Wednesday
As the quarter wore on, there were more and more days when I didn't write anything in 1954. I'm not sure if was just that I was busy, or there was some other reason. It just sort of happened.
Thursday
"History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes." Such a great quote from Mark Twain. And true -- when history "repeats," it's never an exact duplication.
Monday
I don't know why, but I didn't immediately set up long distance on my dorm phone. After more than a week not talking to Melissa, though, I suddenly this day felt I had to talk with her immediately. I got long distance hooked up and called her right away. I was nearly in tears when we finally spoke, and we talked for an hour and a half straight.
Tuesday
The drawing here is one I'm really proud of. It's both a devil and flames, meant to evoke the Hell's bargain Faust enters to achieve genius.
Someone pulled the fire alarm in my dorm, so rather than sit around outside I decided to walk over to Neesham's dorm and hang out with her for awhile. She and her roommate and I talked for hours, and I ended up staying the night.
I don't remember if it was this night or another one, but I remember having an argument with Neesham over whether you could have sex with someone without becoming emotionally attached. I argued that you could -- and I might have sort of believed it, but mostly I just really wanted to have sex with her. As much as I loved Melissa, she was insistent on maintaining her virginity, and I was one horny motherfucker by this point. Neesham never bought that one could have sex with someone while remaining committed to someone else, so we never did it, but I do have vague memories of making out with her in the middle of the night in her bed -- I may have initiated it while I was asleep, I'm not sure. I might even have just dreamed it, but I don't think I did.
My floormates were mightily impressed that I didn't come home that night, that's for sure.
I feel like I should mention that while I was definitely conscious of the fact that I was essentially cheating on the girl I loved, I had rationalized it by convincing myself that as long as I didn't give my heart to another, it wasn't entirely cheating. I think that belief was at the root of my side of the argument with Neesham. I needed to convince myself of it as much as I was trying to convince her.
Saturday
Mario's real name was Marjan. He went by Mario because nobody in Ohio could ever pronounce his Macedonian name right -- which was sort of like "Mahd-yahn." I was able to pronounce it correctly, which meant I was alright in his book.
My Mother's Creation was my sort-of-cousin Donny's band (he was the grandson of my step-grandmother, so we just thought of ourselves as cousins). He was a senior at OSU when I was a freshman, and he sang in the band. I took a bunch of friends to see him one night, and my friends were instant fans. (It helped that Don and one of the guitarists were really good looking -- the girls all swooned.) The band was really good; I bought their tape that night, I think.
Sunday
My uncle Tom lived in Newark, Ohio, just outside Columbus, and I got to know him pretty well throughout school. He's a programmer, and back then he was mostly nocturnal, so we kept similar hours.
Thursday
One of the unique aspects of the Stadium Dorm was that it was mostly student run, with a small administrative, janitorial and kitchen staff to oversee student worker, who got discounted housing in exchange for their work. My first shift under this program was in the cafeteria, at 7am. I expected to be working the line in the cafeteria, but instead the chef put me on prep for lunch. I put toppings on large pizzas for two hours. Not a bad way to wake up.
Had the other half of my math class (lecture vs. recitation) and my fourth class, honors Greek Philosphy, today. I met a couple cool people in my philosophy class, which itself was a breeze. The professor was good at interspersing his lecture with humor, and got the class discussing the philosophical topics pretty well.
Friday
I told you my Faust class was my favorite -- I realized how awesome it was on the second day. The diagram here is something that came up on a tangent in class -- the Magic Square, in which the numbers 1 through 16 are arranged so they add up to 34 in any direction, including the diagonals. It didn't have anything to do with what we were discussing, other than that it was an example of how math was seen as something somewhat magical in the Middle Ages, when Christopher Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus.
Tuesday
I think the note to the future (technically not allowed in 1954, but it happened) was from Jill, based on the handwriting. I'm sure I told a few people about "Andyhuff," the compound name that many of my high school friends knew me by.
Neesham and I confirmed that we liked each other on a "pseudo-date" at Insomnia, the coffeeshop that became my home away from home for most of freshman year, and a good portion of the next three, too. It was a pseudo-date because we both had significant others, and we talked a lot about them that night, but it was also clear that there was some not-just-friends attraction there. I was a bit conflicted, but definitely piqued. It was sort of the start of my realization that maybe Melissa was right, we should see other people. But it was a realization I fought even as it became obvious, especially in the second half of the school year, that it was the right decision to make.
Wednesday
My first day of class went well enough. I'm not sure why I was so struck by two girls with curly died hair in my math class, but there you go. Honors English went well enough, and Molly, one of my friends from orientation, was in that class, which was nice.
German H263, "The Faust Theme in Germanic Literature," was probably the best class I took in college, one of those classes that is so college-y that it's practically a cliche. It was an honors class with only 12 students in it, part of the German department but more of a literature class, taught by a somewhat eccentric professor. It was like RQ but even more finely focused. You;ll hear a lot more about it ahead.
Sunday
The rest of the floor began to fill up, and I got to meet some of my future friends and my roommate, Sin. He seemed nice enough -- he was originally from Taiwan, and still had a thick accent, which made him a little hard to understand at times. But he was amiable and easy-going -- his signature phrase was "I don't give a fuck," delivered not aggressively but with a shrug.
I met Neesham while sketching outside the Honors Center, if I recall correctly. She was from the Cleveland area, and reminded me a lot of my friends from back in Barrington -- quick-witted, snarky, politically and culturally aware. (She was also pretty, which didn't hurt a bit.) We hit it off, and we exchanged numbers so we could meet up again -- the "3" shorthand, since all the numbers on campus started with 291, 292, 293 or 294.
The Pitt was one of the bars on High Street, at the south end of campus, which was where most of the party bars were. The Pitt was one of the easier ones to get into if you were underage. I guess a bunch of the guys from the dorm and I went there that night.
Monday
UVC was the freshman orientation class. It was pretty lame, but fortunately was only five weeks, and didn't count as a grade; I had to show up, and that was it. P.E.E.R. was a group orientation type thing specifically for the dorm. It was similarly lame.
I managed to lose my ID, and found out where the campus police office was. I imagine if I were an engineering student, I might have passed it more often -- it was just on the edge of the cluster of engineering buildings -- but I think this was the only time in four years that I visited it.
Friday
Of course if something can go wrong ahead of a move, it will. It turned out Pete had broken a bone in the middle of his foot when he came down funny in a game of touch football Thursday afternoon, and so I had to take him to the hospital (which was two minutes from the house) to get a temporary cast to wear until he came home from the family trip to take me to school. He was pissed off because at first nobody believed he was that hurt, and I was pissed because I was stressed out about leaving and he was throwing a monkey wrench in the plans. As it was, we didn't leave until Dad got home from work, and then it took two hours to get through Chicagoland traffic and finally be on the open road. Thankfully, we didn't try to make it all the way to Columbus that night.
Pete was supposed to keep his foot elevated, which in an Aerostar filled with five people and a whole lot of boxes meant putting his foot on the console between the front seats -- where his foot kept getting elbowed.
Saturday
We arrived in Columbus on a cool, grey day. My dorm was the Stadium Scholarship Dormitory, located under the west stands of Ohio Stadium. I was excited to be in it, because it was hyped as being a cool community, with its own newsletter and cafeteria. My grandfather had also stayed in the Stadium Dorm, and spoke fondly of it.
Once I got there, though, the reality of the situation settled in. Since it was under the stands, there were only windows on one exterior wall. If you weren't in one of those rooms -- which were all "quads," or quadruple occupancy -- you had no windows. My room was a near-square of drywall and tile, with a wooden door. As we discovered later on, the walls were built to meet minimum fire codes and nothing more, so they were basically two layers of drywall with a little flame-retardant insulation in between. That meant the doors, which were solid wood, were the most sound-proof thing in the room. And since my room wasn't on the outside wall, when you turned off the lights, it was pitch black except for a little light leaking in from under the door.
Anyway, after I loaded everything into my room and said goodbye to my family, I was basically alone. I had arrived on the early end of move-in -- most kids, including my roommate, would be arriving Sunday -- so I did a little unpacking and then wandered the campus. I ended up buying dinner at a fast food place on High Street (I think I went to the "all in one," which was a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC all in the same restaurant) and took it to the Oval (the central green). For whatever reason, I climbed a smallish tree and ate it sitting a few feet off the ground, watching the smattering of other students walk by. It was a very lonely first night.
Wednesday
I spent the last couple days just before school furiously packing. I seem to remember bringing a ridiculous amount of stuff with me -- tons of clothes and random other things I really shouldn't have bothered with. It meant doing a lot of packing, and I think I ended up sending some of what I brought home with my family.
Oh Brooke. I guess she did end up calling my brother a lot; I had no idea they hung out much after I left, but Pete told me they did.
As I've already written, I was a real jerk when it came to Brooke and a lot of my high school friends. Once I got to college I just didn't stay in touch the way I should have. I feel bad about it, but it's hard staying in touch when you're hundreds of miles away, in a totally different, fast-paced environment. Still, I should have been better about being in touch.
Thursday
Pete's "bad foot" -- foreshadowing!
My last date with Melissa before leaving. I thought that dinner was so classy -- turkey, swiss and dijon mustard on a croissant seemed pretty special to me, and certainly the best I could do within my budget. I had scouted out the location for our picnic, but probably should have chosen a bit more wisely. It was neat being near the water, hidden in the woods, but the ground was bumpy and there were mosquitos and it was still warm enough for there to be people out partying on their boats, so it wasn't as tranquil as I hoped.
It was good enough, though, and I spent most of the time we were down there telling Meilissa how much I loved her and how I wished we could just get married right then. We talked about how we would handle our long distance relationship, too. She felt we should go ahead and date other people -- she wanted me to feel like I could experience college to its fullest, and she too should have the normal high school experience rather than worrying about a boyfriend in college. I saw her point logically, but couldn't bare the thought of us not being together. So in spite of her better judgment, we agreed to remain a couple.
Monday
"I thought you were already gone" was a common refrain in the last couple weeks before I left for college -- along with "you're still here?" Universities on the quarter system start as much as a month later than semester schools, so folks like me and anyone going to Northwestern (Katrina, for one) were sort of lurking around, biding our time like lame duck politicians.
I spent most of my off time hanging about Yvette's, with an assortment of friends joining me once high school let out. A little weird to feel like a ghost already.
Tuesday
My final shift at Baloney's was a long one -- 11am to 7:15pm. I don't think it was particularly ceremonious. Roberta most likely told me I'd be welcome to pick up shifts when I was back in town and the next summer (I didn't, though I did stop by to say hi, just like so many college-aged former employees before me) and gave me a hug, and that was it. Tuesday nights were typically slow, so I spent at least part of the time practicing my cross-hatching, evidently.
Saturday
I don't remember Jenny Crane, sadly. I do remember all the people whose addresses I have here, though. That's something.
Sunday
1993 was Jack McDowell's year. He won the Cy Young -- despite the awful inning we saw him pitch this day. It was a terrible beginning of a dismal game.
Thursday
Hrm. I think this "portfolio review" was in preparation for getting advanced credit for an art class or two at OSU. I don't seem to have written about it once I got to school, so: I got credit for the basic drawing class, and that was it. I was hoping to get at least a photography class out of the way, too, but no.
Friday
Strange that I didn't write anything here. I don't remember if I went.
Tuesday
Jeremy was Nikki's ex-boyfriend. The words on this page written in pencil are one of his poems. At least I think it's a poem.
I love the idea of some woman in suburbia dealing with multiple coups d'etat. What was the final one?
Wednesday
One thing I learned from Melissa was that not all devout Christians were narrow-minded and humorless. She often surprised me with statements, like the one quoted here, that you'd never expect to hear out of someone with absolute faith in God's existence and the truth of the Bible. Through her and my close college friend Ross, I learned not to be so presumptuous or judgmental about people of faith.
I am, I'm sure, not the first person to come up with the pun "At last we cross pens." (Or maybe I am.) But I was sufficiently proud of myself to get out of bed and write it down.
Sunday
Labor Day weekend dinner at my aunt and uncle's in Deerfield. Kind of boring, probably, but at least a couple amusing quotes came out of it.
Monday
It was good to hear Pete think this way. It took a couple more years for him to actually follow that through to its logical conclusion, but oh well.
Friday
I kind of expected pretty much everyone to be off to school at this point -- Jill was one of the last of my friends heading to a semester school to leave. But there were a good number of folks either not going to school or headed to Harper, the local community college, so Yvette's was still pretty hopping.
I still find it weird that I could show up at Melissa's house late at night -- and even be walking around outside their house in the dark -- and it wasn't a big deal. Being there till 1:30 in the morning didn't seem to be a concern. Her parents were just so... cool.
Saturday
Hah! I'd completely forgotten that Tim and I had almost gotten tattoos!
This was such an incredible day. Tim and I took the Metra downtown, where I was going to use a gift certificate I got as a graduation gift, then went up to Clark and Belmont to visit the Alley. I got an Alley t-shirt (their classic Jack Daniels-style design) to rep for Chicago at OSU. We thought we could just walk back to the train station from there, but we only got down to the south end of Lincoln Park before realized we'd never make it in time for the train.
Later I picked up Melissa for a date, and her parents suggested we go to the party they were attending -- an amateur music night and open house at a retreat someplace in Woodstock. We went and got Tim, and the three of us went up to the party, which turned out to e pretty awesome. The main building was room after room of interesting art, books, musical instruments, neat furniture -- when I say it was like my room, it's because that's sort of what I envisioned my room to be like. I wanted it to be chock full of interesting things to look at. Even the back yard, where the music -- basically, an open jam session -- was going down, was really interesting. There were sort of private nooks everywhere, inside and out. As I recall, there were a few small cottages off behind the house, where whoever used the place as a retreat stayed. Tim, Melissa and I were pretty blown away.
Wednesday
Woof, another full work day -- this time at three different works. I was in the home stretch ahead of school, and trying to earn as much spending money as possible.
Thursday
Yep, 9:45am to 7pm. Like I said, makin' money.
It seems so weird to think that I'd call a girl's father to ask for advice on how to handle her cousins. I don't remember whether that worked out at all.
