california driving school
lesson one: strike first
All’s I’ve been doing lately is scanning images and posting them here. I haven’t taken the time to write anything and it bums me out. I’m gonna stop working so much and get back to entertaining myself and who ever else comes along. It’s not just work that shuts me up though. I’m scared to write. I have an audience of friends, family and co-workers. I hardly ever write about my dick anymore. Or my balls for that matter. Or where they go and who they meet. And when was the last time I told a good story about how much I hate my boss? Or what I stole? Or how much coke I sucked up the night before? I haven’t dared to explore a fresh perspective of molestation in months. This virtual community is starting to make me feel Amish. It is time to go for freedom, to use some of the stuff our fighting men have fought and died to keep. Why set that freedom up on a shelf and just look at it? It can go bad. Screw the lid off and let the freedom genie out! Joplin said right when she said “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. I got stuff to lose, but I also have the desire to lay it all on the line, go for broke, do or die time people. Speak from the heart, and every other stop on the chakra line. Let it all out. That’s what it means to have nothing left to lose. Freedom is the moment of clarity that all the golden shackles of professional 3 horsepower blenders and Sirius radio receivers shouldn’t keep us from standing up and saying What the Fuck? and not mincing the sentiment with abbreviation. WTF? exactly. Fucking what the fuck good is that? So to all the WTF’ers out there today, lets make a promise to ourselves and take the time to let each word roll off the tongue with fullness and cherish the way you can put all that emotion into three little words. I love you for it.
Bummer that you’re feeling so hamstrung by your audience. Perhaps what you need to do is to stratify your postings a bit so that folks who don’t want to read about your dick can easily avoid such content. I see other blogs where the blogger ‘files’ their entry in a specific category.
As for WTF, are you suggesting that people actually say that acronym out loud? I think it’s fine for a typed abbreviation but the idea that someone would actually talk like that seems funny to me.
Comment by Lyle_s — June 11, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
I thought everyone said “WTF” now, to be cute, at work. So I was calling for an end to cuteness and a return to guts. But I like what you said about stratification. I’ll try to put a dick page up.
Comment by Rolston — June 11, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
It actually takes longer to speak the acronym than it does the phrase. Anyone who says WTF out loud is a scrote, that’s what I say.
Comment by Lyle_s — June 12, 2008 @ 6:07 am
let it all hang out buddy. It is OK.
Comment by al — June 12, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
deerskin, i looked at your wall and it is a tad ironic, i am building a stone wall in front of the wine shop on marcy st, I recall when i helped you build your stone wall in front of your mom’s house, ya know next to the 1950s pepsi machine, yo po mum, i will snap a photo of the new fancy south end, the fish market is now purple, people drive by and say “Thats pretty,,,, is that perrywinkle?” I say “What?,” I can’t hear you. They reply How do I get to Newcastle, I say turn around go over the memorial bridge go past warrens. take a right then go throught the shipyard, it’s just beyond there,,,,,,,,,
Comment by hooperlooper — June 12, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
YES! YES! YES! FUCK, YEAH!
Comment by molly — June 13, 2008 @ 7:11 am
If I’m lucky I’ll get back home for a few days at the end of the summer. I have to remember to check out the houses by the fish market. I never spent much time mulling around that area but I remember that collection of shacks on the water as such a unique patch, even in pre-internet Portsmouth.
I think Meghan Boley’s mom lives on the hill right there, by the kids Museum. Ken, you ever see Meghan mulling around town?
Comment by Lyle_s — June 13, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
aah,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Meghan, no but I am as equally lucky not to see her brother either, last time i saw Meghan she was wearing a Free Sean Ahearn T-shirt at the Elvis Room, jail sucks
Comment by mr, pooperlooper — June 14, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
i think her mom moved to florida to raise the kid meghan had with the prince of polynesia…or bali…
Comment by Rolston — June 14, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
i miss meghan
Comment by Rolston — June 14, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
somehow I always associated trouble w. meghan, she wasn’t bad, right lyle?
Comment by hooperlooper — June 14, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
she wasn’t bad, but every guy she dated was, jim davis, troy mueter, sean ahern i think there was a couple others.
Comment by al — June 15, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
You associated her with trouble because she associated with trouble. Al pretty much hit it on the head. I don’t have the skills to do the work but hers would be an interesting portrait of someone who threw away their life. I think Ken’s last encounter with her says it all, as if the jailing of Sean Ahern was one of the great atrocities of our time.
Now, Ken, why the comment about her brother Jake? I recall him to be a harmless, friendless, douche. I can’t imagine that’s changed much?
Comment by Lyle_s — June 15, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Let me remind people that what they are saying is googleable. Next time Jake or one of Jake’s friends googles his name, he’ll get called a harmless douche.
It could be true. But it isn’t such a great feeling to have someone call you out on something you’ve said about them in print. Just a few weeks ago Butch Daubney contacted me about using his name in a story about high school and a certain sexual encounter I concocted. He asked me to not use his name, since his kids were about to be old enough to use the internet.
That being said, say whatever you want. Just remember we aren’t having a private conversation is all. This all goes back to my complaint about being hamstrung by my audience. Now the audience is anyone with internet access…
Am I a pussy?
Comment by Rolston — June 15, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
Let me be the first to say, you are a pussy.
I love Meghan. She was a great friend to me. That said, she dated jerks in high school. As for her brother, I never knew him really, except that he hung out with Mark Websters older brother and Brad’s sister when they were living on Richards ave.
I love the fact that you can google yourself and find out what people are writing about you. It seems kind of conceited though. No one really writes about me. Take my advice Jon, if you are gonna write about some one change their name by a letter or some shit like that.
Finally, it’s the first amendment, write whatever the hell you want, you just have to accept the consequences.
Are you writing for us or for yourself or some semblance of both?
Comment by al — June 16, 2008 @ 3:47 am
I write for the audience. i write about what i like and hope to attract similarly interested people. If people didn’t visit and you guys didn’t comment, i wouldn’t have any encouragement to write. I think I’m an entertainer, so I need an audience. I want to be a great one, and to me a great entertainer takes risks that might offend the audience. So I am a pussy to tell people to watch what they say. But then again, I’m not interested in taking risks that involve bad mouthing people. The risks I’m interested in are ones that require a new perspective on things, talking about things I don’t even understand myself so well.
Troy and Sean and Jim were heroes to me, because they took risks. And they acted for an audience. I wanted to be a part of their audience because it wasn’t made up of Chip Griffins and Mr. Novaks and sunday school teachers and these other people who had no passion, no demons they struggled with.
I could also see that they had gone a little overboard. The system is too strong for one person to stand up to it like they did. Two day in house detention made me realize the system would win, never mind jail time.
The system is rotten and they knew it, so for that I honor them. The people they hurt along the way makes it hard to say that…
There were so few role models in high school, so little information about constructive rebellion. That’s why On The Road made me so happy when I read it. It gave me a blueprint – run away. Ditch the scene altogether.
And that’s why I’m in San Francisco as I write this today.
Comment by Rolston — June 16, 2008 @ 8:55 am
Let me just say that I don’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings, that’s just my recollection of him. There were conflicts I had with the guy that formed my opinion of him. I’m glad to hear, by Al’s account, that he actually had friends. Of course, it wasn’t my post that would have come up on the Google search, it was Jon’s that actually put the first and last name together, thereby almost guaranteeing a hit that will show up when that person Google’s himself. If you’re really concerned about his feelings, Jon, I’ll have no problem with you censoring my post. It’s not like the comment added any value to the conversation. I’m only interested in why Ken would want to avoid him in particular. I thought maybe there was a story there.
Same goes for Megan (I don’t think she had an h in her name, even though I spelled it that way before). I really cared about her back in the day and I hope she’s doing well now. I asked if she was still around town because I would like to bump into her one day and catch up, so long as I don’t have to listen to a speech about why Sean should be set free.
Now, it’s easy to see why you were drawn to these characters in high school. I saw the same things, I imagine. While I didn’t idolize these guys, most of them had very compelling personalities. Sean was a charismatic and talented guy who, without a doubt, didn’t need to end up where he did. He wasn’t Jamie Moore talented but he was certainly an athletic kid. From my limited view, he became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy; a man in search of an image and status that was most easily achieved by taking the path that he took. I enjoyed being around the guy when he wasn’t trying to perpetuate that image. Take, for instance, the tone of the propaganda on his band’s website and contrast that with the writing he’s sent to you about life in the clink. Which do you find more enjoyable to read?
I didn’t know Troy or Jim very well. I did spend one memorable night tooling around downtown with DSM and Jim. We snuck on to one of the salt ships in the harbor and got in to a fight by the old A&P with some college guys that were wasted. Actually, it was Jim who got into the fight. Some name calling and then Jim got pushed around a little bit by these 2 guys that were considerably larger than him. Jim was smart not to get into it any further at that point but then we ran into Neal Clemens who was on his way home from somewhere else. Jim grabbed a large rock and we jumped into Neal’s car. The 2 drunk guys were in the middle of the road and we drove by them at about 55 MPH. Jim leaned out the window and hurled that rock right into one of the guy’s midsection. As you might guess, that guy collapsed in the road and he wasn’t getting up any time soon. I can’t imagine how bad that fucked him up but I know it was in the papers a couple of days later. He was hospitalized for a while but I believe he survived. I’ve always felt conflicted about that incident. In a way, the guy had it coming. I think the punishment was a little harsh but, then again, you never really know who your fucking with in those situations. Jim was a wild one, the wildest guy I ever met. If he was born 120 years earlier, we might never have heard of Jesse James. I really believe that. He was scary.
Troy actually told me once not to get all caught up in the scene he was at the center of. He seemed really unhappy at the time and I believe he split for Ocala not too long after that (his On the Road moment, I imagine). There’s nothing on the internet to suggest that he spiraled downward so I assume he got it right from there, which is what he seemed to want, based on the one conversation I had with him. Could have been complete BS but I prefer to think it wasn’t.
These are the impressions that these guys left on me in high school. They were fascinating guys. I think you romanticize them a bit by saying they were your heroes. They clearly weren’t that because you didn’t pattern your behavior after them. You wanted to be a part of their audience, as did I, because they were entertaining. In that sense, we used them. You knew them better than I did and maybe you knew them well enough to say that their actions were part of some conscious rage against the system but I suspect otherwise. That was your struggle, not theirs. I think, perhaps, that you’re projecting your own knowledge of and feelings about the system on top of their actions so you can continue to think fondly of the memories you have of them. I have good memories of them, too, and some not so good ones. Sean once jumped a guy coming out of a building and pummeled him as he yelled out ‘Why? Why are you doing this to me?’ I’m willing to bet that you’ve asked that question before in a different situation. Put yourself in that guy’s shoes and tell me that, if it had happened to you, you could write the same thing you wrote earlier.
I should also point out that you bad-mouthed the do-gooders in the same post you said you weren’t interested in bad-mouthing people. Those guys are/were no less passionless than yourself and it’s technically unfair to suggest otherwise. They just didn’t have passions that appealed to you. Sunday school teachers are passionate about spiritual education. Mr. Novak was passionate about running a school and covering for his maintenance alcoholic of a boss. Chip was passionate about politics and stocks and all the other shit that made him completely intolerable to be around in high school (and probably today, too). I’m sure he had to deal with the demon of being a complete fucking dork all through high school. He just didn’t have self-destructive demons (except for overeating, maybe – he was a chubby guy).
I’m not really compelled to defend these guys like you were for Jake. I think you’ve just caught my ire today, Rolston. I don’t think you’re a pussy. Maybe a romantic and a bit of a hypocrite, but not a pussy.
Glad to hear Butch is doing well. Very nice guy but I have to laugh at the idea that his kids are going to be searching the internet for content about their dad. Seems a little far-fetched, to me. Do I need to start scouring the internet and asking people to clean up content involving me so that my kids won’t read it one day? I don’t have much of an internet footprint but I’d rather leave any of that content out there as a lesson for my kids about the world and the internet and people, in general. Would they be doing that search expecting to find that I used to be President of the United States or that I really was the World’s Greatest Dad? It’s OK if my kids find out that I can be a heartless prick, be it on the internet or just from being around me. They’ll love me, anyways.
I’m sure I’ll regret this post later…
Comment by Lyle_s — June 16, 2008 @ 7:15 pm
Nope. That’s a good one.
Comment by Rolston — June 16, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
And last I heard, Troy had Bunny Ranch spelled in christmas lights on his roof somewhere in Seabrook. Honestly.
Comment by Rolston — June 16, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
just wanted to be 20th
Comment by al — June 17, 2008 @ 5:43 pm