a study of science

First let me tell you about the chiggers.  That they are insect larvae invisible to the naked eye.  That they feed on animal and human flesh, when they can find it.  That they live in low-lying swampy areas, in woodlands and along streambeds. That the only way you know you’ve been bitten by a chigger, aside from avoiding damp areas all together, is when red bumps appear at the point of contact. That these bumps itch worse than a mosquito bite, worse even than poison ivy is a sure sign.

Now, let me tell you about Jake. Jake lived in the room next door at McKalney He had my old room from junior year with two big windows and a Chinese roommate.  The year before, I had lived alone. My room the following year was circular and dubbed, appropriately so, “the circle room.” The room itself lived in the turret of the house, for the house was a mansion and of the severe Victorian style. But, this is not when I met Jake.

I met him at the end of my second year of undergrad.  He was a transfer and had begun to infiltrate the ranks of our close-knit group.  He looked imposing and so infiltrate is the correct word to describe how he wormed along.  With a Jew ‘Fro and a knob of iron pierced right below his upper lip, holes in his earlobes the size of a dime, and tattoos of nautical stars on his elbows, all on his lanky six foot frame, he was alternative and dangerous.  He also loved “Crime and Punishment. ”  That year he had a girlfriend named Isis. I met her once. They seemed perfect together. She, a prodding, argumentative and dark intellectual; he, equally able to counter her whimsies with a darkness all his own.

The following year, I was abroad and didn’t see Jake until we were placed in adjacent rooms in our final year.  He had spent a semester in Berlin and came back with more tattoos and  the jaded look of a cynic.  In my own way, I suppose, I am also a cynic, although it is not as pronounced as in the way of a barcode tattooed on the back of my neck. If I remember correctly, Jake became a project the beginning of the fall semester. His relationship with Isis had soured, and he had carried on a few self-gratifying relationships since then.  I don’t believe the project was to make Jake like me, but it was more to get him to be less cynical about the world.  This, however, is not the way things panned out.  I suppose the more you try to pan through the river for gold, the more chiggers you’re bound to find.

We got into this habit of taking afternoon naps on the ratty futon mattress that rested in the middle of the circle in my room. It was my roommate’s and since the room could not fit a futon frame properly, the mattress became the epicenter of the room.  I don’t believe I was ever openly nice or offered up my friendship freely to Jake, which is why, in part, I now think he should have been aware of what he was getting himself into.  He would come into my room when I was working on my thesis, or studying, or plain not working at all, and just inject himself into a conversation about music or women or Derrida, Dostoyevsky, Kant. ...Sometimes I listened politely like a good confidant. Other times, I told him to leave.  Around the end of the first semester, Jake asked me to go out with him for Indian food.   I went more out of curiosity than desire.  I could take him easily in small doses.  But this “date,” was a test of tolerance.  In Jake’s opinion, I must have succeeded because on a random Friday night, he asked me to go out drinking in the neighboring town’s pub.

I must stress again, if I recall correctly and I believe I do, I never gave Jake the impression of liking him as more than the platonic asexual might show interest and consequently had no reason to believe the invitation carried Jake’s romantic intentions. And so, off to a tavern in another town where we talked for a while about everything cynicism, and other things people talk about when they’re avoiding a more elephantine subject.  And then, it came out.  A confession. Of interest.

Now, it must have been the alcohol talking when I said I agreed with him “we should try a go of it.”  That maybe there was some “interest or attraction from me here in agreeing to go out with him tonight, and if kept light, it could be fun.”  And so when driving back, I believe Jake was the most genuinely contented he had been in months.  This led to the latter part of the evening ending up on my bed, in my bed, with naked bodies rolling around, and me, toying with the whole situation to “see what would come of it.”

Jake told me later he knew right away when he looked into my eyes that night that I didn’t mean it; that it wouldn’t last.  And I suppose, maybe it took that evening for me to realize it too, that sometimes you don’t know if you’re attracted to a person physically until you are actually physically involved.

This whole evening precipitated Jake’s breakdown which led to, among other things, therapy, medications, and a shudder of tears one evening as he came into my room and the only thing I could do at that moment was offer a pathetic little hug.  

Flash forward to the end of the college, graduation,– that point in a life when everything is so completely up in the air that to try and pin anything down is like popping a helium-filled balloon.  Flash forward further to an afternoon phone call from Jake working at a summer camp close to where my parents, and his offer for a visit.  Although, in anyone’s right mind, the advice would be reject the offer, the fact that I can be an awful person is reflected by the fact that I encouraged, actively encouraged Jake’s visit.  This being the case, Jake drove over from the camp one evening and regaled me with dinner, with his feigned act of “really truly being in a much better place emotionally right now.”  The dinner led to a drive into a hippie town with bars that played live music any night of the week and had patios.  This led to more and more drinks, more and more cigarettes on the back patio, more and more heights of tension for how, really, does one move past a moment that has never truly been resolved.  And this led to the chiggers.  

I tell myself now that what I did next was in an effort to avoid drinking and driving.  But, it is likely I wanted to see what would happen.  I told Jake there was a cool point down at the riverbank where we could go and sit for a while since we were too drunk to drive.  And so we found this spot on the edge of the water where a streetlight glistened just right to see a pathway down to the river.

At first, I went back and forth on whether to swim or not to swim. It started with a challenge: I’ll do it if you do it.  And so, not being one to lose in a contest of the wills, I stripped down naked and waded into the warm, summer river water.  And so it was, again, Jake, the ever glutton for punishment and me, both of us wading naked into the dirty river water at the edge of town, basking in the moonlight.  The sheer romance of it could make anyone desirable.  Now, I can easily see why people say full moons cause weird happenings: it is because the light seems to light upon desire itself.  And the light, and the warmth of the water, and the way the pale moon touched down on the pale skin of our bodies, we moved toward and through each other. And this all being done without feeling. Or rather, out of the pure instinct; that is ability to rationalize – the ability to use what makes the human animal different from all other animals – reason – was nowhere to be found.  I tell myself it was the moon.  Still, it did not stop me.  And I did not stop.

The chigger bites erupted three or four days later. Every inch of my body teemed with itch.  I began to think hard about how it could have happened.  How it felt the way desire does, and how unlikely.