VERY Rough Draft of My First Chapter

Chapter 1
What will you be in 10 years?

The question was asked during my senior year in high school. It was an assignment for Brownie’s English class. "Brownie" was the nickname for Mr. Brown, English teacher, senior class sponsor, and all around friend to students. Brownie had this dirty-old-man air about him, but he was grandfatherly all the same. He ate antacids like they were candy. I guess he ate a bottle full in a day or so. Brownie’s class was always interesting. It was there that I first learned about Voltaire, Descartes, and C.S. Lewis. It was in that class that I discovered Dante and his Inferno. It was in his class that I realized that I loved to read and write.

“What will I be in 10 years?” How could I know? I couldn’t predict the future. I always hated those kinds of questions: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What kind of impact will your life have on the world?” “How will people remember you when you are gone?” How can anyone honestly answer these questions? I was getting frustrated. I was only 17, and my biggest concern was just getting through the day. So I sat in Brownie’s class trying to come up with something intelligible for the assignment, but all I could do was doodle and scribble band names on my folder. "Maybe I should write about music."

Music has always been a huge part of my life. My mother once told me that my father would put headphones on her pregnant belly as I kicked to the rhythm of Queen's "We Will Rock You." He was into the guitar greats: Clapton, Hendrix, Page, and more. When I was young I used to listen to his Queen albums over and over again. I wanted my fingers to scream across the neck of a guitar like Brian May.

Mom, on the other hand, was more refined in her taste of music. I think that she tolerated Dad’s music, but she was more interested in vocalists and classic instrumentalists, specifically the “Kings of Hair:” Michael Bolton and Kenny G. I still cringe when I think about it.

I remember sitting in classes just trying to think up “cool” band names. Fronting a band was a dream of mine, but it never really panned out. I couldn’t play anything, I could barely sing, and I couldn’t write music. But I could write lyrics…I had tons of lyrics.

About my junior year, I had found interest in poetry. I knew that it was not the coolest thing a guy could do, but I became interested in this romantic language for one reason: GIRLS. I soon realized that most girls see right through that strategy. I soon started to understand that by writing I was releasing something pent up inside of me. It was in this kind of therapeutic self-discovery that I began to see the scary side of myself. I started writing about death, suicide, and pain. In fact it became all that I wrote about.

I wouldn’t say that I was suicidal or even depressed, but there were inklings of who I could become in those morbid writings. And I was OK with that, because I thought that I was finding myself. Writing was filling a void. I didn’t know what was missing, but when I put a pen to paper I was transformed.

So I started writing for the school yearbook. I was consumed not only with the writing, but also with the mundane aspects of journalism: layout, design, promotion, and marketing. I threw myself into it, often staying after school till 10:00 or later. By my senior year I knew what I was going to do with my life: I was going to be a writer.

I became an editor of the yearbook my senior year and started writing for the school newspaper. It was all I thought about: I was obsessed. I even started writing articles for the local city newspaper. I began to think about writing as a profession. Then it hit me: Rolling Stone Magazine. I loved music, I loved writing. I always wanted to be in a band, but maybe I could do the next best thing; I could get paid to follow bands and write about them. So I set my goal, I was going to be a writer for Rolling Stone.

Brownie was less than pleased with my paper. I guess I misinterpreted his meaning in assigning the paper. Apparently he wanted something a little more philosophic than what I wrote. I think he secretly wished he was a philosophy professor at a prestigious college. He gave me an 82% on the paper, but that was OK, because I had discovered who I would be.

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