The Hitmen – Bates Motel
page 4
Columbia’s Exposed experiment worked for me and, for every track I liked that didn’t encourage me to go pick up a whole new album (like Tommy Tutone’s winning Which Man Are You? which was then trumped by the overplaying of their one semi-hit Jenny (867-5309)), there was another one that did (go Gary Myrick!), and their $2.99 gambit made me pour at least $30 back into the corporate coffers, money that would’ve probably been spent elsewhere.
The next year, I was still a day-student, and, although my mom had encouraged me to try to get more involved with the campus life, I felt like such an imposter hanging out there after dinner and not having anywhere to go and cruising the cafeteria with no safe port in which to land. I had kept up a superficial friendship with Rory throughout that year, but we never really spent any time together because we had entirely different classes and then he was off doing his thing at night and I wasn’t.
At graduation that year – his graduation – I got my first taste of what life might be like if I could just somehow come out of my shell and join the rest of the student body. Early in the year I had written a short essay about the crazy Interlochen schedule (classes ran from Tuesday through Saturday, but Thursday was a kind of floating day in which not every class met, but it was a chance to do things that were too time consuming (special rehearsals, films, tests) for the normal schedule (which, with nine hours of classes every day running from 8:15 to 5:15, was already packed to the gills)). The essay had gained some notoriety among the faculty and the director read it (although, with my blessing, he didn’t credit it to me) at Honor’s Convocation, the big awards celebration that took place the night before graduation. Much to my surprise, Rory latched on to me that night and, when I admitted I had written that essay, he cheered and hugged me and ran around telling everybody how cool I was. It was a wonderful night and I finally felt like I belonged.
The next day, graduation, was a bittersweet day for everybody. Commencement took place in the morning and then the student body slowly blew apart, parents dragging their tearful kids away from their best friends forever. I ran into Rory early in the day and we promised we’d hook up again before he had to leave, but, alas, it was never meant to be. We got separated and by the time I got back to his dorm, he was gone. I was devastated. Occasionally, I’ll walk around with some emotional bomb in my throat, and I know if I utter the words, the floodgates will open, but if I stay quiet, I can keep the tears in check. After realizing that I had missed him and would, in all likelihood, never get to see him again, I walked slowly back across the post-apocalyptic campus towards my house, holding the poisonous phrase on my tongue, rolling it around in my mouth, feeling its weight. I opened the door and sat heavily on the couch. My mom came in, saw my distress, and asked what was wrong. “Rory left,” I muttered, letting it drop out of my mouth and onto the floor, “and I didn’t even get to say goodbye”.
The frustration of years of loneliness poured out of my head and down my cheeks and, after the storm had passed, we sat and talked for a long time, deciding that the only way I was ever really going to have the kind of friendships I wanted at the Academy, those deep and meaningful relationships that I longed for and that Rory brushed against, was if I moved into the dorm for my last two years.
After the summer had passed, I packed my records up in a box (those were the days – one box held them all), threw my clothes and sheets in the car, and had my mom drive me the half-mile to the dorm, my new home, and set out with high hopes to find a true friend. My mom bid me farewell and drove home alone, her own poisonous phrase squeezing tears out of her eyes and into Frank’s arms.
“My baby’s gone.”