for
5/6/2000
Writer's note: Most of you out there in Readerland know my face already. For those who don't, this week may be something of a treat, as it will mark the first time that the Toast has publicly revealed his face on the S.T.P. ... sort of. Let's get started:
Frequently wears white dress shirts in this way, front open. Cuffs may be loose or buttoned; it can not be discerned, in this image, which of the two ways this shirt is being worn.
Tallish and skinny.
May be taller.
Space Toast does not wear a wallet chain; he, having grown up in rural Maine (pardon the redundancy) regards it as a "redneck thing."
It all began on the front page of the Boston Globe...
Tuesday evening. The final, dirty copy of the paper remaining on the rack grabbed my attention and forced me to buy it. On the cover was... me, or rather someone who looked almost exactly like me. My doppleganger. A close inspection of the cover photograph necissarily followed.
Head held slightly higher than usual.
Hair length can not be discerned, but may also be worn in a pony tail.
Chin too proportionally large and indented. (Research "Butt chin.")
Does not own this tee shirt.
The man's name is John Paul Denning. According to the paper, some months ago, John was returning to NYU from a weekend with his girlfriend when he was surrounded by police officers and EMTs, brandishing a fistful of his private emails, and taken to Belleview Hospital's ward for the mentally disturbed, where he was confined for the next three days. He was released after a doctor finally met with him, to find himself expelled from the university and banned from its campus. The reason: Housing and Residence Life Policy #4. "Violence, actual or threatened, against another person or oneself" is prohibited.
Facial shape, overall, remarkably similar. Eyebrows and general fall of hair apparently equal.
Glasses appear to have the exact same frame design.
Nostrils too wide.
Disconnected earlobes. (Detail sufficient in actual image.)
These events were set into motion after he left for the weekend. His roommates, whom he didn't get along with particularly well, in idiocy that I hope was attributable to pot, got discussing the partial-loner's personal faults, vis. the Columbine shootings. Marijuana-level logic brought one to the conclusion that, if only someone had checked the emails of the young attempted-xenociders, then none of it would have happened. John had said they could use his computer, and they did. They found, in his private emails, several files that spoke about violence, printed out the worst, and gave them to school administration. Here are the paper-provided excerpts:
I want to go out and shoot as many people as I can, and then shoot myself to even the number...
Most things these days make me want to slit my throat and see how many people I can bleed on before I die...
Maybe I should stop showing people my new gun, but I'm so proud of it. Make's me feel like a real New Yorker.
The first is claustrophobic, the second is plainly humorous if you laughed during Fargo, and the third makes me want to bring him on and expand to a bi-weekly.
These, the worst of the worst of the worst, out of context, do not strike me as anything more than what they are. Namely, the black-humorous lamentations of a person having an extremely bad day--and indeed, the worst emails were written over a 24-hour period. They were also written to one particular person: a friend back home with a rather sick sense of humor. Indeed, it was a phone call by the doctor to this friend's answering machine, which features a joke from the movie Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, that got John released from Bellevue.
The end of John's story makes me happy. He refused an offer to expunge his record of ever attending the school, tuition repaid in full, and opted for a board of inquiry, which could have become a big black mark on his record if he wound up on the losing side. The board sided with John, and the no-doubt homogenously inept administration wasn't even forced to offer up a sacrificial lamb's career--keeping one more broken-down coke addict snorting powder through a McDonald's straw from littering the alleyways of Hell's Kitchen.
Yet I'm still worried. The similarities do not end at physical appearance. This was John's first year in the Big City, as it was mine. He goes to school in New York, with a girlfriend in Massachusetts; I'm in Massachusetts with a girlfriend in New York. He writes weird shit, I, well... you're reading it. We're the same age. We even have the same living arrangement in the dorms--a roommate and two suite-mates.
I did have one advantage over John; namely that I'm in an art school. People expect these things; hell, I see kids daily who look like they're struggling to stay depressed and out of the loop for fear of losing their edge. My question is, is that all I had or have protecting me?
You see, this whole story has an odd feeling to it. It's almost as if fate's sniper took a shot at me and missed, hitting a guy behind me. (Whoop's--violence reference: "I... [, a] sniper [,] took a shot... and... hit... a guy behind me [which made me happy].") Somehow I'm having trouble thinking that this couldn't have been me. Everyone gets depressed; writers just file a report on it. I've certainly got a handful of such reports on my computer, just waiting to trigger the proverbial cow in some chemically/naturally inconvenienced snoop.
America, here's the point: There is no Bermuda Triangle, and Lloyds of London's statistics have proven it. Likewise, there is no rash of faceless teen killers. Juvenile crime is down to its lowest level since the 1920s. Violent video games and movies are easily as effective at blowing off steam as they are at getting it up. We know that we shouldn't do what Arnold does (especially in Junior). We know right from wrong as well as the 'Boomers ever did. Ladies and gentlemen, the kids are all right!
And yet Witch Trial hysteria goes on. The Commie scare continues. What if a kindergartener today made the clay gun that I did back in 1985? I shudder to wonder, especially now that some school districts think they have violent-offender-spotting down to a rubric...
Looking for Trouble
It's all about me, and it's all about John. It's about the inherent fear that adults have of children, remembering their own turbulant upbringings and projecting the fears that still live on in certain watery recesses of their brains onto the new young. It's about our uncertainties and our failings in life, driving us to think that this whole great world is somehow spinning on a single washer, about to give. It's about our fear of the closeness we all instinctively feel to insanity in today's absurd world. It's about panicky decisions, and it's about a nation without many problems needing some.
One should take comfort in this fairy-tale's implied happy ending. Slowly but surely, the truth about this kind of violence is coming to light. Media articles are beginning to focus more and more on the absurd and extreme "preventative measures" than on the threats, real or imagined, in these cases. At this point, to some, it's all over but the shouting, while to others it remains all over but the shooting, but chances are that John and I will still be here in the morning, faces boldly cast toward the winds of absurdity.
Touch the Toast