​Can’t remember exactly how Burt and I had met.  He’s a poet, too.  I was fairly new to Burlington and I attracted a small group of people, all of whom were complete strangers before I arrived, and now we’re just acquaintances as life had surpassed our time together.  First it was Jared.  We had met outside of the Radio Bean.  He's an amazing photographer and he showed me some of his Instagram photos.  We also exchanged phone numbers.  We got along quite well.  The following night he called me and asked if he could crash at my place.  It was raining and he was camping out on the beach that summer and I said yeah he can spend the night.  I didn’t know him very well so like most nights I stayed up to make sure I didn’t find myself ripped off in the morning.  Not that I had anything worth stealing at the time.  That was when we became good friends.  Next was Mike.  Jared and I were outside talking about how the world would burn one day and Mike chimed in.  He told us that he liked where this conversating was heading.  And then from there, the conversation flowed.  Sometimes I would sit outside of the Bean all by myself and share poetry with strangers and talk about dark, nihilistic subjects and very few people were intrigued.  But Mike and Jared were.  So the three of us hung out most nights.  One night, I think it was Mike, asked us if his coworker could come along on our venture.  Neither Jared nor I cared, so Burt joined us that night.  He was a poet, and he asked me if I could help him put together his book.  I said I would.  The following day I met him at the library and when we were done with our session, we walked around together.  He and I had quite a bit in common.  He was camping out in some graveyard, which I would never do by myself.  I think Chuck was staying in his tent too, although I can’t be sure.  I brought Burt to Monday night Lit Club and he read his poetry and it was damn good.  Very visual.  I remember sitting in the park with him and it started to pour.  Like really pour.  We ducked under a tall tree and stayed completely dry.  Most people were scrambling for real solid cover, but Burt was like: Let’s stand under that tree.  I never thought a tree would provide so much protection from the rain, but it did.  There were lots of other trees there too and no one even thought to commandeer one for themselves.  So Burt and I hung out quite a bit for a whole week straight, probably every day, and we’d just walk all over the place and talk about stuff, some conversations were deep and meaningful and others were shallow and pointless.  Then Burt decided to leave, I think to New Mexico or something.  We continued to talk for a bit after he had left, via Facebook and Facebook Messenger, but eventually the amount we talked started to dwindle and fade away and now we are back to being strangers.  It’s just amazing sometimes, the people you get to know closely in life.  All the people who’ve touched you in some way or another.  All the people you remember and will probably never forget.

After school I took the bus up Mass Ave. but stayed in Arlington and got off downtown.  All the storefronts were filled with shoppers.  It was a Friday afternoon in spring and the cobblestone atrium was littered with townies, students, and yuppies.  In front of the Starbucks were outdoor tables and people were sipping coffee and typing up their novels under the sun.  I walked past the shoppers till I got to the street where the residential Harry was staying at was.
I had met Harry at a different, more short-term residential program called CIP, also located in Arlington, right up the street from his current residential and even farther down the street from my school.  I didn’t live in Arlington, and neither did he.  We both lived in Newton even though we met in Arlington and we kept ending up in Arlington.
 
The residential he was staying at, similarly to the one at which we had met, was just one big house, sort of a mansion.  When I got there, there was an older guy in his early 20s sitting outside talking to a girl about my age.  I told them I was here for Harry.  The guy said he would go in and tell him I was here.
 
While I waited, the teenage girl asked me if I was a Punk.  She must have noticed my blue hair.
 
I said: “I guess.”
 
She asked me: “Are you like nice Punks or A Clockwork Orange Punks?”
 
Harry came out.  I smiled at her.  Harry said: “We’re about as nice as they come.”
 
The guy, who I presume was one of the staff members, told Harry to be back before 10.
 
Harry nodded and said he would.
 
We hopped back on the bus and headed into Harvard Square, where we met up with Jeff and then found a homeless man to buy us a handle of the cheapest vodka.  The vodka he came out with was Cossack.  Then the three of us got back on the bus and headed back into Arlington and got off downtown.  One of us went into the CVS and got a bottle of Sunny Delight and we poured out half the bottle and poured in as much vodka as we could.
 
The show we were going to was at the Knights of Columbus and we sat on benches on the cobblestone atrium and passed the bottle and watched the people till it was time to go to the show.
 
Then I vomited in some toilet.  Harry was trying to revive me while someone was yelling at us telling us to get the fuck out of here.
 
I vomited some more.
 
I was sitting on a bench and the cop said: “Is he okay?”
 
Jeff told the cop I have an inner ear infection.
 
I rolled off the bench and fell on the ground.
 
Then Jeff carted me around town on his shoulder.

On the way to school the following Monday morning, I had a vague recollection of stashing the rest of the vodka in the bushes somewhere outside the Knights of Columbus.
So I took the bus a little farther down and got off downtown and headed over there.  The bottle was in the bushes, just like I had remembered.  I drank enough to feel good and then went to school.
 
Of course, I showed up to Math class 30 minutes late and the teacher angrily smacked a worksheet down in front of me.
 
I started to fill it out and then read the top of the page and yelled: “Fuck it’s a test!”
 
The whole class laughed.
 
Next class was English and afterwards the teacher asked to speak to me in the hall.  I knew she knew I was drunk.  But to my surprise, she told me this was my best class yet.
 
That’s when my guidance counselor came and got me and said they wanted to give me a sobriety test.  I failed it.  I couldn’t walk a straight line.
 
But I did ace the Math test which was probly the best I did all year.

​I was outside the venue smoking a cigarette.  Samantha said: “Firework!” and flicked her lit cigarette butt at me and the cherry kissed my chin before it fell to the ground.  She laughed.  When she was looking away, I said: “Firework!” and flicked my lit cigarette butt at her and it hit her in the chest and rolled into her bra and she howled.  I laughed.  And then I heard it———--
 
“We are … the league!”
 
The Anti-Nowhere League was up.
 
I pushed my way through the mob and burst through the door.  I saw the band onstage.  Animal held the microphone in his hand, while the rest of the band bathed in the screeching feedback of the guitar.  I hurried across the venue and when I reached the front I grabbed the stage and hoisted myself up.  The guitarist started in.  I stood up there staring off into the crowd.  The drums kicked in and their singer, Animal, passed me the mike and right on cue, I began:
 
“Another boring night and I’m feeling pissed
My head’s fucked up and I’m in a mess
Too many drugs, they make me high
I wanna cause havoc, I wanna die.”
 
And then leapt into the swarming mob….  I swung around, and, as I was about to dive into the pit, two hands grabbed me from behind, spun me around, and I was facing off with some buff hardcore kid in a white T-shirt.
 
He shouted at me: “You split my lip.”
 
I said: “I can’t hear you.”
 
Gesturing to the looming monitors, I repeated: “Dude I can’t hear you.  The music’s too loud.”
 
He said even louder now: “You split my fuckin lip.”
 
I couldn’t help but laugh.
 
He said: “Don’t do that again!”
 
I pushed past him and reached the front again and started to pogo.  My arms swinging.
 
Two hands grabbed me again.  Spun me around and his fist smashed into my teeth.
 
I laughed again.  I was bleeding, and I was laughing.
 
He grimaced and walked away just as someone from behind me said: “Keep doing what you’re doing, everyone here’s got your back.”
 
Outside the venue, Samantha asked that me, Andrew, and Ben give Katie a ride home since her dorm was on our way and not on hers.  We said we would.
 
When we arrived at Katie’s dorm, Andrew suggested we go in too.  Katie said: “No, don’t.”  I said: “Yeah, let’s do it.”  Katie said: “Please don’t.”  Andrew said: “Fine, it’s settled.  We’re going in.”
 
We all followed Katie through the door and up the stairs.  When we entered her common room there was a girl crying on the couch and Andrew asked Katie if she had any beer.
 
I said: “What’s wrong with her?” gesturing to the girl on the couch.
 
Katie told us: “Her boyfriend just broke up with her.”
 
Ben said: “Maybe we should just go.”
 
Andrew said: “Not till we get some beer.”
 
I said: “Why’d your boyfriend break up with you?”
 
She stood up and went into her own room and slammed the door shut.
 
Andrew asked: “Um, beer?”
 
Katie said: “Guys, get out of here!”
 
Ben said: “Yeah, you guys are being assholes.  Let’s just go.”
 
I was laughing.
 
So we left.  But we didn’t leave empty-handed.  Down the stairs was a door left ajar, and we snuck in and found boxes of pizza that were half-eaten and beer and then we left.
 
And then I got lost in the parking lot….

​This wasn’t the first time I met Lacey.  Last time, I met her briefly as Andrew whisked her away under his arm.  Somehow, though, after everything that had happened that night—getting tanked, breaking into a sex shop and stealing a bondage belt and selling it for five dollars, breaking into a car and stealing the stereo but tossing it into a dumpster, verbally assaulting the cop standing outside the show all because of the frightful phone call I got where these two strange guys said they were the police and they were going to rape my girlfriend, and finally, getting jumped by those two guys, getting ignored by the same cop as I laid there bleeding out of my ears, nose, and mouth, getting up and lumbering on the train, going home, and thrusting a knife through all four tires of Samantha’s car, because she was the one who had set me up, and then plopping on the curb and crying myself into a red-eyed prune———after all that, I woke up with someone else’s cellphone in my pocket.  I received a phone call on my landline from Samantha checking if I was okay and she said when she called my cellphone, someone named Lacey picked up.  So, after Samantha’s mom drove her over to my house to pick up her car with its four flattened tires, and I sat in the backyard crying and feeling rather foolish, I hopped on the train to Fenway and exchanged cellphones with Lacey.
No one would have foreseen her being my next girlfriend.  In fact, she said she would never in a million years hook up with me because I was a scumbag.
 
The next time I saw her was a month later, when Lethal Erection played for a rowdy crowd at the Midway Café.  I spotted her first and she was staring adoringly at Andrew as he plucked & thrummed his weapon of mass destruction.  Song after song flew past the night like a radioactive hawk.
We rode the waves of heavy Punk rock riffs and knockout drumbeats and of course the lyrics meant something a little more than dribble.
 
When we were all done, Andrew and I hopped down from the stage and she ran over and greeted Andrew first and then me.  When she heard we were playing, she just had to see.  I went over to the bar and ordered myself a drink.  Over by the door was Fishface talking to a bouncer—we called her Fishface because, well, her face looked like a fish.  She was the usual girl to take our money before we entered the venue.  The crowd was pouring onto the street.  Laughing and talking.  The air was filled with the buzzing static of happy Punk rock chatter.  I drank my drink while Andrew and Lacey spoke somewhere behind me, then the three of us left and passed through the mob of smiling derelicts.  The bar would be closing soon and we had to find an alternate refuge.  It was Saturday night in the city.
We drank all night, from bar to bar, alleyway to alleyway, streetcorner to streetcorner, passing bums and winos, hookers and addicts, talking to the riffraff skaters and goths, mingling with gutter pirates and the other street Punks we’d find, seeing college boys stumble and stagger, swaggering college girls throwing up over the curb, latching onto the boys with their pumps and their cleavage.
The night was raw and on fire; we found our adventure and we lived it.
 
At 2AM we went to crash at Lacey’s college dorm.  She went to Emanuel College, right around the corner from the Fenway train station.  We had to wait till 2AM because we wouldn’t be able to get past the RAs sitting downstairs if we had gotten there any earlier.  The RAs were off duty at 2AM.
We stormed into the elevator raucously and you could have heard the laughter traveling through the shaft all the way to the roof and if you heard it, you better fuckin move, because we were belligerent, too.  The doors slid open on her floor and we whisked on through and I rapped my knuckles on all the doors leading to her room.  Lacey told me to stop and Andrew had reached the epoch of mania as he laughed and egged me on.  Andrew had to pee so we barreled drunkenly into the coed bathroom.  I climbed on to the top of a stall and sat on the half wall and began chucking toilet paper at Andrew.  At this point Lacey had given up all restraint because she knew there was no point in trying to stop what we were doing and she started laughing too.  A girl moseyed out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her and when she saw the riotous commotion she ducked back into the stall and I laughed so hard I nearly fell down from my perch.  We left the bathroom and the hysterical buzz was vibrant and we defied every rule there was.  Back at Lacey’s dorm I tried on Lacey’s clothing.  I was skinny as a snake and I fit right into her fishnet stockings and skirt and I sat at the windowsill smoking cigarettes as the two of them made out on the bed.  I climbed onto the bed to join them but Lacey cringed and put a hand up to block my advances and Andrew was laughing so hard the bed was shaking.  I climbed up onto the top bunk and found a wrapped present and asked Lacey if this was hers; she told me it was her roommate’s and I should not open it.  I told her it was too late.  I had already opened it.  It was a book about nature.  I grimaced and chucked it on the floor.
Andrew and Lacey screwed on the bed as I searched her room for some food.  I couldn’t find any.
 
In the morning I woke up covered in lipstick.  Lacey told us we had to smoke outside.  She wasn’t drunk anymore, so now she was laying down the law.  When we came back from our smoke, she was so mad at us and we couldn’t figure out why.  She kicked us out immediately and the streets were cold and windy and we waited outside the nearest liquor store for it to open.

​At some point during the night, since Lacey and I lived so close to each other, we exchanged phone numbers.  I can’t remember who called who first but for the next three weeks we hung out every day.
 
One night we were riding the train home and by the door was an older Punk rocker with spikes and leather and dyed hair.  We sparked up a conversation with him and he invited us to his place to smoke weed and drink more.  This was probably the coldest night that winter, and we were on the last train already, I explained.  He said it was fine, we can crash at his place.  I looked at Lacey and she nodded in approval and we got off somewhere in Allston.  The cold air was brutal.  We stayed tucked close together as we lumbered after the older Punk rocker.  Steam wafted from our mouths.  Our boots left prints on the sidewalk.  We were shivering.  When we got there, he opened the door and the two of us rushed inside to escape the cold.  We sat on the couch and it was just us two and this older Punk rocker we didn’t know.  He went into the next room to get the weed and then he came back and said his girlfriend called, we had to get going.  But what are we supposed to do?  I looked at Lacey and she looked at me and shrugged.  I looked at the older Punker rocker and he said sorry, dude.  But you guys can’t be here right now.
We were back in the cold.  There were no trains anymore.  Our ears and finger were so numb they stung.  With our hands tucked deep in our pockets, we trudged back to the train, but really we had nowhere we could go.  We’d probably die out here, when Lacey pointed and said look!  Someone had left their backdoor ajar, and almost on cue we hustled across the backyard and we didn’t take any chances as we dashed through the door, closing it softly behind us.  We were in the basement and it was dark and cold—but not as cold as outside—and smelt of mildew and mold and there were spiderwebs hung from corners with nasty-looking spiders waiting for their chance to strike.  We sat on the cold concrete floor and pressed our backs to the wall behind us.  We each had a flannel shirt tied to our waists and we used them as blankets as we shook.  The radiator was down there and all we could hear was a buzz and a rustle and a scrape as it shot hot air into the house above us.  At some point we heard screaming come from upstairs—a domestic dispute.  We sat down there and chain-smoked, trying to make out what the fight was all about.  We were so cold we held each other tight to keep warm; then started making out.
Every day for the past three weeks we hung out—now, Lacey asked me to be her boyfriend and I said I would….

I was walking alone.  I was dirty.  Scared.  I wanted to die so badly.  I thought about how I would do it.  It would be so easy, too.

​The day before, my band got back together with a whole new lineup.  It was originally me, Jeremy, DP, and Harry.  Now, it would be me, Andrew, Bill, and Samantha.  I was so excited to play again.  Even more excited to see Samantha again.  We were broken up now.  Around the same time the band went on hiatus, our love story fell to ashes.
The practice was at our new drummer Bill’s house in New Hampshire, and since Andrew, who I had met a few weeks earlier in college, lived in Haverhill, MA, right on the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I would ride the train to Haverhill and Andrew would pick me up and drive us to practice.
 
I arrived in Haverhill with my backpack full of new song lyrics, a microphone, half a bottle of Jack, and a small bag of coke.  I looked around the lot but there was no sign of Andrew.
In the corner of my eye a red pickup truck backed out of its spot, turned slightly, and then gunned it at me full force.  My nerves were on overdrive.  I dashed out of its path.  The truck stopped there, and the passenger door popped open.  I looked up into the cabin, and saw it was Andrew.
 
In the first leg of the drive, I turned to him and said: “Mind if I drink?”
 
He said: “Not at all.”  Pulled a bottle of Jäger out from behind the seat and took a hit.
 
I removed the bottle of Jack from my backpack and did the same.
 
The cocaine, on the other hand, I was saving for Samantha.  I owed her, and I was to woo her back to me today.  But after I was all lubed up with the whiskey I was sipping, it slipped out of me.
 
I said: “You ever done coke?”
 
He looked at me and smiled.  “Nah, why?”
 
“I got some if you wanna try it when we get there.”
 
“Yeah, definitely,” he said.
 
And so it was settled.  I asked Bill when we got there if he’d ever done coke and he said he had, so I didn’t feel obligated to share any with him.  But really, I just didn’t like Bill.  I liked Andrew, though.  Andrew was fun.
 
We huddled in the bathroom and I made lines and we alternated hits.  Samantha still wasn’t there.  She was running late, she told me.  Boy would she be psyched to see what I brought her.  Too bad there wasn’t too much left by the time she finally got there.
 
Practice was fun.  We wrote new songs and played them.
 
Afterwards, Andrew and Bill drove out to some hardcore show in New Hampshire.  Samantha offered to give me a ride home.
 
We stopped in Harvard Square on the way.
 
I remember this day the crowd was sitting behind the entrance to the train station, against the slanted wall.  We were among them.  Tanya was there too.  Since Samantha and I had broken up, Tanya had been my new plaything.
 
One night I met Tanya in Harvard Square and she and I bought a bottle and sat on the front steps of some church and talked.  She had a really annoying New York City accent.  She was a philosophy major and she said my ideas reminded her of those similar to Nietzsche.  One thing led to another and we made out on those steps.
Another night she and I went to a show at Regeneration Records and it was raining that night and she pushed me into the mud behind the venue, mounted me, and screamed that she was a lion, biting me and scratching.
 
Little did I know, she had been falling for me, but I had my sights on Samantha and Samantha only.  She was just someone I was having fun with till I got back together with Samantha.  This would be the first night she met Samantha and Samantha invited Tanya to come down to the river with us.
 
The three of us hung out down by the river.  Tanya kept her eyes on me, I kept my eyes on Samantha, Samantha kept her eyes on the bottle.  It was the classic love triangle.  The night progressed and Tanya’s jealousy took on a drunken low.  She started yelling, getting belligerent, knocking over trashcans.  She didn’t want it to seem as though she was in love with me, but it was obvious by this point.
 
The trains stopped running at around 1AM and it was 2AM and Samantha was planning to drive me home.  We were about to leave but Tanya was a complete lovesick mess.
 
Samantha said to me: “Maybe you should help her get home.”
 
“Why don’t you just give us both a ride?”
 
“I can’t,” she told me.  “My mom would be worried about me.”
 
“Then how are we supposed to get her home if the trains stopped running.”
 
Tanya lived in Summerville, I lived in Newton.
 
“You can walk there with her,” she suggested.  “Just make sure she gets there safe.”
 
“But then how am I supposed to get home?  I can’t walk from Summerville to Newton, that would take all night.”
 
Tanya interjected: “You can crash with me?”  She was beaming.
 
So that’s what I did.  The two of us walked to Summerville together.
 
When we got there, her grandmother was still awake, waiting for her to get home.  Tanya opened the door and brought me inside.  She asked her grandmother if I could crash here.
 
“No,” her grandmother said.  “No way.”
 
“Please.”
 
“No,” she said again.  “He’s dirty.  He’s probably got diseases.”
 
Tanya turned to me and said: “You can sleep in my backyard.  I’ll sleep out there with you.”
 
The ground was wet and muggy and we lay there together and fooled around and first thing when the sun came up, I walked to the Davis Square train station all alone.  I was so depressed.  Crashing from cocaine and hungover.  I was dirty and gross.  I wanted to die.  And it would be so easy….