143 Days - Wanna Make Out (Vol.3)

I roll out of the cab through the window. Al Pacino is thinking if he should’ve dropped me at the mental institute instead. He helps me with the baggage out of the boot. He wants to get rid of me. He zooms off as soon as the last bag is out.

I’m standing under this old tree. Tree’s eyes have seen it all, he’s been here a while. I say hello to him via wink-&-nod. I rotate & suck in the surroundings. I take a deep breath & make some weird throaty noise. ‘So this is what freedom smells like.’ I whisper to myself. I’m usually not so frenzied. I tell you there’s something in this wind.

When I’m normal I lift my hand bag & head towards the block that reads: Monash Residential Services. As I enter the room I notice the girl sitting behind the desk. Her name plate reads Tamika-Holly S Faulkner. She has two official first names, hyphenated, plus middle initial. And Al Pacino thought I was crazy.

‘I’m here to pick my keys’ I say clearly distracted by the holistic duality about this girl. I’m not sure if she heard or noticed me. She continues to paint her nails. Suddenly looks up & raises her left hand in front of me. ‘What do you think?’

‘Purple,’ I say in reflex. ‘I like purple’ she smiles goofily. She’s wearing green paint on her other hand. Her open hair is streaked blood-red & powder-blue. Her lips are black-&-white. Silver eye lashes & hazel kohled eyes.

‘Do ya think I’m lesbian?’ she looks lesbian.

‘Are you’

I don’t know; haven’t figured out yet.’ She scrunches. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Rowan Shaw’ my name got mutated into this from Rohan Shah as my dad believed in integration. Shoot me.

She punches my name into the computer. ‘Farrer Hall, room no. 133’ she looks up. ‘From California, Rowan’

‘Yep, and you can call me Ray’ I don’t like Rowan, it feels fake. I like Ray.

‘Like a Ray of hope’ I nodded. ‘And you can call me Tim-Tam’

‘Tim-Tam, like the legendary biscuits’

She nodded. ‘You got any gal-pal waiting for ya back home’ she looked at me; her head tilted, brows curled. I nodded in negative. ‘That’s what I was hoping for’ she tosses the keys over.

I catch in reflex. ‘Thank you’ I smile, turn around & start to walk off.

‘Ray’ her raspy voice stops me at the door.

‘If you ever need a hug, don’t you be shy to come over’ her gray eyes squinted, lips crunched. ‘I’m famous for my hugs, they bring people back from the dead’. Fucking wow!

‘I’ll’ I say; I'm frighteningly mesmerized by this girl. Though I couldn’t imagine a situation where I will come asking for one.

I grab rest of my baggage from under the vintage tree & take a walk towards Farrer Hall. My abode for the next 5 months. ‘Why Farrer?’ I had asked when Derek, the serial traveller & ex-exchange resident, had recommended me Farrer. ‘Hot girls’ he had retorted.

I love hot girls. What’s not to love about them. They’re fancy stuff like Ferrari, with whom you can talk, laugh, embrace, kiss & all the dirty stuff.

I opened the main doors to farrer using my dog tag key. I take two flights of stairs & I’m there in the lobby. If you take a U to your right, it’ll take you to the additional residential wing named Chastity. To my right is the kitchen, for chastity residents. I walk straight down & open the door leading to the first floor corridor. Mine is the first room to the right. I look down the corridor. I don’t see a soul. It’s dead quiet for a Sunday evening. Perhaps most kids haven’t returned yet as classes officially do not start until the 16^th. I open my room; run my fingers across the white concrete walls. My fingers read the history written in them. I dump my stuff in one corner, open the windows & sit legs dangling dangerous outside. Oh it’s just first floor, I will merely break a ball.

About half hour passes. I climb back into my room. Open my Melbourne guide & find the nearest supermarket & how to get there. Coles supermarket, 2 kms out, bus no. 703. Frequency terrible on Sunday. I decide to take a walk. I buy tons of frozen & other junk stuff. Take the bus back to campus.

Technically my kitchen should be the first floor kitchen. But it’s all the way down & around the corridor. A 37-second walk. And chastity kitchen is a sober 4-second walk. I decide chastity is my kitchen.

I dump perishables in the kitchen fridge. Now I don’t feel like cooking, not even noodles. So I make my favorite: breakfast-for-dinner: cornflakes, raisins & lotsa cold milk, in a ceramic bowl.

I hop back to my room. Kick up my laptop. Relish my cornflakes over the greatest show about nothing, Seinfeld. I leave my door wide open. I never close my door. It's my thing. I never closed my door at Stanford either. Even at night I merely shut it, never lock. Of course I shut & lock my door at home at all times. I got nosy gujarati parents.

It’s almost midnight & I’ve watched way too much Seinfeld. I’m laughed-out. The door to my corridor opens; a girl walks past my room. She returns a minute later. She’s tall, dressed in a sparkling blue party dress, bare-feat, now leaning against my room’s threshold. She makes an offer no man has ever refused.

‘Wanna make out.’ Movies, movies, movies. All over again. Words get frozen in my neck. 

She’s now walked in.

‘Or we can just talk,’ she sits on the bed. ‘I’m Rachel’

‘Ray’ I turn my chair enough to see her.

‘I’m totally wasted, Ray’ she smiles like a drunk person. ‘But I swear I won’t throw up on you,’ she stops to think, lips pouted, eyes narrowed, ‘hope not’. She smiles. I have to say I got a bit scared of getting vomited over. No matter how you spin it, it’s never fun.

‘Looks like you just came in’ my unpacked baggage, bare shelves & walls gave away my secret.

‘I’m a few hours old in this country’

‘Newbee’ she slides up, her back now resting on the wall. ‘My head hurts’

‘Coffee?’

‘Black & strong’ she slaps herself & jumps off the bed. ‘Let’s go, Ray’

We rush to the chastity kitchen. She opens a cupboard, then another. She finds what she was looking for. As we’re cooking coffee we talk a little about some nonsense stuff about how people should travel wearing roller blades to save fuel & how pigs would make wonderful pets. She boldly predicted next US President will be black, muslim & gay.

‘Why did you wanna make out with me?’ I couldn't resist.

‘Frankly, my dear, coz your door was open’ we both laughed. Moral: Always leave the damn door open.

‘Good enough for me’ we laugh a little more. I don’t even fake pride.

‘Anyway, before you hear it from others, which you’ll, let me tell you I’m known to be loose around these shores.’

‘Ah’

‘In one semester I hooked up with eleven blokes’

‘That’s a lot’

‘It’s the official record across Monash’ Wow, somebody kept record books. ‘I broke the long standing record of some girl named Sasha. She did nine’

‘Sasha. That’s such a striper name’ she laughs.

‘If I keep at it Rachel will become a slutty name.’ she winks at me. ‘Gotta pee, be right back’

I’ve been bit dazed since Rachel showed up at my door. Because frankly my dear, Rachel is picture perfect, with the body of a supermodel. 9 on 10, any day of the year. I’ve never been friends with a nine. I’m not Brad Pitt. There is something instantaneously likeable about her. And it has got nothing to do with how she looks.

Rachel is back. ‘Crap, I left my bag in Nick’s car.’ She pulls her tongue out. ‘My keys, now I can’t get into my room’

‘Sleep at mine’

‘Ok’ she said right away. ‘I’ll also borrow some of your clothes’

‘Sure’

‘And I take the floor’

‘Deal’

Even the strong coffee couldn’t keep her awake. Half hour later she fell asleep on floor, wearing my ill-fitting shorts & worn Lakers T. I placed a pillow under her head.

I had decided to write a diary. I had even bought one of those fancy papyrus leather-bound antiquated notebooks with strings. I knew I won’t be writing anything. I’ve never written anything ever even after promising myself year after year. I was about to break the deadlock.

I turned off the lights & turned on the lamp. I wrote the first page of my vintage diary.

“A girl with black-&-white lips gave me a free-hug coupon. Likes to be called: tim-tam. Rachel, blonde (I think color is fake) is sleeping on my carpet, her arms littered all over the place. Wearing my old clothes. Looking like a clown. I wonder if I look like a clown in them. What am I gonna dream tonight in this stranger country with a stranger under my bed. I just looked at Rachel, she does look stupid. And I love stupid people, they look just like me.”