Chapter 13: Leaving Rustown.

Being offered a scholarship was encouraging. At last, things seemed to be channeling in the right direction. I moved to California full of hope. Changes were good. New hopes were born in a warmer weather.

College was liberating. Although I don't know how much of a conventional freshwoman I was. For sure, I avoided my university's sororities and disliked most fraternities and all the entitled bullshit they secreted. Well, that's how I felt —always positive thoughts! Not that I had time for that kind of shitty social groups anyway.

The allotted monthly freshwoman credit was a currency to bargain with. Thus did I. I minimized all expenses and reused whatever credits or perks I was given —whether they came from the enrollment or the scholarship. The latter were the hardest to trade. Though there were ways to optimize things like the housing grant.

Not many memories came back from Rustown.

From a dorm in freshman year, I went to living officially off-campus as a sophomore. Technically: because in reality, I stayed in the campus. Everything needed could be acquired by knowing where to get it for free or asking nicely for it. I bought a second hand van. The most expensive part was to ‘pass’ smog. Regulations, and always people willing to defeat them, sometimes at a price. Against pollution, I rarely drove it: I parked that van within the perimeter of the campus and I slept in that van many nights —not as many as I passed in the library, though. Showers? Aplenty. Food? “Anything you'd fancy!” As long as you fancy mostly pizza and pasta.

I had a group of friends that remained quite stable through those years. We were around eight friends, give or take depending on the year and circumstances. Only one, Alain —not Alan—, studied Computer Engineering —like me. The rest were a diverse mix of unconventional people studying conventional degrees.

Not all were dysfunctional when integrating to the society in-campus. Probably no one was. Not even I. That was the beauty of college back then: nobody would be really labeled as dysfunctional. Most people keep judging others as harshly as when they were cruel infants, but they keep that shit to themselves. Like I did. Be that a proof of maturity or a shift in the expression of immaturity.

Alain and I met Margo at a café a few blocks from the campus. We had seen her a few times prior. When she introduced herself, she was insistent in that her name had no T. Before she became a friend, we were used to long periods of comfortable silence —boring, yet with a calming sense of stability.

Margo seemed quite shy, but it was only a part of the façade. Chaos was her drive. She used to go to fraternity parties and take many beers from them, what she would call ‘crap beer’. She would later come to us and share them. She really went on to mastering her innocence-infused sex appeal. I admired her freedom and how she used her weapons. At the same time, I knew I wouldn't ever allow myself to do such things. My repression ran deep.

She was what I'd call a ‘social nucleus’: most people in the group had joined through knowing Margaret.

Once I got this frat boy telling me how beautiful I was. A compliment that was a good start, but didn't really find alluring by itself. I always wondered why so many girls needed that kind of reassurance coming from guys whose worth was unknown. Now, if the compliment came from a guy I knew to have a minimum honesty, that would be different.

Once, I got this frat boy telling me how beautiful I was. How my features were exotic and angular, how I gave away the impression of being deep and smart. How he would do me, even considering how small my boobs were.

Well, at least there was honesty there. The guy was admittedly hot, but that prick's pick-up technique was laughable —if not downright irritating. He would go on playing more or less that same role with other girls, with varying degrees of sexual success. Honestly, I'd pick a pickle before letting that prick pick me.

Pick a pickle? Who wrote that? It wasn't me. Such a silly, weird expression... peut-être Peter Piper picked pecks of pickled peppers?

The hook-up routine in college was packed with similar stereotypes. That, when it wasn't the infamous ‘nice guy’. Or the ones that went from 0 to 100 devotion in a few hours —rarely lasting more than a week.

I knew of different unreasonable kinds of infatuation: in theory. I knew about their capability to induce detachment from reality. None of them suspended reason as much as the hormone-driven infatuation on its pinnacle: youth, and how to love without seeing the thorns. For me, that youth's naïveté had gone away very early, and never intersected with romance. Even in my twenties, I felt old. That feeling had distanced me even further from these types of guys, and from recurrent fantasies of romance.

Outside those profiles shadowed by the young lust gone, there were many worthy guys. Maybe. I guess. It wasn't all doom and gloom. Even those profiles weren't as radical as I portray them: there's clearly a sampling bias here.

Not that I did anything to change that bias. Anyway... after all, I admit I wasn't that great either: a cynical, judgmental, impatient, busy girl with far too high expectations, and no intention to lower them.