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

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, although 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