Joseph-Tanner-39 Venmo

So not kidding yo.

I have to make a million dollars by the end of ever

I have to speak in click languages to impress as polyglottal

I was told long ago never to start a letter with "I". This is not a letter.

My brain burns and my heart makes an audible squish as it takes on more funk and sweat. I want to cry in Times Square; I want the world to wonder what my problem is.

I'm lost and wandering with no clear purpose; such a state loses cachet after 35 years old at the outside. I'm sposta have my excrement in neat piles I'm told, though I'm puzzled as to why one should keep such in any form.

Monetize the many little comedies and tragedies that make up each day.

I lived in Booger Hollow, Arkansas until I was 18 but it was in Laguna Beach, California that I grew up.

We moved between Hot Springs, Arkansas and the surrounding area and Tulsa, Oklahoma and the surrounding area for the first 18 years of my life. It was we until I turned 13, at which time it became I. That was the way of my family; when you hit puberty, any opinions contrary to parental instruction is an indication that it's time to strike out on one's own.

We were in Hot Springs when my first curlicues sprouted, coinciding with a divergent opinion regarding the necessity  (father's opinion) or the lack thereof(mine own) of family dinner time. I was not against the idea of dining together as a family as much as I was busy and felt I could not be held to such a demand when work and/or social engagements demanded my attention/attendance. I was 17 at the time and had been on my own for four years at that point.

I was living with my mom and sibs until 13, at which time Mom and the BF decided to pack up and move to Tulsa, Oklahoma. We moved as often as every 3 months for as long as I could remember and I chose not to move again. I dropped out of school, got a job and took over payments on the two-bedroom trailer that we'd all been sharing until this point. I was 13, a man and ready to be responsible for myself and my choices. 

I worked at the Majestic(sic) Hotel, in the basement quarters where the staff changing rooms and lunch/lounge areas were. All the bellmen and porters had lockers in the basement and would spend any downtime relaxing in the lounges there. There were showers and couches ; some claimed a preference to the basement quarters over their homes as it was spacious and without the demands of wives/girlfriends/children, etc.  

The Majestic Hotel was a first-class affair, famous for its glass elevator, and for the need of an elevator at all. At 15 floors, the Majestic was the only hotel to exceed four stories at the time. Hot Springs, Arkansas was known as "The Vegas of the South", with beautiful world-renowned bathhouses where one could luxuriate in the therapeutic springs for which the town was named, as well as a number of beautifully appointed hotels, none more than 6 floors as they were spread out rather than up. 

So anyway, this was my first real job, keeping the staff facilities clean and in good working order. It covered my rent of $200 monthly and kept the larder adequately supplied. This was 1978 and $200 was no small amount but a 40 hours weekly at $2.25 per was enough and I thrived, until I didn't.

My first real job was as a ticket-taker at the Sunset Drive-In in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I was 10 years old, not old enough to watch the weekend movies but I could handle the rudimentary math required and it got me out of my mother's hair. I felt important; even if I didn't get to keep my salary, I was earning nonetheless.

I had worked long before this; a real job is one that actually generates cash money. I worked as far back as I can remember; taking care of my siblings first and foremost. I knew how to operate a gas stove before I had mastered speech. I kept us alive; our parents did provide foodstuffs but left the assembly to me. We ate more Kraft mac-and-cheese than should be legal.

I raised my sister, born 15 months after me, and my brother, five years after. I learned to cook and clean, somewhat. I was as clean as a child could be anyway. In the earliest days, the parents provided foodstuffs but soon even that fell away and I learned to collect soda bottles and cans for the redemption fees. I could be found most days on the side of the road and digging through trash cans to collect enough bottles to keep us in mac and cheese. I know there were other foods but mac and cheese was the most of our diet. I also learned to stretch one can of tuna into enough to feed a dozen or more, with all but the kitchen sink thrown in.

That's all I seem to remember now; that's all it seems I was then, a nine-year-old boy already well on his way to becoming a drudge of a housewife, sans house or husband or understanding that there could be anything beyond the present joylessness.

My parents must have done something, evidenced by the fact I live today, having lived through days I could not care for myself. Regardless, I have no recollection of their ever having cared for me. 

As I got older, Lisa and I learned where we could find large caches of coke bottles as well as how to roll the inebriated for dollars. We learned the importance of taking enough but not all. We learned to identify the sounds of sleep, to differentiate between those who might easily waken from those whom Morpheus held tightly in his grasp. From those who sleep as dead, we borrowed liberally and without shame as they were foolish to be caught in such a state. As to those who were dead, this only happened once and I took all he had. Chyron be damned, I left no pennies for his eyelids.

We lived in the kind of squalor that neglect affords. Mom and Dad were more ideas than people. I understand now that they put food in the cabinets but at the time I just knew where to look and gave little thought to how things came to be. I just knew to look in the cabinets first, then beg, borrow, or burgle if I found nothing there.

So we survived into adolescence on endless cereal, mac and cheese and hamburger helper. There's little more I remember as survival was everything.

I lived with my family until 13 years old. The onset of puberty is often accompanied by the development of one's own opinions; in my family, the combination is taken to mean that it was time to find one's own way. 

Mom and uncle whoever she was dating at the time decided to move from the trailer we were all sharing and this is when I struck out on my own. I left by not leaving; I stayed behind and continued to rent the two-bedroom trailer that we had been living in. As mentioned earlier, I quit school at this point so I could work and cover my bills. It was a different world then; I don't know how I got away with the circumstances. Such would definitely not be allowed today.

I lived for a couple years in this manner; I have no recollection of what brought that time of my life to a close but end it did. 

At 16 I found my way back to Tulsa. I was back on the streets for awhile but this got old and cold so I moved in with my Dad and step-mom. This arrangement was doomed from the beginning; my father had decided to be a parent at this point. 

He quickly found out that you can't control a child who's been on their own since their stache grew in. I had been leading my own life, controlling my own clock for years by this point and now he wanted me to acquiesce to his parental control.?. It was a failure on so many levels. 

I came home one afternoon to find all my belongings neatly packed and stacked in the foyer. My father stood on the balcony and said to me "Don't let the sun go down on you one more day in my house." It was 5:40pm and the last rays were dipping as he spoke.

The last rays snapped past the horizon as I grabbed the backpack and bedroll and crossed the threshold for the last time. Though I had no idea where I was going, I was glad to be on my own. I found pretense of family to be exhausting and stupid. I had no interest in these people, just as they had no interest in me.

I still had cousins nearby so I called them; making plans to meet later. It was just turning from autumn to winter. Each night a little colder than the night before, it wasn't long before my cheap sleeping bag was of little comfort through the night. I would fall asleep comfortably enough, only to waken in the night for a nocturnal piss and discover the bag stiff with re-frozen sweat and condensation. It was never easy to go back to sleep in such a state but exhaustion would eventually overtake me once more and thru the night.

My cousin Lynn, two years younger but with a fearless curiosity that I looked up to, had been kicked out of his mother's home at the same time as I was kicked to the curb. He moved in with a family friend, Nancy S, whose apartment was right by the open field where I camped at night. As soon as Nancy's car pulled out of parking, I would gather my damp belongings and head for her place. Lynn would greet me at the door, wrapped in a blanket. He would point to the couch before going back to his bed. We'd both sleep a while more and then getup, eat cereal and smoke pot all day. We had a great soundtrack, Pink Floyd, the Cars, Beatles and Led Zeppelin in particular spring to mind.

This lasted through til autumn but the first snowfall set me in motion. I lay in the field in a thin sleeping bag; the snow would melt as it landed on me, then re-freeze, turning the thin plastic crunchy with ice. I lay there and think about the beaches of California and decided to hit the road that very day.

I had discovered hitchhiking between the pages of a long-forgotten book and had practiced all summer as a way to get around Tulsa. Cheap Trick was appearing in Little Rock, Arkansas so that became my first interstate trip and it went great on the way there. It's an eight-hour drive from Tulsa, Oklahoma and Lynn and I made it there in little more than 12 hours, with three short rides and the last right to the Coliseum. We found a place to camp for the night and enjoyed the concert the next day. The show remains one of the best I've ever seen. but the trip back the next day was one of the worst experiences, to this day. Why we even chose to start out right after the show rather than find a campsite has been lost in the fog of my mind but I can't forget how cold it was no matter how hard I try.

We got a ride from the coliseum easy enough, with the driver dropping us at the nearest onramp,  from where we got another couple rides in quick succession; soon we were on the freeway itself because the onramp was too desolate at that time of night.

It was about 1am when a truck pulled over and offered to get us another 50 miles down the road. The driver was an affable fellow, and as he was turning from the main road, he offered us a place to crash for the night. We thought about it, then thanked him but decided to keep on as we had been making good time and hoped to get back before dawn. Why we were so  stupid, I don't remember but it was not about any concerns about the driver. We had been making such good time that the hour and the location did not register as the problems that they turned out to be. It was only a few more hours until dawn but they were the longest hours of my life.

We had made such good time that we didn't consider the hour or the temperature. At 3am, on a November night, the temperature dropped to a dangerous degree. I began kicking the curb while we waited, in an effort to stave off frostbite.

I suppose it worked as I still possess both feet and all ten toes.

Tulsa, Oklahoma to Hot Springs, Arkansas was an eight-hour drive and they had made it in less than 10 so they were sure that they would have the same luck when returning but this was not at all the case.