The Ghost Apple

by Aaron Thier

  The Walking Ape is omnivorous and can subsist for long periods on vegetable matter, but it is also a tenacious and irresistible predator. It has decimated fisheries in every ocean and eradicated megafauna in Australia, most of the Americas, and isolated islands across the globe. It also functions as a vector for other invasive species, clearing ground so that imported edible vegetation can flourish in traumatized areas. In addition, it “husbands” a number of animal species, including several birds, a number of other large-bodied mammals, and at least one species of social insect. The deliberate introduction of these species to virgin ecosystems is a further threat to native flora and fauna.

  Although the Walking Ape reproduces slowly, it is adaptable, aggressive, and long-lived. It is also unique among other large predators and omnivores in that it forms very large communities, sometimes consisting of several million individuals. It has learned to construct dwellings and body coverings which effectively reproduce the warm conditions of its original tropical home, and this has enabled it to establish a lasting presence in environments as hostile as the high arctic.

  Although the Walking Ape lacks claws and other obvious defenses, experience teaches that it should be regarded as extremely dangerous and approached, if at all, with great caution.

  From: “Maggie Bell”

  To: “Chris Bell”

  Date: September 19, 2009, at 12:15 AM

  Subject: (no subject)

  Mister C,

  I woke up this morning one minute before the alarm on my phone was supposed to go off, and the alarm tone (bell tower) was already running through my head. It’s terrible how the brain spends its time.

  Last night I got a little drunk with the dean of students! He’s living in a freshman dorm under an assumed name. Nobody seemed particularly bothered by this. He was wearing a tie-dyed shirt under his sport coat and he’d dyed his hair this weird rich creamy Nutella color. I told him all kinds of embarrassing stuff. I kept saying that I was turning over a new leaf. Am I?

  Lonely, yeah. Or I don’t know. I haven’t seen Becca or Francoise more than once or twice all year. I’ve just been wandering around by myself. But actually I kind of like it. I’m not depressed or anything but I’m more thoughtful. When I saw Becca she yelled at me for not calling her. Like that’s supposed to make me want to call her? I’d rather just hang out with the Chloes.

  Do you still think you’re going to tell Dad at Christmas? I guess I don’t have any idea what you should do. I’ve just been assuming he’ll be a jerk about it but who knows, right? Have I told you about my friend Big Ben? I hope someday you’ll meet him. He was on the football team and then one day during halftime of some big game he told everyone he was gay and he hated football. He walked right out of the locker room and all the way back to campus in full uniform. Then he had to reapply to Tripoli because football credits don’t count toward a bachelor’s degree, and now he’s a lit major and he smokes cloves. Not bad, right? I’ve been going to freshman parties with him and it’s good because it reminds me of a more innocent time. Do you get nostalgic for freshman year? I know it’s only been two years but I really feel like things are different now. Freshmen are so excited about everything!

  Ben showed me a video of one of the Tripoli kickers falling down when he tried to kick a field goal. He fell twice in one game. Then the other kicker came in to replace him, but the other guy, I mean the backup, took his helmet off at midfield and started crying. I’ll send you the link. That is some troubling shit, man! Like actual unabashed weeping on the football field. But Ben says some of the players are part of a mandatory drug trial and it’s fucking them up. They use these poor guys like guinea pigs, I think. And anyway, college football is a pretty grim setup even if Genutrex or whatever isn’t sticking needles in them all the time. Think about it: The players are mostly black and they work really hard and a crucial condition of their employment, according to the NCAA, is that they don’t get paid! They go up and down a field in all kinds of weather while white men yell at them from the sidelines. And also there’s this whole idea that they’re so well cared for, the college gives them food and clothes and housing, everybody admires them, yeah yeah yeah. The white coach knows best. Then the players end up with injuries and multiple concussions and maybe they blow their brains out. Go Tyrants!

  This is Professor Kabaka talking. I think he’s really gotten into my head. I told you about him? My Atlantic history professor. He says things like this: He says, “Slavery is the rule in human history.” He has a loud voice and he’s beautiful and he makes these statements that you can’t argue with. “Human enterprises naturally tend toward exploitative arrangements.” Governments, businesses, civic organizations—everything tends toward slavery, he says, and in order to prevent slavery from coming back and reestablishing itself, you have to actively resist it. He says that good intentions are not enough. You have to actively avoid the sweatshop shoes and the cheap electronics and the plantation bananas. It’s kind of an incredible way to think about daily life, you know? The idea that our choices are what make economic systems work one way or another way or not at all. The problem is that it’s exhausting and miserable to live this way! You spend all day sweating over these choices and then you think, “I’ll just sit down here and take a load off and watch a little college football . . .” And there’s Big Ben, or someone like him, struggling up the green field while the overseer screams himself hoarse on the sideline. Do we just accept the impossibility of ever doing anything that doesn’t harm at least someone?

  Ugh! Sorry. I’m trying to think of something more lighthearted. Do you know the story of how Europeans started eating potatoes? At first no one would touch them because they were said to be Indian food, but then this French or German aristocrat planted a potato patch and fenced it in and put up a Keep Out sign. And immediately people started breaking in and stealing the potatoes.

  The other day in my abnormal psychology class, I was sitting next to a girl who fell asleep right in the middle of writing her notes, but she kept on going. Her handwriting was still perfectly legible, so it was like, “PTSD: soldiers, accidents, terrorism, watermelon beep beep.”

  Oh! And they’re selling the college to a snack-food company! We’re all going to have the logo tattooed on our asses!

  Watermelon beep beep,

  Maggie

  From

  English Department Course Listings

  Fall 2009

  ENGL 150 / Toward Good and Evil

  Herman

  An analysis of Professor Beckford’s character. We will focus on clothing, mode of speech, characteristic gestures, tacit assumptions, personal hygiene, mental hygiene, and short-term memory loss. We will discuss the professor’s embattled relationship to good and evil, with particular reference to his three failed marriages, his recent excommunication, the various plots and gambits for which he has been called to account in our nation’s courts of law, and his involvement in weapons technology. We ask: Which of his crimes are excusable on the basis of his extraordinarily advanced age? How did he obtain a heavy-gauge amphibious motor scooter with shotgun rack and mount? Are those his original eyes? We want to be generous. We are willing to accept any number of explanations.

  ENGL 187 / Encountering the Contemporary: Speed, Light, and Color

  Carlyle

  Students will participate in the excitement of the professor’s rapid mood swings! On good days, we’ll have raffles and fashion shows! The less said about the bad days, the better! The professor once spent two weeks in a dog crate!!! Raise your hand if you want to learn how to steam open an envelope! Let’s slash Professor Amundsen’s tires!!! How much simple syrup can you drink!? A gallon? Two gallons??? Assessments will involve rum and drag racing!!!!!

  ENGL 410a / Senior Seminar: What Is to Be Done?

  Beckford

  An hour appointed by destiny has struck in the heavens above our beloved Tripoli. The declaration of war has already
been delivered, and all students should pay heed: This semester we go to battle against the parasitic bureaucrats and check-licking administrators who, at every moment, have hindered our advance and have often endangered our very existence. Recent events can be summarized in the following phrases: promises, threats, blackmail, and finally, to crown the edifice, an ignoble siege by those who would refuse the gracious charity of that corporation which offers its hand in friendship. There is no required reading for this course. The time for reading and writing is at an end. Inactivity is death.

  ENGL 411a / Senior Seminar: Reading Literature

  Longman

  Sterling R. Loman Distinguished Professor of English Language and Literature, forty-nine, seeks twelve undergraduate English majors for weekly discussions of the modern British novel, including works by Lawrence, Conrad, Ford, Joyce, West, Woolf, Forster, Rhys, and others. Enthusiasm a must!

  Undercover Dean: Blog Post #2

  I had originally thought that my undercover mission would last one week (two weeks at the most), but here I am in my fourth week as a Tripoli freshman, and I still have so much to learn! That’s why I plan to stay undercover as long as it takes.

  It’s no surprise that dorm life has been a major adjustment: In Hogbender Hall, I sleep in a bunk bed, so my sleeping patterns depend in part on Akash, my roommate, a much younger (and much more romantically active) man. My room is too hot, my bed is too soft, and there’s always someone talking to me. The building itself hasn’t been renovated since I myself was a Tripoli student! Plus, it seems as if anything could happen at any time, whether it’s Lehman practicing with a small gong in the middle of the night or a lacrosse player discharging a fire extinguisher in the hallway outside.

  At the same time, I find that I welcome the noise and distractions. My wife and I ate breakfast together every morning for years and years. We’d make steel-cut oatmeal and read the paper and we wouldn’t say a word, but after she died the silence was different. The silence was so loud that I couldn’t read at all. It’s nice to live in a place where there’s always something going on.

  Tripoli at the Trough: Notes on Dining Services

  I want to talk first about one aspect of student life that arguably has an effect on every other aspect, and that’s the question of what our students eat.

  Tripoli has gotten a lot of attention recently because of what’s been called our “old-fashioned” (and sometimes, less generously, our “reactionary”) approach to dining services, and it’s true that we haven’t responded as quickly as some institutions to new and changing ideas about diet and nutrition. Part of the reason that some members of the community welcome the partnership with Big Anna® is that the company markets a lot of low-calorie foods. Professor Amundsen has even proposed that we source all of our food and food products from Big Anna®.

  In the past, I ate in the dining halls once or twice a week, but I usually had other things on my mind and I rarely ate more than a salad, a piece of fruit, and maybe some bread and butter. My appetite isn’t what it used to be! Now, however, in order to get a better sense of how our students eat, I pledged to have the regular entrée and two sides at each meal. Little did I know how difficult it would be to keep that promise. At both lunch and dinner, Tripoli’s dining halls typically offer a choice of three entrées, not including the vegetarian option, but I’ve found that often there isn’t much to choose. On an average night, options might include old favorites like Drippy Wrap w/Fish, Bacon Blast Pizza, or Soused Mackerel, plus a vegetarian alternative like Crushed Legume Patty. Students ordering the Legume Patty can choose to have it “fully loaded”—i.e., served on a bun with pickles, pickle relish, mayonnaise, onion rings, barbecue sauce, garlic aioli, and ketchup—or they can eat it plain off a piece of wax paper. Side dishes might include Potato Salad or Poached Green Beans, but more often there are less nutritious items such as Mini Tacos, Candy Apple Slices in Jell-O (which is not considered a dessert), or Deep-Fried Pasta. Dessert options might include the popular Nut Ball in Chocolate Sauce—a frozen ball of peanut butter dipped in hot fudge—or a bowl of Chilled Water Matrix with Flavor Compound, our only low-calorie dessert option.

  But as you can tell from reading any number of editorials in the Tripoli Telegraph, the real controversy has to do with our famous self-serve pudding bars (c.f. “The Problem Is in the Pudding,” Tripoli College Telegraph, September 4, 2009). Made possible by a generous gift from the Walker family, Tripoli’s pudding bars have always struck me as a fun diversion from the rigors of college life, but I soon discovered that the reality was different. At lunch one day during my first week, I was taking a breather before heading into the servery when Lehman sat down across from me with a full tray. He was wearing a suit coat with mesh gym shorts.

  “You know the best thing about college?” he said. “I can have as much pudding as I like, or none at all.”

  I thought this was a joke, since there was no pudding on his tray, but later he returned to the servery and came back with a bowl of Butterychocolate Home-Style Comfort Pudding topped with peanut butter pieces, whipped cream, and gummy worms. He dug in with a soup spoon and said to me, “Live a little, Grandpa.”

  It’s one thing to say “live a little” before enjoying a small piece of chocolate cake after a nutritious dinner. After all, “live a little” is another way of saying “indulge yourself just this once.” But Lehman has a large bowl of pudding every day, and often twice a day. He is, you might say, living quite a lot. He told me that he’s gained six pounds since arriving at Tripoli, and I would guess that he’s by no means exceptional in that regard. Yesterday I saw a young man holding his stomach and resting his forehead on the table. There was a half-finished bowl of pudding on his tray and some pudding and whipped cream in his hair. Later I saw him licking the bowl clean.

  The pudding bars have become so much a part of Tripoli’s identity that criticizing them is thought to be in bad taste, and it’s only the rare student (Akash is one) who seems inclined to give them a pass. But it’s worth considering what happens when an occasional indulgence becomes a daily habit. It’s worth asking, too, whether there are foods one should probably never eat, under any circumstances. We don’t say “live a little” in order to justify using hard drugs.

  I hadn’t spent much time thinking about the consequences, as much psychological as physical, of eating in the Tripoli dining halls every day, but I quickly discovered that most of our menu items left me feeling sick and confused rather than fortified. I actually vomited after trying the Mini Tacos! I’d venture the argument that this is more than just a public health issue. Our students can’t hope to do their best work if they’re not well nourished. I’ve seen Burke and Lehman taking long naps after dinner, and sometimes after lunch as well. One night I heard Burke observe matter-of-factly, “Sometimes my vision goes all wonky after I eat.”

  Nightlife

  Let me shift gears now and turn to a topic that anyone concerned about the character of student life is going to be interested in—the elephant in the room, so to speak.

  Ask a few Tripoli grads how they spent their college years, and inevitably a large percentage will say “partying.” Obviously, alcohol abuse is one of our major concerns in the dean’s office. We don’t mind if students have a drink now and then, as long as they do so in moderation and in a safe environment, but how much is too much? When, and why, does good fun become no fun?

  It’s almost impossible for us in the dean’s office to get a good idea of how much the average Tripoli student drinks on a night out. I had seen Lehman drinking rum most nights, but I didn’t know whether he was representative and I was eager for the opportunity to get an insider’s look at a typical party. It wasn’t long before I got my chance.

  One night I was having trouble sleeping, so I went out to take a short walk and smoke a cigar. When I got back to the room, Lehman and Burke had a case of beer open on the table and they were taking turns rolling a pair of dice and drinking from red plastic cup
s. They explained that they were playing a game, the rules of which they quickly outlined. I decided not to ask how they’d gotten the beer (they are both underage) and instead asked if I could join them.

  I’ve never been much of a drinker. Usually, when I begin to feel “buzzed,” as my suitemates would say, I decide that I’ve had enough. But tonight was different. I couldn’t beg off and head to my room, because that would have been a violation of etiquette and it might also have jeopardized the trust my suitemates had placed in me. Plus, I needed to stay up and observe. So I continued to roll the dice, drink the watery beer (I promised myself that if I did this again, I’d spring for something better!), and listen to the loud music Lehman was playing on his stereo. As I did so, I began to feel a sense of ease and comfort that I hadn’t expected. Maybe readers will tell me that it was only the alcohol, but I think it was something more: It was a sudden realization of what was important, and what was not important, at that particular moment.

  I looked around at my dorm room. Here was the old fireplace, its brick darkened by years of smoke (the flue was now blocked). Here was the bay window, with its blue curtains that moved in the cool night breeze. Here was the scuffed hardwood floor and dirty rug, and here was the desk lamp that shed a dim yellow light and left most of the room in shadow. Here were the old desks, the old chairs, the old black molding and door frames and window frames. And here we were: three college freshmen, content in one another’s company and excited about the possibilities of this September night. I remember thinking, What does it matter, what could it matter, that one of us is fifty years older than the other two?