My Life in Writing

     If you can imagine being in prison, you can imagine being a victim of some torturous experiment, then maybe you can imagine how I felt about school when I was growing up.  Being dyslexic, I spent most of my time in school away from the regular kids in special classrooms.  The classrooms were small, so you could get one-on-one attention.  It doesn't sound so bad when you I say the teachers were nice, understand and always smiling.  But when your walking down a crowded hallway in school, and you have to enter the doorway, to your special class, it is indescribable.  You know that whoever sees you enter that room is going to label you as inferior.  To say that gives a kid an inferiority complex is such an understatement.  Its like saying that Babe Ruth was an average baseball player.  Dyslexia is not such a serious disability, being segregated from everyone is.

     I'm proud of the things I accomplished there.  Getting my regents diploma and everything else they said I'd never be able to do, like read.  But it still doesn't make up for the things I went through to do it. 

     That's why I don't talk about it much.  When I meet people I went to school with, they always want to talk about the good old days.  But to borrow from Billy Joel “The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems”.  That's my opinion to, so I tell'em I only want to talk about the future.  It doesn't last long, they never want to talk about that, it's like their life ended after school.  To bad for them.

     As I said before the school system segregated me from most everyone else, I think that had a negative impact on my development, it turned me off to everything school had to offer, granted wasn't much.  It did make me stronger, but at the cost o some social skills.  I'm considered blunt to the point of rudeness by most people.  I kind of like that though, it's less work than trying to make everyone else happy.

     After I graduated I joined the Marine Corps so I could get the hell out of dodge.  At the age o twenty is when I say my life changed.  I started to read books to pass the time while I was on guard duty.  The books were nothing special, usually science fiction or horror, anything with a lot o action in it, that would keep me awake for my twelve-hour shift.  One book I remember was a true crime book called The Ultimate Evil.  I can't remember who wrote it, but the book tried to show how the Son of Sam murders were done by members o a satanic cult operating in N.Y. with connections all around the world.  At one point in the book the author explained how the cult would meet in a barn in Brewster, N.Y.  I have never been able to find out where in Brewster this barn is; it has always fascinated me though, since I grew up only about five miles away from Brewster.  I can remember riding my bicycle there when I was young and it makes me wonder if this book is true, if I ever saw any of the cult members when I was growing up.  Anyway, this book certainly kept me awake and alert the night I read it on duty.  Of the other books I read then the only notable author is Stephen King.

     As I worked my way up in rank and gained more experience in the Corps, I eventually got out of guard duty and joined a road unit with the military police.  In the road unit we were responsible for a lot of incident reports (meaning domestic disturbances, thefts, assaults, everything that a regular officer might be responsible for) and this was my first taste of professional writing.  I credit the Marine Corps for testing me.  It taught me more then I ever wanted to know, and showed me things that people just shouldn't see.

     The Marine Corps breaks down and destroys the person you were when you joined, and rebuilds you to the person they want you to be.  Through the Corps I learned things from how to do my own laundry to how to kill, from how to cook my own meals to how to camouflage myself and use a variety of weapons, from first aid to why freedom is worth dying for.  I saw a lot of things that opened my eyes to the world we live in.  I say death, racism, and a lot of people's pain, if forced to name a positive I think I would have to mention the people.  You are forced to meet and work with such a variety of people that you can't help but learn.

     If my schooling made me feel inferior to other people, the Marine Corps mad me feel superior to

everyone.  I had become a storm trooper in the Corps, even earning the nickname Darth Vader by some of my friends.  As a military policeman you have the same kind of authority as a regular cop.  This had gone to my head, and by my last year in the Corps I had discovered it.  When I discovered this, I forced myself to look at my life and see how much I had changed since joining the Corps.  Most of the changes were positive, but the ones that were negative were big enough that I realized I needed to make some changes in my life .

     I left the Marine Corps on Friday, November 13, 1992 and for the most part drank my first year of freedom away.  I did start school at Dutchess Community College though, and took the normal first semester classes.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I knew things that weren't me, the military and law enforcement.  I think I chose the media arts program at Dutchess for two reasons.  First it's a field where I would control my life, and that's important to me and second it would allow me to make an impact on the world.  I have always wanted to help make the world a better place and show everyone that I had something to offer.  I think maybe I can do that through the communication field, the same as if I were a cop.

     While attending Dutchess I also did a couple of other things that I thought I would never do.  I acted in a children's play both through school and in community theater.  I wrote several short stories and even composed a poem or two.  I acted in the play quite simply because I was asked to.  A speech and theater teacher of mine who was putting on the play both in school and in the community said he thought I would be good in it.  Since I've never done anything like acting before I said OK.  I've realized that you have to take chances and experience things in life to make it worth while.  The writing I do for myself.  It's something inside that just takes control, as I don't think I could stop if I wanted to.  To this end I believe that I am a gusher, having to write down the things that come to me and go back later to try and make sense out of it.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  All of the time, however, the  gusher works on its own schedule, not caring if I need it or not. 

     Now, you probably have a better understanding of me.  I hope you don't have a complete understanding.  I hope I was able to leave enough out to keep myself interesting.  I was raised without an introduction to art and writing.  Because of my learning disability I was pushed away from anything intellectual being told that I would never be able to understand it.  From this I formed the opinion that artists and writers were all gay losers.  I understood that if they were real men they would be out doing some kind of physical work.  For the last five years now, my opinion has been steadily changing.  I still enjoy physical work, but seeing it from the other side now, I say there could be something to this writing and art stuff.

     I'm still not comfortable with the idea that there are gay artists and writers around me now, I probably never will be.  As long as they let me lies my life and don't flaunt their sexual preference around me, I'm content to let them lead their own lives.  I am also still not an intellectual and have no desire to become one.  For me the only question left to answer is can this old dog, who never wanted to travel farther than the local pub compete with all the other writers in the world?