You Must Be New Here, by Nils Parker

My name is Nils Parker. I am 31 years old. I went to college at the University of California, Berkeley and spent my last two years there living in one of the most famous collegiate co-operatives in the country: Cloyne Court Hotel. Before I got to Cloyne, I had no idea who I really was or what I really wanted to do with myself. And for me, the house proved to be a crucible for adulthood. This series is the story of my time at Cloyne and how the events of those two years shaped who I would become and how I would view the world.

This is the first installment.

You Must Be New Here

“You must be new here.” This was not a question. This was a statement. The courtyard was transfixed. Through the haze of his hangover, CV focused on the polished nametag pinned to the man’s chest. Marshal Dong. In fact, Marshal Dong had only joined the University Fire Department in January, at the beginning of spring semester. It was now the middle of May. And while it is true that Marshal Dong should have seen enough in that time to callous himself to what he was standing over, it is also true that you don’t call out a fire department official as he and his team sift through the charred remains of your drunken, destructive exploits (it’s rude). “We do stuff like this all the time,” CV confirmed.

The Clones who witnessed the exchange quickly disappeared while the growing number of law enforcement officials on the scene laughed in disbelief. Asshole idiot kids, I bet they thought. It’s what I think every time I tell this story. I don’t know for sure what happened between CV and the fire marshal, because I wasn’t there. I was on the other side of campus at Café Durant having breakfast with Andy and avoiding confrontation.

Café Durant is somewhat of a Berkeley institution. It’s not iconic like Moe’s Books or Blondie’s Pizza or the squinty-eyed guy with the afro and the table full of bumper stickers for sale, but if you were not a maladjusted recluse (or a computer science major) during your college years, you hit up Café Durant at least once while in Berkeley. Perched above Wall Berlin–a coffeehouse (now defunct) whose coffee was as bitter as its employees–Café Durant is not a place you go when you are hungry for food. It is a place you go when you are hungry for the sweet release of death. You order something greasy, grab a table in the sun, skull as much water and coffee as your stomach will allow, and then spend a couple hours sweating out the alcohol and taking stock of what you did (or didn’t do) the night before that may (or may not) have been monumentally stupid. It was my favorite place to go when I was trying to hide from the consequences of my actions.

Andy and I sat on the sunniest side of one of Café Durant’s outdoor deck tables guzzling water and picking through third-rate breakfasts. We sat there for some time and shifted with the early morning sun as it moved in the direction of the tilted patio umbrella sticking up through the middle of our table. Fighting off a crippling headache, I squinted at Andy while he talked. The sun reflected off a bus tray full of silverware and the glint hit me directly in the eyes; the back of which my heart was using as snare drums to keep its beat. Andy was doing a lot better than me.

“What did you guys do after I went to bed?” he asked between bites.

“I don’t know. I remember CV burning the craps table and then—“

“He burned the craps table?!!” Andy, normally very laid back, looked genuinely displeased.

“You don’t remember that?”

“No!”

“Wow, I feel like that was pretty early in the night.” Andy looked at me through serious eyes. “When did you go to bed?” I asked.

“After CV burned the skate ramp.”

“CV burned the skate ramp?!” I was astonished. That thing was pretty big.

“Yeah.”

“Wow, I don’t remember that at all.” There really is nothing more sobering than learning the details of the previous evening from something other than your own memory.

“Robin and Jesse tried to reason with him, but when they left he went and burned it anyway.”

“What a dick move.” It was.

“Yeah, they’re pretty pissed. They built it themselves.” I could hear the regret building in Andy’s voice; not so much because of his involvement but because I think he knew we’d finally crossed some sort of line. “You smell awful by the way.”

In the movies, when someone tells a person they stink, that person always lifts their arm and smells their pit. Then they lift their other arm because it’s only ever one armpit that stinks and it’s never the first one. I didn’t have to lift either of my arms. I already knew I stunk. I hadn’t shaved in at least ten days. I smelled of acrid smoke and vomit. The smoke was soaked into my skin. The vomit was caked to my facial hair. I could smell it baking into the hair above my lip.

“I know. I can’t stand myself right now.”

Andy nodded. My answers told him everything he needed to know about the previous night. They told me that I’d done something stupid (again) and blacked out (again). Aside from my spotty memories, prior to breakfast all I had remembered was being shaken awake by my girlfriend. I was on top of the covers, shirtless, and the Berkeley Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials team was crunching its way down the narrow, gravel driveway that leads to the courtyard of the Cloyne Court Co-Op, where I’d lived for the last two years.

I left Andy at the café shortly after to survey the damage and deal with the fallout. Andy was going to stick around Southside and hook up with some girl down there. He had girls sprinkled all over campus, like random plot points on a graph. As I got to know him better over the course of our senior year, his ability to satisfy these women’s needs (in the non-sexual sense) and maintain their loose, easy relationships grew more impressive.

Most guys, when they enter college, embark on a sexual scorched earth campaign. They try to fuck as many girls as possible with little regard for the consequences of fucking the wrong ones. You hooked up with a booty call’s roommate or a fuck buddy’s best friend? Who cares?! That’s how most guys felt. Most guys didn’t give a shit.

Not Andy.

He managed his relationships like a field general. These girls never crossed paths. Their circles never overlapped. He never talked shit. He never burned a bridge. He could, at any given time, wholly become that specific part of his personality that each girl liked most about him. He was a chameleon. He gave them just enough of himself to keep them on the hook while, at the same time, making sure what he did give them was not the stuff that would leave them with the impression they could expect anything more from him.

Tall, thin, with dark slightly curly hair, Andy used an incredibly disarming smile and his natural Midwestern charm to ensnare these defenseless co-eds. I never once saw a woman get mad at him. Even when the female-dominated student disciplinary committee grilled us about the fire a few weeks later, they spoke to Andy with confusion that bordered on sympathy. How could Andy be involved in such reckless malfeasance? Not our Andy! He must have been tricked…or pressured! Not one of them expressed anything close to anger or disappointment or disdain. They saved those emotions for me.

I took the longest and steepest route through campus on my way back to Cloyne. I needed every possible second to cobble together my thoughts and figure out what I should say: to the Fire Department, to the House Manager, to the angry hipster busybodies I lived with. I hadn’t seen the aftermath but I knew just from talking to Andy that there was something different about this fire. I knew it in my gut because I could feel the pit growing inside it. It was the pit I get in my stomach when I do something wrong and I’m not sure how wrong it is, but I know it’s wrong enough that I won’t come out of it unscathed. I’ve had a lot of experience with that pit.

I was in the 6th grade—11 years old—the first time I ever felt it. I had been staying home alone after school for three years by that point, thanks to an entire year of pleading and cajoling with my mother when I was in 3rd grade. She gave in at the end of that year when I brought home a fourth consecutive Straight-E report card. I could walk home after school and stay by myself on two conditions: 1) I do all my homework before my mom got home, and 2) I did whatever chores she assigned. She would leave a list on the kitchen table every morning and then call the house at 3:30 from her office to check on me and add to the chore list. Our arrangement worked well and the daily phone calls were all generally the same, including this particular one:

“How was your day?” Fine.
“Do you have a lot of homework?” I did it already.
“Didn’t you just get home?” I did it in class. What’s for dinner?
“I’ll figure something out when I get home. Have you taken Bandit out?” No. I’ll do it later.
“Don’t wait too long or he’s going to crap in the backyard again. He’s killing the grass. I pay good money to have that lawn kept up.” I know. I won’t.

This is when she would hit me with the chores she forgot to include on the morning list.

“I need you to bring a couple grocery bags of empty 2-liter soda bottles to the recycling center behind Encinal Market.” But Sportscenter is about to start!!

This was 1989 and while household recycling had begun to pick up steam in California, it was not yet at the point where local sanitation departments provided separate trash and recycling bins as part of trash collection. Instead, recycling centers started to pop up near dumps and junkyards, with satellite drop-off stations at markets and strip-malls.

My mom didn’t actually care about recycling. She’d been living in California for 15 years by then, but she was still an East Coaster—North Jersey to be exact—where Best Foods is Hellman’s, Dreyer’s is Edy’s, and garbage is garbage. The only thing she brought from New Jersey that was the same in California was everyone’s favorite suburban neighborhood game: Keeping Up with the Joneses.

This being the San Francisco Bay Area, our neighborhood was quick to hop on the recycling bandwagon. Families would make an outing of bringing their bags of recyclables to the market. They’d stop by friend’s houses on the way and offer to bring their recyclables too. It was annoying and obnoxious. But God forbid someone saw me take out the garbage and dump a bunch of 2-liter bottles into the trashcan. What would they think!? What kind of person raises their children not to contribute or care about the environment?!

“Take the dog with you.” She suggested it in a fun way, like holding a leash and picking up dogshit with one hand while trying to hold onto bags full of bottles with the other was going to make me forget that Sportscenter was about to start. I was 11, not retarded.

It sounds childish, I know, but in my defense, I was a fucking child. Plus, this was the heyday of SportsCenter. On any given afternoon you might get Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick or Craig Kilborn and Charlie Steiner. I hated missing the afternoon SportsCenter, especially then, with the Oakland A’s at the pinnacle of their late 80s success. I wanted to get off the phone before the theme music started, so I grudgingly agreed. The next thing I knew, it was 4:30, SportsCenter was over, and the 4:35 Braves game was about to start over on TBS. That gave me 5 minutes to leash up Bandit, gather the bags of bottles, hustle the three blocks to the recycling center, and sprint back. It was an impossible task for a procrastinating 11 year old.

Thinking quickly, I did the next best thing. I walked Bandit around the block twice and slid a couple empty bottles into each sewer drain I passed. It’s not like I was supposed to go to the recycling center because my mom cared about the earth or something. She just wanted them gone and not in the trash. It was an ingenious plan; one that seemed foolproof until it rained torrentially later that evening and every sewer in my neighborhood backed up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the back-ups until the top of the 4th Inning, when my mother charged through the front door soaked from head to toe and filled with the fury of three Lou Piniellas. My stomach jumped into my throat as she shut the door with a tremendous slam. I knew I’d done something wrong, I just didn’t know how bad it was. And the pit began to grow. My mother, I was informed at ear-ringing decibels, came upon at least, AT LEAST, a half dozen empty 2-liter bottles floating in the gutter as she made the 3 block walk past our neighbors, PEOPLE SHE HAD TO SEE EVERY DAY, from the bus stop to our front door.

I have done a lot of stupid things and made a lot of bad decisions since that day, all of which have affected my mother in some material way, and none of them have inspired the wild-eyed fury that the Recycling Incident generated. The sickening memory of that adolescent irresponsibility washed over me like a wave as I approached the side gate to Cloyne’s courtyard and slid my key in the lock. I opened the heavy wood door and walked across the newly-sodded lawn that divided the courtyard. A large, dark, ashen stain consumed most of the asphalt on the other half. There was no Haz Mat team. There were no fire trucks. There was only a group of Clones gathered around the picnic tables, talking to an officer from the Berkeley City Police Department. Their heads turned and their scorn-filled eyes met mine as the door crashed shut behind me. No one said anything. I came to the point where I had to wade between the two picnic tables in order to get through the back door and into the house, when finally someone spoke up. It was the police officer.

“Hey, I remember you.”

The Clones, including my girlfriend, erupted in a roar of self-satisfied mocking laughter. The kind elicited by a stand-up comedian when he shuts down an obnoxious heckler with the perfect insult. Like CV had done to the fire marshal a couple hours earlier, I peered in at the polished nametag pinned to the officer’s chest.

“Officer Ruiz,” I recited aloud. “Oh, man!” I couldn’t believe it. And neither could a single person sitting at the picnic tables. Because they erupted again.

To be continued…