And then of course there’s the high-energy music that they play. It is not loud, for they seek never to arouse the attention of Greg’s family. (Greg’s mother never encumbers them, instead leaving trays of vegetarian and vegan food out for the both, for which Nat is most grateful.) However, from what I can ascertain only the wrists and fingers receive the bulk of the exercise, strumming the strings and picking out chords and rudimentary melodies. Nat and Greg egg each other on within their insular world. Like retarded twins, they spend every evening tucked away in Greg’s bedroom poring over the history and present forms of their chosen subculture with the intensity of scholars or historians. Why, what is punk but a living fossil? They also swop notes on parasites. Greg is completing a project on this gruesome subject for school, with the emphasis on tapeworms.
Nat’s obsession with the macabre doesn’t wane. He doesn’t spend quite so much time in his unwholesome hidey holes which exist within the extremities of the Snoxell house, but he makes up for it with his perusal of morbid fiction and the study of the lore and facts which lie behind such works. He remains unmoved by Greg’s continued harassment of him with things political.
Nat took umbrage when I intimated a thought of mine, that there may be something of a sexual nature betwixt him and his companion. I should have known better. They are quintessentially puritans, however punkoid they perceive their leanings to be.
SUN SEP 21
Nat is being plagued by suicidal thoughts and desires. Some days he will say he is “fine” and refuse to discuss his doom-laden feelings at all. Eventually, however, they return and trouble him to such a degree that he has to share them with me. I still think that he has some “unfinished business”. But what to do about it? I cannot tell. I continue to press him to contact me regardless of the hour in which his depression falls, should he feel in danger of taking his life. He feebly agrees to do so but if it came to the crunch, I doubt that he would. Still, one cannot follow someone around for all of their life with a safety net. I suppose I could always give him drugs…
I informed Nat of my intention to remain in medicine. He smiled.
MON SEP 22
I had some rather bland dreams last night. The material was so normal and banal that I shan’t even bother to record it.