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

he knew were having anal sex with their girlfriends. He just made wild assumptions about people.

After the girls I was friends with started pledging, my mother could sense that I was lonelier. She was a little disappointed since I had been so happy at college and she was hoping that I was able to overcome my mental illness. That is what I thought too, up until March 15.

Friday, March 15, 2002, started out as any ordinary day. I went to classes, then to my work-study job, and was lying down to rest shortly after seven o’clock. Suddenly, I felt the white presence strike and heard a voice in my mind again. It had been months since I felt that I was communicating with anybody telepathically. March 15 marked the one-year anniversary of when I began hearing Eric’s voice in my mind. On March 15, 2002, I didn’t think that I was talking to Eric, Carmine, or any of my other high school classmates. This time I was convinced that I was talking telepathically to Rich.

In my mind, I heard Rich laughing, then suddenly I asked him in our minds if he believed in God. Rich said he did, definitely. About ten minutes later, the voice left me. Shortly after the voice disappeared, the phone started ringing. Bruce, who was on his computer at the time, said, “I bet that’s for you.” I picked up the phone, and there was a dial tone; somebody had just hung up. That night, I went out with Denise and some other people on my floor. I didn’t think about what had happened in my mind.

The following Monday, I once again heard Rich’s voice in my mind. Rich should have been at American Politics, so in my mind I asked why wasn’t he in class. Rich replied, calling me a “stalker.” The voice I heard lasted a shorter amount of time than it had on Friday night.

The next night, I was at the campus delicatessen a few minutes before closing when I saw Rich. I didn’t want to tell Rich that I thought we were having a telepathic conversation, so I kept the conversation simple. Since Rich’s screen name started with “Strider,” I jokingly asked him if his girlfriend’s screen name was “Rider.” Rich wasn’t amused, but he wasn’t angry.

In fact, the next three consecutive days I saw Rich near the campus deli. We always made some small talk. At the first run-in, I complained to Rich about having three tests in the same week; later, I was surprised when he remembered and asked how the tests went. Still, I didn’t even think about asking Rich if anything strange had been happening in his mind.

The following Friday, March 22, 2002, I went home to Albany for spring break. I didn’t go to Cancun or Florida or any of those places, since most college students I knew didn’t have the money to take trips like the ones on MTV or the movie The Real Cancun. Since Randy, my friend from high school, was attending college locally, I got to spend time with him. It was refreshing to have another male around, instead of being the only guy in a group of girls.

One night Randy invited me to go along to the local bars, coffeehouses, and music clubs to distribute demos that his band had made. One of Randy’s band members was his best friend, Kyle, who was as religious as Randy and was even homeschooled because his parents thought public school had too many temptations.

After Randy and I dropped off CD’s, we later went to a psychic and found a package of horny goat weed in a convenience store. I told the psychic about the car that would drive by my house late at night and park outside the driveway; it had started happening again during my spring break. I asked who it was or why the person was doing this. Just like most cheap psychics, the woman knew nothing. After that, I asked Randy if he knew the driver, but Randy said he knew nothing about it. I knew that Randy knew more; he would just never tell me. I decided to change the subject, and we speculated if using horny goat weed would make a girl want to have sex with somebody.

The week after spring break was quiet for me. Diana and Shannon were still pledging, but I did receive an invitation to go out partying both weekend nights. For the first time ever, I actually got up on the bar and started slapping some drunken girl’s ass—something I had never done before. But on Saturday, I heard Rich’s voice in my mind again. I was in the laundry room finishing up a wash when I heard Rich’s laugh. I remember walking up the steps, thinking that I might have heard something in the basement instead. I kept telling myself, “I’m sure after I walk upstairs and fold all of my clothes, the voice will disappear.” It didn’t, and every night until the end of the semester, I would feel that I was communicating with Rich through our minds.

On one of the first occasions that the two of us communicated telepathically, I asked Rich why he would write so many strange e-mails. We talked about how Rich wrote me nasty e-mails saying that I was weird and that I should go back to the psychiatric ward where I came from. I would frequently e-mail Rich content that was just as strange. One of the e-mails I sent actually had the subject line, “oh that vagina.” Rich told me that at first he thought it was pornography and was going to delete it.

Up until college, I was always just a quiet kid. In high school I got a reputation more from what Eric said about me than what I actually did, so my e-mails were a way for me to show a new side of myself. I knew Rich thought they were funny, but he