“Frankly, I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left me.” A young Hunter S. Thompson wrote in a letter to a friend.
Wish I had that attitude earlier in my own life. Tried poverty, which sucked. Big time. But having learned what actual poverty actually is, I know now I didn’t have it so bad.
Tried honest labor. That didn’t work out so great either. Couldn’t keep a job more than five years. Which, if you think about it, is approximately the time of a structured education. Learned a lot. Plenty. Learned what not to do, what not to say. What not to see. Whom not to trust.
“The problem,” one high-powered female executive, her hair was bright and short and she was wearing a stiff red suit, told me, “the problem is, you are NOT fooling anybody.” Which I didn’t even consciously know I was trying to do.
This was the same woman who advised me to “Do what most of the rest of us do. You get up in the morning, put on a costume, show up on time, play a role and go home when the show is over. You do the same thing the next day.”
That’s when I realized what the problem was: I couldn’t do that. I just could not do that. Despite my Methodist parents’ best efforts and the best efforts of a small village fifty miles north of New York City. There were two gay people in town – at least that we knew about – and they were siblings. Two of the best folks you’ll ever meet and she could simply use her wresting skills to kick his opera-loving ass.
And there was one black guy. Levi, the school janitor, like a saint with an aura of goodness, we dedicated our senior yearbook to him. My wife refers to my family photo when she says she married into the Cleavers.
“Please tell em I’m Wally.” She just rolled her eyes. When I was a kid, I admit I could’ve won a Beaver Look-Alike Contest. But I digress.
I discovered the concept of females and I got Stupid.
My Aunt will tell you to this day – and up until maybe the last ten years – my brain was the second organ I asked for advice.
Turns out I was better at crime than, what do the overseers call it, ‘an honest day’s work,’ fucking spare me, please. You can see right there I can get excited. Don’t be fooled, I am a hard man. That was a fun discovery. For me at least, not for some others.
I knew I wasn’t lazy. You don’t run seven-minute pace for one-hundred-and-seventeen miles at seven thousand feet altitude in seven days if you are lazy. No, you don’t.
Turns out I simply can’t abide being pushed around. So, I tried to tame myself. Mostly because nobody else seemed to be doing a great job. Tried hard. Tied hard. But can’t last long. Sooner or later, I’d snap. Or get snapped. Snap!! And every time I escaped The Caretaker’s chains, I became the Wild Dog. And got wilder.
And now I have completely forgotten my way back to the cage.