stuzzy

I wen to prom with Autumn Dubose. She was a beautiful redhead that wwent to my school. We went as friends. SHe was always nice and sweet to me. I used to let her read my stories that I wrote in high school. I knew they weren't that good but I always loved to write anyway you know? She would always say they were good. Maybe she was humoring me, regardless, she was a sweet person and very well liked by many. She was special. She used to always bum rides home from people after school so she didn't have to ride the bus and a couple of times I acted put out when she asked me. To this day I regret that. One of the very few things I do regret so far. The summer after prom she went to England to study some art program at Oxford because she was quite the talented artist. She died in a double decker bus accident and I remember going to her funeral and she had so many friends there. I had never seen so many punks in one place. She had touched so many people and they had all showed up to say goodbye. I alkways think about stopping by to see her on my way home from work some time but I never do. I don't know why. I need to. Friends are important.

I've had two best friends in my life. The first was Greg. Can't remember his last name. He was my best friend in elementary school and he lived in my neighborhood. We used to ride skateboards and bmx bikes together and get in all kinds of trouble. He tricked me once though into following him somewhere where someone was waiting to beat my ass. And boy did I get my ass beat. I deserved it. I remember running home crying. Not because I got my ass beat but because I had been betrayed. It stung like a needle through my heart. He followed me home runnign after me but I didn't stop and he stood outside my window and begged for forgiveness. I think I forgave him, but it was never really the same after that. He tried to trick me again later on in fifth grade. Tried to get me to say something bad about someone while they were hiding around the corner, probably waiting to kick my ass once I said something. I didn't fall for it, I remembered. I learned.

My second best friend was Kris Jennings. Man we were thick as thieves I tell you. We would spend hours talking on the phone about comic books and dungeons and dragons. We had a little crew at school and we always used to hang out but me and Kris, we were the core. He was at my house when the first space shuttle blew up. Not a weekend went by where I wasn't spending the night at his house or him at mine. We had some good times. Midway through the freshman year at high school his parents moved to California and took Kris with them. I was pretty bummed. We kept in touch for a bit but you know how it goes. At first the letters are fast and furious but then they die away. He made it back to Georgia eventually and stayed for a couple of years, but it wasn't the same between us anymore. He dated Autumn for a while. Boy he fell head over heels for her. He ended up moving back to California again after a while and when Autumn died he took it really hard even though they had broken up. Didn't want to have anything to with anything from Georgia anymore, including me. I guess it reminded him of Autumn and caused him too much pain. I wonder what he's up too now. Often I've thought about trying to find him just to see what he's up too. Maybe fly out there and surprise him with a visit and catch up on old times. I'm not dead yet so who knows maybe it'll happen one day.

It breaks my heart that some people grow up without having any friends. Nobody should be without friends. If I could I'd be everybody's friend who didn't have one, just so they could say they did. I'd be their friend too, not just say it ( or at least Id try). For me, my friends were an escape from an unhappy home life. You always belong with friends. They always accept you for who you are and don't expect you to be something different. Or maybe my friends were so important to me because I always wanted to belong somewhere and when you have friends, well, you do. Maybe for me it was a mixture of both.

I had other friends in high school. Eric and Dave most notably. I remember meeting Eric for the first time. He had long red hair and was a metalhead from Nashville, just moved here. I met him through Dave and we three became pretty good friends. We used to ride around in his white citation listening to punk rock. We called his car the punk rock taxi because he was always driving us to shows and shit because nobody else had a car. Eric got me stoned for the first time. We had a rough spot me and Eric, over a girl, and some words were had. We made it through it all right though. He's married now and has a kid. I don't see him so much any more. He's got his life going on and I've got mine. He's getting as new band together though so I imagine I'll see him soon I hope playing a show somewhere. Dave and me were pretty tight. We had some real good times together. He was sharp as a tack and his wit was equal to mine. We always used to crack jokes that nobody else would get but the other. So many parties I can remember where he or I would be drunk and crack a joke that nobody would get, and one of us would be not too far way and say "hey man...I got it, that was funny" and we'd look at eachother and laugh and then thank the other for the validation. Good times. To this day I still miss Dave. We all worked at the same place after high school as well, and got a lot of our friends jobs their as well. It was like high school continued sort of. Eventually we all took off though, getting new jobs and such. One day Dave decide he didn't want to hang out with us anymore. I guess we weren't "cool" enough for him or something and he just dropped us like a bad habit. That sorta stung but I guess people got to go their own way sometimes. I was pissed at him for a while but I let that go some time ago. I hope he's doing well. I think Dave could probably qualify as my third best friend, but I never really classified him as such. It seems that in high school you don't use that term so much anymore.

So now I don't have quite so many friends as I used to. I used to say that I liked it that way. Keeps my life simple and such. I have some good friends still in Ed and Scott and we hang sometimes. Ed doesn't really like to leave his house though and Scott doesn't either. When I hang with them it's usually at their house and it's not terribly exciting, which isn't a problem really. I'm a low key kinda guy. But I like to get out a bit more, I miss going to shows. I joined suicide girls because I wanted to blog somewhere anonymously. Somewhere nobody knew me and what I was about. I quickly made some aquaintances though and so I never really let go with my writing like I had originally wanted. I had to keep the shields up so to speak and not let people see inside of me. Now I've got friends here. Mostly here in Atlanta but a couple scattered about as well like tiberius in LA, Kay in Antarctica, Hatchetprincess in NC and I met some really cool people in Seattle when I was up there like FuManchu, Sinovia, monkey13, Godzuki ( more aquaintances than friends really i suppose). I've met a bunch of new friends in the Atlanta group. Even got a couple of good friends here in Atlanta out of it. I feel lucky to have met some really cool people here and I'm beginning to be ok with parts of myself that I've never been ok with before. I'm beginning to blog here like I originally intended and I can see now that it can be a sort of therapy to unload your thoughts and feelings for others to read. To just put yourself out there for all to see. It's daunting but you know, this is me, take it or leave it. You ain't got to read it if you don't want and I'm learning to be happy with myself just the way I am so to be honest, I could give a fuck.

"Phases and stages, circles and cycles and scenes that we've all seen before"