College as a Candle

Kelton is quiet. The quiet leaves a stickiness in my brain — a fog, of sorts. I’m not used to quiet, especially on a Saturday night. Strange. I wish for real fog. My legs automatically carry me down the sloping pavement; I like when my body runs on autopilot. But I swear, my jeans are in league with the warm January air to suffocate my legs. Which is also strange, by the way. But I suppose I was at Will Rogers State Beach in a bikini right before it burned that January. So, strange isn’t the right word. Maybe just LA. 

I walk past the toilet lying forlorn on the same patch of grass it lay in last week. The poor, abandoned thing. I snort softly, and when I breathe back in, the breeze blows the smell of weed into my dry nostrils. I’ve walked past this toilet so many times, and I’ve smiled down at it so many times, and I’ve started to associate the smell of stagnant, diluted weed with comfort. A new scent enters the scene as I keep moving down the block. The smell of fresh laundry mingles with the tendrils of smoke in the balmy air. If college were a candle, it would be those two scents. But I doubt the wax would capture the smell right. It never does. The candle labeled “petrichor” never truly smells like the soft and sweet ecstasy of the first rain of the season. But I’m always hoping the next one I smell gets it right.

Lady Gaga finishes singing “LoveGame” in my ears, and the opening synths of “DANCE…” by Slayyyter begin. I walk faster, pumping my legs. Sometimes, when I’m alone walking at night, I like to pretend I’m a model. I let my hips sway. I make my footsteps more purposeful. I imagine a me who is not me. I don’t think I could handle being perceived for my body. But I like to imagine I could.

Though I can’t hear the chatter of the soft night over the sound of pop perfection, I make sure to take note of everything around me. I was raised by a San Franciscan mother, after all. I feel like an owl — or a Waymo camera, the way I swing my head back and forth. As the beat kicks into “DANCE…” (just before the 1:00 mark, should you want to recreate this), I step around the final Bird scooter blocking my path. And finally, I’m flying. I am on my own for a moment, before I fly past the man walking up Kelton, not down like me. And I will admit, I hold my breath as he passes. I don’t turn down my music, because of, well, the aforementioned pop perfection, but my head is on a swivel as we cross paths and my eyes track his like laserbeams. Again, owl. Waymo. Missile? Red shell in Mario Kart? My breathing kickstarts when the air returns to its equilibrium after being interrupted by the man’s movement, like a ripple in the water. I don’t disturb the air, of course, because I’ve never been more weightless. I turn onto Levering. Bye, Kelton. Bye, forlorn toilet and Bird scooter graveyard. I’ll probably see you again tomorrow.

My feet slow as I start my trek up Levering. I hate hills. But I like running down them. So I suppose I shouldn’t mind climbing them. Still. My jacket is too warm and my skin starts to feel clammy underneath my layers, but at least the moon is full and shining and my nostrils feel cold if I breathe in hard enough. I wonder what it feels like to vape. Is it cold, too? I probably would have tried vaping by now, but I have asthma. I think. As it turns out, Levering is also a household graveyard. A couch is laid to rest, here. It also lies on its side. I wonder if it knew the toilet. Probably not.

As I sneak another glance at that full moon, I think I see lightning strike. But there are no clouds, and there is no rain because there is no smell of petrichor, and it’s still 70 degrees at 9 p.m. in mid-January. So, it can’t be lightning. But it flashes again! This time, it reveals itself as the flash of a digital camera off the balcony of a building I almost lived in. A me that is not me is up there. I suppose a flash of a camera is close enough to lighting. Except that a camera flash is a marker of time being frozen, whereas lightning signifies a storm growing more alive. Fleeting, either way.

Now, I consider that Kelton might’ve only been quiet because I was listening to Lady Gaga too loudly to hear anything else. Either way, Levering feels louder than Kelton even though the volume of my headphones is the same. It’s because I can see the noise. Groups of girls in their boots and black tops are going out and I hope they saw the lightning too. I briefly think myself a loser for heading home at 9 p.m. instead of leaving my apartment like they are, but maybe I don’t care. And, God, when did this become home? God? I don’t think I believe in any god. I also briefly worry about forgetting this feeling of living in a college town, which joins my perpetual worries about being kidnapped or assaulted, and I would rather be a woman than a man, so it’s okay. I hope my worries get along up there.

But now I have to cross the street, and I have to think about looking both ways as car lights blind me from every direction. I miss the lightning. It was kinder to me in its ephemerality. I quite honestly don’t look too hard before crossing, because what are they going to do? Hit me? Maybe then they’d absolve my student loans. But I’ll pay them back eventually, because I love being alive. Anyway, pedestrians run this town (until I’m driving, and then I do). 

My apartment finally materializes, and I leave behind the intersection to filter more cars through it that will blind someone I’ve passed by on campus before, whose legs will burn just like mine as they walk up this same street, who, even after 3 years here, can’t get used to Westwood’s hills, and who will maybe think about Sisyphus and his rock like me when they walk this path again tomorrow.

And I finally climb my way up the last hill to my apartment door with the little sign that reads “Sorry We’re Awesome” and I finally turn the key into the lock and the smell of weed and laundry will always remind me of being 20 and the toilet and couch will never be claimed and I will never be able to capture the way this feels and how I feel and I