For my Winter Term project, I create a documentary about the lives of my high school graduating class.
I meet Jeff and Johnny, who Cathy will forever refer to as “your ruffian friends.”
Indulgence
I trip on LSD for the first time with someone whose name will be omitted to protect the extremely guilty.
I meet Nadine.
I meet Janine.
Janine and I “hang out” for a while.
Nadine and I “hang out” for a while.
One of my all time lingering regrets is that a relationship with Nadine did not come to pass. She’s a hot Harvard lawyer now.
Senior Year
Begin my senior year at DePauw. I lived in Rector.
Crazy Summer
Cathy and I break up.
I try to kill myself. An attempt is made to hospitalize me. I avoid this by agreeing to therapy.
I spend a lot of the summer in therapy and on anti-depressants.
I stay on campus during the summer, rooming with Ryan. We have a mysterious passive-aggressive falling out. But then we went out to the soccer field and beat each other up with foam SCA swords. It seemed to help.
I discover the card game Magic: The Gathering. I promptly become obsessed with it, dragging everyone around me into a sick addiction. I ended up making about $600 selling premium cards on the Internet. Pre eBay, yo.
Cathy
Start dating Cathy.
I have a premonition that we will get married, but it will end in disaster. I didn’t care.
K
Dave, Ryan and I make the short film, “K.” It tests the endurance of our friendships.
I start smoking. I discover that I lack whatever genetic switch that makes people addicted to nicotine, alcohol or drugs. I switch my use of such things on and off for years later.
Books I Read in 1993
(3.3 Books/Month Average)
1. End of the Circle
2. Foley’s Luck
3. Tea & Sympathy
4. The Golden Ass
5. The Princess De Cleves
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
7. Candida
8. Agamemnon
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Lysistrata
11. Getting Beyond “How Are You?”
12. Hedda Gabler
13. The Farlander Papers
14. The Merchant of Venice
15. C.S. Lewis and His World
16. The Cherry Orchard
17. The Three Sisters
18. Much Ado About Nothing
19. Henry IV, Part I
20. Long Day’s Journey Into Night
21. Summer and Smoke
22. A Streetcar Named Desire
23. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
24. Hamlet
25. Orlando
26. The Trial
27. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
28. King Lear
29. Curse of the Starving Class
30. Jazz
31. Equus
32. Burn This
33. Anna Karenina
34. Neuromancer
35. The Novel
36. Jurassic Park
37. Count Zero
38. The Lies We Believe
39. The Last Command
40. A Chorus of Stones
41. Burning Chrome
42. Mona Lisa Overdrive
Irish Coffee
I have my first alcoholic beverage at a restaurant while out with my mom.
That’s right, I never touched alcohol until I was 21. Unless you count the diluted rumpopo my mom gave me as a child.
Dichotomy
The mood provokes writing. The dark steaminess of the bar envelopes me like I’m wearing a soaking wet trenchcoat. I’m smoking because it gives me a sense of adding something physical to the atmosphere; it is my aura. I sit there, looking through the wall, the scene, everything, and I think about ordering a drink. Something with a bite. Something that will make the bartender raise an eyebrow and the patrons turn their heads with my favorite mixture of disgust and respect. Continue reading →
When There’s Nothing Left to Say
When there’s nothing left to say
And I’m standing here breathing
Into the receiver which has been stuffed
With the black marshmallows of your silence,
And the phone is a plastic leech
Nursing warmly at my earlobe,
I realize that the picture on my wall
Of Bora Bora
Is not Bora Bora at all,
But a beach on Kokomo
That has been made to look exactly like
A beach at Bora Bora.
Now that I am on to the fact that
Someone is going around creating flawless facsimiles
Of tropical islands,
I had better be pretty damn sure
That Key Largo really is Key Largo
Because that’s where I’m going
To forget that “we” ever gave each other anything more than
Furtive glances.
I know you think that I’ll never carve pumpkins again
Because only “we” carved pumpkins
In that special exclusive way,
And I should want to keep those moments sacred.
But you’re wrong.
I’ll sit there on the beach at Key Largo
And carve a pumpkin every fucking day
And it won’t mean a thing to me.
Sometimes there’ll be a girl there
To help me carve the pumpkin.
Yes, hon, a girl; someone other than yourself.
In fact, there’ll be a different girl every day!
And when we’re done carving that pumpkin,
We’ll roll naked in the sand
And the pumpkin meat.
There’ll be little almond-shaped seeds
Plastered all over us
And I will not be thinking about you at all.
You, of course, are oblivious to all of this.
You believe I should be concerned with the fact that
One day you woke up to find that your safe little world
Was really made of slinkies and tinker toys.
I remain silent on the phone.
I let you think I’m thinking about you thinking that I’m thinking About what you thought I said to you.
But I’m not thinking that at all.
I’m thinking that I’d rather dangle my balls
In a piranha tank
Than give you the satisfaction of weeping into the phone,
Cracking open my heart,
Making me say “Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s okay.”
You’re not going to get that from me this time.
All you can hear now is the muffled bubbling of your voice
As I drown you.
I flush and flush,
But you won’t fit down the hole
And the coiled umbilical cord stretches taught,
Trying to stay attached to my world.
It doesn’t matter.
I’m gone.
I’m off to Key Largo
Or whatever the fuck they’re calling it today.