A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (12 page)

Nothing delivered a bigger blow to my mental and emotional state, however, than my incredibly foolish decision to attend Rutgers University. As the premier state university of New Jersey, Rutgers has a proud history. It is one of nine colleges that existed in the United States during the colonial era. Among its alumni are Paul Robeson, Milton Friedman, and the dude who discovered antibiotics. But walking around campus after my arrival there, I soon came to realize that 1998 was a low point for the school. The crumbling buildings were a sign that the school wasn't the academic stalwart it once was, and the mind-boggling
amount of construction sites pointed toward a rebuilt future that I would unfortunately not be around to enjoy.

Rutgers during my stay was both overcrowded and filthy. My dorm was perched up against the Raritan River, so that light-brown malaria pit was the view from my room. My roommate was an Estonian nationalist known as “the Russian Bear.” The very best thing Rutgers had going for it, as far as I was concerned, was a group of trailers called “the Grease Trucks.” They sold sandwiches, including one called a “Fat Bitch” that contained a cheesesteak, fries, mozzarella sticks, and chicken fingers. Let me reiterate—this was
the best thing the place had going for it
. Not that I had a right to be choosy. My main reason for going to Rutgers was that they didn't make me write an essay as part of the application.

Looking back on it now, I realize Rutgers and I had a lot in common: in a few years we would turn out fine, but back then we were both feeling pretty beat up. In the midst of that first semester, however, it was hard for me to see the bright side. In truth, I was miserable.

I tried to explain to my mom how unhappy I was.

“You've only been there five weeks,” she replied, her voice devoid of sympathy.

“I mean, Mom,” I said, “last night, a fat Asian guy threw up spaghetti in the showers and then tried to make out with me.”

I registered the pause as my mother attempted to process the fact that homosexuals not only existed but also talked to her son. “I don't think you should tell me that, Chris,” she said quietly.

My father, Johnny Education, was no help either. He went to Montclair State, near our house, and he would often tell stories about his time there.

“I worked every day stocking shelves,” he'd say. “Then, at the end of my shift, I'd drive over there and take night classes. I was tired all the time.”

He graduated in three years. Then he went on to get two master's degrees and an MBA. He recently received his PhD. Needless to say, my complaints about wanting to leave school were not the sort of thing I could talk to my dad about.

The next person I turned to was my usually reliable brother Gregg. After I told him how I was feeling, he drove to Rutgers and hung out in my dorm.

“So dude, what's going?” he asked upon arriving.

“Man, I don't know. I don't think this place is for me . . . at all,” I answered.

“Cool,” he said. “So how many girls live on your floor?”

Gregg's priorities were clearly not with helping his little brother.

With all of these factors lined up and pushing me into a very depressed corner, I did what anyone who was eighteen in the late '90s would do—I retreated to the Internet. Specifically, to AOL's Instant Messenger program.

At any moment I wasn't in class (my favorite that semester was “Dinosaurs,” because every time it met, the professor would grab at his hair in frustration and shout, “They're just birds,” over and over again) or at the dining hall (where my favorite meal—one that I ate at least once and sometimes twice a day—was four separate bowls of Cocoa Krispies, a plate of cheese fries, and copious amounts of cranberry juice), I was online, talking to friends from high school and my family. I was doing anything and everything to avoid dealing with the reality of my actual existence, so naturally I spent hours sitting at my computer.

My name online was “Framsky.” And “Framsky,” probably due to the fact that it's much easier to hide emotions in typed messages on a screen as opposed to actual conversations with real people, wasn't half as sad or miserable as “Chris” was. “Framsky” was getting me through many days, and even more nights. While
other kids were going to dorm-sponsored get-to-know-you events, I could sit online and tell my high school friends how lame things like that were, and not have to admit that it was my own social anxiety keeping me from participating. When people invited me to parties, I could act busy in front of the computer screen instead of owning up to the fact I felt too uncomfortable in my own skin to do anything around that many people.

I would even IM with the kid who lived directly across the hall from me, a ridiculously tall half-Asian kid named Andy. I'm still not sure why Andy and I didn't just walk across the hall and hang out. A typical conversation looked like this:

Such were the types of high-minded, empowering conversations that served as life rafts, keeping one's psyche afloat.

That is, until the day “Framsky” was taken away from me.

One December night at about eight, I got a message from an acquaintance of mine named Rob. Rob went to Princeton, but was a friend of some friends I had met at Rutgers.

“Chris!” his message read. “WATCH OUT!”

Before I could even finish typing and sending the word “why,” over thirty strangers randomly messaged me with no provocation. While I was trying to sort out what Rob's message was about, and what the strange feeding frenzy of online messages was for, they all began to “warn” me. As any avid IM user knows, too many warnings means you get booted from the program. I was cut off.

Sitting there on a Friday night, lonely and depressed, a Fat Bitch working its way through my intestinal tracts, I found myself unable to access my precious Instant Messenger. Suddenly, a rage known only to those with Irish blood raised by a melodramatic mother in a neighborhood full of self-hating Catholics burst within me. Even though no one else was there—not even the Russian Bear—I looked up at my filthy, cracked ceiling and let out a scream.

I immediately ran to the phone and called the friends who had introduced me to Rob—or, as I knew him online, Prfsr-Frink. They gave me his number.

“Chris?” he answered. He knew I would be calling.

“Rob,” I said, “what was that? I mean—what WAS that?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “This kid who lives on my floor, he's been doing that all day to people. He calls them IM bombs. He thinks it's really funny.”

“IM bomb? Why? What did I do to him?” I asked.

“Nothing. He just organizes a bunch of people and they do it randomly,” Rob said. “He came into my room and took your name. I didn't realize. I'm really sorry.”

“Rob, what's the kid's deal?” I asked, my mood shifting from confusion to anger.

“Well, it's Deh-reek,” he said. “You gotta understand, he's a good guy, but—”

“Why do you say his name like that?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Deh-reek,” I repeated. “I've never heard that name before.”

“Well, it's spelled like Derek, but he pronounces it Dehr-eek,” Rob answered.

The grievances were piling up quickly. Not only did he IM bomb me, this guy also pronounced his name pretentiously. But what truly sealed Derek's fate was the fact that he attended Princeton. Even the most self-loathing Rutgers students have a
natural hatred for our Ivy League neighbors. We're blue-collared. They're blue-blooded. We don't like it.

“What's his deal again?” I asked.

“Well,” Rob said, “he's from Toronto, and—”

I exploded into the phone. “This fucking Canadian fuck.”

I don't have a problem with Canadians per se; in fact, I wish we had their health care system. But I do have a problem with any Canadian who thinks he's going to walk onto my turf, New Jersey, and pull a fast one on me. New Jersey may not be the prettiest place in the world, but it's mine.

“Rob, what's the name of your dorm?” I asked. He told me.

Then, I took action. I threw open my door and saw Andy sitting with his door open across the hall. Andy was as depressed and crazy as I was, plus he had a car.

“Andy,” I said. He turned around. “Want to drive to Princeton and beat up some Princeton kid?”

He answered “Yes” instantaneously, and with surprisingly little emotion in his voice. He didn't even look surprised at my query. It was as if he had been waiting all night for someone to walk by and offer a midnight beating of a Princeton student.

We called our other friend Jeff, who came running over. The three of us dressed in black from head to toe—black puffy jackets, black pants, black wool hats. We got in Andy's car, and we were off—three true-blue Jersey kids on our way to Princeton.

“How far is it again?” Jeff asked, shifting uncomfortably in the back seat.

“Maybe thirty miles,” Andy answered. Thirty miles was all that separated our shitball college from one of the most prestigious schools on earth.

“W
hoa,” I gasped when we finally pulled up alongside Princeton's gates.

“Yeah,” Andy said. “It's fucking beautiful.”

All three of us shook our heads. Princeton was the complete opposite of Rutgers.

“It's so clean,” Jeff said. We were shocked that a school could be so grime-free.

Princeton was clearly not the type of place where you got in without writing an essay.

“We probably shouldn't have dressed in all black,” Andy said.

It suddenly dawned on us that at Princeton, someone was likely to stand out if he wasn't wearing khaki pants. Rocking wannabe paramilitary gear wasn't the best choice if we wanted to go unnoticed. It was the type of place where people were probably mortified at the sight of jeans, let alone people dressed up like James Bond movie henchmen. We knew we had to act fast or the police would be on their way, but were chagrined to realize that Derek's dorm was located at the opposite side of campus from where we parked. We sprinted, knowing we probably wouldn't make it there without being swept up like the state-school trash we were.

Luckily for us, it was as if the Princetonites couldn't even see us. No one blinked. It's my assumption that we had the same effect on them as Columbus's ships did on the Indians—none. They couldn't even fathom that we existed in their reality.

We made our way to the dorm and found we needed a magnetic swipe card to enter. This surprised us—at Rutgers, anyone could just walk into any dorm at any time. We responded in the only way we could think of—we tried to kick the door down. It wouldn't give. A young gentleman in a pair of khakis and loafers saw us in our frustration and walked up to us.

“Need to get inside?” he asked, smiling. He looked like an average turn-of-the-twenty-first-century preppy type, but his tone of voice was like Potsy or Dennis the Menace, something from a more innocent time. Clearly, this Princeton student had never tasted a Fat Bitch. He'd yet to have his optimistic outlook crushed by the harsh realities of life, like ours had.

“Yeah,” we each grunted in a low guttural tone, the kind produced by months of damaging our throats with malt liquor, and hinting at the insomnia caused by the despair of our general direction.

He swiped us right in, apparently not sensing that we were clearly up to no good.

When we had left for Princeton, we planned on scaring Derek good. We didn't really think we were going to do any serious damage to him. But what we saw in the lobby of that immaculate, pristinely maintained dorm changed a lot of things for us that night, and sadly, a lot of things for Derek.

Gathered in the middle of the dorm were a group of about fifteen kids. Every single one of them was wearing a sweater and/or turtleneck. They were standing around the dorm's
grand piano
.
Grand
.
Piano
.

And they were singing Christmas carols.

Driving from the banks of the muddy Raritan—from the 400-person classes, from the bug-infested living areas, from the realization that every day for the next four years was going to be a lackluster one, to this, to Christmas carols, to the blind, unbothered, let's-get-together-and-belt-out-a-good-Silent-Night world of Princeton—pushed a button inside all three of us. Andy, Jeff, and I all froze, our seething resentment mixing with our collective self-loathing into a dangerously combustible mixture. This wasn't just cheesy. This wasn't just white bread in a way that
would never survive at Rutgers. This was a rallying call to war. We were three kids who existed in a place where we found it hard to feel good about anything. We were three kids who woke up every day a little pissed off about how things were going. Most of all, we were three kids who spent so much time uncertain and angry that we were scared about whether we were going to turn out okay.