Preface
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Four years ago (time flies) I was selecting colleges and listing them on our college applications which were due to the small college office that I never bothered to set foot into more than twice in my entire high school career (I had no idea that we even had a college office let alone peeked inside it). It seems that I have spent the least time in preparation for these phases of my life. I have ceased to take advantage of my high school college office and I have failed to get in touch with my college career advisors. I refused to see my high school end and I refused to see my college end; I don't mean that I didn't want them to end, it was that I did not accept the fact that I have ended these phases in my life fully---I denied the ending of the phases and belittled their worth; instead of fully accepting the new weight and burden of the situation I ignored the duties and responsibilities that come with graduation and with the passing of the phase. Though I vented once or twice to Ms. Wicklow I felt like I did not get to the bottom of things; I have whizzed past the career office and pretended as if it did not exist and that I am on my own when I comes to understanding my career route. Four years ago Dewey was a rather distant home for me at the crest of my graduation date and on the lawn I realized that I was going to be blindsighted by college. The heat of the sun on our gowned bodies and the music from Mr. Steinberg's makeshift band tooted little horns for success. Mr. Perez wound his body around the DJ system and piped the sound system to an overplayed song and parents wrenched their heads around the statue to catch a glimpse of their minority children graduate. I think the reason why Dewey did not promise me enough was because I ended up losing faith in the school's administration and most of all, I lost hope in all that comprised Dewey. The name felt expired and everything about the morale of the school dissipated after my junior year. It also has something to do with my involvement with Dewey. After I had given up on the Classic Rock Music Club with the late Mr. Tannenbaum, three years ago, I realized that my involvement with Dewey had waned besides my occasional helpouts with Mr. Tannenbaum, Ms. Napolitano, or guitar-jam sessions ("touring classrooms"). Besides these self-appraising activities I could call myself involved in, I was pretty much marooned away from my high school by my senior year. Senior year was a complete desert for me because I ended up dallying with "fook-dup" people which means complicated people. My parents didn't want me hanging around handballers or lahn-jais they would call them; they thought they were aw-lok people which means morally deteriorating. I would like to reflect on my senior year and brag about the gangster friends that I have made and the connections that I made on the handball courts, but all these connections have faded by now and know me no longer, not enough to give me a job or even hang out with me near a handball court. Though a chunk of my senior year was devoted to handball and chiew been sik yan (carelessly acquainting with someone [stranger]), I did not stomp on my studies. My 3.91 GPA followed me all the way into my senior year of college.
Memory One
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A few weeks before graduation day, I visited CSI with Annie. She had asked me if I could go to CSI with her because she exclusively needed someone to go to tour the college with her. She had intentions of going. So I decided to go with her under the pretense that I had nothing to do; this coincided with the very fact that I literally had nothing to do in my senior year besides handball my hours away until the sun went down. So we made an odyssey to CSI which was in the middle of nowhere, in a pseudo-gated community with a sprawling campus and a "loop bus" that took students to and fro the main campus buildings. This proved to be tedious and inexpedient because the bus could only hold a handful of students and getting there proved to be an extension of a two hour trip from Brooklyn. We ended up going to Bay Ridge to take the bus and then sit an hour and a half to this segregated piece of land that encircled CSI. I confused the quantity of time spent to be the quality of time spent; it seemed that I crushed on Annie and this made me initially agree to going to CSI with her which I knew beforehand was not going to be a short trip. I knew that I had agreed/signed up for something that would consume my afternoon and it eventually did consume my afternoon when I suppose that I could have done something else (I could always do something else in any time given). I thought that Annie had feelings for me and that was why she asked me to go. I thought that the trip would be a trial period for me and I was on my best behavior for her. I felt the trip bought us some bonding time, just the two of us, and allowed me to really get to know her. I didn't really know her besides two gym classes we had together: I believe we worked out in Mr. Grosso's class together and I played badminton with her in another gym class. I can't lie that I found her physically attractive especially with her short denim jeans and her perky, lively personality. I remember that on the way back I pretended to be excessively sleepy. She asked me if I was sleepy and she yawned in agreement, so I decided to close my eyes and slowly fall onto her shoulder. After falling onto her shoulder for a good second I perked my head up because I knew that I would get awkward and I didn't want the rest of the trip to be a ride of unfilled, awkward silence.
Memory Two
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I had a crush on Cathy maybe in my sophomore year. It wasn't founded on the fact that we shared subway stations in the morning but it was founded rather on some unfamiliar ground that I do not remember. I do not remember meeting Cathy as clear as I remember meeting Nicole. Because Nicole and I share the same birthday and we both have the love for singing, it is undeniable that we had our first voice session in the equipment room of the music wing room one something. It was there that we met and I found out she was with this kid named Jonathan. Cathy was an especially different person because she defined the word rad and warm for me in scintillating ways that I thought almost impossible. Because I was under the halo effect early on, every heartfelt conversation that I had with Cathy, especially one in the history R.C. near the end of one cycle, was ingrained in me. This particular conversation was about my future and her trust in me and her faith in me that I should pursue music at all costs and that my talent will outshine the darkness in my life. It was clear that Cathy was goading me to be the best that I could ever be, especially after high school was life. With little sign of Cathy's leaving to SUNY/private/non-CUNY school I had to adjust to her MIA-ness and steadfast disappearance from my life, not that her appearance in my life was steady or something that I had desired. It was clear that the first year of college I videochatted with Cathy and I came to realize that her presence in another state made me reminisce our time together. When she said she met a rocker dude in her school I became disheartened because it reminded me of my attachment and crush on her way back a year or two ago in high school. What sucked more was that she liked white rocker dudes and I did not fit that criteria. Cathy left some crucial advice for me but unfortunately it did not stick with me and I do not remember anything that she told me from that afternoon in the history R.C. What I do remember are our conversations on the phone when I would literally call her on the phone and sing and play guitar to her, begging for comments and praises afterwards. There was never a time when she did not compliment me and there was never a time when she did not feel fond of my musical talent. She would praise me and shower me with support. She would tell me that I have a very good voice and that I would have a good shot at being a musician. That was part of the reason why my email was krssguitarist2010 because I had imagined myself famous by the year 2010. The clearest memory was when we were at 25th Avenue together before 9AM on our way to B band and she told me, "you look lonely, what's wrong?" As she walked up to me from twelve feet away I realized that Cathy saw through me or at least she saw what I wanted her to see, a bruised teen on the brink of drama king behavior, marooning himself away from society and believing that his sorrow was much darker and grieve-worthy than anyone else's.
Memory Three
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My first real girlfriend I can consider is Sara. Sara can be readily summarized as a charming, artsy (not a deploring remark or negative hint, but rather praise), imaginative, innovative, creative, intelligent, straightforward, religious girl from a totally different high school than me. She was my real girlfriend because Cheryl does not count. Sara was the first hint of a love because my mother saw my photo of us kissing in my wallet. It became a faint reminder that she was a plot in my romantic life. But she became ever evanescent like the fading, crumpled wallet that I purchased on the first day we met in Union Square. It was in DSW that I bought that wallet and it was there that she tried to plant my first kiss. But it was later on our second hangout on the steps of this apartment complex one block from Bay Parkway train station that I lost my first kiss ever to Sara. She took away my first kiss pretty surreptitiously by charmingly planting her lips on mine and then stealing it away ever so romantically. I was impressed so we kissed again on Canal Street platform J,M,Z side. I can say that I made out with Sara in a lot of places. It was near the Empire State Building that I knew we were to fall apart and never to resume again mostly because she could not handle my lies and my pretentious behavior to exert my masculinity when she loved me for who I was without exerting any self-impression management. Sara allowed me to banish curses for a full three months that we were together. I did not curse because she hated curses. She was incredibly devout to God and every time we departed she would say See you next time, God willing as if the fate of the world and the fate of our love rested in the hands of God; I'm sure this isn't exactly what she meant but I still interpret it this way. When we were at Madison Square Park and I threw a penny into the fountain I made a wish and so did she. She revealed to me her wish and said that she called me rain because I tasted like rain when we kissed. Then the rest of her revelation became lost and jumbled in my memory, expired and I cannot dig it up right now. Whatever amount of our relationship it became air a year later. It wasn't until her first year in NYU and my second year in college that we webcammed and we cried over webcam to each other. She said she missed me and I told her I missed her too. But this sign of sadness and longing was truly a reactive measure and fully fueled by a burst of nostalgia. It wasn't something that lasted or managed to become active; it didn't cause us to come back together. Then again maybe the film shoot with Mocao screwed it up because she thought that I was hitting on her and in this act it seemed like I wanted to get back at her for dumping me by asking her out. It seemed pretty clear that Sara was over me completely and that anything I did was in vain and the effort was just not to be seen, forever. Case closed. On with our different, separate lives.
Memory Four
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The day I left Benson Elementary School was the day I forgot all my classmates. Who was there to remember? I do remember Joanne who was the door monitor from Mr. Vallero's class. Mr. Vallero was a cool Italian dude who had big eyes and angular eyebrows. He seemed an Armani model back in the day. I remember walking down the stairs with Joanne and complimenting her on her grey wool sweater. She was the epitome of sweet, innocent, and charming girl back in the day when I was just around what nine or ten years of age. This was superior memory for me and it was an experience that shifted my liking for Asian girls, mostly Chinese. I would like to say that my first crush was Alice who my parents referred to as gong-kum moi which means piano girl. She was a music prodigy and amazing pianist of the day. We lived on opposite blocks pretty much but we never hung out because I just didn't get to hang out until my last year of junior high school. Grade school days were complete house arrest and homework time. I didn't even get to see my neighbor Johnny until the dying years of junior high school and Johnny lived only three houses down. His mother owns a dry cleaner and we would just enter through her storefront and then bam into his house we were. But Johnny and I were complete mismatches and it ended up that my dad disliked him because he was disrespectful to my dad and my dad held a grudge against Johnny for not returning my small pocket book; he held a grudge for me. In retrospect it was interesting how much more fed up he was than I was. I didn't really care about the book. But I think that my Dad just wanted me to have positive friends who would positively influence me and push me in a more upward direction. Back to Joanne, she was the quiet, reserved type who would be casual in her speech and rather soft-toned. It was then I felt like I could compare her to this girl in a music video with the soft eyes. But she also had this fallen princess look equated with her softness; it was almost as if she needed a knight in shining armor. I also remember Danielle, a redhead who I became jealous of when I found out she was seeing Eugene this kid from my fifth grade class. I told Eugene off when I saw that he was with her and he became a rival--he realized that I was pathetic to even tell him that I was jealous and not try to take her from him. Actions speak louder than words, he thought. I also remember this tall dude who my parents always thought Indian. Addyhan lived on the block next to mine in a thirteen floor apartment building and his parents drove a white faded station wagon in which they drove me home in one night. It became clear that Addyhan and I were close friends, but we drifted away during fourth grade. I remember him gulping his milk from his thermos every afternoon during cold lunch period. He would bend his head down and sip and then reappear with a milk moustache. It is no wonder that he is now six foot four! My last impactful memory was that of Ivana, a girl who sent me a X-Mas card during fifth grade. She wrote "love" and then signed her name and this impacted me because I took it to literally mean that she had crushed on me. I reacquainted myself with Ivana when I saw her at MNN studios near John Jay for their open house nearly three years ago. I recognized her because of her petite stature and her wide face and soft bangs/short hair. She had a quiet, subtle lisp and a rather artsy demeanor that made her stand out. But it turned out that after a few trades on Facebook she defriended me and resigned me to stranger status.
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