The first was eigth grade graduation. During the rehearsals, a classmate tried to start a fight. I backed him down. The vulgarity I used got me kicked out of my own graduation ceremony. Not that I cared. I'd given my class ring to a girlfriend. Didn't even order a senior ring. By then I was working full-time and paying for my own well-being. A ring was the least of my concerns.
Mom decided that there was no way I was missing my graduation. So we got decked out in our finest and headed to the gymnasium. As soon as I walked in, my teacher ran up to me and said "What are you doing here? You need to go home." Then my mother spotted my adversary from the previous day.
"It's this fucking idiot's fault. Why don't you step outside with me, Asshole?"
Said asshole being 6'8"...
There was no brawl in the parking lot, just my furious mother dragging me to the car after the principal threatened to call the police.
My mom's whole outlook seemed to be turning darker. Catching my friend from next door making drinks in the kitchen, she'd have taken everything I owned and confined me to my room... in the past.
Instead, she walked in, sat her purse down and said, "So you're drinking, huh?"
"Yep," replied Andy. He always was the cocky one.
Mom just gave us this weary, defeated look.
"Fuck it, then. Make me one."
I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall for my parents' marriage and our living situation right then, but I had so many different forces pulling my mind away. I'll get to them in a timely manner, I assure you.
During Freshman year, a lot of the students were getting involved in gangs and the drug trade. One day , I was robbed at gunpoint. Two or three weeks later, Andy was struck between the eyes with a blunt object. His forehead was swollen for a week, but his eyes were black for months. He decided that we should arm ourselves.
He used a router to cut wooden moulds in the shape of brass knuckles, then melted lead weights -pilfered from dozens of duck decoys- in a cast-iron skillet over his grandfather's propane burner.
After some trial and error, maybe half a dozen sets, we each took the pair most suited for our hand size. I had some reservations about carrying them, but he assured me that if we were caught, we could claim they were weights that we wore for exercise when walking home from school on the levee. It wasn't a bad idea, either. We began to do just that.
In English class one Friday afternoon, someone blamed me for a disturbance. Nose buried deep in some book, I came out of the dream-haze wondering what they could possibly be talking about. As it turned out, it was nothing, really. A trumpet-blast of flatulence from the girl beside me. Seriously.
I was invited to go to the office for the crime of disrupting the classroom, but I'd had enough.
"No. I won't be punished for the childishness of others anymore."
One of the guys got up from his desk and walked over to me.
"Get up! You can't talk to my cousin like that!"
He had always been friendly before, but I guessed that those days were over.
I closed my book and stood up. Over half a dozen of his friends followed suit.
Then something strange happened. A breathtaking sense of calmness filled me.
"I'm through fighting with you. I've had my fill. This is bullshit. You're all fucking idiots."
As I sat down and began to read again, the girl that had started this clusterfuck jumped up and ran towards me, swinging. I never looked up. I was already elsewhere. Someone grabbed her and half-dragged/half-carried her to the front of the classroom.
By now, our English teacher's veins were standing out on her sweaty forehead.
"Everyone sit down! Mr. Tournear, if you don't go to the principal's office immediately, I'll have to have a sheriff's deputy remove you from the classroom!" she shouted.
"Then I guess you'll have to call him," I said.
Ten minutes later, the assistant principal and a police officer entered the classroom.
"Now, would you like to come with us, or do I have to have you handcuffed and forcibly removed?"
I decided that now was the time to leave. I rose, grabbed my bag, and left with them. On the way downstairs, he began to scream in a harsh, tobacco-cracked voice.
"You're suspended for 9 days for causing a disruption, obscenity, and insubordination!"
I remained silent. As we neared the office, he thanked the deputy and assured him that he could take it from there.
We entered and sat down to begin my write-up. I dropped my duffel bag a little too hard, and there was a loud, metallic clank as it struck the floor.
He looked up from his typewriter and asked me if I'd like to show him what was in my bag.
Knowing I was busted, I began to stammer.
"It's nothing, really."
"Then open your bag."
I fetched a long sigh and pulled the weapons from the bottom of my bag. Wrapping them in a shirt hadn't done enough to muffle the sound.
"You're carrying brass knuckles. I'll have to write you up for expulsion and turn these over to the sheriff's office."
"But they're not, sir. They're made of lead, and entirely too heavy to throw a punch with. I use these for weights because I walk home from school as part of my physical fitness regimen."
He fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
"I'm afraid that I'll have to confiscate them regardless of your reason for having them. If they were to fall into the wrong hands, they could be used as a weapon."
And wonder of wonders, I was neither expelled nor criminally charged that day.
Andy never got caught. Realizing that I would probably be found out, he got the hall pass and stashed his pair at the bottom of a trash can in the janitor's closet.
During my little vacation, I presented my demands to Mom.
"I know that there's only a month or so left in the schoolyear, and I'm prepared to deal with that, but I'm going back to Buras next year. I've had it up to here. I can use Grandma's address."
"I agree that something needs to be done, but it will be hard to bring you back and forth."
"I can go stay at her house, and come home on weekends."
"I really don't know if it's a good idea for you to move out."
"It really won't be like moving out. I've stayed weekends and summers before. I'll only be 15 minutes away."
Mom agreed to give it some thought. As it turned out, she was both right and wrong.
I don't want to give the impression that the year was completely without merit. That spring and summer marked the time that playing music stopped being a pipe dream and became a reality.
Being raised on funk/R n' B and rock from the classic period, during the '80's I didn't pay a lot of attention to modern rock. Then my neighbor began to get into a lot of metal, and naturally, took me along for the ride. I'd already lived through his rap phase, and while I genuinely liked a lot of it, something about music with live instruments was more interesting to me.
He began with Metallica, who happened to be on top of the world that year, before being led towards death metal by some friends that lived a few miles away.
I was enthused by the ferocity and speed of it all, but the lyrical content -which always seemed to wind up back at the gates of hell- became boring pretty quickly. Kinda like those old Cypress Hill albums where every song would be about smoking weed. Hurry up and change the subject, already.
I dug through their tapes every time I came over, and I began to put on a few out of curiosity. Death metal and thrash seemed to be all the rage with them, but a few really peaked my curiosity. One was on a peculiar-looking label I'd never heard of called Sub Pop. According to the copyright, it had been released in 1987, but it didn't sound like any of the glam rock I'd shunned during that time. The name on the cassette was Soundgarden.
What I found interesting was the fact that it didn't sound like one single genre. It had a little bit of the '70's cock rock feel -especially Black Sabbath- but at the same time embodied some of the sound I'd heard in old grainy footage of punk rock bands. So I dug a little deeper, and came up with The Real Thing, by Faith No More.
I wasn't very impressed when they were put into heavy rotation with the "Epic" video a year or so earlier, and I'll admit that I was still pretty milquetoast at that point. I found some of the songs to be very cool, while others didn't do anything for me at all. Nevertheless, my friend, who by now had admitted to me that they were his favorite band, began to talk to me every chance he could about their songs, about seeing them live, and how he'd heard through the grapevine that they had a new record on the way. Sooner or later, while still not much of a fan, I found myself eagerly anticipating the release date.
When the new album, Angel Dust, was released, I didn't really know what to think at first. It would have been one thing, had they sounded like merely a different band than the one that played on the previous album. They sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard.
By the second listen, I was hooked.
Within two months, we were at the Superdome watching them do the opening act stint on the ill-fated Metallica/Guns N' Roses tour. Despite their equipment being mixed at an insultingly low volume (couldn't risk having someone upstage the headliners, now, could they?), the fat bastards proved to all in attendance that they really were escapees from a psychiatric ward. Imagine Mike Patton running on stage during the intro to "Land of Sunshine;" doing a u-turn to go puke; then returning just in time to sing; before doing a front-flip onto his back - which is where he finished the song, screaming like all the hounds of hell were after him. And that was just the first song.
(That wasn't their only strange behavior. At one show, I saw the singer pick up a beer bottle off the stage and throw it backhand behind him, only to strike the drummer in the head, bringing the song and the show to a bloody halt.)
It went downhill from there. Metallica was - and always will be - a very tight live band, but judging by the content of that album and every one that followed it, I could already sense that they were past their prime. Guns N' Roses really bears no mention. It was such a production that it was like being at an opera. Not what rock n' roll should be - exciting, dammit! I honestly could have taken a nap.
There have been hundreds of shows and sets by thousands of bands since then, but we better move on before this turns into an epic.
One band that made an impact - again not right away, but a strong one nonetheless - was Nirvana.
A buddy of mine named Delbert kept telling me about his new favorite band. I started checking MTV every once in a while until I caught them. Again, I wasn't very impressed. Maybe I'm too harsh a critic.
A few months later, in January of '92, I caugh them on Hangin' with MTV (which to jog your memory, was one of those afternoon prime time music shows like TRL, only geared towards rock music). They came out and played a blistering version of "Territorial Pissings." I was completely blown away.
I clearly remember the woman sitting beside me saying that she could make a million dollars, too, if all that you had to do was scream like that. I came to the conclusion that she was right. You didn't have to wait until you'd had several years worth of lessons. All you had to do was get up there and play three chords and do a lot of screaming until you found your voice.
I began to save money for a guitar, but Jeffrey beat me to it. He saved up enough cash to order one of those Harmony beginner's models that have been offered in Sears catalogues since the dawn of time, then urged Mom to order it for him.
Here we were, at the beginning, both practicing on the same guitar! It really wasn't a hard thing to do, though. Our sleeping and daily roaming habits were like night and day.
During that initial phase of our musical education, we'd try to puzzle out Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath riffs endlessly, while learning the occasional Cobain and Co. song.
That summer, my fate was decided. One of the guys from school had a chip on his shoulder over being questioned on a weapons charge, so he decided the time for revenge had come. He lined our driveway with roughly 50 roofing nails (the square-headed ones that will stand straight up), causing my dad to flatten both of his rear tires when he left for work the next morning.
Dad was pissed, and quite understandably. He brought both tires to a friend's auto shop for repair, and presented the bill to the Sheriff's Office with his report. The police refused to take action, stating that proof would be nearly impossible to find.
"Do you see now?" I asked him. "Can you register me in Buras this year, or do I have to walk around for three more years waiting for someone to stab me in the back?"
That's how I wound up graduating from the same school where I began.
One more thing about Port Sulphur, then I'll leave it alone. It's part in my tale is finished. Andy called me up during my first week in Buras to tell me that one of our classmates had died of a gunshot wound. I was deeply saddened by it (and still I am. He's buried close to some people that are very dear to me.)
The day I walked back into Buras High School was like night and day compared to the previous year. Most of the students were pleasant and chatty, and I'll be damned if several people didn't make friends with me right away. The jocks and cheerleaders were more likely to belittle others, but they were a crowd I instinctively gravitated away from. It wasn't much of a problem.
I always seemed to get along better with girls than I did with guys. I guess it was just the fact that most guys were into sports, or hunting and fishing. My interests were always the arts, so I found myself hanging with three groups: the girls, the geeks, and the stoners. Sometimes I think the fact that I was equally accepted by all three was proof beyond positive that I had no clearly defined social identity.
One by-product of hanging out with the stoners was that I began to experiment with drugs. I'd tried pot the year before, but didn't think much of it. This time was quite a bit different.
When I first started getting high, the world seemed to be more colorful. I smiled a lot, music sounded better, everything seemed to be funny, and I would get highly motivated. I could literally fly through whatever I was writing at the time, and songs seemed to flow from my imagination endlessly.
Disagree now if you like, but I never saw any harm come from marijuana usage - at least not in the time I spent with it. Mostly benefits, as medical researchers are finally saying. I don't think it's a gateway drug either. My belief is that some people have a desire to expand their consciousness, while others just have a curiosity about what the high feels like. In the beginning, I had a little bit of both. So naturally, I moved on to the next thing that happened to come my way.
And that thing turned out to be LSD.
I'd been reading about people using hallucinogens to access a part of their brain that normally lies dormant. There had even been top secret military experiments with them. And most accounts I'd read claimed that when one reached the point that the visions became too horrific, they could quit with no withdrawal symptoms. They'd come out on the other side smarter and stronger, and most of the random clutter seemed to be washed out of their minds.
Some like-minded friends (and musicians, too, but let's leave that here for a few minutes) informed me one day that a friend was holding and we could score that evening. If I remember correctly, we met the guy at a baseball field, of all places.
We got back to the house and dropped at 6:00 pm. Nothing seemed amiss right away. As the last few stragglers arrived, someone cued up a Mr. Bungle CD at track 3, "Squeeze Me Macaroni," and lit a joint. We began to unwind. Little did I know that within minutes, we'd be unravelling.
As usual, I started digging through a stack of CD's while the rest of the guys purveyed some porno mags. In the middle of taking mental notes about albums I needed to purchase, all 3 of them began to laugh hysterically.
"Come here! You've got to see this."
When I took a look, I wondered why this tableau was so funny. It appeared to be a wedding reception made up entirely of women that were 500+ lbs. All were attired in nothing but wedding veils. To tell the truth, it seemed kind of insulting.
But to my amazement, the longer I looked, the funnier it seemed. Especially when the entire wedding party began to carouse and dance. They poured wine, ate wedding cake, and cackled merrily.
The party having come to life, we jumped up and began to run around the room, laughing like lunatics all the while.
The next song, "Carousel," seemed to have been playing for months. I swear that I heard the part with the guy getting sick on a carnival ride at least 5 times.
During the peak hours, we dangled upside down from the ceiling rafters like bats; one of the guys nearly had a meltdown when I found a poetry book by Jim Morrison and began to recite it; and in one chaotic scene, some jocks that also happened to be tripping showed up pretending to be the police. Our mad dash through the drum room in the dark probably wasn't very kind to the musical equipment. I can't recall whether anything was damaged or not.
Oh, yeah! I almost forgot - our body temperatures were so high that we drank everything in the house within minutes, then spent the rest of the night drinking directly from the taps.
An older guy that was dating one of our sisters gave two of us a ride home. He claimed to be tripping, but appeared calm, cool, and collective. I asked him why he wasn't freaking out, and he just responded that he was laid-back. He spent the trip home talking us down and praising the Dr. Hook tape that was blaring on his sound system.
I thanked him for the ride and went to bed.
I drifted off sometime after 7 am, still watching serpents and topographical maps leap across the parchment paper of the ceiling. I felt drained, yet peaceful.
I don't want you to get the wrong idea and mark me as a drug burnout on first impresssion. I didn't do any of the substances that I tried more than a handful of times. Unfortunately, I didn't see the point of getting off of drugs until over a year after I graduated.
It didn't affect my grades, though. One teacher approached me with my transcripts from Port Sulphur, wanting to know why my marks had been so bad there. I seemed to be doing fine now. I mumbled something about having had a few problems, then hurried off with an excuse.
Things weren't all bad. I began working nearly full time that year.
I guess that right here I should begin this part by telling you a little bit about my hometown.
Plaquemines Parish is a delta that lies at the southernmost part of the state of Louisiana. There is literally one way in and one way out. That's one thing I had to get used to after being forced to relocate due to Hurricane Katrina years later - places with roads to everywhere. The natives call the lower end of the Parish "Down the Road," or DTR (the term came from a local magazine that was published annually). There are no more than 3 or 4 traffic lights in the entire parish. The main industries are seafood and oilfield. In my time, I've had a hand in both.
A week or two into my sophomore year, I decided to find some work. In Buras, I was closer to more seafood docks, and there were plenty of boats that could potentially be looking for a deckhand. I skipped school one Monday and went to Bondi's seafood dock in Empire. He put me to work on the spot. My job duties were to assist in unloading, weighing, and icing down shrimp in vats of ice. For my backbreaking day of work, I was paid the princely sum of $35.
Right then and there I was convinced that I'd have to find something that paid better, but seemingly being guaranteed work, I decided to ride it out until a better opportunity presented itself.
That opportunity turned out to be Dan's Seafood, located directly across from the Lucky Food Mart and a block or so down the highway from the Buras Saloon & Emile's Lounge - the former owned by my aunt and uncle, the latter managed by my grandmother. Grandma's night shift, punctuated by days holed-up in her cave-like bedroom, left me free to roam around and get into things that no 16-year-old should ever be involved in.
The opportunity to work at Dan's came at the perfect time. I'd hitched a ride back to Empire the next day, only to find that he'd basically given me a day's work because he was short-handed. He wasn't particularly thrilled with the idea of me missing school to come shovel ice and lug vats ofshrimp around with a pallet jack.
At Dan's this presented no problem. I'd offered to come in bright and early, but he assured me that there was no need to miss school. Someone would be around to buy crabs from the fishermen all day long. My job would be to sort and box the live crabs, then clean and bag the gumbo crabs. All were intended for shipment to the airport in New Orleans.
During this period, I became. friends with two extraordinary families. The Parkers lived next door to Dan's, and the two siblings closest to my age, James and Daniel, quickly became partners-in-crime/co-workers. We roamed the streets, getting into the kind of extracurricular activities that most teens with partying on the brain wind up in on weekends. On the ther hand, we worked side-by-side, both at fish docks and on commercial fishing boats.
The other, the Hammonds, were a family of 7. They first came to my attention when one of the elder brothers participated in a televised quiz bowl during my 6th grade year. I was impressed with his bookish knowledge and rapid-fire answers. I'd always been well read, but never felt good enough to share any of that knowledge or take part in such character-building activities. Maybe I should have studied the course on self-esteem that Mom insisted I take in 4H, but I guess that's more water over the dam.
I met him at the bus stop one day, and commented on his quiz bowl performance. Not that we had enough in common to really talk at that point. We were too far apart in age. The youngest sister, Jessica, I met at a dance I went to in 8th grade. She developed a crush on me and asked me out. That wasn't exactly surprising. Most romantic relationships I've been in, I was either asked to date, or someone set us up. No way would I ever tell them. It turned out to be short-lived , as we've already discussed. Being 12 at the time (two years my junior), can you blame her for quickly deciding that we should just be friends?
I did meet Jason on one visit to their house. It was one of those houses built on pylons to avoid flood waters (not that it wound up helping when the most destructive storm in U.S. history came to town many years later). There was a downstairs shop that had been converted into an extra bedroom. There I found him, studiously working out the bass line to "Manic Depression." Later, we would become close (or as close as I would ever allow) friends.
A year and a half later, upon my return to BHS, I was finally able to take Jessica up on her offer of friendship. I became friends with Kristi, who was in the same grade as me. After a Halloween party at their house, I became very close with the family.
Their parents, while stern, were very fair and loving. Anyone that their children befriended became an honorary member of the family. I spent lots of time with them, especially when I convinced them to let me make dessert one night. They went into raptures of delight over my cakes and brownies. For the longest time, when I'd arrive, they'd inform me what I was baking that night.
I was welcomed heartily and drawn into their circle of friends.
It seemed I'd finally found peace and acceptance. I began to outwardly express the principles I'd been studying for four years. It felt so good to have a "Hail, fellow. Well met" for every person that I came across. The parents of all of my friends became accustomed to hugging me upon my arrival and my departure. The same went for my female friends. And violence... there was none. With the guys I would stop fights before they could start.
Sometimes it was a case of talking sense into people's heads before violence could erupt. On other occasions, the aggressor(s) would decide I looked scary and depart swiftly. Why? I don't know. I didn't approach them in a temper.
Unfortunately, this happy existence didn't last. Something happened that taught me to never repeat a rumour, no matter how confidential it supposedly is; made me an object of scorn and ridicule for years to come; and drafted the blueprint for the way I would carry out nearly all friendships in the future.
This is how I went from outcast to nearly content and back in the space of less than a year.
Among all the friends I made, two were a couple. The odd part was that I never saw them together. She went to Buras with me, while he was in Port Sulphur. I made some terrible decisions concerning them.
One day, sitting in the gymnasium at lunch due to adverse weather conditions, a friend I was sitting with saw her and made the remark that he couldn't believe they were still dating. Not really understanding what he was getting at, I asked what he was talking about. He responded by saying that she had been cheating on him with a friend that was enlisted when he came home on leave. She'd been seen all over town with him.
"Well, what makes you so sure she was sleeping with him?" I asked.
"Come on, man. It was obvious. She didn't keep it a secret that she was running around with him."
I knew as well then as I do now that it was all hearsay, and not worth spreading around. Did I keep my mouth shut?
Say sorry, Sai, but I didn't.
Now, don't go off half-cocked by thinking that I'd gotten a taste of popularity and decided to join the rumour mill that high school cliques spin on. I'd made some friends, but I wasn't talking that much.
What happened was this: I'd met up with some friends to toke, and being late at night, we figured that the best place to adjourn to would be the golf course.
We were sitting on a bench that was in the vicinity of the 9th hole, when one of the guys began to trumpet his disdain for her.
"She's got him totally whipped. We can't even get him to hang out anymore. I really don't get what he sees in her. He had a chance to screw another girl recently, and he wound up backing out. Told her, 'I can't do this. I have a girlfriend.' I couldn't believe it. I wonder if she ever cheated on him."
And here's the first terrible mistake I made:
"I heard something, but I don't think I should tell it. I don't even know if it's true."
One of them chimed in with, "Come on, man! You can't leave us hanging like that."
"Ok, but you have to promise me you won't tell him. I don't know if it's true or not, and I don't want that coming from me."
A few days later, she approached me in tears, telling me that he'd broken it off with her.
Distressed, I approached my friends that night.
"I can't believe you told him! I really didn't know anything."
"No, calm down, dude. We didn't say anything."
"Well, what happened?"
"She was cheating on him, and he found out."
Now I was really panicking. I went to his house to see how he was doing, and to my surprise, his attitude was "to hell with it. I've moved on."
She was an entirely different story. Every day at school, she would come hang out with me whenever scheduling allowed, and repeatedly ask herself what she had done. Feeling guiltier by the day, I did whatever I could to console her...
So when the invitation to come to her house arrived, I came without a second thought. Which was fine. I was encouraging when she was down, and walked on eggshells when the mood swung around to anger. Nevertheless, I tried to be a good friend and not consume myself with guilt.
Everything seemed like it might be ok... until she jumped my bones, and guilt-ridden or not, I did absolutely nothing to resist it .
I know today that it was a bad decision by someone who was on the rebound rollercoaster, but being seduced so aggressively, I submitted in silence. The voices in my head were screaming, "Don't do this! They are going to hate you!!" so loudly that there was absolutely no pleasure involved. How could there be, when I had done something so despicable.
Had I had the backbone to say no, they would both probably respect me today. This was probably the first major instance of letting my silence cause grief and ruin. Being a kid, I still had many life lessons to learn. I've never repeated another rumour.
But sadly, not speaking up to influence the situation would rise up to bite me again, and with disastrous circumstances.
Gradually, I began to come around less. I guess that it was the guilt that kept me away, but I still think that it's the reason she eventually got him to come talk to her. Putting their heads together with what they knew, it was a foregone conclusion that I had orchestrated this whole mess to get in her pants. Would you believe me in this situation? I probably wouldn't.
I was hanging with the rest of the guys in Port Sulphur when I heard that they were talking. A tight little knot of nerves began to twist nauseously in my guts. We were about to adjourn to one of their father's houses in Empire to play music, but one of them pulled me to the side.
"I think I had better take you home first."
I asked him why, and he responded that our friend was pretty upset with me.
He would say no more, but he really didn't have to. I knew that I was found out.
I got my first taste of how they would react a few days later. I was at the Hammond's house for a visit, and Kristi asked if she could speak to me in her room. I agreed and we sat on the bed to talk.
"Mark, you really need to watch what you're doing."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"My dad's been hearing some things, and he's nearly convinced that he doesn't want you around here anymore."
"What could he possibly have heard about me?
"That you're selling drugs."
"That's ridiculous. You know I've tried a few things, but I've never sold any. Who could have told him that?"
"A friend of his that's a cop. Regardless of whether it's true or not, you're under suspicion. You need to be careful."
I didn't know what to say. I was speechless.
"I heard some other things, too. If they're true, I'm afraid I might not be able to continue being your friend."
I wish I could say that I saw a small fraction of belief in me on her face, but I can't do that. The look was cold. Nothing I said could get her to tell me the rest, but I found out soon enough.
Between the end of the school year and the start of the new the following year, lots of information made the rounds about me. As you know by now, some of it was true (even if my intentions were misinterpreted), but 98% of the things I found out about myself when I began my junior year in the fall were blatant lies, intended only to slander.
Especially hurtful were the rumours about Kristi. I finally got someone to tell me, and it seems that I was being labeled a womanizer (And why not? One guy with a whole crowd of girls every morning before homeroom. I'm sure they were trying to figure out whether I was gay or just playing sensitive to get close to them). My affair the previous spring -and my supposed ill intentions- were now public knowledge. And to top all that off, I had been "heard" bragging about having done the same to her. It was really sad. I had made some good friends.
Those that weren't included in the tales that were flying around didn't have as much reason to be filled with scorn, but chose to file me away in the backs of their minds as untrustworthy.
I finally heard from my former friend. He called me up one day to let me know that he intended to hurt me very badly when we met again. I was perturbed, but resigned to my fate.
I'll not go into our meeting, but I did nothing to resist his blows. It was one-part guilt, and the other total sleep deprivation. I was exhausted.
That year brought some other major upheavals in my life. I hadn't gotten into enough trouble being on my own to cause legal entanglements, but it was enough for Mom to decide I was moving back home.
Then she moved out. That was when the real trouble started.
The summer of 1993 went by in a haze of narcotics, alcohol, and trips to the mini-beach at Fort Jackson.
On one occasion, my dad took a trip to Venice to pick up some friends, leaving Jeff and I alone. We decided it would be great to take the other car for a thrill-ride. We amused ourselves by sliding around the curvy shell road, then returned home.
"Let's go again!" said Jeffrey.
Without pausing for thought, I said, "Nah. Let's not. We don't need to be sneaking off in the car too much."
He agreed, and we walked into the house, which was completely filled with smoke. We began to run from room to room looking for the source. It turned out to be coming from a mattress on the floor between the beds in Michael and Cody's room. Someone had lain it there for guests to sleep on. Now, in the center of it, was a smouldering circle roughly the size of a manhole cover. Apparently, the flame had fallen from someones cigarette on the way out the door.
As we grabbed it and ran down the hall to the back door, flames began to leap hungrily. We ran through the back yard and threw it over the fence, where it burned in a ditch for over an hour. Had we changed drivers and taken another joyride, the house would have burned to the ground.
Then came my legal troubles. Some guys that I knew vaguely were arrested for credit card theft and robbery. They'd pumped gas and carried a case of beer to the car. When the card was denied, they fled with it, then came to our house.
It was a very bad scene. There were a dozen people or more, nearly all of them underage. Two people had passed out at the beach and were brought home laid out in the back of a truck. The guy was placed on the sofa. Some rocket scientist had put the girl, fully clothed, into a bathtub full of cold water.
I was on the phone with my girlfriend (if you could say that. She had broken up with me, but was calling me constantly in an effort to iron out our differences.) when several voices began to shout, "It's the cops!" I peeked through the blinds, and was astonished to see that nearly a dozen police cars were parked in front of the house.
My girlfriend said, "The police are there, aren't they?"
"Yes. I gotta go."
"Okay."
As I was hanging up, a knock sounded. Thinking as quickly as I could, I knelt over and hid my beer behind a bookshelf. Before I could rise from my position, the head of the detective division and an undercover narcotics officer burst into the room.
"Freeze! What are you hiding back there?"
Not wanting to get shot, I quickly stammered, "It's just a beer! Calm down. I'm underage and I didn't want to get in trouble."
"Oh, you're in trouble, all right. Get it! I want to see what it is."
When I reached behind the bookshelf, the narcotics officer hit me over the head nearly a dozen times with his flashlight. Luckily, I was very drunk. I didn't feel a thing. The onlookers in the room, on the other hand, were horrified. Why the hell wasn't a juvenile officer called out to deal with teenagers?
"What the fuck are you doing that for?!?" Michael shouted.
I got ribbed for a couple weeks - guys calling me the Plaquemines Parish answer to Rodney King, and saying that I should sue the Sheriff's Office.
The offenders mentioned my name in connection, so I was arrested on an accessory to the fact charge and scheduled for arraignment in juvenile court.
Before that could happen, I was picked up on another accessory charge. A friend was feuding with a guy from Buras, and one night they agreed to meet and fight later that evening. My friend wanted to meet at a dock on the riverside right away, but the other guy persuaded him to meet at a gas station in Empire at midnight.
I almost asked to be dropped off, but I said "the hell with it" and went along for the ride. Two of my friends were next door to the gas station, and walked over to see what was going on. Little did we know that the opponent's father, a police officer, had orchestrated the entire setup. They drove up together, and the officer got out alone. He was wearing his utility belt over boxer shorts and a wife-beater t-shirt.
He levelled a sawed-off shotgun at us, and ordered us all against the building with our hands on the wall. Another unit arrived and we were handcuffed one at a time with the gun shoved rudely into the backs of our heads. The guy that rode with me, a metalhead, told the officers in the front seat, "I wish I was on PCP! I could bust out of these handcuffs, then come up there and rip your heads off."
Shit! I'm screwed, I thought.
Upon arriving at the police station, I stood on my right to remain silent until my friends, innocent bystanders who had walked up at the wrong time, were released. Believe it or not, they were actually brought home free of charge without even being questioned.
My court dates were constantly rescheduled until January of the following year. By the end, I thought they were waiting until my 17th birthday so they could charge me as an adult. That wound up not happening. They mostly wanted to scare me into staying out of trouble, and it worked. I've never had cause to be arrested again.
I was given 6 months of probation and 80 hours of community service, which I served at the Port Sulphur lock-up. I mostly painted and cleaned out storage sheds. I did see some interesting things there, such as crime scene photos and tear gas grenades. One day, while painting the inside of the cells that housed the trustees, I saw a music video by the most oddball folk musician I'd ever laid eyes on. So I guess you could say that the first time I heard Beck I was in jail.
Believe it or not, my old youth minister returned. He had called a few times to "see how things were going for me." The bastard was probably sniffing around to see if there was a warrant for his arrest. One evening, he called the house to say that he was in town visiting a few people. Would it be okay to come over? I still had a desire to say that nothing was amiss, so I told him that would be fine.
What he didn't know was that I'd been through just enough that I would no longer be cowed into inaction.
When he arrived, he asked me to take a ride with him. This set off alarm bells (as if they hadn't been ringing all along. Ha!). But I went ahead and agreed. Being such a basket case about things the first time, my judgement had been clouded. Now was my chance to find out exactly what his motivations were. And I'll be damned if I didn't find out real quick.
During the ride, he began questioning me about what I'd been up to over the last two years. When the subject of my girlfriend came up, he went into a frenzy. He asked if we'd been sexually active.
"Look, I'm not interested in sharing any of this with you. Or comfortable with it, for that matter."
He pulled over and looked at me with a lecherous grin.
"Why not? I bet she gets you hard as a rock. I could put my mouth on it and do the same"
He began to lean towards my lap. I grabbed his head and slammed it against his window nearly hard enough to shatter the glass. It was the last violent act I would ever commit.
"You're a fucking psycho! You need to stop thinking about your obsessions, and start thinking about the kids that you've sent running from God."
He said nothing. All the animation had left his face. He sat there, slack-jawed and quiet.
"Go back where you came from. If I were you, I'd kill myself when I got there."
I got out of the car and walked home. I don't know what became of him. I've had no luck with Google.
Not everything went badly during that period. A second guitar was attained, and we began to learn even more songs. We even ventured to write a few originals - skeletal and noisy in arrangement.
When I saw that I had become a social pariah once again, I retreated back into solitude. Some people let the previous spring's events go before the year had grown much hair on it's face, while the others were split into two groups: those that took a few years to come around, and those that never spoke to me again. Not a day goes by that I don't regret those events. They were people that I had a lot in common with, and we are forever estranged.
Some of the new students, either coming into 9th grade from junior high or transplants, took a liking to me. They didn't have history to make them biased yet. I was courteous to them -even went as far to sit with them at lunch- but none of my new mates had any idea how insecure I had grown. I soon garnered a reputation for being extremely quiet. I have had maybe one or two close friends at a time since then, but still kept myself guarded. I'd sidestep questions about myself or quickly change the subject. I even took to telling lies to hide who I was, and not just whoppers. If someone on the phone asked what I was eating, I'd tell them brownies - even if I was having ice cream. How many of you remember me telling you that I valued your friendship, but I'd surely do something to ruin it one day? This is when that sort of behavior began.
One freshman, Chance Lay, was in the marching band and had a drum kit at his house. We began to go to his house and set up our amps outside of the tiny storage shed he kept it in. We fooled around a little bit with some of the modern rock songs that were big at the time.
Then everything changed. I purchased a Stratocaster from a thrift store and a Peavey TKO 65 bass amp from a friend. At nearly the same time, Jeffrey bought a bass from Musician's Friend. The first time I picked it up, I realized that I was a bassist. For some reason it came more naturally than guitar ever had. I remember hooking up my new Bigmuff pedal to the bass and playing "Gratitude" by the Beastie Boys like it was yesterday. It was love at first sight. Maybe it had something to do with the years I spent playing tuba and drums in the marching band during junior high. I've excelled more on the bass and drums over the years, but I still play the random song on guitar - usually when I'm the vocalist. For some reason, it's the instrument I find it easiest to play while singing. Chance moved his kit to our larger garage, and we began to record hours of tape using any available format: 4-track, boom box, karaoke machine, handheld microcassette, etc. At this point, there were no gigs, only the occasional drunken party where we'd set up in a corner and bash away.
Our good friend, Dustin Hayden, would show up from time to time with his guitar and some beer. One night, we moved the coffee pot into the garage and talked him into drinking some. 4 pots and a couple dozen songs later, we smoothly made the transition from casual coffee drinkers to eternal caffeine junkies.
Another new friend was Odessa Butler, who had recently moved from the Baton Rouge area to live with her mother. Hers is a friendship that I could have handled better.
The day we met, I quickly noticed that she didn't look or act like the socialites and cheerleaders that sneered at we fearless freaks. Then, in one of my classes, I noticed a graffito she had pencilled on a desk we both used. It was something about music.
Aha! One of my only interests, I thought.
In no time we were communicating by daily defacing school property. I took the desk name of Gemini - I was obsessed with split personalities that year - to match her Freebird. Some of my former friends noticed, and began to ridicule me with their own graffiti. We switched to passing notes to rid ourselves of that problem.
I sometimes wonder if we ever actually spoke out loud. She claims we did, but I'm not certain.
Before I knew it, I was crushing on her bigtime - she was very nice to me, plus I have a history of being infatuated with redheads. I never let her know that I liked her. How are you gonna do something like that when you don't even talk to people? For another thing, I was off and on with my girlfriend so much that I never knew from one day to the next whether I was available. She'd grown sick of the drugs and drinking, and thought that both my friends and the music I was into were a bad influence. During that last year and a half, she would dump me on an almost weekly basis.
My crush and my communication were pretty short-lived. One of my friends asked her out, and she came to his house one day when I was there. He was playing Nirvana's cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" on the guitar. He stopped and told her that I sang it much better than he did, then suggested that I do so. I refused by merely shaking my head, lighting a cigarette, and quickly leaving.
They didn't date long, but I still kept my distance for the last few weeks of school. I didn't want to get in the middle of their relationship. Look how badly that had turned out in the past. I'd lost too many friends already. I was a little sore about it at first. I thought he had done it to stub my toe. Maybe it was just that alpha dog, "I'm the best" attitude he carried himself with. There really was no reason to believe that. It wasn't like I'd told anyone that I liked her, but jealousy is what it is, right?
I had the summer to get over it, and when I returned to school in the fall I was ready to put it behind me and be a real friend. What I didn't know was that some of her friends had been questioning our friendship, asking her why she was talking to that freak. She told them that she thought I was very cool, and that we were friends. One of them didn't think that was the right answer, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.
I approached her in the gym and asked if Odessa had stayed home from school that day. She pulled me aside and ripped into me right away.
"You leave her alone! She has a boyfriend now. She's making a good life for herself here. And to be honest, she thinks you're really strange and she doesn't want to talk to you. Odessa is happy. Don't ruin that, Mark."
...And being as low on self-esteem as I was by this point, I believed every word. I didn't try to talk to her at all anymore. Our communication died, and after graduation we didn't see each other again. Somewhere deep inside the vault that I had constructed to wall my emotions in, I lamented the fact that I couldn't keep a friend to save my life.
Odessa and I did reconnect. Last year she got in touch with me. She, the friends I have made through her, and the rapidly growing spiderweb of friends I have made through them, have proven quite motivational. Soon I'll tell you how.
At this time, I was working on lots of boats, both shrimping and fishing with gill nets. During one of these trips, with Dan Thompson (the owner of Dan's Seafood) and Daniel Parker (one of the few friends that never turned his back on me), I felt the first symptom's of what I first took to be heartburn/indigestion. Half a lifetime later - despite appointments with GI doctors, every over-the-counter med known to man, even a few prescriptions - this condition has worsened considerably. Now,when it flares up it sometimes leads to nausea, vomiting, and constant pain. I can't keep weight on me to save my life.
Then I met Squid.
She had just moved from Baton Rouge and was entering her junior year. Her parents were employees of the school system, so I got to hang out at the teacher's apartments a lot. She was more advanced than what our school system had to offer. I don't remember if it was by way of her number of credits or a placement test, but she was advanced and wound up graduating with me at the age of 16.
The day I met her, she was face-painting for homecoming week. I asked her to paint "I'm a lazy sod" across one cheek (I was listening to a lot of Sex Pistols).
We bonded over punk rock, New Orleans, and thrift shops. I had quickly noticed the difference between the bands that embodied the indie rock spirit and those that were marketed as such, when they were really arena rock. I weeded out the dreck pretty early, then turned off the radio and began to discover the punk bands these artists would name as influences.
Squid had one up on me. She had hundreds of punk rock albums, and tons of books and 'zines. I plunged myself into that world and went mad. While every single one of them has been a major influence to me, two bands reigned me in hard: I had heard a few songs by the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, and marked them as interesting, but hadn't found the time to hear many records. She introduced me to the Velvet Underground & Nico and much of SY's back catalogue. When I put in Sister for the first time, it was like hearing a sound that had been playing in my head for an eternity.
Our original recordings from this period began to take on the form of long, dissonant drones - complete with tunings dreamed up out of the ether.
I will never be able to say enough good things about Squid. She has been there through everything: through smiles, through the tears and lies, even through madness. Squid loves me unconditionally, and I'll never be capable of showing her the level of gratitude she deserves. What level, you might ask? One example should serve.
She was being tutored in math (might have been trig), and invited me to accompany her to our math teacher's apartment. After going over her lessons, they began to discuss the fact that I was having a little trouble myself. So she began to drill me. For the next few weeks, we'd go to her tutoring sessions, during which our teacher would instruct me. I wound up with an A for the nine weeks and a B for my final grade... which is beside the point. The main point is that years later I found out her mother had paid the instructor to tutor both of us.
Now I ask you... Is that love?
I had finally had enough of my rollercoaster relationship. The last time we'd been together, she had flung every glass item within reach and sent me fleeing on the levee. She tried to follow me, but I told her I'd had it. She was obviously crazy. I wouldn't be coming back. A few weeks later, the mystery of her mood swings reared its head.
She had gotten her sister's boyfriend to get her a pregnancy test, and her suspicions were confirmed. A month or so after my graduation we would be parents.
As you can imagine, the scene at both of our houses wasn't pretty. My mom actually started smoking that night. I stood my ground. I'd take care of our child, but we could never be together again. I was completely fed up.
Instead of the occasional deckhand job, I went back to Dan's, this time working full-time. I took no days off. My evenings and weekends were full. My parents had split up for good, and my dad had moved into an apartment behind my aunt's bar. I moved in with him to be close to work.
She had gotten her sister's boyfriend to get her a pregnancy test, and her suspicions were confirmed. A month or so after my graduation we would be parents.
As you can imagine, the scene at both of our houses wasn't pretty. My mom actually started smoking that night. I stood my ground. I'd take care of our child, but we could never be together again. I was completely fed up.
Instead of the occasional deckhand job, I went back to Dan's, this time working full-time. I took no days off. My evenings and weekends were full. My parents had split up for good, and my dad had moved into an apartment behind my aunt's bar. I moved in with him to be close to work.
A few months before graduation, she persuaded me to come back. She'd cried on the phone to me for months, telling me that she didn't want our son to grow up without both parents. The soft spot in my heart got the better of me, so I moved into her parent's house.
Just weeks before the ceremony, Dan asked me if I'd like to manage his business so he could fish at night. His previous manager had left to return to shrimping. I accepted the offer with little trepidation.
This was how I graduated from high school. Between the non-stop activity of finals, managing a business, playing music at night, and the accompanying stress that any expectant parent goes through, my metabolism went on a rocket ride and I dropped 35 pounds in one month. Since then, I have never had any trouble losing weight, even when I clearly didn't need it.
I had come nearly full circle - lighter in frame and fainter at heart, but with no clear idea about what would come next. I'd made no plans for college. Hadn't even taken the ACT's. I'd planned on being a professional musician and starving until I made it, for better or worse. My priorities had changed overnight. I was alone no longer. I had more than just myself to look after.
Here I stood, at a crossroads: school behind me and nearly ten years of hard work, laughter, and sunshine ahead of me. They turned out to be good years, for the most part. I'm now thankful for those years, because a dark cloud hovered unseen in the distant future.
