Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Day 2

Hey guys! A couple things real quick.

One, because of the time constraints that come from a combination of Bible Study, Engineering and NaNoWriMo, I won't be able to put up unquie posts everday. As a result, I'm going to put up my NaNoWriMo writing for the day as my post (or continue from where I left off. Whichever). I'd probably have regulat posts up on Thursdays, Fridays and the weekends.

Two, a lot of you have been asking about the name of the novel and just what is a pink triangle. For those of you who don't know here's the Wikipeida link for it. That should help explain its significance.

Three, to all my non-Trinidadian readers, the dialouge of one of the characters, David, is written in Trinidadian dialect, so it maybe hard to read. If you don't understand, feel free to ask me to translate.

So here is my contribution for Day 2! Enjoy!

she sighed. “Are they even allowed to be sharing out that stuff?”
Cassie shook her head. “I’m not sure. Bet they’d do it anyway. They think that they’re above anything.” Cassie didn’t really have problem with Christianity. It’s just how Christians thought that they were so down with God that they could pass judgment on anyone in his place. That’s what they did back home when word got out that she was like the other girls who lived around her. Within a matter of days, kids who had been friends with her since she was a kid all disappeared. They all started avoiding her, labeling her a sinner behind her back and whispering about how she was going to hell. And they way they made life for her, it pretty much was hell. Her one reprieve was that her parents didn’t join the bandwagon of persecution. They accepted her, and that made life bearable. Even so, she was happy when she was given the chance to leave that old town behind and live her life in freedom. Apparently, all that bondage had followed her here. She watched as the girls made there way over to where she and Beck were sitting. She wanted to get up and leave, to get away from the entire pretense that they were going to pour out on her. Becky sat up suddenly. “Hey Cassie! Kiss me!” she whispered excitedly.
“What? What are yo-” Before Cassie could finish her sentence, Becky grabbed her face between her hands and smothered her with an exaggerated kiss. Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie you see the expression on the girls’ faces change to a rather uncomfortable expression and then to one of disgust. They stopped and changed direction, walking towards another group of people pretending to have never been coming in their direction. Becky released Cassie, and sat back down with a loud laugh. “Did you see the look and their faces? Ha!”
Cassie gave her a playful slap on the arm. “You’re so mean!”
“I know, right? That was fun!”
Cassie’s watch beeped. “It’s almost time for the orientation lecture. I should get going now. I don’t to be late and make a bad first impression.” She said, picking up all her belongings. “Don’t forget to pass by Megan’s later and collect all my stuff.”
“I won’t.” Becky said Cassie began to leave. “Go forth my little mechanical engineer. Turn the world upside down with your wizardry.”
“I will.” Cassie laughed. “I love you.”
Becky hugged her, pulling her in closely. “I love you too, Cass.” She released her embrace. “And if you need any help getting rid of any religious nut jobs, let me know, and I’d help.” She said sticking out her tongue. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. Bye.” She waved as she walked off to find the Engineering block. Becky waved back as she watched her disappear.

Cassie got to the room where the lecture was being held, just as the first big rain drops began to fall, she quickly rushed up the stairs, trying to avoid having to go inside all wet. Reaching inside she quickly found a seat near the door. About a minute later, a boy ran came through the door, his clothes and hair wet. He quickly sat down next to her. “Hi, I’m Cassie.” She said pleasantly offering her had. The boy smiled and shook her hand. “Hi Cassie, I’m Seth.” He replied in a thick accent.
“Nice to meet you Seth.” It was then that she caught a glimpse of his shirt. It the same type of shirt that the girls were wearing back in the engineering village with the cross printed on the front of it. “Oh great.” She groaned inwardly.”Another Jesus Freak!”


Seth looked up at the grey sky, enjoying the cool breeze that blew about him. “Dis is perfect weather fuh you ent?” His older brother who was standing beside him asked. “All this depressing rainnyness. Ah bet it doe have one person in this school dat like dis kinda crappy weather.” He said pointing to the campus they were standing in front of. “What it name again?”
“It’s St. Augustine College. And liking rainy weather is not as uncommon as you may think.”
“’As uncommon as you may think’?” his brother asked, repeating his words in a mocking voice. “Watch you. One week here and you done start talking like a Yankee.”
“I’m going to be living here for a while, David. I have to learn to talk the people language. How else I go expected them to understand me?”
“Well I hope you don’t lose the Trini in you yes. Next ting you hear, you coming back Trinidad with man and ting.”
“With a man? How you connect talking Yankee with being gay? I’m not coming back with a boyfriend. Changing the way I talk doesn’t change my sexuality. And why are we even taking about gay people again?”
“Well, ent it was you who went to a all-boys school for 7 years?”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”
“All, I saying is that fuh you tuh be careful. It does have real gay people here.”
“What do you mean? That all the gay people in Trinidad are fake gay people?” David let loose a long stupes. “Yuh know what I mean. They more open about it here nah.”
“Ok David. I’ll make sure to look out for gay people.” David grabbed his little brother and hugged him tight. “I feeling happy for yuh little bro. You is the first one in the family to go and study in foreign. Make good on that big brain yuh have right?” Seth patted his brother on the back. “Don’t worry, I will. I’ll make you guys proud.”
“Remember to make mummy proud too, right?” David said, releasing him.
“Yeah, I’ll make mummy proud too.”
David moved back and open the door of the car that was next to him. “Enjoy yuh orientation thing. Yuh sure yuh don’t want me to wait for tuh finish? I could drop yuh back by aunty Stacey yuh know.”
“Nah man. I’ll take the subway. I have to learn these things too.”
“Well, Richard and de other people from de SACS should be waiting tuh meet yuh in de orientation booth they have. Yuh should go and check them out.”
“I will.”
“Well, ah go see yuh lata.” David waved to Seth as he got in to the car and drove off. Seth waved back behind the car as it drove off and disappeared into the New York traffic. Seth felt his heart drop a little as David drove away. He felt alone in this foreign land. He didn’t like feeling alone. He shook the negative thoughts out of his head, stiffened his shoulders and walked through the gates and onto the campus.

The college orientation village was a happy lively affair, despite the gloom of the impending rain. It bustled with new students looking at all the stuff offered at their new university and old returning students who came to meet up with new friends and capitalize on all the free stuff being given away. Seth made his way to the SACS booth, which wasn’t that difficult to find, seeing as a massive banner decorated by a large blue cross and the letters SACS could be clearly seen from a great distance away. As he came closer, he recognized a familiar face that stood there at the booth. “Aye, Seth boy! What’s up?” said Richard in deep rich baritone voice as he came over and hugged Seth. “How things going?”
“I’m good for now. It’s great to see you again.” Richard was from Trinidad as well, being a few years older than Seth. They had gone to the same church as children in Trinidad and kept in touch even when Richard had moved away to study. He was in fact a great influence when it came to Seth choosing this school to study in. “It’s good to see you man. I’m glad you came here.”
“Me too. So what do you have going on here?” He said pointing to the stall. “I heard plenty about it.”
“Well this is the SACS,” said Richard, “The St. Augustine Christian Society. Where Christians from all over campus can come and meet fellowship and grow in the Lord. We have meetings every week, Wednesday afternoons. It’s really good you should come. Here, you want a T-shirt?” Richard threw at T-shirt at Seth.
“Sounds really nice. You guys have evangelism stuff going too?” asked Seth, trying on the T-shirt to see how it felt. “You mean if we go out and tell people about Christianity and thing? Yeah, we do. We even have a couple people doing that right now.” He looked over Seth’s shoulder. “Here are some of them coming now.” Seth turned to see a group of girls all wearing the SACS shirts, with various tracts in their hands. He noted with some interest that one of them had a particularly nice smile as they approached. “Hey Richard!” The girl in front called out.
“Hey Sarah!” he replied. “Come here. I want you to meet someone here. This is Seth, the guy from Trinidad I was telling you about. Seth, this is Sarah, our music equipment coordinator.”
“Hey Seth.” Said Sarah offering her hand enthusiastically. “Welcome to the St. Augustine! I trust you’ll be joining the SACS?” She asked, eyeing the shirt he was wearing. “Yeah, I guess I will.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that you are. It’s always good to have a solider on the frontlines. Over here, it’s always a war, day in and day out.”
“Sarah tends to get carried away with the military analogies.” Richard whispered to Seth. “No, really. You’d be surprised with the kind of things you see people doing here. Case in point, we just saw to girls kissing. Kissing! In public!” Sarah sighed. “I have no idea what the world is coming too.” Seth thought that with some degree of irony that this was exactly what David was talking to him about mere minutes ago.


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