Chapter 2

Home was 23 Sanders Avenue, a dilapidated two-bedroom house a minute or two from campus if one drove, ten minutes by foot. Back when my car had been running, I'd driven. Since January, I'd walked. They just didn't make 1980 AMC Pacers like they used to. Actually, they hadn't made them at all since 1980, and in hindsight it had been something of a mistake even then. 
 It wasn't a bad walk. Across the small ivy-covered campus, past the historic homes of Federal Street, over the undeniably charming wooden bridge, take a right on Sanders and keep walking until you came to the eyesore. 23 Sanders Ave was a unique structure in the otherwise picturesque town of Bridgeton, Maine. It didn't look good. It didn't smell good. It was currently for sale, and had been for at least a decade. I strongly suspected that if the building hadn't been near a college campus where it could attract undiscriminating students in search of affordable housing it would have been torn down long ago. Or at very least been allowed to fall down. 
 "Interview?" Dave Orr, my roommate, asked when I walked through the door. Dave was lying on the living room couch. As near as I could tell, he had been staring blankly into space before I returned. Staring blankly into space was Dave's greatest passion.
 "No, I wore a suit to class today, asshole."
 "Don't yell at me. It's not my fault you can't get a job."
 "Actually, it is."
 "Get off it. I did not cost you that job."
 "Dave, you told the recruiter from Mornall & Swain to go fuck herself."
 "That wasn't my fault. I always answer the phone 'Go fuck yourself.'"
 "And that's not your fault?"
 "Not as I see it, no. Anyway, she still gave you the interview, didn't she?
 "Yea. I told her you had Turret's Syndrome, but I'm not sure she bought it."
 "Fuck it. Come on, I'll buy you a beer."
 "Can't. I've got a paper to write."
 "So write it later. It's only one o'clock in the afternoon."
 "But if we start drinking now we won't stop until we're both drunk."
 "So?"
 "So I can't write a paper drunk."
 "You can't? Haven't you learned anything in four years?"
 I was heading up the stairs to take off my suit and write my paper. But despite his easy-going reputation, Dave could be tenacious when he believed he was right. 
 "Just tell the professor you need an extension," he called up the stairs.
 "Can't. He'll need a reason."
 "Tell him you got sick."
 "I did that with my last paper."
 "Then tell him there was a death in your family."
I paused on the top step. "That'll work."
 An hour later, I had changed out of my suit and was well on my way to drunk. 
 Ernie's Pub was a dilapidated establishment a minute or two from the edge of campus. It didn't look good. It didn't smell good. It was currently for sale, and had been for at least a decade. If it wasn't for the waitresses, I commented often in those days, I would have had trouble telling it apart from my apartment. The waitresses, on the other hand, apparently had little trouble spotting the difference, as they had not once accepted my oft-repeated invitations to visit the tavern's residential equivalent. But I prided myself on being a happy drunk, and never took the refusals personally, even when that's clearly how they were intended. On this particular afternoon, the beer did not cheer me up, and the waitress wasn't worth the effort.
 "Dave, it's just not fair," I remember complaining. "We're at a good school. I got good grades. I majored in economics. I give a good interview. I spent last summer interning at an investment bank. I even look good in a suit. Six, seven years ago, firms would have been begging for me. This year, shit."
 "You got good grades?"
 "I mean, I just figured that even with the tough market, someone out there would just love to have me."
 "How the hell did you get good grades?"
 "I never questioned that there'd be a job waiting for me at the end of this. I was sure."
 "I mean, I can't remember seeing you do any work. Not once. You talk about writing papers every now and then, but I've never actually seen you write one. Hell, it was March before I was certain that you were enrolled this semester. Where do you come off getting good grades?"
 "Not that I'm sure I really want to be an investment banker. It just seems like the thing to do. And, you know, well, the money's there."
 "If you intended to go into investment banking, why didn't you go to some big state university where they'd offer classes in business and accounting and things like that?" Dave asked, finally giving up on his earlier line of questioning.
 "Because this place was better."
 "We're talking about colleges, 'better' is subjective."
 "No it isn't. They publish a ranking every year. This place is better."
 "Uh huh. Gwaf, I think you've got a problem."
 "I know I've got a problem."
 "No, I mean that paper. Is it for Professor Cousins?"
 "Yea."
 "Isn't that Professor Cousins?"
 "Where?"
 "Over there. At the bar. Eating a burger. You know, that guy waving to you."
 "Fuck."
 "You might as well get out from under the table; he already saw you. You still gonna go with the death in the family?"
 "I don't think he'll buy that now unless I produce the corpse. I need a plan. What am I gonna do?"
 "Just blow it off. It's senior year."
 "Yea, but I've kept my grades in good shape this long, I'd hate to fuck it up now."
 "Then write your paper. Are you sober enough?"
 "Don't know."
 "How many have you had?"
 "Only one. No, wait--three. And those other two."
 "How much of the paper do you have done?"
 "Are you kidding?"
 "You do need a plan. But first, a beer."
 One beer later, I had a plan. And a few minutes later than that, I was back on campus, in the office of the Druids, one of Bucklin College's innumerable organizations for the humorless environmental crusader.
 "Come on, man, you're my last chance," I told Head Druid Mark Letlee.
 "Gwaf, I can't do it. The Druids are a serious environmental organization. The campus counts on us to stand up to the college bureaucracy in the defense of the planet. We're not here for your personal use."
 "Hey, have I ever asked anything of you before? Just blockade the damn library early this evening, and I'll tell my professor I couldn't get the research done. His office has a view of the library, so he'll buy it. Besides, think of all the trees they knocked down to fill that library. This really is an environmental cause when you stop and consider it." 
 "I just can't do it," he said. "And, as it happens, we're already blockading the science buildings today."
 "You're against science?"
 "Not as a rule, no...but Tom Strucey's got this biology exam he doesn't want to take."
 "Fuck Strucey. I've got a GPA to think of."
 "So why don't you just write your damn paper?"
 "I'm not going to justify that question with a response. Tell you what, if we can hit the library, I'll join your blockade."
 "Well..."
 "Final offer: I'll join the blockade and write a letter to the administration protesting their continued policy of whatever the hell continuing policy it is you're protesting this week."
 "You'd write a letter to put off writing a paper?"
 "It's the principle of the thing."
 "Okay Gwafin, I'll do it--after the science building protest. But, goddamn it, I can't help but feel I'm compromising my principles."
 "All for the greater good, Mark. All for the greater good. Incidentally, what's it about?"
 "What's what about?"
 "Today's protest."
 "Oh. Uh…the Northwestern Treefrog."
 "You're against treefrogs?"
 "No, we're for them. They're near extinction."
 "Pesticides?"
 "Pickups."
 "Pickups?"
 "Mainly. The treefrogs try to hop across the road, but they freeze in the headlights."
 "So how exactly do you propose to remedy the situation?
 "By protesting. What else?"
 A couple of Dave's friends had joined him for a beer at Ernie's, but they were leaving when I returned. That was fine with me. I could take Dave's vaguely hippie ways in small doses, but preferred not to be around when he got together with his whole mellower-than-thou crowd. Sometimes their conversations seemed to consist of nothing but the word "Dude" repeated ad nauseam at varied levels of pitch and amplitude.
 "You get out of your paper?" Dave asked.
 "The wheels are in motion. How many rounds did I miss?"
 "Let's see--you were gone half an hour, so three. You must be losing it. Never used to take you half an hour to convince Letlee of anything."
 "It took some work this time."
 "Mark Letlee took some work?"
 "Tom Strucey beat me to him."
 "Fuckin' Strucey."
 "Anyway I should be okay. Professor Cousins is as liberal as they come. He wouldn't want me screwing with a tree-frog protest."
 "Treefrogs?"
 "Yea."
 "Pollution?"
 "Traffic safety. Where the hell's my beer?"
 "Oh. Was that yours?"
 "Hey, could we get another round," I called to the waitress. 
 "Have to trade anything?" Dave asked.
 "For the beer?"
 "No--with the Druids."
 "I've got to march in his protest and write an angry letter to the administration."
 "You're writing a letter to avoid writing a paper?"
 "It's the principle of the thing."
 "There's a principle to shirking responsibility?"
 "In this case, yes. This is the last college paper I'll ever write. That makes it the last totally pointless endeavor I'll ever be forced to endure, and now that I've had a chance to think about it, I'll be damned if I'm going to turn it in on time."
 "Do you suppose anyone actually reads those protest letters the Druids are writing to the administration all the time?"
 "Sure. They hire an intern over the summer to read 'em."
 "How do you know that?"
 "Mark Letlee told me once. He's the intern."
 "Oh. That makes sense. I guess."

College, in my sometimes-less-than-humble opinion, was a colossal waste of time. A classroom full of students cumulatively might cram in thousands of hours of study to pass a single test, only to forget everything they'd learned the next day. Term papers were written to be glanced at by a professor, graded, returned, then tossed in the trash. Well, actually, they were recycled, not tossed in the trash, since anyone putting a sheet of paper in a trashcan on a college campus was just asking for trouble. I didn't rock the boat on this point, although I wasn't what you'd call an extremist when it came to environmentalism back then. As it happened, I saw recycling as the perfect end for college dissertations that were nothing more than regurgitations of others' ideas from the start. 
 That was college. Grand yet ludicrous ideas were proposed, then discussed as if they had some merit. Reasonable ideas too were considered--assuming, of course, that they were universally non-offensive. Independent thought was fine, so long as it was in line with what everyone else believed.
 A colossal waste of time--how many times had I repeated that phrase over the past four years? Yet I was still there, about to graduate. Some would call this hypocrisy. I called it a rational response to the situation. For as it happened, college was a colossal waste of time that now was considered a must for anyone wishing to get ahead in the world. 
 Besides, it was a colossal waste of time at which I had become quite proficient. While I freely confess that I was not an exceptionally motivated student, nor even the most intellectually gifted, I do believe I excelled when it came to succeeding with the least possible effort. For nearly four years I had scored A's--inevitably low A's--in class after class. In May I would graduate with honors, an accomplishment that could only serve to make me look like a tremendous student, at least to anyone with whom I had never shared a classroom.
 Yes, my grades owed more to last-ditch pre-exam cram sessions than to sustained effort. And, yes, if a professor or fellow student made a politically correct but factually unsupportable statement in class I tended to let it pass unchallenged even as it tore me up inside. And, sure, there was the somewhat unpleasant, yet unavoidable, fact that I had now and then selected a class based more on the professor's reputation for lenient grading than for that professor's grasp of the subject matter--or on one particularly regrettable occasion, his grasp of the English language. And, okay, when it comes right down to it, grade inflation was as rampant at Bucklin as at any top school. At Harvard, for example, half of all grades were A's, only 6% C-plus or below. Like all fine American colleges, Bucklin aspired to be like Harvard. 
 I'm not proud of any of this. Grade-grubbing and the devaluation of accomplishment were exactly the sort of behavior that went against my beliefs. But in my defense I should point out that I was not without my principles--or principle, anyway: if I found a class worthless, I wouldn't work any harder than was absolutely necessary to get an A. That was my code, and I lived by it. It is necessary to have a code. It helps one belittle others. With my code, I could tell myself that when someone else got good grades, it was because they wasted their life studying. When I got good grades, it was because I knew how to work the system. 
 I suppose a better man wouldn't have cared about grades at all. But I just couldn't stand the idea of some jackass doing better than me, and thus concluding he or she was my intellectual superior.

Letlee no doubt considered attendance at the treefrog demonstration depressingly low. No more than a dozen students milled around the stairs in front of the Lysenko Science Center when I arrived. It was that time of year. Come April, the weather begins to improve and even the most liberal of students start enjoying themselves outside instead of protesting for the environment. Other students have job interviews to worry about, then before you know it there are final exams and end-of-term parties. I felt a bit sorry for Letlee. Spring was not a good time to be a humorless environmental crusader. 
 I'd known Mark Letlee since Freshman year, when he lived across the hall from me. Back then he was still searching for an identity. I'd watched him try out a few with what might charitably be called limited success. He wasn't a bad looking guy, in that bohemian kind of way that's so popular on college campuses and in sections of downtown Seattle, so he'd made a play at being a player, but come up a bit short in the personality department. Not that it takes a whole heck of a lot of personality to seduce drunken coeds, but you do need to talk about something in the time it takes to get from a frat party to one's dorm room, and Letlee just couldn't get the job done. Next he'd grown his hair out a bit and tried the hippie thing, but found that he couldn't use the word "doobie" with anything approaching the necessary degree of authenticity. Finally, Letlee had settled on the humorless environmental crusader persona. It was a good role for him, in that it played right into the campus politic, and gave him a chance to benefit from his complete lack of wit, something considered a detriment in many other circles. 
 To give credit where credit is due, Letlee continued to strive for self improvement. Once about a year back, I'd heard that he was trying to shed the dour image and develop a sense of humor about himself. Perhaps he wished to give his facial muscles a rest after years of scowling at the frivolity of comedy. Or perhaps Letlee had discovered that a sense of humor can be a useful tool even for an environmental crusader. For example, when only a handful of people show up for one's march to save the musk ox or the Sri Lankan striped spider, or the Sri Lankan striped musk ox, or any other creature not cute enough to draw the big crowds, one might win over all present with a single well-timed self-deprecating remark. In an instant this self-deprecating individual becomes the lone voice for righteousness, rather than the loser with poor organizational skills. 
 Letlee's adventures in this new world of personality had by all accounts gone poorly. He'd been no more able to seduce crowds of crusaders with his words than he had individual women. So perhaps Letlee had made a wise move when he reverted back to his humorless environmental crusader niche. It was this humorless Mark Letlee that stood before me, protesting valiantly for treefrogs. To make the most of what he had to work with, Letlee scowled at the low turnout. "What happens to these people after college?" I wondered. "They can't all join Greenpeace and rescue whales. There wouldn't be enough whales to go around; fistfights would break out over the best ones." 
 Three of the twelve students wandered off. I should have guessed they weren't environmental crusaders. They looked too much like--well, like me. Button-down shirts, nice haircuts, clearly not the environmentalist sort by appearance. Funny how the world has a way of confirming one's stereotypes, at least when it came to the things we had control over, like dress and hairstyle. Letlee had only nine protesters to get me out of a paper and Strucey out of an exam. It hardly seemed enough to be noticed. 
 Tom Strucey hadn't even bothered to show up. "Fuckin' Strucey," Letlee mumbled loud enough to be heard. "Let's get this going," he said to the group. "Those treefrogs won't save themselves." 
 Despite the call to action, the group didn't do much but continue to mill about. Fearing trouble, I sidled up to Letlee. "So what exactly are we going to do on this protest," I prodded. 
 "Same as any protest. We carry signs and chant--just let people know we're not happy about the situation."
 "Uh, Mark--Do you see any signs?"
Letlee reassessed the group. No signs. "Well, we don't have signs prepared for this one. It's a sort of spur-of-the-moment emergency thing, you understand."
 "Fair enough. Do you know any treefrog chants?"
 "Good question. None of the usual chants seem to apply."
 "We could try to come up with one," I suggested.
 "Think so?"
 "Sure. Maybe something like 'Yeaaaa, Treefrogs!' Then we could spell out T-R-E-E-F-R-O-G with our bodies." I stuck out my arms to demonstrate the "T".
 "Fuck you, Gwaf. You're not even trying to help."
 "Sure I am," I said. And I was. "Your protest group is getting restless. We've got to hold these people together long enough to get down to the library." 
 "Why don't we just explain the treefrog problem to anyone who passes by," Letlee suggested.
 "That works for me," I said, happy for any decision.
Letlee went off to explain the plan to the rest of the group.
 I gave it a shot. Why not? I was in favor of sampling life's many possibilities, so long as they happened by at moments when I had nothing better to do. I spotted gangly looking guy headed towards the science lab--probably a Freshman I guessed, based on his youthful appearance. I blocked his path.
 "Hello. Have you heard about the treefrogs?"
The kid walked around me without a glance. 
 "Learns fast for a Freshman," I thought. But I wasn't ready to give up after one failure. Especially not when the next passer-by passing by me was one of the more attractive women I'd seen on campus.
 "Excuse me, have you heard about the treefrogs?"
 "Of course--that's why I'm here. Sorry I'm late."
And in a flash, I understood the attraction of campus environmentalism. Red hair, green eyes, beautiful--and she never would have looked my way twice if she had any idea how little I really cared about treefrogs meeting their end as smallish, squishy speedbumps. No, I thought, that's not quite accurate. At that moment, I cared more about treefrogs than anyone in the world. I probably cared more about treefrogs than the treefrogs did themselves, since the best moment a treefrog can hope for in its short, slime-covered life is sex with another treefrog.
 "I haven't seen you at Druid events before," the woman said.
 "Treefrogs are a special cause of mine."
 "Oh, are you from the northwest?"
 "No, but, uh…a treefrog saved my life once." It wasn't one of my better lies.
 "What?"
 "Dana!" Letlee called out. The woman headed over in his direction, and I was thankful for the well-timed distraction. 
 "I have to remember to take this seriously," I thought. The woman of my dreams--my dreams that night at least--clearly did. She'd even brought a "Save the Treefrogs" sign, I noticed--and the sign showed enough wear to indicate it had been used many times before. My first environmental crusade and I was trying to impress a woman who had worn through a "Save the treefrogs" sign. This wasn't going to be easy.
 Okay, I could take treefrogs seriously, if necessary. (The term "necessary" in this context means "if there's even the vaguest possibility of it leading to sex," just as it usually does.) Dana glanced in my direction, and I did my level best to look like a treefrog activist.
 "Excuse me, sir, have you heard about the treefrogs," I asked the nearest pedestrian, a buff-looking guy in a backwards-turned baseball cap that marked him as a fraternity member.
 "The what?" asked the student, who clearly cared about as much about treefrogs as I had until a moment earlier, specifically until the possibility of sex had been introduced.
 "Treefrogs. They're being run over."
 "They're being run over in the trees?"
 "No, they're being run over in the roads."
 "They're treefrogs. What business do they have leaving the damn trees?"
I had to admit, for a frat guy, he made a good point. "Uh…they have to spawn, I guess," I guessed.
 "They spawn in the road? Christ, what do they expect? I mean, if you're into screwing in the middle of the road, more power to you--but don't come crying to me when you get run over."
The frat guy moved on. I was very glad Dana hadn't heard the exchange. "I wonder why they don't just stay in the damn trees," I thought to myself. I'd have to ask Mark. This environmentalism was much tougher than I'd imagined. I strolled over to Letlee. He was inspecting his small group of protesters as they accosted passersby, furrowing his brow to denote leadership. I started to ask my road question, but decided to move straight to a more pressing issue. "Say, Mark, it's nearly five o'clock--maybe we should head down towards the library."
 "Yea, okay Gwaf. Just give it a couple more minutes here."
 "No problem. Uh, Mark, do you know Dana well?"
 "Sure. She was in charge of the Druids before me."
 "You wouldn't happen to know if she's seeing anyone, would you?"
Letlee looked me right in the eyes. "Forget it, Gwafin. You don't have a chance. She's a beautiful, intelligent, dedicated environmental activist. You're a self-involved bastard."
 "More accurately, I'm a self-involved bastard who Dana thinks cares deeply about treefrogs," I replied. Then to the whole group I called "Okay, everyone, let's head down to the library." I figured I could usurp Letlee's leadership without much trouble and was proved correct. Dana glanced in my direction. Not a bad glance at all. "By the way, Mark," I asked in a lower voice. "Why don't they just stay in the damn trees?"