by Christopher Bacas
I stayed out late the night before I left for college, saying goodbye to friends whose future included institutions even more punitive than mine. My parents packed my belongings in two long, green army duffel bags purchased at “Sunny’s Surplus”, where you could buy Afro picks with folding handles, decommissioned grenades and a “knuckle knife”.
At Baltimore-Washington airport, I watched a young man carrying a black-leather trumpet case unload his luggage from a Rolls Royce. My parents thought he might be going to school with me. I doubted them. My throat burnt by cheap Mexican weed, trumpet kid looked as sullen as I felt. He boarded with me and we flew southwest. At Dallas-Fort Worth, we both headed to the baggage carousels, still avoiding eye contact. The area gradually cleared, leaving a cluster of freshman music students. A saxophonist unpacked a gleaming Yamaha alto and played scales with a windup, wooden metronome. He began them slowly and evenly, a proper music lesson, and ended each with a monsoon of notes whose velocity propelled his body backwards, a cephalopod in flight.
A few of us took out the letters promising shuttle bus service to our dorm in Denton. At the curb, unmarked vans pulled in, waited and left, sometimes without picking up passengers. They drove through a lattice of Texas sun and graphite shadow. It was one-hundred and fourteen degrees. Read more »