So I was raised in a middle class white flight suburban dreamscape.
It was a Rust Belt city slowing choking to death on its own fumes in the midst of Reagan’s ‘New Dawn’ in America and life was pretty good. I was outside from dawn till dusk doing God knows what because bad things didn’t happen to kids back then. There were a dozen kids my age who were all the same and my D&D ranger/assassin was like level 22.
Timeline Content Link; First Jobs
Avoid emotions with Gallows humor
But then my parents got divorced because somebody told my mother that she ‘deserved to be happy.‘ Their split was rather amicable. My Dad found Jesus in a big way and my Mom found a red haired dickhead alcoholic whose passive aggressive nature was only outpaced by his unmitigated bitterness. Parents please put your children first or you will mess them up badly. I actually blame the shitty ‘me first’ culture of the Boomers more than I personally blame my mother.
Anyway we got poor real quick.
I had to move to a different kind of neighborhood, still suburban but with 3 different coke dealers within a few blocks. My old friends suddenly did not talk to me. I was 12. I like to blame them and think it was because I could not afford Z Cavaricci Jeans, but it might have been because I was changing as well. Punk rock was really there for me in a big way when I needed something to be there for me. High school gets done somehow. It wasn’t all Sturm and Drang, I realized I needed some discipline in my life so I joined the Military. I went to Boot Camp and straight into the Reserves.(They don’t let you do that anymore)
I didn’t run away from home so much as I stopped going there.
Strays like me tend to drift into the cities. The problem with that is without any real support network the kids tend to band together into packs of orphans who technically still have parents and try to raise each other as best they know how. And yes by packs, I mean gangs and yes there is only one real gang for white kids.
So I was a Nazi Skinhead for a long time. Even right through the Military and Undergrad. I flew under the radar because pre 1995 there was no such thing as domestic terrorism. I won’t try to defend that time in my life, if you weren’t there, you don’t know.
The catalyst for change in that subculture often comes because you are burning the candle at both ends. You keep waiting for something drastic to happen to justify your delusional worldview and before you know it you start making the drastic things happen. Your options are death, prison, or get out. The crew you are running with, the territory you control, the shit you’ve seen, it all starts to fold back in on itself.
The average newbie lasts about 9 months, I made it 5 years.
Relevant Blog note; I taught myself HTML by viewing source codes, it was 1994, I could have made a ton of money, the internet back then was only pornography and radical politics, but alas I was short sighted.
OK back to the life progression parts. A girl I know buys me a copy of the GRE book because I wanted to go to grad school. The things is one/third math, I don’t do math. I took the GRE book back to the bookstore to return it ($100 book). I ask the counter clerk which one of them there fancy tests don’t got no math on it. Why son you must mean the LSAT. Oh yeah, what do you become if you do good on that? A lawyer.
So I moved to a different city and started law school.
Lucky for me, another fish out of water one year ahead of me happens to be a girl with great boobs and a strikingly similar background in terms of the punk rock scene and plodding along into law school because of guilt and good grades. I stalked her until she became my girlfriend. Life was looking up.
Continue to Part 2, Electric Boogaloo
Othala Fehu 