Missing the Big Picture (14 page)

My main way of making friends was just to tell my wacky stories to anyone who would listen. I would tell Diana and Shannon about the time I bought the issue of
Penthouse
or about my grandmother and how she always walked around in a bathrobe. I also talked to them about Nite Moves, an Albany strip club, and I would act out how I got lap dances from the strippers. They found me to be entertaining.

The first time Shannon and Diana went up to my room, besides observing that I didn’t have sheets on my bed, that it was very dark, and had a strange odor, Diana noticed that I was from Colonie, according to the sign outside my door. She remarked that her father was Mr. Jackson, an associate principal at Colonie High School. I always heard that Mr. Jackson had an attractive daughter, but I couldn’t believe how gorgeous she was. Diana used to tell me that when she was home she would frequently get prank phone calls from vengeful high school students and Diana would tell them to never fucking call again. The funniest part of Diana’s story was that Mr. Jackson missed his daughter being away at college because he couldn’t swear at his pupils to have them stop calling him.

After that weekend, I started visiting Diana’s room every day, for hours at a time. Since SUNY Geneseo was located in a rural area, talking in somebody’s room was a major pastime for most college students. Even though I was friends with lots of girls, I still wasn’t very sensitive. One time when I knocked on Diana and her roommate Renee’s door and the girls knew it was me, they yelled, “Don’t come in!” I didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying and came in anyway. Renee then said, “Okay, well, I’ll just stay here in my underwear.” I was then kicked out of the room.

Another time at dinner some of the girls mentioned that one guy in line was cute. My response was, “So you’d give him a blow job, then?” I got yelled at, and one of the girls explained, “Just because she thinks he’s cute doesn’t mean she wants to blow him.” Another time I got kicked out of Diana’s room because I asked if she’d ever seen her dad “do the adjust”—as in adjust his scrotum—since I thought it would be funny to see a principal do that. I was dismissed at once.

Still, I liked spending time with these girls. Adolescent boys were too competitive with one another, and I felt intimidated since I wasn’t athletic and definitely didn’t have any sex stories to brag about. When I was hanging out with girls, I didn’t need to be competitive, since I was the one getting the attention. They loved my stories and my jokes, and soon I would come up with my own dance moves. I could tell that Bruce was jealous when he saw the girls come to my room and ask for me. Bruce was very reserved and very much into his computer. If I ever talked about getting a good grade or how challenging a particular course was, he would always try to say that a class he was in or a grade he got was so much harder to accomplish. He had only a few close friends, and he definitely thought he was better than most people. Rich and some of his friends started hanging out with Bruce. Bruce would get jealous if I would say something that made Rich laugh. These were his friends, and they were off limits to me.

After Thanksgiving, I found out that Colonie High in mid-December was going to have its Alumni Day. It was an annual tradition. Usually the day before holiday break, the graduating class from that year was invited to come back and socialize with one another. My mother told me that when she got the invitation in the mail, she threw it out. She didn’t want me to go back to Colonie because she was afraid it could trigger the voices. I had made so much progress, and she was worried I could relapse.

I would often tell Diana and Shannon and my other friends about my former high school crush, Claire, and how she was mean to me and how I would play jokes on her. Pranking started to become a pastime for us. We would look up people we didn’t like and tell them that we heard their boyfriend or girlfriend was cheating on them. One time I pranked Rich and pretended to ask for a girl named Rosemary. When Rich said there was nobody there named Rosemary, I explained that Rosemary applied my hemorrhoid ointment and asked if he could do that for me since I couldn’t find Rosemary. Kaitlin, a friend of Shannon and Diana, had me prank her prom date who stopped talking to her after the prom. I called his roommate and told him that he used to experiment with guys, so watch out. Kaitlin was so happy after I did this—it was as if I had just bought her a new house.

The plan for Claire was that I was going to call her house pretending to be a guidance counselor. I would explain that they forgot to give her the Head & Shoulders Women in Science Award, and the only time she could claim her prize was at Alumni Day. I was going to wear a hooded sweatshirt, put a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo in it, and walk up to Claire and tell her, “I’m your award.” The girls laughed when I told them my plan; I think they were shocked when I actually said I was going to do it.

Just before the semester was over, I visited Rich and his roommate in their room. Rich, who always had to convey his tough demeanor, said that he was going to spend his semester break “fucking bitches and getting drunk.” Rich then told me that he had gotten laid before tons of times, and I could sense that he thought I was inferior to him because I was a virgin. I originally wanted to keep my virginity a secret, but Rich started talking about all the wild sex he was having, and when I could not share any stories of my own; he soon found out I was a virgin. Rich was definitely a male chauvinist, while his roommate, Neil, was the total opposite. Neil was quiet, he liked doing musicals, and he was an elementary education major. The two of them got along really well, mainly because Rich was definitely a man’s man. He could never understand why I would want to hang out with girls; he got along with any guy. He had little respect for women and would only talk to his girlfriend fifteen minutes a night, and even then he was mean to her. The first night we were in that room, I didn’t know that about Rich. The three of us laughed at Neil’s prom picture, how he looked like he was black and his head was pasted on his body. I told both Neil and Rich that I didn’t get to go to any of my proms, and I still used the fencing tournament as an excuse.

I finished my last day of exams, and shortly before I left Geneseo to go home to Albany, I remember lying on my bed in my dorm room and once again hearing a voice inside of my mind. Even though I knew Carmine was in Albany attending college and I was in Geneseo, I still felt that we were communicating to each other through our minds. We talked about the Alumni Day the following day, and Carmine’s voice said that he would say hi to me. In the back of my mind, I was hoping that I would see Carmine and he would tell me that the voice in my mind was his and that I wasn’t a schizophrenic. Maybe we could actually be friends. I didn’t tell anybody about the voice that I heard—not even my mother. I had stopped taking Zyprexa in September, and this was the first time I had heard a voice since June. I didn’t like the medication. I had gained weight on it, and it made me hungry and tired all the time. I blamed my weight gain on the infamous “freshmen fifteen” that most college students experience. Plus, every time I saw that bottle of pills, it reminded me that I was schizophrenic. I just wanted to be normal again.

Even though I was adjusted to college and was having a blast my freshman year, I couldn’t forget the voices and all of the torment that I went through during high school. One night Denise and Jody spiked my hair, and we took a picture of me hugging them as they both kissed my face. I e-mailed the picture to Carmine. I would also instant message him on occasion, sometimes as a joke.

On December 20, I actually walked into Colonie Central High School as an alumnus. I talked to my guidance counselor and mentioned how much I liked working in the admissions office at Geneseo. I was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt with a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo inside the pocket, and I was planning to give Claire the bottle and say that I was her award. Claire didn’t show up, so I can only imagine what everybody thought the big lump hanging out of my stomach was. I did see Carmine, and he did say hi to me—just like his voice had told me previously—but that was it. I only stayed there an hour, and then I went home.

While I was at Alumni Day, I ran into Mr. Jackson, one of the associate principals at the high school and my friend Diana’s father. I told him that I knew his daughter, and then he said, “Yes, I know; she has a picture of you dancing in her room. She told me, ‘This kid is crazy. He’s from Colonie.’” When I told my mother this, she couldn’t believe it. She had really just known me as the depressed and sullen kid I’d been over the past four years.

After I spent close to an hour visiting some of my former classmates, I still wanted to make a lasting impression on my high school peers. Before I had left Geneseo, Jody had made a sign that said, “Do You Love Lukey? Then Sign Up for the Luscious Lukey Fan Club,” and put it on my door. It was just a joke, but I was touched by Jody’s thoughtfulness. As a bit of revenge for what Carmine and his friends did to me throughout high school, I decided to tape the sign to Carmine’s car. After I taped the sign, I ran from Carmine’s car and lost my shoe in the process. I remember a school monitor was just staring at me in bewilderment. At that time, even though Carmine and Eric wouldn’t let me tell them to their faces, I wanted to say, “You made me feel worthless in high school, and now I have friends and I no longer accept the horrible labels that you and your clique put on me.”

Soon after I returned home from semester break, my mother told me that she and Anthony had decided to split up and she was single again. They had dated each other for eight to nine years. Anthony was controlling, and I knew that my mother wanted to end their relationship for a while, but my mental illness had taken a toll on her and she needed support. Even though I told her not to tell anyone about my schizophrenia, I knew she couldn’t hold it in and had ended up telling Anthony. I missed seeing Julie, Anthony’s daughter, and I knew it would be hard for my mother to be single.

During the month that I was home on break between my first and second semester, I started to hang out again with my high school friend Randy. We went to the mall, restaurants, shopping, and movies. Usually we just hung out by ourselves, since Randy’s other friends usually associated with Carmine or Eric. Randy was surprised at how much I had changed. During the four months that I was at college, I had become more outgoing and outspoken. One time while the two of us were at the mall, an Asian food worker offered me a free sample of chicken on a stick. I took the chicken and shoved it in the worker’s face to be funny and to turn the tables on him, but the man didn’t want to eat it.

I noticed that Randy had become a little shyer and less sure of himself since entering college. In high school Randy was known for his leads in the school plays and a talent show skit in which his friends satirized the crazy boy bands popular at the time. Now Randy missed high school and didn’t like college that much.

The main reason why Randy disliked his freshman year of college was the same reason he loved his senior year of high school: his girlfriend, Michelle. Michelle and Randy were madly in loved when they finished their senior years of high school. They went to the same college and lived on the same floor, but Michelle started to enjoy college life and all the drinking and partying associated with on-campus living. Randy, on the other hand, was very religious. He would go to parties, but he never smoked marijuana or drank too much, which was the main reason he was just an acquaintance of Carmine’s and Eric’s—and not a full-blown member.

Even though high school was over, the drama between Eric and his friends and me apparently wasn’t. When I was in college, I was still angry at Eric and would occasionally prank him since he was outside of my area code. My mother told me that she in turn had gotten prank phone calls up to three times a week, and she got caller ID as a result. When I was home from break, I noticed a car outside of our house for long periods of time. It looked like a single passenger was sitting in the vehicle, and I would tell my mother about it. Suddenly, I noticed that the car was parked in front of our house very frequently—every other day, in fact. One night I woke up my mother and we decided to go outside to see who was driving it. When we walked outside, though, the car sped away. I would ask Randy if he knew anybody who would want to stalk me, but Randy pretended not to know the identity of the driver. My mother thought I was paranoid and that the neighbors just parked their car in front of their lawn every night. It wasn’t until I went back to college that the car stopped coming back.

Besides Randy, I hung out with my old friends Taylor and Melanie on that vacation. Taylor started cracking up when this old woman and I started singing together in the grocery store. Taylor and Melanie did play games with me, though. One time they stole my car keys from the table at a diner where we were eating dinner. They locked the door and drove around the block before finally returning to pick me up.

Taylor was in the middle of a massive weight loss when we started becoming friends. She lost close to one hundred pounds between her junior year of high school and freshman year of college. She was voted “Most Changed” for the class of 2002. The yearbook staff asked her in what ways she changed, and she responded with, “Well, I don’t think anybody has noticed, but the biggest way I changed was I switched my shampoo from Herbal Essences to Head & Shoulders.” By the time she finished high school, Taylor was a very sexy, attractive young woman.

I was excited to go back and see all of my new friends when I returned for the second semester of my freshman year in January 2002. When I was at home during break, my friends and family asked if I was dating any of the girls that I was hanging out with. Even though most of my college friends were extremely attractive, they didn’t see me as boyfriend material. They talked openly about their periods and other men in my presence. When Diana went home for a weekend, she told her roommate, “Tell Dad [Luke] that I made it home okay.” After that, I tried saying to them, “Who’s your daddy,” but that didn’t work, either. Most of them were single during the first semester, but second semester some of them starting dating and liking guys. This changed the dynamic between us.