Barely conscious from exhaustion, I tried to write my column last night. I woke up this morning slumped over on a couch fully dressed and coffee-stained, my face on my keyboard. Firefox had two pages open: the lyrics to 2Pac's "Brenda's Got a Baby" and my Facebook profile. As failures go, it was to working what drunkenly passing out in a puddle and drowning is to partying.
I skipped work to write, which did not go unpunished.
The next morning, I wandered outside onto the abandoned golf course behind our base: a surreal savanna of tall brown grass and scattered Dr. Seuss trees, it is quiet other than distant trains and occasional Air Force cargo plane flyovers. The golf course is also the preferred place to drink for underage volunteers. (Adults frequent a nearby pub elaborately named "The Pub" and, on karaoke Thursdays, a gay bar named "Just Us.")
I was napping under a tree as the sun sank through power lines when Beardsley, Josh Ring '08 and Eli Mitchell '10 ambushed. As Beardsley whispered "It never ends, pledge, it never ends" in my ear, they tied my hands and feet with duct tape, tightened my sweatshirt hood around my face until I couldn't see and superglued my work gloves into my jeans pockets. Rugby-biceped Josh threw me over his shoulder, ever-resourceful Beardsley produced a rope, and Eli -- the consummate freshman girl -- brought out her camera.
They hung me upside-down from the tree while chiding me for missing "the most beautiful sunset of all time." Then they dropped me to the ground and left. I kicked my legs in vain like a cockroach on its back. They returned after ten minutes with more people and more cameras. The pictures look like Abu Ghraib on anti-depressants.
The episode was a welcome departure: their abuse is usually psychological. Josh and Beardsley told me they were giving me up for Lent. Beardsley suggested that I should give up "speaking when not spoken to."
Beardsley occasionally substitutes absurdity for hostility. We take more breaks while working than Eli and Josh, and I said that at least we "legitimized each other."
Beardsley was suddenly conspiratorial. "Listen man, don't ever tell anyone about that time we legitimized each other. That was between you and me and God, and God did not like it."
Luckily for our sanity, the frantic volunteer camp we live in provides many opportunities to meet other people. Short-term volunteers range from a Cornell alum "unsatisfied" with his job in financial consulting (his assessment of Dartmouth alums: "You guys really hold your own, you're everywhere") to a Hispanic teenager named Marco who revealed on his last day that his month of service had been court-ordered, but changed his life anyway.
The long-term volunteers are yet more colorful. Woody the Scotsman is the world's fourth most eminent expert on an obscure Scottish intellectual named Patrick Geddis. Deubs (pronounced "Doobs") is intense beyond reason, more volcano than man. He smokes like the cure to cancer, his drawling profanity is inspiring. I half-expect to discover that he is an Olympic gymnast, or that he cries lightning.
Our conflicts aside, the Dartmouth foursome is holding its own. Hair unwashed and fleece jackets paint-speckled, we are crunchiness incarnate. I recently achieved my first-ever authentic, labor-induced jeans tear, a milestone which I immediately crossed off my before-I-die to-do list. Still to go: lose a barfight, boat-hitchhike to the North Pole, and find friends who won't hogtie and abandon me at random. One thing at a time.
