Wrestling with the Devil (Imbolc 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)
At college, I lived in the same dorm room for nearly three
years. My university had a requirement that all freshmen live in the dorms at
least a year before moving off campus or into a subsidized apartment. That
first year, our floor of ten rooms was a random collection of stoners,
rednecks, frat boys, athletes, hippies and suburban misfits, not all mutually
exclusive, packed three to a room. Pretty much like every college across the
country.
By winter quarter, maybe a sixth of the guys had cleared
out, claiming spots in frat houses down by the river or sneaking into
apartments with upperclassmen while their parents still paid for a bed. With a
bit more breathing room, the rest of the floor began reordering itself into
groups based less on some arcane stochastic process and more on shared
interests and compatibility. That’s how Rick came to live in the room next to
mine.
Rick was a hippie, a libertarian and one of the sharpest
software engineers I’ve known. He was a year older than the rest of us, serving
out a yearlong exile from Carnegie Mellon after a mysterious run-in with his
department head the year before. Because he never planned on staying longer
than his sentence, he remained somewhat derisive of the school, its teachers
and his classmates. He was also more than a bit willful and impetuous, proclaiming
at the beginning of fall quarter that he would wear nothing but shorts and tee-shirts
with no shoes all winter because it never got cold in Florida. I can still see him
hobbling barefoot to class early one November morning with the temperature hovering
at 39. When he went home for the holidays, he came back with a coat.
Despite all that, I liked him. He was generally easy-going
and usually fun to be around. We had similar taste in music. He didn’t borrow
my stuff without asking then treat it as his own like a number of other
degenerates on our floor. He had the cool air of confidence that came with
being a red-shirt freshman. I sensed somewhere beneath his mask lurked a decent
human being. As time and forced contact bred familiarity, we confided in each
other and connected in some meaningful way.
The university had turned a blind eye to our floor being
mostly down to two in a room after what I assumed was an annual stealth
evacuation. That’s where Rick’s compassionate hippie nature got the best of him.
Somewhere in his travels he’d run across a couple local construction workers
who started hanging out. One went by the name of Donald Bradley.
Neither Don nor his friend were college types but both them
were interested in partying which was one of Rick’s favorite pastimes. Don soon
became a fixture on our floor, though his friend just as quickly disappeared.
Come to find out Don had spun Rick some woe-is-me sob story of being homeless,
something about a girlfriend or roommates kicking him out. So Rick, according
to his nature, gave him a place to live. No one was using that extra bed
anyway.
Don was four years older than the rest of us, sun-baked and
well-muscled from his work outdoor. He spent most of his energy trying to
convince us that we were wasting our time learning a bunch of useless
knowledge, that we could haul down serious cash in construction right now. The
irony of his squatting on charity in a college dorm wasn’t lost on us. Most of
us were uncomfortable having him around. He had a look and demeanor that spoke
of unpredictability and thinly veiled potential violence. We all knew Don was
using Rick, but in some foolish bond of youthful solidarity and shared misery
none of us blew him in to the university.
By February, Don had become well entrenched on our floor,
showering in the communal bathroom, hanging out in people’s rooms, entering and
leaving unobserved through the back door beneath the staircase. So I wasn’t
really surprised when I returned from class one afternoon to find Rick, Don, and
another couple guys from our floor waiting in my room. I knew by their postures
and the look in their eyes that something was up, something I probably wasn’t
going to like.
Turns out they’d heard it was my birthday. I’m not sure who’d
told them. I tend to keep details like that close with casual contacts. I’d
never fit on the floor in because I’d never felt I had much in common with the other
guys and it probably showed. I think some of them thought I needed a lesson. Or
maybe this was some testosterone-addled form of acceptance. Either way, Don had
convinced the other three that they should give me upgraded ritual spanking.
The plan was to tie me to a chair and leave me in the shower.
You know, good, clean, guys being guys sort of fun. The type of stuff I’d never
cottoned to in my life, either on the giving or receiving end, and wasn’t about
to start to now. But what I thought really didn’t enter the equation as the
others were convinced that this was the perfect birthday gift. Don said he
would hold me still while the others did the work. With four of them, it would
take a few minutes tops before they could taunt me with some well-earned beers then
they settled in to get me drunk.
Sorry fellas, I think I have other plans.
The four of them jumped me anyway and wrestled me onto a bed
without much problem. I’m not certain what they expected; I guess that I would
eventually just give in to the spirit of the moment. That was never going to
happen, not without a fight.
All my life, people have underestimated me. More than once
I’ve been the target of bullies, probably because I don’t look all that
intimidating and tend to avoid conflict where I can. But when trouble jumps
off, I don’t back down, often to my detriment. Growing up in a house with a
couple abusive people either beats you down or sparks a fire within your soul.
With me, it laid the tinder.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big guy. Back then I was
tall and lanky, not yet filled out like most men now. But I’m still wiry and my
lever-arms are long. Plus I’m willful and evil cunning when backed into a
corner. It probably doesn’t hurt that living in fear for most of my life left me
with crazy eyes.
So I unleashed my inner demons and allowed them to erupt.
While I could never quite break free, every time the four of them thought they
had me immobilized, I slipped sideways somehow. Though we weren’t really trying
to hurt each other, I didn’t mind using my knees and elbows to make a point.
When the other two guys understood I wasn’t taking this as a
prank, they suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be. Don and Rick
kept at it, thinking they’d eventually wear me down. They were both stronger
than I was, and there were still two of them after all. But fear and adrenaline
make powerful allies.
Unfortunately, the math had turned against me. Two was
greater than four because they no longer got in each other’s way. My dorm-mates
were mostly undisciplined stoners so had never evolved from a simple pack
mentality to coordinated attacks. And Don relied exclusively on might makes
right to win the day.
My struggle turned into an existential crisis. I fought and
fought and fought until my muscles ached and my skin was raw and red. I knew I
had to keep them off balance or risk being drawn into a war of attrition. If
these two tied me to anything and left me anywhere, I’d probably stay all night
to justify their grief.
Finally, Rick, too, got the message that mine wasn’t a token
resistance. Besides, after so much exertion, he desperately needed a cigarette.
He collapsed onto another bed and started cajoling me to submit to the
inevitable as he satisfied his addiction. When he recognized that surrender wasn’t
in the offing, he reluctantly switched to Don.
But Don wouldn’t have any part of it. He’d be damned before
some skinny college boy got the best of him. At this point he had me in a full body
lock, contained but uncontrollable unless I let him. Encouraged by even odds, I
honed my tactics and started pitting his strength against him. He had to keep
his body taut in every possible direction to prevent me from slipping free. I
could mostly rest as I picked the direction of my next attack. Which I did
relentlessly each time his concentration lapsed.
My long-term strategy paid a dividend when I threw another
change-up. I lulled Don into loosening his grip by playing possum, a trick I’d
learned when someone tried to drown me when I was ten. Sensing victory, he
relaxed just half a second too long. I seized my opportunity like Caesar at the
Rubicon. Before Don could react, I burst up and out the door. Behind me I heard
Rick say, it’s not worth it. Just let him go.
Even then, I stayed away a good, long time. I re-entered the
dorm only cautiously then locked myself in my room. I watched my back for at
least a week and disappeared all the next weekend. Don struck me as the
unforgiving kind. The kind with a very long memory of defeat.
Soon after, campus security caught wind of Don’s covert living
arrangements. He had to leave the dorm or risk arrest. The following quarter,
Rick left, too, returning to his predestined path in Pennsylvania .
We exchanged a letter or two but soon fell into characteristic college silence.
Despite the one encounter and losing touch, I still considered him a friend,
one of the few I counted my freshman year.
Fast forward to the Facebook era. Like a number of people
I’d somehow made an impression on without realizing it, Rick reached out with a
friend request. We did the usual, exchanging some posts and comments and a few
messages to catch up. He even led me to a number of my current online friends.
One day a couple years ago, I spotted a message from him in
my inbox. “Remember him?” was the only preamble to the enclosed website. And
there in the preview pane was Don’s mug shot. I recognized him immediately and
followed the link to what turned out to be a Florida Department of Corrections
webpage. Not just any DoC webpage, their list of current death row inmates. My
blood went colder than Lake Baikal
Turns out our quasi-dorm-mate had been sentenced in a murder-for-hire
scheme he’d successfully carried out. As an added perk, by the time we’d met
him, he’d already done one year of a three year stint for failure to appear. Rick’s
only other comment when I got back to him was “No real surprise.” I wasn’t sure
exactly what to make of that.
Now I wrestle with this memory. Rick’s message serves as a
reminder of just how lucky I’ve been throughout my life, often without
realizing it. The situations we find ourselves in can quickly turn
unpredictable. You never know exactly who you’re dealing with. And sometimes a random
encounter kicks off with a dorm-mate who can’t turn away a stray.
So how does all this relate to Imbolc? I’m not sure it does
except through proximity to the date. It is just one of many life events that
shaped my outlook, though one that has obviously lingered more than most. Memories
like this sometimes haunt me now, kicking like lambs in their mothers’ wombs on
the eve of Celtic spring. Perhaps a sign that they are preparing to emerge in
warmer, safer, more contented days.
© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III
