The car ride back to Florida with my dad was as bad as you can imagine.
First, we went to the junkyard to take insurance photos of his company car because the engine had seized up and the car was totaled. We popped the trunk open and transferred all his concrete sample books into his new company car—a Rambler American, which was the cheapest model they made and a demotion for my father.
After that he asked me what had happened and I told him all about Gary and Leigh and the fire—but not everything. I didn’t tell him about my inner life and how I had wanted to be Gary. I kept that to myself, locked up in my heart, or thought I had. This is what I remember most clearly about the trip home because it’s the truth that always sticks its knife in you the deepest: We were driving in the slow lane because of the lousy car when he glanced at me and said, “I suppose you think you are a great individualist dressed in that getup like some kind of punk antihero. But you are nothing but a common conformist like all the other Pagoda wannabes that are a dime a dozen.”
I never answered him. Not properly. How can you reply to something like that when you feel dead inside from just having the fire in your heart reduced to ashes?
Instead I said, “I hate myself.”
He glanced over at me with a look of bewilderment on his face.
After a minute or so he said, “You should join the navy when you turn eighteen. It’ll make a man out of you.”
“I think I’m doing pretty good on my own,” I replied.
After that we traveled in silence.
At home I quit the Sea Cadets. I avoided my family. And after we moved, nothing really changed for me. I stayed holed up in my room. I imagine Gary probably returned to his old self, but I did not go back to being my old self. What trouble was in me hardened and stayed under my skin, even though I realized I was neither cruel enough nor sentimental enough to be him.
Soon the excitement over Mom’s new baby kept the spotlight off me, which was a good thing. At my new school I didn’t join the chess club or the Latin club as before. I kept slipping out of class and hiding in empty rooms. When I did make a run for the exit I had to pass the school’s trophy case. I noticed there was no trophy moment for lost kids like me who’d rather win a Pagoda Olympics gold medal for nearly killing myself than a school sports event that bored me to tears.
By the time I made it into high school I didn’t care what might next happen to me. My life was never my own, so I abused it because it wasn’t the one I wanted. I don’t know what happened to Gary—after the hospital he got sent back to juvie. He probably ended up in prison. His life was never his own either because no one would allow him to live it his way.
I dropped out of school and again moved with my parents, this time to Puerto Rico, where I worked on a hotel construction project with my father. The work didn’t unite us. We didn’t see eye to eye on much.
I quit and returned to school in Florida, where I moved in with a family who rented me an extra bedroom. They were friendly. They treated me well, but I wasn’t interested in pulling myself together when all along it was my goal to escape my parents and then become someone I loathed more than someone I loved. It didn’t take long for me to be a smart-ass to the nice family and make a mess of their home life, so I moved out. But soon I landed on my feet and was living by myself in a welfare motel and making all my own decisions. That was a breath of fresh air.
At last I was in charge. I could choose my own future.
But while I was waiting around to make a choice, I did what I always did and found someone to make a choice for me. I met some nice guys and they had a plan to make a ton of quick money. They were just missing one piece of the plan to make it all happen, and since I had always been a piece of someone else’s plan I once again fit right in. I wanted to be just like them and that led to another disaster, which released the trouble already lurking within me. If you read Hole in My Life, you’ll see what I mean.