Travis Lewis's Questionnaire

Travis lives in Berkely, California, as that is where he did his Ph.D and where he teaches folklore as a University instructor. 

He lives in a  section of town that is well-known for being populated by graduate students. It has plenty of bookstores, coffee shops, bars, night clubs, restaurants, fast food, and cannabis dispensaries.  

Travis lives in a modest apartment building, which, again, is populated largely by graduate students and others connected with the local universities. 

The apartment has a small kitchen and dining area, a decent sized living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom with shower.  

Travis does not own a television. His living room is filled to the brim with shelves containing books, manuscript, and his computer station. 

In the bedroom by his bed is a fairly large tabletop altar where Travis performs occult rituals. 

Hanging throughout the apartment, and especially above the door and windows, are various occult charms designed to block entry of evil spirits and unwanted energies.  

Travis suffered alienation and abuse in his high school years, believing things would get better when he ran off to college. 

He quickly discovered people in college were a lot like people in high school, only with more money and therefore even more superficial and pretentious. 

Having suffered the japes of the in-crowd for all his college career, particularly at the hands of rich kids who joined Greek Letter societies (fraternities and sororities), Travis published an open letter in the student newspaper calling for the abolition of all Greek Letter societies on campus. The letter was laced with intellectually worded snipes as to the lack of intelligence and morality of such societies. 

One night when Travis was walking home from the library, he was assaulted by a gang of thugs. While they were wearing masks, he recognized their voices.  They belonged to a particularly vicious fraternity.

Travis was sent to the hospital with some contusions and broken ribs. He filed a report with campus police but soon discovered they had little interest in pursuing the matter. 

At this point, Travis performed several occult rituals over successive nights.  Whether coincidentally or not, within  a week of those rituals, the fraternity that had secretly assaulted him was rocked by a scandal involving the hazing of pledges and was ultimately banned from campus.  

Travis took from this that there were really only two important things in life: 1) social credibility, and 2) the power to enforce one's will.  

Travis's father is named William, though every one called him Billy.  Billy was exceedingly popular in high school and in the local community, and was something of a Bad Boy when growing up.  William never prized anything intellectual and upon graduation went into various construction jobs. William looked askance at his son, who in his eyes was too nerdy, too introverted, and not "manly enough."  He urged Lewis to get a "real job" after graduating high school, or at least go to a vocational school, rather than go to college and study folklore.  Needless to say, Travis and his father don't see eye to eye often or get along exceedingly well. 

Travis's mother is named Mary.  Mary was known in high school for being promiscuous, among other things, and immediately fell for the town Bad Boy, William.  Sometime after graduation and having Travis,  Mary found Jesus, or whatever version of Jesus was promoted by the televangelist she listened to every day. Now Mary considers herself a most holy Christian, though she rarely steps inside a church.  She has given a lot of money to her televangelist church over the years. She also counsels young girls to remain abstinent until marriage, which to anybody who knew Mary in high school, would seem laughably hypocritical. 

The closest thing Travis has to a healthy human relationship is a young women named Shoshana.  Shoshana can be described as a dark beauty, Jewish, and of Mediterranean and Eastern European stock.  Shoshana is a few years younger than Lewis and is still completing her undergrad.  Travis and Shoshanna get along well and enjoy each other's company, both intellectual and carnal.  Lewis thought of proposing, but Shoshanna has stated she is strongly pressured by her family to marry a Jewish guy and she doesn't know if their relationship can last much longer. 

Travis's parents were the town Bad Boy (the father) and the town Promiscuous Girl. (the mother)  The Mother became something of a diehard, televangelist-watching Protestant Christian later in life.  The father paid lip service to religion but seemed more interested in watching sports, drinking beer, and  - when the mother wasn't around - watching porn.  While not exactly stupid or unintelligent, neither of these individuals prized intellectual activity, nor could they conceive of a life other than the rustic, working-class life they and their forebears had been living.  Neither supported Travis in his desire to build an intellectual career away from the small town where he grew up. 

Travis attended school. Despite lack of proper encouragement from his parents, he did well.  In fact, he graduated near the top of his class and earned a scholarship to college.  

Travis was woefully unpopular.  He had little interest in sports, he did not see fit to pay lip service to local custom and religion, and he had some aberrant interests such as the occult.  He didn't have friends, exactly, only sporadic acquaintances who occasionally tolerated his presence.  This lonely life made Travis concinved the only person he could count on was himself.