Well I had my class – made an effort to be nice to the tutor, though more argumentative/contrary later on – and then home for fried egg sandwiches yum yum. Supposed to think about what could be interesting about my life. Well, here goes…
Kicked out of home aged 17, live above a guitar shop, fly to America on a whim aged 20, when the holiday ends, I decide to stay, become an illegal alien, spend a night in a New York jail, buy a car with every penny I own (well, all but six dollars) and then total it two weeks later, work for a Jewish furniture-moving company, live rough on roofs and in squats, buy another car, drive to Arizona (crashing it in Mississippi on the way) where it dies, sell it for ten dollars, hitch-hike to Las Vegas, move to Virginia (after winter in California), buy another car and crash it while drunk, spend another three nights in jail, skip bail and hitch-hike to Arizona (in winter), live on a ranch and train to be a stunt cowboy, win a donkey in a bet (and then sell it), hitch-hike through Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, steal a grain-truck, ride a freight-train across the Rockies, get arrested on another train and deported, fly back to America, hitch-hike down the Pacific Coast to Mexico, camp in a mountain canyon for six and a half weeks, meet a spiritual teacher, have some mystical experiences and do a vision quest, stop drinking and doing drugs, hitch back to Virginia then back to New Mexico, meet a Yogi, meet a female Indian saint, do a 28-day vision quest, spend time with a healer/exorcist/psychic, die on a mountain, go back to England, live in a meditation center, go to India in search of a guru, go to Germany to meet one, fly back to America again and get deported, live in Paris and almost get married and have children, split up after I discover her infidelity, follow dreams, signs and feelings to a meeting with a soul-mate (four years ago now), and that’s about it.
Except…
I’ve never tried a cigarette, never seen E.T. (The Extra Terrestrial) or The Sound of Music, and once shook hands with Prince Charles (and had some sexual fumblings with a girl who had sat on Bill Clinton’s knee) (and vomited on Dave Mathews’s floor and hid it under his couch), I’m distantly related to Nick Faldo, Geoff Capes and the Sheriff of Nottingham (but not the Sheriff of Nottingham), my girlfriend’s Canadian and we share the same last name (purely a coincidence), and myself and my three grandmothers (who were all living until two years ago) are all Aquarius, and two of us shared a birthday. Also, I once tried to eat a 4½ LB steak in one hour and only ended up three or four ounces short, but I did succeed in eating a pound of dry rice for a bet. I haven’t been drunk or taken any intoxicants for nearly seven years.
And that is it. Although…
I like to write, and have had one story published (as well as some poems in the university magazine) which is mildly interesting. Also, I play guitar and sing, and can do this juggling thing with ‘devil sticks’. I can balance rocks, too, but you’d have to see some pictures to know what I mean by that. (People find it interesting.) Oh, and I’m very good at riding a bike non-handed, and have done it for miles on end, and travelling really quickly down really steep hills. I’ve had frostbite on one of my toes, and nearly trod on a rattlesnake once. I also got lost in an underground cave, have been charged at by buffaloes, and played music and sang in front of several hundred people on more than one occasion (more than two, in fact). I once owned over 150 vinyl records by Jimi Hendrix. I once lost over two thousand dollars (U.S.) in cash. I’ve crossed the Grand Canyon by foot.
And that really really really is it.
Except…(I’m not meaning to do this)
I’ve spent more than ten straight hours playing online computer games like Risk and Scrabble on several occasions in the last few years (not stopping to think about food or water), I’ve stolen quite a few things (in my youth), I’ve kissed three men, but never gone further (I once kissed three women – and a man – in one night), I’ve taken naked pictures of myself and once put one or two (tasteful) ones on the internet, I’ve punched one man (since my teenage years – but plenty of boys and one girl before), I’ve had sexual fantasies about my mother (though not for the last two or three years). I still have wet dreams.
Enough?
Enough
Phew! Well I didn’t know what was going to happen. It started out, of course, thinking that, wow, I really have had an interesting life – especially in comparison to the nineteen/twenty year-olds I share my class with – but then…well, I guess you can’t do that mush bragging without having it bounce back at you; without the memories of the occasions that you were less than glorious welling up to the surface. The only question then is, do I push those down, or do I acknowledge them and let them out? I guess I’m one for truth – and since I know the content of my mind, and since I know when I’m running and hiding, then I also know when I can go beyond those impulses. So I type, even if ‘I’ don’t want to, even if it’s stuff I’d rather keep to myself – and some of it I did. Stuff like…having my drink spiked and coming round in some gay black guy’s bed, or punching my girlfriend (in the stomach) one drunk and messy New Year’s Eve about ten years ago. Not so glorious there. (She’d punched me before that – but that doesn’t seem to excuse it, this indoctrination that violence against men is okay, but not oh no definitely not against women.) Is there worse? Curiosity about sex and children – don’t even want to know where thinking about that might lead (but I am curious; like, how is that even possible?) – and then obviously the specific naughtiness of my various crimes – especially the one where I nicked that band’s musical equipment. Damn. See how hard it is to just indulge in a little bragging! I don’t feel elated at all, I feel bummed out and keen to get off these computer, having been reminded of my past transgressions (even though so many of them were committed by the Rory that I hope and believe has long since vanished from the face of this Earth). But I guess you can’t escape your past – or, at least, your memory of it. Children, don’t do bad things – not because of any Divine punishment, or even the punishment of man should you get caught – thank God, I never really got caught – but because one day, if you make it through the storm, and if you’re honest with yourself and don’t hide behind a mask (of intoxicants, of distractions, of falsehood, or hypocrisy, or intellectualism) then one day you’re going to have to sit and face it all over again, in the mirror of your own conscience, from which there is now escape, and even if you mend your errant ways, and become the embodiment of goodness itself, you will never, ever forget what a crooked and deceitful shit you have been in your youth. I mean, oh God look at me, I’m not a bad guy, and I don’t really do bad things, but here I stand, on the verge of adulthood, and still I suffer for the knowledge of what I did in my younger, stupider, drunkener days. I am not those things any more – and yet, here they remain. Maybe because I never made amends – maybe that would help – but maybe simply because that is yet another of the consequences that we must face when our actions are not only wrong, and bad, and unholy, and not-good, but when they just plain suck.
Ow. [Rubs forehead with right hand, closes eyes and moves head from side to side.] I mean, he says, Mamma Mia!
Must have been a longer break than I realised!
And then I had this enormous nap. Wowee!
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