McGlovin(tm) asked: Is it interesting and is it going anywhere?
May could not have come fast enough for the budding group of departing seniors from Colford University. On an evening where the euphoric skyline that draped over the jubilant grads stood still in a blend of blue and tangerine, the day was about to retire into the evening twilight. For the numerous students who packed commuter vans and walked in groups averaging 3-5, their nights were just beginning.
Most were ready to let their hair down after a tumultuous month of papers, exams, and research studies. Among the gallery of white baseball caps, oversized cups and domesticated cackling, stood well known attendees at an off-campus mixer. Ellie Bowden and her group of girlfriends comprised that list. Ellie and her girls were checking out the scenery, as they had so succinctly put into their efforts of meeting men of legitimate dating material.
Across the way, Brendan Rainer had his sights set on the 5’7 tawny-haired bombshell her mother affectionately refers to as ‘A little Ellie-fish, about to enter the big pond of life’.
Wearing a striped, button-down shirt, draped onto dreary denim jeans, and parted black hair and sideburns Brenden has had his ups-and-downs with the girl department. To his chagrin, although he valued and respected women, it has most often proved to be his Achilles heel as far as his love life was concerned. He was usually the best friend and he had long since tired of that image. Him and his buddies were also on hand kicking back in the corner and conversing. Was Ellie Bowden out of his league? Maybe. But then again, he had his gameface on. Nothing was going to stand in his way, except for two Capri-sporting, sandal-wearing, necklaced girls who got his attention first.
In the traditional sense, Brendan and Ellie came from opposite sides of the tracks. In lieu of their social standing, neither lacked drive. Besides, they were graduating college next week, so things should even out smoothly.
Early afternoon, Brendan woke up from a semi-drunken stupor to the hammering of the door from his father Don. Right off the bat the everso blunt, yet overprotective old man of the Rainers look his son square in the eye with a sentiment of Son, we need to talk.’ For Brendan this was all too routine. Had it been a cd that lain next to his hundreds of music tapes, a more fitting title of his father’s speech would be The Best of Mr. Rainer’s Bullshit Lectures: Volume 1, available in both Stressful and Unnecessary.. Brendan cared much for his parents although he sought to find his own identity in his 4 years of Colford. His mother Beverly was the first to hug the first of the clan to have done anything productive past high school. She and her husband were high school sweethearts who married into their early 20s and raised Brendan when they were relatively anew to their own existence. Over the years, they had gone out of their way to bond with their kid over a variety of topics, ranging from learning to balance his own check book to ***. Brendan beyond hoped it would not be one of those talks.. Admittedly enough his estrangement from his parents at a young age was not something that would deter his parents from doing their part in raising his son with some semblance of integrity and standard. That did not always stay in tact once Brendan started his freshman year, but then again so didn’t his laundry habits.
How you been, dad?,” Brendan asked with heavy eyes and semi-combed hair carrying a heaping helping of a month’s worth of wardrobe.
Just bring in the rest of your bags—you know your mom and I really missed you.”
He put on weight, Don,” Beverly chimed.
“I doubt that, honey.”
It’s been a while since you been at school, and.we’re going to have to ask that you switch to living in the basement or possibly moving out,” his father relayed passively.
What the hell?,” Brendan stood dumbfounded. He looked to his mother with a glance in his eye seeking approval if she would be too put off that he curse up a storm. It would not be the first time.
what about MY room, ma ?”
“Look son, we know this has been a hard pill to swallow but things haven’t been on the up and up at work,” his father retorted. “And ever since we came here her and I have had a hard enough time getting aid to put your brother and sister through school. That’s what it is, Brendan. I’m sorry.”
The middle child of the family was feeling like the forgotten one as he buried his head in his hands with an animated grunt and galloped upstairs before getting the attention of his mother. “Bren, we did keep your stuff downstairs,” his mother proclaimed to her defeated son, in a tone resembling a game show announcer letting a contestant know they had still won the complimentary parting prize.
“What the hell is that about, man?,” was the initial reaction from his buddy Dennis. “I dunno, they’re being weird. But maybe it’s for the better,” Brendan nonchalantly quipped as he drew devil horns around stick figures emulating his folks.Brendan was a drawer who also liked to write. Since artists who occasionally penned was not a solid major, Brendan took side jobs and apprentice work shops after school to hone his passion for drawing. He used to just stick to comic book superheroes until he figured he move on to bigger and better once he hit campus. Plus he did could do without being taunted for it by potential love interests. That night, Brendan and his sentimental entourage of post-collegiate hopeless romantics took to one of Colford Universities popular off-campus dive bars: Chet’s. What started out as a series of walks 3 nights a week amid-st tethered finances and the occasionally overdue midterm take home exam, became a car ride into town, feeling like the had taken the wrong turn at the crossroads of their newly-designated roles in society: Rookie real worlders.
Ellie Bowden felt a sense of loss when she had trouble finding a full-time job after graduating with a degree in finance. She was very involved on campus and was a tri-star athlete who excelled in the class, and definitely knew how to have a good time in between and around her endeavors. At times overly conscientious of her looks, Ellie would tussle her strand of tawny-brown locks and bat her green eyes, along with soft lips and a diamond necklace she wore in tribute to her grandmother. Ellie was a family person at heart. Although she felt she may have done some things at college she may not have done after finishing school, nor necessarily felt proud of Ellie sported lots of energy and personality aside from her good looks. She was also not one to take lightly in terns of pulling the wool over her eyes. Months after finishing school, Ellie took notice of how infrequent she would see her friends from high school, let alone some of her suite mates she had been tight with since her sophomore year.
Ellie had her “return nights” at Colford but it was not the same. New faces, new crowd, new drama. Same old routine. Brendan felt similar at his guys night out at Chet’s, sitting at the bar watching ESPN parallel to older townsfolk who sported Keno tickets and cigars. His and Shawn and their friends of their old roommates sat awkwardly ajar a storm of spilt drinks and camera flashes. That night, Ellie babysat for her neighbors, but instead of chatting up with some of her old teammates plastered on her cell phone directory, she brought over a scrap book and glossed over it since one of the pages had a congratulations card that said “Here’s Looking at you Kid”, and had a baby emblazoned on the front. Ellie wanted children of her own somebody, but finding Mr. Right was not something she took lightly, especially when many of the men who had flirted up a storm toward her at Chet’s two nights a week back in her final semester were old enough to be her uncle…literally. She was still her mother’s princess, her ‘Ellie-fish in a pond.’ And it really annoyed her with a passion. Though she loved her mother, she wasn’t quite ready to take on a role as a 12-year old girl trapped in a young woman’s body. Bickering ensued and Ellie’s trip to Key West on Spring Break was now rivaled by bickering over keeping her room picked up.
Six months after the homestretch of senior year winded down, talk show reruns and Gelato proved stale to Ellie–a determined post-collegiate, who had sent out hundreds of resumes but ended up getting called off of most jobs she went for. Temping and waitressing to support herself, aside from the clothes store she clamored at since high school, Ellie got the occasional pep talk of others who hated their jobs and ask that someone with as much potential as her break out of her rut and exit their self-proclaimed retail hell. Then she remembered that her time would come in spite of the prominent mentality that who you are replicates what you make of it. Brendan contributed to several on-line magazines to pad his amateur resume, but nothing that paid off his student loans. Characteristically, those that are fortunate—and there are usually a lot of people, who receive their degrees and get into their fields, were on the opposite of Brendan who had since come to feel that he did not know what the hell he wanted to do with his life. Even though he had not needed much of his parents help when he lived on campus, he commonly never turned it down when offered. Truth be told, both of Colford’s fresh new representatives in finding themselves after dusk has overcast their dawn of post-adolescence– alongside the always prominent ‘we’re not kids anymore, now what?!’ mentality were pawns of the separation anxiety that thrusted what was set to be the crossroads of their journey into their mid-twenties. Both were hard workers, but each had their own parental sparring and runaround responses from job recruiters that they were not quite preparing to see, but were not immune to. The determination and long term goals of each had long since been compromised and their morales were declining.
Brendan stayed around town and frequented the basement aside from his parent’s garage. He had grown to adjust to the independence he had long hoped for, but never expected–particularly in the fashion in which it was first introduced months prior. At a New Year’s Eve party took out to the patio at Dennis’s apartment, an epiphany struck Brendan Rainer, two years removed from his five-year plight of early class, 3am pizza deliveries and the occasional practical joke by his hallway mates. He had come to realize that would likely never happen again, though he could still sing a mean Tom Petty song using a beer bottle as a microphone when playing guitar that night.
Looking back at that time of a college grad’s life where the fun and glory of finding yourself on your own, 8 months at a time proved to be overly gratuitous and sentimental. Things would not be the same for either but then there were the inevitabilities of getting older that was also on deck in their own ambiguous agendas.
Then again, there is always grad school.
