Chapter 12

Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry twelve: Planning for the future, and a visit to Davenport

At the end of the last week in January, I took a look at the semester schedule to make sure I was keeping track of all the tests and term papers that I had to finish over the next few months. I don’t know why it hit me so hard at that moment, but I realized there were only three months remaining in my senior year. Classes would end after the first week of May, and on top of that was the 10-day interruption of Spring Break. Only three months left, and then we’d all be done with high school.

That looming deadline, the graduation date that would end our lives as we currently knew them, still didn’t register with most of my classmates, and that included Yvonne. It seemed they were all still living for the moment. What was odd was that my parents weren’t much better. They rarely looked at any future beyond their next cruise. My dad was a little better about that when it came to his investments, but Mom was as oblivious about the future as any teenager.

The fact that everyone around me was so complacent made me all that more worried about my own future. Although I had started looking at universities around the US in the fall, I knew that by the end of January I had to be a lot more serious about making my final choices. I did not want to go to college locally: I wanted to get away and see some other part of the US. I finally settled on two universities: a big public university in Boulder, Colorado, and a mid-sized school in central California called Davenport State University.

From the beginning it was Davenport State University that really caught my attention. DSU was built right on the coast, just north of Santa Cruz. It was a mediocre college in an overpriced state, but what appealed to me was the fact it overlooked the Pacific Ocean. I had always wanted to live near the beach and going to DSU would certainly give me that chance. The campus seemed really pretty, from what I could see from DSU promotional materials and pictures from the Internet.

However, there was something odd that drew my attention to DSU in particular. The art department had a promotional poster that featured a smiling naked young model standing on a rock with the Pacific Ocean and the late afternoon sun in the background. Her hand was stretched upwards and the camera angle made it look like she was holding the sun. The poster’s slogan read: “Join us and set your creativity free! Begin your adventure at Art_DSU@mta.corp.” I later found out the model was actually a student at the university and worked for the Art Department.

I wasn’t planning to major in art, but the poster totally fascinated me. I know it sounds totally silly that a naked art model would capture my attention in the way that she did. At the moment, the promise of freedom she represented gave me hope that DSU really was a place where students could “set their creativity free.”

I decided that DSU would be the out-of-state college of my choice and that I’d visit it during Spring Break. The university would be expensive because it was in central California, but my parents had told me they’d pay for my education as long as I was enrolled full-time, had a major that was “serious”, and kept my grades up. “Serious” meant something science-based. No humanities major with the word “studies” attached to it.

The more I looked at DSU, the more I wanted to go there. They had a respected geology department, so I figured that would be as good a major as any. Geology was a practical field that didn’t go too deep into theoretical mathematical formulas, so it was a major I figured I could handle and wouldn’t stress me out too much. I proposed studying geology at DSU to my parents and their attitude was: “OK, let’s go check it out.”

My only doubt about going to DSU was what was going to happen between me and Yvonne. At the time I didn’t see that as much of a problem. I knew that Yvonne wanted to get away from her rotten situation in Eastwood. I figured that if I went to California, I could take her with me. I’d have to get an apartment instead of living on campus, but if my parents were willing to pay out-of-state tuition for me to study in California, paying for an apartment would be more of an after-thought than anything else.

I brought the idea up with Yvonne. As I expected, at first she was very skeptical.

“California? You’re shitting me. What the fuck am I gonna do in California?”

“What you’re doing now. Giving massages. So, what you’re telling me that people don’t need massages in California? Besides, there’s a professional massage school in Santa Cruz that gives out certifications. You could get an actual degree in what you’re doing. Think about that. No more jerking guys off or putting your finger up their asses. You’d have a real license and be legit.”

“I still ... I just don’t know about it. I mean, California?”