On January 20, 1985, I turned seventeen. I'm not sure if it was a big deal or not. I was a junior at South Garland High School in Garland, Texas, when the year began. I'd become a senior in the fall. I had maybe three or four people I knew in school that I considered "school friends," but I didn't really see them outside of school. I had a friend named Gary Anderson that I knew outside of school because he frequented the same book store where I bought comics. Gary was an odd kid - I talked about him here, & also here, & also here. That last link has a story I will tell below. The main person I hung out with, the person I called my best friend, actually didn't like me all that much. I suspect he only hung out with me because I had a car. I introduced him to Bowie & other musicians, & music became important to him. But he loved to insult me, to demean me, he took a kind of sadistic glee in it. I loved & admired him, & didn't know that your friends shouldn't do that to you. All I had, really, was my experience with my family, & every member of my family acted as though they were in competition with one another. If you were, let's say, somewhat intelligent & doing very well at school, you were told in no uncertain terms that that would get you nowhere & that "common sense" was more important than "book smarts." In that way, my family denigrated whatever small achievements I had while amplifying my failures. "He can't even change the oil in his car!"
My "best friend" would often get angry at me if I disliked or otherwise spoke out against things he had decided were good or important. I learned to simply not tell him if I disagreed with him. Later on in life, when our situations were such that I felt I could disagree with him, he would act horrified, even frightened, & to this day he doesn't talk to me about things he knows I have different opinions than he does. Anyway, in about six years, he would betray me so utterly that it almost killed me, & it took me much longer to realize it was easy for him because of how contemptuous he was of me.
At seventeen, I had never been kissed, & of course I had never had a relationship with a girl. I wouldn't have known how to start one. This is a true story: there was a girl in our neighborhood whom I fancied. I had "met" her at the convenience store where I worked, & found out she lived nearby. I asked her over to my little apartment (this is where we lived) & told her how I felt. She was of course dumbstruck, & said, "Okay," & left, & never spoke to me again. The idea that I might ask her out hadn't occurred to me. I guess I hadn't seen enough movies or something. I simply didn't know what I was expecting.
Which brings me to the story of Gary Anderson. Gary was gay, although I wouldn't have entirely known what that meant at the time, & wouldn't find out for a few years. But, you know, it was kind of obvious. At some point, either in 1985 or earlier, he was looking at my high school yearbook. He had big round eyes & a long mane of curly blond hair, too poofy to be a mullet, but mullet-esque, & he turned to me with horror. "Gary!" he said. "You let boys sign your yearbook?" I said of course I did. The only people I talked to in school were boys. He said, "Won't people think you're gay?"
Mostly people didn't think about me at all. My family had almost written me off, my little brother didn't even say hello to me if he saw me in the halls at high school, & despite I suppose having a good academic record, I didn't really distinguish myself in anything notable in school. Well, I was on the Whiz Quiz team. That was a kind of local "College Bowl" competition, & our team was beaten by the team that went on to take it all. My brain is telling me it was Arts Magnet, but I don't know if I remember it. I missed a simple Mark Twain question that would've tied the game if I had answered it correctly. For some reason, I agreed to be team captain in my senior year but luckily Whiz Quiz was either discontinued or put on hiatus. There's a videotape of the event - it was broadcast on local television - that my friend Russell taped & gave me a copy of, but I was never able to watch it all the way through. It's not fun watching yourself lose.
Even acquaintances thought very little of me. My favorite place to get comics was a bookstore - I won't remember what it was called, but I remember the odd man, Don, who owned it. I should write more about Don. Anyway, I came in at some point in 1985 to get comics, & he wasn't there. He had sold the place. The woman who bought it told me she intended to continue with the same arrangement he had with me - putting aside comics for me each week - but it really hurt that he never told me. I visited that store every week for two years & talked with him. He never said goodbye. It probably didn't even cross his mind.
As for work - this is getting long & there's lots to say about this year - I worked at the convenience store owned by my mother's boyfriend but wasn't fond of it. I worked over the summer I believe at Mobil gas station, & remember quite liking it, moving with the manager to a different store when he transferred. His name was Rob, he was the first Sikh I ever met, although entirely American. & also my first horndog. The guy made Jack Tripper on Three's Company seem like a seminarian. At some point I also delivered pizza, & I think I did that after the gas stations? No, I think it was before. It's too bad, too. It ruined my poor old car.
Enough for today. These little yearly entries are the closest I'll ever get to writing an autobiography, so I feel the need to cram so much in. But I feel like I liked 1985 pretty much. I was mostly unself-aware but thought I knew it all. Is that how most seventeen-year-olds feel?
PS When Self Help Radio explored the number "seventeen" as theme, I wrote a little about my seventeenth year. You can read that, if you want, here.
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