You probably don't know him, unless you're from central texas working for a piano moving company.
I am a student at the Putney boarding school, in Brattleboro, Vermont. Quentin and I roomed together during my junior year. He's gone now, having been kicked out for getting caught smoking marijuana too many times. During his brief stay, I knew him as the wildest and most uncontainable person I've ever known.
First of all, he was from Texas. He had an accent, the suthern drawl. He had come here because it was better than Catholic school or boot camp. He could speak Latin fluently. He said he had come from a swamp, near the town where they make Fritos. He told us on the first day that he had once stolen a car while intoxicated, and then woke up in Arizona two days later.
He liked drugs. He smoked weed, did coke, and tripped acid all in a day. He lost his student ID after using it to sniff ketamine. He cut a hole in our floor to hide drugs in. His harmonica smelled like weed. His guitar strings were oiled with resin. They said he had had sex on ecstacy. He would trip all day, and miss class. He had been in "the hole". Tex liked drugs.
He was at least 250 pounds, and he was sensitive about it. He used to duck-walk around campus in the winter on a pair of skiis, wearing a scandinavian hat and 3D vision shades. I once found photocopies of a check for 24 dollars from his mom in his desk. He would fall asleep at 7:00, with his clothes on, on a matress with no sheets. We would then take polaroids of his bare ass and leave them on his bedpost, where he would discover them the next morning. He said the fasion of our school was to look impoverished, so one day he showed up to class in a full tuxedo...and 3D vision shades.
He hung tibetan prayer flags on our wall, and listened to Ravi Shankar. He taught me how to appreciate ZZ Top and Merle Haggard. He had a five-string bass. He could play "turkey in the straw" on the violin. He started a bluegrass band and a punk band called the dipshit masturbational punk machines. He would write songs about "gothic star trek" and "my donkey pedro". "my donkey pedro" was the story of a mexican who decided to solicit a prostitute for his donkey.
His teachers tried their hardest to make him behave. He would stay up all night writing papers which made no sense at all. He tried to participate in class discussions, but he was just too stoned. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. People used to line up outside our door when he got a shipment of drugs. He made videos of people sitting around a campfire, smoking a bong and playing steel drums. He once carried a kid on his back a mile uphill from a party in the woods who would have died of alcohol poisoning.
Sometimes he would get depressed. He would lie on his bed and tell me about his girl troubles while I sat at my computer. He was enamored with a girl named Layla, who once put something special in his pocket(he never told me what) and was too young for him. He felt he had no real friends at this school. He would say "I'm like the wind-up monkey, put in a quarter and I'll do a little dance." But none of it mattered to Tex. He was ok, even in Vermont where the snow was knee-high. He didn't use drugs to solve his problems. His chosen name on Napster was "TexQuentininVT".
Over spring break that year, I left for home a few days early because of sickness. I was in Santa Cruz, California when I heard from a mutual friend that he had been caught smoking weed in his room with a few other perpetrators. He was told to take as many of his belongings as he could and not come back. When I returned, the room was clean, with a Texan flag laid out on his bed. He left a message on the screensaver of my computer, a scrolling marquee, that said, "hey Matt it's me Tex...thanks for being a great roommate and tell everyone I love them very much. Don't give up and appreciate this place."
Last I heard of him, he was a piano mover in Texas. Some friends called him to see how he was doing, but for some reason I never did. It didn't seem appropriate. I had spent most of that year watching people I knew destroy themselves with addictions and bad relationships. I knew Tex didn't want to hear about any of that. He always said the only reason he ever got high was to liven up his day.
I truely believe he had no inhibitions, no fears, and absolutely no understanding of the frigid, nervous, half-dead yankees who took him on as a guest for six months of his life.