My teeth were still chattering, but I was able to get her to run out to my car and bring in my duffel bag. By the time she got back, I had been joined under the hot water by a couple of sophomores who had become polar bears. When Mack Senack started undressing under the water (he lived upstairs on the third floor) Marilyn squealed and scampered away. I laughed and got out of the shower and stripped down. Somebody brought in a few towels and I dried off, and then changed into the spare clothing in my emergency bag. I left it and my wet clothes in the bathroom afterwards and went downstairs.
I found Marilyn chatting with a couple of the brothers and their girlfriends in the kitchen as I entered. Everybody clapped as I entered. I just grimaced and shook my head. "I can't believe I did that!", I said.
"I think our movie night is out.", commented Marilyn.
I leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. "Sorry about that. I had no idea this was going to happen!" I looked around. "Do we have any big plastic bags? I need something to hold my wet clothes." A garbage bag was scrounged up and I went back upstairs, to bundle up my wet clothing and stuff it into the duffel. I finished dressing and slipped my shoes on, and then carried my duffel downstairs again. The two sophomores who had become polar bears had already departed for their rooms to change. I dropped the bag in the coat room, and went in search of Marilyn. I found her on a couch in the living room. Surrounding her on the other couches were the rest of the polar bears, passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels and drinking straight from the bottle.
I'm not a big fan of bourbon, but I needed a drink. I flopped down next to her and tossed an arm around her shoulders. When the bottle got to me, I put it to my lips and took a healthy swig and passed it to her. She looked at it curiously, and put it to her lips, but barely had a sip in when she passed it along and said, "Yuck!" That got her a lot of laughs.
When the bottle came back around, I took another dose of medicine. "I'm certainly feeling warmer now than when I started." I passed the bottle to Marilyn, but she simply handed it to the guy next to her, who I just now noticed was Mike Ghormley. He took a heavy swig and looked me in the eye and nodded.
"Cheers." He took a second swallow. "You deserved it.", he told me.
"So did you.", I replied.
He just shrugged and gave me a wry smile. "Yeah, so what. Fuck it."
I got a third swallow out of the bottle and was starting to feel mellow when Marilyn nudged me with her elbow. "I am not sleeping here on the couch again!"
I nodded in understanding. "Well, you can always drive us back to my dorm room and you can sleep there. We can kick out my roommate."
"Forget it."
"You can drive us back to your dorm room and we can kick out your roommates."
"Not going to happen.", she replied.
"Maybe I need to do something other than drink more whiskey."
She nodded. "I think that's the right answer."
I shrugged. An armchair opened up across from us, and we moved over there, with her sitting on my lap. Another bottle was produced for the polar bears, but this time I let it pass by. It was unfortunate, since this was a bottle of Canadian, but I just whined and whimpered as it went by. Marilyn just wagged her finger at me and I behaved.
It worked out however; by the time the second bottle was gone, everybody in the living room was drunk off their asses and passed out. We snuck into the formal room and made out for quite a while without anybody bothering us. Then I drove her back to Saint Rose, and we decided to go to the movies the next night.
Chapter 30: Second Semester
The next two months went by in a pleasant routine. I would call Marilyn from the pay phone down in the lounge every couple of days, since she couldn't call me. Most weekends we would see each other, but a few times she had to beg off and go back home. I did notice that she usually came back to Saint Rose from these trips rather depressed. I had noticed this way back when, also, but hadn't been smart enough to pay attention. I also knew that things were not improving on the academic front.
The usual complaint was that her family just didn't understand her. I had always chalked it up to standard issue complaining. Nobody's family ever understands them! (Jesus Christ! I should know, right?) In Marilyn's case, however, I knew this to be true. Marilyn was actually a lonely girl, and visits home didn't help a whole lot. Her father was a workaholic obsessed with his business, her mother was buried by trying to raise ten-plus kids, and the next seven kids were all boys and useless to boot. Depending on who she was dealing with at home, she was either the unwanted older sister or free labor. The only other woman in the family she could talk to was her four year old sister. Even if she could sit down with her mother or an aunt to try and have a discussion about something adult, it still wouldn't work. Her family was hard core Catholic and in no possible way could she talk to them about boys or sex. Likewise, she was the only person in the family to ever go to college, so that wasn't a topic either.
Mind you, Marilyn's family was far more supportive and loving than mine, even on its worst day. Still, on more than one occasion, she'd visit me at Kegs and cry on my shoulder after a bad time at home. I now realized that I was one of the first people to ever talk to her like an adult and treat her like one. Even her roommates at college weren't much help; one was a snob who looked down on Marilyn's white trash upbringing and the other was a doper. I was the only one who really understood her, and even more now than before.
One thing that I got back in the habit of doing was giving blood. Every couple of months the Red Cross would have a blood drive on campus. They would set up tables in the gym or the Armory and the vampires would come in and drain a pint off anybody who got close enough to wrestle onto a table. You couldn't donate unless you were over 18, so I missed the first few chances, but by February I got back in the habit.
For me it was very easy. I don't have any problems with seeing blood, although I would always look away when they stuck me, so that I wouldn't flinch. (I did have a friend or two over the years who would pass out at the sight of anything medical, even a hypodermic needle!) After that, I would just lay back and rest. I remember one time I actually fell asleep on the table, and only woke up when I heard someone next to me yell out, "We've got a deader here!" I woke up and looked around, much to the consternation of the vampire who thought I had passed out.
I mentioned this to Marilyn once. She couldn't donate blood, since she had had some sort of jaundice or liver disease as a child that prevented it. It wasn't anything fatal or dangerous, but it was something that kept her from donating. On the other hand, I gave a couple of gallons while I was in college.
Professor Rhineburg was actually quite interested in helping me navigate through the hurdles of staying at Rensselaer as a grad student. At the time, most colleges wanted you to go to grad school elsewhere, to broaden your outlook. The standard practice was to get a bachelors at one school, a masters at another, and your doctorate at yet a third. RPI was different in that they offered a large number of five and six year masters programs in engineering and architecture, and I knew a chemistry major who stayed there for eight years and got his doctorate. When I discussed working on something involving both information science and topology, he smiled and nodded and invited me to see him after class at least once a week to discuss possible research.
Eventually it stopped snowing and winter was declared over. Mid-April saw the end of pledgehood. We all knew it was going to happen, and eventually Hell Week was upon us. We were summoned to the house a week before and handed a list of instructions and banished from the environs for a week, and told to report back to Kegs the following Sunday at 2:00 in the afternoon. We all ended up walking back to campus reading over our lists and trying to figure things out.