Posted on by Matt Thomas

My Time in Kumamoto Japan I: NOVA and Meeting Sachie

Note: This is the first entry in a new series about my time in Kumamoto, Japan between April of 1997 and December of 1998. What began as a recollection of a short, chaotic teaching stint but became an excavation of place, power, and early adult identity under surveillance. Set against the compressed social ecosystem of a small Japanese city in the late 1990s, the piece moves through NOVA’s glass-room culture, its porous rules, and the peculiar cast of lifers, bosses, and drifters who inhabited it. What emerges is not a complaint but a tonal study: of being watched, of improvising freedom within constraint, and of the quiet luck of finding something real—Sachie—amid a system that often felt artificial.

Epigraph:

Kim You Bore Me to Death

—Grandaddy

I arrived in Kumamoto in April of 1997 to teach English at NOVA, which at the time felt like a pretty wild thing to be doing. Kumamoto is not Tokyo. It’s a smaller city, slower, and NOVA was right at the north end of the Shotengai, basically downtown. Everyone knew everyone, or at least knew of them, which I didn’t fully understand yet.

What I also didn’t fully understand was that I would be living with one of my bosses.

Her name was Sam. She was about 35, from Wales, and she had this story she loved to tell—more like boast—that Donovan had written a song for her mother. I never quite figured out which one. She was in the apartment with me and another teacher, Heather, and she was there all the time. Not just physically there, but present. Observing. Asking. Not in a relaxed roommate way, but in a way that felt like she was always slightly checking something.

NOVA had a loose rule about no fraternization between students and teachers. Loose being the key word. It happened all the time. Another teacher, Cameron, told me a lot of the young women came to find a boyfriend. Whether that was true or not, relationships were constant. There was this big izakaya on the Shotengai where everyone went, and it was basically understood that whatever the rule was, it wasn’t really enforced.

By early June I was seeing Sachie, who had been my student. She was my girlfriend then and is my wife now. I went to her house pretty early on. Her father, Tetsuyo, a gruff, older, very conservative Japanese dad, said he would meet me, but then he went to take a “bath” and didn’t. So I didn’t meet him for months. Her mother, Kazuko, was lovely then and is lovely now.

We couldn’t really spend time together at my place, obviously, so we’d drive around in her car. That was our space. We’d park wherever passed for lovers’ lane in Kumamoto, which, thankfully, was not the Zodiac. No Zodiac in Kyushu, thankfully. We’d sit there, windows cracked, the car quiet, the whole thing feeling both secret and completely ordinary at the same time. That was just how it worked.

At some point I told Joy, another teacher, that I was seeing Sachie, and I told her not to say anything because it was technically against the rules. She said of course. And then, of course, she immediately went and told John G., and from there it got around.

By that point it didn’t really matter. I had to leave, but I also wanted to leave. NOVA felt like a factory. The hours, the structure, the constant low-level supervision—it wasn’t for me. I gave my one month’s notice and in July of 1997 I moved to Washington. Better hours, easier gig, and a lot more freedom.

There were a couple of long-term guys at NOVA, both Brits, both lifers in a way I couldn’t really imagine.

Cameron was the more interesting of the two. We’d go to the big izakaya on the Shotengai—yakitori, big beers in frosty mugs, the usual—but his real place was Madam’s Bar, also on the Shotengai. Madam was the owner, a transvestite, and Cameron loved her. Absolutely loved her. He went there every night.

He took me a few times. It was small and dark, always smoky, with Queen playing on a loop. I drank White Russians and, for reasons that made sense at the time, felt like a bit of a stud. It had its own rules, though. You could feel that pretty quickly.

By Halloween of 1997 I was already at Washington, but I was still around Kumamoto a fair bit, still seeing people. The week before Halloween I went back to Madam’s with Cameron.

“Matty baby, T-shirt time,” Madam said. “You will buy the bar T-shirt. Halloween theme. ¥4000.”

¥4000 was a lot for me then.

“Madam baby, that’s a bit steep,” I said. “I’ve already got plenty of T-shirts. Maybe next year.”

She and Cameron had a quick whispered conversation off to the side. We finished our drinks and left. Outside, Cameron turned to me.

“Matty baby, there’s not going to be a next year. You’re banned. 86’d. Hit the bricks, pal. You’re out.”

“For not buying a T-shirt?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “T-shirts are serious business.”

And that was it. Never went back.

Mark was the other lifer. Late thirties, married, one daughter. Solid guy. He loved his wife in a way that was both sincere and slightly odd in its phrasing.

“I can hack this job,” he’d say, “as long as I can go home each night to my little mouse’s ear.”

I never heard that expression before or since.

John E. was our boss, technically over Sam. He was always in and out—Osaka, Fukuoka, training sessions, that kind of thing. When he was around, though, he had a habit.

When we drank, he would smack Mark on the butt. All the time. Didn’t ask. Just did it. Mark would try to laugh it off.

“John E. baby, maybe not tonight,” he’d say.

Didn’t matter. It kept happening.

One night John E. turned to me. “Matty baby, can I smack your ass?”

“John E. baby, no way,” I said. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

At least he asked.

John G. was an anomaly. Everyone else was in their twenties or thirties; he was in his sixties. He said—said, mind you—that he had made and lost six fortunes, mostly in gold in South Africa. Maybe. By the time I met him he was broke as fuck.

He would fall asleep in class. Not subtly either. Full-on snoring, loud enough that you could hear it through the glass walls. And these were small classes, three or four students at most, everyone sitting there while he just drifted off. You could see it happen in real time.

John E. had a number of supervisory conversations with him. Nothing changed.

Then there was Paul, who wasn’t even at Kumamoto—he worked out of Osaka. I met him during training in late April of ’97, and he was a strange guy from the jump.

He told this whole story about growing up in Arkansas, parents who were abusive, into drugs, no money. Said he ran away at sixteen and found God on the road shortly after. Compared himself—without irony—to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Claimed he made a living hustling poker, which might have been true, but there was something else in there too. Not exactly dishonest, but… flexible.

He wanted to convert me. That was clear immediately.

We walked all night. Ten hours, maybe more, all over Osaka. Through neighborhoods, through stations, at one point through a huge homeless encampment—post-bubble Japan, a lot of salarymen who had fallen hard. It stuck with me. Paul talked and listened in equal measure, which is its own kind of technique, but there was always one direction to it.

The goal was simple: Matty finds Jesus tonight, come hell or high water.

I didn’t.

A couple of months later he came down to visit Kumamoto. We went to the izakaya on the Shotengai, then another bar—not Madam’s. Different energy.

There was a girl there, Yoko, and she was very clearly interested in me. So she’s all over me and Young Mr. Johnson is getting, uh, perky. I’m kind of nuzzling her neck and all, and Sachie and I are barely dating, not exclusive yet. Cameron leans over.

“Uh, Matty baby, YMJ is looking a little perky there.”

“Ruh roh,” I said. “Gotta go.”

There were a few good reasons for that.

One, I wanted to date Sachie only. I wanted to be exclusive. I told her the next day what had happened and she was like, “Good. Let’s go exclusive then.” So that was that.

Two, Yoko was like nineteen and I was twenty-three, and she had tons and tons of pancake makeup, which just wasn’t my thing.

So I jetted. Walked fifteen minutes home.

On the way I passed Fumachi. Of course, “machi” means street in Japanese, so to me it read FU-machi, which I found hilarious. I tried to explain this to Sachie once and she was like, “Yeah, machi just means street.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “That’s why it’s funny.”

Didn’t really translate.

By the river, as always, hammered dudes were out there pissing into the water. Just part of the scenery.

I get home, it’s around eleven, I’m getting ready for bed, and a taxi pulls up.

Out step Paul and Yoko.

Ruh roh.

Paul’s staying over, sleeping on a futon in the living room, and I’m thinking, what’s the plan here—hook up with Yoko right there while me, Heather, and Sam are all in the apartment? Outta control. Maybe that’s just how he rolled.

Anyway, Yoko took one look at me and jets. She’s gone.

Paul shrugged it off.

“Easy come, easy go.”

We end up playing poker instead. For a little money. I’d played all through childhood, in college, figured I was about a B+.

He wiped the floor with me. Took all my lunch money and didn’t lose a hand.

That’s when I started to believe him.

Looking back, those first two months in Kumamoto feel both chaotic and oddly contained, like everything was happening all at once but also exactly as it was supposed to. NOVA was a factory, no doubt—bad bosses, strange rules, glass rooms, and the occasional existential crisis over whether a black turtleneck and a white short-sleeved shirt constituted a violation of “regs.” I smoked Mild Sevens like it was part of the job description, drifted between pool halls and izakayas, and tried to make sense of a place where everyone seemed to know more about what I was doing than I did. And in the middle of all that, somehow, I met Sachie. That part feels less like chance the older I get, more like the one thing that cut cleanly through all the noise.

It didn’t last long—April to July, just a couple of months—but it stuck. The people, the rhythms, the small absurdities, the feeling of being watched and not quite fitting and also not really caring. I left because I had to, and because I wanted to, and both things were true at the same time. Better hours, easier life, more freedom. But Kumamoto was the start of something, even if I didn’t know what at the time. I never did get that T-shirt.

Dedication:

For my wife Sachie. Glad I met ya baby.

Note: If you like this piece, you may like the pieces below, which take up my time just before moving from the US to Japan.

My Time at Northern Arizona University Part I: Decision and Arrival
On My Interlude Between Hamilton College and Japan, 1996 and early 1997.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

Levels of Lucidity in Dreams: A Close Reading

Illustrations presented with thanks by Riko Kusahara

Note: This piece was written for the Psiber Dreaming Conference offered by IASD in September 2018, under a strict word limit that forced a level of compression I don’t always allow myself. It draws on a series of lucid dreaming experiences to explore how we determine whether we are dreaming or awake, and why those determinations so often fail under pressure. Looking back, I’m less interested in the specific techniques of lucidity than in the broader question the paper circles: what happens when our usual markers of reality—stability, plausibility, even self-awareness—prove unreliable? The result is less a theory of dreaming than a compact record of trying to think clearly inside a system that continually revises its own ground.

Epigraph I:

The difference between most people and myself is that for me the “dividing walls” are transparent.  That is my peculiarity.

—Carl Jung

Epigraph II:

The conventional scientific sentiment has become that—while we don’t totally understand why dreaming happens—the dreams themselves are meaningless. They’re images and sounds we unconsciously collect, almost at random {…} Which seems like a potentially massive misjudgement.

—Chuck Klosterman

Dream I: I awake in a warehouse.  The bed is against one wall–on the other is a thirty-foot mountain of cantaloupes.  I realize I am dreaming.  I get up and run my hands over the cantaloupes.  They feel absolutely real—as tangible as in life.  I remember that tangibility is not a viable reality test—I’ve made that mistake before.  Now fully lucid, I decide to levitate.  The room dissolves, and I float suspended somewhere in dense, colourless space.  Eventually, I feel the need to come back to earth but cannot locate it.  I feel something beneath me.  This is my bed, and I awake back in the warehouse, relieved yet exhilarated.  The cantaloupes are still there, however I don’t question them.  I just happen to live in a room full of fruit.  Moments later I awake again, this time in diurnal “reality.”

The most common dream experience is of waking from a dream we take to be real, only to understand that it was “just a dream.”  However, a subset of dreamers, probably more than we generally imagine, have experienced lucid dreams, dreams in which, to some degree, they are aware they are dreaming.  Lucid dreamers may also experience “false awakenings”[1]— the sensation of waking progressively through dream “levels.”  False awakenings can be disorienting (Robert Waggoner writes that after seven successive false awakenings he “would accept {…} any reality {…} as long as it stayed put”[2]), or sought after (Daniel Love and Keith Hearne have independently developed techniques to induce false awakenings[3]).  Regardless of the desirability of the experience, the existence of dream levels, far from a simple oddity, provides a potential window into massive metaphysical questions.   

First, we need to understand how dreamers use evidence to establish whether they are dreaming or awake.  

II: I am in a dreaming contest with another dreamer.  The contest begins and slimy amphibians begin to appear.  Some resemble frogs; others are in shapes that don’t exist in nature.  Their size varies from that of a pinky to that of a fist and they are very colourful.  I am not trying to dream them, rather they are spilling everywhere around my feet.  I sense this is a dream and check on the other dreamer.  He is standing to my right in empty space.  He looks just like me and hasn’t begun his dream. 

This dream is non-lucid at first and becomes lucid because of the bright color and absurd number of the amphibians.  An awareness beyond the dream senses a non-natural situation.  

III: I am picking out fruit at a fruit stand.  There are some huge avocados, almost too good looking.  I wonder if I am in a dream, and touch an avocado to check.  The one I choose is ripe and soft—I squeeze it a little.  There is no doubt that I am having a tactile experience, and I conclude I am not dreaming.  Of course, I am. 

Two dreams, two types of evidence.  In Dream II, I correctly identify the amphibians as anomalous, and become lucid.  In Dream III, my attempt to test the lifelikeness of the avocado as an indicator fails.  Simply put, realistic sensation is not sufficiently indicative of reality.  Love agrees: “we are not looking for a qualitative difference in how realistic the experience feels {…} we are {…} on the lookout for issues with stability and plausibility.”[4]  In Dream I, at first the huge pile of melons in my bedroom appears implausible and triggers lucidity; after moving up a dream level, my mind overrides the implausibility by “justifying”[5] the anomaly.  

Because we awake from sleep and dreams every morning, we are very familiar with the experience of awakening.  It is therefore unsurprising that when we wake inside a dream we accept the new reality as the waking world, even if it contains anomalous elements.  

IV: I am in a huge house where a large group of families on motorcycles arrive.  The families are making noise all night.  I realize I am dreaming and levitate over to the families.  Later I decide to wake up.  I ease myself out of bed, bumping my nose into an ironing board.  The room looks and feels exactly like my room.  I don’t recall the ironing board being there, but whatever.  Moments later I awake again—the situation is identical, only, the ironing board is gone.  I feel a pit in my stomach, wondering what is ultimately real.

Dream IV is a good example of how dream levels can become increasingly realistic as we move through them.  An ironing board in front of the bed is (for me) more plausible than a house full of bikers.  Dreams such as this beg the question of how we can ever be sure we are awake.  I have dreamt of getting up, walking to the front door, opening it, and emerging into the sunshine in my neighbourhood.  At every point, this dream felt entirely realistic with no anomalies.  After experiences like this, is it wholly unrealistic that we could dream an entire morning?  An entire day?

There are different ways to approach this kind of question.  The first is to use rigorous reality tests.[6]  Using reality tests after each fresh awakening can help us filter anomalies in what may be an increasingly realistic dream state. The second is to open ourselves to a wider set of questions.  Although space limitations make full exploration of these questions impossible, modern dreamers would do well to recall that throughout recorded history people have speculated on the meaning of the dream state and what it can tell us about space, time, life after death, and the nature of reality. 

As dreamers, we know that dreamtime behaves very differently than waking time.  Robert Moss distinguishes between Chronos (“linear time”) and Kairos (the “spacious now.”)  He writes that when Kairos operates in waking life, “ordinary time is {…} suspended or elastic,” and that the world can “quiver or shimmer.”[7]  Moss’ Kairos time sounds a great deal like dreamtime.  Jung in his memoir writes “our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity,”[8]  and “there are indications that at least a part of the psyche is not subject to the laws of space and time.”[9]  Jung makes multiple connections between dreams and life after death, suggesting that our waking world,

in which we are “conscious,” may in fact be a projection of a more “real” and permanent, even timeless, unconscious.[10] 

In the Tibetan tradition of dream yoga, the yogi prepares for death through dreams and meditation, entering death consciously by releasing the bodily energy in such a way that the body partially or entirely dissolves into pure light.  This “rainbow body” is well-documented in Tibet and China, and cases of this phenomenon have been reported across multiple religious traditions.[11]  Finally, Moss connects dreams with the much discussed Many Worlds theory, as does, in popular culture, Richard Linklater. [12]

V:  I am among a large group of people on the top floor of a building.  We lie down on our backs and form bundles.  The molecular structure of these bundles begins to dissolve, we become lighter, then totally empty.  This process is dictated by a power outside of us which doesn’t speak.  Once empty, we have the choice to become anything we want.  I choose to become white light.  Suddenly I am transported through space in a burst of pure white light, my old body left entirely behind.  This is the most peaceful and thrilling feeling in the world.  Then, I am back into a new bundle, trying again to become empty.  I make progress, but it is hard and I am over-concentrating.  Progress ceases; I wake up. 

Although I have thought at length about dreams, I am a normal person with a normal job, dreaming anonymously night after night.  I don’t belong to a spiritual tradition, am not a yogi or a meditating hermit.  As a lucid dreamer, like many of us, I am self-taught.  While we anonymous dreamers are wise to suspend judgement about the particularities of a theory as mind-boggling as dreams as an interface to infinite parallel universes, it is perhaps not by chance that my dreams of ascending to a state of pure white light bear close resemblance to innumerable near-death experiences or the reported manifestations of a lifetime of dream yoga.  Although admittedly outside of our normal rational mode of apprehension, the experience of journeying through multiple dream levels, and the energy and amazement which often accompany these experiences, may point the way toward worlds far above, below, or beyond our own.  

Who are we in our trek through life?  Are we the maker, or the made?  The writer, or the page?  The actor, or the stage?  The happening, or the happened to?  Perhaps, our ability to exercise agency in the vastness of forever depends in part on learning to navigate levels of “reality,” however we encounter them.  Or, perhaps, journeying to the far side of the dream can bring us face to face with that which is actually dreaming us.

Bibliography

Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books, 1989.

Linklater, Richard, director. Slacker. Orion Classics, 1990.

Love, Daniel. Are you Dreaming? Enchanted Loom Publishing, 2013.

Moss, Robert. Sidewalk Oracles. New World Library, 2015.

Rinpoche, Gyalwai Nyugu.  “About Rainbow Body.” http://www.gyalwai-nyugu.com/about-rainbow-body/.  Accessed 24 July 2018.

Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal. The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Snow Lion Publications, 1998.

Thomas, Matthew.  “On Coming Through”: A New Meditation on Intention. https://craftfollowsconcept.com/2013/05/13/on-coming-through-statement-of-intent-on-the-approach-of-my-39th-birthday/#more-11. Accessed 24 July 2018.

Waggoner, Robert. Lucid Dreaming. Moment Point Press, 2009.

[1] Waggoner, 61

[2] ibid., 63

[3] Love, 131

[4] Love, 71

[5] Love cites “poor reasoning skills” as one common reason for failing to recognize dream signs and achieve lucidity.  Love, 73.

[6] Love, 78-79; Waggoner, 259.  (Wagonner uses the term “reality check” instead of “reality test.”)

[7] Moss, 49

[8] Jung, 300

[9] ibid., 304

[10] ibid., 324

[11] Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, 314; Gyalwai Nyugu Rinpoche

[12] Moss, 74-74; Linklater

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Scenes from Hamilton College VI: Junior Year in New Zealand

Note: This is Part VI of the Hamilton series. Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV and Part V are available.

Epigraph:

They all come and peep through a hole in the wall
Keep the bastards guessing
He likes to take the long way home,
It’s another fine decision

Peter Jefferies

I spent a full academic year, the second semester of my junior year and the first of my senior year, at The University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago is a pretty good university, but Dunedin is pretty small and kind of country. Overall, it was a good experience, but I was flat broke and not on a meal plan due to an oversight by I guess myself and my parents. More on that later.

After I landed, I spent one night at a hotel and bought a bottle of wine, for the first time in my life. I was of legal drinking age in New Zealand. I drank about three-quarters of it and was a little hungover the next day. At Hamilton people did not drink wine.

The first few days I was on a homestay in the country with a sheep farming family. The father spent the day watching cricket, and then would rouse and take the sheep out and move them around, with sheepdogs and all. I remember going to a local pub with two of his sons and their friends and we had five or six beers and they drove home. On the drive home they tried to run over rabbits on the road, and roared with delight when they got close. That was a scene.

Then, I went back to Dunedin, and met my roommates who were all in graduate school studying to be teachers. These were Tim, Ho (who was of Maori descent), Sharlene, and Donna. Tim was a musician and there was a large piano in his room. The roommates were good folks, however I think I disappointed them a little because they asked for an American roommate and were apparently expecting someone really flamboyant and loud. I was not that, and kept to myself much of the year. One time though that I lived up to their expectations was when Tim once again said “you’re from Washington D.C.” and I said “I’m not from fucking Washington D.C., I told you before I’m from Washington State!” Tim said to the roommates, “I told you rooming with an American would be fun.”

There were a number of other exchange students from the U.S. there and I got to know some of them a bit at first, but for some reason I was a little standoffish, and we didn’t hang out much after the first week or so. I was back into running, not smoking and barely drinking, although I did go out once with Ho and his Maori friends and got blasted. I would run 8-10 miles a day, sometimes more, and was in training for a marathon.

As I mentioned, my food situation was bad. We had neglected to put me on a meal plan, and I think my parents didn’t even know this, and at first I chipped in what I could to the communal roommate shopping. However, they ate very poor quality mutton all the time and I just couldn’t hack it. Mutton is pretty bad at the best of times, and cheap mutton is awful. So I went off the roommate plan and ate mostly trail mix for dinner. Trail mix, it turns out, is among the best value for money food around. I would buy raisins, peanuts, and carob chips and that’s what I ate at the flat. For lunch I would eat one apricot yoghurt bar and a cup of coffee, costing around $3.50 NZD. I would eat super slowly, taking about 45 minutes to finish the apricot bar and somehow this made me feel like I’d had a meal. I was living on about $7 NZD a day and was hungry all the time. With this and the running, I was also super thin.

At Otago I studied some more literature, and also a lot of Indian History, with a focus on Ghandi. I learned a great deal about Gandhi this year, and found him interesting. One incident I recall was in one class on Buddhism the professor assigned a paper on Zen. I had the bright idea to turn in an empty paper, which I thought would be symbolic, but the professor was a step ahead of me. “Don’t try and turn in an empty paper for this,” he said, “I’ve seen that move before.”

One more interesting thing that happened was when I was invited to the faculty club for drinks by my Australian literature professor. He was in his 60’s and was an Otago lifer. At first I was kind of flattered to be invited, however on arrival it was clear he had other motives. He started hitting on me in a most egregious manner, and it was obvious he had done this many, many times. I had two drinks and politely removed myself. To his credit this had no impact on how he treated me in class, and things went on as normal. I guess it was all par for the course.

The Otago campus was on the north side of town, and the south side was said to be pretty rough. “Don’t go down there,” I was told more than once, “it’s dangerous.” But I thought it couldn’t be that dangerous, so one day I walked down there by myself to check it out. There were a lot of industrial areas and such, and it was a little run-down, but I got home safe just fine. I suspected that “dangerous” in a New Zealand context might mean something a little different than in a U.S. context.

My roommate Sharlene had a friend who just had a breakup and Sharlene wanted us to get together. She invited us both to a party, and sure enough we started making out, under a table as I recall. It just lasted that one night, but Sharlene thought it was hilarious. “They were pashing,” she cried, “pashing away.” Pashing is apparently Kiwi slang for kissing, or maybe it was a Sharlene original.

Sharlene had a stepfather and I visited his house once. He had a nice car and complained on and on about how many tickets he would get from traffic cameras. Traffic cameras were on the scene in 1995. This appeared to be his only topic. He should have driven more carefully.

After the pashing incident, there was another girl who was interested in me. I forget her name, but it started with an M. M. was really into me, maybe because I read a lot and so did she. There was a kind of club place for students with TVs (I remember watching the O.J. Simpson car chase there), and I would hang out there. M. would come in and lob a snickers bar from over my shoulder for me and buy me a coke. This was really nice and super helpful because I needed all the calories I could get. M. wanted to get together, but I wasn’t into it. We did spend a fair amount of time together, at the club and going to the bookstore with another friend of hers.

As I mentioned, I was in good running shape this year and actually went out for a marathon. I was doing great through the first half, but started to fade really bad around the 20 mile mark. I had terrible blisters and pulled my groin and couldn’t imagine doing another 6 miles, so I pulled up. I asked a couple with a car for a ride to the finish line where there were buses, and they gave it to me but made it clear they were not impressed with me packing it in. I wasn’t impressed with myself either, but marathons hurt like hell.

In addition to running, and starving, I also went out for Aikido. Aikido is a Japanese martial art, and I was already well on my way to my Asian Studies minor and was getting into all things Asian. Aikido was taught by a white couple, and this was their life. They were ok teachers, but the atmosphere was just a little culty. Despite my father’s fears, I have never been amenable to cults-like scenes. I stuck with it for a number of months however, and managed to get my first belt.

I don’t remember listening to a lot of music that year because I don’t think I had a stereo in my room, however, one day on the radio I did hear a song I immediately fell in love with. This was “The Fate of the Human Carbine,” by a Dunedin artist called Peter Jefferies. It was spooky and weird and totally captivating. Cat Power would later cover it, and lines from this song serve as the epigraph for this piece.

One more thing that happened this year was that Jenny from Hamilton visited. I don’t think she came specifically to see me, but I’m not sure. I was traveling, with god knows what money, in the New Zealand Alps which are on the South Island there and are really lovely. Jenny and I stayed at a hostel, and hung out which was really cool. That’s the same trip when I went for a walk in deep snow and almost died when the snow suddenly came up to my neck. Deep snow is almost as dangerous as the ocean, it turns out.

Those are my memories of New Zealand. Despite being so broke I had to eat a 45 minute apricot bar, it was a good year and I got really good grades. My academic focus would fall off, however, when I got back to Hamilton, but that’s a story for the next post.

Dedication:

For apricot bars and trail mix. You literally saved my life.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

Scenes from Hamilton College IV: Sophomore Year II: The Sports Show, Ann, Getting Fired

Note: This is Part IV of the Hamilton series. Part I, Part II and Part III are available. This post will take up my friendship with Ann, the Sports Show John Innes and friends had, and losing my job at the print short.

I was living in the delta
Wasting most of my time

Car Seat Headrest

I mentioned in Part III that I was on a sports talk show on the college radio station, WHCL. This was called Sports Corner. John Innes was the leader; it was his show. A friend of ours called Jeff Kingsley was on the show, as well as myself. Kingsley was a huge Buffalo Bills fan, and he stayed on top of the sports news, especially the NFL. Innes was always super prepared, and taped the shows which he would later play for his dad when we got back to Washington State. I sort of kept up with the sports scene, but I was mostly there for comic relief. I would crack jokes and make fun of stuff, but was definitely the third banana on the show.

The radio station didn’t have a lot of bandwidth so the listeners were mostly on campus and Clinton locals, but I recall Sports Corner having a number of regular listeners who would call in. From my point of view, the callers were the best part of the show. We treasured our listeners and gave them plenty of airtime. I never told any of them to “cold compress ma’am.” I was a regular as a sophomore and the first half of junior year until I went abroad to New Zealand. When I came back as a senior I think I just guested. I remember one show where Innes asked me what kind of sports were big in New Zealand. I said “marbles, marbles are really big.” I was just fucking around, but it was pretty funny. Although I was only marginally prepared, Sports Corner was a blast and Innes was a great host. He totally could have done it professionally.

I also talked in Part III about Ann. Ann was Ian’s girlfriend sophomore year, and I got to know her pretty well. Ann sort of took over where Rochelle left off in the mothering department, but she was really different from Rochelle. More intense. Ann didn’t like smoking and she tried to stop me from doing so, to no effect. I remember once, I think it was junior year actually, where at a dorm party she grabbed my cigarette from me and threw it out the window. I just shrugged and lit another one.

If Ann was intense, she thought I was. Innes and Ann and I were hanging out once and Innes said “M.A. (that was my nickname at college) is the chillest guy I know,” and Ann replied “I think he is the most intense.” Well, someone will maybe eventually get to the bottom of that one. One day I dropped by Ann’s room and there was a big jigsaw puzzle partially done. I started picking at it, and she stopped me. “That’s for me and Ian,” she said. Must have been some puzzle. Another time I went to Ann’s house with Ian and she tried, I guess, to pair me up with one of her friends. This wasn’t going to take, but we all did sleep, clothed, in the same bed that night. I don’t think I got a lot of sleep.

While some friends came and went at Hamilton, Ann I was close to sophomore, junior and senior year. After graduation she moved to the U.K. for a bit. I wrote about this elsewhere and will reprint it here.

“My friend Ann from Hamilton College went to England after graduation and she and I exchanged a few letters, back when people still wrote letters. She wrote me that she was drinking some, so I wrote a poem about my image of her over there. The original poem had two or three more verses, but they were terrible. Then a little while back I reconnected with Ann, which was great, and re-worked the poem, which wasn’t. It might have been a little better, but it was still bad. These two stanzas, on the other hand, are awesome, and maybe that’s all there ever needs to be said about Ann in England, you know?” Here is that poem fragment:

Ann belle princess of the isles
the orbs whisper your name even if you’ve gotten piles
or if you’re on the game

Buxom barmaid or bellicose barfly
begs the inevitable question
booze improves the poet’s eye. but ruins her digestion

I still like it.

Ann has read some of this blog, and even contributed a piece as a guest writer, which is not currently live.

The other big event sophomore year was when Deb fired me. I mentioned that as a freshman I skipped work some, and the next year this pattern was exacerbated. I still had no money, however work was becoming really tough. This was not Deb and Sally’s fault at all–I just couldn’t hack walking all the way up the hill just to collate. Instead, I spent time in the woods jumping off little cliffs and messing around in the late afternoon. No hard feelings; looking back I should have done things differently. I don’t remember exactly when I was fired, but I think it was about two thirds of the way through the year.

That’s it–this is a short one. There are a bunch of other things that may have happened this year or the next, so I’ll cover some of these in my upcoming junior year pieces.

Dedication: For Ann, the belle princess.

to be continued…

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Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)

Note: In Part I and Part II of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton. Part III will take up sophomore year where I lived down the hill in Bundy Dorm.

All you ladies and gentlemen
Who made this all so probable

Big Star

After freshman year I returned back to Washington State for the summer. I have written glancingly about this period, suffice it to say I was not up to much. Still broke, I did have a short lived girlfriend but she dumped me mid-summer. I spent a few days moping around playing nerf golf at my parents’ house, then got over it. I don’t remember much else from that summer except that I got back in good running shape, and when I got back to campus in the fall I turned out, once again, for the running team.

One thing I neglected to mention in my pieces on freshman year is that I actually competed on the JV running team at Hamilton for a time and ran a few races. I was not in great shape that year, and JV was not that exciting. As I have written, I had other pursuits. Sophomore year, however, I was in better shape and had a shot at making the top five. The only other runner I recall was called Harry. I thought Harry lived in Sig, but Jake tells me he was in a frat called THX, about which I remember nothing. In any case, Jake knew him. Harry was a hardcore runner and scolded me about my lifestyle, wanting me to devote myself to the team. I was not going to do this, but I was able to run with Harry and the first team for a number of practices. In the long run though it didn’t work out–they ran mornings and afternoons, and my summer shape wasn’t going to carry me through a hyper-competitive season. I was a good runner, but I just didn’t have the drive. Sooner or later I left the team, this time for good. I look back fondly on Harry however–he was right; I was lazy and needed a kick in the rear.

As a sophomore I roomed in a double with John Innes (there were two John’s in my friend group, John Innes and John Slack), in a dorm halfway down the hill to Clinton called Bundy. Marc Campbell was also on our floor. Ian was living in his frat, but spent a lot of time in Bundy as he was dating Ann, someone who I became close with over the year as well. Jake was over at Sig and I didn’t see much of him, mostly for geographic reasons.

Bundy was a way different story than North. First, I spent a lot more time in my dorm room with John Innes. Innes would watch the soap opera Days of Our Lives and insist I watched it too. I could have cared less, but watched it to be a good friend. We also played Sega, almost exclusively Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega Hockey, at which John usually beat me (however not in the biggest matches, as I’ll get to later). Innes liked rap music and had a pretty good collection. I could get into some of the rap; I liked Public Enemy, KRS One, De La Soul, and a minor band called Basehead which wasn’t really rap. However I was by then deep into what would today be described as alternative or indie music, so Innes’ taste and mine mostly diverged. We were both good about sharing airtime though, so he got to know my music and I his.

The record I listened to the most, by far, that year was Big Star Third: Sister Lovers from the then mostly forgotten American band Big Star. I loved this record (which was on Rykodisc), and played it endlessly while trying to advance in Sonic the Hedgehog. I stuck my mattress in the closet and hung a tapestry over the door area so I had a little cubby to sleep in. Overall, the whole scene was much more domestic than the pretty chaotic North.

Other than Marc and John Innes, I don’t remember exactly who the other guys who were on our floor, but I’ve been reminded that John Slack was one of them. Ian and Jake were living in frats, and over the year I got to know a new crew of people, including several girls. These included firstly Jenny and Jen, who lived in the female area on our same floor (maybe the second floor? Innes will remember). Innes and I became very close to Jenny and Jen, and spent almost every evening hanging out in their room doing something called “Candle Time.” Candle Time was pretty much exactly what it sounds like–we would turn down the lights, light candles (which was probably against school rules) and talk for hours. We would talk about our days, people and goings on in the dorm, and just life in general. It was really wholesome and again, a major change from North.

Candle Time lasted, in my recollection, for a number of months, but not all through the year. Despite spending so much time together, there was no romantic involvement, although I believe Innes and Jen did get together later, and briefly; I’m not really sure. I think it was supposed by some that I myself had a crush on Jen; however although I liked her a lot this was not the case. I did have a little bit of a crush on Jenny, but she had other people who were interested in her and we all hung out so nothing ever happened. That was fine–it was actually really nice to just have close female friends with no expectations.

Jenny and Jen were both from the upstate New York area, broader Rochester as I recall. My guess is they came from relatively less money than many of our classmates, who came from preppier areas, and schools. I actually visited Jenny’s house once or twice, and I think a bunch of us slept over once and watched the film Glengarry Glen Ross. These included Amy Holland, who was one of the coolest chicks around. She was called “Red,” on account of her red hair, and was totally my speed. Everyone else fell asleep during the movie except Amy and I and as I recall she loved what is, to be fair, a pretty stereotypically male film.

Jenny’s house was nice, but seemed pretty middle-class and maybe that’s part of why we all bonded–the richer kids, although I obviously hung around with them a lot, had their own life ways to some extent. I remember one evening Jenny and I went to see the band The New Dylans on campus. I thought they were a good band, and had found their cassette at the campus radio station where John Innes and I had a sports talk show. Their record has a song I liked called “The Prodigal Son Returns Today.” They sounded kind of like a minor league Big Head Todd and the Monsters or something, and are kind of dated today if I’m honest, but I was excited for the show. At first it was pretty full, but people left little by little and by the end it was just me and Jenny. The band played their hearts out for the two of us, including encores! After the show, I joined them for a cigarette outside and chatted. I told them that I really liked the show and they said thanks and all with no mention of the fact that the venue was totally empty. That’s professionalism, I thought, and I imagined that as a band trying to break through playing small colleges and sending cassettes to radio stations they’d had their share of ups and downs. I doubt they are still around, but if so I’m rooting for you guys!

A bigger star that played Hamilton was Ani DiFranco. I saw Ani several times, both on campus and off, as she was pretty huge in New York State at the time. She had not yet released “Dilate,” which came in 1996 and was her mainstream breakthrough to the extent she ever had one, but she was a star on campus, mostly with the women but with a lot of the guys too. Ani put on a great show, and I totally got the appeal. She was kind of the Jeff Rosenstock of the day I suppose.

Shawn Colvin also came, and I knew some of the people who were assigned to take care of her backstage. They reported that she was a total asshole, asked for coke, and generally threw her weight around big time. Shawn Colvin was OK, but no so great that she could act like a diva I don’t think. Full on divas are acceptable-like Joni Mitchell might be a diva and what are you going to do–but minor league divas pretty much suck.

Anyway, like I say over the year although we still saw each other, I saw less of Jenny and Jen, and more of other people like Ann, Amy, and Matt Thornton. I’m not sure where Matt lived, maybe Bundy and maybe not, and I don’t recall either how or when I met him, but we soon became fast friends. Matt was full speed ahead, and argumentative, but I can handle my own in an argument, and I really liked him. Matt ran with an interesting group of friends, including several Asian-Americans who I believe lived on the Kirkland side of campus. Hamilton used to be a guys’ school and Kirkland was the attached girls’ school. Then at some point they merged, but the Kirkland side and the old Hamilton side always felt distinct to me and were separated by a bridge.

One time we were talking about going to New York and Matt told me about some clubs for Asians that he was interested in. Matt’s friends told him that he (or I) could not go to these clubs because we would get the shit kicked out of us. Had to be at least half-Asian apparently. But I think Matt went to these kinds of clubs anyway and did not get beat up, because he just sort of rolled that way.

Matt and I and Ian did go to New York eventually, and spent a few days uptown at some person’s apartment where I commandeered a prime sleeping space and we ordered pizza three times a day. I believe this was actually after graduation, as Matt transferred before graduating from Hamilton.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this was also the year Ian and I went to Boston to see music shows. We went with a fellow called Cale who was a freshman. Cale was cool, and also we liked him because of his name, reminiscent of John Cale, violist for the Velvet Underground who Ian and I were both fans of. With Ian and Cale I felt like I was in good company–we were all very simpatico.

My academic performance sophomore year was just OK. I took more English classes, and also started to take some History classes including some Asian History with Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson was a good professor, but I think he was one of those guys who really saw himself at U. Chicago or Yale or something. A lot of academics are like that. Nevertheless, Tom was good–tough but fair–and pushed me to really deepen my research abilities. Outside of Tom’s class, my effort was a little mixed, and during the dead of winter I skipped some morning classes because the climb up the hill was just too tough. The winters in upstate New York are pretty brutal, and I preferred to stay local down in Bundy a lot of the time.

One more thing I remember from this year is starting, and then dropping, photography class. I had an old camera that barely worked, and was interested in learning how to develop film in a darkroom. However, photography class was really expensive because we had to regularly buy these huge rolls of film which cost like $50 at the school store. A classmate I’ll call C. to protect his identity told me, “just tuck your pants into your socks and drop the film down your pants and walk out. That’s what I do.” But I wasn’t going to steal film all year and there was no way I could pay the outrageous costs. On top of that, I wasn’t all that good–certainly my classmates outclassed me, crappy camera or not. So I dropped it after six weeks or so; however now that I think about it I may well have met Matt Thornton in that exact class. It’s a possibility.

Note: That will do it for Part III. In Part IV I’ll write more about my friendship with Ann as well as the Sports Talk Show we did on the Hamilton radio station.

Dedication: For the whole Bundy dorm, actually. It was a pretty chill year.

to be continued…

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Scenes from Hamilton College II: Freshman Year Continued (with cameos from Honey, the Print Shop, and Billy Bragg)

Note: In Part I of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton, focusing on two friends, Ian and Jake. Part II will branch out and cover a fairly wide, and somewhat random, set of memories.

Epigraph:

I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade
He said some things are really best left unspoken
But I prefer it all to be out in the open

Billy Bragg

I have already written quite a bit about the characters who lived in the North Dorm freshman year at Hamilton, however there are a few more to cover. First were the first floor stoners. Basmo was a stoner, and he lived on my side of the dorm, but on the other side of the first floor lived the hardcore stoners. This consisted of a quad of guys whose names I don’t totally recall, but one was Peter Kimber, and who got baked at all waking hours and played Roger Waters’ Amused to Death solo on repeat. Next to them, in a double I believe, lived Keys. Keys’ actual name was Caleb, but everyone called him Keys because of the six to eight keys he had dangling from around his neck at all times. What on earth did he need all those keys for? One for the dorm, maybe one for a car (although he should not have been driving at all because he was the single biggest stoner in the dorm and perhaps on campus), what else? I can’t imagine.

Keys and I were not that close, but I did see a lot of him because we had the same job, which was in the school print shop. I don’t know if print shops still exist in the same form in this digital age, but back then the print shop was busy as. We held the campus down. There were two slightly older women who worked at the print shop full-time and three of us students helping out. The full-timers were Sally and Deb. Deb was the boss, and she was kind of motherly and kind to the students. Sally was nice too, but she could be tough. She would bark at us when we made mistakes, which was often because we were running large machines that would glitch pretty frequently. Sally was both the little sister to Deb and also the enforcer. I liked them both, even though Deb ended up firing me, which I’ll get to later.

So Keys would come in lit every day and sort of fumble through his work, which consisted mostly of stapling and collating. I was trusted more than Keys, with good reason, so I ran the machines, but I also did stapling and collating. We printed things for professors, menus for the dining halls, the school newsletter, and a bunch of other stuff. The third student was a girl whose name I don’t recall, and she was a super-hardcore feminist. Everything in the world that was wrong was men’s fault, and it was her only topic. She didn’t seem to dislike me so much as just want to lecture Keys and I all through work, which usually lasted two to three hours in the afternoon, about the ills of men. I was, and am, up for a little feminist theory but Keys was no help and I don’t even think he noticed her, so it was kind of just me and her. Serious feminism and collating are, perhaps, not best paired.

I didn’t originally want the print shop job. I needed work, and there was kind of an intake for all working students where you put your first choice. I put library, but didn’t get the gig. John Innes put audio/video and he got it, which meant he often had to get up early to set up videos for professor’s classes. I would not have been good at that. The print shop was more my speed, but eventually it got really repetitive and I started skipping work more and more. I would go walk in the woods behind campus, or just drink coffee with about a half cup of honey and hang around after class. I also improved as a student through the year, and took my English classes pretty seriously so I was spending more time in the library, although still not sleeping much.

My money situation was tight, although not as bad as it would later be during my junior year abroad in New Zealand where it was super tight. I had a little income from the print shop and my parents sent a small allowance once in a while, but I usually didn’t have more than about 15 bucks in my pocket at any one time. What money I did have went mostly to CDs, as many as I could afford. I had a dining hall pass, but the dining hall food was not really my style so I mostly lived on toast and coffee with honey. Then at night people would order pizza from a local shop, but that was too expensive for me so I would get “friend dough.” Fried dough is just what it sounds like–deep friend pizza dough with powdered sugar, and it cost about $1.50 for a big box. Not the best diet, but it was what I could afford.

One time the father of one of my classmates from high school visited for some reason; he must have been in the area. We met for lunch, and when he left he handed me $100 bucks. This was a serious windfall, and I immediately blew it on CDs, perhaps Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and others. My CD collection, although no rival to Ian’s was slowly increasing and I liked it.

Back in the dorm, in addition to the guys I have discussed, there were also girls, who lived on the second and fourth floor. I got to know the girls directly above us on the second floor pretty well, although not many of the others in the dorm. Among these was Rochelle, who was the girl I was closest to. Rochelle was, I think, from New York, and when she arrived on campus she made a big deal about having a boyfriend. This didn’t last long however, and although I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend I did like hanging out with her. She kind of mothered me a bit though, which I wasn’t so into, because I was going to do what I was going to do. I still have her contact, and I believe she might even read this piece! I think I also met Marie Bishko freshman year, and Marie is someone I thought was really cool.

I don’t really remember any us North guys hooking up with the second floor girls, but it must of happened. Another incident which occurred around this time had to do with my roommate B. and his girlfriend from high school. Like Rochelle, and even more so, he made a big deal of his girlfriend and told us all kind of semi-salacious details. Then one day he told us she was coming to visit and he wanted the three of us in the quad to go to a hotel for a night. I told him sure, if you pay, but he said no. He was dead serious but we told him to forget it, so sure enough she arrived and they hooked up while we all pretended to sleep. That only happened once, thankfully, and it still strikes me as pretty odd. He later broke up with her and fell in love with a Jewish girl, but that didn’t last either because he wasn’t Jewish.

I mentioned in Part I that Jake pledged the fraternity Sig. Ian and John Slack also pledged, Chi Psi (I had to Google the spelling). I spent some time at Chi Psi as well as, where I was alleged to sit on the steps in my trench coat, but I preferred Sig. There was another frat called Deke, and that was where the wildest, and the worst parties were. At Deke there was copious amounts of Milwaukee’s Best (the fabled Beast) and jungle juice. The parties were terrible, but there was a pool table which was a bonus. I didn’t drink much at college, mostly because I had no money, but I did drink some at Deke, with exactly the results you would imagine. I believe it was at Deke where Marc Campbell pulled off his famous pacification move. I didn’t pledge a frat, and I was and remain glad I didn’t. Greek life wasn’t for me.

One guy who I believe lived in North was called Gabe. Gabe was super popular at first in freshman year, and he played guitar on the grass outside the dorm. He was pretty good and he would play “Sexuality” by Billy Bragg which was surprisingly popular in 1992. People, including girls, would flock around him, but over time something seemed to happen to Gabe. He ran for class president and lost to a guy called Kerry who was African American. Kerry lived down the hill in a different part of campus, and he ran really hard for the job. I think Gabe’s ran mostly on a music ticket, and although he got a lot of votes I think he came in second. He may have taken this hard, because he kind of faded into the background, or maybe he just changed up his action. I think I voted, but may have voted for Kerry.

As I mentioned, Jake and I saw less of one another once he started pledging, however we still saw each other in English class and in the English building. We overlapped professors, although he knew some I did not. The two best professors in the English department were George Balkhe and Fred Wagner. Balkhe was still in his prime, maybe late 50’s, whereas Wagner was older and I believe in a semi-emeritus role. I wasn’t even sure I ever took a class from Wagner, but it’s been confirmed that I did, Modern British and American Drama, which makes sense. I didn’t much like 20th century American plays, as plays are mostly blueprints anyway. In any case, Mr. Wagner knew me early in the year because Balkhe praised my reading knowledge to him. Jake and I would go to Wagner’s house, also down the hill toward the town of Clinton (the closest town to Hamilton, about a 15 minute walk), and I recall once we played him the song “Marlene Dietrich’s Favorite Poem” by Peter Murphy, formerly of Bauhaus, with Peter Murphy murmuring “sad-eyed pearl and drop lips…”

Peter Murphy is super underrated by the way, and Wagner liked the song, which just showed how cool he was.

I took a few classes with Balkhe, and we studied poems, and novels–typical choices mostly. I enjoyed these and read most of them, even Faulkner who is really dense. For the ones I didn’t I just faked it. Like I said, Balkhe thought I was amazing because on the first day of class he asked for a list of books we had read and I listed like 200. These were mostly Agatha Christie and John LeCarre and such, but I guess it was good enough. Balhke liked the singer Donovan and the song “Mellow Yellow.”

Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze

(I later saw Donovan at a new age convention in Boston when I was visiting Ian after college, which I will recount later).

Wagner and Balkhe are both passed away now, so rest in peace to two great English teachers and mentors.

That’s about all I have on freshman year. The last thing is about the featured image for this post, which is the album cover for Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy. I have written about The Pogues quite a bit, but the album I listened to most freshman year was Oh Mercy. After geology class had a break before lunch and would go back and semi-sleep to Oh Mercy. The quad was always empty at that time of day, and this was the best rest I would get. The album still makes me sleepy to this day, and features excellent production from the famed producer Daniel Lanois. So thank you Bob and Daniel.

Dedication: For Fred. And for George–I hope you are enjoying a little electrical banana up there in heaven.

to be continued…

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Scenes from Hamilton College I: Meeting Ian and Jake

New Note: It’s been a while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back here as a republication. “Hamilton I” remains one of my favorite entries on the Kyoto Kibbitzer—an early chapter built around friendship, music, and the strange, formative textures of freshman year, especially the central presence of my good friends Ian and Jake, who shaped so much of that time. It’s also one of the more widely read pieces on the site, which I appreciate. Re-reading it now, I’m struck by how much of what came later was already there in embryo: the scenes, the sounds, the late nights, and the people who mattered. As always, thanks for reading.

And I recall the moment
More distant than it seems
When five green queens
On a black bin bag
Meant all the world to me

The Pogues

I attended Hamilton College, and managed to graduate–possibly in linen. At Hamilton I was an English major, and intended to be from when I enrolled. This was a decent choice; however both Hamilton and English were kind of my father’s choices. I also managed to cobble together an Asian Studies minor through the good auspices of my advisor who checked out my credits and told me I could put that together. This was a good call on his part, and even though I kind of stumbled into it, The Asian Studies minor was my choice.

I was pretty unprepared for college. Before going I was asked to fill out a kind of questionnaire to help the college place me with roommates. One of the questions was, are you clean, messy, or in the middle. I chose in the middle, which was sort of a mistake because it turns out men are pigs, and I was cleaner than most. At the same time though it wasn’t a mistake because if I had selected clean I may not have met Ian and Jake. Jake was my roommate, and we lived in a quad. The other two roommates were Brian and Geoff, and although I had a relationship of a sort with both of them freshman year, we were not really on the same page. Jake and I were. Ian was our next door neighbor, and he roomed with Marc Campbell, and two other people. Ian, Jake, and Marc are still in my life.

My parents came with me to upstate New York, and before I moved into the dorm we stayed for a few days in a hotel near campus. I was kind of apprehensive, and spent the days listening to The Pogues and quietly stressing. But when I moved into the quad things were fine. This was mostly because of Jake.

Jake was a bit of a wild character. He was from either New York or Connecticut as I recall, and I think he came from decent money. When I visited his house later that year it was very patrician, for lack of a better word. His father seemed like a super old-school WASP patriarch, and his mother didn’t work I don’t believe. His younger brother held right-wing political views at the time, while Jake was a lefty. This was a point of serious disagreement between the brothers, but other than that the family seemed pretty solid. I believe that his brother has since switched his political views.

I didn’t meet Jake’s family until Thanksgiving however, and got to know him first in the context of the quad. We lived in a dorm called North, on the first floor right by the door. (My buddy John Innes, who joined me at Hamilton from our high school lived in the neighboring dorm Kirkland, and next to that was South.) The door to North would be locked at night, and other dorm folks would regularly misplace their key and crawl through our always open window. Jake and I rarely slept, and I got in the habit of staying up until about five AM. After that I would get a little sleep before first period English class. Then I would attend Geology class, which satisfied some kind of Science graduation credit. For English class I was alert and on top of it, although I was still hand-writing my papers, which changed once I got in the habit of using the computers in the library. English class was small, maybe 12-15 people, whereas Geology was huge and held in a lecture hall. I would go lay down in the back in the aisle and try and sleep. I ended up getting As in almost all my English classes, and a C- in Geology, which was deserved to an extent because of the sleeping. However, the main question on the final was brutal and pretty unfair, which was to draw a seismograph. Literally, draw one, which we had never studied and I did cram for the final. Brutal action. Somehow I still made the honor roll that year, and every year, because of my performance in the humanities.

Jake was an English major as well as far as I recall, I kind of forget, but he knew a lot of the teachers I knew. In any case, we did not bond primarily in the classroom, but in the dorm and then at “Sig,” the frat he was associated with and later pledged. Sig was the alternative frat. I hung out there a bit, but when pledge season started they kind of cracked down on non-pledges attending parties. For Halloween, Jake snuck me in early, and although that night I got a few looks I was good with Jake’s blessing. That night I wore all black with a turtleneck and a paper sign on my back saying “No future for you.” As in the Sex Pistols. I was talking with an older guy, an alum (there were always some alums that hung at the frat parties at Sig) at the party and he said something to the effect of “I like you, but I don’t like your shirt.” OK dude.

That was the same night I believe that inspired the following little ditty I later shared with Jake:

I pissed in the toilet

He pissed in the sink

He said I haven’t got a god above

I haven’t got a drink

Jake later took umbrage with the lines, not the sink part, which was and remains credible, but the god part. I think he is, or was, a believer. In any case, he’s my friend and won’t sue.

I appreciated Jake showing me the ropes at Sig and elsewhere. In the dorm we would play his music–he was into the classics, Beatles and Stones, Kinks, Bowie. We would sing “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and “Come Together,” mostly the former over and over, no doubt to the annoyance of our roommates. Jake also liked The Pogues, and this made me think even more highly of him.

Jake smoked, Marlboro Reds, and I soon started smoking too, the same brand. This was not out of a desire to be a smoker, but rather as a way to keep my hands occupied and look busy at parties, where I had some difficulty mixing. I picked up, or invented, a little trick where I would fold up the flaps of a cigarette pack so they looked like a paper airplane, and then lob the cigs around the room, usually to any girl that wanted one. This got me some attention and some affection, and I kind of became known for the move. It didn’t get me laid, but at least it was something. Jake and I were fast friends, and hung out a lot in the early part of the year, before he began to branch out. Once he started pledging Sig though I saw less of him, naturally enough I guess.

By the time Jake started pledging, and even before, I was spending more time with Ian. Ian was from Boston and his father was a medical doctor. He lived in a nice house in the suburbs–both Jake and Ian had quite a bit more money than I, a common feature at Hamilton where pretty much everyone had money expect me. I was on a pretty decent scholarship, despite my not so impressive high school record, and could not have afforded the school without the scholarship. I visited Ian once or twice I believe in college, and then stayed with his family for a few months in the fall after college, but that’s a story for a future post.

Ian had a massive record collection in his quad, next door to mine as I have said. I liked Jake’s music, especially “Rebel Rebel,” “Come Dancing,” and The Stones, however his selection was somewhat limited. Ian’s was capacious. He was into bands like The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Ride, and a bunch of other British bands I didn’t know at the time. But he was really into everything. I spent hours in Ian’s room soaking up his music, and my association with him kind of took over where Dyche Alsaker’s left off. I think it was Ian who also introduced me to Luna, who was coming up at the time and is still one of my favorite bands to this day. Later, in senior year I think, Ian and I had a radio show together and one night we got to play records all night long when a few other people canceled suddenly. I would play The Replacements and the Pogues, and Ian would play his music, but I was also getting deep into the 4AD label and bands like Big Star, This Mortal Coil, and a little known band called The Binsey Poplars (who I’m not sure were even on 4AD), named after a Hopkins poem. But my favorite around that time was Nick Drake, who was on Rykodisc.

Drake is now pretty well known, mostly on the back of his song “Pink Moon,” which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial, but back then he was not well known outside serious music circles. I loved his song “Rider on the Wheel,” and was an evangelist for him, telling all and sundry to listen. Most people didn’t, of course, but the whole move was just odd enough to get a little attention, which I was definitely seeking. (Another friend from that time John mentioned to me a few years ago that I would sit on the front steps of his frat in my trench coat and read a book. I don’t really remember this, but if it’s true it was for sure for attention.) I remember one evening Ian had a kind of band that was playing and I “opened” for them. My act was simply talking about Nick Drake, painting him as a forgotten genius, which he was, and pleading with the crowd to listen. It went over pretty well, like I said probably just because it was different.

Later on, mostly the next year I think, Ian and I went to a few shows in Boston, including The Red House Painters, The Fall, and Love Spit Love. Ian would drive, and blast The Pogues with the window down to stay awake on the way home. Before one of these shows we managed to source a little green, which was enjoyable. We would park, illegally, in some lot Ian knew. In the lot, there were rats.

Jake and I were sort of on the same level–both semi-degenerate English majors–but Ian I looked up to. He was definitely the leader in the friendship, although he must have seen something in me because we hung out a fair bit. Ian was also friends with Marc, but he was perhaps closer to another group of guys who lived in two adjacent quads on the third floor. This included John and a guy called Will. I would go up there too, and Will would ask “what Dead do you want to listen to?” I always went with Reckoning because I liked the country-folk sound and the song “It Must Have Been the Roses.” I liked the third floor guys too, especially John.

Next door to Jake and my quad was Adam and Basmo. Adam and Basmo (a nickname) were seniors who for some reason decided to stay in what was basically a freshman dorm. Adam was cool, but pretty grown up. Basmo was still a kid, and loved to get high. Loved to get high. Early on in the year he would come over and ask “anyone want to get stoned and session?” A session, it turned out, was you would smoke, put on The Beatles, and watch Bugs Bunny or something with the sound down. The idea was the music would synch up with the cartoon and it would be hysterical. It totally worked, although I just liked to listen to music and bullshit rather than session. Real heads will remember the session. (Jake told me that sadly Basmo later took his own life as a result of the worsening effects of ef. That was really too bad because Basmo was just a pure open-hearted soul.) So basically we would get stoned when we could, smoke Reds, and stay up all night and listen to music, which was a pretty decent life all in all. Jake and Ian took me in, and made the first part of freshman year so much better in all ways than it would have been if I hadn’t known them.

Dedication: For Ian and Jake, for seeing something in me, and helping make me a little somebody.

to be continued…

Note: If you liked this piece, you may other like the other pieces below in the Hamilton series.

Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)
Scenes from Hamilton College IV: Sophomore Year II: The Sports Show, Ann, Getting Fired

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On Subcultures and Scenes in Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”

New Note: It has been a little while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back into view. It remains my very favorite essay on the Kyoto Kibbitzer, and has continued to circulate far beyond what I ever expected, with many hundreds of reads over time. In an entirely unscientific but pleasingly persistent corner of the internet, it still seems to rank #2 in search results for the term “Katie Park Bad Moves,” just behind Wikipedia, which is pretty cool. I have no idea what to make of that, but I’m not complaining.

The piece itself—on Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”—has always felt to me like one of the most complete things I’ve written about music, scenes, and subcultures, and I’m grateful for the continued readership and responses it has received. Reposting here in full for anyone who missed it the first time around, or wants to revisit it.

Original Note: This piece is about an absolutely amazing song by Craig Finn called “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” released in 2020 on All These Perfect Crosses from Partisan Records. We will also expand on the song’s theme, which is how subcultures (and “scenes”) operate. Finn is, in my opinion, the greatest lyricist working today (not the greatest living lyricist, that’s still Dylan). I’ve written about about Finn before here, and here.

Craig Finn himself has commented on this song and says that “It’s Never Been A Fair Fight”:

“Is about the extreme difficulty of staying true to the rigid rules of a subculture as you get older. The character in the song revisits an old peer and finds struggle and disappointment in the place he left behind.”

In this case, the narrator had been part of the punk/hardcore scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has left the scene, and reflects on his time there and what it meant as he meets his old friend—and we suppose former lover—Vanessa. I’m not sure I understand the entire chronology of the song, as it engages in some apparent time jumps that can be a little hard to follow. Overall however, it is pretty clear what the song is about.

The opening verse sees the narrator (let’s call him C., because while we will grant Finn the understanding as an artist that his characters are characters, in this case the song feels pretty autobiographical) checking in with Vanessa. The song opens in the present day.

Finn has C. meet her “right in front of her building,” Vanessa “vague in taste and drowning,” telling him she’s “got a new man…in a new band,” and “they’ve got a new sound.”

We get the impression that C. has been out of the scene for a while, while Vanessa is very much still in it: new man, new band, new sound, same old place. Vanessa’s man, we assume, is in a hardcore band, and I believe it is the case that Finn came up through the hardcore scene before forming his first band Lifter Puller. Lifter Puller is not a hardcore band, and I don’t know if Finn was actually in a hardcore band or just in the scene.

Then comes one of Finn’s perfect little deadpan truths. C. shrugs that “hardcore’s in the eye of the beholder,” a funny line for a number of reasons (it also reminds me of the classic David Berman line: “punk rock died when the first kid said / punk’s not dead.”) The humor hits because it’s both self-aware and scene-aware.

After C. recalls his “broken heart from 1989,” Finn pivots the timeline. The song shifts back—back to when C. was attending hardcore shows, hot and sweaty, elbows in his eyes. The chronology bends, but the emotional logic stays firm.

Vanessa says there are “threads that connect us,” and “flags and wars we should never accept.” Angelo’s off seeing “snakes in the smoke” from someone’s cigarette. And Ivan? He isn’t concerned at all — for him it’s mostly just about “what you wear to the show.” C. admits he “heard a song…on the radio” that he liked, which we can assume violates at least one of Vanessa’s unwritten rules.

Finn is an absolute master of sketching characters in just a line or two. Here, he uses a sort of pointillistic approach to introduce us to two additional members of the scene, Angelo and Ivan. With just a few short verses we already understand a great deal about “the scene.” Here is what we can deduce:

i) All four members of the scene have very differently valenced loyalties. Put another way, they want different things from it. Vanessa is a purist; for her being part of the scene is like being part of an tribe, an army, and we take her to be a fierce protector of the in-group/ out-group aspects that tend to arise in subcultures. Angelo, it seems, is a little out there; he’s seeing snakes in the cigarette smoke and probably not all that interested in the ultimate nature or meaning of the scene. Ivan likes the t-shirts and jeans, likes the look. He’s not a purist either. And C., well he likes a little pop music, an inclination we assume is strictly verboten for folks like Vanessa.

ii) Probably because of the differences in ideas and ideologies between the scene members, C. sees things coming to an end, both with the scene and between he and Vanessa. Here we are reminded of the difficulty of keeping any kind of group together, whether a scene, a band, or just a group of friends. Everyone knows the feeling of having a group of friends who tell each other they will be tight forever, however life doesn’t usually work that way. The best film about this dynamic is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which depicts a young group of friends in Manhattan who come together and then slowly, but inevitably, come apart over the course of a winter. There is a great moment in Metropolitan where the main character, Tom, looks around and realizes the scene is dead. Where did it go? It was here one day, gone the next. Scenes are like that, and this is what Finn is writing about.

iii) The inherent differences between people which make keeping the scene together are also something that Finn celebrates to a certain extent I think. One of the most salient features of Finn’s writing is his compassion. Finn has compassion for Angelo and his snakes, Ivan and his jeans, and for Vanessa, in all of her rigidity. As of the time of the song we know for sure that Vanessa is still in the scene and C. is not. I guess that neither Angelo nor Ivan is still around, however if only one of them is my money’s on Angelo, if he’s still alive.

Through the course of my own life, I have been involved, for a shorter or longer time, with a variety of subcultures. One category of subculture that I have frequented is what we could broadly call “new age.” My explorations of this category have been reasonably extensive. Back in my early 20s, I was involved for about 4–5 months with a Tibetan Buddhist group back in Washington State. I would get up at 4 AM, drive an hour across town to a beautiful old house on the hill, and meditate with the folks there. This group also organized some outings, such as mountain hiking.

I enjoyed the group and the meditation. The group leader, a slightly older woman who was lovely, asked me to pay like 6 dollars for a little book with chants in it, which I did. There was a total cross-section of people in the group of different ages and backgrounds, and all in all I liked it there. However, I peeled off from the group after a time for reasons very similar to those discussed by Finn. There were two specific things that led to me leaving. The second I’ll discuss a little later. The first was one day I was chatting with one of the members on the street outside after meditation. He was telling me how his daughter used to play chess, however he would no longer allow her to do so because it was interfering with her studies of Tibetan Buddhism. “There’s just not enough time,” he told me.

I had talked with this guy before and he was a perfectly nice guy, but I didn’t agree with his approach. I felt, in fact, that it was bad action. Now, I understood that people joined the group for different reasons and had different levels of investment. I was not looking to become a Tibetan Buddhist or anything—I was just “checking it out.” To circle back to Finn, the valence gap between this fellow’s take on the subculture and my own was vast, and his entire approach turned me off. This was the first step in my deciding to leave.

The next three verses of “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” see C. trying to keep the door open to Vanessa even as he edges out of the scene. He wants to meet her and if she agrees he will know that she like him feels that “punk is not a fair fight.” Finn doesn’t say, but I’m guessing Vanessa doesn’t show.

If things change quickly/ just remember I still love you/ and I’ll circle ’round the block tonight/ between 9 and 10 o’clock tonight

If you’re still standing here, I’ll take that as a sign/ that you agree it was a sucker punch/ punk is not a fair fight/ it’s never been a fair fight

We said there weren’t any rules/ but there were so many goddamn rules/ we said that they’d be cool/ but then there were so many goddamn rules

Verse VII is the hinge-point of the song and basically its thesis. Finn’s point is straightforward: the appeal of the scene is the potential for freedom, exploration, rebellion, however once inside the subculture C. finds himself increasingly hemmed in by the strictures of that culture and the requirements necessary to remain within it. The very thing that drew C. to the subculture (flight from an over-determined social reality) is that thing that ultimately drives him away. “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” appears in two versions on All These Perfect Crosses; the main version is horn driven and upbeat, and there is also an acoustic version. On the main version, Finn, realizing perhaps that the repeated line is a bit poetically unorthodox, spits out a laugh on the “then” in “but then there were so many goddamn rules,” and in the process underlines the centrality of the sentiment to the song as a whole. It’s a great verse, and one which tells us something fundamental about C.’s nature: he likes the action, and as such needs to be free to pursue it wherever it may be. Action is not limited to the Minneapolis hardcore scene, after all.

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The Most Insane People of All Time: #3 Elizabeth Holmes (aka You’re Outta Control!)

Epigraph: 

“This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius…”

— Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, The 5th Dimension

Elizabeth Holmes emerges in Silicon Valley with the full prodigy package: Stanford dropout, world-changing ambition, and a carefully constructed persona. She leans hard into the comparison with Steve Jobs — black turtlenecks, minimalist language, intense seriousness — and presents herself as the young visionary who will revolutionize medicine. The pitch behind Theranos is irresistible: hundreds of diagnostic tests from a single finger prick. Investors, politicians, and media figures line up. The board fills with heavyweight names including George Shultz, and the company’s valuation soars to roughly $9 billion. Holmes becomes, on paper, the youngest self-made female billionaire. It’s classic Silicon Valley moonshot energy — bold claims, secrecy, and belief outrunning reality.

The problem, as insiders begin to realize, is that the technology doesn’t work at all. Engineers and lab staff struggle to produce reliable results, while Holmes and her partner Ramesh Balwani continue presenting the system as revolutionary. The company begins quietly using conventional lab equipment while maintaining the illusion. Whistleblowers emerge, including Shultz’s own grandson, who raises concerns at significant personal cost. The leadership circles the wagons. Meanwhile, John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal begins investigating, encountering secrecy, evasive answers, and mounting contradictions. His reporting — later expanded into the book Bad Blood — becomes the turning point. The narrative collapses, regulators move in, partnerships evaporate, and the once-mythic startup implodes.

Legal consequences follow. Holmes and Balwani are charged with fraud, and after a long, high-profile trial she is convicted on multiple counts. She delays reporting to prison after becoming pregnant, later giving birth with partner Billy Evans. Eventually she begins serving her sentence in a minimum-security federal facility. Even there, the mythology lingers — supporters, critics, and observers debating whether she was a calculating fraud, a true believer, or some combination of both. The arc is striking: Stanford prodigy, Jobs imitation, $9 billion valuation, total collapse, and prison. Less chaotic than John McAfee, less creepy than Keith Raniere, but still unmistakably outta control — a billion-dollar story built on belief, performance, and a technology that never worked.

Steve Jobs represents the template Elizabeth Holmes tried to emulate. Jobs cultivated a minimalist aesthetic, black turtlenecks, product mystique, and a “reality distortion field” that persuaded investors, employees, and customers to believe in things before they fully existed. But the crucial difference is that Jobs ultimately delivered. From the original Macintosh launch in 1984 to the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007, Apple shipped real, transformative products. Jobs bent reality rhetorically, not technically; Holmes attempted to bend reality where physics and chemistry refused. The comparison highlights both the ambition and the failure — she borrowed the style, but not the substance.

Bernie Madoff represents the classic institutional fraud parallel. A former NASDAQ chairman, Madoff operated a decades-long Ponzi scheme through Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, promising steady returns that attracted elite clients, charities, and feeder funds. By the mid-2000s, billions were under management, including investments tied to major institutions and wealthy families. In December 2008, amid the financial crisis, Madoff confessed to his sons, was arrested, and the scheme collapsed, revealing losses estimated at roughly $65 billion in paper value. The deception persisted largely through reputation and trust — investors assumed competence because of his stature. Holmes operated similarly: prestigious board members, high-profile endorsements, and a narrative of inevitability masked a system that didn’t work. Like Madoff, she benefited from credibility cascading downward — once enough influential people believed, the illusion sustained itself.

Sam Bankman-Fried provides the modern startup-era comparison. Bankman-Fried founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2019, and within a few years it was valued at around $32 billion. He cultivated a quirky, disheveled persona and promoted “effective altruism,” pledging to donate vast sums to global causes. FTX attracted major investors including venture firms and high-profile endorsements, while its sister trading firm Alameda Research operated closely behind the scenes. In November 2022, liquidity concerns triggered a rapid collapse, revealing commingled funds and massive shortfalls. Bankman-Fried was arrested in December 2022 and later convicted in 2023 on fraud and conspiracy charges. The arc mirrors Holmes: meteoric rise, media fascination, complexity masking weakness, and sudden implosion once scrutiny arrived. Where Jobs built something real and Madoff ran a traditional financial fraud, Bankman-Fried and Holmes sit in the same modern category — startup mythology outrunning reality.

In the end, the most astonishing thing about Elizabeth Holmes is not just the scale of the deception but the audacity of it. How, exactly, did she think she was going to get away with it? Blood testing is not social media. It’s not software. It’s chemistry, biology, physics — things that eventually either work or don’t. Yet she and Ramesh Balwani kept pushing forward, covering, deflecting, and doubling down as the gap between claim and reality widened. That’s the outta-control element: the belief that charisma, secrecy, and prestige could override science indefinitely. At some point, the story had to collapse. But like many figures in this series, Holmes seems to have inhabited a gray zone between calculation and belief — part fraud, part self-hypnosis — which made the whole thing both more dangerous and more surreal.

Then there’s the broader cultural context, including the willingness of powerful people to buy in. Even Barack Obama publicly embraced the Theranos narrative early on, holding Holmes up as a symbol of innovation and entrepreneurial promise. Chump. In retrospect, it’s striking how easily the image worked: the black turtleneck, the calm intensity, the world-changing pitch. Smart people — very smart people — saw what they wanted to see. It’s a reminder that charisma plus narrative can override skepticism, especially when wrapped in Silicon Valley optimism. The episode becomes a cautionary tale: will future founders learn from this, or will the same hubris reappear in new forms? The myth of the visionary is powerful, and the temptation to believe in it hasn’t gone away.

The quiet hero of the story, meanwhile, remains the Theranos whistleblower — George Shultz’s grandson — who raised concerns when doing so meant alienating family, risking his career, and standing against a multibillion-dollar narrative. He saw that the technology didn’t work, said so, and held his ground. In a story dominated by hype, status, and belief, that kind of stubborn insistence on reality stands out. Holmes’s rise is outta control, her fall inevitable, but the ending belongs to the people who refused to play along.

Note: If you liked this piece, you may also like the other ones in out “You’re Outta Control” series.

https://thekyotokibbitzer.wordpress.com/2026/04/11/on-the-most-outta-control-people-in-history-aka-youre-outta-control-1-keith-rainere/
https://thekyotokibbitzer.wordpress.com/2026/04/11/the-most-insane-people-of-all-time-aka-youre-outta-control-2-john-mcafee/
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The Most Insane People of All Time (aka You’re Outta Control!): #2 John McAfee

Note: This second installment in The Most Insane People of All Time (aka You’re Outta Control) looks at John McAfee, tracing his evolution from software pioneer to global fugitive, crypto evangelist, and online cult figure. The piece emphasizes the improvisational chaos of his later life and contrasts it with more conventional tech figures like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, arguing that McAfee’s volatility places him in a category of his own. The tone is impressionistic, comparative, and intentionally informal.

Epigraph: 

“I fought the law and the law won…”

— I Fought the Law, The Clash

John McAfee starts in relatively conventional fashion: brilliant programmer, eccentric personality, builds the first widely adopted consumer antivirus software in the late 1980s, and becomes extremely wealthy when McAfee Associates takes off. But even in the early years there’s instability, and a foreshadowing of things to come — drug use, paranoia, erratic business decisions, and a growing anti-authority streak. He sells his stake, drifts through various ventures, and by the late 2000s relocates to Central America, eventually settling in Belize. There he buys beachfront property, hires armed guards, collects dogs, experiments with quasi-scientific projects, and begins acting like a semi-autonomous local strongman. It’s the first fully “outta control” phase: money, isolation, guns, and a man already well inclined toward paranoia.

Then comes the neighbor incident. In 2012, McAfee’s American neighbor, Gregory Faull, is found murdered. McAfee is named a person of interest — never charged — and instead of lying low, he goes fully theatrical. He claims the authorities are targeting him, allegedly evades police by hiding, disguising himself, and moving between safe houses, all while giving interviews and live-tweeting the saga. With girlfriend (later wife) Janice McAfee and various associates in tow, he flees Belize, surfaces in Guatemala, is detained, then ultimately allowed back to the United States. The whole episode is surreal: a tech millionaire allegedly on the run for murder, narrating the chase in real time on social media. It’s not just outta control — it’s performance art.

Back in the U.S., McAfee briefly lands in Florida but quickly re-enters chaos. He promotes cryptocurrencies, launches bizarre tokens, courts publicity, and cultivates a global cult following. He posts paranoid threads about surveillance, claims he lives inside Faraday cages, talks about government plots, and offers wild schemes — including promises to evade arrest by sea, air, or even paragliding into New Mexico to meet with fans! He pops up in unexpected places, from Caribbean boats to European cities, always accompanied by Janice and a rotating cast of loyalists. At one point he tattoos crypto branding onto himself, predicts conspiracies, and positions himself as both fugitive and prophet. The line between performance and belief dissolves completely.

Eventually, legal trouble catches up. U.S. authorities charge him with tax evasion and crypto-related fraud, and he’s arrested in Spain in 2020. From prison he continues tweeting through intermediaries, hinting at conspiracies and insisting he’ll never kill himself. In June 2021, shortly after a Spanish court approves extradition to the United States, McAfee is found dead in his cell — ruled a suicide. His supporters, including Janice, immediately dispute the finding, pointing to earlier posts and tattoos as supposed foreshadowing. The ending is as chaotic as the life: software pioneer turned fugitive, Twitter antihero, crypto evangelist, paranoid showman, and finally a death that only deepened the mythology. Outta control doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Compared to John McAfee, figures like Elon Musk and Bill Gates still look almost conventional — even when they drift into odd territory. Musk’s public persona is chaotic in a very modern way: late-night posting, impulsive announcements, awkward humor, and personal-life theatrics. The relationship with Grimes, the bizarre naming of children, and the infamous weekend when Azealia Banks claimed she was stranded at Musk’s house amid talk of LSD and general weirdness all add to the sense of volatility. Then there are the dad-joke moments — hauling a sink into Twitter headquarters and posting “let that sink in,” which is either performance art or just terrible humor. It’s eccentric, sometimes cringe, occasionally outta control — but the companies still run, rockets still launch, and the chaos never fully escapes the bounds of reality.

Gates, by contrast, is a more old-school eccentric. Bill Gates has the reputation of a hyper-competitive young executive who mellowed into a philanthropic technocrat, but the quirks linger. The awkward dancing, the slightly rumpled appearance, the perennial jokes about dandruff — he has always projected a kind of brilliant-but-uncool energy. The later-life turbulence — divorce from Melinda after decades, scrutiny over his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein, and the general aura of a private billionaire navigating public controversy — adds complexity but not chaos. Gates remains structured, Musk volatile, but both operate within functioning systems. McAfee, meanwhile, is something else entirely: not just eccentric but improvisationally unstable, a man who turned paranoia, fugitivity, and spectacle into a lifestyle. Musk may be chaotic, Gates may be awkward, but McAfee is outta control in a different register altogether.

In the end, John McAfee feels more outta control than Keith Raniere, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates — and that’s saying something. Raniere was creepy and manipulative but small; Musk is chaotic but still tethered to real-world outcomes; Gates is eccentric but fundamentally structured. McAfee, by contrast, seemed to live entirely outside normal constraints. Guns, boats, dogs, girlfriends, crypto tokens, Faraday cages, live-tweeting alleged manhunts, promising wild escapes, drifting between countries — the whole thing reads less like a biography and more like a fever dream. He wasn’t just eccentric; he appeared to improvise his life day by day, escalating the spectacle each time. That kind of volatility is rare. It’s also why he became a cult hero: he embodied a fantasy of total freedom, however reckless, however unsustainable.

Years after his death, the mythology hasn’t faded. Supporters still debate the circumstances, quote his tweets, and treat him as a kind of outlaw technologist who refused to play by the rules. Whether you see him as mad genius, performance artist, or cautionary tale, the scale of the chaos is undeniable. There may have been more dangerous figures, more powerful figures, even more tragic figures — but few as consistently, flamboyantly outta control. That’s what makes McAfee a legend. Not admirable, not necessarily likable, but unforgettable. And like all true originals, there probably won’t be another. So RIP, prayers up, and pour one out for a real one, John Motherfucking McAfee.

Note: If you liked this piece, you may also like the other ones in out “You’re Outta Control” series.

On the Most Outta Control People in History (aka You’re Outta Control!): #1 Keith Rainere
The Most Insane People of All Time: #3 Elizabeth Holmes (aka You’re Outta Control!)