Chapter 4: Judgment Night
Every year at Haverford College, there is a campus-wide, weekend-long party that the school sponsors as a way of celebrating spring and giving students the chance to unwind before final exams. In 2003, Haverfest was the setting of one of the more memorable weekends of my time at college, for good reasons and bad.
Friday night of Haverfest marked the last Throng show of the year, and the last ever for our seniors. The night was filled with emotion and good times, carrying us into the wee hours. On Saturday afternoon, I made my way from the Dining Center over to Lloyd 90s, where Alexis and her friends lived. They were already outside enjoying the warm weather and mirth natural to Haverfest weekend. Chris and Scott (with whom I’d spent many late nights doing scenes, traveling to Wawa and doing more scenes) didn’t live in Lloyd 90s, but they were there already, and that made me feel like it was going to be a good day.
Chris was noticeably anxious when I saw him. When I asked him what was up, he told me that today was the day he expected to find out whether we’d been selected to perform in the Del Close Marathon in New York. While I recognized this as important, I decided not to let an uncontrollable result effect my good time, and I suggested he carry it in kind. Scott was messing around with a kickball that belonged to Lloyd 90s, and he and I started passing it back and forth like it was a basketball. That guy sure knew how to make you feel like a kid when you thought you’d forgotten how (explains his mastery of improvisation, certainly).
So Scott and I are geting into a pretty energetic back-and-forth when the ball goes a bit wild and into a bed of flowers. To retrieve the ball, Scott has to walk on some of the flowers, and does so without much consideration for the plant life. I didn’t think much of it, until I hear someone say something to the effect of, “Be careful, a–hole!” But I wasn’t surprised when I saw who said it. She was one of Alexis’s friends whom I didn’t talk to anymore.
Scott replied, “What?”
She said, “The flowers! Be careful. That’s, like, my major.”
Scott, without missing a beat, said, “I thought it was Painting.”
Scott and I start laughing. I may have even fallen down from laughing so hard because she was an art major. And watching her get annoyed amused us because she was known for getting annoyed easily…and that’s what happened that day. She stared Scott down for a few seconds. Then, Scott froze deer-style and said, “Nooooo fighting!”
Hearing that, I instantly howled with laughter again, because his wit cut deeply than I thought it would. See, this girl is a proud Quaker (if the entire exchange doesn’t seem funny to you after knowing that, then I guess you had to be there).
Anyway, she went back to doing whatever she was doing. No one else around expressed that Scott and I had been especially offensive, so the day went on with negligible tension. I wasn’t too worried about the exchange because, as I’ve already said, the girl and I weren’t on speaking terms.
Here’s why: remember when I said I had a crush on one of Alexis’s friends and that’s mostly why I sat with them for lunch sometimes? I met her at the start of first semester that year, when she’d returned from Study Abroad. She and I worked together at the campus café and became friendly that way. She always seemed to have some boy problem or another and, the schmo I was, availed myself to her venting spells (couldn’t hurt, right?).
Then she started dating someone fairly seriously. Then, more importantly, she got dumped by someone she was dating fairly seriously. When it happened, she spent a lot of time holed up in her room. I’d visit her, try to make her laugh or just sit there while she cried. It didn’t feel like a chore since I cared. It bummed me out that she was partial to dating heels, especially when I liked her and wouldn’t have treated her badly.
Anyway, a few months go by, and we’re closing up the café when I ask her out. She laughed, said, “Oh, I don’t know…” and went home. I was pretty embarrassed, but kept hoping I had a shot. I didn’t bring it up again because I didn’t want work to be awkward, but my feelings didn’t change. So I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time: I wrote her a letter…by hand, talking about how much I hated that she got hurt and that it wouldn’t be that way if she was with me, etc (trust me, I’m shaking my head about it even today). A few days later, I get a rejection email from her (that’s right, an email), admitting both flattery and disinterest in a relationship…and in even being my friend at all anymore. Stinger.
She must have changed the night of her café shift or something, because we didn’t really cross paths that much after that. We haven’t spoken to each other to this day.
Return to Saturday. Chris, Scott, and I had spent the entire day together, mostly at Lloyd 90s (we watched some Jell-O wrestling by the Dining Center, but that got old really quickly). Later that night, Chris went back to his room to check his email. He came back and told us that he got an email from the UCB Theatre inviting The Throng to participate in the 5th Annual Del Close Marathon!
You would have thought we’d won the NBA Championship by how many times we spontaneously hugged each other while exchanging unintelligible adulation. The news that we’d be playing on the same stage as the Upright Citizens Brigade, the masters of the very craft we loved, bumped the celebration of the weekend to a new level. When other members of The Throng would wander past the building, we’d call them over and spread the good news…and exchange more unintelligible adulation. When people from The Lighted Fools came by (they’d been accepted, too), we patted each other on the back and traded kind words. When people we didn’t even know walked by…we didn’t really notice because we were all so caught up by being the most important people on campus for that brief moment (only known to us, of course).
And then the figurative ceiling fell in. At some point during the night, a group of people came over to Lloyd 90s because they’d won an auction item that the residents of Lloyd 90s offered as part of a fundraiser. The item was a game of Das Boot, a version of kickball modified to keep college kids…er…interested. Chris, Scott and I weren’t planning on playing, but figured we’d follow the crowd and enjoy a livelier backdrop for talking about how awesome the Del Close Marathon was going to be. Just as the group was getting ready to head over to the lawn where they’d play, Alexis came up to me and said that I couldn’t go over to the game. At first, I thought it was because it was an exclusive event for the people who’d won the auction (which seemed silly). Then I learned quickly that that wasn’t the case.
Alexis: “This really sucks, but [Quaker girl] is really uncomfortable and doesn’t want you around.”
Seriously. That happened.
In all honesty, I wasn’t surprised that she’d feel that way given how our friendship had gone south. But the more frustrating part was that I’d been hanging out there all day and she never said anything. I made sure to stay out of her way so that she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. So I was more hurt to be kicked out of a party that I’d been enjoying for hours. Then, I was shocked that she’d believe she had the right to have me removed from a party being thrown by a dorm she didn’t even live in. But more than all that, I felt badly for Chris and Scott because I figured they’d feel pressured to hang out with me instead of going to watch the Das Boot game. I didn’t want to put them in that position.
Turns out they were both more angry about my being kicked out of the party than anything else. Scott got pretty fired up about it, citing the flowerbed incident from earlier in the day as “not that big a deal” and “all [him] if anything.” Chris understood that there was more to it than that, but he was still mad, and told me that he’d rather hang out with me anyway (bless him). So we walked off toward my dorm to find something else to get into, and Alexis apologized again and went to the game.
On the way towards Gummere dorm, we shook the whole thing off by talking about how bogus the whole situation was. That was when I vowed never to talk to the girl again (as if it were up to me). But by the time we got to the front of my building, where there was a completely different group of happy people hanging out, we were already talking about the Del Close Marathon again, and sharing with these new people how awesome that was, whether they cared or not. Luckily, during Haverfest weekend, one man’s good news is everyone’s good news. The Quaker way wasn’t so bad after all. And now, my summer calendar had one huge circle on it, and that was really all that mattered.
Next time…Chapter 5: Live from New York
Jason Stockdale (R) directs R&HAD cast members Olwn Conway and Mark Bringhurst.
How could you, Paul Walker? How could you?