The Brain Dead Poet Variety
One writer's experience inside the mysterious rabbit hole at Hunter
Patrick Clark
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Opinion
Picture this: A year long battle of wits sharpie-scrawled upon a wall at the bottom of a dank and derelict stairway between one college student with too much time on his hands and his equally indolent nemesis.
Now, envision the climax: through a fateful coincidence, just as the student puts the final touches upon another concise and insulting masterwork, his counterpart arrives to do the very same.
As he turns with bated breath to see his tormenter come into the light of a gently humming fluorescent, he is shocked to be looking into his own face! (The stairwell is a time warp and/or the clone is an alien replicate of some sort).
This scene would be directed by the sage who did Donnie Darko.
Forgive me, but it is this sort of pseudo-philosophical bunkum that comes to mind when traveling deep into the heart of Hunter West's "Rabbit Hole," a hidden and unnecessary staircase (The Envoy chose to keep the exact location anonymous), whose lower levels seem to be devoted to illicit sex with multiple partners and/or the tattooing of equally vulgar poetic profundity to every flat surface. This writer's brief foray into the 'hole,' (spread across three or four landings in a narrow stairwell) felt more like spelunking in a cave festooned with the middens of a semi-literate and oversexed tribe of troglodytes.
I am a big boy, if not in stature then definitely in maturity, so the numerous used condoms littering the floor failed to force me to retreat back upwards towards civilization in disgust (although they did force me to tip-toe, a defensive tactic I thought I had overcome years ago). No, it wasn't the evidence of amorous depravity that piqued my interest above the disinterested clinical manner I had cultivated towards the whole endeavor. Instead, it was the graffiti.
Most of it was lewd, either in drawings or words, sometimes in drawings with captions (these were especially informative). This is to be expected at Hunter or any other place with public bathrooms catering to those with ballpoint pens and the opposable thumbs necessary for their operation. It was the poetry-the sonnets of the broken-hearted, the political screeds of the civic minded, the convictions on the nature of life and knowledge of the freethinking - that got my goat.
Yes, I understand that bathroom (or dangerously-secluded-stairwell) graffiti is quite an easy target for ridicule, but in an institute such as Hunter College, ranked eight in the nation in value by the Princeton Review (PRINCE-ton!), shouldn't we expect a slightly more learned battle of the magic markers than we would in any old dive bar loo? A comparison with the other top ten value colleges chosen by Princeton may reveal our beloved school to be desperately behind in style, usage, and anatomical realism.
Furthermore, who on Earth is the genius who lays out a step-by-step diagram of the change from one word to another, often tangentially related (FREE - FRER - FEER - FEAR! Free must somehow EQUAL fear!). I find this provocative wordplay in every bathroom at Hunter, including the 'hole' of this article, in which so many young Joyceans have hung their brain-poops out to dry. It is this poetic form that encapsulates the work of so many young property defacers at our lovely Cuniversity. If space allowed, I would transcribe as many of the little ditties I could stomach, but I assume The Envoy readership has had as much experience with the species as I have.
What goes through these people's minds as they numbly search their scabby fingers into their Bubble Yum clogged dungaree pockets? In the time it takes their cuticles to navigate past their condoms, does anything break through the fog of creative inspiration that has so engulfed their frontal lobes to wonder, "Don't I have something better to do?" Well, to all those out their thinking about discharging a succinct aphorism after a satisfying evacuation, of course you do. Of course you have something better to do. And if that isn't reason enough, please refer to the paradoxical remonstrance of this wise Rabbit Hole contributor:
THIS IS YOUR
HOME
FIVE DAYS OF THE WEEK
KEEP IT CLEAN
OR MY MOTHERFU…
You get the picture. Well, from the looks of the floor, at least they aren't procreating.
Now, envision the climax: through a fateful coincidence, just as the student puts the final touches upon another concise and insulting masterwork, his counterpart arrives to do the very same.
As he turns with bated breath to see his tormenter come into the light of a gently humming fluorescent, he is shocked to be looking into his own face! (The stairwell is a time warp and/or the clone is an alien replicate of some sort).
This scene would be directed by the sage who did Donnie Darko.
Forgive me, but it is this sort of pseudo-philosophical bunkum that comes to mind when traveling deep into the heart of Hunter West's "Rabbit Hole," a hidden and unnecessary staircase (The Envoy chose to keep the exact location anonymous), whose lower levels seem to be devoted to illicit sex with multiple partners and/or the tattooing of equally vulgar poetic profundity to every flat surface. This writer's brief foray into the 'hole,' (spread across three or four landings in a narrow stairwell) felt more like spelunking in a cave festooned with the middens of a semi-literate and oversexed tribe of troglodytes.
I am a big boy, if not in stature then definitely in maturity, so the numerous used condoms littering the floor failed to force me to retreat back upwards towards civilization in disgust (although they did force me to tip-toe, a defensive tactic I thought I had overcome years ago). No, it wasn't the evidence of amorous depravity that piqued my interest above the disinterested clinical manner I had cultivated towards the whole endeavor. Instead, it was the graffiti.
Most of it was lewd, either in drawings or words, sometimes in drawings with captions (these were especially informative). This is to be expected at Hunter or any other place with public bathrooms catering to those with ballpoint pens and the opposable thumbs necessary for their operation. It was the poetry-the sonnets of the broken-hearted, the political screeds of the civic minded, the convictions on the nature of life and knowledge of the freethinking - that got my goat.
Yes, I understand that bathroom (or dangerously-secluded-stairwell) graffiti is quite an easy target for ridicule, but in an institute such as Hunter College, ranked eight in the nation in value by the Princeton Review (PRINCE-ton!), shouldn't we expect a slightly more learned battle of the magic markers than we would in any old dive bar loo? A comparison with the other top ten value colleges chosen by Princeton may reveal our beloved school to be desperately behind in style, usage, and anatomical realism.
Furthermore, who on Earth is the genius who lays out a step-by-step diagram of the change from one word to another, often tangentially related (FREE - FRER - FEER - FEAR! Free must somehow EQUAL fear!). I find this provocative wordplay in every bathroom at Hunter, including the 'hole' of this article, in which so many young Joyceans have hung their brain-poops out to dry. It is this poetic form that encapsulates the work of so many young property defacers at our lovely Cuniversity. If space allowed, I would transcribe as many of the little ditties I could stomach, but I assume The Envoy readership has had as much experience with the species as I have.
What goes through these people's minds as they numbly search their scabby fingers into their Bubble Yum clogged dungaree pockets? In the time it takes their cuticles to navigate past their condoms, does anything break through the fog of creative inspiration that has so engulfed their frontal lobes to wonder, "Don't I have something better to do?" Well, to all those out their thinking about discharging a succinct aphorism after a satisfying evacuation, of course you do. Of course you have something better to do. And if that isn't reason enough, please refer to the paradoxical remonstrance of this wise Rabbit Hole contributor:
THIS IS YOUR
HOME
FIVE DAYS OF THE WEEK
KEEP IT CLEAN
OR MY MOTHERFU…
You get the picture. Well, from the looks of the floor, at least they aren't procreating.
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