Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [75]
I did not take this news well.
First of all, I had brought just one dress to school with me, and that was only after a heated argument with my mother. Every other piece of my current clothing I was carefully allowing to acquire a patina of random paint splatters, the better to reflect the seriousness of my artistic intentions.
When the dorm meeting came to a close, I quickly met two other like-minded girls who were similarly offended by this indignity. The three of us began plotting a campaign of protest. The best we could come up with on short notice was the idea of wearing our so-called dinner dresses on top of whatever jeans ensemble we had worn to class that day.
And the very next evening, we put our plan in motion. When the dinner promenade was lining up, I arrived wearing my navy blue sleeveless A-line sheath over a black-and-purple striped T-shirt, a pair of jeans with one knee ripped open, and paint-splattered cowboy boots.
It took only three days of these forward-thinking fashion statements before my two new best friends and I received word that Mrs. Bissonette wanted to talk with us. We were summoned to the dorm mother suite, where she sat in unamused silence, seeking an explanation of our behavior.
“It just doesn’t seem fair to force me to take time off from making art to change into a dress for dinner, knowing that a few minutes after that I’ll have to change right back into work clothes again,” I explained.
“Maybe you are not a good fit for Stern Hall,” said Mrs. Bissonette.
Those were the ten words I’d been longing to hear.
From there it was a mere hop, skip, and a jump to forging my parents’ signatures on a release form, so that we three renegades could rent an apartment off campus. Now there would be nothing keeping us from setting up the kind of free-spirited creative environment befitting individuals of limitless abilities such as ourselves who were ready to take our place as the kind of human beings to whom the next century would no doubt owe a great debt of thanks.
Our new apartment was a four-room promised land in a two-story stucco building, a mere fifteen-minute bike ride from campus. We didn’t have furniture. Furniture was but a first unnecessary step toward a stifling life devoid of all meaning. Besides, the place came with a card table and a couple of folding chairs. As far as I was concerned, it was fully furnished.
Everything about this apartment was perfect. Imagine a refrigerator that contained only the food my friends and I put into it! I could be on an unending diet of only celery and sugar-free Jell-O and no one would ever dream of saying a word! At last I had a place I was proud of, where I could invite the right kind of interesting young man in for a cup of weird licorice-smelling tea in a room lit only by scented candles, as I did that very first week, when a guy from my Basic Design class stopped by at midnight. There we were, at the card table, inhaling cinnamon in a flickering open flame, listening to the new Doors album and discussing existence while also playing with a can of rubber cement. We were layering globs of it on the tabletop to form interesting sculptural shapes that were even more awesome when you set parts of them on fire. Okay, yes, for a few minutes we set the whole table on fire. But we put it right out again with a couple of big pots of water. And by the end of the evening, you could hardly see the black smoke stains way up there on the ceiling of the kitchen.
Next thing I knew, spring quarter was over and my roommates were packing their suitcases and heading home for the summer. Though I’d landed a part-time job as a counter girl at the Lunch Box in Berkeley, it didn’t pay enough for me to cover the rent for our three-bedroom apartment alone. I couldn’t bear the idea of giving up my freedom yet was unable to figure out where to find more roommates on such short notice.
Somehow I managed to convince my parents to let me enroll in summer quarter. I could stay on in Berkeley