5 comments/ 8291 views/ 0 favorites The Meaning of Lizzie By: secretme Samantha, I suppose that I should start with the standard opening questions for a letter: How are you? What have you been doing? etc... But, since I don't have a return address and won't have one for the rest of this summer that would be a bit pointless. I'm going on a road trip with a friend. I've decided to write you once in a while. Don't expect letters, just know that they may come. That's how I started the letters. We were in Alabama that night and in the morning we stopped at a rest plaza on route 65 just outside of Athens. There was a light mist and the sun was coming up over some hills that were lush green and trees. There wasn't a single color except for the green and all different shades of green: forest, blue, and hundreds of other shades. I don't think crayola knows what to call all of it. That was when I knew that it was spring and that was when I started the letters. I wrote to Sam on a picnic table that said things like, DON'T FEED THE BEARS, THERE ARE NO BEARS AROUND HERE, DICKWEED, SALLY LOVES JOHNY, MARY LOVES SALLY. You've got to love people's humor. I know that it's been a long time since you've heard from me. I've been thinking that maybe I should let everyone at home know what happened. I never meant to hurt anyone. I suppose I was being selfish when I took off and didn't tell anyone where I was going. I'm not trying to justify my actions or apologize for them. But, I think I may be able to explain them. I think I should start with Lizzi. I met Lizzi as a friend of a friend. She was strangely eccentric, exceptionally elitist, intelligent to a flaw, and appeared farther from normal than anyone I'd ever met. I first spoke to her out of necessity, she was there and it was awkward to stand in silence. It wasn't until months later that I found out how much I needed to know her. I listened to my family far too much. They said, "go to college." I went. They said, "be a teacher." I majored in elementary ed. I said, "I hate this shit," and quit. I changed my major to writing. That was where Lizzi came in. She was an artist. She liked to paint large distorted pictures of different parts of the body. She spent most of her time just being and only dealt with the parts of the world she saw fit. She was unique and I figured that a character like her with a decent plot would make a great story. Lizzi was the "frightening" roommate of a disgustingly candied girl I knew. She was nice and normal and completely intimidated by Lizzi, who, took great pleasure in messing with her mind. I was fascinated by my first impressions of Lizzi. Much to the disappointment of my friend and that led to her no longer being my friend. In the end Lizzi moved in with Kate and my friend moved in with whoever that girl down the hall was who played loud rap music all of the time. I went looking for Lizzi the day after I changed my major and quickly latched onto her, trying to figure her out. Our friendship, if you could call it that, was one sided in everything. I worked my way into her life without her needing or wanting me there. Looking back I can see that the only part that was mutual was the respect and need for the relationship. Though at first that was pretty one sided as well. Neither Lizzi nor I knew that Lizzi needed anyone. Let alone me. As I first began my initiation into the small elitist group that was Lizzi's circle she was worried about how I would react to things. So, she brought them up slowly, testing the waters so to speak. I think that I became her great project for the year: turn boring loud freshman into interesting creative person. Not that I objected. The beginning with Lizzi was mostly a game, I think. She took great pleasure in shocking me. She enjoyed seeing my face contort into that strange array of confusion and amazement that she so easily was able to evoke. After all, I was the "good Christian girl" and she was going to help me with that problem. To a certain degree Lizzi was more interested in how she affected people then people themselves. It took a while before I gained enough respect from her to be treated as anything other than a science experiment that involved a human instead of a lab rat. She would go to great lengths just to get a reaction out of me. Don't take this wrong Sam. It wasn't Lizzi entirely that did it. There were several pieces of myself missing. I didn't know where to look or what I'd find, if anything. But, following Lizzi around was definitely different from my life before. Lizzi was laying in bed when I came to her room one night. That wouldn't have upset my traditionalistic nature itself, but she was lying in bed with a woman. We had known each other for a short time at that point. I had come to accept that Lizzi was trying to make an impression on me. But, I never really considered this and at first it truly confused me. I sat in a chair opposite the bed and carried on a conversation with her and the girl with her, Jane, and Lizzi's roommate, Kate, before I finally got up enough nerve to ask them why they were in bed like that. They weren't naked or anything. But, they were touching and caressing and then kissing so I asked. They laughed and I waited and yes they had decided to start going out. It was strange enough that it was Lizzi, who had been dating a man named Mike just before that, but Jane was another friend of mine, from long before I met Lizzi, and the fact that she was dating Lizzi had shocked me more than anything else. Lizzi was normally abnormal in comparison to social equinox and could be called the societal Antichrist in some respects. But, Jane was, or had appeared to be, the "miss fit in" of the bunch and as much an adamant hetero as I used to be. It seemed that I was being dealt a tremendous dose of the antiserum for not judging by appearances and it was going down quite badly. Salvaging what I could of my shattered picturesque impression of friends and life as I had known it, I finished the conversation jokingly. I should have realized, at that time, what they had in the works. The conversation had turned chidingly to me going out with Kate, but I thought that they were teasing me. Months passed and I got used to hearing about the escapades that the group went on. They'd all go out in the middle of the night and decorate trees with odd gloves and socks or they'd go for a walk in a thunderstorm or spend the night camping out in the cemetery with tarot cards trying to determine the future, convinced that the ground held some special meaning. They went to poetry readings and sat around in their room naked. I even heard rumors about them throwing a party where everyone was supposed to come naked and just be there naked. But, I was never invited. I don't think I would have gone, back then. Those things, that they did as a group where no one was any different from anyone else and whoever wanted to join in could, weren't the things that I wanted to be a part of as much as the long intimate conversations that can only take place between close friends. All of the people in Lizzi's circle seemed to have that level of communication indicative of lovers or intimate companions. I had never been part of something like that. Although, I did and still do believe it exists, somewhere. But, even the ridiculous stuff they did, together, sounded great to me, who never left my room. And complete childishness was something that I never actually tried anymore. Lizzi would tell me about everything they did. It became a temptation dangling there in front of me. I could see it as well as my own reflection in the mirror. That reminded me of the bad taste I left the bathroom with every morning. That taste in my mouth that never seemed to go away after I brushed my teeth staring into that giant, dorm, bathroom mirror surrounded by florescent lighting. I know now that she was preparing me, kind of the way doctors get a person's body ready for an organ transplant so that the body doesn't reject the new organ. When I was at the point of wanting nothing else, but fearing to ask for it, she invited me along. In this way it could never be said that I was forced into anything I didn't ask for. I was growing increasingly restless watching the television in complete boredom as Jason would leave me in my room alone and go out with the guys, supposedly. I was still completely and foolishly devoted to him. Then the phone rang. It was a sound completely foreign to me at that point and almost scared me as I picked up the receiver. It was Lizzi and she asked me to join a small group that she was leading into town that night. Leaving my high school prom pictures behind in a pile on the floor and Jason's class ring with them I headed out the door to meet Lizzi and the others who were gathered in her room and waiting to leave. There were close to ten people including Lizzi, Jane, Kate, and I. Mike, Lizzi's ex who I found completely intriguing, never came around anymore after he found out about Jane and Lizzi. I have to admit I was a little disappointed about that. We ended up in a bar that I had heard of as the place to go for underage drinking. The bar tender didn't ask and I didn't say as he handed me a drink without looking at my I.D. and I went over to join the rest of the group at a round table in a corner in the back. Even through the thick smoke I could see that Lizzi and Jane were all over each other. But, no one among us, except me, noticed. Kate sat down next to me and sidled up fairly close. I was always a touchy person and people picked on me about how adverse I was to physical contact so I didn't say anything about Kate's proximity, thinking that it was probably normal for her, and after I finished my third beer her hand on my knee didn't bother me at all. The rest of the people with us were distributed evenly among different tables and there was this strange pale, dark haired boy who was continually staring at Lizzi and Lizzi would stare right back. She would even watch him while she was necking with Jane and he seemed quite amused by that. But, Lizzi never answered any questions about him that I asked, then, and no one else seemed to care. We spent most of our time there in a state of general amusement and seated across from a small group of guys who didn't come with us and didn't know us and were more or less frightened by the blatant lesbianism. The rest of the time we spent listening to the bad poetry being spewed from a small stage off in an abyss of the room. We joked and laughed and left the bar quite blasted, tripping down the road and ended up in the park three blocks from our dorm and on the swing set. The motion of the swings was quite dizzying under the effects of alcohol. But I think that the fresh night air helped to combat the nausea which should have set in. The rest of the group had dispersed and I was left with Lizzi, Jane and Kate. Kate and I watched Lizzi and Jane in the moonlight and I wondered what it was like to kiss a woman. I'd never thought about it before and maybe it was the beer, but I asked and then found out. Sam, I sit here carefully reading words from my page, but all I can see in the letters is the concerned frown passing over your face that I've come to know quite intimately in the few times I have seen you since I left home. You said once that you trusted me more than anyone else in our family. You have to believe in me now. Kate's lips were a lot softer than Jason's and they tasted sweet. I think she'd been drinking wine that night. I could smell her hair and I touched it. It was soft and she didn't have a mustache to work my way through scratching my face, and her hands were smooth. After it happened we all stood silent for a while and the others waited to see how I would react. But, I didn't really react at all. I sort of treated it with a "matter of fact" manner and a "so that's what it's like" air. They went back to swinging and laughing and joking, though Lizzi was the only one who's voice didn't seem to hold the taught air that the rest of us tried so hard to hide, and no one said another word about it until weeks later. It was like a hidden secret that we all shared but weren't sure we wanted to admit to. I think they acted that way because they were afraid of how I would handle it and I know that I acted that way because I was afraid of how I'd handle it. That was the strangest night I'd ever had. For the first time ever I got truly wasted and then I kissed Kate or Kate kissed me. I'm still not sure of the exact physics of the first kissed. But, when I finally got up the nerve to deal with it and said something about it one night, it happened again and that time I know I didn't mind and maybe even liked it. That night was the first time I actually came to grips with my views and feelings on the matter. Nothing ever went any farther between Kate and me. I don't think I wanted it to. I had reached the conclusions I needed from the experience and I was never really attracted to Kate anyway. My new found insight and revelation that year took up a lot of my time and then all of a sudden it was summer and the group hugged and said good bye and made plans, if sketchy, for the next semester and summer correspondence. But, I never wrote any letters and none were written to me and I went back to my own boring normality over the summer. It pleased my parents that college hadn't changed me too much, but they never paid that much attention to my behavior anyway, as long as I stayed out of trouble. I started to feel quite depressed that it had all ended just as I started to get involved. I had felt like I was understood and accepted. I wondered if things would go back to what they were when we all got back together come the beginning of the next semester. But, found myself feeling doubtful and contemplating trying to get into a sorority if it didn't work out with Lizzi, Jane, and Kate or giving up entirely. You see, Sam, there was something more to it all then just being friends. Jason didn't understand at all. He hated them. Jason and I were fine all summer and if I had never gone back to school or if the others hadn't been there when I got there I know that things would have stayed the same and I never would have had the courage to get out. I would be married now with three kids and a dog and coming to visit Mom every Sunday for dinner. Come the beginning of my sophomore year when I moved into the dorm the first person to knock on my door was Kate. She brought her usual entourage plus one. Some new guy she was dating. I was happy for her even if a little jealous and I let the past slip silently out of my mind. I felt like a huge weight was gone. I was back and everything was virtually the same except that Lizzi was depressed over her summer adventures. Lizzi hadn't gone home that summer like the rest of us had. She moved in with Mike and ended up back in an intimate relationship with him that they both had said would never happen again. A previous boyfriend of Lizzi's had also surfaced that summer and ended up killing himself before the end of the first month he was around, because he found out about Mike. It all sounded to me like a bad rerun soap. But, the weirdest part about all of it was that Lizzi felt responsible for the second guy's death and Mike's depression when she pushed him away again intent on returning to Jane come the beginning of the year. Lizzi didn't want to lose Mike's friendship over the entire affair and so now she wanted me to start dating Mike so that he would have a girlfriend and she wouldn't never see him again because I was her friend and always around. At first I found Lizzi's logic rather twisted and selfish. But, this was Mike and I couldn't help but like him. He was "a good looking, fun guy who wasn't after a commitment but wanted someone around on an intimate level," (personal ad would read). That seemed to be the exact relationship I was looking for. But, you can guess how awkward the entire affair would be if we actually did anything and at first we didn't. That was where my next great moral dilemma occurred. Start dating Mike, have a fling with no real meaning behind it and sex for the first time in months, I had stopped sleeping with Jason out of resentment or revenge or something, or don't go out with Mike and leave Lizzi depressed and Mike depressed. Besides that I was still around Jason and regardless of how the situation was set up he believed that we were together or would eventually be back together and would start trouble with anyone who seemed to be getting close to me. But, I was bored in that relationship. It was solid and had an air of marriage about it, if I allowed him to stay around. Then again I wanted to be out of it and no one in Lizzi's company who knew what was going on saw any moral problems with going out with Mike and not telling Jason. In the end I found out that it was exceptionally easy to pull off and Jason never knew what was happening. He was continually going out with his friends and I, in turn, would go out with mine. I had given up my virginity to Jason the summer before that semester and Lizzi was glad for that. She seemed to believe that a virgin was a waste of a good body. Not that I share her belief. But, I do think that virginity is only a state of mind in life and not necessarily any state of the body itself. In essence I had decided that I was looking forward to getting involved with Mike. In fact I wanted very much to be with him. The first time I got exceptionally intimate with Mike though, all I could think about was what he may or may not have done with Lizzi, and my mind, reeling of the possibilities forced me to stop headlong and leave the apartment. I found myself back in bed with Jason and then felt bad about going from one guy to the other. Besides the problem that because I had slept with him, Jason decided that there was still a chance for us. Finally I convinced Jason that we needed to see other people, period. Then I didn't feel so bad about going out with Mike. But, I still couldn't give Mike everything he wanted, or I wanted, without wondering about Lizzi. Lizzi had grown quite fond of talking with me and since I was dating Mike she was always asking me how he was. She cared a great deal about him as a good friend. But, she was adamant about never getting involved with him again. Finally one night I couldn't take it any longer and I asked her what, exactly was between them when they were together. Lizzi didn't say much about what they had done but she confided that it meant more to Mike than to her and convinced me that I was acting like an idiot and sometimes a person has to be impetuous. Next thing I knew I was in bed with Mike and this time I didn't run out. Sam, as I reread the pages I know that after that night with Mike I wasn't going back to the person I was before that and I was glad. This was it. The deciding factor. No matter how much or how little the relationship with Mike or with Lizzi meant to them they had no idea what it meant to me. I know that Mike was just using me as a vehicle to get over Lizzi. But, reciprocity as it is, I was only using him to break away from home and Jason. Mike was a memorable lover. He was different. Mike held and caressed me and didn't worry about my thinking he was strange if he did something he thought I'd like. Jason had been afraid of experimentation. With Mike I felt alive and free and totally out of control, not only in bed but in general. It was one of the greatest feelings of my life and exceptionally addictive. The relationship with Mike didn't last very long, sexually. Although even after we stopped having sex on a regular basis every once and a while it just happened. But, through everything our relationship became one of the strongest friendships that I had during college. Because of the things that we had in common, like the writing we both did and many of our views about human compulsions, we just seemed to connect and understand each other. It had always been hard for me to open up to people and trust them, but I found it all very easy with Mike and to this day I wonder where he is and what he's doing and miss the times we spent talking. The Meaning of Lizzie The thing I remember most about that relationship was thinking that if every person could have something so open and honest then there probably wouldn't be so much jealousy and petty misunderstandings when it comes down to marriage and affairs. I found that there is a big difference between lust and love and friendship and marriage. It was through Mike that I got to know Lizzi the best that I could. She was manipulative and plotting. But, not usually for her own benefit. She was intelligent to the point of eccentricity and at times very flamboyant. She was manic depressant to an extreme and masochistic at times. But, most people never knew that about Lizzi. Most people never knew Lizzi. When I first met her I had envied her. It wasn't until our junior year that I realized how misplaced that feeling had been. I came to understand Lizzi through more of her mistakes than anything else. When I say mistakes I mean the way she would accidentally let her guard down around some people. It was always up in full force around me, but we would go out and she would see a friend on the street and they would talk and something would be dropped out of context or I would talk to someone about her. Notes compared and true feelings shown, most people were confused by her and I think she wanted it that way. She had a life that every college student wants. Her parents paid for her education and wanted nothing in return. She was never expected home at Christmas, her friends all loved her, and she had no apparent enemies. She was an art major and spent all of her time drawing and writing and hanging out in coffeehouses with the alternative crowd that a person either likes or hates, but is never indifferent to. She had no job and didn't care. You know, I never really believed all that shit about a person needing their friends and family to come down on them once in a while for a person to know that they care. I only met Lizzi's parents once. I don't know enough about them to make judgments. But, I never once yelled at her when she tried to burn her name into the soft white underside of her left arm or added another tattoo to her extensive collection and when she pierced her nose with the straight pin, everyone smiled and said that it looked great on her and it was just another thing that made Lizzi, Lizzi. Her mom was just like her. They even looked alike. They both had that calm air of patience that made Lizzi stand out at school and was one of her most defining qualities. I could tell that Lizzi's mom was thoughtful and cared a great deal for Lizzi. But, her step-father, tremendous asshole that he was, was probably the reason Lizzi never went home. I was never close to Lizzi until the night that I was at her house, I had gone with her to pick up some things that she needed, we had a long talk and I realized a great deal. Lizzi was far more normal than I gave her credit for. She was just normal in a different way, in a way that started to make more sense to me than the normal that my family expected or the normal that Jason tried to enforce upon me. Lizzi missed her real father, who died when she was young, she admired and hated her mother, she fought with her siblings. She wanted to be an artist. She wanted the same things that everyone wants, just a little differently. There was a rain storm that night and I watched quite amused as Lizzi proceeded to strip naked and run out into the middle of a field that was far enough from her house that no one could see and yet close enough that if we wanted to not get wet we could have run inside before the rain started. Thunder cracked, lightning streaked the black fog sky and criss-crossed clouds above us as the rain started to fall. It poured from the clouds and I watched Lizzi jump around, clapping her hands and singing strange things into the sky. She told me later that she was trying to call down the lightning. Sam, I figured out that night that the reason people are so drawn to her is her willingness to accept them and her strength to go after what she wants in the way she wants and not the way society says is right. I can just picture her headed down the middle of a one way street the wrong way, balancing along the center line and barely being missed by the cars that speed past on either side. The true effect of Lizzi on me was finally realized by my family when I went to the Christmas party in all green including my lipstick and nail polish as well as hair. I had a brand new silver nose ring with a cheery, Christmas bell dangling from it and I wore a tee shirt that read "Salvation Army Sale 1984". My mother was "mortified" by this and Jason refused to be seen in public with me. I showed my new colors by being mortified right back at the completely "close minded" way they were treating me and no matter what I looked like I was still me. (Not that it was especially true.) Then I went out and got a tattoo of a spiraling red dragon on my right shoulder. They were mortified again and I went back to school with a chip on my shoulder, just above the dragon, and hating them all, wishing they were more like Lizzi's family, who had called once over Christmas and then went back to normal, so to speak. One night not long after Christmas and everyone was back in school we skipped the border to Canada where it was legal for all of us to drink. Mike was 23 but Lizzi, Kate, Jane, and I were all 20 so we figured we'd go somewhere we wouldn't get in trouble for it. Lizzi had talked Mike, who was the only one we knew with a car, into taking us there and he wasn't thrilled to be along. Lizzi and Jane had been apart for quite a while and they decided that night to start dating again. Mike wasn't too happy about watching them hang on each other so he conned me into going for a ride around town while Lizzi and Jane cooled off and Kate stayed with them to make sure that they didn't get into any trouble. Kate being the sensible one of the group. Lizzi and Jane were both drunk and high and weren't exactly using the best sense when it came to who they should talk to and what they should take off. I drove and Mike hung out the window screaming and waking up everyone in the neighborhood. The cops pulled us over and Mike talked them into letting us go with a warning. Then we drove out to nowhere and upon realizing that we were lost and didn't know how to get back we pulled off the road and cleared our heads and took off our clothes and laid down in the cold of an open field just off the road. Mike tended to want to be with me the most when he was the maddest at Lizzi. I ignored that. By the time we got back Lizzi was topless and dancing on a table being egged on by some drunk strangers and Jane was passed out on the floor. Mike hadn't had anything to drink and I was perfectly sober but Kate was buzzing pretty good and all Mike and I could do was wait for Lizzi to get down while Kate babbled on about us being unfair and how beautiful Lizzi was up there. That was one of the few times she ever let her true feelings for Lizzi come out. When we finally left Mike was pissed and refused to drive us all back to the dorm so we ended up staying at his place. Personally, I didn't see how our staying there made him feel better. But, I wasn't going to argue. Lizzi passed out on the couch, Kate was watching television all night with a strange look of complete emptiness on her face and Jane was so far gone we considered calling the hospital. But, we didn't. I slept with Mike. Kate suggested that I stay in the living room with others but I wasn't going to sleep on the floor. Mike and I were both tired but we stayed up most of the night talking about Lizzi. Our conversations always tended to turn toward her. She said that she wanted to die and that if she did she wanted us to promise to get her work put up in a museum. She had said it on the way home that night. It was one of the things that upset Mike. He still loved her. I always knew he'd never give her up completely. I tried to convince her that her stuff would get more publicity if she established herself and then committed suicide. But, I was only joking. Mike knew that I was only joking. She nodded her head contemplatively and then collapsed in the back seat. Lizzi and I had a conversation several nights later on the way that we would like to die. She believed that her death would come over a long period of time. She would grow ill and unable to think and slowly waste away. I decided that if I were able to choose the way I'd die it would be quick and dramatic. I had contemplated suicide on several occasions that year, but in the end decided to save my death for when my work had finally been published and respected and just before I lost my audience or for when my work was looked down upon to the point that the only way to get it published would be after my death. Lizzi laughed. I smiled. We kept that conversation to ourselves. The year passed rather quickly and soon it was spring. The school year had been prosperous in the fact that I was no longer shocked by Lizzi or Kate. Jane had decided that she needed to fill other appetites that Lizzi could no longer feed and we didn't see her much toward the end. Lizzi started to date some tall guy with dark hair, I never knew his name. But, I remember him being very vampiresque. He seemed to me to be the same boy that I had seen Lizzi with off and on that year. She was probably dating him for quite a while and didn't tell anybody. Lizzi was a careful guard of her secrets. With summer upon us again and the talk of home coming up just as it had the year before. Lizzi and I decided not to go home. Lizzi wouldn't have gone anyway, but the addition of myself to her exclusive list of friends that she was willing to allow to join her on her adventures pleased me. I agreed to go trekking with her and as soon as my last class final was finished we headed out. Sam, that was when all of the phone calls home stopped. I think that I saw myself as saving all of you from the pain of trying to understand me when I believed that you couldn't. I was far too different from the person that everyone believed me to be and I didn't think that you could accept that or that I could accept you not accepting. This decision meant the easiest thing was for me to disappear and I did for that summer. We spent a lot of time on buses sitting next to people that ranged from the dirty, rag top, bum with no teeth and a sign, that read "Jesus loves us all", taped to his back to the little old lady with the white hat and her handbag full of guns that she showed me and told me that I should get a gun too, because everyone needs to protect himself. We stayed in different houses with various friends that Lizzi had made with the intent of taking advantage of their hospitality when she decided to make her great road trip. I met a number of people who considered me boring and not at all worth Lizzi's time. But, they put up with my presence and I saved my most interesting views for late discussions with Lizzi. I also met a number of people who were quite impressed with me, if not sure how to handle me. We cruised through Arizona in May with some friends of Lizzi's who were in a university there. They were all botany majors and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the different uses for common weeds that most people break their backs trying to dig out of their gardens. We were in Florida and Wyoming and every state in between at different times during June. At one point I was dating a girl named Beth, who believed that the human brain thrived on blood and oxygen, not that it isn't true. But she spent a great deal of time standing on her head and reciting facts believing that the practice would make her more intelligent. When I left her she was yet to have proved her theory. On another occasion became quite intimate with a man named Derrick, who was a ranch hand at a place where they raised ostriches. Derrick traveled with us for quite a while and we ended up in Utah and went to visit some of his friends there. We went to a back street book store that had every odd book from the beginning of books and on through to the latest edition of "On the Road". The store had this room where some locals were sitting around smoking pot and discussing the meaning of life. I didn't think that anyone would ever believe that though, far too cliché. We were in Ohio for all of August. But, I didn't want to deal with family. We stayed with Mike. He didn't appreciate our intrusion on his life. But, he let us stay. Sam, I called home just before school started because if I wanted to remain in school I had to call home. I told Mom that it was because I missed everyone and was sorry for the summer. I didn't say that I had lived better that summer than any summer before and was glad that I went. I had no money and no job. There were a lot of things said during that call I wish I could take back. But, that's not going to happen. My senior year toned down my extremes and I wasn't frightening my parents any longer. Mike graduated and I haven't seen him since. I started getting things published and the little bit of money I was getting from that combined with the money from odd jobs made me less dependant on home and I stopped calling again. I paid all of my bills myself. Got a lousy apartment and stopped socializing altogether. I became obsessive about writing. I didn't talk to anyone. I found myself losing weight for not eating, working, sleeping and writing. But, mostly writing. Lizzi stopped by one night with that guy she had been hiding all of the year before. He seemed half trashed and was probably her favorite conquest on the road of men that she was traveling that day. I wasn't thrilled to see them. I was in the middle of revising a story that was giving me some problems. But, I decided to take a break. We sat around talking about nothing until Lizzi asked to see my latest piece. Making several excuses for it I handed it over. Actually I was glad to get another opinion on it. Lizzi's word had always carried a fair amount of weight in my mind. I even let the drunk guy read it. Lizzi just smiled and said it was missing something. I already knew that. I told her that I thought I should get out more often. My stuff was always better when the characters were based on real people. My imagination never seemed to work in three dimensions anymore. Lizzi said that I was one of the better writers she had ever met and told me that I had everything I needed to write the character, myself. She said that real people are too boring to be characters and that they are only spin off points of light that lead to the interesting people we make them in our minds. The drunk guy just said that it was the greatest thing he ever read, asked for an autographed copy, and then vomited over the side of the couch. I considered calling home as I wallowed in my writers block. But, the tension that the line carried every time I even considered a call home was like instant repellant and I would stop even answering the phone when it rang for fear it would be someone from home. I was convinced that if I talked to any of them I would go back to what I had been before Lizzi and that scared the shit out of me. So, I kept as far from the phone and home as possible. I think that everyone at home knew when I graduated. If they came to the ceremony and didn't see me it was because I had my diploma mailed to me. I didn't want to take the chance of getting into an argument that would result in total emotional decay. I think I would have liked to have seen you there though, Sam. I got a phone call last month from Kate. It only lasted a few minutes before we were cut off. Apparently, she was in Spain when she found out that Lizzi was dead. I didn't get a chance to ask how it happened. I never heard about a funeral or who was there or how Kate took the death. I planned a trip to Spain to try and find Kate. But, I realized at the last minute that I wasn't going looking for Kate. I was looking for myself. I died a little bit with Lizzi. As long as she was out there being crazy there was a piece of me that was out there with her. I hope she died well. I've decided to buy one of the reprints of a picture Lizzi painted from the museum downtown, the one with the huge distortion of a penis in the middle. The male anatomy was always one of her favorite subjects. I don't know if it's really hers. I suppose that there may be another artists out there named Lizzi. But, that, in itself, really doesn't matter. Sam, I know that Mom knows where I am. I've decided that it's time to move on again. But, I want you to tell her one thing, if nothing else, from this letter. I recently had a book published. I'm doing well on my writing now. The book is titled, The Meaning of Lizzi, and is published under the pen name Adrian Reed. But, I couldn't bring myself to use the person as the character. Lizzi may have seen herself as a spin off. But I don't think that a character could have been as unique as the person. The character simply received her name. I hope that it lives up to its name sake.