I am a member of one of the last hidden, marginalized minority groups here at Harvard.

We don't have a club.

We don't have an a cappella group.

We don't have a ribbon or a catchy slogan.

We barely even have an agenda.

People laugh at what we do and whisper that we're sadists.

We can express ourselves by occasionally wearing a cryptic T-shirt or taking sideways glance as we're walking to Loker Commons.

We call ourselves Fire Buffs.

For us, excitement is the fire engine, the hoses and the nozzles, the rapidly flashing lights and the scream of the siren.

It's the tower truck, hundred-foot ladders and powerful streams of steamy water. It's in the heroism of the fire department and the heat of a four-alarm worker.

It's in the psychology of what we most fear and in the passion and compassion for those who've lost a home or a loved one.

Perhaps something seems aberrant or even slightly sensual in all this. But for me, the love of fire-buffing is Platonic, couched in the aesthetics of movement and of sound and of sight and of rhythm.

But, as the over-bloated and from-the-heart prose above no doubt reveals, fire-buffing can be an obsession.

Desperately trying to memorize Sartre's conception of the soi the night before a final exam last year, I heard a full assignment of Cambridge trucks dispatched to a fire more than a mile away.

The spirit seized me.

I sprinted across Harvard Yard and out into Cambridge. I stayed at the fire until 3 a.m.

I came out as a fire-buff about two years ago, after becoming addicted to the emergency scanners at my place of work.

Unsure of my newly found identity, I took to the Web to see if I could find someone to share my calenture.

And sure enough, I found company.

We're not a desensitized lot of voyeurs, by the way. Many buffs volunteer for the Red Cross, helping families rebuild after they've lost home or hearth.

Most of us are certified in CPR and are ready to lend a hand when needed. Others serve as volunteer firefighters.

For fire-buffs, living around Boston is heaven. We know about the legendary fire captain who could extinguish a five-story blaze with solely the deck gun on his engine.

We regale in details about the BFD's stick work, their heroic rescues of man and animal. Walking down Newbury Street on a cold Friday night, we follow the screams of Ladder 15 and Engine 33 as they investigate smoke from a building on Comm. Ave.

But we wonder at times why our hobby seems to result from human suffering.

Personally, I don't like fire and never have. I don't like to suffer and cry when those around me do. I was never a pyromaniac as a young teenager.

But I was never indifferent to a passing fire truck. My head would follow the Doppler effect, twisting around to see the pulsating lights disappear off to perform acrobatic feats of heroism about which I could only imagine.