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Title Page

Dedication

Freshman Summer june 2003

Freshman Summer july 2003

Freshman Summer august 2003

Sophomore Winter december 2003

Sophomore Winter january 2004

Sophomore Summer june 2004

Sophomore Summer july 2004

Sophomore Summer august 2004

Junior Winter december 2004

Junior Winter january 2005

Junior Summer june 2005

Junior Summer july 2005

Junior Summer august 2005

Graduation december 2005

Acknowledgments

Copyright Page

For all the faces in my college photo albums—

even the ones I can't remember,

but especially those I couldn't forget

* * *

June 1st

Dear Hope,

Whoever said that you can't go home again was wrong. You can go home again. Just don't be surprised when it totally sucks.

And so, I wait for the express bus to Pineville, New Jersey. To fake-and-bake salons and acrylic talons. To Confederate-flagged pickups. To DWI guys with suspended licenses pedaling their fat asses on tiny bicycles. To the cross-breeding of pineys and bennies. To certain death by cerebral asphyxiation.

To home, bitter home.

I'm exhausted from dragging myself and two duffel bags down to Forty-second Street. I took the subway, of course; it only feels like I trudged seventy-four blocks on foot. The first time I left Columbia's campus for the Port Authority bus terminal—almost six months ago, for winter break—I thought there would be a waiting area with a section of seats attached to TV sets bolted into the floor and I'd be able to pay a quarter for a sitcom or half a talk show. At this point, I'm so brain-dead and bored that I'd pay $10 for thirty minutes if Jerry Springer had guests who degraded themselves in an entertaining way. I'm blaming the homeless for ruining this pleasure for the rest of us.

Is this an example of how New York City has made me as callous as Marcus fears I've become?

(A parenthetical anecdote to prove otherwise: Stubby is a homeless man who sings Motown songs on a patch of sidewalk near the gothic, wrought-iron gates separating the relentless bustle of 116th and Broadway from the relative calm of College Walk. He's short, as befits his name, and black. He could be twenty-five or seventy-five. He's always wearing some form of Columbia University apparel—shorts and a T-shirt in spring, a wool varsity-style jacket and sweatpants in winter—surely donated by someone affiliated with the school. He's there every day, clutching a grubby faux-Grecian WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU paper coffee cup, singing classic tunes like “My Girl,” “I Can't Help Myself,” and “Ain't Too Proud to Beg,” the last of which sung with a hint of irony. What once must have been a caramel-smooth tenor has been ravaged by misfortune. Everyone here knows Stubby; he's as much of a campus presence as the grand statue of Alma Mater on the steps of Low Library. I've never passed him without putting at least a nickel in his cup, usually more. But that's not the compassionate part. One day last winter, Stubby wasn't in his spot. A bit worrisome, sure, but I tried not to think about it because it was during midterms and I had five thousand pages of reading to catch up on. The next day, another absence. And then another. As his no-shows accumulated, I got more upset. Was Stubby dead? Had he frozen to death? ODed? I would've asked my friends if they'd seen him around, but they all seemed too preoccupied to panic about anything unrelated to academics. Finally, about a week later, on the morning of my Art Hum exam, Stubby was back in his spot. He looked and sounded the same as always: R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me! I remember wanting to ask where he had disappeared to, but I decided to R-E-S-P-E-C-T his privacy. I popped $5 in his cup that morning, which was a considerable percentage of my personal assets and therefore excuses me from any accusations that I'm just a spoiled Ivy Leaguer trying to pay off my liberal guilt. Then I took my exam and got an A.

See? I do care about people! I am compassionate about the plight of the homeless! I'm going to close parentheses now before the contents get any more