My wife had come home from work and took our oldest out so they could have some much needed one on one time, and I took the baby out to see if I could get him to have a proper nap (we had both been up since 3 a.m. and no...he did not nap) and I decided to drive to the hospital that inspired a chunk of the story. While I sat in the parking lot taking these obligatory Instagram ready photos, I started thinking about a million other (non book related) times I had a history with where I was. I immediately remembered doing the thing I never did, and actually going with my friends into the woods on the fourth of July to be a teenager, a delinquent, to drink 40 ounces, and have the time of my life. From what I remember? I did. Of course, I had my headphones on me (I took them everywhere, I became Mr. Walkman through all of high school) and right before a I puked and my buddies Turk and Ryan (this is seriously cute) held my hair back for me (I had REALLY long hair in those days) so I wouldn't get vomit in it...I remember just watching the fire works in Boston and getting lost in Chris Cornell's "Seasons" and thinking about...earlier that day, a friend needed a lift so he tried to hitchhike and this younger guy stopped and pointed at me (I was wearing my coveted Pearl Jam shirt that my friend Ally since brought back into my life) and told them...the only one of you I'd take anywhere is that Eddie Vedder looking dude in the Pearl Jam shirt because he looks like good people.
I remember Turk calling my parents and telling them I was sleeping over his house (his apartment was across from ours) and he fed me Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bars and water and to help me feel better. I am 33, why do I still remember that shit? or the infamous (I say this because most of the people I grew up with are now cops, teachers, social workers, and well....not who they were as teenagers so I have to protect the innocent) TGB DON'T CARE! Printer burning story? God, can any of us remember what it was like to be kids? To have friends? To be horrified to be a kid, or want to be a kid and want to have those friends? As I was driving home with my baby, I just kept talking as if he even cared. Stories upon stories upon stories about...this person and me did this here, we had a shit ton of fun there, this is where this happened or that happened. I think that's why I am so obsessed with people reading my book or anyone I know getting their hands on it. It is barely the tip of the iceberg in terms of my life or what became the fictional version of it...but there are so many damn people who were amazing sources of inspiration for the work. I have so many moments that correlate with songs and so many albums I can't stop listening to because when I start to feel sad, isolated, or alone...all of my friends? They're right there. They're all in that album, in that library of memories, in this book.
I tried for a decade to put so much distance between myself and the town I grew up in. There was just too much pain, too much loneliness, too much anxiety about how much it hated me. I needed to distance myself from it, disown it and the people in it. Then the mother of all irony? I wound up finding the love of my life right where I left it. Then even more ironic? The first book I have ever published? Is about that town.
The book was right in front of me. My kids, my wife, those friends...all of it was right in front of me. Why the hell did I try so hard to run away from it? I guess its easier to run away from something if you can't stop feeling like it never wanted you in the first place than to hang around and even have one part of it say...dude, it was always here and so were you.
1 Comment
Tina Gualtieri
9/26/2020 05:39:45 pm
Give me invite to zoooooom
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