Wherein My Introduction To Gumby Is Discussed, or, A Year In The Life Of A Dying Man, Part One

The first time we met, Gumby was sitting on a mattress in the middle of the floor of what was to be our shared dorm room. He had dumped a box of Lucky Charms out on the mattress in front of him and was carefully sorting them into separate piles of cereal and marshmallows. There was another mattress leaning against the wall, two matching and unopened suitcases and what appeared to be an expensive Sony stereo still in its box.

I stood in the door with my duffle bag on my shoulder and watched as he began to sort the marshmallows by color. Lost in thought and not wanting to interrupt, I just stood in the door and watched. It was almost ten minutes before he noticed me.

“Oh.” His accent labeled him immediately as a New Yorker. “Hey. I’m Alex. Want some marshmallows?”

Not sure how to respond, I just said no and he went back to sorting.

I dropped my bag next to the stereo and went back downstairs to get my bike. A flyer in the freshman packet had said that your room was the safest place to keep it and that the bookstore sold ceiling hooks for three bucks. I carried it up the stairs and wondered about my roommate. He had short black hair and a dark complexion that wasn’t just a tan. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a J Crew catalogue.

I didn’t know it then, but we were the perfect roommates. The best of all possible combinations: I was over 21 and he had a car. I could to buy booze and he had a way to go and get it.

I rolled the bike down the hall nodding and saying hello to the few people I passed. As I walked into the room Alex was throwing handfuls of cereal out the window and the marshmallows had been arranged into the shapes of several rather elaborate fish. He noticed me come in and looked at the bike.

“Sick ride. Haro, right? Extreme Comp?” I nodded and he sat down carefully so as not to disturb his fish. “All XT. Cool. Rapid-fire or thumbs?”

“Thumbs. With CQP cranks and spuds.”

“Nice.” He started eating the tail of a blue fish, one marshmallow at a time without using his hands. He would just bend down and carefully pick one up with his teeth. I leaned my bike against the wall, leaned out the open window and looked out at the trees in the quad.

“So do you smoke or what?” I heard from behind me.

“Not cigarettes.” He laughed and opened one of the suitcases and took out a glass bong and a gallon sized Zip Lock filled with at least a key of weed.

“You’ll like this. Bought it all for three hundred in Cabo a month ago. Put it in a tampon box in my mom’s suitcase on the way back. Assholes.” I wasn’t sure who he meant. He got up, said he would be back and left with the bong.

I looked at the open suitcase. On top of a pair of Levi’s and a blue button down was a bottle of Valium, a bottle of yellow and black pills I didn’t recognize, two boxes of Zig Zags, a perfume sized bottle of clear liquid with a screw top and a pair of gray gym socks that said K-Swiss.

Everything a freshman needed to succeed in college.

Shit. I wished that I was half as well prepared.