The Camel’s Back

It was a new dorm. A new life. My parents divorced, like the day before I moved out. Now that I didn't live in the house, there was no need for them to stay together, but that didn't irritate me as much as the smell. It smelled like cat urine in my recently refurbished dorm room.

My dorm looked as if I threw an entire lifetime of things in a small closet. I had boxes of records, and a record player that my recently deceased grandfather left for me, along with a bunch of other old stuff that didn't matter to anyone in his family. The autographed baseballs and tie clips and old man clothes were all his. My mom would’ve just tried to pawn them.

I thought someone in the family ought to remember him. 

That old smell, from my grandfather's things, faintly disguised the piss smell for a while. There’s a darn fine reason pets can’t live in the dorms, people.

Every day, for the first term, I took a fabric softener sheet and rubbed a new spot on the floor, hoping to rid myself of the cat urine-headache that I always woke up with. Across the floor there was an old floral rug that I stole from an old folks' home. I was a freshman in high school then and things had changed. I was a new man. One who hadn’t stolen anything in weeks.

I thought about death but was too broke to be emo. How would people remember me? The death of my grandfather triggered a time of self-examination that caused me to make rash and emotional decisions for the first two terms of my college life? Career? I’ll let you be the judge. What was I going to remember of my education in four years from now? Nothing.

Books cluttered the window, which reminded me of a small prison window that I saw in an old movie. Bobbles and trinkets I had collected from my travels and childish thievery decorated the tops of the books and the empty spaces. There was a desk against the wall that I had placed a giant fish tank on. My two goldfish Lloyd and Harry were getting big in the small, simple and loved world that I created for them.

The fish tank had blue rocks and a small pirate ship that blew bubbles out of what I imagined being the captain's room. On the second desk I had my lamp, some paper, pens, and a picture frame that rested nicely, though empty, in the left corner. Graduation gifts from a deranged uncle took occupancy in the garbage can behind the desk. 

In one corner, there was a bunk bed, and that was when I realized that what I thought was a single room wasn't.

I signed up for a single; the room sure was small enough to be a single. I panicked and threw all of my clothes that were littered about the floor onto the bottom bunk and began taking down posters. My mind searched for hope. Maybe they ran out of single beds? That’s when I got a knock.

"Hello, is anyone there?" asked a posh voice.

"Yeah, give me a sec!" I yelled through the door and began hiding a blunt or two under the mattress. I didn't smoke them, though. Those were for good luck. A buddy that ended up going to guitar school in Canada quit smoking the herb one morning and, in a less ceremonial and more sincere vow, we both swore to smoke our next bowl with each other. I never saw that friend again. Good thing too, because I wasn’t going to make it after the news I was about to receive.

I opened the door. 

There was my roommate, hand extended, hair more red than a Radio Flyer, grinning like a drunk and toothless old man. His clothes were not in fashion, at least not any time in American history. His beige rounded shoes looked like something made of wood from Holland. They were hideous, but not as bad as the cargo shorts that matched them, which didn't match his repulsive, broccoli puke, green hooded sweatshirt that had buttons. 

That sweatshirt was the first sweatshirt with buttons that I had ever seen. I felt ill. Not because my roommate was a complete monstrosity, which he was. His very presence meant that I had to share a room, and that was something that I thought I was not prepared to do. I gulped hard and shook his hand. 

"Hello," I said. It might have sounded like a question. I can’t remember.

"Hey there," said an older man. "You must be my son's newest roommate?" 

"What do you mean by newest?" I asked.

"Uh… In the last two years, he has had four roommates and you are lucky-number five." He grinned like a lawyer who just took your dad for all he’s worth and just so happened to be boinking your mom.

His familiar smile made me sick. I grabbed my stomach anyway and headed to the restroom. As I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and splashed water on my face, I wondered if this new-roommate-guy was going to kill me, or push me off my rocker, or worse. My mind wandered, filled with fear. I did not want to become the victim of such a potentially terrible roommate.

I didn't want a roommate. It was move-in day, and I was pretty stoked about being rid of my parents. They were always fighting and cursing, but that was over now. It was my time to fight and curse and that is the only thing that my new roommate helped me to do. At first I never argued with him or cursed him to his face, but every action he chose led me closer and closer to buying a really long rope and discover how high the fifth floor really was.

Conversation was difficult. Awkward. Everything was awkward. He used short sentences. Everything… small. Like his buttons. On that darn sweatshirt! I wanted to burn his sweatshirt the moment I saw it. Little did I know he was going to wear it on every unimportant day for the rest of my natural life with him. I almost convinced him to let me borrow it once. I had planned on ripping off the buttons and then leave them around the room and then burn that ratty sweatshirt right out in public, maybe even in front of the library and film the thing in flames.

As he began moving in, I started chatting with his parents. They dressed in their latest fashion: spike-less golf shoes, dress pants, appropriately matching golf shirts, with sun visors that read "Titleist". Both of my roommates' parents had brown hair, which complemented their Oakley sunglasses and even tans. After the move-in, they were going to go to their private golf course. They practically lived there in the Summer because they couldn’t live in the house—because that’s where their son lived. The woman who was far too young to be my roommate's mother and his dick father frenched in the doorway.

No doubt my roommates' “parents” were about to celebrate their son and youngest child, finally leaving the house for their second school year of childless bliss.

My roommate's dad held out his hand to say goodbye. The same one he just squeezed his wife’s butt with. He said, "I hope you and Joe get along" or something like that.

Joe? This ginger's name is Joe? He certainly didn't look like anything made by Hasbro. Belly sagging, red hair matted and waving, like burnt fingers grasping the side of an awkward melon, and in all various places. He stood there in his penguin stance and in his coke-bottle glasses which reflected silence in the dimly lit room. Yep, nothing general issue about this Joe.

My mind wandered rudely, ignoring my muttering conversant. I thought about my family. Were they out celebrating my departure? Did they give two farts about what I was going through? Suffering this relationship? Well, my parents didn't choose to live with me, as my final thought had concluded. I had finished connecting the dots, and that was the moment that I had decided I would tough it out.

If I couldn't live with this stranger for a term, then I would try to move out. Joe's father turned to leave.

"Oh, sorry, sir. Yeah, I’m sure that we’ll get along just fine." l extended my hand, then gave him my most professional handshake. I could tell based on the look in his eye and the business-like attitude that took over his face. I was one impressive guy. 

I heard him say as much before he told his wife that he hoped this roommate would work out. Sure, my roommate scared the freaking jeepers out of me the way clowns did when I was a kid, but I wouldn't admit it. Being a scaredy-cat of a few unknowns is stupid. I’ll just ignore him. My eyes pulled a Judas on me and I stared at that sweatshirt—a sweatshirt that I would discover was impossible to destroy.

Who was this freak that ended my perfect expectations of what my life for the next nine months would be like? I didn't care who he was. I was only concerned with what he was capable of. We set our room up and got things 'ready for functionality'. He had a microwave, which was nice, but after arranging the room, it looked way too cozy and I had to get out. I don't know if it was the combination of old-man-cat-urine-body-odor-ginger smell or just a natural empathy the good-maker cursed me with, but I knew Joe didn't want to be there either.

"Hey Joe,” I said. “You want to grab something to eat? I'm starving."

He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something soft. 

"What?" I almost yelled. 

I was going to break this guy out of his shell. That was my goal. That, and burn his sweatshirt.

I found out he liked Panda Express and so we walked across campus and I ordered the usual, "Chow Mien, no sample, thank-you… Orange Chicken, Mandarin Chicken, hold the sauce, no third side, thanks" I held up my box. "No thank you, nothing to drink." I had seen "Super Size Me" and since then I was done with soda. I thought fat was repulsive and I could never live with myself if I were to get fat. Joe ordered rice, beef and broccoli, and something gross looking with extra sauce. 

He forgot his fortune cookie at the register, so I grabbed it for him. I got extra napkins and looked for a table. My fortune cookie read. ‘A LETTER OF GREAT IMPORTANCE MAY REACH YOU ANY DAY NOW -PANDA EXPRESS - PANDA INN’ I smiled and thought, may reach you. My smile carried its way across the room, all the way to the girl whose photo would eventually rest in that empty frame on my desk. She was smiling as she walked by. 

Once out of sight, I averted my attention back to Joe. "Hey Joe, what does your fortune cookie say?" 

He finally spoke. "Nothing," he said.

"What do you mean, 'nothing'?"

"I don't tell people what it says or it won't come true."

"Of course it won't. How can a piece of paper tell you what is going to happen?

I glared. "Just tell me what it says." I tried to snatch it from his hand, but he swatted it away.

"No!" he said. He shoved it in his pocket. "All of my fortune cookies have always come true." 

Now l was curious. I had to know what it said, so I bugged him about it until thoughts of my irritating siblings came back to haunt me. I stopped.

I would eventually read it later at a terrible time, right before the holidays. His fortune cookie said something to the extent of finding a genuine friend. I don't remember it exactly, but the way he acted, I guess that meant me. Shoot.

As the term progressed, Joe and I got to know each other. He was very clingy and had no other plans but to make my days worse by invading my space and ruining the most important aspects of my social life. 

Morally, he was a decent enough person, but he still annoyed me to the point of blood boiling, bulging veins, followed by workout sessions that lasted hours. I owe the dissolution of my boyish frame to his annoying ass.

After half a term, I was successfully adapting to his habits and annoying tendencies. I tried to survive the rest of the term, but everything that Joe did became just another straw that  might eventually break this camel's swole back. 

Then it happened. The big moment. I got a note from the girl that I saw at Panda Express, Valery. She was in my biology class and the two of us had been spending almost every afternoon and weekend together since class had started. Thanks to her note, I finally had enough courage to ask her out on an official date.

I later found out that she had been hinting during a class we shared. I think it was anthropology or something lame like that, but I was too dense or too uninterested to care. We had big plans. We were going bowling.

This wasn't our first time bowling together, but we were under the spell of "date" and it was our first time without other friends. I walked her home to her sorority after a long wandering through the park.

"Hey Valery, did you have a good time?" I asked.

She sighed sweetly and softly into my ear. "Yes, but not because you are an amazing bowler with an average of 190 despite never practicing." Okay, I made that part up, but she said something real-nice and followed it with a smile and kiss that I’ll never forget. It was a moonless night, but we didn't know it. It felt like everything was going to be perfect forever.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the biggest moment of the night. While I was floating on air, I arrived home to find Joe lying on the floor, convulsing in pain, body twitching everywhere. The poor guy was having a seizure.

"Joe, are you alright?! Stop that! Stop moving!" I didn't know what to do, so I yelled at him. l dialed 911 on my cell phone. The battery was dying. "Pickup! Pick-the-fork-up!" I remember yelling. A heard a lady's voice. I blurted out everything that had just happened and gave her my location. She tried to calm me, but I was going nuts. 

When the medics arrived, they thought I was the one having the seizure! I pointed to Joe on the ground, just lying there, passed out. Not normal at all.

While the medics wheeled Joe out of our dorm and down the hallway, I stared at the elevator as the doors closed and watched the numbers flash all the way down to the lobby. As soon as the ambulance lights vanished from view, everything got really quiet. I called Valery.

"Please come over and sit with me." I said, stammering without expression or even air in my torched lungs.

She came over and I told her what happened. I had thought that Joe was dead. We held  each other all night. Valery possessed such an amazing comfort in her touch that it put me at ease and we sat in silence together until the next morning when we went to see Joe together.

"Hey Joe, are you alright?" I nudged him in his hospital bed. 

He looked over at Valery and I and said, "They don't know what's wrong with me." 

I guess he hadn’t had a seizure, but there was some unexplainable event that caused him to lose control of his muscles.

Joe's family had already left that day and were calling it a freak accident. For the rest of the term, Joe suffered from temporary paralysis. I pitied him for sometime. He reminded me of my goldfish. I had saved Harry and Lloyd from a frightful death by toilet and l took it upon myself to make sure that Joe was alright and well fed at all times. That is why l asked him to come home with me for Christmas break.

During Christmas break, I had gone home and spent it with my family (and my mom’s lawyer) if you could call them a family. I was smart enough to not bring Valery. She didn't understand at first and she made me promise her she would meet my family later. We hadn't even been dating for two months yet! Slow down, girl! She argued I was bringing Joe with me.

I felt bad for him. His parents were off climbing some-who-cares-mountain in who-knows-where? Joe's parents lead me to wonder about my own. Why did my parents spend any holidays together? I will never understand them.

It was hard, but the break was very revealing. I realized that at the moment my parents divorced, they also divorced me, and I didn’t get the freaking memo with “sign here” stickers or nothing. Valery and Joe were the people in my life who were my family now. Of course, I didn't realize this until I got back because my mind’s strong that way. It takes a lot to affect me.

At our trailer park, it was the same old cursing and yelling that always went on. For some reason, I had hoped for better for my parents and older siblings. I should have known better. I wanted to get low. Drop in a ditch somewhere and melt like the cheese on a Circle K chili dog.

I don’t think Joe blinked once while we were there. I thought my family broke his moral sensibilities more than once.

During the break, I started smoking the herb again. At first, to relieve the stress I received from the attention Joe demanded, and family brought on, and then to just get baked. I was tired. 

I returned to school and was getting really edgy. When I came back to school, I met a guy named Stan. He was my pizza delivery man and also my dealer. I just had to order a pizza. 

"Twenty minutes or less’ll get ya the works," he'd say. He would often stay and smoke some herb before returning to work.

By the middle of the second term, everything Joe did got on my nerves again. I was tired of holding his head up so that he could breathe. His condition worsened, and he consumed all of my free time, but he was a family outcast like me. Right? How could I abandon him? He stole so much of my time with Valery. 

And Joe's parents! They were always off on some vacation. It was as if they had ignored Joe's situation all together. They thought he was crying out for help and the most important thing to do was ignore him. They said that none of the scans or tests ever had any results that confirmed his ailment. 

That is what the school said, too. It took the school awhile to find out about Joe, but when they did, they declared his condition as psychological, in agreement with the local medical experts. He saw a shrink, school policy, for his "condition," but that didn't go over well, because Joe never said a word. 

I think it was my anger (more than my empathy) at his parents and the school that caused me to stay by Joe's side whenever he flopped around like a fish.

Valery and I spent even more time together and going on dates whenever I could convince Stan to watch Joe in the evenings, but not without a few speed bumps, most of which were caused by Joe's seizure/paralysis or Stan not showing up because he was stoned.

She was sweet, but I became too stressed out for her; our relationship was hurting. By the end of the second term, even Harry and Lloyd were dying. A couple days before spring break, l was supposed to pick Valery up from her sorority on the other side of campus. I had already ordered the pie from Stan, who I now had on speed dial. He always hooked me up. And Joe was going to some band event, so we had the place to ourselves.

I set the candles in the room. That awful piss smell was finally gone, and the mood was right. Far less romantic than I wanted, but tonight was the night. I was going to ask her to move in with me over the Summer. Tonight was going to be a night to remember. Then I was late to pick her up, because Joe collapsed. So I called. 

She told me earlier that she was excited to leave after finals for Spring Break with me, but her tone was different now. I just wanted her to come over and have a slice of pie, or at least that was what I told her. That was when the fight started. I had my old cell phone pressed between my ear and shoulder. "Don't get mad, baby! I will be right there. Just as soon as Joe snaps out of it."

I finally realized I was yelling and tried whispering. "Joe’s having another one of his episodes." She slammed her phone down but didn't hang up. I could hear her sobbing.

She moaned, picked up the phone and said, "I'm pregnant."

I wish I could remember what exactly I said, but it didn't matter because I was already on my way to my door. I looked down at Joe, who was gurgling, searching for breath, just lying on the floor. I was blind-piss-angry, and starting to tear up. I didn't want Valery to make a wrong decision. We both knew that she wasn't ready to have kids.

More than ever, I wanted Joe to be cured! I looked at him helplessly. Thoughts ran through my head. 

He was a faker.
He was using his "condition" so that I would stay and he’d have a friend.
He knew I would have left a log time ago.
The poor bastard didn't even need me. 

Then thoughts of Valery leaving for an abortion clinic circulated throughout the room and haunted me.

l stared at Joe for some time. 

"I am sorry, Joe. I have to go. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Joe stared back… knowingly? Accusingly? I didn’t want to know.

I crammed a pillow under Joe's head, and I left. In my haste, I grabbed Joe's hideous sweatshirt and pulled it over my head on the dark sidewalk where the lights flickered outside my dorm. I ran as fast as I could to Valery's house, but l didn't make it in time. She left without me and God only knows to this day because I never saw her again. 

I yelled and cursed at her sorority sisters for not stopping her before I collapsed with a door in my face. I would have yelled more if I’d known that I’d never see Valery again.

I broke down again on her front lawn. Tears began pouring off of my face into the freshly cut grass. The smell was so pleasant and I hated it with every fiber of my being. I needed a direction. I needed a car. This isn't my sweatshirt. Which clinic would Valery have gone to?

Then, as I looked down, I wiped my eyes. I remembered poor Joe, lying there by himself, on my stolen floral rug. Eighteen and I was already a murderer, or so I thought. I ran back as fast as I could. Maybe I could save someone today.

I ran as fast as I ever had before. Where did Valery go? Did I just leave someone to die lying on the floor choking on their own tongue? I felt heavy. My heart sank and as the falling tears soaked Joe's disgusting sweatshirt and the front of my jeans, my thoughts saturated. Still running to my dorm, I dialed Stan's number in between strides, but there was no answer. I needed his delivery truck. l needed Valery. I needed Stan to check on Joe. No answer.

My mind raced. I texted Valery.

And it was there that it hit me. Not that my love was gone forever, or that I had just killed one of the few people left in my life. Not that I was losing my child, but it was there on the corner in view of my dorm that I washed the deluge of tears from my eyes and it was there in the middle or the crosswalk, with my eyes closed, that Stan's pizza delivery truck ran the yellow light and hit me.

I ran into traffic like a lowlife and now I lay in the road as traffic passed me. My mind had flown back to my first day in college.

Who was going to remember me and keep my things? Who was going to rescue and care for the things I cared about most? My love, my friend, my fish. I lay there now, thoughts washing over me like the rain on my face, a warm heap of broken bones and tears, and in such a lovely, beautiful, unconditional, button-covered sweatshirt.