zk/lj-dump/L-1475.md

%title NaNoWriMo
%date 2008-11-02 04:03:26

<img alt="4521 words" src="http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/NanowrimoMiniGraph/116254.png"/>

Hopefully I can keep this up.

<details text="Ignore this"><summary>Ignore this</summary>
Mom and I piled into the car at about seven that morning, squeezing ourselves in amongst a laundry basket full of a bubble of my clothes, my computers, and bedding enough for one who lives in Colorado and knows what the winters can be like.  Check in wasn't until four that afternoon, but there was still quite the drive ahead of us in order to get there on time and to give us some time in town for lunch and walking.

"Exciting, isn't it?" my mom said.

"Yeah, stoked," I replied with as much sarcasm as I could muster that early in the morning.  "Why can't you empty-nest like all the other parents?"

She laughed.  "Why would I?  I get the dogs all to myself now, I can go hiking whenever I want, and hey, I can make as much spinach as I want."

"Hey, I like spinach too!  And you know I'm going to go crazy without my pups there to keep me company."

She nodded and focused on getting us down the mountain of her driveway and onto asphalt.  Steamboat is tucked nicely in a valley, and the floor of that valley is decently flat, but unless you live in the middle of the town, you're in the hills.  Much as I loved the Rocky Mountains, I had no desire to go to college in my hometown, sacrificing proximity to home for a school that wasn't filled with slackers who picked the school based on its proximity to the very popular ski slope.  I really was excited to be going to college, where I could get an education that was pertinent to me.

The next hour or so was spent in silence rather than our usual banter due to the early hour.  I nursed my coffee for most of that time and watched as we pulled north from the town, slipping past habitation and into the densely packed wilderness, walls of building giving way to the walls of the pine forest.  We wound our way up and north - up into the passes and north of the town, driving for Wyoming.  Even though I was going to school almost directly east, it was faster for us to duck up to Wyoming for I-80 and head for I-25 to duck south back into Colorado to head for Fort Collins than to try driving east.

With the sun heading to the top of the sky, I drained my now chilly coffee in a few quick gulps and reached back  behind my seat to tuck the travel mug into my backpack.  The mug had been one of my parting gifts from my friends who still had a year left of high school, and my mom had supplemented that with a small coffee maker.  I had told her I didn't like drip coffee, but she assured me that I would most certainly get more use out of that coffee maker than any of my textbooks.  Hard to disagree there.

"I can't believe you picked somewhere so flat!" she exclaimed, breaking the silence of our drive to that point.

"Me either.  I feel as though I'm twice as tall there and I might just tip over, like it's harder to balance or something."

"At least there are plenty trees."

"Yeah, to hide the lack of mountains."

"And you can bike easier."

"Mmhm."  I could sense where this was headed.  My mom would always talk about the town before broaching the next subject.

"And why did you pick such a stuck up little cow-town?  I mean, it's not Greeley, but you could've gone to Boulder!  Fort Collins is so... so..."

"Conservative?  I know, but that's just the town.  I'll be living in the dorms."

"Do you think they'll be that different?" she asked, sounding genuinely worried by now.

"I hope so," I murmurred distractedly.  We'd had most of this conversation before.  "You know what they say: if you're not a liberal in college, you have no heart."

"Well, you know the rest of that saying says that if you're not a conservative by forty that you have no brain, and plenty of your classmates' parents will have chosen their school for them; indoctrinated them."

"Like you did me?"  I grinned back to her sidelong glarsays that if you're not a conservative by forty that you have no brain, and plenty of your classmates' parents will have chosen their school for them; indoctrinated them."

"Like you did me?"  I grinned back to her sidelong glare.

"Be serious, you know what I mean..."

I nodded and sat for a bit before replying, "At least I'm not going to Wyoming."

"I don't think I'd let you."  Her expression turned pained, "Don't want you to be the next Matthew Shepherd.  Poor kid..."

"I know, mom.  You saw the office, though, they clearly have enough gay people there for them to have an office, and to have some influence ofver how things are run."

She nodded and shrugged as best as one can while holding at ten and two, a cautious driver.  "But that's a group thing.  You know, sociology and what not.  That's not going to stop some crazy individual who's convinced deep down that God hates fags and it's their sworn duty to usher them straight to hell."

"Well, yeah.  I promise I'll be safe," I said dismissively.  This conversation was getting worn out from how often we had had it.  "And hey, maybe I'll even meet someone local to date."

Smirking, she replied, "You can date whoever you want, Cory, I'm not going to stop you.  I am going to suggest that those internet relationships you've had aren't exactly healthy, is all.  Much as I liked Chris..."

Nice disclaimer, I thought.  And she really had liked Chris.  It was tough on both of us when that relationship had ended as poorly as it did.  "I know, I know.  I'll go shopping and bring home a nice boy sometime, one of those funny ones."

"Hey," she said mock defensively, laughing.  "I'm not the one that needs a boyfriend, it's you.  Date who you want, seriously.  Jared and I will support you, whoever you wind up with."

"Yeah," I said distractedly.  I got the feeling that Jared wasn't exactly a big fan of having a gay step son.  Mom had the final say, though, and promised me that even if that was the case, I came first for her, and didn't have anything to worry about on that end.

Another bit of silence greeted us as the trees around the road began to thin and the omnipresent greenery shifted from the greenish blue of the pine trees to the brownish green of scrub.  Wyoming was close.  I hoped that meant food was close, as well.  We had planned on stopping somewhere along I-80 in order to pick something up.


"Did you ever get in touch with your roommate?" mom asked.

"Yeah, he emailed me back.  Sounds like kind of a jerk," I said, brow furrowing.  "He's in some sort of fraternity, I think.  Hopefully that means I won't see him much.  Don't know how I feel about living with someone who spells 'cool' with a 'k'."

"Great," she muttered in response.  "Now I'm really worried."

"Don't be, mom.  You know I can take care of myself."

"So you always say, I just don't want you calling me to say you couldn't prove that."

I blinked and frowned, mildly offended at that.  I stared out the window for a little bit before looking over at my mom who had the steering wheel in a while-knuckled grip.  She looked genuinely worried, "I'll talk to the GLBT student services guys about it, just to make sure I've got someone on my side if something happens, promise."

She nodded and relaxed her grip somewhat, "Alright.  Didn't mean to sound rude, I just worry sometimes."

I gave a little sigh of a laugh, "Maybe you are empty nesting."

***

Full of bagel, cream cheese, and lax, Our route turned east along I-80 for the few miles it took to get to I-25.  Even though I'd gotten a coffee to go with our lunch, I was still tired.  When my mom asked, I told her it was how boring the bland landscape was after the relative excitement of the mountains and greenery.  I had barely slept the night before.  Despite trying to act cool about the whole moving to college thing, excitement really had taken its toll on me, and I had alternated between worrying in bed and worrying at my desk.  I must've mowed through half the container of olives we had in the fridge that night, sneaking out so as not to wake my mom and Jared as I made my food raids.  Those spicy olives straight from the container were one of my comfort foods.  One of those things that has to be eaten with the fingers.

I suppose I'm a little weird.

The conversation wandered around a little more between my mom and my self as she shared anecdotes from her own college life and I talked about recent stories about my friends as news from the perennial diaspora of high school graduates to colleges across the country trickled back to me.  "Other Cory" had wound up down in Denver at the University of Colorado's campus there, and he had sent me a few pictures from his most recent visit down there.  A few more friends from band had made their way to CU's Boulder campus, where my mom had wanted me to go, and the Inseparable Trio of Karen, Jessie and Nate had made their way to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, just a half hour away from where I was headed.  Only one other of my friends from band --- more an acquaintance than anything --- had picked Colorado State University as I had, trekking over to Fort Collins along with me for visits and auditions, though he wasn't moving in until later today.

Most of my other friends, though, had spread out much further than Colorado.  Many of the other band kids had filtered down to various schools in Texas for their music and education programs down there, and one or two made their way to each coast.  Their parents were loaded, though, and could afford to pay for all the plane tickets and out of state tuition that was involved in such a move.

I was comfortable heading three or four hours away, though.  I felt that it was close enough to home that I could visit if I wanted once I got my car fixed over Thanksgiving break.  Still, it was far enough away so that I wouldn't have to worry about my mom 'emtpy nesting' on me and coming over to visit, except for the concerts.  Dad was down in Colorado Springs, which was a good distance away, though I didn't expect to see him quite as much.  Since he was helping with tuition as well, he made in-state tuition a must.  Not that I minded, I loved Colorado, it just meant that if I wanted to get away, I would have to choose my schools carefully.  I knew CSU from the two times I had done summer band camp, so that was my logical choice.

Sipping my way through my coffee, I let the flattening landscape and my mom's music lull me into an empty mind.  Excitement and caffeine kept me from dozing, but it felt like the first real relaxation I'd had in a while.

Dad had sent me on my way with his goofy stories from college: shooting out a street light with a .22 rifle and having to repaint twenty light posts for the city as his community service; drinking with friends; smoking enough pot at a party that he wandered into the wrong apartment when he'd tried to go home.  "Just promise me you'll get a DD if you drink, be a DD when you don't, and call me once in a while," was his goodbye when I'd left for Steamboat again on Wednesday.  He'd given me a check for fifty dollars and walked me out to Jared's Honda, the car I was borrowing for this last visit.

Jared had little to say to when it came to college other than to agree with most of what my mom said and offer up common sense advice on doing my homework.  I had watched his own kid graduate and move off to college, which was a much bigger deal to him - he and Jennifer had gone out to dinner on their own four or five times in as many weeks before she made her way across town to the Colorado Mountain College, and they had planned everything meticulously.  It was understandable, I guess.  He and my mom hadn't gotten married until my Sophomore year of high school - he was just that guy that lived with us, and I was just that kid his girlfriend had from before.  Didn't matter much to us that I was leaving.  And I don't suppose it helped that I liked guys.  I was always just a little unnatural to him.

Mom and dad had taken that whole thing pretty well, at least.  There were a few long talks I had to sit through about whether or not the whole thing was a phase or not, what this meant for their hopes of grandchildren, who I would go out with, and so on, but after a while, it was all normal to them.  They both liked Chris, they both had their concerns about the whole internet dating thing, and they both treated me as they always had, which I suppose was the most important thing.  Say what you want about Colorado in general, but I guess when it's your kid, it's hard to freak out too much.  Besides, they were both hippies once.

The bigger concern amongs them, my parents and Jared, was that I wanted to go into music.  That alone had caused more strife than coming out had.

"You'll never make any money," was what their arguments had come down to.  Usually, it was couched in some lecture-speak, like, "There's a fine line between doing what you love and doing what you have to do in order to live comfortably."  I had been a good kid and rarely rolled my eyes, but after watching both parents suffer through work, after watching Jared's relief at his lay-off, and most importantly, watching Mr. Paulsen talk about how much he loved his job in music teaching our band, I had to roll my eyes at this.

The arguments went back and forth, and my only concession had been to major in music education instead of just plain music.  Teaching wouldn't be so bad, so long as I could teach music.

***

"Is this...?  Yeah, this has to be it."  My mom muttered.

I jerked my head up from where I was half-dozing against the window at the words.  Blinking at the light, I looked around.  From the time I had spaced out an hour or so before, the landscape had changed from brownish scrublands of Wyoming to the tan plains east of the Rockies that I knew from the drives to band camp.  That had always been my dad's deal, and this was only my mom's second time driving to Fort Collins.

"Yeah, take this one," I yawned.  Rubbing at my face, I struggled towards wakefulness.  I fumbled around and found the second half of my coffee, long cold by now, and finished it with a grimmace.  "Hopefully the places here have better coffee than this."

"Can't have you without your coffee," my mom laughed.  "Good dreams?"

"Nah, wasn't sleeping."

"Mmhm.  Do you always drool when you're not sleeping?"

"Sure," I mumbled.  "That's what spit valves are for."

She laughed and steered her way towards campus.  I guided her through the move-in day traffic onto the campus and toward the dorms, letting her interrupt me as patiently as I could with her outbursts of drumming the steering wheel while sing-songing, "This is exciiiiitiiiiing!"

Following the crowds, we made it to the south end of campus slowly and pulled up along the side of the street with the other cars disgorging students and stuff.

"Glad we made it here early," I mumbled.  There were already twenty or so other families unpacking along the stretch of road, and more were visible in the parking lots on either side of the building.  Looking over the bent 'H' shaped dorm and trying to count rooms, I grimmaced at the thought of that many families trying to move their children in at once.  No, I corrected myself, that many times two, what with the whole roommate thing.

Before unpacking anything, my mom and I made our way around one wing of the building toward the lobby.  We stopped to pick up my key and get directions to the room itself.  Walking along the hallway to the wings, my mom was bouncing on the balls of her feet, poking fun at me for being more excited than I was.

"I'm excited, I promise.  Just dreading the common restrooms."

"Aw," she jibed.  "They're not that bad, I promise.  Just have to get used to it.  And schedule your showers for when the least amount of people are in there.  And wear sandals when you do."

"Thanks mom, you fill me with confidence."

"I aim to please," she shot back.

The doors to the southwest wing on the second floor were propped open and standing just inside was a man who looked to be in his late twenties who introduced himself as Mark, the RA for the hall.

"Small!" my mom blurted as we were shown to my room.  Both Mark and I laughed as we followed her in, but I had to agree with her.  The far wall was taken up by a bank of picture windows, and opposite that was a bank of closets, split into two sets, one for each person, I supposed.  Other than that, the room was a bit drab and depressing.  The two empty walls were tan brick, though each one was partially obscured with a cork-board painted an institutional sort of off-white.  Along each of those walls was a long twin bed and a wooden desk that looked functional enough, though instead of drawers, the side of the desk held shelf space.  Addict that I was, I was already mentally fitting my printer onto one of those shelves and my computer down by my feet.  Tight fit.

It looked all the more shabby for how empty it was: my roommate had yet to show up.

I buried my sense of disappointment about the room under the activity of moving my stuff from the car to the room, one armload at a time, with my mom.  She had made me clean out my whole room at home and throw away, give away, or sell as much as I could stand to, promising that it would be better, and after lugging only my computer, a laundry basket of clothes and bedding, and a few loads of books into the room, I had to agree with her forecast.  In the process of cleaning out my rooms at my mom's and dad's, I was exposed to just how much junk one person could have.

When we finished getting everything stacked on my bed, we made our way back to the car to make way for another family while we went out to lunch.

"Well, your RA seems nice," mom quipped on the winding drive off campus.  "Mine, when I lived in the dorms, was a big priss.  She was useless as an RA, so we just pretended we didn't actually have one."

"Yeah, he was cool," I replied distractedly, pointing her towards a little mexican restaurant I had found in my last year of band camp.

After a pregnant pause, my mom asked, "So, when are you going to come out to him?"

"I'll get around to it," I sighed.  "It's not that big of a deal to me; I mean, it is normal for me.  I think if I act that way, others will see it as normal, too."

Mom nodded hesitantly.

We made our way inside and ordered our food, taking our burritos and drinks to a booth out of the way near the back of the restaurant.

``I don't mean to be such a worrywort,'' my mom began, and I knew that was a disclaimer that more worrying was on the way.  ``But I just think that it's something you need to worry about a little yourself.  In high school, it doesn't mean as much because you're not living with those people, and the teachers are pretty much required by law to be okay with it.  They can't show it if they're not, I mean.''

``Well, sure, but I'd like to think that since I'm going to a school the size of the town I grew up in, that I'd get a little anonymity from that,'' I countered.  ``Sure I live with these people, but it's only for this year.  And besides, I can sort of... keep things down low, know what I mean?  I can wait to meet people and see how they are before I go about being openly gay.  Hell, I waited for fourteen years, trying to figure out how you guys would react before I mentioned it to my own parents.''

Mom laughed around her bite of food and nodded, pausing to swallow before continuing.  ``I know I should trust you more, but it's my job to worry.  Highschool went pretty smoothly for you, especially once you started doing so well in band, but that's not to say that the same thing will happen here.  Just saying.''

We finished in silence before making our way back out to the car, my mom tapping the ``Now Hiring'' sign taped up next to the door and raising her eyebrows at me.  ``You should think about this, Cory.  You know we kind of had to skimp on your meal plan a bit, so you should probably think about getting a job pretty soon to get some food for yourself.''

I nodded as I slid into the passenger seat again, ``Hopefully the market's a little better out here than it was in Steamboat.  I'd prefer to avoid working at Subway again.''

``Yeah, that wasn't exactly your dream job, was it?''

``I worry for those who dream of working at Subway.  Anyway, let's check out this Old Town thing before I have to get back for yet another campus tour.  Get to see the town before I'm buried under homework and classwork.''

As we drove up north to seek a parking spot near the long row of shops that was Old Town, I worked to reconcile my mom's worries with my lack of them.  I just hoped it would be as easy as it was in my imagination.

***

I saw my mom off shortly before we were supposed to gather for our first hall meeting.  She cried as she hugged me and kissed at my cheeks, whispering those same worries to me one last time before she went back to her car.  I suppose the reality that I had just moved away from home hadn't set in yet, but I was admittedly a little glad to see her go.  I was starting to feel like her pessimism was dragging me down and I was eager to get into life at college.

I had just enough time shift my basket of clothes to the floor and get my sheets onto the bed before Mark started hollering at the head of the hall, calling all the guys out of their rooms for the first meet and greet.

``Alright guys, for those who don't know or forgot, I'm your RA, Mark.  I'm supposed to read this big spiel to you, but I can sum it up to you pretty quickly.  Come to me if you've got problems with each other, with school, or with your room, but not for help with your love life.  The code to the bathroom is ninteen eleven, and we'll come up with a cleaning rotation later this weekend.  No candles, no incense, no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, take it easy on the loud music, and respect your roommate.  Basically what I'm saying is have fun, y'all are cool, but be nice to each other and don't burn the building down.''


We all laughed and went down the hall, giving our names, majors, and room numbers.

``Well, since that whole thing was supposed to take us an hour and a half and it took five minutes, why don't y'all just mingle for a bit, okay?  I'm serious, get to know each other, 'cause you've got six months to go here and you're stuck where you are.  No sneaking back to your room.''  As if to provide a role-model for us, he socked the closest guy on the shoulder and started in to introducing himself to him in depth.

We all stood around awkwardly for a bit before loosening up and starting to actually talk with each other.  There was one other music major, Eric, and two art majors, Joseph and Jamen, and the four of us somehow wound up clumped together amongst the crowd of thirty two guys.

``So,'' ventured Jamen.  "You two are majoring in burger flipping, and Joseph and I have telemarketing?"

We laughed a little shyly and nodded.  ``I guess that's how it goes,'' I said.  ``So.. what kind of art do you guys do?''

``Painting and graphic design,'' Jamen said.

``Comic book type stuff and graphic design,'' Joseph said, adding, ``Graphic design is about the only way to make any money in the business, so it seems like every art major is also in graphic design.''

Eric nodded.  ``Sorta the same with music, except with education.''

``You an ed major, too?'' I asked.  Eric nodded.  ``I just kinda tacked it on when my parents complained that I'd never make any money.''

``Yeah, my parents got on my case about that, too,'' Eric chuckled.  ``No such thing as professional choirs anymore.  What instrument do you play?  Or are you voice?''

``Trumpet.  Pretty standard stuff.''

And so it went.  We introduced ourselves to the other guys on the hall, but after half an hour or so of that, we wound up sitting against the wall, two of us on each side of the hall, facing each other and talking about random things, mostly about going to what was mostly an agricultural school for a liberal arts degree.

</details>