Like Mud Pressed Through a Sieve
Freshman Year.
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Hello,
It’s been a minute! How are you? — Oh wow, interesting! That sounds intense!
Excuse my absence. I have a note from my doctor if you need to see it. No, I’ve been on the road and otherwise working on a new novel which requires 99% of my heart and focus. Hence my reticence.
I come to you now with another Composition Notebook (link at the bottom). This one runs from August to December of 1998, which includes my first semester as a student at Barnard College….
I was just reminiscing about that time. This was back in the day when you could request a SMOKING ROOM in the dorms. (BTW I was 17 my entire freshman year.) So I was in a “smoking triple” and it was insane—my roommates hated me so much. I was so uptight. I went to sleep at 8:30 every night with earplugs and eye mask. I don’t know why. I remember very little from college but that cigarette hallway is so clear in my mind. The doorframes were painted lilac. There were rats. And the posters in the bathroom stalls of ripped out magazine editorials of heroin-chic models and big red block lettering saying “THIS ISN’T A GOOD ROLE MODEL!” So that those of us puking in the toilets…wouldn’t?
I ended up requesting to move into a non-smoking dorm the second semester, so I had to quit smoking (temporarily) to justify the move, but honestly I just couldn’t hang. The smoking dorm was too intimate and the girls were too tough and I was a softy crazy person with too much to hide and I have severe sleeping disabilities. The college moved me into a double with a Russian girl from Brooklyn who was the first person I ever met who wore thong underwear.