Mushrooms, Comets, Baby Bonnets

sokasea:

Heroin-The Velvet Underground

I first heard this song as played on an acoustic guitar by a townie from where I went to boarding school.  I was walking through the woods looking for a safe place to smoke a cigarette, when I heard music.  I walked towards him, but when he saw me, I got shy.  He stopped playing, asked me to sit, and offered me some Jack Daniels.  I told him to keep singing.  I saw him a few times after that, but we never really talked.  I think that’s the first time I realized how sexy scruffy guys with guitars can be.  His name was Jack.  And when I found out the band that sang the song (I was fourteen, and had no idea who the Velvet Underground were), I immediately bought the album.

“Townie,” the word reminds me of The Hold Steady song, “One for the Cutters,” which I think is about college, but we had townies in high school, too.  The worked in our dining halls, and some lived in trailers below the school and worked for maintenance.  The sold us drugs at ridiculous prices (we didn’t know any better).  And sometimes, I’d go to their parties.

Anyway, this townie person was the nephew of a man who saved me multiple times.  He was my humanities teacher, and he was dating the mom of a day student three years my senior, who introduced me to vodka one night.  I was only fourteen, and vodka tastes like water if you drink enough of it.  I had drunk beer and wine before, but never straight alcohol.  After a couple of drinking games, I got very, very ill.  I was the only boarding student at the party, and I had to be back for curfew.  My friend didn’t know what to do, so she called her mom, who was at my teacher’s house.  Her mom and my teacher both came home right away and took me back to campus.  They gave instructions to my roommate on how to take care of me, and my teacher checked up on me throughout the next day to make sure I was okay.  I swore I would never, ever drink vodka again, which lasted for at least a year.  I was pretty miserable.

A few weekends later, I got expelled for something I had done my second weekend at school (I didn’t get caught until months later).  He agreed to speak for me at my appeal meeting.  He told the committee that I was brilliant and that he would be shocked if I didn’t become a published author one day (even though I was a theatre major).  He said I was among the brightest students he had ever encountered, and that all of my behavior could be explained by my upbringing, since I had attended Christian and Catholic schools all my life.  I know he didn’t mean everything he said and that he just wanted me to have a second chance, but he was the first adult in my life to see me as an individual, and it meant everything.  I was readmitted.

A couple of months later, I showed up to his class on mushrooms.  I was working with him on my thesis for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but the words wouldn’t stay put on the page.  He sent me home and covered for me so I wouldn’t have to visit the school nurse.

Then, he told me that experimenting with drugs is a normal part of growing up, but that I was special and he didn’t want to see me get in any trouble.  And he gave me his home phone number, and asked me to call him if I ever needed anything.

He really believed in me, which gave me faith in myself.  And it made my crush on his nephew burn even brighter.

(I’m supposed to be writing an essay on the person who had the biggest impact on my high school education, and while “hey look, I did a lot of drugs in high school, but still got into an ivy league school thanks to my very supportive teachers” is not an appropriate essay topic, I’m enjoying reminiscing.)

(I’m also not advocating for teenage drug use.  I was lucky.  Some of my friends really weren’t.  We were in a very protected environment, but after graduation some people had real problems.  One of my friends killed herself a few years ago.  She was one of the girls I got expelled with my freshman year, and we were close.  My friend Catherine had a mental breakdown less than a year out of high school and was hospitalized for what seemed like forever.  Another friend got HepB from sharing needles.  I confronted her about it after the whites of her eyes turned yellow and her skin began to look like egg yolk.  She stormed off and we haven’t spoken since, although I recently heard that she’s sober and studying to be a nurse in Ohio, so I guess it all worked out.  They were all writing majors, is that significant?)

Why am I thinking about this stuff?  Okay, if I’m not going to write my essays, I should go to sleep.  G’night tumblrs.

Wow, this is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen on tumblr in a while. I enjoyed reading this and would love to read more. :)