[in which eric's geek past catches up with him...]

you know what? i asked atif a few sundays ago, i’ve had a pretty interesting life. here it is, 2005, and i’m dragging one of my best mates from london around the campus of my alma matter, caltech in pasadena, nearly 10 years to the day of my post-high-school arrival.

i don’t stop and smell the roses, really. but sometimes—especially over the past few months—i reconnect with long-forgotten [or long-suppressed] chapters of my life. when i graduated caltech in 1999, i vowed to never return to los angeles—for any reason, even to visit. why did i despise southern california so much?

most of it was due to the four years of intense academic pressure at caltech, which i barely survived. i had friends commit suicide, i had friends go crazy and try to kill me, i had friends drop out and vanish. those of us who did make it through, we did what we needed to do.

for me, that meant taking the second half of my junior year off, to move to london for a few months. returning to caltech after my wonderful sabbatical, my eyes were opened to the insanity of the school, of my degree, of the stress.

whereas i had enjoyed the first few years immensely, being active in student government and being overwhelmed by living in l.a. and enjoying hanging out with so many fellow nerds, my final year is very much jaded, and just looking forward to graduating.

my best bud and college roommate jason slept through most of our classes senior year, but we made it. we made it by enjoying ourselves as much as we could that final year. we made life more livable, and we did this in two ways…

we took lower crotch, which is the main common area of lloyd house, and made it a lot more… comfy. we covered up the icky blue and white stucco walls with warm wood paneling, replaced the harsh fluorescent lighting with overhead incandescents [on dimmers] and i had an olde-style wooden sign engraved that said lloyd house.

i paid for it ourselves [and later got reimbursed] and installed it without approval from anyone. throughout my final year at caltech, lower crotch became even more social, and it helped everyone to chill out just a little bit more.

after graduation, though, i heard that the fire department came through and made the housing department tear it all down, as it was considered a fire hazard [we didn't really install it properly, nor did we run the power cables for the lights properly]. that sucked.

jason and i transformed our dorm room, room 129 into a supercool lounge. i know what you’re thinking—lame college kids get some crap from target to decorate their dorm room. au contraire! we stole bought several party lights from a deejay store [we're talking 1000s of watts of disco action], a fog machine, a disco ball with two spotlights, and wired them all up to remote control.

we got rid of the fluorescent lights, and i wired in 4 hanging incandescents, each with a different color bulb, again with a dimmer. i did this with the power to the room still on, as the circuit breaker box was unlabeled, and i couldn’t shut off power to the other 79 rooms. i knew those electrical engineering courses would come in handy.

we put our desks to the side, got a huge sofa, a television, a fridge, and that was it. budding deejay jason would usually be spinning tunes, or we’d be tuned in to groove radio, or i’d be queuing up some newfangled mp3s. our door was almost always open, even when were out at class, or asleep. most of my straight boyfriends i met at our friday night parties.

the vip room of club 129

our room became known as club 129, and we always had people stopping by to decompress. jason printed out a really simple, 3″ x 6″ sign in microsoft word, using two lame fonts left over from windows 95 days, which simply said club 129. he printed it out, and taped it above our door.

—

after a 30-minute tour around campus, atif convinced me that we should, in fact, go back inside lloyd house. i really didn’t want to, as i was convinced that the few good memories i had left of the place would be erased by whatever crappiness was there now.

walking into lower crotch [so named due it being the intersection of the "L" joining the two wings, and being on the bottom of two floors], i was hit by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. about 100 different memories came flooding back [the time emma stayed up for 4 days, the time alex overdosed on nyquil...] the best thing, of course, is that the paneling was back up, and my engraved sign was still hanging proud. i’m not sure if was re-installed or what.

walking down tropic alley to my old room, i was hit with that familiar stench of sweat and beer and carpet cleaner. all of the murals that we’d painted were still there, surprisingly, even the giant enjoy crack coca-cola logo spoof was still there. approaching the door to my old room, i couldn’t believe that there, above the door frame, was jason crappy paper sign, still taped, 7 years later.

i innocently asked the gaggle of nerds across the hall, why’s this room called club 129? they excitedly start telling me about these two cool guys that used to live there, and how it was famous for having these parties [we once crammed 30 sweaty dancers into our 14' x 18' room]. one of them used the word legendary, which cracked me up to no end.

after they finished, i told them, actually, that used to be my room. i lived there. they just stared blankly. i’d like to think that they were in awe, but i fear that maybe they were simply disappointed—this random old dude is the father of club 129?!

for me at least, it was nice to connect the past to the present.

sam

inspired by the queen of countdowns, i bring you the first annual [and hopefully last ever] straight boyfriend countdown. self-explanatory, methinks. we’re counting down from 6… sam.

after 4 weeks at my new university, i’d started to settle in—just. several thousand miles away from home, i was beginning to enjoy the freedoms of college life [not going to class! drinking! meeting freaks!] but still struggling to make friends.

i made friends with pete, a spunky asian math geek 2 years older than me, who was my first real gay friend. it was very exciting to talk about gay things with him and be free and gossip and read xy together. what was not very exciting was to discover that there were no other gay boys on the 900-person campus.

none. even at this young age, my barely-developed gaydar could verify pete’s claims. in fact, most of the kids on campus just seemed asexual, as if they’d never kissed anyone, as if they maybe even didn’t have genitalia.

one night, though, pete came up to me, excitedly, telling me, umm… someone wants to meet up with you. i stared back, confused. i dunno what to say, eric, except that someone asked me to ask you to meet up with him tonight for a chat.

at 11pm, in the fragrant, balmy pasadena night air, i met up with pete and this stunningly handsome tall, blonde, nordic-looking lad. with giant hands. he towered above me, easily 6’3″. hey, i’m sam…

if there were a big man on campus at caltech, he was it. jocky, manly, boozy, well-liked and well-respected by all. notorious for being a heartbreaker with the ladies. what did he want with me?

pete disappeared, and the two of us started walking… just walking. across campus, through the gardens, past the pond, into the surrounding pasadena neighborhoods. he had questions, lots of questions. about me, about my sexuality, about my background. he was very confident, yet at the same time very confused.

we walked for miles, all the way to pasadena city hall. in the wee hours, the plaza and the clocktower were deserted… we climbed up and stared out across the valley, tons of orange halogen streetlights glistening through the early-morning smog.

he was less-than-forthcoming about the reasons for our meeting, but it was obvious to me. we walked all the way back to campus, both of us brimming with nervous energy. around 530am, we made it back, and crashed in front of the fireplace [yes, the fireplace was always on, even in the middle of september]. laying on the couch, he somehow seemed even longer than he was tall.

i sat next to him, and we took off our shoes, plopping our feet by the fire. our socks got toasty, and the conversation died down to a comfortable silence. the sun was up at this point, and you could hear the cleaning woman rumbling through the broom closet.

i saw his foot inch [literally] towards mine. i inched. he inched. our toes touched, and i felt the most orgasmic shock through my entire 17yo body. eventually this lead to holding hands, and eventually, our first kiss.

the months went by, and i found myself very easily and very drastically obsessing about him all day every day. he was tall and older and handsome and sexy and innocent. and he was mine. but nobody could know—we had to keep it on the down low.

his group of friends—a posse of testosterone-filled alcoholics two years older than me known as the lower crotch crowd—could never find out. this meant we were limited to secret rendezvous at midnight every night, sneaking into lecture halls and classrooms and laboratories to get our freak on.

these late-night encounters were very unhealthy… not only did i sleep through nearly all of my lectures, it meant that i wasn’t socializing with my peers… the only socializing i was doing was with sam in the wee hours of the morning, in private.

eventually, i was allowed to hang out with him and his friends, which made me feel too cool for school. his friends had cars which meant we could drive all over los angeles, to the beach at santa monica and late-night movies in hollywood and to funky diners in koreatown.

our breakup was devistating. it was a combination of his closettedness, my realizing that i needed to make friends my own age, and him nearly getting expelled that triggered the emotional explosion. i cried. i cried hard. and i had nobody to talk to—i had even been neglecting pete, my only gay friend on campus.

months went by, and my heart healed. i made friends. i hated him. but, i kept his secret. until the night of the big, end-of-year party.

i couldn’t keep my eyes of him, and the free booze [amaretto sour, please] meant my inhibitions were gone. we danced, we snogged, we ended up passed out on the lawn in front of the administration building [where the dean's offices are]. we were awoken at 530am by the freezing cold sprinklers… we were so drunk that we stayed there, passed out, for a good 20 minutes until security finally sent us shooing.

we tried to remain friends, but my feelings were [and probably still are] too intense to handle a simple friendship. plus, he’s straight, right?

london weather just clicked from winter to summer, quite dramatically over the past week, which has provided a slight mugginess, reminiscent to early-autumn southern california weather. the similarity slammed me quite dramatically as i passed a very fragrant flowering hibiscus bush in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, strolling home with misha.

the sticky coolness, the slight mist hazing around the orange glow of the streetlamp, the fragrant flowers blooming, the eerie silence of suburbia [pasadena/finsbury park], the naughtiness of being out late when the streets are deserted and most normal people are tucked away in bed.

the first time was 1999, just a week after i moved to pasadena to study electrical engineering [and later comptuer science] at caltech. one description of caltech: prestigous, difficult to get accepted to, expensive. an alternate description: a brilliant, interesting but small student body, loads of stress coupled with a great deal of freedoms, a beautiful campus surrounded by wealthy suburbia.

a week into my first year, suddently 2000 miles away from family, friends, high school. most of my fellow new students [none of whom i'd really befriended] were attending lectures, reveling in nerddom, forming cliques. my day typically started after sundown, where i’d precariously hang out with [or nearby] the bitter juniors.

the bitter juniors were the boisterous rebels, the 3rd-year students who had suffered enough at tech to hate it. they spent every evening commiserating over beers, loudly arguing, breaking things, playing incredibly eclectic music, and presenting a very different take on student life than my naive freshmen colleagues.

pete, a fun soft-spoken math major, immediately sussed me out during freshmen orientation, and decided he’d become my gay best friend, as he was the only other gay boy [he knew of] on the 900-student campus. after a week of hanging out and deciding that we would never be anything more than friends, he let loose that well… maybe there was this one other guy that i might want to meet…

sam and i met for the first time just outside my dorm room, at a secret midnight rendezvous organized by pete. whereas i was still a boy, wearing my highschool clothes [tie-dye! socks with sandals! jean shorts!], sam, 2 years older and part of the bitter juniors, was definitely more of a man. even at the age of 20, he was tall, chiseled and very nordic. piercing blue eyes, taut clear skin, floppy ashen blond hair. you could find photos easily.

that first night we strolled around campus, chatting about classes, music, sports… the simple, nonthreatening topics that you discuss to find commonalities with someone you’ve just met. he showed me all over campus, and i remember thinking how gorgeous all of the tropical plants and flowers [and sam] looked as the fog dissipated and the sun rose around 6am.
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