The Fall Festival

Last night I went with a bunch of other philosophy students to the Irish Lion for Happy Hour. This was Susan's idea - one more reason to love Susan, who is beginning her dissertation on Chinese philosophy. The Irish Lion is actually where I had my first meal in Bloomington, back when I came to visit, and so it is a scene of pleasant memories although not the ideal venue for this sort of social event, as we had to sit at tables and there were so many of us we broke off into two groups. Whenever this happens, I always feel I am in the wrong place. I ended up next to this chap who's quite polite and probably very smart, but who is very fussy - as K. says, you can imagine him painstakingly arranging things on his desk and explaining why everything must be ordered the way it is. My love for Percy Weasley notwithstanding, I do not find this sort of thing endearing.

However, towards the end of the dinner, Susan and Value Theory Lad came over to our end of the table, and I managed to invite Susan to go with me to a screening of Serenity next week. (I knew Susan would be into Firefly. It's so satisfying when I'm right. And she probably won't mind if I go dressed as Kaylee.) And Value Theory Lad issued a general invitation to go to the orchestra tomorrow night, which I will probably do, because Value Theory Lad + Free Music sounds like a good plan to me. I wonder if people get dressed up for this sort of thing. I wonder if I can wear one of my many pairs of gloves.

I was reluctant to go home and read philosophy, so I asked whether anybody had any interesting plans for the rest of the evening. Luke suggested we go to a fall festival in the next town over - there would, he assured us, be funnel cake, and local color to appreciate ironically. This sounded like just the thing to me, and so off we went.

Luke's an interesting cat; I quite enjoy him. He's the departmental Beau Brummell: lanky and languorous, immaculately dressed, I can easily picture him at the Drones, playing cricket with dinner rolls. Apparently he goes every year to an event called Hell House, a sort of Christian haunted house that they do around Halloween to show kids that the wages of sin is death: there's a room where you go to the funeral of a gay man who died of AIDS and an abortion room and I don't know what-all. Luke finds this extremely amusing. I think it sounds distressing, but I'm probably going to end up going; it sounds like it will be an outing.

On this occasion, happily, there were no scenes of eternal damnation - merely rustic charm and unhealthy food, of which I did not partake. Some of the boys bought funnel cake and ate it, and we walked around the fall festival for a bit. Luke tried to get me to go down the super slide, but as I pointed out, that was $2 that could instead be spent on delicious beer.

"I'm convinced," said Mike, and we spun on our heels and headed to Luke's house, stopping on the way to pick up some local beer from a liquor store.

We sat in the yard and Luke piled a mountain of kindling onto the fire pit and before long there was a towering blaze. "I'm the fire guy," he drawled, pleased with himself. A log rolled off the fire, sending off lots of sparks into the parched grass.

"Nice work, fire guy," said Mike. "I'm not fire safety guy," Luke retorted scornfully.

So we sat by the fire and drank our nice, cold beers and talked. We discussed what we'd be doing if not becoming academics - rock star was a popular choice. Value Theory Lad and Luke both want to go to Hollywood. I would be a librarian or a comic book artist, or both.

It was nice, sitting outside with a beer in my hand and a fire crackling, surrounded by these people who are now that much closer to becoming my colleagues and friends. It was the sort of thing I know I ought to be doing, and enjoying. Yet somehow it was not right, or not enough, and I was cold and lonely.