Catharsis

I am twenty-six years old, and in the summertime, when the weather is hot and the beer is cold, I will be twenty-seven. I have now married, and my wife and I have a small boy-child, whose favorite word as of the time of this writing is, "aaa-geeeee." He says this usually at 5 a.m. when he wakes up and I pass the door to his room and notice that he is awake. I come to his crib-side and look over, saying, "Hi, bub!" He looks up, recognizes me (I hope), and says his favorite word through a radiant, toothless grin. It makes my day. I pick him up and we go off in search of food for both of us.

I'm too old to be angry anymore, and that's hard to believe. When I was twenty-one, I operated on nothing more than rage and caffeine. (It's funny how when one is in the depths of misery, wallowing in it is a perverse sort of entertainment.) Back then, I thought I'd never see an end to it.

Five years later, I realize that the whole point of life as I live it is to live responsibly, provide for your family, and have as much fun as you can. So, yeah, I've compromised: I can't listen to the Descendents for as long as I used to be able to, and my old Yes and Rush and King Crimson CDs are starting to sound better and better. (I still like the Replacements, though. I'll probably croak before the first two albums stop ravaging my system.) I got a job and a sensible 4-door vehicle. All the lyrics I write these days are based entirely from a humorous standpoint, or sometimes even one which is slightly maudlin. I started smoking... and stopped because I don't want my son to grow up without me around. (Due to family medical histories, this is entirely likely if I go on smoking. Therefore, no more tobacco in any of its delicious, nerve-settling forms.)

Nonetheless, even though the angry, snarling young malcontent of my younger days is quickly fading into memory, there are some things, events, and people that make me uncomfortable and evoke ghostly echoes of that spiked-haired fiend. So in a public venue, allow me to lay them to rest, using the one true weapon of those who are - slowly - growing older, wiser, and more stable: humor.

School Days

I graduated from a Christian high school. This means that after four years, coming out with even a shred of faith in the belief system I'd had before school was a feat of Herculean proportions. So, to religious oppression and closed-mindedness, I say, "Hey, pal! I think you're not good! I'll never be your best friend!" (Thanks, Max.)

My Semi-Romantic Past

Most of the painful events in my life have involved the opposite sex. Not because of them, but because of my stupidity. For instance, I wish I'd known that Christian Slater in "Untamed Roses" or "Bed of Heart" or whatever those movies are called is a better example of what a lot of women like in a man, as opposed to, say, Mel Gibson in "Payback," "Lethal Weapon," or "Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome." (It is, however, pretty funny if you goof up the Thunderdome chant when you're eight years old, on the playground during recess. "ONE MAN ENTER! TWO MAN LEAVE!" I wrote about that someplace else at one point; I bet if you look hard enough, you'll find it.)

Also, I wish I'd known that in several cases, that nothing was going to develop and that we were just wasting time. In particular, I wish I'd known that before it was screamed at me, rather loudly, at a Ruby Tuesday full of co-workers. They laughed. I didn't. I did learn early on, though, that no matter how high of a score you get on a video game, very few women will be impressed by such an impressive accomplishment. Especially in a bar at last call.

And, in retrospect, I guess I just plain should have known right off that a relationship with anyone who has purchased ceramic cherubim and painted them to look like extras from a Marilyn Manson stage show - given my own rural and rather rustic upbringing - would be like combining very sharp fingernails with a chalkboard. For the record, I actually did say, "If those things turn their heads to look at me, I'm leaving and I shall never return." (That happened in several nightmares, but never in waking life.)

Recreation

I wouldn't have taken getting forced out of a progressive rock band in '94 all that hard. After all, I was a punk rocker, a rhythm guitarist, and had no grasp of music theory. Now I'm just a hard rocker, I can fake a lead, and I can play in 7/8 for approximately ten seconds straight before my brain implodes. Now that I can do these things, everyone moved 50 miles away.

I wouldn't have become quite so absorbed with gaming as I was for about three years. I like to think I was a decent GM, especially with World of Darkness. It was never about making one of my PCs into an NPC and awarding myself with a Str + 8 Mage-Crafted Silver Grand Klaive with Cold Iron runic inscriptions with a spirit servant of Helios bound to it that made it burst into sunlight at a word. There was the temptation, but mostly I just wanted to make a good story and come up with interesting NPCs with distinct personalities for the PCs to interact with. I especially miss portraying Daphne, the Dominate-era Malkavian with the "I believe that fire trucks are harbingers of Gehenna" derangement, and Burt, the elder Bone Gnawer who spent weeknights as a Wal-Mart greeter.

On the flip side of the coin, I do wish I'd been a better player. There was a lot of that rage thing happening inside - like diarrhea, only messier - and I guess a lot of it came out in my characters. Since we mostly played Werewolf and Rage is so much a part of the game as to be gifted the status of proper noun, I guess it was an intuitive step.

Kind of tied in with the last one: I wish I'd handled the relationship that sprung up between a friend of mine and my ex-girlfriend better. Really, the pairing was the best for everyone involved, and I think we'd all known for some time on some level. However, all that anger boiled over, and we all know how those stories turn out. Saw them awhile back, heard they'd gotten married. I wished them well. I don't think they believed me. For once in my life, I was being sincere, and no one believed me. I think it's my reputation.

Previous Employment

I worked in customer service for an electronics and appliance store chain that will go unnamed - it's mainly regional, so most readers may not know where it is anyway - and I learned there about how not to treat customer service people when I went shopping or went to return things. I also learned about empathy, understanding why someone was so angry when a big-screen TV that they'd paid megabucks for arrived that morning with a shattered screen right out of the box. I also learned that I hated the mealy-mouthed recital of "store policies" that I had no belief in or regard for. I also hated my then-boss, who had no emotions and no personality except for the one whose objectives could best be described as "annoying laughter and prying into employees' personal lives."

I got to witness, once, the most spectacular quitting/firing I've ever seen. A friend of mine, who worked for the same person in a different area of the store, felt the calling for some nicotine. He politely asked to be allowed to go smoke a cigarette; he was denied and then put down for smoking. At the time, I was also a smoker, so I was incensed. (No pun intended; you may make a patchouli joke if you really, really want to.) He threw his employee cap in the boss' face, made long- and widely-suspected questions of the manager's sexual preferences, all at 11 on the volume pot, as he was escorted out of the store. For a moment, just a moment, I felt a strong, burning sense of justice. I shortly realized that it was actually my cheap disposable lighter leaking in my pocket, and I went home to change.

That job taught me a lot about people - how they work, how to deal with them, and that more than anything else, I hate to lie to them. If someone asks me for my opinion on a product today - now that I'm out of retail - I'll say, "I don't know... but I bet you that not many people in this store know it, either."

I think I worked through the last remnants of my anger, there. In a sense it's kind of like flattening a nearly-expired tube of toothpaste with a steamroller in order to get absolutely every bit out, regardless of whether or not you can use it. So it's done, my cup runneth empty and is turned upside down in the saucer for the benefit of the friendly Denny's waitress, in order to signify that it's time for the check. Check, please; file forward, pay, drive on.