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

2002, before Facebook or MySpace were household names. I was upset that I had to stay away from them, but they could make fun of me on a website. I went to the police station, and even though the police gave me a hard time, they did end up talking to Bruce. It wasn’t a joke; it was slander.

I was hoping that after all of this, Bruce and Rich would finally be out of my life. However, as with most things, I was wrong. One morning when I was finishing up at the radio station, Bruce suddenly walked in the room. He said that if I ever went to the police again, he and Rich would blackmail me with more e-mails. He warned me that I better stay quiet. I was outraged. I knew my freshman-year roommate was controlling and cruel, but I didn’t see Bruce’s true colors until the website scandal. After the show was over, I went back to the police station and filed a second report against Bruce for harassment.

Besides that day at the radio station, other disturbing events occurred that were tied to Bruce. One day Denise told me that Bruce had asked her when my birthday was. A few days later, my mother received a credit card application with everything filled out except for the birthday.

The only moment out of this harassment case that made me smile was when Diana, Shannon, and some of their other friends emailed Bruce and told him to fuck off and stay away from me. I was proud; I rarely stood up for myself, let alone have somebody else defend me. Even though my friends were of the opposite sex, Shannon, Diana, Denise, Vanessa, and I all had truly caring and emotional relationships with one another. Bruce didn’t retaliate against the e-mail because he wasn’t intimidated by their threats; much like Rich, Bruce was a sexist who thought girls were weak and inferior. It was like having his mom yell at him. Bruce never took any threat or command from a woman seriously.

About a week after I filed the second report, I received a phone call from the resident director of Shay Hall, where Bruce was living. She wanted both Bruce and me to sit down and have a meditative conference where we would agree to avoid each other for the rest of our college careers. At first, I was frightened to attend a meeting with Bruce present, but since the resident director would be there, I was confident that no mudslinging would occur.

As I was walking to the meeting, I worried that I would run into Bruce on the way. That would have been extremely awkward. The meeting turned out to be short and simple. The resident director made it crystal clear that both of us were to stay out of each other’s lives and that if we ran into each other, we should look the other way. I hoped that this would put an end to the immature and cruel tricks that Bruce and his friends had played on me since freshman year.

At this point, it was almost November. The semester was officially half over, and my days at Geneseo were nearing an end. Despite all of the drama that I endured with Bruce and Rich, I did have a few other memorable moments. One Saturday night as I was lying in bed, Marty came into our room with a girl. I pretended to be asleep but heard them start talking. Marty eventually asked the girl, “So, you want to start some shit?” That was Marty’s pickup line, and it actually worked. They didn’t do much shit, though—mainly kissing and tickling. I really didn’t have many interactions with Marty. One of the few things I remember about him was that he loved the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” and he played it all the time. It was always stuck in my head, except I didn’t know the title. Instead of Elton John singing “Hold me close now, tiny dancer,” I thought the words were “Hold me close now, Tony Danza.” When I told some friends that I had the Tony Danza song stuck in my head, I was embarrassed to learn that the name of the song was “Tiny Dancer” and it wasn’t about Tony Danza at all.

I still managed to have some fun that final semester. Usually on Friday night I went to a fraternity party with Vanessa and her girlfriends. Since Denise was always with Rodney, Vanessa had found a new set of friends independent of Jody and Denise. Sometimes at these parties, a girl would come up to Vanessa and her friends and say that there was a strange man following them. Vanessa would reassure the girl that they were safe because the “strange man” following them was just their friend Luke.

After Rich filed the police report against me, I didn’t hear his voice for two weeks. It started to come back, but it wasn’t as frequent as it once was. I would hear Rich’s voice in my mind until December 15, 2002, about two days before I left SUNY Geneseo and nine months to the day that I began to hear his voice in my mind.

Even though I was leaving SUNY Geneseo and going to SUNY Albany, I was still anxious about transferring home. When I was back at Thanksgiving, I asked Randy if I could come and socialize at his suite, since I knew Carmine didn’t like me and they were living together. Randy told me that I could come over—just to make sure that I called before. During that break, I also wanted to tell Randy about all of the telepathic conversations I was having. My psychiatrist and mother both agreed that telling anybody would be insane. I kept thinking that Randy already knew about the voices I was hearing in my mind and just didn’t tell me. I was thinking that once I transferred to SUNY Albany, I would see Carmine