27 February 2006
reunion blues [4]
Another panel/scene, location tbd
New panel. Set in front of the house Steve lived in (rented together with Bob?) the year after I left TCU, where I visited during my time off from Chevron Mobile Drilling Platform No. 9. Harsh shadows cast by the streetlights collide with winter-bare tree branches. WHOOSH of passing cars on icing rain-slick streets. DOUG and STEVE have just come outside to catch some air. They are very high. Steve presses the back of his right hand against his forehead and staggers.
They manage to ignore a sudden chill, and the suggestive throb of the orchestra playing the soundtrack to this scene.
Another panel/scene, setting tbd.
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DOUG:
It’s a miracle I’m not one of the babbling dazed, agitated, drooling nutcases on Telegraph Avenue, like the “street people” I found so “cute and colorful” when I first got here from Texas – Hate Man, Orange Man, Graduate Student Defending Thesis & the rest. God knows, I’ve been there, often enough, in the years since, I’ve even done some screaming in addition to wandering around confused and robotic. But I’ve been lucky, I always had people around to reel me back in and take care of me, and, I firmly believe, God helped me, too. And, I’ve always been, from time to time, as crazy in mind (if not in street) as anybody I’ve ever seen acting out on the public stage.
* * *
New panel. Set in front of the house Steve lived in (rented together with Bob?) the year after I left TCU, where I visited during my time off from Chevron Mobile Drilling Platform No. 9. Harsh shadows cast by the streetlights collide with winter-bare tree branches. WHOOSH of passing cars on icing rain-slick streets. DOUG and STEVE have just come outside to catch some air. They are very high. Steve presses the back of his right hand against his forehead and staggers.
DOUG:
What’s wrong?
STEVE:
I just stepped into the second half of my life.
DOUG:
What do you mean?
STEVE:
Just that. I’m 20. I step over this line (INDICATES WITH HIS TOE A CRACK BETWEEN SIDEWALK SEGMENTS) and I’ve stepped into the second half of my life.
DOUG:
So, that means.…
STEVE:
Right. 40, and I’m out of the game.
DOUG:
No time to lose. Onward, through the fog!
They manage to ignore a sudden chill, and the suggestive throb of the orchestra playing the soundtrack to this scene.
* * *
Another panel/scene, setting tbd.
DOUG:
The more I thought about things, as Steve and I plunged into this correspondence frenzy, well maybe I was the frenzied one, I always am, the more I realized what a negative feeling I get as I dig deeper into remembering my freshman year at TCU. Looking back, that year has always represented a pinnacle of failure – rejection by Princeton led to accepting TCU's out-of-nowhere what-have-I-got-to-lose offer of a generous scholarship (putting in place a trend that continues, failure of contingency planning leading to reactive choice of distant second-best), then I failed to engage with the academic program, lost my scholarship, and left under the threat of arrest for marijuana possession (was that it?). Along the way, I developed a bad attitude and dangerous substance abuse habits.
Steve reminds me of the fire that moved us, reminds me of the fun part of that year, obscure behind the blur at best, and, finally, three and a half decades later, invisible to me behind the memories of pain that those bad habits led to in the years after I fled TCU. It's possible that, in my mind, I exaggerate the degree to which I left school with my tail between my legs, and the degree to which I let fly with a fine Fuck You Very Much on my way out the door.
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# posted by Unknown @ 9:52 AM 
