My Friend Frank ---(Warning: Explicit Lyrics)

One of the best compliments I’ve ever received came in a conversation on a flawless spring day, the kind that empties dorms onto the lawns. After a long winter, a hot sun warmed our skin, and a breeze the temperature of the crisp blue sky sauntered through. My friend Frank told me, “Luke, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are full of shit; and those who aren’t. You are not full of shit.”

I do not understand my friend Frank. I tell him this regularly, and he agrees. It was high school that sent us in different directions—perhaps it was junior high—but I left high school polished, socially confident, with an air of popularity. Meanwhile, Frank uncovered himself through music and friends, turned his back on popularity and high school, on the hierarchy of smiles and manicured faces that I had silently lusted after. My friends and I had discovered the joys of being beautiful and being nice. Frank and his friends discovered—created—a loophole, living far from the bright lights of popular society, discovered how to love more and care less.
I entered college with the skills to survive a world of painted Plexiglas—the real world. Talking at people and smiling keeps the world running, and I was learning the steps, finding the cadence. Frank entered on the train of counter-culture, the wind of music, the pride of making it.
We met during our sophomore year; he sat with his friends in the corner of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, talked infrequently and laughed discreetly. Naturally I assumed they were laughing at me, at my clothes and face and inane comments, as this is always the most plausible explanation of laughter among friends.

It took most of that first year for us to become friends. I had heard that all people are basically the same, but I doubted it with Frank. Philosophy had shifted my faith off its moorings and onto nothing, and I needed someone else who was basically the same. My friends did not talk about, nor care about philosophy. But Frank did. Even before he joined the major, Frank read the French philosophers because he believes people should read the French philosophers. We started a philosophy club. I talked to Frank and his friends whenever I could, mostly about philosophy, because that is all we had to talk about.

I recently told Frank my first impression of him and his friends, using my fingers to illustrate three points—
First Finger: They knew something I didn’t, something intrinsic about philosophy and being important. Second Finger: They were all inherently smarter than me. Thumb: Whatever they knew, they weren’t going to tell me.
He used his own fingers to respond—
First Finger: In a philosophy class, everyone thinks they are the dumbest person. Second Finger: —with a shrug—Who knows? Thumb: Well, that’s true.
Frank has never liked my friends, and though he has grown nicer since I met him, he has always been easily offended. Frank swears and has friends who say God is a dickhead. My friends, the ones who are going to be pastors, offend him. He is offended at how easily they are offended. Conformity offends him. Pat Robertson provokes Frank to cursing and tears. The Mormons he invited to lunch last semester were wrong—or at least crazy, and Frank wants people to know Jesus.

Frank and I are very different. I am tall; he is average. I have long hair and wear a baseball cap; my clothes can be seen on the plastic mannequins in stores. Frank has always worn really torn pants—tight jeans from a long time ago. When it is cold, he layers flannel shirts and zippered hoodies, and he carries coffee. His hair is short, and he has one baseball cap, a blue one, which sits flat on his head; it reminds me of a milkman. I don’t know why it reminds of that, except that it may be from a dairy farm. More often, he wears stocking caps—knit black ones—they remind me that he is in a band. And bands, much more than clothes, make Frank go.

Frank believes in music, lives in it, until it pours from him. I’ve had a lot of friends who play music, even love music, but not like Frank. The music scene at my high school consisted of cover bands and awful bands, and Frank would’ve been offended by them all. They played for audiences, and we cheered because they played songs from the radio. They smoked pot and got jobs at hardware stores after high school. Frank used to smoke cigarettes, but he sucks in music like a sponge trying to drink down the ocean, like a huge, inhaled breath. And every time he moves, it pours out. It pours into his friends’ art, into his new CD; it explains his copies of Heidegger, Sartre, and Baudrillard. I’ve known Frank for three years now, and I’m still trying to find out what he knows and I don’t. He still baffles me, most of the time. We have both changed a lot since then; he loves people better, especially people that aren’t like him. He still has trouble with my friends—with people like me—and I am beginning to wonder if I gave him too much credit—if he ever knew anything I didn’t. I’m beginning to think that he gave me too much credit—that we all, in different varieties—that we all are full of shit.

Writers' Block vs. The Deadline: the Art of Needing 350 words by morning

My fingers sit poised on the keyboard, eager, waiting. As I look at them, they wait with me, one finger twitches, then another, then a flutter of clicks and we stare at the screen together, my fingers and I. Crap. It sucks. BackspaceBackspace. SpaceSpace. And we wait. The pushups I did earlier aren’t helping. My arms are sagging, and the weight of my little muscles pulls my hands from the desk.

It sure is getting late, I say to my fingers.

Yeah, sure is—they say back. You better get going.

Yeah, I better.

The tips of my fingers are restless. The letters are lying beneath them; they’re touching them. They know the letters are waiting to scamper up to the bright screen and shine bright words into my dark room. I’m not sure why the words are not coming tonight. The other night, I wrote two pages, just cause I wanted to.

We, say my fingers.

What? I say.

We wrote two pages.

Oh, sorry. We.

Tonight, it’s just staring, and waiting. My arms really want to fall off, and I don’t think I’d mind too much—pretty original excuse: Why didn’t you finish the assignment? Well, (give them my arms) I, uh, couldn’t.

Unlikely, I think to myself.

Yeah, you’re telling me, say my fingers.

Oh my gosh! I say out loud, in my head.
You can hear my thoughts! I say to my fingers. This is getting weird.

Yeah, they say, but you’re only at 238 words, so I’d take what you can get.

Good point, I say.

So I go back to staring, waiting, twitching. What profound thing can I write about? I think about clouds and mountains. Wait. I think I’m on to something: My fingers, on the keyboard—it’s like I’m waiting, watching for what comes next. Just like life. Senior, graduating, no job—but then I figure out that the keys won’t push themselves; that it’s me that has to type. It’s perfect. I’ll write about that.

What do you think? I ask my fingers.

Sucks. That’s a terrible idea. They say that.

Whatever! I say. What’s your idea, then?

Go to bed, they say. You’ll think of something in the morning.

Whatever. I say again. Fine.

The Final Chapters

College is almost over. Almost, over.

My first night in Hodson 117: a night apart from home and family. My roommate hadn’t arrived; only my RA and a soccer player named Brandon had moved in. The orange lights of campus seemed unnaturally warm, sifting through the blinds into my darkened new home. College was a new and frightful microphone into which I’d sing beautiful and utterly important songs. I had recently caught fire, knew God, and IWU would soon hear my sweet music. Humbly, I would sing, and they would love me.

This night—the East Lodge 202—what happened? Through slotted blinds, the familiar orange glow falls on unfamiliar bricks. My memories are splintered, shattered—a reflection off moving water. My years were never years; they were weeks, days, shards of time, glued together by a miscreant child. And whatever happened to endless possibilities, and what about helping IWU learn all that I knew? I was going to change things—amount to something—make ripples. Didn’t I sing? No—they didn’t hear! Did I sing? And what was it that I was going to tell them, again?

I strain to isolate the memories in the onrushing current; I can’t make them out; I recognize some, others are lost, washed out and away. Stop it! Stop the rush! I’m not ready for this. For this, to float on.