So, you go to therapy, and every now and then a session yields something.  You might have the feeling, 'well, why didn't she just tell me that earlier,' but that's how it works.  It takes a while, bit by bit, finding the greater context in which to place things and understand them.  You find one piece of the puzzle, fit it in, and then because of that, maybe another piece fits in.

"You say one more word to me and I'll go to the dean and have you charged with sexual harassment." That's what she, The Princess,' said to me after I approached her one sunny day in the dining hall.  The night before it had been a full moon, and I'd gone by her suite to see if she wanted to go to the Full Moon Party down at the Zoo, a house down off campus past the football field.  Yes, it was awkward.  I shrugged and left quickly, asked to do so.  Great.

I'd told my therapist Dr. H. about it, sessions ago, I'm sure.  I think it was that, but it may have been another incident, like, what she said to me, and even on sensitive ground, speaking to a woman, the other side, really, in the battle of the sexes, even the therapist had to be moved, telling me that The Princess had treated me like "a low life."  Jesus Christ.

New Yorkers like to talk.  They like to hear themselves talk.  One of my first impressions, going to Amherst, observing the very first week.  They fancy themselves good at it, have complete self-confidence.   That was my impression of a lot of my classmates, actually.  It was hard to get a thoughtful word in edgewise.  They were talking like they knew what to say their whole lives forward.  And there was I, right in the middle of them.  Pushy city dwellers.

(The genetic kindly temper of the people in the countrysides of the nation have a slower turnover.  There is institutional memory, persisting longer, habits like politeness and conversational ability.  There is less difference between the current generation and, say, that of four generations ago.  Which tends to make people more pleasant, less caught up with the latest changes promising superior lifestyle...)

It made me sad, the whole thing with her, old Miss Princess.  She never seemed to give me a chance, or if she did, as I could see, it was right after she had performed some magnificent cut-off put-down of me.  Unmistakable phrases, quiet clear in meaning.  Like, "Oh, God..."

I hadn't realized the impact it was having on my whole adult life.   It is, I suppose, the decent people who feel these things acutely.  A louder person would have played the match with her, been loud back.  Well, that wasn't who I was.   The insinuations of her language dog my psyche thirty years later, isn't that funny....   Like I have to prove myself to be decent even before opening my mouth.  I guess that's why am I waiter, a bartender, even...  Jesus Christ.  I can't be a ditch digger, let alone a teacher, unless I feel myself earning the title, proving I'm not what she said I was.

And that's not how life works, how people do things.  People just jump into things.  Sure.  Qualified.  That old self-confidence people always talk about.  Jesus Christ.


In a way I'd wish there'd been a Jim character to keep my Huck company going down that old river, Amherst.  ("My Waterloo," a classmate, a lawyer, described her as, not too long ago, coming through DC.)  Jim would have been supportive, and we could have gone fishing, forgetting about her.  Cheering me up.  "Who are these people," Jim would have asked me.  "They are racist," he might have said, racist against us, me and Jim, a slave on the run and a college professors son whose parents were splitting up....

Yeah, so you add a little bit to your pile, figuring out the puzzle.  What keeps holding you back from all the changes you should be making in your life...

A decent guy is never going to find it in himself to be harsh like everyone else.  He still likes people, finding them more or less mistaken, but hey, we all human, we all, all of us, make mistakes.  It's the being patient.  Other people don't have much time for that.  Nope.  They got things to do, lives to lead, choices to make, every day, choices.  The only choices a good and decent person makes is to be good and decent, first and foremost, in the middle, and lastly....

But it is that sort of "Fuck You," "I'm a decent person," the being thoughtful, that is so revolutionary, when you look at it, particularly in the context of the world's operations.  Revolutionary.

It messed me up pretty good though.  Her insinuations led to patterns, ones which drove wedges between me and my family, me and my college career, me and living a decent life led according to my values.  Well, I kept up with the values, you can't not.  But things that get in the way....

A mushroom cloud of pain that wouldn't go away.  I brought her flowers.  I was inept with her, sure, that's how kids are when they are trying to be themselves, not be some sort of phony act.

When you wake up finally, there's a kind of horror.  There's sadness.  Watching the soldiers tell their stories of being back in Ken Burns' The Vietman War reminds me of it.  You don't trust anybody....  It seems like you'd be taken as a misogynist even for saying so.  "Well, she didn't mean it.  She only said that, like, once.  What's the big deal?"  Yeah, and maybe she might not have meant it to be a big deal, but it was.   And she will never even apologize for it, and nor will her abetting friends.  You have a hard time trusting anyone.  It's always, "you're the asshole," meaning, myself.

So, yes, you're kind of broken.  Depressed, finally taking medication for it.   No retirement plan.  No suitable grown-up career.  And you get blamed for all that too, "your choices, your fault."   Which doesn't help.  All you are is a good person.   Perhaps not so effective at it, most of the time....

That's the crucifying world for you.  It's miserable.


Fit one piece in, fit in another.  Realize what the problem is, bit by bit.  Maybe that's how it has to go. You couldn't see the whole picture all at once;  it would be overwhelming.  So it takes time, finally figuring out who you are as a human being.  This is why people occupy themselves with things so they don't have to think too deeply, I suppose.

Even if you tried to be a good boy and write it down it might be miserable and wholly alienating that you wouldn't want to, and if taken as a writer, just for the sake of argument, it wouldn't be something you'd really ever want to talk about.  Or maybe you would, as part of the ongoing effort to get better, having finally realized how messed up you in fact are.


Writers get to be writers, I suppose, out of the desire to use words carefully, thoughtfully.  They might not be the quickest, the first in the room to respond to a stimulus.  That, to me, is a different mode of being than what I saw for myself arriving at college finding myself amongst New Yorkers, city folk.

There are all sorts of writers, I suppose.  Different temperaments.  Different walks of life.  Different walks of life.  Different attitudes.  Different sensibilities.  Joseph Conrad is Joseph Conrad, Anton Chekhov is Anton Chekhov, and Jack Kerouac is Jack Kerouac.  Kurt Vonnegut is Kurt Vonnegut.  Whether or not they even write.  An interface.  The person is important.  Should be more important than the writing.   A soul.  The writing is secondary if it is not the story of the person who is the writer.