Read Missing the Big Picture Online
Authors: Luke Donovan
The next day after dinner, I received an unexpected phone call from a woman who identified herself as an Officer Washington with the university police. My heart began pumping, and I became very nervous. Rich had gone down to the university police station and filed a report against me. I never thought that Rich would have taken it that far. Officer Washington said I would receive more information about the matter later, but for now, I needed to cease all contact with Rich immediately.
After I got off the phone, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I knew what I wasn’t going to do—e-mail Rich—but I wanted to tell somebody about the incident. I couldn’t imagine what my friends would say to me when I was in trouble for what appeared to be harassing another male. Then I realized that Rich wasn’t just an innocent victim; we had had plenty of actual conversations when Bruce and Rich instigated my bothering him. I just thought it was all in good fun. For example, toward the end of September, I had received pranks late at night and strange instant messages from people, both girls and boys, who wanted to initiate sexual contact. I always knew that Rich or Bruce had something to do with them, and I would just hang up the phone or block the person from instant messaging.
I first decided to tell Denise about what had happened. Even though Denise and I had grown apart because of her relationship with Rodney, I always knew I could tell her everything and she would be nonjudgmental and supportive—well, everything except the voices I heard. Denise was surprised that Rich took it that far, and she told me that they were just making fun of me and it was stupid to think that we were friends. Denise didn’t like Rich; Bruce; Rich’s roommate, Neil; or anybody else in their clan. She thought they were extremely rude and obnoxious. Whenever she passed any of them on campus—which was always in a group because none of them liked to walk alone—Denise could sense that they were laughing at her and thought that they were above her.
After I finished talking to Denise, I decided to walk to the police station and read the report that Rich filed against me. Officer Washington had told me most importantly to avoid Rich and had wanted to know how Rich and I knew each other. She had even asked me if Rich and I were a couple. It was so embarrassing.
There was more in the police report than just the e-mails. Rich told the police officer that while working at the admissions office, I looked at his file, which made Rich extremely uncomfortable. I denied that I ever looked in Rich’s file and wondered how he knew. The only person I ever told about my file searching was him, but only in my head during one of our telepathic conversations. Now it was in a police report. The report also included copies of the e-mails that I wrote Rich. Most of them were perverted because Rich was a sexist male chauvinist who was a pig himself. When I was in high school, I got called “fag” or “pussy” because I wasn’t masculine and I looked innocent. In college, I found out that when I acted perverted, I got a bunch of laughs. As a way of becoming more extroverted, I started talking more about sex and anything that was remotely sexual. Since I had no real experience with sex, most of my knowledge came from pornography magazines. Learning about sex from explicit pornographic sources is morally wrong, but it kept me from pressuring some girl into having sex prematurely, like Rich and other teenage boys did.
In the e-mail that was submitted into evidence, the first line was “Sure, I talk about vagina, but who doesn’t love the smell of vagina.” This was the quote that was put in the police report. I was mortified. Reading the quote made me realize that I was putting myself down and being someone I wasn’t just to get external approval. Officer Washington told me, “Well, if you thought he was your best friend, he’s not.” As I left the meeting, the officer told me that I would have to discuss the matter with a representative from the dean’s office.
Upon leaving the campus police station, I decided that I was going to transfer to SUNY Albany and commute. I loved SUNY Geneseo, and I had met great people. I had always wanted the voices in my mind to end, but I finally realized what shape my life was in. I had a mental health disorder that was now getting me in trouble with the law. I wanted to get better and have a clear mind. I was back on my medication after taking some weeks off. The medication alone was not working for me.
The following day, I went to the dean’s office and spoke with the dean of student affairs. The meeting was heated, and the dean said that I was disgusting and shouldn’t have a job in the admissions office where I had access to confidential information. I was once again humiliated. My only reservation about transferring to SUNY Albany was that three of the voices I had heard during high school were on that campus. What if I ran into Carmine, who was now my friend Randy’s roommate? I definitely didn’t want to hear more voices in my mind. Still, I knew there were over twelve thousand students at SUNY Albany. It would be a good opportunity for somebody who wanted to start over.
The first person I told about transferring was Denise. Then I told Diana, Vanessa, Jody, Shannon, and Diana’s friends. The girls were all extremely disappointed and sad. They didn’t understand why I would want to leave. On the outside I appeared to love college. When the admissions office staff found out that I was leaving, the director of admissions said to me, “We don’t want you to leave, Luke. We love you.” The experience highlighted another problem I had when I was young. Ninety-nine people could say good things about me, but if one person didn’t like me, I would focus all of my attention on figuring out what I needed to do to get respect from that person. I didn’t appreciate the friends I had or the great people who surrounded me.
I wanted to tell Randy that I was transferring because we had always hung out during breaks when I was home from college. I didn’t know exactly how to tell him or how would he react. When I came home for Columbus Day weekend, I broke the news. I actually showed him the notice I received with the quote from the e-mail. Randy thought it was hysterical. He still hung out with Eric and Carmine, so I let him keep the notice just so he would show them—once again, I sought their approval.
After I came back to Geneseo from Columbus Day weekend, I was surfing the Internet and found out that Bruce, my former roommate, had made a website. At the top of the website he wrote, “After popular demand, I have granted everybody access into my life”—proving just how arrogant he really was. The website was about two pages, if it was printed out. The first page was about Bruce and his girlfriend; he was a sophomore in college and she was still in high school. The second page was dedicated to me. As I scrolled down the screen, I saw a picture of myself, looking disheveled, that I couldn’t remember posing for. Below the picture was the caption “WARNING, WARNING! Do not talk to this man. Notify police immediately” and other derogatory statements. Although today there are tons of social networking sites and people are used to seeing themselves online, this was in 2002, before Facebook or MySpace were household names. I was upset that I had to stay away from them, but they could make fun of me on a website. I went to the police station, and even though the police gave me a hard time, they did end up talking to Bruce. It wasn’t a joke; it was slander.
I was hoping that after all of this, Bruce and Rich would finally be out of my life. However, as with most things, I was wrong. One morning when I was finishing up at the radio station, Bruce suddenly walked in the room. He said that if I ever went to the police again, he and Rich would blackmail me with more e-mails. He warned me that I better stay quiet. I was outraged. I knew my freshman-year roommate was controlling and cruel, but I didn’t see Bruce’s true colors until the website scandal. After the show was over, I went back to the police station and filed a second report against Bruce for harassment.
Besides that day at the radio station, other disturbing events occurred that were tied to Bruce. One day Denise told me that Bruce had asked her when my birthday was. A few days later, my mother received a credit card application with everything filled out except for the birthday.
The only moment out of this harassment case that made me smile was when Diana, Shannon, and some of their other friends emailed Bruce and told him to fuck off and stay away from me. I was proud; I rarely stood up for myself, let alone have somebody else defend me. Even though my friends were of the opposite sex, Shannon, Diana, Denise, Vanessa, and I all had truly caring and emotional relationships with one another. Bruce didn’t retaliate against the e-mail because he wasn’t intimidated by their threats; much like Rich, Bruce was a sexist who thought girls were weak and inferior. It was like having his mom yell at him. Bruce never took any threat or command from a woman seriously.
About a week after I filed the second report, I received a phone call from the resident director of Shay Hall, where Bruce was living. She wanted both Bruce and me to sit down and have a meditative conference where we would agree to avoid each other for the rest of our college careers. At first, I was frightened to attend a meeting with Bruce present, but since the resident director would be there, I was confident that no mudslinging would occur.
As I was walking to the meeting, I worried that I would run into Bruce on the way. That would have been extremely awkward. The meeting turned out to be short and simple. The resident director made it crystal clear that both of us were to stay out of each other’s lives and that if we ran into each other, we should look the other way. I hoped that this would put an end to the immature and cruel tricks that Bruce and his friends had played on me since freshman year.
At this point, it was almost November. The semester was officially half over, and my days at Geneseo were nearing an end. Despite all of the drama that I endured with Bruce and Rich, I did have a few other memorable moments. One Saturday night as I was lying in bed, Marty came into our room with a girl. I pretended to be asleep but heard them start talking. Marty eventually asked the girl, “So, you want to start some shit?” That was Marty’s pickup line, and it actually worked. They didn’t do much shit, though—mainly kissing and tickling. I really didn’t have many interactions with Marty. One of the few things I remember about him was that he loved the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” and he played it all the time. It was always stuck in my head, except I didn’t know the title. Instead of Elton John singing “Hold me close now, tiny dancer,” I thought the words were “Hold me close now, Tony Danza.” When I told some friends that I had the Tony Danza song stuck in my head, I was embarrassed to learn that the name of the song was “Tiny Dancer” and it wasn’t about Tony Danza at all.
I still managed to have some fun that final semester. Usually on Friday night I went to a fraternity party with Vanessa and her girlfriends. Since Denise was always with Rodney, Vanessa had found a new set of friends independent of Jody and Denise. Sometimes at these parties, a girl would come up to Vanessa and her friends and say that there was a strange man following them. Vanessa would reassure the girl that they were safe because the “strange man” following them was just their friend Luke.
After Rich filed the police report against me, I didn’t hear his voice for two weeks. It started to come back, but it wasn’t as frequent as it once was. I would hear Rich’s voice in my mind until December 15, 2002, about two days before I left SUNY Geneseo and nine months to the day that I began to hear his voice in my mind.
Even though I was leaving SUNY Geneseo and going to SUNY Albany, I was still anxious about transferring home. When I was back at Thanksgiving, I asked Randy if I could come and socialize at his suite, since I knew Carmine didn’t like me and they were living together. Randy told me that I could come over—just to make sure that I called before. During that break, I also wanted to tell Randy about all of the telepathic conversations I was having. My psychiatrist and mother both agreed that telling anybody would be insane. I kept thinking that Randy already knew about the voices I was hearing in my mind and just didn’t tell me. I was thinking that once I transferred to SUNY Albany, I would see Carmine and find out that these conversations were real and that I wasn’t schizophrenic.
After Thanksgiving, most of the drama between Bruce and me ended. He took down the picture of me on his website. In the future, Bruce would call each of his birthday parties “Bruce Fest” and say it was “the most spectacular event in human history.” Instead of my picture, Bruce posted a list of fifty reasons why he loved his juvenile girlfriend. Reason number eleven was “how you say Aerosmith is going to die soon”; number forty-three was “how you let me watch you get ready for bed”; another reason was “those strange little noises you make,” followed by “rock, papers, scissors, SHOUT.” Most everybody thought Bruce was strange, obsessive, and immature.
Before I left SUNY Geneseo, the girls gave me a going-away party and made me a collage of pictures. Even though I was only at SUNY Geneseo for three semesters, I definitely learned a lot about myself. After having feelings of worthlessness for years, I learned that people could like me, I could entertain others, and there was no reason why I couldn’t have friends. I also learned that I was still very impressionable. I had let this insecure, cruel kid from Long Island literally destroy part of my life that I had worked so hard to build.
I knew I had to leave SUNY Geneseo. Being four hours away from my family when I was hearing voices nearly every day didn’t help my mental health. I needed to get treatment and get away from Rich’s voice. I do regret that I didn’t fight the voice enough. Instead of trying to tell myself, “Don’t listen to or communicate anything to this voice,” I assumed that I was having a real conversation and actually followed its commands.
Despite my dealings with Bruce and Rich, most of the students, faculty, and staff I met at SUNY Geneseo were beautiful people who helped me realize that I was a person who was as good as everyone else. I missed them all as soon as I transferred.