The Advocate

The Story of the Advocate 1982 was so multifaceted.

There was another situation, the story of the Managing Editor.

This will be brief.

Again, about the Elections.

She was Managing Editor in 1982, what was she going to do in 1983, as a Senior?

She didn’t say anything to me about wanting to be President.

Typically, the President is a Prose or Poetry Board Member. She was an Art Board Member.

She came from a famous family of old New England Publishers.

There was a broken line of communication.

There was a tense moment when she announced at the last minute that she wanted to run.

The only thing that came out right was the President and the Poetry Board election went peacefully. The Prose Editor postponed her election until the following day until civility was restored.

So, It wasn’t all bad.

But the Managing Editor wanted a good role and I asked her to be the Publisher. Which was traditionally a shit job. But there was no other open position. She agreed. Which meant the person targeting that position had to step down to Business Board Head. I wasn’t aware of the Art Board Election. They were responsible for making fun of me by putting pictures of pigs on the cover of the magazine and the like. Which I didn’t get until years later.

I was responsible for swallowing all the shit of the outgoing board who had loused everything up in a dying, beloved institution so that they didn’t have to. And then going home and 86ing myself. Everybody wanted it. So a certain person played it really vague how he left it with me and when I called him from Germantown when my son was 2 years old (I was calling absolutely EVERYBODY whom I had ever known)–that would have been 10 years later– he received the call as if we had kept in touch over the years which we had not. I called him several times. I got into serious trouble with this–calling up old friends and acquaintances at this time. I scared myself.

So then, when my son was 20, we moved up here from Florida. At the apartment in Easton it was pretty scary. I wrote a bad post about this person and even about his father, whom I had met. The post were blatantly rude, shockingly. I had been listening to a Christian song that said “Break with the ones you follow.” and I thought it was time to break off with my old friends and acquaintances with the Advocate. It just wasn’t a legitimate part of my life any more.

I so deeply regret this now. But I can’t do anything about who I was then and HOW I was then. If I could show the pictures of the apartment I was living in it would make a little more sense. It was absolutely terrifying there. There were a dozen bags of trash below the window which meant there were probably possums and rats. The windows were all breaking down around the edges. It was all covered over when I took a brief look. I was practically falling down when I signed the lease, I was so ill I just had to get into any apartment. I had been staying in cheap or extended stay motels for 2 months and I had intense bug phobia and I was afraid I was infecting the places I was staying and I was afraid to get a nice apartment for the same reason. There is a whole story to this that I don’t have the time to tell. I got out of ther after 4 of 5 months and into a clean and ordinary apartment in an apartment complex nearer to here where I live now with my father. My mother was also here.

So, that was my state of mind when I publicly defamed two adorable writers in the spring of 2013, father and son.

I am slowly getting better. It has taken time.

I do apologize.

And yes, I really did write suicide notes on toilet paper with pencil on two separate occasions.