old school

We’re driving around a cluster of college and prep school campuses that are all mixed up together. I think I see Dartmouth up ahead but then realize it’s Duke. We come around a corner and there is Hotchkiss at an oblique angle.

I’m excited to visit, and we get out and go into my freshman year dormitory. There are signs of construction all over. I start to climb up a rickety pile of debris and then notice that there’s a staircase and go up that instead. Upstairs the doors are open to all the empty rooms. We walk into two or three and stand in the tiny spaces and look around. They’ve been stripped bare, and I explain how they all had dark wood paneling back in my day.

We go downstairs through the main building and into a kind of recreation room. There are people playing ping pong. I am indignant and say, There was never a ping pong table! Then I notice an old schoolmate of mine over to the side of the room. I somehow know that he’s suffered a great tragedy of some kind, and I walk over and wrap my arms around him. We stand there for a long, long time, holding on to each other. At one point I catch Chris’s eye and hold out my hand without breaking the embrace. He comes close, and I give him a reassuring kiss and then go back to the long hug.

Someone spills some kind of blue goo and wipes it up with towels and takes it outside and throws it in the lake. Apparently they’ve been doing this for years. I’m outraged and start shouting and carrying on about how I’m going to bring an environmental lawsuit against the school.

I’m sitting in a court room, listening to a case being tried. I’m sitting on some benches with a group of gay guys, one of whom particularly dislikes me. They’re being bitchy and rude. There’s a tabby kitten wandering around, and I pick it up and move to a different seat across the room.

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