Apparently we had two birthday parties to celebrate Ashleigh’s first year of life around her actual birthday March 21. I’m not sure why, especially since photos indicate that they both were at my house. In fact, it wouldn’t suprise me in the least to learn that Ashleigh had had yet another party thrown for her at Joy’s where she and Christi were living. Ashleigh had been walking and forming intelligible words for about a month and was blossoming into quite the adorable kid. Although I tried to see her as much as possible, it grew increasingly difficult with the events that were unfolding throughout the Spring of 1991.
Ashleigh and cake #1
Denise, Christi, and I gather around and wait for Ashleigh to dig in to the other cake
Ashleigh’s first birthday was certainly the high point of the year so far. Work as a bagger at the Beavercreek Kroger was dull and unchallenging. I had no real friends to speak of since all of my time was consumed by Christi, Ashleigh, work, and school. My high school friends had mostly moved away. My friend Kyer Phillips who I had re-connected with during my first quarter had virtually disappeared. And I had yet to become good friends with many of my workmates, although I sometimes went over to Jon Petering’s house to watch football. There were a few former friends from high school that I saw now and again around campus. These included Nicole Perez, Mark Harris, Steve Johnson, Dave Graeter, and Eric Bagdonis. Matt Bohlander and I still hung out on occasion too, but other than that, most of my real partying days were still ahead of me.
The relationship between Christi and I, which had faltered the previous Fall and then resumed with my proposal and engagement to her, began to suffer once again. Her cousin Jennifer who was living with their family, had begun dating a new boyfriend named Seakay. He had gone to school with me and had been a friend of my friend Jeff Flinn. The previous boyfriend Jennifer had (a fool named Matt) was friends with Christi’s ex-boyfriend Jason. Now this initial band of losers had disappeared and a new regime was taking their place. Of course, it wasn’t simply a matter of Seakay dating Jennifer; he had to bring all of his friends along as well when he would visit Christi’s house to see her.
This meant that new characters named Jeff (not Flinn) and Steve would be hanging around - and Jeff would quickly develop a fixation on Christi, trying to get her interested in him, giving her flowers, and doing everything possible to get under my skin. My temper was at an all-time high at that point so I responded with anger and hostility, constantly challenging him to fight…and destroying the flowers and throwing them in the garbage! Remarkably, Christi and I would survive the first half of the year before it would all blow up.
As for school, I was heading nowhere fast, with no clue as to what subject I wanted to major in, and going through the motions of general education at Wright State taking classes that I can scarcely remember. The courses that I had during the Spring quarter were: Cultural Studies (B - 3 credit hours), Freshman Composition (A - 4 credit hours), History of the Western World (B - 3 credit hours), Regional Studies: Japan (C - 3 credit hours), and Film Appreciation (A - 4 credit hours).
It was amazing that I got as good of grades as I did, with my disinterest and continued lack of studying. I took the Japan class because I liked the rock band Loudness, who hailed from Japan. Unfortunately, this interest didn’t translate to anything remotely interesting in the class. The one class that I remember well was the Film Appreciation class taught by Dr. Chas. Derry - and this is no surprise since the love of movies was right up my alley.
Our teacher had Tourettes syndrome and kept blowing on his pinkie - but never mind that. I can even recall most of the feature films that we watched (with a huge emphasis on my favorite director Alfred Hitchcock): Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Citizen Kane, The Searchers, and The Times of Harvey Milk. In addition, we did our final reports on the Hitchcock film Marnie - which I already knew like the back of my hand.
But by far, the most unusual thing to come out of this class was one of the guys that I met in it. There was one day that I brought in my autograph collection of Hitchcock stars in order to impress our teacher. One of the guys who I showed it to approached me after the class and asked me if I would help him out by appearing in a movie he was shooting for one of his classes. His name was Keith. Knowing my interest in film, he thought I might be a ringer - and besides I had the look of a troubled youth that he was looking for. I responded that yeah, I had done some acting before and would be glad to help. Worst mistake of my life - but the consequences wouldn’t come until nearly two years later.
The film was simply a two-minute Super 8 film assignment, which merely showed a guy (played by me) sitting in the woods drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette, and looking through a kaleidoscope. The image than cuts to the guys viewpoint of the kaleidoscope when suddenly a clown’s head appears inside of it. The next shot shows the guy presumedly dead. That’s it.
Of course, it made no sense - but was obviously an early project in film production values and the like. Keith picked me up and we drove to a woods somewhere. Not wanting to contribute to the delinquency of someone who wasn’t yet twenty-one, we substituted root beer for actual beer. I thought that if I suggested that the character was smoking, I could get a free pack of cigarettes. Never did I consider that this guy might be a lunatic looking to hack me up once we got in the woods - and fortunately that didn’t happen. But he was a lunatic.
Here are an odd series of ‘production’ photos that he was requred to take for the assignment that he later gave to me. For the record, I hate all of them except for the first shot, which came out kind of nice. He also gave me the finished copy of the film - which I later destroyed.
1991 will continue…
More photos from Ashleigh’s first birthday were finally located…and displayed here
Although I know you’ve mentioned them here before, (your “The Big Seven” entry), I have to say, it is awfully nice to know of someone else who liked the Japanese band Loudness. Back in the day, I thought that “Thunder in the East” was a great album, but I haven’t heard it in many years. “Rock and Roll Crazy Nights” is the only song I can remember.
Peter
January 6th, 2008