If you’re a student at UBC, you know Homecoming: blue and gold, go sports, football, rah rah, etc. Once you’ve attended a couple of ‘em, you know all there is to know. Been there, done that. Hoco who?
Homecoming may never change, but you can. We at The Ubyssey spent the iconic kick-off to UBC’s school year with Chill Lestguy, UBC’s most nonchalant super senior, to learn about how to project a relaxed aura on an otherwise crazy lit movie day.
Though I was supposed to meet with Lestguy at 1 p.m. sharp, he was nowhere to be found. After 45 minutes of twiddling my thumbs and one hour of wandering around the Nest aimlessly, I found him with a black coffee in the back corner of the Gallery.
“Nonchalant tip one,” he said with a smize. “Always let them come to you. The nonchalant don’t seek out their followers — they are curated by chance.”
Ignoring the implication that I was just one of Lestguy’s followers — I’m a journalist, why does no one believe me? — I followed him into the fire escape. As we descended, I learned another cardinal rule of chillness: elevators are the most awkward, chalant spaces on campus.
“A truly mysterious dude isn’t caged by the metal doors of the institution, man,” said Lestguy.
Arriving at the pre-party, we began our journey toward the stadium to the musical stylings of Travis Scott, featuring unintelligibly-muffled megaphone shouting. There was pomp (a marching band) and circumstance (a lot of drunk first-years). However, after looking down at my official journalist notebook for two minutes, I lost Lestguy to the crowd.
He reappeared after three hours had elapsed, finding me sitting on the curb of the street party, head in hands and cheap cooler also in hands. He was holding the Norton Anthology of British Literature and a 1915 Hammond Multiplex Typewriter.
When asked how he got all that shit through security, Lestguy said, “No big deal, bruh. I know a guy.”
Though I pressed the subject, Lestguy’s lips were sealed (metaphorically — in actuality they were constantly slightly parted and every 14 minutes he’d bite his lower lip, but in a really natural unplanned way). After telling me “I gotta piss lowkey,” Lestguy left, but shortly returned in a new outfit.
“Oh, this?” He pinched the fabric of the shirt at his chest and pulled it out like guys do sometimes. “A worn-in-game 1929 Hardy Cup-winning jersey.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Was lying around somewhere, no big deal.”
But readers, it was, in fact, a big deal. Paired with wide-leg vintage Levis, Lestguy looked devastatingly mysterious. We took our seats in the very back corner of the stadium and Lestguy began reading from a dog-eared page of his Norton Anthology.
“Are you going to watch the game?”
“I’d rather play — in the game of life, that is.”
Lestguy was a sight to behold: leaning up against the wall, legs across the bleachers, hair mussed and jawline perpetually in what can only be described as a state of “mew,” he read Blake and Barbault; he thumbed through Barret Browning and regular Browning. Though Crazy P banged on his drum and the DJ played that funky music, Lestguy remained unbothered, chillaxin’, relaxin’ all cool.
“Homecoming is obviously BYOA,” Lestguy said with a wink, “but it’s also BYOB.”
“Lestguy, what? BYOA? And BYOB? That’s illegal, you can’t —”
Oh, but he did. From a silver flask kept I don’t even know where, he poured himself a hefty portion of brown liquor into a crystal glass kept I also don’t know where.
“BYOA means Bring Your Own Anthology. I thought you were a journalist. You’re supposed to know what you’re writing about, no?”
Like a fool, I turned my gaze back to the game. I’d overplayed my hand. He knew I knew nothing. I was chalant through and through. I’d never be as nonchalant as Lestguy. I’d never be him. A whisper of Lestguy’s cigarette smoke met my nose. The scent was really chill and normal.
The crowd roared, a touchdown scored. The click-clack of Lestguy’s typewriter punctuated my realization that I was simply not good at projecting an unbothered energy. I gave up on my interview because only chalant guys gaf about student journalism. I watched the game like a regular person. I hooted, I hollered, I found some of those stupid blow-up things you smack together.
Suddenly, I felt a presence from behind my shoulder. It was Thunder the Thunderbird. He placed a wing on my shoulder and spoke in a hushed tone for my ears only.
“Sometimes” — I smelt bourbon on his breath — “the most nonchalant energy” — Is that cigarette smoke? — “is found in the most chalant of guys.”
I gasped. Lestguy? The mascot? Nuanced, complex, confusing af. I had many questions, but ostensibly I no longer cared. A true assertion of his nonchalant demeanour was evident through the embrace of the overtly chalant. If Lestguy could be cool and rahhhhhhhhhhh go birds, so could I. Maybe the true nonchalant was the friends we made along the way. Or maybe it was in whatever was in the flask Lestguy had slipped me through his feathery bird suit.
