The day after, I committed my first campus theft. I was asked by some friends to come to a late night meal at one of the dining halls mostly so that we could nab one of their pumpkins. They didn’t want me there for my personality, mind you (I’m a pretty boring guy), but I was the only one among us strong enough to carry a pumpkin the size of my torso across campus. Also I was the only one who seemed to have the balls to grab the thing. I will not lie and say that I was casual about it, on the contrary I was terrified. I started casing the place for cameras and staff members the moment we walked into the building and made sure to time a crowd to ensure that it passed between me and a supervisor while I took the pumpkin from its perch. It didn’t seem to matter. Considering how many people were laughing at us and clapping, I doubt that we went unseen. I think that the staff just didn’t care. That was also the night that I was introduced to the iPhone app “Yik Yak” as someone posted “Shoutout to the guy who just stole a big ass pumpkin from Worcester.”
Between the fear of committing a theft that didn’t matter, the exercise of carrying the gourd, and our laughter all the way back, I’d say that it was a pretty good night that we were bound to remember.
The week got better though.
The next night I attended the English Society’s initiation. You can imagine what my thoughts were when they told us to show up wearing all black. “As close to mourning clothes as possible” the “secular chaplain” said. “Bring your worst, most reprehensible piece of poetry ever. I'm talking the scrap of break-up poetry you crumpled under your bed during sixth grade. When Martha broke up with you the night before the Sadie Hawkins. To go with your best friend. Ugh.” Well, I write very little poetry, but what I’d scribbled down a couple of weeks before in a bout of anger and depression was dreadful and I had resolved to burn it.
Perfect, I thought and grabbed it as I finished adjusting my suit and tie. This is a perfect demonstration of how you can still write absolute shit even at this age. I popped on my fedora and bolted out the door, a stupid grin cracking my face as I leapt down the stairs. Once we were all gathered, we were handed candles and we listened to the chaplain tell us how, that night, we were “reborn.” This was the night when we left behind all of our sins and mistakes and “The time when Sally broke up with you over text message and said some really awful things about you to her friends and then you two got into a big fight and said some hurtful things that really shouldn’t have been said.” He was crying by this point. “God damned Sally.” He recomposed himself. “But none of that matters, because tonight, you are reborn.” He would say that same phrase perhaps five or eight more times before the night was over. “It doesn’t matter about that jerk in elementary school that followed you into high school and called you gay in fifty different ways before going into the military and then coming back without any change except for how big he was and that the military broke him down and built him back up in their image and he was still calling me ‘faggot’ and ‘pussy’ and…” He recomposed himself. “But that doesn’t matter, because tonight, you are reborn.” The monologs went on like this for a few minutes before he told us that we were about to descend into the depths of Hell.
We entered Herter Hall and proceeded to the tunnel that connects that building to Bartlett, which is considered the English building. However, while we had candles and an electric lamp, we found that the lights were still on in the tunnel. I heard a lot of muttered “They should be turned off! How do we turn them off!?” before the Society’s officers decided that we would carry on as if we were all in a pitch black room. They held up their lantern so that the vice president could read a passage from Dante’s “Inferno” in the pretend darkness, describing the inscription above the gateway to Hell. “Through me you go to the grief wracked city; Through me you go to everlasting pain; Through me you go to a pass among lost souls. Justice inspired my exalted Creator: I am a creature of the Holiest Power, of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love. Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings. And I endure eternally. Abandon all hope — Ye Who Enter Here.” He was alluding to the trials and pains of being a writer- all of the errors you will make, the publishers who will deny you, the people who will criticize your work- and said that this ritual was also about cleansing our writing “sins” and giving us a new start. “To cleanse you of your sins, however, like Dante you must pass through Hell. Here you will see the horrors of writing and the atrocities that you must never commit.” He then leaned back and opened the door to the tunnel, gesturing us through with what might have looked like a foreboding gesture if he hadn’t done it in essentially broad daylight. While giggling at the mock severity of this whole “ordeal” and walking through the passage, our chaplain halted us and pointed to the president who was sitting at the far end of the hall with a white strobe light flashing against his staring face. Again, in the dark this may have been disturbing, but in the light he just looked like he’d taken a hit of marijuana. “Stop here,” our chaplain ordered. “Do not approach him. He is one of the tortured souls who wanders the abyss. Don’t speak to him. He may start crying.” The chaplain then walked up to the staring president, knelt beside him, and asked “What ails you my son?”
The president looked up, crossed himself, and said “Forgive me Father, for I have fucked up.”
“Oh, come on, whatever you did couldn’t have been too bad.” The president pulled out a folded stack of papers and handed them to the chaplain. “What’s this?”
“This was my final paper.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad. I’m sure that your writing sins will be forgiven…” he trailed off as he started to read the essay. “What is this? This is unacceptable.”
“I thought you said I’d be forgiven!”
“I’ve changed my mind! This is disgraceful!”
“Oh,” the president mumbled. “Am I going to be grounded?”
“We’ll talk when we get home.”
We dragged him from the tunnel, all of us endeavoring not to guffaw like buffoons at the officers’ antics, and lit our candles before processing to the campus pond, frightening all of the bystanders that we passed with our macabre parade. We came to a stone bench beside the pond which the officers used as an alter and platform as they ordered us to come forward one at a time to read our horrible poetry. I must say that, while it was all dreadful, some actually had interesting bits in them that deserved recycling in the authors’ later works. Anyhow, once we read our word vomit aloud, each of us rolled up our poems and stuck them into an empty scotch bottle with some stones at the bottom. Once that was done, we were “absolved of our [literary] sins and reborn.” The officers then tried to light the poems on fire while they were still in the bottle. I watched them stuff match after match down the bottle’s neck and we initiates were clasping hands over our mouths to stifle the giggles. “We are definitely English majors,” one of the girl initiates said. We lost it and all started laughing, some of us so hard that we had to lean on each other to keep from toppling to the earth. I couldn’t stand to watch any more and pointed out how there wasn’t enough oxygen in the bottle to sustain a flame.
The officers looked at each other. “Well,” the president said, “there are rocks at the bottom of the bottle. It’ll still sink.” They corked it and the chaplain cocked his arm back. With a mighty heave, he threw the bottle as far as he could into the campus pond where our poetry would sink to a watery grave, our sins forever at the bottom of a [frequently dredged] artificial pond. Until the bottle bobbed to the surface ten seconds later that is.
I figured as much would happen and sort of kind of freaked out because my piece-o-shit poem had my name on it. I don’t want anyone seeing that atrocity! Our chaplain apologized and assured us that he would retrieve it after the ceremony was finished. We were herded back to the “alter” where our new president was baptized by the chaplain and other officers with the four liquids of all UMass writers: Bad tea, Bartlett water, bad coffee, and good scotch. “Except that we don’t have any good scotch, so we’re just going to use this stuff and pretend.”
The new president got down on his knees, bowed his head, and waited as the officers poured these drinks onto him. The stuff soaked into his hair, ran off into the grass, and started seeping into his suit. Dripping with some concoction of those four liquids, he stood on the bench himself, trying to control his own laughter and wiping the junk out of his eyes. “I hope that I don’t get pulled over tonight. I can just imagine the officer leaning in, smelling me, and asking ‘Sir, have you been drinking- Actually, have you been swimming in scotch tonight?’” He started to give a short speech. The only part that I can remember was when he said “This is a proud, momentous night when you are made officially members of the English Society and there is a cop over there.” I have never seen students move so quickly. Candles were snuffed out almost before the words left his lips and several people dove for the nearest trees or bushes as if they were in a war zone. I just watched the cop as he cruised past us without any sign that he saw or cared. I turned back to find the president and officers standing up from their hiding spot behind the bench as they peeked around to ensure that the police had left. Most of us still had lit candles and we all snickered at each other and abused the officers a bit. I noticed one girl walking back toward us and I wondered how on earth she had managed to get as far as she had so quickly. She had almost made it to the Fine Arts Center a good hundred meters away in the span of just a few moments. She didn’t even look particularly athletic…
Our president had long since lost his train of thought and decided to call it a night. He gave us one last warm welcome to the English Society before we turned and walked back to our dorms. Chatting with those heading my way, we joked and laughed, retold bits of the night, and just enjoyed each others’ company. The next day, they either didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to speak, but regardless I had the sense that I had shared something with them, even if they didn’t feel it. I had become a part of a society through an absurd ritual and the members’ mutual love of literature. Just as I had bonded with other friends over stealing a massive pumpkin and running around campus wearing only enough to cover my “vitals,” the people at the ceremony had become something of an extended family that night. I haven’t seen them since, but I think that the next time I see them, we will at least have some inside jokes to share.
I know that I didn’t get to the major gossip or anything tonight, but I figure that this is probably enough for you if you haven’t gotten bored and quit the page already. If it helps ease the disappointment, I will tell you that the English Society’s chaplain later stripped and swam through that dumping ground of a pond to retrieve our monstrous poetry. I’d like to think that I owe him one, considering how he probably had to go through military-grade decontamination after that, but he did sort of bring it upon himself through bad planning… Eh. He survived. Have a good week!
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