I'd like to tell you the story of my life at Bennington College and why I was kicked out. It's a story of sex, violence, politics, large powerful handguns and huge amounts of money. Tragically, the story is just too damn long. I've written over 75 typed pages on the subject and even that doesn't cover it. But to briefly give you an idea of my relationship with Bennington, I will tell you this: I built a pool, built a staircase in the closet of my dorm room that went up into the attic, ran for president of student council and lost, sued the school for $250,000, tried to impeach the president and vice-president of student council, went before more judicial hearings than any student in the college's history, changed the lock on my door, got suspended for a year for parking violations, became friends with the girl whom I tried to impeach, sued the school for a half a million dollars in federal court, created a newspaper, ran for president again and won, accidentally shot myself while target shooting and built Stonehenge.

Yes, you heard me right. I built Stonehenge. Actually, I built a full-scale model of Stonehenge, but that's pretty damn impressive if you think about it. In case you don't know what Stonehenge is, it's a horseshoe of eight huge stones encircled by 16 more. It was built in England around three or four thousand years ago and it probably had some sort of religious significance.

I don't know exactly how the idea came to me. It was the fall term of 1988. I had a course in astronomy and Stonehenge was mentioned briefly in the class. (It is believed to have also been an ancient observatory.) I also watched the movie 'This Is Spinal Tap' (which contains an infamous model Stonehenge scene) over and over again. Between these two things a vision congealed in my mind: I had to build a full scale model of Stonehenge. My visions tend to be complicated like that.

I was doing terribly in my astronomy class so I convinced my teacher that building a model of Stonehenge would have some significance in the study of astronomy. He said, "Well, I guess so." With him, I worked out the coordinates so that it would appear the same to us as it would to people in England. I then recruited my friend, Gioia H. Connel. An installation of this size would need approval from somebody; Gioia was a sculpture student, so she got permission from the art department.

Then, I needed a design. The main structure of Stonehenge is a circle of stones 97 feet in diameter. There was only one choice when it came to deciding where I would build it: the exact center of campus. No one could possibly avoid it there.

Next I needed material to build it. Stone and concrete were right out. I thought of paper mache over chicken wire but that would be too heavy and too expensive. The same would be true for burlap over chicken wire. I finally settled on black plastic over wooden frames. The plastic was light, cheap, big and black. It was the perfect material. I would wrap the plastic over wooden frames. I wanted to use 2 x 4s but the amount I needed would have been too expensive, so I ripped the 2 x 4s in half and made 2 x 2s. Internal wiring, in the style of architect Buckminster Fuller, would give the structure the needed strength.

When I was designing it, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Not only was Stonehenge 97 feet in diameter it was also 24 feet tall, as high as a two-story building. I couldn't really comprehend how high that was until I had actually bought the wood. Standing in the parking lot of the lumber yard, I stood one of the 24 foot 2 x 4s up against a building. I looked up and said, "Holy fucking shit, what have I gotten myself into?" Nevertheless, I plowed ahead.

I wanted to finish the job in one night so that it would be a surprise to everyone the next morning. The night we started building it was snowing. As I was laying out the circle in the new fallen snow, some snow frolicking hippies came by and asked what I was doing. When I told them they started yelling at me and told me to build it someplace else. Still, I pressed on. With the song 'Stonehenge' by Spinal Tap blaring out of a second-story window, we began to build.

It was a far bigger job than I expected. By dawn we had only completed five of the eight 24-foot high main stones. We arranged these in a circle and quit for the day. Even that, the towering black obelisks outlined against the white snow, was quite a shock for the students of Bennington that morning.

The job took five nights. During that time over a dozen people worked on it but never more than three at a time. I was always there. After the big stones started to fall over in the wind, I had to tie them down with guy wires. I climbed up a ladder with a rope to one of the few standing ones and started to tie the rope to the top. Just then a breeze came up and I helplessly watched it topple over. It was funny at the time. I worked for 72 hours without sleep until I collapsed. During a student council meeting, I asked the council what they thought of Stonehenge. Some thought it was great, others hated it and still others thought I was just plain weird, but they all agreed that if I had to do it I should. Somebody dubbed it Heftyhenge, a name that sort of stuck.

When it was finally finished, there were more than 30 stones, the smallest of them ten feet high, six feet wide and three feet deep. It was a truly awesome sight. You can't really appreciate just how big Stonehenge is until you are standing there looking up at it. I hired a plane so I could take aerial photographs. The installation was up for one day. That night, as I slept, a vandal cut all the guy wires. A strong wind came up and the stones crashed down and broke into pieces. All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Stonehenge together again. Yes, there were many people who didn't like me at Bennington. I passed my astronomy course, though.

What have I learned from Stonehenge? I don't know. There are those that said it was my greatest work. Still others said it was the stupidest thing that I have ever done. In a way, they are both correct. It certainly is part of the reason I didn't graduate from Bennington. But if I had it to do over again, I would. It was just something I had to do.