2003-09-10 11:58 a.m.
Writer Qualifications

I was born to be a poet. Hear my evidence, and perhaps you'll agree.

With the advent of autumn, I am usually wont to reflect on my formative years, namely high school. I page through the old senior yearbook, the tears of laughter running streams of mascara (yup, still Maybelline's Great Lash in Very Black, same as it's ever been) down my cheeks. Often, I end up rolling on the floor as well. My high school experience, as I'm sure it was with most everyone's, was the longest joke I've ever been privy to. And my yearbook the perfect, final punchline to that joke. High school is rank with cliches and archetypes; I, of course, was one. But at least I got to be a fun one.

The prophecy in my yearbook (written by the "popular" crowd who, by law, had a real talent for making fun of people) foretold that I would, fifteen years after graduation, be a Central Park "quick drawer who recites depressing poetry and wears a black sheet with her belly button ring showing." Isn't that fabulous? I was, at 14 years old, the first person in my school to have a piercing somewhere other than my ears. Did it myself too, with some ice for numbing, an ear piercing stud, and some whiskey for the other kind of numbing. I was also, at 14, hanging out in biker bars, places with names like Hot Rod's, rocking out to local metal bands (anyone remember Surgeon General's Warning? Didn't think so.) and sneaking unattended drinks off the bar when nobody was looking. The hard drinking started at 15. So did the sex. My first lover was a guy who looked like a cross between Axl Rose and Ethan Hawke. He came from a family of bikers, Pagans to be exact. He played the drums. Got me hooked on musicians, a habit which eventually led to include artists and writers on my list of attractions as well. Musicians are the gateway drug of teenage love lives.

So there I was, the lone true Art Girl(oh, Switters, where art thou?) of my class. Black eyeliner, knee high boot, and superminiskirt wearin' hussy. The Poet Laureate of Eldred Central School. Not because I was good, but because I would say and do the things that no one else would. Concerned parents would call my mother every time the local newspaper published another of my poems. That was the excuse, anyway. What they really were concerned about (if they were truly concerned at all, rather than just nosy) was the behavior I was famous for, and the fact that I went to no trouble to keep this offensive behavior out of the public eye. My crimes:

I read books and poetry by authors that were too "old" for someone my age, such as the evil Nietzsche, the unwholesome Nabokov, and the atrocious Joseph Campbell, and regularly quoted my favorite passages or verses to random passersby in the halls, no doubt scaring the shit out of more than a few small minds.

It was my literature choices, obviously, that led me to become an atheist, a fact I made no secret of, horrifying students, teachers, and parents alike.

I was a "bad influence" on my friends, one of whom was a perfectly sweet and obedient Catholic daughter until, as her parents said when they forbade her to speak to me ever again, she met up with me.

I could, and did, drink more than the most seasoned of alcoholic rednosed grandpas that sat on their barstools every day for the past forty years (a habit that chased me, like a lion hunts a wildebeest, into adulthood; once, at the age of 23, I drank an entire bottle of Jack, an entire bottle of Jager, a quarter bottle of Absolut Citron, and a half bottle of Malibu in one sitting. Ask Cassey. I don't remember it, but she was there).

I laughed too much, too loudly, and at all the wrong things. Like car accidents, for instance.

I could never, ever fucking sit still.

I had fistfights with my lovers in the street.

Judgement was passed. Of course, I never blamed the jury. Only the system.

And now I realize, in retrospect, that I spent much of my youth uselessly flailing about and behaving like the drunken love child of Dorothy Parker and Charles Bukowski.

Which is cool.

I very rarely miss those days but, apparently, as my friend Phil Lee (who is the only person from high school with whom I presently communicate) tells me, those days certainly do miss me.

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