Gray Hall Two, Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN: GHOSTS, GOBLINS, AND OTHER LAW SCHOOL CREATURES
Last Halloween was bad for me. I got real beat up. I went to a party dressed as a piñata.
--Jim Samuels
When I was in college, I came up with the perfect costume. I wore cat ears and angel wings and carried a pitchfork, and went as every girl on campus.
--Steve Hofstetter
On Halloween I ran out of candy and I had to give the kids nicotine gum.
--David Letterman

Jake enjoyed his daily drive up Nichols Street to get to Gray Hall, the home of Davis University Law School. It allowed him an opportunity to see a part of the Davis University campus, a site that he rarely saw while in law school. When you enter graduate school, let alone any professional school, you generally stay in one building. Sometimes, you stayed in the same classroom in the building.
Jake did spend time on the main campus (outside of law school) because the financial aid people, for some reason, kept losing his financial aid papers every semester. He wasn't sure why this happened to him. Life worked in odd ways. You never look for problems, but problems just find you.
According to their records, they thought he did not file the necessary papers to get his excess financial aid released. This was how things worked at Davis University. Jake knew he had filed them last semester, the semester before that, and the semester before that, for the last seven years at Davis University. He knew this because Davis University would mail (now it was done by e-mail) him a confirmation letter. And Jake kept meticulous records, though one might consider him a paper packrat. Given the changes to a paperless society, one might now consider him an e-paper packrat.
Jake would show them the confirmation letter or a paper copy of the electronic version of the confirmation letter. The mistake would get cleared up and the financial aid people would apologize. They would say this mistake would not happen again. The next semester, it would happen again.
Oddly enough, a new student to Davis University would approach him and ask where a certain building was or how to get to a certain building. If you had asked him this question while he was in college, this question would pose no problem. He would point in the general direction and give a detailed set of instructions on how to get there. If you asked him this question now, this question would pose some problems. He had spent so much time in Gray Hall that his mental picture of campus had shrunk down to the area around Gray Hall. On a campus that encompassed several thousand acres, this was a small percentage of Davis University, one that was of little geographical use.

The daily drive up Nichols Street also allowed him a chance to watch people. Every day, Jake saw people wearing what was considered normal, everyday wear. What he saw ranged from tasteful to unusual to, well, Jake wasn't sure what or how to describe it. Imagine an obviously beautiful female--tall, blond and athletic, but with curves in the right places. Now imagine this person wearing pink customized Nike sneakers, neon pink socks, a garishly-bright neon yellow skirt the shade of a highlighter, a black T-shirt with more neon on it, and a pink headband. Now add in the requisite iPod and the pink cellular phone (the very sleek and very thin RAZR model). What words do you use to describe that ensemble? Garish? Scary? Taking the current trend of the retro look (in this example, the 1980's, too far? He wasn't sure what to say on those occasions.
Another thing that he saw. Maybe he was a little old fashioned, but Jake thought it wasn't presentable and quite honestly, unprofessional. Sure, you could do what you wanted when you were an adult, but some thing just weren't right. When was it acceptable to wear pajamas to school? It's fine to wear pajamas in your dorm or your apartment or your house, but out in public? While walking to class? Some people took the bedroom look (and not the sexy come-hither type) to the ludicrous extreme by wearing flip-flops. It didn't take that much time to put on jeans.
On a good day, however, there was the seemingly endless parade of attractive women wearing shorts, skirts, and other weather related, body-baring fashions. On those days, he didn't mind waiting in a long line of cars. Sometimes, he wished that the line would move as fast as possible.
For some reason, certain people thought that because it was warm, they should wear shorts, skirts, and clothing that was as small as possible despite how bad the clothing looked on them. If you could consider it clothing. Jake firmly believed that certain people should wear certain types of clothing. Not for religious reasons, but for the public good. Nobody, he was sure, wanted to see anyone with more rolls than a bakery wearing ultra-short shorts and belly-baring shirts. Even those who said that "everyone was beautiful no matter how they looked." On the other hand, people who were so thin that he could see what they were eating without using an X-ray machine, should not wear clothing that showed off their bone structure. It worked both ways.

Today, the clothing style was bordering on the unusual, and yet, Jake wasn't making snide comments to himself on how atrocious their clothing choices were. Instead, he was amazed at how creative their choices were. What was the difference in his mood? It was Halloween. Well, not exactly October 31, but October 29 as Halloween fell on a Sunday and nobody went to classes on Sunday. So the students at Davis University wore their costumes on the Friday before Halloween.
Currently, Jake was not a big fan of Halloween. For him, in this point of his life, Halloween was another day of the year that came and past. If it was a school day, he went to school and spent the day listening to lectures. If it was a weekend, he did the laundry and other weekend activities. At night, he shut off the lights, locked the doors, and did his best in ignoring the children that inevitably knocked on his doors to ask for candy and other foods high in processed and refined sugar.
Personally, in his opinion, Jake thought that some people took Halloween way too seriously. There were people who wore a costume to school or their place of employment. There were people who will accost you for not having the proper Halloween spirit if you're not dressed up like they are. And if you expressed an opinion contrary to their own Halloween belief system, you're considered a spoil sport. One would think that these people considered Halloween a religious holiday and wearing a costume of some sort (lame or cool) is akin to religious vestments in order to commune with the Halloween gods.
And yet, despite his seemingly curmudgeonly attitude about Halloween, Jake did enjoy this holiday, but in limited doses. He did enjoy watching people (particularly people who were considered adults) dress up in costumes and have some fun for a day. It was one of the few days when dressing up in a costume was considered normal and socially acceptable behavior. Then again, in certain parts of the country like New Orleans, dressing up in a costume was an everyday activity. Or at least that's what Jake heard from some people who used to live in New Orleans. Maybe they were exaggerating this statement, but it seemed quite plausible.
Jake kept a mental tally of the number of people wearing costumes and what kind of costume they were wearing on this day. He came up with some general patterns when it came to costumes. For instance, the men wore sports jerseys so they, quite blandly, looked like athletes. One man was dressed like Fred Phelps (the anti-homosexual preacher from Kansas who held up signs that said "Thank God for IEDs") which Jake found to be creative and hilarious. One guy was wearing a Devil costume and ironically (so Jake thought), standing next to the guy dressed up like Fred Phelps. And there was the motley group of pirates fighting with an equally motley group of ninjas. The women had a little more variety in their choices if one considered multiple variations on witches, angels, fairies, and fuzzy animals like cats varied. Jake wasn't sure if this counted as a variety. He also noted that their costumes were on the tasteful side due to the University's unofficial dress code. After all, as much as Davis University talked about free speech and students having rights, the University still had power to limit what was worn by students and faculty. After all, one does not want someone running naked around campus, let alone letting women or men exposing certain parts of their bodies.
Jake had noticed a trend for female Halloween costumes, one that he was not voicing an opinion over. He had noticed that female costumes, no matter what they were--teacher, cowboy, animal, police officer, etc.--were getting more and more risqué in nature. Once could say that they were, well, put in a politically incorrect manner, sluttish, maybe even stripper-like. It seemed like every woman he had known decided that they wanted to wear a costume that exposed large amounts of skin (sometimes, in a bad way as noted above). He wasn't sure what exactly was motivating this. No matter what the costume was, it inevitably included stiletto heels, mini skirts, push-up bras, and clothing that unbuttoned down to the navel. He considered it the male-fantasy version of ordinary occupations involving women. It's never a nurse, but a stripper daylighting as a nurse. It's never a police officer, but a police officer wearing heels, possessing handcuffs, and a fascination for bondage. Society was supposedly moving towards a politically correct version where women were becoming equal to men and they weren't going to be treated as sex objects. If this was the case, these costumes were an odd way of showing it.

Jake parked his car in the Burton Union parking lot. Instead of making his way directly to Gray Hall, he decided to enter Burton Hall to enroll for classes. In addition to being the Halloween season, it was also enrollment season for law school students. Being a 3L, he was in the top of the heap for class picking order.
He made his way through the doors and got to the computers. He quickly logged on and picked his classes using the online enrollment website. For once, things were working well on the online enrollment website. When the online system first came on, there were many problems. It was slow, even slower than the old process of filling out paper applications and waiting in line. There were numerous errors. The system shut down for no reason; the links did not work or sent you to the wrong site; the online timetable showed the wrong times for classes. It was sheer hell just to enroll in classes. Dropping a class was an even worse experience.
Jake logged off and noticed that an attractive brunette female was waiting to use the computer. Apparently, the other computers were not working for some reason (something that frequently happened with the Davis University computer network). He also noticed that she was wearing a cat costume (white instead of the traditional black costume that people generally wore) complete with fuzzy ears and tail. This person, Jake thought, must enjoy Halloween, much more than he did.
She said, "Can I use the computer? It's my day to enroll for classes."
Jake replied, "I'm done with it. You can use it right now."
"Great! I probably can enroll in a class I want." Jake thought that this was the end of the conversation. After all, she wanted to use the computer and she got to use the computer. That was what this conversation was all about, at least to Jake's mind. One can imagine Jake's surprise when she decided to continue this conversation on an unusual tangent that he did not expect.
She randomly added in, "Do you like my costume?"
At this moment, Jake could have slunk away and pretended to not have heard her query. Or he could have claimed to be late for something (highly unlikely as it was only 7:15 AM and there were no classes at this time. For some reason, Jake decided to continue this conversation where it may lead. Jake had a knack for getting into strange situations and conversations, even for his standards. Like trouble, one does not ask for it. It just happens.
"Yes, yes I do. You look nice in it. Cat costumes are very cute." This was the truth, unembellished, but the truth. He managed to use two words that females used constantly in many forms. Females, it seemed to Jake, used "cute" and "nice" in so many ways that he was not sure what those words meant. Depending on the inflection, the context, the subject one was referring to, the word "nice" or "cute" could be interpreted as a sincere compliment or a scathing insult or something in between. He hoped that she understood that he was using these words as a compliment.
"Thank you for the compliment." She looked him over. "Where's your costume? I don't see you wearing one."
"Um, I don't feel like wearing one. Am I supposed to wear one?"
"Are you supposed to wear one?" A look of surprise and indignation as if Jake said something amounting to sacrilege. "You're supposed to wear one. It's Halloween!"
"I have to wear a costume on Halloween?" Of course, it wasn't Halloween and he could have pointed this out, but he decided not to.
"Yes, you have to."
"In that case, I am dressed up as a cat lover." Jake paused for a moment. He then added in jest, "In fact, I'm looking for a cat to take home. You'd fit the bill."
"Really?" She laughed. "That was pretty good. So, what's you name?"
"The name's Jake. And yours?"
"Ellen Larson. Nice to meet you."
"A pleasure to meet you. I've got to go."

Jake left without getting her number. He was happily dating and unavailable. His sensibilities could not accept the concept of being in relationships with more than one woman. At this moment, it was hard enough to handle one woman. Jake couldn't imagine how much harder it would be to date two women. The Chinese, quite wisely, knew that more than one woman in a house meant trouble, big trouble. In fact, the Chinese ideogram for "discord" had two women underneath a roof. Jake chuckled at that. Five thousand years of civilization did give you an advantage in some ways.
His Halloween was off to a good start. Once Jake survived the regiment of classes for today, he would go home and get ready for what promised to be a fun Halloween party with Clarissa. There was nothing like a Halloween costume party hosted by law school students.