Normal
Sometimes my thoughts spiral down into a black hole where I am unable to process and even speak. I have been brilliant and witty on stage. I have had a room full of people cheering and laughing and hanging onto my every word. I have been confident and entertaining and quick. This can’t be taken from me. It is real. People have seen it. But people have also seen me break down. Clam up and walk off into the night.
My good friend Richard was explaining, as we sat in the diner, his take on Frank Kelso Wolfe. I liked what he said. He put things into perspective and made me feel better. He said I was not normal (no big secret). He said that I felt and saw things that many others don’t. It didn’t give me an excuse for blanking out, not that I need one, or for going psychotic or “fritzing out”. It did explain a few things.
I am bi-racial. I grew up in a time when race relations were making strides but still tense(The Cosby Show). I grew up gifted and very creative in a town that sticks close to normal and doesn’t offer many outlets for creativity and the arts. My youth was, thanks to my parents, in many ways idyllic and charmed. There were some incidents of racism and tension but I did not lack for anything, and my home was full of art and books and all my parents ever asked of me was to do my best.
I was terribly shy (reticent) and never felt attractive to the girls in school. I did well in high school. Honor student and Scholar athlete of the year and academic scholarship to Penn State Happy Valley. That was 1987.What follows is an account of a decent, not onto madness, but into being different. Of surviving and going my own way. I have a picture of me my first day at 212 Hartranft, the dorm room I would call home while I did my own thing for two semesters. My world was the college and college town by night. I wandered and ate and read and went to the movies and played pinball. I haunted Pattee library and roamed the streets. My wishes were my desires. I was incredibly lonely. But I was having a good time. I was different.
Upcoming: Part two- “ The books I read, and “Almost Home Cookies”
Wow. This beautiful. Thank you.