Aruba, Jamaica

There's an awful 80s song playing in my head right now. The name of it might be Hold on to the night, hold on to the memories. I can remember my mom joking once that she thought the words were hold on to the mammories.

Speaking of my mom, she's decided to fly us to Aruba for Spring Break. This strikes me as an opulent and entirely welcome development. My goals that week will be as follows: swim, read a book, get a tan.

I wrote the following piece, an event, for my literary journalism class. I'm going to post it below, and then either a) run a nice big chunk of miles or b) take the world's longest nap. Peace out, scouts.

The man in the front row

The room wasn’t hot, but the man sitting in the front row, middle chair, could have used a towel. Beads of sweat had been forming on the folds of his neck since he arrived. The neck, spotted with stubble, disappeared almost entirely into the collar of his shirt when he moved. And he moved often.

In front of him, two panelists who had noticed his awkward presence from the start of the lecture were trying not to look at him. The room at NYU’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life was crowded, but it seemed that looking at anyone besides the man in the front row was, for them, impossible. They shouldered their burden of discomfort in different ways: Udi Ofer, who represented the New York Civil Liberties Union at this casual Monday-night meeting of student journalists, flashed an occasional game-show-host smile after allowing himself brief glances at the man in the front. Village Voice writer Alisa Solomon, when she looked at him, set her jaw and looked to be willing her pixy-cut hair to not stand on end.

The moderator of the discussion, a solemn Betty Page lookalike, looked infrequently at the man in the front and appeared alternately shocked, bemused, and shocked by what she saw.

The subject of the talk was First Amendment freedoms. Certainly, no one in the audience could have argued that the man didn’t have the right to be there.

As Ofer began to cite search tools like Google’s National Security Archives and the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, the head of the man in the front row began to droop. As Ofer discussed the Des Moines Register’s fearless story on subpoenaed peace demonstrators, the man was a disgruntled six-year-old. He pushed back on his heels, sending his chair back a good two inches on the floor. His coat crinkled like a candy wrapper.

The Page twin’s green eyes widened, her nose scrunching in a brief portrait of pain and disdain. The inner-workings of her brain were clear: is this man distracting people from the lecture? Yes. Should I do something?

Solomon briefly talked numbers. The percentage of cargo-bearing ships that entered U.S. ports unchecked before September 11: two, the same number of nostrils it took to become nearly paralyzed by the pungent smell of the man in the front. The percentage that entered unchecked after September 11: four, the number of conspicuously empty seats beside him.

When the event was drawing to a close, the man’s flabby arm shot up. The Page twin nodded in his direction, wearing apprehension on her face like so many freckles.

He ahhed, ummed, then asked a question. His voice was a hesitant, deep baritone. When he turned to the side, as he did several times during the asking of his question, his profile revealed a snub nose, plastic glasses and a beard.

Ofer praised the question as a great one, and then began to answer it. But before the first full sentence had fallen from his lips, the man in the front row had very clearly decided to call it a night. He picked up a thick piece of Na’an from the paper plate beside him. (A Middle Eastern dinner had been served before the talk began, and the man hadn’t, apparently, finished his meal.) He chewed loudly, staring not at Ofer, but at the bread.

When he’d finished devouring the Na’an, the man in the front row began to rummage like a squirrel through a paper bag he’d brought with him. He crunched, bunched and tore the bag, apparently not finding the nuts he sought within.

When Ofer finished his response, the man in the front row did not even blink in his direction.

A man three rows back asked a wrap-up question that looked, from the relieved expressions of the weary panelists, to make him the hero of the evening. A ripple of calm went through the room, followed by loud clapping. The lecture was over.

Ofer, Solomon and the Page girl looked pleased, as though they’d beaten their strange heckler. But as the man in the front row stood up, collected his belongings and began to trudge toward the bathroom, they realized nobody would emerge from the room smiling.