5/17/00
GRADUATION DAY
3 PAGES

So it was a year ago today that I officially ended my life as a student. Graduation day 1999, Emerson College. An event day in and of itself worth writing about. The graduation itself wasn't all that great although you've gotta hand it to Emerson students. 50% of them were either drunk or stoned during the ceremony. A beach ball was being bounced around and around the graduates like at a rock concert. Our speaker was the head of AOL interactive or something who proceeded to alienate the students with his speech. He recalls a scene in THE GRADUATE where Dustin Hoffman's father's friend gives him advice about his future and it's in one word, "Plastics." Well this guy's one word was "Internet." And he spent the next half hour basically doing a self-serving speech praising technology and the internet. At any other school, Harvard, MIT, he might have gotten a good response. But this was a room full of artists who were more about ideas than technology. And, you really had to feel bad for the guy because all the people who were receiving honorary degrees when giving their speeches, bascially trashed this guy, saying that technology doesn't matter, it's the ideas you have, eliciting wild rounds of applause from the stoned graduates. Even Morton Dean slammed this guy. When this poor guy got up to receive his honorary degree, he said simply, "I'd like to thank the fire stokers for this roast."

I received my diploma, yadda yadda. Went up the street with everybody to the Commons and had my pictures taken with Tara and my other friends. Then I went out to dinner with my parents and my friend Ross and his girlfriend. Ross was the older brother I never had. He was a senior in highschool when I was in seventh grade. He wa the one who gave me advice about girls, drinking, attitude. And we've always kind of had that bond. We went to the Screaming Crab for dinner and had clams, seafood and lots of beer. Ross's girlfriend was really cool. She was a beer and tequila chick who was sarcastic and quick and funny and her and Ross looked GREAT together.

After dinner, my parents left for home and me, Ross and… I can't remember her name, I wanna say Allison, we went for some more drinks. Drank a beer and then did a shot. Me and Ross were the pussies, drinking the kamikaze shots. Allison did the tequila. We shot the shit, we laughed a lot and I was well on my way to drunkeness by the time we left the bar. They headed for home and I headed back to the dorm. I had another party to get to later that night.

It was about 9pm when I got back to the dorm. The sun was just setting. The party was at this dance club, being thrown by the school for the graduating seniors and wasn't for another couple hours. So I went around the building to try and find some of my friends to hang out a bit before we headed over. But apparently most of them were still out with their families. I passed by the lounge and this chick Chelsea was in there. She was a tall black chick, lesbian who had once gone out with my friend Monica. So we started shooting the shit. I was commenting on how my buzz was starting to go away and she was like, "Hey I've got a bottle of wine in my room that I'm not gonna drink. You want it?" So I say, sure. So we go into her room and proceed to sit by the window, taking hits off the bottle and smoking cigarettes and talking for like an hour and a half. And the whole time, (granted I was in an alchoal induced fog), but I'm sensing some mutual attraction going on here. I was getting the sense, that like Mary Ann, Chelsea wasn't as completely gay as everyone thought. And it struck me, and it continues to strike me, "I could have her right now." I mean, I don't know how far it would have gone, but I could have leaned over and kissed her right then. But I didn't. I was "remaining faithful" to Mary Ann who by this point was in Milwaukee. I haven't lost any sleep over that, but every now and then I kick myself saying, "Fuck, I should've just gone for it." Cuz Chelsea was pretty damn hot too and hell, that'd be two lesbians in one week eh? J

So after the wine was polished off, she had to go sit desk and I left for the party. The night was still young. Got to "The Big Easy" around 11am and the party was in full swing. I have to say, I have not had a night quite like that night before or since. I don't know what it was, if it was the alcohal, an exuding of confidence, or if I just happened to look really good that night, but all of a sudden, these chicks who I'd had a crush on for months or years were bumpin' and grindin' with me. We were close enough where we could've just started making out right then. I was buying them drinks. They were buying me drinks. There were probably 3 chicks at least that even in retrospect I'm thinking, "I could've had her." Mind you, I'm not the arrogant type usually when it comes to stuff like that. I'm usually actually quite insecure, thinking that I have no chance with a chick, but that night, for some reason, I was on FIRE and had at leat 3 separate chances for just a random hook-up… But I didn't. I didn't want to cheapen things with Mary Ann, who I now haven't seen, actually seen face to face in over a year. Not since she got on that plane to Milwaukee 4 or 5 days earlier.

The party wound down and we all said our goodbyes. That moment hasn't really hit me since then until I just wrote that line just now. Standing there in the Alley as everybody kind of staggered out of the bar, giving people hugs, knowing that with a few exceptions, I was NEVER going to see some of these people again. NEVER AGAIN. Those are strong words when you think about it. My really good friends, the ones who were in my soul, I knew I would see again. We would make sure of it. But the ones who, while they weren't in my soul, they had still been good friends; we were all going our separate ways, scattering to the wind. It wasn't like graduating highschool where you knew that even though everybody was going to different schools, there was always Thanksgiving, Christmas and the summer where you'd all be coming back and seeing each other. This was a clean break, all a once. Bam. And while a lot of these people were only seasonals, the kinds who are in your life for a period of time and then gone and it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it was still really sad. NEVER AGAIN. As I was hugging some of these people and saying "See you later," because that's what you say, I was thinking, "I'm NOT going to see them later." It was really rough.

I walked back to the dorm with Tara and Maria. A few of us went up to Tara's room and just chilled out. I had to be at the bus station at 6am to catch my bus home, so we figured we'd just stay awake until then. Laying there in Tara's room, on her bed, it was a repeat of what had happened the previous semester. We had all gone out to a bar, gotten wasted, and then I was in her room, and there was something unspoken that neither of us acknowledged. At that time though, it was pure and clean. This time, there was a mountain of things that went along with it. Mary Ann, timing, rejection, Mary Ann… It was the same kind of situation, true, even the same kind of feelings, but it wasn't the same. It was truly a sad moment. So close yet so far away.

The alarm wen off at 5am. We had drifted off to sleep. We got up, still in the same clothes. We went up to Maria's room and pounded on the door. But she was apparently dead to the world in there. Whatever it was, she wasn't getting up to answer the phone. So the last time I saw Maria, I didn't even get to say goodbye.

The subways weren't running yet, so I called a cab. It was just me and Tara in the back seat on the way to South Station. I don't remember what we talked about. I had given her a card a few days earlier. One of those, "Keep in touch cards." And I told her the story about signing yearbooks senior year of highschool and how I only wrote "I'll never forget you to people who I really meant it." I told her beyond all doubt, I would NEVER forget her. Once we got to South Station, I told her again, "I'll never forget you, no matter what." She said, "Well that's because I'm not going to give the chance to forget me." We hugged and hugged and hugged. I really just didn't want to let go. I can feel it in my chest right now the emptiness that I was already feeling. There were no tears but I could feel them in my throat as I ran my hands down her face one more time before telling her "I love you," and picking up my bags, turning and walking to the bus. It was such a slow process, the driver checking in my bag and putting it into the bus. I looked back inside the terminal before I got on the bus but Tara was already walking away. There were only about 10 people on the bus, so I had the seat to myself. I curled up in the seat, my knees on the seat in front of me, leaning on the window, and put on my headphones, listened to my depressing music tape, feeling alone.

We drove out of Boston as the sun rose, casting purple and orange across the city, across the buildings, across the harbor, across the river. Across a living breathing place that I had grown to love. Even though I knew that I would be back here in a month while shooting ROAD TRIP, it felt like I was leaving it forever. If Tony Bennet were singing my story, the lyrics would be changed to "I left my Heart in Boston." That's how I really felt. I felt like a big part of me was dying. The part of me that was subsisting on Boston, was starving to death. It was such an impotent feeling. I wanted to cry so much. I felt like if I could just break down sobbing, it would purge this pressure that was in my stomach and chest, but I couldn't. Not that I was trying to not cry. The tears just wouldn't come. As I write this, I can feel the very emptiness I felt as that Greyhound brought me farther and farther away. The skyline gradually faded into the horizon, and even the suburbs gave way to open road.