In the e-mail that was submitted into evidence, the first line was “Sure, I talk about vagina, but who doesn’t love the smell of vagina.” This was the quote that was put in the police report. I was mortified. Reading the quote made me realize that I was putting myself down and being someone I wasn’t just to get external approval. Officer Washington told me, “Well, if you thought he was your best friend, he’s not.” As I left the meeting, the officer told me that I would have to discuss the matter with a representative from the dean’s office.
Upon leaving the campus police station, I decided that I was going to transfer to SUNY Albany and commute. I loved SUNY Geneseo, and I had met great people. I had always wanted the voices in my mind to end, but I finally realized what shape my life was in. I had a mental health disorder that was now getting me in trouble with the law. I wanted to get better and have a clear mind. I was back on my medication after taking some weeks off. The medication alone was not working for me.
The following day, I went to the dean’s office and spoke with the dean of student affairs. The meeting was heated, and the dean said that I was disgusting and shouldn’t have a job in the admissions office where I had access to confidential information. I was once again humiliated. My only reservation about transferring to SUNY Albany was that three of the voices I had heard during high school were on that campus. What if I ran into Carmine, who was now my friend Randy’s roommate? I definitely didn’t want to hear more voices in my mind. Still, I knew there were over twelve thousand students at SUNY Albany. It would be a good opportunity for somebody who wanted to start over.
The first person I told about transferring was Denise. Then I told Diana, Vanessa, Jody, Shannon, and Diana’s friends. The girls were all extremely disappointed and sad. They didn’t understand why I would want to leave. On the outside I appeared to love college. When the admissions office staff found out that I was leaving, the director of admissions said to me, “We don’t want you to leave, Luke. We love you.” The experience highlighted another problem I had when I was young. Ninety-nine people could say good things about me, but if one person didn’t like me, I would focus all of my attention on figuring out what I needed to do to get respect from that person. I didn’t appreciate the friends I had or the great people who surrounded me.
I wanted to tell Randy that I was transferring because we had always hung out during breaks when I was home from college. I didn’t know exactly how to tell him or how would he react. When I came home for Columbus Day weekend, I broke the news. I actually showed him the notice I received with the quote from the e-mail. Randy thought it was hysterical. He still hung out with Eric and Carmine, so I let him keep the notice just so he would show them—once again, I sought their approval.
After I came back to Geneseo from Columbus Day weekend, I was surfing the Internet and found out that Bruce, my former roommate, had made a website. At the top of the website he wrote, “After popular demand, I have granted everybody access into my life”—proving just how arrogant he really was. The website was about two pages, if it was printed out. The first page was about Bruce and his girlfriend; he was a sophomore in college and she was still in high school. The second page was dedicated to me. As I scrolled down the screen, I saw a picture of myself, looking disheveled, that I couldn’t remember posing for. Below the picture was the caption “WARNING, WARNING! Do not talk to this man. Notify police immediately” and other derogatory statements. Although today there are tons of social networking sites and people are used to seeing themselves online, this was in 2002, before Facebook or MySpace were household names. I was upset that I had to stay away from them, but they could make fun of me on a website. I went to the police station, and even though the police gave me a hard time, they did end up talking to Bruce. It wasn’t a joke; it was slander.
I was hoping that after all of this, Bruce and Rich would finally be out of my life. However, as with most things, I was wrong. One morning when I was finishing up at the radio station, Bruce suddenly walked in the room. He said that if I ever went to the police again, he and Rich would blackmail me with more e-mails. He warned me that I better stay quiet. I was outraged. I knew my freshman-year roommate was controlling and cruel, but I didn’t see Bruce’s true colors until the website scandal. After the show was over, I went back to the police station and filed a second report against Bruce for harassment.
Besides that day at the radio station, other disturbing events occurred that were tied to Bruce. One day Denise told me that Bruce had asked her when my birthday was. A few days later, my mother received a credit card application with everything filled out except for the birthday.
The only moment out of this harassment case that made me smile was when Diana, Shannon, and some of their other friends emailed Bruce and told him to fuck off and stay away from me. I was proud; I rarely stood up for myself, let alone have somebody else defend me. Even though my friends were of the opposite sex, Shannon, Diana, Denise, Vanessa, and I all had truly caring and emotional relationships with one another. Bruce didn’t retaliate against the e-mail because he wasn’t intimidated by their threats; much like Rich, Bruce was a sexist who thought girls were weak and inferior. It was like having his mom yell at him. Bruce never took any threat or command from a woman seriously.
About a week after I filed the second report, I received a phone call from the resident director of Shay Hall, where Bruce was living. She wanted both Bruce and me to sit down and have a meditative conference where we would agree to avoid each other for the rest of our college careers. At first, I was frightened to attend a meeting with Bruce present, but since the resident director would be there, I was confident that no mudslinging would occur.
As I was walking to the meeting, I worried that I would run into Bruce on the way. That would have been extremely awkward. The meeting turned out to be short and simple. The resident director made it crystal clear that both of us were to stay out of each other’s lives and that if we ran into each other, we should look the other way. I hoped that this would put an end to the immature and cruel tricks that Bruce and his friends had played on me since freshman year.
At this point, it was almost November. The semester was officially half over, and my days at Geneseo were nearing an end. Despite all of the drama that I endured with Bruce and Rich, I did have a few other memorable moments. One Saturday night as I was lying in bed, Marty came into our room with a girl. I pretended to be asleep but heard them start talking. Marty eventually asked the girl, “So, you want to start some shit?” That was Marty’s pickup line, and it actually worked. They didn’t do much shit, though—mainly kissing and tickling. I really didn’t have many interactions with Marty. One of the few things I remember about him was that he loved the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” and he played it all the time. It was always stuck in my head, except I didn’t know the title. Instead of Elton John singing “Hold me close now, tiny dancer,” I thought the words were “Hold me close now, Tony Danza.” When I told some friends that I had the Tony Danza song stuck in my head, I was embarrassed to learn that the name of the song was “Tiny Dancer” and it wasn’t about Tony Danza at all.
I still managed to have some fun that final semester. Usually on Friday night I went to a fraternity party with Vanessa and her girlfriends. Since Denise was always with Rodney, Vanessa had found a new set of friends independent of Jody and Denise. Sometimes at these parties, a girl would come up to Vanessa and her friends and say that there was a strange man following them. Vanessa would reassure the girl that they were safe because the “strange man” following them was just their friend Luke.
After Rich filed the police report against me, I didn’t hear his voice for two weeks. It started to come back, but it wasn’t as frequent as it once was. I would hear Rich’s voice in my mind until December 15, 2002, about two days before I left SUNY Geneseo and nine months to the day that I began to hear his voice in my mind.
Even though I was leaving SUNY Geneseo and going to SUNY Albany, I was
still anxious about transferring home. When I was back at Thanksgiving, I asked Randy if I could come and socialize at his suite, since I knew Carmine didn’t like me and they were living together. Randy told me that I could come over—just to make sure that I called before. During that break, I also wanted to tell Randy about all of the telepathic conversations I was having. My psychiatrist and mother both agreed that telling anybody would be insane. I kept thinking that Randy already knew about the voices I was hearing in my mind and just didn’t tell me. I was thinking that once I transferred to SUNY Albany, I would see Carmine and find out that these conversations were real and that I wasn’t schizophrenic.
After Thanksgiving, most of the drama between Bruce and me ended. He took down the picture of me on his website. In the future, Bruce would call each of his birthday parties “Bruce Fest” and say it was “the most spectacular event in human history.” Instead of my picture, Bruce posted a list of fifty reasons why he loved his juvenile girlfriend. Reason number eleven was “how you say Aerosmith is going to die soon”; number forty-three was “how you let me watch you get ready for bed”; another reason was “those strange little noises you make,” followed by “rock, papers, scissors, SHOUT.” Most everybody thought Bruce was strange, obsessive, and immature.
Before I left SUNY Geneseo, the girls gave me a going-away party and made me a collage of pictures. Even though I was only at SUNY Geneseo for three semesters, I definitely learned a lot about myself. After having feelings of worthlessness for years, I learned that people could like me, I could entertain others, and there was no reason why I couldn’t have friends. I also learned that I was still very impressionable. I had let this insecure, cruel kid from Long Island literally destroy part of my life that I had worked so hard to build.
I knew I had to leave SUNY Geneseo. Being four hours away from my family when I was hearing voices nearly every day didn’t help my mental health. I needed to get treatment and get away from Rich’s voice. I do regret that I didn’t fight the voice enough. Instead of trying to tell myself, “Don’t listen to or communicate anything to this voice,” I assumed that I was having a real conversation and actually followed its commands.
Despite my dealings with Bruce and Rich, most of the students, faculty, and staff I met at SUNY Geneseo were beautiful people who helped me realize that I was a person who was as good as everyone else. I missed them all as soon as I transferred.
CHAPTER 7
NEW BEGINNINGS—2003 AND BEYOND
My favorite beer is my third.
—Las Vegas Comedian Linda Lou
On New Year’s Eve, 2002, I spent the holiday with my entire family because it was also my grandmother’s birthday. My mother’s ex-boss, Jeremy, was recently divorced and had no plans for the holiday, so she invited him over and told me they were just friends. The weather was so horrible that Jeremy stayed overnight and slept on the couch. The next day, he didn’t go home. He asked my mother if he could stay until he found an apartment, and she agreed. In exchange for lodging, Jeremy would have to help around the house because my mother was sick and just out of the hospital. My mother had suffered from Crohn’s disease all her life and was in the middle of a flare-up when I transferred home.
Most nineteen-year-olds would be apprehensive about having a man they only met once come and live at their houses. At first, I thought stuff like that only happened in 1980s sitcoms like Who’s the Boss? or Perfect Strangers. But Jeremy fit in just fine. In April 2003, the two officially started dating, even though they had been living together for 3 months. He could spend hours watching Lifetime movies, which was a requirement for having a good relationship with my mother. Jeremy was the total opposite of Anthony, my mother’s ex-boyfriend. He had no desire to control her; all he needed was a beer and some potato chips to make him happy. Instead of telling her that she shouldn’t go out with her co-workers to happy hour, Jeremy would go with her and sometimes even pay for it.
Due to Jeremy’s presence in the house, for the first time in my twenty years, I could honestly say that my mother was happy. She had no more burdens; her mother was living in a retirement home, and she had a boyfriend who was open, flexible, and easy to get along with.
As the spring semester approached, I wanted to visit Randy’s suite at SUNY Albany just like I did at Geneseo with Diana, Vanessa, and Denise. SUNY Albany had twelve thousand undergraduates, and I would need to make new friends. At first, Randy said I could visit, and then he told me that Carmine just didn’t like me. I thought that it was strange that Carmine had such a hateful opinion of me with the little contact that I had with him in high school. I never really talked to Carmine in real life, only through e-mails. To ease the tension, I decided to write Carmine an e-mail and attempt to put the past behind us. He just deleted it.
On January 22, 2003, I went to my first day of classes at UAlbany. I was worried that if I ever ran into Carmine, I would hear his voice in my mind again. To ease my mind, I reminded myself that there were so many students at SUNY; the chance of randomly seeing Carmine was small. However, on that first day, I ran into him at the campus center. He put his glove over his face so he wouldn’t see me.
The classes were bigger, almost twice the size of SUNY Geneseo, and most of my instructors were graduate students working toward doctorates. However, I thrived in this environment. The atmosphere was less competitive and intimidating. There was less pressure—and I always did well when there was less pressure. My final grade point average for the semester was a 3.68, while my overall grade point average at Geneseo was barely over a 3.0. During my last two semesters of my undergraduate career, I would obtain a 4.0 GPA.
I also started working out at the local gym by my house. As part of my membership, I was given two personal training sessions. During the second session, I almost passed out from exhaustion. I thought it was important to exercise to improve my mental health. December 15, 2002, was the last time I had a cluttered mind, and I was willing to do anything to keep my mind free and clean. Plus, I was back on Zyprexa and had been taking it semi-regularly since April 2002; I didn’t want to gain a bunch of weight. I had previously put on fifteen pounds, which is a common side effect of the medication.
During my spring break, I decided to visit Geneseo. At the time, Denise was trying to break up with Rodney, but he was acting possessive and had a whole fraternity behind him. He would call her repeatedly, and once told her that she was either going to get back with him or he was going to throw himself in front of the next passing car. If Rodney called Denise and she wasn’t there, he would usually call Jody or Vanessa next and ask where Denise was.
A couple weeks after their breakup, Denise became interested in a senior named Tony. Soon Rodney found the number to Tony’s townhouse and started calling and asking Denise to visit him. Then, when Denise started to stay overnight there, Rodney would stop by. When Denise came to the door, the incidents became physical. Rodney would hit Denise and Tony would not do anything. He was too scared to intervene. Denise didn’t know what to do. She was told to document everything, so she kept a written diary of events. Eventually Denise’s father called Rodney’s parents and threatened Rodney with a lawyer. He even wanted his daughter to come home for a week to clear her mind. Despite Denise’s father talking to Rodney’s father, nothing changed, and Denise decided to file a report with the university police against Rodney.
Whenever Denise was in the library or out on campus, Rodney or one of his fraternity brothers was present. She always felt like she was being watched, which made her nervous. In previous semesters, she enjoyed the freedom of walking into a fraternity party and saying, “I’m a girlfriend”—meaning she didn’t have to pay or have her ID checked. Now she was nervous about having twenty-five brothers always watching her.
After she went to the university police, things calmed down for a bit—except that Rodney ignored their warning and would still call her. Denise would say, “Well, you know you’re not supposed to call,” although sometimes she woul
d talk to him in the hopes that he would get better. But he didn’t. Denise’s relationship with Tony ended; he said he really liked her but was too afraid of Rodney and his fraternity to be with her. Rodney kept calling Denise well into her junior year and kept staring at her in public until she graduated. One time in the middle of senior year, Rodney walked up to Denise’s friends at a bar and asked, “Where’s that slut Denise?”
Many battered woman stay with these men because they see things in them that others don’t. I never understood why Denise would give Rodney the time of day. He always made fun of her and her friends. One time while we were hanging out in Denise’s room, a friend told a story in which a girl gave a man a blow job in return for a single cigarette. “Does anybody know a girl who would do that?” Rodney asked, and then pointed at Denise when she wasn’t looking. Rodney was very mean, but for a long time Denise still wanted to be with him.
Denise entered into the relationship with Rodney because she wanted to change him and turn him into a nice, considerate man. That would have been impossible. After she broke up with him, Denise learned that a relationship in which one side has to change is not meant to exist.
Missing the Big Picture Page 15
