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

they still hadn’t consummated the relationship. Rich told one of his friends that if Melissa kept putting off having sex, he was going to dump her. So finally, one day in September, Melissa and Rich actually skipped school and had sex for the first time. Soon after that, Melissa dumped Rich. In my mind, Rich’s voice told me that Melissa cried after she had sex with him. He also went into great detail about his second serious girlfriend, Emily.

The main thing that brought Rich and Emily together was that by the end of March, everybody was thinking about prom and nobody wanted to go without a date. Rich was active in student life, and he wasn’t going to miss prom for any reason. With prom only about six weeks away, it would be the perfect time to have sex. This way Rich’s friends wouldn’t bust his balls for remaining celibate on prom night.

But Rich and Emily began having sex even before prom night. The first time Emily gave Rich oral sex, she actually wrote him a note saying that she wanted to. Emily wasn’t a virgin; in fact, she made Jenna Jameson look like the Virgin Mary. She had oral sex when she was only thirteen and lost her virginity a year later as a freshman in high school. With this in mind, Rich wondered early in the relationship when they were going to have sex, since neither one of them were virgins. Emily said that it would be about six weeks, which was her timetable for sexual activity. Where did Emily get this notion that six weeks into a relationship made it okay to start having sex? Why six, and why did she live her sex life according to a set schedule, instead of how she felt for that person?

But Emily was seen as promiscuous, and one boy in her school actually called her a slut to her face. She was so upset that Rich actually punched him and ended up losing the fight. To make it up to Rich, Emily promised that they could have sex every day for one month. Once again, they lived their lives according to a fixed schedule. They both enjoyed sex and saw nothing wrong with having as much of it as possible.

So where were Rich and Emily having all this sex? Since Emily was an only child, they mainly had sex when school was over, during the summer, when nobody was home. Rich had talked to his father a lot about sex; Tom had even pressured Rich to ask girls to sleep with him. Emily never actually talked with her parents about sex—she never had the “sex talk”—and as a result, she already had many sexual partners by the time that she was eighteen. Tom thought Emily was too much of a slut for his son, and he would often joke that Rich’s twelve-year-old brother probably had a chance with her. In my mind, Rich’s voice said that when Emily’s grades were low, he would tell her, “Well, you get an A in sucking dick.” Rich even said that he didn’t think another girl giving him oral sex was cheating on his girlfriend.

Since I was the product of a single-parent home with a nonexistent biological father, I didn’t want to seem sensitive or feminine, but I was definitely gentler than most guys. Rich was always trying to give off this ultramasculine, tough-guy persona, just like Eric did in high school. The one thing that I learned from Rich’s voice was that behind this tough exterior, he had a sensitive and vulnerable side to him.

During the summer that I was home from college, I tried to tell my mother what the voice inside my head was telling me. The voices were a sore subject for us to talk about, so I usually refrained from doing so. One time I told my mother, “Well, if I bring Rich here and have him tell you, would you still not think it’s real?” My mother became angry and started yelling at me that she would never believe it.

One time when I felt that I was communicating with Rich in our minds, his voice told me that the first time he orally pleased his girlfriend, she was very dry. I told my mother what the voice had told me and she became angry and repeated, “This is what the voice is telling you.” For the majority of the summer, I would hear Rich’s voice in my mind—and even Carmine’s, too, although never at the same time.

I soon began to understand why Rich and Bruce were becoming close friends; even though they were polar opposites. When I first met Rich, he intimidated me; he seemed strong, tough, and ruthless. Bruce spent most of his time in high school either playing the piano or surfing the Internet. There were two reasons why polar opposites such as Bruce and Rich became good friends. First, even though Rich was a tough guy, he came from a background in which his father and his friends made all the decisions for him. When Rich woke up in the morning, his day was planned. The “boys” always assumed that they would hang out that day. They would meet in their friends’ basement and then discuss what to do. Rich rarely had a say in the discussion. When the “boys” played their guitars and rehearsed with their band, Rich simply watched. His father made any major decision that affected Rich. Tom planned Rich’s classes, college, major, curfew—everything. Rich had little autonomy. By the time he went to college, he was clueless on how to live his life and he needed somebody to make decisions for him. Bruce was happy to oblige. The second reason these two opposites became friends was that they were both mean. Bruce loved to be cynical when he was talking to or about me.

When I did hear Rich’s voice in my mind over the summer, we made plans to hang out