Winter 2024 Issue

It was not as if John Johnson intentionally distanced himself from the rest of his university class; it could be said that he naturally carried with him an off-putting and obviously subpar aura wherever he went. Once, in his first year at the university, John made an attempt to connect with the higher ups in his year. During the first week of the year, he, upon observation, noticed that other first years left their dormitory doors open to invite other students in to chat. Subsequently, John Johnson propped his oak wood door open with his rented copy of “Introduction to Computer Science” textbook and waited. After thirty minutes went by with no visitors, John decided to wander about the hall. Finding an open door three rooms down, John Johnson entered to find a group of four boys lounging on the room’s two beds. Their conversation, with which they were deeply engrossed, came to a halt as they recognized another had entered the room. Sensing the awkwardness hanging in the air, John Johnson said what he found suitable for the situation: “Hello, I am John Johnson.” While nothing about his sentence was amusing, it was met with poorly stifled chuckles and silence from the group. A number of moments later, a boy said: “John Johnson, did you see the open door?” “Ah,” thought John, “they were confused as to why I came in and now, realizing the door was open, they will understand!” He nodded. “Great, please close it on your way out,” said the same boy. On the walk back to his room and for the next several hours, John Johnson replayed the interaction frame by frame in his mind. Later that night, John Johnson typed out the verbal interaction on a black document, only stopping when his laptop drained itself of battery. He went to bed that night reimagining the interaction in full. He did something wrong, he thought, and he would resign to think about the wrongdoing until he found a solution. This occurrence was three years ago now, and John still had not landed upon a satisfactory answer, though he had, of course, never relinquished the idea that he might find it. There were rules, John Johnson thought. Rules—intangible and untouchable—that governed life at the university. Rules that he did not and was not allowed to understand. The rules he could understand lay alone in syntax errors and binary and so these became his livelihood.

​

~ 

​

The reality of life within the inner-circle at the university was at first strange to John. There lay hidden norms that he, very quickly and all at once, was expected to conform to. And conform he did, with a smile on his face. The group, as one might expect, always traveled in groups. One would never find a member of it alone. While they walked in a hoard, if they saw a lonesome student, one member of the group would say: “Alone as always, crazy as always!” and this would be followed by laughs from the rest of the group. Appearances had to be kept when in one another’s company. John soon noticed that his new friends constantly swapped out one cable knit sweater for another, though each was of a similar level of splendor. In order to meet this requirement, John took to rewearing his one and only fine piece of clothing—the crewneck over and over. When asked about his singular choice of uniform, John fibbed that he loved the crewneck so much that he purchased several iterations of it to wear on repeat. Lying, he soon found out, was another one of the unspoken necessities of the group. He learned each of these elements and lived them. He even learned, over the months, to love them. 

​

~

​

John Johnson was very still. He stood in his wreckage. His once-focused eyes now swam, vacant and empty, a vessel drained of all reason. John had become a stranger to himself, a tragic figure caught in the web of his own madness. He saw red and blue. John thought: “Is it my beloved crewneck, mended and fresh, coming back to me? Yes, I can see it now!” Even when the flashing sirens and the authoritative voices of the police pierced through the fog, John stood aloof with a glazed look of contentment over his features. He surrendered without resistance, his demeanor distant and detached. John Johnson felt very profound in that moment. He gazed lazily at the siren lights atop the car he was being forced into and murmured, though it could not be understood by any of the attending officers or onlookers: “I want for nothing anymore.” The onlookers soon dispersed in groups, as the night had grown very cold indeed and the exhaust from the cars was piling up on their outerwear. The car, with John Johnson, was lost to the darkness.