TWENTY
It’s a brand new record for 1990
They Might Be Giants’ brand new album “Flood”!
That’s how my 20th year began. Every time I think of it, I can’t believe it was that long ago. Twenty-one years? Really?
Well, whatever. I was a doofus back then, albeit a doofus with a lot more hair and a flatter stomach. I suppose that counts for something. But still, I was clueless. Almost as clueless as I am now, especially about why everyone’s posting what they were up to at age 20.
I can’t remember what I had for lunch this afternoon, but I damn sure remember 1990. I was living in a beehive apartment complex with three other guys (one of whom I even liked) in Gainesville, Florida, where I was attending the University of Florida in pursuit of a useless Psychology degree with a specialty in Behavior Modification, which is just a fancy way of saying I learned how to manipulate people in the name of science. Hooray, science!
I was single. I was obsessed with a girl, but she was popular so she had no time for me (save for that one night). I was unemployed. I needed money, but I was too lazy to work. My superpower was stretching scholarship money beyond all reasonable limits. My mom tried to help out, but she was poor. My dad wasn’t poor at all, but he wasn’t generous, either. Might have had something to do with me telling him to fuck off and not calling him for a year. Long story.
This next part is going to come as a great shock to most of you: I took drugs. Lots of them. A colorful variety. Whatever I could get my hands on, really. Many of them were delightful. Others, not so much. But I took them anyway.
I listened to the Pixies, Jane’s Addiction, Ministry, My Bloody Valentine, A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy. I still listen to them now.
I stood just a few feet away while Nirvana played a show in a tiny bar with no stage. I saw Fugazi in a filthy little dive that lasted long enough for just that one show. Not long after that, I saw Sonic Youth play in a giant arena from what seemed like a mile away. Then it was Green Day in a small bar that was so shitty the roof actually caved in during the performance.
I worried that I might get drafted into the military. (Spoiler: I didn’t.)
I read a lot of Russian literature. Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev. The usual suspects, I guess. This was post-Perestroika, and the Soviet Union was crumbling. I thought a lot about the human condition. I still do. Even so, I’ve yet to come to any real conclusions.
I hung out at a Goth bar called Netherworld. A friend from high school was a bartender there. She gave me free drinks and gummy worms soaked in booze — Bacardi 151, if I remember right. I won a T-shirt for knowing what the title of Skinny Puppy’s “T.F.W.O.” stood for.
I narrowly escaped a DUI on my bicycle.
I didn’t escape a mugging. My face swelled up and turned at least a half-dozen colors over the next week. I cried a lot. Fucking frat guys.
I got hit by a car and flipped over head-first on my bike. I suffered a concussion. I cried a lot again.
I read “Still Life With Woodpecker” by Tom Robbins. It changed my life.
It still does, actually.
I’m not 20, anymore. To quote Mr. Dylan, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
