The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 63 Pt.2 - My Life Til Now (edit)

6/20/10

It was the true dawn of the internet. My first screenname was RDMASQUE, my teenage superhero/vigilante alter ego, with a slight nod to the Poe short story 'Masque of the Red Death', where upper society is killed by a plague at a fancy dinner.

I would hang out with my friends, then come home and log into the TOWN SQUARE - LONG ISLAND room on AOL 2.5 and then make fun of the losers that hung out in there. We'd play WAV files that we each had surprising one another with well timed gags.

And after losing my virginity I found the anonymous aspect of IM flirting to be a godsend. Finally, I didn't need to feel awkward in person and I could just say whatever I felt, be as snarky as I wanted, type bold statements that would be so unlike me in person. I was able to come into my own and redefine myself.

Eventually we met up with those losers online in real life, and we were the cool under 21 kids hanging out with late 20's social rejects. There was some common bond of outcast status that made it so that a group from all walks of life could congregate and create our own scene.

At this point in my life, my grandmother dead and buried, my ex long forgotten, and a guy obsessed with me now just a suicide statistic, I was numb to everything. A headbutt from a bullying friend to my sternum shut down my heart chakra and I didn't care or think about anyone else.

I slept with a few girls, some who broke up with their boyfriends for a week just to sleep with me, some who asked if we were going out as I entered her. I was relentless in my online flirting and it led me to have sex with the hottest girl I could imagine, who left crying immediately after. She drunk drove home to her boyfriend.

Then I began dating a 27 year old just before I turned 21. A weird mix of friends all gathered at the surprise party my parents threw for me. My friends all bought me Playstation and the Die Hard game. I drunkenly bought everything at a 7-11 at 2am. I had everything I could have wanted.

But she became obsessed, checked my emails after we broke up. Somehow she guilted me into dating her for another 6 months. I would sit and watch Tom & Jerry with this girl who had finished Grad school for Psychology, and imagined hitting her in the head with a brick. I didn't want to be there with her but couldn't get out of it.

I hung out with my friends as often as possible, finally discovering weed, smoked and watched Traces of Death while eating hot wing potato chips. We'd play multiplayer Goldeneye and Starfox on the Nintendo 64, killing each other virtually over and over again. One on one they were my best friends, in a group I was the butt of the jokes.

Somehow with my group of friends I entered their world of comic books and role-playing as the patsy, the jester, the one you could tear down just to watch me twist under sarcastic insults. Initially I embraced it, eager to fill a role after leaving the non-existent family dynamic I had. I went from unwanted oldest child left alone with a TV, to doofy victim of insecure teenage dorks.

College passed in the blink of an eye without so much of a memorable experience. I had gone to Nassau Community College instead of SUNY New Paltz in upstate New York. I would've found a hippy scene up there and become a different person but instead entered the 13th grade with my friends, staying at home in suburbia.

I wrote everything I could, screenplays, poetry, short stories, even filmed two short movies. I had technical ability but no real life experience to write about. With words I could convey emotions, put you in a scene, but what was it that I had to say? Nothing that wasn't derived from some comic book or action movie. So I gave it up after I graduated.

I had worked since I was 11, from a newspaper route, to helping deliver candy and sodas to train stations in Jamaica. Then I ran the kiddy rides at Adventureland when I was 16, was a cashier at Waldbaums when I graduated, and wound up at K-Mart in the electronics department in college. I bounced to a brief stint at Sears as a TV/laserdisk salesman, and finally wound up at Jiffy Lube, despite knowing nothing about cars (and my dad was/is a mechanic).

So this all led up to some point. I began avoiding the 27 year old, showing up hours late to work after nearly getting arrested at a hotel party off the LIE, and I was about ready to make a stand with my friends. The ringleader, Ed, had made out with other girls behind his current girlfriend's back, and she knew I was the weak link so she came to me to find out the truth.

And with that passive aggressive revealing of the truth, breaking the bros before hos code, I no longer had friends. Everyone sided with him over me, having too much fun with his smartass comments and magnetic personality. In one summer I had isolated myself utterly and completely.

I had just begun dating Rebecca. She was the girl I jumped to in order to escape the older chick. Rebecca also had gotten me a job doing customer service with her. In a few months I became the trainer, and was making more money than ever. It was an easy job and with my infinite patience I never was rude to these idiotic people that bought "rare" coins or VHS tapes about trains, super car lube, or breast enhancement cream.

It was a new life and with it a new direction. After drawing in MS Paint at the job, I thought I wanted to do artwork on the computer. After all, my dad was obsessed with computers, making music, short animations, DOOM levels, and so I figured my affinity for computer programs could make up for my lack of art skill.

So with a friend Dan, from the High School gang, also ostracized, we went to graphic design school. We learned Adobe desktop publishing, Flash animation, HTML and 3D animation. I really took to it but never excelled at it, much like everything else I did in my life. But I had new friends and went to see their bands perform around Long Island.

I had quit the customer service job and was selling whatever I had to eat and used credit cards to buy comic books. My girlfriend Rebecca was hiding out in my bedroom on a nightly basis as my parents fought about my irresponsibility.

My father saw me as wasting my potential, not being the sacrificial martyr he was, slaving away to support a family he seemingly didn't want. My mother defended me as I always took care of my accounts, paid my bills, and other than never doing anything around the house (set by my father's example) I was a good kid, if not a bit lazy.

It was the end of the 90's and Y2K was nearly upon us. For all the anticipation, it was a non-event, years of build-up and no payoff. Except it was apocalyptic for me. Everything was on the verge of breaking, and sure enough there was one final death blow to my life.

Rebecca and I went to her friend's house party. Her ex that endlessly cheated on her, making her a paranoid, jealous mess (with her sketchy dad's help), was at the party, flirting with girls despite having a girlfriend who wasn't there. She watched him as a joint was passed around.

I was nervous as she was not okay with smoking. I asked if it was cool, and she nodded, but when it came around to me she had left to go do shots. I barely took a hit, mostly to be social with these strangers, and then went to sober up a bit before driving back. When I found her and brought her to the car to head home, she was drunk.

I wanted to be honest so I told her that I had smoked a tiny bit. She unleashed an insane rage upon me, punching the glasses off my face, kicking me, as I tried to keep the car from sliding on the black ice of Sunrise Highway. I got her to my parent's house and locked her in my room. I crouched into a ball keeping the door shut as she wailed on me.

I had a moment, I knew if I could smack her hard enough, I could knock her unconscious and finally relax. I slapped her as hard as I could, then felt guilty on how justified I felt at lashing back at her. When I couldn't take it anymore I let her leave to go crash drunkenly. My mom and sister woke up and talked her down.

It was over. I wouldn't stay with her. That was a line that was crossed. I had been thoroughly emasculated. But she feigned some sickness and I took care of her. The ultimate fucking chump. She played me and I fell for it. By the end of the mysterious two week sickness spent in my bed, the drunken attack was a distant memory. I tried to blank it out.

But it was there. When my friend Dan went out to lunch with her one day, he went Basic Instinct crazy on her, telling her that me and him had hooked up and that I was his first. To this day I'll wonder exactly how this conversation went down, but that was it for my friends. I didn't even question her and cut him off instantly.

Then we moved out together. Her nesting instinct took over and I became some lazy asshole she lived with. By this time I had gotten an office job designing medical and financial forms, placing the Wong-Baker scale into hospital charts and typing 4pt legalese on the back of loan applications. I needed a creative output.

So on January 1, 2001 I decided to start writing comic books. In a month I had my first script about a fallen hero, now a junkie vigilante, an unwitting pawn of the devil. It was good enough for me to look for paid work and I got a gig scripting a few 28 page one-shots based on this guy's characters. I got paid $50 a script, but then the company folded.

It was enough of a tease that I decided to work on my own. I had an idea about a modern day Chow Yun Fat style master of kung fu who would avenge his father against superpowered illuminati members. At a networking panel at WizardWorld Philly I met an insanely talented kid named Chris (my father and grandfather's name), and later my personal guru/idol Grant Morrison at the DC Comics booth.

It was a sign. Chris and I began working on a new comic, a sci-fi/fantasy kung fu revenge story, and it was my only outlet. I had no friends to go out with, no family I wanted to keep in touch with, and a girlfriend that was more of a roommate. The comic came together and we began showing it around comic conventions, talking to any and every professional.

But I felt stupid. The quiet shy kid that let this genius artist get all the attention and glory. It was enough at first to have him believe in me and my writing. But after countless hours standing silently beside him, listening to endless praise of his work, I just felt empty. Not worth anything. No life. Basically invisible.

I had one friend at this time, the old rebel without a clue Dennis. We had reconnected and rode mountain bikes through trails. It was nice seeing someone from when I was a kid, even if he was the troublemaker who took my first girlfriend from me. Now he was engaged and growing up.

But once again, when it was just us we'd be close, tight, talking about anything and everything, in front of others, he'd berate and hit me. I couldn't take it anymore, my anxiety levels were peaking, I wanted to freak out, but somehow I was just holding on to my sanity.

Rebecca got two little pugs, having always been an animal person, and now well adjusted enough to be stable and be close with her family once again thanks to my patience and therapeutic advice, so she didn't need me anymore. And then my parents split up. My mom comes over to tell me, but instead breaks down into tears to Rebecca when I leave the room.

My father says he'll come by and talk to me about it but never does. He blames Rebecca for the breakup because of a supportive message she wrote to my mom (he checked my mom's email of course), not because of any of his flaws or faults. I don't talk to him for two years after that happily. He changes my AOL password on Father's Day months later.

I feel unfazed by the whole thing, half wanting/expecting it since I was old enough to know that parents could split up. They were together since they were teenagers and were not much older than I am right now as I write this. They needed a life. Instead they repeated patterns.

My mom found an asshole boyfriend who was about the same age and disposition as my dad. My dad found an older woman who was simple and sweet, not unlike his own father did when his parents split up, at just about the same age. Repeating cycles.

My grandmother's death was the real end of the family, but here it was, the final death rattle. There was no family anymore. No friends around either. Just a girlfriend who wanted nothing to do with me and her sister, who both ignored or talked right over me. I was often told to shut up or be quiet.

So I broke down. That was it. If my parents splitting up wasn't enough of a reason to be listened to, nothing would. I laid on the floor rocking back forth mumbling "I can't...I can't...", over and over for hours. I was totally lost. What was the point of anything? Movies and comics were empty distractions from life, my office job was all I had, what was the point of anything if you couldn't share it with anyone?

I became depressed, smoked weed excessively, watched as many fucked up movies as I could, hoping that I would feel something. But I didn't. The social anxiety amped up so that I couldn't even go to a store in the mall, which was my one distraction outside of work and home.

Rebecca began seeing a therapist, and eventually I went along for couples therapy. I found myself thinking of how mentally superior I was to the therapist, but she did validate all my frustration which I found to be liberating. I went to my own therapist but gave up on her when she couldn't remember my name or what I talked about week to week.

Traumatized by the PETA videos Rebecca had shown me forced me to become vegetarian, preying upon my squeamishness at eating dead animals. I would eat frozen veggie burgers and chicken noodle soup with the chicken plucked out. I watched artsy and disturbing movies on my lunch break. I had a routine and began going to the gym.

I was feeling better day by day but I was still afraid of life. I'd constantly push myself, going out to bars to see local bands, went for a day trip up to New Paltz to see the college I could've gone to. The comic was coming along but I really needed to write for myself again. I needed to purge my soul with words.

I thought back to the screenplay I never finished in college. Two secret agents sent to a remote Hindu temple to complete the Tower of Brahma, thus ending all of existence. It was a cliched action movie, with tidbits of existentialism. Shootouts, car chases, and badass black suits.

So I started writing. Somehow a guy past his prime, late in his 20's, changed everything about himself through those words. I went to San Diego to promote my graphic novel, and when I got back, I found myself going out to Long Island City to see the Scissor Sisters at PS1. A week later I was in the East Village seeing a friend of a friend's band. And then I met a girl.

Diana drew me in somehow, made me feel bolder than I ever felt, and she wanted to listen, to get to know me. So I told her everything, and a month later I was living with her down on the LES outside the Williamsburg Bridge. I ended things with Rebecca, quit my office job, and threw everything into storage. I lived out of my car with a few bags at her place.

I got a job as a paparazzi photo editor working the late shift, coming home to Delancey at 4am. With Diana I hit dive bars, gallery openings, fashion events, and saw almost all of Manhattan. From the Financial District to Upper West Side, Governor's Island to the Highline (before it was renovated). She loved playing tour guide and I got the crash course in the city that I needed.

But she was cold, and something must have reminded me about my past ex-girlfriend's with her, so I cried and acted out and purged my soul all over her. We both quit the photo agency and went to Columbia where we got taken around by her family. After that we went to LA where we got tattoos. But when we got back it all fell apart.

On July 4th she left for Vegas for a girls weekend and I went to an open bar Gen Art event with Jared, the guy's band I saw that night I first met her. We got ridiculous drunk and by this time I had experience being blackout drunk, having gone into a walking coma at the MoMA, vomiting on the F train, collapsing on Eldridge.

So when we blacked out that night it wasn't that much of a surprise but the British female voice that was on my voicemail the next morning was a shock. It seems I somehow picked up a girl while totally unconscious. Or I guess she picked me up. I meet her a few weeks later (she went back to Australia for a few weeks, and yes, Australian with a British accent), and I had no idea what she looked like.

I pass her on the street without knowing, observing her hotness. We eventually recognize each other and hit up a sake bar, where I proceed to tell her everything you've just read, give or take a few tidbits. We hang out a few more times but when it gets a bit serious she ends things, just before my birthday.

I'd been living with my ex in her friend's apartment on 15th and 5th Ave, but after a trip up to the top of the Empire State Building, I leave for Boston. I hit up a comic book convention with my fellow creators, newly formed as a studio collective dubbed TenTon Studios, and we get drunk, ridiculous, and it'd be one of the best times any of us had.

I tell them I don't know where I'm going to live, I was getting unemployment for a few months, no idea at all what job I'd be able to get. Jay and Jong invite me to come back to their place to crash in North Alrington, New Jersey. In three days I'm eating meat and smoking cigarettes again, and suddenly hooked on Starbucks Americanos.

After a few months of living in the Garden State and hooking up with some Jersery girls, I move back to New York City with my last paycheck from Cingular customer service training. I had gotten a job at the last possible moment at an Alphagraphics and spent what money I had coming into the city on the weekends so I could drink with Jared, sleeping on his floor for two days at a stretch.

Eventually I just blew my last check on rent to move in with him and to save money I brought all my crap from storage on Long Island and lugged it up four flights. I was basically just living in a storage unit with 30 long boxes of comics and a mattress on top as my bed. All my other junk was still tucked away in boxes, but I made it my own.

It was a one bedroom, where he had the living room as his room, and my bedroom held the bathroom. The shower was in the closet and we were living on top of each other, or would be if I didn't work nights and he worked days. It somehow worked out for a few years and we had gotten close enough where it was fairly comfortable.

We would go out every free night, run the gamut of East Village and Lower East Side bars, hit the girls with our routine where we pronounce that despite our closeness we were not gay, not even a little...but yeah, we were gay. And it made them all laugh every time. And maybe there was some weird physical side to us, not an attraction, but an understanding of our dynamic.

He was the sadistic one, so dreadfully insecure that he'd have to constantly bring me down (and everyone else for that matter) to be "funny", and I would once again play the part of slapstick sidekick, taking the abuse in order to feel like I was playing my role, a comfort in the schtick. But, like before, I grew resentful, realizing that he only did care about himself, and was only capable of caring for himself.

We switched off for months at a time in relationships so we started to not see each other. But all my friends, my social life, everything was his. I barely had a small handful of friends and so found myself in relationship after relationship. Once I was the one who felt the pain of disinterest, and became an obsessive lunatic, but mostly I got involved with girls then plotted my escape route.

And I'd do this by being my best self, a facade of awesome that would be whatever they wanted. And when I began to see their flaws, things I couldn't live with, exaggerated pains I felt, a disrespect I wouldn't accept. Each time I said too much, made things as messy as possible, and this even ended with my having to call 911 to have an ambulance stop my young ex, just a sophomore at NYU, from slicing her wrists open.

Right before that I ventured to Amsterdam and Paris with my friend Ben from New School. I had taken a few semesters a year before and met him in my first writing class. He was much like the lost (and cooler/more badass) younger brother I never had. Of course I fucked up my financial aid and never got to go back to college after the trip.

With two new credit cards we headed out to Europe and smoked as much as we could stand, exhausting ourselves as we wandered around the canals, dodging bikes. We smuggled some on the train to Paris and smoked out the window of our hotel in the middle of La Siene overlooking the Palais du Justice.

We found Paris to be dead, but to its credit, so were we. Beaten from the travel, the smoking, the drinking, the 'shrooms, the cold Amsterdam air pouring into our room as we chained smoked and zoned out to MTV Europe. I fell in love with Amsterdam, and on the last night I was so high that I uncovered a power to project a fictional reality around me.

Or was it there the whole time?

I came back and within two months I was engaged to who I thought was my female counterpart. She was an ex-model with a sarcastic sense of humor, tall and thin, goofy in her choice of style. Unique gets tossed around a lot, but I dare anyone to find me someone more so. Of course, she was also bi-polar and a borderline alcoholic who was addicted to karaoke.

I moved in with her after four months. Things ended badly with Jared and his latest girlfriend who I absolutely loathed. Oh, and I had also gotten laid off (aka quit because of a significant pay cut) and couldn't find another job. I was broke and she was helping me as best she could. By the time we lived together, the honeymoon was long over.

All my insecurities bubbled to the surface. I couldn't do karaoke. I couldn't take everyone wanting her. Girls would never want me like guys want her. That imbalance consumed me. My self-worth plummeted as she went off dressed to the nines to be hit on by men with jobs, power, confidence. I was just an unemployed, neurotic asshole.

Our clashes were epic. We'd scream, I'd storm out, walk the streets, sometimes blackout drunk and bleeding from smashing something. I often contemplated and nearly committed suicide. I began therapy and it helped, but I never felt such despair in my life. I had no way out, my debt was growing, and she couldn't fulfill me.

My addictions were exposed. I needed to smoke to alleviate boredom. I wanted to fuck to lose myself, to dominate her, to control her. I needed it more than air or food. And I never got it. I obsessed about it. I became delirious, paranoid beyond even my imaginings. I had to face myself and all that I wasn't, all that I expected myself to be.

I kept writing though. Working on comics. Started a podcast. Truly it was my most productive year in that regard. I suddenly had an internet radio show with an audience, a new comic in the works, and I was nearing the end of a novel I had begun six years before, when I was a totally different person. Some finish line was coming.

I got a job at the Daily News, a major metropolitan newspaper. I was excited. This wasn't just paparazzi bullshit (though that was still present), it was news, world events. I was working a five day work week, night shift, and lost all contact with humanity. I didn't go out, the money I made wasn't enough, the relationship was really failing despite desperate attempts to salvage it.

The holidays came, and she went to her parents. I went to work. I can't imagine a worse time in my life. After the New Year, 2010, I was working on pictures of the devastation of the Haiti earthquake, color correcting a photo of a man crying, screaming in anguish, as he holds his daughter's dead body, and I wished I was him. I wanted true pain. I wanted to have my entire life crumble around me.

I held a knife against my wrist for hours before I checked myself into the ER. My therapist had recommended it multiple times and it had finally gotten that bad. They recommended I sign myself in, and I did. I surrendered myself to their care. They told me when to wake up, when to sleep, fed me, and medicated me.

I saw the hope in the eyes of the much further gone cases around me. They held on to dreams that they would most likely fuck up once they got out. They had lives they wanted to return to that their disorders would destroy. Or they were too withdrawn and a mess to do much of anything but ride out the rest of their days.

After a week they released me. I was free. Lauren and I were suddenly back together and doing well after she came and visited me all week on the inside. But that wouldn't last. We had to move, barely staving off court because we couldn't afford the rent at her place. We fought as we sought out places in Brooklyn. On the last day possible we found a two bedroom in Clinton Hill.

After we moved in, we split apart. We lived separate lives, had smaller and smaller breakdowns and screaming matches. Finally, we just ended it. It was over, but neither of us could go anywhere. We couldn't afford it. I secretly (secret even to me) held onto hope that this was like all the other times, and we'd go back to how things were. Then she slept with Lady Gaga's DJ.

I went through the stages of grief, said horrible things to her, hurt her as best as I could, not that she would ever show it. So instead I just died inside until I needed to go on, there was nothing else to do. I pushed her out of my head a bit more each day. I embraced what was around me that made me feel good, happy. It was such a foreign feeling at this point.

I've just moved out, tossed all I own into storage, found a sublet in Harlem, and said my goodbyes to her. My father just went to rehab for alcohol in Florida, down by his family. My sister is about to get married. My friend Boston has survived being a cop and is now a park ranger in Massachusetts. We have a ton of projects we want to work on together. I have one more chapter to write in this book.

A whole new life, not even a new chapter, but an entirely new book lies ahead of me. This is everything that is now behind me. I finally release it all. It's made me this person so I could do what I'm about to do.