Youth is credit

When I was fifteen years old I was so afraid of dying a virgin. I was afraid a meteor would hit the earth or space aliens invade and I die without ever getting my dick sucked. Two years later, his name was Vincent and the first time wasn’t so special. It was actually quite gay. I met him at a bar. He bought me a rum and coke. We did it in my 87 Laser outside my sister’s apartment. He never called again. I promised myself to never make that mistake again. Not to kiss before I meant it. Not to take off my clothes before I was certain.

Nobody in my family had good credit. We were poor. The lights got cut off every other month. When I turned eighteen years old and went off to college I had twisted ideas on credit. I got as many credit cards as they would give me. I had no plans on paying them. I figure it was free money. I figured I just declare bankruptcy and wait for the seven years for the shame to fall off my credit. I also had a misconception about my life after college. I thought I’d be a millionaire by age 22. That didn’t happen.

After I graduated college with three degrees I made less than ten dollars an hour as a receptionist for a law firm and I had bad credit. I also had way too many student loans. I was screwed. I didn’t know how much credit affect life. I didn’t know how much and how long I was going to have pay it back. I guess that’s why becoming a rentboy was so attractive. I moved in with Charles to save money on bills and rent. I told myself I wouldn’t get stuck but we all know how that story ended, me getting put out by the cops once he replaced me with somebody better looking, sober, and probably with better credit.

So what is youth? I know childhood is that period between infancy and childhood ( age 2-17). There legal adulthood, eighteen years old when one can vote, get a credit and buy property. But I think youth is that period between where the front brain is still developing that’s responsible for the consequences of decisions. It’s that reason why it believes young people are so stupid, spontaneous, irrational, and dramatic. I call youth the drama years. It’s where you’re fearless but also suicidal. When I was twenty years old I couldn’t see farther than Friday night at the club. It was like a long black tunnel with no light.

My ex Charles was obsessed with youth. He was a borderline pedophile. He was a grown man in forties that actually had teen magazines on his coffee table. His excuse was that he didn’t have an adolescent. He constantly complained that he was mother was overbearing and sick and in his twenties he had to stay home and rub her feet. It was very Psycho. So twenty years later he wanted to relive his adolescents. It was the horror of watching a forty something year old man skip down the hall like he was a five year old girl. He liked sucking his thumb. He would buy toys. We were once going to a straight black hip hop club and he put on some baggy pants and turned a baseball cap to the back. I almost had a heart attack. I screamed at him that he looked ridiculous. It was fucking embarrassing. It was just sad. It was like a person who kept flunking the same grade and suddenly they were a thirty year old man in the second grade. It doesn’t look right unless you’re retarded. It don’t look right for a grown man just showing up at a playground wanting to swing on the monkey bars. Somebody is going to call the cops.

The thing I hated about Charles the most wasn’t his psychological issues but fantasy of what youth was. We all only get one chance. And we all pay it back. For me youth was just credit. It wasn’t real. I was eventually going to have to pay it back like my student loans. Youth could either fuck up somebody’s life or make their life better. We spend most of our live preparing for adulthood. They send us to elementary, secondary and high school. We have to learn math, science, language and other crap. Then some of us go to college so that we can make a better income. We hope somehow youth doesn’t fuck it up. I’ve seen kids in college fuck up. It’s like once you become thirteen years old, everyone starts mistrusting you. It’s the fear of pregnancy, drugs, teenage violence. I’ve had friends get pregnant. I had a friend get really drunk and run his car accidentally into a cop’s car. I’ve had friends rob gas stations. I had friends die. Charles considered youth just a good time. He fantasized about the smooth skin and sexual libidos. He fantasized about dancing on table tops and staying out all night. He hated that he stayed home. He hated that he never took advantage of his stupidity. I would tell him he lived his life that he was young once and that was just his youth and he had to pay it back. He was going to spend the rest of his life chasing some fantasy that he thought he was supposed to have had when he was in his twenties.

My youth different. If youth was credit, I fucked up real bad. I was going to be in bankruptcy a long time. I woke up at twenty seven years old a mess. I spent my youth dancing on table tops and staying out all night. I spent my youth going to the clubs and bars six times a week. I was living a fantasy so reality hit me hard. I spent my youth going from one man to the next. I spent my youth in bathhouses, bookstores, cruising spots, on the internet, the sex phone lines and the parking lots after the club. I was going to have to pay it all back. I spent my youth starving myself, constantly trying to fit in, spending money on designer clothes I couldn’t afford, ruining my credit so I could look like so television 90210 when I knew I didn’t have a steady job. I spent my youth fighting in clubs, hustling, writing bad checks, stealing money, and I was going to have to pay it all back.

If you’re a fantasy, just the party, everybody’s good time, how do you pay it back? It’s jail. Its overdoses. It’s rehab. You wake up and find yourself like I did in the darkest and deepest part of the ocean, drowning. Life is a balance. Nothing can ever feel too good without some sort of crash. The sun rises and it sets, it’s a balance. WE have four seasons to balance the earth. There’s a heaven and hell.

That’s what scared me on the greyhound bus heading to D.C. I was going to have to pay back everything I did for whatever reason I did it. That’s the fucked up part about being an adult. Even I was initially reacting to a bad childhood it didn’t take away the fact I was a grown man. It didn’t take away the fact I was accountable for my actions. Nobody cares about the reason why anymore when you’re adult. There are not men shelters if you can’t get your life right. You become homeless. We only get a certain amount of time that people give us credit, the benefit of doubt, what some call potential. It’s when they are willing to help a young man try and find his way.

But some of us abuse it. The young always think they are going to be young forever. I know I abused my youth. I figured I was owed. I didn’t want to work. I didn’t know how to be a man. I was greedy. I was vain. I thought all the compliments made me special. I couldn’t’ see farther than Friday night at the club.

But I had no regrets. I did what I knew how to do. I was going to have to learn better. I was twenty seven years old. I had bad credit: emotionally and financially. I didn’t even trust myself. I was looking for a third chance. I was looking for someone wiling to believe in me despite the facts.

When you have bad credit, can’t get a checking account, life gets more expensive. It cost more to be poor. I would have to start cashing my checks at Ace Cashing were they charged an arm and leg. I would have to get those very high interest credit cards where they charge over two hundred dollars in fees for a three hundred dollar limit. Because I fucked up my youth, like credit, I suddenly became a second class citizen. I was poor.

And then I was lucky that another ex was giving me a third chance. The last time I saw him he flipped me off. But he knew I was desperate. He would let me live with him but I had to sleep on the floor. I had to get a job. I couldn’t drink or do any drug in his house. It was like checking into prison.

I questioned if I could do it. My youth left me with an alcohol and drug problem. But I knew there was no other alternative. It was like the old man who stayed too long at the club. My life was about to get really pathetic and sad. The party was over. Youth was over.

Growing up nobody in family had good credit. I see where that got them. My father the drug dealer got killed when I was five years old. My mother got addicted to crack and wondered her entire life. I had aunts who kept getting into bad relationships and having more kids and never learning the lesson. My successful uncles were the drug dealers and hustlers, but they always ended up in prison for ten or fifteen years, getting out and everything they acquired usually dissipated. It seemed nobody in my family was capable of paying back their youth. They just kept repeating the mistake. When I ran away from home when I was fifteen years old, I used to pride myself on the fact I graduated high school. I used to feel good about the fact I was the only person in my family to go to college and graduate. I used to feel proud that I was the only male on both sides of my family and that’s out of 46 men that didn’t go to prison. I had a 99 percent chance of going to prison.

I wonder what had happened to the pride. I suddenly wanted to be the only person in my family that paid back it’s youth. I needed to pay back all the credit cards. I needed to pay back my student loans. I needed to pay back the dancing on the table tops and staying out all night. I needed to pay back the binge drinking and drug habits. I needed to pay back the reputation I created with friends and family. I couldn’t die a tragic fag. I wasn’t going to end up dead in some alley.

Yet I understood childhood and how I was prepared to be an adult. My youth was just that on crack. I always felt my childhood was about the separation of my body with molestation, the abandonment, the abuse, the neglect, the loneliness but I was going to have to turn that frown upside down. What I learned from molestation was how to respect my body and not let others disrespect my body. What I learned from abandonment that no matter what we are capable of surviving. What I learned from abuse is that I can take a good punch to the face and not bruise. What I learned from the neglect is that if you don’t speak up for yourself no one else will. What I learned from the loneliness was that God was lonely once and look what he’s done.

I realize when Charles was yelling at me in that car that night, he was bill collector. I could not just answer the phone. I tried to ignore him. But bill collectors don’t give up. There is a decision one has to make when youth is over and it’s time to pay it back. The decision is will I repeat what I learned as a child. WE all get a grace period between 18 years old and twenty five years old and then the world gets really cruel and cold. We all pay our youth back one way or another.

Some of the crazy things I did in my youth: I once was so high and drunk I got on a crowded bus at 8 in the morning with my dick out. Well I wasn’t wearing any underwear and the zipper came undone and out came my dick.

I once ran my car into this guy car after a fight, then got really pissed, stumbled my drunk ass to a pay phone and decided to call the cops. The operator was like “Are you drunk.” And I was like “I’d been drinking.” And she was like, you sure you want the cops. I was like, maybe she’s right.
I left a club one night and met up with this stranger. I smoked a joint with him and six hours later I woke up in a cemetery. I still don’t how I got there. Don’t take drugs from strangers.

I once jumped out a moving car because the person wouldn’t change the radio station.

When I was twenty two years old I had a threesome with a geriatric couple. It was dollar margaritas that night, I had way too many and ended up going home with a women who at least had to be in her fifties and a man that was in his sixties. My friends tried to talk me out of it. I never heard the end up that semester.

I once woke up on the bathroom floor at a club. It was my twenty fifth birthday and I drank an entire 1.75 bottle of Vodka and decided to go out. I was only in the club for like five minutes before I passed out.

I used to drag race.

I tried to rape this guy. It was early morning one night after a club; I met him on the way home. He was some Mexican guy that barely spoke English. He wanted to suck my dick but I refused to take him home. I told him we could go behind a building. He didn’t want to, so I dragged him. I pull my dick out and I forced him to the ground. I kept slapping it in his face. He started to cry. My dick had never been so hard. I let him go. He ran.

The most stupid thing I did was how I got my DWI. All I had to do was sign the damn ticket. But I had to get out the car. I had to argue with the officer. I had to point my finger in his face. I just had to get myself arrested again.

The most stupid thing I ever did, I went to a bar to purposely pick a fight. I was pissed at my boyfriend. He wouldn’t fight me, so I had to go find something that would. I walked into the bar and just started knocking people drinks out their hands. I got a fight. I also got three crack ribs and two teeth knocked out my mouth.

I once got robbed at because I was so high I couldn’t move. I could see the guy going through my pockets, turning me over, but I was so messed up I couldn’t move.

Now it was time for me to be a man.