Everyday I woke up to Digital Signal, volume seven on my cell phone. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was 8:30am. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:45am. Saturdays and Sundays, 10:30am. Everyday I woke, never allowing myself to hit the snooze. Always awake just in time to piss. Pissing involved a 50ft. walk out my door, down the hall, to an amalgamation of hygiene and waste called 7^th West Vandelville Hall Restroom. I brushed my teeth while kids I didn’t know, but saw everyday, tried to conceal wet, sloppy dumps and muffle fart noises three stalls away.

My teeth, their poop, our bliss.

Darren, my roommate, was always still asleep when I came back to the room fresh from the shower. I dried myself and scurried around our 16 x 15 ft. room filled with everything either of us should care to have. Darren’s TV. Darren’s Playstation. Both our games and DVDs. My computer. Darren’s computer. My microwave. Darren’s air conditioner. My entertainment stand. Our shared futon. And so on. Wall space was a compromise between who was willing to pony up the most when the poster venders came to campus and head shop tapestry appraisal. Observing ownership practices on fridge items and closet contents depended on levels of intoxication and thoughtfulness. You don’t know what sharing is until you see your underwear comfortably wrapped around your roommate’s balls.

My skivvies, his balls, our bliss.

Class was a journey that always began with a walk down fourteen flights of stairs, passed an out of order elevator, and ended at one of two buildings a fifteen minute walk away. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Trout Hall for my 9:15am Economics and Political Policies of Ancient Greece and Rome. Tuesdays and Thursdays was Foundations of Ancient Warfare at the Mickabee Center. The classrooms had a stagnant smell of forced learning illuminated by overhead projectors. Times New Roman key points on white backgrounds. Tired eyes and note taking present on account of parental patronage. I saw those kids every other day. He sat next to him, she sat next to her, I sat next to him and she always talked to him. Today, everyone, we will be discussing the Socratic Method. Any Questions? Didn’t think so.

Blue and white Bic pens were one of my favorite things in the world. The ink in that pen is blue, for those who haven’t discovered such a treasure. I couldn’t pay attention properly if my ink was black or, heaven forbid, it was lead and not ink at all. Notes were to be taken in strict outline format, starting with a roman numeral, then a upper case letter, a number, lower case letter, another number and a series of symbols if a finer point must be documented. I preferred dashes (-) and asterisks(*). If Dr. Vandt or Dr. Burrell made a point that didn’t fit my outline scheme, I was lost in a battle of a sentence beginning at the left margin surrounded by stars and homicide/suicide delirium.

Every minor folkway was forgiven in class for the sake of P.C. The dumb and uninterested kids never sat in the back anymore because some attentive and involved kids just felt more comfortable back there. It wasn’t right to generalize. No question was a stupid question. It was ok to take tests outside of the assigned test time. Grace periods were given on case by case basis for papers according to the level of the emergency. It’s tough to study when you make yourself vomit to look like the girl in the Newport Cigarettes ad. If you asked anyone what they wanted to do after they graduated, it was something impressive. Darren had it in his head he was going to sell his paintings for ten million a piece, as soon as he woke up. Chandra Peters was going to re-invent the inner soul and scientifically explain it. Bill McCoy who spent half his day at the bottom of a $8.99 "on special" bottle of vodka and the other drinking a tall order of toilet water, heavy on his own puke, was going to be an investment banker for Stanley Phillips. Aaron Michaels was going to take over his dad’s multi-million dollar advertising firm. Kristin Vance was going to poke holes in Aaron Michael’s condoms until she was pregnant with his child. I was going to be a research consultant for National Geographic or the History Channel. If that didn’t work, I could always go to law school.

My Bic pens, youth potential, our bliss.

Anything I needed there was a plan for it, even if I didn’t know I needed a plan. Everyone wanted to know your plan. Meals were covered under my meal plan. A smorgasbord of roasted, fried and baked delights with a rainbow of beverages that allowed lunch ladies to piss on skittles packages and flip off lucky charms boxes. Community service awarded a community service plan. Room plan. Intramural athletics plan. Plans for graduating to stay the course under constant barrages of postgraduate abyss testimonials and Pink Floyd albums. What was my plan for next weekend? I knew the emergency evacuation plan for each building. I knew the professor’s lesson plans for each class I took. Happiness, the meaning of life, life-long sexual companionship, good grades, increasing salaries, promotion, houses, self-fulfillment, pride, legacy, morality, abundance, spiritual contentment and a memorable death were all part of my plan.

My plan, your plan, our bliss.

I remember how much fun everything was. I remember the amount of fun varied according to the time of day or the day of the week. Everyday, at 4pm, just when I got back from the gym, it was a war on NCAA "insert-year-here" College Football. Dynasty was always associated with my teams and I could win the National Championship with the clear cut Heisman with the worst team, on the hardest level. Dominance is an understatement when I created myself as a player and threw for 783 yards and 8 TDs in a rivalry game. Darren was my sissy little school girl with cute little blue ribbons on her shoes in Halo, but come Tiger Woods Golf, I had to grease it and ride it just like every other challenger that came across his path. Fun is a bevy of testosterone, backwards fitted hats and spitters once the next Madden game came out. An overtime strike into double coverage to let everyone know who’s house this is.

Monday nights it was two pitchers and some stick at Fountain Street Billiards. Tom Petty C.C.R. and any this-moment-the-shit-tomorrow-forgotten rap single were on the jukebox. Thursday nights meant quarter draws at Freddie’s. Hip hop, cocktails and shots at either 112 or Hell’s Kitchen on Friday night and usually the same for Saturdays. Each night I would be introduced to someone new and forget their name. My name was Dude or Man. None of us could help it. We were all terrible and names. I was sorry and I swore I would remember next time. I smile, they smile, these things were bound to happen with all we had going on.

Sunday nights was a stare-down competition over a deck of cards and $200 poker chip sets. Buy-ins varied at the level and seriousness of the player and what his parents did for a living. Long silences and ESPN choreographed jubilation defined the ebs and flows of the new American dream sport. An unlit cigar and insider terminology were padded extras to a reason to wear my Oakely’s indoors and stake bragging rights for the week when I’d take Vance’s lunch money when he was 20-years-old.

Fun was the twenty minutes I had between when I got back to the room from lunch and when Darren got back from class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each one of these three sacred days I would have gone to church the same I did Christmas and Easter if jacking off was made a religion. I would walk in the room and lock the door. I would drop my backpack on the couch and immediately head to my desk chair and log onto my computer. Username: LTwarriorsfan. Password:*********. I remember the last time I did it.

The internet was slow, which is like licking high voltage razor blades when time is the central issue. I had spent the greater part of the past two weeks on blowjob classics recommended by blast_tastic.com. The thing about great porn actresses is they sell the "undying thirst for cum face" that I’d hope I’d see one day when my testicles allowed my brain to ask to give a facial. Smiles are impossible to fake because the muscles in your eyes used for smiling are completely involuntary. This wasn’t an issue with the blast_tastic classics because normally those boys knew how to paint the whole barn. I pulled up the link but had exhausted all the sample clips of girls I was interested in seeing.

Time was ticking.

I waded into a search engine and pondered for a minute what I was really in the mood for. Anal sex was a phase for about a week my sophomore year until I saw an early nineties uncut that had lube pouring out of you-know-where when the guy pulled out. It looked like an ice cream soft serve running out of dairy mix. Girl on girl was nice for viewing with friends so everyone could comment and would know everyone’s not queer because we are comfortable watching porn together, as long as there are no dicks involved. Someone might comment on size. Point being, unworthy masturbation material. I thought about doggy-style, but I thought of it like modern art in the sense that I can admire but ultimately come to the conclusion that I was capable of such a feat. Titty-fucking it would have to be.

The search engine had about a billion hits on the topic and I wondered briefly how common it was for a camera to be present for such an act or if recycling was a common practice in porn. This compounded my difficulty getting aroused because the only way I could ruin my twenty minutes, three times a week was to think too much. I clicked into a sight that repeated "titty-fuck cumshot facial titty-fuck hardcore hot bitches" on the link and scanned quickly for my particular piece. I dropped my jeans around my ankles and began to work myself into a stir as I searched, landing on a 16 second loop video of some innocent looking brunette getting worked as she begged for it. The outcome was predictable. I looped the footage over as I concentrated, getting involved, loving her eyes. I began to moan to myself, having her tell me things I wanted her to say to me, in my voice. My climax came and I seized bending forward as I caught myself in my free hand.

I looked to my left and Darren was standing with the door open, staring at me, with his sister looking over his shoulder. I still had four minutes. His sister doesn’t ever come unless it is Thursday or Saturday. Darren never remembered his key.

"Oh, Jesus" I said.

"Uhh later…dude."

My dick, their eyes, our bliss.

My plan was to die. I would have stuck a gun in my mouth and ruined the wall compromise, but campus policy didn’t permit the possession of firearms on campus.

I thought about my dad. I thought and still do think that daddy issues have become such a prominent cop-out that I wondered what came first, the psychology or the deadbeat. I only thought of him because he was the furthest thing from my mind when I had a head full of shock, a body full of terror, and a fistful of my own spunk. I didn’t even remember what he looked like and several times I tried but seeing his face was the same practice as remembering the lyrics to a song I only half remembered the tune to. You know you know it, the frustration mounts because it is so simple, but by the time you tell yourself it will come to you, you forget that you should still be trying to remember. But there he was, his face with it’s clean shave, stylish glasses, cocked right eyebrow, prominent chin and short dark hair. I could see him again in my mind as I held his would-be grandson in my hand. I thought of everything I could remember about him.

My Grandpa’s name was Edward James Riley who worked as a mechanic in Boston, but all that anyone really remembers about him is that he came home from France in a bag with a little triangular flag on top of it in the Forties. My Grandma, Eleanor Dupont Riley, never remarried and raised Edward’s only son, Frank Riley, until she sent him off to college at Penn State. She died a year later when a moving crew carrying a refrigerator up to the third floor of her apartment building lost grip and sent the fridge to make my father an orphan. I don’t know how he took it, he never told me, I had no uncles or aunts to tell me and when he left, my mother never said his name so I could hear. I hear the ceremony was lovely, though. He graduated from Penn State and married my mother, I don’t know when, but sometime after that. My dad was an accountant for a bank where I grew up and we lived comfortably, as far as I can remember. I have memories of my dad letting me stuff the envelopes with checks to pay the bills, lick stamps and put the stack of outgoing mail on top of the mailbox the next day on my way to school. One day, when I was nine, he just left and I never asked what happened to him and my mother never told me.

My lack of curiosity, her hatred, our bliss.

A few times I wondered where he went and what he was doing, but the absence of my mother’s sorrows and my continued daily routine without much hiccup led me to believe these things happened. Half my friends didn’t have married parents or didn’t know who their father was. I was past the whole "bring your father to class" years so after awhile all Dad ever was was an empty spot at the dinner table and one less person in a photograph. Not that we took many to begin with. Kids don’t ask where your father is at birthdays when everyone has on the same dunce hat and is staring down ice cream and cake just as long as they behave and keep their envy to themselves.

I continued to grow and my mother worked as a realtor for a mid-level suburban firm, mainly to pass the time. She dated rarely and when she did, I couldn’t tell if I had met the guy before or if men over the age of forty wore sport jackets and ties on dates because it was standard potential pro-creative government issue. I swear I knew how old I was just to tell potential suitors, one every eight months to a year. I think Stuart was my favorite name.

We received word that my Dad died by a phone call from a lawyer who had a certified copy of his will. I was almost eighteen. He had been living in New York City at the time, but the lawyer didn’t know much about him outside the one time he met him to draw up the will, three months prior. We didn’t even ask the cause of death. The lawyer faxed some paperwork I needed to sign in order to claim the 2000 BMW 323 my father left behind to his only son. We had no idea what other things my father owned, because it was unlawful to disclose, but for my mother’s ten years of matrimony, I got a five-year-old luxury automobile with a flight itinerary to Rome, Italy for a week after his death in the glove box. It was funny, Dad had been dead for almost nine years and now I got a car.

His death, my Beamer, our bliss.

I loved that car. It reeked class and spoke commandments. Everyday in college when I popped out of a BMW, people looked at me different. Nobody can tell the difference between a five year old BMW worth $12,000 and constantly depreciating in value and one three years newer and worth triple. All they know if my family has money and there’s more where that came from. In one situation I was a stranger with a decent handshake with a mild demeanor. Next to the Beamer, I was out-of-state license plates, a blue-and-white checkerboard, leather interior, well-bred, large monthly credit card statements, gregarious, a bright future, and a plan.

"Ohmygod! Was he jacking off?" I heard Darren’s sister say as he shut the door. "What was he saying?"

Stirs of floor mates out in the hall and doors opening in reaction to Darren’s sister’s inquiries turned into a press conference of college males asking, "Who?" as if the answer to the question would fill hours of future conversation and ice breakers. I sat with my head down as my Dad’s face evaporated leaving only his car in the lot.