I finally got sick of the sad, soaked, phony world of Dartmouth editorial writing -- it was Hunter S. Thompson who put the fix on me. Now there was a real gonzo journalist, prime mover, sunny scat-hound sleuthing through the slimy underbelly of the sinister rhinoceros that is America.
Even if I didn't have his plastique prose stylings yet, I knew I could get in the gonzo mindset if I hit the road, so I did -- 45 miles an hour on Route 4 West, heading for Rutland.
Rutland was a land of mystery, an enigma waiting to be anesthetized, something far beyond the pulpy fictions of Dartmouth. I had Rutland on the brain, beating tin pan beats in my blood, surging like a surfboard on the waves of my consciousness.
To me, Dartmouth was a plain, old, tired egg -- I'd criticized its every facet, every turn of its Big Green shoulders. I needed new ammunition, somewhere out there, out in the world, the Real World, not the MTV show, but the Real Fat Bloated Seismological World of my cryptic dreams and saucy nightmares.
It was the World of Rutland.
When the Killington ski resorts, full of idle waste now that winter isfinally over, came into view I knew that Rutland was near. Rutland was calling to me like a French-Canadian harlot on vacation in Argentina while she's getting a haircut.
"Rutland," I thought. "You queer, tempestuous mistress."
Somewhere the rational part of my brain was telling me to turn back, to play it safe in Hanover, to carouse in the Greek houses and suck down fruit smoothies at Collis. "You can't handle Rutland, friend," that rational voice was telling me with the cool cadences of a Machiavellian fishmonger. "Your New York plates are a dead giveaway -- you're a college student, Bantha fodder. These people are gonna eat you alive."
But I didn't care. I was too full of juice, too crammed with cranberries, too multitudinous in my penumbrae. Sure, I knew I wasn't the only guy who'd ever read Thomas Pynchon, but I figured I had some kind of wily edge, some nuanced noodling that could get me out of any jam.
Or so I thought.
Finally Rutland consumed me like an antacid tablet. Suddenly there were fast food places and cheap motels beckoning on either side; bright, multi-colored brightnesses assaulted me, brightly.
I pulled into a Taco Bell -- it was all part of the plan. My sleek '87 Camry glistened with bird droppings in the mid-afternoon sun. I could feel the sweat scurrying down the back of my neck like a salamander would scurry down the trunk of a pine tree if salamanders were ever to be found scurrying in northern climates.
"Okay, this is it," I thought as I approached the entrance. I let out a small belch and went inside.
The place wasn't too crowded, I noticed right off the bat, and the women's bathroom was out-of-order. "Good," I thought, "no surprises." The sullen customers -- sullen with their three-day-old stubble, sullen with their loopy eyes and their crazy Vermont-talk, sullen with their brown pants and their cheese -- stared me down. I didn't return their gaze. I had other plans.
"What can I get for you?" The cashier was chipper and chirpy, like a dodo bird that isn't extinct. I fixed him with my hard, dark, hard eyes.
"I'll have the Big Beef Taco Special, please." My cordial manner had thrown him, I could tell. His eyes were reeling, his smell was the smell of Rollie Fingers on a bad day. I knew I had him.
Meekly, he quoted me a price. Already savoring my victory, I felt no need to bargain with him. Then I waited. It seemed like eons had passed before the food arrived, but it was well worth the wait.
That Big Beef Taco had a taste all its own. It was a taste you just can't find at Dartmouth, a taste I can only describe as non-Dartmouth.
It was the taste of Rutland, the taste of Hunter S. Thompson, the taste of an ugly shadow percolating like instant coffee in the recesses of a brain that doesn't know it's alive.
Even though I'm back here at Dartmouth, stuck in this rut like a blind dog for four more weeks, I'll never forget that taste.
It was my first taste of reality.
The taste of freedom.