1972 -
So I had a hard childhood. Had very little to show for anything. I didn't particularly achieve anything or succeed in anything. My grades were lousy, I had to go to work at 14 to make some money. I was a carhop at a drive-in. The tallest carhop in the world I would guess. I read a lot of books. I had read a lot of comic books, and then paperback action and sci-fi novels. Stumbled on to some better books: Steinbeck, Sherwood Anderson, Maybe probably Jack Kerouac, then Tolkien and Herman Hesse and a bunch of other stuff. Oh and a college student had given me Ayn Rand to read while I was working my way up from Cap Hop to Soda Jerk to Kitchen cook. I was boy journalist, writing for the High School Paper and they had a teen thing for us to write things for the local city paper. I went to the Bloomington School Board meetings with my clip-on tie to report on the Board meetings as a high school student.
I had no life. No girl friend. Just a bunch of nerdy friends to hang out with and share weird things with. The kids from the south side of town that I worked with were cool and we did dope and went on illicit camp-outs which the parents never knew about and drank, but were still pretty nerdy.
At fifteen I wrote a short story that was sort of based on a story out of Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson which was basically a tale of me going to work, going to a party and getting drunk and the fantasy of the perfect love. Well, it turned out I wrote it pretty well, or better then well. And all the adults told me I was genius. Probably a big mistake to believe them. But no one ever had told me I did anything really well.
I had already been making up stories about myself to compensate for my nothing life. There had been a silly story in Harlan Ellison's first book about how he pretended to be a teenage hoodlum to write a book about gang life and had supposedly learned how to flip open a regular pocketknife to make it seem like a switchblade. I kept that one to tell other kids. I quit a fry cook job I hated in my Senior year because it was a terrible job. I made it into a story about how a friend wanted to to cold turkey his heroin habit so I went to help him do it. I had told this to one of the waitresses and she called me when a group of her friends were setting up a halfway drug crisis center and asked me to come help. Despite my bullshit, I wasn't too bad at it.
I was a good little actor. I had portrayed my guilt about a a supposed knife fight to a co-worker at the drive-in and somehow everyone became afraid of me. It was helpful for warding off the bullies. I had a guy in High School accosted me because he wanted me to do all of his homework for the drafting class we were in. I asked him if he was serious and did he hear about the bad knife fight. After that he left me alone. I guess I was writing my first novels in my head.
People believed me. Which was a real problem. My best friend and my girl friend bought into the bullshit because I was such a believable actor. You always had to have regret and angst about your life and it bought you belief, whether it was true or not.
So married at 18 and off to Utah for my second year in college. I had not admitted my virginity to my wife to be out of embarrassment and confessed it on our honeymoon trip to Utah. This became the betrayal of my love. It went downhill from there. In Utah I went to my first group therapy session, where you have a group of five or six people all confessing themselves in a room with a therapist there to help act as guide. I confessed all. And no one hated me. I was sure they would. So after that, I decided to try and tell the truth. It was hard.
King Lear:
I had no life. No girl friend. Just a bunch of nerdy friends to hang out with and share weird things with. The kids from the south side of town that I worked with were cool and we did dope and went on illicit camp-outs which the parents never knew about and drank, but were still pretty nerdy.
At fifteen I wrote a short story that was sort of based on a story out of Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson which was basically a tale of me going to work, going to a party and getting drunk and the fantasy of the perfect love. Well, it turned out I wrote it pretty well, or better then well. And all the adults told me I was genius. Probably a big mistake to believe them. But no one ever had told me I did anything really well.
I had already been making up stories about myself to compensate for my nothing life. There had been a silly story in Harlan Ellison's first book about how he pretended to be a teenage hoodlum to write a book about gang life and had supposedly learned how to flip open a regular pocketknife to make it seem like a switchblade. I kept that one to tell other kids. I quit a fry cook job I hated in my Senior year because it was a terrible job. I made it into a story about how a friend wanted to to cold turkey his heroin habit so I went to help him do it. I had told this to one of the waitresses and she called me when a group of her friends were setting up a halfway drug crisis center and asked me to come help. Despite my bullshit, I wasn't too bad at it.
I was a good little actor. I had portrayed my guilt about a a supposed knife fight to a co-worker at the drive-in and somehow everyone became afraid of me. It was helpful for warding off the bullies. I had a guy in High School accosted me because he wanted me to do all of his homework for the drafting class we were in. I asked him if he was serious and did he hear about the bad knife fight. After that he left me alone. I guess I was writing my first novels in my head.
People believed me. Which was a real problem. My best friend and my girl friend bought into the bullshit because I was such a believable actor. You always had to have regret and angst about your life and it bought you belief, whether it was true or not.
So married at 18 and off to Utah for my second year in college. I had not admitted my virginity to my wife to be out of embarrassment and confessed it on our honeymoon trip to Utah. This became the betrayal of my love. It went downhill from there. In Utah I went to my first group therapy session, where you have a group of five or six people all confessing themselves in a room with a therapist there to help act as guide. I confessed all. And no one hated me. I was sure they would. So after that, I decided to try and tell the truth. It was hard.
King Lear:
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