Day Sixty - Melt

So my plan before getting the transfer, and after feeling more at ease with the rigours of miltary life, was to ask for an extension to my contract. It was a weird setup, as first I'd have to have an additional four month extension, and only then could I go for yearly extensions. Had I stayed where I was, I'm fairly certain that I would have seen out a number of those contracts, maybe even all of them. So by the time I'd made ny introduction to my new CO, I also mentioned that I was looking for that four month extension. I quickly gave up on that idea, as I didn't want to spend a moment longer than was absolutely necessary in the air force. I truly disliked everyone who I had to deal with, with no exception. From  the top on down, no one there was amiable in the least, and having gone through that particular ordeal once, I felt no desire to go through that again. And things would get worse, when early one morning, as I was finishing my shift, I twisted my ankle, and god alone knows how I didn't actually break my foot. But for a couple of weeks I could barely walk, and the doctor recommended I use crutches so I didn't have to lean on my foot, and I had to go on leave for a bit. On the very day I told my CO that I had been given a medical leave, the guy went absolutely apeshit on me. If I had any doubts about leaving teh air force, then they were definitely dissipated then. All I had to do was endure the remaining weeks I still had to go, and then I would be free.

When that time came, I had to return all my military clothing, uninforms and whatever gear I was issued, before I could be given the all clear. That done, I was supremely glad to leave that part of my life behind. A part of me felt sorry, but that was the part of me that knew I'd messed up by accepting the transfer, because deep down I knew I was fine where I was. In August 1996, I left the air force and now had to figure out what I was going to do. And I arrived at that decision quite easily : I wanted to go back to school, finish high school and maybe get into university. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men... 

One of the good things about leaving the air force was that for a year and a half I'd be receiving unemployment, and as such I thought that the best course of action for me would be going to a private school. It would take quite a chunk out of my monthly loot, but It was manageable. For some reason I thought that I would be able to just cruise through it, but not to anyone's surprise, really, I struggled bad, crashed and quit even before the year was up.

Day Fifty-nine - In the flat field

 Before I got the transfer though, I had to spend almost a year at the air force base where I was stationed. As I said before, things weren't easy at all for me, at least during the first few months. A big reason for that was how young and immature I was at the time - I was still seventeen when I got to the base. And truly, at that time? I was very, very immature. It would have behooved me greatly if what I had to go through had helped me develop a thicker skin, but in truth, I was sorely lacking a certain inner fortitude to help me navigate those feelings I started to harbour. So instead on focusing on all the great things that could - and very easily, I might add - be readily available to me Iif I wanted - things like holding multiple driver licenses, having access to an easier way to go to university, learning skills that would have benefitted me in the real in the world - I just kind of withdrew, and trudged along. A form of complacency also developed, but in truth nurtured by the circumstances I now found myself in. If during my training, we had loads of daily physical exercise, during this part of my time there we barely did any. And though I rarely enjoyed lunch or dinner at the mess hall, breakfasts I enjoyed a whole of a hell lot. So much so that I'd eat a plateful of sunny side up fried eggs, that were often burnt brown and dripping with grease - and god, did I eat too many of those. So that meant that I eventually got, well, quite rotund. And though during my time at my first air base it never was a problem of any kind for me... but when the transfer came in, and I had to start anew in my new air force base, little did I know how much of an issue it would me.

It was a mistake, leaving where I'd been stationed, at a time when I was feeling fully integrated. I know that. But I made the choice to accept the transfer - because I could have declined it, mind you - because a part of me also welcomed that challlenge. I thought I could handle whatever was coming my way, but oh boy, was I wrong. And I immediately knew that something was wrong when I met my new CO -  a young Lieutenant who I sort of admired fromn a distance when I was doing my basic training, and one of the other platoons had him as an instructor. I thought then that he'd be someone who was the kind of leader one would aspire to have, but god damn, nothing could have prepared for how much of a dick he turned out to actually be. 

New people had to go through this sort of ritual where they'd have to intorduce themselves to the CO, and as I was finishing my turn, I made the fatal mistake of mentioning a health issue I was experiencing and would like to have treated. He looked at with a visceral, loathing look, and right then and there he decided he'd make the rest of my days there to be not so unpleasant ones.

Day Fifty-eight - Banshee

Concurrently to me starting do date Dora, my military life was staring in earnest. As I said before, I had the choice of where I wanted to be stationed, and what would go down between us was ultimately the swing vote for me to choose staying closer to home. However, a part of me wanted to stay even closer, so shortly after I got to my Base, I put in a transfer for another one that was closer to where I lived. And that, as were many of the things I'd unfortunately choose to do during my time in the air force, was a mistake. Never should have done that. But the again, in this particular instance? For sure there were a lot of things I should have never done. So... ok. When I finished my training and got stationed, my life - in the miltary sense - changed a lot. Because I went from being one among many who were basically equal, to being one of the rookies, one of the new guys. And that meant a lot of unpleasant things : there was a lot of hazing (read physycal and psychological abuse), it meant me having to do all the crappy shifts, like going on patrol from two to five a.m., come rain or sun, while the others slept warm in their bunks. It was what it was, and I realize it's part of an ongoing process - the rookies before me went through the same, and so did the ones that came after me. But if I'm being honest, all this made me dislike my early military life a lot. Right then, I had no way of getting out of that contract, and I'd have to wait until it was up to get out of the service. So those first few months were hard for me, and were hard on me. I was asked to trust people - my brothers in arms, really - but they rarely gave me reason to trust me. I got stuff stolen from me, surreptitiously or otherwise, I had to go through the aforementioned abuse, and very few of the people I met there, be they just service-men like me, corporals, sergeants or officers were actually that nice to me. And later, much much later, I realized I shouldn't have expected people to be nice to me - in fact, what I was being given ought to have been enough for me to come to terms with how a beginner's life in the military was. But a very part of me held a grudge for a good, long while, and when the transfer came through, I took it. I said before it was a mistake, and do you want to know why? It was because by the time the transfer was approved I'd actually managed to integrate myself in that military life, with those for whom I felt certain disdain, and even downright hatred in some cases, but who in time I came to respect, and in a few instances, actually like. Having to start that process all over again was a mistake. A stupid, avoidable mistake.

Day Fifty-seven - Cities in dust

So Dora was my first girlfriend, and for about the next eight years or so, she would be my one and only woman. We were deeply in love with each other, we even thought we loved each other, but ultimately we didn't. But we still have a long way to go before we get to the bad, sad days - which weren't really bad (though they weren't good) nor were they sad (though they weren't good) - they were mostly just indifferent. It's a true saying, that familiarity breeds contempt, which in the end, was pretty much all we felt for each other.

Beginnings, and as things go, are always very exciting. You spend a seemingly infinite amount of time trying to learn as much as you can, you want to know anything and everything about them, and us still being quite young - I was seventeen when we started dating, and Dora, three years my senior, was twenty - none of us was very sexually experienced. Or, actually, not at all - we were both virgins. Dora, I guess, she had had boyfriends in the past, and she told me that she had tried to have sex with one of the guys before, but apparently it never happened for whatever reason. When we first started dating there was a huge sexual tension between us - as was to be expected - but for the first few weeks we just sort of fooled around. As we started dating in the summertime, we went to the beach quite a lot. It was during that time I first felt and licked her boobs, smallish though they were, but hey : I'm no porn star neither. It was also here that I got my first blowjob, something I honestly thought would never happen, and to this day I'm not sure where I came. I know I didn't do anything at all, I just lay in somewhat of a schock as it was happening. And then, as it was, indeed, happening, the floodgates burst loose. Now, I know where they burst loose, Dora swore up and down that it wasn't, er, inside her, but none of it could be felt neither on me nor on the towel. Ah, this also happened at night, not during broad daylight. Though soon enough we would be doing far more than that on broad daylight...

Our first time proper happened when we went on a trip together - also our first - and on the train ride I was already feeling like I was going to explode. Somehow, we managed to keep it under control, but as soon as we got to our room at the hostel we were staying, we immediately got to it. And it was... ok-ish. Which perfectly describes how our sex life was pretty much always. It was never great, it was rarely good, sometimes it felt much better than others. I don't think we really had that much chemistry betwen us, if I'm honest. But we had some fun. At least for a short while we did.

Day Fifty-six - 12:51

I can't remember now how many times I saw Dora before we became an item. It wouldn't have been many, maybe just a handful. Out of the top of my head I recall five, maybe six such instances. In one of them, which might actually be two of the same instances combined, who knows, I remember being alone with her near Valter's house for some reason. I have no idea why, but there we were, just the two of us talking about whatever. And maybe I let show just how infatuated I was with Lucia, even though she cared little for me, and at that she asked me if I really liked her that much. It was more of a remark than a question, really, and she sounded a bit sad as she asked it. I guess I told her I did, thpugh I knew nothing would come out of it, and no more was said. Some time later, maybe weeks apart from this moment, but not maybe just a couple of weeks really, me, Valter and the girls went out for drinks and, you know, after a while and after a few drinks me and her found ourselves alone again. This time we went outside the bar, and soon found ourselves sitting down on a patch of grass in front of the bar. It was maybe early June, and the nights were already hot. The sky was clear that night, and we just lay on our backs looking at the stars. I'm not sure if we talked much at all, but we probably did. All I know is that soon we had turned to face each other there in that patch of grass, still lying down, oh so close to one another... and nothing happened. I suppose we both wanted to, probably her more than me, but out of respect for Valter and our friendship, I decided to quit while I was ahead. 

We both returned to the bar - we might've been absent for quite a while - and when Valter got the opportunity, he flat out asked me I'd kissed her. I told him no, no I didn't. Well, at least not then, but I soon would. And soon, I'd lose that friendship with Valter, something that still pains me to this day. I've always said that had our roles been reversed, I'd have not given up on our friendship. Yes, I know these things hurt, and I know these things that a lot of a lot of different things to properly heal - but I've also learned that friendships, and good ones at that, come fewer and far between than girlfriends. But maybe, just maybe it was a just punishment.

It might've been on this night that I told Dora that I was planning to ask to be assigned to somewhere very far, and this said, wwe exchanged addresses and phone numbers. She asked me to write her whenever I got to to where I was supposed to go, and I promised her I would. As soon as the time came for me to choose where I wanted to be allocated, I chose to stay quite near home.  And first chance I got, I called Dora. I asked her if she knew where I was calling from, and she guessed wrong. Soon we would be meeting alone for the first time, and we started dating that very day.

Day Fifty-five - Suedehead

Lucia, now she was really putting the moves on me. That never having happened before - with 'Mary Moon' it just kind of happened - I just sort of naturally followed her lead. She took me away from the others, and we sat down just talking for a bit, but before I knew it  she had me wrapped around her arms, and we spent quite a bit of that gig making out, though at least when the bands I really wanted to see started palying, I convinced her to move to the arena proper so at least I could listen to some of the music, and maybe a catch a glimpse of the gig as well amidst all the smooching.

Now, let's make this very, very clear : I am, always was, and always will be, a quite naive person. If someone tells me something, I usually take it at face value. If someone shows an interest in me, it's always because in my mind there is no vested interest behind it. This, of course, has led to nothing but disappointment my whole life, but alas - such is my nature. I can't change it, not fully, but as years wore on and wore me down I had to become much more protective of myself. But I am still very naive...

So, with that said, a very big part of me truly believed that Lucia was somehow interested in me, though I always thought a girl like her was so far out of my reach. But this was during my military training, and I was in great shape, and I myself am not entirely unattractive - even if I do say so myself. And that would prove to be the only time we were actually together, though I got her phone number and maybe her address so I could maybe write to her - I can't recall now that I ever did, but I might've. It never really struck that she was just using me to get back at JC, perhaps there was still some unresolved shit between them, and maybe she also saw him at the gig flanked by those two other girls, and in me she just saw an useful idiot, just there for the taking. To add to this, sometime after the gig, I was talking to Valter on the payphone we had where I was doing my training, and he alluded to the fact that there was someone missing me... so I believed, truly. How very naive I was...

Oh, in that gig there was some other girl there - Dora. Though she really didn't register in my mind all that much, I'd soon get to know her better, because apparently as Lucia was to me in that gig, so was she also to Valter. Though I knew nothing of it then, it would still take a few more weeks until she told me that. And just like me, Valter also thought that she was interested in him. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was naive.

Day Fifty-four - In motion #1

Just a wee while before Lucia, for some reason I can't remember now, sometime during easter 1995 I went to my old school - the one where I spent a whole year doing my damndest to fail ninth grade. Maybe I went to there to see someone's grades, but whatever the reason, I ran across this girl - I'm going to call her 'Mary Moon' from now on - and I'd known her from the previous year. I'm guessing she was maybe a year below us, but for some unfathomable reason, she and a friend of hers - and they were both very pretty girls at that - they had some sort of infatuation for me, which I feltt incredibly strange, and at the time, also quite annoying. They were indeed younger than us, and I saw them as no more than tiny children who were more of an unwelcome nuisance than anything else. And when we met by chance that day, somehow I ended up with her phone number and she with mine. But not before she made sure to tell me exactly what she'd gotten up the summer before - she'd lost her virginity, apparently with a cousin, and that gave her a huge edge over me. I mean, I'd never even kissed a girl before, let alone imagine that I one day would be having sex with someone. 

Soon we'd start metting up, either to go to the beach or to go for a walk, and during one of those outings we'd start kissing. I have no idea what I expected kissing to be like, what with the tongues, and the saliva, but though we kissed a whole lot, I don't think we were paticularly good at it - I think I took many years to get good at it, really. But more than just the kissing, 'Mary Moon', and for the furation of the time we went out together - which was just a few weeks, really - she kept  on telling me how much she wanted to fuck me. And those, ladies and gentlemen, I kid you not - those were her actual words. And she told me exactly that every single time we went out together. Now, naturally, nothing of that sort ever happened between us - I could never actually keep from seeing her as just a chilld. It wasn't just the age thing, it was also how tiny she was next to me.

I also realized quite early that whatever this thhing happening between us was, us being together wasn't her ultimate endgame - she apparently had her eyes on another guy, and as I remember it he might've either around my age or the same age as me, but he was already addicted to drugs, and she thought she could somehow save this kid from whatever troubles he had. The last couple of interactions we ever had was she leaving a note for me in my mailbox, saying that her junkie friend had overdosed, and then, not having seen her for a while, I came across her and some other guy in a bus, and I felt so.... I don't know... ashamed? uneased? Whatever it was I felt, I pretended I didn't know her.

Day Fifty-three - Je ne t'aime plus

I can't remember now where I might have seen it first, but it was likely either somewhere inside a music magazine or maybe in one of the very few specialized stores we still had back then, but as as soon as I saw that there was a metal festival shceduled for May 1995, featuring a couple of my favourite bands at the time - Tiamat and Samael - as well as a band that would suprise the hell out of me in their live performance - the finnish band Sentenced, I knew I had to attend it. As soon as I could, I bought the ticket for the gig. Sometime before the actual gig, though, and late one night as I was exiting the subway, some random dude pushed me down to the ground from behind, and stole my wallet - among what was lost to me was the ticket which I was keeping safe in my wallet, or so I thought. Thankfully though, getting a new one wasn't that difficult a task - though well attended, I don't think it was ever in any risk of selling out. So when the day finally came, I hooked up both with 'James', who I'd went to ninth grade with, and Paulo, who I met in the eighth grade. They got along well enough, I guess, and before the gig started we were already loaded up on booze - that was just part of the ritual. I knew that I was going to meet Valter at the gig as well - he'd told me as much. Before I met up with him, though, I ran into this kid who was a friend of his - though I got along well with him, we were never truly friends - and all the time I knew this kid - we'll call him JC - he was datinga a girl called Lucia, who was pretty but not beautiful, a little bit of a resting bitch face, but she was still very attractive to me. But that day JC had a couple of different girls - yes, plural - wrapepd around his arms. I felt that something has been off between them for a while - a while before the concert we attended a gig JC's band at the time were throwing, maybe to promote their demo tape or something like that, and after the gig he and Lucia got into a spat, but I thought that things would be mended between them. Obviously, they did not, and after I ran across JC, I met up with Valter and he was accompanied by two girls - Lucia, and one other I'd never met before. She was introduced to me, and her name is Dora. I have to say, for reasons that will be patently obvious soon, I didn't really pay that much attention to her. Her presence there just sort of registered in mind, because while on the one hand I was very heavily invested in getting the most out of that gig, on the other hand I now had Lucia making the moves on me - something that had had only happened to me once, and very recently at that, up to that day.

Day Fifty-two - Lisbon

And, by military career, let's just make it quite clear that it was just for a period of eighteen months. When I enlisted, I was told that initially I'd start in an eighteen month contract, then after that it could be extended for a period of almost nine years, after which my time would be up. And to be honest, eighteen months seemed such an eternity at the time; in truth, I half-regretted it as soon as my basic training began, and though the thought of quitting plagued my mind for a few weeks, I stuck it out. Well, as I've mentioned before, my military career got off to a wrong start, well, before it even it began. You see, when I first volunteered and I went through those psychometry tests, I was initially slated to become a driver for the Air Force, you know, transporting personnel from one place to the other, that sort of thing. But just before I got the all clear, I was told that due to my age - I was still only seventeen at the time, and still half a year away from turning eighteen -  that I wouldn't be able to be incorporated straight away, I'd have to wait until I was close enough to eighteen in order to be eligible for the military driver's license. And truth be told, then - sadly just as now - I was far too impatient... and I made a blunder of a move : in order to get an earlier incorporation, I'd change my specialty, and so I joined the military police. Which, if I'm honest, was no police by any stretch of the imagination, just basically glorified security officers whose job was to sort of keep the peace, but we mostly spent our days doing very little. I didn't really complain about it then, but I immediately knew it was a faux-pas. 

Well, let's see how things went : I had like a month of basic training, which was just running around and marching a lot of the time - daily from the crack of the dawn until very late in the evening. Then I had two more months of specialty training, which, shocker, was pretty much of the same, but with probably even more running.  Cool thing about that was that I was in really good shape back then - at least for my usual standards. Then, by the end of specialty training I had the choice of where I wanted to be assigned, in terms of air force bases. I had in mind to go either far away, or very far away - that was the plan for the longest time. But then, about midway through my specialty training, something very important, and completely unforeseen would happen. I had no way of knowing yet, but sometime in May 1995 I would meet the girl who would one day gift me with a son. But all that will be told soon. Now, let's end this by saying that there's a part of me that wishes I'd stuck to the plan, and went really far away. Why? Because though it meant that likely things would never have happened the way they did for me, I think she would have been happier.

Day Fifty-one - The trooper

My first attempt at ninth grade ended just as I pretty much expected it to end - with almost zero effort put in, by the end of the school year the only doubt in my mind was just how bad I'd fail, and fail bad I did. But I cared not, I'd do it next year. Or so I thought.

That summer was spent visiting S's a lot - this was the time period when me, S and N - who was also very frequently there - started to coalesce and strengthen our budding friendship. We spent countless hours basically just watching and rewatching the same two movies : Stanley Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket', which we pretty much knew every line by heart, and the first 'Back to the future' flick. It's a weird thing to think about now, especially because as an adult now I could never do it, but we never ever felt bored of watching those movies over and over again. I've tried to explain this to a few people before, and always got a funny look in return. But other than the movies, there would always be lots of conversations about comics and metal - I'd almost always have fresh batches of tapes for us to listen to, and an occasional CD here and there. 

As summer moved quickly on, I had to make decisions about what I wanted to do. I immediately enrolled in school again, but as I was getting older, I had to attend night-school. I initially started going to the same school where I attempted my first go at ninth grade, then after a few days requested and got a transfer to the school where I went for two years of seventh grade. Very early on I knew things wouldn't work out at all - and it was here that I'd meet a kid - his name is lost to time now - that would, though unwittingly and I suspect he never knew, send me down a path towards something that I have long held as one of biggest regrest of my lifes. 

It goes like this : one day during recess we were having a conversation, and he mentioned that he knew this guy, maybe a bit older than us - I was seventeen at the time - and that guy had joined the Air Force. Apparently, after like a month of basic training, he was mostly leading a Beetle Bailey kind of military life - pretty much not doing anything at all and getting paid for it. I daresay that in that same week I went to the Air Force recruitment base and asked around to see what was needed for me to join. They required a few documents I did not have, but shortly after I was back there, this time to apply. Soon, I got called to do some boring psychometric tests for a few days, maybe even some sort of physical tests - though I cannot guarantee that. I think we had to take them, but I'm not so sure now.

I passed all tests witth flying colours, made the first major mistake of my military career, and soon after I was starting my basic training. And that was twenty-nine years ago, to the very day.

Day Fifty - Transmission

And then there were two - or at least two more people I'd meet that school year that would prove to be very impactful in my life. One became a good friend - no more than that because, very wisely, he moved abroad many years ago, and our contact since then has been sparse at best, though the friendship, respect and admiration remains - and the other became one my good and true friends. I count very few people as friends, and he is certainly one of tyhe very best. So in my class there were these two weird kids - one of them I guess might've started school a few days later than normal, and tI heard about him first before I even saw or met him. He was referred to as 'the retard' though when I finally got to see who this kid was, I just couldn't see why he got that nickname. I'm going to call him N. He's the guy that moved abroad years ago. The other kid is S - the one who became one of my best friends. I'd come to learn eventually that they both had been classmates before, and had known each other for a long time. Naturally, they always hung around each other, interacting little with the other kids. But within a few months something momentous would happen : by chance I'd taken a comic with me to school, and S, being an avid comic book fan himself, struck a conversation with me. Soon thereafter we'd start to go to our local comic stores - of which there were only precious few. Both S. and N. were also two kids I somewhat converted to metal as well. I don't think any of them were particularly into it when we met, but the allure of Anathema, Paradise Lost, Cradle of Filth and Moonspell was far too great for them to resist, and eventually succumbed to the dark side.

But more than just the friendship, in S I'd found something of a kindreg d spirit, moreso than with Valter. It also helped that S lived not very far from where I live - within walking disstance, in fact - so I spent a lot of time at his place playing computer and viedo games, listening to metal, discussing comics and having proro-intellectual musings about everything from mythology to religion, from literature to philosophy, and so much more. S lived with his father, and he had a prodigious library and a vast collection of classic music - going to his house always felt like walking into a cathedral dedicated to culture. I always felt welcome there - and there was a time when I felt more at home there than I did in my own house. His father would come to influence how I viewed being a father to a son - and though I could never hope to replicate everything, there was much about him that informed how I would behave as a father when that time came. I hold him dearly in my heart, and last I saw him I told him as much.

Day Forty-nine - True belief

I almost did this narrative a disservice by nearly neglecting to mention someobe very important I met that same school year. After yesterday's post, I was about to write about two other people I met that year and made friends with, and then move on from that. nd then I remembered this very specific person. Again, odds of him ever reading this are slim to none, but be that as it may I am just going to call him by an alias - let's call him 'James'.

And the curious thing was that me and him weren't exactly friends that year, nor were we actually very friendly. 'James' was very much a loner, or he'd hang out with another weird kid - we'd nickname him 'Weasel'. But he'd mosty hang alone from everyone else, apart from anyone else. On ocasion we'd talk, and I'd come to learn that he liked metal as well, though he didn't know much outside the most commercial stuff. But after I left school by the end of the year, we'd start talking more outside school, and during the summer of '94 a friendship started to coalesce. Again, he was someonw who imbibed a lot from my knowledge of metal, and as he started to venture into bands that even I'd never listened to, that helped fuel a healthy competition between us to see who would acummulate more records and go to more gigs. It went from a rather casual thing to a friendship that has lasted for over thirty years now, and though nowadays we rarely get in touch with one another, there is still that lingering friendship. We had some ups and downs through the years - 'James' is a very volatile and borderline violent guy, easily irascible - and there were a couple of instances here and there where things were a bit touch and go between us, as I recall it we might not have even said word one to one another for a couple of years, but we always found our way back to each other. We had some pretty good times together - our 'James' was a barely functioning alcoholic by his late teens, and though I also liked to drink myself, I could never hope to keep up with him - and neither did I ever want to. I know that by his later adult life he changed quite a bit - he had a kid back in 2010, if I remember correctly, and the last time I saw him he imparted the news that there was another one on the way. I even met the mother to be - a different girl from the one I knew had a child with him - and I saw a different 'James' then. Calmer, more at ease with life. As a teen and then as an adult he had that sort of unbridled and directionless rage that could never seem to be harnessed in any other way other than self destruction. But I'm glad he found that one thing he could focus on.

I truly am happy for him, and a big part of me misses him. Maybe one of these days I'll give him a ring.

Day Forty-eight - Butterfly on a wheel

So, right off the bat, on the very first day of school I connected with a couple of somewhat like-minded outcasts. You see, this was a preppie kind of school, where most everyone knew each other almost from first grade. As such, me and these kids - Victor and Haykal - didn't really fit in. It was easy to connect with Victor - he was a metalhead as well, and being tall, muscular, his blonde buzzed off, and with a bushy goatee, he seemed like the spitting image of a very young Phil Anselmo, Pantera's lead vocalist. Now, Haykal, he was a different matter altogeher : whereas there were a few of the more alternativ sort, like myself, Victor, and the other older metalheads, pretty much everyone in school dressed the same way middle-class kids did. But Haykal, he almost always wore a suit. This, naturally, set him apart from anyone else there. And coupled with a dusky completion that gave him a sort mysterious middle eastern look, and the fact that he took extremely good care of himself, meant that girls had an eye on him. So we made a quite strange trio that was actually quite close - but also so very different. Victor came from a working class family, and he sort of lived in the projects. His neighbourhood wasn't too bad, but hey, it wasn't that great either. As for Haykal, man, he came from a well-to-do family, his father owned a business of some sort that was apparently doing well, and so money was never an issue for them. He lived in a very nice building in a nice part of the city. So, three mostly different guys somehow got bunched together, and somehow we made it work. Oh, these friendships wouldn't last long - I lost touch with Haykal as soon as the school year ended, and Victor, I might've kept in touch with him for a couple more years. But what really mattered were those few months we stuck together. It's a funny thing, but with Haykal, most of that friendship was school-based only, though on occasion we'd go to his place. However, with Victor things transcended that : he was sort of a neophyte when it came to metal, and as Valter was to me some years prior, so I was to Victor, I took to thoroughly educating him on the facets of this world he didn't even know existed yet. And that meant visiting the very few specialized music stores we still had - all of them are which long gone by now - and also we attended a bunch of gigs together. It was around this time that I started taking more of a liking to beer - I'm guessing about a year prior I'd started to drink here and there - but right about then was when the breswskies started to taking a hold of me. It became sort of a ritual when we were together outside of school, and especially so if we went gigging. Maybe it was some sort of rite of passage, seeing just how booze you could down - and not throw up.

Day Forty-seven - Sweet tears

Getting back on track, and moving on to my final year in school - the ninth grade, of which there were three different attempts - all of the unsucessfull at that, and all to be discussed in the near future. So, guess what? New school, new people, same old story. I had to begin from srcatch again. And if in a way this was probably the best school I'd attended so far, it was also probably the one I disliked the most. This would have been circa 1993, and by then I was full on hardcore on my metal phase. I only wore metal related t-shirts, and my wardrobe had hoodies as well shorts, and when, on the first day, my sorry ass first set foot in the school sporting a Napalm Death t-shirt and cammo shorts, I was soon the kid everyone looked at sideways. Even though there was an - admittedly - very small contingent of headbangers there, I didn't really get along with them, and nor did I try to actually buddy up with any of that lot. They were also my seniors, and as I knew that my time in that school would be short lived, I had no plans on getting to know anyone there. Understand that if until then I'd trudged along, albeit mostly unwillingly, doing just enough to pass the year, when I got to the ninth grade, somehow I already knew that that would be my last year in school. Probably not forever, but at least for the foreseeable future. See, life at home at gotten incredibly hard. The year before, in '92, my brother got arrested for breaking and entering - somewhere along the way he'd gotten addicted to drugs, and he ended up serving over three years in jail. And the establishment he got sent to was quite far from where we lived, so we could only visit him in the weekend. My mother and grandmother would spend most of the week cooking food to give him so he could eat something decent - which meant that for the rest of us, my mother, my grandmother, myself and my sister, food became scarce. It's not like we were going hungry, but most days there just wasn't enough food, and I knew deep down that sooner rather than later I'd be forced to start working, if I didn't want things to get any worse. I'll tell you all about it pretty soon.

So when I started that school year, I'd sort of given up already. I mean, I didn't even try - it's as if for most of the classes I attended I was there in spirit only, my mind already elsewhere. That might help account for how long that school year seemed to stretch on - more than any other year in the past, this one felt truly neverending, and not for the best reasons. But I didn't count on that year actually surprising me in some ways, and though I went into it not really wanting to make any connection with anyone, I ended up making some that would last to this very day.

Day Forty-six - Waiting for the miracle

Today I had to go out to go pick up an order, all in all travelling to the place I had to go to and returning back home took me almost two hours. This is relevant only because as I was almost halfway through going down my street, I suddenly found myself tumbling to floor, face first. Had I not put my hands in front of me as I was falling, and for sure I'd have come home sporting some nasty scrapes on not just my right knee, but on my face as well. And this is something that, sadly for me, has always happened - I've always been prone to taking some weird tumbles, and to this day it's something that keeps on hanging. Late last year, I was out and about with my best friend, Hugo, and as we were crossing a street, I twisted my ankle, and found myself on the ground. The weird thing is that I managed to fall down in a way that left me shoeless, and how this quite happened I don't really know. I picked myself from the ground only to see that my shoes were somehow behind me.

The last meaningful relationship I had was about a decade ago - 2015 to be more precise - and I recall when I first started to getting to know the girl, Sónia, when, you know, it's that early part of the relationship when you don't know a lot about each other and you start telling some maybe serious stuf and maybe some not so serious stuff, and I was telling her that her new boyfriend (me, naturally) was a clumsy fellow. And at that she might've just laughed and waved it away, but I doubled down on it, and reiterated that things seemed to slip from my hands, that I fell over mysefl all the time, and I laughed at that too. But in this instance, I'd come to see a look of disappointment in her face - one that I didn't know yet, but would come too know all too well in the near future. It was look that judged me for all my many inadequacies, and thet equated me with a bumbling child. I can't fault her for that, I blame only myself for on the one hand not having anticipated that me disappointing her was all but guaranteed, and on the other hand for opening up myself that much, thereby creating a vulnerability that she could pounce upon. I hadn't yet realized, but in fact I opened many such avenues, and I was punished severely for every single instance.

Still, there were some sweet moments between us - I'll eventually come round to her sometime in the future, and write some more about her. 

This reminiscing made me think of the very first time me and this girl wnet out together, and the nice meal at an indian restaurant that ended up with me being invited to spend the night with her. There are things about that game of cat and mouse that I really miss, and wish to god that it might somehow happen again... but I don't have any hopes of that actually happening.

Day Forty-five - Souvenirs d'un autre monde

I might have been a bit too harsh in my last post, regarding Valter. Yes, he was weird, but i was no less weird than him. In a sense, all my friends have always been mainly weird, and that was always fine by me. But his friendhsip was something I treasured greatly during the half-decade it lasted, and as will be patently shown further down the line, the loss of that friendship was something that pained me deeply. I learned a lot from him when it came to the metal world, and I admired his proficiency playing Street Fighter II - he was much better at than I was, and though I could beat him often, he got the upper hand on me on a much more constant basis. I wouldn't say I was much of a button-masher, but I relied a lot on special moves, whereas he was more into combos than me. I spent some really good times with him and his brother : we went to concerts together, we spent countless hours looking at records and toys in the stores, we were truly good friends. And I should also extend a word of appreciation towards his family; though like all other families they had their quirks and idiosyncrasies, they welcomed me always with open arms. Again, as a sort of weird kid myself, I wouldn't be always expecting that people be nice to me. But they were, and sometimes when I went to visit them they'd let me have lunch with them, or they'd have me over for the weekend and feed me - and this at a time when my family life was a tough one. I'll probably write about it a bit more in depth soon, but the earlly 90's were rough for my family. Sometimes we wouldn't have enough to eat, some days we were lucky to get a sandwich for dinner, and I rarely was able to eat at school - there never seemed to be enough to go around back then. It'll be fun revisiting the antics I got up to back then, that's for sure.

But to have that safe haven at his place was a boon I sorely needed, and I don't know how much worse off I'd have been had I not had that refuge. Even though sometimes there would be the occasional outburst from his father, staying at Valter's was always the best moment of my week - school was tough, home was just as tough, and I felt very alone back then. The friends I'd make along the way were never quite in the same category as he was, and maybe personally, I should have let him know more often how much I prized having him as a friend. Though our friendship died many years ago - going on thirty years now, fuck me - I can't help but have fond memories of that time we shared. As you'll come to see in the near future, there was a clear divider between us, and I wouldn't have changed anything. But had the roles been reversed? I'd still be his friend.

Day Forty-four - Forever failure

This kid Valter, he was a strange one : tall - taller than me, and probably at least as tall as my brother, who back then towered over me, gangly, he wore glasses with these thick ass lenses, and his hair was this wavy, curly mess that was growing all over his head, leaving himm with a stranhe hairdo. He was ugly as well, and he use to boast that the only person uglier than him was myself, but even then I knew he was full of shit. Because above all, he was a bitter dude. And he was bitter because his younger brother Vilson was a very good looking dude. Think Joseph Gordon Levitt kind of pretty, and especially in those first '3rd Rock from the Sun' seasons, they looked pretty alike. The boy was everything his brother wasn't : outgoing, happy, athletic. Valter also harboured a bitterness inside him that stemmed from his relationship with his parents : his father has a hard man, who wasn't averse to smacking him in front of others, me included. It shocked the living daylights out of me the first time I saw it happen - for some reason I imagined my family being the only one where these things happened. And maybe in some way he also resented his mother for not sticking up to him and defending him when his father got angry with him. She was also a harsh kind of woman, who never seemed to smile. But they provided him and his brother with everything; I wouldn't say that their family was what one would call traditionally wealthy, but his grandfather had a business that made enough money, money enough that they had a life with some luxuries : they went on vacation every single year, they had an amazing modular Technics stereo system fully kitted, the kids had plenty of toys and comics, and Valter himself by the beginning of the 90's already had a prodigious music collection - hundreds of cassetes, probably already a couple of hundred CDs and a bunch of viny as well. He also had a crazy expensive Sony walkman - I always had the cheapest kind. 

But he was also a very talented kid in some repects. He could draw quite well, and though so could his brother, here he came out on top. Both would eventually go to art school, but by then our friendship was all but over. Ah, but that's a story for another day, though.

He had a network of friends who I got to meet, and though I am loath to ever having considered any of them as my friends, I got along pretty well with them - especially with a kid called David. I shopuld mention that Valter was a couple of years older than me, or maybe even three years older, he might have been the same age as my brother. But he always seemed closer to my age, than I ever seemed to my brother's. This was a very competitive kind of friendship, and maybe because of that, it really wasn't meant to last long.

Day Forty-three - Creator, destroyer

Lee and Sean, though, were not the only kids I made friedns with that summer. There was another kid there, he was vacationing with his family in a neighbouring condo, and as such had access to the same private swimming pool. In fact, I not only met him, I met his younger brother as well. I am loath to name them, but screw it - older brother was Valter and younger brother was Vilson. I'm not sure what first drew us together, it was either a shared loved for comics - of which he had a prodigious vintage collection - or for Transformers, of which he had quite a bit more than I did. Whenever I wasn't socializing with any of the other british kids, my time was spent with these two. But unlike the other kids who were just spending their summer there and then returned to the United Kingdom, I kept in touch with the brothers I'd just met. They lived a bit far from where I live, and soon after that summer I started going to their house, and they to mine. By then, we all started getting addicted to videogames - I had an NES, a Megadrive, and then later a SNES, and they had both the Megadrive and the SNES, so there was also a healhty exchange of games between us. Everything seemed to work perfectly - we loved the same toys, the same comics, the same games. And I'd soon find out we loved pretty much the same music too. You see, since I was very young I'd nurtured a fascination for the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It went so far as me having a bunch of their t-shirts, patches that my grandmother would sow on a denim sleeveless jacket that would be eventually stolen, and then my future godfather - who was a big fan of the band - started to tape some of the records for me so I could listen to them at home. Growing up, bands like Queen, Dire Straits and Iron Maiden were my top choices. And through both my godfather and a few other kids I'd meet here and there - I'd recognize them by the t-shirts they wore, and asked incessant questions about the band if I did not know the name, and demand they tape stuff for me - I'd start to learn a little bit about the world of metal. But little did I know that it wasn't a world, but a universe unto itself. Valter was a huge metal fan - and he knew tons and tons of bands I'd never heard about. In fact, I'd never even heard of any other subgenre of heavy metal, but soon I was listening to thrash and death and black metal. A lot I liked, some I never quite got, but the journey was astounding. Soon I'd start amassing my own growing collection of tapes and CDs - of which I now have none, having thrown away the tapes some twenty years ago, and sold off my CD collection as well.

Day Forty-two - That's not my name

But just before everything came to a head, there was one final summer for us. One that could have easily turned tragic, but it turned out to have its moments of magic. That summer we vacationed to the south, something we usually did every year, but we'd always stay with our family down there. There would be at least a couple of weeks spent there every year, and I always looked forward to those. But that last year, that last summer, we rented an apartment just for ourselves, and that apartment came with private access to a swimming pool, only for those who lived in the condos that flanked it. I didn't fully realize it then, especially because it was something that had never been a worry before, insofar as I'd been able to notice it, but apparently things weren't really going well financially for our family, and for that vacation to happen there had to have been some not so light borrowing from my grandparents. 

This might have been the driver that finally caused the split to happen - it would be made official a few months hence. So let's start looking at the truly bad part of this final summer we spent as a family : not only were there the financial issues I just mentioned, but there was a lot of violence too. And here's the truly weird thing : while I was aware that it was happening, I never saw any of it. I knew that things were not well, and bad things were happening between my parents, but things always seemed to happen out of sight. It was my brother who told me that he'd seen my father abusing my mother, and I had no choice but to believe him. Did it happen? Did it not happen? I'm sure it did. There were really no outward signs that I could see that would make me feel 100% sure, but it would not surprise me one bit that that's how things truly went down. 

Then, on the other hand, in those weeks I'd meet three guys who I'd bond with - a couple of English kids, Lee and Sean, who I'd meet in the swimming pool. Lee and his family were staying in the same condo as our family, and we hung around quite a bit. I think that what drew us together was our fondness for comics - he saw me reading a copy of Excalibur and immediately struck up a conversation. Before we left to go back home, I'd gift him that issue - he absolutely loved it, and he gifted me a commemorative WWF medal. Sadly, though, it wasn't the World Wrestling Federation, but rather the World Wildlife Fund. Sean, I can't recall now how we bonded or why, but we'd have a lot of fun playing in the swimming pool, chasing after one another.

This summer vacation also saw my brother scoring a really beautiful girlfriend - god, how I envied him. But then again, at that age, he was much more attractive to girls than my dumpy thirteen year old ass could ever be.

Day Forty-one - Mass hypnosis

There's an important timeline of the very early 90's that should be taken in consideration : betweeen '90 and '91, my parents separated, my maternal grandfather died, and we left that small hamlet to which wepd moved a few years before, only to return to the city, and to our grandmother's place. Thereafter, my life happened exlusively here in the city, and I for one did not complain. What with my parents splitting up, my mother had tno way of paying the loan that had been taken for the house, and it reverted back to the bank. Good riddance, I say. I don't think none of us were ever happy there, not really. And at least here we were safe, in a lot of ways. 

My first year back here saw me moving to yet another different school - you see a repeating pattern there, right? Worry not, I'll only be talking about two more different schools. I hated being in this new school, like you would not believe. It was like every single bad experience I'd had in the years prior got condensed into an ongoing year of hell, multiplied by a thousand. So many bad things happened to me that school year : I was robbed multiple times, I was beat up a few times, I was incessantly bullied, and all that misery I felt translated into me having a very mediocre year academically. Not to anyone's surprise, but I failed that year, and my penance was having to endure another year in hell. 

Though I have to say this - while it was by no means a good year, or even a decent one, it wasn't altogether unpleasant. The previous year - and this is eighth grade I'm talking about here - I made no friends nor connections, so my time there was absolutely lonely. But the following year I had a number of guys in my classroom with whom I got along well - some moreso than others. One of them was a kid called Paulo who had a budding interest in everything heavy metal, and me, who fancied himself a bit of a metal expert, shared my knowledge with him eagerly. He drank deep from that well, letting his hair grow even longer than mine, and sporting alll kinds of metal shirts, emulating me quite a bit. We soon decided we wanted to have a band together, though none of us knew how to play an instrument. But I did have a guitar my brother had left at home, and some gear of his, including a speaker. Paulo took to the guitar naturally, and in his cellar we assembled a makeshift drum set comprised of pots and pans and lids precariously balanced. He played the guitar, I played the drums, he sort of sang, I sort of shouted, and the resulting cacophony was regurgigated into a portable tape recorder. He'd make some nifty artwork for it, and we assembled a few copies of our demo to try and sell it at our school. Guess how many we sold? Yeah, none.

Day Forty - Afterlife

...or Poltergeist part II.

You see, this place we moved to in that tiny hamlet I wrote about also had its share of weird things. I really can't tell what followed us and what was already there, but for sure things were pretty damn strange there as well. We still had the bloodstained walls that no matter ho much you scrubbed them clean would always regain the blood stains, and because we lived in a two-storey villa, where our bedrooms, living room and main bathroom were in the first floor, that meant that both the kitchen, pantry, dining room and a very small bathroom adjacent to th entrance were on the ground floor. And let me tell you this : I was deathly afraid of goint to the ground floor, especially at night. If I was thirsty and had to go downstairs for a drink of water, I'd make sure I'd light up the house before going down the stairs - something my parents often got mad at me for doing. Even with all the lights on, I'd always feel this unease whenever I was down there, as if I wasn't alone, as if something bad was watching me. And though things in my previous house were definintely worse and weirder, I never ever felt the same sense of utter dread as I felt in this new house. Even during the day, I nerver quite felt safe there - there was a definite presence there that manifested itself as an old man, and one day I was home alone and sometime after lunch the sense that somethig was wrong was rapidly growing on me. I left the house in a hurry, and went over to our neighbour's on the other side - I wouldn't say that we got along swimmingly, but they were at least somewhat friendly to us and tolerated my presence. They - and a bunch of other families - lived in the lot of land next to mine, and on it they'd built a bunch of smaller villas for each individual family; I can't say for sure now but I think they were all related somehow. I recall being on the terrace of one of the buildings and looking directly at my house - in my room I could see the outline of the man standing in the darkness, staring silently at me. It sent shivers down my spine then, it still does now, just thinking about it. As night drew close, I filled up my heart with courage and returned home. I raced up the stairs to the first floor, and locked myself inside my living room until my parents got home. 

There was a ritual I performed every single night I spent in that house : after I went to bed, I pushed the covers just above my head, and underneath I'd recite to myself a cobbled up prayer I'd made up and to which I'd add to every so often. Somehow I always felt safer after intoning those words, it's as if they erected some form of potection over me.

Day Thirty-nine - Wild is the wind

Before we move on to the final few years of my time spent going to school, let's see where I was and how things were on other levels. So, about 1986, I moved from a tiny town to a tinier village where my father had his offices. I mean, we actually didn't live there, we lived some 8 kms away in a tiny, tiny, tiny hamlet - and I positively hated living there. It wasn't just that I didn't really make any friends - my brother made a bunch, but then he's alwasy been much more outgoing than I ever was. It was also that gnawing feeling that everyone there resented us because we were the outsiders who'd come from 'the big city'. My time spent there was one marked by a profound loneliness, and it's a curious thing : as an adult I would have loved to have lived there, and make the most od so much natural beauty that was all around me, and for which I cared little as a kid. Just behind where we lived there were these woods, and sometimes I'd venture into them, though not very far. I'd rather spend my days inside the house, and I'd either be in the living room watching movies or whatever was on the TV, or I'd be in my room playing with my action figures or reading comics or science fiction books. Not as often as I'd wish, though, sometimes I'd find some loose change and go to one of the local caffes who'd have maybe a couple of arcade machines. My absolute favourite at that time was Sega's seminal masterpiece 'Golden Axe' - and I was so absolutely horrendous at it. Many a quarter was pumped into that machine, in a lot of different places, and I never ever got good at it. Only when - much later - I played it via emulation and had unlimited continues did I manage to finish the game. 

Meanwhile, my family life wasn't going that well. You see, me and my father never really got along that great and his violence - both physical and verbal - sure didn't help any. From a very young age, I knew I felt no emotional attachment to him. There was a clear division between me and my brother - he was much more devoted to our father, and I to our to mother. My sister, being the youngest, was obviously the apple of everyone's eyes, but even so she wouldn't be enough to keep our parents together. Fair's fair : my mother had it up to here with him anyway, and I can only imagine how long she'd been pondering that separation. Things were never peaceful between them, and my mother could be just as abusive towards us as my father was, and she also didn't treat him well sometimes. Things always seemed to be just simmering close enough to reach a boiling point at any given time, and the last summer our family ever spent together was fraught with such chaos that we, as a unit, all but ceased to exist.

Day Thirty-eight - Signs of life

Seventh grade, my second attempt. So, going into that iteration I already knew where I had to improve in order not to fail via being kicked out of school : actually attend classes. How that would help me actually pass the year would be ultimately up to me. Understand that by this time I was already feeling that my time spent in the school system was already coming to an end, so my desire to actually be in school and any desire to perform academically were very, very low. And yet again, an all new set of faces I had never met before. To be honest, this would prove to be my worst bunch of classmates so far : while In the past I'd attended a very dodgy school for about one and a half years, there the kids would mostly be out of one another's way, with a few exceptions. And if in my previous year in this school I'd had that boon of having everyone know me as Batman, this time around it no longer applied. 

So let's get this clear : the school year itself was pretty much uneventful; I'd move on to the eighth grade but just passing by the skin of my teeth. It was touch and go for a while there, and I'm pretty sure maybe a couple of teachers took pity on me. The bad part of the year was that I had some guys in my class which were nasty pieces of business, and they made sure that my time there wasn't a pleasant one. I can recall at least a physical altercation with one of the kids that ended up with me getting my ass kicked. Worst of all, this kid had a cousin in some other class and he made my life there a living hell. I don't think he was ever physically violent towards me, but psychologically, jesus... every single time I crossed paths with him he'd do my head in. There was also a very good and surprising part : yet again I'd make a good friend that would last the rest of the year - though only that; I only saw that kid once again after that school year, because guess what, I'd have moved to yet another different school, and it was decidedly strange... almost unfriendly in a way. 

But throughout that year Jorge was the kid who I really got along with - I can't remember now what exactly it was that brought us together, other than us being nuts for the same football team. But for whichever reason, me and him hung around a bunch during school and even out of school I'd go to his house a lot - he didn't live that far from our school, so sometimes he'd invite me for lunch, or we'd just go there and play computer games. Which reminds that besides him I also struck a friendship with another kid - Fernando. In fact the three of us were good friends. Too bad it didn't last long.

Day Thirty-seven - C'mere

In my very short time attending seventh grade for the first time, a few things happened of relevance : on the one hand, I met the guy who became my one true friend that year, and maybe for a couple of years afterwards we still kept in touch. This kid was the sort of kid I'd never thought I'd meet : his parents were well to do architects, they lived in a very nice house, they often went to New York city on a lark, he had plenty of toys and he liked comics as well; he was also more sophisticated than the other kids I knew, he listened to grown-up music and read Patricia Highsmith novels. And why he went to a rather shoddy and past its prime public school, I never quite knew. He was also a very good looking guy. I hesitate on calling him beautiful, because he had some oddities about him, but he was by a country mile the prettiest guy I'd ever seen - and naturally he was blonde and had blue eyes, and athletic to boot. All the things I was clearly not...

Which meant that on the other hand in our class there were two real pretty girls - they both had the same uncommon last name, and yet were completely unrelated. One of them was very, very pretty, and the other one was achingly beautiful. She was my first true crush, and goddamn, how I pined for her. So one day in a break between classes, I was looking for this friend of mine - the cool cat - and he was nowhere to be found. I asked a few of the other boys if anyone had seen him, and someone gave me a rather vague answer that they'd seen him somewhere off to the side of one of the school's secondary buildings. Knowing perfectly where it was - it was, after all, near the same smallish building where we took shop - I found him there smooshing my erstwhile imaginaty paramour - and by golly, whatever magic they were doing with their tongues is something that I, lo these many years past, still haven't been able to quite figure out.

They saw me as I approached, and though I lingered but shortly and scurried back to where I could let my tears flow freely, unseen from others, when we did meet again - just as next class was starting - he noticed that I was visibly distraught, and asked me if I was feeling that way because of them. I lied and said no, but he saw through me and said that he valued our friendship more and that he'd walk away from the girl - and god's honest truth, that's just what he did. Strangely enough, I'd come to find out a bit later on that both those girls from my class were actually dating other guys maybe a couple of years our seniors, and for some stupid reason or the other, the girls and their guys once decided to pick on me and threatened to kick my ass. I didn't back down, actually, and told them that whatever they could bring, I could do do them tenfold. A lie, a hollow one at that, but stil a lie that ended up working out.

Day Thirty-six - When doves cry

And now it's time to move on to the seventh grade - and man, what a year that was, and I don't say this in the best way possible. At all.

So, as was often the case, a new school, a new set of people for me to get to know, but mainly ignore and stay out of their way, and all this happened at the height of Batmania! This, of course, refers to Tim Burton's '89 Batman movie - and as a kid I always adored Batman, though as an adult not so much. But going into that school year I'd be just getting a brand new Batman t-shirt with the logo, I'd won it in a contest and I wore it all the time. No, I do mean all the time - so much so that that year my nickname was Batman. In my school noone knew my name, but everyone knew who I was. What a weird experience that was.

So evertything about school I'd started to dislike and even loathe on my fifth grade, just got way worse. It was the moment I realized I wanted to be everywhere else but in school. And that translated into me failing that year - my first time, though not the last - and I failed because I started cutting classes. I just couldn't bear spending so many hours inside the classroom, it just wasn't for me. So I'd either lounge around the school in some corner, or spend time in the library - a great hall filled with dusty books, I loved it. Sometimes, I'd go to a shopping centre not very far from the school and if I could spare the money, I'd play a little bit in the arcades. Some memorable games I playes for the first time were Konami's 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Tutles : The Arcade Game' and 'The Simpsons : The Arcade Game'. Though not this year, I'd soon be playing one of the most influential games of my life quite soon in another nearby arcade - Street  Fighter II. More on that in the future.

Eventually what happened was that in the first term of that school year I'd skipped so many classes that I flunked out of school altogether. My parents made a last ditch desperate effort to see if things could be somehow reversed, and I was given a reprieve under the proviso that I wouldn't be able to skip another class or else I'd be flunked out for good this time. And guess what? I didn't even last past the early stages of my second term. The day I was given notice that I was being kicked out of school, I was picked up by my father at my granparent's, and on our way home to that small village we lived in, and where I'd spend pretty much the rest of the time, he was fuming, all the time teeling me what kind of thrashing I would be getting when we got home. It thankfully never arrived - though to this day I can't understand why it didn't; nothing ever stopped him from being violent towards us before. 

Day Thirty-five - The canals of our city

So one thing I almost neglected to mention - though I'm guessing I would've gone there eventually - is that maybe as early as my secong grade I started to take English classes as well. There's a part of me that wants to say it was even earlier than that, at the same time that I began first grade, but I wouldn't be able to now know for sure. So let's stick the most likely scenario, the second grade one. I do know I was prettty young whenever I started to take my classes, and from about my third year onwards I was almost always the youngest person in my class, and though at first it made no difference whatsoever, by my latter years and as I moved into the more advanced classes, I was barely in my teens and had real grown adults as classmates.

There's not much in these years that can make then quite distinguishable from one another, they sort of melt into one another, though some early memories include me saying a bad word - 'shit' - in my very first class, and being very sternly admonished by my teacher, who, funnily enough, was also the school's principal. There was also an early year where I had a very, very pretty teacher called Marina, and for whatever reasons, for a few weeks I decided to skip classes - I do remember that that particular year I was taking classes during the morning rather than in the evening, which I almost always did. But one day she confronted me just as we were staring class one morning, and in front of the whole class no less, and told me that if I wanted to play hooky, I could do it in another class, but not hers. Now, 'playing hooky' was an expression I wasn't yet aware of, and I didn't immediately relaize what she meant. I stopped skipping classes anyway, but it wasn't really because she'd told me to - for some very stupid reason, I thought that what she'd said to me was in a way something sexual, which rightly disturbed the hell out of me. A funny side story - a few years later I found out she was living quite near me, the street next to mine or something like that, and me being a little bit older and at that age where girls stop being a nuissance to being everything a boy can only think about, me and Marina crossed paths when I was on my way home one day, and that sort of inexistent sexual tension I thought had been created a few years back made almost want to propose something very dirty to her. Mind you, she was very very attractive, and I was very early into my teens... and hormones and stupidity by themselves can't stand for everyhting, but man... was I ever so sorely tempted. I'd been laughed under the table, probably, and that's if I was lucky. If I wasn't, she'd probably slap the living daylights out of me. 

Day Thirty-four - Apply some pressure

Oof. Day three of feeling like I was hit by a runaway truck, and I still feel a bit under the weather. I spent the better part of today resting, even managing to sneak in a quick nap after lunch, but I still feel the wight of the past few days in my body. Though the abdominal discomfort has greatly diminished, I feel bone weary, as if I had done some physical task that led me to exhaustion. It was the throwing up, I'm sure, that made me feel even worse than what I thought was in store, but well... them's the breaks. Now, where was I before I was so unexpectedly and violently derailed?

Ah yes, sixth grade, and before the school year ended something rather monumentous happened in my life : I had accute appendicitis and had to have urgent surgery in order to have it removed. So urgent indeed, that had it taken a bit longer than it did, I might have died. So that meant a few weeks recovery, probably one or maybe two in the hospital, which also meant that I missed out on the last few weeks of school as well. And this being a private school I was going to at the time, meant that me passing the year wasn't just down to my grades - I still had to take an exam and then I had to obviously pass it. So, you know, having missed out all that school time meant that I was somewhat at a disadvantage.. but the thing is, aloof and uninterested I might have shown myself to be as a student, I was never dumb. And when it came to the crunch, I aced my exams, especially my science exam . I got the highest grade in my school. And to think my idiot teacher thought he'd never pass his class?

Unfortunately for me, and while all this was happening, my appendectomy recovery actually wasn't proceeding according to plan. Something inside me got infected, and I was taken to the hospital where they had to cut me open without giving me any form of any anaesthesia, and boy, I'm sure that my yells still reverberate throughout that hospital's walls. For a while thereafter I had to go to the hospital for additional treatments, and what wasn't a nice looking scar to begin with became that much uglier. But that was that for sixth grade, and even before everything I just wrote about, I already knew that seventh grade would be in yet another different school. I had no way knowing just how influential that year would turn out to be, and not for the best reasons. A lot of things would begin coming to a head between '89, when I got to the seventh grade, and '91 - but those are stories to be told in the near future. It was a trip, though, reminiscing about this particular year. There's a parte of me that would maybe like to connect with some of those kids, to know what happened to them. Never gonna happen, though.

Day Thirty-three - Asleep

It's safe to say that last night was quite probably one of the very worst nights in my life. After my desperation move of going out for laxative, I took a couple of pills when I got home, hoping that soon-ish I'd be feeling much better. I didn't, in fact, I only got worse. The cramping continued and got more difficult to endure - not even painkillers were making any difference. Around maybe 3 A.M. I got out of bed, going to the toilet once again, hoping against hope that something would come out. And it did, only not in the way I was maybe expecting. As soon as I sat down, I had to turn my head directly to the sink and throw up my guts. It was awful, because due to how bad I'd been feeling during the day, I had no appetite whatsoever and I only ate a couple of yoghurts during the day. So other than that and what liquid I'd drank during the day were all I thought I had inside of me, but of course my old friend and hated bile had to make an appearance. I dragged myself back to bed, but I still felt worse and worse. Maybe a couple of hours later I returned to the toilet, and I had barely set foot in there when the retching began again - this time in the bathtub, I couldn't manage to go any further. Yet, after this second bout of throwing up, I did start to feeel a little bit better - like a weight had started to be lifted from me. Soon enough, the laxative also started making effect, and I spent the better part of the day going to and from the toilet. I'm not yet one hundre percent, but by jove, do I feel much better. I'm still just feeling very sore in my abdominal region, and there might be something that still needs to come out. And jesus, how tired do I feel? After two days of almost no sleep and no rest, I'm well and truly spent. Time to tuck in and see if I can get some good resting done.

Day Thirty-two - Rest my chemistry

Well, leave it to my old self to finally decide doing something only for life to slap me in the face. Yesterday I was real busy at work, and after I left I still had a pile of work that needed to be done. But I had to go out for some hopping first, and then to pick up an order that arrived for me at a friend of mine's. All in all, this took me about an hour to get sorted, and by the time I got home I started organizing the workload I had left, to see what could be done then and what could be left fof the day after. That meant that it was quite late when I finally decided to grab a bite to eat, and I just went and downed a bowl of cereal. And maybe I ate it too fast, I don't know, but shortly thereafter my stomach started cramping bad. I initially waved it away, reasoning that it was only a momentary discomfort. How wrong I was.

Throughout the night and through the whole day, things got progressively worse. I felt like I really had to go to the toilet, but to no avail. In desperation, I first started taking a mild laxative, and that made no difference whatsoever. As the hours wore on and as my discomfort grew, I went to the chemist's nearby and bought a stronger laxative. Let's see if it works.

More tomorrow, now I'm going to try and get some rest.