Jay Fox - THE WALLS

I learned that the girl who resembled Neela had a name all her own, one that wasn’t provided by the oglers who came up with very inventive sobriquets by which to call her when she was beyond earshot, the most common of which was Coco-butters (a friend was fond of calling any pair of tits larger than a C cup “butters” or “butteries,” and, in this case, the coco- prefix came about for obvious reasons). This name was Vinati. And as beautiful as she was, she proved to be a short-lived infatuation. It's not that she was frigid or snobbish; in fact, she was far more outgoing than I had initially assumed. It was just that I realized very quickly that she could do better than me; furthermore, I was busy doing somebody else by the time we were formally introduced. I guess this means things failed to materialize for reasons beyond presumed futility.

Vinati and I continued to see one another probably once or twice a month. When B.A.C.s ran high we would talk, flirt, and lament over the general disinterest we shared for the other in more sober settings. A repartee was cultivated, but a genuine friendship was never established.

I came to love her presence for more than the obvious reason. Like mass and power, beauty tends to lump together. This simple fact proved to be beneficial whenever we managed to get a spot in her entourage for the night. She got us invited to parties with free booze, free food, and fashionable people by whom we were silently ostracized. If we went out to a bar, Wall Street types would sometimes buy the entire table several rounds to prove not only their wealth or amour propre , but also their strict obedience to propriety. She and her friends exploited them all ruthlessly, not that these men seemed to notice or particularly care. One could think it somewhat unethical or shameful, but the men continued to put the drinks on their tab even after they realized that they were banging their heads against a proverbial brick wall. Some of them ended up being fairly nice. All of them ended up being revelatory drunks, and most of the revelations concerned the fact that everything they do is an act, and that they don't even know who they are anymore. If we listened either in earnest or with the pretense of sincerity, they would exchange numbers not only with Vinati and her friends, but with all of the guys at the table, too.

We never called them. They never called any of us so far as I know. Vinati and I had a similar relationship. We didn't call one another or even embrace during hellos. Goodbyes were sometimes less reserved. I accepted that we sat at opposite ends of the spectrum that was comprised of the various social groups with whom Ilkay associated. Her friends were predominately female, rich, of noble families from the Indian sub-continent, beautiful, dull, and arrogant. Their bodies had few curves and fewer blemishes except for yellowed teeth and, sometimes, bad breath, which was usually covered up by an Altoid or a Parliament. Many came from the West Coast, and they talked like it, too (pronouncing “yeah” as the Scandinavian yä , and littering their narratives with words like “like” and “rad” and “hella-” and “totally” (sometimes even using all of them in a single sentence — i.e. “Yä, it was, like, totally hella-rad”)). My friends, on the other hand, were mostly contentious drunkards on the weekend, academics more or less confined to the catacombs of the library on the weekdays. We were disdained by the serious students and those who thought themselves too intellectually endowed to socialize unless at a poetry reading or a screening of a Lynch film or one of those art shows where everyone walks around with a glass of red wine and a smug grin because they know only they “really get it” (whatever this elusive “it” happens to be); we were considered too brainy for those who were at the university to piss away a fraction of their parents' fortunes on gambling, covers, liquor, and, after only six short years, an overpriced general studies degree. In other words, we were alienated from the majority of the student body because we sat in the middle of a polarized continuum. One could run a parallel to tragic irony, but the situation was not tragic, and ironic only if one misunderstands the word ‘ironic’, which happens more often than people would like to admit.

Ilkay never did understand the relationship I had with Vinati. It was his belief that the two of us had a silent infatuation for the other. He habitually floated sly remarks in our direction without being entirely clandestine or even contextually relevant, especially when drunk. These sharp (what he would call) quips would send him into small sessions of hysterics that appeared somewhat feigned, though, knowing Ilkay, this was far from the case. And while these comments rarely aroused pink or, in her case, mahogany cheeks, they did prove insidious enough to unite the two of us in momentary hatred. Maybe he sought to unite the two of us via shared scorn, though I certainly have my doubts about this — not because he had a penchant for trying to embarrass his friends, or because he happened to be that one friend who thinks the best way to appear on a pedestal is to bury everyone else; he just seemed to enjoy creating awkward tension between to the two of us.

In his less obnoxious moments he came off as contemplative, but never anxious or cerebral. It was difficult to tell if his thoughts were profound or merely esoteric. According to him, he was always thinking of “nothing really,” which we all recognized as bullshit, though it was also collectively understood that expecting a sincere response from him was but a chasing of the wind.

In his more indulgent moments he liked to talk about his early childhood in Istanbul, Zürich, and Paris. He and his family had moved to Boston when he was nine, which was something he lamented, even if it was rather obvious to all of us that he was more American than European. We said nothing, though. It wasn't out of cowardice or even pity; it was a collective recognition that it is far better to ignore what you cannot change. People will always find an anchor or a control in the past to which they can relate the present, and there's no point in trying to expose the fact that this is a useless practice, attractive only to those who overtly refer to themselves as either optimists or pessimists (the former always seeing progress from that past to present; the latter always seeing decay). For Ilkay (a pessimist), his vetus imago was Paris. Rather predictably, his favorite author was Marcel Proust, of whom he said it was sacrilegious to read in English. He said similar things about Orhan Pamuk, though this author’s primary language is Turkish. Then again, Ilkay enjoyed a lot of Latin American writers without even a moderate proficiency in Spanish.

Europe proved to be about the only subject he would discuss in earnest. You couldn't believe much of what he said otherwise. It wasn't that he had a malicious intent in his prevarications; he just seemed to enjoy either confusing or fucking with people. He was certainly difficult to read. It took me the better part of the first semester just to realize this much.

Of the events that took place that year, my reminiscences are at once both many and slightly hazy. I shared a room in a four-person suit with my roommate from the previous year and closest friend throughout college, Dennis Grabowski. Our two other roommates were nice enough, but they had their own agendas and lives with which we did our best not to interfere. Relations were always cordial, but we never spent much time with either of them. One had a girlfriend with an apartment either in Park Slope or Prospect Heights; the other was of that school of anarchism where members are required to stay in a dark room, smoke grass, listen to punk bands from the early eighties, and discuss The Revolution with friends for fourteen hours a day. Marcus and Alex, respectively.