Date: Monday, 12/1/69

The die has been cast. Such a banal statement for such a huge change. The lottery was tonight. Charles’s birthdate was the first one drawn and as fate would have it, Tony’s was the second. Can you believe it? The silence in our apartment was so uncomfortable that I felt like doing something so outrageously insensitive that it was all I could do not to.

I felt so many things about his fate, and mine, after the drawing that I almost disappeared inside myself never to return again. Never before have I had these thoughts, but I thought, it’s my fault. I never should have slept with Prof. Keating. I should have told Charles about what Philip did to me. I shouldn’t have stolen the book and on and on. Every transgression I committed said to me, this is your fault, you could have saved him, if only . . . If only I had known that I could, perhaps, have saved him, I would have tried.

No one can imagine the gloom that settled over us. We didn’t ship Tony off tonight either. After the non-reveling ended, we asked him to stay and he did, and he curled up with us in the big bed in our bedroom.

Charles slept between us, as was his proper place. We all held hands. And stared at the ceiling. Numbness set in. We weren’t quiet but mute. We breathed and our stomachs may have needed food but we had no appetite.

We each talked about our day before the drawing.

Tony went first. He told us of his run in with one of his professors about a late paper. He successfully got her to extend the deadline until this Friday.

“But you have to wonder what the point of that will be, don’t you? I mean, now, really, I’m screwed. I could shoot off my right hand, I guess. I know a guy who did that. The thing was, he was left handed but they didn’t know that at the draft board, they gave him a 4-F and told him to go home. Another guy I know just popped puncture marks all over this arms and told them he was a drug addict. He took something, though, that a stupid buddy had given him to hide the drugs in his piss. So they didn’t believe him. But they called the cops on him and he got busted for possession.

“Man, this system is so fucked. And rigged against us. Ain’t no way, no how, I am off to that fucking war.”

“I hear you,” Charles said and squeezed my hand.

Charles isn’t a talker so what he eventually said took some courage for him. I give him that and a lot of love as well. I do love him, despite how badly I reacted to what he said.

“I know no one cares right now for us guys that have to go and fight one of the stupidest wars in history. But, to you two, I am really indebted. If you weren’t here, I’d be killing myself and I mean it. I hate feeling like this too and I hate it because this is exactly the sort of feeling that makes me want to light up a joint or shoot up.

“Tony knows that about me. He’s been a rock, you have man, and without you, for sure, when they threw me out of here for doing drugs, I would never have stayed alive to return and do well and meet this lovely woman who has been with me this term.

“I know I’m lucky in that way. But I do want to just pack it all in and say good bye to life right now.”

I listened to the two of them and my heart sat in my chest. It seemed so silly to be in love and it seemed so silly not to be in love.

My current problems were infinitely less significant at that moment. So were my current successes. And so were the promises he had made to me before the drawing on television tonight.

It no longer seemed of any real interest now that he had decided to give up drugs completely. That he promised me we were going to work things out and stay together, at least that was what he wanted.

Maybe I’m just paranoid about these kinds of moments in life. I wanted so desperately to believe him, that we had a future together.

He returned very late last night. He came directly to my room, walked in and looked around as if he smelled something was up. He had come to drive me back to his apartment. I was relieved to see him and to be held in his arms. We lived through our love for each other in bed that night without words. Charles lit the candles around the bed and brought a bottle of wine. He made his declaration of a drug-free life and all in all, I woke up this morning believing myself to be the happiest person in the world and if not in the world at least at the College.

That feeling carried me right back into classes where even Dr. Fish looked happy today. Maybe it had to do, I thought, with some sort of sadistic pleasure he took in giving out bad grades. But that assessment changed quickly as I looked over the comments he had put on my paper; his “bad” comments were complimentary. He shocked all of us by how he walked into the classroom. He looked good. Then he announced he was going to congratulate a woman on her work. God damn but that woman was me. Can you believe it?

I think the earth had to be off its axis for him to make that concession. I worked so hard on my “Frost at Midnight” paper. I liked being told I had what it takes to write about poetry from him. I would have given him a big hug, but I knew that would be going a bit far for him to accept. He had gone as far as any of us could have imagined him capable of already.

Neal looked back at me and smiled. He had tears in his eyes. We all, I think, felt so touched by Dr. Fish’s ability to accept my work, and others as well. I wasn’t the only one to pass his high standards.

I learned so much working on that paper. I could write a paper for him about how much I learned working on it. I learned what it takes to be able to write about poetry. One of the things that helped was having heard live poets read from their work.

So that was the best news for today. In my pottery class, there had been some minor accidents in the room, so, again, we sat around and shared ideas about pottery as an art form and pottery as a commodity. I still basked in the glow of Dr. Fish’s comments on my paper. I checked out, as it were, from that discussion.

My other classes had gone well too. The end of the term is a rather long drawn out process. Most of us were focused more on the lottery than on class. If I had been in charge I would have cancelled all classes for the day. Now I feel like canceling life for a while.