Here's lookin' at you, kid

I spot her immediately. Red hair, green eyes. Spot her through the haze of whatever is wafting out of people's mouths, spilling from plastic cups and generally packing the Terrace television room. Unbelievably, she suddenly turns and looks my way. Such eyes. Bright eyes. I try to think up something suave to say, but it ends up feeling too much like "Casablanca." "Of all the hipster, second-floor rooms overgrown with blue carpet and beer-stained cushions, you had to walk into mine." I am not a naturally debonair person, so this is not looking good for me. I continue to sit, nursing my flat, washy cup of Beast, trying to look every bit like Humphrey Bogart from a 1940s film noir hit. Last drag on a bummed cigarette. Flicking it, burning, into a half-empty cup. Someone stole my pack of Turkish Golds yesterday night — probably Steven, prodding me to quit the decadent habit I picked up from Hepburn, Gable, Grant and...well, Steven. I can't help but want to be like them — to preserve the Amory Blaine image of the University's indolent beauty. Intense intelligence coupled with a dilatory but trenchant laze. Two o'clock naps for no apparent reason. Mind wandering again. Concentrate.

Against all odds, she looks at me. At me. In a twist of fate, she seems to be moving my way. Winding through the sea of revelers, stepping over Reeboks, pushing inebriated patrons out of her way, moving closer and closer. My senses heighten. I've got my hood up; is that too sketch? I worry. I sweat. Quickly, suavely, I put on an expressionless face that has, "Oh, I didn't notice you there; I was too busy thinking deep thoughts and pondering that Kant lecture from last year," written all over it. I'm not sure if I'm succeeding. Half of this television room is surrounded by two levels of gigantic stairs, like steps from the Great Altar of Pergamon. I perch at the top, sipping and failing to look like Humphrey Bogart. But she stops in front of me, smiles, turns and sits on the level just below. This is looking good.

If I've learned anything over the last few years, it's to expect the unexpected. For instance, it's my third year at our beloved Old Nassau, and to say "it's not what I expected" would be a euphemism for "I don't know what in the world happened to me." When I first pulled up to campus, I expected to see arguments brewing on the green lawns and students crowding Go boards, huddled in little circles, fingers and thumbs on furrowed brows. Where are the publishing rivalries? The geniuses shoving desks out of third-story windows? I guess when I finally stopped looking for Russell Crowe, I started finding the Tom Levins, the Devin Fores, the Paul Muldoons, the Martin Scherzingers. People who've honestly changed my intellectual and spiritual lifestyle (not to mention my bizarre sleep schedule). I'm a German major for goodness sake. Isn't that what college is all about? Being courageous? Doing something new?

The redhead seems to think so. She turns around. Our eyes meet. I take my hood off. She smiles. I smile back, a bit shyly.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," I say back. Call me a hopeless romantic (I vigorously indict Keats for that disease), but I can see candlelight, New York dates, white picket fences, etc., flashing through my mind. She's going to say something perfect. Something memorable. I pause as she opens her lips, expecting the words that might anchor a new stage in my life.

"Hey ... do you have any weed?" she asks.

I answer in the negative, and she turns away. Not even a second look. She disappears into the haze of whatever is coming out of people's mouths, spilling out of plastic cups and generally packing the Terrace television room. I laugh to myself. "Maltese Falcon." I finish off the dregs of my drink and wade out of the television room. End scene, I think as I leave, growing dim against the warm, autumn night that is Princeton.