I Tried to Be Invisible Most of the Time.

Yes. Reading Joe Pernice's book inspired by the Smith's "Meat is Murder," (see previous post), took me back to my own High School years in the mid-seventies. Nixon. Watergate. Fear & Loathing on the campaign trail, John Lennon, Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," Springsteen's "Born to Run," Patti Smith's Horses." I realize most of my time in High School is a blur. I have blocked out huge sections of my time there. I did not sit for school pictures. I did not go to Prom. I did not appear in the Yearbook. I wasn't in the Glee Club. I didn't go to school dances. I wasn't a "joiner" didn't have many friends. Wasn't popular.

I was on the Basketball team briefly as a sophomore, but then contracted walking pneumonia, and quit the team when the Coach told me to cut my hair. My hair was long. Way long. Big clumps of unruly hair. I think I tried to hide underneath my hair. I was quiet. Shy. Nervous in groups of kids. Uncomfortable in my skin. I spent most of my free time in my room; reading Vonnegut, Catch 22, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, listening to records, learning how to play guitar. I was briefly in a fledgling r&r band started by some kids I knew, but I only attended a couple rehearsals, and then found out later that I was "kicked out of the band," because, well, I wasn't a very good guitar player. I only knew a few chords. "Doesn't play well with others."

I think of my bedroom. The posters on the walls give a bit of a clue to what I was listening to and some of my cultural references: the famous Dylan-rainbow-hair poster, the Beatles' White Album poster, the Who's maximum R&B poster, a Badfinger poster featuring a sultry, exotic woman in a headdress. I remember my father seeing that poster for the first time and declaring: "Cheesecake!"

It was a painful time. High School. I hated it. I truly, madly deeply hated it. Didn't want to be there. Didn't know who I was, didn't know what the world was about. Kind of pissed off at everything. I did reluctantly join the school newspaper in Junior and Senior years. I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson. I was a radical left-winger for awhile - "Power to the People!" I wrote some stories, I was pretty good at making stuff up. I wrote some music and movie reviews. I got a bunch of stories published in a creative writing journal that was published in my senior year.

A couple "published" articles and stories. My big accomplishment over the four years! I basically lived in my head. And tried to be invisible to the outside world most of the time. That was high school for me. The years of my trying to be super-invisible.