I showed up drunk for my first day of college. I showed up barely coherent, waving like a buoy, reeking like a bad sock that had been bathed in turpentine.
After 18 years spent sweating it out in Delaware County, just waiting for the moment when I could break out, bust out, explode across the cosmos, there I sat, half-baked on a set of bleachers, hunkered deep inside a low-budget gym, watching some dude named Bird lead a “WE ARE …” chant as he charged across mid-court, unfurling an industrial-sized banner.
I was there to be acclimated, indoctrinated, to pledge allegiance to the drag. Only I had no interest in being acclimated, or indoctrinated, or even cheering on some dude named Bird. In fact, the only thing I did have interest in at that particular moment was sleep … sleep, and the fleeting hope that when I awoke, all of this would somehow vanish, clearing a path for me to continue along my way.
Delaware County is not a place where fertile dreams are given to flower.
All of which explains why I had spent the bulk of that past summer running … running and sometimes even praying that something somewhere might come along and lift me out of this grind. I was young, and I was poor, and I was devoid of any means or transportation, which meant the furthest I could go was a close friend’s beach house in Ocean City, New Jersey, where there was enough free liquor to see me through until the fall.
The night before college orientation I wound up at a friend’s house, drunk and belligerent, pleading with that friend’s older sister to give me a ride to the PA Turnpike. Once there, I planned on hitchhiking clear across to the Ohio state line. Was I a bit over the moon with drama? Yes, I was a bit over the moon with drama. But I was also deadly serious. In the end, my midnight ride would never come to pass. Instead, I would simply drink my way to morning, at which point my mother would drop me off at the local Penn State campus.
***
Within weeks of orientation, I fell in with a small group of burnouts whose lack of interest paralleled mine. Every morning, the lot of us would ditch class, and wander over to the Commons Building, where we would panhandle loose change until we had accumulated enough to afford a case of beer.
The defining moment of my freshman year occurred during the height of February. Driving cold had forced the students indoors, and a few of us had taken to spending the afternoons watching movies in one of the library’s AV rooms.
One morning, I arrived on campus earlier than usual, hungover and unkempt. I commandeered the audio-visual room, where I lay down to take a nap. When I came to—face down in a pile of denim—I could hear a voice, a rhetorical voice, the kind of voice that one might associate with a lecture. My eyes were shut, but my bearings were intact, which is how I knew that I was still lying in the center of the AV room. I rolled over, interrupting a class in mid-session. A dozen students sat huddled around me in a horseshoe curve. A lone moderator stood at the fore. I sat up. I gathered my belongings. I made a beeline for the door.
***
A week after the spring semester ended, my father and I got into a vicious argument. We had been fighting almost daily—loud and vile, tooth and bone. It was during one of these arguments, at a point when the two of us very nearly came to blows, that my father opened the front door and invited me to leave. And so I did.
I left behind a rambling letter that placed the brunt of the ordeal on me. This was my father’s house, I reasoned, and so long as I was living in it, I had to abide by his rules. Skipping town was a good move, the right move, a move I should have made immediately after I had graduated high school. The only thing that had held me back was my own fear, a fear of failure, a fear of my father, a fear of ignorance, a fear of working papers, a fear of being out there, on the road, alone, without proper means or understanding; a fear of all the cautionary tales I had been fed over the years; a fear of how cold and cruel and stark-raving mad the world at large could become. This was a fear that had been instilled in me since early childhood, reinforced by my parents and my teachers and my peers. Everyone was so afraid for me, but what did they know, really? None of them had ever pursued a life outside of that whiny and pedestrian and wholly unremarkable little town.
***
One week later, I fell asleep alongside a set of railroad tracks, using an Acme bag as my bedroll. I remember lying there, stubborn weeds poking at my sides. I remember thinking if I could just lay low until the break of day, I might be able to keep walking without substantial risk of being arrested, or molested, or even robbed. I also remember looking up into the sky, and thinking I was about to enter yet another weird stage in my young life. This would be the first time that I could dictate my own choices. I remember thinking that the most liberating thing about entering any new stage, whether it be a new relationship, a new job, a change of address, or even a school transfer, is that a person has the opportunity to start over, to go clear, to wipe away all of the shame that has built up over the years.
The goal now, so far as I could tell, would be to gather momentum, not moss.
Day 91
(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB.)