---

The fault of a part is usually to blame for collapse in the whole.

This is the mantra of retrospective foresight, an employment that demands sacrifice for smoother waters tomorrow. Especially when it comes to social mingling and supposedly required interactions of the juvenile kind…I absolutely must be a master at this.

It is the only way I, the Don Quixote of the millennial era, can hope to blend in with false niceties and a cloak of similarity. Nevertheless, I still have hope for them! With each interaction, I learn how to entice my fellow twenty-something year olds, how to meet them as equals, how to tolerate their obsessions. Somewhere within the rotted crust of the whole lies a golden core, and I chew away relentlessly for that sweet center. Reservation is the hero here, certain that humanity is worth investing time and understanding in. Besides, I know, without Reservation and retrospective foresight…then I am a carp, flopping around on the top of a hill, miles away from the lake; it’s a nice view, but I need that damn water if I’m going to live.

Desperate for a breath of clear air from my home, a place I like to call “Hell’s Crotchpocket,” I opted for a semester studying in London, England. Here I could start afresh, with an optimistic mind and an open heart. All I needed to remember: the fault of a part is usually to blame for the collapse of the whole. I must steel every socializing nerve in my body, prepare myself mentally, and make myself the most impressive foreigner they’ve ever seen. One crack in the cement, and that whole edifice comes crumbling down.

Personal justifications aside, it was a failure. The fault must definitely lay with that Norwegian…A pal of mine (I think), fast friends despite being clearer opposites than Progressives and Conservatives, with his brash and unapologetic nature putting my own manipulative goodwill out to dry. He and I were due for a shindig that clocked in at nine, but that more experienced fellow assured me that drinking beforehand was a prerequisite. So I acquiesced, stood in the corner, as he and the rest of my flat drank. Long bottles of tequila, stubby glasses of rum, cubic vials of vodka, all disappearing down their hollow throats – my flatmates, ten in total, who insisted on showing me how parties are done in the UK. As the minutes trickled on, the clocklike array of cards began to mysteriously lose face, and I began to doubt if we would ever get to the party. The time rang eleven, though only for me.

It was supposed to be fun, a kickstart night welcoming all freshmen (and international students like myself). A night of easy dancing and cool music, an event of socializing and getting to know those whom you might spend the rest of your university days with – or the rest of your life, even. At least, that’s what I hope from the bottom of my heart it will turn out to be. I may have journeyed here to study, add another cinderblock in an impressive degree, but that doesn’t shelve my romantic telescope. And let me tell you, from this chilly mountaintop, the stars promised to be bright tonight.

But then the Norwegian was drunk. He was my closest compatriot in this strange land, and exceptionally handsome, so I was relying on his company to loosen crowds. But his tongue loosened first, loosened so much that it wrought a cannon to fire off as many derogatory statements into the hearts of our female companions as possible. I would have risked it, though. I would have risked it to not be alone at the forthcoming party, but he soon disappeared with a group of even looser buddies. All who obviously had attended the pre-drinking festivities of their own flats, and manifested within a cloud of smoke that reeked filthily of nicotine. For the record, the Norwegian did wildly gesture at me to join, but there were far too many of his kind now that my hand was forced to disappointedly wave him off. I shouldn’t have relied so heavily on his company.

And so the fault must certainly lie with these worthless pre-drinking festivities. Before he left, the Norwegian tried to force me to drink, said it would get my blood pumping – and he was probably right. But the stuff tastes like rubbish, and I would rather not act like rubbish, so I focus on Kings as the rest of the powwow passes around their Peace Pint. After the Norwegian, it was the Indian who got drunk first. But she was petite, and whined pathetically as the games penalties were heaped on her shoulders, sinking her further into that muddlebrained mire. I laugh, I compete in the categories seriously, but I am deeply anxious to hurry to the real party. The real party that might offer such a change from the stagnant cesspools of Hell’s Crotchpocket. Who would I meet? Could I actually convince a beautiful, intelligent young woman to drink with me? Of course, I wouldn’t have more than one glass; I must keep my wits out of courtesy for her company…Still, what of the dancing – will it be actual dancing? How do I approach her? What if my movements fall short of charming, and I-

The German directs my attention towards choosing a card. She is the only other not drinking, and as antsy as I to move on to the venue. “It must be everything I hope for, right?” I signal with my eyes. She might be a third year, but she’s still a novice at reading expressions because she just smiles agreeably and sips her Coke.

I am continually offered the community booze, and politely refuse with not decreasingly hidden disgust. Nevertheless, my optimism is unwavering, even as the drunken festivities clamber towards midnight, and I see shadows in the soggy walkways lurching homewards, probably those who arrived at its commencement around nine.

Actually, that sight does put a damper on my hopes.

Thankfully, the German has also had enough, and joins my pleas that convince the rest of our haggard troupe to move on to the main event…Finally! I confess to excitement, though I’ve always put a firm heel down on the throat of this particular brand of merrymaking…it’s simply not the kind of indulgence I’d prefer taking advantage of. But it’s an alien thing to me, this “clubbing” business, and novelty is enough to quiet principle for a brief while. I smile at the German for assisting this poor American in his dilemma. Perhaps she can take the place of the Norwegian?

Her eyes flutter and she places her hand gently on my arm. I smile sweetly back at her and escape before she further misinterprets my actions.

The rain comes in a light sprinkle. I won’t blame the rain, because rain is pleasant. The dance itself is in a pub on our university’s campus, so it’s a short walk through gravel unevenly shifted by tipsy toddlers, some of them not even able to make it through the trees. We arrive to a line of students longer than the building itself, waiting to get in…but it is all right! In fact, I am relieved, worried that the fault might come to lie with our late arrival and the absence of attendees. But a queue line in the rain? I come here expecting fun in a place I would normally dismiss, so what is a little wet wait? All these belching, chanting, ass-grabbing, smoking, swearing wretches – they’re nothing I haven’t dealt with before at home.

This is fine.

As the long line disappears, man by woman, into the club, I quiver in anticipation. Who will I meet tonight? What should I say? My breath smells fresh enou – crap, I think the rain melted the paste in my hair! But it is too late to tell, too late to change; the doors open wide, a red aura and trembling bass waves pouring forth from within. I expected this sort of raucous, but…not at this level. Still, I’m here for the people. I can hear my Reservation calling, that this is a crowd with infinite potential, and that the people of this crowd can offer me something fantastic. Well, then, it’s high time to meet them!

No sooner do I step inside the pulsating red shadows am I sucked up in an enormous mass, mashing and kneading to process me through its lumps of human flesh. The air itself is sweat, and that which drips down ungraceful figures flailing about in these cramped quarters serves as saliva – Several heaving gulps are required to wash me down this strange throat, this immense organ of bodies. The belly of the beast is nothing but alcoholic madness as bloodshot eyes look upwards into darkness, mouths agape like lifeless fish heads bobbing up and down in a pool of emptiness. Their meaty lips pull back in smiles, but they gulp desperately for air in secret as their glossy eyes swivel in search of the closest Zippo. They are clammy, cold, surrendering the faintest response as I swim in search of some semblance of life. I leave the bar and break for the tents, certain that misty air might wash the brains I desperately long to pick. Though I am met with questions there, they are not the pleasant kind: “Hey, fam, got have a lighter? Hey, do you smoke weed? How ‘bout a glass of beer, then find a real party?”

There has to be some safe haven here; Someone just like me, searching for someone just like them, as disgusted as I am with how far social intimacy has fallen.

But, the more I look for life in the whole, the more shattered parts present themselves in its stead. I try! I swear, I really do – But look there: at the bar, faults – on the deck in the rain, faults – in the basement club, faults – in the large white tents, faults. Faults everywhere, no matter how hard I try not to look for them. I can speak with no one, because no one has the capacity to speak, or feel reasonably, or do anything else but absorb the heat of corporeal contact, and so there is no one to prove that my founded faults are not grounded. What a waste of time, of sanity – I need to get out of this cesspool! I make my way out the doors, to the cool of the rain, but the crowd has changed. At least when it acted as an organ, a body made of many bodies, there was life still and a purpose for movement. But now the energy is gone – What remains is a sticky, hot lump, welded as one by the gas of booze and cigarettes.

I am swimming in shit. A mushy mass of shapeless filth, drained dry of organic usefulness and God-given autonomy, squelches with every step aimed at escape. Chunks of bloody corn stare at me, red kernels behind humanlike skulls worn to slivers by digestion – the hunger for acceptance. A rotting stench of sop swirls in my head, almost as if no longer a gas but a dripping liquid oozing from the crack of the intestinally tormented. There is puke on the floor, literal puke, but it can hardly compete with the bitter auditory diarrhea that sloshes around in my ears, sticking to the drums and the canals until I can hear nothing more than the sloshing of human excrement. Base groans and groaning bass, thumping in the loins of everyone present but thumping my brain to the point of insanity.

My back sticks to one of these walking stools, a portly girl with piercings in her tongue that might well be a key ring she swallowed as a child. Those kernels in her head speak one word: sex. She smiles, opens her mouth, I smell the rancid smoke climbing from the depths, see the piss coating her tongue, beg her apologies, and flee.

Now I am in the middle of it all. I cannot see the exit, or the Norwegian, or the Indian, or the German, or even a single thing I recognize as comfortable, familiar. All I see is a black mass, lumpy and wet, flopping about in the dark under that red light. I can barely breathe now, its putrid, moldy, rotting steam choking my mind and seizing my heart. I panic, lost in a shit-sea, paddling desperately for shore where there is none to be found. Mouths grin through the dark muck, anxious to sink deeper into the bowels of warm, empty pleasure. I am drowning in this fecal mire, my mind races, my limbs fail to move, my eyes register nothing before me –

In my blindness – a voice.

The voice drifts over the crap-covered floor from a stage, where a DJ stirs the pot. Waving to me from on high – my lofty Reservation! Her angelic smile beaming down, she opens her arms to encourage.

“Keep searching, my brave warrior! She is here, somewhere, just waiting for you!”

With a graceful gesture she beckons, towards those twisted faces half-dissolved from the juices designed to help them save face. They gawk at me with incomprehension as to why I resist the joys of invasive connection.

“But where? How much longer must I search? I’m so very tired!”

My Reservation does not answer, but gestures once again over those pitiful floating heads beneath. I can only bring myself to glance at them again, but their gaping, oozing stares are revolting to even feel upon the back of your head. Still, if my Reservation says she must be here, then she must be here! I hold my breath and plunge back in, filled with determination.

For an hour I sifted through the bile, through those animalistic pleas for pleasure, for someone above the roar of dysfunction. But my eyes began to cloud over, my brain waxes lax, and I almost realized too late that I was sinking into something new. Something the people here came to escape, something they had to lose their minds and their very selves to ignore.

Something called despair.

A laugh rises up over the turmoil. I start from my lapse, and flail desperately for the surface, the laugh growing ever louder. When my head breaks above the muck, that laugh pierces the grimy air of the dance floor, shrieking at a pitch that only I can hear – and wish I could not.

It belongs to my delicate, my innocent, my optimistic Reservation. She now hangs off the edge of the stage, pupils expanded in madness and cheeks split with her smile, howling in hysterics. She points aimlessly at the malodorous orgy.

“She’s there, boy! She’s there, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere!”

She then points straight at my forehead and cackles. But this is too much! My panic rises to a grand capitulation, and, without thought, I take off my belt and swing it above my head repeatedly, then let go. The belt hurtles across the room, over the toilet I’m sinking in, and wraps tight round the neck of my Reservation. She grasps for it, but loses her grip in the process, tipping over and plummeting headfirst into the shit sloshing onto the stage. Her ringing laughter is abruptly reduced to weak burbling. She does not resurface. But she lingers still, still lingers…

My head finally clears, and I walk freely out of the building without a single piece of crap smudging my shirt.

As I stagger home in the rain, I pass another group, drunk from pre-drinks and on their way to the party. At the back is a naïve-looking fellow: a babyface with clear and hopeful eyes. He is also a dreamer, excited for what he finds back at that party, the one I just left in horror. And who knows; maybe he will find what he’s looking for? It’s a foolish dream, I see at last, but I hope he does.

I am no longer so immature, to hope there might be someone like me out there, who believes that human connection can be made both rationally and emotionally, out of high-minded care and an eye for the future. To hope there is someone who can keep their head above the shit, and still keep a smile on their face as they aim towards contentment, not only happiness…Do they exist?

I, a child, so eager to cross the threshold of Hell in search of an angel, a righteous fool. Yes, I will still forge friendships with the Norwegian and the German and the Indian…the American, the Brit, the Chinese, every one of them. I will laugh with them, work with them, share stories with them, feel things with them. But what I can no longer do is expect the impossible from them. I tried so long, in the hopes that meaningful human connections among young people, built on merit and virtue rather than social pleasure and political convention, might still exist. I hoped that love might still be out there in untouched fields, harvesting the land in its purest form.

The drought killing those fields was the fault of the whole’s collapse. But it happened before I arrived, and I mourn that I can do nothing but settle for the last semblance of a home among the rubble. Since there is no single part to blame, I have murdered my Reservation, and dunked her in the very thing I sought hope from: the youth of the human race.

In this manner I say, without joy, without the despair of hoping, without Reservation, that the generation still consuming this undefined collective good…They cannot see the sun, through all the shit sealing the cave they dance in.

---