Shaking Hands with Young Me

 

Bensenville '94.

Me at 17 under a tree in Bensenville, IL. I remember staring down an undeveloped access road that led to the tracks in one direction and in the other to the dingy apartment complex my mother, sister and I lived in, a place where gangsters, meth cooks, and one serial killer (I didn’t find out about him until after we moved, but we all smelled his handiwork) did dwell. Was it October? I want to say it was. Someone knows and in this case it’s John Bruni.

He knows because he is half if not more of the reason that I was standing under that tree 29 years ago. I wrote it on his computer. It was a real piece of dogshit called “The Dark”. One positive about it— the tale contained an easy chair which would prove to become a legendary inside joke that has since taken form and made it into things that have seen print. The chair was immortalized; the story died on the launching pad.

“Just the way she goes,” A great man would have said.

I have to backtrack a bit. I think it was Halloween after school when I came over to ole John’s for the first or second time, this would’ve been, right? Someone knows. We watched two Stephen King movies in his grandmother’s basement, and I was high on brown weed—right as I recall and guess who knows—is that when it happened—I would write it this way, but it may have been that he—not sure why he told me about Havershame, the kind of thing that in a 1993 or 4 high school setting would’ve gotten a person in some pretty ugly shit, sad to say—times was different— he clued me in to this Anthony Havershame character he was writing…think early queer writer bizarro—and I went apeshit. Not because I’m a homophobe, oh no—I thought it was the funniest goddamn shit I had ever read and now wanted to write some of my own.

“I’m not going to write him anymore,” he said. 

“Fuck that shit dude, you have to,” I said. “Here, move over. I want to write one of these. I’m going to use his buddy Richard Thruster.”

I can’t say for sure the dialogue went this way, but there’s every chance it did. But it was late, and we were kids, so I was fucked. Until I slept over one weekend. Then it was on. We laughed so goddamn hard at the shit we were coming up with for this Thruster story—because it became a team effort, see—that we pissed off his Gramma. I think we pissed her off so much that I wasn’t supposed to be allowed around anymore. I want to say there were a couple of other people there…can’t say for sure…maybe Holsted the Grunge Kid or Matt of the Tallywhackers or John’s cousin Erik the Smooth were there with young John and Rob the Bastard…I do feel like others were there and someone knows.

In this case it is the kid I shook hands with who knows. The teen under the tree with the long hair in all black clothes, smoking weed and drinking beer and thinking of maybe getting some coke if that miracle happened to fall into the Grunge Kid’s lap as it sometimes did on the weekends, who knows? And thinking of the future. It was bright and a little weird.

John was also working on something he intended to send to Aberrations. After asking him what sort of shit they want, I asked if I could write something on his computer really quick—Mom didn’t have one, we didn’t have fucking cock all back then, we barely had fucking furniture—and he said, “Try it, go ahead.” And I whipped something out in a night, and he read it and—

Hm. What he said was, “I like it. Sure, I’ll send it out for you.” What he thought, I can’t truly say. John Paul Bruni is very astute. He fronts like he isn’t, but he is and always has been. I’m pretty sure he had this idea that…well, let’s just say I feel like the gears were turning in a furtive fashion I’ll never fully, firmly know. 

Predictably enough the few thousand words of garbage was rejected. But before the rejection letter came and just for one bloody night—ah finally we get to the goods—I was standing under this tree with stars in my eyes thinking of how awesome it would be to be a writer. The idiot Steppenwolf in me tried to convince me that writing sucked, and I should just play guitar—he was both right and wrong which is a story for later—that night I refused to entertain another thought in my head other than how awesome it would be to be a writer. And I think I went upstairs and watched The Dark Half. I loved that movie back then. Hell, I still do.

Ah, how I did listen to the wolf. That kid and the wolf would fight over the whole me for the next 25 years.

Cut to these days. Today I realized I’m finally shaking hands with this child version of myself. He didn’t die under that tree. He died slowly over years of doing everything wrong. The Psychopath* Waltz, and I was more interested in doing it than in doing what I ought to have been, writing. Now that the stars are right and in sight again—that means this kid is getting what he wants—it’s an energy center in the brain, not a kid, see, and it can fuck you up if you don’t shake hands with it—that’s another story for another time. In sum, I caught it before it killed me. Shaking hands with this energy in me saved my life, so I thought I’d write a little about it. And now I’m having hell ending this. Fuck it. It’s over. Reintegration of the inner child—watch out for regression—stay away from pathological cunts who distract you from your goals, this goes not just for me but for anyone who wants to rise above the bullshit lot. 

Thanks for reading again as always. See you soon. 

 

 

Cmon. It's hilarious. It's so over the top.

 

 

 

*Not meaning, “I’m Ted Bundy”, meaning, “I want my pleasure (be it drugs, sex, leisure, etc., nothing murderous) right the fuck now and I will get it whether it hurts you, me, them, the sky, that cunt over there, the trees in the forest and the animals in the woods, the cops, etc., I want what I want right fucking now and that’s IT. Fuck who don’t like it. I spent a long time being that cunt. It’s mostly over now. Now I only apply that as needed—as with naysaying cunts—like a gamma ray of sorts. OFC any shrink who saw this and knew I was listening to Necrotic Gore Beast while I write this stoned on hash would likely say I haven’t come very far at all. That kind of myopia is becoming rampant—stupid psychology vids—little cartoon cunts teaching wrong thinking—a mohawk don’t make you the devil—

Cheers. Thanks for reading.