High school sucked. I hated it. When I look back on it now, though... I miss it. I have no idea why, but I do. Maybe it was my friends, whom I still talk to today and hang out with. Maybe it was that I still had my life ahead of me and it still held a lot of promise. Or maybe it was just that I am a fucking retard and had no common sense to fear what was coming. Rose tinted glasses, I guess.
Anyway, let's move on to college. I roomed with my best friend's cousin, Tim. Now, he wasn't really that bad, but he and I had a falling out. A pretty big one that involved me telling him to fuck off when I was on the phone with my mom. After that, we flipped a coin to see who was moving out, and he lost. Being the kind, generous soul that I am, I didn't make him move out. I said it was up to him. Then I went back home for the holiday break and really had to think about whether I wanted to go back to school or not.
On the way to the train station, my parents gave me the option: you can drop out and finish the next semester at one of the local colleges, or you can go back and tough it out. I went back. I'm glad I did. I met a girl, fell in love, got my heart broken into teeny tiny little pieces, put it back together, got back with the girl, had my heart re-broken into the aforementioned teeny tiny pieces (and summarily shat on) and totally gothed out. Then, after the inevitable "I look retarded" realization, I became a skinhead. You might say to yourself, dude... WTF?! I have no answer for you, friend. I'm as puzzled by my lapses in logic and common sense as you are.
Anyway, I wandered aimlessly through academia before settling on art. Stop laughing, it's not funny. I then wandered through the art department, becoming a jack of all trades. If you've seen my work, you know that is painfully true. While my work generally looks like something police would find in the house of that old shut-in down the street that never gave out candy on Halloween and never watered his lawn, I will admit that I actually liked some of my stuff. Granted, that isn't saying much because I'm not a very good judge of anything. at all. But my point is for a brief period in time, I was actually very creative. I think in one 3 month period I put out something like 100 finished pieces. For me, that is a Herculean task. Anyway, in December of 1999, I done gradumated with a BA in Art. Hurray for me. I then lived happily ever after.
Ok, so I may have exaggerated about that whole "living happily ever after" stuff. But I did get a totally sweet job with the university. I created the Art History Department's web site. It was bad ass, dude. Wait, let me clarify: The site itself sucked. I was (and continue to be) a terrible web developer. The site was a steaming pile of infectious waste. But the job... the job was sweet as bear meat, friend. By the terms of my contract, I was able to work something like 15 hours a week. I just needed to get the site done by August. Considering I started that job in early January, a target date of August was not a problem. Since I was working in the Art Department with former professors, I already knew my coworkers. And the Dean liked me, so he got me a job doing various web design work for the Art Department, too. I would work about 20 hours a week getting paid a lot more than I had ever gotten paid before, and I got to dress however I wanted. I could take off during work and go roller blade around campus or whatever. I could just putz around on my brand new G4 with 22" cinema display monitor. I could burn CDs. I loved my job. And then August rolled around.
Now, since I was a little bit ant, little bit grasshopper, I was able to play and get my work done. I handed in my project, left them with instructions on how to update the site and my contact information in case they ever wanted me to do work on the site in the future. I had successfully completed my first real job. I was ready for more. Then my car broke down, wiping out all of my fucking savings. I moved back home with my parents and sat there, jobless, for almost 3 months. Any money I did have was eaten up. I would check my status on Monster.com like... every few hours. This one time I was getting a job offer from a company and the mail server my friend ran (where the job offer was coming to) was down and I tracked him down at Don Pablos to find out when it was going to be back up. I had never seen Jay look quite so annoyed with me. Luckily I haven't seen him that annoyed again. Well, except for that unfortunate outburst about Ruby Ridge...
Anyway, I got a job offer from a Bank/Mortgage Lender in Troy. I happily accepted the job, as it was like... 3x what I was getting paid before at the university. How I got hired as a Java Developer is beyond me, as I had like... no experience with Java. But that is beside the point. The point is that I have been a corporate stooge for 6 years. Six fucking years, dude. I like my job, don't get me wrong. It's not bad. But six years? At a bank? What would the me of 10 years ago say? And why do I find Office Space funny now?
Ok, let's step into the way back machine and go all the way back to like... Grade School. I was a very messy child. I was the kid that ended up getting more ice cream on his face than in his mouth. This one time when my family was on vacation up north we went to the House of Flavors (an ice cream place) and I somehow got ice cream on my pants, shirt, shoes, socks, cheeks, nose and forehead. It's a wonder I wasn't institutionalized right then and there.
Anyway, my point with this whole stupid page is that I have always been a nerd. If you couldn't tell from everything on this site, well... frankly, I pity you. Anyway, I am/was a nerd. A big nerd. How nerdy? I had a Ghostbusters club in Grade School. But not how you probably think; We actually tried to devise ways to physically capture ghosts. We took the movie at its word. Now... it wasn't a complete wash, because I did learn some science and whatnot in the process of my horribly misinformed childhood hobby. But the other children didn't quite see it that way. I was ostracized. Even the other nerds made fun of me. It followed me everywhere I went. I had become untouchable.
When I moved to Junior High, the stigma of Ghostbusters was modified to the stigma of being a skater with K-mart clothes and an utter lack of social skills. What the other skaters (the ones who actually skated) had in ability and attitude I made up for in sheer ability to take up space. I was a wall flower in tight acid washed jeans and a Vision t-shirt. All I was missing was a mullet. When my family moved a few miles away when I was still in Junior High, I lost touch with my old friends, for the most part. This was a good thing. Had we not moved I would probably be in jail or something.
High school rolls around and get this: I'm still a nerd. I know, I know... I just blew your fucking mind, right? Well, get in line. I'm just not cool. I never will be. I don't want to be. Fuck cool. Fuck it right in the ass. The big difference between Junior High and High School, however, was that I actually had friends. Great friends. If I hadn't had them... who knows. I'd rather not think about it. They helped me through a lot of awkward times. I'm very grateful.
After I graduated High School and went to college things changed, however slightly. Since I had begun my journey to the dark side (i.e. being a stupid gothic basket case) some people were a little too afraid to make fun of me to my face. I think they thought I might like... go nuts and eat them or something. So as I already mentioned, I lived with my best friend's cousin for the first year of college. He was something of a dick at times, but he was also hilarious. Now that I look back at it, it wasn't really that bad. It's not like I'm easy to live with, either. As the weeks and months rolled on and I was less than enthused about going out and getting drunk every night, he started to pick on me for being a homebody. Whatever. He was right on that. I'm just not a social person, I guess. I can't just go up to someone and start talking. It's just not how I'm wired. I remember one time at this party of a friend of my roommate's, I was talking to this girl who said she liked my KMFDM shirt, and what pro ceded was possibly the most awkward bout of drunken flirting the world has ever seen. I look back on it to this day and hang my head in shame. Granted, there are so many of those events that I have stopped taking inventory. But whatever... point is: I'm awkward. Very awkward. My first semester could accurately be described with the pickup line "Hello, I am woman repellent. I am emotionally needy and a terrible lay. Would you like to come back to my room and awkwardly fumble around on my twin size bed for fifteen minutes, until I prematurely ejaculate into my dirty underwear and blame it on mental illness that runs in my family". Actually, that's not accurate. I was so pathetic I couldn't even get someone to come to my room. Though this one time a girl from down the hall came over so she could use my computer to check her email. I swear the fact that my room smelled like a girl for fifteen minutes totally gave me a bonah.
Anyway, yeah... pathetic. My second semester I met my first girlfriend. Awwwww. How did the spider lure the fly into his den, you ask? Pity. Sheer Pity. Ahhh pity, where would I be without you? We dated and I fell in love and she broke my heart and... I can't think of anything to rhyme with love that isn't totally lame. I was trying to go for a Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue vibe, but I suck so... there you go. Yeah, we dated for like... 8 months or something and then she left me for some satanic pyromaniac gang member. Believe it or not, that didn't last too long and we started dating again, and well... lather, rinse, repeat. She cheated on me with like... the entire cast of War and Peace or something. Of course, I didn't find this out until after all my friends and quite a few strangers already knew. Anyway, I moved on. Shortly after that, I started dating another girl. She was cute and funny and... I dunno. I just shut down. She got the shit end of the stick from me and as rightful punishment, God inflicted on me a 5+ year dry spell.
A few months after that is when I shaved my head and become a member of ARA. Now, before you jump to conclusions, ARA isn't Aryan Race Alliance or some other stupid white power nonsense. It stands for Anti-Racist Action. I was a SHARP. And with that, I will move on to the Summer Street house.
My senior year of college I moved in to a house in the ghetto of Kalamazoo. And when I say ghetto, I don't mean student ghetto or some other exaggeration. I mean the ghetto. People got arrested on my front lawn with the cops' guns drawn. People got beat up on my driveway. There was a crackhouse down the street, squatters around the corner and really really scared white folk scattered throughout the neighborhood. In back of our house was the police station and a funeral home. Across the street from them was possibly the greatest mashup business ever. You could get your hair did, hoopty washed and get you some fried scrimps all under the same roof. I am still to this day disappointed I never went in. Being a vegetarian, the thought of bottom dwelling crap eaters fried in pork fat doesn't really do it for me... but I still regret not going in. Maybe I could have gotten a hush puppy or something. Anyway, I moved in to this house with one person I knew and 6 people I really didn't. After a short while, I got to know my roommates and figure out who I liked and who I didn't. About 4 months in to my stint in that house my bestest friend in the whole wide world decided he was going to transfer to my college and live in my house. After some initial hesitance from my roommates, they agreed. And that began possibly one of the greatest times of my entire life. Matt, Wes and I fucking tore shit up in that house. We had so much fun I can't even begin to explain. The house was haunted, bled from the walls, probably had children's skeletons in the basement, 50+ pairs of tighty whities crammed in the ductwork and a serious bat problem... but I miss that house like crazy.
After moving back in with my parents and getting the job at The Bank, it's all kind of a blur. I remember something about becoming a semi-regular at City Club with a bunch of my friends. Something about getting so drunk on the 4th of July one year that my friends had to come by and poke me with a stick every few minutes to make sure I wasn't dead. Oh, and buying a house and becoming a total fucking bore because it's all I ever fucking talk about and bore others with. But for the most part, the past few years have gone by so fast I'm still half-convinced it's just a dream and I'm going to wake up in my room on Summer Street and hope that I'm laying in a pool of sweat instead of something... unsavory. Do you know what is most pathetic about this? This was only supposed to be a few sentences for each section. Instead, it's turned into me proving to you why you shouldn't be associated with me. If you know what's best for you, you'll hightail it out of here, friend. I think patheticness is like... contagious and stuff. Assuming patheticness is a word, which it totally isn't. Fuck.