30.15

my hair was growing long

my patience was growing shorter…

TJ was born in 1977, august 1st
so that summer, before the school year started
he got a car
and drove us around:
more freedom

not wanting to be kept down
i taught T and S the secrets of good shoplifting
an we started going in and out of Best Buy a few times a weekend
using our expensive scientific calculators to store a tally: to see who’d got the most CDs… we shared them all, of course
… we even started going into Boarders Books
laying down our largest back pack
and just filling it up over a few hours
zipping it up
and carrying it out

a few months later
they installed cameras:
but we never got caught

when i met TJ in middle school
he was a pudgy kid
really smart
but obviously doing things to piss people off
i kinda copied this and went over board
but not in the same way he would

he’d walk around mumbling/screaming
“meat! Milk!… raw Meat.. in a bowl of Milk…. feed it to your kids”
shit like that

the first year of high school
i switched from reading fantasy novels and myths
to french existentialism and beat poetry

TJ was heavily into Burroughs even then…

That summer, when we started driving around
i dropped the “Nick” and became “Dominic”
Sheri became “Sheridan”
and TJ became “Trevis”

we were struggling for our freedom
and because there was absolutely none in sight
we were searching in our imaginations
with our desperation…
looking for a way out
and a way to survive…

that summer…
we started hanging out in Broad Ripple
the “cool” part of Indianapolis

i met some girl named Heather
(and have met a million more of her around the world since)
you know, loves gay boys, chubby girl with black (natural?) hair
always wearing black clothes. . .

the first night we met she said
“oh my god! you have such beautiful eyes, can i put makeup on you?”

i remember coming home and my parents bitching me out
but it started a change

Before trevis got the car
i was meeting up with Satyr a few times a week to work out in the school gym and “Wrestle”

the school just wasn’t cool enough for me, though

i was still working the “computer back up” job at my dad’s office

through all these years
i’d alternated with my brother

different nights
then different weeks

at this point: it was all mine

at this point
i was meeting guys on those BBS servers
and i’d ride my bike the 4 miles into Zionsville to have pathetic terrible sex with them

through the school year i started stealing my dad’s delivery vehicles (well, i knew where they kept the keys.. and i had a master key to the building)
they were manual transmission
so i’d drive around the parking lot grinding the gears
until i figured out how to switch from first
to second
to third…

i’d sometimes drive over and see ted
and we’d go to Denny’s late at night
or Steak N Shake. . .

we were producing a Zine on my father’s copiers in the office
sometimes Ted and his friend PJ would hang out with me there. . .
and sometimes my old friend Bryan

in those first two years of high school
The Lab became a place of freedom
in the off hours…

but sometime during the year
they updated the computer systems
and i wasn’t really needed as much
just a few times a week

but by that point
i had learned how to drive the stick shift
and was driving out to Satyr’s house
about a half hour away

(he was so shocked the first time i showed up)

we’d take off our clothes and tear into eachother

he body slammed me so hard he fractured one of my ribs
right over my heart (yeah yeah yeah)

he’d punch me
and grin at me
totally under his control

i wanted him to smash me
i wanted him to break me open

i wanted to feel something
— anything

Trevis had even taken to cutting himself

things sure were swell in Zionsville…

sometime in the middle of the school year
the principle had a word with Satyr
said “you’ve seem to have been spending an awful lot of time around that boy, do me a favor and stop that”

and he cut me off cold turkey
stopped talking with me
stopped wrestling with me
stopped spending any time with me at all

i had a total break down

still not knowing what love was
i became far more familiar with its inverse

THEN i started smoking pot a lot
and
Surprise
found the biggest stoner hang out was in
Ted’s Garage

we called it “Slick Willy’s”
and Trevis and Sheridan and i would go over there and get really fucking blasted every day after school
and play through our copious new CD collections

near the end of the year
i’d dropped the boys club job
(maybe long before, i couldn’t have worked there when i was stoned all the time: i don’t remember)
and ended up getting a job at a restaurant that Sheri and Ryan worked at called The Pie Safe
it was right on Main Street Zionsville

hmmm

i
uh…

i remember being around those kids always made me feel so stupid
and i was in all these Smart Classes now
and excelling at everything

i got this feeling in my mind that sleeping was a terrible waste of time
and i would figure out how not to sleep at all

i would steal caffiene pills
and mini thins

drink coffee
and dr pepper

i pretty much only ate Twizlers and Doritos

but that year was also the year my mother got a job working at a Health Food store
and she started taking us all chiropractors
and magnetic emotional reprograming specialists

and i started getting sick all the time
Started…
it got much worse…

i often missed school

one day, i was home all day
and a guy knocked on the front door

i went out to see what he wanted
“uh, excuse me: your barn is on fire… i let your dog out…”

my dad had an alarm system installed:
i hit the “fire” button and ran outside

smoke billowing out the side of the door…
the dog running around barking its head off
(at this point i hated dogs
and my dad had got a hunting dog that he and my sister were supposed to train and show
they had it out in the old hay barn: with a heating lamp that it had, apparently, knocked over)

i ran to the huge front door of the barn and pulled it open

… i didn’t know any better
and the draft almost sucked me in

i stepped back
and watched the metal ceiling begin to melt

the tractor exploded

the rabbits were on fire
screaming
running around in the grass

the fire department came and did their best
but it was all burnt up by that point
.
.
.

what was i saying?

near the end of the year
Trevis got us some acid
and i skipped school and went with him and Sheridan to drive around down town Indianapolis
… on acid.

but it wasn’t real acid
it was rat poison, i think

i got terrible cramps all through my body
and became increasingly violent
strangling trevis: leaving bruises on his neck

being dropped off at home
staring at the carpet
as it undulated below me
i put on the Reservoir Dogs sound track
and suffered in how much i hated the world
and everyone in it.