The online ramblings of a 30-something American.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Here's to you, Life.....thanks a lot.

I want to thank a very special embodiment of power and spiritual hope today.

I want to thank... life ...(that's right, LIFE, not the magazine and not the cereal)...for kicking the living shit out of me-- whether I'm down or up-- and continuing to toss me more than my share of bad luck.

I know I've done bad shit in my past, but haven't we all, life? There's an old saying that goes "Behind every person lies enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility forever."

For those that don't know, I have officially been diagnosed with influenza, diabetes and a heart murmur in one day. Oh, and in spite of the heavy doses of beta blockers I'm taking, my hyptertension is 'no longer in control'. Oh, and I get an electrocardiogram on Wednesday to determine if there are 'additional problems' with my heart.

Fucking wonderful. I couldn't ask for more.

I kept telling and telling people. My parents, my wife, my friends....and not a single one of them listened to me. No one listens to someone who has a sixth sense about such things. I tried to go to the E.R. last week, and let myself be convinced by my wife nothing was wrong.

Now something is very wrong. I'm probably going to lose my job over all of these absences I've had. Stress, tension, all from WANTING to DO a good job and be the person I used to be, coming back onto the job scene after a year and a half of being sedentary...hard hours...trying so hard...it all contributed to the stress that led to these problems.

That was the last time I listen to anyone. Because I don't trust you, life. Why should I? You've given me no reason to, you and your buddy 'Fate'.

Thanks, life. You were always there for me when I needed you the most. Now you just made me look like a fucking idiot following a promotion. Why do you always punish me after something good happens, huh? You've ALWAYS done that without fail. That's why I don't like very good things headed my way, because you always throw in something equally worse to go with it.

Why don't you just kill me and get it over with? You must like fucking with me that much.

Maybe there is no higher power at all...but if there is, I have a strong sensation that if there is in fact a God, or maybe even a guardian angel out there watching over me...it enjoys watching me suffer.

The tears are coming, and I cannot stop them, so I am ending this here. I've had enough. Fuck all of this. Call me childish for writing this, I don't care. Fuck you if you don't like it.

Friday, October 21, 2005

And then on the 8th day, there was.....traffic.

So, I'm at work, pondering the deeper mysteries of this dried up thing on my arm that I won't go get checked out (translated as picking at it). My long-time friend from childhood logs on.

He's just graduated from college, and finally gotten himself an admirable job. I'm beginning to notice a trend in what he talks to me about on IM as the work day winds on, and I decided to write about it today.

He just got a new car. Lucky him. Wonder if I'll ever be that careless with money. Meh...anyway...at first it was just general griping about gas because of the situations with the two hurricanes that recently hit us, plus its general rising over the last few years.

Why?

Because...he has to drive from the core of Dallas all the way to Richardson to get to work.

I used to do that kind of stuff, long ago, in my '73 Mustang. Irving to Garland I believe was the route. Imagine the stretch of road on 635, the section between 35 and 75...bumper to bumper in 114 degree heat, in a car painted black with no A/C, nervously tipping up your water bottle to your mouth and hoping things move soon. You get the idea.

I seemed to remember...no matter how much good music I listened to, no matter how loudly I sang along with it, no matter how upgraded my rides became, I would always come home in a rather ripe, foul mood.

You can just tell by the look on a person's face when they walk in the door, can't you? As a kid I never understood why Mom would have that look on her face when she got back from the grocery store (Mom has always had a habit of driving further and further across town to get to the bigger and better grocery stores...today it's not even grocery stores anymore for her -- it's Super Target).

Anyway, I thought of myself in those days. How foul I'd feel coming home. My ex wife didn't appreciate it when I was married to her and commuting between Irving and Garland. But screw her, she deserves no pity from me, ever. However, my current wife used to notice the same trend with me when I came home when I was commuting from the core of Dallas to HEB and back every day. And I had a much nicer car by then (Lincoln Mark VIII, damn what a ride, wish I still had it...oh well). My drive just got so damn bad I got a special request for a 'straight-8', an eight-hour shift where I took no lunch, just ate at my desk and went home, just to gain some of that wasted drive time back.

Today, I drive a paltry 12 miles to work during peak highway hours. I come in feeling great, and I finally realized today why. Because the drive is nice. Very few a-holes on the road during the times of day I've had to work so far, and very little distance travelled to have to deal with them to begin with. Overall, I'm happier when I first get home, and happier when I first get to work every single day. Yes, yes, yes, the job is part of it too, but I'm talking about a specific mood here, work with me -- the mood I'm in when I actually walk through the door of work/home.

In the early months of 2006, the company I work for is going to be moving just 6 miles from where I live. The gas/drivetime implications of this are simply staggering, as it will be the closest I've ever lived to a job.

Wow...I might come in so bubbly people might actually kill me...I might come home in such a good mood my wife might actually kill me too if she's had a bad day.

Here's another irony for you... when you take a road trip to someplace you WANT to go to, it's generally an enjoyable drive, even if you have to trek 500 miles to get there. You may be a little groggy once you get out of the car, yet nowhere near the fire breathing demon you can be when you've just come home from a bad day of work and crappy traffic. Am I wrong?

Moral of the story is... a good drive is worth its weight in gold. And it contributes to your mental well-being, for better or worse.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Today's "Notes"

Ever have a day when you get so pent up full of emotion that all you want to do is come home and cry?

I had one of those days today. Then, when you actually get home, you can't cry.

I often wonder about days like today.

I guess I can't put my finger on one specific thing, maybe the day overall was full of negative energy.

Maybe I just held my frustration in so long that by the time I came home, the time to cleanse my emotions had simply passed. Something about getting into your car and heading home after a bad day somehow calms your inner senses.

Who knows.

But I noticed something I remembered seeing from my early days at my current place of work, and I really will miss it when the company moves in January.

As you exit the highway and loop under to head east, there's the backside of a long row of houses just off the highway, each one with picket fences -- a very long line of them -- all the way to the Grubbs dealership.

One house in particular I always notice. I always look at it. From the picket fence to the curb of the service road (quite a bit of space), every year the person that owns this house grows a quite impressive garden. I always notice the corn stalks. Naturally, the garden is in its decline this time of year.

Simple things like this I hope to get to enjoy someday. Making things grow was tedious but rewarding when I was a kid, but wow, I really learned how to raise some nice cucumbers. Gardening your own vegetables is a wonderful hobby. To the person that does it every year outside that house, thank you, for making me remember that there still are many things in life for me to look forward to.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

In The Name of the Father

So at last we come to the core of it all. The culmination of all my pain, the last of the demons I must exorcise from my current life. Some may dismiss this post as just another whine. Some may not. I may have other posts about my past, and my life (my ex-wife would be a novel, for example) that may not seem very cheery, but this is the darkest post of them all.

It concerns a person that I look up to, yet despise for most of what he is. A person whom I love, but whose actions I hate. A person I find myself becoming more and more like as I grow older, but less proud of the fact that I am.

My father.

No, for all you Catholics out there, not the ‘Father who art in Heaven”. My biological father.

Our relationship has always been quite odd. But I wouldn’t call it good, no. Not by a long shot. In fact, if he came anywhere near close to treating my son, his only grandchild, anything like he treated me, he wouldn’t HAVE a relationship with my son. It’s good that he treats him like I always wanted to be treated by him…but I can’t help but feel a pang of regret. But it’s too late to go back…very likely.

I briefly mentioned my father in the last post. His barring me from the Arts Magnet, for a stupid reason. His real reason, the one he won’t fess up to, is jealousy.

With that last comment in mind, before you judge me as being high and mighty on myself, just hear me out.

I won’t bore you with my dad’s life, or childhood. I’ll just say that he had a perfectly normal 50s-60s nuclear family, with a mom that stayed home and a dad that came home every day at 5pm, and 5 kids who were eager to see him.

I grew up much, much differently. First of all, I’m an only child. My parents could have had another child. But they decided they just didn’t want another. I had friends, and my cousins, I suppose. Some say siblings are overrated, but for those who grew up close to their sibling, I know that’s not always true. Some are lucky enough to have a brother or sister who loves them, and in rare cases, even likes them. I led a lonely childhood in this manner.

My father, a product of the 1960s hippie revolution, was never a pothead (though he did try it once), but other than that, he was just a quiet, model student, graduated from high school in 1969. Married his high school sweetheart – that would be Mom. Learning that he was going to be drafted during Vietnam, he enlisted into the USAF and got stationed in Thailand instead, working on airplanes.

Now, I don’t blame him for this decision. He could have been drafted and sent back to his wife and son in a box like the other 55,000 that went to the front lines. He was protecting his new family. Oh yes, I was born somewhere in there. Mom stuck by his side during all of his training days until he was shipped out.

Eventually, Mom – having come from a shitty family of her own, with no place to go – was offered a home in my grandmother’s house in Dallas. And there we stayed until Dad came home from Thailand. It was during these very impressionable years that I formed a strong bond with Dad’s father. My grandfather. The person whom my son is named after. It was unfortunate, because by the time he finally got shipped back and they moved into their temporary apartment in south oak cliff, I had already bonded with my grandfather, who was the world to me.

At last, we moved into the house that would be my home until I was 22. I was 2 years old, so I guess that makes it a solid twenty years spent there. Dad used one of his 3 V.A. loans and paid a grand total of $13,000 for that house. It’s worth $90,000.00 today. Dad landed a job at a printing company, and finally began his career. I have vague memories of my parents, being really ‘together’ for the first time, doing a lot of fighting back then. Adjustment, I guess. I just remember several times my Mom almost leaving him. I remember the house was so barren for so long, we had very little furniture. But I do miss that big tacky red vinyl couch we used to have. Anyway…

Dad never liked his job, but he's there to stay, still works there to this day. It was a constant nightshift position, and that was the routine that as a small child, I got used to. But I began to form my relationship with him…and it was honestly awkward. He used to get so mad at me. I didn’t understand his anger. And no, I wasn’t abused. I WAS spanked, but the fear he struck in me of spankings was far more effective. He would get mad over the stupidest things, and as a result, I started fearing him so much I would hide things from him. I began as early as age 5 to develop a quite different relationship with my mother than I had with my father.

For example …

I could cuss like a sailor around my mother. As a kid in the 80s, it wasn’t as big of a deal as it is today (and my son gets into trouble if he even says a mild cuss word). Mom didn’t care. She thought it was almost cute. She let me do things Dad wouldn’t let me do when he was at home. When Dad was home, I was obedient…sometimes we had fun doing an occasional activity, but said events are few and far between. Dad was really obsessed with his 1963 Corvair convertible and getting it running again. So I got to spend a lot of time just watching him work on it (until he found me annoying and sent me inside). The other half of the time he spent his days off getting drunk….VERY drunk. And you know what’s sad about that…he was a nice, open and much more honest and caring person when he drank. The stuffiness he still displays to this day when he’s sober is unnerving to say the least.

I understand he had to support a family. I understand he felt all these obligations weighing heavily on him. I understand he needed his free time when he was not working. He would try and talk to me one minute, but expect me to stay out of his way the next, though.

For a brief period during elementary school, something I always feared happened. He was moved to dayshift, which means he was home when I was home. We butted heads like you wouldn’t believe. But I always seemed to be the one who literally was winding up against the wall. Sometimes he apologized for getting angry at me, sometimes he didn’t. But fear was always there, ever-present, always waiting, it seemed to lash out at me courtesy of him, every time I did something wrong. So I either did everything right, or just hid anything I did wrong from him as best I could.

But, I genuinely tried, unconsciously, to form a bond with him. I tried to understand him. I tried to get along with him. Subconsciously, I needed that fatherly bond with him.

As a child with primarily nothing but his own imagination to entertain him, I had a lot of ‘pretend’ time alone with myself as a kid. Some days I would be a king, or a sorcerer, an eagle or some sidekick to Indiana Jones, whatever struck me that day. I kept my playtime very quiet and very private when my father was home, though, for if he caught me, every single time I would be told to ‘stop doing that stupid shit and come inside’. And he had the nerve to wonder why I would avoid him at times. It was because of things like that, comments like that … that hurt.

That kind of venom he could put into a stinging comment about me, showing his disapproval of me being expressive or free, it infected its way into everything regarding my behavior. I was always told by my mother’s father (the biggest a-hole on the planet when it came to kids) what a well-behaved child I was. It was my childhood years that made me a very great little actor, both because I still valued my creativity being a lone child with no siblings, and on the other hand because I was always in danger of facing my father’s wrath if I was ever caught doing it.

Where was my mother in all of this? She let me be the real me when he was not around, when he was around she just said, “Do as your father tells you, son, I don’t want to listen to him bitch.” And so it went on like this for many years of him being on nightshift or swingshift.

As I finally entered into adolescence, I was already a pronounced self-taught musician. I had been picking things out on the piano since I was 3 years of age. I had already been in band 6 years in elementary and jr. high school, and they seemed supportive of it. I think my father viewed it as fascinating at first, but as I got older, bands like Van Halen started getting my attention, and eventually, at age 12 – The Beatles. Dad had a few guitars lying around and yes, he can also play a little, but not much. I think he views it as one of those ‘pain in the ass’ hobbies he enjoys but doesn’t want to make any real effort to learn.

For awhile I had a musical keyboard, and there was almost a bonding there. He would get out his guitar and we would try and play some things with me on my little casio piano and him on his arch-top. But something wasn’t working. I loved Van Halen and the Beatles a lot by then, so I started to pick things up on guitar, using my already acquired knowledge of things like scales in band. Then, a mutual friend of the family who also played guitar let me borrow a very old and tattered ‘Complete Beatles’ songbook, that had every guitar chord inscribed for every Beatles song there ever was. And therein I learned every basic chord known to guitar players by playing music I liked. It was all downhill for me after that. I remember trying to play Stairway to Heaven once when we were testing out one of his older guitars through the stereo. He recognized the song enough to say something absolutely discouraging. He said "Shit...Jimmy Page you AIN'T." That pissed me off and yet hurt me so much that I made it a point to learn Stairway to Heaven to the point where I can to this day, play it in my sleep if necessary. All of it.

I was also a heavy dabbler in electronics. I wanted an amplifier like the people on MTV had. So I tried rigging one at first with my stereo. I saved my allowance and bought a tie-pin microphone as a ‘pickup’ for the shoddy old acoustic Dad had had for a few years and had pieced back together for me. I still have a picture of it with the mic taped to it. Today it would probably sound like shit to me, but at age 13, the mic distorted so badly and I got some real buzz out of the thing – I was in Heaven. The day after Mom took me to Radio Shack, I came home from school to find my father in his chair, smoking a cigarette and staring at me. That usually meant I was about to get my ass chewed out, in the putting-down manner he always did. He told me he was confiscating the microphone, that I had no right to do anything of the sort like that with my money. It’s funny, because just before I did it I had talked to him of the idea just to test the waters (I did this a lot to see what he thought), and he seemed to think it would work, hypothetically. So, being the motivated person I was with the things I loved, I went out and bought it with my own money. Now it was being taken away from me. I didn’t have many amenities back then. Just that Casio keyboard and a crappy student guitar. Such were my humble musical beginnings. But I didn’t quite understand at all what I was being punished for. This was where my father would not openly admit his jealousy of what I was becoming.

Eventually I got the mic back, but his overreaction to it was what perplexed me. At last, after a year of proving myself more and more that I could play, Mom felt sorry for me when I was 13 and my first girlfriend had just dumped me. She bought me an early birthday present – an electric guitar…a used one, slightly worn, but I liked it a lot, and I played her to death so much she’s hardly playable today, but I still have her. Resourceful as ever, I had managed to procure a crappy amplifier from my cousin who agreed to let me use it because she didn’t use it anymore. It wasn’t a guitar amp, it was just a little microphone amplifier, ran on D cells. I soldered together a cord that would work, bought again with my own money from Radio Shack, and played away. Later that summer, an old friend from Middle School eventually sold me a real guitar amp. At that point, Dad knew he couldn’t stop me from playing if it was what I liked to do.
But he found other reasons and ways to punish me, constantly using music as leverage. That summer between Jr. High and High School was probably one of the worst I’ve ever had, other than receiving my first electric guitar. Mom was very proud of me at that point. She would tell family, friends, whoever, that my playing was becoming quite impressive, and that (sigh) I had ‘passed my father’s playing up in a matter of weeks’. She wasn’t helping an already touchy matter. I’m sure Dad felt embarrassed by it, but if it were MY son, I’d have played right into it and said “Yeah, he did pass me up, but glad I could help, yada yada." I would say it without hesitation. My father did none of this, he brushed me off to others with a "BAH" attitude.

By the following summer I had another guitar (which he constantly confiscated along with my first guitar and all my equipment if I did badly in school), and I remember just doing a general audio recording of one of my birthday parties (I loved playing with audio equipment). My father said something when I was outside that I will never forget. He was so standoffish and blunt about my playing that I just worked harder and harder. My cousin was messing with my newer guitar, and she was saying to my dad “Eh, I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t play.” My dad replied, “Well….neither can Stuart.”

Those words cut like a sharp knife. He had already banned me from going to the Arts Magnet. Is this how I was going to be treated? I began to wonder.

I was more than right.

Yet, when he got drunk, and it was just he and I, and he was in a good mood, I would be teaching him some Creedence song he really liked, or whatever. I liked those bands too, but that’s not the point. Behind the scenes, when enebriated, he acknowledged my talent quite openly, and enjoyed being taught a few things, which I was of course happy to teach him, because other opportunities were few and far between.

10th grade I finally formed a band… and about this time Dad conveniently really turned up the heat on me with the grades. Always punishment, always locking my musical equipment up for better grades, but conveniently doing nothing to actually help me with school, or even ask me if I needed help. Just telling me to ‘just do it’. But, whenever he got drunk, the musical instruments came out. Little did he know…when he was working swingshift, they came out then, too, because my mother just couldn’t enforce the kind of punishment he wanted.

But at last, the punishment came, and it came hard. During one of my groundings, it was announced he finally would be moving to dayshift as lead pressman. That meant permanence. No more shift-hopping. He would be on days for good. I didn’t think he would enforce the punishment that was supposed to be inflicted on me, but he did.

For three solid years of my high school life, I spent it in my room when I came home. I was to eat dinner, which my mother had to have prepared for me by the time I got home, then go to my room and do my homework first. If I got done with my homework early, I was to spend the rest of the evening studying something, anything. I had to sit at my desk. No stereo. No musical instruments. No coming out of my room unless to go to the bathroom. My bedroom door had to stay open at all times.

Now, I fully acknowledge being a fuck-up in school, because I seemed to be cursed with some kind of deficiency at mathematics. Maybe it was the piss-poor teachers in DISD who would rather throw an eraser at me than answer something I didn’t understand. Either way, I didn’t get help from my dad nor from my teachers when I needed it the most. So I just said eff it, and failed a lot. At last I had gotten a good teacher in summer school for Algebra I, wish I could have kept her all the way through high school, but it just wasn’t to be. Everything else I was good in when I applied myself. But no one wanted to help me when I was really in trouble, least of all my father. He would not be inconvenienced to look over my homework with me because gosh, that would be interrupting the evening news or the Cosby Show, or Cheers or Night Court.

I hated those years so much. I still tear up thinking about how lost I was…not able to find my way out. What was funny (funny meaning ironic, NOT humorous) was…his punishment not only didn’t stick, but it just made me more defiant. I not only didn’t do my schoolwork, but I did as much screwing around as a teenage male could do sitting at that desk (yes, even rosy-palms at the desk goes……my desk wasn’t in the line-of-sight of the door). I pondered suicide and running away a lot back then.

Oh, and when I was grounded for bad grades, that grounding lasted until the next report card…which meant the musical instruments were completely off-limits, even on the weekends.

NO kid at the high school I went to even believed me when I told them what was being done to me, not even my closest friends. And I didn’t have many friends at high school, mainly just the people that followed me there from middle school. As stated in the previous blog, the bulk of my friends went to the Arts Magnet.

Somehow, I managed to salvage the weekends when my father was drunk and the rare periods I wasn’t grounded, or when Dad worked late.

There were times when I would completely break down--try and reach out to him--and I once even defined his method of punishing me as ‘torture’. All saying this to him did was make him even more angry at me. How, as a kid, could I explain it to him in a way he could understand it? I certainly could explain it to him now, knowing what I know. But what does a 15-17 year old know about explaining to his father that he’s got a dream, explaining it to a father that didn’t care about fairy tales and dreams, but lived in what he called harsh reality?

I seem to remember those days I ate at the dinner table in the dining room, and my parents ate in the living room. I think the coffee table was too small for three people, and damned be it all if they didn’t get to watch the news. Joining me at the table was inconvenient. I was inconvenient, or I felt that way, at least. Who wouldn’t?

Oh, somehow, during that time, Mom went out and bought Dad a guitar that was really, really expensive compared to what she’d spend on me. Ironic she spent so much, I define that guitar today as a piece of shit. Oh, and Dad didn’t ask for these types of things, he never felt he needed them, Mom just got them for him. I knew where her loyalties lay. But I can’t fault her too much. She loves both of us, he just came first. It was just the way it was.

Let’s face it folks, the moral to this story is…my Dad was (and still can be when provoked)…an asshole.

By the time I graduated, I got my grades into shape for me, I had finally learned how to take care of myself, but my parents in NO way had any affect on me in that regard. I started to do those things for me. And naturally, my musical instrument privileges were restored. Dad was still a shit to people about my playing, though, and my band, who were also my good friends (one of them still is). I guess I have to give kudos to my parents for putting up with our noisy rehearsals, but still… if it was a type of music that they didn’t like (we were doing classic rock, but also getting into newer bands like the Cult, and Metallica), they would beat on the door to my stuffy bedroom and embarrass me. Such was life.

But by then, by the time I graduated (on the A and B honor rolls that year, btw) , the damage had already taken hold. I once again propounded the idea of a career in music to my Dad, who had offered to help me with college if it was what I wanted to do after high school. I was thinking of music IN college. You want to know what his reply was?

“Sure, you can do a nightclub gig if you think your band’s good enough and you’re brave enough to get out there.”

Obviously, he completely missed my point. I almost tore my hair out. The subject was never broached again. I didn’t get the proper nurturing I needed, so desperately needed in the transition from middle to high school, I didn’t get the emotional and financial support I would have needed for college at 18 when I was ripe and ready to be taught there. It was nothing more than a pissant hobby to him. Always has been.

Only recently, about a year ago when I had my back injury, did it dawn on me just how much the decisions my father made back then, so non-chalantly, affect my life today.

You may say to yourself after reading all this dribble…..”Surely there were some good moments, come on..”

Growing up, Dad and I had and still have a shared interest of how things work. Cars, airplanes, computer technology, electronics, you name it. If it ticks, we like to know how it ticks, and we talk about it endlessly. But Dad’s more like a big brother in that sense.

He owned a 71' Mustang. I liked it so much I went out and not only bought a Mustang just like it, I fixed it up exactly as he would have fixed up his if he had the time and the initiative. We both now own identical white lebaron convertibles. Hardly coincidence. We share a common interest, but it's also still a vague attempt at gaining his approval, about trying to spark his interest in me somehow.

We still have that bond when we talk. When my son was born, that was one of the rare times he’s actually hugged me as an adult. The other time was after his heart attack.. As uncomfortable as it was, and as painful as the fact that it was uncomfortable was, every time I saw him in the hospital, I forced myself to hug him and tell him I loved him.

Why is that so hard? A father and a son should be closer than this. My son and I are tenfold closer than this, and always will be.

I can’t talk to him about emotional things at all. When my grandfather died, he went into the shadows. He didn’t talk to me about it at all, except to say that after the funeral, it would finally all be ‘over with’, not bothering to explain to me that it would be okay to grieve after that if I still felt it inside of me. Yes, this was the same grandfather I bonded with instead of my dad in the tender years. I pent up my grief after the funeral for 14 years due to the misinterpretation of his words, and just lost it at his grave when I was 22. Only now, can I say I’ve properly grieved his death, 25 years later.

When I was going through my divorce, all he could do was be there to help out with my son when I was going through periods of horrible grief while my ex-wife was out having sex with God-knows-who. Having not been through a divorce himself, he not only didn’t know what to say, but also being my father, he didn’t even try to say anything. The most emotional comment from him was ‘no one said any of this would be easy’. Gee, thanks.

I’ve gone through spells in dealing with all of this, in remembering my past….where I’m very calm in explaining it, like I am right now, or in miserable grief, screaming silently through gritted teeth “I hate him.”

There was and is so much that will likely never get said between myself and my father before he (or I) passes away. He’s mellowed a lot in recent years, and my wife really likes talking to him, maybe it’s his way of making up for the fact that he never tried to get close to my first wife very much.

For any doubters or naysayers, I’m not whining in this blog. The point of sharing my life in this blog is simply this, things you can’t understand you just have to deal with on your own. Some terrible emotional things have happened to me in my life, and my relationship with my father is one of the biggest. But I am recognizing it and dealing with it for what it is.

In a perfect world, I’d like to hug my dad hello and goodbye, and make sure he knows I love him. I’d like to heal any rift that may remain between us. I’d like to CALL him Dad just once and not feel awkward saying it (no, I don’t call him anything…ever have a person like that in your life?). I’d like him to say he’s sorry for the things he’s done, that maybe although I was a tough kid to raise, just maybe he went a little overboard, too. I’d like him to be supportive of the fact that I’m working on a musical degree now…now more than ever, I need that support from all the family and friends I can get. I have it from every family member BUT him…and that little boy in me that wanted to please him comes out, crying to be heard by just him, wanting to be acknowledged positively. Like he acknowledges his grandchild.

And I’d like to see my son see that his old man and his Papaw get along before he goes. It’s the most important thing I could do. As it stands now, dad still has his little moments where he forgets I’m 32 years old and doesn’t show any respect for my age when he lectures me about something he doesn’t agree with.

And in spite of everything that ever happened, I never once, in my 32 years, as a child, teen or an adult ever said to him in a fit of anger, "I hate you." Saying that to him actually would have hurt his feelings, and Mom would have made me apologize. I made a conscious effort never to say it.

I guess I’ll do what I can. But I have a feeling I’ll be picking up all these broken pieces on my own. And having myself isn’t so bad, I guess it’s better than nothing at all.

However, as my friend whom I loaned a certain anime series to will soon find out, I believe that everyone needs someone close to stand by them in life. Of all the people I could have chosen to stand by me in my life with something this big, I wish it had been him. My father missed out on a lot in my life (some of it against his will, some of it his own choice), and I’m sure he regrets all of it to some degree.

Whether or not I will ever bridge that gap with him, only time will tell. But we are both pretty set in our ways now in dealing with each other. And he doesn’t drink anymore, so there’s no more chance for a heart-to-heart talk with him like I used to have.

Is your brain fried yet? I’ll stop. This is becoming difficult for me to finish, so I’ll just end it here. This post, as I said, was simply to exorcise my own demons. I’ve never actually written a topic on this subject, as it is very sensitive to me.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

The Past Revisited

So, I decided to write a blog while slightly buzzed on beer. Tried something tonight called Red Stripe, imported from Jamaica or something like that. It’s actually pretty damn good, doesn’t have that pissy immediate aftertaste that American beer has…

This entry is damned long, but I’m sorry, I need to get this out of my system.

I joined up with friendster.com and found more than I bargained for today. It was unduly depressing to see so many people from my past so successful today.

I take no pride in the fact that I’m a two-time college dropout who can’t seem to get his shit together. I’m stubborn and selfish and indecisive. I don’t know how my wife puts up with me sometimes.

No, I’m not done with this pity party. My new job IS going well, but it’s a means to an end. College. But so late in life, I wasted so many godamned years…screwing off.

What made me suddenly realize this? Let me ask you, the reader, a question for yourself…what school years do you remember the most fondly?

I will tell you mine. The Jr. High years. Yep, 7th and 8th grade. There’s something absolutely magical about the years that unfold into puberty. You remember the girls you started to notice. I had three. The first one was just a measure of my self-worth and trying to test out my ‘looks’ or whatever charm I thought I might have had.

I was dissed. Badly. She put me in my place. Thanks, Josie. You weren’t worth it after all. Seeing you working in a 7-11 almost 15 years later almost made up for it.

I was in the band, you see. Yes, a ‘band fag’, as we were called at the time. But I loved music, as you can tell by my photo. I picked up a guitar not long after I hung up my cornet for good at the end of my Junior High years.

There were so many interesting people in that band, and people connected to those people. I think it’s the pictures I kept that helped me remember them all, taken with my Dad’s now old Vivitar 110. I was academically a very good musician, but as with all things, kids are stupid, so few of them appreciated my raw talent at the time (especially my parents).

In 7th grade I was 2nd chair in the cornet/trumpet section of advanced band. I should have been 1st chair, but I was too nervous during the tryouts and screwed up a scale. I could have challenged the 1st chair player and won, but I didn’t. Why not? Peer pressure. I would have made a lot of this girl’s friends mad if I had, and they were big and mean friends. But I was already starting to pick up popular music, translate band songs to the piano, and began picking out things on the guitar.

By 8th grade, the former 1st chair had moved on to high school, and there I was, King of my particular hill, 1st chair of the cornet section. But peer pressure still jolted me into never bragging about it, nor openly feeling proud about it. I impressed a lot of people privately with both my piano playing and my guitar playing, and the ease of which I could translate a lot of our band songs to other instruments. Looking back, I realize I had nothing to be ashamed of, and if I had held to my convictions, people might have remembered me better when I grew up. MIGHT.

My band instructor sure as hell did. My mom had a co-worker whose daughter was going to my Jr. High School many years later, and in the band. This was damn near 10 years later. My name was dropped to the instructor, and he responded like Obi-Wan Kenobi or some shit: “Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time….”

But would these other people remember me? I guess it just depends on the people. My band instructor remembers me as a good student, obviously. I’d hate to admit to him that I never once practiced at home, my chops were always kept sharp enough by just playing in band during band period.

Anyway…along with the band was a group from a rich grove nearby I like to fondly and affectionately recall as the “Kessler Brats”. The ‘Brats were a tight-knit group of people, all of whom knew the other, and a very large group at that. And if they weren’t in band, they knew someone who was. I tried desperately to fit in with this group, though my approaches were awkward. But there were many of us who were not from that neighborhood who tried and accepted into their circle to some degree. I had several friends from that bunch.

The second girl is the one I will never forget. She set the standards by which I judged all girls for the rest of my life, and truly I can say that it wasn’t a bad thing, because she was, for the most part, a very pretty and very nice girl.

Back in my day, to express that you liked someone of the opposing gender, you asked the girl if she’d ‘go with you’ (shortened form of ‘go steady with me’ from earlier generations, obviously). I never did this with her. Instead, some girls told her for me…and like an idiot I came back the next day acting foolish in class, and although she and I were still friends after that, she wasn’t as flirty afterwards. I never did stop liking her, though.

But after that, I kept on trying to fit in. The final time I tried was with a girl a year younger than me in band but in 7th grade, a precocious flute player with a very sweet nature. I haven’t forgotten her due to the situation. She was a regulation ‘hottie’, and not touchable by anyone, much less a dork like me. Ah, so much we learn when we’re young and don’t know shit about shit. I got dissed seven different ways from Sunday. And due to her apparent ‘status’ in the school, my asking her to go with me apparently rocked the school. I was miserable for months, living in shame among the halls, and with my peers. She must’ve decided she’d had enough later on, because she felt sorry for me one day at lunch and gave me her sandwich to eat, just out of the blue. I learned a few years later from a sister of my oldest friend that she wound up pregnant and giving the child up for adoption while in high school.

It was about this time I had picked up a guitar, and began my musical journey. I finally had my first girlfriend for a little while after that, who dumped me after just a few months, but I’ll write about that in another blog.

Let’s see, other than some unforgettable friends and acquaintances that year…what else happened…oh yes, there was a house party thrown by one of my female friends, one that a LOT of people showed up to. It was fun, even though I didn’t know anyone. Two of the girls were messing with guys’ hair that night, and wanted to spike my hair. I didn’t let them. My loss. God, I was a prude.

The Kessler Brats finally split up at the end of that 8th grade year…some went to the local high school, some went to the school I went to, and most of the cooler ones went to the Arts Magnet, where I wanted to go.

The measure of my worth hit me pretty damned hard during those years. There were also additional rumors floating around anytime anyone might like a girl, I was no exception to those kinds of rumors, either. I feel that in the long run, I took it like a 14 year old could take it. The ups and the downs of my 8th grade year, though, I will never forget them. Nor the people. Following the end of those years, I began burying myself deep in my music, practicing night after night, honing my abilities. I did that for FOUR years of high school, much to the discontent of my parents. I once told a friend when I was 20 the story of how I never really had a girlfriend in high school, and I don’t know how I survived that long being such an outcast. His response to that was, “You had your music.”

Damned straight.

Oh yes, that’s what I was talking about at the beginning of my blog wasn’t it? Yeah, my best friend, also a band player during that time, sent me some links to some of the people over on friendster.com today. It was weird seeing so many of them for the first time in literally years. Seeing them ‘all grown up’. Very odd. Each person definitely looks like the person I ingrained into my memory, just the ‘adult edition’. Grown up, indeed. Some of them led exciting and purposeful lives, and are now the sums of experiences that are incredibly great in years. Almost 20 now. God, has it been that long? Too depressing to ponder.

But would they remember me? Maybe. Maybe not. I wrote one of them to test the waters.

Which at last brings me to what’s on my profile. I was stopped by my father. He said I would never make a dime at music, and it wasn’t worth trying, even if I ‘was the next Jimi Hendrix’. Leave it to my father to insult me and throw platitudes at me at the same time.

At any rate, I was barred from considering the Arts Magnet as an option, because, to quote my father: “I’m not sending you to a school full of godamn punks and pot smokers.”

/sigh/

That was the key turning point in my life. That was the reason I wound up hating high school. That was the reason I spent 10 years succeeding at jobs I hated anyway. That is why I didn’t go to college. My father shut me out. But that is also another story for another blog. Suffice it to say, that I found out at the beginning of my 9th grade year, my talent didn’t go unnoticed, as many people at the bus stop (all schools all had busses stop at the same home high school for all the ‘magnets’) on my first day of 9th either asked me why the hell I wasn’t at the Arts Magnet where I belonged, or asked me why I didn’t sign up for band at my current high school. All I could do was shrug my shoulders at them.

So…now, years later, here I am struggling to finish that music degree I should have gone for in the first effing place. Am I doing good at it, you may ask? My teachers display that old spark of interest in me that my band instructor did in 8th grade. I’d say so. If only I hadn’t had that injury last year, I might only be one year away from finishing now instead of three. I guess looking back, it’s tough to swallow that I wasted 14 years of my life. People were trying to tell me back then that I had the ability to do what I really wanted, but kids can’t do much when their parents say no.

To my wife, I love you baby, you were the one that made me believe I could do this.

To those of you that graduated from Booker T., Class of 1991 or 92, I’m right behind you. And I consider myself one of you, no matter that I didn’t go.

I guess, for what it’s worth, I’m gratified to know I had friends and good acquaintances who did become successful rather than losers, which proves I’m a decent judge of character. Always been one of my strengths.

All I know is I started something dear to me, and now I've GOT to finish it. Even if I never do anything with the degrees I have planned. I need this for ME.

“…and all the handiworks remain there…only a dream away.” -- George Harrison

About Me

My photo
Read my blog. Ok, ok. 33 years old, twice divorced, one kid from a previous marriage, and one cat that drives me up the wall. I'm currently working my way through college, where I plan to get my BA in Music Business, and then my Master's in Composition after. I have been a musician as long as I can remember, but my parents did their best to stop me from becoming a professional musician. Oh, and I have yet to meet a woman that isn't a flaky bitch.