The sadness that I felt that evening would eventually subside. I made it to my classes and to track practice. I was running about 70 miles a week, nothing too taxing just yet, and I was gearing up for indoor track. It was the first time in my life that I wasn't the best runner on my team. Throughout high school I was always the top dog. I was never pushed very hard by my teammates, and I was rarely tested in races. That is until it was time for States. Each year I had my best race at regionals. Each year I thought I was going to win States. I don't know if it was the pressure I put on myself that I couldn't handle, or if it was the allergy induced asthma that attacked me each time May rolled around and the flowers started ejaculating pollen into the air that did me in. Either way you sliced it, I was always coming up short on the big stage, never finishing higher than eighth in the state of Ohio.
What a difference college made. I was barely the third best runner on the team, and on any given day I was more like the fifth best runner. Not only did my running seem crappy but so did my social standing. The girls that went to my college didn't seem to be interested in me. It started getting into my head that I wasn't the man any more.
I was the "man" in high school, and now I was just a piss ant. To make things worse I was only attracted to two girls on campus, which is kind of sad, I know, maybe I have unrealistically high standards, who knows. One of the girls was Lauren Bynum. She had a boyfriend, who I was somewhat good friends with, and I didn't want to be a home wrecker, so that left Courtney Day. Courtney, no relation to my boy Day, was a sprinter on the track team and was the spitting image of Melissa Joan Heart from Clarissa Explains it All.
She was exceptionally fast, and also very smart, which I found incredibly sexy. I built up the courage to ask her out, and we went to the movies. It was a comedy that I picked, and maybe I should have let her decide, because she did not laugh the entire time. She said she didn't get it. I couldn't understand why she didn't get it when she was so smart otherwise. Hell, she had better grades than I did. Granted I didn't study and was only at as many classes that I had to be at to not fail, but that is all beside the point. She wasn't a good fit if she couldn't enjoy humor, so my options ended that night.
Which led to a month long episode of Diablo II in my dorm room with Pubert and Mono. Pubert is a good guy, but he talks an incredible amount of shit. We started talking about our love affair with the computer RPG Diablo and he said that he had Stones of Jordan and other crazy items that are rarer than rarified crap, and I called bullshit. He had no way to prove it since he didn't have the computer with him, so we resorted to buying Diablo II and decided to compete to see who could have the better character. I picked a paladin, and he picked a barbarian. I know, this is nerdy shit, but it is what it is.
As it turned out, Pubert was a very good gamer, and he proved to me that a barbarian is better than a paladin. Rather than share time on my computer competing against one another, we determined that if we shared a character, and played around the clock, we would be able to level up faster, as the game is practically infinite, and it gets harder and harder to level up the higher one's point total gets. We picked a sorceress, and got started. Geekery insued. If the girls were going to be stuck up and ugly, then we were going to have the best RPG character on campus.
We never went to class and only went out for meals, beer, and of course, track practice. Since we played nonstop, we had to take turns at the computer. I would be playing, Pubert would be sleeping. Pubert would be playing, I would be at Convocation (we couldn't skip all of our classes because Cumberland would fail you if you missed a percentage of your classes. Convo could only be skipped twice, since it was once a week.) Sometimes we would play with each other (and not like that, damn it). The bottom line was, 12 hours plus of gaming for each of us every single day. We were getting tired. We needed another.
As luck would have it Mono decided to get in on the fun. Which meant there was an omnipresent 20 oz Dr. Pepper bottle filled with dip spit on my desk. We could now take 2 four hour shifts each day. This was a much nicer arrangement. We started attending class more regularly, and it was all around better on our personal health and well being.
We never had to worry about my roommate, fortunately, since he never stayed in our room and was always at his girlfriends. He would occasionally come back and brag about how he was getting laid every night which made all of us very jealous. "Oh yeah, well do you have a level 83 sorceress? Pubert would ask."
We would get up, go for our morning run. Mono would man the computer while we were gone. Like I said earlier, he was a helluva 800 meter runner, he ran 1:52 in high school, and he didn't ever go to pracitce. He wasn't at Cumberland for the running. He was there to stabilize our group. He had a full beard, and was always having to wipe it clean of tobacco spittle. He was an outdoorsman, and had an attitude of generally not giving a fuck that resonated quite well with the Triple S mantra.
After playing Diablo II and beating it repeatedly like a bastard step child, we got the expansion pack. We defeated Baal, and again, and again. Our sorceress was slowly growing more powerful. At level 89 we decided to stop. There was not enough time in the day to get enough points to level up any more, and we realized that the days were getting nicer as the winter was turning to spring.
One night Pubert did manage to round up a couple of hoes. The plan was to walk out the train tracks, two miles, to a trail in the middle of nowhere that lead to a small cave. When we got to the cave we planned on starting a fire. We had already built the logs up earlier that week on a run, which was how we found the place to begin with.
It was about eight o'clock when we all met up outside of Siler Dorm. I was in my jeans and hoodie, had some boots on, and a backpack filled with the essentials, several bottles of Robitussin Maximum Strength, a couple of joints I bought from my Rastafarian friend Alain, flashlights, a couple of beers and various snack foods. Day brought the boom box and the CD's. Joey brought a case of beers, and Mono, the God of Fire, brought one single match.
The girls showed up with Pubert, all dressed to the nines ready to go to the club. We all looked at each other like, "did he seriously fail to mention that this was an outdoor adventure?" The girls bitched the entire time, and rightfully so. It was freezing cold and they were grossly under dressed.
We started out down the train tracks. About a half mile out we were already out of town. We had to cross the Cumberland River which meant we had to traverse a bridge about 150 meters long. There was a walk way between one side of the tracks and the bridge that was about three feet across, roughly one person width, which meant we had to make a line, and the walk way was rickety as shit, thirty or so feet about the raging water below.
Once we made it across, Pubert began walking backwards so he could talk to one of the girls, Jessica, who he would eventually marry. He was trying impress her with these stories of crazy shit he did during high school. Day and Joey, seeing that Pubert was laying his bait, did their best to sabotage things by saying he was making the stories up.
At about the halfway point Pubert fell out of sight. He had tripped over a dead bloated sheep.
How the sheep got there on the train tracks, we will never know. Pubert, who now smelled like rotting sheep carcass would not be deterred. Of course the drugs were kicking in and we still hadn't made it to the fire site.
Finally we got off of the tracks and down the path that would lead to the firewood, and we put Mono to work. It is dark and cold. One of the girls, Alexis, who was loud and obnoxious and was tripping on cough medicine decided that we had brought the girls out to this spot to rape them. She began getting very hysterical. Day told her that yes, in fact, we had taken them out here to rape them. He was joking but she didn't get the memo. Mono got the fire started, but Alexis needed to get out of there.
"This bitch is ruining our fire experience," Day said. We have to get her home. Pubert was off trying to get his dick wet. Joey was getting a little messy drunk and Mono was working his magic on the fire, which was starting to grow despite the condensation covering all of the wood. "St. Louis, you get to take Alexis back," Day informed me.
So I did. We started heading back and I lit up a joint. Not only did Alexis go but also a large girl named Sarah decided to come back with us. We headed back down the train tracks and got to the bridge which crossed the river. Just as we were halfway across, we heard the train in the distance. "We better hurry," I said. "This walkway isn't far away from the tracks. If there is a wire or something hanging off of the side of one of the cars, it will cut right through us.
Alexis started crying, as did Sarah. It was so dark, but the light of the oncoming train was so bright that it almost made my eyes hurt looking at it as it rushed towards us. I threw down the joint and pushed the girls in front of me. "Go! Stop your crying and move! We have to get off of this bridge!"
The spastic girls were so incredibly slow and the train was coming closer and closer, horn blaring behind us.
Trains are incredibly loud if you are ever very close to them, especially when they blow their horns. Just as we got off of the bridge the train bulldozed past us with a tremendous gush of wind blowing off into our faces. We had made it off just in time. I decided that I did not need to listen to the girls bitching anymore, and as soon as we got back to campus, I went back to my dorm and started playing Diablo.
The next day in the cafeteria we are all sitting at the table eating our food and bullshitting about this and that. Alexis comes stoming over to our table and starts screaming at us. Day told her to shut up and go back to her seat.
"You were going to rape me! How dare you! You wanted to take me into the woods and rape me!"
"Bitch, you are flattering yourself. I would rather have had sex with that deat sheep than rape your ugly ass."
"Don't you say that about me! I will get my dad to come here and he will beat your ass!"
The spat continued back and forth, until Day had enough, at which point he calmly picked up the lasagna that was on his plate and shoved it into Alexis' face. The next day he would have to meet with the Dean of Student Affairs.
