the immediate

It’s monsoon season here in New Haven, gone, are the banked, fluorescent colors of sunset. This feeling hit me, like a rogue wave. “We have to go out tonight,” I announced, to no one in particular. I think I’d hit my capacity for monotony. Lisa looked up from her book. “The moment has to happen,” I continued, with an animal-like awareness of the immediate, “For the psycho sexual imaginary and as something to cherish in backward gaze.” “I’m for that.” Lisa shrugged, almost indifferently - she was used to my purple prose. “I’m buying,” I announced, to no one in particular. “Then let’s DO this thing!” Sunny called-out from her room. “Where are we going?” Leong asked, poking her head out of her room. —- I took an m-cat practice test earlier today. In the dorm, before breakfast and the test, I was staring in the mirror. “Hey you, where ya been—how ya been?” I asked myself. I followed up with, “Are you ready for this—are you up for this?” Lisa stuck her head in the bathroom, “Psyching yourself up?” she asked. She’d be taking the test later too. —----- The tests took about 6 hours. I’ve taken the downloadable ‘practice tests’ but not strictly on-the-clock. There’s something about sitting at that official, green terminal - on an uncomfortable plastic chair, being timed by officiously grim and callously indifferent bureaucrats. (#chefskiss) I felt like the young, haunted governess in ‘The Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James. Except my ghosts were my entire, immediate family - who’ve taken this test before me and done really well. My mom’s apparition hovered over my shoulders - making a snarky noise when I picked certain answers. My spectral brother sat by a window, feet-up on the desk in front of him, boredly checking his watch. My intangible sister sat at an empty terminal, as if she too, were taking the tests, and finally Step (my stepfather’s doppelgänger) ghosted in, like a Spielberg effect, through the closed classroom door, periodically, to voice his support. The place seemed positively crowded. I got a 507 (out of a possible 528), in the 76th percentile (they said). Not good enough (yet). I’ll take the real test in July (sigh). . . our cast (a reader once asked, ‘who are these people?’) Lisa, (roommate) 20, grew up in a posh 50th floor walk-up (a joke) on Central Park South, Manhattan. A Molecular biophysics and biochemistry major. Leong, (roommate) 20, is from Macau, China - the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and a proud communist (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it). A molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major. Sunny, (suitemate) 20, a cowgirl from Nebraska and also a molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major.