Derrick: "Hey, I DID! I did what the coach said, man!"
Craig: "Oh yeah? Dude, I saw you at the gym. How much can you bench, maybe 110, tops?"
Derrick: "That's crap, man! I can bench like 170! Ask the coach!"
Craig: "Oh yeah, did the coach give you those pills?"
Derrick: "Shut up! I don't do that shit, man! What is this bullshit?! I don't do that shit!" (As background music swells into theme from NBC's "After-school Special," Derrick throws trunk at Craig. Trunk opens and spills. Both pause, momentarily shocked at the site of the large heap of mud at the bottom of the stairs.)
Derrick: "Man, check it out--the trunk's full of shit! How're we gonna clean up that shit?"
Craig: "Eh, just leave it there. The roaches'll eat it."
Another possibility we considered was scrawling the words "DERRICK IS A HOMO" on the dry-erase board in permanent marker. But that would be too blatant. Instead, we thought that we should write it in small letters on the side of one of the bedroom doors, where he would only find it several months later--after prolonged hangovers which would prevent him from ever suspecting anyone but Craig could have wrote it. And our most sophisticated plan involved leaving the house absolutely spotless but throwing all of the beds into the backyard. The scene unfolds:
(All five contemplate mattress-choked backyard.)
Derrick (pensively): "Man, those girls must've gotten totally trashed. Now we gotta carry the beds back inside."
Craig: "Eh, I don't feel like it. Let's just sleep outside for the rest of the year."
Everyone leaves things behind when they move out, me included. This past spring, I wrote my name and class year on the underside of the mantle in my old room in Eliot. Today, that room might very well be occupied by summer school students making up stories about me, attributing the pile of trash in the fireplace to my personal slovenliness, ripping off the doorknobs and throwing my bed out the window.
But I don't much care. I'll be in a different room next year.
Dara Horn '99 has vacated Eliot House for the summer to work at The New Republic. Her worldly possessions are safely hidden away.