Annette had lived off campus the previous semester, taking a rest from school. I don't know or remember how she and Ken met, but I met her in my philosophy classes, and we had studied together on several occasions.
Before the dinner, she described Ken to me as 'a quiet sociology major'. It was spot on, but I would soon find the description was lacking and incomplete, rather like describing a rave as a dance party.
Dinner went well enough. I was concerned about one thing: moving in the next semester so I could get the fuck off of campus and away from George and Seth, the two downstate weirdos who were driving me nuts. Ken could have been a serial killer, but as long as I did not have to share a room with him and he only murdered Annette, I was fine with him.
To this day he describes the spring semester of 1989, when we all started living under one roof, as "our long dance." I thought that was faggy sociological or beatnik bullshit, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Some 19 years later I conceded that there was some awkward walk around each other - he went about some ritual of discovery but I, like in many relationships in my life, blindly fell into whatever was happening around me. Here's a note I sent to him about it just this year:
I never wanted to accept your story of us "doing a dance around each other" when
we first met. First, it sounds faggy (not that there's anything wrong with that
. . .). Second, it sounds like mushrooms blooming in the dark yet fecund mind of
a quiet sociology major.
I never thought about it more than enough was
necessary to dismiss it. But today I accepted it long enough to come up with
this theory: You were dancing, i wasn't. I was running around like an airhead
letting chance rule my day, and whatever steps I took that looked like a dance
were purely coincidental. You were more deliberate, I was haphazard.
If that
makes sense to you, you really might be my best friend and I henceforth fear for
your sanity - unless I am making the same mistake all over again. Ad infinitum:
the story repeats.
I concede the Big C was always yours. But I did control
your mind a few times.
I suck and you love me. Admit it.
So. Whatever. However it progressed, I remember a few seminal moments. I kept a small refrigerator next to my bed, usually with a plastic pitcher full of iced tea - the sugary crap that you make with a powder and water - mostly sugar. One night about 2am, everyone was sound asleep and I heard a loud THUD outside my door. I turned on the light and opened my door (ok, it was a curtain) and found Ken, on the floor in front of the bathroom, which he had just exited.
What happened? I fainted, he said. Got up to go to the bathroom and got lightheaded after I got up from the toilet.
Annette came into the scene to see what was going on, and I got a cup and poured him some iced tea. You're probably low on blood sugar or something. Drink this. It will make you feel better.
We stared at each other awhile, Ken pretty much still on the floor, looking up at us. (Yes, it is possible to look up at Annette). Just about when the silence was getting uncomfortable, Ken said something trite like, This is good iced tea. Where'd you get it? Price Chopper, I said. Really? Yeah, I responded. You make it with water, you know? We stared at each other awhile longer, pulled him off the floor, and sent him back downstairs to his room.
Next came the Skunk. It was early one morning - before dawn on a cold April day. Katie Bouse, a friend of Annette's was staying with her. I had my girlfriend in my room, and Ken was downstairs in his lair. I was awake, my girlfriend was in my arms. She was scared of ghosts, she said. She had seen two alleged "ghost busters" give a speech the night before at the Union. It was all frogwash I said. What is the image on the blank TV screen then? Here, I said, it's static glow. I wiped my hand across the screen and gathered a static charge that lit the small B&W's screen. Just then, a commotion started in Annette's room. I ignored it at first, until I could smell it.
What is that? my girlfriend asked. Smells like gas or something. We had better get up. The commotion got louder. Katie was rambling on about something as if in a trance. Annette came into the room. "We gotta find out what this is," she says. Smells like gas, I said. Katie got louder. I could hear Ken coming up the steps.
"...just come with me into the arms of Jesus, everyone, it's OK!" This freaked out my girlfriend, so she left. Annette rolled her eyes, and when Ken came to my door, she said she was taking Katie to Dot's house, and she wanted the two of us to figure out what was wrong.
I stared at the quiet sociology major, he stared back. About then we figured out that a skunk had blown his bladder somewhere near, if not in, the house. We decided to search the perimeter for holes and plug them up. We were on the roof at 6am, hammering makeshift boards into holes in the crappy little house.
Everything smelled like skunk. There was no escaping it. Unaware of how bad it might have got my clothes, I put on a long wool coat and went to my job at the radio station. I saw the DJ who went before me there, and he immediately turned around and looked at me. "get hit by a skunk or something?" I think I skipped all my classes that day.
Probably the third event was the day I was walking home from the bus. It was a beautiful April afternoon - warm, slighly humid, smelling of chlorophyll and flowers everywhere. I turned up the small alley that is NW 9th street, and toward the house. I could hear the Stones blaring. Ken moved his couch or an easy chair on to the front lawn. He was sitting like the guy in the Memorex ad - laid back in the chair, sunglasses and all - drinking a beer and slowly bopping his head to some song that I can't remember but I am sure has become a favorite of mine. Somehow or another we scrounged up for more beer and continued the ruckus on our own until nightfall.
After that it was stuff like cleaning out the koi ponds, filling them with water, turning on the nice lights, and then - not being satisfied with that - dumping kerosene ont he water and lighting it. Chernobyl Pond, we called it, that event being recent enough for us to know about it.
There was also many a night when we lay on the floor in or near my room, making fun of Annette. We three had some sick little inside joke running and it used to piss my girlfriend off. One night as we started into it, she got mad and left. I made a tape one night, and there are such incidents as me misconstruing something that Ken said to Annette as her being the "fuck of the month" when what he really called her was "fuck of the mountain. Or vice-versa. My memory and my hearing problem, put together, make interesting stories.
That semester ended with me graduating and driving the big orange VM microbus away the day after we got loaded and partied on Water Street. I was down there with some other friends when Ken and Annette showed up. I was thrilled out of my mind and I think I showered them both with beer. I lost a shirt that night, as I would many other times.
Post-graduate Ken stories to come later.
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