Rolling Stone College
Papers, Spring 1980:
Suicide: Notes on a Life Too Short.  By the
end of the 1970s, my life was greatly impacted
by the deaths of several people I knew.    That
includes the death of  my girlfriend and fiancée
Michelle Lakin. This article is not specifically
about her (as many people believe)  but  there
is a lot of her in it.  It certainly echoed out of the
well of grief  I fell into that year. Michelle played
a great blues harp and was a potter, painter
and fabric artist. She liked Jimi Hendrix and
motorcycles. She was a vegetarian who liked
ketchup on her carrots. I met her when we were
18.  She died at 21.  She changed my life with
hers and changed it again by dieing. After her
death In October of 1979 I was unable to come
to grips with anything that had happened. I’m
still putting it into perspective.

This article  was originally about her. My editor
at RollingStone, David Abramsom wanted me to
write something more about myself, and my
personal process. I couldn't do it.  It was a dark
winter. The cold froze my bones and mind
numb. I ended up going into the basement of
my little house on Clairmont street in the
Russian Bottoms  to a dark corner where there
was a desk and a picture of Michelle on the
wall. I never wrote down there.  There was no
heat. And it was  haunted.

Some said the ghost was  the German prisoner
of war that had settled there after the war. But
Harriet Tubman had also lived there. In the coal
room she had hid escaped slaves. Its hard to
imagine the PTSD of post slavery and escape.
The fear every time a dog barked. I lived with
those ghosts that year too.  Is that what David
had in mind?As I typed out the  article a
composite of  people and events  came out. I
invoked the panic and shock I was feeling.
Mostly the shock.  People die. That's what I
learned in college.

David had me rewrite  the story  over Christmas
vacation. I was in Florida visiting my parents.  
He wanted a photograph of me to go with the
article.  He suggested I go to a photo booth
and take a few there. I didn't care. I was tanned
dark from my tourist time on the beach.  I was
grief worn and tired.

I sat in a  photo booth in a Walgreens for
awhile before snapping a series of pictures.
They were terribly lit. I wasn't happy.  I sent the
best out of a series of terrible shots to David. If
that's what he wanted, that's what he got.  It
was Rollingstone magazine after all. If David
had said pose naked with a flamingo I would
have done it. A dream was ending. A dream
was beginning.

The article was  published in the new year. I got
familiar with the power of RollingStone
magazine pretty quickly. I got mail. A play
based on the article was produced in Kansas
City. I was invited to appear on the Phil
Donohoe Show as an alternate guest. The
show was about college related suicides.

Everyone invited onto the show said the same
things.  As I say in my novel, we all hung out
like fish in an aquarium. With our mouths open.
I got the call from the producer in a casino in
Atlantic City. I was standing at the slot machine,
watching the fruit spin when they announced
my name over the intercom. I was visiting
relatives. My grandmother took the call from
the Donohoe show and told them where I was
playing.

The producer asked me if I had anything
different to add to what the other guests were
saying. She was annoyed when I said “no.”
I did not appear on the show as a result.
I  should have talked about the sexual assaults
that  were at the core of everything that
happened.

I was not yet awake enough to understand.
I didn't wake up for several years.

The College Papers remain an interesting
magazine experiment. It was very short lived.
There were only one or two issues. This  
particular  issue also contained an interview
with Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and
an unpublished story by Philip K. Dick. Two
people who had a great impact on the style and
content of my writing. Yes, Chevy Chase was in
there too. I think that cover shot has a great
deal to do with why you don't see the magazine
around.

I see being published in Rollingstone as a sort
of benediction. A linage thing. It was the pistol
shot that started the whole thing off.
AP archive photo circa 1979
Caption: Michael Zangari to
publish memories of the
University of Nebraska.
At  eightteen years of age I met Michelle Lakin. She was sitting in the
commons area of our dorm in the experimental Centennial Education
Program at the University of Nebraska. She was wearing a loose flannel
shirt and had a doll face. She had deep peacock blue eye shadow on her
eye lids and perfectly etched eyebrows arching over her cinnamon
colored eyes. She squinted at me to see who I was.
I was frozen by the window like an ice sculpture, nimbused in the light
and completely rapped.  She paused, letting purple smoke trail off her
Virginia Slim cigarette.  She usually had one in one hand while she
sketched in her journal with the other.  She alternated the journal with
the Farmer's Almanac, which she read for moon phases and personals.
She was looking for a husband on an isolated ranch. She wanted to feel
safe.  Stable.

The smoke and light surrounded her  like she was an apparition from the
other side. Her long honey colored hair like the hood of some kind of  
mystical robe.

It was decided.
I was going to be boyfriend.
And by the end of the day, I was.