THE QUAD
It started as a slow walk across a field, a cool collar of oaks protecting you from the sunny expanse ahead. Moisture from the morning rising up from the ground to meet the moisture that permanently lived in the air, creating not so much a cloud as a wet blanket to be breathed in and out. Coating the lungs, soaking the shirt, hot.
One "drive" crossed as the kids with cars searched in vain for one of 30 spots vied for by 20,000 students and faculty. Yellow tickets dotting windshields. 10 low slung steps and a clock tower. It has to be a recording and not an actual bell, right? Has to be. Up and over into another cove of oaks, the temperature drops and rises with the shady spots. An out of place monolithic library, out of place since it's erection. Today, it's completely condemned. Left behind by fans who'd prefer W's to all that "book learning".
A left and you pass up the "black fraternities" who hold court caddy corner to the "white fraternities", twenty feet of separation that might as well be a million miles.
I always thought "the quad" was a square. Mostly because I inhabited one corner of one half of it, the south end some sort of wasteland where they taught "science" and other nerd shit, me, a mere 9 months removed from being that nerd in some ways. My ambition killed by resentment of a man who had an addiction and who was doing his best for me.
We'd take that route 3-5 days a week with full intent of attending the classes in those musty halls, Spanish tiled roofs, moss of the same name. Most days we'd run into a familiar face and conversations would start. A lot of those days we'd say fuck it abd sit on the aggregate rectangles, attempting the crossword as a team. Wasting away the mornings and the days learning opportunities sometimes for one class, but many days for all of them, as once you convinced yourself of skipping one, the second and and third collapsed into lunch, forming the fodder of nightmares that still make you awake with a fear that you've shown up at class, some 30 years later, and there's an exam you knew nothing about.
#hugsandhi5s
#foreverlsu
