these pictures on your wall belong to the pornographic industry

His room is always a mess, but I keep coming back. In a sense I feel like I ought to care for him, tender something I see bruised in his spirit, a shadow of sadness. But it seems I always get too concerned with my ego blisters, and his room never gets any cleaner. 

It's not important that I say all this but it isn't so irrelevant either. We all consume a little tenderness easily. The other day I thought of the most eloquent phrase: "these pictures on your wall belong to the pornographic industry". I thought of this eloquent phrase when I left the remote house in the remote "Eta" neighbourhood, to be difficult and cryptic. Let's just call the whole thing a big Eta. So I left Eta thinking that. There wasn't any porn on the walls. I guess it's just the nature of the Eta house that makes me think there is some kind of pornographic culture happening there. I guess I was just a little hazy too. I had covered myself in an American flag blanket all night, what do you expect.

But let's backtrack a little and talk about Eta and its inhabitants. A curious bunch. Nerd jocks. Have you ever come across the concept of nerd jocks? Well these guys were nerd jocks. They were the rich kids that tagged along the better-looking, socially apt kids in high school and offered their place as the prefered location for meetings. Kids these days call drug gatherings "play dates". This new name terrorizes me a little bit. Play dates. Holy fucking shit.

Anyway, there I was in the Eta house and there was plenty of eloquence to be had amongst all of us; eloquence of the nice kind in which people foster a healthy curiosity for one another to help relieve the general stress of hanging around absolute strangers in a confined space (I, being the main stranger). Anyway, cutting to the chase, we started drinking and being generally loose and hits were had and hits were shared (this was late at night and proved to be a great relief to the shitty night I was having beforehand) and all of a sudden - I don't know if the really confined space helped mitigate this or not - I got that sensation that you are in some particularly special cloud nine. The whole scene and all the boys my eyes could possibly gobble over, the multiple conversations and fairly sparse music discussions... When suddenly, it. The whole thing, drenched with perfection. Okay, not perfection. But his presence made the garage vibrate. Presence, hey. Presence is a funny thing. When people have a lot of presence, no matter what - no matter who was there previously or who jumped in the bandwagon with a bit of delay -, when this person leaves, it's like the whole world sinks in a little a bit. This person carries the room. This person facilitates, but more than that: without this person it feels as though you may or not be wasting your time with all these other people (in my case, nerd jocks). But with professors - with professors you just know there is no other place you'd rather be. Why? Because they have no doubt. They just are. They are presumptuous as fuck, as you would imagine. They are overtly convinced of their own talents, and most people just like to drink assurance whether it's a legit thing or not.