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Once again I was approached by a guidance counselor and told that there was a move afoot to have me tossed out of school. “I’m paid up—my grades are good and I haven’t missed a single class or lab. What’s the problem?”
“You’re classmates are afraid of you.”
“They’re the ones trying to get rid of me—I’m the one that should be fearful here.”
“Well, are you?”
“Not really. I would think they would need more of a reason than some contrived fear of competition or because they hate their fathers. And I certainly hope I’m not related to anyone here.”
In the meantime, in between time I still had a small bucket load of money due me from the regional distributor of Mountain Valley Water from Hot Springs Arkansas, the man with the security clearance, the man who served bottled spring water to the White House and the Congress. He owned property and warehouses and trucks and he had his own gas pumps. He was behind in his payments, but a man of his claimed respectability wouldn’t skin a poor working stiff student, would he? An American Value?
I escaped from Elvis and his CIA father. North of Orlando, north of University of Central Florida, east and far enough away from Full Sail and off the beaten path, on a dead end dirt road, I found a house where Toots the cat could hunt and eat lizards and I could once more have a little peace, Oviedo. It was living in the sticks with the mall and coffee shop down the road a piece. There were only six houses on the road and all on the same side. The opposite side was overgrown and mushy—wetlands I presumed. The house was big enough for a small army and my truck fit into the garage so Iris could hide.
The results came back on our fifteen minute screen plays and I was the only one in the class with a perfect score—my script would be the midterm class project. No wonder they wanted to get rid of me. The one thing I took into consideration when writing my script was: Was it doable for a bunch of students? I had the locations sighted the set created in my mind and a limited number of scenes. Since it was a class project everyone got input and the losers attempted to make it impossible with impossible demands for spiral staircases and flowery poetry readings by actors. I increased my popularity by fighting outrageous demands every step of the way with passionate argument and degrading innuendo. Oh so doomed I was. I was having fun.
With all that was going on I began a screen play—DARK STAR—A black woman had dreams of being Christ reincarnate complete with stigmata. She befriended a cab driver who people began to believe was the Anti-Christ. I passed around all of my work to faculty and students alike at Full Sale—including TAKE A BITE OF THE APPLE—the song, the script and the storyboard. And Al Gore was in the process of making the information highway a viable entity. My computer couldn’t access it but Brian Eight Ball was logged on to America On Line. This was all new stuff but the school wasn’t there—they were turning out grips and Best Boys. I had one of the few cell phones in the entire school and it came in handy driving a taxi.

“Good friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.” That was the quote at the bottom of the first handout in the first class in writing. We were also informed that we had a task to write a fifteen minute script and the chosen one would be the midterm film project for the class.
In the lighting for film and video class we were informed that we would be grading ourselves. The instructor was balding and had a long braid down his back and he really didn’t care about much more than his paycheck. I was driving a taxi 60 hours a week and going to some form of school for another 40 with a bunch of kids that thought giving themselves their own grades was really cool. I still believed that I was getting good information. We got to pull cables and set up three point lighting.
In writing there was the exchange of ideas. Spike the black kid wanted to do a script about robbing banks. Brian was writing a script about people running their entire lives by shaking a magic eight ball for every decision. Ben wrote about a vengeful Vietnam Veteran becoming a serial killer and eating his victims. Elvis was writing about an alien abduction where Jesus was on board the spaceship the abducted heathen was taken to and afterwards became an evangelist. Betty was working on a script about Shake and Bake, a recipe for chicken and how easy it was to help if you were a kid. Veronica wrote about her time in the army and sexual harassment by officers and the revenge of killing them. Woodlee wrote about his fascination with Judy Garland and Sugar the diabetic computer whiz had robots injecting him with insulin and falling in love with his body. Paul, the other black kid came up with the premise of being trapped in an art school that taught nothing but the art of graffiti and how not to get caught. I wrote about reading Walt Whitman loudly at train stations as a way to pick up chicks. Winter Park had a really nice train station I discovered while driving the taxi.
I worked the taxi until six o’clock in the morning or thereabouts. Weekends I had the opportunity to go back to the apartment and get some sleep. One Sunday morning very early on I learned an important lesson. After driving all night I stretched out on the couch I owned in front of the TV I owned in the common room and watched a little TV. Elvis came into the apartment after church and I was groggy, “You’re Drunk!” he said, “You’re disgusting.”
“Give me a break, Baloney Boy. I worked all night.” He got me—I lost it. I was a bit harsh but I knew that he was in on trying to get me bounced out of school like he did Tuck and his pornography. I also knew I had to find another place to live even though the lease was in my name. Elvis said his father would cover the security deposit when he got back from Algeria. I figured he must have worked for the CIA so I couldn’t ask the kid to leave. The taxi business was giving me enough money I thought I could do it on my own though the hours were taking a toll. It was also separating me further and farther away from my classmates but keeping me in touch with the darkness of the night and the reality of the real jungle.