“Looking for a way out already?”A pair of earnest eyes leaned in to meet mine.
“I don’t blame you. This place is like a prison. It’ll consume you whole if you let it. A place like this makes you forget, you see. You lose your perspective. Forget that there’s a whole other world out there beyond these suffocating walls.”
Squinting in the acute glare of the crisp sunlight that was pouring at a tilt over the pebbled campus courtyard of Boston City University, through dazzled eyes I glimpsed the ragged frame of a young male student hovering languidly at my side. His face seemed vaguely familiar to me.
“I’m telling you,” he continued, “freedom doesn’t exist in here. It only exists out there.”
I followed the line of his outstretched arm as he pointed directly at the exit gates on the far side of the courtyard. My confused glance shifted between his fixed expression and the lofty iron gates.
“Rented accommodation,” he explained. And he nodded to the notice board in front of me which was littered with advertisements, all of them offering rooms to rent. “Like I said, I don’t blame you for looking for a way out of this place. It’s like a prison, an artificial prison.”
“Oh... right,” I acknowledged, glaring back at the notice board. To my surprise, I hadn’t even noticed the advertisements or their contents. Too busy whiling away the last few stubborn minutes before my next class began. I must have stared right past them.
“You couldn’t pay me to live on campus,” the freshman went on, barely pulling out the words before a tired yawn engulfed his face. He cast a disgusted glance at the stream of students passing by. “I mean, look at these people. I bet half of them barely step outside campus at all. There is nothing else to them, nothing but this self-contained little village.”
An expectant pause followed and I offered a polite concurrence. “Yeah… I don’t live on campus either. I’m crashing at my brother’s place. It’s in the North End. Just temporary.”
He nodded, pleased, his eyes springing open and sparking into life and bringing new light to his dull complexion. Spurred on by my agreement, he continued his fervent lamentation on the pitfalls of campus living. “Look at everyone running to class as if their life depended on it. It’s like I said, freedom doesn’t exist in here. How can it? It’s a counterfeit world. But try telling that to any of these people… ”
I peered over at the black iron gates as he spoke. Suddenly they developed an ominous sort of appearance and despite the fact that they stood open, I felt strangely incarcerated by their presence alone.
But as soon as I acknowledged it, I shook the notion off, for although I admired this student’s fervor – appreciated his opposing will, too – my opinion of the college experience just wasn’t quite as conspiratorial as his. Although I had to admit, in the few short weeks I had been attending classes, already I had found myself considerably less enamored by the university experience than most other recent campus arrivals. But the reasons for my indifference were rather more simple, for as far as I was concerned, this blinkered life just wasn’t my world. I preferred that place beyond the gates, the place this fellow freshman of mine referred to as freedom.
“The way I see it,” he concluded, “we’ve got four years. Four years before life overtakes us. Prison will come soon enough. I intend to enjoy my time here, before it all turns against us.”
His voice turned quieter as he finished, much less determined than the rest of his talk. I noticed the contradiction in his words: how he saw a prison in here where life didn’t exist, and a prison out there where life did exist. The freedom he was looking for was nowhere to be found.
As he fumbled around in his backpack, I took note of his appearance: torn jeans, crumpled shirt, his face darkened by a rough stubble, his hair matted and disheveled. I guessed he hadn’t made it home the previous night. Around us, the corner courtyard, which neatly enclosed the science and arts buildings at the back end of campus, was beginning to clear. A last spray of stragglers made their way hurriedly up the stony steps at my side. I stole a tentative glance at my watch – it was after three. I was late.
Finally, he found what he had been searching for and pulled a small piece of card out of his tattered backpack.
“By the way, Eric Solomon,” he said, offering his hand.
“Jack Winter,” I replied.
“So, Jack,” Eric said, pinning the card on the notice board. “You interested?”
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