Fearless

I recently found this (rather scathing) satire of Oberlin College that I wrote for a class while I was a student there. I wonder what my professor thought? I’ve always found “fearless” a rather silly characteristic to aspire to.

—

Part I — “Waiting for Gregory”

Samuel
A tall, handsome young man, looks to be in his late teens

Nick
His younger brother, looks to be elementary school age

Gregory
A savior in pale blue

A southern country road. A mailbox.

Afternoon.

Samuel: (sits on curb next to the mailbox, ties and unties his shoe, alone) Nothing to be done…

Nick: (prancing in from stage left) What Sammy?

Samuel: There’s nothing to do, I’m saying.

Nick: Well what are you doing?

Samuel: I’m waiting.

Nick: Waiting? For what?

Samuel: I’m waiting for what I’ve been waiting for all week, and for what I was waiting for all last week.

Nick: Oh.

(they sit in silence, Samuel begins to tie and untie his shoe once again.)

Nick: Well, would you like to play a game?

Samuel: I can’t.

Nick: Why can’t you?

Samuel: Because I’m waiting.

Nick: What are you waiting for?

Samuel: For Gregory, Nick. Just as I have been for the last two weeks. On this curb. (pointing to the concrete hump he sits on)

Nick: But Gregory is the mailman.

Samuel: He brings the mail, yes.

Nick: But Gregory brings the mail every day.

Samuel: He’s fairly reliable, yes.

Nick: But Gregory comes every day.

Samuel: You’ve said that.

Nick: But if you keep on waiting for him, even though he comes every day… you’ll just be waiting forever.

Samuel: Then I’ll wait forever if I must.

(Nick sits down on the curb beside Samuel, head in his hands, confused.)

Nick: Will you really wait forever?

Samuel: Of course; I’m fearless.

Nick: Then why couldn’t I bring the rat from school home last month?

Samuel: What?

Nick: Mom said that you were afraid of rats.

Samuel: That’s a different kind of fear.

Nick: How is it different?

Samuel: It just is. (He ties his shoe for the final time, double knotting and pulling tightly) Anyway, I’m not afraid of rats… I just don’t like their little claws.

Nick: Rosco wouldn’t scratch you up.

Samuel: That’s beside the point.

Nick: Then what’s the point?

Samuel: The point is waiting. The point is to wait, to keep waiting.

Nick: What is Gregory bringing in the mail? Is that what you’re waiting for?

Samuel: We’ll have to wait and see.

(They wait. After not too long, a white mail truck pulls up in front of the mailbox.)

Nick: (Waving erratically at Gregory) Hello!

(Gregory waves back without enthusiasm, climbs from the cab of his truck and places a large white envelope in Samuel’s hands. The word “FEARLESS” is written in thick red letters across the back.)

Samuel: This is it!

(Samuel hops up from the curb as Gregory pulls away, and it can be seen that the envelope is from Oberlin College)

Nick: Are you going to Ohio?

Samuel: (tracing the edges of the envelope) I don’t know yet, I haven’t opened it.

Nick: Well open it!

Samuel: I can’t.

Nick: What?

Samuel: I can’t open it yet. I have to wait.

Nick: More waiting?!

(Nick throws his arms up into the air before trying to pull the envelope from Samuel’s hands to open it himself)

Samuel: More waiting. Mark and I agreed we wouldn’t open our envelopes until we’d both gotten them. And he’s been waiting for three weeks.

Nick: That’s even longer than you! He could be waiting forever!

Samuel: He’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes.

Nick: Would you really have waited so long if you were fearless Sammy?

Samuel: (arms fall to sides, droopy and unsure) I think so.

—

Part II — “The Tell-Tale Envelope”

Samuel placed the envelope, careful not to upturn any of its white edges, between the slats of some wooden planks beneath his bed. This was a place he’d utilized nearly all of his life. He’d discovered the wooden vestibule around age 8 and immediately began to hide small jars that his brother’s baby food came in beneath the planks. The mashed up peas and carrots had been dug out and fed to Nick, but the ants and grasshoppers that Samuel closed inside could still find tiny morsels about the corners to pick at. Once the jars had been cleaned from the inside by their investigating mouths though, they died.

For a long time the vestibule had been home to a pornographic paradise of sorts, but Samuel found a girlfriend among the High School jungle, and she enjoyed showing him her breasts. They made love on Thursday afternoons while his mother volunteered at a hospice.

The envelope meant everything. It would tell him whether he had to say goodbye to Sarah’s breasts forever. He wasn’t sure if the flat land of Ohio could be worth more to him than the hollows of her pale neck, but the envelope would tell him. His reaction would be animal like when the adhesive was finally ripped apart, and there would be no hiding what he really wanted. He left the envelope, its red letters reminding him to be fearless winking up through the planks, and he tried to forget about it.

He tried, and he’d managed for a few days, but after Thursday afternoon came and went there was something tugging at his brain. For hours he felt as though he was forgetting something. He busied himself around the kitchen with Nick at his heels. He spread chunky peanut butter over a piece of toast to keep his brother busy and quiet, gummy mush sticking to the roof of his mouth.

In the middle of dinner that night it came to him in a thick stabbing feeling between his ribs. The envelope lay knowing what Samuel needed to know, but forbidden. He excused himself from the dinner table to crawl underneath his bed frame. On top of the wooden planks that shadowed his envelope there felt to be a rumbling right up through the floor and into his heart. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Mark’s number, still face first with the dust bunnies that perpetually drifted across the dark space. His need was sudden but serious. Mark clicked into being on the other end of the line:

“Hey dude!” He was gleeful, probably full of pizza.

“Dude.”

“Dude?”

“Dude, have you gotten your letter yet?”

“No, but any day now man. You didn’t fucking open yours did you?”

“I’m going crazy; I need to open it.”

“Come on, don’t be a pussy man. Isn’t that the school’s motto or some shit?”

“It’s about being fearless, you dick.”

“If you’re going to piss your pants over it then go ahead and open the damn thing, but you sure as hell aren’t fearless.” Samuel clicked the phone shut to erase Mark’s voice. What did he know? All he did was apply to a bunch of state schools, and he probably hadn’t gotten any letters yet because he wasn’t getting accepted. Samuel decided that he didn’t need to open the envelope right then.

Because he was so confident in his acceptance.

Wasn’t he?

He traveled back downstairs after patting down his t-shirt, dust spiraling off in waves. Nick sat on the couch, shoveling crunchy orange puffs into his mouth. His fingers were sticky with orange and the front collar of his shirt was covered in the film as well.

“Didn’t get enough at dinner little man?”

“We didn’t have cheetos at dinner.” Nick glared at Samuel. “Not like you’d know what we had anyway.” But Samuel had the pork chop in his stomach to prove it, though he decided to turn in for bed early rather than sustain further abuse from a ten year old. He thought that maybe the gnawing in his stomach and chest might subside a bit with sleep.

Samuel drifted off. Hours passed. The house was stagnant.

Samuel woke up, suddenly.

He could see through the cracks between his curtains that the sky was still murky black, a few dimly lit stars making their way through the suburban haze. The house was stagnant. Or, at least the air of the house was stagnant, but Samuel could hear a rustling sound, like multiple papers shuffling. They were distant at first, and the rustling was very calm as if the person rifling through them had plenty of time to take in his or her endeavor. So Samuel relaxed, and attempted to return to his sleep, assuming that Nick simply couldn’t sleep and was shuffling through some homework papers.

When his attention returned to slumber, though, the sound grew louder so that it could have been right outside Samuel’s bedroom door. It started to escalate and the rifling became frantic. The sound seeped under his door until he could swear he felt it shaking his bed frame, emanating from directly below him, through the cracks of his floor boards and between the folds of his Oberlin envelope.

“Fine!” He shot up in bed and pounded both of his fists into the mattress on either side of him. “If my subconscious can’t fucking let it go — then I’ll open the damn envelope.” And so he did, folding his body over to peek beneath the bed, carefully sliding one wooden plank up and over another, and slowly dragging the large white envelope, leering “FEARLESS” at him in its big block letters, up and into his lap. The awful noises had ceased the instant his index finger jammed itself underneath the glue to pry it open, and within a breath the cover letter was resting against his shins.

Accepted, it said. You have been accepted. To Oberlin College. And Samuel loved the place already.

—

Part III — “How Do I Love Thee Oberlin, Let Me Count the Ways…”

How do I love thee Oberlin? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth of thy arboretum’s creek
and breadth and height of thy wisdom tree’s trunk
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of hope and ideal utopia.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most raucous connies, by fog and downtown Christmas lights.
I love thee freely, as puzzled genders strive for shared spaces;
I love thee purely, as they turn from definition.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my new endeavors, and with my childhood’s ignorance.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With other institutions, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if some celestial being choose,
I shall but love thee better after graduation.

—

Part IV — “Brave New Orientation Week”

Samuel arrives with his family, after a twenty-eight hour car ride from the south, at Oberlin College. He feels like a savage here, mostly because he looks like a savage here: unshaven facial hair rough and stringy clumping about his chin and cheeks, sweaty t-shirt with stains from the many cheeseburgers he consumed along the way, and some dirty flip flops. Samuel Savage they should call him, and maybe they will.

For the first day of orientation his family shuffles around with him in a daze, delirious from the enormously long car ride. They eat lunch at a table labeled “English” and listen to other new students talk about what they want to do with their major in “English”. They take a tour of the environmental science building that smells of dirt, and Nick bends over to lick one of the chairs in the lecture hall — the tour guide having told them that they were somehow edible.

Finally after eating dinner at the Oberlin Inn’s restaurant, Samuel ushers his family upstairs to their room and they look at him with hazy eyes, giving hugs and goodnights until tomorrow when they will begin the long drive back south. Samuel takes the asphalt path through Tappan Square to North Quad. In the very center is a large tree that he’d read about on the internet: the Wisdom Tree, where students congregate young and old to partake in the consumption of marijuana, alcohol, and possibly other drugs that Samuel had only dreamed of being introduced to.

Barely dusk but there was already a ring of students sitting cross legged under the tree, its migrating shadow headed east. Samuel headed directly for them, thinking: now or never, though orientation week is a very special time when thoughts like now-or-never are reserved for the weak. They eyed him as he approached, standing somewhat awkwardly a few feet from the circle with his hands inside his pockets.

“Do you want to join us or something?” A girl with her back up against the tree slurred. There were eight or ten students, each with some kind of beverage or pipe to aid in their intoxication.

“Yeah, sure.” Samuel responded as if they’d personally invited him out onto the quad in the first place. He grinned widely after squeezing between a boy with dreadlocks and a girl who emanated a particularly funky odor.

“Are you a first year?” The smelly girl beside him asked.

“Yeah. Aren’t you?” He looked around the group, expecting somebody to hand him a drink of his own or something to smoke.

“No.”

“Then why are you at orientation?”

“To party.” She took a long drag from the giant bottle of beer that had been sitting in front of her. “Are you fearless?” Samuel grinned.

“Hell yeah I’m fearless.” But none of them thought it made him very interesting. In fact, they all began to laugh as if in on one big joke he couldn’t possibly understand.

“Sure you are.” One of the boys from the other side of the circle said. “You may be fearless, but I’m going to change the world.” They all laughed again, apparently thinking that the boy was very clever. Samuel suddenly felt very uncomfortable. The rest of the people he sat with continued to laugh and then began to talk about other things — politics that they didn’t seem to know much about, music that they and everyone Samuel knew seemed to like, and other students that they knew gossip about to share.

When he thought of something to add, he stopped himself suddenly, afraid.

—

Part V — Analysis

My satire is one of parodies. Though, they might not be considered parodies because they aren’t necessarily targeting the original work, or much resemble the original work for that matter. I just thought that it would be interesting to write something which contained a few different forms such as drama, poetry, and prose.

The satiric target of this piece is Oberlin College and the contrast between what one might expect when applying and joining the community to what one might actually encounter when joining the community. It especially focuses on Oberlin College’s new slogan intended to attract new students, seemingly a particular kind of student — one that would consider themselves “fearless”.

As a student at Oberlin, its clear to me that we are not fearless, and why should we be? I tried to explore what the idea of fearless was supposed to mean anyway, particularly in Part I when Samuel’s brother asks him if he is really fearless and Samuel tries to explain what kinds of fear should be included in the idea of fearlessness.

The contrast that I’m trying to emphasize is done mostly through anticipation in the first three sections followed by a sharp letdown in the last. There are instances when the concept of fearlessness is questioned in the first few sections but it isn’t until the last when it becomes very evident to Samuel that he has a very different way of looking at fearlessness and his situation at college than the other people in a place where he will be spending the next four years of his life.