A visit with my younger self: 12 November 1988

This entry marks a breaking point in my mental and emotional health as a young man. This was the point where I decided that I could not continue at Harvey Mudd College and I would try transferring to one of the other Claremont Colleges as an English major (I had hoped to end up at Pomona, but my mediocre academic record left that door closed to me and I went to Pitzer instead). I had been drinking pretty heavily at this point in my life and between that, depression and life struggles, I ended up in the place this entry describes:

I’ve bottomed out. Fuck, I can’t even find a decent pen.¹ First, I asked Megan out for this weekend; she wasn’t home so I left a message on her machine. That was Wednesday. This is Saturday. She hasn’t returned my call. Optimistic explanation: she’s lost my number and nobody’s home to answer the extension when she rings me.² Optimistic explanation #2: She’s so busy the only time she remembers to call is late at night and she won’t call then because she doesn’t want to be rude. Neutral explanation: she’s dead. (Neutral because while she is dead, she does at least have a decent explanation for not calling back). Negative explanation: I don’t warrant a call back.³

Second, I couldn’t find my watch today.

Third, I’m failing logic.

Fourth, I think I may be becoming a manic-depressive. I trashed my room because I couldn’t find a watch.

Fifth, I’ve realized that my chances of having a social life are nil and getting lower. I mean, the signs that Megan might have liked me seemed pretty good and look where I am now. I don’t know how to meet people.

I walked down to the ΚΔ⁴ room at Pomona this evening. When I walked in, I got a lot of what I believed were reproachful looks; WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GEEK DOING IN OUR ROOM? I found my way to the beer. John Kuyper was there. He seemed at least neutral towards my presence. Hell he even presented the “Lowly”⁵ seal for my approval. I have such a sterling record of interpretting others’ actions. I didn’t speak. Nor did I smile. There was nothing to even smile ironically about—the scene there was pure, unadulterated human tragedy.

What is sexual pleasure? Something to inspire otherwise lazy human beings to reproduce.

What is love? Something to justify settling for a lower grade mate.

As I recall it, I was damned close to suicide that night. Over the next weeks, I filed the paperwork to take a leave of absence from Harvey Mudd for the next semester, broke the news to my indignant mom, managed to arrange a job at UIC for the spring and summer and somehow persuaded the professor from my logic class that if he gave me a D, I would never claim to know anything about mathematical logic for as long as I lived.

1. The first sentence was written in pen, but the ink fades out in “out.” The remainder of the entry is in pencil.
2. I had a direct phone line in my dorm room with its own phone number but also, there was a phone extension on the campus phone system shared with the other room of my suite and that number didn’t have an answering machine like my direct line did.
3. Of course, all this ignores the fundamental awkwardness of asking someone out via their answering machine.
4. Pomona College had a set of “fraternities” which were largely clubs that out of historical inertia had party rooms in the basements of some of the dorms. Other than this and naming themselves with Greek letters, they had no real connection to what I understand fraternity life to be from watching movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds.
5. A contemporaneous nickname for Lowenbrau.