It was about 1am Saturday night. There I was, in Mark’s pub, the most popular bar on campus, on April 20th, my birthday. 4/20, with the Student Body President and over a dozen 9s and 10s in my harem, and the DJ starts a Happy Birthday sing along for me, yet I was too zonked out– with cocaine flowing through my blood, enough weed in me to get an elephant stoned, and enough alcohol in my system to declare many people legally dead. If I were to tell you that I was the big man on campus at a midwestern Division 1 college and hated every minute of it you would say bullshit. My group of friends and I were unofficially referred to as the Mafia House. I never had to wait in line at the night clubs. I had professional athletes coming back to visit me in college and driving me around town while I sat shotgun, and I was a regular in the campus’ police blotter for me and my crew’s fighting exploits–always dudes twice the size of me. I had the pick of the women every time I left my apartment, with the chicks literally throwing themselves at me everywhere I went– the grocery store, the rec center, the library, shit– even the nurses were hitting on me while checking me for STDs. I had academic groupies, social groupies, and gym groupies, often times in the same day. Although I did sell drugs as a source of fund raising (along with numerous other part time jobs), I normally got my hard drugs for free. Not to overshadow being on the Dean’s List pretty much every semester and receiving awards for my character and accomplishment that quickly got filed away. I was THAT dude. Most people would cherish that experience, just to get that feeling once–in any of those areas, but for me, it was a hindrance.
As amazing as some of these experiences were, I’d choose to pass on them if given the chance again. All these fantastic experiences I had were efforts by me to not be stuck in my own head. These actions were meant to avoid thinking about the lifetime of childhood trauma, depression, and PTSD brought on by sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and neglect. I did whatever I could to extreme levels to simply not think about my trauma. As soon as I had moments of sobriety or calmness my thoughts immediately became poisoned by how awful my life had been up to that moment. Masking my pain became the norm and I became really good at it. My efforts to suppress my pain formed my identity, and my reputation preceded me, even at other campuses when I’d go visit.
Most people have a few pictures of their college experience, and probably a T-shirt. Me— I kept a daily journal, in detail, regardless of how banged up I was, regardless of what time the cat dragged me in, and I have pictures to support most of these experiences. I also have newspaper clippings supporting some of the more higher profile instances. All of these artifacts are a reminder of a life that was almost lost to my own demons and self-medication.
I was challenged by my therapist recently, one whom I see weekly for years now due to the level of childhood trauma I was exposed to, to review my older journals and see what triggered the ‘a-ha’ moment that allowed me to shift my values and lifestyle. I have actual first hand documentation of so many raunchy, rock and roll, wrong side of the tracks experiences, that even Mike Tyson, Hugh Hefner, and Ozzy Osbourne would be impressed. And many people were. Many people wanted to just be along for the ride, since I brought the party and excitement with me. All this was a form of self-medication, though. I had emotionally and mentally compartmentalized 2 decades of trauma that forced me to either recognize that trauma, or be in a state where I couldn’t think about it. I chose the latter. If people knew, they would never want to trade shoes with me if they had to experience what I did to get to where I was.
When I arrived on campus for freshman orientation in the middle of the summer a few weeks before actually starting college I was surprised by how many people I knew from around town at home from sports or partying that were also enrolled. I met up with some guys I knew from the neighborhood whom I had no idea were also going to school there. They had enrolled early for summer school and I partied with them that night, the only night I’d be in town. We got WASTED. I ended up banging some chick on their futon and passing out in their dorm in my own vomit, only to show up late for orientation the next morning, where my freshman ID photo is immortalized with dried puke on my shirt with a very hungover portrait of me. Welcome to college. It didn’t slow down from there.
Freshman year was a blur. I had knee surgery from a high school sports injury the week before ‘Welcome Week’ and that whole Fall semester I was on crutches, longer than it should have been because I just winged it on my knee recovery. I became known as ‘shark bite’ because I was telling people that is how I hurt my knee– a shark attack. Although I was on a partial academic scholarship, I hardly went to class and lost my scholarship for not maintaining a 3.0— I had a 2.8 that Fall semester. Instead of studying, I spent that first year partying like it was spring break 24/7. I partied a lot in high school (and middle school), so I thought college would be a ‘been there/done that’ kind of experience. Boy was I wrong. I got shit faced nightly. We really only went to bars on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, but I had a fake ID and was quite popular in my dorm and that side of the campus. The area of dorms on our side of campus had thousands of underclassmen, and we were right there next to the party apartment complexes, so I had plenty of options. Although I stand at only 5’9” tall, I stood out. I was very good looking, had a killer body from working out from sports and spending about 2 hours a day at the gym, did insane antics to get attention, had a very charismatic personality, and knew people everywhere I went. I was the life of the party. People were drawn to me, and still are. During the Fall and Spring fraternity rushes I had the 2 most popular frats on campus both begging me to join. My friends that did join dubbed me the ‘non-due paying member’ since I still partied with them often for the duration of my undergraduate experience. I got written up so many times for ‘quiet hour’ violations and drinking in the dorms that we were put on the dorm’s version of probation and I had to make a bulletin board about not partying in the dorm rooms, which I of course glorified getting shit-faced with the sketches of me and the campus mascot pulling tubes and bonging beers. Don’t be like Freddy Falcon.
One night at an after hours party at one of the apartments I got a ticket for urinating on a cop’s foot. For real. I went outside to piss off the stoop of the front doors of the apartment at around 3 am and someone told me “stop what you are doing” and had their foot between my spread feet as I was pissing, so I peed on their foot. I didn’t think it was a cop, but rather one of my buddies I was with, which is why I opted to piss on the foot as a joke. I got a citation for that. When I went to court at the County and they read my charge there was laughter in the room when the judge read my charge and it stated I “urinated on the officer’s feet’. I got 2 years probation for that and had to do alcohol class. That same year I got another ticket for pissing in the parking lot behind a bar, but gave the cop my fake ID for the citation. That same year I also was visiting my older brother at his college and was pissing on a post office walking back from the bars and my brother missed the memo to warn me of any danger. As I was peeing I was told to ‘turn around and come to the car’, so I did. The officer stated, “first, please put your dick away”, as I stood at the car’s window with my dick still out. The office then goes, “I should obviously arrest you, but you are the luckiest SOB I’ve ever met. We are close to shift change and I don’t want to do the paperwork for this,” and sent me on my way. It should be noted that I was already on probation for pissing at this time. 3 pissing incidents in 1 year. I clearly had a pissing problem.
My roommate, also from my high school, and I, got into drunken brawls pretty much every weekend— always with dudes bigger than me. Sometimes with each other. I grew up in a tough neighborhood and had brawls or fights weekly, so fighting was second nature for us. Our dorm floor was the ground floor and had heavy foot traffic after bars if people opted to take the steps versus the elevator, so we got into fights pretty frequently after hours with drunk assholes. On one occasion that was in the spring semester, so I wasn’t on crutches anymore, I had some chicks at my door after hours and these 2 drunken football playing assholes decided to be lewd to the women and talk shit to my roommate and me. It didn’t end well for them– both of them got sent home badly beaten and bloodied. Don’t fuck with me in my home. I actually had class with one of the guy’s buddy’s, who became the main instigator of what would become a very one-sided feud. He and I got into it in the middle of my English class because I had a ‘souvenir’ that I was waving at him from across class– his buddy’s bandana I kept after knocking his buddy out in our initial fight in my hallway a few weeks before. Not sure why I kept that dude’s bandana, but when I discovered they were friends I knew what to do with it. Their group tried to jump me at the bars on 2 separate occasions following this, but they chickened out both times when I became the aggressor to their surprise. The 2nd time they tried I was begging all 4 of them to fight me in the bar’s back parking lot, or if not, just 2 of them, but they chickened out.
They decided to do a home-invasion style attack on me in my dorm one weekend shortly after. Bad idea. I had my marine friends from back home visiting, one of whom served time at Leavenworth for assault for putting a fellow marine’s head through a ceramic toilet bowl and forming a quasi gang in their barrack that bullied the other marines. We were in my dorm drinking before going to a party and heard a loud crash and commotion in the hallway outside my door. I opened the door to see my enemy and 3 of his larger football player friends breaking lights in the dorm hall outside my door. I didn’t hesitate and popped the one closest to me cleanly in his left eye, sending him down immediately with blood gushing out from his wound. My roommate and 2 buddies pulled the largest guy into my room, leaving me out in the hallway with the other 3. The largest one was the one breaking the lights and was also the starting center on the football team. He got his head smashed through the TV in my dorm room. There was blood all over my room, along with my TV with a head imprint dented into the side. I fought the 3 others on my own in the hallway while they badly beat the one guy in my room. Well, I guess it was only 2, since the first kid I hit was still laid out on the ground bleeding from his face. When the rest of my group came out of my room a few minutes later after pummeling the center they were shocked to find the 3 guys I had been fighting all laying on the hallway floor, bloodied and beaten by me. I had knocked the main instigator from my class out twice in that fight– once early on when we squared up in the hallway, and then once again as we were fleeing the scene and he was being helped up by my floor’s RA. I knocked his ass out cold with a very solid right hook to the jaw on that last one. The 4th guy got stomped out and slammed head first through the dorm floor’s bathroom door, where he was then knocked through the closest bathroom stall’s wall. I remember that kid was crying loudly begging for the beating to stop.
All 4 of the would-be jumpers got sent out in ambulances that night, and I had the football coach and the rest of the football team on my ass after that for the next several years. I literally had the head football coach of a D1 program calling my room several times telling me not to press charges against his players. I did have a gnarly gash on my knuckle from one of their teeth. We fled to a party at the apartments behind campus near me and I had a groupie there clean my wound and bandage me up and then hook up with me later that night. The visiting marines got into a 2nd fight that night at a different party, but I wasn’t involved in that one. My roommate and I were eventually kicked off campus for that dorm incident after it had gone through campus legal, but no charges were filed, since those guys didn’t want to rat themselves out for being the instigators. I should note my roommate on a different occasion also threatened to choke out one of the RAs from a different floor (we liked our RA).
It wasn’t just the booze, drugs, and violence that set the tone for that year, and for the 5 years I was at campus. I hooked up a lot. Like every night frequency. It was to the point where my neighbors would congregate outside my dorm door to see who I would bring home that night, and then listen. I had ridiculous game to begin with, but having the crutches and knee injury made it too easy. I would ask women to help me back to my dorm, help me carry my food tray, or help me carry my bag back from class. I even hooked up with the RA from the women’s dorm upstairs one drunken, who insisted I get help back to my room since I couldn’t open the door on my own and use the crutches. I kept rubbers wedged into the screen holding up the top bunk’s mattress for easy access since I had the bottom bunk. This was always an interesting conversation starter, since our dorm room had only 1 chair and the rest of the audience would need to sit on my bed. On at least a few occasions condoms would fall down onto my company while they were sitting on my bed, including female classmates I would invite over to study with me seeing them and asking about them.
My floor’s RA told us we could always ask him for rubbers if we needed them when he did our dorm floor’s orientation meeting, and I took full advantage of that. I took him up on his word. I would regularly run out down the hall, partially dressed, and need to knock on his door at all hours. 6pm. 10pm. Midnight. 2am. 4am. Sometimes several times the same day. He initially thought it was helpful, then funny, then became annoyed by the end of that Fall semester. I burned that bridge and had to start using my campus billing account to get rubbers (and bottles of Robitussin) from the campus clinic. I assumed that was what all the dorm RAs did, so I mistakenly knocked on the door of an RA on a different floor while trying to hook up with some random chick in my buddy’s dorm hall’s bathroom, and that RA wasn’t as helpful or understanding.
Needless to say, I developed quite the reputation. It wasn’t all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll (and bouncing football players) that year. I learned a lot about myself that first year at college. I grew up with a single mother not getting much child support, a maniac of a father who was a terrible role model early on for me, and financially broke as hell. I was molested as a young child, and was also being groomed by others. I was beaten daily by my older brother from as far as I remember until literally my Senior year in high school. I was neglected by my parents, family, and teachers. I had many horrible experiences with people of authority growing up. That bullshit was constant and as long as I could remember it was going on. In 1st grade, when I was 5, the teacher put me in front of the class and made each kid tell me what they disliked about me. That scarred me emotionally. That same year I was molested by a babysitter and experienced grooming actions by several other people of authority and influence in my life. While we were at our poorest. While getting my ass kicked daily. Life sucked.
I needed to work in the dorm’s cafeteria for money for my food and whatever I had left beer money. I drank the cheap shit, and luckily had a lot of people willing to get me free drinks at the bars regularly, since I was good at getting the women to join our crowd. A quid pro quo. I discovered an appreciation for Robotussin cough medicine that year and its cheap student cost of only $4 a bottle, which was cheaper than beer. The campus clinic was my supplier and I was in there regularly for both STD testing and as the plug for my Robo-buzzes. I was going through about a bottle a day. And the cool thing was that the Robo-buzzes would go to my Bursar account, so I’d simply get billed on my college charge account, which I’m still paying for. I was allergic to whatever toxins were getting spit out of the dorm’s radiators, but that was more of an excuse to chug cough medicine all day. I kept a bottle in my bookbag and would sip on it all day while out and about for class. They eventually cut me off of the Robotussin saying it appeared I had ‘a problem’. Who else can say that as part of their freshman experience– cut off of Robotussin from their pharmacy and also rubbers from their RA?!
I was embarrassingly broke, especially for a college that is predominately middle to upper class with its clientele. I decided to work in the cafeteria due to its proximity and friendly hours for a college schedule. I struggled adjusting to an environment where everyone seemed to be rich in my eyes and I was this broke kid with everything to prove who had to scrape the slop off their food plates and trays in the cafeteria. I ended up working there for 4 years. The hours were good and the pay was pretty good, plus I had access to so many chicks every day and would use that as one of the feeding grounds for my many, many women. All my friends came from wealthy families and didn’t understand my insecurities or financial issues.
I took a college experience class that Freshman Fall semester and that opened my eyes to how adverse my upbringing was. I was so different from my peers. They had all these fond memories of high school, of school spirit, of good values and goal setting, and I was a drunk party boy who was always in trouble and always fighting. When we were discussing this in class I remember trying to hold back tears as I reflected on how shitty I had it growing up. They weren’t like me.
I was also a huge bigot due to my upbringing. Despite my college being 98% white, our dorm room was sandwiched between black guys on both sides. I befriended both and I credit that for opening my eyes up about my bigotry. It wasn’t anything they said to me, but more so by living next to both all year. One of them I remained friends with through the rest of my undergraduate years.
Although it seems trivial, these lessons were huge for me that first year. Sure, I partied my ass off, couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, and had terrible discipline, but I did learn about my limitations. I journaled about them, and was determined to improve my character and values by ‘addition through subtraction.’ I knew I was broke as a joke, but understood I’d need to work for what I wanted. I became aware that my upbringing was not the norm, but more so an anomaly, and became aware of what a racist asshole I had been my whole life. A lot of lessons learned.
A Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents 