Day 1: Alumni, Weakened

We arrived at Swat on Thursday evening to find that we were staying in a 3rd floor Hallowell lounge. A lounge, yes. No phone, no gift basket of toiletries, and the closest thing to a bed was a singularly unsavory mattress leaning against the wall. I didn't want to feel like a demanding alum, I wanted to feel like a laid-back Swattie, but I couldn't manage it (though I managed it better than K). An inauspicious beginning to the vacation, which was already on rocky footing: our answering machine had crapped out as we were on our way out the door that morning, leaving us unable to receive messages from movers and cable companies and employers. (The point was moot, anyway; our dear cat knocked the phone from its cradle within hours of our departure, and our phone was effectively disconnected for twelve days.)

Happily, our lovely and talented dorm host Miriam was able to drum up a new room for us on the first floor, for which we were profoundly grateful. K. went to bed; I spent the evening in the Science Center, investigating the vibratory properties of the tables, then found a cluster of people (jedediah, carpenter, ceciliaregent, jaipur, others) chatting in Ha-Ha-Hallowell basement. We found a bit of Yeats's Leda and the Swan scrawled on one of the couches, and spent some time in epigraphy:

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

We wondered just what had happened in that basement lounge, under what circumstances our vandal had carved those words. And then I thought of our third-floor mattress. Oh dear.

Day 2: Kodachrome

If you took all the girls I knew when I was single,
Brought 'em all together for one night...

Alumni Weekend featured somewhere between six and a dozen of my romantic entanglements, depending how we count: exes, currents, potentials, serious flirtations, major obsessions, happy dalliances. Let's say nine, and thereby limit it to women I've actually Kissed With Intention. (I hear a rustling as my audience begins ticking people off on their fingers.) It was an odd stew of emotions, of recent wounds and cautious hopes and time-smoothed fondnesses and simple joys. It says something positive about me, I hope, that I'm still on good terms with every last one of them, but it was indeed odd, and there were times I had to sit very still and blink quietly to myself.

It was a relief, then, to have lunch with I Ask Wetly (that's a pseudonymous anagram, and most of you don't know her, I'm sure). She is frankly flirtatious, but very clear about her utter lack of intentions toward me, so even as she is graphically updating me on her sex life and gifting me with a glow-in-the-dark vibrator there is no confusion whatsoever. I bought her lunch at Essie Mae's, and she showed me the darling little turtle embryos (wee chibi-turtles!) she's experimenting on in her lab. We had very little time, but I quite enjoyed seeing her.

There was a dinner snafu that evening, in which K. and I were invited to dinner, then summarily disinvited for reasons that continue to elude me. Happily, other people had been unrelatedly but similarly screwed, so we hopped into a car with oygevalt and superbacana and headed to Peking for a perfectly happy evening of Chinese food. (We briefly considered finding somewhere we could get schrod, but wisely opted to avoid the pun.)

I gamed in the afternoon, playing a strange little riverboat racing game called Mississippi Queen, and again in the evening, stalking between Name Games and playtesting Ben N.'s amusing storytelling/mapmaking game Land of The... Afterward, I commandeered his cramped little backpacker guitar and serenaded the lounge, while franzeska urged me again and again to "Play something darker!" and sinsofthedove complained about all the Dylan.

Ah, yes: sinsofthedove, who had assured me time and time again that there was no way she'd be able to make it to Alumni Weekend, startled the bejeezus out of me by showing up that afternoon. Once I got over my initial shock, I had a lovely time getting to know her in person, as nearly all our previous interactions had been online. She and I stayed up far far too late with showergrrl on the couch in the math lounge, getting sleepier and sillier and snugglier, until finally we called security to lock the doors around 4AM.

This is what some of today looked like. ( As usual, I will remove photos at the subject's request. )