Missing the Big Picture

by Donovan, Luke

  —Ann Landers

  On Sunday, April 7, I heard Rich’s voice on four different occasions. Rich started to ask me what I thought of Bruce, and when I said that he was “all right,” Rich was surprised. His voice said that he was used to hearing Bruce complain that his roommate was weird, strange, and too silly for him. From what I was hearing in my mind, Rich portrayed Bruce as somebody who really hated me.

  Even though I began to hear Rich’s voice, I was still able to function at school and work and continue hanging out with my group of friends. I didn’t tell anyone that I was hearing a voice in my mind. When the voice first surfaced, I was distracted by hosting an overnight guest. At my work-study job in the admissions office, the assistant director had asked if I would mind hosting a prospective student. My overnight guest, Pete, and a friend, drove from Syracuse to Geneseo. After I showed him my room, he wanted to smoke marijuana and find some parties. To Pete’s disappointment, everybody I knew had to stay in and study, as college was not always the party scene as portrayed in college flicks.

  So Pete and his friend decided to make their own party. At eight that evening, only a few hours after meeting me, Pete decided to split ways and hang out with his friend in another suite. Pete said he’d come back in a couple of hours, but he never did. After a few hours, I started to worry: how bad is it to host an overnight guest and lose him? I never got in trouble, but it was clear that my guest just wanted to party.

  As of April 16, I was still hearing Rich’s voice in my mind on a daily basis—sometimes three to four times a day. I decided to tell somebody. I didn’t want to go running to my mother because I knew she would get frustrated, worried, anxious, and maybe even angry. Plus, I didn’t want to go back on the medication again. I had gained weight on the Zyprexa and didn’t want to go back to feeling tired all the time. I couldn’t keep this strange experience a secret, so I told my second mother, my Aunt Eileen.

  Unlike Dr. Roberts or my mother, Eileen was more open-minded and didn’t just yell at me to take my medication. When I asked Eileen if she thought this could actually happen—two people communicating through their minds—Eileen couldn’t even give me a sound answer. My mother told me that I could have all the boys whose voices I heard come over and tell her that we were talking telepathically, and she still wouldn’t believe it. Dr. Roberts shared the same opinion. Dr. Roberts told me that talking telepathically with somebody had never been scientifically proven, and that if I took the medication, it could calm all the activity that was happening in my mind. Despite spending hours with Dr. Roberts and my mother telling me that what was happening in my mind was all an illusion, I was utterly convinced that I was having a conversation with Rich—just like I thought I was having conversations with Eric, Carmine, and the others only months before.

  Even though I told my Aunt Eileen in confidence, my mother found out anyway. She was initially disappointed because I made tremendous progress in my life since starting college. I was happy and having fun. The only problem was that my grades could have been a little higher. She told me that if the problem persisted, I should go back on my medication. I then started taking the medication again after my mother told me to do so. As much as I hated taking the Zyprexa, I hated hearing voices more, so I did decided to start taking it again. Still, the medication alone was not my only plan to make the voices in my mind stop.

  I had a new approach to ending the voices. Rich’s voice was the most talkative, and when we were communicating, he said that he loved doing this. Most people remember the topics they discuss with others. As if I was having a real conversation, why not just talk to Rich about what I thought we were communicating telepathically and see how Rich reacted? All the voices in my mind were very clear, just like real-life conversations. I decided the next time I saw Rich in person, I would mention what I heard in my mind and see what his reaction would be.

  One day I coincidentally ran into Rich on the way back to class, and I decided to bring up the topics we had discussed in my mind. In my mind, we talked about everything—mostly Bruce and other people from our dorm, but also Rich’s classes and his high school. He once told me that the first woman he had a crush on was Paula Abdul, and I said that I liked Heather Graham. When I brought up these girls to him in person—both odd topics because this was before Paula Abdul made a comeback on American Idol and after Heather Graham’s days on Austin Powers and Boogie Nights—Rich acted confused as to why I was talking about them.

  After my real-life conversation with Rich, I began wondering whether Dr. Roberts and my mother were correct. Was Rich’s voice a complete creation of my brain, and my mind was just playing tricks on me? Or, was Rich just trying to torment and frustrate me? It felt so real, this voice in my mind. Through telepathy, I learned about Rich’s first girlfriend, Melissa, and his current girlfriend, Emily. Rich told me how he would buy Emily a present each week and how she expected it. Rich had a totally different viewpoint of women. He definitely saw himself as superior, and viewed his girlfriend as someone to look down upon and use for sex. Rich’s voice in my mind said that he would never acknowledge in person that this experience was happening and that the time I tried to talk to him about it, he got scared and nervous. He explained that this was why he was mean to me.

  Once again in early May, I thought about asking Rich to come over so I could again try to talk to him about what was going on in our minds. I would use other bits of information about his girlfriends as ice breakers. Rich at first was hesitant about speaking with me, but he then agreed.

  That night after dinner, Bruce and Rich entered my dorm room. Bruce said, “Luke, I heard there was something you wanted to talk with Rich about.” Then a strange moment later he said, “I forgot I needed to talk to my RA [residential advisor] about something” and left the room. Both Bruce and Rich had smirks on their faces.

  I told Rich that only hours before, in my chemistry class, I had overheard a male student tell a woman, “Jean, the test we’re having on Friday is hard—you better send me some psychic messages or in some telepathic way give me the answers.” Both Jean and the boy stared at me and said, “Oh, telepathically,” then they started giggling. As I was telling Rich this story, he started acting nervous. Whenever I said “telepathically,” he got angry and starting to call me a “freak,” telling me that I was “strange” and a “loser.” Now I was even more confused: why did Rich get so offensive and threatened when I mentioned the word telepathic? I did even ask him about Paula Abdul and Heather Graham again, but he did not respond to my questions.

  Finally, after a couple of minutes, Bruce reentered the room. Rich asked him, “Do you know what’s been going on since April sixth that involved Heather Graham and Paula Abdul?” Bruce said no and laughed hysterically.

  After that confrontation, I was confused and even angry—plus my relationship with Bruce was becoming more awkward. Once when I was walking to class, I realized I forgot a pen and went back to my dorm room. When I opened the door I found Bruce going through my stuff and looking at my pictures. In my mind, Rich said that he had told Bruce to look for some pictures to show him; this way Rich could see that the people I pictured in my mind were the same as in real life. Rich said that he told Bruce and his other friends that we communicated telepathically, and they all believed him. He also said he was going to and he would tell Bruce everything we talked about in our minds.

  Regardless of what was happening with Rich in my mind, Rich in person was one mean guy, although he didn’t think he was mean—he thought he was funny. Sometimes when I acted strange, or made one of my jokes about The Vagina Monologues, Rich told me that I had a mental disorder. He also told me that I had problems because I had no male role model, meaning my biological father, in my life. I wished I had the ability to just shrug off his ugly comments, but like everything, I took it personally and once again thought it was me with the problem and that Rich must be right.

  I would still hear Rich’s voice in my mind the rest of the semester, althou
gh there was no rhythm or pattern to when it would occur. If I was in class or in my dorm room or with my friends, I went from having a clear mind to hearing Rich’s voice—at a moment’s notice. By May, most of the girls had stopped pledging, but they still loved to hang out with their new friends, so I still didn’t see them anymore—they just smelled a lot better.

  As for Denise, she was having troubles of her own with Rodney. He would often dance with other girls at parties. Once he actually made out with a girl from the floor below Denise’s. Denise blamed the girl Rodney made out with instead of Rodney himself. Another time, as Rodney and Denise were walking home from a party, Rodney actually held hands with another girl as Denise walked behind them and tearfully looked on.

  Most of Denise’s friends told her that she should just dump him; he was crude and mean to her friends. Once Jody said that she was going to a wedding the following weekend. Rodney intervened with, “Oh, Jody—are you going to suck the groom’s dick?” Rodney was even meaner to Denise. He often called her “fat” and “ugly.” Denise’s goal was to change Rodney. Before she entered his life, Rodney had had only one girlfriend for a period of five months; many people knew why. He hated anything that was remotely feminine, such as talking and shopping, and would rather spend his time with his friends playing sports. Denise was convinced that she could turn Rodney into a sophisticated, caring gentleman. She would never succeed at doing this, but as freshman year came to a close, the two of them were still dating.

  As my first year of college wound down, I began to think about how much I’d learned, how much fun I’d had, and how in some ways I’d changed, but in other ways I hadn’t. For once, I was happy because I had friends. But there were always problems. I was either helping my friends fix their problems, or I had my own problems to fix.

  My friends’ problems mainly involved dating and other normal teenage stuff, but during my first year of college, I met students who suffered from domestic violence, mental disorders, and eating disorders. Three girls living in my dormitory had to get help for eating disorders. In the spring, a student was also assaulted on campus and died.

  I had to study for my final exams hearing Rich’s voice in my mind at the same time. Most of these surreal talks revolved around when we were both leaving and how Rich was staying overnight until the last possible day the dorms were open, after almost everybody else would have left. Rich and I started to plan our own little day together. Since the last of day of exams was May 20 and I had a final at eight o’clock that morning, Rich and I were planning to get drunk after everyone had left campus. I never really drank much; I just went along with the voice in the hopes that it would stop. Rich even asked me if I would smoke pot. Most importantly, Rich promised that we would sit down and actually talk about our telepathic communication. Out of all the different activities previously mentioned, I was most looking forward to that.

  Even though I hadn’t talked to the real Rich for two weeks, I absolutely believed that he would come to my dorm room at five o’clock, we would talk about all the weird stuff that was happening in our minds, and then the fun would begin. It was a day that I had anticipated since January 29, 2001—the first time I thought I had a telepathic conversation. I convinced myself that these conversations were real, and I was counting on Rich to verify it; after all, I had spent so much time tormenting myself and getting into arguments with my mother and Dr. Roberts.

  As a backup plan, I knew that Diana and Shannon were also staying overnight on the twentieth, the last day the dorms were open. If Rich pulled a no-show, I knew I had at least two other friends to visit.

  On the morning of May 20, the main thing on my mind was my art history final, but I was also thinking about Rich coming to my dorm room and talking about what I thought was our telepathic experience. I decided to call Rich in person and ask what he was doing after his finals were over. I left a message. Now it was more than just a telepathic plan; I had actually called Rich and asked him to visit.

  As it turned out, the art history final lasted only an hour, and then most of the SUNY Geneseo residents moved out and said their tearful good-byes. It was hard for me to say good-bye to Denise and Vanessa. Bruce actually moved out four days earlier, and there was no love lost between us anyway. I actually helped Bruce pack his dad’s car in order to get him moved out faster.

  By five o’clock, the dorm had turned into a ghost town. Kaitlin and some of our other friends decided to use a computer-animated voice to make prank phone calls. Somebody would dial the number and then type in what she wanted the computer voice to say. Once Kaitlin typed in, “You make me so wet, you just turn me on.” That was the least vulgar and sexually explicit of what the girls were typing in.

  In the meantime, I was getting nervous about what was going to happen. For several days now, Rich’s voice said that he would be at my dorm room at five o’clock. I just sat in my room when five o’clock came and then realized as the minutes ticked by that Rich wasn’t going to show up. I decided to walk by Rich’s room and found it locked. It looked like nobody was there, but the name tag with Rich’s name and hometown was still posted on the side of the door—meaning he hadn’t checked out yet.

  As I walked back to my dorm room, I began to hear Rich’s voice in my mind again. It said he was still on campus, that he didn’t forget about me, and that he would stop by at nine. So I sat in my room at nine o’clock, feeling totally detached as I waited for Rich. At nine thirty, Rich still didn’t show up, so I went to his dorm room. His name tag was gone. Despite the phone messages I’d left saying that I wanted to talk to him before he left, and despite what was happening in my mind, Rich was a no-show and I was crushed. I had convinced myself that I was communicating with Rich in my mind and was waiting for the minute when he would confirm that I wasn’t schizophrenic after all.

  Luckily, Shannon and Diana were still in the dorm. As soon as I saw Rich was gone, I went down to my favorite hangout, Diana’s dorm room, one last time. I walked in while Shannon, Diana, and some other girls were talking about what it would be like to orgasm, since none of them ever had. Even though everybody was laughing and joking, I knew the girls would figure out that something was wrong with me. Still, I could never tell them that I was hearing somebody’s voice in my mind. Soon after, we went to a pizza place right off campus.

  On the way there, Diana and Shannon were still talking about boys and Diana was saying that she didn’t want a guy who would drop everything to be with her; she didn’t like the desperate type. I, on the other hand, was about to tell them something that they would find disturbing. Most of the people who were in the pizza parlor were graduating seniors, since Monday night was the beginning of Senior Week, a weeklong celebration devoted to the seniors that ended with graduation on Sunday.

  As the girls were eating their pizza in the relatively empty restaurant, I told them I couldn’t imagine myself graduating from SUNY Geneseo in three years. I said that I had a gut feeling that something would happen that would make me want to leave the college that, until the previous month, I had loved so dearly. The girls couldn’t understand why I would say that.

  After the girls finished their pizza, we went back to their dorm and watched Dazed and Confused, a movie about a bunch of burnout teenagers celebrating the last day of school. I was older than most of the characters in the movie, but with all the recent activities in my mind, the title very much suited me. As the movie was ending, I noticed that Shannon and Diana were asleep. I sadly walked by Denise’s room on my way back to my dorm room and noticed that everybody had departed. My freshman year of college had been one of the best years of my life. Before I went to bed that night, I began to hear Rich’s voice in my mind again, saying that he was driving home to Long Island. He apologized and said that since I already had his e-mail address, we could just communicate with each other and it would be no big deal. The voice that I heard only lasted a few minutes. I quickly went to sleep knowing that I had to be out of my room by nine in the morning. />
  The next morning, I left college and went home. The drive lasted four hours. My mother and I had a conversation on the way back in which I promised that I was going to change. I said I was going to stand up for myself, be more assertive, and stop letting people take advantage of me. Later in the day, I went back to Friendly’s and got rehired for the summer.

  Within a few days of being back, I started hanging out with Randy more and more. Randy kept asking what was happening between Carmine and Eric and me, even though it had been a year since high school. When I told Randy that it was a touchy subject, he wanted to know why. I decided that when I hung out with Randy, I just wouldn’t talk about Eric or Carmine because I knew Randy would just report back to them. We mainly spent our time together running errands, hanging out at the mall, or going out to a diner.

  Less than a week after I got home from college, I decided to send Rich an e-mail, but he didn’t respond. Soon after that, I once began hearing Rich’s voice in my mind. Still, even though Rich was at home in Long Island and I was in Albany, I utterly convinced myself that I wasn’t mentally ill and that I was having some strange psychic experience. The main reason I actually thought I was having a telepathic conversation with him was the content of our exchanges. I learned about Rich’s home life, his past relationships, and what he thought about his friends. In fact, the voice in my mind was the complete opposite of my own voice.

  While I was raised in a single-parent family with my grandmother controlling the house, Rich came from a male-dominated household, where his father ruled with an iron fist. I knew that from literally talking to Rich, while his voice in my mind just reiterated this. Rich completely idolized his father, Tom, who made all of the major decisions in Rich’s life. One time when Rich was in his early teens, Tom actually told his son that he should lose his virginity by the time he turned eighteen. After Rich lost his virginity at the age of seventeen, his dad would repeatedly ask when he’d last had sex.