"DECEMBER BOYS" PART THREE: "PARALLEL LINES: THE BALLAD OF CRAIG AND STEPHANIE-PART ONE" (2nd section)

PARALLEL LINES:

THE BALLAD OF CRAIG & STEPHANIE

PART ONE (2nd section)

 That fall, Craig and Stephanie adopted silly on-air handles (“Sergeant Stephanie and Colonel Craig”—upgraded from “Captain Craig” upon Stephanie’s arrival-her idea) and an ironically self-deprecating title (“Road To Nowhere”). They divided their three hour shift into a somewhat equal number of music sets, whose lengths depended on nothing more than how many songs they chose to play on a given program. In between, since there was no advertising, Craig and Stephanie jumped head first into their on-air banter, filled with cackles, entertainment gossip, movie reviews and the like. All of their antics may have been entertaining only to themselves but such was the artistic purpose of student radio and besides, as Stephanie joked on nearly every show, “I know no one is listening!”

     The musical tastes of Craig and Stephanie interlocked very well yet there were some profound differences. Stephanie liked her music to be more straightforward and direct. She had no time for the more pretentious nature of rock and roll, which included concept albums, side-long epics, lengthy solos, all of which Craig adored. If it just couldn’t be said in five minutes or less, Stephanie became extremely skeptical. Craig, on the other hand, was into music for music’s sake. Aside from country music (“Too much twang!”) and rap (“All that fake posturing to mechanical beats and no fucking musicians!”), he tended to be quite musically open minded and he would eventually change his mind about musical forms he previously ignored (Public Enemy’s “Fear Of A Black Planet” ultimately resonated deeply) . He loved music’s potential. He loved its’ omnipotence. That it could encompass all that Stephanie loved about it plus so much more than either of the two of them could even conceptualize. With that, Craig’s favorite music was always bound by the instrumentation that inspired, strong melodies and admittedly, he was a sucker for great background vocals, “ooohing” and “aaahing” straight from the vinyl directly into his heart. It was not unusual for Craig to be awed by some piece of music, race over to Stephanie’s Adams Hall dorm room to tell her all about it just to have her dismiss it as if it were an afterthought. Sometimes Craig let Stephanie’s reaction roll off his shoulders and figured that she just didn’t “get it.” Other times, however, her comments stung and deeply. Sometimes, it felt so personal that it was as if Craig wrote the songs himself. He just wanted her to either like it or not say anything at all. The approaching moment on Craig’s cassette was one of those times.

     The song was “Silver, Blue and Gold” by Bad Company. Craig found it by chance in the vinyl stacks as Stephanie continued to play her set of music. On this recorded evening, there was an unspoken tension in the air and as Craig listened on his headphones, he couldn’t (or perhaps, wouldn’t) remember the circumstances of this night. Yet, once he heard the melancholy piano based opening and the first bars of Paul Rodgers’ vocals, performed in a tone only lovestruck boys could understand, he could feel the edge of that night returning to him—and, for some reason, he kept listening.

     Before he began his set of music, it had been an off night for Craig and Stephanie’s radio show. There had been some flat conversations and missed musical cues. In fact, it had been one of their off weeks personally. It was a combination of things, really. The semester pressures for the both of them, simmering within the soup of collegiate tensions, gave them no assistance with their relationship and they dealt with those pressures very differently. Craig liked to talk things out. While it could be seen as neurotic, Craig needed to talk out his issues as a way of trying to get his brain to sort out and compartmentalize his tasks and duties into a way where it would make sense to him. He needed to vent, to verbally blow off steam and to have Stephanie offer advice and comfort to him, which she just could not always do. Stephanie, on the other hand, became reticent. She felt that all the talk in the world would not get the work completed any better or quicker, so why waste the time talking when one could be doing?! Just put your head down and get on with it! Admittedly, Craig’s attitude and stresses during these period were annoying to Stephanie. But, being Craig’s best friend, she tried to keep her irritation quiet and redirect Craig’s energies. She tried to add levity by sending him funny messages through campus mail to which Craig was too stressed out to appreciate and accept, which in turn would irritate Stephanie even more. It felt as if no matter what she did for him, Craig just needed to be miserable for a while and that was something Stephanie had no time for, best friend or not. Stephanie Deavitt was a senior and the calling of the real world was giving her her own sense of anxiety to deal with and at times, the pressures of college that she had already lived through didn’t mean much when faced with the unknown of post-collegiate life.  

     During this particular week and a half period, Craig had two term papers to complete within a day of each other for English and Comparative Literature. He also had a midterm presentation to prepare for his speech class (a requirement of the Communication Arts major and a source of anxiety for most students). The assignments couldn’t have fallen at a worse time. If he only had just a hair of space to breathe, he would’ve felt better about it. But, here was yet another mountain to scale and not much time to get to the peak. So, he talked about his troubles and complained the pressures of time to Stephanie during their nightly visits to The Shed for snacks. Stephanie consoled, joked and offered advice to which Craig predictably continued on his worrisome path which predictably made Stephanie frustrated and eventually angry.

     One afternoon, after returning from her Chaucer lecture, Stephanie entered the Tripp/Adams Gatehouse and saw that she received a letter from Craig through campus mail. She returned to her room in Noyes House and read. The letter was a sigh of relief from Craig. While it did thank Stephanie for being the friend that she is, it mostly detailed the sudden burst of creativity and energy he received while holed up in the Tripp Hall laundry room. In the time it took to do his weekly wash, he had written a whopping 12 page English paper and was now halfway through his Comp Lit essay. This breakthrough would undoubtedly give him ample time to spend on his speech project and maybe, just maybe, he would be able to take in a movie at Focus Films that evening and would she like to go with him. Now, one would think that this would be something to celebrate and perhaps Stephanie would call Craig, congratulate him and accept his offer to take in a movie. On the contrary, it made Stephanie furious. To her, the letter smacked of being self-congratulatory and inconsiderate to astonishing degree. “Give this guy a bloody medal!”, Stephanie thought to herself. “All that whining and carrying on and then, magically he saves the world through his eloquent words. Ugh!” 

     Stephanie loved Craig. He was her best friend. But, this was an aspect of Craig she found difficult to tolerate. His somewhat subtle tendency for the dramatic. His sickly tortured artist pose. The dark cloud he willingly placed so firmly over his head and gladly kept there long past an acceptable period. Sometimes, Stephanie wanted to take the heart on Craig’s sleeve and shove it up his overly melancholic ass. She had been quiet long enough and now, she had to release her own energy. And she did so…in an acid drenched letter through campus mail.

            Dear Craig,

              I will warn you from the start that you will not like this letter. In fact, you may hate it and at this stage, your predilliction and obsessive attentiveness to your own feelings is moot because I have simply had enough. Before you try to call me or race over here to work things out or plead your case or Good Lord, tell me your precious feelings, know that I am not available for you and I will not be here this weekend for the show. You’re on your own this week, Craig.  I just don’t have the composure to realistically sit and watch your pained facial expressions. God Craig! I can just never tell you anything without you fearing the absolute worst for yourself and our friendship and I am so sick of it. It should be fine for me to be angry with you once in a while. It should be fine. Because you have to understand something crucially important to these years of your life. There is NO EXCLUSIVITY to the college experience. More specifically, the college experience is not exclusive to YOU! Didn’t it ever occur to you that perhaps, just maybe, I had my own pressures to deal with? Didn’t it ever cross your mind that I am graduating this year and I have no idea as to what I will be doing with myself? Of course you wouldn’t. I haven’t talked about that. Hasn’t it occurred to you that I almost never talk about my assignments or exams or what I have due and when? I tend not to talk about those things Craig, because talking won’t get anything completed any faster or better or at all and for the last week or so, I have had to sit through this maelstrom of self-absorbed, narcissistic pap which you now want me to congratulate you for since you have had your tremendous artistic breakthrough and produced a Faulkner novel’s worth of words. I’ll notify the Mayor and ensure a street parade in your honor is scheduled immediately. I’m sorry if this is too harsh for you, Craig but I felt that this time, I had to be.

                                                                                                            Stephanie

     Craig loved Stephanie. She was his best friend. Yet, on this early Friday evening in Botkin House, Craig read Stephanie’s letter and wanted to rip it and her into the tiniest of pieces. This was just like Stephanie to do this, Craig fumed to himself. He read Stephanie’s letter over and over before detailing its’ contents to Jon. What Craig found so distasteful was Stephanie’s methods of which this was not the first he had been a recipient. The eloquence of her dagger edged words hurled at him in the most cowardly fashion. Why could she not just have it out with him in person? Or better yet, why couldn’t she have said something to him sooner? Did she think him to be that fragile? So unable to take criticism of any kind that she sat onto her precious emotions, stewed and simmered until coming to a full boil?!

     As Craig furiously pondered and re-read his letter, his roommate Jon returned from a Friday afternoon’s labor in a chemistry lab washing out test tubes and his bi-monthly trek to the State Street record stores to reward himself with CD purchases (this week’s included two offerings from Jethro Tull).

     “Where the fuck does she get off, Jon?!” Craig shouted. “It’s just like her to start a fight, completely on her terms, no less and then, just take off without even giving me a chance to have my say. So, I just have to sit around and wait for her to get back and wait for her to sanction a fucking meeting or some such shit?!”

     Automatically, Jon knew that Craig had yet another blowout with Stephanie. “Did she make you cry? Make you break down? Shatter your illusions of love?” Jon inquired via precious Stevie Nicks lyrics.

     “I don’t want to know,” Craig answered, offering another “Rumours” era lyric as response.

     “Maybe you should pick up the pieces and go home,” Jon sagely consoled through another Nicks lyric.

     “Jon, I just don’t get her.” Craig paused and then stated with mock indignation, “You know that this is all your fault!”

     “What?!” Jon answered incredulously as he swiftly turned on Tull’s “Storm Watch” and leapt from the floor to the radiator to the top of his bunk with athletic grace.

     “You were the man who told me that…if I am not mistaken, that you would not be surprised if Stephanie and I started dating.”

     “But, you’re not dating…sort of.”

     “But, you were the man who planted the seed. I never would’ve even thought about that girl if you hadn’t been ‘Mr. Greenjeans’!”

     “I didn’t plant anything,” laughed Jon as he paged simultaneously through his CD booklets and Engineering texts.

     “Jon, what do you think about all of this anyway? Do you think that I feel that the college experience is exclusive to me?”

     “Is that what she said?!”

     “That and worse.”

     “I just don’t get it at all with you two,” Jon began. “You both insist that you aren’t dating and you are essentially dating. She’s your girlfriend who isn’t your girlfriend.”

     “Keely says that Stephanie doesn’t know what she wants and that I should save myself from her, get on with my life and find someone new.”

     “I hate to say it, Craig but, Keely has a point. Stephanie is always doing something like this. You guys are fine for a while and then there’s some new disaster to deal with. There is a point where you can’t be like Christine McVie…”

     “Don’t you talk about my Christine!” Craig interrupted.

     “…in ‘Oh Daddy’, where she’s just so addicted to her man and she can’t walk away from him even if she tried,” Jon completed. “Don’t do the Christine, Craig. She’s so mopey and mournful.”

     “She’s deep and romantic,” Craig playfully challenged “She’s emotionally unfulfilled as she continues to yearn and search for happiness.”

     “Oh please!”

     “And besides,” Craig continued, pointing his finger for emphasis. “She’s the secret weapon of that band and don’t you forget that.”

     “Why would you even need a secret weapon when you have Stevie-a force of nature?!” retorted Jon. “Stevie is nobody’s fool. She will follow you down until the sound of her voice will haunt you!!”

     While he laughed and was appreciative, Craig had difficulty in understanding why Stephanie would treat him so inconsiderately. In his mind, Stephanie hurled this rage at him much like a politician would launch a cruise missile from the safety of their own arm chair, with feet resting comfortably upon an ottoman, alcoholic beverage in hand and watching the fate of millions as tiny video game blips on a television screen.

     After Jon went out with some friends from his Chemistry lecture, Craig felt nothing but his own sense of rage throughout the rest of that evening. He wanted to only confront Stephanie and get things ironed out but, as she stated, she was unavailable. He took in a midnight showing of “Pink Floyd The Wall,” always a release for him during tense times. He returned to his dorm room after 2:00 a.m. to find Jon sleeping for the night with Fleetwood Mac’s “Future Games” softly playing in repeat mode. Craig smiled. It was his favorite Fleetwood Mac album at this time and he enjoyed listening to it at bedtime. He listened to it so much that he figured Jon must be getting sick of it. So purposefully, Craig had not played it in some time. The fact that it was playing now was an act of kindness from Jon and the gesture of their deep friendship calmed Craig’s spirits as he readied himself for bed.

     The next day, Craig’s sense of rage returned. He spent nearly all of it alone, ferociously completing his assignments. His radio show that night was unusually angry as he played the hardest, loudest, most obnoxious and abrasive sounding songs he could possibly think to play for three hours while only addressing his phantom audience twice—once to open his show and once to end it, only muttering, “Use your heads. Use your hearts.”

     Sunday led to an overwhelming sadness. Craig wanted to have the chance to talk to Stephanie desperately. He paced around his dorm room like a caged beast fuming then worrying that all was lost and wondering how or why Stephanie had gotten so angry. He hated feeling this way towards someone he was this close to and he was stunned to read how she felt about him. Did she really think him to be so self-serving, so inattentive and inconsiderate? He just could not comprehend how someone, who claimed to be his best friend, his “cosmic twin” for God’s sake, would and could be so careless with his feelings, his loyalty…his love.

     Craig and Stephanie didn’t see or speak to each other for much of the following week. Craig missed their occasional walks to classes, their constant phone calls and nightly visits to The Shed for stale popcorn and flat soda. He missed just being around her, being completely taken in by her lovely profile and citrus scent, talking about everything and nothing while building their friendship piece by beautiful piece. And now, it seemed damaged and that it was all his fault and he didn’t know how to fix it.

     Before the weekend of their tense radio show, Craig saw Stephanie for a split second in a crowd of students during a class-transition on the Liz Waters path. Craig was deep into his headphone trance, returning to his dorm as Stephanie passed him. She offered a quick and timid wave. Her eyes were soft and much of her face was curiously covered with a scarf on that frosty mid-morning (she was feeling a tad self-conscious after just having had her wisdom teeth pulled days before) and Craig knew that, somehow, all was forgiven. He never had the chance to have his say but he didn’t care. Craig just wanted Stephanie back.

     For Stephanie, whatever tension existed was over and done with. Things were as they should be in her mind and she was more than happy to be around Craig again. For Craig, he wanted to feel the same but there was a nagging source of anger in his heart and each time he attempted to quell that anger, it would pop out in the form of subtle sarcasm that Stephanie, who could usually read Craig extremely well, couldn’t place.

     Returning to the evening forever preserved on cassette, Craig remembered Stephanie’s playfully scornful remark concerning his Bad Company selection (“How sweet. Cock rock goes soft.”) and how he had heard enough. Craig could not hold his anger in check anymore. Why did Stephanie always have to hold the reins of their relationship? She held the road map, determined the route, held the keys and drove the car. (She probably owned it too.) The more Craig thought about it, the more disgusted with himself he became for allowing Stephanie to have this much control over his emotions. Jon and Keely were correct. This was not the first time he and Stephanie had gone through an experience like this one and no matter how deeply or how much he wanted her to be…she wasn’t his girlfriend! Why expend this much energy over something that is just a friendship? Friendships shouldn’t have to be this much work. If he were going to work this much with someone on a relationship, she should be someone he is dating and no matter how irrational she appeared to sometimes be, Stephanie had made it crystal clear that they are destined to just be friends.

     Craig became uncomfortably silent after Stephanie’s remark over the song and it unnerved her. She knew that something was wrong between them and from past fights, she knew that Craig’s silences were lethal because she never knew if he would shut down or lash out, or when it would happen, if at all.

     “Craig?” she began tentatively, “Are you OK?”

     “This is the last song of my set,” Craig addressed while coldly avoiding the question. “You have anything you wanna play next?”

     Stephanie was surprised. Craig’s sets tended to last more than thirty minutes (his sets gave her plenty of time to do some homework or catch up on reading assignments) and this one had only been four songs in. “Um…no, Craig,” said Stephanie, quickly shuffling her papers and notebook in order to get herself to the record library.

     “No bother,” offered Craig, fingering the debut album by The Pursuit Of Happiness. “I’ll get something to start the next set and then you can take over if you want. Why don’t we do the movies now?”

     “Sure thing,” replied Stephanie in a softer tone. “Whatever you want is fine by me. Craig, I’m sorry to ask you again but is everything alright?”

     Craig ignored her question, and ignited the On-Air switch as the song faded into the airwaves. What follows is a transcript…

ROAD TO NOWHERE:

it’s about healing

airdate: November 1988

-As Craig speaks, Stephanie will quickly trot into the studio booth, get her stool and adjust her headphones and microphone.

CRAIG

(adjusting headphones, turning music volume down):

I certainly hope that wasn’t too WIBA for you. Bad Company with “Silver, Blue and Gold” off the Swan Song label. Some of you out there may have thought that this was a bit of “cock rock gone soft” but I had to play it. (A beat) Sorry, it’s my show.

-Stephanie, stung by Craig’s comments while understanding the sting of her previous remark, begins to see red.

STEPHANIE:

A solo act, once again?

CRAIG:

No. No. Not at all. You know what I mean.

STEPHANIE

(overlapping with mock sadness):

Because if you just (sniff sniff) need me to…

CRAIG

(overlapping):

Never. It’s not the “Road To Nowhere” without my Co-Pilot. I was just claiming a bit of musical, radio autonomy here.

STEPHANIE:

Well, it has been a more autonomous night for you, Craig. I mean—that if I could critique this set, there was nothing in it that I chose.

CRAIG:

Not intentionally. (addressing listeners) You see folks, WLHA, being the high-tech station we are with state of the art equipment at our complete disposal, doesn’t have a tape deck and Stephanie brought her’s and since we didn’t have the right in and out jack, you know, we couldn’t get her stuff on the air tonight. Stephanie’s a little bummed so (to Stephanie, dryly accompanied by a cold stare) better luck next week.

STEPHANIE

(sarcastically sobbing):

 I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But, tonight, what you’re gonna get is a more “Hughes-esque” show.

CRAIG

(overlapping):

“Hughes-esque” as opposed to “Kafkaesque”.

STEPHANIE

(overlapping):

It’s not gonna have that “Stephanie vibe” at all. (grabs Craig’s set list sheet) So, listeners…(very sarcastically) lots of Utopia coming your way!  

-Craig offers a stunted chuckle.

STEPHANIE:

So, at the very least, why don’t I read off what you just heard.

CRAIG

(tense):

Shoot.

STEPHANIE:

Alright, before Bad Company, we heard…(trying to read Craig’s writing) what is that…oh yeah, “Slit Skirts” by the illustrious yet capitalistic Pete Townshend. I mean, for God’s sake, I just recently read that he is planning on resurrecting The Who for another mega-tour next year.

CRAIG:

Yeah, I read that too. Honestly, who’s bankrupt this time?! He can do so much more on his own right now. For me, the idea of The Who is just so passé right now. It’s kinda like The Stones getting back together for another album and tour which is a proposed idea. Keith Richards just had that great solo album and Mick can do something without the banner of The Stones hanging over his head. Have they done anything musically relevant since the early eighties?

STEPHANIE:

I am in total agreement with you. But, even as talented as he is, you get songs, sorry Craig, like this one. Oh, he probably wrote it when he was drunk.

-After a moment of feeling as if things would pass by, Craig begins to get tense again as he prepares to defend his musical choices.

STEPHANIE:

And then there’s that line, “Let me tell you somethin’ more about myself…” Like, every song he’s ever written is about himself!

CRAIG:

Really? I had no idea that Pete Townshend was once an autistic pinball prodigy.

STEPHANIE

(superior tone):

Now Craig, don’t get testy. But after all of the English classes you have taken surely you must realize that everything someone writes is about themselves in some way. And usually the most seemingly removed story is the most personal.

CRAIG

(trying to sound light but hiding his sense of fury):

I don’t buy that. There is a little something called “imagination” and right now, I imagine that the two listeners we have are now itching to change the dial so why not get back to the songs.

STEPHANIE

(dripping with sarcasm):

OK. Before that, we had “Charlotte Anne” by Julian Cope, a weekly Craig favorite. And before that, another weekly Craig favorite, “Cars and Girls” by Prefab Sprout, and our,…oops, I mean, Craig’s set began with “You’re My Drug” by The Dukes Of Stratosphere, which is a pseudonym for XTC—a band that, in my opinion, truly walks that fine line between being really, really clever and really, really annoying.

CRAIG:

Hey, the songs are there. They’re always there.

STEPHANIE:

 Not always. Clever only gets you so far and this album doesn’t get that far in my book.

CRAIG

(to audience):

Oh, she’s just mad that she didn’t get the joke and that someone actually, could put something past her. She prefers U2, a band so in love with its sense of self-importance that they actually forget they’re just a rock band.

STEPHANIE:

Craig, if XTC actually condescended to just spending time making good songs and less time trying to tweak people’s ears in that self-congratulatory way of theirs , alerting everyone to how smart they are, every album would be great—or at least, listenable.

CRAIG

(seething, holding himself back from screaming):

Hmmm…you’re on fire tonight. Forget to take your nap? Need a piece of bark to chew on? (to audience) Well, with that,…we were going to do the movies now but you’ve heard more then enough of us. So…

STEPHANIE

(interrupting):

…On the turntable is a track from Todd Rundgren’s latest set of studio puppets—direct from Canada, no less, The Pursuit of Happiness with “Walking In The Woods”. So, if you do have any requests, call us at 2-WLHA or for the alphabetically challenged, that’s 2-9542.

-Stephanie switches the music on and switches off the microphones.

     Craig and Stephanie barely spoke to each other for the remainder of the show. In fact, Stephanie, not wanting to increase any of the tension, returned to her dorm in Noyes House, reclined on her mattress, listened to the end of Craig’s show and surprising herself, began to feel her eyes gently moisten. While she believed that no one was listening on this late Saturday night, when few people were roaming the dorms anyway, she was ashamed of her behavior and treatment of her best friend on the air. Hurting Craig was the last thing she ever wanted to do but she found herself in situation after situation, hurting him. Friends fight yet their fights were always cloaked in something beyond whatever the issue of the fight was. This evening was no exception. It wasn’t about music. And it wasn’t even really about the fight they had just made up from. Stephanie Deavitt mentally replayed those endless moments, as she and Craig simultaneously impressed and damaged the other with verbal wit and ironic distance. Her attack on something so pure and personal to Craig was unusually cruel and she knew it. What Stephanie also knew (the knowledge of which was probably causing her sadness at this moment) was that Craig would forgive her, that he would be back and things would be as they were before despite her sometimes cavalier attitude towards his affections and loyalty, no matter how overwhelming it could be. Craig always welcomed her return with no questions asked. His demeanor was the definition of steadfast. It was an unconditional friendship and deep down, she knew that she had better be careful because everyone has a limit and at some point, someone always says,”Goodbye”. 

     Shuddering at the thought of losing Craig forever, Stephanie lit a short stick of incense and instinctively reached for her acoustic guitar. She immediately began strumming familiar chords for solace. Stephanie Deavitt’s relationship with her guitar began at the age of 10, while home from school for a week healing from a severe case of strep throat. While the first couple of days home from school were filled with rest and the novelty of being able to watch reruns of “Green Acres” while her friends slogged through Social Studies, Stephanie quickly developed a case of cabin fever. This, of course, emphasized each painful swallow on her enlarged lymph nodes. On one empty morning, she wandered into her long-departed oldest brother’s room to find the acoustic guitar he had also long abandoned when dreams of following George Harrison proved unfulfilled. She took the guitar to her room and sat in bed with it, playing around with the strings and before she knew it, three days had been spent almost exclusively with this instrument. It felt right to her then and it had ever since.

     Craig Hughes was a frustrated guitarist. It was not uncommon to find him, unobtrusively playing air guitar and it was a long standing dream of his to one day learn this instrument. Yet, knowing things tend to get harder with age, Craig realized that his patience was lacking when it came to learning a new instrument. So, he was more than fascinated when he discovered that Stephanie owned a guitar and knew how to play it. He would often kindly tease her for a performance to which she would self-consciously decline. But now, as she strummed in her dorm room on this late Saturday night, Stephanie suddenly thought of a way to properly make amends with her best friend. She would make a cassette tape exclusively for him of her guitar skills. He would like that, she thought to herself. Stephanie knew that aside from Craig’s cynical barbs he was a highly sentimental young man who would love the idea that she took the time to make something for him. Also, it was a way to tell him that she loved him, without having to actually say the words and be tied to Craig’s possible confusion of her meaning. Regardless, she hoped he would accept her apology and immediately, she set to work on her musical atonement. Copyright 2014 by Scott Collins All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.

"DECEMBER BOYS" PART TWO: "PARALLEL LINES: THE BALLAD OF CRAIG AND STEPHANIE-PART ONE" (first section)

PARALLEL LINES:

THE BALLAD OF CRAIG & STEPHANIE

PART ONE (1st section)

     Craig quietly paced around the second floor of the Union as he waited for Rhett. Having entered the Union not that long ago from the Lakeshore path, Craig was slowly warming up while listening to a tape of his radio show from the previous year. Craig’s time as a DJ at WLHA was a childhood fantasy fulfilled. While his broadcast aired at a time when the least amount of students would possibly be listening (10 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturday nights) plus the fact that the station utilized the booming power of one half of one watt, he loved every moment of it and he was meticulous about his on-air duties. He didn’t like to talk that much on the air (the blazingly red “On Air” light made him nervous every time he saw it) he just loved having the chance to play his favorite songs, old and new, to someone, anyone beyond the bowels of the JF Friedrick Center, where the student station resided. Now in his Junior year, Craig was the station’s Music Director and that gave him the added bonus of having the station’s keys, access to a larger studio where he could record his shows in stereo (as opposed to FM Mono), and of course, the greatest musical bounty of them all, the station's new albums were entirely shipped to him to peruse and listen to before they made their way  on the air and into the stacks, where they would consistently be stolen by the DJs, taped in their dorm rooms and brought back the following week. (To keep a sense of order within the station, Craig politely asked if albums currently featured on the playlist could remain in the studio until they were replaced by newer albums—the DJs agreed.) At this moment, Craig was just enjoying his song selections plus being attune to his show’s pacing and transitions from one song to the next. But there was one other thing…perhaps the most important sound on this cassette that Craig was listening to, against his better judgment, the sound of Stephanie’s voice. Hearing her every little vocal inflection and timbre. Being surrounded by her brilliant literary filled wit. It was just about anything to hear her voice again. Yet, having her voice inside of his head placed him into a dark mood. In fact, within a few moments, he was about to hear a passage of their on-air banter which was unfortunately filled with tension; romantic, sexual, artistic, or all of the above.

     If one were to ask either Craig Hughes or Stephanie Deavitt about the precise moment the two of them met for the first time, they would each draw a blank due to the inauspiciousness of their initial meeting. For our purposes, it should be noted that Craig and Stephanie discovered each other’s existence within the cozy yet periodically bustling area of the Tripp Hall Gatehouse, where Stephanie was employed and Craig frequented daily to collect his mail, purchase laundry tickets or stamps, send letters through campus mail and more often than not, he could be found as a love-struck loiterer pining for the affection and attention from the admittedly transfixing, vivacious and voluptuous Gail Kufahl.

     Gail Kufahl, a Junior who lived in Bashford House of Tripp Hall, happened to be randomly assigned to serve as Craig’s S.P.U.D. (Student Providing Undergraduate Direction) for the duration of the school year, and while the two had indeed become fast friends and she honestly enjoyed his steadfast visits to the Gatehouse where she was also employed, she was also unaware of Craig’s vigorously healthy infatuation. Craig would stop into the Gatehouse several times a week to see if the illustrious Gail Kufahl was working, hoping to bask in her unquestionably magnetic beauty for even a moment. Yet, his heart, filled with nervous anticipation, would feel itself deflate at Gail’s occasional absences and especially when he felt himself essentially confronted with the sight of the dark brown haired, brown leather jacket and thrift store clothes clad girl with the hard, impenetrable stare and a resting face that seemed unable to elicit even a crack of a smile. Whenever he happened to see this other Gatehouse girl, Craig felt uneasy, as if his presence was somehow offensive to her, therefore making his desire to keep any interactions and transactions mercifully brief. On one occasion, as he and Jon Dahl passed through the Gatehouse on their way to the Shed for dinner, Craig, disappointed with not being able to see Gail and finding the other, dark cloud tinged Gatehouse girl in her place for the evening, he informed Jon that the only person on Gatehouse duty that night was “that mad girl.”

     One crisp gray Saturday afternoon, when seemingly the entire student body of the Lakeshore dorms was attending another punishing Badger football loss, Craig, as usual, remained behind in Tripp Hall to do some laundry and tackle some readings for his Psychology class, in which he was struggling as he did with all Science classes, even the ones that Jon, a Chemical Engineering major, would scornfully classify as “pseudo-Science.” Finding himself short two laundry tickets, Craig quickly ventured to the Gatehouse to replenish his supply. Since he knew that Gail Kufahl was a Badger football devotee, he knew that this Gatehouse visit would be of a shorter variety. Or so he thought…

     Upon entering the Gatehouse, Craig was greeted by the magical voice of Stevie Nicks, whose intoxicating, raspy singing filled the air and weaved a darkly romantic spell on this cloudy day. As Craig rounded the corner past the mailboxes to the Gatehouse booth window, he was instantly paused by the sight of the mad girl. Even as this person gave Craig a sense of trepidation, he was also unusually up for a challenge. He found himself to be an approachable person, sometimes friendly to a fault but definitely not someone to be feared. In that moment, he realized that he actually wanted to try and make contact with this mad girl and see if there was a way that any ice could be broken or if the wall he perceived her to be barricaded by was insurmountable.

     To Craig’s surprise, the mad girl, who soon identified herself as Stephanie Deavitt, was actually quite talkative and even more than a little charming. Hours upon hours of sorting through mail was an understandably lonely occupation, especially on empty football Saturdays and perhaps on this day, Stephanie was just itching to have a conversation with anyone. But with Craig Hughes, she was surprised to meet someone who not only held a certain maturity that was elusive to many Freshman, but also the fact that he seemed to be as passionately devoted to music as she was. His declaration of his love for Fleetwood Mac, the band that she held above all in her devotion was a plus to be certain. Oddly enough, he spent quite a bit of time also declaring his infatuation with Gail Kufahl, but even so, Stephanie easily understood his starry eyed fascination. While she did not know Gail very well, she had no complaints about her and could easily regard her obvious desirability. With that in mind, she indulged Craig’s tales of awkwardness and embarrassment while in Gail’s presence and Stephanie had to admit to herself that this Craig Hughes was certainly the storyteller, as he essentially acted out his anecdotes as if they were one-act plays or stand up comedy routines. On Craig’s end, he enjoyed how Stephanie was quick with a quip and he also was intrigued by her sometimes literary infused speech pattern and impressive vocabulary. Craig surprised himself when he realized that there was essentially no ice to be broken in regards to Stephanie Deavitt. It was as if she had just been waiting for him to finally come along to talk with.

     For many weeks after their first meeting, Craig and Stephanie also became very fast friends. They visited each other’s dorms, shared cassettes, cajoled and laughed together easily and often. So easily and often that their rapport felt as natural s if they had been friends for the entirety of their lives. There was an ease and grace to their banter. Nothing ever felt forced and there was never a loss for words thus rendering the potential for empty spaces in conversation completely moot. Before Craig or Stephanie even realized, they each had begun to look forward towards the next time they would see each other and in Craig’s instance, thoughts of Gail Kufahl became less and less. On another evening when Craig and Jon passed through the Gatehouse while on their way to the Shed for dinner, Craig spent several minutes chatting away with the on-Gatehouse duty Stephanie. While Jon surreptitiously read his latest issue of Rolling Stone, he perceptively observed the behavior of his roommate and his new friend and upon existing the Gatehouse, he asked Craig, “So, what’s going with you two?”

     “What do you mean?” Craig responded honestly and innocently.

    “I mean, whatever happened to Gail? You and Stephanie have seemed to really hit it off.”

    “Stephanie?” wondered Craig aloud. “Well…we’re just friends.”

    “Hmmm,” began Jon. “Well, if the two of you actually started dating I wouldn’t be surprised.”

     The seed had been planted.

     Stephanie Deavitt’s first experience with Craig’s life in student radio came at the end of her Junior year and Craig’s Freshman year. It was an evening they both needed in their budding relationship which was filled with seriously conflicted emotions of friendship and love and all of the many levels in both states. Beginning in the Winter months, Craig found himself almost painfully in love with Stephanie, the girl who would become his best friend and closest companion despite all of the messy friction and honest affection between them. By the end of his Freshman year, Craig and Stephanie had seemed to reach a deeper plateau in their relationship which was as meaningful as it was still confusing. A day simply would not pass without at least some moments together and to the outside eye, it would indeed appear as if these two were a stable and serious romantic couple although they had never kissed even once, let alone held hands, as Craig’s romantic gestures and feelings were sadly unrequited.

     With regards to school, Craig Hughes never really got used to the anti-climactic nature of the end of a college school year as opposed to high school but in this year, there was a sense of celebration with a Lakeshore dorms outdoor bash, complete with barbequed food, illicitly obtained drinks (Craig had his first taste of vodka that late afternoon) and a studio slick sounding band pounding out Cheap Trick’s “The Flame.”

     That night, while at WLHA studios performing his radio show, he was surprised to hear the door buzzer since no DJ’s spun after him on Saturday nights. He went to the door, surprised and touched to see Stephanie, holding a pizza, expectantly waiting for him to let her inside his previously unknown domain. She was a tad tipsy herself from the party and despite her protests, she ended up on the air with Craig. The night was a glorious one in their friendship, filled with music, food and laughter. It proved to both of them the rightness of becoming close friends in the first place, despite all of the romantic tension, and on this evening, there was none. When they listened to the cassette of the show later, they laughed just as hard as they did on-air and realized that they sort of enjoyed their own radio rapport. Craig hated the sound of his own voice but he had to admit that there was something special about hearing Stephanie’s voice within this context. He had a great time and he invited her to join him on the air the following year as his partner. She said that she would think about it over the summer.

     While Stephanie’s summer was spent being much involved with her family, spending time in her bedroom creating her own guitar recordings and pursuits completely unrelated in any way to college, she would often think of that night in WLHA with Craig. She had to admit to herself that it was more than a little fascinating to see her friend in a new light. While at that time, she didn’t know him that well, they inexplicably became extremely close. So close, that to both of them, it felt as if their paths were meant to cross. (She was, in fact, the one who coined the expression that they were “Cosmic Twins”.) Even so, much of what she knew about Craig was a person who passionately or foolishly wore his heart on his sleeve. Seeing him, headphones strapped to his ears, pressing buttons and switching dials on archaic machinery consumed with the music, cueing records, searching for new songs to play into the glorious Spring night, made Stephanie see Craig a little differently. It deepened their friendship, of course. But, it was different enough to seriously consider Craig’s offer to join him on the air the next year. And during a phone conversation over the summer, shortly before Craig’s return to Madison, Stephanie said, “Yes!” Since she often returned to her home in Whitefish Bay on weekends and equally enjoyed having time just to herself, Stephanie added the stipulation that she not be required to perform on every single broadcast. Craig agreed. He was just happy to have her there with him at all.
Copyright 2014 by Scott Collins All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.

"DECEMBER BOYS" PART ONE: OPENING & RHETT'S LAMENT

DECEMBER BOYS
PART ONE:

“It’s just you’re a really nice guy and we don’t want to see you get hurt.”

-Corey Flood

“I want to get hurt!”

-Lloyd Dobler

(“Say Anything…”)

     It was all so simple. It was just going to be a night for two friends to go out. A “Guys Night Out.” No debauchery or lewd activities were planned. Solely a night at the movies on campus. Who knew it would end up with feelings of loneliness to the point of almost paralyzing heartbreak?

     It was during times like these when Craig Hughes was more than thankful to have a single room. This was not to suggest that he was any less than thankful to the Gods of Student Housing for blessing his previous two years by living in the pastoral Lakeshore dormitories or for having a priceless roommate in Jon Dahl for both of those years. But even during the days which would be forever etched into the fondest of his memories, there were those times in which he would’ve preferred solitude. Especially during his more emotionally turbulent times, most notably his extended dance with Stephanie Deavitt. It was in fact a few more painful dance steps with Stephanie that led to this proposed evening out with Rhett Brazelton, a friend from WLHA student radio, who was also nursing a few recently received romantic wounds.

     Craig and Rhett had planned to meet at Memorial Union to take in a showing of “Say Anything…,” the latest guide to young romantic life with the formidable John Cusack as tour guide. Craig loved John Cusack. Not simply a fan of his acting but an admirer of the essence he presented across the screen in his roles.

     John Cusack had somewhat beady eyes, a mouth the size of a quarter and a voice that suggested that he had perpetual post-nasal drip. His on-screen attitude could easily had been interpreted as an overly sarcastic and arrogant privileged teen if it were not for the warmth of his humor and the unforced and yearning tenderness of his romantic roles. Craig remembered first seeing John Cusack in a early eighties romp entitled “Class,” in which there was but a taste of the sharpness of Cusack’s wit and ability to place a knife’s edge spin on language. Then, there was his appearance in Craig’s treasured “Sixteen Candles” and finally, in a performance Craig liked to link to the similarly firecracker film debuts of Eddie Murphy and Michael Keaton, John Cusack received his first starring role in “The Sure Thing.”       Cusack played Walter “Gib” Gibson, a college freshman in pursuit of sex yet finding true love on a Capraesque road trip with the uptight Daphne Zuniga as love interest. To Craig, John Cusack exploded from the screen with a romantic wistfulness combined with scorching comic timing. These gifts were combined brilliantly in an early scene in which Cusack breathlessly creates a dire scenario of his future unless Zuniga assists him with the English class they share. While Zuniga ignores him and repeatedly swims from one end of the campus pool to the other, Cusack keeps pace on land, all the while crafting a hilariously sordid tale of disappointed parents, a life in fast food service, unsuccessful drug deals which of course would lead to prison terms and a cruel world upon release that would find him a toothless old man nursing a container of paint thinner while conversing to the obligatory gutter. The bravado sequence climaxes with Cusack flailing himself into the swimming pool while Zuniga, not missing a beat, swims directly past him unimpressed or concerned. Craig had the speech memorized in full. “The Sure Thing” was one of several movies that spoke to his own sense of humor and romance and it would have been hard pressed to find an actor to serve as a more effective conduit than John Cusack.

     Over the years, John Cusack possessed an almost subversive quality to his roles. He was one of the few actors of his generation to avoid being lumped in with the cruelly named “Brat Pack” and that spoke to Craig’s growing and crucial sense of individuality. He was one of the very few actors that Craig would consistently seek out simply because he was in a film. If John Cusack was involved, Craig thought, there had to be something unique about the experience.

     Finally, John Cusack had style to burn. He was a person, Craig thought, who knew how to wear clothes well. Anything just looked good on the man and that quality was one Craig alternately admired and envied. Possibly the most characteristic, the most “Cusackian” piece of film wardrobe iconography had to be the trench coat of “Say Anything…” Somehow that coat was as much a part of the character of Lloyd Dobler as the graceful dialogue. Cusack’s peerless skill, honor and charisma in the role was an insight Craig was able to gain from something as simple as the film’s one-sheet poster. Having missed the movie in its first run (despite valiant attempts as Craig was unsuccessful at finding anyone who happened to own a car to take him to the multiplex cinemas and additionally, he was equally unsuccessful at negotiating Madison’s bus routes), he was especially anxious to see it on this night. To Rhett, it didn’t matter one way or the other. John Cusack was just like any other actor to him. He wasn’t the film buff that Craig was and even if he wanted to be, he deeply felt that this was an area in which he could not compete. What he wanted was a good night out with a friend. Take in a movie and have some laughs, which Craig was always good for. What Rhett also wanted was to forget. He wanted to forget about lecture halls, the semester’s academic pressures and even the looming Milton paper he had been putting off tackling or even thinking about for one full week. Most of all, Rhett just wanted to stop thinking about, if only for a couple of hours, Amethyst Lessing.

RHETT’S LAMENT

     To Rhett Brazelton, the Southeast dormitories of Sellery, Witte and Ogg (Rhett’s current residence) resembled housing projects. Their tall, rectangular designs bracketed Johnson Street along with University Square like the most non-descript of bookends. There was nothing collegiate to its appearance and especially on weekends, its’ clientele of students. He didn’t think that it was wise or natural to pack so many kids, not so long out of high school no less, into such small quarters. And the collective tension of college responsibilities and pressures with hormones was as wise to Rhett as mixing various narcotics. The Southeast dorms on campus long had a reputation for the antics that would definitely give a respectable Midwestern Liberal Arts based university the shameful tag of a “party school” in adult Men’s magazines. Overnight drunken parties which led to pulled fire alarms which then led to frigid nights outdoors waiting for the fire inspectors to proclaim the dormitories safe were commonplace. Tragically one semester, however, there was, Rhett remembered reading about in the Badger Herald, a fatal alcohol or drug induced fall from a ninth floor window. In his freshman year, Rhett didn’t think too much about his surroundings since he was engulfed in the complete newness of college. But, now halfway through his sophomore year, he itched for different living arrangements.

     Activities in Ogg Hall were especially rambunctious on this particular Friday night. It made Rhett nervous. What also made Rhett uncomfortable was the loss of his room key, which he was desperately trying to find so he could go and meet Craig at the Union. Oh how he hated his room. It was the size of a children’s shoebox made smaller by the friction between himself and his roommate, a member of the football team. They had not even spoken to each other since October for no apparent reason or cause. The three walls encapsulating his dorm room were useless in muffling sounds from neighboring phone conversations, pre-dawn laughter, the physical and emotional exploits of romantic entanglements, the crash of a drum beat crossed with the crash of a drunken student into their own children’s shoe box sized room and, if he had to hear “Red Red Wine” just one more goddamn time…

     Again, Rhett grumbled about the lack of space. It was simply inhuman, he reasoned to himself, to expect two people to live like this, packed like rats in too small of a cage scrambling for the same piece of cheese, or in this case, a set of keys wrapped around a homemade Fishbone keychain.

     Rhett made and re-made his army cot style bed three times, hoping his keys would drop out of a previously pocket shaped area of blanket or sheet. Or maybe they ended up inside of his pillowcase after he tossed his keys and backpack onto the bed after his Philosophy lecture that afternoon. No luck. Rhett then decided to fish through his backpack, which he had to admit, needed to be cleaned out-a task he hadn’t approached since Finals Week before the holiday break.

     First, Rhett checked the side and smaller pockets along the front of his pack in which he found a stale package of chewing gum, an ancient guitar shaped Hard Rock Café pin, musty Kleenex (unused) and a collection of ripped plastic from purchased cassettes. He next went into the main part of his back pack. He began with his new books for the semester, the most obvious items and most recently placed occupants of his pack. He brushed through his notebook and shook a smaller journal, which contained an inner pouch. Then, finally, in the furthermost region of his backpack, he ran his hand through another pouch and his fingers discovered something he hadn’t thought of and was quite surprised that he still possessed; an envelope filled with a semester’s worth of book receipts from University Book Store.

     To offer a small source of compensation from the monopoly of the campus’ main source of classroom texts and supplies, patrons of the University Book Store were able to take their saved receipts up to the office cashiers and cash them in to receive 10% of their complete purchase total back in cash. It was a practice long discouraged by the store’s managers to reveal and they relayed that message to their staff. Yet, the staff reasoned, if you don’t want customers to partake of the service, then don’t offer it. With that, it is needless to emphasize just how brilliantly the staff made every opportunity to inform customers of this service.

     Rhett Brazelton saved every single receipt from University Book Store for the better part of a year in order to cash in and buy a special Christmas gift for Amethyst Lessing. Sadly, Rhett and Amethyst parted ways by Thanksgiving. He wondered that perhaps he still had these receipts simply by forgetting about them during the whirlwind of Finals Week and holiday travel back to Minnesota. It was during the down time of Christmas break that the hurt of losing Amethyst filled his thoughts and clouded his mood. Rhett stared at the receipts for a few moments, running through his head the sorts of Christmas presents he may have bought for Amethyst had he the chance. He was lost in so deep of thoughts, the cacophony of Ogg Hall evaporated into a pool of emotional numbness. Only hearing the familiar jingle of a set of keys jarred him from his state. Absent mindedly, he placed the receipts back into the pouch of his backpack, zipped it tightly and tossed it back onto the floor in a frustrated motion. Upon completing his flourish, he heard the jingling sound again and at that moment, he realized his stupidity (and embarrassment at having to make Craig wait for him), reached inside the pocket of his sweatshirt and found the keys he had placed there quickly after not having to use them to unlock his dorm room since his uncommunicative roommate barreled out just as he was returning. With that nonsense over with, he grabbed his coat, locked his room and ran past the already vomit stained drinking fountain into the frigid early February night.

     Using the chime of the campus carillon as a pace meter, Rhett trotted and then ambled along to the Union. Winter was Rhett’s least favorite season. He didn’t really have a favorite time of year but winter brought him down. The thinness of the air constricted his breathing, his movements and at times, Rhett could swear that he could feel his joints and muscles tightening up with each step up and down Bascom Hill. Even at points of rest, talking to a friend by the dormant fountain in Library Mall, he spoke lower and slower, seeing his every breath leave his body in ghostly formations never to return. The days darkened much too early for his nature. The darkness of winter had seemed to take over his entire mood and it always began somewhere in mid to late fall. He loved the color of the leaves and as far as girls were concerned, he loved seeing their fall fashions as opposed to skimpier summer wear. But, once that first nip tasted the air, Rhett felt his body close up, much like a bear hibernating for the winter yet much less restful. In fact, during his most recent Finals Week, he remembered hearing a weather report from the television in Ogg’s Common Room just as he was racing towards his Statistics final. ”Your flesh will freeze in under thirty seconds!” the weatherman cheerfully proclaimed. Never had Rhett felt so disgusted with the weather and misguidedly, at the University for placing his very life in jeopardy because it would take at most 10 whopping minutes to get to his exam. If he survived, that is.

     This night on the way to the Union was not as treacherous, yet the cold was bitter to the skin. As he stood at the edge of Library Mall, waiting to cross over to the Union, Rhett felt that winter lasted for an extreme amount of time and maybe that’s why it bothered him so much. He ached for some warmth, some comfort to take the numbness from him. As he watched car after car pass in front of his eyes, he surveyed Sterling Hall to his left and the hell of Langdon street to his right, and before he knew it, a tear slowly drifted from his eyelash and merged with the slowly forming mucus that dripped from his frozen nose. Unfortunately, he also knew that he had to get it together before he saw Craig. That tear had nothing to do with the cold and he had shed too many of them. As he found some tissue to dab at his nostrils, he lamented again about how winter just lasted too damn long. As with anything, Rhett thought, too much of anything is not a good thing. Too many classes. Too many deadlines and not enough hours in the day.  And right now, he knew that he had been so very sad too often since Amethyst’s departure from his life. “But, I don’t know how to get out of it…,” he truthfully muttered to himself, as he watched his breath vaporize into the night. 
Copyright 2014 by Scott Collins All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.

INTRODUCTION TO "DECEMBER BOYS"

If Tales From Memorial Union will ultimately be comprised of six stories, by this time, you have had the opportunity to read four of them. Also by this time, I am honestly not even certain if the labels of "short stories" or "novellas" even make a difference anymore because I am discovering that I am just writing what feels to be right for the story and the characters, no matter how long it just may take for me to arrive at the destination.

All that I can hope is that for you, the reader, that these stories feel organically true to you and, once again, and as always, I cannot even begin to thank you enough for all of the encouragement and support that you have been so kind to give to me. Absolutely every stitch of it has energized me to move forwards with this VERY long gestating project.

And now, I must go backwards in order to go forwards.

We now arrive at the fifth story, "December Boys." Titled after a line in Big Star's golden power pop classic "September Gurls," this story, like all of the others, again takes a very simple concept and attempts to treat it in a hopefully complex fashion. The story features the return of my alter-ego Craig Hughes and one long, sad and frigidly wintry night he shares with a friend named Rhett Brazelton, as they are each nursing some deep romantic wounds. Characters from my screenplay "My First Year" also return (or in this case are introduced to you), most notably Craig's roommate Jon Dahl (who is lovingly based upon my very first roommate and whose name is a hybrid of Yes' Jon Anderson and legendary Chicago DJ Steve Dahl) and Craig's very best friend and love interest Stephanie Deavitt.

As with that screenplay and the story "Fourteen," most of what will appear in the story concerning Craig and Stephanie is indeed auto-biographical and I am hoping to be as emotionally naked with them in this story just as I was in the screenplay. The challenge with that particular hope is that I wrote the screenplay as the events were really happening to me in real life so the movie almost functioned as a diary.

Over time, I realized that what I was really doing was trying to process exactly what was happening between myself and my first year of school so I guess, writing that script worked as a form of self-imposed therapy too. Now, for the purposes of "December Boys," I will have to tap back into my 18-20 year old self to bring those real and raw emotion as back to the surface so the story doesn't just fall into the hazy, glaze of memory. Also, to assist me is that aforementioned screenplay plus some key songs I placed onto the CD "soundtracks" I have made to help guide me as well (I should really write about that part of this whole process for you too...but another time).

And then, I still have a ton of letters Stephanie's inspiration and I wrote back and forth to each other during those years and the ones that I have decided to really unearth and maybe even weave into this story have been extremely illuminating. Not for what happened between us (and what will happen between Craig and Stephanie) but for me to see my behavior in a completely new way...something that will allow me as a writer to be even more critical of Craig Hughes and his behavior and not have him exist as a flawless hero.

With Rhett Brazelton, he is largely based upon my second roommate...but to a degree. The things that Craig and Rhett do together and joke about are completely in line with what my second roommate and I did together, but who Rhett is as a person, and his overall behavior, has been decidedly invented. His love story with Amethyst Lessing (who goes by "Amy") will also be mostly invented with bits and pieces of real stories I have heard tossed in here and there.

As I think about "December Boys," and in addition to being a story of camaraderie, the hope for connections and painful heartbreak, this is a story about moments and memories, how they intertwine, influence and inform each other as we all try to move forwards in life. While the main conceit of the story takes place in one night, and actually just a few hours at that, "December Boys" leapfrogs through the present and past where individual stories or moments fall into each other.

In addition, "December Boys" will feature my largest cast of characters to date, something that allows me to celebrate that particular time, this school and the people I knew to a larger degree (especially one character named Keely Glass who is based upon someone extremely cherished and one I still communicate with to this day). But I do have my work cut out for me in trying to keep them and their motivations all straight, so please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Oh yes...my beloved Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything..." (1989), which I did see during its original theatrical run, also plays a role within this story but you'll have to wait to find out how...

I began writing this story on May 9, 2003 and over the course of eight years, off and on, the story has reached upwards to about 90 pages, which are all ready to go on this blogsite and I will release over time. But then, I kind of hit a wall with it as trying to keep up with the details and storylines made me get a tad lost in the weeds. I just felt that I needed to take a break from it but little did I know that break would last several years, partially because I wrote "Paul Westerberg" off an don over these last three years and partially because my self-confidence was such that I was nervous to try again for fear that I would fail myself and the story.

But "Paul Westerberg" proved to me that I can finish something and I need to take that fuel and run with it for "December Boys" and finally finish it. So, my Moleskine is itching and waiting for me to return to it and continue this story and while I am writing, I will also be releasing was has been written, and hopefully, that immersion will push me forwards as I re-read everything from the past.

Stay tuned, for the first installment of "December Boys" is coming. I hope to play this one out for quite a while so if you'll still have me, please stay and take this journey with me.

"PAUL WESTERBERG" :POST-RELEASE THOUGHTS

From my Moleskine journal, October 7, 2014:

"I did it! I really did it! I'm actually crying a little as I am writing because I really finished a story again. I DID IT!!!"

Yes, during a rest time period at school, as the children were sleeping and my lovely co-teacher had stepped out of the classroom for a spell to make a copy, I finally completed "Paul Westerberg" and wrote those words posted above. Yes, I did start to cry because I was stunned that what had existed inside of me for so, so long was finally outside of me and was made into something unmistakably and tangibly real. But most importantly, I proved to myself that indeed I could finish something creative again, something I had not accomplished for an extremely long time (my blogs Savage Cinema and Synesthesia, notwithstanding).

Since that time, I obviously began the process of continuing to type and clean up what was written in long hand (as pictured below):

And afterwards, I posted new installments for your reading pleasure (I hope), with the final three installments arriving this past weekend.

As it stands, the story, when printed, comes out to 93 pages!!! Certainly, much more than a short story, so does that make this a novella? I really have no idea. And also, I really have no idea if it is a good story anyway. I just know that I wrote 93 pages of something, it spoke to me, I like it and all I can hope is that it meant something to you too.

Like I said in the intro, this is a story about communication and connection. The dual first person narratives are essentially interior monologues, so as Tracey and Heather are indeed speaking to YOU the reader, they are definitely speaking to themselves as they process this experience they are sharing but only from their individual viewpoints and perceptions.

I hope that this story felt romantic to you, as that was indeed my wish. I wanted you to hope that these two people would somehow find their way to each other especially when things were obviously falling apart during their date, a section which actually was influenced by the date sequence from "Some Kind Of Wonderful" (the film these two characters both adore) due to how it is possibly the lengthiest section of the entire story and Tracey and Heather are confronted with their emotions in an explicit fashion. They each want the same thing--to re-create whatever alchemy existed on the day of the blizzard but they each secretly fear that maybe that day was an anomaly for differing reasons.

I wanted to show how people sometimes reveal themselves or are at their most open when they are with other people they may not ever see again.  There's nothing to lose, so to speak. But, when it comes time for reunion and the potential of moving forward, especially after revealing so much, the concept may be emotionally daunting, as it really is for Heather Harrison who does suffer from some strands of social anxiety, as evidenced not only from the date but also for her love of quiet football Saturdays in the dorms and even when she returns from Spring Break and is just craving solitude before having to be "ON" for her roommate and floor mates again.

Well, now here's the point where I reveal the true inspiration for this story. Here goes. This story entirely happened to me. The real "Heather Harrison" is actually named Heather (I cannot remember her last name) and I did meet her on the day of a freak blizzard while waiting for my bus to return to Chicago for Spring Break. We did talk all day in the Union and for the epic bus ride home, where she did get off at O'Hare to meet her Father (for what I do not remember at all). She did send me a post card (which I actually still have). We did have a flirty phone call once we got back to school and we did indeed have a date which fell completely apart in the way it was written for the most part. And yes, there was also an "Abbey" whose real name is Miranda and she was as insufferable as described.

Certainly a very large portion was invented for the story as I obviously am not able to remember exactly what was said other than a few things. For instance, Heather really did like my "Some Kind Of Wonderful" sticker, which I had stuck to either a notebook or textbook. The structure of the date sequence was true. Meeting at the dorm, going to the movie (we really did see "The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen" on our date--no hand holding though), to the frat house (including the cover band) and IHOP all really happened. And believe it or not, Miranda really did tell me that she didn't date Black guys, hijacked the night and Heather and afterwards, she did walk back to my dorm with me and furthermore, she did make herself a constant and unwanted presence on my floor for a while too--much to the great amusement of my roommate who had never seen me so bent out of shape.

As for the life of Heather Harrison that Tracey Wolf recounts to us, much of that was indeed invented. Again, I cannot remember at all what she and I talked about on that bus ride but I cherry picked moments from my own life as well as stories I had heard and learned from friends plus some fully imagined tales and weaved them into the tapestry of this character that I hoped you would find yourselves falling for just as Tracey Wolf was falling himself.

Then, there is the "doppelganger" story that Tracey recounts in order to woo Heather with conversation on their date. That story actually happened to me too! I had long thought about making it its own story but I couldn't figure out a way to do it, so I folded it into this one.

As for the ending on Bascom  Hill, I made that piece of the story purposefully ambiguous as to whether Heather and Tracey will even speak as they see each other. As for me and what happened in reality, this story did have a definitive ending as I really did see Heather walking down Bascom Hill as I was walking upwards, some time after the failed date and not having seen her ever since. But again, for a story, I wanted there to be a window for YOU the reader to fill in what YOU thought these two characters might do. If you think Heather finally spoke to Tracey, then so be it. If you thought they passed each other without a word, then so be it as well. At this point, it doesn't matter what happened to me in real life. I leave this piece of the story up to you. 

I think the thing that was most satisfying to me as I was writing was the creation of Heather Harrison because in my real life, I was always confused as to what went wrong, and especially what were Heather and Miranda ding in that IHOP bathroom for so long. Before I began writing, I actually told several female friends the story and I was curious as to what they thought had possibly happened, especially as they all had first hand knowledge of covert meetings in the ladies room. Every single woman I spoke with all expressed confusion and the main sentiment that I had harbored myself for all of these years, "Maybe she was just scared." So, then, it was trying to come up with behaviors and a overall personality to bring the character to that fateful and sad night and I have to say that the character of Heather Harrison surprised me over and again as it did often feel as if she was standing over my shoulder telling me how she was feeling. That is when writing is just....UNREAL!!!!

Now, "Paul Westerberg" is finished and I am readying the next story, which will indeed play out for a very lengthy period of time. But, I won't divulge just yet. I hope to reveal in December.

Thank you all so much for taking this journey with me and being so supportive and encouraging as I never really thought I would ever share this with anyone.