The One Who Sinks

We found ourselves again in the cold rain, outside a colossal cement, research structure, the kind that made modernists proud of the future they once imagined.

In a classroom, an overenthusiastic undergraduate asked persistent questions in a graduate seminar, with no sense of shame. The one who sinks, studying the nondescript major, noticed and later asked for help. I was a nerd in this class, he took it as an elective. He used it as a hobby, for me it consumed me, sank years of my life. Nevertheless, he needed help with the homework.

He studied some nondescript major he didn’t even care about. He inhaled the crackling fire of a cheap cigarette, maybe a menthol, I don’t remember. The rain pooled itself into a mirror for the lonely sodium lamp, another fading symbol of high modernism. I exhaled some poison from the same flame he shared with me. He had so many fucking cigarettes, a pack in each pocket of his pants, jacket, backpack, and half were labeled in another language (yeah, they also had a really regretful looking dude in the cover).

Inside the colossus, we silently laughed as we sighed across the room while typing essays on a library computer. It was always full, it smelled of sweat, noodles, and some asshole was always eating melted cheese. Others caffeinated themselves at the small café across the overhead lines and rails. Instead of bringing back a smell, they pervaded the atmosphere with their shitty stress, as if we didn’t have our own. My life ran on cortisol and shame in those years.

He told me to call him by his last name, since his first name was hard to pronounce in English. I looked it up, years later, and found out he came from an important family, so important a website called it a “clan.” It turns out? This fucking clan is still fighting over ancient burial grounds with another “clan.” His name means something like “that which is sinking.” This last name apparently is as old as like, 1,000 BC. On the other hand, my last name was made up in the Middle Ages and means, like, “scary stick” or something. Before then, my family only had first names (but they probably lived close to a really big fucking stick, so some Lord could keep track of them…or maybe he hit them with a stick when they tried to run from serfdom, idk). Indoeuropean separates out lineages, too. The last online post I remember him sharing was about how cats apparently think we’re just hairless cats, so they hunt animals for us because they think we’re really fucking stupid cats. I had to use Google translate to understand what he shared.

One night it was really cold, but he waved me over from across the room and I nodded “fuck yeah” back. I grabbed a diet, carbonated something, some God forsaken—Erythrosine, Red No. 3 dye—containing, corn-syruped, gelatin thing, and followed him out. He gave me free cigarettes which probably corresponded to a deficit, in his checkbook, if he followed double-entry methods. I have absolutely no recollection what we talked about, but standing there, in the cold, taking unprescribed stimulants while staring at the nostalgic sodium light—now bouncing off of ice—gave me a strange feeling of full satisfaction. A Socialist Realist writer might call this a moment “proletarian satisfaction,” agglutinate some word in a Slavic language for it, and write a novel about how “this is how the proletariat is,” so some undergrad would go “oh wow” and join a cause for ten years of their lives. Some Church Father would call it “God,” but I don’t know where the Erythrosine would fit into theology. Or maybe it was a Shomin-geki (庶民劇), if Wikipedia is right. Still, I absolutely cherished my smoke breaks with Mr. Sinking Ship, or whatever his name meant. He had no idea how much I hated my life and every activity, work, and relationship I was a part of, nor did he understand the sheer sense of communion I felt when we stood there, silently.

My last semester, I got out of class and went to the colossal structure. The elevator was locked for the upper floods, making some think they were doing highly unethical things with taxpayer money. The last time I had tried to go up there was with someone I thought would be the love of my life, even if they didn’t shower as often as they should. Much to my chagrin and shock, this person who smelled like moldy laundry didn’t want commitment.

I took the elevator up a few floors, though, and looked out into the night. The window was covered in what seemed to be decades of salt. I was one of the last people on campus. I went out the back door, checked in my jacket, and found a partially smoked cigarette covered in lint. I was absolutely going to smoke it. I lit it up, though, and found no satisfaction in the experience. Smoking was just a means to bond in the cold. I tried to smoke with other people throughout the years, but they all fucking sucked at being smoke buddies, you have to know how to poison yourself properly.

The back of that library is one of the holiest places in my mind, a small sanctuary to a friendship that gave and took just enough, exchanged in moderation, and left a small mark next to a lamp that probably blinds the odd passerby with LEDs nowadays. I hope, more than anything, that he is well, and that his nondescript major gave him more satisfaction than what he thought my vocation gave me.