Dropping the H bomb

So I stopped writing this for a bit. While traveling I found myself hemorrhaging imagination and sustained access to the internet. My plan now is to work backwards, writing a little about the places I went to. Both my followers must be thrilled.

After five weeks of traveling I arrived back in Harvard yesterday evening. The campus is currently a sprawl of sedate right angles, graying snow and not much else. Few people are back yet and there is not much to do other than wander around bored and dazed and feeling deprived of adventure and chaos. It felt strange leaving my room this morning without a camera, passport and a map of the local area.

It is eleven AM on a Saturday morning and I am sitting in the law faculty café. It is monied, marble and immaculately lit. The wireless connection is so good you can almost see it filling the air like dry ice. Someone is playing a grand piano in the lobby downstairs. Those who have just emerged from bed are wearing maroon Harvard pyjamas. Those who have been up for a while are wearing checkered shirts and are huddled earnestly over macbooks. The café is an eerie orchard of glowing white apples.

Sitting opposite me is a pallid slightly chubby man about my age who, despite wearing blue and black Harvard pyjamas, is still looking effortlessly preppy. He is pontificating about health care reform to a woman sitting just out of sight:

Twat in pyjamas: “Its turned into a conversation about socialism ya know? I mean there’s so much moral mandate there right?”

Girl out of sight: “That’s interesting ye-“

Twat: “And he is NEVER going to get the nomination for 2012. He’s just too divisive ya know?”

Girl: “Hmmm y-“

Twat: “I mean the Republicans are not even a party any more.”

I am gripped with the familiar feeling of being an undercover agent posted deep in foreign territory, and that I am only one poorly articulated anecdote away from being found out. I have a sudden overwhelming urge to ask the man sitting to my left, who is wearing a sleek, blazing orange, sweater pulled over a collared shirt, if I could borrow a pen. I don’t need a pen. I have cheap pens coming out of my ears. It is an urge to interact, if only for a few seconds, on equal terms with someone in the room.

I remember time after time on the road squirming my way through countless conversations like the following:

Grizzled old man/attractive girl/railway conductor/fellow English tourists in/on shop/train/bar/: “So are you just traveling?”

Me: “No I’m actually studying here for a year.”

Them: “In New Orleans/Altanta/Baltimore?”

Me: “No. Up north.”

Them: “Where are you studying?”

Me: “Up in Boston.”

Them: “No I meant which school.”

Me: (more often than not) “Boston University...”

Sitting in the law school cafe the instincts displayed above make logical sense. Telling people from the outside world that you go to Harvard is affectionately known as ‘dropping the H bomb.’