I have my first alcoholic beverage at a restaurant while out with my mom.

That’s right, I never touched alcohol until I was 21. Unless you count the diluted rumpopo my mom gave me as a child.

When there’s nothing left to say
And I’m standing here breathing
Into the receiver which has been stuffed
With the black marshmallows of your silence,
And the phone is a plastic leech
Nursing warmly at my earlobe,
I realize that the picture on my wall
Of Bora Bora
Is not Bora Bora at all,
But a beach on Kokomo
That has been made to look exactly like
A beach at Bora Bora.
Now that I am on to the fact that
Someone is going around creating flawless facsimiles
Of tropical islands,
I had better be pretty damn sure
That Key Largo really is Key Largo
Because that’s where I’m going
To forget that “we” ever gave each other anything more than
Furtive glances.

I know you think that I’ll never carve pumpkins again
Because only “we” carved pumpkins
In that special exclusive way,
And I should want to keep those moments sacred.
But you’re wrong.
I’ll sit there on the beach at Key Largo
And carve a pumpkin every fucking day
And it won’t mean a thing to me.
Sometimes there’ll be a girl there
To help me carve the pumpkin.
Yes, hon, a girl; someone other than yourself.
In fact, there’ll be a different girl every day!
And when we’re done carving that pumpkin,
We’ll roll naked in the sand
And the pumpkin meat.
There’ll be little almond-shaped seeds
Plastered all over us
And I will not be thinking about you at all.

You, of course, are oblivious to all of this.
You believe I should be concerned with the fact that
One day you woke up to find that your safe little world
Was really made of slinkies and tinker toys.
I remain silent on the phone.
I let you think I’m thinking about you thinking that I’m thinking About what you thought I said to you.
But I’m not thinking that at all.
I’m thinking that I’d rather dangle my balls
In a piranha tank
Than give you the satisfaction of weeping into the phone,
Cracking open my heart,
Making me say “Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s okay.”
You’re not going to get that from me this time.
All you can hear now is the muffled bubbling of your voice
As I drown you.
I flush and flush,
But you won’t fit down the hole
And the coiled umbilical cord stretches taught,
Trying to stay attached to my world.
It doesn’t matter.
I’m gone.
I’m off to Key Largo
Or whatever the fuck they’re calling it today.

My niece, Dominique, is born.  At first I was angry with my sister for getting pregnant.  Now I hate ever feeling that way.  Dominique is beautiful and wonderful.

She shares her birthday with Dave.

Begin my junior year at DePauw.  I am rooming with Dave, who will become one of my best friends.  Ryan is the RA.  He also becomes one of my best friends.  We all live in Hogate.  We live in an experiment known as the “Substance-Free Floor.”  Ironically enough, I go on to violate just about every rule.

Upon my return from Fall Break, Dave and Ryan convince me that Dave has decided to pledge a fraternity.  I fall for it, only because I believed that Ryan was unable to lie.

I break up with Kerry.

I meet Beth.

I meet Cathy.

I start creating the Chronicle of the Pages world, later renamed DreamPunk.

I meet Alex Arevalo, the crazy Columbian.