Read Missing the Big Picture Online
Authors: Luke Donovan
The secrecy of the Greek system attracts members as well. Since many of the pledges were still teenagers when they joined, having secret rituals and secret ceremonies about which they weren’t even allowed to tell their parents was exciting and made them feel accepted and special.
Many of the students I talked to at Geneseo felt pressured to pledge a fraternity or sorority. They had sisters, fathers, mothers, and brothers who were members of fraternities and sororities, and they felt that they had to uphold tradition. Many of the students were also cliquish. If most of the student’s friends were pledging and he or she didn’t pledge, who would be left to go out with, eat meals with, or hang out with?
The last reason why students at Geneseo became involved in the Greek system was because they just liked to have fun and being Greek was the ultimate fun on campus. For guys, fraternity house parties provided plenty of girls; for girls, it provided an opportunity for friends, dating, and acceptance. Some people in life just need to be a part of a formal organization to feel accepted.
I did get lonelier the less time I saw my friends. The second weekend in March, Bruce decided to go home and see a friend who was in the hospital. To make that possible, Bruce’s parents drove a total of sixteen hours—the time it took to drive Bruce to and from SUNY Geneseo. However, the real reason Bruce went home was to see his girlfriend.
Since Rich and Bruce usually hosted a radio show together, I wanted to stop by and see how Rich acted without Bruce around. During the first semester, I liked Rich, but I had this inner suspicion that Bruce was telling Rich to avoid me. I took the radio show as a great opportunity to see what exactly was going on.
Even though it was snowing, I still walked the fifteen minutes across town to the radio station. Rich was there and seemed apathetic that I showed up, but he never asked me why I decided to come out. The main topic of our conversation, as always, had something to do with girls or my sex life (or lack thereof). Rich blamed my celibate lifestyle on the way I acted; I was just too silly, he said. At the time, I never thought it was disconcerting that Rich cared so much about my personal business; I just wanted his approval. It didn’t matter that I had a bunch of other friends; the fact that there was a group of people who disliked me was motivation enough for me to want to change to be accepted. However, Rich’s relationship with his girlfriend, Emily, was very odd. She visited only once during the year in college that they were together. They had all their romantic meals at the dining halls, and Rich was nice enough to let his girlfriend use his meal passes. He also told us that he told his girlfriend that she was hot enough to be in
Playboy,
but then he admitted that he was lying.
Another time when I was in Rich’s room, I saw a newspaper article about how Rosie O’Donnell came out as a lesbian and would no longer be hosting her own daytime talk show. Many people encouraged O’Donnell to admit that she was gay, but others discouraged it. When he saw the photo, Rich asked me, “Would you fuck Rosie O’Donnell in her ass?” Looking back, I can’t believe that I wanted to be friends with somebody who was so strange. Asking if somebody would have anal sex with Rosie O’Donnell was a conversation starter for Rich, just like a normal person saying, “How are your classes?” or “Did you go out last weekend?” According to Rich, everybody was like him and all the boys he knew were having anal sex with their girlfriends. He just made wild assumptions about people.
After the girls I was friends with started pledging, my mother could sense that I was lonelier. She was a little disappointed since I had been so happy at college and she was hoping that I was able to overcome my mental illness. That is what I thought too, up until March 15.
Friday, March 15, 2002, started out as any ordinary day. I went to classes, then to my work-study job, and was lying down to rest shortly after seven o’clock. Suddenly, I felt the white presence strike and heard a voice in my mind again. It had been months since I felt that I was communicating with anybody telepathically. March 15 marked the one-year anniversary of when I began hearing Eric’s voice in my mind. On March 15, 2002, I didn’t think that I was talking to Eric, Carmine, or any of my other high school classmates. This time I was convinced that I was talking telepathically to Rich.
In my mind, I heard Rich laughing, then suddenly I asked him in our minds if he believed in God. Rich said he did, definitely. About ten minutes later, the voice left me. Shortly after the voice disappeared, the phone started ringing. Bruce, who was on his computer at the time, said, “I bet that’s for you.” I picked up the phone, and there was a dial tone; somebody had just hung up. That night, I went out with Denise and some other people on my floor. I didn’t think about what had happened in my mind.
The following Monday, I once again heard Rich’s voice in my mind. Rich should have been at American Politics, so in my mind I asked why wasn’t he in class. Rich replied, calling me a “stalker.” The voice I heard lasted a shorter amount of time than it had on Friday night.
The next night, I was at the campus delicatessen a few minutes before closing when I saw Rich. I didn’t want to tell Rich that I thought we were having a telepathic conversation, so I kept the conversation simple. Since Rich’s screen name started with “Strider,” I jokingly asked him if his girlfriend’s screen name was “Rider.” Rich wasn’t amused, but he wasn’t angry.
In fact, the next three consecutive days I saw Rich near the campus deli. We always made some small talk. At the first run-in, I complained to Rich about having three tests in the same week; later, I was surprised when he remembered and asked how the tests went. Still, I didn’t even think about asking Rich if anything strange had been happening in his mind.
The following Friday, March 22, 2002, I went home to Albany for spring break. I didn’t go to Cancun or Florida or any of those places, since most college students I knew didn’t have the money to take trips like the ones on MTV or the movie
The Real Cancun
. Since Randy, my friend from high school, was attending college locally, I got to spend time with him. It was refreshing to have another male around, instead of being the only guy in a group of girls.
One night Randy invited me to go along to the local bars, coffeehouses, and music clubs to distribute demos that his band had made. One of Randy’s band members was his best friend, Kyle, who was as religious as Randy and was even homeschooled because his parents thought public school had too many temptations.
After Randy and I dropped off CD’s, we later went to a psychic and found a package of horny goat weed in a convenience store. I told the psychic about the car that would drive by my house late at night and park outside the driveway; it had started happening again during my spring break. I asked who it was or why the person was doing this. Just like most cheap psychics, the woman knew nothing. After that, I asked Randy if he knew the driver, but Randy said he knew nothing about it. I knew that Randy knew more; he would just never tell me. I decided to change the subject, and we speculated if using horny goat weed would make a girl want to have sex with somebody.
The week after spring break was quiet for me. Diana and Shannon were still pledging, but I did receive an invitation to go out partying both weekend nights. For the first time ever, I actually got up on the bar and started slapping some drunken girl’s ass—something I had never done before. But on Saturday, I heard Rich’s voice in my mind again. I was in the laundry room finishing up a wash when I heard Rich’s laugh. I remember walking up the steps, thinking that I might have heard something in the basement instead. I kept telling myself, “I’m sure after I walk upstairs and fold all of my clothes, the voice will disappear.” It didn’t, and every night until the end of the semester, I would feel that I was communicating with Rich through our minds.
On one of the first occasions that the two of us communicated telepathically, I asked Rich why he would write so many strange e-mails. We talked about how Rich wrote me nasty e-mails saying that I was weird and that I should go back to the psychiatric ward where I came from. I would frequently e-mail Rich content that was just as strange. One of the e-mails I sent actually had the subject line, “oh that vagina.” Rich told me that at first he thought it was pornography and was going to delete it.
Up until college, I was always just a quiet kid. In high school I got a reputation more from what Eric said about me than what I actually did, so my e-mails were a way for me to show a new side of myself. I knew Rich thought they were funny, but he was mean afterward. He would constantly call me a “freak,” “pathetic,” or “weird.” The sad thing was that I still wanted to be his friend regardless.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
—Ann Landers
O
n Sunday, April 7, I heard Rich’s voice on four different occasions. Rich started to ask me what I thought of Bruce, and when I said that he was “all right,” Rich was surprised. His voice said that he was used to hearing Bruce complain that his roommate was weird, strange, and too silly for him. From what I was hearing in my mind, Rich portrayed Bruce as somebody who really hated me.
Even though I began to hear Rich’s voice, I was still able to function at school and work and continue hanging out with my group of friends. I didn’t tell anyone that I was hearing a voice in my mind. When the voice first surfaced, I was distracted by hosting an overnight guest. At my work-study job in the admissions office, the assistant director had asked if I would mind hosting a prospective student. My overnight guest, Pete, and a friend, drove from Syracuse to Geneseo. After I showed him my room, he wanted to smoke marijuana and find some parties. To Pete’s disappointment, everybody I knew had to stay in and study, as college was not always the party scene as portrayed in college flicks.
So Pete and his friend decided to make their own party. At eight that evening, only a few hours after meeting me, Pete decided to split ways and hang out with his friend in another suite. Pete said he’d come back in a couple of hours, but he never did. After a few hours, I started to worry: how bad is it to host an overnight guest and lose him? I never got in trouble, but it was clear that my guest just wanted to party.
As of April 16, I was still hearing Rich’s voice in my mind on a daily basis—sometimes three to four times a day. I decided to tell somebody. I didn’t want to go running to my mother because I knew she would get frustrated, worried, anxious, and maybe even angry. Plus, I didn’t want to go back on the medication again. I had gained weight on the Zyprexa and didn’t want to go back to feeling tired all the time. I couldn’t keep this strange experience a secret, so I told my second mother, my Aunt Eileen.
Unlike Dr. Roberts or my mother, Eileen was more open-minded and didn’t just yell at me to take my medication. When I asked Eileen if she thought this could actually happen—two people communicating through their minds—Eileen couldn’t even give me a sound answer. My mother told me that I could have all the boys whose voices I heard come over and tell her that we were talking telepathically, and she still wouldn’t believe it. Dr. Roberts shared the same opinion. Dr. Roberts told me that talking telepathically with somebody had never been scientifically proven, and that if I took the medication, it could calm all the activity that was happening in my mind. Despite spending hours with Dr. Roberts and my mother telling me that what was happening in my mind was all an illusion, I was utterly convinced that I was having a conversation with Rich—just like I thought I was having conversations with Eric, Carmine, and the others only months before.
Even though I told my Aunt Eileen in confidence, my mother found out anyway. She was initially disappointed because I made tremendous progress in my life since starting college. I was happy and having fun. The only problem was that my grades could have been a little higher. She told me that if the problem persisted, I should go back on my medication. I then started taking the medication again after my mother told me to do so. As much as I hated taking the Zyprexa, I hated hearing voices more, so I did decided to start taking it again. Still, the medication alone was not my only plan to make the voices in my mind stop.
I had a new approach to ending the voices. Rich’s voice was the most talkative, and when we were communicating, he said that he loved doing this. Most people remember the topics they discuss with others. As if I was having a real conversation, why not just talk to Rich about what I thought we were communicating telepathically and see how Rich reacted? All the voices in my mind were very clear, just like real-life conversations. I decided the next time I saw Rich in person, I would mention what I heard in my mind and see what his reaction would be.
One day I coincidentally ran into Rich on the way back to class, and I decided to bring up the topics we had discussed in my mind. In my mind, we talked about everything—mostly Bruce and other people from our dorm, but also Rich’s classes and his high school. He once told me that the first woman he had a crush on was Paula Abdul, and I said that I liked Heather Graham. When I brought up these girls to him in person—both odd topics because this was before Paula Abdul made a comeback on
American Idol
and after Heather Graham’s days on
Austin Powers
and
Boogie Nights
—Rich acted confused as to why I was talking about them.
After my real-life conversation with Rich, I began wondering whether Dr. Roberts and my mother were correct. Was Rich’s voice a complete creation of my brain, and my mind was just playing tricks on me? Or, was Rich just trying to torment and frustrate me? It felt so real, this voice in my mind. Through telepathy, I learned about Rich’s first girlfriend, Melissa, and his current girlfriend, Emily. Rich told me how he would buy Emily a present each week and how she expected it. Rich had a totally different viewpoint of women. He definitely saw himself as superior, and viewed his girlfriend as someone to look down upon and use for sex. Rich’s voice in my mind said that he would never acknowledge in person that this experience was happening and that the time I tried to talk to him about it, he got scared and nervous. He explained that this was why he was mean to me.