Dealt a bad hand (PreSeventeen)

My first job was at a Little Caesars pizza in Fulton MO. It was a brand new store. JoAnn found the job in the news paper, and took me to the interview. She wanted me to get my own car. She also needed me preoccupied in the evenings. I was sixteen. The job was super easy. There was no challenge about it at all. I don't remember how I lost the job. I think I just stopped showing up. I do remember this is when I started smoking. I had been at a party, where others were smoking. I was standing among a group of girls, all older than me, and they asked if I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to fit in, so I took a cigarette. Like everyone does, I coughed really hard, and they laughed at me. I had already smoked before, but it was when I was thirteen living at Barry's. When he caught me, he really threw a fit, so I hadn't smoked for years. Well, laughing at me in a group only inspires me.

I wanted to not cough when I smoked, so I started smoking Camel non-filters until the coughing stopped. It only took a couple of packs. Less than a week. Self destruction in effect. This is when kids could get away with buying cigarettes at the gas station. I remember paying ninety three cents for a pack of Marlboro Reds. I preferred to smoke Marlboro, but I needed to get my lungs acclimated. I can't stand being laughed at. Camel non-filters did the trick. I smoked a lot at Little Caesars so JoAnn wouldn't know I was smoking.  

I had to get a job another job, so I ended up working at a Golden Corral. It was much closer to my house. The scene was much more appropriate to my culture too. That is to say, white trash. It was also a actually doing some cooking, which is something I have always loved to do. It's not exactly the easiest thing at sixteen to be cooking twenty steaks at the same time. I was always proud that I could work rush hour shifts and never have any re-cooks. Several adults couldn't do that. I've always been a natural when it comes to cooking dead animals. My bar-b-que is off the chain. The best part of working at that GC was the sense of freedom it gave me. I had never experienced that level of freedom before. 

I was surrounded by what I now know to be fucked up people. Almost everyone partied and did drugs. JoAnn had always kept me on lock down, so this job was a really good cover for the lifestyle I wanted to live. It opened the doors to a world I did not know existed. I was still on juvenile probation, so she would use my probation officer to keep me locked down as best she could. She would call my probation officer, whenever necessary to keep me in line, but what should be obvious by now is that I am much smarter than the woman who brought me into this world. She did not have what it takes to keep me reigned in. Unfortunately being intelligent is double edged, because being really smart without any wisdom, or life experience, is nothing but troubles. I was really good at getting into trouble. JoAnn worked evenings, so as you can imagine I used this to my advantage. 

I met my future wife working at that GC. I invited people over to the house one evening, and Rachel came over. I had no choice in being attracted to the girls with daddy issues. None. And they had no choice but to be attracted to me. It's interesting how the unconscious can make someone seem so beautiful. How the pull becomes a must. Stronger than magnets. Stronger than gravity. Stronger than the pain itself. Blinding. She was beautiful to me.

We were sitting on the back porch. Everyone was drinking. I started talking about the music that I love. We all know alcohol lowers one's inhibitions. This crowd at my house wasn't the rough crowd that I had been trying to impress. There were no macho males around to ridicule me. I wasn't trying to impress anyone. These were people from GC, and some local kids from the neighborhood. I had my guard down a bit, I was being honest. I loved what I call 80's glam rock. I genuinely love that music. When I was a kid in Hermann I would listen to this radio station out of St. Louis. Sometimes I would wait for hours to hear my favorite songs so I could record them on cassette only to listen to them over and over again. 

My first ever vinyl record was a single, We are the World. You know, when all those singers got together. I remember living in Centralia at Barry's and literally being in front of the TV the first day MTV came on. It was amazing. Duran Duran, Madonna, Wham, Boy George, George Michael, Toto, I listened to all that stuff. I had every Madonna cassette. I would go to sleep listening to George Michael's first solo album. Oh my god Depeche Mode's Violator album. Loved it. Loved it all. It turned out my love of glam rock radically changed Rachel's view of me. In her eyes I went from being this dumb jock, to a sensitive guy with a heart. 

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight, It must have been something you said.
I keep looking for something I can't get, broken hearts lay all around me
And I don't see an easy way to get out of this
.....
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight, It must've been some kind of kiss
I should have walked away, I should have walked away
Is there any just cause for a feeling like this?
On the surface I'm a name on a list, I try to be discreet but then blow it again
I've lost and found, it's my final mistake, She's loving by proxy, no give and all take
"Cos I've been thrilled to fantasy one too many times
.....
It was a long hot night
She made it easy, she made it feel right
But now it's over the moment has gone
I followed my hands not my head, I knew I was wrong

That was my fucking jam. Cutting Crew in the house.

She was older. She had her own place. I chased her hard. She had several boy friends too. I wrapped her up like I do. She was even messing around with a guy who was in his thirties. I went to high school with this guys son. He didn't stand a chance. Rachel was already out of high school, I was still a junior. I was just a dumb kid true and through. It didn't matter though. This would be a recurring theme through out my life, this attempting to get women who are not capable of loving me, to love me. It's a common theme among abused boys. An almost fanatical attempt to get a woman to love us.This isn't something that is unique to me, but maybe the thing that made it unique about me is that I took it so far. I spent over ten years trying to get this woman to love me, and all the while she was always sleeping with others, always, just like when we first met. 

It had to be obvious to anyone with any sense at all, that my shit was whack. Even fucked up people could tell. One day at work, I was talking to an assistant manager. He loved music too. He would talk about his extensive CD collection of which I was always supremely jealous. I think his name was Bob. He was a legitimately nice guy. He was endearing in that way. Much older than I. He had already been to college. He had a certain wisdom about him. We were talking one day while I was on break, and he asked me about my life. I told him some things about my family, and why I had so much anger and rage. This was the first time in my life someone had some compassion for me. He looked at me and said, "Some people get dealt bad hands in life, and Ben, you got dealt a shit hand." I've never forgotten Bob for that. Someone was actually fucking nice to me, and not just telling me that something was wrong with me. The dude actually listened to me. He understood.

It was too late. Too late for compassion of any kind. My life was not going to get any better any time soon.

The crowd I was trying to impress were all older. They all were drunks. Initially they didn't like me, but the slowly warmed up to me. They would also use me for entertainment. There was a house party. Some of the rough crowd was there whom I desperately wanted to be apart of. These guys were legit trouble makers. Fighters. Just like me they would go looking for fights. The party was boring, so you know what they did? They went and got me a fifth of Evan Williams. Half a bottle in, and I was fucking with every body. Shoving people, being rude. My friends thought this was great. At one point one of them was holding me up by my belt loops as I shoved my way through the house. Drinking straight from the bottle. It was a preppy party, and my "friends" were using me to crash it. None of the preps were going to mess with me since I had these older guys behind me, waiting for a fight.

I ended up stumbling outside to take a piss. Just totally shit faced. When I tried to go back inside a guy had locked the door. I was too drunk to understand what was being said, but I understood what was happening. I wasn't having that, and I started pounding on the door. It was causing a scene so he ended up trying to unlock the door like that wasn't what he was doing. As I stepped in the door, he was up against the wall, like he was holding the door open for me or something. Soon as I stepped inside the door, I decked this guy right in the mouth. His head bounced off the wall, his glasses and hat kind of suspended in air above his face. It was like some cartoon shit. Pop! It was so comical to me I started laughing. He slid down the wall, and right when his ass hit the floor I gave him a couple of knees to the face. Party was over.

The next day I had to work. So hung over. I ended up downing nearly three fourths of that bottle. This guy's girlfriend ends up dragging him into the restaurant, and asked a manager to bring me out to the front. She was literally dragging this poor guy behind her. She demanded that I apologize to him. I was so stunned by this display that I actually complied. The poor guy had braces and his lips looked shredded. Top and bottom. When I got to the back, I laughed so hard. I had no idea who that guy even was, but I went to school with his girlfriend so I guess she felt inclined. I was destined to become notorious.