On my way into the grocery store earlier tonight, and as I’m walking in smoking my ridicously expensive cigarette, out of the corner of my eye, I catch this Hispanic man talking on his cell phone in Spanish. I work in a call center with lots of Hispanic customers near the Mexico-Texas border, so at this point, I’m used to Spanish, and I don’t think twice about it.

I grab a shopping cart and start pushing my way around. As I look at my list on a Wendy’s napkin written in purple highlighter — living the true college experience — I found myself debating whether or not to buy Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea. Not convinced I’ve made the right decision after I’ve wandered for about five minutes, staring at my notated napkin, I fought myself over types of pasta. Grocery shopping by yourself really should be illegal because you look like you’re crazy as you argue with yourself over what type of insert-random-food-here that you’re going to buy. When you’re talking out loud about it, people tend to stay away from your aisle, in case you go postal and pull out an AK47.

At the end of the aisle is the Hispanic man I saw earlier talking on his cell phone outside. His head is down on the grocery store Zamboni looking as if he was going to cry. As I weighed the two types of pasta in my hand, I weighed the ethical dilemma in my head. When confronted with that situation, is it better to confront it head-on? Or is it better to walk away?

As I walked through the grocery store, I could not help but thinking to myself that I affirm the values and the importance of each person in society. On the other hand, I didn’t know the man. I had never seen him before in my life, and I probably wouldn’t ever see him again (minus the four more times I saw him in the grocery store). When we say we affirm the hand of friendship to all individuals in society, does that mean to just the ones we know, and if we don’t double-check someone isn’t crying, are we hypocrites or realists?

Are the potential tears of that one unnamed person more important than our public embarassment — especially if you’re not sure if they speak English? People call in to our call center who we have to translate for, and I didn’t have a Spanish-speaking person at hand. I guess I could have called Michael, but what a weird phone call. “Michael, honey, translate for me; I’m not sure if this random person is okay.”

Thinking about it as I paced through the walls of Cheerios on one side and peanut butter on the other, I eventually decided that he was just tired. It was after ten o’clock, and he was working. I justified my lack of connection with $60 of groceries, still uncertain of whether I made the right decision.

Brett Currier

My fraternity brother’s best friend died the other day, and as I was sitting listening to him, my heart could not help but go out to him. His best friend from high school was one of those friends from high school he always promised himself he would keep in contact with. The person he always meant to call but got to busy and forgot to. As he tried to hide his tears for his best friend and innocence, my heart went out for him, and I was glad for once for my fraternity because as a freshman at K-State, I do not know who else he would have talked to.

From a high school senior to a freshman in college, the community we had gets lost somewhere, and we find ourselves with new people and situations, but without a home base, tragedies only evolve into catastrophes from which we cannot escape. That is what we lose during a tragedy, a hurricane, or a death. While we might lose buildings or money; we also lose the community that we have created in the meantime. The only thing harder than experiencing tragedy is experiencing tragedy by yourself. Community is involvement in a group larger than you and creating a safe place that cannot be pulled apart.  

Brett Currier

For the sake of protecting marriage, more and more states are making it illegal for gays to marry. If we allow gays to marry, we will be breaking down this historical institution. Now, marriage needs someone to rush to its defense. After all, over half of all marriages end in divorce. If a company produced a product that failed fifty percent of the time, it would go bankrupt, and we witness the bankruptcy of marriage. So in order to protect marriage, I pose the following possible solutions:

1)Make divorce illegal. What better way of protecting marriage than by not allowing citizens to get out of it except by death? We can take away everyone’s civil rights and protect marriage all at the same time!

2)Since marriage should create an environment for positive and healthy families, let’s allow only people of child-bearing age who are fertile to get married. Women with potential pregnancy complications need not apply.

3)Everyone is only allowed one marriage. If your first husband or wife dies or is abusive, well at least you got the one shot.

The point is that all of the laws we pass or policies we create are going to be as ridiculous as the last one. On September 29th, the Terminator terminated a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage in California—and maybe this is necessary. Perhaps the voters of California will vote for same-sex marriages, and Schwarzenegger’s veto will become a waste of media space.

Brett Currier

In my second year of college, I missed high school. What I missed was the band hall. I reminisced about my best friend flirting with her longtime girlfriend, my sly realist poking at my idealistic bubble, or the gaggle of people that floated around us in our aura of support. We had created a gay-straight alliance without meetings. Soon, we were interrupted by college, and I lost my community.

I spent the next year lost in the swarms. Bright lights lit up every word. Queer Straight Alliance! College Democrats! Ordinary Women! Nothing felt right. I had spent my community on the promises of a brighter tomorrow, only to go broke. As a gay man, the gay community that I depended on in high school now relied on rumors and booze. The more I stayed in college, the more I longed for high school. We had a vocabulary problem. My definition of queer meant support, community, and coffee. To me, their definition meant sex, gossip, booze. I could not rectify those differences. I struggled against my own idealism, fearing that I had run out of steam. Then, Google happened.

On a misplaced remark, I discovered the Gay Greek. Twenty minutes on the Internet, too much enthusiasm, and a national election later, Delta Lambda Phi at Kansas State University gave birth — to me and my brothers. That moment could not have come any sooner. Three months later, I tripped into near suicidal depression.

Spring of 2005, I spent most of March and April locked in my house. If I left, I found myself puking randomly or being so nervous while driving I had to pull over while my anxiety attack subsided. I barely resembled the founding president from a few months earlier. I slept twelve hours a day for weeks. I stopped seeing my therapist. The medical community was for refills or medicating the side effects. The only constant in my life, and what eventually pulled me through, was my fraternity brothers — The Delta Lambda Phi boys.

My fraternity brothers watched over me while I played Russian roulette with psychotropic medications. They empathized as I cried during Duracell commercials, and I beat up myself up over being so fragile. Emerging with Effexor, I could find myself again underneath the battle scars of medication with the community that I had hoped to find but instead was privileged to build.

Brett Currier

In the last two years, I have moved nine times with six different addresses over two states. For two months, I found myself lost in the streets of New Orleans. There was uptown, the Quarter, the Warehouse district, the Faubourg Marine, and the suburbs. Through the eyes of a transplanted but temporary local, New Orleans was an exciting adventure with every day bringing another experience to retell.

Fourth of July weekend was spent with my best friend, Ally, and another college friend. As we left the bar in the Warehouse district, we got lost finding our way back to the French Quarter, where we parked as far away from the Warehouse district as possible. With blisters on Ally’s feet, we stopped at Café du Monde at the halfway point. Drinking our chickaree coffee and eating our beignets, we thought we were never going to get back to our car, much less where we were sleeping. Despite the blisters, the walk, the generic bar, the laughter that flooded the desolate streets still haunts me, as if the laughter of the dead cemeteries rang with us that night.

New Orleans is a place of a haunting. The antebellum mansions, the cemeteries every few blocks, or the voodoo that litters the streets of the French Quarter like so many tourist traps; you are never more than a block from history. The city breathes the slave trade and Andrew Jackson, decades after both of their deaths. Whether riding the streetcar on St. Charles past houses that have been there since before the city or passing time in a coffee shop opened while you were there, you inhale the city past and present without judgment or celebration. To ignore is to forget, which the city’s inhabitants are reluctant to do. Everyone knows something, even if everyone knows it. There is art, life, movement, and beauty in the dirtiest crevices of the city.

Now that dirt has washed away. The city is covered in water, and no one knows when it will be evacuated. The bodies of the dead remain unburied; the bodies of the living are still uncertain as to when they can go home or if they have homes. To think of a city engulfed by history, now by water, confuses me, especially since newscaster[s] act [as] i[f] the city is dead, when perhaps it just needed time for cleansing and healing. The city has not forgotten the sieges and the wars and also reemerges stronger, healthier, and more beautiful, daring nature to fight with it again.

While the houses and landmarks are forever altered, our histories of the city have been added to. Much like Gloria Gaynor, it will survive, and so will its people. I raise a glass to the city that haunts my memories still. The ability to forget you is not even succeeded by death. You will rise, again, stronger, more capable, and more beautiful. We merely await your rebirth from hibernation.

Brett Currier