In his less obnoxious moments he came off as contemplative, but never anxious or cerebral. It was difficult to tell if his thoughts were profound or merely esoteric. According to him, he was always thinking of “nothing really,” which we all recognized as bullshit, though it was also collectively understood that expecting a sincere response from him was but a chasing of the wind.
In his more indulgent moments he liked to talk about his early childhood in Istanbul, Zürich, and Paris. He and his family had moved to Boston when he was nine, which was something he lamented, even if it was rather obvious to all of us that he was more American than European. We said nothing, though. It wasn't out of cowardice or even pity; it was a collective recognition that it is far better to ignore what you cannot change. People will always find an anchor or a control in the past to which they can relate the present, and there's no point in trying to expose the fact that this is a useless practice, attractive only to those who overtly refer to themselves as either optimists or pessimists (the former always seeing progress from that past to present; the latter always seeing decay). For Ilkay (a pessimist), his vetus imago was Paris. Rather predictably, his favorite author was Marcel Proust, of whom he said it was sacrilegious to read in English. He said similar things about Orhan Pamuk, though this author’s primary language is Turkish. Then again, Ilkay enjoyed a lot of Latin American writers without even a moderate proficiency in Spanish.
Europe proved to be about the only subject he would discuss in earnest. You couldn't believe much of what he said otherwise. It wasn't that he had a malicious intent in his prevarications; he just seemed to enjoy either confusing or fucking with people. He was certainly difficult to read. It took me the better part of the first semester just to realize this much.
Of the events that took place that year, my reminiscences are at once both many and slightly hazy. I shared a room in a four-person suit with my roommate from the previous year and closest friend throughout college, Dennis Grabowski. Our two other roommates were nice enough, but they had their own agendas and lives with which we did our best not to interfere. Relations were always cordial, but we never spent much time with either of them. One had a girlfriend with an apartment either in Park Slope or Prospect Heights; the other was of that school of anarchism where members are required to stay in a dark room, smoke grass, listen to punk bands from the early eighties, and discuss The Revolution with friends for fourteen hours a day. Marcus and Alex, respectively.
I don't remember if Alex and his cohort made our suite their base of operations before or after Dennis and I took to spending most of our free time down the hall. Not to say we were spiteful about the room dynamic. After all, Ilkay's suite was a welcoming environment. He had been friends with two out of his three roommates for the better part of a decade, so there seldom arose an issue about rights to the main room. The one roommate whom they had not known prior to the year, Min, was never around anyway. He was involved in the Asian fraternity, which essentially meant he was not to associate with anyone with ancestors from another continent. Ilkay fell in with us, as his parents had been born on the wrong side of the Bosporus. And then there was the whole homophobia thing for which Koreans are so infamous.
Besides me and Dennis, as well as Ilkay's suite-mates, there were also four girls from the hall who regularly came by his suite. Other people stopped in intermittently, too, but the suite was typically home to the nine of us, plus respective boyfriends and girlfriends. People from the other dorms rarely came to see us. We rarely went to see them. It was not for want of compromise; compromise entailed places like the Village or Williamsburg or Smith Street. Unfortunately, such locations came to be visited with less frequency as the first semester approached its end. While we certainly wanted to leave, the problem was one of simple economics. On top of the fact that any venture that extended beyond the confines of Gramercy would inevitably demand at least one cab, it was also the case that Ilkay's parents owned a few liquor stores in the Boston area, and, as one can imagine, there was never a want of free, top-shelf booze available to us. As a consequence more of the latter than the former, many nights were spent doing little more than watching the television with open mouths and closed eyes.
One can presume that there was a lot of fucking going on between the four straight men and the four straight women — well, three, I guess, as one of them was, probably still is, somewhat bisexual (though there were accusations that she would prove to be a L.U.G. (Lesbian Until Graduation), though not strictly, as she made no secret of the few men who meandered into, and quickly out of, her sex-life). Sexual mischief aside, no two people ever managed to seriously pair off. Perhaps as a sign of some kind of shared, sophomoric wisdom, it was understood that, while the fruit was pleasing to the eye and desirable for the pleasure it could provide, this knowledge was best left to those to whom the hall was not home.
It was more a love for the company of others as opposed to an era of perpetual debauchery. While we did spend the majority of this time heavily inebriated, our nights rarely materialized into those seriously interesting anecdotes that get retold over and over again until the very lexicon of the group comes to be a string of inside jokes and obscure references. It was simply a year of my life that I come back to every now and again when I need to be reminded of the fact that I have been unbelievably lucky to know so many wonderful people. And while there certainly are numerous stories that could be told, there is no need to make the reader feel like the awkward date at a high school reunion, one who is forced to listen to tales that eventually ferment into an array of nostalgic half-truths.
Still, it is important to note that it was with these memories in mind that I set out for Ilkay's going-away party. He wasn't really going away — at least not permanently; he was simply going on vacation to Europe, and he thought it imperative he have one last night in New York beforehand, as he seemed to understand that he would come back to what would be, for all intents and purposes, a new city filled with friends in the midst of drifting apart due to work or relationships, people who would end up dispersed throughout Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, thereby making it impossible to ever get “the gang” back under a single roof until a special occasion — a birthday, a wedding, a funeral — demanded it. Graduation, in so many ways, is a form of entropy.
“It's a fucking Twenty-Sixth Street reunion, man,” Ilkay effervesces as I walk into the…well, it's one of those lounge/bar/club places. Stalactites peer down ominously from the ceiling, adding a pleonastic touch to the already cavernous nature of the basement establishment. The walls glow in luminous aquamarine and a shade of magenta more purple than pink, the color one might expect when ordering an exotic piece of sushi. Shadows wave and flutter in the hues of late dusk, but the dance floor is quiet. Most of the tables are open, as it's just turned nine. The ones that are occupied contain vaguely familiar faces that welcome implicitly — no smiles, just glances of recognition and other sign-language equivalents that capture both the salutatory and informal qualities of the “S'up bro'.”
“I feel like I haven't seen you in months,” Ilkay says dramatically.
“It hasn't been that long,” I respond as I let go of his hand. “We were at that thing for Pete less than a month ago.”
“Was that really only a month ago?” He shakes his head. “I was strung out on fucking Addies for, like, two weeks before graduation. I'm amazed I made it.” He shrugs. “But that's all behind us now, right? Am I right?” I laugh and nod. His attention shifts. “Look what the cat dragged in,” he says either to or of Vinati. She's in an olive drab dress, the type of get-up a nurse from the Second World War may have sported (with a few flattering alterations). Her hair is shorter than I remember; it is styled to frame her face. I can't recall how she wore it the last time I saw her. “So are you going to finally throw him a bone tonight…” he begins. “Well, actually he would be the one throwing you the bone….” He pauses again. Vinati's eyes narrow. “And I guess throwing isn't the proper verb, now is it? More like pene—”