Thank you for material

Unforgettable moments as a controversial writer

By: Steve Markley

Posted: 4/25/06

I promised myself I would not write a farewell column. Maybe in my time at The Miami Student, I haven't been funny and I haven't been insightful, but at least I've been original - you have to give me that - and a weepy farewell column appeals to me about as much as getting a vasectomy with garden sheers.

However, farewell columns are kind of like having anal sex with your friend's dog. You don't want to do it, you tell yourself you're not going to do it, but then you're all alone in your buddy's house with Whistleton and you've got some time to kill while your pal goes to buy the beer.

So I find that after four years, I just have too much on my chest to not say goodbye. I'm not going to lie: The opportunity to write in this newspaper has been one of the best experiences of my life and one hell of a journey.

Blame my friend and co-editor Chris Gardner for getting me the job. The very first column I ever wrote elicited a rather nasty piece of hate mail. The editors at the time refused to run my second column, which ended with a joke about masturbation. Blame former editor in chief, Leah Rupp, for giving me a job as editor (and therefore the opportunity to make masturbation jokes in every column) mostly because I made her life a living hell when I wrote about how I would rather not have sex with that used tampon of a human being, Ann Coulter.

I never thought anything I would write could ever again elicit that much hate mail, furor and calls for me to lose my job. Then I got back from Europe and recounted my adventures in Amsterdam and Prague (sex shows, midget strippers and mind-altering substances) and had e-mails from Miami administrators telling me they would do everything in their power to make sure kids like me never got to study abroad at Miami. Reliable sources tell me that within the offices of the study abroad programs they have nickname for kids who just go overseas to debase themselves: "How do we keep out the Steve Markleys?" they say. One high-ranking individual wrote to The Student to claim that I was responsible for turning back the Enlightenment.

If only they could know how much that meant to me. It was like they were giving my ego a hand job.

I've had people come up to me to say they love my columns. I've had people write to me to say they hate them (once, a girl from the College Republicans wrote to tell me how misplaced my values were and the very next weekend I saw her name in the Police Beat for drunk driving). Either way, this gig has been the most fun I've ever had and I can't tell you how grateful I am that anyone took the time to form an opinion about me, good, bad or really, really bad.

So here's the problem: The problem is that you can never define what this experience of college has meant to you. Whether it's an old flame who still enjoys your company years after the relationship has ended, whether it's the friends you've kept from high school who will remind you when you weren't that cool and couldn't talk to a girl to save your life (OK, so this hasn't changed), whether it's that person you met on your study abroad trip who got drunk with you in so many strange European cities that you got to know every embarrassing story and past tragedy in each other's lives, whether it's the co-workers who always gave you the feeling when you left the office that you hadn't been working but just hanging out with your friends, whether it's the ex-girlfriend who you first met at a party when you thought to yourself that she had the most beautiful pair of eyes you'd ever seen inside of a human skull, whether it's all the roommates with whom you've shared dorm rooms and apartments - not to mention living rooms, kitchens, showers and toilets - who all feel more like your brothers than your friends, whether it's the people you've only just met this year who you didn't get nearly enough time with. …

The problem is that for all these people, there is just no way to tell them how much you love them - how goddamn much they mean to you. So you stare at them across the room at a party and think about how you'll probably just have to let them slip out of your life without ever letting them know. …

Such is the way of things, I guess. We move on. We go other places, meet other people, and relegate the rest to memory. I suppose the best thing to say to these people - to you reading this - is thanks for carving out a place among those memories for me.

Finally, I have to thank some people. Thank you to Ann Coulter for being such a joke. Thanks to the woman in Amsterdam who showed me that vaginal muscles can be built to Herculean strength. Thanks to George W. Bush for giving me so much material. Thanks to all the professors who brought my name up in their classes. Thanks to the College Republicans for being such an easy target. Thanks to the Miami administrators who unwittingly broke out a bottle of hand lotion for me. Thanks to everyone who ever felt the need to spend a portion of their life telling me what they thought about what I thought.

Thanks for everything. Here's hoping our paths cross again someday.