Greg Kosey Griffith
Mat Wenzel
ENC2135
23 July 2019
All in my head?
I am in McCollum on the Florida State University campus with my friends in their dorm and we begin making our way to the first floor since we are on the third. I met some new friends recently and I walked all the way from Reynolds Hall which is about twenty minutes away from my living hall to McCollum it's cool I have literally nothing else to fill my time. We leave their room get on the elevator and shoot down to the main floor. On the elevator ride down my four new friends I am with Mack, Jocelyn, and Rochelle are talking amongst themselves kind of excluding me I feel like now but the ride down is short and I just ignore them. Mac and Jocelyn are both funny but Jocelyn’s literally hilarious, Mac seems to like my jokes ninety nine percent of the time cause I'm funny and seems to want me around, so the friendship aspect with these folks SEEMS very easy. Jocelyn is so beautiful and has the most beautiful big curly hair! We would take pictures and would both pose like models together and to me that is enchanting. We popped off. I honestly don't care much for Rochelle; I didn’t come for her but tonight all their energy towards me is different. I just think I am new, so this is to be expected in a new early friendship. The elevator dinged pulling me out of my thoughts and the doors whooshed open and we swiftly move out of the elevator. On the first floor of Mccollum is a movie area and some couches and that’s where we are heading to for the night. When we leave the elevator, we take a fast left and make our way to the couches and where the big television is to watch a movie. We all plop down on the long couch, but all ironically end up ignoring the big television we came downstairs to watch. Kids nowadays, it infuriates me. I look up from my phone ample amount of times and try to make aggressive eye contact towards Jocelyn, Mac, and Rochelle to show my disapproval. My eye contact is literally futile because their eyes are IN their phones so if you can't beat them join them. We all start glaring down at our phones texting within our group chat we made together after we met for two seconds while the television plays a football game none of us are interested in. Behind us there is a pool table that we could play on and I got bored of being so antisocial and suggest for us to play an actual game of pool. They all ignore me but it's because I’m black and the social hier- Kosey don’t get started it is nothing they probably are not even aware you feel left out like this is probably all in your head! But I could be right because they literally are all white...... KOSEY STOP!! I repeat myself three times waiting for them to finally respond to me and Rochelle finally agrees with my idea. You see. All in my head.
I get up and walk to the front counter of McCollum slowly and unsurely to ask a random lady for pool sticks and the balls to play. I am literally so nervous when I went to the front desk. I am still not use to college I barely know my way around since I just started college as a freshman this summer. I asked for the sticks in the most trembly voiced, confused face, and lost person way possible. I walk back to the movie area, I literally look so pitiful struggling with pool sticks I hit the walls like ten time and feel so nervous others will see me, and when I get back Jocelyn, Rochelle, and Mack are much closer to each other chuckling together whilst I was away getting the stuff for the game, oh no. Exclusion. Exclusion! EXCLUSION! “I thought we were going to play?” I say to them sadly and a little hurt. I feel like an ugly puppy. An unwanted ugly pug dog. I look at them dumbfounded. Mac then starts laughing about memes he created on some dumb app, because he decided to make a whole new group chat on WhatsApp without me in it. Honestly, what the cracker! This seems pretty overt. Or not. It could be but maybe I am over analyzing. While I walk to the table and setup the balls and lay out the sticks for pool, I hear them huddling up on the couch together cackling as Mack sends outrageous memes, he sends to everyone but me and at the same time I was trying to organize my thoughts. The pool table is directly behind the couches so I can see everything they are doing. I have to look away from them or I would get sad that I am not just accepted easily like the rest of them in this dumbass friendship! I ask, “are we still playing pool today” with annoyance but refrain in my voice and I am met with no response, I keep asking but they just stay sitting next to one each other sending memes, this is hell. Jocelyn and Rochelle even begin to start taking pictures with Mack and posting them on Snapchat and Instagram and people are commenting asking them if they were dating and saying Mack is so cute. He’s not even, he's okay not a supermodel. Not even close. I’m a badder baddie but if I speak I might go off so no. Not only am I the one on the outside of the friend group I’m the ugly duckling on the outside of the friend group. Splendid.
I feel so excluded, I want to leave but at the same time don't want to believe I’m being excluded I feel like I might be used to feeling excluded in my friendships because I’m black. It's rough out here in these streets. I’m going to feel this way about any friendship I have everyone around me is white. With society basically constantly devaluing black people through different methods while also praising whiteness this feeling I’m having is in inevitable. This actually is a good friendship based on that fact. Black people don’t even like me, so they are not a future friendship option. Oy vey. I turn my pained thoughts off and kept asking, “does anyone still want to play pool?” They ignore me and after they finish chuckling on the couch together, they make plans for us to go to Moe’s which is directly across the street from McCollum. They get up still huddled and walk slowly towards the back door of the building while I start scrambling to get the pieces of the pool set picked up so I can catch them before they leave the room without me. I stumble a little then I leave the movie room with all the pieces and run to the front desk to return the items I got to play a game of pool we never played. My friends begin walking to the back door of McCollum and I quickly followed. We leave the building and start heading off campus. We cross the grass and we start back on our phones again as we walk across the street and up the road to Moe’s. On the walk there we all are just staring at our phones; we talk occasionally but are phones are our prime interest. Thank god we are not talking it is keeping my mind off the fact that I’m dying thinking about this friendship right now. As we continued walking a homeless man walks up to us and started saying, “what do you call a retarded Asian baby?” We all look up from our phones and start panicking and we run away from him, and he has the nerve to start jogging to catch up with us to tell his clearly racist joke. Luckily, he is right next to the Moe’s we are trying to get into. We all start laughing but at the same time I definitely am scared of the man. We ran into the restaurant and are hysterical laughter along with are spurts of fear lasted a minute before we could pay attention to where we were. Lookie here this friendship isn't all that bad, we are laughing together. Maybe I am a part of this friendship. It could be all in my head. We peer out of the window to make sure he is not going to follow us inside.
We are in the Moe’s still huffing and out of breath laughing about the crazy man who just tried to chase us down after asking the offensive question. Rochelle said, “let's go back to hear the answer to the joke he's trying to tell.” We laugh and then the adrenaline of the situation starts to wear off and we start to focus on what we were going to eat because suddenly, we all get very hungry. Mac and Rochelle go in front of Jocelyn and I because we had never been there before, so we must study the menu. I don’t even know why I’m here I’m not even hungry and I don’t want to spend money but I'm desperate because I'm so fresh to college and because desperateness I feel is high key my personality. Love that for me! We glare so long and then turn to each other in confusion questioning whether we should get a burrito, a quesadilla, or a bowl. I finally go for it and get a burrito with little to nothing on it while Jocelyn decides to get a bowl. We move down in line quickly and Mack and Rochelle sit down first in the corner of the Moe’s at a booth I am the next person to join them, I am nervous because this was going to be all talking and more Kosey exclusion time. Time to brace for my life. When I joined them in the booth they have already got deep in a joke when I got there as they are both hysterically laughing. I sit down and Jocelyn follows quickly after me. We sit and start talking about our favorite foods and where they came from in the world. I’m destined to fail in this topic because I literally think every food is just American. I'm not cultured. They start bringing up stuff like real Mexican and Indian food, naming names of actual foods in other cultures and different geographic regions. This is the one conversation I’m not mad about being left out in. I literally will embarrass myself so bad and they probably will pounce on me because that’s what my friend options at FSU would do. Fun for me! I take slow bites of my burrito trying to enjoy it while my friends begin taking pictures to post on Instagram together. I tried to include myself in the picture while at other times I just sit and accept the excluded vibes I felt were being thrown at me. We were eating and Mack tells me to get them napkins and drinks and salsa for their food. I feel so defeated, I would hurt hi, but my internally battered self feels so loser-ish I take myself to the counter at Moe’s to get them their stupid requests. I am already out of it. Ready for the night to be over with but we finish eating and leave Moe’s. Sadly, that takes more time with them. I feel this is the friendships I'm destined to have. I have never gone to a school for more than two years and this friendship seems pretty reminiscent of a lot of my past ones. Is it the friends I choose? Maybe. Hopefully I can figure out soon because college cost too much money for me not to be ecstatic here.
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