LESSONS FROM THE 90s, MEMOIR 2
- zchlong8
- Mar 6, 2024
- 6 min read
Hello all!
And hello if you came from the Twitter-X crowd or came here by my Aggressive Business Cards (ABCs) efforts. And for those of you who were with the blog since the beginning, welcome back as always.
As I know (and hope) many of you will come in from Twitter-X, let me first get some things out of the way. I know I mentioned a ‘pornography-induced nightmare’—and that’s all I’m telling you. See, you may be used to people wailing about their personal life on the Internet. To some degree I’ve been doing that and don’t want to. But I’m not going to tell you all of my personal story, my life, with you. Why? …Well I’m not writing an award-winning Memoir anytime soon, for fat stacks of cash. This blog is free, why the hell give away valuable stuff?
Second, when I do mention bad stuff that affected me, I will give only the minimal details. Of the people who’ve had an effect on me my whole life, only one of them is dead (my Aunt Joan). I have several more dead people—a brother, a cousin, and a friend—who but affected my life but once and it was amazing. …The point being I’ve got to worry about more than my own privacy. …I’ll put it to you this way—even to this day, my family (mother and father’s sides) keeps their personal problems hidden from each other. That created a very unhappy environment. So why the hell would I mope about it to you?
Third, I know you’re all Internet gremlins, but this blog is not therapy. That was one of the first lessons I got in professional writing school: You writing as an author is NOT therapy. Treating it like therapy is a waste of time, and may even reinforce the things that you are trying to work through. Hm? What? Oh right, you’re all Internet gremlins. Sad to say, I hung out with some frankly awful Internet gremlins from too young an age, and barely got out in time before they hurt me. That’s also another reason—I don’t trust you until I see your chat-log history.
Fourth, this is the Internet—show some **ckin’ privacy!
Where was I—uh, I think I took a wrong turn at memory lane…
Right! Cousin died when I was about 5 or 6 (about 1998/1999) and then, we moved out of my old home on account of the gangs wars and the next door meth-lab blowing up. Note that we, my immediate family, weren’t poor—we lived in my mother’s house, who got it from her father and family, and effectively is…one or two acres of land? 4 houses in total, and I helped build and clean the 3rd house (freakin’ hated it, was the most miserable part of that childhood). Mother and father made good enough money to shove 2 kids through private schools all our lives.
Anyway, we move out about 2000, and then when I was 8 years old, about to turn 9, 9/11 happened. Also, one of our cats died from getting hit by a car when we moved to the new neighborhood. She was not a smart cat, cause she ran in front of cars.
I still remember the orange glow of the towers. Well, yes and no. See, I remember my mom, dad, and I think my Aunt John and uncle (her brother) were over at the house to watch the news. Me? I was mad me and my sister couldn’t watch TV in the living room. “Okay, Lauren, let’s go watch TV in dad’s room.” And we did, though I don’t know what we watched. 9/11 had one of the most curious things/effects on me. See, I didn’t understand what happened, but I understood my family was afraid—and then I saw the patriotic fervor sweep them up as the Iraq war began, and I saw their fervor turn to bitterness at what a farce it became.
Me? It was like I learned how not to be afraid. Maybe it was also because I was still under the impression of my beloved cousin’s sudden death. But the War on Terror had no terror on me. Maybe I was too young, or maybe it was because I had already grown up on a healthy diet of mythology and superheroes. I wasn’t afraid.
Oh, what next? …Oh all right, fine, I’ll sketch out my life, to fill up a 1000 words, so that you can track me on a timeline. I bounce around A LOT, FYI, for the newcomers.
Age 10—Found nude pictures on the Internet because I hit puberty early
Age 12—Pornography and worse found me on the Internet; plus I was so bullied in school, I learned how hatefully vindicative I could be, and I’ve been telling that bastard to shut up.
[This was in grade school, 6th grade.]
Age 14—went to Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock Arkansas.
Age 16—took Coach Cochran’s ‘Themes in Literature’ class and that changed my life; in addition, I was watching the Canadian animated comedy 6teen with my mother, and that show made me realize I could be a writer.
[By my reckoning, age 12 to 16 were the most miserable years of my life, for genuinely bad reasons.]
Age 17/—Took the ‘Theology of the Body’ course offered in high school, that also changed my life. Graduated 16th in my class of 167 dudes (we started with 200). Wait, 16th or 18th?
[Also finally went to therapy that started the process of healing.]
Age 18—Before college, read up enough books to realize that, while I wanted to be a writer, becoming a writer for Television was a pain in the ass, so I switched to book writing. Thank God I did!
Age 18-22—went to college at the University of Central Arkansas; had misadventures, like how NOT to interact with men and women, learned to be a writer, got an education in philosophy, art, and novel-writing, but did not yet realize how damn bonkers the College Apparatus was. Graduated from the Honors College with my first novel as my Senior Thesis. I still love the friends and professors I met there.
Age 22-25—for obscure(d) reasons, I bummed at my mother’s house, unemployed, for about three years, until either a) she broke her arm or b) lost her job or c), both.Found employement in restaurant work; ALMOST got in at the next-door jewelry shop, where I could have been a jeweler’s apprentice…
BUT everyone at the jewelry shop were snobs. The Restaurant crews I worked with, some I could trust with my life.
Age 25-27—found regular employment at my restaurant AND THEN Covid hit. Was umemployed in 2020, got back to work when Arkansas opened up; quit my job at the restaurant because it was either go manager or leave; I left.
Age 27/28—left my mother’s home under not-good circumstances, crashed at my friend’s house/couch for a year (because depression), and then friend said ‘you need help’. That got me off the couch.
Age 29—January of 2022, my first job again, and I break my arm in a bike accident. Became a one-armed pizza guy because I was already hired, and I broke my arm, the morning of my first day. Hospital trip and then back to work.
Age 29 again—continued to bounce around from pizza place to pizza place until finally I wound up in an alcohol shop that was managed by the husband of the manager of one of the other pizza places.
That alcohol shop was, despite its tip-top shape and respectability, the most miserable job I had to date; and it was not because of the long hours (normal enough) or the drunks (part of the job), but because of the shameless greed of the alcohol industry*. Was there for a few months, and left that December.
Age 30—that December of 2022, I left the alcohol shop under more unhappy circumstances (draconian measures) and then the same day or so, I signed up for employment at a little hole-in-the-wall local restaurant. By some irony (cough*God*cough) the overall manager was the former owner of the liquor shop, who sold it to corporate goons.
[*To elaborate, they were there to make money, I was there to make money, and upper management was there to make money. They had the attitudes of hard-bitten gangsters protecting their interests—which was money, not people. Which, I get. They make tons of money, they own tons of land for their vinyards, they are in a lawsuit-prone business, they have to be hard to make a buck. But I saw the people they were selling booze to, and I was disgusted in selling out the customers to their vices. Never again!]
Age 30/31—Since August of 2023, I’ve been slowly growing, learning, and expanding on ‘the Internet’, to sell my stories and become a full-time author.
You can , ahem, track me more here:
...More to follow!
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