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The Curse (Third Installment)

The Curse: Part 3

It was that time of day that depended on perspective; if you were still awake it was very late at night but if you had just awakened it was very early. I was the only one in the fraternity house that was awake. I was relatively certain of that.

Through the wall of Brad’s room I could hear music turned on at a low enough level that it would lull him to sleep. Brad loved to listen to music especially when he was studying but the fact that he had it turned on at such a low level was not only respect for me but also an indication that he was sleeping.

My desire for revenge had burned within me for more than a month and a half. Very soon all my fraternity brothers would be returning to campus from their summer vacations idea, refreshed and reinvigorated in their quest for the sheep-skin covered brass ring that promised a bright future. The time could not have been better. It seemed as if the universe had delivered not only the opportunity but the means to exact remedy.

I tiptoed down the hall, just in case my bare footfalls might make enough of a disturbance to wake Cooker, Larry, and Chuck. When I reached the door, I already had the master key in hand. I had removed it from my key ring so that there would be no jingle as other keys on the ring collided. I slowly, quietly slipped the key into the door handle lock and gently turned, careful not to make a noise. Then with as much stealth as I could still muster, I pitched the crusty, sweaty, smelly pair of socks under the bed closest to the door, the bed under which there was already a pile of dirty clothes.

I closed the door without making a sound and calmly returned to my room where I immediately noticed a great improvement in the smell. I had a good chuckle before finally turning in for the night.

It was cathartic. Even though it served no immediate purpose I felt much better about myself and the things that I felt were important. I felt that I had made a statement, albeit in the background. I realized that I could never take credit for the act. It would probably be one of those mysteries sometimes mentioned but never solved.

When I awakened late in the morning I just had enough time to take a quick shower and hurry off to class. Otherwise it was a pretty busy day. I had a couple of presentations to make and it was the last day of the radio production course. We had to turn in our final individual projects, which the professor would present and each of us would formally comment upon and rank in order from best to worst.

Except for the necessary collaboration to complete our midterm project I had not said much more than hello to Senobia since the episode on the Fourth of July. It wasn’t that there was any anger between us. I felt that she was disappointed in me, that I had not acted like a true friend. It prevented me from being comfortable around her, from the two of us being friends.

Even though the truth was very different from what she thought, I knew that anything I might say either wouldn’t matter or would ultimately worsen the situation. There was a wall between us. So long as it was transparent and that we could be professional for the purposes of working together in the class, it was fine. She presented civility toward me and I pretended that nothing had happened.

The fact that only the night before I had done something about it on a personal level may have contributed to my overall perspective as I sat there in class listening to the professor’s comments on the first presentation. Each of us had been assigned five challenges. There was a one minute time limit on our solution involving sound, sound editing, mixing, overdubbing and special effects. As I heard the first presentation, I was horrified. I had misunderstood the challenge that would represent half of my grade for the course. I had not seen the examination as a series of five discrete exercises. I had instead used every technique to produce five distinct solutions for the overall challenge.

As one after another of the presentations were played back, I squirmed, uncomfortably awaiting the condemnation that I alone had not paid attention. My project would stand out as being the only one that was different in its gross ignorance of the conditions of the challenge.

Again and again, the others in the class had responded pretty-much in kind. This is an example of special effects; this is an example of mixing; this is an example of overdubbing and so on. If I had the magical power to conjure a hole in the floor beneath my chair I would have gladly fell into it and hid.

There were only two presentations left. I dreaded the inevitable but also hoped for a swifter execution. I hoped against all hope that my presentation was next. When the professor had threaded the tape he turned toward the class and, as he had with everyone else, asked Senobia if she had any comments in preface.

“I did something a little different than everyone else,” she admitted. “I thought the challenges were to produce five different examples of using all the techniques.”

I was amazed. She had approached the presentation in the same way that I had. What she had come up with was completely unique of course but she had created a commercial, a man on the street interview, a sample of someone playing multiple instruments, a sound montage that produced a rhythm and a beat that became almost musical and a formal headline news leading with field reports overdubbed.

“Impressive,” The professor told her. “I can’t believe that we have gone through the entire class and this is the very first person that stepped outside of the box and did exactly what I was trying to get you to do. This is a capstone production, using everything that you have learned how to do, employing every tool and technique at your disposal. This is a very good example of what I expected.”

I felt a rush of relief.

Of course the critiques of the other students followed suit in lavishing praise. It was a classy, slick production. I would have expected nothing else from Senobia. Obviously only the two of us had really understood the purpose of the challenge. As my presentation was next, the only question remaining to be determined was whose production was better.

As the professor threaded the 7 ½ X ¼” reel-to-reel tape he glanced at speed. He knew that I usually worked at 15 inches per second. He had told me repeatedly what a waste of tape it was. I did it because it was easier to edit and much higher signal to noise ratio but for the sake of space, I had mastered the entire recording at 3 ¾ inches per second. It surprised him a little. I could tell as he glanced my way and flashed a quick smile.

I had taken his advice, using the source as a master and filtering the output to remove as much of the background noise that came from re-recording. My professor had been right. I was pleased with the overall lack of hiss.

It was my style to let the work speak for itself, so of course I decline the opportunity to preface the recording.

In the first track I had used multiple overdubs of a series of fundamental tones generated from the magnetic pickups of an electric bass guitar. I had processed the ‘notes’ through a feedback loop that was running through a ten stage linear compressor. The result sounded like a machine in a factory.

The second track was an interview with me. Using a parametric equalizer I had altered one of my voices to sound much different. Since it was all recorded in a sound studio, in editing I had overdubbed background noises so that it sounded very open and airy like the recording had been made outdoors with some traffic passing by and in the distance there was even a passing train.

The third was a commercial promoting a fictitious product complete with a number of sound effects.

The fourth was a sound montage about the life of a chicken, with birth heralded as the beginning of a day with a rooster’s crow and death being the sound of a axe chopping into a block of wood with the fluttering of wings in panic afterwards segued into the finality of the coop door closing and being locked.

The fifth was very similar to what Senobia had done with a headline newscast except mine was humorous and drew some laughter from the juxtaposition of special effects that did not exactly fit the stories.

“Very nice work,” my professor said. “I know from the amount of time that he requested in the past few weeks that everything on this tape was created in the studio.”

Whether Senobia voted for mine, I voted for hers or we both were jealously selfish it did not matter. When combined with the votes of everyone else in the class, we tied for the best. Even so it was a hollow enough achievement. Even with my professor’s recommendation I did not get the internship that I had sought.

In consolation I was offered a news reporting internship, which due to the requirements of my degree I needed to take when offered. Senobia won the last production internship.

As I was stepping out of the studio in which our class had been held, she called out to me, “That was very good.”

“Thank you,” I said as I approached the group with which she had been talking. “Yours was as always perfect.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Are you going home between now and the fall semester?”

“I probably will. I have a lot of laundry to do.”

Senobia laughed. “You have done your laundry since…well I would hope you have.”

“I have,” I said, “Maybe once at least.”

She laughed again, “You’re bad.”

“Hey, I’m busy. At least I have been.”

“Me too. I’m glad this summer is over.”

“Except that it is probably the last summer of freedom.”

“Come again?”

“Next summer it will all be over. College that is.”

“Oh.” She smiled, “You could go to graduate school.”

“I don’t have the grades. I partied too much. Maybe I’ll try it when I have been working for a while.”

“My dad says that once you leave school it gets harder and harder to ever go back.”

“He is a wise man,” I said.

“He knows. He had to work his way through college, bussing tables…it is how he met mom though.”

“See it had a purpose.”

Senobia smiled the looked directly into my eyes. “We need to talk.”

“I would love to. What about?”

“No here,” she stepped closer to me and away from her friends. “Somewhere alone.”

“I drove. I parked over in the garage. I can give you a ride back to the dorm if you like.”

“That would be nice,” she said as she followed his lead and hurried up to walk beside him. “Slow down your legs are longer than mine, damn it.”

“I forgot. Are you hungry?”

“I didn’t have time for breakfast. I got up kinda late.”

“Yeah me too,” he admitted.

“I was working my project down to the wire.”

“Wow, that’s a change. I haven’t touched mine for a couple of days and you procrastinated.”

Senobia flashed a smiled, “You were a bad influence.”

“Not all that bad, I hope.”

“No, it wasn’t all bad.”

“How does pizza sound?”

“Some place with salad. I need a salad.”

“Yeah, me too,” I confessed. “But I want a pizza.”

She laughed. “You have lost some weight.”

“Brad and I have been jogging lately.”

“You still watch Star Trek reruns afterwards?”

“Of course,” I said. “I have this thing for Nichelle Nichols.”

“Lt. Uhura.”

“You never told me you are a fan.”

“You never asked. I suppose I remind you of her.”

“Why? What do you have in common with her?”

“You’re crazy,” she laughed. “Well I always liked Mr. Spock.”

“Damn! Then it wasn’t necessary to have the points of my ears removed.”

“I used to watch it every week when I was a kid.”

“I am really into science fiction, space travel, time travel all that stuff. That is what I am writing about, well sort of anyway.”

“I’ll have to read it sometime.”

“It is awful. All first draft. What’s worse I typed it.”

“Oh, well I know how bad that is,” she chuckled. After a few moments of silence, she finally broached the subject, “Do you like me?”

“Of course I do.”

“That answer came too easily.”

“You’re fun to be with, you have an amazing wit and sense of humor and you’re very pretty.”

“Why, thank you,” she said. “Is that why you made up stories about us to tell to your friends?”

“Senobia, I swear whatever is in their heads is the product of perverted minds.”

“You were always a perfect gentleman with me,” she said.

“We had a lot of things we needed to do and, well I didn’t want to allow anything to get in the way. It is like dating someone that you work with.”

“You thought about it, then?”

“How could I not?”

“Well at least I wasn’t alone, then.”

I stopped. “You mean I had a chance?”

“You might still have one if you are careful,” she said over her shoulder as she continued on toward the Student Union parking garage. “I mean, we aren’t ‘working together’ anymore.”

“That is a good point,” I said as I hurried after her. “Slow down. I didn’t know you could walk that fast.”

“You had better get used to it. If you are going to keep up with me,” she said with a laugh.

We spent most of the afternoon together. We went to a pizza place. We both had salad…and pizza. It was a nice, pleasant afternoon and so when I took her back to her dorm I parked and we sat outside the door enjoying the clear skies and light breeze.

She was going home the next morning, going to spend a few days in Chicago with her family before coming back to school. I had made plans to spend a day or two over the weekend at home before driving back and getting things rolling on the fraternity’s social calendar for the fall. We made promised to get in contact again once we were both back and settled, maybe take in a movie or something.

As I drove back to the fraternity my thoughts were completely on how much of the summer Senobia and I had wasted when in fact we had a lot more at stake and a lot more in common than either of us might have believed. As I entered the fraternity house and ascended the stairs toward the third floor, my mind was on anything else but why it smelled like someone had broken a bottle of cologne.

The roar of a fan called my attention to room where Cooker, Larry and Chuck slept in air conditioned comfort. “What the hell happened?” I asked as I peered around the door.

“Damnedest thing,” Check said. “About 4 in the morning all of us woke up gagging. There was the worst smell in the world in this room. I figured a most or a rat or something had crawled into the room and died. So, Cooker sprinkled cologne around the room until it covered over the smell.”

“Wow! I am not sure this smell is any better?”

“Cooker claims it is expensive cologne. Who knows? Anyway as soon as it airs out it will be fine. We found what it was.”

“That’s good,” I said suddenly remembering, suddenly realizing, and immediately wanting to not show the truth of my understanding.

“It was a pair of crusty socks.”

“Whose were they?”

“Beats me. It wasn’t from any of us. I don’t know how they got there. They were behind the cabinet at the end of my bed. Nasty things.”

“You threw them out of course.”

“Damn I didn’t want to harm the environment, so I tossed them down the other stairwell, the one we haven’t been using. I figured with the windows open and all they can air out a little. Then maybe someone with a strong enough stomach can deal with them.”

* * * * *

When I returned to campus from the visit home with a stack of freshly laundered cloths stuffed into my duffle bag, I parked at the far end of the parking lot so that I wouldn’t be trapped by other people that were unloading trailers and trucks. I entered the fraternity from the west end, stairwell saying hello to a couple of brothers that I had not seen all summer long.

“I thought you were taking care of the house over the summer,” one of them said accusingly.

“I did. It didn’t burn down. No one got injured.”

“Well, you guys never used this stairwell, obviously.”

“Barely ever, why?”

“There was a pair of socks in here that were stiff as a board. They smelled so rank that Greg got the tongs out of the kitchen to pick then up and hauled them off to the woods.” Then he laughed. “There he is with his camouflage outfit complete with his gas mask on telling Farkle to pick them up and Farkle barking and growling like he was arguing with him.”

“Smart dog,” I confirmed.

Greg had personally trained Farkle, a rat terrier. The Dog had been Greg’s inseparable buddy returning from a hitch with the Marines in Viet Nam. Apparently there was a limit to training and friendship.

* * * *
When I had finished recounting my version of reality, I looked up from the container that sealed The Curse. “This could possibly be worse than the socks,” I said.

“Then you admit to it,” Tim, Brad’s big brother asked.

“They were my socks,” I confessed. “I had a good reason to do what I did.”

“I’ve heard what you said and I’ m sure you felt that you did but actions always have consequences.”

“In this case, it is The Curse.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’m never going to use it,” I guess with this remark I accepted it finally and until I yielded it to another.

“You never know,” Tim said.

“I’m sworn to secrecy, an oath that I will never break,” I said. What time I was in college I never broke that promise and not even with close friends or family members until now. When it was time I too passed on The Curse to a deserving if reluctant successor, another brother added to the unbroken chain. I would not be surprised if The Curse is still out there somewhere in someone's possession.


The End

E

posted by Unknown @ 1:51 PM