Rite of Passage #2
1992 marked a lot of changes for me. I graduated high school and turned 18 on the same day, which was also celebrated by purchase of a lottery ticket (as other 18 milestone activities didn't seem as appropriate: I'd been able to get into clubs for a couple of years, so that was nothing new, I didn't smoke, and the idea of rushing out to buy a porn magazine just seemed a little creepy and anticlimactic).
The first week of 1992 I met the girl who became my first and most significant long term relationship. Staying over at a friend's house, for nostalgia's sake they decided to revive the old slumber party fun of prank calling people. Picking my name somewhat randomly out of the phone book (though they were looking for people with "children's' lines" so as to avoid arousing the wrath of sleepy adults) she called me around 1:30am, and we stayed up all night talking until I had to get up for school around 6 o'clock. If nothing else it made for a great "How did you meet?" story.
Noting that alternative radio stations had evolved almost exclusively toward the grunge movement (which I was already becoming weary of), and hearing little besides country music from my girlfriend, I took refuge in my CD collection, and revisiting some of my preferences from several years back, including a lot of classical music (with a newfound interest in French Impressionism) and some of my old Tangerine Dream albums and some Cure albums. In a fit of insanity, however, and prompted by dwindling cash supply, I'm sure, I sold almost all of my Brit pop, Manchester band, and shoegazer CDs — an action I've regretted at least once every couple of weeks since then, as many of the albums went out of print shortly thereafter. Even with the internet file-sharing revolution of the early 2000s I still haven't been able to find copies of some.
In the spirit of "starting over," socially, I pledged a fraternity at the beginning of my freshman year in college. It didn't take me too long to become a little disillusioned with the ideals put forth by the group (though I still enjoyed hanging out with the guys, and it was notably one of the least conformity-oriented Greek organizations on campus), when the vice president of the fraternity gave me the choice of dumping my girlfriend or sticking around, it wasn't too difficult a choice. Even after leaving, what few members were still willing to associate with me refused to believe I'd been put in that position. I found out, only afterward, that my dad had been through a similar bad experience, but hadn't wanted to tell me before for fear it would change my mind about at least giving it a try.
I encountered my first two experiences with roommate life. The first, whom I'd met when he was in town for college orientation, never showed, and I managed to hide the fact from the housing office for quite some time (about two months) which gave me an extra closet, desk, and decent amount of living space. Once the secret was out, the housing office moved my second roommate in from an overflow dormitory, where he'd been staying before. They guy and I had practically nothing in common except for the fact that we were both fairly quiet, so we exchanged probably little more than 200 words all year long. Observations I did make were as follows: he changed his sheets three times that year (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter — he'd take his laundry home with him on holidays), he had this terrible old word-processor/typewriter thing which he'd finally print his paper assignments on at around 5am when he finished them, his alarm was set to a country music station, and he'd sleep through it for up to an hour or two sometimes, and his friends were intolerable (videotaping me in my sleep and putting salt, pepper, or other things in my bed, and so on). My best revenge, though a little embarrassing, was when he and his mother unexpectedly came into the room, without knocking, to find me and my girlfriend in the throes of passion, so to speak.
I had an old IBM-compatible Tandy laptop which served as my first personal computer. The thing had a 12Mhz processor, 512K RAM, a 2400 baud modem, and a 20MB hard drive. It's laughable now. Perhaps I was too critical of the roommate's word processor. That machine could play a mean game of Railroad Tycoon, though (even with the monochrome LCD display).
My fascination with Hermann Hesse continued, including readings of Steppenwolf and Pictor's Metamorphoses, among others. I also began reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov — it took me a couple of years of intermittent reading to finish that one.
The first week of 1992 I met the girl who became my first and most significant long term relationship. Staying over at a friend's house, for nostalgia's sake they decided to revive the old slumber party fun of prank calling people. Picking my name somewhat randomly out of the phone book (though they were looking for people with "children's' lines" so as to avoid arousing the wrath of sleepy adults) she called me around 1:30am, and we stayed up all night talking until I had to get up for school around 6 o'clock. If nothing else it made for a great "How did you meet?" story.
Noting that alternative radio stations had evolved almost exclusively toward the grunge movement (which I was already becoming weary of), and hearing little besides country music from my girlfriend, I took refuge in my CD collection, and revisiting some of my preferences from several years back, including a lot of classical music (with a newfound interest in French Impressionism) and some of my old Tangerine Dream albums and some Cure albums. In a fit of insanity, however, and prompted by dwindling cash supply, I'm sure, I sold almost all of my Brit pop, Manchester band, and shoegazer CDs — an action I've regretted at least once every couple of weeks since then, as many of the albums went out of print shortly thereafter. Even with the internet file-sharing revolution of the early 2000s I still haven't been able to find copies of some.
In the spirit of "starting over," socially, I pledged a fraternity at the beginning of my freshman year in college. It didn't take me too long to become a little disillusioned with the ideals put forth by the group (though I still enjoyed hanging out with the guys, and it was notably one of the least conformity-oriented Greek organizations on campus), when the vice president of the fraternity gave me the choice of dumping my girlfriend or sticking around, it wasn't too difficult a choice. Even after leaving, what few members were still willing to associate with me refused to believe I'd been put in that position. I found out, only afterward, that my dad had been through a similar bad experience, but hadn't wanted to tell me before for fear it would change my mind about at least giving it a try.
I encountered my first two experiences with roommate life. The first, whom I'd met when he was in town for college orientation, never showed, and I managed to hide the fact from the housing office for quite some time (about two months) which gave me an extra closet, desk, and decent amount of living space. Once the secret was out, the housing office moved my second roommate in from an overflow dormitory, where he'd been staying before. They guy and I had practically nothing in common except for the fact that we were both fairly quiet, so we exchanged probably little more than 200 words all year long. Observations I did make were as follows: he changed his sheets three times that year (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter — he'd take his laundry home with him on holidays), he had this terrible old word-processor/typewriter thing which he'd finally print his paper assignments on at around 5am when he finished them, his alarm was set to a country music station, and he'd sleep through it for up to an hour or two sometimes, and his friends were intolerable (videotaping me in my sleep and putting salt, pepper, or other things in my bed, and so on). My best revenge, though a little embarrassing, was when he and his mother unexpectedly came into the room, without knocking, to find me and my girlfriend in the throes of passion, so to speak.
I had an old IBM-compatible Tandy laptop which served as my first personal computer. The thing had a 12Mhz processor, 512K RAM, a 2400 baud modem, and a 20MB hard drive. It's laughable now. Perhaps I was too critical of the roommate's word processor. That machine could play a mean game of Railroad Tycoon, though (even with the monochrome LCD display).
My fascination with Hermann Hesse continued, including readings of Steppenwolf and Pictor's Metamorphoses, among others. I also began reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov — it took me a couple of years of intermittent reading to finish that one.