There is an underlying humor hiding beneath the mundane excitement of returning to school. The mental shock of trying to remember all the names you should know and a necessary effort to learn new ones, stemming not from social interest, but more directly from social requirement. The next step in the evolution of U.Va. night life is of course the first-year class, and even though they are just as amusing as they are simultaneously annoying, each of us was there in the extremely recent past. Even the frustration of waiting in the 1:30 a.m. crowd to close your tab at Jabberwoke can't mask the quiet satisfaction of being back in Charlottesville and starting a new school year.
As you begin to settle and can smell comfort approaching, classes begin and assignments materialize in the overpriced mound of books you have to carry away from the overcrowded bookstore. But what area of this city is not crowded? Well, most of it is, so if the claustrophobic twitch begins to affect your handwriting, an emotional release becomes necessary. There are the common options of TV or movie watching, a journey into some unrelated novel (if you are not reading too much already) or a night of blacking out and waking the next morning to a day full of recovery by way of vitamin C boosters and estrangement from your own body and its new contusions and aches. Of course these are all less direct methods of escape than the obvious -- to just get the hell out of town.
For a few of us, that is exactly what had become immediately necessary. The two-and-a-half-hour journey to the Chesapeake and the house in which we planned to sleep was only a temporary burden considering the fruits to be rewarded upon arrival. As you approach the coast, you can roll down the windows and feel the salt air climbing your olfactory glands and cleansing your conscience. Not a person is in sight, which is a very rewarding feeling after leaving Charlottesville and its civilian congestion. Even though the sky looked like a louching glass of absinthe, we were not perturbed by any means -- just happy to be away for a while.
The stress and frustration of Charlottesville is easily forgotten during three summer months of down time. But the first three days of a new semester alone can make a preacher cuss -- or at least stare off into space in quiet contemplation while playing a hand pipe like the one in "Kill Bill vol 2." We filed out of our cars and into our friend's home on the bay. There was much rejoicing...Yea.
The reaching of our goal was so overwhelming that you immediately lost all control over yourself and jumped into the swimming pool. Of course this was counter productive because we immediately had to get out, dry off and make a stiff drink. Screw the drink! How 'bout a jar of corn whiskey? Mmmmmm, that sounds nice. I think I'll have that.
A combination of drinking, boating and wake-boarding in the rain while Bob Marley wails from the boat's CD player will alleviate even the most severe psychological stress. All of your pains and problems are washed away as the boat rocks too far starboard and splashes water over your face. But it's hard to ski when there is no sun, so new activities had to be forged. And of course the logical conclusion is starting an enormous fire.
The heat is so intense that you must stand about 15 feet away from the fire, but it is very fun to throw cups of gasoline into the raging inferno and watch a fireball of black and red rise up and puff out over your head, slowly disintegrating in the air above. And when the bugs get to you, just retreat inside, finish the jar of whiskey and hang out with some bull frogs until about four in the morning.
When the sun rose and we crawled out of our beds and off the floor, the John Deere Gator 6x4 stared at us menacingly. The taunting was too much and the challenge had to be accepted. Recent alumnus Nick Harris accepted that challenge, and even though he was sober and it was 11 in the morning, we knew that something terrible had happened when he walked back 15 minutes after driving off on it. "I mean the tree was right there, and I just kind of felt like smashing into it." Sometimes you just have to answer the call and dance with the devil in the pale moon light.
Then we had to drive back two-and-a-half hours so we could show up for Monday classes and read 400 pages in preparation. Are we out of absinthe already?
Brett Meeks is a Cavalier Daily Life Columnist. He can be reached at meeks@cavalierdaily.com.
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