Violence sur la mer

[So absorbed was I in John H.'s visit that I didn't even hear about Friday night's carnage in Isla Vista until breezing past a newspaper yesterday afternoon. It wasn't until this morning that I read about it in depth. I could picture the scene so well that the TV news reports, when I finally saw them, seemed flat compared to my lurid imaginings, fed as they were by memory. How many parties did I go to on Sabado Tarde Road when I was at UCSB?]

[If you went to the kind of university where Friday night was everything, then probably you can imagine it. Hordes of 18-to-21 year olds, wandering up and down the street, from party to party, scoping each other out, daring each other to greater heights of binge drinking and concurrent stupid behavior. Even without the charming combination of alcohol and methamphetamine turning unstable children into homicidal maniacs, I.V.'s a dangerous place for partiers: a steep cliff one block from where the killings happened claims at least a couple of lives per school year. Then, of course, there's the usual: date rape, alcohol overdose, fag bashing, vandalism (the air most Saturday and Sunday mornings is redolent with the fumes of still-smoldering furniture).]

[I wouldn't have missed it at the time, but I wouldn't want to repeat any of it. I can't think of any lessons to take from this event, but it has been a trip, dude, to see Isla Vista in the headlines, for the first time, most likely, since students burned down the Bank of America branch in 1970. It really is a pretty quiet, scruffy place most of the time. Really.]

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