University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2011 Mild To Moderately Severe J D. Valencia University of Central Florida Part of the Creative Writing Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Valencia, J D., "Mild To Moderately Severe" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 1985. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/1985 MILD TO MODERATELY SEVERE by J DANIEL VALENCIA BA University of Central Florida, 2007 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2011 © 2011 J Daniel Valencia ii ABSTRACT Mild to Moderately Severe is an episodic memoir of a boy coming of age as a latch-key kid, living with a working single mother and partly raising himself, as a hearing impaired and depressed young adult, learning to navigate the culture with a strategy of faking it, as a nomad with seven mailing addresses before turning ten. It is an examination of accidental and cultivated loneliness, a narrative of a boy and later a man who is too adept at adapting to different environments, a reflection on relationships and popularity and a need for attention and love that clashes with a need to walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods alone. “Mild to moderately severe” is a diagnosed level of my hearing impairment. It is also the level of clinical depression I’m supposed to have been suffering since I was a preteen. It is also an answer to the question, “How was your day?” iii This is dedicated to everyone who treasures the sound of their bare feet scuffing a carpet. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 LODI .......................................................................................................................................... 1 2 ANTONIO ............................................................................................................................... 10 3 HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, HALLWAY TO HELL ............................................................. 11 4 JOHN CARPENTER EFFECT................................................................................................ 16 5 THE INTERIMS AND IN-BETWEENS ................................................................................ 23 6 FLORIDA ................................................................................................................................ 31 7 MILD TO MODERATELY SEVERE .................................................................................... 34 8 MIDDLE SCHOOL ................................................................................................................. 45 9 ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL ..................................................................................... 51 10 ANXIETY .............................................................................................................................. 58 11 IVY ........................................................................................................................................ 64 12 HELL ..................................................................................................................................... 75 13 NOTES ................................................................................................................................... 80 14 GUIDANCE ........................................................................................................................... 85 15 THE FOUNDATION............................................................................................................. 89 16 AWAKE AND DREAMING ................................................................................................ 95 17 MIX TAPES......................................................................................................................... 104 18 ROSEMARY AND TIME ................................................................................................... 110 19 SECURITY .......................................................................................................................... 125 20 RESISTANCE ..................................................................................................................... 131 21 10-4 ...................................................................................................................................... 136 22 OPPORTUNITY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF OBSTACLES OR WHAT I LEARNED FROM BHARATA AND OINGO BOINGO ............................................................................. 155 23 DISTRACTED ..................................................................................................................... 162 v 1 LODI ~*~ Monday Third grade. The closing bell echoed through the red brick building. The bell brought a moment of harmony. Everyone heard it and responded to it. The soft murmur of voices erupted into laughter and screams and squeals. Giddy children poured out of the building. We carried the memory of the closing bell with us like an echo. It seemed like the bell kept ringing and ringing, even when I was away from the building and a block away. I walked down the cracked sidewalk of the hill, the sound of hysterical children not so much fading as stripping down to its barest elements. It was mid-October but still warm. Sweat had already started to soak the collar of my t-shirt. My grey windbreaker felt like tarpaulin. My books wanted to slip my grip and I wanted to let them. When I looked down at my own body, I thought I resembled a bulging cardboard tube, like a roll of paper towels with the last, half-glued sheet hanging off. My walk home was a short descent through concrete. Down the hill under constant sun that reflected heat of the sidewalk, the streets, the beige or graying walls that held in sparse lawns flanked by houses that seemed sick and starving. When we were living on Farnham Road the previous year, my walk was several times longer, in the opposite direction, uphill, leaving the school several worlds behind. I was traveling to higher planes. There was glittering shade from many overhanging trees, and the houses were friendly. The apartment on Farnham, the second floor of a two-family house, was open and brightly lit. I always 1 looked forward to getting home. The picture window in the living room frosted over in the winter. On clear mornings, I could see the city glittering in the distance from my bedroom window. From that we moved to a garage apartment, two easy too-quick blocks down from school. Down. We lived under a real house, under a real family. My mother and her boyfriend had moved there while I’d spent the summer in Florida with my grandparents. The front door at the Farnham Road apartment, with its huge living room, the den where I played Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, the warm, comfortable kitchen, was grey and inconspicuous. The elaborate and heavy lacquered wooden door of the garage apartment, with four small windowpanes that looked like delicate crystal, led to a dark space with two small windows inches above the dirt, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. The door lied to me every time I got home. And I forgot my key. I searched the gravel of the driveway. Searching for lost things is a ritual that has never ended. It’s a feeling that must be akin to a ghost haunting a house. The door was firm, cold, locked. I stacked my books beside the door and I walked down the hill. My friend Antonio lived a block down the hill in a brick apartment building. I knocked on the door and waited two minutes before walking on. Just beyond his building, the hill leveled out. A block beyond that there was a big, open park that looked like a grassy dinner plate complete with the raised rim edges. Antonio and his two younger sisters and brother were running around each other. Black as ink, their huge smiles revealed big, perfect white teeth. “Jules,” he called as I got closer. “Jules,” his siblings echoed in their smaller, giddy voices. Antonio Slaughter was wiry, tall, just a bit shorter than I, and his body was a knotwork of muscle. He was one of those children who started life with all the grace he would ever need and his easy confidence showed it. 2 We played tag for an hour. I fell twice and stained the knees and rear of my tan “good” pants. My mother would wonder why I didn’t put on “play” pants before going out. I would rather let her think I forgot that than my keys. I always forgot my keys. But if I had actually forgotten to change pants, I bet I would have preferred she think I lost my keys. I guess it is the real embarrassment that we want to avoid. After an hour, Antonio shepherded his brother and sisters home to do homework. I walked with them, and then kept walking up the hill, past the garage apartment. Farther up the hill there was a corner store that had Donkey Kong. The sun came through the window and reflected rudely on the screen, and the graphics looked like a vague ghost image. I had two quarters in my pocket. I played them quickly because Donkey Kong’s barrels kept sneaking up on me through the