by Kevin Feeney
Picture this, my friend:
You are the hero in a black-and-white western. We townsfolk thought you were dead, by golly. Oh, that tragic day when Raccoon Dale packed you in a barrel and pushed you over Lobos Point! The barrel, plummeting down the waterfall. The dry air, lapping up our tears. Yes, we thought you were a goner. But you’ve returned, triumphantly, tumbleweeds trailing behind you. A guitar lets out its first chord, in the tradition of Mexican folk music.
You are the hero. And I am the town-boy, the first one to meet you—over there, by the wooden fence, where the cows moan like middle-aged cynics. You want to hear everything—what happened at the Rattlesnake Saloon, why the women must wear dinner bells around their necks, who has escaped, and how long Raccoon Dale waited to summon the rest of his gang.
I say there isn’t much time to chat. Daisy, your trusty and androgynous love interest, is trapped inside Shooly’s mine cellar.
—But that’s been closed for years, you say.
—There’s no time to explain.
Well there is time, but very little of it. So let me speak quickly. Details shall be glossed, breathing shall be withheld.
I begin to speak, and everything is as I’ve told it, except I am no town-boy, and this is no western. But my tone of voice—urgent and high-pitched—and the account—long-winded—will remain true, for I have just spent two hours doing laundry, only to remember (Mom, move to the next paragraph) that I never used detergent. I have much to tell of my days since we last spoke, but time is indeed of the essence, as piles of wet and smelly clothes are breathing down my neck.
First (now speaking as a college student), I fear I may have jinxed us that November-something day I last wrote, when I predicted a victory for John Kerry. For the record, John Kerry is not our new President. The President’s name is George W. Bush, a former oil executive and owner of the Texas Rangers.
It was silent in Harvard that night and the next. I didn’t anticipate that the election of a plainspoken man with a penchant for electric chairs would so affect me, but it did. I turned dark and gloomy, which did contribute to my image as a mysterious and alluring freshman male, but detracted greatly from my overall mental health.
I recovered. I responded. I joined with Gabe Hudson to re-launch the “Dear Mr. President” feature on the McSweeney’s website. I’m doing okay.
(My friend Gabriel Rocha and I had the chance to visit Mr. Hudson at Princeton last week. He and I staged an altercation in front of his creative writing class, whereupon I was asked to leave the premises, but not before I made a fuss over my missing water bottle. Good fun.)
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As for the goals I set in my last entry, I have come to the conclusion that walking up the stairs to my dorm room is a decent form of exercise—end of story—and the New York Times online is a fine way to keep up with the news. I’ve found a community service organization, as well. It’s called Crimson in the Community, a program that facilitates journalism seminars at local high schools. On that same note, I am now an official staff member of Fifteen Minutes, the Crimson’s weekend magazine. In a week I will publish my second cover story, a look at the business behind Thefacebook.com, a popular social networking website started by a couple Harvard sophomores last year.
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Thank you, San Francisco, for putting together a week of wet and stormy weather for my return to the Bay. With just a week in town, I barely made it out of the house and spent much of my time working on the cover story mentioned above.
Here’s the problem: Harvard scheduled final exams for after winter break. We attend classes for a week, study for another, and then enter final exams. We’re just coming off a week-long intercession, part of which I spent in New Jersey. The rest of the time I stayed at Harvard. One night I caught a European short film festival, which included a documentary from Sweden that posed this central question: Yellow tags on farm animals, what’s up with that? Hmm?
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I’d like to fill you in on every detail, but I’m not sure how quickly wet clothes grow moldy. I’ll leave you with a run-on sentence of my recent days at Harvard—sort of a “Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” type of thing, and a glossary to boot. Take care, and hurry up, that squealing noise sounds like Daisy, and it’s coming from the mineshaft!
THE QUICK BROWN FOX SENTENCE:
Since I last wrote in late November—just before I left for a Brazilian Thanksgiving* at Gabe’s house, where I was the only one who did not speak Portuguese*— I have wrapped up two issues of the Goose*, joined the Boss Fort Club*, contemplated my identity*, surprised* the unsuspecting, and just recently—meaning a week before Valentine’s day*—I signed up for VES 172*, Anthropology 1790* and English 168*, among other courses, so drop it like it’s hot*, yo.
THE GLOSSARY TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THIS SENTENCE:
ANTHROPOLOGY 1790—COCA, CONFLICT AND CONTROL
A course in which cocaine is explored not scientifically but anthropologically. We use cocaine as a prism through which we may catch a glimpse of racial and political truths. Why, for example, did the “Crack Baby” phenomenon of the 1980’s capture widespread media attention when there were just as many rich, white women snorting cocaine in the 1970’s? The subject will fascinate you, and the professor will take you just about anywhere.
THE BOSS FORT CLUB
Yes, I’m a member. What do we do?
We build boss forts. Obviously.
To spell it out (borrowing several key phrases from HRBFC President Jonah Kanin), Visigoths and pirates are a constant treat. We need forts to protect ourselves. And if we’re going to build a fort, we better build a fort that is extremely boss.
We meet in Jonah’s room at 10 o’clock on Wednesday nights. Sometimes there are snacks, but when attendance is poor Jonah will often forego this benefit. We use materials at hand—coffee table, mattress, pillows, sheet, string, tape—to build a really, really boss fort. This takes an hour, at the least. Everyone is pretty exhausted by the end.
When the work is done, we photograph the fort from all different angles. Currently we don’t have the technology, but some day we may be able to construct 360-degree images of our forts using modern scanning-technology and lasers and night vision goggles.
Afterwards, we move inside the fort, turn off all the lights, and tell fort-themed stories. Here’s my favorite, from a young man named Ned, liberally transcribed here:
Ned decided to get his motorcycle permit in the spring of last year. He waited in the motorcycle-only line and eventually reached DMV Dale’s corner desk, which strangely resembled a boss fort. Dale went through the typical bureaucratic questions: ID please, social security card please. Then, finally, Dale stamped and signed Ned’s permit, and said, sighing, “Ahh. It feels good to be the king.”
BRAZILIAN THANKSGIVING
Basically a regular Thanksgiving, except the food’s better, the conversation’s more energetic (and in Portuguese) and you can drink mango juice.
DROP IT LIKE IT’S HOT BY SNOOP DOGG
My roommate Rajiv blasted this song on loop for, I swear, twelve days straight. When the pigs try to get at ya’, park it like it’s hot. Park it like it’s hot. When the pimp’s in the crib ma, drop it like it’s hot. Drop it like it’s hot…..And so on.
ENGLISH 168: COUNTERCULTURES OF THE SIXTIES
We read Didion, Mailer and Capote. We talk culture and politics. JFK and revolution. This class has it all. Even Warhol and alt-comix.
THE GOOSE
A ‘zine my friend Gabe and I started, attributed to the fictional translator Don Rubarb Ferdinand. The Goose proposes to tackle a new social concern with each edition (Issue One: The Fascist Goose; Issue Two: The Quasi-Chivalrous Goose). The thing is, Don Rubarb Ferdinand always loses his way, and most of the pieces end up describing women with three arms, pirates and personal advertisements.
We had to get official Harvard approval to distribute our little publication. That means we had to meet with University deans, draft a Goose Constitution and enlist ten other members.
Important note: The Goose is not, as Harvard’s assistant dean was led to believe, a SCUBA-diving organization. To rectify this misunderstanding, Gabe said to the dean, “We are not the SCUBA club. But we certainly aren’t adverse to taking several SCUBA-related trips throughout the year.” The dean was not amused, but he approved us nevertheless.
IDENTITY
I’ve been thinking a lot about national identity and cultural identity. I don’t have family traditions or vivid tales of my ancestors. Nor am I particularly fond of the current state of the U.S.
I can’t describe exactly what I feel is missing—not yet, anyway. Nur Yalman, a retiring professor of anthropology with a terrific accent and a scholarly moustache, has agreed to help me sort things out. For now, I’ll explain myself with a story:
I went with my friends Jose Mario, Monica, Francis and Gabe to the Woolbridge meeting at the beginning of the year. Woolbridge is a social group for international students. This was a get-to-know you meeting, and the first thing we did was go around and say our names and countries.
Gabe said Brazil. Jose Mario, Monica and Francis passed by saying Puerto Rico. Then attention moved toward me.
Sweden, I said. I’m from Sweden.
And it felt good.
PORTUGUESE
Basically Spanish, except you add -sh to everything and, in my case, talk like a robot.
SURPRISED
The word to describe what my roommate’s sister’s friend experienced when she randomly read about Jack and Equus and undies on the internet in the first installment of this diary. I find the notion of reading about someone you know unexpectedly by way of the internet sort of charming. In the spirit of this young woman’s astonishment, I will include here (and in all future entries) the name of one Harvard student who, by some strange chain of events, may come to read these words. This month’s Harvard student is SUPRIYA BALSEKAR.
Supriya, we met during freshman week. Thank you for translating the lyrics to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into an Indian tongue (Hindi, I believe). I still sing that song quite often. Haven’t talked to you much since then. So long.
VALENTINE’S DAY
A holiday my friend Monica and I will exploit next week by going on a fake but still romantic date to the campus dining hall where we will dress up in prom attire, drink cranberry juice out of wine glasses, share delicious cafeteria food and hold hands over a white table cloth.
VES 172: AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM
Former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell, a man who sports long and graying deadlocks, teaches us how to express what we feel about film. Last week, we viewed “The Spook in the Door,” a politically charged artifact of black cinema. This week, it’s something with Sinatra and Dean Martin. Oh, and for what it’s worth, he makes a lot of jokes about the cinematic merits of “Pootie Tang.”
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Now I must run to the laundry room to further shrink my clothing and rid myself of two dozen quarters.
Take care in that wonderful city.
Kevin Feeney
