Achtung Baby

I had a presentation at 1pm. I had 3 hours to kill.

My feeling about the presentation was fairly negative. It was for an Asian studies class that has very poor structure and is taught by a tutor that really had no idea what shes doing. Its one of the few courses that I've encounted that feels like teaching by numbers and some times I feel like just getting up and doing it myself.

"Look. Shut up. Just shutup. You don't really care about this. You have no interest in this and thats very obvious. You inject not a hint of passion or expressiveness and nobody enjoys it. Shut the fuck up. Sit down. Really."

However, I need the marks. These first years dictate scholarships and the showers (downpours) of praise and recognition I need as an unqualified genius. The first years dictate all the free shit that will be poured upon me in the form of further education, study tours, and eventually research grants. Then there is the respect. Oh jesus I get respect now but I hunger for it in ever increasing, vast, applauding, king-of-everything quantities. What can I say? I'm a respect-whore. Should I pretend not to be? That leads to copious bags of weed and screaming at people I don't know "You don't know me!"

That said, none of that compares to Bryn. The Girl from Mars that sits across from me during this class. She sits, like a goddamn statue, with eyes that seem to look through people and sometimes, just sometimes, she looks at me and I look at her and we look at eachother. It feels like it lasts forever but... it doesn't. Its just a glance from her (and thats all it is) and she smiles and her alien face is then looking at me and smiling. I stare some more at her smile and then my brain kicks in and says 'Do something'. Its calm at first, like "Hey you better smile back or shes going to think you're an unfriendly dude". My features are sluggish and my brain lifts the volume. "FUCKING. SMILE. NOW." Eventually, in what seems like a massive brain-lag my smile emerges and by this point shes already gone back to listening to the class and I'm sitting there grinning like a moron at her. I sort of don't care though, because each of those smiles is something very special. They're like tiny pictures of things that have been put inside pieces of glass. They're kind of piling up, like treasure I guess. I have maybe 4 or 5 and each time I'm ridiculous and in the hyper reality that I'm obviously inhabiting I respond with a "For me? Why thank you."

I make it sound silly but she is an alien and has special alien powers that I don't understand.

So I have hours until this damn presentation is due and I haven't really prepared for it; its worth 20% of my course mark; and the Girl from Mars will be there being beautiful and interesting.

So... I went shopping. In my mind this was good because I would

a) Have a new jumper and maybe a scarf (2 as it turns out).
b) Promote my uber-attractive Man from Mars qualities that the Martian Girl would obviously find alluring.
c) Kill time.

I found myself all of 25 minutes later, with 2 hours and 35 minutes to go and nothing else to do. I sat and sipped coffee on North Tce. I pretended to write something on a writing pad in order to appear like I was doing something. Inevitably this ends up being stuff that I find funny like inverting cliches and whatnot: You cannot lose, if you do not play; If you never try, you can never fail. That kind of shite.

I was hopping. Aside from the caffeine hitting my system, the thought of the unprepared-for presentation and the Martian hotty were really amping me up. There isn't much left in life (because of the times, not my advancing years) that is as visceral as waiting for something to happen. Anticipation is still a bitch. We never really fear for our safety or worry about God (at least if you've got any measure of intellect), or really get too cut up because of what people think. Barrows of money and a consumer society have really addressed those pretty well. But waiting for something... really waiting for something that you can't stop thinking about is bullshit. Especially for someone like me who had very little mental discipline. I was like a small child one sugar.

Then I saw the police.