The Summer of George

A new September has brought a new inactivity to my life. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I am not a student, a queer and uncomfortable position to be sure. The month that was always marked by new books, teachers and lessons is now just endless hours waiting for the newest installment of offensive futility from the World Champions.

I decided to take the summer off (read: wasn’t creative enough to keep writing) from the space in an effort to refocus and get away from the self-loathing that was all I could muster. I had graduated jobless, with no honors, and my final summer was all that separated me from returning home with my parents and bidding Audrey adieu as she embarked on her new career in Florida. Broke, and with little hope for a job, I couldn’t stand to be publicly miserable any longer.

While the time away wasn’t entirely voluntary, it did allow me to reflect on the year that has past, the year you all have gotten to know me. Ironically, the year I began publicly charting my growth is probably the one in which I made the least progress. My belief was that senior year would be the torch bearer, the year I would always remember fondly when thinking back on college; however, it will probably go down as one of the worst. But pain is fleeting and often skin deep, and the sands of time have a way of smoothing even the roughest of stones into a gorgeous marble.

My year long search for employment left me chasing a proverbial shadow. I had seen many of my friends go through their last hurrahs in similar fashion, chasing a job that never came, walking across the stage to uncertain waters, and laboring under part-time work before finally landing the elusive nine-to-five. Perhaps it was Audrey’s success, perhaps my self-deprecating nature, but the inability to find work destroyed my senior year. I was morose, miserable and mean to many, most notably myself. I didn’t land a job, and I didn’t enjoy my last year, and with neither goal fulfilled, I made myself miserable.

Compounding my own demons was Audrey, although by no fault of her own. To be satisfied in a relationship with another is truly trying, but nearly impossible when not in a happy relationship with oneself. Problems originated as we got accustomed to living in close proximity once again, after she had returned from a semester working two hours away from State College Town. But things came to a boiling point when she informed me she had taken a job that would cause her to move to Jacksonville, Fla., when I had been expecting her to accept an offer here in Metropolis. The one thing I had thought I had a grip on was slipping through my fingers, and my frustrations often boiled over into ugly confrontations.

Finally, when the job search had me down and Audrey and I were at each others throats, the Fraternity abandoned me, drifting idly by as more and more members abandoned ship. Many of my friends, the ones who had attracted me to it in the first place, had graduated and were gone, and so many of my peers were like me, in relationships and inconsistently available because of them. Our time spent together was no longer reminiscing about a drunken night or debating the latest football game, but instead hashing out the latest girl problems or the lame party recently thrown attended by only a handful of sorority girls. The chapter was a sinking ship, and we seniors were too wrapped up in our own lives to come to the rescue, as those before us did so routinely.

And now September has dawned anew, a fresh senior year has commenced, and a virgin crop will suffer through the torture chamber, worrying about their futures, analyzing their present and complaining about how they wished it was freshman year all over again. But it is true what they say: those who ignore their past are destined to repeat it, and those who long for the future will never realize it. Senior year is an opportunity I squandered, and in subsequent months, I know I will remember things fondly that elude me today, but the life I feared so much is laid out before me, and all that worrying I did the past 12 months did nothing to change it.