Chapter 19

Yesterday was an interesting day.

Monday, one of the graduate students was found dead in his apartment. It was later determined he committed suicide. Everyone in the department liked him, he had a fiancée who everyone agreed was wonderful, and he was beautifully handsome (everyone said he looked like Elvis) and a great writer and teacher, who all his students loved.

We don’t know why he killed himself.

Yesterday, Thursday, there was a memorial service for him at the chapel on campus. His parents were there. After hearing people say lots of good things about him, we went and planted a tree in his memory, then went over to the head of the Arts and Humanities Department’s house for a party. His parents were there. It would have been hard to tell why.

I don’t see anybody in this novel committing suicide, nor do I think they know anyone who would commit suicide, so I don’t know why I brought it up. Perhaps it was because it was such a strange day, moving from sorrow to hedonism within two hours. At the party, I think I heard the dead man’s name mentioned twice, early on, then nothing afterward. By the end of the party, everyone was drunk, except my friend Steve, who doesn’t drink. At the end, he was sitting at a table, reading everyone’s tarot cards, which is funny, because I know he doesn’t believe in them (just as I don’t believe them), though everyone is always talking about how good and accurate he is.

Steve read my tarot cards too. Every time someone reads my tarot cards, I know a few things are going to happen. One, I will get the death card. Two, the person reading my cards will look surprised and say something to the effect that this is the strangest thing he has ever seen. Three, in addition to the death card, I’ll have at least two other major arcana. This time, I got the devil card in conjunction with the death card, indicating my next year or two will be full of chaotic change. Nothing new there. My life has been in the grasp of chaotic change for years, since I started college.

He also said my life would be affected by someone else’s health problems. Currently, my grandmother is very sick. She was supposed to have surgery on her lung to remove part of it because of the presence of what appears to be a tumor. My grandmother is a hypochondriac, and I made the mistake of saying, when she first got the flu, that she had to get well, because so long as she was sick, they couldn’t do the surgery. Since my grandmother is also scared to death of having the surgery done, I don’t doubt she decided to stay sick. I would like to go see her, but I’m in Texas, and I have no money to go see her.

Steve also said that I had made the right career choice, but that my choice would be put into strong question. However, I should resist these pressures. Also, he said my career will be essentially stagnant over the next three years (let’s see, one more year for Master’s, at least four more years after that for PhD...).

I told Donna all this last night in bed, and she asked if he had said anything about us. I told her no. That, of course, was a lie, because Steve did mention something about a woman. He said I would be involved with a woman by the end of the year who I either already know or will meet this year, and who is in a position of authority over others. He did say this did not exclude Donna, because she could perhaps get a supervisory job, but I could tell, because of the way he said it, that he didn’t believe it was going to be Donna. So technically (and I know this is a big technically) I told Donna the truth. He didn’t say anything about us. When he did mention her name, he didn’t believe it. Of course, right now I couldn’t think of anyone else he could be talking about, since I wouldn’t want to date any of the women I know who are in a position of authority over others.

This reminds me of something interesting Donna said to me in bed last night. She has been on to me about marrying her for months -- almost since the first moment she moved in with me. But last night she said she didn’t want to get married again, that she would live with me and fuck me forever, but she didn’t think she was going to marry me. Personally, this doesn’t sound very good. This tells me that our relationship is breaking down -- though currently at a glacial pace. I think she has decided to leave me, but she knows we cannot afford to send her anywhere, and she cannot afford to move out, and other than that little Freshman girl, Maddy, she doesn’t know anybody she could move in with here, so she’s sticking around. She has been talking to this one guy from Birmingham on the phone quite a bit. She says he’s not very attractive (or so she’s heard -- I don’t think she’s actually ever seen him) but I still think she’s interested in him -- most particularly because he is bisexual, as is she. One of her fantasies is to be in bed with two men while the men have sex. She knows she won’t ever get that with me, but with this guy there is more than a distinct possibility. She spends hours on the phone with him, talking about lord knows what, and when our phone was turned off because the phone company was sending our phone bill to the wrong place (not that I minded that it was turned off, since that meant she could not stay on the Internet all the time, which meant she actually started spending time with me), she started making me take her to the phone booth to talk to him, leaving me sitting in the car for over an hour. I took a book last night, but I was too drunk to read more than two short stories. I think I dozed off a few times, then realized it was 3:30 in the morning, and sat up, buckled my seatbelt, and started the van. When she opened the door to ask what the hell I was doing, I told her I was going home, and that if she wanted to go, she’d better get in. In a surprise move on her part, she wasn’t angry (her most common emotion). She said she was trying to get off the phone, but he wouldn’t stop talking.

Again, I have no idea why I decided to put all this in the novel, since I can think of no way it relates to the book -- at least, in a direct way. Yesterday was just a full day, a day I guess I needed to talk about, get off my chest, out of my head. Some strange implications for me, that’s for sure - things that, as they change my life this year, will inevitably affect what I write in this novel. Maybe that’s why I included it. Maybe yesterday was the first day of a series that will cause my life to change. In that respect, I don’t see how it is any different from any other day, since one could say that about any day. Everything affects our lives, so we might as well appreciate everything that happens. But sometimes you know that certain events, certain realizations, certain things said are going to affect you in more profound ways than the activities of a more typical day. This, I think, is the prologue to a change in my life, and, therefore, a change in the book. I don’t know what it is going to be. We’ll just have to discover it together.