Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

I’d spent all of the fall semester trying to convince Denise to like me, but she made it clear that she wasn’t interested. I knew that she liked rough guys; she said she didn’t want a guy who was all over her, and she enjoyed “the challenge.” Most of the other boys she had dated were jocks, not guys who were known for being nice—like me. Soon after the second semester began, Denise started dating a Middle Eastern student named Rodney. Rodney was loud, athletic, and fond of making inappropriate jokes, usually at another person’s expense. He would pick on Denise’s friend, telling her that her breasts looked like “mosquito bites.” Another time, when everyone was watching television, he told another girl to “get up and a make a sandwich for me now.”

Despite all of Rodney’s negative comments to others, the buttons he most liked to press were mine. He told me how Denise had hooked up with another guy, just to make me angry. When a bunch of people from my dorm were hanging out in our floor lounge one day, he singled me out and asked, “Do you jerk off to Denise?” He also made fun of me because I was still a virgin and the only thing physically I had done with a woman was with a stripper. Finally, tired of Rodney’s crude humor, I decided to wrestle him in the study lounge. This wasn’t an average wrestling match. Nearly every seat in the lounge was taken, and everyone was taking pictures. Some ended up on the Internet for years, which was rare in 2002.

I was nervous having everybody watching me, so I just egged Rodney on and ran around him in circles. I ended up losing the wrestling match. Rodney said that I would have to be his bitch for losing—plus he was dating Denise and I wasn’t.

My main pastime at Geneseo was simply socializing in other people’s rooms. I had no computer and no cell phone, and I had to share my room with somebody else. Yet I loved just being able to walk down the hall and hang out with some friends.

One night Renee and Diana were talking about how they never saw the famous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape, and they wanted me to rent it for them. As a loyal friend, I agreed to visit the off-campus video store and attempt to rent it. Unlike any other video store, I was disappointed when the man went onto the computer to look for the tape, but he was all out. I settled for another pornographic flick called I Came and I Can’t Get Up, which was made in the 1970s and only cost a dollar to rent. Still, the laughs that came from the movie were priceless.

While many people who watch porn probably sit alone and watch from the comfort of their couches, Diana and her friends gathered around. One girl kept yelling out, “Yeah, I’ve done that,” every time the two sex partners changed positions. Another joke we played was to call one unsuspecting friend to come over to copy some class notes, and then just let the porno play in the background.

Another memorable occasion that semester was when The Vagina Monologues came to SUNY Geneseo. As a joke, I would call random rooms or ask people sitting at tables in the campus center if that was where I could get tickets. One man at a table said, “Well, I don’t know where you can get tickets, but I know a lot about vagina.”

My friends were surprised at how open and risqué I was with complete strangers. Diana and I were talking to somebody we had never met before, and she told us that she saw The Vagina Monologues. I asked her if there was any moaning, and she told me no. I replied, “That must have been the last time I saw vagina.” Diana started laughing uncontrollably while the girl just gave me a strange look.

After the holiday break, I noticed that Rich and Bruce were becoming good friends. I could never understand how the two of them had such a close friendship; they appeared to be polar opposites. Bruce never liked to drink, and Rich loved to go to parties, smoke weed, and drink. Every other word that came out of Rich’s mouth was “fuck.” He used it as an adjective, a noun, and a verb. He would refer to me as a “sick fuck” if I said something perverted, although he would openly talk about the anal sex that he was having with his girlfriend. Of course, he also used the word as a verb, especially describing how he liked to fuck.

Bruce was more of a loner and spent hours on his computer or playing his guitar. Sometimes he would even play the guitar when I was sleeping. Bruce also prided himself on once almost hacking into his school’s computer. SUNY Geneseo was known for being two-thirds female, and Rich could never really be friends with any girls he wasn’t dating. He had no respect for women. When his girlfriend from Long Island called, the most that he would talk to her would be for fifteen minutes because “That’s all I can take from that bitch.” In fact, a lot of women were known as “bitches” to Rich.

If ever Rich had somebody visiting or somebody new was on the floor, Bruce and Rich would call me to Rich’s room to meet them. One time we had a visitor named Bin, who was of Russian descent. I knew Rich wanted me to ask him strange questions as a joke. I asked Bin how many Russian girls he knew were shaved and whether it was socially acceptable to have threesomes. I knew Rich thought my questions were hysterical, but he knew that Bruce hated me and he didn’t want to say that he liked me. Bruce was so