Cigarettes and Alcohol

Last night, I went to the comp meeting for Harvard's oldest publication, The Advocate, a literary magazine formerly edited and contributed to by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, and Norman Mailer, among many others.

The meeting was held in the upstairs room of 21 South Street, hardwood floor and dark wood moldings and bookshelves all the way around. Two long, wooden tables set up like the head tables at a ritual initiation: two martini glasses offered cigarettes, fat white candles burned down into themselves like shy people, mismatching wine glasses gathered in crowds around six bottles of red wine. Freshmen in Harvard gear kept uncomfortably to themselves and sophomores and underclassmen mingled with the board members that they knew, kids that were dressed in the same colors and tones, sulky, slouchy, cleanly shaved but growing out, black-framed glasses, tattooed backs, polo shirts and black tank tops, upstanding, dramatic, buzzed, reminiscent of all those people you know.

At Harvard, many publications and clubs involve a "comp," which, as I understand it, is short for "competition." It is part initiation, part training, part audition: every institution decides for itself how much of each part their own comp is. The six boards of the Advocate have comps of varying intensity: presentations, essays, submission and revenue solicitation, assignments. Some boards have two rounds of cuts.

I'm scared shitless. I need a glass of wine.