I am sick. I don’t get sick all that often, so it kind of bums me out when it happens. It’s just a head cold. It makes me not want to be around anyone and it makes me introspective.
I’m not as extroverted as I used to be. A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook from 2003 with me in an Afro wig, headband & Elvis sunglasses going up to a party in the Tri-Cities to do a funny interpretive dance to Physical by Olivia Newton John. This was not an isolated event. This is something that I did all the time. My friend Kelly and I did a talent show where we donned roller blades and super tight clothing and did a majestic interpretive dance to Purple Rain by Prince. I used to love to be the center of attention.
I got shy. I can’t tell you when it happened or why it happened, but sometime in my late 20s I yearned for more anonymity.
Sometimes I catch a bug and I’ll let loose my old obnoxious ways, but I think just getting older has made me more solitary. I don’t spend all that much time being social. My big social outlet is at work as a bartender.
My friend Kent posted on Facebook that I had passed away. He only kept it up for three minutes. Only three people noticed it and responded. Kent said, “So last night Megan (his wife) and I were talking and eventually we discussed those people who are so vital to a scene that people would fucking explode if anything were to happen to them. And you were that example.” While I appreciate that I still hold that kind of image for some people, I believe that my time has already come and gone. I have chosen to move towards obscurity.
It got me thinking, should I go the other direction? Should I become what I have been in the past? Is someone like me needed?
I used to live in this house with these two awesome girls and our house was a meeting place for people who knew we’d let them in and hangs out with them. We could be doing chores or working on whatever and they’d happily just sit on the couch and porch just know that we were there for them. The house was a staging area for all of our mischief. My one roommate Megan, not Kent’s wife, would be waiting for us when we scurried back from some kind of prank or stunt with a steaming pile of spaghetti and meatballs for us. The den mother we needed to make sure we didn’t cross that hard to define line.
Sometimes people would call the house (we had a land line!) and ask for someone who didn’t live there. It was important to some of these people that this was a place they could hang out. Years after we all moved out and went our different ways, this guy who had moved to Texas while we were still living in the house came to the house to see if we were there. I could imagine the person opening the door to this big Texan asking if Dave or Megan were there and watching them walk back down the stairs to the street looking around unsure of what to do now. An era had come to an end.
While I miss those days more than any other times in my past, I am not the same man. I have grown and I have matured and I don’t live in that house anymore. I’ve moved states, I have gone back to school and finished, I have seen my group of friends change drastically and I have become more introverted.
I was watching Jackass 3 the other day by myself and kept laughing and looking around the room for the guys who I watched the other ones with. They weren’t sitting there. I was by myself and I remembered all the dumb stunts my friends and I used to pull. I remember all the stupid pranks we used to play on each other. I don’t think my body can take that abuse anymore. I might just be saying that because I’m sick right now. Maybe you should be careful next time you see me; I might slap you in the face and laugh just for old time sake.
If people tell you to calm down or grow up – don’t.
Dude I love being invisible and a nobody.