فصل 26

January 25, 1992

Dear friend,

I feel great! I really mean it. I have to remember this for the next time I’m having a terrible week. Have you ever done that? You feel really bad, and then it goes away, and you don’t know why. I try to remind myself when I feel great like this that there will be another terrible week coming someday, so I should store up as many great details as I can, so during the next terrible week, I can remember those details and believe that I’ll feel great again. It doesn’t work a lot, but I think it’s very important to try.

My psychiatrist is a very nice man. He’s much better than my last psychiatrist. We talk about things that I feel and think and remember. Like when I was little, and there was this one time that I walked down the street in my neighborhood. I was completely naked, holding a bright blue umbrella, even though it wasn’t raining. And I was so happy because it made my mom smile. And she rarely smiled. So, she took a picture. And the neighbors complained.

This other time, I saw a commercial for this movie about a man who was accused of murder, but he didn’t commit the murder. A guy from MAS*H was the star of the movie. That’s probably why I remember it. The commercial said that the whole movie was about him trying to prove that he was innocent and how he could go to jail anyway. That scared me a lot. It scared me how much it scared me. Being punished for something you did not do. Or being an innocent victim. It’s just something that I never want to experience.

I don’t know if it is important to tell you all this, but at the time, it felt like a “breakthrough.”

The best thing about my psychiatrist is that he has music magazines in his waiting room. I read an article about Nirvana on one visit, and it didn’t have any references to honey mustard dressing or lettuce. They kept talking about the singer’s stomach problems all the time, though. It was weird.

Like I told you, Sam and Patrick love their big song, so I thought I’d read it to have something to discuss with them. In the end, the magazine compared him with John Lennon from the Beatles. I told that to Sam later, and she got really mad. She said he was like Jim Morrison if he was like anybody, but really, he isn’t like anybody but himself. We were all at the Big Boy after Rocky Horror, and it started this big discussion.

Craig said the problem with things is that everyone is always comparing everyone with everyone and because of that, it discredits people, like in his photography classes.

Bob said that it was all about our parents not wanting to let go of their youth and how it kills them when they can’t relate to something.

Patrick said that the problem was that since everything has happened already, it makes it hard to break new ground. Nobody can be as big as the Beatles because the Beatles already gave it a “context.” The reason they were so big is that they had no one to compare themselves with, so the sky was the limit.

Sam added that nowadays a band or someone would compare themselves to the Beatles after the second album, and their own personal voice would be less from that moment on.

“What do you think, Charlie?”

I couldn’t remember where I heard it or read it. I said maybe it was in This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There’s a place near the end of the book where the main kid is picked up by some older gentleman. They are both going to an Ivy League homecoming football game, and they have this debate. The older gentleman is established. The kid is “jaded.”

Anyway, they have this discussion, and the kid is an idealist in a temporary way. He talks about his “restless generation” and things like that. And he says something like, “This is not a time for heroes because nobody will let that happen.” The book takes place in the 1920s, which I thought was great because I supposed the same kind of conversation could happen in the Big Boy. It probably already did with our parents and grandparents. It was probably happening with us right now.

So, I said I thought the magazine was trying to make him a hero, but then later somebody might dig up something to make him seem like less than a person. And I didn’t know why because to me he is just a guy who writes songs that a lot of people like, and I thought that was enough for everyone involved. Maybe I’m wrong, but everyone at the table starting talking about it.

Sam blamed television. Patrick blamed government. Craig blamed the “corporate media.” Bob was in the bathroom.

I don’t know what it was, and I know we didn’t really accomplish anything, but it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things. It was like when Bill told me to “participate.” I went to the homecoming dance like I told you before, but this was much more fun. It was especially fun to think that people all over the world were having similar conversations in their equivalent of the Big Boy.

I would have told the table that, but they were really having fun being cynical, and I didn’t want to ruin it. So, I just sat back a little bit and watched Sam sitting next to Craig and tried not to be too sad about it. I have to say that I couldn’t do it very successfully. But at one point, Craig was talking about something, and Sam turned to me and smiled. It was a movie smile in slow motion, and then everything was okay.

I told this to my psychiatrist, but he said it was too soon to draw any conclusions.

I don’t know. I just had a great day. I hope you did, too.

Love always, Charlie