I spent $30 on ramen that gave me food poisoning

The way that people talk and write about college made me think I knew what I was in for. But it’s a Wednesday night in April, and I’ve finished all of my homework for the day, so I’m in a restaurant alone. The air smells like the chlorine they probably use to wipe and clean their tables and a fishy crispness I know to be imitation crab. (I’m not an amateur. Unless they’re all huddled around an oven in the back, I’m the only Asian person here. None of this shit is authentic.)

Missoula likes its LED lighting. And indie trumpets. And vegan leather. I miss Eureka, I guess, with its creeks and sticks and the tall, blue mountains that fling tinkling bursts of hot, sweet summer wind into the valley. But I mostly miss my family and being able to drive a car. Walks through the city, though, are the next best thing.

There’s a guy at the bar who looks like the Charles Wright in the film pictures. Speaking of people who wrote about college. “College Days,” one of my favorite poems, has given me absolutely no faith.

Another guy has one of his knees bent over the other at a weird angle. I’m leaving lip gloss residue on the straw and I can taste it it if I focus, touch the plastic with my tongue and let it sit there, chemical bitterness a mixed up chaser for Coke.

The two people next to me are on their first date, I think. The man—if you could call him that, his beard almost as scraggly as his faded, fraying jeans—is talking incessantly about himself, and the woman giggles, compensating to carry her weight. I can’t, in good conscience, say that she’s enjoying herself, but maybe she is. Maybe I’m the one with too much to think about, not enough to say.

I shouldn’t have gone out tonight. There’s 22 days left in April and I only have about $60 left of my $270. But I have the money. And what can you do?

I swipe my card.