Here It Is, A Special Last Column For Those Graduating
The following column is a special one I wrote that combines elements of columns that never made it with the intended ending of the last column. Thanks for all of your support with the column, and I really couldn't have done it without all my friends being whores. That's hot, Jonathan Majak.
Higher Education
Boyfriend Issues 101
There are few things that compare to the pain and horror inflicted on undergraduates at the end of each semester: registration. The process has always been exhausting experience but nowadays it’s made even worst by that thing called ESIS. Not unlike an asshole boyfriend, ESIS is temperamental, prone to be shut down right when you need it to be open with you, and most likely servicing several others while denying your needs.
As I pounded away at the keys of my laptop, I start contemplating breaking up with asshole boyfriend ESIS, especially when one of my friends IMed me with cheerful news that she had registered.
“You’re such a fucking slut,” I sneered at ESIS before shutting down my computer, heading to the computer lab to print out my DARS.
As I sat in the computer lab with other people who were in mid-fight with their significant other ESIS, I started to mull over my DARS (Degree Audit Report). Right there in my hands was the extent of my college career. If I just followed that, I would graduate.
As I shuffled my way back to my dorm room, I sat down at my computer and started highlighting the classes I needed to take. Editing for Print Media? Highlighted. Movement as Meditation? Highlighted. Possibly Oceanography if I fail the final? Highlighted twice for emphasis. Just like that, I knew what I needed to do to get me where I am supposed to be going.
I sat back in my seat and thought to myself how much easier if there was a Dating Audit Report that you just had to follow the instructions, try to ace, hope not to fail and repeat, and hopefully get you to that graduated state of romantic bliss.
Fearology
While I was pondering my dating future, my friend “Greta” had taken to pondering about her post-college future. For her, the thought of going across the stage to get her diploma had turned into a death march and Pomp and Circumstance a dirge. But at least she had supportive friends.
“You could always work at Wal-Mart,” one of them offered.
Okay, maybe supportive isn’t the correct terminology.
“They’re hiring at Caribou in Hudson. You love Caribou.”
Or maybe it’s not even the right concept.
“So apparently I am going to be living with some guy that lived here first semester,” I babbled to her as she worked the front desk.
Greta’s eyes started to water a little bit. Shit, I thought. When it came to dealing with emotional friends, I was in dire need of a remedial course. But I did what any good friend would do faced with actual human emotions pouring purely out of another person.
“Umm, I think American Idol is starting, gotta run,” I stammered before bolting.
That night, when I tried to add Movement as Meditation, ESIS didn’t work.
“I hate you so hard right now,” I sneered.
A few days later, a group of us went out to the bars with it being the last Thirsty Thursday of the year. Greta had been able to pull herself up from her bed into an outfit and shuffle herself to the bars with the rest of us.
She was perky enough as we stopped at Associated Bank for me to get some money but just like buying a paper online, Greta’s feelings finally fully caught up with her there in the waiting area of the bank.
“What’s going on?” I said or more accurately shouted. “You know I can’t handle people that cry!”
“If I was going to plan to have a breakdown that you would be the last person I would choose to have around during it!” she yelled back, moving outside and sitting on a bench. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t want to go home and I don’t know what is going to happen and I just don’t want to leave all of you guys.”
And there it was. Another one of the most horrifying pains that can be inflicted on an undergraduate: the idea of having to go it alone.
Survey of Modern American Flirtation, Part 1
While I hurriedly tried to read the master class list, I got an instant message from Ridley the Rugby Player who expressed his own reading habit.
“It’s been forever since I read your profile,” he wrote me, “but I am a habitual reader of the column.”
“Actually starting to work on a special column for my friend Greta’s graduation,” I wrote back, resigning myself that ESIS was in full passive-aggressive mode. “I'm putting together the original ending with the original beginning column that never went out.”
“Sounds tough,” he wrote to me. “As your unofficial muse, how can I help?”
“Give me words of encouragement and be cute and I might just bump you up to official muse,” I typed back. “You get a free toaster with that.”
“An adjustable one so I can adjust it from bagel to a slice of bread?” he asked.
“I think I can swing that,” I replied.
“Is love required from a muse?”
“Nope, but I get to lust after you so it's all good,” I remarked. “You just have to remain desirable, can you handle that responsibility?”
“I think I can,” he replied. “So people have started obsessing over me?”
“Well a lot of people were completely unprepared for you since every column ended with me being disappointed by guys but vowing to be optimistic.”
“Does this mean I get to have groupies?” he asked. “I wonder if they rent those.”
“Wouldn’t they be called renties then?” I countered.
“What?” he said, pausing a moment in conversation. “Sorry, it’s getting late. My super human/muse abilities are fading.”
“Well you go to bed and regenerate and get back to full muse powers,” I suggested.
“Ok,” he said, sending a smiley face. “May the force be with you.”
Ridley logged off. I went back and tried ESIS one more time. This time it was effective. Apparently my asshole technological boyfriend got jealous.
Art Appreciation
“Carrie gave me her Tim McGraw poster,” Greta beamed to me. “And before you say anything, I realize that you don’t care at all.”
“You know me so well,” I replied.
Writing for the Mass Media
In the midst of all of the craziness of the end of the year hoopla, I decided to focus on one task at a time to help get me better at a Zen state so I decided to clean out my campus email. It was during this purging that I noticed an email from the advisor to the Student Voice:
Jon:
Tomorrow (Thursday, May 5) will be the Journalism Department award
reception in Rodli Blue Room 5-7 p.m. Your work has been selected for an
award, which will be bestowed tomorrow during the program. We would be
delighted if you could attend the reception, enjoy some refreshments and
mingle with some of your Voice colleagues.
I apologize for the extreme lateness of this invitation and notice. The
department sent out announcements to all journalism majors who'd won
awards, but I'm afraid word didn't get out to you because your name was
not on that list.
I do hope you can join us.
I did as I was instructed and showed up to a banquet for all journalism students, which was held in the River Room and not the Rodli Blue Room. One would have guessed that of all people, a journalism department would be able to disseminate accurate information. Granted, if misinformation is good enough for the New York Times, it’s good enough for the Student Voice.
“You’re winning an award?” columnist and my future editor B.J. asked me as I sat down at his table.
I stared at him a bit. At all functions there are the tables that seat the adults, the tables where people discuss the important decisions of the world. As I looked around and saw my former editor, who incidentally I had to coach down from a bar table a few days prior, I realized that this was the other table.
“I guess so,” I said as I sat down. “Man, if I knew this was going to be so awards-y, I would have put in a request for a red carpet so I could do some Joan Rivers-esque coverage because you know I could rock that shit.”
While the other tables discussed the ins-and-outs of the journalism field, our table discussed the various ins-and-outs of sex including B.J.’s quest to find out whether or not he was circumcised, the gay hookups at Karges which we volunteered the other future editor to go to do some literal undercover work on, and all of the other topics that had the alumni sitting at the next table crinkling up their noses in disgust. It had taken me a long, long time but for the first time in my educational career I had ended up at the cool table.
“And the next award is for best obituary,” said the speaker.
“You have to be kidding me,” I said, choking on my Sprite.
“That’s going to make for one hell of an acceptance speech,” B.J. joked.
An hour and five million awards later, I was working my way through my fifth plate of chips when the speaker started talking again.
“The next award goes to the column entitled ‘Piling Accomplishments on the Plate of Life,” I heard him say.
I choked on my chips.
“You okay there Majak?” Elle, the former editor asked.
“I’ve choked on my Sprite and chips,” I sighed. “Being gay, you’d think I wouldn’t have such bad gag reflexes.”
“This is a deeply personal column that quietly argues the point that gays and heterosexuals often desire the same out of life-love, friendship, and family,” the speaker continued. “He examines his own ‘emotional malnourishment’ vis-à-vis his relationships and yearns for his life at some point to be ‘truly full.’ It is not easy opening up your life for such an intensely personal column.”
Before I knew it, I was up out of my seat and walking up to the podium to receive my award. As I felt the paper press into my hand, I realized that I had graduated. I had gone from the freshmen gay that didn’t know how to exist to a gay sex columnist. As I heard the clapping, it was then that I realized that I had spent so much time thinking about boyfriends and Dating Audit Reports that I had forgotten the little steps, the little graduations towards full maturation.
Survey of Modern American Flirtation, Part 2
“I got an award for best column of the year,” I wrote to Ridley.
“That’s awesome,” he wrote back. “That’s cause for celebration. If only I had alcohol to celebrate with. Which column?”
“The food one,” I wrote back.
“Hey that column is the best I have ever read from you,” he wrote, adding a smiley face. “I wish I could write like you.”
“I’ll teach you that one of these days,” I wrote back teasingly. “Then you can teach me what the hell rugby is about.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he replied.
Human Issues
As the last days of finals week wraps up, UW-River Falls was clouded over with rain but some sunshine had been able to break through in the form of Greta’s new positive outlook.
“I started to look for a job,” she smiled to me as I visited her at the front desk.
“And you can come and visit me this summer when I’m doing my cleaning job,” I sighed. “You know, one of my friends said that he’d pay money to see me do the job since I’m like Paris Hilton without the millions of dollars but with the same sense of entitlement.”
“That’s pretty accurate,” she smirked.
“We going out tonite?” I asked her.
She stared at me for a second.
“Why do I even ask anymore?” I laughed. “Give me like an hour head start to get ready.”
“As usual,” she smiled.
I went into my room and closed the door, pulling up the shades to look out the window. The lights were all on in the buildings, people were outside hitting a volleyball around. I smiled a bit and decided to check on my boyfriend ESIS one last time. I looked and saw all my classes had come through. We broke up right then.
I then checked my email and saw that Alex had tied for best actor this year in the full-production plays. Agatha and Duran called, telling me they were going to be out of town but inviting me to come over to watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. In the middle of our talking, I sent a message to Thad the Cad calling him a whore and asking if he was going out.
I decided that I would wear my red Converse shoes and as I tied them, I thought to myself that this is what higher education is all about. It’s about growing, crying, fearing, learning, and eventually graduating. But the most important thing when you walk across that stage and get your accomplishment handed to you that you’ve worked so hard on--whether it be a great love, a great career, or just the possibility of a great future-that you don’t forget those precious moments, those little classes, tests, and exams that you’ve gone through to get there.
I downloaded one last song and listened it to before I headed upstairs to join my friends, my family, my study group of sorts as we continued our education of all the different flavors of Boones Farm but as I turned off the light, I had the song still in my head:
Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side
Rainbow's are visions
They're only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some chose to
Believe it
But I know they're wrong wait and see
Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
Who said that every wish
Would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that
And someone believed it
And look what it's done so far
What's so amazing
That keeps us star gazing
What so we think we might see
Someday we'll find it
That rainbow connection
The lovers the dreamers and me
Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices
I've heard them calling my name
Are these the sweet sounds that called
The young sailors
I think they're one and the same
I've heard it too many times to ignore it
There's something that I'm supposed to be
Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me