Wayward Sons Ch. 1

1

“And you ask yourself
where is my mind, where is my mind….”



         YOU don't know it. Or maybe you know it somewhere deep in the cobwebbed corners of the dark alleyways in your mind that you fear to tread. Maybe somewhere deep in those dark recesses is the lighthearted kid you used to be. The dreamer. The high school athlete with the world at your fingertips. The adrenaline junkie in a cage that you unlock only when this oh so safe world allows it. The hopeless romantic in this reality of one-night-stands and internet porn.

         The real you knows it. The you that you are not allowed to be due to the chains modern society cheerfully clasps you in from the day you are born in middle class suburbia. The rent money making you work two jobs that a chimp with a high I.Q. could do. The polite, proper people that are appalled at anything bordering on an original perspective on life. The lawyers, ready to snatch away your life to improve theirs at the drop of a court summons. The multinational corporations, the Wal-Marts and Mcdonalds, the CEOs with bank accounts vomiting money who let their core workforce scrape by on minimum wage.

          Their path must be the one leading to fulfillment, you tell that little unmanageable, illogical you. Everyone else is doing it. They seem to be getting along okay.

         You turn on the TV, turn off your brain, and set your alarm clock.

         You would be me. Or am I you? It’s hard to say. I hope for your sake that you’re not as jacked up in the head as I am. I hope for your sake that you’re not working four days a week and going to school five. Nine days of work in a seven day week makes Jack a dull boy. Jake, actually, Jacob Anthony Brown, if you give a damn. Not Jack. But a dull boy? Well, I didn’t plan to end up that way.

         You know how when you’re young (and you’ll probably laugh at that coming from me at age nineteen) you think you will be able to do whatever the hell you want? Maybe you want to be a fireman, a doctor, play in the NBA. Whatever. I wanted to ride motocross, freestyle motocross. You say what the hell is that? Think Travis Pastrana, double backflip, X games. That kind of thing. I never got past anything but doing big jumps, but when I was younger I figured I‘d be the next Travis Pastrana by the time I was 20 or so. When you’re young, high school age anyhow, and naïve as that freshman cheerleader dating the senior quarterback who thinks she’s in love, shit, the world is your oyster. What’s going to stop you from doing whatever you want? Who cares if you don’t have any money, time, or god-given superior talent? None of it seems to matter.

         I remember when that little fantasy shattered for me. It shattered a bit earlier than some other kids’ dream worlds did. People say I’m old for my age. Funny, because I look about seventeen. My sideburns are still patchy and sparse and not worth shaving more than once a week and I‘m just clearing 5‘8“. I sometimes think the universe puts an unhealthy emphasis on irony.

         Anyhow, I was a punk of a junior in high school when shit first hit the fan. Until the middle of that year I’d spent most of my free time smoking weed with some other potheads I called friends, eating frozen pizzas, chasing girls, playing video games, that kind of cliché stoner movie thing. So one day we’re getting stoned in Metal Shop at the high school. We’re invincible right? We go to the arc-welding stall, take a hit, quietly like, and then go blow it into the forge. My pothead friend Scott, he’s walking to the forge with his cheeks puffed out like a greedy chipmunk, and the metal shop teacher stops him. I sit there in agonizing suspense watching Scott’s eyes turn red as he attempts to mutter some sort of reply to the grizzled up old man they call a teacher, who’s really more like a watchdog put in the shop to make sure the freshmen don’t blow each other up with oxyacetylene. Then it all comes out, a big blue cloud of skunk smoke right into the watchdog’s face. Oh shit. Unlike when you blow a hit into the face of a real dog, Watchdog does not lie down and wag his tail. He seems to take offense and pretty soon Scott and I have a situation on our hands.

         Now don’t get all judgmental yet. So I was a stoner in high school. In my school, almost everyone was. Its what you did after school, why you went to a kid’s house, how you met new people. In my hometown, main street has a bible shop, a gun shop, and a dirt bike shop all adjacent to each other. Bars line the other streets. What are a bunch of young punk kids to do in this tiny hick town anyhow? You get stoned, go to parties. Its like a networking thing. I’m over that now, onto less controversial things like alcohol and cigarettes. The stuff society says is okay, even though I’m sure the cancer sticks will kill me faster than any amount of bud ever would’ve. I do what I have to. Pick my poison.

         Well, when Scotty tried to get the Watchdog stoned 2nd hand, my naive fantasy land started to look like Baghdad after George Bush had his say. In my brother’s freshman year, he got caught getting stoned in the bathroom and got kicked out for one week. My brother, man he paves the way for me. Anything I pull looks like little shit after the things Derek‘s done. He’s made my life way easier. In 6th grade he got caught at a friends house in the front yard with a 1/5th of Jack Daniels. He got caught sneaking back into the house a good seven times, always intoxicated in some way or another. The guy was precocious. He’s not a burnout or anything; he goes to college 4 days a week and works 3, and he’s smart as hell. He’s good to his girlfriend of three years. He’s a damn good brother, too, but hell, he lives life at a pretty furious pace.

         Back on topic. Derek got one week. Me? I get eight. Tack it up to the school board cracking down. Hard. The principal, a new guy, he just has no mercy. The guy has had all sorts of strange shit happening ever since he got here. Rumors on the evening news about his personal life. The baseball team sexually assaulting the freshmen players. That’s a whole other story, but man, I was surprised at how accepting people are of partial rape when the suspects committing it are on the Varsity baseball team. No one seemed to care. Priorities, right? Playing on a high school varsity team makes you damn near diplomatically immune. You can do whatever the hell you want really if you can hit a ball with a bat. These guys finally got some punishment from the establishment, but their fellow kids? They still liked ‘em just fine, as long as they played good.

         Maybe it was the principal. Maybe he had some pent up aggression, maybe he was just doing what the school board made him do. I don’t know, or care. Think eight weeks solitary confinement. Think that’s melodrama? You’re wrong. I’m grounded, a recluse, cut off from the school and all my good weather pothead friends. I instant message people once in a while. Besides this, there are no connections. I have no cell phone. The only people I get to see are my family, and my parents, while supportive of me, are still pretty shocked and its awkward as hell. I go nowhere. Do nothing. Eight weeks I wake up at noon, do all the homework they say should take me a week in a half an hour to an hour, play video games all day. Get high. They really think throwing a kid into solitary for eight weeks with no outside stimulation and no supervision is going to help him stop substance abuse? I’d like to see the flow chart they came up with to draw that conclusion. Fucking morons.

         I take their patronizing little drug and alcohol class. You know, they could’ve done it good, not tried to trick me, and just given it to me straight. But they have to take it to that melodramatic B.S. after school special level. They have an interview with an actor on VHS, guy says ‘I’ve been uh…. smoking pot…. for like…. 30 years man. And I’m totally….. what was I saying?” And I have to laugh. Because I know people who’ve smoked weed for thirty years and can still make me feel like an idiot. I’m not an idiot, either. I got a 2000 on my SATs. I never got below an A on any essay in High School. Although High School work was so damn easy that I spent most of my time sitting, staring out the window, or daydreaming through a cloud of THC, if it was freshman or sophomore year. You get all your work done in the first five minutes of class, what do you do? You get stoned before class, so you can’t think for shit, it takes you a half hour to plow that busy work down instead. Challenge yourself, they tell you.

         After the eight weeks of playing MX Unleashed on my Xbox until my thumbs had ½ inch thick calluses, of reading about thirty books, of smoking probably too much weed, my whole sense of self was just completely blown. Its like dropping a man on a desert island; he becomes a different man. Little thoughts just expand and magnify and spread out and pretty soon you get this mutation of what was, nothing left in common with before but the basic instincts. My grades went down to a 2.5, and my grades had never went below 3.5 before. Upon re-arrival at school I discovered that in my absence all my ‘friends’ had been laughing at me behind my back. I quit hanging out with the stoners, quit smoking weed. I wanted that feeling of being invincible back, that young naïve feeling. That fuck-the-world, you can’t stop me feeling.

         So I went back to the one thing that always gives me that feeling. Not smoking weed, not drinking, none of that synthetic substitute bullshit. I went back to riding my bike. Quick lesson for the uninitiated: a motocross bike is a beautiful thing. Unless, that is, you’re part of the Sierra club, who call us evil for riding on trails, tearing up topsoil, killing rare species of tumbleweeds. Anyhow. Motocross bikes… I ride a 250cc SXF, an Austrian made (KTM to be specific) four stroke marvel of engineering. Orange and black, it carries the aura of some sort of big, pissed off mechanical hornet. Coincidentally, my high school colors are orange and black. It just fits me in every way. This beast grunts a deep roar of igniting race gas and whizzing cams at about 105 decibels, a bit over the legal limit. I’d silence it down a bit but I’m too broke for that kind of technology. My bike puts out about 35 or 40 horses on a good day, everything optimal. Not a lot, right? Think of the power to weight ratio. The bike is 214, I‘m a rail at 5‘8ish“, 135 lbs. Think Kentucky derby style jockey, but thicker, I‘d like to think. Us short guys have it good in motocross, because we pack less beef and carry less wind resistance. This means good starts and a cheap way to pass fat kids on hills. Although there aren’t many fat kids; you can’t ride if you’re out of shape. In 1970 a team of scientists found that motocross was the world’s 2nd most physically demanding sport, after soccer. Anyhow, my bike and my combined weight being about 340, say the HP is 34, although it’s probably a bit more. Still, that‘s 10 lbs. to a HP. Now take your ‘99 dodge viper. 7.51 lb per HP. Getting the picture? This thing is a rocket ship. It’ll rev to 10,000 RPM happily and beg for more. I take this bike over to a track twenty minutes from my house, a private track owned by an older guy named George.

          Motocross tracks are dirt, with big hills all over them. These hills are really takeoff and landing ramps, although you probably wouldn‘t know it until you saw someone fly over them. George, he used to ride better than I can ever really hope to, at least in terms of raw speed. I like to think I ride with pretty smooth style, at least while in the air. George built his track with unflinching dedication. Then he started having back problems. Turns out he’s missing three discs in his back. So George lives in a ton of pain, but the guy is always upbeat, he’s just unbelievable. He teaches me new stuff constantly when it comes to riding my bike, he doesn’t take pain pills 90% of the time, instead using some martial arts skill he learned en route to one of his 3 black belts to block out the pain. You can’t stop the guy. He can’t ride anymore, a fact that I would find downright infuriating, but he seems to calmly accept it and step into the role of Motocross sensei. He’s just admirably strong about anything difficult in life.

          Let’s see, junior year I’d been riding at George’s house for about two years. I started going over to George’s and riding more after I quit hanging out with the stoner kids, because in high school, if you ditch your clique, it takes a while to find some new friends. If that sounds stupid and shallow, well, it is. Its also the reality of the thing. I got better at riding, started throwing small tricks, started staying low and fast over the jumps. I’d done all the jumps but one, and finally I got the courage up to do the big nasty itself, this 6th gear pinned, hang onto the bars like your hanging off a cliff, say your prayers hundred-and-thirty foot gap. People think its stupid to do that kind of thing. Well, the first time I did it I landed beautifully on the downhill slope under power and felt like Travis Pastrana himself. Then the next time around I got too pumped and jumped clear over the landing, 150 feet to flat. The bike bounced when it hit, but it came back down and I rode away fine. My back was a tad sore the next day. I’m not stupid, I’m aware of the risk, but I’m prepared for almost any eventuality once that bike leaves the ground. Two of my buddies have broken their femurs in the last year riding their bikes because they weren’t prepared.

         Hell, I’m getting off topic. My naïve dream land, its still bombed all to ruins by that eight week span, right? But now I’m feeling a bit better. I start rebuilding that naive dreamland a bit. The adrenaline takes the edge off. When I go ride, I get home at night and pass out hard. Its almost as good as getting laid, and a lot less complicated. I don’t think girls are objects or anything, but that comparison was just too accurate to pass up. After riding, life is perfect. I’m satisfied with everything, if just for the next twenty four hours. Nothing else matters, I float through life, reliving that last whip I threw over the big kicker (A Whip being a sort of flick move where you toss that 200 lb. bike sideways in the air by yanking on the bars and leaning to one side on takeoff, then bring it back using the gyration of the rear wheel under throttle and your upper body strength). I think a whip gives sort of the same feeling fighter pilots must get when they head 90 degrees from earth spinning in circles. Its pure joy.

         You know what, though, pure joy is a damned dangerous thing. I got a taste of it in high school. I had my moments. Think total escape, going to the deserts of central Oregon with my two best friends, Motocrossers I met after I quit hanging with the stoner clique, and my dad and brother. Eric and Jason and I, a pack of three adrenaline junkies let loose on the barren deserts, became an experience I repeated often and will never forget.

         Pure joy is racing in a line of three different colored dirtbikes with my two very best friends at about 55mph through Volkswagen bug sized sand rollers, topped off with just enough snow to provide a cushioning effect without compromising any traction. Hit a roller, bounce, land on the backside of the next one, bounce, turn in the air around an S curve, bounce. Jason’s back tire always right in front of me, Eric right behind me. The landscape a white-brown blur; nothing is clearly defined but a small path in front of me. All I see is my line. Tunnel vision. The deep grunt when someone upshifts and the high pitched roar of someone tapping out a gear explode out from our bikes like we’re bringing down the apocalypse. Little ponderosa pine trees line the trail, crusted with snow and frost. Its like we’re riding through Santa’s village, minus the elves and candy canes and Hallmark card inspired warm-fuzziness.

         Suddenly I round a corner to see Jason sliding, he lays his bike down trying not to plow into the deer standing in front of him in the middle of the trail. I lay my bike over, Eric behind me endoes (flies over the handlebars) and lands in a snow drift. I skid sideways to a stop in the snow, just short of planting my bikes steel underside into Jason‘s back. We jump up and test our sore ribs, laughing our asses off, whooping like a tribe of drunken Indians, adrenaline just pounding, pulsing through us; man, its so good to be alive. Jason’s laughing the hardest. “Dude, when I came around that corner, that buck was getting some from a doe right in the middle of the trail! He must have felt like I did when Ellie‘s dad walked in on us!” I don’t care if you think it’s redneck humor or what, the three of us laughed for ten minutes solid over that.

         Another time, Eric and I are up on Mt. Hood. Eric is one of those friends you can always have fun with. We always have such an awesome time together, always find something to make fun of, usually each other. The guy is just good people. The snow is perfect, about a foot of powder, just how I like it. We’ve been boarding for about 3 years each, I think maybe I’ve got about 15 trips on Eric though; this is mid-senior year and I’ve practically been living on the mountain with my season pass all winter.

          We meet up with Jordan, another of my before college friends, this too tall, always tan, half-hawaiian crazy ass that likes jumping his Toyota truck on asphalt hills and hucking 200 foot gaps on his dirt bike. The guy that drinks three Budweisers for breakfast, something I could never do, and has lunch at taco bell. Somehow Jordan always finds the right place at the right time, despite his partying. He works at Timberline, boards every day and parties with his boss. I didn‘t know it then, but next year, the guy will be working at a dirt bike shop, sponsored to ride, getting free bikes, living in his boss’s basement. Jordan always finds a way to get all sorts of good things out of life. The kid is nuts, but we get along good, because I can get crazy too. I just get it out boarding or on my bike instead of partying like he does.

         We’re up on the mountain, and we’re carving hard. Going so fast, a tiny bump in the middle of the run will boot us into the air and let us glide for thirty feet down the hill. Everything is white and cold and pristine. I nail a rail I‘ve never hit before, double kinked, twenty feet long, on my ghetto board with my outdated gear. All the yuppie kids in their pimp boarder outfits with their 100 dollar Oakley goggles sit and watch. This is like Robin Hood justice right here. The white world of Mt. Hood gave me tons of memories that make everyday life seem stale by comparison.

         Then there’s the girl. You know, my guy friends, we had good times. I say had because all my friends are gone now. But that’s off topic. With my friends, boarding, riding, just camping out on top of Goat Mountain, shooting trap off the cliff at the top, bullshitting around the fire with made up stories about riding or driving or whatever, catching pissant baby trout out of the river, all these things are valuable, time well spent. But even the good guys, the real true friends, the guys you would room with if you could afford it, they just have nothing on a certain girl.

         This girl Melissa. Sometimes its just Lissa. Pronounced Liss-uh, not Lee-sah like the one on the Simpsons. I don’t know how I lucked into Melissa. We met sophomore year, both of us were in the height of our short lived stoner days. Maybe that’s how it began. I asked her out a few weeks after I met her. You know, in high school, if you wait too long, you become a friend. R remember that if you‘re in high school and don‘t know it yet. I came up to her and tried to show a lot of confidence that I didn‘t have, this being sophomore year, all 5’5”, 115 lbs. of me, my shaggy black hair and bloodshot eyes. This was before my weight training classes and motocross, but I’m still on the shorter side. I just actually have some muscle to me now. In those days, I was a rail of a rail. I came up to her, totally losing it inside, as this beautiful, intelligent, funny brunette snowboarder girl smiled curiously at me. It’s like peeling a bandaid off your gravel-rash. Just get it over with. I was totally ready for rejection, so I almost died of shock when she giggled and said yes, she was wondering if I‘d ask her. This beautiful girl wanted something to do with me; it was one of those inexplicably great moments in life.

          Melissa and I, we just clicked. I never could stand certain kinds of girls. The dumb blondes, or the dumb brunettes, or the dumb redheads. Be fair to the blondes. One of the smartest girls I ever met was a blond: smart, conniving, game playing Jessica the barracuda. Lissa, she’s smart as can be, but not in that try-to-make-you-jealous, play games with your head way. More in the philosophical, make you laugh, big vocabulary way. She’s got a lean, feminine build, that hourglass shape, seductive green eyes and a natural smile, all of it better than I deserve, I always told her. I’d like to think I’m not shallow, but I’ve never been attracted to an obese girl. Another thing I can’t be attracted to, those girls that throw themselves at you. The ones who probably didn’t get enough time from daddy when they were little, the ones with shirts showing all they’ve got every day they come to school. This turns me off, quickly. Lissa isn’t shy, but she isn’t throwing herself on me. She’ll wear revealing clothing, sure, but she’s not whoring for attention like so many other girls. She’s just right. Nothing’s taboo with her, nothing’s ever awkward. We never have weird silences, although we have some good silences, where I’m just looking into those big green eyes of hers and she’s smiling at me. Yeah, you’re right, it does sound sappy. But if you’ve been there, think back to it. Think back to that high school sweetheart. That first real connection with the opposite sex. It’s paradise.

          Lissa boards too. We used to go up boarding in my ratted out Subaru Wagon, ride all day, tease each other, flirt, make out on the chairlift. To a sixteen year old kid, this is the ninth level of nirvana. Girls can give you what no guy ever can, unless, I suppose, you’re gay. Can’t help you there, so I’m sticking with my viewpoint. Melissa introduced me to that feeling of having someone care about you, and caring about that someone in return. The mutual longing for each other, the wonder that you’re with such a great person, and the amazement that they must think of you in the same way. The feeling of soft but firm curves pressed tight up against you. Call me perverted, but every teenage guy is thinking the same damned thing. Not only that, I bet all the girls are thinking of being up against a hard bodied guy. But it was never just physical with Lissa. There was so much more.

         Sure, I have loyal friends, guys who’ll always have my back. Guys who won’t talk shit when I’m not around like most the phony two faced people in high school. But with a girl, the right girl, the whole level of intimacy is just a different ball park. I’m not talking about that one night stand shit people get into. Maybe that works for you, maybe not, but I know it never appealed to me. Melissa and I stayed together all through high school. If you think by intimacy I mean sex, I don’t. Lissa was a good girl. She was a virgin when I met her, and we took things really slow, because if you rush into things, sometimes you just screw everything up. Sex was just another way of expressing what we felt. If you want a bunch of detailed sex scenes, I can’t help you out, I’m sorry. Those times are between me and her.

         Now see, this is where the pure joy is a problem. Because I built up this great life where I had no job, no responsibilities, living at home, a drain on my parents, yes, but with a beautiful girl I got to see whenever I could and two great friends that were really like brothers to me to ride with or hang out with any time. And then I graduated. I’ve been out of that hick town for a year now. I’m at one state college, Melissa at another state college. In another state. I’m still in Oregon. Melissa, well, she’s in Hawaii. This is where the pure joy turns into pure sickness of the heart and mind, pure sleepless nights, pure wondering uncertainly what the hell comes next.

         My best friends Eric and Jason, they were my brothers, as close as family, are out of state too. Everyone I cared about or spent time with is gone, except my family, who I see on holidays. I really don’t fit with my roommates at all, but somehow we get along. Its funny what you can do out of necessity.

          Necessity is all I have left, though. Enjoyment has passed. And this after-high-school-wasteland, its only teenage wasteland, this college adjustment phase shit, this is the nuclear bomb that drops on the Baghdad of my dream world, the big ugly that falls shrieking from the sky and turns the resurrected new and improved metropolis into a sheet of blackened glass without a sign of life anywhere. And I’m trapped under that sheet of glass, pounding and pounding on it, but how the hell am I going to shatter a sheet of glass that covers a whole country? How the hell am I going to get out of this quiet, static, boring little bubble, devoid of all life or freedom? This is the after high school era that you don’t read about in those brochures for OSU with the smiling teens and twenty-somethings laughing at something hidden joke. The sick, ironic side of me thinks they’re probably laughing at the fact that none of the naïve little dreamland dwellers know shit about what’s coming next. No one knows about that submarine anchored just offshore of dreamland, with the hatch on top opening and a big fat warhead just beginning to poke out. This is the side of college life that they don’t really accurately describe, the whole being cut off from everyone you’ve come to be close to part, the go to school all week and work all weekend thing, the start over in a new world thing. They don’t tell you about this in the brochures.