Please Note: While this is a mostly factual account of my life, I have had to embellish some of it for the sake of entertainment and just plain fuzzy memory. So, while this is mostly a work of non-fiction, always remember that this is written from the perspective of an overactive imagination.
I. My Antisocial Tendencies and Donkey Kong
The summer following my 7th grade year was a lazy one, spent mostly in front of a TV screen playing Super Nintendo. My overall failure to make new friends, besides Johnny, had driven me further inward, forcing me to rely on video games for comfort. I became fearful of social situations, figuring they would be perilous at best, and used video games as a security blanket - a protective, 16-bit chrysalis.
Sadly, I relied so much on video games for comfort I even brought my Super Nintendo with me to my cousin Jeryn’s birthday party. My parents were forcing me to go, in an effort to push me into social situations with the hope I’d emerge with some manner of friends - maybe even some of a female persuasion. Resentful of this “sink or swim” approach, I rebelled the only way I could: by preparing myself to not have a good time no matter what. It’s a shitty, immature part of my personality that I’m not proud of, which still reasserts itself on occasion to this day. It’s an odd, ridiculous way to behave. It’d be like someone offering me a candy bar, and I reply by going, “Oh, so you’re trying to do something nice for me, huh? Well, I’ll show you!” Then I perform Japanese ritualistic suicide. Ridiculous.
I sat in the back seat of the family car, with the trusty machine wrapped up in a plastic sack in my lap, while my dad drove me to the party. I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror looking at the bag, then at me, and back at the bag.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked in a tone that suggested he very well knew the answer.
As casually as I could, I replied: “Meh, just my Super Nintendo and, um, Donkey Kong Country. No biggie.”
“You… you’re bringing a game to a birthday party? Where are you going to play it?”
I shrugged. “In a bedroom I guess.”
“So, we’re driving you all the way to this party so you can play King Kong County* all by yourself? You’re not going to socialize at all?”
*My dad has the uncanny ability to completely butcher the title of things, no matter how long ago he heard it. One time we all went to see Ocean’s 11, and had been talking about the movie amongst each other for weeks, because we had just gotten back from Las Vegas (where it’s set). My dad had plenty of time and opportunities to commit the simple title to memory, but when it came down to that moment of truth, he walked up to the ticket booth, and confidently asked for two tickets to “Ocean View”. When the ticket taker asked him to repeat it, he again asked for tickets to “Ocean View”, until I piped up and corrected him.
“Sure, if people want to watch me play,” I said, as if that were a very reasonable compromise.
“Alright, fine, whatever,” my dad said in a brisk, irritated fashion. “This is why you don’t have friends.”
“Danny!” My mom spoke up from the passenger side. “If he wants to bring his game, let him bring his game!” Dad only shook his head in resignation.
I ended up making a beeline through the crowded house of party goers, straight to my Cousin Justin’s bedroom. I shut the door, turned the lights off, hooked up the Super Nintendo, and proceeded to play the night away. Every so often, a kid from the party would poke his head into the dark room and ask what I was playing.
“Donkey Kong Country,” I’d answer, without even looking in his direction.
“Is it good?”
“Yes.”
“Can I play?”
At that point I’d pause the game, turn to look the kid up and down, before narrowing my eyes to slits and firmly answering: “No.” Then I’d turn back and continue playing until I was alone again. Every now and then, my aunt Robin would ask me to come out to the party, and I’d tell her that I’d come out later, just to get her to leave me alone. So, as my peers played Spin-the-Bottle in the living room, I’m sure a couple of times the bottle probably pointed at the bedroom where, instead of engaging in basic American teenage experiences, I was making digital monkeys throw barrels at bumblebees. It’s one of many moments that, if the Ghost of Sexual Past brought me back to relive it, I’d probably scream a litany of curse words at my younger self until my mouth was dry and tears trailed my eyes.
II. Moving to Russellville… Take Two!
My aunt Robin moved out of her house, and it just so happened that my parents were looking for a place closer to town. Uncomfortable house parties notwithstanding, I still had mostly positive associations with that house, not to mention that it had an above-ground pool, so I became very vocal about moving into it. My parents seemed hesitant, wanting to shop around at first, but Robin was willing to make a good deal, and the house was right next to the elementary school my little brother, and eventually my little sister, would later attend.
For once, in a long time, I was overjoyed with the idea of moving. I hated Lewisburg with a passion, and living so far from town made it extra difficult for me to fit in with my peers at school. Most importantly, I would have my own room, where I could masturbate with total impunity, even while doing a dance if I so desired (which I did on many occasions, usually to “I Got the Power” by Snap).
Little did I know that my bedroom was going to be upstairs, in a tiny room with no air conditioning. I had a window unit, but it leaked water like nobody’s business. Whenever I’d dare to defy my father, who forbade us from using the AC too much for fear of an astronomical electric bill, and leave the air conditioner on overnight, I’d usually wake up to a small, yet strangely serene, pool of water on the floor, my comic books floating lazily on top if it like lily pads. So, more often than not, I wouldn’t be able to use the air conditioner, and would have to just sweat it out, or sleep on the couch in the much cooler living room.
Another unpleasant aspect of that bedroom was the hornets’ nest just above my window. On almost a daily basis, a bold little hornet would make its way through my air conditioner, and into my room, whereby I’d dispatch it with a stainless steel spatula that I’d always keep by my side. I used to carry out this task with panic bordering on hysteria, plagued with worry about how the hornet would counterattack should I miss hitting it. A couple of times, I'd take a whack at a hornet, manage to hit it, but it'd somehow still be alive, and I'd end up frantically running away, yelling, "Oh my god, it's gonna kill me!" as the hornet lazily followed in my wake, hellbent on vengeance.
Fortunately, I got better – I was the Babe Ruth of killing hornets. The hornet incursion was such a routine, I became cold blooded and damn near robotic about getting rid of them. Whenever I had friends over, they couldn’t help but marvel at how casually I handled killing the occasional hornet or two; sometimes I’d even do it without looking, it became such a rote task. I tried to get my parents to do something about the nest, but they ultimately decided that it wouldn’t be worth the money of hiring an exterminator, when I seemed to be handling it perfectly well with a spatula. My parents are nothing if not pragmatic.
III. Seventy-seven
I approached my 8th grade year with a confidence and bravado that I been sorely lacking the previous year. Whether it came from spending a whole summer in a sweat box, fending off an entire swarm of hornets, or my Final Fantasy inspired resolve to change my life, I can’t be certain. One choice I made that helped me rise in stature was to join the football team.
In case I haven’t made it clear before, I hate sports. Hmm, no, “hate” isn’t a strong enough word… I loathe sports. A large part of it came out of how my dad would shoo me away from the TV every Saturday morning so that he could watch college football and/or basketball. Most fathers would have their sons sit next to them on the sofa, and explain why they loved those sports, in hopes of passing on that passion. My dad chose, instead, to obnoxiously mock whatever I had been watching on TV and send me outside so that I wouldn’t bother him. I grew up never understanding why people watched sports, as it seemed like a frivolous, boring waste of time. However, my hatred of sports isn’t simply rooted to questionable fathering; I was just never any good at them. Every sport I attempted, I was awful at, and nobody would take the time to help me get any better. So, I’d spend most of the time just pitifully meandering around a field, until the coach benched me, and I’d end up with the dreaded Participation trophy (if I even won a trophy at all).
I hadn’t played competitive sports for awhile up to 8th grade, but considering how poorly my 7th grade year went, drastic times called for drastic measures. If playing football would net me any friends, I was going to strap on the pads and go for it. I even selected the number 77, as I figured the double sevens might improve my luck in this endeavor… by which, I mean, I would walk away from this experiment without a broken bone. Another reason I played was because my friend Johnny played football, and so I wouldn’t be entirely alone. Besides, for all I knew, maybe I’d have a latent talent for football I never suspected existed.
Well, as it turned out, I didn’t have talent – no talent whatsoever. The practices took place over summer break, and we’d be out all day in full gear, either running laps, or doing pushups. It was brutal. Add to it the fact that my dad, who could not have been more excited that his oldest son was finally taking an interest in football, spent nearly every practice criticizing me from the sidelines as, after every snap, I stood up, looking around in bewilderment, wondering who I’m supposed to tackle, while the quarterback practically sashayed right by me, holding the ball to my face. Honestly, my best memory of 8th grade football was the ones of me sitting out games on the bench. Nevertheless, despite having me on the team, we managed to go undefeated that year, which was a wave of victory that I got to ride on even though I had nothing to do with it (I would argue that my not playing in the games was integral to us winning every game).
I will say this much for my time in 8th grade football though: socially, it had the desired effect. I guess seeing me participating in a normal activity that wasn’t playing Donkey Kong alone in a bedroom, or sitting in the corner of the classroom, doodling sketches of Spawn, made my peers realize that maybe this Craig kid wasn’t such a weirdo after all. I had everyone’s attention doing something I was horrible at – now I had to reel them in with something I was good at: comedy.
IV. My Funny Little Drawings
Even though people began treating me with more respect, I still had a difficult time expressing myself in school. I’d remember how harshly any of my attempts at socializing were spiked back into my face in 7th grade, and so I had gotten into the habit of keeping my mouth closed. My cousin Jeryn had encouraged me to just be who I was: a funny guy. He seemed to think that if I could just make people laugh, I’d be popular in no time. Being that he was, himself, very popular, I took his advice seriously.
Having no other avenue of self expression open to me, I began drawing funny one page comic strips, featuring teachers and other students in school that I either hated, or were just generally easy to make fun of. For example, there was my music teacher, who would run his class by vaguely explaining the significance of oddly chosen pieces of music, such as “Horse with No Name” by America, and then he’d play that song, while literally sitting next to the CD player, with his face in his hands, as if softly weeping about the tragic turn-of-events that brought his life to teaching middle school music. Seriously, whenever I hear “Horse with No Name”, I think of the image of a sad, sad man, sitting in profound despair, with his face buried in his hands.
Noticing quirks like this, but having virtually no one to relate them too, I’d just draw a funny comic about it to entertain myself. I can’t remember how it happened, but one day my little comics got a classmate’s attention, and soon they began to get passed around. Wisely, I left my name off the drawings, as they would often get confiscated by a teacher, but everyone knew it was me. I don’t want to overstate the popularity of my comics, but they did become enough of a minor sensation that my reputation as “a funny guy” was sealed before I knew it. Suddenly, I had a group of friends hanging out with me, anxiously awaiting my next comic, but also enjoying my company because they realized, like my cousin, that I was generally pretty funny.
It was at this point that I became friends with a guy named Matt whom, like Johnny, I remain friends with to this day. Matt was tall, with shaggy black hair, and at the time, had a propensity for wearing tie-dye shirts and John Lennon glasses. He was heavily into music; his bedroom floor was as full of CD cases as my bedroom floor was full of leaky A/C water. He also had a goofy, absurdist sense of humor that made my comics particularly appealing to him. What was strange about this was that Matt, and all the other friends that suddenly sprung up around me, were also, at some point in 7th grade, my tormentors. The only one of them I got along with before 8th grade was a short, redheaded guy name Ryan, who was probably the funniest guy in my class, if not the entire school. Ryan had a tendency to be brutally honest, but in a way that was hilarious, so even when he’d tease me, I couldn’t help but find myself laughing along with the pure honesty of the situation.
My friends from school and I still laugh at some of his most memorable one-liners to this day. My favorite story, for example, was during a field trip to the Bowling Green mall. We were all waiting on the school bus, while the teachers scoured the mall, searching for an obese girl who hadn’t returned to the designated rendezvous point. We were all hot, tired, and ready to get back home, and looking for this girl was an extra annoyance. Out of nowhere, Ryan began singing, over and over, to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus”: “I’ve never seen a beached whale quite so large get lost in a mall, lost in a mall.” I don’t recall ever laughing so hard in my life before hearing that. It sounds really mean, and it was, but the singing stopped when she finally boarded the bus, and we got on our way (although some of us may have hummed it).
Another person I began hanging out with a lot was Josh. We all have that one friend who introduces us to the grimy world of hardcore pornography – for me, Josh was that friend. He brought over a tape one day of some 70s porn he swiped from his uncle, and I was absolutely stunned by what it contained. Up till then, I had always just watched whatever softcore stuff that played late on Cinemax, which usually consisted of a man and a woman writhing against each other in a laughable pantomime of sex. I had no idea that it was possible to actually witness… well, real sex. It blew my mind. For some reason, ever since sex was explained to me, I had difficulty visualizing the, er, mechanics of it. Vaginas seems so… unassuming to me, and it was strange to think that a penis as somehow supposed to be able to go inside of that. Blame this on lack of research on my part. I vividly remember, while watching porn for the first time, having a moment where it clicked in my brain: Oh, so the dick goes in like that! That’s how it works! Now it all makes senses. I must borrow this tape for further… ahem… research.
The point of all of this was that 8th grade was shaping up to be drastically different than the previous year: I was semi-popular, with a group of friends that I actually hung out with. Then, about midway through the school year, I met Lauren.
V. The Pencil Drop of Destiny
I was sitting in Language Arts, while the teacher taught us the subtle, poetic beauty of Tim McGraw’s song, “Don’t Take the Girl”. I’m not even kidding; we had to listen to the song multiple times, and study the lyrics. It was excruciating. Wordsworth? Yeats? Fuck those fags! This is Tim McGraw country! Yee-haw!
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a pencil roll next to me on the floor. Without much thought, I picked up the pencil and, as I handed it to the owner, I found myself lost in the most tranquil, blue eyes I’d ever seen. They belonged to a girl named Lauren, who gave me a bright, wide smile as I gave her back her pencil, said “Thanks”, and turned back to her Tim McGraw notes. I replied by trying to say: “You’re welcome”, but it came out more like a belch crossed with a mutter.
Lauren had strawberry blond hair, cut about neck length, and had a swimmer’s figure due to, well, being a competitive swimmer. She carried herself with the grace and poise of someone leagues more mature than I could even conceive at that point, and, needless to say, she was an academic virtuoso. To give you an idea of just how much her intelligence dwarfed mine, her favorite books in eighth grade were The Count of Monte Cristo and Atlas Shrugged. My favorite books were anything that contained lightsaber battles. Lauren was the kind of girl everyone assumed would grow up to be a doctor, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what she grew up to be.
However, after meeting her, I recoiled in my seat, taking deep breaths, as I felt an incredible pressure inside of my chest. It was an altogether unfamiliar sensation… kind of warm and tingly. It was pleasant, yet at the same time, it burned like fire. Up to that point, I had always felt something more akin to lust when it came to girls, but this was different… this seemed to be love. Yes, it was 8th grade puppy love, but love nonetheless.
My friends and I were hanging out at lunch, discussing the merits of Elizabeth Berkeley, aka Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell, getting nude in the in the film, Showgirls. As intellectually stimulating as the conversation was, it eventually transitioned into talk about the hottest girls in school. After all of the usual girls were given their due praise, I meekly threw in my selection. “Um, so, I… I think that Lauren is pretty hot.”
Silence blanketed the lunch table as my friends exchanged knowing glances. One of them finally spoke up. “Yeah, but you know, she’s an Untouchable, right?”
“A what?”
“An Untouchable,” my friend explained further. “She’s the kind of girl that doesn’t date anybody. I don’t know, because she’s into Jesus or something.”
“I heard she’s into Asians,” someone else piped in helpfully.
“That’s bullshit,” someone disputed.
“No, for real, she, like, dated some Asian dude at band camp or something.”
“Anyway,” my friend continued. “She’s just super smart, and not interested in the kind of dudes that live in Russellville.”
Good, I thought, because I’m not a Russellville dude. Still, I would by lying if I said this information about her perceived lack of interest in dating didn’t intimidate me a bit. Evidently, most of the boys in my class who were way better with the ladies had written her off as a “no-win” scenario, most likely because they figured getting laid was out of the question, which is priority one to a typical teenage guy. So, in the good news column, that meant no competition. Although I was certainly no different as far as being a horny teenager goes, curiously, it didn’t bother me that sex was most likely not in the cards. In fact, the idea that Lauren supposedly had a strict code of abstinence made her all the more desirable. It meant that she high standards and was carefully selective. I found many of the girls my age at the time to be frivolous and stupid, but Lauren was neither of those things. I think the guys in my class just had trouble with that, because they weren’t use to someone their age being so mature.
I was still at square one though: how do I talk to her? I felt like I was having the same issue with Lauren that I had with Chelsea: I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to connect with her as a human being. I always felt like a lesser being around her, which would ultimately be my undoing (among other factors) in my pursuit of her. Almost from the start, I put Lauren on an impossibly high pedestal, like a statuesque Greek goddess. I finally had a lucky break thanks to one of my funny little cartoons. However, the day we finally broke the ice was also one of the worst days of my life.
VI. The Deodorant Problem
Part of the struggle that is puberty is figuring out how to wear a new, completely unfamiliar body comfortably. Besides battling zits, not to mention my raging hormones, I also had to deal with personal hygiene. Throughout childhood, I found hygiene to be a tedious bore. I hated taking baths or showers. I hated brushing my teeth. I hated clipping my nails, both fingers and especially toes. Whenever I watched Charlie Brown, Pigpen was my favorite character, because that guy had it made – his parents let him forego personal hygiene altogether, so he was constantly surrounded by a thick cloud of filth.
When puberty struck, that all changed. Suddenly, all my baby teeth were gone, so I had to take better care, or my adult teeth would be gone too. I had to take better care of my skin too, or else it would get ravaged by acne. The thing I had the most trouble with, however, was remembering to wear deodorant. It didn’t help that I hated the stuff and, quite frankly, the stuff didn’t much care for me. My main problem with deodorant was that it burned as if I were a vampire holding crosses under my arms. The only stuff that didn’t burn was the gel, but that shit would melt and drip ever-so-slowly down my torso. More often than not, I consciously forsook wearing deodorant because I didn’t want to even deal with it, and honestly, I didn’t even think I needed it.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
On the fateful day I broke my silence with Lauren, I had also neglected to put on deodorant. It was a bad combination. It didn’t hit me that I stank until the middle of the day, when someone in my algebra class sniffed and asked, “Hey, what smells like onions?”
I looked up from my work, sniffing around, and said, “Yeah, something does smell like onions.” I had no idea that the source of the smell was me. Pretty soon everyone within my general vicinity caught the whiff and was reacting with violent repulsion. There were coughs, gags, people putting the collar of their shirts over their noses ninja-style, and one guy even jumped out of the window to escape the funk. I put my own shirt over my nose to block it out, and only then realized, with horror, that I was the one who stank. My entire body broke out in the cold sweat of panic, but I kept the shirt over my nose to avoid suspicion.
After class, I rushed over to the classroom where my mom worked. My mom had gotten job at my school as a teacher’s assistant for the special education class. I walked into the room and sheepishly asked her if she had any deodorant.
“What? No. Why would I have deodorant?”
“I just figured you kept in your purse, you know, with your make-up or something.”
“No, I put it on before I leave the house like a normal person.”
“Well, do any your retarded…”
“Special ed,” my mom corrected, looking over her shoulder to make sure nobody heard me. “You know better than to use the R-word.”
“Oh, uh, sorry, yeah,” I sputtered, compounding my embarrassment with my reckless use of the word ‘retard’. “Do any of your special ed students have deodorant?”
“No, they’re smart enough to put it on before leaving home like normal people too,” she said pointedly. “Just go to the bathroom and put hand soap under your arms.”
Of course, I thought. I rolled my eyes at how stupid I was not to think of that. I made a beeline through the crowded hallway, leaving a veritable jet stream of funk in my wake, to which people responded as if I were farting mustard gas. I got to the bathroom, waited till it was empty, and applied liquid soap to my armpits. It was uncomfortable, but the effect of dampening my stench was immediate. Phew. It was just in time for social studies, wherein I sat in front of Lauren, who would have been in the down draft of my BO.
When I got to class, Matt, who sat next to me, asked to see my latest comic strip. It was a rather lewd comic that featured, as its punch line, someone masturbating on a public street. I proudly passed it to him, and after he got a laugh out of it, he passed it straight to Lauren. For the second time that day, I was horrified – someone like Lauren wouldn’t find this funny! She’d be profoundly disgusted at the sheer depravity of…
“Hahahahaha,” Lauren busted out laughing. She laid her head down on her desk, she was laughing so hard, before she raised back up to ask, “Who drew this?”
I reluctantly rose up a finger. “Um… I did.”
She handed it back. “Well, it’s hilarious. Do you have more?”
“Uh, yeah, sure… just not with me today.”
She seemed genuinely disappointed by this, but before anything more could be said, class started. I sat there, buzzing with joy by the revelation that Lauren had an awesome sense of humor. It just so happened that I was a rather skilled humor facilitator. Perhaps I had a chance with little Ms. Untouchable after all. Before I could bask too long in my smugness, I felt a tap on the shoulder.
“Do… do you smell onions?” Lauren asked.
***
Once the ice was broken with my silly comic strips, I felt a lot more comfortable about goofing off with Lauren. One day in particular I remember was when we were studying Abraham Lincoln. Matt and I collaborated on a comic strip that featured a crudely drawn Lincoln having sex with his son Tad. It sounds awful in writing, but at the time, it was comedy gold, and Lauren got a kick out of it, as is evident in what she wrote in my yearbook:
Have a good year with President Lincoln and Tad – YES! -Lauren
I even got her phone number, though I could never summon the courage to call her. I still hated talking on the phone, and just the thought of calling a girl made me dry heave with nerves. Still, things seemed to be going better than I could have anticipated all the way through 8th grade. Every time we spoke in the hallway, I was floored by how warmly receptive she was to me. I hadn’t yet built up the awful self-image I would eventually develop in high school, but I still couldn’t understand why such a girl would give me the time of day.
Then high school came along.
VII. Gifted and Talented
I won’t go into too much detail about my times in high school within this chapter, but needless to say, it was about as turbulent a time as one can imagine. My own body betrayed me on every level, as I gained a considerable amount of weight; my eyes became horribly nearsighted almost overnight, leaving me having to wear the nerdiest pair of glasses I could have possibly chosen; and last, but certainly not least, my hair began drastically thinning somewhere around Junior year. To say that I didn’t get laid in high school would be as much of an understatement as saying that the Hindenburg had a shaky take-off.
It was a dramatic adjustment to go from a decent looking guy, with golden locks, to dumpy, frumpy, and balding. I felt like I had fallen in toxic waste and transformed into a hideous beast, ala the Toxic Avenger, but minus the muscular frame and his rugged good looks. While I took time to adapt to being a fat asshole, Lauren was continuing to not only blossom into an even more gorgeous young woman, but she continued to excel academically as well. The pedestal I had put her on in 8th grade began rapidly growing taller than the Megazord from Power Rangers (ah, the 90s), and I had nothing to do but stand in its shadow, wondering if she could even see me from way up there.
It wasn’t as if I stopped talking to her completely. As we both drifted to different social circles, which is the most difficult, not to mention baffling, aspect of high school, every interaction seemed belabored. We had one conversation in particular that took a turn for the sour in the computer lab. In an uncharacteristically bold gesture (I must have had a cold or something) I purposely sat next to her in the computer lab. We were supposed to be working on an assignment, but instead, I was playing Grand Theft Auto, which I had secretly installed in the network, hidden in a file innocuously labeled “The 82081 Protocol”, along with several Nintendo games I had illegally downloaded. For the record, I used the same folder name on my family’s computer to hide porn. For the further record, it was not I who thought of that ingenious ploy, but Johnny – stand up a take a bow, my friend. By some odd reasoning, I thought she’d be impressed with not only my computer savvy, but how I chose to thumb my nose at authority.
She was not impressed – not in the slightest. If anything, she was altogether annoyed that, while she was hard at work on an assignment that mattered to her, I was playing an obnoxiously violent video game that rewarded points for killing innocent people. I really can’t tell you what I thought I had discerned from her personality that made me think she’d find a video game about mass murder funny, but we’ll chalk it up to me being a teenage moron. In fact, I’ll go ahead and post my teenage moron thoughts in italics to further illustrate this point. To break the ice, I began talking to her about my favorite television shows. I went on a rant about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, quite possibly, the best show on television (an opinion that I still hold to).
“I’ve never watched it,” she said in an unmistakable tone of disinterest. “I prefer shows like The West Wing.”
“The West Wing,” I said, puzzled. “What the hell is that?” My surly, free use of curse words will surely make her think I’m cool.
“It’s about the President of the United States.”
“Oh.” I said, casually mowing down a group of Buddhist monks for bonus points. “Sounds kind of boring.” She’s bound to respect how much of an independent thinker I am and how I don’t try to kiss her butt by pretending I like her stupid show.
She stopped typing, but continued to face her computer screen as she said: “Well, Craig, believe it or not, there are good shows out there that don’t feature vampires.” She continued typing in icy silence.
Ouch. I quietly continued my digital carnage, resolved to leave her alone for, perhaps, the rest of my life.
As if that wasn’t painful enough, another time she saw me at my worst was when I was accepted into the “Gifted and Talented” program. I was dubious about the whole thing, but it seemed to mean a lot to my mom that I was part of it, so I gave it a shot. My problem was that I didn't feel like I belonged in such a class. I didn't believe I was smart, and for the sake of fitting in with my peers, I wanted to appear as if I wasn't very smart. It's an utterly ridiculous state of mind, but that's high school cultivates - utterly stupid states of mind. I was called out of class for the first meeting, which took place in the gym. Lauren was there, along with several AP Honor Roll kids I didn’t really talk to. I instantly felt out of place and bored. The teacher informed us that, for the first session, we were going to learn how to dance. I was instantly shocked out of boredom and went straight into terrified. Dance??? Like… in front of all of these nerds? Oh my god… in front of Lauren? What the fuck? What the fuck?
I became cold and clammy, as I did whenever I was at a pep rally. Everybody paired off into couples and went out to the gym floor. I just stood there, fidgeting nervously, not knowing what I should do or say. Before I knew it, everybody had a partner… except me. It was like watching my life’s story, all the way up until the writing of this very blog, play out in a condensed form, right in front of me. The teacher noticed that I was the odd man and generously let the rest of the class know it as well: “Aw, Craig doesn’t have a partner!” This elicited a chorus of mock “Awws” all around and I felt so humiliated it nearly overwhelmed me. I was suddenly back in Boy Scouts all over again, getting my uniform torn, and being called a “faggot” by people who were supposed to be my comrades. The mixture of rage, despair, and panic felt like a wild squall in my brain, overwhelming my senses, and making me dizzy. It was almost like the prom scene in Carrie after she gets the pigs blood spilled on her and she’s in the midst of a total breakdown:
I didn’t explode into a fury of telekinetic vengeance (that that time), but I did scream, “FUCK ALL OF YOU!” and run out of the gym, to the nearest bathroom, where I proceeded to hyperventilate so much I vomited. The most horrifying aspect of the incident was that Lauren had witnessed the whole thing and, for all I knew, had taken part in mocking me. I was not asked back to the Gifted and Talented, nor did I venture to go back.
***
It took a combination of events to put me in a position where relations with Lauren and I could even be described as “amicable” again. The first was joining Art Club; the second was having Psychology class together. Lauren and I hardly ever shared classes because she took all the AP classes, while I stuck to mostly vocational school classes, because I could goof off over there. Seriously, most of my time in the vocational school was spent playing multiplayer Quake and eating junk food from the vending machines. On occasions, when the weather was warmer, the teachers would even have a grill out for the students. It was a fucking blast.
However, the list of extracurricular activities I engaged in was exactly zero. I didn’t play sports, so my parents were insistent I find something to do after school. Since I enjoyed drawing, joining the Art Club seemed to be the most sensible solution. I also really liked the art teacher, Mr. Stinson, who treated us more like peers than students. I would often have conversations with him about movies or the latest episode of The Simpsons, and he’d even let met bring movies to class to play while we worked on our respective projects. Aside from goofing off in the vocational school, my art classes were truly some of the happier moments of my life in high school. Honestly, it was largely due to Mr. Stinson’s encouragement that I’m even writing at all. Of all my teachers, he was always the biggest fan of my writing and delighted to read whatever crazy story I came up with next. He was also emphatic that I never let that talent go to waste. What he wrote in my yearbook stuck with me for years:
Craig – You have been given two great talents: writing and drawing. Don’t let either go to waste. Work hard – don’t waste a minute! Don’t be a ‘wish I had done such and such’ person. Good luck! –Mr. Stinson
So the prospect of spending my valuable free time in the art room after school doing something I loved, with people I whose company I actually enjoyed, appealed to me greatly. You can imagine my reaction when I walked in the first day and found out that none other than Lauren herself was also in Art Club – my reaction being mostly panic tinged with just enough elation to prevent me from sprinting out the door full speed. I can only liken it to the “Fight or Flight” response that animals have when threatened by a predator. I took a deep breath, shook it off, and walked into the room, but as I walked by, I noticed she had a large art book devoted to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I pointed at it, my mouth agape in shock, with nothing coming out but a sort of high pitched screeching, not unlike that of a pod person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When I could finally form words, I said, “Holy crap, I’m totally reading Fellowship of the Ring right now!”
For the first time in a long while, her expression reverted back to the warm, friendly girl I met in eighth grade. “Really?” she asked with genuine excitement that led me to suspect that she was not used to having guys at our school talk to her about literature, much less the works of Tolkien. I lived in a pretty hick town, after all. “It’s probably my favorite trilogy of books ever! How are you enjoying it so far?”
“Um, it’s not my usual thing,” I began. “I mean, it’s sorely lacking in lightsaber battles, but I’m digging it.”
We stood there and spoke some more about Lord of the Rings, and other books we both enjoyed, until it was time to work on our projects. I was using my time in Art Club to create a portfolio to send to the Chicago Institute for Art, so I couldn’t spend as much time as I wanted talking to her, or goofing off with my friends. I didn't understand it then, but I felt an immense sense of relief after that conversation with Lauren, because in that moment, I was briefly reminded that she was not, in any sense, the pinnacle of womanly perfection I had cast her to be in my mind to be, but rather, just a person - like me; with mundane, somewhat nerdy interests - like me. If I were only mature enough to understand that back then... but let's get into "woulda-shoulda-coulda" territory.
VIII. The Loveland Castle Adventure
Click on this link for appropriate 90s mood music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8MAHQhKe7Q&ob=av2e
I never really had a better opportunity to get to know Lauren than on the field trip the art club took to Cincinnati. We visited a few art museums on that trip, but I mostly remember visiting the Loveland Castle Museum.
The castle was built in 1929 by a Boy Scout troop leader named Harry Andrews. Besides it being a work of art on its own merit, I couldn’t understand why we were going to castle, but I was excited by the prospect as I had never been to a castle, and what perfect setting to continue my pursuit of Lauren after all the Lord of the Rings talk?
Even though I sat in front of Lauren in the bus, I spent most of the trip up goofing off with my friends. Here I was, with this amazing opportunity to maybe bond with this girl that I adored, and, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything to talk about! Honestly, the only thing I remember us discussing on the trip was our favorite music. We had both brought our Walkmans and CD books. She had me listen to “If I had a Million Dollars” by The Barenaked Ladies, who was one of her favorite bands at the time:
What I told her was: “Wow, this is pretty great!” What I was thinking was: Ugh, god, I hate this… it’s just so fucking cheerful. Almost as if trying to wash the effervescence of the Barenaked Ladies’ song, I recommended that she listen to “The Trick is to Keep Breathing” by Garbage:
I gave this song a spin quite a lot in my teenage years, especially after “The Florida Incident”, which I will write about in the next entry. I felt that, by listening to this song, Lauren would learn a little more about who I was as a person. Surely, after hearing this song, she will consider me in a whole new light. She’ll be impressed by my magnificent taste in music and think…
“Meh, it’s alright,” she said, as she handed the CD back to me with her finger in the center hole.
“Wha…?” I said, snapped out of my daydream. “What do you mean it’s alright? This song is amazing!”
She shrugged. “Meh. It’s okay.” I clutched my chest and reeled. How could she think this song is anything less than awesome? I sat back in my seat, stealing glimpses of her as she took a nap, and wondered, not for the first time, why I was so into this person.
***
The rest of the trip was spent with me trailing after Lauren at the different art museums, and pretending to understand art as much as she did. Finally, the last stop was Loveland Castle. We had a grand tour of the place, and afterwards, we all got to walk around on our own. I bought a medieval battle ax replica that was for sale at the souvenir shop. I turned to Lauren, with the ax in hand, and asked, “What do you think of that Garbage song NOW?” She found it mildly amusing, if not a little distressing.
I shuffled about in the courtyard, felling a little depressed. A friend of mine asked what was up.
“I don’t know. I was kind of hoping I’d get closer to Lauren on this trip, but… I’m still not on her radar, you know?”
“Dude, the problem you’ve always had with her is that you’ve put her up on a pedestal.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I replied, before spotting her head peaking out of one of the castle windows, her golden hair flowing in the wind. I leaned on my battle ax and considered how, in that moment, she was like a princess waiting for a handsome knight to rescue her. She looked in my direction, and I twirled the battle ax in my hand with a flourish, before it slipped out of my grip, and flew towards some unsuspecting classmates, who screamed in terror. I apologized profusely for lobbing a deadly ax at them (something I swore I’d never have to do again), and when I looked up at the window Lauren was in, she was gone.
IX. Psych!
As I mentioned before, we also ended up taking Psychology together, but not only were we in the same class… but we sat together at the same table. Oh yeah. What did I do with this amazing opportunity, given to me as if gift wrapped by the Almighty Himself? Well… I excreted more volumes of sweat that semester than I think I did the entire time I played 8th grade football, which isn’t hard to imagine considering I spent so much of that time on the bench. It was by this point in time that I had take my class clowning to an entirely new level of actual performing out in class, and strangely enough, rather than get in trouble for disruption, my teachers seemed to genuinely enjoy it. Maybe it was because, unlike most of the smart ass students they dealt with, I was actually funny. I would like to think so.
Anyway, one of my best bits, for lack of a better word, is what I turned in for an assignment we did in Psychology. We had to put together a “mini-lesson” over an assigned topic for Power Point and present it to the class. I was absolutely annoyed with what looked to me like a transparent attempt on behalf of my teacher to make us do her job for her. I didn’t want to get an F, so, in pure mockery, I put together a Power Point presentation to beat the band; not only did it contain all the necessary information, the background of the panels would have random pictures of people like Screech from Saved by the Bell or Mr. T (this was before making fun of those guys was hackneyed – I was on the cutting edge, man!). I also included random sound effects, or funny lines from movies. For example, whenever I clicked a bullet point, Jim Carrey would say “I’ve got worms!” It was like I was taking my funny little pictures and going HIGH TECH! The presentation earned riotous laughter, and my friend Ryan even fell out of his seat from laughing so hard. People outside of the class wanted to see this ridiculous Power Point, and I’d show them on Mr. Stinson’s computer (as he, himself, was a fan of it).
A completely unintentional result of the insane presentation was what Lauren wrote in my yearbook:
Big K (I know your name starts with a C, but K sounds better). Have I ever enjoyed a Power Point before yours? No. It was just as funny and unique as you are. Thanks for the many laughs this year. You have great talent. Have fun next year and don’t forget us. Western Rules! God Bless Always, Lauren
The tragedy was that I didn’t know she felt this way about me until the end of the year, when she wrote this. It’s not like I thought it meant she was in love with me, or could ever be in love with me, but for once, in our long and storied experiences with each other, I realized that she, well, actually kind of liked me. The entire time I had known her, I had felt like I didn’t exist in her world. I kind of assumed that saw me as somewhat of a buffoon, not to be taken seriously, and certainly not to be dated. I figured she saw me as the epitome of why she supposedly didn’t date boys from Russellville. In the moment it took me to read what she wrote in my yearbook, I realized how much time I wasted chasing after her as someone to be my girlfriend, when I probably would have benefitted more by chasing her as someone to just be my friend. I wish I could say this lesson followed me through college, but alas, it didn’t. What I actually gleaned from the lesson was just as quick and fleeting as the lesson itself.
X. College Years and Beyond
There really isn’t much to say about Lauren when I was in college. She went to school in Florida and I stayed in Kentucky. We stayed in contact throughout college, chatting on AOL every now and then. At some point I confessed my true feelings for her, which, unsurprisingly, she had already surmised. I’m nothing if not fairly obvious. We had a laugh, but nothing more came of it. On the occasion that she was home for the summer, I'd sometimes run into her at the Country Club swimming pool (somehow my parents finagled their way into a Country Club). Even after a year of college under my belt, and all my cards on the table, I still found it utterly impossible to talk to her without feeling... inferior. She'd be poolside, reading a book, and I'd try to make conversation about it, and although she was as personable as can be, I would let my insecurities get the better of me (I was shirtless, after all), and make a hasty retreat. I remember one time my mom asked me why I regarded Lauren so highly - what was it about her that made me feel the way I did. I thought about the question for a moment and mumbled "I don't know", but later wrote in my journal a more thoughtful answer:
She makes me realize that I have so much more potential than I give myself credit for. All this time, perhaps I didn't want to so much date her, but make myself into the kind of guy that would be worthy of dating her, because if someone like Lauren loves you, then, by god, you're doing something right.
I ultimately lost contact with her when she went on a trip to Australia, and was never seen, or heard from, again…
…just kidding. She came back from Australia, alive and well, went to school for medicine, got married, had a kid, and is now living the whole “happily ever after” lifestyle I always knew she’d live. Nowadays she travels to exotic locals on mission trips, helping sick people, and being the generally wonderful person I always knew she was since 8th grade.
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