Summer, 1993. I
had just graduated from high school and I find myself, at the time, in a miserable situation. I was 17 years old, still a minor in the eyes of
the state. My parents, in fear of leaving a minor behind for the summer, forced me to go to Croatia for the entire summer season. Now, I may
sound like a selfish bastard, but try and see what I was facing at the
time. I had just graduated high school and this was probably the last summer I would
spend as an innocent, not quite an adult, teenage boy who wanted
nothing more then to simply hang with his friends and party. Denying me
this right of freedom that summer, lead to me being a very selfish, self
absorbed, wreck of a kid that put his parents through much grief.
In
Croatia, there was really not much to do. Keep in mind that these were before the the "computer in every house hold" days. In NJ, I had everything a
teenager would need. In Croatia, nothing. No car, no tv or vcr, no
stereo and above all, no friends. So what did I do? What any rebellious
teen does when his parents just want him to not give them a hard time:
drink. A lot. Everyday.
Literally,
I would start my days around 5PM. I actually mean, start, as in wake
up, at around 5PM. Eat something, shower, go to the cafe across the
street and begin to drink. Get a ride to the nightclub and continue to
drink heavily. Continue on until about 2-3AM, throw up somewhere and
head home. The night didn't end there. I would go to my room and simply
lay wide awake, thrashing around my bed, feeling depressed and enraged
the whole time until about 9AM where I would pass out from physical and
mental exhaustion. I thought I was actually going crazy. One night, I
thought the bed was trying to swallow me. This happened everyday.
My
one salvation was that I had a walkman with a bunch of tapes. The tapes
got old quick, so my cousin who lived next door lent me Nirvana's
Nevermind. It had been out for a couple of years, but the time I got to
it was the exact time I needed to get to it. I listened to it every
night. Multiple times a night, in fact. I would love to tell you that it
made me feel better, but I think I fell into an even darker place
engulfed by even more depression and angst. This was the catalyst that
started me off as a musician.
I
returned home to NJ and everything looked and felt different. I can't
fully describe it, but it felt like prior to going away that summer, my
eyes had a layer of skin on them that was now peeled back and for the
first time I saw things, well, really just saw things. I know I am
probably romanticizing the experience and that it was probably just the
feeling of being away for about 3 months and returning to a place that
seemed a bit foreign due to not being there. Who knows. What I do know
was that, my hair grew about 5 inches that summer, I had full facial and
chest hair and I was about to begin my first semester of college. See you at Bergen Community!
