Walking Journal #14

For these next few walking journals, I will explore the Reno of Willy Vlautin’s Northline. In Northline, the main character explores a variety of locations that are still present in the Reno that I call home today. The Reno that the main character, Allison, explores is a much darker Reno than I have become accustomed to. In Allison’s Reno, shady characters lurk in the darkness and on the shadowy streets that Allison calls home.

In the story, Allison finds a companion in Dan, a shy, tortured character who seems to share the pain that Allison often feels. Dan remembers a story about a dark occurrence that happened on the very university campus that I call home. “‘What did happen to you?’ she asked. ‘Well,’ he said after a time, ‘I was walking home through the college grounds up at UNR. It was nighttime. I was walking home from a party my cousin had. I had longer hair then, maybe it was almost as long as yours. But, otherwise, I was dressed normal. Jeans and a flannel coat, I don’t know. It was late, maybe three in the morning, and there was no one around, and then four guys came up. I didn’t know them. I had never seen them before, they were drunk. It seemed like they came out of thin air. They started saying things to me. They called me queer. They kept yelling that at me, and then they surrounded me. I hadn’t said a word and then I just started running, I didn’t know what else to do. There was something going on I didn’t understand. The guys were young. I don’t know if they were in a fraternity or what. I didn’t know what was going to happen. They chased after me. One of them tripped me and I fell, and then they just started kicking me. One of the guys bent down and started hitting me in the face. Then another one did and then another. They had to rebuild my cheekbone. They broke my arm and hand. They broke two ribs, and punctured one of my lungs. I got a concussion and my other hand was completely ruined. One of them stomped on it with his boot a few times. And then they ran off. I don’t know why they did it. I laid there and I was sure I was going to die. I just laid there on the sidewalk. There was nothing I could do’” (Vlautin 164).

This seems outlandish to me: while the University campus that Dan experiences is full of terror and shady characters, the University of my neighborhood is the only place I consistently feel safe. The University is the center of my neighborhood. Not only do I live here, but I find comfort in my dorm room and the various places I’ve explored here on campus. In addition to the campus itself seeming to burst with comfort, the people on campus are always friendly. Regardless of the situation, everyone on campus has been open and friendly, whether I needed directions to my next class or just holding the door open. There’s literally no one on campus that has been not been happy to start a conversation or simply be polite. It’s hard for me to imagine the dark reality of Dan’s recollection.

For this journal, I walked through the campus with my roommate; not quite at three in the morning as Dan describes, but later at night. We chose a path that’s familiar to us: from our dorm, past Lincoln Hall, and to the Joe. While the atmosphere may be more “creepy” at night, the overall feeling of comfort doesn’t fully disappear. Walking past the volleyball courts behind White Pine, it’s almost possible to imagine a scene in which darker characters of the night could harm an innocent walker, but even though the atmosphere is darker, the event is still seemingly outlandish. We don’t run into many people, but those few that we do walk past just hurry along on their own business. There are no terrible characters of the night as Dan describes. Maybe Vlautin describes a time in which violence was more prevalent, or perhaps my roommate and I were fortunate enough to simply not run into people like the dark characters from Northline. Whatever the case, it’s hard to imagine a scene like the one that plays out on the University campus of Northline, when the campus that I’ve become accustomed to is a safe zone, not a dark and dangerous place.

While Willy Vlautin’s Northline is based in real locations of Reno, I find it hard to compare the University of my reality to the University described in Dan’s recollection of darkness and harm. The University that I call home is simply too comfortable for me to imagine a scene such as the one in Northline.