I wanted to write about something traumatic that happened to me because, apparently, traumatic experiences and how to deal with them is a pretty big fandango in this class. Something just happened, though, so I want to write about that and see where it takes me in the next nineteen minutes or so. The computer assistant in the theatre department (where I am right now, being a theatre major and all) just complimented me on my hat, a black fedora I bought in Greenwich Village about a year and a half ago. I was visiting for about a week over spring break and auditioning for the elusive Experimental Theatre wing of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. After a fairly successful audition I concentrated all of my efforts of exploring, something I had done about seven or eight months earlier the first time I visited. This time I was alone, though. The time before I had my brother, eighteen months my junior and my closest friend, at my side and all was well. This time I had to w2ait a couple of days for his arrival, since he couldn't get off school and I could, being a senior and having a few excused absence "college days" on my hands. So I set out to explore and found a bar in the mob district of Little Italy that didn't ID and I found myself drunkenly wandering the streets of New York, stumbling upon Strawberry Fields in a haze and not realizing the significance until about a week later. After three days of being lost in my drugged little haze my brother joined me. When I picked him up at the airport I noticed that I had taken to thinking of myself as a New Yorker. I had adopted the city and there was a definite change in the way my brother and I related to each other. This changed over the next four days, though, as he assimilated into New York the way I had and we set out to Little Italy to begin our evenings with a little pasta, a Nat King Cole impersonator, a jug of white wine every night, and a restaurant owned by the mob.  After taking in as much of the culture and the underbelly of the city we found ourselves down to our last (having just dropped twenty bucks on some Thai food that smelled like sewer filth). It was our second to last day in the city and we decided to thrift store shop and try to extend our dollars as far as they would go. Then we saw them. In a small shop in the Village (not that there aren't a billion of them) we both saw fedoras that just said "you". We ended up dropping our last fifty dollars on our new hats and had to pay for our ride to the airport ( a limo, surprisingly cheaper than a taxi because it had a set fare) with a handful of quarters. We hadn't eaten for two days and there wasn't a meal of any kind on the plane (not even peanuts) so we wound up in Houston on a two hour layover with nothing to do, empty stomachs, and no money. I ended up begging, trying to sell a stack of demo tapes I had cut for two bucks a pop. I ended up selling two, and we ate the best Taco Bell that has ever been eaten by a human. I remember that the only people who bought the tapes were other musicians. Maybe it's a karma thing ("Wow, that guy looks pathetic. Better buy his tape because that could be me someday. ")  One way or the other they understood. I was upset just because my plan was to randomly hand out this stack of tapes to people as they departed for different corners of the country, hoping that they would like it and that underground distribution would abound. Maybe it worked: I still don't know. I know it was passed around quite a bit in south Texas, but not much further than that. Oh, well. By the by, I'm really tired right now because my band played a two hour show last night. We haven't played that long in about a year, since clubs usually limit you to an hour or less. We used to go two hours without even trying when we were playing for our friend's parties, but now we've gotten lazy. Last night really woke us up. I was so drenched in sweat that I actually had to wring out my shirt after the show. We didn't even get a decent crowd until the last thirty minutes or so. That's ok. Better things will come along soon enough. We play every Thursday at Black Cat, which has no cover and is all ages. For some reason, this alone does not attract a crowd. It's really upsetting. I know we're not a bad band, so it's really frustrating when you can't talk people out of disco dancing at Bob Popular to enjoy a free show that accepts all ages and doesn't involve a DJ. Someday. About that traumatic experience. About five months ago I was hit by a car while I was crossing the street into Trudy's off Guadalupe. It was late and I was wearing all black and the guy didn't see me. I was looking the other way because I saw the car that hit me but he seemed too far away to reach me. I was more concerned about cars coming from the other direction, which is a curving road that is hard to see down. When he hit me his fender shattered my leg and I was thrown onto his windshield. He didn't brake until then and the force of him braking as I hit the windshield sent me flying into the road about twenty feet out. I never lost consciousness and never really felt all that dazed or affected by it. I just calmly looked up, announced that my "fucking leg was broken" and asked one of my friends to call 911. Then I just lay down in the road waiting for the ambulance. It started to rain. That night I was taken to Brackenridge and left alone for about an hour at a time in the ER. Only one of my friends cam to visit me. She held my hand while they pieced my leg back together and set it into a cast. They had already pumped me with morphine and I heard them mumble about amputation a time or two, but eventually they settled on inserting a rod from my knee to my ankle. The morphine did nothing to me, though, because they gave it in light doses and after years of recreational drug use I wasn't really affected. That and the pain was coming from the one part of my body where intravenous drugs couldn't possibly go. I ended up just biting down on a folded-up blanket, not wanted my screams to disturb others in the ER. Over the next three days I was observed and recovered quicker than anyone imagined. My family came to be with me from San Antonio, except for my dad who was in Orlando on business. He wanted to rush to Austin to be with me but I didn't want him to see me tied up to machines and weak. I knew he couldn't handle it. After about a half hour of coaxing he stayed in Orlando. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol in twenty years after getting a kidney removed before I was born. That night he drank himself into submission. Slowly my friends from the theatre department began creeping in until I had a steady stream of visitors and a room full of flowers, candy, and porn (don't ask). The faculty came to make sure that I was alright, something I never would've expected, and one night my nurse ( a Mary Poppins sort of woman) turned my bed so that I could see the tower lit up in orange. I've never had school spirit or pride in any organization whatsoever, but for some reason I cried. For some reason I loved the sight of the tower at that moment. I've recovered completely. I was angry for a while and spent a lot of time screaming and damning anyone who could walk while I made my way around in a wheelchair. I marveled at the fact that, even when I was on crutches, nice families at the Arboretum would still pull their children closer and hold their purses tighter. I began to keep a journal, but by the time I had written five entries my anger was gone. My depression was gone. I couldn't even dwell of death, which I know I had cheated. I was just glad to be alive and to put it all behind me. Now I'm physically and emotionally recovered. I don't have nightmares and I don't fear cars. I don't know why. Maybe I'll learn that this semester. For some reason I recovered very nicely in all aspects from this whole awful little episode.  The good thing is that I'm happy and sober now. I had attempted suicide twice this past year, once just two weeks before the accident. Then I was put in a situation where I didn't try and death actually came for me, and I fought to stay alive. That's always struck me as odd. Oh well. For whatever reason I am a happier, if quieter person. Things are good. I'm looking forward to psychological experiments this year. Now I'm off. I've written for about thirty minutes and I think it's time for a cigarette. Bye bye now.   

Big Five personality labels — Extraversion: n, Neuroticism: n, Agreeableness: n, Conscientiousness: y, Openness: y