The Olympics come to Campus

I love the Olympic Games, and the fact that they come once after four years. However, next door, the Olympics have been running consistently day and night for more months now than I care to remember.

They are an everyday thing in my campus and as such, I do not have to wait for the usual number of years to participate. Sadly, I have over the months, grown weary of being an unwilling participant to the games. So, whenever my two very athletic neighbors decide to go for gold, I take a long walk or go to the television room no matter what time of day or night it might be.

Tonight however, as fate would have it, the rain won’t cease and neither would their drive. I sit restlessly in my small cubicle, a prisoner in every sense. The very thin wooden partitioning of the rooms allows for all the noises from next door to filter through clearly. I turn up the volume of my stereo but it does not help. If anything I feel more aggravated by the additional noise. I pull the pillow over my head but the banging continues incessantly. I, then, know that even if I was not able to hear them, I would still be haunted by the thought of what they were doing.

Being human, my thoughts naturally take a turn towards the obvious, but I am not inclined to share what feelings the whole experience is exciting in me. All I can say is that the agony I feel is overwhelming. Outside, I can hear the muffled sound of the storm and wonder whether the sound proofing only works to prevent the noises from without. Next door, the screams of pleasure hit a new crescendo. The iron bed creaks and shakes as if in protest. Damn! I curse loudly and desperately. Wasn’t there any modesty to enjoying canal pleasures? Nobody could be that good not even in the b-movies I watched in mute as a teenager after everyone was asleep. I secretly wonder what sort of steroids my neighbor friend is on, Viagra perhaps. He is forever on a race towards that ultimate finish line and with his partner in close chase. Day and night they race on without end. Woe on us when the race is a tie or when she happens to cross the finish line before him! The screams are just deafening.

In all these days of “excitement”, I have had the chance for a sort of respite for only a few days in a month. I figured that this was the period upon which the girlfriend experienced her red-robot days.

In a moment, I recall that I have a bottle of jet fuel under the bed and I reach out for the poison excitedly. My engines are all fired up and ready to go. The lethal 750ml cane extra vodka is a left over from the weekend’s fresher’s bash. I drink the contents of the half full bottle, or is it half empty, in a flash. The liquid burns my throat and warms up my insides and in an instant I am taxing down the runway at full speed. Unfortunately, I black out before I take off.

At about ten o’clock in the morning, I awake from my dreamless drunken stupor to a lot of noise and commotion.  My head aches terribly and the noise aggravates it even more. Someone is shouting and banging on my door and the radio is as loud as I had left it the previous night. I lower the volume and then proceed to see who’s at the door. I open it with rage. My Olympiad friend is standing over the door wearing an angry expression on his face and a small green towel on his waist. I stare at his masculine black form in shock. ‘What do you want?’ I scream in seething anger.

“Please keep the music down, some of us are trying to sleep!” he screams back and then walks away to his room clutching his towel as if afraid it would drop off.

I shake my head in disbelief and bang the door in such fury that the handle falls off. In a while, as I warm my bath water, the morning marathon race begins next door. Not again! I beg or is it protest and my strength fails me. I reach for my stereos volume knob and turn it up.

©Eddie Karisa 2009

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