This is NOT Over

Sunday Nov 26 to the end of 1989 – The Fucking Year in Review (Sic Semper Everybody)

Megs and my friend from the Fish House got something going and I am happy for them. I am interested only in getting straight. I’m at home and hiding from all my friends back here with the exception of Cousin Mike. We are making tapes and that takes my mind off everything serious, bad, and sad.

The only occasion for naughtiness came at Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. Should all that stuff be capitalized? Should all acquaintances be forgot? Wait, that’s New Year’s Eve.

We got to St. Joe’s super early. While my mom talked to some of her school friends, I wandered off to have a cigarette. Saw Megs’ brother Ronnie. At first he was pissed at me and gave me shit for introducing his sister to blacks I know. He made a point of saying, “Good thing she broke it off before he fucked her…” or something like that.

I give her credit for telling that racist piece of shit anything. He forgot about Greenie (yes, I know a black guy that I call Greenie because that is his last name, or at least part of it)…oh, he forgot about Megs and Greenie because he was more interested in meeting some of my other friends from the Fish House in DK. Ronnie was also interested in meeting my friends from Loves Park.

Told Ronnie I’m not interested in driving rented cars back and forth or doing anything like that but I didn’t have a problem with making introductions. His family has always been good to me and the other weirdoes who share my last name. Grandpa Vessel’s band played a lot of weddings for the old man’s kids and for some of their cousins too…of course those people are cousins with everybody.

Amazing how I never think of back home when I am away at school. DeKalb seems to be this little fairy village absolutely disconnected with reality. Part of me wants to keep Ronnie Zupec and his friends a thousand fucking miles from my little haven in the west. Westhaven?

Let’s hope the shithole I’ve found on I-88 is better than that shithole.

I don’t even know where that Westhaven shithole is, but I know the shithole on I-88 is better than the shithole of a neighborhood that is home to the old family church and my Midnight Mass meeting with Ronnie Z. Home is not really a shithole. I’ve made it that way. I’ve implanted some of the streets (with maybe the exception of the little one where my grandparents used to live) with the bad things I’ve done and the sorry folks I have known.

Running into Ronnie stayed with me the whole time during church. Well, I wasn’t there to get anything from the mass. That’s something I haven’t done since I was in 8th grade. I was there for my mom.

I was relatively successful at hiding from my friends, minus the cigarette with Ronnie at St. Joe’s. If I was any sort of man or mind, I’d try to offer some insight into the historic events of the end of the decade…but that’s just not me.

All I know is Ceaucescue and Billy Martin both died on the same day…Christmas. Sic Semper Tyrannous or something like that. Come to think of it, everybody’s got to die so I guess it’s sic semper everybody.