E1: Proof of Concept; S5: It's ALIVE (and fixed)!

Welcome to the dot matrix printer of the soul. This is a record of what happens when you’re an openly gay student body president in 1987, the world thinks you deserve to die because of the AIDS crisis, and your only way out is to turn survival into a high-stakes performance art.This is an extemporaneous thinking process about a life that was "complicated enough," featuring a suite of coping mechanisms that range from the meticulous to the flat-out unruly. Prepare yourself for a narrative tapestry with no edges, woven by a Gen X latchkey kid who learned early that necessity is the mother of premeditated deception.Inside this "thing," you will find:The Art of the Forgery: Learn how to throw a "perfectly shaped pebble of absences" across a school year using a forged signature card intercepted from the mail. If you’re going to commit felony forgery, you might as well use it to skip class and get your ears pierced with a potato and a pint of alcohol.The Silence of the Answering Machine: Witness the daily sprint to delete anonymous death threats from the family’s dual-cassette recorder before the parents get home—because protecting them from your own mortality is just another item on the priority list.Intellectual Escapism: When the world gets too heavy, become an autodidact through and through. Dive into 20-hour reading benders until your eyes go fuzzy, writing down every word you don't know, and spiraling into Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, Kierkegaard, and the existential dread of Planck time.Institutional Inconvenience: See what happens when a "disrespectful young man" organizes a symposium on homophobia and leads the "No on 64" campaign while his personal life is in a "nosedive" involving roommates with knives.The Power of No Contact: Experience the "glare" of a father who works in the defense industry and the radical decision to never speak to him again—even while sitting in the same room—because sometimes silence is the only shield against "shoveled shit".This is a "fixed and alive" exploration of geometric points, 1970s Cadillacs, and the "intense glue" of a mind that, once applied, can never be pulled away. It’s not a lecture; it’s a proof of concept for staying sane in a universe that doesn't have a beginning or an end.Drop in. Don't worry about the form. Just try to keep the paper from filling the room.