I feel like 8th grade is really where I started waking up mentally and began exploring my own identity. Yes, it was a chaotic identity, but it was mine.
I began to listen to bands like Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Moby, A Perfect Circle, Limp Bizkit, Backstreet Boys and more random bands around that time. I watched people on TV like Tom Green, Andy Dick, Pauly Shore, David Spade, Chris Farley and other comedians that just, rocked in their time. Watching wrestling wasn't as big of a priority in my life anymore, but I still had a love for it. And of course, I would still replay those iconic video games, Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. But now? I had additional games to play, Like Final Fantasy VIII and Metal Gear Solid 2. *Crowd roars with excitement*
I remember being into a number of different dating prospects around that time. One was a twin, who had the same piercing stare that the girl four years my senior had before. The difference was, she just stared at me, no smile. I would look back at her, and she wouldn't look away. Just a very serious, very symmetrical face, looking intensely at me, as I looked back.
Sometimes I'd think she was zoned out looking at me, I'd do a subtle wave, she'd smirk a little or look away depending on the vibe, only to go right back to staring at me. What a weird girl... my interest was piqued.
But she and I never really connected because I didn't muster up the courage to actually talk to her. She was a black haired, brown eyed middle eastern girl, just like the one I had dated before in the 7th grade, ever so briefly, only she looked like she could be a model, her and her twin sister. I guess if you imagined a young Princess Jasmine (from Aladdin) yeah, that's who was staring at me all the time.
Another girl I had interest in, was a pale-skinned blonde girl with strange teeth. She kind of reminded me of Kirsten Dunst. I think I even asked her out at one point, but she turned me down. Her response to me asking her out was very vague and confusing. I don't even remember what she said specifically, but I get the impression to this day: It was because she was a rich upper-class girl, and I was obviously not rich or upper class at all.
I was a Grand Theft Auto 3 obsessed, metal-loving, baggy jeans-wearing rocker kid. If you don't know what a rocker is, they were essentially like Emo kids without the ridiculous makeup and instead of wanting to harm ourselves, we would fantasize about being badass all the time. That? And we didn't do the "bangs over my eyes" thing. We loved having crazy hair, spiked, pulled back or to the sides, but never all sad or girly looking. I'm convinced to this day that most any dude with dyed black hair who wears makeup in a serious context? Would probably happily be a bottom in any romantic relationship. Zero alpha male energy from those guys.
So, what was my hair situation? Nowhere near as glamorous as the perfectly brushed silky hair of your typical emo bottom boys. I was a rocker, so one day I dyed my hair for the third time over the period of that year. This left my hair blonde at the base, orange in the middle, and dark orange at the tips. I had dyed it a number of colors the last couple times, but the final color, was blonde, so it made me look like a reverse sunflower (or as people would sing to me when I passed them in the halls "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine!" which was dorky, but also made me laugh). I guess I was a local meme at the time.
So, it was a no go on the first two people I was interested in when I was going to that school. But there was another girl I was thinking about dating, she just so happened to have the darkest skin of any girl I had ever dated. Or to translate: She was an ebony goddess to me at the time. I asked her out, and she said yes. I thought this would lead to awesome things... I was traumatically wrong.
This girl was clingy, which I loved, but the problem was, she didn't have a lot of life experience or common sense. What I mean by this is, the first time I kissed anyone, I did awesome. It was with the girl who was four years older than me, and everything felt natural with her. Kissing the first girl ever, flowed like water, our movements matched each other, we complimented each other perfectly. Now when this new, clingy ebony princess wanted to kiss? Well, she just couldn't wait. We had just started dating, and she planted her lips on mine, right in our school hallway.
Sounds fine right? Wrong. It was the worst kiss I had ever experienced in my entire life. She puckered up her lips so tight, almost to make a doughnut shape. When she pressed her lips against mine, there was so much muscle being flexed in her lips that it didn't feel like she was trying to kiss me, it felt like she was trying to punch me in the face with her lips.
Additionally, she did in fact leave a hole in the middle, which she tried to stick her tongue through. Like she was an ocean creature... dude, do I have to explain it more? It was horrifying.
I broke up with her like, the next day. I know, shallow. I could have waited it out, tried to teach her how to do it right, but I kept thinking "What person thinks that is how you are supposed to kiss? Like, everyone knows how to kiss from watching movies and stuff, what the hell was that?". It just seemed like a core defect in her mind, one that was probably just the tip of the iceberg of her potential relationship logic defects.
I guess my reasoning here is: When you kiss someone, you should feel the emotion behind it, and it should drive you, guide you, like a dance. You should naturally know how to move, because it's what you dream of, it's what you were made to do.
Like if you want to eat ice cream, you don't take a bowl of it and smash it against your face like some caveman, no. You deliver it to your mouth in a gentle but precise manner. The ice cream is dropped off in the place where you can enjoy it most, and without injury or discomfort, you slide it into your mouth, without scraping the spoon against your teeth, without any drama. You do this, because it's common god damn sense.
What I'm saying is, her kiss, scared the hell out of me so bad, that I just didn't want to go through that again. Just like you probably would lose your interest in ice cream if every time you asked for it, someone just through a hard ball of it at your eye.
And years later? The phone rang: "Hey, is this Greg?" it was her voice. I replied, "Yeah, it's me." she added "You remember us dating before?" I replied "Yes. How have you been?" she replied "Good" *insert awkward silence* "You know, I've changed." after a pause, I said "Ok" she added again "I'd like to hang out some time." another pause, then she said, "I've gotten a lot bigger in the right places" and conversation over for me. I knew what she was doing, and it represented more logic errors. Why was she calling me up just to tell me her tits were bigger? Like I cared? She had big ones before, I still didn't stay with her because there's a whole lot more to relationships than how much fat you have dangling off your rib cage.
Remember earlier when I said in 7th grade, finding someone who was developed was awesome because it was like I had the opportunity to date someone older? Well, toward the end of 8th grade, that was no longer a rarity. Half the people in school had boobs. I didn't aspire to be with a girl who had giant boobs, I just wanted someone who looked normal, and like they were more developed, like an older person would be. Her phone call to me was like "Hey, remember how I am terrible at kissing? Well, I also drink water and breathe air, so, you should date me again."
The phone call ended with me trying to be polite and I got off the phone as soon as I could. I was cringing, I had no interest in this girl, and I never heard from her again.
Cue me almost getting beaten up by a total stranger.
There was a boy at my school, who I never met, never spoke to. Naturally, having zero contact with this dude, I had no problems with him. He was middle eastern, about 6 feet tall, and highly athletic. The dude had a proportionate face, short hair, and piercing eyes. I was told by a tall, ugly blonde boy, that I was to fight him in the boy's locker room that Friday after school.
...wait, what?
I was athletic myself in the past, but barely. I was on the boys wrestling team the year before but quit due to a very uncommon reason. We had some funny moments when I was in wrestling, but I always tried to hide the fact that I had intense back acne, by keeping my shirt on during wrestling. It was a tight shirt, specifically for swimmers, so it didn't look too strange, just like I had a cooler outfit than the other wrestlers.
The girl who had dumped me before for not having blue eyes? She was even on the wrestling team, but wrestling her? That was something I wanted to avoid at any cost as I didn't want to accidentally get a boner if I wrestled her. I already had an issue with people thinking I had a boner when I didn't. Specifically, when I'd do pull ups, multiple girls would interchangeably look at my shorts and say, "Do you have a boner?" I would always feel compelled to correct them saying "No, that's just how I look."
I asked Shane Dawson once about this problem. He said that he had the same problem. Apparently, according to him, our business just rests differently, making it look bigger under clothing, when it's, in reality, not bigger at all. Just more, prominently displayed. Hey, I didn't design my body. I just live in it. Pretty sure Shane and I are the definitely of average or slightly above average. Nothing to write home about.
Regardless, quick story about wrestling experiences: I was once wrestling a cool guy I knew, reminded me of the lead singer of Green Day. He was the dude everyone felt was popular, cool and basically the dude you'd expect to be homecoming king for the outsiders. He was a tough wrestle, and when I was practice wrestling him, some boy was screaming at me about what I should do in the wrestling match. So in the middle of a pretzel-like lock with the cool dude, the boy was demanding I follow his commands, after listening to him blather on about his mastery of wrestling, I yelled back "Why don't you come over here and do it yourself!?" still being half choked out by the cool dude.
The whole room erupted into laughter. I imagine even the girl on our team was laughing too. We were all tired of that dude, all talk.
A sad story leads us to why I quit the wrestling team. I was into this girl I had met at a student event that took place, like all the other events I went to, after the sun went down. She looked like a real woman, potential wife-material, someone I could see myself having a white picket fence with some day. Pale skin, freckles, brown hair, about five feet five inches. She had the same hair as the girl I had nearly lost my virginity too, only paler and a little taller, so while the differences didn't make her any better, I was still definitely interested.
Unfortunately for me, she was sitting in the bleachers during a wrestling match of mine. At these matches, I was required to take off my special swim shirt... let's just say, before I took of my shirt, she was sitting there, watching the match to come. I was so distracted, thinking about how she would react to my back-acne, I lost the match as quick as I could, didn't want to fight for it, just wanted to run into a hole and hide alone with my embarrassment. After I was done wrestling? She was gone.
She saw my back, covered in acne, and wanted no part of that, I assumed. And from that point on, I decided I never wanted to wrestle again. Right after my match I saw the cool dude was wrestling. He wasn't wearing a shirt like I had wanted to, you know, a skintight swimmer's shirt. Instead? He was wearing a rapper Eminem style white shirt, baggy as hell. I asked the coach "What the hell? You said I couldn't wear a shirt because it might break someone's fingers if they got caught up in it, yet he's wearing something way more dangerous." and the coach just shrugged like a jackass.
Turns out, cool boy, he held his ground on the shirt rule. He had a giant birthmark on his back he wanted to hide, and I guess born with it trumps "puberty gave it to me" as far as body issues go. Had I done the same, fought for my shirt, maybe I would have won that match, I'd won before after all... and maybe, I would have had an opportunity to let that girl know to brace herself before she ever saw my back. A little warning can go a long way and buy yourself a great amount of sympathy. Sometimes, people just don't know how to react when it blows up in their face.
Of course, the acne just came from my body being hit with a wave of testosterone. I was a young boy, going through puberty. We were just kids and neither of us were given the tools to fully understand my temporary situation. After over a decade of back acne, I can say, it does go away for most folks, it just takes time. Now I look great shirtless... I mean, not my "This is my Vegetarian body" great, because I kind of looked like a crackhead then. I mean actually great. Getting older has some perks.
My wrestling coach came by my band class one day to ask me why I hadn't been to match or practice in two weeks. I gave him some overly simplistic response and he made a motion in the air that said to me "You're full of crap dude, consider your resignation accepted."
Long story short, I wasn't actually THAT athletic, and by the time this boy in 8th grade was challenging me to fight? A guy that was taller than me, stronger than me & was someone I had no reason to fight as I had no idea who he was? Well, what were my options? Time for me to tuck my tail between my legs and tell mommy.
When I got home from school I said "Hey, mom?" she said "Yeah Greg?" I added "Can you collect my homework after Friday for me, because I'll be dead." Of course, that sentence makes no sense, if you're dead, you don't have to do your homework anymore, but clearly, I was baiting my mom for questioning. And questioning is what I got.
My mom demanded I explain to her what was going on, so I did. I told her a kid I never met or spoke to wanted to fight me. Fight me for, who knows what reason. As a result, my mom called the school, and the school promptly suspended the boy for the rest of the week.
What happened when I went back to school? Well, the tall ugly blonde boy passed me in the hallway and muttered under his breath like an oversized Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter "...wuss!" I pretended to ignore him and continued on my way to woodshop, but what he said echoed in my mind throughout the day.
All this considered, I still didn't regret what I did. Why the hell would I risk being seriously harmed, or seriously harming another person, for literally no good reason? It was madness. I didn't know of an alternative to what I chose to do. Was I supposed to be like Alexander Hamilton's son? Show up to a fight, stick my fist (or gun in his case) up in the air and say, "I refuse to fight you!" only to have the living hell beat out of me anyway? (Or in Alexander Hamilton's son's case, literally die from that approach to fighting)
No, he could call me a wuss all he wanted. I was still alive, free of wounds, and had no assault/battery charges to my name. A blow to your reputation is a small price to pay for law-abidance and physical health.
To possibly your surprise however, not long after, I did get in a fight with someone. I was leaning back in my chair, just being the relaxed, chill student, I was in English class. The class A-hole thought it would be funny to kick the chair out from under me and scurry across the room like all was swell. An additional problem to this action, was there was a three-pronged plug that was inserted into the electrical outlet just behind me. So, when he kicked out my chair, the metal and stone backing of my chair broke the largest cable prong while ripping the others out of the wall, creating a metal electrical razor blade now sticking out of the wall. What does human flesh do when you scrape it against razors? The downward momentum smacked my back against the metal sticking out of the wall, slicing through my shirt to cut my skin.
What would you do if someone just caused you to get a five-inch cut/scrape across your back because they felt like being a dick? Well, I jumped up, grabbed my big white binder, ran across the room, leapt into the air and drove my binder, flat side, directly into his back. It was just like I had seen professional wrestlers do with metal chairs in the ring.
The little bitch boy started to say "Ow! Ow! Ow!" like he was an emo crybaby owl. Personally, I felt like I had "pulled" my punch for him. While it made a loud noise, I could have done a lot more in response to the now bleeding cut he left on my back. But? No one seemed to register what he had just done to me. He was on the other side of the room by the time I got up and smacked him. They all just thought I just fell in my chair for no reason.
The teacher yelled at me to go to the principal's office, and the chair tipper was free to continue class with zero punishment.
In the principal's office, I explained what had happened. The half white, half Native American man with huge acne scars on his face (again, thanks puberty) looked at me like I was just saying "Blah blah blah" and gave me 3 days of in-school suspension.
Just so you know, in-school suspension is like regular suspension, only instead of staying at home, eating chips and watching Jerry Springer all day every day, you would instead have to sit in a tiny room at school with an adult who hates their life, waiting for the bell to ring. They'd give you meaningless classwork to do throughout the day, and your butt would hurt something serious from having to sit on it non-stop.
I showed up the first day to in-school suspension, completely unamused and increasingly infuriated with the injustice I was going through. Apparently here at this school you can cause people to get seriously injured and you don't get punished, but you fight back, and you wind up in in-school detention? No, I wasn't doing this.
The person who monitored all the kids in in-school suspension left the room, I saw my opportunity and I took my opportunity. I lived about a mile from my school, so I headed right out the side door of the school and walked directly home.
When I got to the condos, the phone rang, I didn't answer because I wasn't supposed to be home. We had one of those classic answering machines where the person calling was put on speakerphone as they left a message for you. It was again, my Native American white boy mix principle saying the following: "Uh... Gregory was in in-school suspension today, and then he was just... uh... gone. If you know where Gregory is, please tell him to come back to school. Uh... thank you." ...what a moron.
As I recall my mom called and expressed my perspective to the principal. She then negotiated me staying at home for my suspension instead of going to school for it. The remaining of my sentence, I spent at home, playing video games and brewing about how much I hated my principal for punishing me, despite me having just stood up for myself, and giving that boy 50% of the damage he had just inflicted on me.
If you can't figure out why this happened, well, I'll explain it to you now that I've reflected on it. He was a normal looking kid; I was a weird looking kid. He was whining like a baby, and I was just angry. They looked at the two of us, one dude playing victim who looked normal, and another kid who was pissed off, looking like no one in the room and they thought "Punish the freak". Attitude and appearances are everything, I guess.
In the same class, when I returned, at some point in the day the kids started snickering at something. Oddly enough, the Asian, heavyset, broken-English speaking English teacher was unaware that she had a bloody vaginal care device stuck to her dress.
The kids in class were continuously laughing and snickering till she said "What!? What you laugh at!?" One of the kids told her discretely what was going on, and she began yelling about how they were horrible for making fun of her. She then proceeded to making one of the students pull the used vaginal product with adhesives on it off her dress. It was gross, and the student did in fact successfully remove it from the back of her dress, guiding it to the trash can.
Personally, if I were that teacher's boss, she would be fired, immediately. Talk about PTSD for whoever had to pull that bloody mess off her dress. Yeah, she was made fun of, but she's an adult and can handle it. We were kids, and her forcing a kid to remove her own bloody vaginal device from her clothing? Talk about messed up.
Regardless, 8th grade was when I met my new best friend. He was the first guy to offer me pot and was the first of many guys I would say "No" to. If you know Eleven's boyfriend from Stranger Things, you basically know what my best friend looked like. He had dark hair, was very skinny, and his mom, was a small person. Like, 3 1/2 feet tall, small. It was interesting because his mom had normal to massive sized boyfriends, and I always thought to myself "How?" We're talking dudes pushing way past 6 ft tall.
Anyway, one day we were hanging out with my best friend, and he asked us, myself and a blonde kid, if we wanted to smoke pot. I said no, and the boy I was with indicated he had never done it before. I told them I'd be happy to watch but wasn't going to get high myself. So? They did. They both smoked some weed, and I got to see this blonde dude get high for the first time in his life. It was just as I thought it was... dumb as hell.
First off, there are two types of people in this world: People who think pot smells good, and intelligent people. *laughs* I'm half-kidding. But seriously, if you love the smell of a skunk's asshole gas, you will love weed. I finished a book by Dave Grohl (lead singer of the Foo Fighters) constantly talking about how when he was younger, his main priority was to get weed, and he would always blow his money on weed. Then he would complain about how little money he had, and I was like "Hmm, wonder what the problem is bro." The man also described weed as "Sweet" smelling, so to that I man, I suggest he divorce his wife, and go make love to a literal skunk for the rest of his life, if he loves that smell so much. </end rant>
If you smoke weed, whatever. Just don't tell me it smells good or that I just smelled "the bad weed" because all weed smells the same to me, like nasty skunk butt.
My best friend at the time had perks other than the comedy coming from watching them get high and the opportunity to be confused whenever I saw his mom bringing men home. He had a sister I was really attracted to at the time, who also had a blonde friend that I was also attracted to. I liked hanging out with his sister and her friend more than I liked hanging out with my best friend, and those two seemed to love hanging out with me too. We were always laughing together, and bonding on countless things. His sister even did a palm reading on me one time which blew my freaking mind. The things she knew, like full on sentences about my secrets and active thoughts, were magical. She might have just been somehow tricking me, still can't figure out how she knew all the stuff she did, but man did I think this girl was the bees' knees.
Did I ask her out? Nope. I felt I was not allowed to because I was friends with her brother. Did I even imply I liked her or her blonde friend? Nope. *sigh* What an idiot I was. Almost like I enjoyed never giving myself the opportunity to have what I wanted, and what others wanted too.
My best friend and I weren't all rainbows and smoke clouds. We were rebels. Once, when I was still just a kid, in the middle of the night with my friend, I jammed my pocketknife in a doorknob at school. That knob opened the door to our math class, which was in a separate building of its own, across the open empty blacktop court from the main school. The next day at school, I watched from the window of my English class, as a line of students waited in the cold, staring on as their math teacher scratched his head, looked at the doorknob, then scratched his head some more. It was, sad and hilarious at the same time.
My eight-grade year I pulled some other antics at my school, but those are stories for maybe a different book. I had a generally good year there, despite all the hiccups. Even had a substitute teacher once explain to us how he was attacked by a bear, and he had a "large flap of skin dangling from (his) skull due to the bear ripping (him) open" that the doctor sewed up shortly after.
Bear attack? Talk about having a serious case of the Mondays.
Anyway, I still had my virginity intact, maybe next year, right?