Late October-early November, 1997. I made a movie. (#150)

November 13, 2022 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 10 Comments

These days, in the era of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, it is difficult to believe how recently it was that common people did not constantly make their own videos. In the 1990s, doing so required a camera that cost hundreds of dollars, and was the size and weight of a medium-sized textbook, at minimum. Also, it was necessary to record these videos onto a tape, and to make sure that there was enough room on the blank tape to record the video without erasing any existing footage. Showing someone a homemade video required a television connected to a VCR or to the camera itself. The Internet existed, but the processing and connection speeds of computers in that era limited most Internet uses to text and standard-definition photos and graphics.

I never had a video camera growing up. I wanted one so badly. I had many ideas for movies and shows I wanted to make. My brother Mark and I, along with whatever neighborhood kids were around, would sometimes act out performances that would have made good home movies. We had a weird variety show called The Mark Show, full of characters based on various inside jokes, and a game show called Messy Room, inspired by Double Dare and Fun House and the other kids’ game shows that briefly became popular in my preteen years. For some of our shows, we would record the audio so we could at least listen to them later, but they were the kind of performances that would have worked much better with video.

Now, in my early 20s, my creative project was a website called Dog Crap and Vince, which I began shortly after I taught myself the basics of HTML, the code used to make websites. Dog Crap and Vince was a series of crudely illustrated stories about the adventures of two quirky high school students, and it would have worked much better as video or animation. I still did not have a video camera, nor did I have the money to buy one. But I had more connections now than as a child, so when I showed Dog Crap and Vince to the boys from the youth group at church, and mentioned that it would work better as a TV show or a movie, Zac Santoro offered to ask his dad if I could borrow their video camera. And thus one of my most involved creative endeavors of my life so far was born.

That night, we had talked about beginning the project Sunday after church, so when I walked up to Zac, Ted Hunter, and Danny Foster after church and asked if they were ready to start filming, I felt inwardly frustrated when Zac replied, “Huh?”

“The Dog Crap and Vince movie. You said you talked to your dad about borrowing your video camera, and that we could start filming today.”

“Oh, yeah! He said you could borrow it.”

“So, like, now? Are we going to your house?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t,” Ted said. “My mom said I have to come straight home.”

“We talked about this on Wednesday,” I reminded Ted. “You said you’d be free on Sunday, and that you would play Vince.”

“I forgot.”

“Well, I can still get the camera, and maybe we can film some scenes that don’t have Vince in them.”

“Film some scenes?” a voice behind me asked. I turned around to see Jim Herman. I knew Jim from seeing him around church; he was older than me, I would guess in his mid-thirties, presumably single because I never saw him with any sort of family. Everyone at church seemed to know Jim. “What are you guys doing?” Jim asked.

“We’re making a movie,” I explained. “I’m borrowing a camera from the Santoros.”

“You think I could go along and help out?” Jim’s question caught me off guard, and when he saw me hesitate, he added, “That way you can all be on camera at the same time, and I can be the cameraman.”

“Sure,” I said. “That would be helpful for scenes I’m going to be in.”

By the time we got to the Santoros’ house, we had already made a change to the script. The boys had decided to film a scene that broke the fourth wall, in which I would knock on Zac’s door asking if Zac could come make a movie with us. Although I had carefully worked on this script for several days, this change seemed like it would fit the quirky, offbeat nature of the Dog Crap and Vince world.

Zac, Danny, Jim, and I walked up to the front door of Zac’s house. I knocked on the door, and Zac’s dad answered a minute later “Hi, boys. Hi, Greg,” he said, shaking my hand. “Jim.” Had I been more observant of body language and subtle cues, I might have noticed a shift in Mr. Santoro’s tone when he addressed Jim, but at the time I thought nothing of it. “Here’s the camera,” Mr. Santoro continued, handing me the camera. “Please be careful with it.”

“I will,” I said. “They wanted to film a scene here first. Is that okay?”

“Sure!”

I handed Jim the camera as we filmed the new scene. Zac’s six-year-old sister answered the door, and I asked if Zac was home. Zac appeared a few seconds later, and I said, “Hey, Zac. Let’s make a movie.”

“Okay!” Zac announced excitedly, acting overly dramatic in a way that I had not intended.

“Go get Danny,” I said.

Zac turned his head toward the inside of the house and called out, “Danny! Let’s go make a movie!” Danny ran out of the house a few seconds later, Zac following, me following both of them, and Jim following us with the camera. “We’ll pick up Ted on the way!” I shouted, since Ted was not there. The two boys, for reasons unknown other than the fact that they were teenage boys, jumped onto the hood of my parked car.

“Cut,” I said to Jim a few seconds later, taking the camera back after he stopped recording.

“Ow!” Danny said. “You kicked me in the head!”

“What?” Zac asked. I played the footage back on the camera’s small screen, and just before Jim had stopped recording, I saw Zac’s foot connect with Danny’s head as they climbed on my car. “You have to leave that in the movie!” Zac said. “Sorry, Danny, it was an accident.”

“It looks good,” I said. “I think it would be hilarious to leave that part in the movie. Especially since it was an accident.”

The leaders from The Edge, the junior high school youth group from church, would have dinner at the Parkers’ house before youth group on some Wednesdays. The Parkers’ oldest son, Brody, was a sophomore at the University of Jeromeville and one of the Edge leaders, and their youngest, a girl named Michelle, was a student in the youth group, the same age as the boys I was making the movie with. Michelle was playing Kim, Dog Crap’s love interest in the movie. I had arranged with the Parkers and Michelle’s real life friend, a girl from the youth group named Shawna Foreman, to film a scene when the leaders came to the Parkers’ house for dinner. The two girls were in Michelle’s room, talking about cute boys, when Michelle’s character, Kim, admitted that she liked Dog Crap. I held the camera for that scene, and one take was good enough.

The Parkers had two telephone lines in their house. Adam, the youth pastor, was downstairs using one phone to call the other, so that I could record Kim answering the phone in her room. After Shawna’s character left, the final film would cut to Dog Crap fidgeting in front of his phone, working up the courage to call Kim and ask her to a school dance.

“Hello?” Michelle said in character as Kim. The final film would then cut to Dog Crap chickening out, awkwardly shouting into the phone, “You have the wrong number!” I continued running the camera as Michelle got a confused look on her face and said, “Oh, sorry.” Michelle hung up the phone. Then she looked up and said, “Wait a minute! How could I have the wrong number? I didn’t call anyone!”

I played the tape back on the camera’s small screen. “It looks good,” I said. “Thanks. We’ll do the dance scene after The Edge tonight.”

“Sounds good!”

“Do you need me again?” Shawna asked.

“Those were your only speaking lines, but you’ll be in the background at the dance.”

“Great! I’ll see you tonight!”

Five Iron Frenzy, a punk-ska band with a Christian background who were too edgy to get much attention on Christian radio, was very popular with the Edge kids at the time. Ted told me that he had gotten the band’s permission to use their music in our movie; he was probably not telling the truth, but I did not bother to check. After The Edge, I filmed the school dance scene for the end of the movie in the youth room. Five Iron Frenzy’s “Where Zero Meets Fifteen” played while Dog Crap and Kim danced. The others in the background danced in much sillier ways than I had imagined; I was losing control of just how quirky this movie was, but I just wanted to get it done. And quirky was good for a project like this, I thought.

“I love this song!” Zac said in character as Dog Crap.

“Me too!” Michelle replied in character as Kim. “It’s my boyfriend’s favorite song!”

“Boyfriend?” Dog Crap said.

“Just kidding! Vince told me to say that.”

I wanted to imply that Vince was playing a prank on Dog Crap by telling Michelle to pretend that she had a boyfriend. I wanted Dog Crap to say something like “I’ll get him back for that,” but what Zac did instead was shout, “Vince!” and run out of the room. At this point, I was not going to be picky; that would have to be good enough.

Kim’s comment about her boyfriend was a reference to a scene from earlier in the movie. I had to shoot the film out of order, to accommodate everyone’s schedules, and I took careful notes of what had already been done and who was needed in each scene. In the boyfriend scene, which we had not yet recorded, Dog Crap and Vince were at school, talking at lunch. Dog Crap said that it is hard for him to ask a girl out because, whenever he starts talking to a girl, she will start talking about her boyfriend, so that he will not ask her out.

“That’s not true,” Vince replied encouragingly. “There’s Christine. Go talk to her.”

Dog Crap walked up to Christine and said, “Hey, Chrsitine. Did you figure out that one math problem you were confused about?”

“Yeah,” Christine answered. “My boyfriend is good at math.”

Dog Crap walked back to Vince with a look on his face as if to say I-told-you-so, and Vince said, “That was just one girl. It’s not everyone. There’s Samantha. Go talk to her.”

Dog Crap walked up to Samantha and said, “Hi, Samantha.”

“My boyfriend says hi to people,” Samantha replied.

At least that was how I pictured the scene in my head. When we recorded it a few days later, Vince said “go ask her out” instead of “go talk to her” for Christine. That seemed out of place if the whole point of the movie was that Dog Crap wanted to ask out a different girl from these two.

Christine and Samantha each had only one line, and I recorded their parts for that scene after we finished the school dance scene. It turned out better than I had planned. When I first started working with The Edge last year, a girl named Samantha Willis had said some awkwardly silly things to me. When I wrote this scene, I named this character Samantha because I had Samantha Willis in mind to play the role, and fortunately, she agreed. “My boyfriend says hi to people a lot!” she exclaimed excitedly on camera, before adding “Bye, Dog Crap!” It was perfect.

We filmed one more scene in the youth room. I played Matt, the school bully, who was also trying to ask Kim to the dance despite Kim’s frequent rebuffs. In this scene, near the end of the movie, Kim turns Matt down again. “I’d rather go out with someone who crawled out from under this table!” Michelle exclaimed in character as Kim, lightly shoving Matt away.

Just then Zac, in character as Dog Crap, crawled out from under the table, where he had been looking for something he dropped. Dog Crap greeted Kim, who smiled at him, and he used the opportunity to ask her to the dance. I thought that scene was particularly brilliant writing on my part, and Zac and Michelle acted it perfectly.

On Saturday, I picked up Zac, Ted, Danny, and Michelle, as well as Jim, who did not have a car. We went to a nearby school, with classrooms that opened directly to the outdoors with no hallway in between, to film the scenes taking place at school. It was more common in those days for school grounds to be left unlocked, open to the public, and all of the school scenes took place outside of classrooms, so this would be good enough for my purposes.

While Dog Crap was trying to find a way to ask Kim to the dance, Vince was training for an upcoming video game tournament. My bully character, Matt, in addition to trying to steal Kim, was also bragging that he was going to win the tournament. Dog Crap’s cousin had told him about Fish Boy, a mysterious video game master who lived in Jeromeville. I also played Dog Crap’s cousin; my two characters were distinguished on camera by Matt wearing a hat and Dog Crap’s cousin not wearing a hat. Of course, though, in one scene I forgot to wear the hat as Matt, and confusion resulted when I showed the movie to people later. I did not know how to run a costume department.

In character as Dog Crap’s cousin, I suggested that we all travel to Jeromeville to meet Fish Boy, and Ted replied as Vince with a brilliant ad-libbed rant. “Jeromeville?” he said with a crazed look, grabbing my shoulders to get my attention. “I’ve heard about this place! They have frog tunnels! And roundabouts! And you get arrested for snoring too loud! It scares me!”

I was not expecting this, but I stayed in character and calmly replied, “But Fish Boy is there! You’ll win the video game contest for sure.”

Vince, instantly back to normal, said, “Oh, yeah. Let’s go!”

Later, we drove around to film scenes from the Jeromeville trip. In character, I got lost several times and made multiple wrong turns, including getting stuck in a roundabout circling multiple times. I took Jim and Michelle home, since I was done with their scenes, and the rest of us went to the Fosters’ house to film the scenes with Danny playing Fish Boy.

Danny’s eighteen-year-old sister Erica, a leader with The Edge, joined us as we walked a quarter mile to the nearest gas station, where the characters had to stop to ask for directions. I had intended this scene to be a shot-for-shot parody of the scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker meets Yoda, without realizing at first that the little green stranger who finds him is Yoda. The boys wanted to go into the gas station store and get snacks. I wanted to focus on getting my movie done, but since these boys were doing a favor for me for free, I let them. Afterward, I reminded everyone of their lines and started the camera.

“We’re being watched!” Zac said in character as Dog Crap, noticing a girl next to them.

“No harm I mean you,” Erica replied, using her normal voice but Yoda’s characteristic syntax. “Wondering what you are doing here, I am.”

“We’re looking for a video game master.”

“Fish Boy! You seek Fish Boy!”

“You know Fish Boy?” Dog Crap asked.

“Take you to him, I will!”

For the next scene, we returned to the Fosters’ house. After an awkward blooper in which Ted forgot his lines, Ted, in character as Vince, angrily spoke up about how they were wasting their time. Luke Skywalker had done the same when Yoda took him to his house.

“I cannot teach them,” Erica said, turning away. “They have no patience. They are not ready.”

“I was once the same way,” Danny replied from off camera.

Dog Crap and Vince looked at Erica, wide-eyed. “Fish Boy?” they said. They turned to each other and added, “Fish Boy’s a girl?”

“No, silly!” Erica replied, no longer speaking like Yoda. “I’m no good at those games! Fish Boy’s my little brother.”

Danny emerged from his bedroom, wearing some weird mask and carrying a hockey stick. Neither of those details was in the script, but this movie was already weird enough, so I allowed it. I continued recording as Fish Boy showed the other two shortcuts and special techniques for the game they were playing. After we finished, I thanked Danny’s parents for letting us their house. I took Ted and Zac home, then went home myself.

Over the next couple weeks, when I had time, I finished recording the remaining scenes. I edited the movie with a very unsophisticated setup of two VCRs connected to each other. We had a watch party on the big projector screen in the youth room at church after The Edge the following week; most of the Edge leaders and some of the kids who were in the movie stuck around to watch.

By modern standards, the movie was pretty terrible. I knew nothing of acting, directing, or editing, and with my rudimentary equipment, the video and sound quality was subpar. The characters’ clothes inexplicably changed from one shot to the next within the same scene, and twice during the movie, my shouts of “Cut!” were audible at the end of scenes, since editing a video with two VCRs was not a precise technique. The film was only half an hour long, too short to be considered a feature film. But we had so much fun and made so many memories during those few weeks.

The Dog Crap and Vince movie had a lasting legacy in my life. The boys from The Edge and I quoted lines from the movie to each other for years to come. I watched that movie so many times with so many people that I still remember much of the dialogue by heart. And Samantha, the boys’ classmate whose boyfriend said hi to people, became a regular character in the web series. It was later revealed that the character’s last name was Whitehead, and years later, among my adult friends, the act of bringing up a significant other in conversation out of context became known as “pulling a Samantha Whitehead.”

Those few weeks that I spent making the Dog Crap and Vince movie also set in motion a chain of events that took a much darker turn. I had no idea at the time that anything like that would come to pass from it, or that anything like this would happen among a Christian community such as Jeromeville Covenant Church. Looking back, though, in that context, it makes sense now why Mr. Santoro, normally a warm and friendly man, seemed aloof when he greeted Jim Herman on the day I borrowed the camera. But that is a story for another time.

This project was also the beginning of my realization that I prefer creative projects I can do alone over ones requiring the involvement of others. As much as it is fun to bring others into my creative mind, coordinating everyone’s schedules and dealing with flaky people caused much frustration. The same thing invariably happened every other time I tried to involve others in Dog Crap and Vince projects. But for the people who did stick to their commitments, I now have a record of the role they played in my life.

Readers: Tell me in the comments about something creative that you worked on with others. Did it all go according to plan or not?

As always, the episodes featuring Dog Crap and Vince were inspired by Cow Chip & Lance, an actual creative project that some people I know have worked on for decades. It has been inactive for a couple years, but some of their material is still available for viewing (click).

Also, if you like music and aren’t following my other site yet, Song of the Day by DJ GJ-64, go follow that one.

And I updated my Greg Out Of Character blog for the first time in several months, with a post that has little to do with 1997. Go follow that one too.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

July 18-20, 1996. A new creative project and a new cheeseburger. (#92)

May 23, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 21 Comments

In 1996, the Internet was coming into the mainstream. Average citizens were communicating by email, discussing topics on a Usenet forum, chatting on Internet Relay Chat, and using the Netscape browser to surf the World Wide Web, a platform for informational documents that could be linked to each other. Advertisements were beginning to include the websites of the companies involved, where anyone in the world with an Internet connection could look up information about the product in question.

The truly computer savvy individual in 1996 had a personal website. The academics, scientists, and government officials for whom the Internet was created used personal websites to share about their careers, their research, and contact information, which was useful for their colleagues and students to have. A few people I had met on the Internet had personal websites, and mostly they consisted of a picture or two and a little bit about the author, with links to other relevant websites. Some of my friends had personal websites too. Eddie Baker had a link to his personal website on his email signature. Eddie’s website had a picture of himself, another picture with his seven roommates, some of his favorite Bible verses, and a link to the University of Jeromeville page.

I wanted so badly to make a personal website, although I had no practical need for one. Unfortunately, this feature was not possible with a UJ student account. This guy named Carl who I met on IRC had access to some kind of personal server, where he gave me an account for free so I could fiddle with making a website. I taught myself basic HTML, the code used for making websites. I found a computer lab on campus with a scanner and scanned a copy of my senior picture from Plumdale High, so I could put that picture on my website. I don’t know why I did, though; I always hated that picture. I wrote a little bit about myself, with links to the pages for the University of Jeromeville and a Bay City Captains football fan page I found. Back in those days, jokes and chain letters circulated by email, the forerunners of the memes and viral posts of the 21st century, and I copied and pasted some of my favorites on my page.

Eddie’s page was hosted by a UJ Computer Science Department account; he was an International Relations major, but had taken a couple of computer classes. When I took Introduction to Programming in the spring, I got a Computer Science account, so I did not need Carl to host my site anymore. At some point after I finished my current Introduction to Software class, I would have to move my site again, since I would not be taking a Computer Science class in the fall. Eddie’s site would probably get deleted eventually as well. I needed to find out if I could get a Mathematics department account and host a personal website on that.

One Thursday night, after I got home from Bible study, I was bored. I was caught up with homework for my class, and I had finished reading everything I was reading for fun. I sat down in front of the computer and dialed into the university’s computer network. I got on my usual IRC chat channel and looked for someone to talk to. A girl named Laura, whom I had been talking to for a few months, was on, so I messaged her. Laura was 17 years old and lived in upstate New York.

gjd76: hi :)
lauragirl17: hi greg! how are you?
gjd76: really bored. i’m caught up with all my work. how are you? i haven’t talked to you in a while. how were things with adam?
lauragirl17: i know, i wasn’t on as much when adam was here. we had a good visit. it was a little weird at the end though
gjd76: why?
lauragirl17: just some stuff happened and i think we’re just going to be friends
gjd76: aww. i hope everything is ok. i wish i could meet girls i knew on the internet
lauragirl17: have you ever met someone from the internet in real life?
gjd76: just once. it was another girl from jeromeville, turned out she lived right down the street. we just hung out and talked for a while, i could tell she wasn’t really my type
lauragirl17: aww. she’s missing out :) maybe i’ll be able to come to jeromeville someday
gjd76: that’d be fun :) well, you could come right now, i gave you my address
lauragirl17: yeah you did! i leave on tuesday, i’m so nervous but so excited too, i’ll write to you as soon as i get settled. it’s kind of weird to think that i’ll be in switzerland this time next week
gjd76: i’m excited for you :) this will be a great experience… one of my best friends in high school, she was an exchange student in austria, and she loved it
lauragirl17: i know, it’s just going to be a big adjustment
gjd76: of course
lauragirl17: well it’s really late here, i should get to bed… but it was good talking to you
gjd76: you too! good night, sleep well :)

I hoped Laura would actually write to me from Switzerland. One of my friends from school, Kelly, was going to be studying in Hungary next year, so between Kelly and Laura, I could possibly be writing and receiving letters from Europe often next year.

Someone else from the chat posted a link to his personal website; I opened it in another window in between messages from Laura. In addition to pictures of himself and links to his university, he also had a story about this party he had attended last month, with pictures from the story and paragraphs telling what happened. I wished I owned my own scanner, so that I could share pictures on the Internet too.

That guy from IRC with the story about his party gave me an idea for something to add to my website. A few years ago, Nintendo released a game called Mario Paint. It was not a game at all, it was more like rudimentary but functional drawing and animation software. It came with a mouse, which was easier to use for drawing than the standard Super Nintendo control pad. Three years ago, I used Mario Paint, two VCRs, and a microphone to make a short film about two strange teenage boys with a weird neighbor. The film was influenced by the buddy comedies of the time period, like Wayne’s World and Beavis and Butthead. I called my creation “Dog Crap and Vince.” I made a few other Dog Crap and Vince short films over the next couple years, and the most recent one I made after I bought this computer, so the screenplay was still saved on this hard drive.

I opened my screenplay and read it. Dog Crap’s cousin came to visit, and while throwing a football around in the yard, Vince threw it too hard, and it got run over by a truck. The boys found a football at a garage sale to replace the one they lost, but it was so old and hard and brittle that it cracked open when it landed on the ground. That was inspired by an inside joke; once, a strange neighbor back home gave my brother and me an old football that had belonged to her son when he was young, and it hit the ground and cracked open just like that.

I opened Microsoft Paint, the drawing software that came with Windows 3.1, and drew the opening scene, where Dog Crap opens the door and lets his cousin in. I then drew the next scene, where the two of them watch television with Vince. Both Dog Crap and Vince always had strange multicolored hair, and I never explained their odd appearance in any of the short films. I also never explained why Dog Crap’s name is Dog Crap, and in their fictional universe, no one questions this.

I continued illustrating scenes from this Dog Crap and Vince story until around one in the morning. The following day, after I finished a morning bike ride, I continued working on Dog Crap and Vince, illustrating the rest of the scenes from the story.

Next, I began typing the HTML code. I typed the lines of dialogue and description for the story, in prose instead of the screenplay format I had written for the Mario Paint film. It did not feel like an actual story, since the illustrations left most of the descriptions unnecessary; the remaining text was very heavy on dialogue. But this was a new format for me, and I did not really have a template or precedent on which to base my work. This story really was designed for animation, but in the absence of that kind of technology, this would have to do.

When I finished writing and debugging the HTML, I uploaded it, and all of my drawings, to the website. I also updated the home page, trying to think of what to call my creation… was it a story, or a comic, or a script, or what? I ended up calling it a story. “Read my story: ‘Dog Crap and Vince, episode 1: ‘Football,’” I typed. I made that line a hyperlink, so that someone could click on it to go to the story. I read through my entire Dog Crap and Vince story again. I was proud of my work. Now I just needed someone to share it with.

Many of my friends who lived in this part of Jeromeville left for the summer, but some of them were still around. Ramon and Jason were still in their apartment on Hampton Drive, and Caroline still lived upstairs from them. Liz, Ramon’s girlfriend and Caroline’s roommate, had gone home for the summer. By Saturday afternoon, the day after I finished Dog Crap and Vince, I was in a mood to socialize, so I walked over to Hampton Drive, about a quarter mile away. Caroline saw me first; she was standing on the balcony, attaching some kind of wire mesh to the balustrade and railing. “Hey, Greg!” she said.

“What are you working on?”

“I’m going to let Henry come out here. I’m putting this up so he doesn’t accidentally fall.”

“That’ll be fun. The cats we had growing up were always outdoor cats. It’s weird to me to think that Henry never goes outside.”

“When we got Henry, we knew he had to be an indoor cat,” Caroline explained. “The apartment wouldn’t allow it otherwise.”

“Makes sense.”

I heard the door on the downstairs apartment open. “Hey, Greg,” Ramon said. “I thought I heard your voice.”

“I just wanted to come say hi.”

“Stick around. Liz is on her way up; she should be here soon. She’ll want to see you.”

“Oh. Cool.”

I went inside to watch TV with Ramon and Jason. Ten minutes later, Caroline came down to tell us that the cat-proofing of the balcony was finished. All of us went to the living room of the upstairs apartment and watched as Caroline opened the door to the balcony, picked up Henry and put him outside. Henry looked around skittishly, then cautiously walked around, sniffing things. Caroline tossed him his toy, a plastic ball with a small bell inside; Henry sniffed the ball and swatted it away, then chased his little furry black and white spotted body after it.

“It’s like he doesn’t quite know what to think of the outside,” Caroline said.

Just then, we heard Liz’s voice saying “Hey, guys!” She walked into the apartment and put her bag down. When she saw me, she looked surprised for a second, then smiled. “Greg! It’s good to see you!”

“How are you?”

“I’m good.” Liz turned to see what everyone was looking at on the balcony. “Henry’s outside!” she said.

“Yeah,” Caroline replied. “I just wanted to try it.”

“It looks like he likes it.”

Liz moved her bag into the bedroom. After she came back out to the living room, Ramon said, “Jason and I have been wanting to try that new Arch Deluxe burger at McDonald’s. Greg? You can come with us if you want.”

“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t eaten yet. And I haven’t tried that either.”

“It’s supposed to have more of an adult taste,” Jason explained.

“What does that mean? How do hamburgers have adult tastes?” Liz asked.

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “It’s being marketed as more sophisticated.”

Across the street from their apartment complex was the back of a shopping center facing Coventry Boulevard. After making sure Henry was securely inside again, the five of us walked there. The McDonald’s was in the middle of the strip mall part of the shopping center and had no drive-thru. We each took turns ordering; I got an Arch Deluxe, eagerly anticipating what this adult cheeseburger would taste like.

“What have you been up to, Greg?” Liz asked as we waited for our order numbers to be called. “You’re taking a class, right?”

“Yeah. Computer Science 40, Intro to Software. It’s going well.”

“Good!”

“Today I made something new for my website. Just for fun, not part of the class.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

I told them about Dog Crap and Vince, how I had created the characters with Mario Paint a few years ago, and about the illustrated story I had written. “I’ll show you guys when we get back to the apartment, if you want.”

“Sure,” Ramon said.

Jason’s meal had arrived by then; he bit into the Arch Deluxe. “This is pretty good,” he said. “It’s different, I’m not sure exactly what is adult about it, but it’s good.”

“What does Dog Crap and Vince mean?” Caroline asked. “What does dog crap have to do with the story? Does Vince always step in dog crap?”

“Dog Crap is his friend’s name. So the title refers to the two main characters, Dog Crap and Vince.”

“Why is his name Dog Crap?”

“I’ve never explained that. It just is.”

“Okay,” Caroline said, as if not sure what to make of this.

The cashier called my number, and I went up to the counter to get my food. I sat down and opened the cardboard Arch Deluxe container. The burger had a different kind of bun, looking more like a sandwich roll, but round. I opened it and removed the tomato slice. “You don’t like tomatoes?” Liz asked.

“No.”

“May I have it?”

“Sure.”

I passed my tomato to Liz and took a bite of what remained of the burger. I liked it. Definitely different from most other McDonald’s products; it tasted like it was made from higher quality ingredients. “This is good,” I said. Growing up, I was a connoisseur of Chicken McNuggets; I did not usually eat hamburgers at McDonald’s, but I was willing to reconsider this position because of the Arch Deluxe.

We sat together at McDonald’s catching up for a while. Liz told us all about her summer with her family, and those of us who were taking classes shared how our studies were going so far. At one point, during a lull in the conversation, Ramon said, “Has anyone ever noticed that this song is the same four chords over and over again?”

“Huh?” Caroline asked.

“This song,” Ramon repeated. Blues Traveler’s “Run-Around” was playing in the background of the restaurant. “It’s the same four chords over again.”

I listened carefully to the guitar and bass playing behind the energetic harmonica solo. “You’re right,” I said, pretending to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I had three years of piano lessons in my past, and I had been singing in the choir at church for almost a year, but Ramon was a much more accomplished musician than I was. “I always thought it was catchy, though.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s catchy,” Jason agreed.

We walked back to the apartment after we finished eating. “Greg?” Ramon asked. “Did you still want to show us that Dog Crap thing?”

“Sure.”

Ramon turned on his computer as Jason found something to watch on TV. He opened Netscape and asked, “What’s the address?” I typed the address for my website, then clicked on the link for Dog Crap and Vince. Ramon began reading silently as Liz and Caroline and I watched the screen. I felt slightly awkward. Was I supposed to read it out loud to them? How would Ramon know when everyone was done reading? At the end of the first page, Ramon asked if everyone was done reading before he continued to the next page. That would work. The others laughed a few times, such as when Dog Crap and Vince saw the Unabomber at the garage sale.

“That’s pretty funny,” Ramon said when he finished.

“You did a good job with the website,” Liz added. “Are you going to do more Dog Crap stories?”

“Eventually, yes.”

“I’ll keep watching for those.”

“Thanks!”

The four of us hung out watching television and just talking for another couple of hours. I walked home after that and got out a sheet of paper. Future Dog Crap and Vince Ideas, I wrote at the top, then I added, Dog Crap is playing guitar, but he only knows four chords, and Vince says he can still play that Blues Traveler song. I used a variation of that line in another episode later that year, and I made it a habit to write down anything funny that I thought of or saw that could be used in future episodes.

Today was a good day. I would be eating many more Arch Deluxes in the future; this would become my new go-to order at McDonald’s. However, sadly, the product was considered a massive failure. The Arch Deluxe never caught on as a popular item once the initial hype faded, and a few years later, it disappeared from McDonald’s menus.

Dog Crap and Vince, however, did not disappear from my life. I continued making new episodes of the series for eleven years, with more animated short films after that. I also did numerous other side projects involving Dog Crap and Vince. Many of my friends have been involved in a Dog Crap and Vince project at some point. These two characters spawned a fictional universe that became a major part of my life for a long time. The world of Dog Crap and Vince even seemed to take on a life of its own at times. The cast of main characters grew from two to at least six, with many other recurring characters in their world, and at times, their stories seemed to take on lives of their own. I never would have believed, on that day three years ago when I drew those two silly-looking boys on Mario Paint, that this would become such a major part of my life.

Author’s note: Dog Crap and Vince is not real. It is based on an actual project called “Cow Chip & Lance.” I’ve known the guys behind those characters for many years, and I’ve done some work behind the scenes for them. They were thinking about reposting their web series from the 90s, and I’m writing about the 90s, so we decided to join forces on that project. Go check them out.

January 10-13, 1996. Another hopeless crush and a party. (#66)

October 20, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 10 Comments

I have always had a good ear for music, but I rarely did anything with it other than sing along in the car. I played piano for a few years in elementary school, but according to Mom, I quit because I thought music was for nerds. I do not remember saying that, but it definitely sounds like something that 10-year-old Greg would have said, not yet mature enough to embrace being different. I did not perform music in front of people again until three months ago, when I started singing at 11:00 Mass at the Newman Center.

Our experience levels in the church choir ranged from people like me who just liked to sing for fun all the way up to Claire Seaver, a third-year music major who had been performing all her life. I did not have much formal training in music, but I would occasionally try different harmonies with some of our usual familiar songs, because my ear could pick up harmonies easily. I was excited this week when Claire brought a new song for us to learn, with four parts. We had been practicing it all night, and the sopranos and altos had just finished doing their parts all together. “Let’s hear just the guys now,” Claire said.

Phil Gallo and I sang the bass parts, while Matt Jones and Ryan Gambrell sang tenor, Matt playing guitar as well. We sounded okay, although there were a few wrong notes sung and played. After this, we tried the entire song with every part singing, and after three times, it seemed like we finally had perfected the song.

“I thought that sounded good,” I said afterward.

“Yes!” Claire agreed. “I think we’re ready for Sunday!”

“Yes,” Danielle Coronado said. “Now I get to go home and write a paper.”

“Already?” Claire said incredulously. “It’s the first week of class!”

“It’s only one page. Not really a paper. Just an assignment.”

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks,” Danielle replied.

“See you guys Sunday,” I said, turning back to Phil, Matt, and Ryan.

“Take it easy, man,” Phil replied. I waved at the guys and went to find Heather, since we were neighbors and had carpooled here, but she and Melanie Giordano were busy talking, and I did not want to interrupt. I stepped back, waiting, when I heard a soft female voice behind me say, “Hey, Greg.”

I turned around and got nervous when I saw Sabrina Murphy looking up at me. There was just something about her that was cute, but I knew that she had a boyfriend, so any of these thoughts were hopeless. I was not sure how to explain it, she was not drop dead beautiful by Hollywood standards, but I found something about her attractive. “Yes?” I asked awkwardly.

“I just wanted to say you really have a strong bass voice,” she said. “It really comes out well when we sing harmony like that.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling and blushing a little.

“Have you ever thought about being in University Chorus? They always need more male voices.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never thought about singing in any kind of group at all until Danielle talked me into doing this a few months ago. She’s in chorus, right?”

“Yeah. And Claire. I did it freshman year, but I haven’t been able to fit it into my schedule since then.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

“You should. I think you’d be good.”

“You ready?” Heather asked me, having walked up beside me and Sabrina a few seconds earlier.

“Sure,” I said. “Sabrina? I’ll see you Sunday?”

“Yes,” Sabrina replied. Have a great week!”

In the car on the way home, Heather asked me, “So what was Sabrina saying you would be good at?”

“She asked if I had ever done University Chorus.”

“You totally should!”

“I don’t know. I sing in the car, but I’m not good at, like, real singing.”

“I’ve heard you sing, I think you’d be great! Give yourself more credit.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Twenty-four hours later, I was sitting in my apartment alone, doing math homework. It was a Thursday night, and I was in a good mood. Thursday was my lightest day of class this quarter, and my tutoring job did not start until next week. But my good mood was mostly because I was still on a high from Sabrina’s compliment last night. Maybe I sang better than her boyfriend, and she was going to leave him for me. My attention drifted from my math assignment as I played out this scenario in my head, imagining what I would say if Sabrina came out of nowhere and confessed her love for me. I heard a knock at the door, and with this on my mind, my heart rate spiked and I almost jumped out of my chair.

I got up and peeked out the window; it was not Sabrina. Heather Escamilla stood in the dim glow of the porch light. I opened the door, wondering what she wanted, since there was no choir practice or church tonight. “Hi,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I was just thinking, I forgot to tell you last night. Saturday we’re going to have a birthday party for Gary at our place. And you’re invited.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure! What time should I be there?”

“I’ve been telling people 7. I don’t know when everyone will get there, though.”

“That sounds good. Do I need to bring anything?”

“No. Just yourself.”

“Great! I’ll see you then!”

“Have a great night!” Heather said, waving as she turned back toward the parking lot. I closed the door and went back to my homework. I just got invited to a party, my first actual college party, other than the one in the dorm last year that I had walked in on uninvited.

As I worked on homework, I kept thinking about Heather and Gary’s party. I wondered if I would know anyone there. I wondered if anyone else from church would be there. Maybe Sabrina would be there. That in and of itself was enough to make me want to go.

My high had worn off by the time I got home from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship on Friday night. All day on campus, the universe seemed to be throwing in my face the fact that other people had boyfriends and girlfriends and I did not. I saw a lot of couples acting coupley all over campus today. This all-American jock type guy sitting across from me on the bus home was making out with a hot girl in a sorority sweatshirt the whole time. At JCF, I sat next to Liz and Ramon, who were two of my best friends, and had been a couple since early in our freshman year, but something about them being a couple bugged me tonight. And I overheard someone saying that this junior girl named Amelia Dye was going out with Scott Madison now, which meant one fewer girl left for me to possibly end up with.

As I sat at my desk listening to the whirs and whistles of the modem connecting to the email server, I saw in the corner of my eye the contact list for the Newman Center choir. Sabrina’s name was misspelled on the contact list; it had her listed as “Sabrina Murpy.” I would have spelled it right had I typed the list; maybe Sabrina was into guys who could spell. Maybe I would call Sabrina sometime this weekend, just to talk, to be friendly. Was that okay? I did not know. She probably would not be home. Her roommate would answer and tell me that she was out with her boyfriend. Sabrina and her boyfriend were out there driving a knife through my heart, unknowingly digging my grave.

“She’s out there, unknowingly digging my grave,” I said to myself. Very poetic. That has a nice rhythm to it. It was 9:45, I was home alone on a Friday night; maybe tonight would be a good night to write poetry. I put my sweatshirt back on and took a walk around the apartment complex and through a little bit of the Greenbelt behind the apartments, trying to think of more lines for this poem. When I returned about twenty minutes later, I wrote down all of the words that had come to mind, and by the time I went to bed, I had this:

“Hello, kid! How are you? How’s everything been?”
I’m really stressed out, if you know what I mean.
And how about you? Got exams coming up?
“I’ve got one on Friday, I need to catch up.”
I called you to see if your roommate was home.
“She’s not, at the moment, I’m here all alone.
Today, it’s not homework that keeps her a slave,
She’s out there, unknowingly digging your grave.”

In November, I had started writing a novel; it was about a high school student who changes his name and goes to live with relatives to make a fresh start. I had written around forty pages so far. I had named the novel Try, Try Again, referencing the old saying about what to do if at first one does not succeed. The character, Mike, felt like he was not succeeding in his old life, so he is trying again. I worked on Try, Try Again for a few hours the next morning. It had been a month since Mike had made his new start, and he had found his way into a popular group of friends. A girl named Erin had taken an interest in him, and after spending a lot of time together at and after school, Mike got brave and asked her to a movie.

Three previews came on before the movie. Mike did not think any of the movies previewed looked good. When the movie itself started, he got comfortable in his seat, placing both arms on the armrest. A minute later, Erin placed her hand on top of his. Mike looked at her and smiled. He liked Erin. After a while, while he was watching the movie, he felt Erin’s hand move from his hand to his knee. He liked it there too. Eventually Erin moved her hand off of Mike for good. Mike, instead, reached over the armrest and took her hand in his, placing it on the armrest.

Mike took his eyes off the movie and looked at Erin. She did the exact same thing a few seconds later. He tightened his grip around her hand for a couple seconds, then loosened it again. Erin began to kiss him. He liked it a lot. It was nothing too unusual for most kids his age, but he had never been kissed so passionately in his life. He tried to return it the best he could, and he felt that Erin liked it as well. Their mouths slowly separated. “Thanks,” Mike whispered. Erin gave him a huge smile.

Mike’s eyes turned back to the movie. He reached his right hand over to her right shoulder and touched it. Erin moved her body a little to the left, closer to Mike. They stayed in that position for the rest of the show.

I wished I could be at a movie with Sabrina, kissing her lips, running my fingers through her pretty red hair, and seeing her cute smile as she looked at me afterward. What did her boyfriend have that I did not? A few months ago, I wanted to be kissing Megan McCauley, until I found out that she also was with someone. And before Megan there were lots of other girls who either had boyfriends or were just not interested in me. Sometimes it felt like the entire single female population all over the state were conspiring to make sure I never had a girlfriend.

Later that night, I left my home and walked to Heather and Gary’s apartment, in the same complex as mine. The party started half an hour ago, but I did not want to be the first one there, since I did not know if I would know anyone. I knocked on the door, and Heather answered. “Hey!” she said. “You made it!”

“I did,” I said. “Happy birthday, Gary!” I called out across the room when I saw Gary wave at me.

“Thanks!” Gary replied.

I looked around the room. Six other people were there besides Heather and Gary. I recognized Melanie from church, but no one else; Melanie was there with her boyfriend. Sabrina was not there. I made small talk with Heather and Gary for a bit, talking about school and my trip to Disneyland with my family.

“You actually drove past O.J. Simpson’s house?” Gary said, laughing. “That’s hilarious!”

“I know. Mom kept saying she couldn’t believe we were actually doing that.”

“What about O.J. Simpson’s house?” a girl I did not recognize said, walking up as she overheard us. She had long straight hair and olive skin. I repeated my story in abbreviated form, and she said, “My apartment isn’t too far from O.J. Simpson’s house.”

“This is my sister, Mariana,” Heather explained. “She’s visiting from California.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Greg.”

“So how do you know my sister?” Mariana asked.

“From church. We both sing in the choir.”

“How fun! I wish I could hear you guys sing in the morning, but my flight back home leaves at 12:15, so I need to be on my way to the airport by then.”

“Aww.”

“I was in choir in high school and college, but I graduated last year, and I’m not doing any kind of singing right now.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Santa Teresa,” Mariana said as Heather and Gary went to greet more people who were just arriving.

“That’s cool. I’ve never been there, but two of my friends from high school go there.”

“Oh yeah? What are their names?”

“Paul Dickinson and Jackie Bordeaux. They would have been freshmen last year.”

“Nope, I don’t know them. It’s a big school.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“You go to Jeromeville? What are you studying?”

“Math.”

“Math,” Mariana repeated, making a face. “That was not my class.”

“A lot of people say that,” I said, laughing.

“Well, if you’re good at it, go for it! Do you know what you want to do with your degree? Do you want to be a teacher?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think I want to be a teacher, though. Too much politics involved in education. I just figure I’ll stay in school until I figure it out.”

“I understand that. I majored in English, but I’m not really using it. I work in an office.”

“Yeah. I was never very good at English in school. I never understood what I was supposed to get from the novels and poems that we had to read.”

“I did a lot of BS’ing on assignments like that, to be honest.”

“I see,” I replied, chuckling. “But the weird thing is, even though I was always bad at English class, I like to write.”

“Oh yeah? What do you like to write?”

“Sometimes I have a thought stuck in my head, and it’ll become a weird poem. And last year I wrote a short novel. I had a really interesting year when I was a senior in high school, so I turned that into a novel.”

“That’s so cool!”

“And right now, I’m working on another novel. It’s about a guy who runs away to live with relatives, because he wants a fresh start. But he pretends to be sixteen instead of eighteen, because he realized he missed out on a lot of experiences in high school, and he wants a second chance.”

“That’s interesting. Where’d you get that idea?”

“Probably just because sometimes I wish I could do that.”

“You feel like you missed out on a lot?”

“Yeah. Like I said with the first novel, I grew a lot my senior year, but then we all graduated and moved away. I feel like if everything that happened my senior year had happened earlier, I would have graduated as an entirely different person.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Mariana contemplated. “Hmm. Interesting.”

“If you want, I can send you some of my writing,” I said. “Or at least I’ll send you what I have so far.”

“Yeah! That would be so cool!”

“Do you use email?”

“I don’t,” Mariana said, disappointedly. “Is that a problem?”

“You can give me your address, and I can mail it to you.”

“Sure! I’ll do that. Let me go get a piece of paper.” Mariana walked off and came back a minute later, handing me her address.

“Thanks!” I said.

Mariana and I talked for about another hour, about life, the past, the future, and many other things on our minds. I could not help but wonder, could there be something here? Might she be interested in me that way? She was a few years older than me, that would be different; hopefully she did not see me as some immature little kid. I had a way to keep in contact with her, and that was the important part at this moment.

“I’m going to get another drink,” Mariana eventually said. “But, hey, it was really good talking to you! Send me your story!”

“I will. Thanks.” I smiled.

“We’ll probably talk more later tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

No one else that I knew ever showed up to the party. I talked to Melanie for a bit about my winter break, and one of Gary’s engineer friends was drunkenly asking me about math at one point. The party got louder as the night went on, and I went home around 10:30.

As soon as I got home, I printed out a copy of the unfinished Try, Try Again to send to Mariana, and I excitedly mailed it with extra stamps the next day. This weekend sure turned into a great one. I met a girl who talked to me for a long time and was interested in my creative work. Maybe I did not need to hope for Sabrina to leave her boyfriend after all. Life was finally looking up for me.

Except it never happened. I never heard from Mariana again. I never found out if she read my story. She never wrote back, and Heather never mentioned her around me again. I could have asked, of course, but I never asked others about girls I was interested in. I was embarrassed for anyone to know that I liked a girl, ever since eighth grade when Paul Dickinson told the whole school who I liked.

Why did Mariana act so friendly if she did not want to talk to me again? Things like this had happened before. Jennifer Henson had been friendly to me all through senior year of high school, then that summer she moved away suddenly without leaving me a way to contact her. Many other girls would treat me like this throughout my life, and I had a tendency to misunderstand the intentions of others. People are complicated, reading and understanding them is hard, and I still had a lot to learn. Maybe I would figure all of this out someday. Until then, I had plenty of material for poetry and fiction.

Early April, 1995. Tear down the wall. (#32)

October 29, 2019December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 25 Comments

The University of Jeromeville is on a three quarter schedule. My classes last for one-third of the school year instead of the traditional half-year. Year-long classes are still year-long classes, but split into three parts instead of two. Winter break falls one-third of the way through the year, which is why UJ starts and ends later than most universities. The spring break at the end of March, which had just passed, comes two-thirds of the way through the year, so that this coming Monday morning I would have new spring quarter classes. The terms are called quarters even though there are three of them.

Right now, it was early afternoon on the Saturday at the end of spring break. I had left my parents’ house in Plumdale around 11 in the morning and stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s in Irving just off Highway 6, where I had Chicken McNuggets. I hadn’t yet outgrown Chicken McNuggets at age 18; that would happen over the next year or so. I arrived back at Building C a little before two o’clock.

The entire South Residential Area was quiet. Most normal students waited until Sunday night to return to Jeromeville, because most normal students preferred to be at home on vacation and not back at school. I would rather be here. It was quieter here than at my parents’ house. I didn’t have friends in Plumdale. And, perhaps most importantly, my computer was here. I didn’t take my computer home, and there was no way to access the Internet from my parents’ house.

It wasn’t exactly correct to say that I didn’t have friends in Plumdale. Melissa Holmes was home for break the same week I was, and we had gone to see some of our old teachers at Plumdale High. I stayed until lunch time and saw many of my teachers and some friends from younger classes, including Rachel Copeland, the only younger friend at Plumdale High who had kept in touch with me consistently. That was a great day.

I checked my email, and today’s date on the incoming messages caught my eye: April 1. April Fool’s Day. I got an idea. I opened a new email and copied and pasted the list of email addresses for all 70 students in the IHP.

Dear friends,

I have really enjoyed being part of the IHP with all of you these last two quarters. Unfortunately, some circumstances have changed back home, and I will be unable to finish out the school year here at UJ. I hope to stay in touch with all of you, and I might be back someday when everything gets sorted out.

Sincerely,

Greg

APRIL FOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Gotcha!

After I sent my April Fool email, I replied to Molly Boyle, an online friend from Pennsylvania, telling her about my visit to Plumdale. I got to thinking about Plumdale High… I really needed another year there. Sure, I was done with classes, but I grew so much senior year, I made new friends and had so many new experiences, and then we all graduated and moved away, leaving what felt to me like unfinished business. I was the quiet kid who kept to myself and did homework at lunch, then all of a sudden I was performing in skits and working behind the scenes in the video yearbook club, and popular kids whom I barely knew were talking to me like old friends. But I never got the chance to get more involved with school activities. I never got the chance to find out if Jennifer Henson actually liked me, or if Annie Gambrell really meant anything when she told me to keep smiling. But I had a great story to tell. I decided I was going to make something of my senior year, and I did, even if everything I was building ended abruptly. It was the kind of story that could be made into a movie, or a novel.

Wait a minute, I thought. I opened Microsoft Word and started typing.

Roar Like A Panther
A Novel
by Gregory J. Dennison

That was a dumb title. I would fix it later, when I thought of something better.

“Tom,” Mom called out to me. “Telephone call.”

I hated taking telephone calls. I have always been really shy on the telephone. I figured I knew who it was calling. I took the telephone into the next room. “Hello?”

“Hey, Tom. It’s Nancy.” As I had suspected.

“Hi.”

“How’s your spring break going?”

“Fine. And yours?”

“I haven’t really done much,” she said. “I’ve just been hanging out with my family.”

“I saw a movie with Kate,” I said.

“How is she?”

“She’s doing fine. We didn’t really talk much, though, but it was nice to see her anyway.”

“So anyway, I was going to go visit Mrs. Jordan tomorrow. Do you want to come with me?”

“Sure!” I said. “At the school?”

“Yes. They’re still in school this week.”

“Right. What time?”

“Is 8:30 all right, or is that too early?”

“Yes. That’s fine.”

“Great!” Nancy exclaimed. “I’ll see you there.”

“Bye,” I said. I hung up.

I wrote for hours, telling about my senior year as well as I could remember, except that I changed most of the characters’ names. Melissa was Nancy; one time in high school, she complained that someone said she looked like her name should be Nancy, so I figured I’d go with it. Catherine became Kate; that one didn’t change as much. Mrs. Norton changed to Mrs. Jordan. That one didn’t really mean anything. My name in the story was Tom, because this was going to be the next Great American Novel, and I noticed once that so many great works of American literature that I had to read in school had a character named Tom. Tom Sawyer. Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath. Thomas Putnam from The Crucible. Tom Robinson from To Kill A Mockingbird. Tom Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie.

Every once in a while, as I was writing, I walked down the hallway to drink from the water fountain; I also used the bathroom on those trips down the hall if I needed to. I always tend to do this as I write. I’m not sure if it helps my brain work, or if it is more of a distraction. By the time I went to bed that night, shortly after eleven o’clock, I had already written the story of my senior year of high school up until mid-November, filming other classes’ projects for my computer graphics and video production class and meeting Annie Gambrell (or Laurie Hampton, as I called her in my novel).

Church on Sunday was emptier than usual, and I continued writing as soon as I got home. Later in the afternoon, I started to hear more people walking around. Around three o’clock, I got up to use the bathroom, and I walked around the rest of the building, starting on the first floor. The common area and study room took up almost half of the first floor, and the door of the room closest to the common area was open. I poked my head inside.

This room belonged to a short brown-haired girl named Heather Beck, but no one ever called her Heather. She always had other Heathers in her classes growing up, so her friends started calling her Beck, and that mutated somehow into Bok, which is the nickname everyone called her now. (Bok rhymes with rock.) Bok was good friends with Skeeter from the third floor; both of them were free-spirited artsy hippie types, although I never saw either of them wear the stereotypical tie-dye with Birkenstocks.

“Hey, Greg,” Bok said, looking up at me through her glasses. She and Skeeter were sitting on the floor, looking at what appeared to be old newspapers spread flat on the floor. “How was your break?”

“It was good. I visited my old high school. That was interesting.”

“I’m sure it was,” Skeeter said. “I got this over break.” She gestured toward the pile of newspapers, and I saw in the middle of them a large sheet of high-quality paper with abstract green, gray, red, and brown swirls on part of it, along with a fancy set of watercolor paints, a few small brushes, and a cup of water.

“Nice!” I said as Skeeter painted black dots with long tails floating in a spiral arrangement. “Is it bad that I can’t really tell what you’re painting?”

“I don’t know,” Skeeter shrugged, smiling, as Bok painted a blue-gray cloud shape at the other empty end of the paper. “These look like sperm. The rest of it is just stuff. By the way, that was a great April Fool’s joke. Good one.”

“Thanks.”

“What was the joke?” Bok asked.

“I don’t want to give it away if you haven’t seen it yet,” Skeeter explained.

“I’m looking forward to seeing how your painting turns out,” I said. “I started writing a novel yesterday.”

“Really?” Bok asked. “You write?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t really something I’ve done before. When I was younger, I used to make comic books and copy them on the copier at my mom’s work. I’d sell them to my brother’s friends for a quarter. But I’ve never really written prose… at least I’ve never finished a novel.”

“How long is it going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s it about?”

“A coming of age story. Based on my life last year. I was thinking about this when I visited my old high school last week.”

“Makes sense,” Skeeter said. “Let me know when you finish it.”

“Me too,” Bok added.

Monday was the first day of class for the quarter. I had math first thing in the morning, as I always did, except this quarter it was nine o’clock instead of eight. I had a whole hour more to sleep in every morning. I recognized some familiar faces from previous math classes: Jack Chalmers from Building F, Tiffany from Building K, and a cute redhead from last quarter.

“Greg!” Jack said, speaking quickly as he always did, as we waited for the class that met an hour earlier in the same room to finish. “How was your break?”

“Good,” I said. “I went to visit my old high school. How was yours? You went to Santa Lucia, right?”

“Yeah! Did you say to take the 122 or 127 to Santa Lucia?”

“127. Why? What happened?”

“On the way down, we couldn’t remember, so we took the 122 instead. It was beautiful!”

“Really?” I asked. “That’s a really windy mountain road, from what I remember.”

“It was great! My friend has a brand new car that handles mountain roads really well, so we really enjoyed the drive. And on the way back we took the 127. That was so much faster! It was only five miles to cut over to the coast. Thanks again for the directions!”

“Glad you had a great drive!” I said. I was surprised at his reaction. My mother apparently had a bad experience with mountain roads once, so she raised me to believe that mountain roads were the most frightening thing ever, to be avoided at all costs. Apparently it was evident from Jack’s reaction that not all people think this way.

My math class that quarter was vector calculus. I also had chemistry and physics later that day. I was taking a class for the IHP called Psychology and the Law, but that class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, not today.

When I got back to Building C, Taylor, Pete, Liz, and Ramon were sitting on one couch in the common room, talking to Schuyler Jenkins and a girl named Jenn who lived next to Pete, sitting on another couch. I waved at them.

“Greg!” Jenn said. “You’re leaving us?”

I was confused by Jenn’s question, trying to process what she meant by leaving, but when Pete and Taylor started laughing, I realized what was going on here. “You didn’t read all of my email, did you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“It was an April Fool’s joke,” Taylor explained.

“Oh my gosh!” Jenn exclaimed, laughing. “I can’t believe I fell for that!”

“Done with classes for the day?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah. It was a good day so far. I still have Psych-Law tomorrow.”

“Liz and I are in that class too,” Ramon said.

“I’ve been writing a novel for fun,” I said.

“Wow,” Taylor replied. “What’s it about?”

“It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s about my life last year.”

“Was your life really that interesting?” Schuyler asked in a dry deadpan tone.

“It was, actually. That’s why I decided to write about it.”

“I didn’t know you liked to write.”

“It’s kind of new for me too. I just felt like it. I’ve always had a creative side I don’t show much, but writing like this is kind of new for me.”

“Good luck with that,” Jenn said.

“Let me know when you’re done,” Liz said. “I’ll read it.”

“Okay. I will.”

I spent most of my free time during the first week and a half of spring quarter writing my story. On Friday, I got back from my last class in the afternoon, ready to write the chapter where we took our senior trip to Disneyland. But before I could get up to my room, I saw Skeeter and Bok in the common room working on two paintings. One of them was the one I had seen in Bok’s room a few days earlier, with the spiral of sperm, but the sperm had been painted over so that now they looked like crosses. Someone had written “the downward spiral” at the bottom of the page. I was vaguely aware of this phrase being the title of an album by the band Nine Inch Nails. I had no idea that this band, or their genre of industrial rock, even existed until a few months ago; no one listened to that back home in Santa Lucia County, at least no one I knew.

The other painting was a new one. The paper was in portrait orientation, the longer dimension vertical. A long light green stripe, almost straight, ran across the painting from left to right, with a dark green stripe just below it. The upper left corner had multicolored swirls, and something resembling a Venus flytrap was in the lower left, its mouth open to reveal red teeth. Directly above the Venus flytrap was a large orange circle, touching the green stripe. Skeeter was painting a pink swirly whooshy thing (I’m not good at describing abstract art) coming down from the orange ball.

“Hi,” I said in Skeeter and Bok’s general direction.

“Bok turned my sperm into crosses!” Skeeter said, sounding jokingly angry.

“I didn’t know you wanted them to be sperm!” Bok argued back.

“I think it’s interesting either way,” I said.

“Come paint with us,” Skeeter said, handing me a brush. On the right edge of the new painting, on top of a yellow spot, I painted twelve dark dots in a circle, with a thirteenth dot in the middle. I added some thin horizontal stripes to the left of this, just above the center of the paper.

“I like that Venus fly trap thing,” I said.

“That was my idea,” Bok replied. “So were the crosses.”

“They’re sperm,” Skeeter said.

“How’s your story coming along so far?” Bok asked.

“I’m getting there. I’ve been writing a lot.”

“That’s cool.”

We continued talking and painting for about another hour. I added some abstract patches of color in the upper right, and Skeeter eventually painted a bunch of parallel diagonal lines on top of it. The pink swirly whooshy thing was extended toward the bottom of the page, where it split into several branches; other colored swirly whooshy things were added next to it, coming down from the parallel lines I painted.

When the page was filled with color, Skeeter said, “It needs a title.”

“Flytrap,” Bok suggested.

“I don’t know. That seems kind of obvious.”

I looked at the painting, the green stripe across its length, the horizontal lines just below now emanating from long curved strokes of different colors. I thought about the other painting, The Downward Spiral, how it had been named after a song and album. I had been listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall earlier that day, a rock opera about a musician who deals with trauma by isolating himself from society and eventually becoming delusional. Toward the end of the album, in a song called “The Trial,” the character’s life is presented as a judge accusing him of having human feelings, as if doing such is a crime. The song ends with repeated chants of “Tear down the wall!”

“How about Tear Down The Wall?” I asked.

Skeeter and Bok looked at me. “I like it,” Bok said. “I think it fits.”

“It’s got this wall separating the two sides,” Skeeter explained, tracing the green stripe in the middle. “And there’s all this tension building up against the wall here,” she added, pointing to the horizontal lines just below the wall. “Go ahead, Greg. Add the title.”

I painted TEAR DOWN THE WALL in black paint, in between the orange ball and the Venus fly trap. Later that night, when the paint was dry, Skeeter and Bok taped both Tear Down The Wall and The Downward Spiral to the wall in the common room, where they stayed for the rest of the school year for all of Building C to admire.

I finished writing my story the following Monday, after I got back from my classes. At 51 pages and about 33,000 words, it was a little short to be called a novel, but it was still the longest piece I had ever written, and it had only taken ten days. I loaded the printer with paper, but before I started printing, I went all the way back to the first page and deleted the title. Roar Like A Panther was a stupid title, and I knew it all along.

The Commencement
A Novel
by Gregory J. Dennison

Graduation ceremonies are also called commencement ceremonies. To commence means to begin, which at first seems like a counterintuitive title since graduation is the end of school, not the beginning. But a commencement ceremony is the beginning of real life. And my senior year of high school felt like the beginning of something new in my life. This was definitely a better title.

When my hard copy of The Commencement finished printing, I punched holes in the pages and put it in a report folder with a clear cover. I wanted other people to read it, so I could find out what they thought of my story. I brought it with me to the common room after dinner, where I sat doing homework and waiting for someone with whom I felt comfortable sharing The Commencement. Liz and Ramon walked by about fifteen minutes later. “Hey, Greg,” Liz said. “What’s up?”

“I finished my story,” I replied, holding up The Commencement.

“That’s cool! Can I read it?”

“Sure. I’d like to know what you think.”

“Do you need it back in a hurry?”

“No. Just eventually when you’re done.”

“I don’t know how long it’ll take. But I’ll let you know.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I think this is really cool. I hadn’t pictured you to be a writer.”

“Thanks. I don’t know if I had either.”

Skeeter and Bok were painting in the common room again three days later, and Pete, Charlie, and Liz were all on the floor painting too. Bok’s stereo had been temporarily moved to the common room, and a strange song played, with a vocalist speaking monotonous rhythmic lyrics over a bass-driven melody. It sounded like some kind of blend of rock, rap, and funk.

“Hi, Greg,” Liz said. “You like our painting?”

“I do.” This painting had four distinct quadrants arranged in a two-by-two grid, each with a distinct color scheme. One was shades of gray; one was pale pastel-like colors; one had swirls of simple, bright colors, like red and blue; and one had dark shades of brown, olive green, midnight blue, and black. The painting was almost finished, there was not much more to do, so I just made blobs and swirls of color, trying to stay close to the colors near what I was painting.

“What’s this music?” I asked.

“Cake,” Bok said.

“What?”

“A local band from Capital City, called Cake. My friend and I went to their show the other day. Apparently they’re going to be the next big thing.”

“They sound different. But I kind of like it.”

“That’s how I feel about them too.”

“I finished your story,” Liz said. “I put it over there on the coffee table. I really liked it.”

“Thank you!”

“It sounds like you really enjoyed your senior year.”

“I did. I feel like I was really growing. And then it all suddenly stopped.”

“But now you’re here. And you’re still growing.”

“Yes, I am,” I said. Liz was right. Sure, I never got to be in another Homecoming skit, and I never got a date with any of those girls I liked back in high school. But instead of standing there looking through a door that had closed, I was now looking at new doors opening here at UJ.

“Does anyone have a good title for this painting?” Skeeter asked.

“Not really,” Pete answered.

“Maybe we should just look around somewhere and find some random title,” Charlie suggested. “Like, look at these newspapers on the ground and find something in there.”

“I like that idea,” I said. “Then the title will be something really off the wall and silly.” I scanned the newspaper. My eyes quickly fell on an advertisement for a furniture store, and I pointed to a phrase from this advertisement. “Like this one,” I added. “‘Everything 25% Off.’” The others laughed.

“I think it’s perfect!” Skeeter said. “Because there are four parts. Fourths, like 25 percent.”

“I think we have our title,” Pete said. I took a paint brush and painted EVERYTHING 25% OFF in a corner of the painting, and later that night Everything 25% Off joined The Downward Spiral and Tear Down The Wall on the wall of the common room.

By the end of the year, there were around a dozen paintings on the wall. When we moved out of the building, Skeeter and Bok let those of us who helped paint each keep one that we helped with. To this day, Tear Down The Wall hangs on a wall at my house.

After I printed The Commencement, I left it in the common room for about a week, in case anyone else wanted to read it. I’m not sure who all did, but Schuyler Jenkins pointed out a typo, and Skeeter told me it was a good first draft. I also sent it to Molly from Pennsylvania in eleven separate emails over the next month, and she said she really liked it and felt like she had gotten to know me better.

Skeeter’s comment seemed kind of disappointing at first, since I thought The Commencement was finished, but she was right. It was a good first draft. My writing style was too dry; I just listed things that happened instead of telling about them in a way that engaged the reader. I worked on The Commencement again for a while in 1996, and again in 2002; by that time, it was almost three times as long as the original. Interestingly enough, one of my friends who read the 2002 version said that the most relatable part was a chapter that I completely made up, something that never happened to me in real life.

I never considered writing for a career. I was a math guy. I didn’t write. And creative writing wasn’t something that could make a steady career. It is possible to make a living writing, of course; many writers and artists and musicians work on art in between working normal jobs, waiting to get discovered. Some of these actually make it. Bok’s friend who said that this local band Cake was the next big thing was right; Cake had several big hits over the next decade. But making a life out of art requires much patience and uncertainty, and that part of it didn’t sound appealing to me. I’d stick to writing for fun.

The Commencement was the first piece of fiction I wrote that was based on myself, and it felt good to open up and share my story with a few others. My own life has been my favorite inspiration for my writing over the years. I’ve written stories not based on me, but I do best when I write what I know, and I don’t understand others as well as I understand myself. I hope that someone out there can learn something from reading my story.

tear down the wall