I

When I was fifteen I had a theory that once you reached sixteen it was all down hill. Freedom would only be exiled into a place only to be reminisced about until it’s pardon somewhere around sixty-five. I had figured that when you were sixteen, whether through peer acceptance or societal necessity, acquiring a driver’s license was a mandatory rite of passage thus opening the door to the very steep hill of decline previously mentioned. This is how the theory worked in my omniscient fifteen year old mind: you had to get the license which in turn meant retaining an automobile; either one to use or to own - eventually the latter. This meant money either for gas or car payments and insurance or some combination thereof. Also, if you had a license or a car or a car to use then you were compelled, if not required, to go places and do things. Again, this all meant money, which of course usually leads each and everyone of us to some sort of gainful employment; gainful being a relative term. So, you acquired the license, a car, a job, and why the next thing you knew it’s off to college or a trade school or an apprenticeship: some way to accumulate more money. Most of your time prior to that eaten away by a job and the rest of the time spent driving around spending what you’ve earned (even if just on gas); time ‘drops it’s hammer’ so to speak and you find yourself dangling from the precipice of eighteen. Well, then it’s bigger and better jobs, steadier and stronger relationships, growing financial responsibility, family, loans, and it all tries to forget about itself in the confines of a hot bath only to be dried off and dirtied up again until you’ve reached sixty five and you could endlessly bathe without fear of dirt. At fifteen I thought I was getting ready to climb into one big toilet that I would soon be forced to flush. Spiraling down through the pipes to find myself, hopefully, floating in the ocean somewhere off Key West.

I was now seventeen; four cars, one ridiculous car accident, one recently purchased lemon, a steady girl for a year and a half, and impending post-high school continuation. All had past since I was fifteen. It is quite easy to see why I deemed post-fifteen mudslide theory as one of one hundred percetn accuracy. I had decided at that point more responsibility was probably not my friend but rather my wolf in sheep’s clothing - one big dire wolf. A quick break for a year or so and then off to the eminent temporary death of higher education was in order. Needless to say, my mother did not agree and so goes the great modern American story of youth.

We were living in Southern California at the time and it was nineteen ninety-three. I was the oldest of my mother’s four children and the first grandchild in the family to face this mammoth change. I would look out my bedroom window and pray for time to freeze, but in mother’s eyes college was going to happen when it ‘should’ happen no matter how many time-freezing gazes I shot out at the world. Graduation came and went, as monumental as it was it seemed just like one more reason to have a family get together and a big fancy table of food. My father had come out on the train from Massachusetts and my parents sat in the same room for probably the first time since my christening at age six, so in a way it was monumental. Due to my lack of enthusiasm and some sort of hope that I would not have to go, I chose odd colleges to apply to. San Francisco, being the epicenter for deviancy that it was, seemed like a good place to go. I humored myself with the idea of applying and getting accepted to the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. My mother’s reaction alone would most surely have made her drop dead, thus supplying me with my own cadaver to practice on and in my mind maybe even gaining me free tuition since I would arrive with my own supplies. I nixed the idea after contemplating how I would have to explain to my grandmother that, yes, her firstborn grandchild would be attending college, but her firstborn child would also be going as ‘school supplies’. My attention swiftly turned to San Francisco State. This became a mistake. My mother thought, “Oh! Great! In-state tuition, good school; maybe he will go!” They lost my application three separate times and I found myself staring out the old bedroom window even more, this time trying to freeze my hand from filling out yet another application to good ol’ San Fran State!

At this point my mother was viewing my attempts as pure procrastination and swiftly recommended that I apply to three schools promptly. She also informed me, that due to a longing for the infernal snow of her youth, she would be moving the family back to Massachusetts. She suggested that one of the schools be there and then I would only have to fret over the other two choices. I was very confused about it all, now more than ever. Sitting on the edge of the bed in between freezing rituals and writing poetry I would think, “Ok. If they leave and I am not going, where will I go or live or do?” Thoughts of my mudslide theory came avalanching into not just my brain my whole being. Lose my steady girl; all of my friends were going away so I would lose them anyway, but lose Ann?

Now I should explain that it was a weird relationship from the get-go but it had mellowed out and well, it was my first real long term involvement with a girl (we all think those are forever!). In the beginning she made me lose my virginity to another girl, convinced me to smoke and made me think that however good nicotine was, drugs and alcohol were bad (which seemed a tad hypocritical, but in my inexperience who was I to judge). Ann lost her virginity at fifteen, so instead of thinking of anything close to my theory of responsibilities she was skipping school to go to motels and get ravaged by a guy named Alfredo who was eighteen and religiously carried ‘prolong’ cream everywhere he went. I wrestled for a couple of years in high school and my first year on the team (before I knew Ann), Alfredo and I would eat together after getting weighed in at wrestling meets. We would sit in his car and in between the seats would be his tube of ‘stay hard’ jelly. He would say, “You gotta use this tuff, it makes ‘em crazy!”. He had this weird Mexican-Italian accent that made it sound silly. We would laugh and it seemed sometimes that I was laughing more at him than what he said. When I found out that Alfredo was Ann’s first, after we had been dating a bit, it gave a weird meaning to the phrase ‘hindsight is 20/20”. Once everything had mellowed out in the relationship (virginities and non-smoking behind us) all I did was think of her. I found that if I wasn’t with her or figuring out schools for my mother, I was masturbating thinking about Ann’s long, thick, red hair.

Procrastination, red hair, and cigarettes seemed to me to have something greater in common than the obvious fact that they weren’t ‘in common’ at all, but what did I know? I thought about that for awhile one day and decided that it sounded too much like country music for me to give it another thought and that in itself was inspiration enough for me to pick out my schools. I thought about obscure places. Places you would only go if you were a merchant marine. I thought if I picked schools based on that, that it would be my last chance at not having to go with the exception of not getting accepted.

Choice number one was Humboldt State University. I figured there was probably more marijuana there than all of South East Asia and South America combined and I knew the grass would at least be better. I knew a couple of people going there and heard the standards were low, so instead of freezing my nice white hiney off in some backwoods puritan hell hole (if I was even going to go) I would at least be going in the great American tradition: in protest as a hippie! Unfortunately my plan backfired right in my kisser. In nineteen ninety-three there were too many dirty hippie potheads in Northern California for some legislative windbag to stand, so the standards were raised. Mandatory GPA went up a whole point and SAT score requirements went up 400 points. What I thought would be my acceptance letter turned out to be a different sort of acceptance letter. Maybe I wouldn’t need to go after all!

Choice numero dos: University of Alaska, Anchorage. Reviewing their strict standards of acceptance (you only had to actually have a GPA, SAT not required), I figured I was a shoe in and it was so remote that there was no way in hell my mother would let me go. It turns out that it was the first acceptance letter that I received. Yippee! I then researched the on campus crime statistics; rape, murder, burglary: zero percent or at least under two percent across the board. Alcoholism and suicide: something ridiculous like sixty-five percent. I figured at that point if all my friends were going to be dead or drunk that I should have just done the mortuary school thing after all.

Last choice, the New England choice: University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thirty six hundred miles away from everything I had known since junior high in order to live three hours away from where my family would be and for what? To say that I had gone to school at the lesser prestigious school next to where Emily Dickenson had lived? I didn’t even like Emily Dickenson, I was a Charles Bukowski fan. I was accepted and I packed my things.