April 1993--Dating Resolutions
The reviewer in the 4/16 issue of The Mirror was right: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," put on by Roanoke students from April 1 through 3, was a long, ponderous play. Not even the sensuality of Maggie in a slip could make it flow any faster. Coincidentally, one of the cable channels showed the movie, with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, at around the same time RC put on the play. So Clarissa and I taped the movie, and watched it after seeing the play. (We noticed that the part about Brick's best friend Skip being a possible homosexual was changed completely for the movie, and instead the controversy had something to do with football.) The movie was also long and ponderous, something we could barely watch all the way through. I think it took us more than one day to watch it. This showed us that the drag of the play had nothing to do with the actors, since if even Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman couldn't energize it, nobody could. It was the play's fault.
As for the RC production, the people with the two lead roles had just recently broken up after dating since September. They were Ned and, shall we say, very curvy Melissa. I found Cindy and a bunch of her high school friends, and sat with them. I ended up sitting close to the right end, with Clarissa to my right and a guy on my left (who, by the way, liked it when Melissa wore only a slip.) He wasn't handsome; his face reminded me of a weasel. But I guess I'm a sucker for a classy coat, especially when the wearer is a nut; his coat was long, stylish and black. He looked at me when he first sat down beside me. When they had to make room for a latecomer to the group, he said he didn't want to get up. He constantly looked in my direction. Even with Melissa-in-a-slip onstage, he kept looking my way. He was hyper and whispered comments to me during the play; I didn't mind, because they were far more interesting.
During the first intermission, we both left for a break, but after we both sat down again, he tried to start up a conversation: where did I go to high school, etc. During the second act, he started stroking my arm! I froze in disbelief. Some strange guy making the moves on me? The blood must've all drained from my face and then rushed back into it. During the second intermission, I decided to stay there and see what would happen. He soon started up a conversation with me again, and asked,
"Do you have any boyfriends? girlfriends?"
I said, "No boyfriends."
"No girlfriends?"
I looked at him strangely, which he took as a no, and I said, "I'm not that way."
"Do you date?"
"Yeah, when I can."
"Are you free next weekend?"
"That's Easter."
"Oh, right. How about the weekend after that?"
After the last act, he went up to his friend Ralph Z. and said something to him.
Ralph looked at me, and said to him, "How'd you do that?"
"I don't know," the guy said. "I should do cartwheels."
The guy came back and we finally exchanged names; his name was Rick. Cindy saw us talking. Later, she asked me,
"How do you know him?"
"I just met him," I said. "I must be a fast worker."
"Oooh," she said.
Cindy invited Clarissa and me to go with them to Rocky Rococo's Pizza in S--. I stayed with this group until about midnight or so.
Either Rick was on a huge sugar rush, or he was an incredibly hyper person. He told me he wasn't usually like that.
I felt like I was in shock, from the second intermission until I went to bed that night. It had been a year and a half since this kind of thing had happened to me, and it was great. The counselor had just said that a replacement would make it easier to forget Shawn, and here I accidentally found one possibility from another college.
He'd asked for my extension number, said he'd remember it, and said he'd call to set up a date and time. So when the phone rang at 2:30am, I thought it was him. Instead, it was some guy named Pat looking for a girl in pink whom he met at the Zeta party that night. I wore pink to the play, but never went to the party. Somebody had given him the wrong number. It was weird.
Possibly on the same night, I got another strange call:
I said, "Hello?"
Some guy said, "Who is this?" The voice was not familiar.
I had heard that it's unwise to answer such a question when a stranger calls, so I said, "Who is this?" I mean, come on, it could have been a stalker or the obscene phone caller.
He said, "No, who is this?"
"Who is this?"
"Who is this?"
Somehow, we finally got past that and discovered he had the wrong number.
On Wednesday, April 7, Clarissa and I signed up for a room in Krueger Hall. We decided to move there so we could be near Pearl, Sharon, Rachel, Cindy, Catherine and the others. Then Pearl and Sharon signed up for the new Phi-Delt living suite in Hofer instead.
This was my 4/12/93 diary entry for 11:45pm:
"I think I see now: techno appeals to one side of me, and alternative and 'beautiful' music to the other. Techno is deep and subconscious, and alternative is poetic and Romantic--especially with the Victorian way it seems to be obsessed with death." (Note that Romantic is capitalized: I didn't mean romance, but the Romantic period of art, literature and music.)
In those days, you see, alternative was not just a different kind of guitar style or the vent for teen angst; it was often crafted with wonderful melodies and lyrics. You could say it was New Wave mixed with alternative. After discovering that some of my favorite bands from those days, and my favorite style of alternative music, were actually from the goth genre, I guess I was "goth" long before I heard of it. For example: Peter Murphy, New Order, the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees (which I got into in 1995 or 1996). I just heard a Joy Division song which also fits right in with these bands, and they're considered goth as well.
In the wee hours of 4/13/93, Shawn called and we settled some things. I considered 4/13 or 14 to be the breakup of our dating relationship, and me to be the one who initiated it. The dating had to mean something, or else I wanted none of it. I was still expecting Rick's call. I didn't know yet if Rick and I would start seeing each other, but I didn't want to be with another guy while Rick sat at home thinking of me.
I wrote in my diary, "I've been living with relationship-problems for over a year now, and finally, for once, my major problems are basically resolved: Peter and I are on better terms than we were, my situation with Shawn and his words is going into recovery, and I'm pretty much to a point with Shawn where I can be content with just his friendship. I'm even planning to ask him why in the world he doesn't go fight for his old girlfriend, if he's still so hung up on her, except I'm afraid I might encourage him to go back into a relationship he didn't feel right about before."
Once, Clarissa told me somebody had called me and hadn't left a name. She didn't think it was Rick. She heard a printer in the background, and thought it was Counselor Dude. She told him when to call back, so I waited. He didn't call.
On the 18th, when I still hadn't heard anything, I got ticked off. I had a right to expect a timely call, especially so I could plan for the date. I went to see Cindy and try to find out what in the world was going on. She said that, though Rick was a nice guy, he was a lot like Peter, into smoking and drinking and other such things.
She said, "He may have gotten back with his ex-girlfriend. I don't think he was the one who called you."
Her suspicions were later confirmed; he stayed with that girlfriend for a while. I don't know if he married her or not.
Shawn said he was inconsiderate for not calling to cancel or postpone or anything.
What a disappointment!
On April 19, I picked up a friend's letter from my mailbox at about 1:40pm. I strolled through the Campus Center lounge, and saw a bunch of people standing around the TV. Some news report was on. I stopped.
It was Waco, Texas, and the Branch Davidian compound was burning. Wesley sat nearby (sigh), telling somebody that David Koresh couldn't finish Revelations or the Seven Seals now. I thought the news announcer said Koresh was on a plane that crashed, but I probably misheard "flames" as "plane." They said Koresh did not survive.
This whole incident is well known, so I won't describe it here.
I got to class late. I rushed to Old Main's basement, but the class had been moved. I rushed up to the third floor, and found the class sitting in the lounge. We waited for someone to unlock the room; a classmate gave more details on the Koresh incident.
By the way, this happened exactly 4 years to the day before my wedding.
In the early 90s, TV networks made movies about any sensational story which hit the news. In fact, they would start work on the movies before the ink on the headlines had even dried. A movie about Koresh was already in the works before the compound went up in flames. When it aired, the final scene was missing because it hadn't happened yet when the movie was written.
Shawn had to go back home for several weeks. His brother was very sick because of cystic fibrosis. When Shawn finally came back near the end of the semester, he didn't say much about what had happened in his family, so I didn't know.
One day at lunch, as I made a chocolate cone at the soft-serve machine, I thought I heard a faint whisper: 'NY-S-S-A.' I turned around, and saw Peter, walking about halfway from me to the doors on my right. He didn't even turn around or act like he'd seen me or said anything to me at all. It seemed too weird, too coincidental, to have been my imagination. The way it sounded, it could've been a statement rather than a greeting. I suppose he might have greeted me, or just said my name, but if so, his voice was so quiet. Could he have whispered it to himself--or even thought it?
Sometime sophomore year, Muehlmeier caught on fire. I don't believe anybody was hurt, though they were scared and shaken up. I began imagining what I would grab if there were a fire in my dorm. I decided to copy my diaries onto a word processor so that if there were a fire there or at my house, I could just grab my discs and wouldn't lose the many records I had made over the years. In time, I would discover fireproof vaults, and use those instead.
In late April, stories of a rapist loose in S--, shook up the women of the campus. Cindy's mom saw him in the laundromat late one night; he knew her and was after her for some reason. His hair gave him a Hitler look. Rumors flew around that he had been spotted on campus; the Mirror reported a suspect confronted in the library on May 5. But it was just the innocent husband of a non-trad. The rapist never did step foot on our campus, as far as we knew. But the fear of him inspired warnings that we women shouldn't go anywhere alone at night. Clarissa and I went with each other just to do laundry, since we reached the suite laundry room by an outside door. The dorms were now locked up at all times, accessible only by key. I could no longer use Krueger's side door to get snacks from the vending machine or visit friends.
The Claymation video "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello was a big hit. The band wanted to be purely a "video band" (no albums) and deliberately tried to play the worst music in the world. But "Pigs" got so popular that they finally relented and allowed a CD to be released. The song made it to the radio in different versions. The video was tons of fun. Clarissa and I had all sorts of fun with it: When the video said, "earned his master's degree from Harvard College," I would say, "Roanoke College." We imitated both the wolf's growling "Little Pig, Little Pig, let me in" and the pigs' falsetto "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!"
Alternative Nation occasionally played a favorite video: "Detachable Penis" by King Missile. It was so delightfully naughty and funny that Clarissa and I both loved it; I called it "The Detachable Song."
Another video of the time: "Liar" by the Rollins Band. Henry Rollins, the lead singer, was also a VJ at the time. This video was funny: Rollins dressed up as "Rollinsman" (as opposed to Superman), begging his love to trust him when he said everything she wanted to hear about eternal love and faithfulness. Then he would switch to a demon, laughing and saying, "'Cause I'm a LIAR!" Gee, I wonder why this sounded so familiar? (It would again, with Phil. More on him junior year.)