Sloppy Memnoirs

——

An artist,
Does art,
And things with art,
like fart,
on bleeding hearts,
in shopping carts,
along the ramparts

—————

doing a 9-5,
search,
on facebook,
will probably land me in jail

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The mold makes our past what it is, or so they say.

I’m a lucky lad. Really, as the drug-ridden broke-ass high school dropouts go, I won that lottery. I’m not broke, somehow managed to (maybe) keep a head on my shoulders, and I have friends that I like most of the time. Cause really, in my adolescent days, I was lazy, had no sense of style, was extremely socially awkward — I could’ve been on beauty and the geeks (guess which side), and I had that really gross-feeling “envy”.

So it all happend when I was 15 - me, son of a pastor, in a juvenile deliquency boarding school.  A girl I befriended later in the program mentioned to me that when I first arrived, the word on the street with the new kid was: “Where’s the flood?”. Now, you have to understand that at these juvenile facilities, anyone new coming in is a huge event. Everyone clamours to find out as much as they can, rumors spread, lies fabricated.  Visualize an extremely skinny vietnamese kid, with incredibly tight black pants that were so short that there was a couple inches of skin that showed *above* his fully pulled up tube socks. He was wearing a faded blue alligator-like collared shirt, with thick plastic glasses, and fuzzy long hair. He was lost, senseless, this kid didn’t belong, moreso — he was dead meat.

I was that kid. Where’s the flood, dawg?

So what was this normal f’ing nerd doing at a correctional facility in Utah.  How did this kid become best friends with a NY raver (who escaped a few times, bless his heart), and a skinhead who I turned onto Duran Duran (he fell asleep to it at night). Up to this point in my life, I hadn’t really done too many drugs yet, I think I had smoked pot, but I can’t really be sure. My drug days were after I got out of there (*gasp*), but at this point before Utah, I was just ditching school. I didn’t have any good reasons for ditching, other that I wanted to sleep a little bit longer than the other kids. Maybe I thought I was entitled to (see self absorted), or didn’t need school anymore — but really, I just wanted to stay up late and school was just lame. Now, I did go to school, but it only was to go to lunch for an hour and hang out, or after school when I would get a ride to play video games, or play Magic: The Gathering, or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever shit we did back in ‘94.Magic (the card game) was definately my thing back then, it was practically my life. Now if you’ve ever seen these cards, there is actually pretty cool art on them. There are 5 colors of cards: black (evil), white (good), green (nature), red (fire), and blue (water). Of course the evil cards have all these sacrificial, fiendishly devilish murderful death art on them — which I’m sure would freak out most parents — but even moreso the first generation Christian Pastor and first generation Christian Pastor’s Wife.

This image to the right doesn’t have me in it, but you get the general idea. These are a bunch of kids at a Magic tournament somewhere. Bless their, uh, big, hearts.

In retrospect, I fully understand why they freaked out, but I have to mention how they freaked out. So the whole time I’m doing purely after school attendance, me and my 5 or 6 good buds would just play cards or D&D til about midnight every night. My curfew was a facist 6pm. Now these days, I hate kids that don’t listen to me, much less 6 hours curfew late kids, much less, not-going-to-school, waking-up-at-noon-and-watching- days-of-our-lives sorts of kids. So naturally, the little fucker deserved it, and his friends were as much to blame as he was.

So my mother had this crazy idea (since there were no girls that ever came over), that we were this crazy satanic sex cult. No girls, black evil cards, and late sessions === Anal Satanic Orgies. She even went so far to call the friends of the mothers, and name one of them the “Ring Leader”. This probably went on for about half a year, and finally my parents kicked into action.

I don’t know why I decided to sleep naked that night, I was never really a naked-sleeping sort of guy — but as fateful evening as it was, it makes a lot of sense. If you’ve ever had one of these moments, in retrospect everything louder, more vivid, and generally a lot clearer. I don’t remember exactly which day it was, but I think it was a weeknight — I think a Tuesday. I do remember the exact day (5-09), which later in my life became my pin number (I wouldn’t suggest trying it).

So my bedroom was off the hallway, 2 steps down. It had this extremely hollow bouncing sound, and was really loud when a 100 pound vietnamese immigrant walks through it, so please imagine two 250 pound Utahian beasts walking through it. I knew what was happening, but shit, what could I do? I was literally naked — I could’ve made a mad naked dash through the neighborhood — “Hey honey, look, it’s a 100 pound son of an vietnamese immigrant running naked from 2 bad looking men”, but that wasn’t happening. You should’ve seen my room. Thousands of cards and dirty, poorly fitted clothes strewn about … in the bedroom of my sister, and the sister before her’s bedroom. Naked. With two big men (one was named Tom, and was a former LA gang member — the other, was some lumberjack looking dude, I wish I could remember his name). I knew what was happening, I don’t remember the conversational exchange, except for me asking if they could leave the room while I changed. I guess they had allowed that before, with a kid bolting out the window. I could’ve outran them. I’m glad I didn’t.

So it turned out, we were going to Utah. Where I asked? Koosharem, Utah, kid. It’s gonna be a little bit different — and why the fuck were you naked kid? I was silent. I was angry. Nevada is so beautiful, or Arizona is so arid. I wish I had the foresight to think of those things, but I just looked out the window for 14 or so hours. It’s those moments, the ones you know everything is going to change — maybe for the better, doesn’t matter, but everything is gonna change.

I wish I had the picture, you should’ve seen me (I think my sister has it). This kid doesn’t belong here is probably what most of the kids thought. My nickname ended being Fuji — the sidekick from American Dave. People ended up loving me. Only one or two enemies, but I definately was a likable one. I started wearing baggy clothes. I had my first real crush in Karly Rice. I huffed gasoline. I smoked a cigarette. I talked about sex with a 14 year old mother. I got in a fight with a kid half my size and lost. I hung out with ventura gang members. I owned them at NBA Live with ferocious defense. I went from nothing to respectable in the basketball games — I could shoot a great 3 ball, even though I played without shoes and had wicked blisters on my feet. I would quote Chick Hearn to the amusement of the skinheads — “The butter is getting haaaaaaaaard.” I got caught smoking with the boys and had to walk for 2 days up hills (which now would be totally sweet, but sucked back then). I dreamed of the New York rave scene, from Ariel, the self-hating Jew would always talk about K after calling himself the K word. I noticed the crazy sexual tension that occured between him and this girl from Seattle, who just had those eyes. I heard lots of stories. Raves? cool. Drugs? hmm. Abnormality? awesome.

So, those days, fatefully, the start of my life.

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So here I am. I’m trying it.

I would hate to think of this of a personal blog, because wouldn’t want to be so self absorbed that I would have one. Actually, I’m already kicking myself cause the beginning sentence already sounds so much like a bad personal: “Hi, it’s my first time on here. I’m really nice, and crazy adventurous, and really like hiking, travelling, cooking, and movies.” Hopefully it won’t be that bad — but only time will tell.

I ask myself why I want to do this. I don’t care if anyone cares, I hope not to give this out for at least a month. The most probable reasons are due to friends’ being writers and I like playing copycat, or that white wife asked me a while back if I had this written down anywhere. Or possibly because last weekend I had to sit through my colleagues telling stories (hellish, I tell you). I have more than a little to say about my past/experiences (notice how those two are lumped together), hopefully this won’t turn into another one week project that will end up in the “ether”net somewhere. Honestly, it’s probably because my life is a lot more interesting in retrospect, and that I really just want another blog for more advertising — Discount Cigarettes, Dating Sites, and Digital Cameras.

So by this point you’re supposed to have already mentioned what you’re writing about. I still haven’t figured out, but I can at least tell you that I’m trying to decide from the multiple things in my head. I can at least give you what’s been in my head.

My adolescent years in a juvenile correctional facility.
My years of working in a cult-owned metaphysical bookstore.
Being the prodigal son of a pastor.
Nepal and the hike up
My years of being a idealogical raver (i never had the money to be full fledged)
Founding a nerd-music based collective in SF
How the high school drop-out got to work at Adobe for 3 days a week
A mandatory entry about a girl — the one, that came, and went

The coffee guys just called me “Mr Americano” — one thinking I’m a soy guy, the other a black coffee guy. I’m a half and half guy — which strangely enough on the west coast means “straight”, and on the east, “not as straight”.

Hold onto your ears.

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