College Cashiers Receipts. September 7, 1986.

This appears to be the oldest receipt in my collection. From September, 1986, this receipt for $1128.34 records payment for an entry fee of some sort for college. I do not specifically recall this fee, or the occasion of writing a check in this amount, but it is probably the Matriculation Deposit. I remember the Matriculation Deposit because I thought “Matriculation” was an unusual and provocative word. It sounded vaguely risqué to me, despite its innocuous meaning.

Much of my early college experiences have suffocated under the phlegm of mental constipation, as well as a concerted effort on my part to forget about that period of my life. College was, from as early as I remember being aware of it in grade school, just something I had to get out of the way. That is not to say that I loathed the experience or the place. Far from it. The place was fine, and many good times were had, some not-so-good times as well but I would think that is typical enough. Upon completion I just wanted to put this experience of college in the past, as if to prove that I was self-sufficient enough to have never even needed it.

This receipt, then, documents the beginning of that period, this 4-year stretch of holding my breath before real life began.

I was uneasy and gawky through most of college. My protracted adolescence fed into mildly anti-social behaviors, mental depression, and was further extended by religious ambivalence.

I attended private Catholic schools for most of my youth. In those places religious observation, as casual as it may have seemed, was a part of the scheduled routine. Outside of that context I tried to find my way into similar environments of church and social structure, but it never worked. Church, I discovered, intimidated me. Prior to college my encounters with church services were more or less mandatory, but when the onus was on me to participate in a culturally looser church setting I think I simply did not fit in.

I re-discovered this fear again when I moved to New York 4 years later. The cathedrals here are magnificent, so glorious in their arches and skyward aspirations that I feel like nothing in their midst. The environment of church in this town seems strangely competitive and, separately, surreal. There is so much exposure to religion in this town, while I would rather keep my spiritual tics between myself and the confessional. In some abstract fashion I imagine a purity of religious purpose which erases a need for physical structures and social rituals.

Whatever the case, my attempts at continuing involvement in church and faith all fell by the wayside in college. I have not thought about this for a long time.