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Back The Underminer Save as PDF
Chapters (21)
  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Bright Young Things campus of Clarkwell College, graduation in the town of Clarksville, somewhere upstate, 1990
  6. Cool Days open mike night at Kafka-fe, after band "2 Much" plays, 1991
  7. New on the Scene utside in front of Club Hush, for a film screening party of Kill Fee, 1993 o
  8. Single in the City at a French bistro, 1995
  9. Hangover brunch, the morning after, 1995
  10. Natural Health a chance meeting at Jasper’s Yoga Studio, 1996
  11. The Fat Flush ’90s in the foyer of a friend’s renovated brownstone, 1997
  12. Art Stars at Bonwyck Gallery, 1998
  13. Inner Odyssey the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, 1999
  14. Life After Death facedown in the dirt of the desert, next morning, 1999
  15. Loyal Companions catching up at the dog run, 2000 catching up at the dog run, 2000
  16. In the Real World a run-in at the ShopShape magazine launch party sponsored by Senor Strawberry Liqueur, early 2001
  17. Wartime spotted at Kinko's, late 2001
  18. Office Job in the cafeteria of the Conde Nast building, 2003
  19. Settling a yard sale on an obscure block in the outer borough, 2003
  20. Starting Over in a remote village tavern on the farmlands of New Zealand, 2004
  21. Epilogue a gathering of friends

This age of our lives. It's weird. I would have never predicted the fates of the Clarkwell College Cabal, you know? Now Tyler is barely around, he's traveling so much going to Biennials and Bienniales. And Sheila's amazing advertising and Internet empire. And Greta, finding solace in writing, developing a real voice. And Carl finally finding happiness. And Sam and me. How we all have all evolved, huh?

We have our careers or we have found love or we have found something like love in some other way, like a house or a pet (I'm so sorry to hear about Checkers by the way!) we've learned to face the facts about our lives, you know? Yeah, all those outsized ambitions have been shattered or realized. For all of us! No matter what! It's weird how we're all just settling down now. Or just settling.

It's just so sad to see people in life so . . . seedless. I mean not like you. You are doing your thing. But there are some people out there who are never satisfied with who they are? Who search and search? Who try to wipe away any feeling of "not having it all" with food, CDs, and self-help books? Who while away their time from meaningless job to meaningless job, fleeting thought to fleeting thought, implausible ideal to implausible ideal, love object to love object? Those people, who always seem to be single and short on cash? And they slightly look like they're going to cry all the time?

Oh wow what a beautiful mirror!

Aw . . . what's this? Your books . . . what are these all?

Keeping an Open Heart in Closed-Off Times, Reason for Hope, Visions of Utopia, Ruskin, Ginsberg, Patti Smith . . . It's good that you are finding inspiration. It reminds me of my Burning Man phase. It's good for parties.

No, it's good. All that '70s hippie idealism mixed with '90s knee-jerk activism. Those funny lies that our flaming liberal professors told us at Clarkwell. And we watched all of that devolve into dumb politically correct jargon and flaccid politics, right? As if sitting around singing "Kumbaya" and holding hands would ever change anything. Puh-leeze. I'd rather just go to the source—to the holy space my guru Sahatma Yoginanda trained me to find inside myself. And also I like to give three percent of my income to charities.

Aw, look at this—Free to Be You and Me. I remember that book. And Sesame Street! And an old hardcover of Where the Wild Things Are. Wow I can't believe you held on to this stuff.