My boyfriend Adam was partially handicapped. He could only walk short distances without needing a wheelchair. He was staying with my in my loft at college, and I needed to go to the middle of campus, so I put him in his wheelchair and we went to Park Hall, the English building.
It was February 21st (I'm scared by the amount of detail I remember sometimes), and I was taking final exams for summer classes. Yes, classes I wouldn't actually be attending for another few months. I was about to walk into Park Hall when I saw a commotion across the street at the drama building. Someone on the steps of Park Hall said something about a free cookout, so I wheeled Adam over there.
An entire kitchen had been set up in the drama building, and the food was going quickly. Adam hopped out of his wheelchair and grabbed a burger and fries. The fries were coming out of the deep fryer with ketchup on them already. This made me think of them as unclean, so I thought I would wait for the next batch. I grabbed a couple of limp lettuce leaves from the bottom of a salad bin, but on my tray they turned into bits of chopped ham. I cringed and dumped them off my tray.
I kept trying to ask the cooks if they would make me a grilled cheese sandwich or something else without meat in it, but no one would listen to me. Finally, I heard one of the cooks saying something about some "PC twins" who had asked for vegetarian dishes, but since they hadn't come to pick them up, they were out of luck. I started yelling to the people in the kitchen that I was a vegetarian as well and that I would like a grilled cheese sandwich. No one said anything. Adam was standing next to me, polishing off his burger. I had been standing there for nearly twenty minutes.
Finally, I pushed through the swinging metal door into the kitchen area and screamed at a girl who was gathering a bag of trash. "Please make me a lunch!" I yelled. The trash girl didn't even look up, but someone else came into the front part of the kitchen and started making me a sandwich.
I felt vindicated.
I don't know if I ever took my exams. The next thing I remember was wheeling Adam back up the hill and then into the old office for the Honors program. There was a trip to a water park being offered to Honors students, and I wanted to be a part of it. A very religious closet homosexual guy I know was also in the Honors office, wanting to go on the trip as well. We greeted each other.
Then I was in a car with my ex-boyfriend Chris (who attends college a thousand miles away), an Asian girl who looked slightly younger than me, the Asian girl's father, and the Asian girl's blonde friend. We were all going to the water park together. Yes, in February. Chris said that he wanted to have sex with the Asian girl, but that she and her father were very religious and it wasn't going to happen without some work. He was very determined.
We ended up at a hotel instead of at a water park. We all went swimming in the hotel pool. It was sunny, warm, and the pool was surrounded by palm trees. I was treading water in the pool, and Chris was standing on the ledge, wearing red swimming trunks, looking as though he were about to jump in. Behind us, I could see images from Not Another Teen Movie superimposed on the sky. The Asian girl and her blonde friend were in the movie, kissing each other passionately.
Chris said, "Oh good! She's a lesbian! That means I'll be able to sleep with her now."
I didn't see how he had made that connection, and I tried to give him some advice about not rushing into a relationship or even any relationship-type activities if he didn't think he was ready to do so. And then he took off his swimming trunks and started doing a naked backstroke. He seemed to have gotten much larger in the time since I'd seen him -- except one part of him, which seemed exceptionally shrunken. I didn't say anything about his appearance.
Soon, I was back from the Honors student vacation, and Adam and I were in a large two-story house. It looked brand-new, with perfectly polished hardwood floors and impeccable furnishings. It looked like a middle-aged couple's house, and I had no idea what we were doing there. We had a huge bed that took up most of one bedroom, and we spent a good bit of the time having sex. Loudly. Adam apparently was not too handicapped to do this. This one bedroom was used only for having sex, so we appropriately branded it "The Sex Room." It was always dimly lit by candles and had satin sheets on the bed, which never got made. When I got out of bed, I went to the foyer by the house's front door. The foyer looked like that in my family's house, except nicer. The view outside was the same. I felt that whenever I looked out the window, no matter what time of day I thought it was, it was always bright and sunny outside.
