Mister Wang is on the balcony.
I’m not quite sure what he’s doing. I think he’s just taking in the view. Or maybe he’s having a phone call- I’m not quite sure.
I am in the kitchen section of the college HQ. There is a stash of wine bottles by my right.
I never really used to pay attention to the wine. In my head, it was in the same category with the like shoulder-high rack of wine bottles in one of the meeting rooms. The one with a table and an iMac and bookshelves and sofas.
I had that room to myself on a recent afternoon. Reclining in the extremely comfortable chair, reading about a newly-popular deep learning library called Keras on the iMac screen. Thinking about neural networks and activation functions and feeling like some grey-haired Stanford professor.
In my head, the assortment of wine bottles to my left were not for consumption by mere mortals like myself. The wine was arranged there for a different species- one I had never encountered before.
In my head, the bottles by my left were not wine, they were art. To be protected from contact with my inquisitive epidermis, lest those invaluable vessels dripping with rich history, instantly crumble into regrettable dust upon contact with my lowly Homo Sapien skin.
But the bottles of wine in the kitchen- the bottles of wine here by my right? These ones are different.
Like a few weeks ago I walked into the HQ kitchen and saw a half-full bottle. I paused mid-stride to make sense of what I was seeing.
Wait, this wine is for drinking? This wine is to be drunk? By human beings?
Ohhhhhh.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Okay. Okay. Okay I get it now. I get it now.
I think there had been some sort of a celebration at the HQ a number of hours before. Hence the wine.
Mister Wang is on the balcony.
I intend to transport one of the wine bottles into my backpack.
I do not know if that is stealing. I know chocolates and general snacks are accessible to all, but I just don’t know about the wine.
I don’t know if it’s expensive wine. To be honest I have no idea how to identify expensive wine, either by the bottle or by the taste. I think confirmation bias could make otherwise unremarkable wine taste expensive. To like me the uninitiated, it definitely would. It probably would have much less of an effect on expert tasters and stuff though.
I wonder if Mister Wang on the balcony can hear my thoughts.
I wonder if he has already perceived my intentions. He gave me a brief glance a few seconds ago.
I don’t know. He seems to be very engrossed in whatever he is doing.
I don’t know. Or maybe he is just being disingenuous.
The wine bottle is in my bag.
In my head I am coming up with explanations for my actions. I am advocating my innocence to the skeptical college-faculty superego in my brain. I can see myself in front of a disciplinary council, drawing on ethical frameworks and logical arguments to exonerate my very pitiable self from impending doom and desolation.
The school administration has been expelling people in recent times. I wonder if I could get expelled for stealing wine from the HQ. I don’t know.
But wait, I don’t even know if this is stealing. The wine is definitely accessible to general staff. I think. For students? I don’t know. For a student sneaking a bottle into his bag to drink back at the dorms with his girlfriend? I have no idea.
The wine bottle is in my bag.
My head keeps dancing about in a web of ethical conundrums as I head out to Market Street and begin to skateboard down to Powell.
A Kenyan classmate just helped me with a wine-opener. She says something about having some sort of share in the wine.
I’m not quite sure what she’s talking about. There’s only room for two this night.
I head down the stairs. About ninety percent of the class is home for summer break- and so the building in Nob Hill which functions as our dorms, is largely empty. The girlfriend and I have been making use of a number of different rooms in the building, in addition to our assigned rooms for the summer.
I call one the “flute room”, because during the session one of the occupants used to play the flute.
It was somewhat ticklish for me being in that room with the girlfriend, and thinking about the relatively innocent conversations I had had right there, with the occupants of the room a number of months before.
Hm, if only these people knew what we’re doing in their room now. What we’re doing with their beds.
Today it’s a different room. This one has a view of California street. Like my room.
I’m heading downstairs, wine-opener in hand.
The stolen wine should set a very stimulating mood for the night.
This night should be a very interesting one.
It’s a number of days later.
I am having a conversation with a resident assistant- a classmate from Malaysia. She is telling me about a strange discovery she made while locking up one of the rooms in the building for the summer.
The room was supposed to have already been cleared out, and so she was surprised to find an unempty bottle of wine in the wardrobe. Along with a blanket. And a number of other things which had very tenuous strings to their consequently ambiguous owners.
Hm. I wonder where the wine came from. I wonder how it got there. I wonder how it got opened, and I wonder what activities the beings who drank from the bottle intended to engage in.
Hm. I wonder.
This life is a mystery.
Image: Drinking (unjustifiably?) expensive wine at Shiro- an interesting Pan Asian restaurant in Lagos Nigeria.
Mayowa Osibodu's Blog. 