extreme measures by j.h. tompkins Time machine

I WAS BARRELING down East Colton at 9:15 a.m., 10 days into the fall 2003 semester. I had 15 minutes to get to art class, and nothing could make me turn around – except a missing iPod. By the time I opened the door to Penny McElroy's collage extravaganza, it was 9:45. As the weeks wore on, I raised the bar when it came to tardiness. I had the best intentions, and it took the holiday break for me to understand my ill-conceived mission: I was trying to stop time – not to ward off the inevitable but to give myself a few moments to catch up.

One could call it a crisis – I'm speaking frankly here – but I wasn't on a Ponce de León trip, looking for a desert fountain to restore hair and attract co-eds. I was the victim of an input overload, courtesy of Philosophy 240, SOAN 320, History 329, and Collage. Ideas were coming at me like rebel rockets in the cradle of civilization, a wake-up call that felt like an ambush. I'd done some living and thought some thoughts – so when a teacher said, "You bring a lot to the table," I said, "Cool," mistaking the beginning for the end.

Thank god for the iPod, an objet d'art, conversation piece, and music box all in one. There's an inverse relationship between volume level and the ability to process visual information. I became horribly self-conscious, and the slim, sexy toy offered a nearly invisible shield.

I was a mystery to my fellow students – a fallen member of the faculty, sentenced to a year of undergrad penance. Soon I became a mystery to myself, a returning student learning that there's no going back. The medium was the message in that regard, and I worked in reverse all semester. Certainties gave way to questions until one night when gravity failed altogether; God, Marx, and modernism were dead. I was adrift in a world of relativity where, as Jim Carroll once wrote, "nothing is true / it's all forgiven." I was obsessed – Kierkegaard had nothing on me – dispensing with classes and homework for a higher cause, even if no one believed me.

I was, at times, so lost even I couldn't find myself, saved only by my temporary résumé (J.H. Tompkins, University of Redlands, '04), the quotation marks that forevermore will bracket the word "real," and my iPod. Back in the Bay, although I was all about hip-hop, I didn't broadcast the fact in the interest of keeping things "real" (who wants an old white guy on their team?). But out in the desert, I was free to represent. I scored Boo Yaa Tribe's West Koasta Nostra at the Ontario Mills Virgin Megastore, drove back to campus, and listened to the single "Bang On" 40 times in a row. A week later, I chopped it up with the Tribe's Young Gawti (seriously). Too $hort (ditto) phoned from the Miami airport. The connection was lousy, and I couldn't understand a word he said, but I couldn't have cared less.

Rappin' 4-Tay dominated my playlist all fall; 4 tha Hard Way, Bigga than tha Game, and Introduction to Mackin' are incredible albums loaded with tight, simple rhymes and rock-solid G-funk. But looking back – I can do that now without breaking into a sweat – I realize the real attraction was his obsession with times past. He positioned himself as a community elder on "I Paid My Dues," the first track on 1996's Off Parole: "Allow me to take you back down memory lane / When a playa was so young in this rap game." And in subsequent albums he served up cuts like "What Ya Gonna Do," "Altogether Now," "Ghetto Bluz," "One Night," and my favorite, "What's Wrong With the Game." The whole college thing took me into uncharted waters, and if the past wasn't always spectacular, it was, at least, known and therefore safe. I listened to 4-Tay until it felt like I knew him; we spilled a little liquor for who I was and what I used to be.

It goes without saying that when you take off the headphones, "reality" is there waiting. I tried to keep them on 24-7, but occasionally, when class didn't start on time, for instance, a situation would develop.

"Hey, you're the guy with the music." The speaker was a man barely out of his teens, who sported glasses and the kind of white shirt-tie-gray slacks fashion popularized by young warriors from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He stared, waiting for a response.

"Huh?" I replied, fighting off the urge to deliver the "You looking at me?" soliloquy of God's Lonely Man, Travis Bickle.

"You're the guy with the music," he repeated. "My roommate told me about you. You're always listening to music."

I was annoyed, but before I could respond, missionary boy tried again.

"My dad likes the Beatles," he said.

Professor O'Neill was beginning to stir, and chatter waned as students shifted in their seats to face the front of the room. I leaned toward my interrogator, who – after jerking backward as if the cavemen in a museum diorama had suddenly come alive – cocked his head and leaned toward me. Herr Professor scratched Heidegger and Dasein on the blackboard, 30 pens began to move, I brought my lips to his left ear.

"Fuck yourself, asshole," I whispered. He blanched, straightened his shoulders, and – when class ended, 100 minutes later – bolted for the door. He didn't return. I did.

E-mail J.H. Tompkins at tommy@sfbg.com.