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

I almost passed out from exhaustion. I thought it was important to exercise to improve my mental health. December 15, 2002, was the last time I had a cluttered mind, and I was willing to do anything to keep my mind free and clean. Plus, I was back on Zyprexa and had been taking it semi-regularly since April 2002; I didn’t want to gain a bunch of weight. I had previously put on fifteen pounds, which is a common side effect of the medication.

During my spring break, I decided to visit Geneseo. At the time, Denise was trying to break up with Rodney, but he was acting possessive and had a whole fraternity behind him. He would call her repeatedly, and once told her that she was either going to get back with him or he was going to throw himself in front of the next passing car. If Rodney called Denise and she wasn’t there, he would usually call Jody or Vanessa next and ask where Denise was.

A couple weeks after their breakup, Denise became interested in a senior named Tony. Soon Rodney found the number to Tony’s townhouse and started calling and asking Denise to visit him. Then, when Denise started to stay overnight there, Rodney would stop by. When Denise came to the door, the incidents became physical. Rodney would hit Denise and Tony would not do anything. He was too scared to intervene. Denise didn’t know what to do. She was told to document everything, so she kept a written diary of events. Eventually Denise’s father called Rodney’s parents and threatened Rodney with a lawyer. He even wanted his daughter to come home for a week to clear her mind. Despite Denise’s father talking to Rodney’s father, nothing changed, and Denise decided to file a report with the university police against Rodney.

Whenever Denise was in the library or out on campus, Rodney or one of his fraternity brothers was present. She always felt like she was being watched, which made her nervous. In previous semesters, she enjoyed the freedom of walking into a fraternity party and saying, “I’m a girlfriend”—meaning she didn’t have to pay or have her ID checked. Now she was nervous about having twenty-five brothers always watching her.

After she went to the university police, things calmed down for a bit—except that Rodney ignored their warning and would still call her. Denise would say, “Well, you know you’re not supposed to call,” although sometimes she would talk to him in the hopes that he would get better. But he didn’t. Denise’s relationship with Tony ended; he said he really liked her but was too afraid of Rodney and his fraternity to be with her. Rodney kept calling Denise well into her junior year and kept staring at her in public until she graduated. One time in the middle of senior year, Rodney walked up to Denise’s friends at a bar and asked, “Where’s that slut Denise?”

Many battered woman stay with these men because they see things in them that others don’t. I never understood why Denise would give Rodney the time of day. He always made fun of her and her friends. One time while we were hanging out in Denise’s room, a friend told a story in which a girl gave a man a blow job in return for a single cigarette. “Does anybody know a girl who would do that?” Rodney asked, and then pointed at Denise when she wasn’t looking. Rodney was very mean, but for a long time Denise still wanted to be with him.

Denise entered into the relationship with Rodney because she wanted to change him and turn him into a nice, considerate man. That would have been impossible. After she broke up with him, Denise learned that a relationship in which one side has to change is not meant to exist.

I did have fun when I visited SUNY Geneseo, but then the week after I would feel sad that my friends were so far away. My first semester at SUNY Albany was a little lonely. I was living at home and had gone from having friends only a dormitory hall away to having to drive everywhere. I tried to branch out and make new friends, but it was always a difficult thing for me to do. I kept asking Randy if I could spend time in his dorm, but he said that Carmine wouldn’t let me. Randy did introduce me to other friends, though.

Randy could make friends easily and had no problems getting girls to date him. When I was walking with Randy on campus, we would often get stopped by many of his friends. If anybody ever asked how we knew each other, we would just say, “We met on a crowded subway.” Once, I remember Randy charming an older female student by explaining what to do when you’re eating soup and a piece of cheese gets stuck to your chin. Randy wanted to know if it was appropriate to peel it off or “just let the cheese wiggle.”

Randy made many friends when he joined IMPACT, the Christian fellowship at SUNY Albany. He was never into drinking or doing drugs. Randy was conservative and spent hours on Sunday attending church, but he was still down to earth and liked having fun.

Even though Randy was religious, I convinced him to go to a strip club called Nite Moves with a gift certificate I bought him for his birthday. When I was twenty, no one could ever be a friend of mine without knowing about Nite Moves. Many people are against strip clubs because they see them as exploiting women. However, most of the men in these clubs are lonely and just need someone to talk to. Prostitution is immoral, but having somebody to talk with can help ease depression.

In fact, by the time I was twenty, my biggest fear was that I was going to turn into the main character in the 2000 motion picture Pornographer. Paul, the