# East Lancing

**Published by:** [POAPs Gone Wild](https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild/)
**Published on:** 2023-01-02
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@poapsgonewild/east-lancing

## Content

I was struggling to dig the hotel keycard out of my pocket–knapsack draped over one shoulder, one hand half-heartedly holding my duffle–when my cell rang. I dropped the duffle and paused my dig to answer my cell. In the kerfuffle it slipped my mind I was in the throes of a weeklong battle with a nagging, vicious ear cyst (above the right lobe). The bulge felt larger by the hour. I worried it might become so bulbous to block the canal and affect my hearing, though I could never get a good look in the mirror to properly assess the severity. The instant cell tapped ear I was struck by a searing pain, as if malleting a red-hot needle into my skull. I yelped and dropped my cell. It bounced off the carpeted floor. I doubled over. My knapsack slid off my shoulder and entangled my feet. I tried to brace myself against a wall that was further than it appeared and fell, banging my ear again, this time on the door jam. Red-hot ice pick. Are you okay? A woman crouched over me. She was giggling. I told her I wasn’t in the mood for feigned concern and that I had a serious malady, an ear cyst. I told her I didn’t see why the suffering of others should bring such amusement. I stopped short of calling her a bitch. She paused her giggle and apologized. It was a bad habit she’d picked up from her dad. When she was a child he used to take her out in his pickup, park on the side of the road, drink gin, and startle pedestrians and cyclists by leanin’ on the horn like he was the tax man. I was taken aback at how quickly she revealed such personal details about her rearing, though admittedly it was rather disarming and perhaps that was the intended effect. Perhaps this trick was something she’d also learned from her drunken loser of a father. Not to pry, but is that MetaMask? You long on ETH? She was smiling again, already. She’d picked up my cell without my consent and noticed the wallet app. I must have unlocked the screen in my failed attempt to answer and it hadn’t yet re-locked. A minor security lapse in this instance that certainly could have played out differently if one of those rogue maids you hear about had happened to walk by and decide they were an opportunist. No, Cardano, because it’s the only peer-reviewed blockchain and Charles Hoskinson is the second coming of Christ, I said through gritted teeth. Rather than the confused reaction I anticipated, she giggled again, furthering my disarmament. She asked if I’d attempted to drain the cyst to relieve the pain. I pointed out how this was clearly not possible since I couldn’t see it. I have a justifiable fear of blindly sticking needles toward and into orifices. She offered to give it a go. To drain a stranger’s ear cyst. Disgusting. But my head was throbbing. I acquiesced and we went inside my room. It turned out we were in town for the same conference and equally upset they’d chose to hold it in East Lansing. We disparaged the green and white and then began discussing other things. We shared Michigan roots. She’d gone to high school in Ypsi, I’d spent years five to fifteen in Traverse City. She’d flown in from Minneapolis, where she’d worked as a personal assistant for several years since a failed foray into retail with her cousin. I live in Boston, stuck for more than a decade since “landing” a mediocre job out of grad school. I realized later I never got her name. The cyst drained beautifully, an explosion followed by a prolonged comedown. She had a sewing needle; it didn’t take barely a prod before the dull pop, a hard jettison that settled on the bed covers. It looked like a small animal had pleasured itself in my linens. Then the extended squeeze for full release, opaque liquid pouring down my neck and coating her fingernails. Then the mixture of blood. We used near an entire roll of flimsy hotel toilet paper to clean up. Like two schoolchildren admiring the soggy gobs in the trash can, returning to my upper lobe to extract every last morsel until my ear was red and flat as a deflated balloon. By the time we reached conclusion, we’d missed the keynote and were already late to the first breakout session. We parted ways and resolved to meet that evening at the lobby bar. I overslept–a failure in two parts, the hotel staff with my wakeup call, me for trusting them to do their job. By the time I made it down she was gone. (Or she got cold feet.) I considered knocking but wasn’t sure which room was hers. I raised my fist to the door across the hall but skin did not touch wood. In the moment, it seemed too much. The next morning, she’d slid a QR code under my door. I scanned it with my cell and up popped a POAP. Title: The East Lancing. Description: At the Marriot in East Lansing, you participated in the Great Lancing. And what a burst it was. The image was a sewing needle covered in goo. Impressive design work for such a quick turnaround. One other wallet minted the POAP but it had no ENS name, just a string of meaningless numbers. I am still yet to succeed in contacting her; my attempts to reach out via third-party communication apps like NFTYChat have been dead ends. I check in on her POAP collection, but her mints are few and far between and follow no logical pattern, though recently she was in New York at a gallery opening. The closest we’d been since our time together. It seems the only hope, however faint, is she might monitor my POAP collection and take the initiative for a surprise reunion. With this in mind I began attending a weekly meetup in Cambridge. The spread is dreadful and the people are stuffy, but they always distribute a POAP. Each time I mint, I feel I’m sending her a message impossible to confirm receipt. I’ll be here next week too. My dirty little secret. While the others mark another gathering to eat buffalo cauliflower wings and drink abominable beer, I mark another week passed I haven’t heard from her, and my POAP collection becomes not a record of memories but a record of memories lost, of time not spent with the one I adore. A more robust communications app layer might soon emerge on top of the Proof of Attendance Protocol, but I fear in my heart of hearts by then it will be too late.

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