Writing Myself into Existence
Dave gave me props for coming up with this concept, and I’ve been thinking about my misspent youth in fly-over America quite a lot these past few days. The reflection and scribbling are incessant right about now, as the time’s come to go get that cheddar.
Let’s do this without being too dramatic about my life. On the rilly real? Shit’s real fuckin’ good for me, considering that I’ve yet to duly get paid. Dig: Regular readers know about the main squeeze and the kids. You prolly do not know that I’ve got a new relationship with a cat who says he’s gonna move my screenwriting career. And my book agent thinks the first blast of narrative about how The Chronic got made is pretty hot shit. Perhaps most shockingly of all, I have my health. There’ve been some close calls in the past few years that are not the stuff of blogging, even for someone who’s been an early adopter of the new diminished privacy aesthetic.
Lately I’ve been in touch with one of the key figures in getting Ghetto Celebrity out into the world. (No, not my ex-wife.) The old-school homie’s first book is in the pipeline to becoming a motion picture and at the same time dude’s personal struggle seems to reaching new levels of dramatic tension. This made me think of the aforementioned memoir and how I almost never got to be that dude.
In the days before I bolted from Santown, a casual named Marc slipped me a joint laced with heroin. It felt pretty amazing. I was 18 and can only imagine that, had I not skipped town right after this first free one, my life would have become a nightmare.
Another another alternative to not having a life as ghetto fab as mine would have been scoring well on my ACT. I stayed out all night before taking the Saturday a.m., exam. (Mom worked the night shift. I clearly remember the random grad party that kept me up. Just is clear is the recollection of getting home before dawn and fronting with my mother like that cereal I was eating as she walked in the door was the first meal of a new day.) My crash came halfway through. I filled in the remaining bubble answers randomly, not even utilizing the testing strategy that William Gates’ instructor gives him in Hoop Dreams. If I’d done well on that test, I would have gone to college in Ohio, never would have seen the World Class Wreckin’ Cru perform that first week I arrived in Sacramento, never would have been taught by the legendary Dr. Jean Stephens.
Ohio gave me a lot, too. And lately I’ve been celebrating WMMS, which was operating at the height of its powers when I discovered both experimental music and Mary Jane. The album rock radio format, much maligned by the time I deejayed at my college radio station, deeply affected how I consume all art by extending my attention span. I wonder what kind of writer I’d be I’d grown up in some other sector of bumfuck. You’d certainly be wasting your time at some other ass-wipe’s blog. You’d not be smiling inside right now.
Enough for now. Gotta go do some writing that pays.