I've spent my entire adult life obsessed with the intellectual notion of the relationship between an individual and the notion of a community. Seriously obsessed with it. It permeates almost everything I think about.
In the fall of 1990, I moved into Kresge College, Building R8, The Zoo at UC Santa Cruz. The building was thusly named because they were apartments with two sets of sliding glass doors that allowed the general public to see into the living room and kitchens of the dwellings... like an exhibit at a zoo. That's a reasonable and accurate description, and one pushed by the UCSC and Kresge College administrations.
The reality of it was more like this. We were a bunch of wild animals. Maniacs. 18-20 year olds free for the first time in their lives. With access to booze, and weed, and acid, and mushrooms, and just about any other psychoactive substance you could imagine. We partook. Joyfully. Somewhat recklessly. Frequently. Copiously.
Our apartment was on the bottom floor in the middle of R8. We were prime zoo exhibit material. Playing along with the joke, we'd sometimes sit in the living room eating bananas, drinking beer, and generally acting slovenly for the entertainment of the passers by.
The living room was separated from the kitchen by a partial wall. There was a large plastered over area on the wall that looked relatively recently patched. We wondered about it until one night....
It was a building-wide party early on in my first semester. I'd gotten to know a number of my building mates fairly well by this point. I was chatting drunkenly with my upstairs neighbor Todd. We were Python buddies. Always had a Holy Grail or Flying Circus quote at the ready for one another. I wondered aloud about the giant plaster job on the living room wall.
"Oh! That! Yeah. That was Stu's doing. He was swinging around a broadsword during a party in here last year." Todd informed me.
"A broadsword you say?" I asked, accepting the absurd reality of this because of the debauchery and weirdness currently surrounding us.
"Yup. He was drunk and angry."
"Apparently."
The night wears on. People come and go through the various apartments of this 6 apartment unit building. I'm wasted at this point. Complete strangers wander through our living room. I chat with them all because drunk.
At one point I'm chatting with a young woman I'm rather drawn to. Andrea. She's a first year student as well. A bit of a goth. Art student. Photographer like me. Having a good, if drunken chat. A tall, slender, long black-haired rock star of a man wanders in. Says nothing. Hovers, relaxedly sipping a cheap beer. Andrea and I continue our chat.
"So this giant plaster spot on the wall..." I slur.
"I was wondering about that." Andrea
"So... apparently some dude with a broadsword wreaked havoc at a party in this apartment last year and got his ass kicked off campus."
"A broadsword you say?"
"It wasn't sharp." the beer sipping rock star dude says.
"Huh?!" Andrea and I gasp.
"It wasn't sharp. I was just trying to scare someone a little. I kinda misjudged its length and smacked the wall. Damage aside, I did accomplish my goal." Cool as a cucumber.
"You must be Stu." I realize out loud.
"I'm Stu. Nice to meet you."
"Krk. Still have the sword?"
"Naw. I realized after getting kicked off campus that I didn't want to move again and again with that thing. Pain in the ass. Made for a good party icebreaker. Its purpose is served."
"Fair enough." I acknowledge.
"I think copious vomiting is in my near future." Andrea slurs.
Stu wanders off with a wave. Andrea is pretty wasted at this point. I help her get back to her apartment a couple buildings away. Her apartment-mates thank me and get her to bed.
I'm wasted too. Time to crawl into bed and pass out. Interesting night, but it's run its course. I have a high tolerance for weird, but meeting the person who wrecked our living room wall a year earlier with a sword while completely wasted was enough for one evening.
This was UC Santa Cruz for me. Short bursts of mind-boggling weirdness between long stretches of academic life, and the crushing reality of constantly being poor.
I was loving it though. For the first time in my life, I didn't stick out like a sore thumb everywhere I went! For the first time in my life, it didn't feel like I needed to conform to a clique or group to fit in. I could finally be me, but a version of me that enjoyed a tight community of friends, and a connection to the larger campus and city nearby. The fantastic coexisted peacefully with the mundane. The weird with the boring. And I was learning what I chose to learn not necessarily what I was supposed to be learning.... much to my dad's dismay.
In the modern age, there's a lot of heated chatter about "when life begins", but for me, life began at age 19 in The Zoo at Kresge College in Santa Cruz, California. All of this would come into clearer focus my second quarter in school when I would take a course that really changed my thinking, "Intro To Political Theory" with J. Peter Euben.
Comments