I'm going to start this post with a very blunt statement: Bid was the whitest black person I ever met. I will explain that a little bit later here. Bid was a year ahead of me and came to Eastern New Mexico University from Chicago, IL. In addition to his involvement in theatre and choir, he was a jock. I know he played baseball, but I don't know if he played other sports.
I first became aware of Bid around February of 1982, when my Drama Club went to the ENMU Drama Festival. I remember seeing this tall, black man walking around the theatre from time to time. He really stood out. Unfortunately, I never got to see him perform because the ENMU production we got to see that year was "Arsenic and Old Lace," which consisted of mostly white people in the cast.
When I started getting involved in the Theatre department in college, I got to know him a little better, but in isolated fragments. I have to admit that coming from a town with very few black people, I found him rather intimidating at first. But I really became familiar with him after he was cast as Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera." He was absolutely phenomenal in that role and had complete command of the stage, despite attempts by one of the other actors to upstage him. He proved to be an extremely versatile actor and dancer and was someone I started looking up to.
The main reason I refer to Bid as the whitest black person I ever met is because his tastes in the arts are not strictly tied to his connection with his being African-American. Most other black actors, if you ask them who their favorite playwright is, will likely respond with August Wilson. I think Bid's favorite was David Mamet. Bid also listened to country music. Bid did listen to a lot of R&B, but he had very expansive tastes and also had a flair for theatrical music and opera.
Bid was one of the go-to people for the Theatre department's professors. He choreographed numbers for our musicals and the Dance department's annual stage presentations. My junior year, we did a production of "Mother Courage and her Children." Bid was called upon to write a musical score for the lyrics that Bertolt Brecht wrote. It seemed like there was almost nothing he couldn't do.
However, this appeared to have all gone to his head at one point. During his senior year, he was asked to choreograph one of the numbers for "HMS Pinafore," in which he played Deadeye Dick. It was a piece that involved the entire male chorus. The few days before he was to present the choreography, he, Chud, myself and some other Theatre students went to audtion at the Southwest Theatre Conference. The main goal of the conference was to land a summer job with any number of theatrical companies that were hiring. Bid got a lot of offers. He was really riding high because it meant he would have something to go to after he graduated.
The Saturday after the conference, we showed up for rehearsal. Bid started showing us the choreography and took us through it step by step, very slowly. However, when we attempted to do the choreography at full speed, we found that even the Bolshoi Ballet Company would have had a great deal of difficulty trying to properly execute it. During one of the breaks, a few of us cast members were talking and we came to the conclusion that Bid was making it up as he went along. Afterwards, I saw Bid sitting and talking to the director, Dr. R. I could not hear the conversation, but Dr. R did not appear to be pleased with what Bid had come up with. I don't know if Dr. R called him on the possibility that he made it up on the spot, or if he thought that the complicated choreography was going to interfere with us being able to sing the number properly. At any rate, we had new choreography the next week.
Bid became one of the very few people I knew from the Theatre department who graduated and was actually able to become a professional actor. While other students in the department envisioned a life of fame and fortune after graduating (including myself), Bid was probably the only person from our group who had a realistic view of how a life in the theatre was supposed to be after college and he accomplished a great deal.
There will be more on that in tomorrow's post.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
Overextending myself
I enjoyed all the extra-curricular activities that I participated in during high school. I expected to be able to do the same thing in college and fill my free time getting involved in campus activities. That didn't work out the way I thought.
Before I started college, Mom wanted me to look into getting involved in the Baptist Student Union. However, I was sort of hoping that I could explore my own spirituality during college without being tethered to a church atmosphere. Even though I am a Christian, I felt very uneasy being around other people of faith at that time. I only ever went there a couple of times during my sophomore year. It really wasn't my scene. I just felt like everybody was very self-righteous. The funny thing is that I knew many of the students, and they never acted like that when I ran into them on campus. This was just isolated to when they were in that building. I didn't feel like putting on fake airs just for their benefit.
One thing that we did not have at Artesia High School was Speech and Debate. At other schools, this fell under the Drama club. But no one there felt it was important enough to budget for yet another group of students to go to various competitions throughout the state.
When Eastern New Mexico University's Speech and Debate team announced their first meeting of the semester, I went to check it out. It looked very interesting at first and appeared to be something I really wanted to be a part of. However, the faculty member in charge of the team made it clear that he expected more out of the participants. It wasn't going to be like the high school version that I never got to be a part of. For instance, we could not just enter one aspect of the competition, like speech, interpretation or debate. We would be expected to get involved in at least five categories per competition.
This was not even the challenging part. We were required to come with whatever we would be speaking about or interpreting or debating on our own. This one girl and I went to the library and tried to find some material that would be suitable. She had done the Speech and Debate the year before, so she knew what was and was not acceptable material. Everything I suggested, she said we couldn't do it. It was very frustrating.
If I had been in Speech and Debate in high school, this probably wouldn't have seemed insurmountable. If I were permitted to just ease my way into with maybe two separate projects, I might have been able to work my way up to five or more. But the team advisor wouldn't allow that.
So I just quit. I had better things to do with my time at college. Besides, I was starting to feel some pompous attitude from the members of the team who knew what they were doing and didn't seem to like having to talk me through things that they had learned more than four years ago. And it wasn't like I left anyone hanging. I think they already felt like they would be better off without me.
During my sophomore year, I was approached to join Phi Mu Alpha, the music fraternity. It wasn't like one of the clubhouse fraternities, so I decided to pledge. I and five other candidates went through the initiation process and I was given a pledge pin. A week later, I was asked to pledge Alpha Psi Omega, the fraternity for the theatre department. With my class overload that semester and involvement in theatrical productions and the renaissance faire that had been planned that year, something had to give. I returned the pledge pin for Phi Mu Alpha. It was getting to be too much.
But I felt really bad quitting because that supposedly had an impact on some of the other pledges. Three of them also pulled out and they said it was because of my decision not to pursue it further. I had no idea I had that type of influence. I probably didn't, and they just used it as an excuse to get out because they were probably overloaded as well.
I also had to cut back my participation in the Renaissance Faire. I was still in it with one theatrical presentation and performing with the Madrigal Singers. Looking back, I still don't know how I got through that semester with my insanity intact. Maybe I didn't.
The Baptist Student Union, the Speech and Debate team, Phi Mu Alpha and the Renaissance Fair made me wish I had been able to avoid or quit other things when I was younger, like 4H or work. This was a good step toward becoming an adult. It's too bad I never quite mastered that ability, especially when it came to relationships, but that is fodder for future posts.
Before I started college, Mom wanted me to look into getting involved in the Baptist Student Union. However, I was sort of hoping that I could explore my own spirituality during college without being tethered to a church atmosphere. Even though I am a Christian, I felt very uneasy being around other people of faith at that time. I only ever went there a couple of times during my sophomore year. It really wasn't my scene. I just felt like everybody was very self-righteous. The funny thing is that I knew many of the students, and they never acted like that when I ran into them on campus. This was just isolated to when they were in that building. I didn't feel like putting on fake airs just for their benefit.
One thing that we did not have at Artesia High School was Speech and Debate. At other schools, this fell under the Drama club. But no one there felt it was important enough to budget for yet another group of students to go to various competitions throughout the state.
When Eastern New Mexico University's Speech and Debate team announced their first meeting of the semester, I went to check it out. It looked very interesting at first and appeared to be something I really wanted to be a part of. However, the faculty member in charge of the team made it clear that he expected more out of the participants. It wasn't going to be like the high school version that I never got to be a part of. For instance, we could not just enter one aspect of the competition, like speech, interpretation or debate. We would be expected to get involved in at least five categories per competition.
This was not even the challenging part. We were required to come with whatever we would be speaking about or interpreting or debating on our own. This one girl and I went to the library and tried to find some material that would be suitable. She had done the Speech and Debate the year before, so she knew what was and was not acceptable material. Everything I suggested, she said we couldn't do it. It was very frustrating.
If I had been in Speech and Debate in high school, this probably wouldn't have seemed insurmountable. If I were permitted to just ease my way into with maybe two separate projects, I might have been able to work my way up to five or more. But the team advisor wouldn't allow that.
So I just quit. I had better things to do with my time at college. Besides, I was starting to feel some pompous attitude from the members of the team who knew what they were doing and didn't seem to like having to talk me through things that they had learned more than four years ago. And it wasn't like I left anyone hanging. I think they already felt like they would be better off without me.
During my sophomore year, I was approached to join Phi Mu Alpha, the music fraternity. It wasn't like one of the clubhouse fraternities, so I decided to pledge. I and five other candidates went through the initiation process and I was given a pledge pin. A week later, I was asked to pledge Alpha Psi Omega, the fraternity for the theatre department. With my class overload that semester and involvement in theatrical productions and the renaissance faire that had been planned that year, something had to give. I returned the pledge pin for Phi Mu Alpha. It was getting to be too much.
But I felt really bad quitting because that supposedly had an impact on some of the other pledges. Three of them also pulled out and they said it was because of my decision not to pursue it further. I had no idea I had that type of influence. I probably didn't, and they just used it as an excuse to get out because they were probably overloaded as well.
I also had to cut back my participation in the Renaissance Faire. I was still in it with one theatrical presentation and performing with the Madrigal Singers. Looking back, I still don't know how I got through that semester with my insanity intact. Maybe I didn't.
The Baptist Student Union, the Speech and Debate team, Phi Mu Alpha and the Renaissance Fair made me wish I had been able to avoid or quit other things when I was younger, like 4H or work. This was a good step toward becoming an adult. It's too bad I never quite mastered that ability, especially when it came to relationships, but that is fodder for future posts.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Mistake's a thief
I made a lot of mistakes, especially in my childhood. The worst part was facing the consequences.
When I was younger, I looked forward to the day I would no longer make mistakes. The thing is, you never get too old for that.
When I was younger, I looked forward to the day I would no longer make mistakes. The thing is, you never get too old for that.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
College Friend: Kird, Part 2
After I graduated from college in 1986 and was living on my own, I received word that Kird was in Germany. I was told he worked in the kitchen at the Air Force base there. I was given a phone number to call him. I had never called overseas before. I was afraid my phone bill would hit $100.
I managed to get in contact with him. We talked on a couple of different occasions, but it wasn't until about the third call that he told me he actually enlisted in the Air Force. His dad pretty much forced him to do that because he was sick of him living like a bohemian and having to call home every other week asking for money. I guess he was sort of embarassed about having to admit that he was in the Air Force because he said the military was the last place he would turn for work. He didn't care much for how he grew up in a military family and didn't want to be subjected to that for the rest of his life.
A few years later, he was stationed at Alamogordo. (This is one thing that irritated a lot of military members that I knew. They grew up in a podunk town that had a base. They joined the Armed Forces and got stationed in some exotic location for a couple of years. Then, they would be re-assigned back to the podunk town they were trying to get away from in the first place.) I was living in Denver at the time and got in contact with him. He told me he had gotten married. I knew he was serious, but I actually laughed at the prospect of him settling down. I said, "The next thing, you're going to tell me you have a child." "Yes, I do, and she the most beautiful little girl in the world!" I was stunned. I never could see Kird as a parent (as much as I could never see myself as one, either).
A few weeks later, I came down to Artesia because my father was getting married. I came over to Alamogordo to visit him. By this time, he and his wife had separated and she had custody of the child. Kird was trying to find a new place to live in Alamogordo. He found this one house, but was concerned because it called for a one-year lease. He was nervous about committing that long a time as he might be re-assigned. Later that night, I met his wife and child. He held his daughter in his arms. It was apparent that he missed her very much.
The next time I saw Kird was a few months later, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego. He had managed to get back together with his wife and they were living in a house they rented. This was October 31st, 1991 and the southern part of the state got pelted with a surprise early snow storm. His wife was concerned about me driving through the mountains to get to Alamogordo, but I found it a breeze after living in Denver for three years.
Kird came out with me to San Diego for a classic road trip. We ran all over the place, but got on each other's nerves after a couple of days. While he was there, we were contemplating driving up to Burbank to see Chud, but he wasn't at home when we called. We left a message on his machine. Chud told me later he never wanted to see Kird again, so I'm glad we didn't try to drive up to see him.
When I came home for Thanksgiving the following year, I drove through Alamogordo and saw Kird. He had completed his tour with the Air Force, but he and his wife had separated again. He was in the process of moving out of the house they were renting. He was also considering re-enlisting with the Air Force. He had a new girlfriend. She came over that night. While she was there, he bragged to me about how he had told her about every woman he had ever slept with. I threw out a few names of girls I knew about in college. He had already told her about them. I started to think if there was someone he may not have told her about. After a few minutes, I shouted out the name Carz (someone I had tried to hook up with before I found out he slept with her and whom I will go into detail in an upcoming post). His girlfriend was aghast. She hadn't heard that name before. Kird covered his face in shame. He explained that he was drunk and stoned and it was the worst sexual experience he had ever had in his life and that's why he didn't tell her about it. (He left out the part in which he did it at a party with other people watching.)
The next time I came out, Kird and his wife had gotten back together and were living with his parents. Kird had started going to grad school at New Mexico State University. He was going to become a social worker.
He eventually finished school and worked with Child Protective Services in Tucumcari, NM. In 1997, I was on vacation in New Mexico with my girlfriend Kez. We were in Clovis, which is close to Tucumcari. We called to see if he was there, but we found out he was actually in Clovis with a couple of twin kids who had been removed from their parents. They had been taken to the hospital there. We went to the hospital, but we never could find him.
In an even more surprising move, Kird went to school and became an attorney. I couldn't believe this was the same person I couldn't get out of bed to go to class in the morning. When I last caught up with him in 2009, he was working as a prosecutor for the District Attorney in Clovis. I met him and his new wife. I never asked about what happened to the old one or his daughter, who was around college age at that time. He invited me to go to the courthouse and see him at work, but since I was in my driving clothes (a t-shirt and jeans), I wouldn't have felt comfortable being in the courtroom. He said I would have looked like one of the defendants.
In the years that followed, Kird accepted my friend request on Facebook, but he never posted anything. He eventually deleted his account. About three years ago, Kird's name appeared in the news as providing an affidavit that he and the District Attorney had engaged in "judge shopping" in order to get a judge accused of bribery convicted. He had to quit his job as a prosecutor.
From what I found on the Internet, it looks like he got a job as an adjunct law professor at Wayland Baptist University (which is really surprising, considering he was an atheist in college). It looks like he then got another job as a prosecutor in Tucumcari about a year ago. Then, a few months ago, he and another attorney set up a private practice in Hobbs, NM. (It must be a really private practice because I can't even find their phone number. I was actually going to call him.)
He also has a law blog (and it's even through Blogger), but he doesn't allow comments on his posts. I've just got no way of getting in touch with him.
But I don't expect that to be a problem for long.
I managed to get in contact with him. We talked on a couple of different occasions, but it wasn't until about the third call that he told me he actually enlisted in the Air Force. His dad pretty much forced him to do that because he was sick of him living like a bohemian and having to call home every other week asking for money. I guess he was sort of embarassed about having to admit that he was in the Air Force because he said the military was the last place he would turn for work. He didn't care much for how he grew up in a military family and didn't want to be subjected to that for the rest of his life.
A few years later, he was stationed at Alamogordo. (This is one thing that irritated a lot of military members that I knew. They grew up in a podunk town that had a base. They joined the Armed Forces and got stationed in some exotic location for a couple of years. Then, they would be re-assigned back to the podunk town they were trying to get away from in the first place.) I was living in Denver at the time and got in contact with him. He told me he had gotten married. I knew he was serious, but I actually laughed at the prospect of him settling down. I said, "The next thing, you're going to tell me you have a child." "Yes, I do, and she the most beautiful little girl in the world!" I was stunned. I never could see Kird as a parent (as much as I could never see myself as one, either).
A few weeks later, I came down to Artesia because my father was getting married. I came over to Alamogordo to visit him. By this time, he and his wife had separated and she had custody of the child. Kird was trying to find a new place to live in Alamogordo. He found this one house, but was concerned because it called for a one-year lease. He was nervous about committing that long a time as he might be re-assigned. Later that night, I met his wife and child. He held his daughter in his arms. It was apparent that he missed her very much.
The next time I saw Kird was a few months later, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego. He had managed to get back together with his wife and they were living in a house they rented. This was October 31st, 1991 and the southern part of the state got pelted with a surprise early snow storm. His wife was concerned about me driving through the mountains to get to Alamogordo, but I found it a breeze after living in Denver for three years.
Kird came out with me to San Diego for a classic road trip. We ran all over the place, but got on each other's nerves after a couple of days. While he was there, we were contemplating driving up to Burbank to see Chud, but he wasn't at home when we called. We left a message on his machine. Chud told me later he never wanted to see Kird again, so I'm glad we didn't try to drive up to see him.
When I came home for Thanksgiving the following year, I drove through Alamogordo and saw Kird. He had completed his tour with the Air Force, but he and his wife had separated again. He was in the process of moving out of the house they were renting. He was also considering re-enlisting with the Air Force. He had a new girlfriend. She came over that night. While she was there, he bragged to me about how he had told her about every woman he had ever slept with. I threw out a few names of girls I knew about in college. He had already told her about them. I started to think if there was someone he may not have told her about. After a few minutes, I shouted out the name Carz (someone I had tried to hook up with before I found out he slept with her and whom I will go into detail in an upcoming post). His girlfriend was aghast. She hadn't heard that name before. Kird covered his face in shame. He explained that he was drunk and stoned and it was the worst sexual experience he had ever had in his life and that's why he didn't tell her about it. (He left out the part in which he did it at a party with other people watching.)
The next time I came out, Kird and his wife had gotten back together and were living with his parents. Kird had started going to grad school at New Mexico State University. He was going to become a social worker.
He eventually finished school and worked with Child Protective Services in Tucumcari, NM. In 1997, I was on vacation in New Mexico with my girlfriend Kez. We were in Clovis, which is close to Tucumcari. We called to see if he was there, but we found out he was actually in Clovis with a couple of twin kids who had been removed from their parents. They had been taken to the hospital there. We went to the hospital, but we never could find him.
In an even more surprising move, Kird went to school and became an attorney. I couldn't believe this was the same person I couldn't get out of bed to go to class in the morning. When I last caught up with him in 2009, he was working as a prosecutor for the District Attorney in Clovis. I met him and his new wife. I never asked about what happened to the old one or his daughter, who was around college age at that time. He invited me to go to the courthouse and see him at work, but since I was in my driving clothes (a t-shirt and jeans), I wouldn't have felt comfortable being in the courtroom. He said I would have looked like one of the defendants.
In the years that followed, Kird accepted my friend request on Facebook, but he never posted anything. He eventually deleted his account. About three years ago, Kird's name appeared in the news as providing an affidavit that he and the District Attorney had engaged in "judge shopping" in order to get a judge accused of bribery convicted. He had to quit his job as a prosecutor.
From what I found on the Internet, it looks like he got a job as an adjunct law professor at Wayland Baptist University (which is really surprising, considering he was an atheist in college). It looks like he then got another job as a prosecutor in Tucumcari about a year ago. Then, a few months ago, he and another attorney set up a private practice in Hobbs, NM. (It must be a really private practice because I can't even find their phone number. I was actually going to call him.)
He also has a law blog (and it's even through Blogger), but he doesn't allow comments on his posts. I've just got no way of getting in touch with him.
But I don't expect that to be a problem for long.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
College Friend: Kird, Part 1
I met Kird on my first day of college classes. I don't know why he decided to be friends with me. I didn't ask him to, but we just hung out together a lot. I guess it was because we found we both had an intense interest in pop and rock music, especially the New Music that was becoming en vogue at the time.
Kird had grown up in Alamogordo, NM, which is about a two-hour drive from Artesia. His father was in the Air Force. Prior to coming to Eastern New Mexico University, Kird's father was stationed in Germany. It was at the high school there in which Kird started becoming involved in acting. He decided to major in Theatre when he went to college.
Before I really got to know him, someone said that Kird wanted to grow up to be Michael Jackson. He was trying to be a rock star and entertain people. I'll admit, he was very energetic and could be entertaining, but in college, he had no means of actually attaining this goal.
Kird was a rather hedonistic character. It seemed like he was always in pursuit of whatever would give him pleasure. More often than not, these pursuits involved other female students. In this day and age, he would likely be kicked out of school for that behavior.
Kird could also be extremely overbearing at times. I enjoyed being around him, but if there were other people around, Kird had a tendency to steal the spotlight. He could easily turn into one of those "look at me" people before I had a chance to let my presence be known. He was 100 times worse than my brother Loyd.
So I don't know how it happened, but he became College Roommate #5 during the Spring 1984 semester. My world was turned upside down that term. Kird would stay up until 3am. He would play music, talk on the phone, watch TV, go out to who knows where and bring people to the room. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we had a class together at the Theatre at 9am. I could almost never get him to wake up and go to class.
Strangely enough, this was the semester I came close to getting a 4.0 average on my classes, so he was not a deterrant to my ability to study.
Also that semester, Kird was supposed to come with me to Artesia for one of the weekends I had planned to go home. We were going to leave after my last class at 1:00pm. However, he was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the campus and a couple of other places he frequented. After a couple of hours, I figured he didn't want me to find him and went home by myself. I kept calling the dorm room that weekend, but he never picked up. When I came back and asked him about it, he said, "I never said I was going to go."
It turned out that he had met some girl that day and decided to spend the weekend hanging around with her (although he never admitted this was the reason). That summer, he and that girl got an apartment together.
The next semester, Kird was no longer attending classes. I guess his father got tired of the bad grades he was making and stopped sending him money to go to school on. He was working in the food services department at ENMU. He was hoping to earn enough money to come back to school the next semester. But I don't know how he was planning to do that, because the first thing he did was buy a $500 bass guitar. He wanted to become a musician and planned to practice with the bass every day and get as good as Sting, whom he greatly admired. He brought the guitar over to the theatre and he was in absolute awe of it. I don't know what happened, but a couple of weeks later, he didn't have that bass anymore.
Even though he wasn't attending classes, Kird got cast in the Theatre department's production of "Charley's Aunt." During that production, he met this freshman girl who was also cast. They really hit it off. The only problem was that he was still living with that other girl. I didn't realize Kird had hooked up with the new student until later.
One night, during rehearsal, the girl he was living with showed up at the theatre. She yelled at him about a lot of stuff and said he owed her money. She then left. Kird went back into the rehearsal. I asked one of the actors what was going on. All he would say is, "Kird and his girlfriend are having problems." I suddenly felt like I was forced into the shroud of secrecy that surrounded me all throughout junior high and high school. I wanted to scream out, "I CAN SEE THAT, YOU MORON! KIRD IS MY FRIEND! WE WERE ROOMMATES LAST SEMESTER! IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER? IT'S NOT LIKE I'M GOING TO RUIN ANYONE'S REPUTATION!"
And I guess that was the problem. I felt like Kird was leaving me out of his life. The old girlfriend left and the new girlfriend moved in. However, she never told her family that she had left the dorm to live with Kird until they came up one weekend. I don't know if meeting the parents was an explosive event, but pretty soon after that, he had moved to Albuquerque. I thought he was gone forever.
I was wrong. A few weeks later, he returned trying to get back with that girl. By this time, she had hooked up with another student, who had recently gotten out of prison. Kird stalked them to the boyfriend's apartment. He was worried that he was going to do something that would send him back to jail. However, nothing happened. While he was in town, Kird had nowhere to stay, so he wound up sleeping on the floor of my dorm room between the beds of my roommate and me.
That night, I got a phone call at 1am. It was one of the administrators. He said he had received a complaint about Kird. Apparently the girl gave him my name as a possible contact. He asked me if I knew where Kird was. I said, "He's right here. Hang on." I gave Kird the phone. Kird did a lot of denying on his end of the conversation. Apparently, the girl accused him of harassing and threatening her. A couple of days later, Kird went back to Albuquerque.
He started doing poetry readings there. He actually had a following. I did go to visit him a couple of times in Albuquerque before I graduated from college, but I never saw him do the poetry stuff.
Kird did a lot more stuff after I graduated from college. His life went in directions I never imagined. I'll get to that in tomorrow's post.
Kird had grown up in Alamogordo, NM, which is about a two-hour drive from Artesia. His father was in the Air Force. Prior to coming to Eastern New Mexico University, Kird's father was stationed in Germany. It was at the high school there in which Kird started becoming involved in acting. He decided to major in Theatre when he went to college.
Before I really got to know him, someone said that Kird wanted to grow up to be Michael Jackson. He was trying to be a rock star and entertain people. I'll admit, he was very energetic and could be entertaining, but in college, he had no means of actually attaining this goal.
Kird was a rather hedonistic character. It seemed like he was always in pursuit of whatever would give him pleasure. More often than not, these pursuits involved other female students. In this day and age, he would likely be kicked out of school for that behavior.
Kird could also be extremely overbearing at times. I enjoyed being around him, but if there were other people around, Kird had a tendency to steal the spotlight. He could easily turn into one of those "look at me" people before I had a chance to let my presence be known. He was 100 times worse than my brother Loyd.
So I don't know how it happened, but he became College Roommate #5 during the Spring 1984 semester. My world was turned upside down that term. Kird would stay up until 3am. He would play music, talk on the phone, watch TV, go out to who knows where and bring people to the room. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we had a class together at the Theatre at 9am. I could almost never get him to wake up and go to class.
Strangely enough, this was the semester I came close to getting a 4.0 average on my classes, so he was not a deterrant to my ability to study.
Also that semester, Kird was supposed to come with me to Artesia for one of the weekends I had planned to go home. We were going to leave after my last class at 1:00pm. However, he was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the campus and a couple of other places he frequented. After a couple of hours, I figured he didn't want me to find him and went home by myself. I kept calling the dorm room that weekend, but he never picked up. When I came back and asked him about it, he said, "I never said I was going to go."
It turned out that he had met some girl that day and decided to spend the weekend hanging around with her (although he never admitted this was the reason). That summer, he and that girl got an apartment together.
The next semester, Kird was no longer attending classes. I guess his father got tired of the bad grades he was making and stopped sending him money to go to school on. He was working in the food services department at ENMU. He was hoping to earn enough money to come back to school the next semester. But I don't know how he was planning to do that, because the first thing he did was buy a $500 bass guitar. He wanted to become a musician and planned to practice with the bass every day and get as good as Sting, whom he greatly admired. He brought the guitar over to the theatre and he was in absolute awe of it. I don't know what happened, but a couple of weeks later, he didn't have that bass anymore.
Even though he wasn't attending classes, Kird got cast in the Theatre department's production of "Charley's Aunt." During that production, he met this freshman girl who was also cast. They really hit it off. The only problem was that he was still living with that other girl. I didn't realize Kird had hooked up with the new student until later.
One night, during rehearsal, the girl he was living with showed up at the theatre. She yelled at him about a lot of stuff and said he owed her money. She then left. Kird went back into the rehearsal. I asked one of the actors what was going on. All he would say is, "Kird and his girlfriend are having problems." I suddenly felt like I was forced into the shroud of secrecy that surrounded me all throughout junior high and high school. I wanted to scream out, "I CAN SEE THAT, YOU MORON! KIRD IS MY FRIEND! WE WERE ROOMMATES LAST SEMESTER! IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER? IT'S NOT LIKE I'M GOING TO RUIN ANYONE'S REPUTATION!"
And I guess that was the problem. I felt like Kird was leaving me out of his life. The old girlfriend left and the new girlfriend moved in. However, she never told her family that she had left the dorm to live with Kird until they came up one weekend. I don't know if meeting the parents was an explosive event, but pretty soon after that, he had moved to Albuquerque. I thought he was gone forever.
I was wrong. A few weeks later, he returned trying to get back with that girl. By this time, she had hooked up with another student, who had recently gotten out of prison. Kird stalked them to the boyfriend's apartment. He was worried that he was going to do something that would send him back to jail. However, nothing happened. While he was in town, Kird had nowhere to stay, so he wound up sleeping on the floor of my dorm room between the beds of my roommate and me.
That night, I got a phone call at 1am. It was one of the administrators. He said he had received a complaint about Kird. Apparently the girl gave him my name as a possible contact. He asked me if I knew where Kird was. I said, "He's right here. Hang on." I gave Kird the phone. Kird did a lot of denying on his end of the conversation. Apparently, the girl accused him of harassing and threatening her. A couple of days later, Kird went back to Albuquerque.
He started doing poetry readings there. He actually had a following. I did go to visit him a couple of times in Albuquerque before I graduated from college, but I never saw him do the poetry stuff.
Kird did a lot more stuff after I graduated from college. His life went in directions I never imagined. I'll get to that in tomorrow's post.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Elected Office!
Having left high school behind me, I was very interested in being a part of student government at Eastern New Mexico University. I felt like I didn't really get to do everything I wanted to do in student council in high school and college would give me a second shot at that.
In college, it was called the Student Senate. You could choose between representing your dorm or representing the department your major was in. My freshman year, it was very easy to get into because no one else from my dorm ran in the election, kind of like how I wound up on the Student Council my junior year in high school.
All we really did was approve spending bills for school funds to go to various functions. We just zipped through them really fast without getting a chance to discuss them. I think that's how real-life legislation works.
Unlike Student Council, we were not very active as a group outside of our weekly meetings. It seemed like a lot of students weren't even aware there was a student government system in place that decided how to spend a portion of student funds that got distributed to the various organizations around campus.
That's not to say that things didn't get dramatic. During one meeting in February of 1983, people were starting to get really irritated about this one particular issue and there was a lot of back and forth. While this was going on, I started feeling really fatigued. When we finally closed the meeting and did the closing prayer, I leaned over so far, I thought my head was about to hit the table.
We started leaving the meeting room. All of a sudden, people started collapsing. I assisted one woman in getting out the door. I felt like I was about to collapse, so I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face. Since I couldn't get enough water in my hands, I plugged up with sink with paper towels. I felt a little bit better and went outside the bathroom. I was really tired and decided to rest a little bit and laid down on the floor.
The next thing I knew, a bunch of people, including an administrator, was carrying me outside the Campus Union Building, where EMTs had arrived and set up a makeshift triage station. I felt better when I got outside, but I had a big headache. I took a couple of puffs of oxygen. They told me to go to the hospital to get checked out, so I went over there, but I didn't take any medication, not even aspirin. They asked me if I had taken any other form of medication.
Other people had it a lot worse and had to be hospitalized. I went home and got a good night's sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the headache was mostly gone, but I could still feel a little tingle from it. However, most of the other people caught up in the action complained of headaches for weeks on end, especially those who had to be hospitalized.
It turned out there was a carbon monoxide leak in the ceiling in the meeting room. There was not enough carbon monoxide in the air to kill us, just enough to make us woozy. They said that if we had gotten carbon monoxide poisoning, once we laid down and fell asleep, we would be dead.
A couple of weeks later, I had to talk to the college's insurance adjuster. They told me my bill came to $60. "WHAT? But all I did was take a couple of breaths of oxygen!" The adjuster assured me that I was not going to have to pay that, the college would take care of it. I still found it shocking that just breathing in a little oxygen would run that much. Thank goodness we get it for free every day.
A few weeks later, student elections for President and Vice President were taking place. A debate was held in the auditorium in the School of Business. During the debate, I started experiencing "deja vu" for the first time in my life. I started feeling like I did that day of the carbon monoxide leak. Just as I was thinking this, two of the students who were hospitalized suddenly got up and ran out of the room without saying anything. They were experiencing the exact same thing I was, but it felt more threatening for them.
The other dramatic thing my freshman year was that we tried to kick our student body president out of office. He had used student funds to get rather expensive gifts for everyone in his administration and gold pocket watch for himself. We had to hold a public hearing before putting it to a vote. The public meeting was a witch hunt that shouldn't have happened in the first place because we did not have an actual quorum. After that shameless display of political strife, we voted against forcing him out of office. But everyone still got their gifts and he got to keep the watch.
I didn't get elected to Student Senate my sophomore year. I guess the gas attack and the impeachment of the president raised the profile of the Student Senate. Two other people from the dorm ran the next year and I came in last place. The next year, I ran to represent the College of Liberal Arts, which was the department Radio/TV was located. I lost that one, too. However, the person who did win quit at the semester and they asked me to take the seat.
I was elected my senior year. I was made the Parliamentarian and the head of the Rules Committee. About 20 years after I graduated, I looked at my ENMU yearbook from 1986. It showed me posed with other members of the committee. For the life of me, I couldn't remember attending one meeting with those people. I know meetings took place because they were supposed to, but I didn't remember getting together with those particular students. I guess my senior year was more of a blur than I would have like to have imagined.
About 10 years later, I would attempt to get involved in getting elected to a real public office, but I never even got my name on the ballot. That's a post for a much later date.
In college, it was called the Student Senate. You could choose between representing your dorm or representing the department your major was in. My freshman year, it was very easy to get into because no one else from my dorm ran in the election, kind of like how I wound up on the Student Council my junior year in high school.
All we really did was approve spending bills for school funds to go to various functions. We just zipped through them really fast without getting a chance to discuss them. I think that's how real-life legislation works.
Unlike Student Council, we were not very active as a group outside of our weekly meetings. It seemed like a lot of students weren't even aware there was a student government system in place that decided how to spend a portion of student funds that got distributed to the various organizations around campus.
That's not to say that things didn't get dramatic. During one meeting in February of 1983, people were starting to get really irritated about this one particular issue and there was a lot of back and forth. While this was going on, I started feeling really fatigued. When we finally closed the meeting and did the closing prayer, I leaned over so far, I thought my head was about to hit the table.
We started leaving the meeting room. All of a sudden, people started collapsing. I assisted one woman in getting out the door. I felt like I was about to collapse, so I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face. Since I couldn't get enough water in my hands, I plugged up with sink with paper towels. I felt a little bit better and went outside the bathroom. I was really tired and decided to rest a little bit and laid down on the floor.
The next thing I knew, a bunch of people, including an administrator, was carrying me outside the Campus Union Building, where EMTs had arrived and set up a makeshift triage station. I felt better when I got outside, but I had a big headache. I took a couple of puffs of oxygen. They told me to go to the hospital to get checked out, so I went over there, but I didn't take any medication, not even aspirin. They asked me if I had taken any other form of medication.
Other people had it a lot worse and had to be hospitalized. I went home and got a good night's sleep. When I woke up the next morning, the headache was mostly gone, but I could still feel a little tingle from it. However, most of the other people caught up in the action complained of headaches for weeks on end, especially those who had to be hospitalized.
It turned out there was a carbon monoxide leak in the ceiling in the meeting room. There was not enough carbon monoxide in the air to kill us, just enough to make us woozy. They said that if we had gotten carbon monoxide poisoning, once we laid down and fell asleep, we would be dead.
A couple of weeks later, I had to talk to the college's insurance adjuster. They told me my bill came to $60. "WHAT? But all I did was take a couple of breaths of oxygen!" The adjuster assured me that I was not going to have to pay that, the college would take care of it. I still found it shocking that just breathing in a little oxygen would run that much. Thank goodness we get it for free every day.
A few weeks later, student elections for President and Vice President were taking place. A debate was held in the auditorium in the School of Business. During the debate, I started experiencing "deja vu" for the first time in my life. I started feeling like I did that day of the carbon monoxide leak. Just as I was thinking this, two of the students who were hospitalized suddenly got up and ran out of the room without saying anything. They were experiencing the exact same thing I was, but it felt more threatening for them.
The other dramatic thing my freshman year was that we tried to kick our student body president out of office. He had used student funds to get rather expensive gifts for everyone in his administration and gold pocket watch for himself. We had to hold a public hearing before putting it to a vote. The public meeting was a witch hunt that shouldn't have happened in the first place because we did not have an actual quorum. After that shameless display of political strife, we voted against forcing him out of office. But everyone still got their gifts and he got to keep the watch.
I didn't get elected to Student Senate my sophomore year. I guess the gas attack and the impeachment of the president raised the profile of the Student Senate. Two other people from the dorm ran the next year and I came in last place. The next year, I ran to represent the College of Liberal Arts, which was the department Radio/TV was located. I lost that one, too. However, the person who did win quit at the semester and they asked me to take the seat.
I was elected my senior year. I was made the Parliamentarian and the head of the Rules Committee. About 20 years after I graduated, I looked at my ENMU yearbook from 1986. It showed me posed with other members of the committee. For the life of me, I couldn't remember attending one meeting with those people. I know meetings took place because they were supposed to, but I didn't remember getting together with those particular students. I guess my senior year was more of a blur than I would have like to have imagined.
About 10 years later, I would attempt to get involved in getting elected to a real public office, but I never even got my name on the ballot. That's a post for a much later date.
Monday, September 22, 2014
College Friend: Chud, Part 2
After we had graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in 1986, Chud and I stayed in constant contact. We would send each other Christmas cards and call long distance from time to time.
After leaving ENMU, Chud got accepted into a Masters program in stage design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He and Elad lived together while he earned his degree. He designed the sets for a number of productions.
In 1989, I was living in Denver. He and Elad came through town on their way out to California after he had graduated. He went there to see his father. They got to meet Bez, who was my girlfriend at the time.
Shortly after arriving in the Los Angeles area, Chud was able to get a job as an Imagineer for Disney's theme parks. Chud didn't think much of marriage, after seeing what happened to his parents after they had gotten divorced. However, he was persuaded to tie the knot with Elad after she proposed to him. I got an announcement from Chud and Elad that they were officially husband and wife. On the back of the note, he drew a shackle and wrote, "Watch out, or you may be next!" However, I never did get married to Bez.
A couple of years later, I moved out to San Diego, CA. About three months later, I got to pay my first visit to Chud and Elad at their apartment in Burbank. It was nice to get to be closer to Chud. I went up every few months to visit them. Sometimes, Chud would take me to Disneyland to see some of the projects he had worked on. I probably went to Disneyland at least 10 times over the next few years.
Eventually, Chud and Elad bought their own home in Burbank. They got a good price on it because it's close to the airport. The entire house is a work in progress because Chud is always doing something creative with it. Something always changes every time I go there.
In 2000, there was a screenwriting contest called "Project Greenlight." I asked Chud if he wanted to help me write a screenplay to enter. I had an idea for a story and we made arrangements for me to come up. I pounded out the majority of the script in a week on an electric typewriter and came up to put it all into his computer. He thought what I had done was very well-written We made plans for me to come up the next week and we would finalize it.
I arrived the next weekend to find he had drastically altered the script. He added more characters and it became a lot more complex, almost too much for the million-dollar budget we were supposed to work with. Some of the changes I agreed with, but most of them were so far out in left field, I didn't feel like it was the same story. So we worked and reached a compromise on many of the issues. However, the biggest fight we got into was figuring out a title. We threw a few titles out and wrote them down. After awhile, we weren't getting any closer to coming up with a title. I sat down at the keyboard and deleted some of my suggestions. I had hoped that Chud would follow my lead and remove some of his as well. But when he sat down to type, HE ADDED MORE TITLES!
Eventually, we agreed on a title and I thought it was ready to enter. We printed it out so we could submit it to the copyright office and the Writers Guild of America. During the first contest for "Project Greenlight," there were several submissions that were already being read and graded before the deadline came. I had hoped to get our screenplay in a week before the deadline so that it would get properly read. However, Chud decided it needed more work, so he made more changes to it, without consulting me. The screenplay was entered on time, but we mostly got bad reviews, so we didn't win. We probably would have gotten bad reviews even if we went with my original draft.
(Years later, I read the actual script that was submitted, which I hadn't done at the time of the contest. It was so different from the compromised version I had initially agreed to, to the point that there were a number of real world logistical flaws with it. However, if I had any further objections, we never would have gotten the entry into the contest on time.)
The next year, we attempted to enter "Project Greenlight" again with a new screenplay. We didn't have as much drama in the writing this time and the reading period didn't start until after the deadline. However, right before we were going to enter the screenplay, Chud's computer crashed and deleted all our work. He called up and profusely apologized to me. He wasn't aware of this, but I wasn't going to have enough money to cover all the entry fees, so it actually came as a relief that I wasn't going to have to fork out all that money. He was probably shocked that I didn't yell at him. I had hard copies of the treatment and many of the key scenes. It was not going to be a problem re-creating the screenplay. We just weren't going to be able to enter that year.
The next time they had a "Project Greenlight," I was able to rewrite the screenplay, but we didn't really stand a chance because they were looking for some type of horror or thriller type of film and this was a comedy. I had a good idea for a story in the thriller vein, but hadn't fully fleshed it out. We would never write another screenplay again.
I moved to San Jose in 2003 and don't get to see Chud and Elad that frequently anymore. However, when we do get together, we always have a great time.
I hope we'll always be able to keep the spark of our friendship alive through at least the next 32 years.
After leaving ENMU, Chud got accepted into a Masters program in stage design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He and Elad lived together while he earned his degree. He designed the sets for a number of productions.
In 1989, I was living in Denver. He and Elad came through town on their way out to California after he had graduated. He went there to see his father. They got to meet Bez, who was my girlfriend at the time.
Shortly after arriving in the Los Angeles area, Chud was able to get a job as an Imagineer for Disney's theme parks. Chud didn't think much of marriage, after seeing what happened to his parents after they had gotten divorced. However, he was persuaded to tie the knot with Elad after she proposed to him. I got an announcement from Chud and Elad that they were officially husband and wife. On the back of the note, he drew a shackle and wrote, "Watch out, or you may be next!" However, I never did get married to Bez.
A couple of years later, I moved out to San Diego, CA. About three months later, I got to pay my first visit to Chud and Elad at their apartment in Burbank. It was nice to get to be closer to Chud. I went up every few months to visit them. Sometimes, Chud would take me to Disneyland to see some of the projects he had worked on. I probably went to Disneyland at least 10 times over the next few years.
Eventually, Chud and Elad bought their own home in Burbank. They got a good price on it because it's close to the airport. The entire house is a work in progress because Chud is always doing something creative with it. Something always changes every time I go there.
In 2000, there was a screenwriting contest called "Project Greenlight." I asked Chud if he wanted to help me write a screenplay to enter. I had an idea for a story and we made arrangements for me to come up. I pounded out the majority of the script in a week on an electric typewriter and came up to put it all into his computer. He thought what I had done was very well-written We made plans for me to come up the next week and we would finalize it.
I arrived the next weekend to find he had drastically altered the script. He added more characters and it became a lot more complex, almost too much for the million-dollar budget we were supposed to work with. Some of the changes I agreed with, but most of them were so far out in left field, I didn't feel like it was the same story. So we worked and reached a compromise on many of the issues. However, the biggest fight we got into was figuring out a title. We threw a few titles out and wrote them down. After awhile, we weren't getting any closer to coming up with a title. I sat down at the keyboard and deleted some of my suggestions. I had hoped that Chud would follow my lead and remove some of his as well. But when he sat down to type, HE ADDED MORE TITLES!
Eventually, we agreed on a title and I thought it was ready to enter. We printed it out so we could submit it to the copyright office and the Writers Guild of America. During the first contest for "Project Greenlight," there were several submissions that were already being read and graded before the deadline came. I had hoped to get our screenplay in a week before the deadline so that it would get properly read. However, Chud decided it needed more work, so he made more changes to it, without consulting me. The screenplay was entered on time, but we mostly got bad reviews, so we didn't win. We probably would have gotten bad reviews even if we went with my original draft.
(Years later, I read the actual script that was submitted, which I hadn't done at the time of the contest. It was so different from the compromised version I had initially agreed to, to the point that there were a number of real world logistical flaws with it. However, if I had any further objections, we never would have gotten the entry into the contest on time.)
The next year, we attempted to enter "Project Greenlight" again with a new screenplay. We didn't have as much drama in the writing this time and the reading period didn't start until after the deadline. However, right before we were going to enter the screenplay, Chud's computer crashed and deleted all our work. He called up and profusely apologized to me. He wasn't aware of this, but I wasn't going to have enough money to cover all the entry fees, so it actually came as a relief that I wasn't going to have to fork out all that money. He was probably shocked that I didn't yell at him. I had hard copies of the treatment and many of the key scenes. It was not going to be a problem re-creating the screenplay. We just weren't going to be able to enter that year.
The next time they had a "Project Greenlight," I was able to rewrite the screenplay, but we didn't really stand a chance because they were looking for some type of horror or thriller type of film and this was a comedy. I had a good idea for a story in the thriller vein, but hadn't fully fleshed it out. We would never write another screenplay again.
I moved to San Jose in 2003 and don't get to see Chud and Elad that frequently anymore. However, when we do get together, we always have a great time.
I hope we'll always be able to keep the spark of our friendship alive through at least the next 32 years.
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