It was obvious within a week of commuting to the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth that I was not meant to be a commuter. I spent each morning figuring out how to get to class at the last possible moment without being late (to this day I still partake in this practice, only for work). I would take different routes to class trying to shave a minute here or there off of my commute. I don't think I was ever late for any class, but then again, I kind of didn't give a shit about school at this point to really have cared.
My freshman year at UMass, Dartmouth lasted exactly 21 days. How do I know it lasted 21 days? Well, the very day I went to the Bursar's Office to get my refund from becoming a new college drop-out, I was told that I had just missed the refund cut-off date by one day. Lucky me, I would spend the next few months working at Subway to pay off my first debt.
is not I didn't just wake up one day and decide, "Hmmmm...this doesn't seem to be working out". I knew from the time I was forced to agree to go to the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth that it was not the place for me. First of all, the school buildings themselves are quite possibly the most depressing pieces of architecture I have ever laid my eyes on. I thought the beautiful 70's architecture of B.M.C. Durfee High School could not be rivaled. I was dead wrong. Apparently, as legends has it, this crazy Satan worshiper was hired as the main architect in charge of building the monstrosity that is the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. However, after doing a quick Google search, I soon discovered that this is a bunch of hooey. Some guy named Paul Rudolph was the architect, and if you notice in the image of him above, he looked like a decent enough, church-going man with a wife and a Chevrolet. Nothing like the Satanic lunatic he was portrayed to be - the very one that built a cold, concrete campus that was in constant disrepair, built three seating areas that, when looked at from above in a helicopter were three backward 6's (yes, 666, only backwards), and then, after he had accomplished this feat, he climbed to the top of the radio tower that stood in the middle of the campus and jumped to his death. No. Mr. Rudolph was not this character. He went on to build other amazingly crappy buildings that later I'm sure had leaking problems as well as a lot of yellow "Caution" tape cordoning off certain parts for the safety of all who dare enter. But I can see how such a suburban legend existed. The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth was such a depressing place to be that you had to somehow make it interesting to convince yourself that you were doing the right thing of bettering your life by attending one of New England's top 25 "Best Deals" for colleges. I may have bought the story, and a semester's worth of tuition for only 21 days of classes, but I was not sold on the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
I always knew that I needed to go away to college. Fall River, Massachusetts, although it has it's pluses such as Highland Pizza and J.J.'s Coney Island Hot Dogs, just was not the place where I needed to be at the ripe old age of 18. Seeing that I wasted my first 21 days as a failed college student at UMass Dartmouth, it became a reality to me that I would be stuck in Fall River until the ripe old age of 19, when I would be able to start anew somewhere else. Here's the story...
The last part of my senior year and the summer of 1995 was tough for me as I try to wrap my head around everything. My life was consumed with figuring everything out that was going on in my head. Now that I think back on it, I was probably clinically depressed, however, being a good Catholic boy, I knew how to repress this pretty well around others. The thought of food made me want to barf and I consequently dropped about 40 pounds. Yes, it was a great diet, but I wouldn't recommend it. The second I knew something was horribly wrong was during a Chemistry Lab where we were watching a fascinating video on lab safety. As intense as the film was, something just wasn't right. I blacked out on my stool. Luckily, I realized I was blacking out as I was blacking out so I leaned forward and landed on the table. I don't know how anyone didn't observe this. I suppose the hit drama about lab safety kept everyone oblivious to those around them. I wasn't out for long and when I came to, I immediately grabbed all of my belongings and left. I immediately headed to the nearest bathroom to puke my brains out. Good thing I hadn't eaten anything in like a month. It was only dry-heaving. I was so freaked out that I just sat in the stall and cried.
That was the last straw. I don't know the date. It was in either late September or Early October that I had decided I needed to take control over my life. I had spent the better half of the year wrangling with the fact that I was a gay, however not many people knew about it, including my family. The thought of mentioning it to them over coffee just wasn't a real possibility. No. I had to do something drastic, because, after all, they were going to be so ashamed of me that I would be thrown out of the house and doomed to a life on the streets doing drugs and pedaling for change. Yes, I was convinced that life as I had known it for the last 18 years was going to change. And change it did. Only, it didn't turn out the way I had imagined.
One morning, I had commuted to school as I normally did. I went to my morning class (coincidentally it was a Math course that was also attended by my now friend Sofia, and her uber annoying friend Ed, who was probably wearing Kenneth Cole's (inside joke)). I then went home, skipping the remainder of my classes for the day. I cleared my bedroom of all of my belongings, dropped some stuff off at my friend Jen's house, and then hit the road. I had a destination in mind. Heck, I needed a place to go where I could be safe and trust someone, and, on top of that, have food and shelter. I was homeless after all. I drove to Mount Holyoke College, which was where my friend Stacy was a student. I also had this strong urge to see the college I really wanted to go to but my parents forcefully convinced me that it was too expensive, which was the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I had to know that it existed even though all of this stuff was going on in my life, kinda like Roy heading to Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Strangely, as I walked around the campus, I ended up in a dorm with one of Stacy's friends and ran into an old childhood friend from grade school, Carley, who was "working" in the office. This was the first of many strange occurrences that will soon follow in my life that convinced me that I was doing the right thing. My parents had convinced me that UMass Dartmouth was the right decision - for them. It was clear that it wasn't anywhere near the right decision for me. To make a long story short, I knew that UMass Amherst was where I needed to be, only I wasn't so sure how I was going to get there. I mean, I was now a homeless bum who had just decided to drop out of college with nothing but the shirt on my back. A phone call from home changed all of that. My mom read my letter I had left that probably said something like "It's been good knowing ya, love, your never to be heard from again GAY son, Matt". She asked if she had dropped me on my head one too many times, and that my father kinda knew already. Definitely not the response I anticipated, and so after a few days, I returned home not knowing what lay in store for me.
please continue!!
ReplyDelete