Jamie vs. College

(This is a chapter from the book of short-stories I'm currently working on, "Everyday I Write The Book")

Sometimes I like to do this thing where I pay around twenty bucks, get on a Greyhound bus and leave Brooklyn, where I have never left for more than the two weeks—I went to summer camp when my mother gave birth to my sister—and visit a place called Real College. I think about the decisions I’ve made in my life and their importance of everything I do now, and the biggest one seems to be the decision to stay in Brooklyn and not displace by myself by going away to Real College.

Now, you may wonder what I mean by that, considering that I am en- rolled at the Pratt Institute as a college student, and it is really a college. Young people travel far and wide to attend Real College and immerse themselves and reinvent themselves—but it was never that for me. I didn’t leave my parents or my friends, I didn’t change any scenery. I continued going to the places I’ve al- ways gone and doing the things I’ve always done. It is during these, the twilight of my college years, I realize that I will never have gotten the full true college experience and while I do not really regret this, I often wonder how I would have fared and what my life would have been like if I had decided to leave New York City.

I never really wanted to go to college, it’s something my parents made me do, if not actively, then passively through Jewish guilt. Upon my senior year of high school, it did not seem unreasonable that if I wanted to, I could have found success as a rock singer or as a playwright (I have also been many times accused of having delusions of grandeur). I figured that my high school, which had about 7,000 kids, was microcosm for the Real World—I had become fa- mous there, everybody really dug my plays and seemed to think my band was really great. I figured the next stop was fame, not more school. Also, nowhere but New York City appealed to me as a place to live, especially not the upstate NY towns of most SUNY schools, nor the middle of nowhere liberal arts schools like Oberlin or Wesleyan, even though they seemed to feature a tremendous amount of sex, drugs and liberal shenanigans on their curriculum. I would not live in a dorm room, I would not sleep in a tiny room with some dude I did not know. While I left high school feeling warm and fuzzy, I still felt like college was another institution, and didn’t care about it enough about it to just immerse myself in it. I thought it was for suckers.

Realizing my parents would never support me otherwise (nor would I meet any girls), I applied to NYU, the New School, and Fordham, where I could major in playwriting, something I was already pretty successful at. When they produced my plays at school the audience rolled in their seats, it was a hit! My grades were not very good. I spent most of high school getting high, eating school lunch, devoting to extracurricular activities, and trying to pass classes using my sense of humor and sharp wit (I failed a lot). NYU pursued and then rejected me, The New School wait-listed and rejected me, and Fordham flat out wanted nothing to do with me (even though my Dad went there). I was going to attend Marymount Manhattan, which I didn’t know anything about. I was in a room signing up for classes and I took a look at the people around me—every one was totally square and seriously white. I imagined the future, and it didn’t look right at all, so I got up and ran, making another important decision: “This is going to be a very interesting time in my life.”

At my mother’s urging, I applied to the Pratt Institute for their Writing for Publication, Performance, and Media program and was soon accepted. I decided my plan was to go there for something to do and to appease my parents. Plus, everyone in my band was going away for college and I needed to meet musicians to start a new band so I could quit school and just do that. Also, throughout high school, I was often told, “Girls will love a guy like you in college.” I had the idea that if I didn’t go to school I would never meet a new girl ever again, so this was a certain amount of motivation. I never thought I would finish college. I thought I would have something more important to do. And then, I went through one of the more humbling times in my life.

The summer was great. I worked at my father’s ice cream store during the day and stayed up all night hanging around Prospect Park, Coney Island, Daisy’s Diner on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn and occasionally took hallucinogenic mushrooms. We listened to “We Laugh At Danger (And Break All The Rules)” by Against Me! in the car and pretended that we were gonna drive off a cliff. This summer I seemed to have about fifteen best friends but the truth that we would be separated was imminent. Everyone was excited about going to college but me. The ones who were leaving were sad about that, and I was even sadder. The end of the summer was one emotional goodbye after another and soon only a few of us were left.

I remember going to Pratt to sign up for classes. I had never really been around Fort Greene and I had no idea where I was. I looked around at the people there and felt baffled by what I should say to them. I then decided to for the first time eat White Castle. I ate about ten micro-sandwiches on the grassy campus lawn and passed out in the dirt. “This is delicious. This tastes like poverty.” A few days later, I walked into my first class and realized I was the owner of the only penis in the room. “This could be good,” I thought. We introduced ourselves and everyone seemed to be from Texas or Vermont or California—bizarre places to me. I didn’t know people from other parts of the country knew about Pratt (nobody in Brooklyn had ever heard of it). I attempted to be charming but found that I was much less charismatic then I remembered myself being. When the class was over, I figured the right thing to do would be to start talking to somebody. So instead, I got the fuck out of there and figured out where I was by walking to Prospect Park, where I got stoned and lay around in the dirt.

With a lot less friends than I had a short while ago and growing less comfortable in my parents’ house by the minute, I found myself walking around all the time, often alone. I would go to Barnes and Noble and read entire books in a sitting. I would spend all day in Prospect Park, or sometimes I’d go to the Vil- lage to Washington Square Park, where I would sing Beatles and Beach Boys and other songs with the musicians that bummed around there. I would eat meals in restaurants by myself. I had an iPod full of great music and had be- come a full-fledged smoker (smoking is one of the best things to do by yourself).

I didn’t really need much else. I was somebody who smiled and laughed all the time, but around then I started discovering the stoic, sad, cool guy personality. I listened to a lot of the Smiths.

I couldn’t believe how much free time I had. All this alone and walking around time made it impossible for me to not notice closing businesses and new constructions. Little did I know in 2004, that in the next four years I would watch Williamsburg, condominiums, gentrifiers, and accompanying trendy restaurants and coffee shops eat my borough.

Smoking cigarettes, despite what the Surgeon General says, turned out to be a good idea, because it lets you socialize in ten minute, not-that-awkward segments that are good for developing a repartee. I still had no friends, really. Everybody else lived at school and had found their social circles—I lived with my parents and hung out in the dirt a lot. These people went to Real College and me, I didn’t really know what the fuck I was doing. Sometimes I would have these five hour gaps between classes where I would sit on campus, chain smoke, and just look at all these fucking people and think, “You fucking people.”

I think most people go to college and meet people like them. I felt like I had been around people like me and was then displaced to be around a bunch of people I had nothing in common with. I felt really out of place, in my head, I was not legitimately a “college student” and it was a cool kid club I would never be a part of. The girls were mostly very cute and made me feel like I was very awkward, especially in comparison to the skinny, dressed-up guys. It’s weird, I never see any fat guys at Pratt. I know America has an obesity problem, but I think I’m the fattest guy here and I’m not that fat really. I wonder if other art schools are like this.

I would go and visit my friends at Real College and it seemed like an equally baffling place to be. Most of the places are located in a town where there is very little else surrounding, giving the college campus a very trapping affect. There are grass and trees there, and sometimes mountains, but minorities seem mostly absent. There is always something to do and conversely, there is never anything to do. While drugs are cheaper and more available, and sex seems more of an option, they are among the few options of the evening. However, people in Real College—while they often are hung up on various political issues—have very few actual concerns outside their college campus world. They don’t see bums or sad old people, pretty much everyone there can afford to be there, there is rarely crime nor violence in their world, and they are cer- tainly not around to watch their hometowns rapidly change as I was.

My friend Ian Manley went to Hampshire College—which seems like one of the kookier liberal arts schools—and decided in his new life he would be a pirate. So, he decided to wear a puffy shirt and introduce himself as “Black Heart.” When a few of us went up to visit him, nobody called him by his real name, nor did anyone feel ridiculous calling him “Black Heart.” Apparently, there is also a cowboy and a group of ninjas. My roommate used to go there, and appeared in public only in the color Pink. These kids did not hear the world “no” enough as children. Hampshire is a place where the problems of the real world don’t exist, so everyone there exercises their right to be as weird as possible and often, to do as many drugs as possible. It is a community of “acting out.” In order to go there, you are forced to participate in these weird cliques and rules and people attempting to create their own mythos. This is not just college, but play land. In a way, it is an amazing place, but I get exhausted just thinking about going there.

My guess is that if I had decided to go to “real college” I would have gotten antsy and gone home before I received any grades. However, maybe in an alternate universe I would have stayed. I’d be playing in a college band instead of The Brooklyn What, maybe I’d play Beer Pong (probably not), maybe I’d have developed a substance abuse problem, and maybe I’d have a more exciting sexual history. However, I’m glad I stayed because while I never became a real college student, I did become a real writer, and going to Pratt allowed me to do that while not having to worry much about actual academics. I learned from some professors, and for the ones I was so adverse to, I wrote good oppositional material.

I was pretty depressed for a while. I pictured my future to be pretty bleak, I thought I was going to crash and burn at school, with the talent and charisma I once perceived rapidly fleeting. I felt guilty for wasting my parents’ money. I thought I might be alone forever (I still think this sometimes). I started going to therapy.

I think the size of New York City keeps me sane—even when things are boring it is a town of possibilities. I need options, I need to have a lot of things not to do. I like to think of myself as a local hero sometimes, holding the fort down in Brooklyn. College got much better as it went on. I slowly met kindred spirits, the professors started actually taking interest in me, and not in a pitying way, the way it might have been at first. I realized that I am writer, I just have to do it my way, not attempt somebody else’s. I am very glad that I was so wrong.

At Pratt, I try to inject my native experience into discussions. I miss my friends who are elsewhere, but whatever goes down in Brooklyn I want to be around for it. The place I grew up and the things I like about it may not be here much longer. The future is now, and I’m glad I decided to stay and watch it burn, and be an angry voice throughout.