Lately I have been swimming a lot. It has been hot and so the community pool near my house is warm even in the middle of the night. The pool is closed but the fence is not very high and you can jump over it pretty easily. I have been a number of times now and there are usually at least a dozen other people there, which makes me feel better about the whole thing. A few weeks ago I saw one of my coworkers there. She was naked. She swam over to me with a cigarette in her mouth and a beer in her hand and I thought that was real cool. We talked for a little while and then she went back over to her friends. Her friends are jerks so I didn’t go with her.

Anyway: I’ll swim around with everyone for an hour and then I’ll get out. Usually I go off to Reed College after that.

Matt and I find a good place to park across the street from the campus and then we’ll walk around with crap wine and talk to people. We went last night. I guess it was freshmen orientation weekend or something. There were babyfaced kids walking all over the place and many of them approached us and asked us what it was like to go to Reed. I told them Matt was a senior and I was a junior and that we liked it all right. They asked if our ilk would pick on them for being new and we said we couldn’t account for everyone, but as for us, we would be friendly to them. And, I told them, if someone gives you grief, it just means they’re an asshole and you can dismiss these people.

There are many unlocked doors on college campuses. Sometimes you’ll find a building with a pool table or free food or something. We’ve found a lot of places like this. If you look like you know where you’re going, no one bothers you. Maybe no one cares anyway. I have never had anyone care or ever pretend to care that I was inside the building of a college I did not attend.

We found a good tree near the dorms and climbed to the top. We talked about how dumb it was that people seem to grow out of the things we had been doing. Which is to say: hopping fences to night swim, walking around college campuses, drinking crap wine, climbing trees, befriending strangers, and so on. These are things I have always enjoyed and I don’t see why I would ever stop feeling that way. It’s cheap and nice and often you end up in strange places with strange people.

Hell, dude. I just like walking around and talking to people. I like talking to people on land and in water. I like making friends. I guess I’m just going to keep doing those things forever. I don’t see why not. I don’t know what the hell else I would do.