... Gabriel Morristhe rest of us were trying to go about the house as usual, not knowing
what else to do. I had pretty much disconnected from the situation,
feeling too overwhelmed myself after the past five days of fasting to
deal with it. Julia’s sister had been alerted to the situation, and we
were all hoping she would come up with a solution sometime soon.
Amy and I stayed on the front porch late into the night, talking
and holding one another, though it was clear that I was less in her
heart now than when she’d stayed with me a few weeks before. Her
mind was clearly occupied with concern for her friend Lisa.
She stayed over that night and then left early the next morning. I
was sad to see her go. Her unexpected presence a few weeks before
had been a blessing, in what was beginning to feel now like my empty
and hollow life. I hadn’t managed to find a steady girlfriend in the year-
and-a-half I’d been in Eugene, and I realized then how much I wanted
to be in a partnership with a woman, sharing together my path of ad-
venture, exploration, and learning. Before she left, Amy invited me to
come to Texas and visit her sometime. It was shortly afterwards that I
started thinking seriously about leaving Eugene for good.
Later that day, Julia’s sister finally called the local social services clin-
ic, to come pick her up and take her to a psychiatric facility. She was
acting increasingly hostile towards the men in the house and wouldn’t
talk clearly even to her own sister, who was extremely apologetic to us
all but didn’t know how to help her. I was gone when they came over
to get her and relieved when I returned to find the drama finally over.
There was something about this particular weekend that attracted
all manner of random, unsettling circumstances. In addition to the
incident with Julia, and Amy’s rushing through with her own frantic
situation, one of our ex-housemates, who had moved up to Portland a
month earlier, came by the next day to get his couch and dining room
table, which we all were using. Suddenly we had nowhere to sit in
the living room and no table to eat on. And just a few days after Amy
left, I got a $10 traffic ticket for running a red light while working
one evening. My brake pads had been screeching lately from undue
wear. When I came speeding towards the intersection, I’d decided