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

said that I had a gut feeling that something would happen that would make me want to leave the college that, until the previous month, I had loved so dearly. The girls couldn’t understand why I would say that.

After the girls finished their pizza, we went back to their dorm and watched Dazed and Confused, a movie about a bunch of burnout teenagers celebrating the last day of school. I was older than most of the characters in the movie, but with all the recent activities in my mind, the title very much suited me. As the movie was ending, I noticed that Shannon and Diana were asleep. I sadly walked by Denise’s room on my way back to my dorm room and noticed that everybody had departed. My freshman year of college had been one of the best years of my life. Before I went to bed that night, I began to hear Rich’s voice in my mind again, saying that he was driving home to Long Island. He apologized and said that since I already had his e-mail address, we could just communicate with each other and it would be no big deal. The voice that I heard only lasted a few minutes. I quickly went to sleep knowing that I had to be out of my room by nine in the morning.

The next morning, I left college and went home. The drive lasted four hours. My mother and I had a conversation on the way back in which I promised that I was going to change. I said I was going to stand up for myself, be more assertive, and stop letting people take advantage of me. Later in the day, I went back to Friendly’s and got rehired for the summer.

Within a few days of being back, I started hanging out with Randy more and more. Randy kept asking what was happening between Carmine and Eric and me, even though it had been a year since high school. When I told Randy that it was a touchy subject, he wanted to know why. I decided that when I hung out with Randy, I just wouldn’t talk about Eric or Carmine because I knew Randy would just report back to them. We mainly spent our time together running errands, hanging out at the mall, or going out to a diner.

Less than a week after I got home from college, I decided to send Rich an e-mail, but he didn’t respond. Soon after that, I once began hearing Rich’s voice in my mind. Still, even though Rich was at home in Long Island and I was in Albany, I utterly convinced myself that I wasn’t mentally ill and that I was having some strange psychic experience. The main reason I actually thought I was having a telepathic conversation with him was the content of our exchanges. I learned about Rich’s home life, his past relationships, and what he thought about his friends. In fact, the voice in my mind was the complete opposite of my own voice.

While I was raised in a single-parent family with my grandmother controlling the house, Rich came from a male-dominated household, where his father ruled with an iron fist. I knew that from literally talking to Rich, while his voice in my mind just reiterated this. Rich completely idolized his father, Tom, who made all of the major decisions in Rich’s life. One time when Rich was in his early teens, Tom actually told his son that he should lose his virginity by the time he turned eighteen. After Rich lost his virginity at the age of seventeen, his dad would repeatedly ask when he’d last had sex.

Tom even decided what college Rich should attend and what major he should choose. Rich was interested in political science; he was fascinated by government, and one day had dreams of working for a government agency. But since Tom though that a bachelor’s degree in political science wouldn’t be useful in the job market, he made his son become a business major (as if business wasn’t just another vague major). Rich always told his friends that he let his dad pick his college because “he was the one paying for it.” Tom told his son that he wouldn’t pay for graduate school, so Rich had no plans of attending. While this information is what I heard in my mind, I did have some conversations in real life with Rich about this topic; of course, these occurred when my roommate Bruce wasn’t present.

By the time Rich was nineteen, he’d had two serious girlfriends. His first, Melissa, began during the middle of his junior year in high school. Melissa showed up at his locker and asked him if he wanted to hang out. Rich asked her if he could turn it into a date, and she said yes. Up until Melissa, Rich had only been to second base with girls, but as the relationship evolved and time passed, Rich felt pressured to lose his virginity. Rich was jealous when he found out that after the junior prom some of his friends had lost their virginities or received blow jobs, while all Rich did was feel his girlfriend up.

Rich was able to get to third base on the last day of junior year in 2000. After his girlfriend gave him oral sex, he told her, “You suck dick now.” That summer, Rich constantly reminded Melissa how much fun his friends were having losing their virginities and that he was jealous. One time he asked Melissa if before school started they could have sex. Rich seduced her by saying, “All the boys are losing their virginities.” Any idiot with half a brain would have probably told his girlfriend how much he loved her in order to have sex, but Rich just said he was jealous of hearing about his friends’ sex lives while he was getting nowhere.

However, by the time senior year started for Rich and Melissa in September 2000,