The goat.

In my first year, Matt and I kept a room the likes of which ye have never seen. We had two admiral beds, three dressers, four desks, six chairs, one futon, and two empty closets. All we owned was strew about the floor, covering its entirety in a one foot deep blanket of crap.

Papers, clothes, books, empty beer and coke bottles, empty bags of chips, broken glass, an empty, dripping mini-keg, and so on.

So, this myth evolved that Matt and I had managed to hide a Goat in our closets, since we weren't using them for anything else. The myth grew and spread to other houses, and soon, people started believing it. On more than one occasion, we got visitors from Cody and Mulock asking to see the mythical Goat.

This myth is much akin to the one Les started earlier this year that I had dated Alanis in high school, and that the song "You Oughta Know" was about me. That myth grew to the point where this girl from Trinity actually believed it, and asked me out solely on that basis. I declined, but did not dispel the myth.

But back to the Goat.

One day, Tom went to a petting zoo and took a picture of a Goat. He returned to residence and posted it on my door, with the caption "Poet's Closet" over it. The myth grew. Someone had actually seen, and photographed the legendary beast. As time went on, stories began to circulate that Matt and I occasionally rented out the Goat for sexual purposes in order to finance our drinking habits. At first, people just laughed and shrugged it off. But as Les and Will and Tom and others would go around saying (with straight faces) that they had enjoyed the Goat on more than one occasion, people began to nervously believe that too.

The climax of the story occurred near the end of the year. Tanya had brought her dog down from her home for the afternoon. It was tall and hairy, and very Goat-like. So, Tanya had entered Jen's room and left the dog right outside in the hall. Pauline, leaving her room to go to Fung, sees this thing at the end of the hall, freezes in terror, and screams out, "MY GOD! IT'S TRUE! THE GOAT! THE GOAT!" At which everybody bolts out of their rooms in the first floor, myself included, as I was also in Jen's room, and collapsed to the floor laughing.

And ever since, I have carried the picture of the Goat with me. And ever since the myth survived. To this day, there are people who lived in residence that year, that still believe Matt and I had a Goat in our room.

And that's that.

In love and dreams,

Poet

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And it lives on! This photo of a UC residence construction fence was taken in June 2005: