said object

When Virgil got into Harvard he expected so much more. It wasn’t the academics, his ivy covered dorm room, the French doors or dusty tomes on the library shelves. These were just as elegant as the brochure had shown. It was the women. He expected them to be shiny, glowing and full of luster like new Christmas toys. Yes, he saw the types in the quad milling about; the blondes, the reds and the chesnuts. Donning Bermuda shorts and glancing about, stretching their perfect necks like proud swans. The long tan legs spreading quaintly on the cut grass. These girls were wrapped in plastic like the couch his Aunt Tina had in her Florida apartment. Sitting on these couches was like avoiding reality and he often wished he could tear the plastic off and bring in a dozen cats to swarm and pollute the fabric with their scent and claws. If you broke the plastic on the girls you simply found dark hearts and trapped values. But he still desired to touch them, penetrate the layer and see if his instincts were right. He had his chance one Fall evening at a party. A dozen of them lined the couch like porcelain statues from another era. Virgil was fairly handsome and one girl promptly turned to him. She smiled a toothy, expensive smile and he smelled her breath. The hint of beer mixed with violets. Was this possible? He realized she had been talking for five minutes or so but he was mesmerized by her hair, straight and beige likefield grass. He heard the word, football and helmet and Darren Wortz and she laughed and he could have cried, he felt a gallon of boredom dumped on his head and he wished he had that helmet so he could stuff the remains of her words in and kick it with his loafers and it would fly softly and slowing into the night air, its contents irrelevant.