words

the timeline for what happened next is a little muddy. i met amanda near the end of middle school. that i know for sure. it was shortly after i got my hair cut. heather hated my new haircute, but everyone else loved it. i now had a level of self confidence that bordered on narcissism.

i guess i conveniently failed to mention that i had a mullet the entire time i was with heather. there i was, judging her appearance, while i looked ridiculous.

and it wasn’t a secret. people told me how stupid my hair was, but i was oblivious. i was too absent-minded to get the jokes they were making. i thought that having long hair was cool.

once i lost the mullet, people started to treat me differently. girls started to notice me. i met amanda through my friend steven. he was dating her best friend. i don’t know why me and amanda started dating. i guess we just thought each other was cute.

it didn’t last long. maybe a few month. it felt longer, though. i only remember hanging out with her once. she came over to my house and we made out in the basement.

we talked a lot on the phone, but never about anything special. we’d talk about how attractive her friends were. she also had a really cute cousin that was a year younger. i don’t know why we talked about how pretty other girls were so often, but that’s what happened.

i had myself convinced that we were closer than we actually were. come to think of it, amanda was the first time i did this. i have a bad habit of getting delusional when my partner is someone i consider out of my league. i guess this is when that developed.

amanda was the first time i was with someone that i bragged about. we had nothing in common, so i manufactured things to bond with her over. kind of like the guy in the song breakfast at tiffany’s. we both have the breaker box in our room? fate must have brought us together.

i wish i was making that one up.

i think this problem stems from a lack of confidence in my physical appearance. i’ve never felt like i had a lot to offer a partner, so when someone i deem more attractive that me shows interest, it fucks with my head.

with how i acted, it’s no wonder she left me as soon as she did. and i was oblivious when she broke up with me. she called me and said she cuddled with another guy.

i’m sure she expected me to get upset and break up with her, but i didn’t care. so she suggested that we just be friends with benefits. i’d never heard the term before, but it sounded like what we already doing, so i agreed.

when ninth grade started, i tried to hang out with her and her friends and they ignored me. me and amanda never spoke again.

my next girlfriend experience was over a year later.

cindy may have been my first real girlfriend, but heather (different heather) was my first real relationship. this was the first time i was with someone longer than a few weeks. this was the first time i was intimate with someone. this was the first time i was needlessly cruel to someone i ostensibly cared about.

looking back, i don’t know why i was with heather. she was fun enough to hang out with, but i never liked her as anything more. i just felt like i had to be with someone, and she was the person that liked me.

i don’t think it was a horny teenager thing, because she was often the one to initiate. i was terrified to kiss her the first time. she made fun of me for never trying to feel her up. what was i doing?

and yet, i kept coming back.

i was unkind to her. there’s no other way to put it. at one point i broke up with her because i wanted to make sure there weren’t other options. after spending an entire day asking out every girl in my school and getting denied, i begged heather to take me back.

i don’t know why i thought that was an acceptable thing to do. and i’m not sure why she agreed to see me again. i don’t remember how or when we broke up the second time, but she started dating my best friend graham shortly after.

i was not happy about that. i wrote a very mean song about her in response. i may have even played it for her. i don’t remember. my mom continued to be her friend. she would invite her over sometimes. this made me even angrier.

i don’t remember the exact timeline, but i know we became friends again in high school. there was a day she came over with a friend and we hung out in the shed in front of my house. we messed around while her friend talked on the phone. they left immediately after we were done.

i have no idea why this happened. and it never happened again.

in tenth grade she started dating another one of my friends and they began sleeping together. this didn’t bother me as much because it had been so long since we were a thing. but that didn’t stop me from writing a second, meaner song. despite the lyrically content, it was actually a pretty good song.

in eleventh grade i met a women named samantha. i became instantly infatuated with her. she had a boyfriend, but that didn’t stop us from talking on aim every night.

i learned a lot of important lessons from samantha. lessons about depression and anxiety. to this day, sam is my favorite name for a women. every computer i’ve had since i met her has been named samantha. i had forgotten why until now.

sam left her boyfriend and started dating heather. talk about karma.

the last time i saw heather was after a mindless self indulgence concert. i was going to a different school at this point, so i hadn’t seen her in a while. she called me an asshole and walked in the opposite direction. good for her.

i looked her up on facebook the other day. she seems to be doing well. she has a kid now, which is weird. she never seemed like the type. she also lost a lot of weight. part of me wants to reach out and apologize. but the other part feels like it’s better to not remind her of how shitty high school was.

this is the first time i’ve reflected on how i treated heather back then. i don’t know why i don’t feel worse about it. everyone in high school was a dick during that time. even my supposed best friends treated me like i was subhuman. that doesn’t make what i did right, but it’s not surprising that i lashed out against someone.

i think this is where the problems started. i learned very early on not to show compassion. even to my partner. everyone was going to turn on me anyway, so what was the point in opening up to people? having a girlfriend wasn’t about companionship, it was a means to an end. what that end was? i don’t know. i certainly wasn’t interested in sex.

i set a bad precedent with heather. i still treat people like they’re disposable. only talking to them when it’s convenient to me. i’m kinder. i no longer write hate songs about people. but i don’t let myself get too invested in others. i have friends. but i prefer to be alone most of the time. it’s just easier.

what i would consider my first real relationship was in eighth grade. it only lasted a few weeks, and i wouldn’t exactly call it a deep partnership. but this was the first time i asked someone to be my girlfriend.

her name was cindy. and because we were only together a few weeks, i don’t remember much about her. we talked on the phone a few times. we held hands. one time we hugged before class and it gave me an erection. that was embarrassing.

it’s weird how time flows differently when you’re a kid. i remember being with cindy a lot longer, but i know that’s factually incorrect. we remained friends afterwards, so maybe that’s why my timeline feels off.

i don’t know why i asked cindy to be my girlfriend. i didn’t really like her. not like that, at least. she was fun to talk to at lunch, but i was still a bit young to be thinking about romance.

maybe i went out with cindy because i thought i had to. if i had a girlfriend, maybe other people would think i was cool. i know some of my classmates thought i was gay, so it’s possible i was trying to prove them wrong.

cindy also marks the earliest instance of a girl with baggage being attracted to me. at least, the first i know of.

cindy was very young when she became sexually active. she would tell me stories about having sex with a older guy in a park. maybe 19. she was proud of this fact, so i don’t think he forced himself on her. not that it makes it any better.

her stories worried me. she was also experimenting with drugs at the time. thinking about it now, maybe that’s why i asked her out. like i was trying to save her.

i didn’t do a very good job, though. because i left her for another girl.

the next time i showed interest in someone was in fourth grade. a girl named brittany had enrolled in my school mid-year. i’m not sure what it was, but i liked her from the moment she was introduced to our class.

our relationship was much tamer than what i had with heather. we never kissed or held hands. i don’t even think we hugged. instead we talked on the phone a few times and swore to everyone that we didn’t like each other.

but we did. i think.

the next year she was in a different class, and that was that. we talked a few times but it wasn’t the same. it’s weird how simply it ended. at the time i was obsessed with her.

or maybe it was just the idea of her.

i would often talk with my friend marcus about why i liked brittany. but the reasons were always superficial.

it’s not that crazy, i guess. we were kids. it’s not like we were having deep conversation about our goals. even marcus, who i considred my best friend, i only knew on a superficial level.

but what was the goal? i was ten. i didn’t know what having a girlfriend was. i was too young to be interested in sex. i was more concerned with getting to the next level in super mario that companionship. why would i want a girlfriend?

i wonder if she requested to be in a separate class after that year. i’m not sure why she would. nothing bad ever happened. maybe she was embarrassed of people talking about us. it’s not like i kept my feelings a secret.

we never saw each other after her second year at the school. i moved the following year. kids didn’t have cellphones or facebook yet so people just stopped existing when you moved.

when i was in my 20s i found her on myspace and asked if she remembered me. we didn’t talk much, but she recalled that we went out for a while. her answer implies that what happened when we were kids was innocent enough.

so i guess we just got bored.

with the new year approaching, i’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on past relationships. more than usual. i’ve been thinking about what a relationship means to me. why i only occasionally want one. and why when i do have one, they always go wrong.

this thought process has led me to the realization that i have unresolved baggage from my last relationship that i’ve been running from for nearly two years. i’ve dated since. or tried. but every time i get close to someone i immediately lose interest.

when i do allow someone to get close, i become paralyzed with the anxiety of losing them. but not always. i’m not sure where this came from. when it started. or why it’s inconsistent.

i’m realizing that most of my relationships have been problematic. the long ones. the short ones. and the few that i would consider healthy only lasted a few months.

the earliest memory i have of dating someone is from when i was in kindergarten. i know it’s silly to consider anything from that time period as dating, but i don’t know what else to call it. we liked each other. we held hands. we kissed once.

i don’t remember many details. how we met. why we were drawn to each other. how long it lasted. all i remember is her name — heather — and that i never saw her again after the school year ended.

i always wondered what happened to her. someone told me that another student put their hands down her pants, so her parents moved her to another school. but i’ve been wondering if that was just a rumor. part of me thinks her parents moved because of me.

that period of my life is blurry. i’ve always associated positive feelings with what happened, but i wonder if she remembers it differently. does she remember it all?

and what did my teacher think about it? two five-year-olds kissing in the lunch line is not normal. what probably happened is the teacher called her mom that day and she was pulled out of school.

where did i learn that behavior? why would i have any interest in girls at that age? did i learned it from tv? or maybe it was a reaction to my parent’s getting a divorce. what if was she the one that initiated things and i’m just remembering it wrong?

i’ll never know for sure.

i didn’t exhibit behavior like that again until i was ten. and at that point it’s not really crazy for kids to be crushing on each other.

high school was a simpler time. or at least i remember it that way. i don’t miss it. i don’t think i do. but things made more sense when i wasn’t allowed to drink and nap all day. time felt more precious. something like getting a ride to school in the morning made the day brighter.

i don’t think i miss high school because i don’t really remember it. i don’t talk to any of my former classmates. the year after high school i remember much more vividly. maybe because that was before i became jaded.

i had a friend named kelly. i forget how we became friends, but i’m pretty sure it was in journalism class during a partner exercise. we had a strange relationship.

i wasn’t long before i developed a crush on kelly. and i didn’t keep it a secret. kelly was very indecisive about this fact. she wasn’t interested, which is fine. i asked more than once just to be sure. but when i eventually moved on and started dating someone else, it made her unhappy.

kelly was depressed and would sometimes call me after midnight when her thoughts got the better of her. one night when this happened i went to her house with a few friends and we sang to her until she felt better.

we lost touch shortly after that night. she started dating a different guy from journalism class. i think they got married, but i’ll never know. wherever she is, i hope she’s happy now.

sobriety came and went without leaving their number. in a month without drinking i learned a lot about how it got so out of control. i have terrible impulse control. it’s not even about drinking and feeling drunk. its about drinking for the sake of drinking.

i did it everyday because i did it everyday. the headaches were often debilitating, but i made it work. i found ways to make it work. it took years before i realized it was becoming a problem. and for much of that time i wanted it to become a problem. i romanticized the tortured drunk artist persona.

but its not as fun when you live it. waking up sick on the bathroom floor isn’t as attractive in real life as it is in books and movies. there’s nothing pretty about drinking until you can’t remember why you started. signing a credit card receipt while riding the edge of blacking out is a skill i shouldn’t be an expert in.  

but i still went back. on purpose. i could have remained sober, but i didn’t. i’m not even sure why. i didn’t want to drink that day. i just felt like i had to. i paced myself, though. i got full from the beer and called it a night early. it felt like i won. i drank without losing control.

i had a different experience the next day.

it started as a treat. i didn’t want to do laundry, so i told myself that i could have a shot of whiskey if i brought my clothes to the laundromat. very adult of me. a while later i treated myself to another shot for putting them in the dryer. so far, so good.

everything would have been fine if had i stopped when my laundry was done, but i didn’t. i stayed until the bar was closed. i stayed until i couldn’t speak.

the problem with bars sometimes is that they serve you drinks you don’t order. i don’t remember my order specifically, but i know that three of the shots i had were served unprovoked. sounds greats. that’s $15 of free booze. but is it really free?

i stayed so late that i only had three hours to sleep before getting up for work. i missed my alarm. my boss had to pick me up at home. he was cool about it, but it doesn’t change the fact that i fucked up. two nights back on the sauce and i was right where i left off

i took the following week off. the day i spent at work that monday was bad. i did my best to hide my hangover, but i know that people could hear me throwing up in the bathroom.

i can only think of three time in my administration where i spent the first half of my day throwing up in the bathroom. two of them were on movie sets. one of them was in an office setting. 

what’s interesting is that i remember throwing up in great detail, but i don’t remember the nights that led to it. what happened to make me go overboard? i know this time because i was only a week ago. but what the fuck made me drink so much that i had to pull over because i threw up on the steering wheel?

i must have been upset about something. right? why else would i drink myself into oblivion? i’ve always loved drinking, but even at my worst i’m usually got at moderation. always saying no to that last drink.

what interesting about the first time i remember throwing up at work is i didn’t do shots back then. i didn’t even go to bars. what that means is that somehow i managed to drink myself past the point of no return in my apartment. alone. what the fuck happened that night?

i remember that era of my life well. nothing particularly bad happened. i had a few girlfriends, but none of the breakups were bad enough to cause me to drink more than usual. i hated my job. maybe that was it. i also had a friend commit suicide around that time, but i didn’t start drinking more when it happened. i just stopped podcasting.

the second time i threw up in a bathroom at work was in new york. i was working on a movie called enchanted forest. it was two years ago. almost to the day.

just like before, i vividly remember being sick, but i don’t remember what was different about the night before. i had just finished spending a few weeks in montauk, so maybe i was celebrating being back in brooklyn. spending that much in time in long island would make anyone drink.

that entire trip was wild. i was originally visiting friends for halloween. somehow that turned into working on a feature three hours away from everyone i came to see.

i met a woman i still dream about a few days before i left minnesota. we met on a dating site, which is embarrassing, and found out we lived in the same building. i had held the door for her once, but she was so beautiful that i was afraid to say hello.

eleanor.

less than 48 hours after sleeping with her i was 1200 miles away in an air bnb sharing a room with brad the model from california and two people that never spoke. 

there wasn’t a minute of my trip where i didn’t miss her. but something else made me drink that night, and i’m not sure what it was.

the landlord was an old chinese women named su who pretended she couldn’t speak english when it was convenient. during the day she worked at a nail salon next door that doubled as the rental office.

i’m not sure why su chose to convert the property from business to residential when buffalo was already oversaturated with apartments. it was a bold move even for a slumlord. though something about our handwritten lease in a notebook tells me she may not have filed the proper paperwork.

the layout of the apartment was oddly utilitarian. this was likely due to it’s origin as an office building. at the top of the stairs was a small commons area where the receptionist used to work. now it was a living room.

no one hung out in the living room, so we never installed a tv. the only things we kept in there was tim’s overpriced drum set and the couch that trent slept on. in a few months tim would move his drums somewhere else to prevent people from playing them.

everything else was along a hallway the spanned the rest of the apartment. on the left was shane’s room, mike and justin’s room, tim and tasha’s room, and what became my room at the end. the other side was the kitchen, the laundry room, and the bathroom.

one bathroom, for seven — eventually nine — people.

when i arrived to the party everyone was already drunk. everyone except trent. trent didn’t drink anymore. not since his driver’s license was suspended after his last dui. in time, I would convince trent that drinking wasn’t so bad after all.

tim was nursing a mixed drink that he had poured in a chalice because he didn’t need to drink beer to feel like a man. tim was very comfortable with his sexuality. so much so that as soon as he noticed i was there he told me how little he cared about what people thought about him drinking a colorful cocktail out of a fancy glass.

on the opposite end of the spectrum was shane, who had just purchased a device that would help him shotgun beers faster. but only if used with the right kind of bottle. he was trying to get everyone to join him, but no was interested.

i spent most of the night talking with mike and justin about how excited i was to meet everyone last night. how great their apartment was. how much i wish i lived with them.

it was a weird slip. i’d never said anything like that to someone before. let alone someone i had just met. but it was true. maybe i could sense i was supposed to be there. maybe i was just excited to make new friends, something i hadn’t done since graduating high school.

it was true, though. i fell desperately in love with their living situation. and when i fell in love back then, i acted impulsivity. i let people know. i’m not like that anymore.

justin called my bluff and invited me to move in. he said it would be fine; there was room in the basement. it would all work out. i said yes.

tim had been elected head of the household, so i emailed him on myspace the next day. i told him what justin had said about living in the basement. I said that i didn’t even know they had a basement, but i would be more than happy to occupy it.

tim was confused by my email.

he said that there was a basement, but it was not part of the notebook paper lease. he wasn’t sure why justin would tell me that it was. maybe justin got confused. the truth is the justin lied because that’s what justin does. 

i was crushed. i knew it seemed to good to be true. i didn’t want to continue living in my mom’s basement, but i didn’t seem to have a choice. for now at least.

a few weeks went by and i got another email from tim. the quiet gay woman hated living with them. they were too loud during the day, which is when she slept. three weeks into moving in she already wanted to leave. tim asked if i wanted to take over her room.

i was in.

the next day I met with tim to pay my first months rent. two hundred dollars. near the end of my time at the apartment i had trouble paying half that and split my room with another guy.

i didn’t know how good i had it at the time.

i’m fascinated by how my perception of time has changed since i was younger. i turned 31 a few days after i turned 30. i was 19 for half of my life.

maybe it’s because a lot of important things happened when i was 19. maybe they were important because i was 19.

without question, my life has improved in the last 12 years. i live in new york now. i’ve always wanted to live in new york. i love my job, which is not something many people can say. i finally make a decent living, too. i’m no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck.

but i still find myself yearning for the days i lived with eight other people in a renovated small-town office in minnesota.

mike was a ten minute drive from james’ house. his apartment was in downtown buffalo on 1st and division above an out-of-business flower shop. i could hear music as we pulled up. when we opened the unlocked door to go upstairs i realized it was live music.

the stairway was long and creaky. i would grow to loathe these stairs after i moved in. especially after going to battle against them with the heavy pink hand-me-down couch my mother gave me.

mike was in a daze playing a blues style solo on his electric guitar when we reached the top of the stairs. to my surprise, the drummer behind him was an acquaintance of mine. a man named tim that i had met during one of my overnight perkins coffee benders.

tim was heavily involved in the music scene in minnesota as an event promoter and front-of-house mixer. if you were in a band and live in mn, which i was and i did, you knew tim.

becasue one coincidence wasn’t enough, i also knew mike’s roommate shane. shane lived in the first room at the top of the stairs. the smallest room. i knew shane from when i worked at the local mcdonald’s in high school. we weren’t particularly close. that didn’t change after i moved in.

mike’s other roommates were people i hadn’t met before. justin shared the largest room with mike. he was mike’s childhood best friend. i would find out later that he was also a pathological liar and a sociopath.

tim shared the smaller room in the hallway with his girlfriend, tasha. me and tasha became good friend in the nine months i lived in the apartment. one time she accidentally said my name while time was inside of her.

this was also the first time i met trent, the afromentioned homeless man. trent was friend of tim’s that slept on the couch in the living room. he was also a recovering alcoholic living with a group of teenagers fresh out of their mom’s basement. what could possibly go wrong?

the room at the end of the hallway would eventually become my room. currently it was occupied by a very quiet gay women that worked the overnight shift at wal-mart. i don’t remember her name because she moved out in less than a month.

mike was still engrossed in the music. i’d never seen someone play guitar so passionately before. music didn’t exist before mike picked up a guitar. time slowed down. i could taste the individual notes.

after 15 minutes mike finally looked up from his instrument and greeted us. i was in awe. had he been a women, i would have fallen in love on the spot. in some ways i still did.

over the next few months mike would help me take my own guitar playing to a level i never thought possible. a level that quickly deteriorated after i went to college and lost the passion for songwriting.

after a quick tour of the apartment, i asked if i could play mike’s guitar. we took turns jamming until it was time to go to bed. or maybe mike had to go to work. probably both.

before i left, he invited me a party they were having the next day. i couldn’t wait.