AFTER DARK, WHAT?
 
 
     Around Lodge Hall, as is the tradition with the majority
of unruly groups of dormitory men, an agitation began.  It
stirred throughout Friday dinner, when they sat in their
uneven rows, the randomization and perversion of a military
academy dining hall, yet a group of young men still imbued
with the spirit of warriors; the mettle of conquerors.
Friday night held the liberation from reason, that enslaver
which hardly resembled its innocent-sounding name.  As
everyone shifted about, the excursions of arms increased in
amplitude and the frequency of oscillation moved upward.  By
20:00, the night was well into swing.  Here was no group of
wimpish conformists.  Here was no settlement of the settled.
No, these men were ready for the night.
 
     Except C T.  He was ready for despair.  He hardly knew
what to do when someone gave him time, except in a calculus
problem as an independent variable.  Saturday was to settle
in soon, and while he'd go to the football game if no one
bought his ticket, he'd rather be listening to some great
impromptu discourse, the type that composed an unexpected
five minutes of Professor Urn's discussion section, but
unfortunately none of Dr. Stammer's mass lecture.  He felt
the drag of it when all the residents on his floor packed up
their common sense and unpacked their package liquor.  He had
his beer or two on occasion, but the alcohol didn't do it.
He wondered what would.  He was imprisoned in his own
framework of weekly class schedule.  He needed out.
 
     Franklin stepped around the corner, dripping profusely
on the tile floor from his masses of tawny unblown-dry hair,
with only a loosely-held towel differentiating him from the
definition of man.  He liked a clean head of hair before the
night, just as before the day.  For him, the day had two
parts.  Similarly, when Robinson came after him, he looked
ready for a second rising to a more enjoyable call.  C T was
headed in the opposite direction to settle a more mundane
calling when the two husky "engineers" confronted him.
 
     "What's this Oxford cloth and pantaloons, Prime, going
out with your calculator?" Franklin posed, or rather,
imposed, as he obscured half the cross sectional area of the
narrow seventh-floor corridor.
 
     "You two look like you're gearing up," C T responed, in
an attempt to save whatever respect he held with the two
brutes.  He wondered which break he needed more.
 
     "We're going to see 'McMovie' tonight at the mall over
on the north side.  Everyone sees it."  "McMovie" was the
cult classic at the University.  People went over and over
and developed litanies of shouted remarks to the script.
 
     "Aren't you going to stay up for 'Friday Night Live?'"
The comedy program was C T's closest approach to popular
culture.
 
     "Oh, Ralphson's hooking up his VCR for that.  We'll
watch it Tuesday night.  You know, Prime, you'd probably cook
up some pretty good lines for 'McMovie.'  You really do pop
off at times.  It'd be revolutionized.  We invite you to
attend with us fellows, Prime."
 
     C T needed only a small increment of incentive to accept
such a low level risk.  After all, he had seen "R" rated
movies like "McMovie" before and they were contrived at best.
Besides, he might derive a source of enjoyment on this, his
worst threshold of time to cross.  He agreed, with some joy
being impressed on his two hosts, and they met at Ralphson's
car.  Ralphson was one of those rich ones, the type that
shouldn't be going to a Big 11 school.  He paid the
exorbitant price for a parking space on concrete campus, and
his car was valued in proportion to the rent.
 
     The four of them assembled about the near-limousine in
their deemed acceptable garb for the affair.  It was 22:00
and the movie started at 22:50.  C T asked, "Why do we need
such an early start?"
 
     Ralphson peered aristocratically from his place of
status and quipped, "the troops need provisions."
"Provisions" took the form of a 500 mL bottle of liquor for
each; Ralphson decanted his 12-year-old Scotch while the two
men in the back egged each other into slammed shots of rum.
They gave C T a bottle of rum as well, but he merely sipped
it, like a cup of coffee at boiling.  He wondered about
Ralphson's sobriety, but that was a question even when he
wasn't drunk.  As for the "engineers," they were simply
finding an application to suit the need.
 
     "McMovie" was in the typical bad taste that defined both
the cult classics of C T's era and the rum he tried to drink
like a respectable gentleman in the car.  He had no need for
the inuendoes of bestiality and necrophilia, and even less
need for the amplification provided by the rather unusual but
decidedly devoted audience.  He was glad he hadn't consumed
too much of his rum when the others went back with him to the
car.
 
     "Well, Prime," Franklin emitted in the crisp night air
of the mall parking lot, "You have seen 'McMovie.'"  He
stumbled sideways, and C T thought he was acting out part of
the cinematic accompaniment.
 
     "You guys are too drunk to drive," he replied, making a
scientific observation.  "Want me to?"  While C T had become
part of "everyone," not "everyone" drove Ralphson's sedan.
 
     "You're not drunk enough to drive," Robinson piped.

     "Well, I'm not riding.  It's less than 2 kilometers back
to Lodge Hall.  I'm hiking."  He was uncertain of this, but
only as uncertain as of making it back alive with Ralphson at
the wheel.  The remainder of the four needed little to
dismiss C T.  They left him, and they made it back--somehow.
 
     C T, however, wasn't sure of what he'd done when the
dark of night surrounded him on streets that had a different
familiarity during the day.  It was a rather lonely night,
lonely as his Fridays had been.  Was the extension worth
this?  He pulled the bottle from his jacket pocket and took
another sip of rum.  The coffee was still boiling.  A dog
came up in a menacing stance but C T wasn't frightened too
long.  He finally reached the Arboretum on the final
approach, and then the images of death from "McMovie" started
into a new light, a light born of the darkness.  Hilarity is
funny by arc light projector but not when recreated in real
life, with no way out.  For a small time, C T wondered if he
should empty his bottle right there and let nausea save him
from the situation.  At that moment, however, something made
him take his rum bottle and set it on the path.  Maybe it
would appease whoever (or whatever) he thought might be
following behind him.