Part II: One Crazy Summer or One, Who Is Crazy, Summer

Summer, 1993. I had just graduated from high school and I find myself, at the time, in a miserable situation. I was 17 years old, still a minor in the eyes of the state. My parents, in fear of leaving a minor behind for the summer, forced me to go to Croatia for the entire season. Now, I may sound like a selfish bastard, but try and see what I was facing at the time. I had just graduated high school and this was probably the last summer I would spend as an innocent, not quite an adult, teenage boy who wanted nothing more than to simply hang with his friends and party. Denying me this right of freedom that summer, lead to me being a very selfish, self absorbed, wreck of a kid that put his parents through much grief.

In Croatia, there was really not much to do. Keep in mind that these were before the "computer in every house hold" days. In NJ, I had everything a teenager would need. In Croatia, nothing. No car, no phone, no tv or vcr, no stereo and above all, no friends. So what did I do? What any rebellious teen does when his parents just want him to not give them a hard time: drink. A lot. Everyday.

Literally, I would start my days around 5PM. I actually mean, start, as in wake up, at around 5PM. Eat something, shower, go to the cafe across the street and begin to drink. Get a ride to the nightclub and continue to drink heavily. Continue on until about 2-3AM, throw up somewhere and head home. The night didn't end there. I would go to my room and simply lay wide awake, thrashing around my bed, feeling depressed and enraged the whole time until about 9AM where I would pass out from physical and mental exhaustion. I thought I was actually going crazy. One night, I thought the bed was trying to swallow me. This happened everyday.

My one salvation was that I had a walkman with a bunch of tapes. The tapes got old quick, so my cousin who lived next door lent me Nirvana's Nevermind. It had been out for a couple of years, but the time I got to it was the exact time I needed to get to it. I listened to it every night. Multiple times a night, in fact. I would love to tell you that it made me feel better, but I think I fell into an even darker place engulfed by even more depression and angst. This was the catalyst that started me off as a musician.

I returned home to NJ and everything looked and felt different. I can't fully describe it, but it felt like prior to going away that summer, my eyes had a layer of skin on them that was now peeled back and for the first time I saw things, well, really just saw things. I know I am probably romanticizing the experience and that it was probably just the feeling of being away for about 3 months and returning to a place that seemed a bit foreign due to not being there. Who knows. What I do know was that, my hair grew about 5 inches that summer, I had full facial and chest hair and I was about to begin my first semester of college. See you at Bergen Community!