Kyle hops a plane back to Paris

Kylie, what's up. How you doing, hon. Hope this letter reaches you before you've hopped a plane to Paris to be with that Frog boy.


Olivier and Kyle, Spring '93

I am writing to you because I didn't want you to miss out on your chance to win ten million dollars. Don't forget to return the winning entry before September 3rd.


Kyle got one like this, too.

Jay and Lydia tell me that tricks with you are good, that you've had a good summer and all of that. I am so disappointed that we all didn't get to go to Block Island together, but hey, it'll happen someday. That Monday, Jenny and I got up around noon and both felt really sick. We decided to stay home and rest all day instead of coming to Watch Hill, because we were driving back South the next day. So hope everybody didn't worry about us being buried somewhere.

It was a fun visit in Rhode Island, though. Jenny got to know my family much better, and we did things together like going to a Native American musuem in Bristol, visiting friends in Boston, clubbing at Club Babyhead in Providence, going out to the Cape, and attending this fundraiser for Save The Bay at Senator Pell's summer house in Newport.


Jenny at Pink House, Spring '93.

That was fun. Totally catered, free drinks and food, hobnobbing with the politically active high society crowd and having power chats with all four of my congressional representatives before the night was through. We even sneaked into a cocktail party thrown for donors who had given $10,000 or more. Mike Wallace and his wife were the guests of honor. He looked like an old motherfucker.

So, anyway, hope that you drop the Pink House a line from Paris every once in awhile. N'Gai will be in New York next year, as will Dana, and Rashmi, and this friend of mine John Hamilton Palmer, who is up there working for Hearst magazines again. We met him when he was on an internship for Vogue in Paris, right after you had left town. Thus, I will have many reasons to visit the city, and perhaps our schedules will coincide at some point when you fly back in for the weekend to buy bagels. That ten million you've got coming will probably lead to many life changes for you, I have a feeling.


Jay and Olivier, Spring '93

Say hello to Olivier for me, and take care of yourself, hon. Be especially careful of old men who sit muttering to themselves wearing long, dark coats. These men are chronic masturbators and are probably lying in wait for you.

- Letter to Kyle

We had such a fun year

How are you doing, this is your devoted pal Erik. Somebody just had a roll of film developed, and there are beautiful pictures of you and me and Penny and Jay and Lydia all over our refrigerator. So how could I help but think about you every time I reach for some bodily nourishment. Besides, I was coming around the corner of North Street today and out of the corner of my eye, who did I spy but Michael. He appeared to be moving into his new house.


Caroline, Erik, Lydia and Jay at 210 Ransom Street, early summer '93

So you see, I really had no choice but to write you this letter today, sitting at my one a.m. desk with John Coltrane in the background, songs from 1962. I just returned to Chapel Hill from Rhode Island. I was there with Jenny for ten days or so, hanging with the folks, visiting my grandma, sharing Northern romantic experiences with my sweetheart.

I heard you were busy with an audition on the day that we were all planning to go to Block Island. Hope it went well, as I hope everything else in your new Boston life is cool, but I really have no doubts that things are going extremely well and positive for my friend the next Shelly Long. When do your classes start? You know, I heard that at Harvard, the best way to gain a professor's respect is to spit in class every once in a while, on the floor or atop a desk or somewhere. It shows you're not intimidated by their Ivy League teaching styles. You should try this sometime.

Anyway, enclosed is some of your mail. By the way, people are constantly stopping me on the street these days, ashen faced because they've realized that you've graduated and are forever gone. I just tell them that you're attending classes at some drunken driving school up in Cambridge.

Caroline, I miss you and hope you'll be in Boston and our schedules will magically coincide sometime this year whenever I get up that way. We had such a fun year. N'Gai is leaving for New York in a few days, and it's got me kind of nostalgic about the last couple years, and everything - and I'm not even done with college yet myself.

One other thing just came full circle, too. Last Wednesday, I got my hair cut. Really short. The last time I did that was two and a half years ago, right before our road trip up North for Spring Break, you, me, Kyle, Dana, and Clint.

Hey, I gotta go. Time to wash the dishes and do battle with ants. Take care of yourself and have a great year, o.k.?

- letter to Caroline Hall

From the Hip

XTCian, 8/4/02

by IAN WILLIAMS ('95-'97)

(During) my vegetarian years, roughly 1991-93...I was besotted with the resurgence of community service amongst us Generation Xers, and got fat eating nothing but french fries. Part of that time I was dating Susan Comfort, and with that came no meat, relentless recycling, and repeated, horrified re-readings of Diet for a New America. I even wrote a couple of environmentally-themed songs at that time that were terrible. I mean, what the hell was I thinking???

One of the good things to come from those dioxin-free days was my involvement in a project called From the Hip, which was our little way of trying to convince the world that the members of Generation X weren't all Frito-munchin' scalawags with brainfuls of "Gilligan's Island" trivia. The project, of course, was doomed from the beginning.

We were never sure what kind of project it would be (a book? a video?) and though 280 young photographers scoured the country looking for "at-risk youths making a difference," only about three of them could take decent pictures. Most of our schemes in the summer of 1993 ended in humiliation at the hands of book agents and corporate sponsors, but none of that mattered to me: I was having too good a time.

It was then I got to know some fabulous people: Stasia Droze, who has since been like family; Lawrence Lucier, who became my confidante at CitySearch in 1996 and then my East Village roommate in 2000; even N'Gai Wright, who later became the character N'Wal in a little movie I'm working on called The Pink House. Our leader Tony Deifell, was an old Chi Psi buddy who always had a plan I learned a lot from his dogged determination, especially when we went to Washington D.C. to crack a few skulls.

Our project was a failure, as were most public service anthems dedicated to our generation (does anybody reading this remember Lead or Leave? At least those Third Millennium cats are still around). But like any project full of bright, intense young thinkers, we all have tons to say to each other even a decade later. That, and I really miss the "let's get together and put on a show" way of looking at one's career; we really did just rent an office in downtown Durham and hope for the best. These days, there's so much formality and structure that accompanies all our decisions - back then, if you had gas in the car, a paid phone bill and a place to get bourbon & cokes after work, anything seemed cool enough to try for a summer.