the "me" part
Wellsir, this here's the part where we get down to the whole bio thing.
I was born and raised in North Carolina, in Johnston County, mostly, which is located about a half an hour from Raleigh, the capital, and basically, anything ales of any real importance in the state. I lived for about three years in Frankfort, Kentucky, from the ages of eightish to about elevenish-twelvish, and then moved back. This really probably doesn't mean much, save that when people start running off at their mouths, my initial impression is to pop them in the face. I don't, of course, being the softie that I am, but, the thought is still there. I have a taste for beer, cheap beers, mind you, that runs back as far as my little redneck mind can stretch. Somewhere in the primordial sludge in the deepest sewer of my mind is a great love for George Jones, Charlie Daniels Band, and ol' Bocephus. I love that Southern drawl, even though I spent the majority of my life feeling somehow apart from my country kin.
My dad was a sailor (back when that meant what it meant--one of my half-sisters went on Oprah once, looking for her father, and one of my uncles on that side happened to be watching that day, when she told the world one of his aliases, and showed the picture of him. He called, and they got in touch, but I don't know the full details, as I was a persona non grata in that household at the time) who played guitar and
sang. Stories tell that he was once ripped off by someone of minor import in the gospel country genre for one of his songs. My favorite uncle on my mom's side tells me to believe that he was a good man, a great guy. I do. He left before I can remember, although when I was sixish, I went to live with him for about a half a year. I remember him taking me to see child shrinks, and I was put on meds for hyperactivity (back before it was trendy for everyone to be on Ritalin). I remember him spanking me a lot, but I think it may have had something to do with me being quite the handful. It was justified, I suppose, seeing as how my first sexual encounter was at the hands of one of my stepsisters (or is it half-sisters?). She was in her teens. When I feel down, I like to visit his grave, and when I'm there, I like to sometimes think of how I would confront the woman that killed him. I swore to kill her, when I was a kid, for denying me the chance to ask him why he left me, but now that I'm a little older, and know a little more, I probably wouldn't so much as say anything to her. She served her time.
My mom was just my mom, if I am to leave out the details that might shame the living. To tie into the story with my dad leaving, I will say that she's a little hard to live with. Then again, he wasn't much of a picnic at times, just from what I saw in six months. She threw me out when I was seventeen. She had to raise me all by herself, in the seventies, in a part of the country where that was probably really hard to get done. I remember several daddies for the day, and she got married two more times, trying to get me a dad. It didn't work, and the last one was a wife-beater. If we had had guns in the house like with the husband previous, that particular fellow would have woken up in hell one morning. I was too afraid I'd be too weak to get a stabbing done properly, and then my mom would have been torn from sleep to watch her boy get killed.
She's always liked music, but never really had much talent for it. I think that my grandfather's criticism might have had something to do with . I personally think that the two defining sounds of my life have come from her throat: Her soft singing is the voice of all gentle womanhood, and the sound I hear in my head when I think of rage came from her as well. She steeped me in the oldies all the way up to eighties music, where we parted ways when I appropriated the records she and wife-beater were holding as collateral from some dude that owed them money. From then on, it was KISS, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Alice Cooper. Cheech and Chong got a lot of airtime with me, as well as the Queen single, "Somebody To Love"--I used to crank that on early Sunday mornings so I wouldn't hear mom and Gerry mattress-wrestling.
My grandparents on my mom's side played bluegrass gospel country stuff, and they put me on Ma's guitar, hoping that I would learn to play so that I could join in. Poor them. My Ma's fingers are too arthritic these days for her to play, and Pa died going on a year ago. He was an Air Force drill instructor, and he was generous with doling out issues to my mom and uncles. It's hard fearing and hating and loving people at the same time. I hate hearing him come out of my mouth when I talk to my kids. I miss him, listening to him play the mandolin and sing.
I've been drawing since memory, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that it was one of the few things that would get me to sit still for more than a few seconds as a child. My mom has always encouraged me to "do art" for a living, and has always praised my good work. I always used to make up stories about the stuff I was drawing, and I think that that's where the stories and writing come in. I have always had a love of hearing stories, and I don't care whether they're true or not, just as long as they capture my imagination. I've been reading since I was very small, and i was introduced to Tolkein by my mom. She used to read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to me as I grew.
And, finally, if anything here seems sarcastic, smart-assed, or in the least bit comedic, it's a defense mechanism I developed at some point in my life. The crazy guy seldom gets fucked with. Watch the local high school losers kick each other in the teeth with their work boots, and don't even stop to wonder why that doesn't happen to you. Then again, the losers never got videotaped eating milk bones in science class (they're good, dammit! but the big ones are hell on the gums), or wore a smiley-face button shot full of holes by a .22 (I decided to stop wearing it after the second time someone got cut by the jagged slivers of metal on the back--and it kept falling apart). But, they got laid more often than I did (even if it was by girls of poor reputation).