn't. The older I became, the less I minded. I suppose even at a young age, I understood the weight of my choices, and the sacrifices that followed them. With each passing year, each delighted teacher, each flawless report card, each promise of being able to polish a future to my liking...well, it was going to be worth it. Right? It was going to save us. I'll never forget the day the letters from colleges arrived. One after the other, congratulating me, accepting me. Congratulations… I read that word for what it really meant. Congratulations: This is your ticket out. A feeling I'd never forget. It was going to be the first time in my life that I truly had choices. Not just the dry noodles, a dime a package. Not being given the hand-me-downs. Not the same pair of shoes for three years now. Not having to deal with assholes in junior high and the even bigger ones in high school laughing at me, because of my clothes and shoes were either two sizes too big, two sizes too small, or simply falling apart. This time, I would choose for myself. My future. My life. My education. In my own hands. The satisfaction was immeasurable. Holding the letters in my hand, reading that one word over and over again, I couldn’t even sit still. I wanted to tell her, wanted to scream it out loud, “There will be Art! There will be Music! There will be Beauty far beyond our imagination! There will be Steaks and lobster! There will be rugs and fine furniture from other countries! We’ll own a Car, and you’ll never have to ride the bus again! Fancy chocolate, cheese, breads, finger foods, whatever we want!