Chapter 2: The Life and Times of a Jaded Loser Part the 1st: Glenwood

1

Since I started my quest to find a relationship online, I’ve found it difficult to tell women who respond to my profile on various sites, things about me that paint my life in a flattering tone. It seems that no matter what detail I divulge about my past, when taken out of context it sounds like a biographical exert from the diary of a serial killer.

Because knowing what a person is all about BEFORE getting to know them is so important to the internet dating process, I’ve decided to spill my guts in a series of auto biographical chapters that will hopefully illustrate the reason that I’ve become the vulgar, caustic, reprehensible twit that I am, while at the same time demonstrating my harmlessness.

Although I’m not that old, I’ve been through a lot in my life. No more than any other, and certainly no worse than most have had it, but some might find my exploits entertaining. In the other chapters of this book I talk about the correlation between past events and current situations, however ‘The Life and Times of a Jaded Loser’ will serve as a much more comprehensive look into my youth and will give you a better understanding of what makes me tick.

This idea came to me a few months ago when I finally made a Face book profile which gave me the opportunity to re-connect with old friends, make new friends, and even ignore ex-girlfriends, spiraling them further down the toilet bowl of hatred towards me. Some of those ‘old friends’ that I have ‘friended’ on Face book include classmates from a time in my life long in memory, but whose influences still haunt me to this day…military school.

Glenwood Military School for Boys. I attended Glenwood for five years, but because they were the developmental years of my young life, they’ve stuck with me like peanut butter on the roof of a dog’s mouth.

Now, first off; wipe that “what did you do? Press your dork up against a bus window so the judge sent you to military school?” look off your face. It wasn’t necessarily a school for ‘misbehaved’ children. I’m sure that every parent had good intentions for sending their kid there. It just so happened that my mother’s intentions were a bit more…selfish than most. But we’ll get into that later.

My friend Mike, who I haven’t seen in years, said some very nice things about Glenwood Military School on his Face book wall. I quote: “I look over these pictures of myself when I was younger in Glenwood and everything seems to fade away. I can do nothing but smile and remember the incredible times I’ve had at this school. I can’t explain the elation within myself. Thank You Glenwood”.

For years when someone would ask me about my childhood I’d either lie so I wouldn’t seem hateful, or I would subtly change the subject so as not to talk about it at all. Glenwood has always been a source of pain for me, and in my selfishness, it never occurred to me to think of the ‘good’ it might have done some boys.

So, after reading Mike’s blurb about Glenwood, I grabbed Mr. Peabody and jumped in the ‘way back’ machine to try to come up with some reasons of my own to gloat about my childhood in military school. Other than the few friends and acquaintances I made there, I couldn’t think of ONE fucking positive thing other than the fact that you can STILL bounce a quarter off my bed which I make every morning. Fuckin' corners all tight, bedspread folded back a palms width and no wrinkles in the pillow. Hell, a girl jumped on my bed once and almost shot herself into space like Wile E. Coyote. This bitch is wound like a trampoline.

Far be it for me to think of someone’s thoughts or feelings as ‘disingenuous’. I have no reason NOT to believe that Mike had a great childhood at Glenwood. I consider Mike to be something of a brother. Hell, we used to crash weddings in Florida WAY before that stupid ass movie came out. I’m sure that his time at Glenwood WAS productive in many ways. Some of us hit the ‘pick 6’ in life’s lottery, and some of us end up standing BEHIND the old ass lady who gives the checkout clerk at the gas station her lottery numbers like she’s reading off launch codes for a nuclear fucking submarine, when all you want to do is hand the girl behind the counter a ten spot for gas and move on with your life. Just when you think she’s done, you realize that she was only catching her breath and she again starts spitting out numbers like ‘Rain Man’ at a bingo parlor. Then she takes more time to pick out ‘instant’ tickets than “John the Stutterer’ from Howard Stern reading a James Michener novel out loud to an ADD class. By the time she IS finished, you’re 3 days late for work and now have a full fucking beard. Fuck you lottery lady.

2

Glenwood School for Boys is a 150 acre campus on 187th and Halsted near Harvey in Glenwood IL. At any one point around 150 children would be housed there in various facilities in age groups ranging from 2nd graders to seniors in high school. The living quarters, referred to as ‘cottages’ were spread out around the campus and each one would hold approximately 12 kids at any given time, with 3 kids to each dorm room within the cottage. We lived on the campus, and a majority of kids got picked up by their parents and taken home on the weekends. Campus was generally closed on holidays meaning that EVERY one went home then.

On the weekdays, we would wake up early in the morning, and every cottage would form ranks in two lines of 6 and march to ‘Butler Hall’, which was our dining area. After a brief time of being yelled at by whoever was our commanding officer at that moment, we’d file in for breakfast. The food was horrible at best and included such delicacies as: ‘cream beef on toast’ which to this day I don’t know what the fuck that was, ‘fish sticks’ which I imagine were made from fish caught in ‘Lake Biohazard’, and ‘Mashed potatoes that were more paste than potato. In the 6 years I was at Glenwood, the menu NEVER changed. I ate the same shit week after miserable week.

After breakfast, we’d head off to school. Formation was repeated for lunch time, and again at dinner time. We wore dress clothes every day, and on Wednesdays we would wear our military uniform, which consisted of a light blazer with the school emblem embroidered on it.

In the months that proceeded my being shipped off to Glenwood, my mother would tell me that the reason I was going there was because she worked ‘midnights’ as a guard at Cook County Jail. I found out later in life that the actual reasons ran a bit deeper, but all I knew at the time was that she was a single mother, a cop, and a hopeless alcoholic. Between working full time as a police officer, and spending her nights drunker than Hemmingway at an Oktoberfest, I just didn’t fit into her lifestyle. So off to military school I went.

3

The very first night I spent at Glenwood I was accused of doing something that I didn’t do. I’m sure you can all relate, you’re ten years old and sitting on the couch one evening enjoying a bomb pop and watching ‘ The Secret of NIMH’ for the 47th time, when your dad busts in the room, and starts yelling at you because there’s money missing from his wallet or some other domestic bitch that parents are fond of throwing in your face. Later he realizes that it was actually your MOM who took the money to get the dog a new set of ‘neuticals’ because she felt bad that your pet Schnauzer ‘Spanky’ had nothing to lick anymore after being fixed. You scream back, or you get frightened and cry, hell you’re a kid…how the hell do you know how to come up with a reasonable defense to this kind of accusation? Same thing.

My mother dropped me off haphazardly, ignoring my cries of ‘please don’t mommy!’ early in the day. I had been set up in a cottage and two boys were assigned to show me around the campus. It was dead of winter and I can remember freezing my little kid balls off walking around in the snow looking at buildings older than religion. Later in the evening, after showing me the gym, where we watched the high schoolers play basketball for a bit, we headed back to the cottage. It was around eight o’clock and the campus had a silvery glow about it from a full moon reflecting off the snow. My crying earlier in the day had dissipated and I now found myself full of hope for what was to come.

I’d just made new friends in the way that only kids can be friends. Innocence, light hearted joking around, and a feeling of utter invincibility. You don’t think about being old like you do now. We spend all of our time as adults wondering what’s going to happen to us when we get older: Where am I going to be in 10 years? What’s my plan for college? Marriage? Kids? What underwear should I wear when I go get my first prostate exam at 40? Why does she have freckles on her ass?

When you’re a kid, all you have to think about is how much fun you’re going to have tomorrow. The world is just one big set of tits waiting to be bromskied. Well all those romantic fantasies of childhood wonder died on that night for me and set me down the path of rebelling against authority and learning to bullshit better than Kurt Russell in ‘ Used Cars’. Which is good, because I work in sales now.

We had gotten a few yards away from the gym on our way to the cottage, when seemingly from out of nowhere, a crazy black man ran up to us and started accusing us of throwing snow balls at his car on Halsted. He was waving his arms around, stomping, and spitting as he talked. I was so scared, I thought his face was going to split in two and reveal a fiery skull. As children, we had no recourse but to proclaim our innocence and politely start throwing snowballs at him to get him the fuck away from us. After 10 minutes of enduring this stupidity he stomped off and left us to walk home. Our innocence afforded us the luxury of laughing off our crazy accuser.

When we got back to the cottage, our supervisor or ‘house parent’ was waiting for us. Think of Barbara Bush only older and uglier…and a guy. THAT was our house parent. She told us that we were wanted at the dean’s office right away.

The dean’s office was a bear cave dug into the side of this enormous brick building that sat at the front of the school’s campus, called ‘The Administration Building’. A dean was stationed in this den 24/7 to deal with just the type of situation I was about to find myself in.

As so ordered, so did we do. We walked to the dean’s office without a care in the world; we would tell him “we didn’t do it” and be on with our night. Again…the mistakes of youth.

When we arrived at the dean’s office, we were greeted by a short thin black man who looked like a cross between Erkle and Prince (It was the 80’s mind you). He immediately began yelling and accusing us without asking any questions. In this fashion, he was much like our original accuser, only I would find out…THIS guy could touch us. He kept screaming for us to admit what we had done. I’m sure we cried. We were scared shitless, it didn’t seem to matter WHAT we told him, he simply would not listen to the reason of a ten year old.

Now that I’m older and understand authority a little better, I realize that he didn’t really care if we did it or not. We were going to get the blame because someone complained about kids on HIS watch, and blaming us was easier than going out to find who ACTUALLY did it. Not knowing that at the time we kept claiming our innocence.

Then he started with the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ techniques. He told us, with a sneer on his face that would seem comical to me today, that he would interview us one at a time while the other two sat in the foyer outside of his office. The first boy went in and us other two were left in foyer. We could hear the beating being delivered on the other side of that door and it still haunts me to this day. Every loud ‘THUD’ of a hand hitting that kid was followed by the sound of a frightened and confused child wailing into the dead, empty, fake wood, panel board and flickering overhead ‘ Joe vs. The Volcano’ neon lights.

The two of us in the hallway, clutching our green pleather bound chairs with tiny white hands, looked at each other with both fear and understanding. We knew what we had to do lest we suffer that humiliating fate, and we’d have to do it in order to STOP it from happening to our friend any longer. In a slow steady motion, we hesitantly stood up in unison; we cautiously walked to the door and pushed it open. Our eyes were saucer wide and filled with tears. We didn’t know it at the time, but what we were about to do was compromise a basic principle of life: innocent until proven guilty. We walked in and told the dean what he wanted to hear. The consequences don’t much matter now, I can hardly remember them. I think we got a week of ‘restriction’ which meant that we had to shovel snow, clean bathrooms, and do generally menial labor.

After that night I developed a philosophy that “If I’m going to get blamed for something I didn’t do, I may as well do it”, from then on I got myself into trouble at every opportunity. I was constantly on restriction. This is a philosophy that sadly has followed me into adult life. I think that understanding its origins helps me to make better decisions. But to be honest with you? Self discovery can be a mother fucker.

4

Well folks…THAT was just the first fucking day. Through the years I suffered daily beatings from high school kids because I was such a fat, clumsy, retard. I weighed as much in fifth grade, as I do right now. I looked like the fat kid from ‘Bad Santa’. I was constantly ridiculed because my mom would either forget or refuse to pick me up on weekends when all the other kids got to leave. There were holidays when I was the ONLY kid on that campus because everyone but me was taken home by loving family members.

Another source of ridicule came from the fact that my mother would never give me new clothes or shoes, so I was always wearing second hand shit from the ‘clothing room’ which was where old clothes and shoes were housed. That place smelled like linen and piss and I still remember the humiliating shame I felt whenever I had to go in there. I don’t think I had a pair of shoes that fit me properly for 2 years, which is probably why I ALWAYS buy shoes that are at least 1 size too big on me now.

But the clothing room was nothing compared to the humiliation one felt if they pissed the bed. One of the worst things a kid could do in Glenwood…was to be a bed wetter. Being a bed wetter in our cottages made you more of a target and an outcast than a pedophile in prison. These poor bastards would face nightly ‘blanket parties’ like Private Pyle in ‘ Full Metal Jacket’. Luckily, pissing the bed was ONE thing that I did NOT do. However…I DID have a different take on the ‘uncontrollable pissing’ genre.

During that first winter at Glenwood, about three or four nights of the week, I would wake up in the morning with my feet soaking wet. Much like YOU’RE thinking now, I assumed someone was pissing on my feet as I slept. I’d seen the ‘blanket parties’, and the ‘dipping someone’s hand in warm water’ bit a million times, but I’d never yet heard of pissing ON someone. I assumed that it was the kid in the bed next to me because he was one of the bullies that picked on me from the moment I woke up to the time we went to bed at night. He would laugh uncontrollably at my wet feet in the morning and feign ignorance as to how it could have happened. After a few instances of this occurrence, I went to my house parent, Mr. Pros and told him that this kid was pissing on me while I slept. Mr. Pros didn’t even look away from the TV as I tattled on this shitheal and his indifference made me feel alone and isolated. I started to fear that these mother fuckers could get away with ANY thing if ‘pissing on someone while they slept’ didn’t herald an immediate response from those in charge.

Several weeks after I had first brought this phenomenon to Mr. Pros attention, I found myself being shaken awake from a deep sleep. It was Mr. Pros. He was yelling at me, and in my state of awakening confusion, I realized that I was standing up. When I gathered enough of my wits to see my surroundings, I realized that I was standing in front of the water fountain at the entrance to our cottage…and I was pissing on it.

After he made me clean up the mess I had made, he sat me down in the living room and told me why my feet were wet all those mornings, and why he had been so lackadaisical in finding the culprit. It seems that several weeks before, I began sleep walking. I would walk outside in the snow and piss on the tree in front of our cottage. Then I’d walk back to my bed and lay down. He never stopped me, because you’re NOT supposed to wake a sleep walker, and since I wasn’t doing anything particularly damaging…he just never bothered. THAT’S why me feet were wet, because I was going outside into the snow barefoot while I slept.

This was the FIRST time that I had done it indoors, so he HAD to stop me. The next night, I came up with a plan to stop myself from doing it ever again. I tied a piece of twine around my wrist and to the bedpost in the hopes this would wake me up if I were to leave the bed. That night, I DID wake up as I tried to sleep walk and piss on something…the only problem was that I had tied the twine in a sailor’s knot and couldn’t get it off of me. I had to piss so bad that I thought my eyes were going to pop out with geysers of urine, and I KNEW that I couldn’t piss on my bed or I’d get beaten worse than Clubber Lange in Rocky III. So I did the only thing I COULD do…I aimed my dick at the bully in the bed next to me while he slept…and pissed all over him.

How’s THAT for fucking irony? After that night? He never bullied anyone again. I EVEN got to be part of the blanket party that was thrown for him the next night by his, supposed, bully friends. It seems that no matter what OUR differences were…at least I didn’t piss the bed.

5

The first time I was suspended from military school came during 6th grade. I was staying in a cottage called ‘Rathje’, and my house parent was a HUGE white whale piece of shit woman named Ms. Forbes. She would lie around in her quarters watching soap operas all day while I was getting my ass kicked. She had a hierarchy of 6th grade throngs who kissed her ass daily in order to be in her good favors. I was NOT in her good favor.

The bullies in our cottage were called upon by her to buy Twinkies from the 7-11, to clean her quarters, or any menial task she could ask them to do in order to further her quest to be the most enormous behemoth possible by never leaving her fucking couch cushion. I would constantly ask her to step in and stop the other kids from beating the shit out of me, or stealing my stuff, and her only response would be for me to ‘grow up’.

One of her favorites was a little nerd, named Mikey, who looked like a midget Harry Potter. She doted on him like a rich woman with a little dog. I think she even carried him around with his head sticking out of her purse. This kid was fucking annoying because he got whatever he wanted from Ms. Forbes and he KNEW he could get away with anything. ALL the bullies knew to leave him the fuck alone, lest they get an ass pounding from this mega woman.

Our cottage, which was called Rathje, was one of the bigger ones on campus and therefore held more kids than most. It was 3 stories high, with 5 dorms per floor. This meant that it normally held around 45 kids like a juvenile detention center. I found it ironic even then, that this mean bitch who had the attention span of an end table, would be in charge of the most kids.

Ms. Forbes quarters were located on the first floor directly below the bathroom on the second. The bathroom consisted of 3 urinals, 3 toilet stalls, a shower, and a drain in the middle of the tiled floor.

One afternoon when I got out of school, I hightailed it back to my cottage because I had a particularly nasty shit brewing. I could feel it in my lower intestine gurgling like a volcano about to erupt. Between the pasty mashed potatoes, the brick-like meatloaf, and the creamed beef on toast, one’s digestive track would back up like a traffic jam slowly building over the course of a few weeks until it was finally ready to explode out of you in a mountainous boulder like-shit. After the 3 o’clock bell rang at school, I promptly stood up from my desk, clenched my ass cheeks together and did that incredibly retarded ‘poo march’ where you walk all fast while trying not to move any part of your body but your legs.

Luckily my cottage was just across the road from the schoolhouse and I quickly closed the distance. I burst through the cottage door and hobbled up the stairs as quickly as I could. As I slammed my ass down onto the toilet seat, the beast within exited me, sending a goose bump inducing feeling of relief throughout my body. I sat there for a minute and just let the joy wash over me.

I wiped myself, and then got up to flush the toilet. I looked down at my sphintoric endeavor and marveled at how much shit had been inside me. It seemed that there must have been at least 14 pounds of waste in that porcelain bowl, and its passing filled me with regret. After all…this was a giant piece of ME that was having a burial at sea. I stood at attention and saluted my fallen comrades.

When I pushed the lever down…that feeling of fear and panic that we’ve ALL faced gripped me, as the water in the bowl began to rise. In this situation, you KNOW you have about 3 seconds to find a plunger, and I darted through the bathroom HOPING upon hope that one would be available. As I was looking in the third stall…I heard it. That sound of water slapping the tile below the toilet.

Panic once again gripped me because as I ran back to the toilet, I could see my dookies bobbing precariously on the edge of the overflow. Just then, Ms. Forbes’ pet Mikey came strolling into the bathroom. As much as I hated him, I KNEW that he would know where a plunger was. He sized up my situation, and looked at me with wide eyed surprise. “DON’T JUST STAND THERE, GET ME A PLUNGER” I yelled at him. And without missing a beat, he turned and with the glee of a tiny tattle tale, ran down the stairs yelling “Ms. Forbes! Ms. Forbes! Mike overflowed the toilet!”

Shit! This is exactly what I did NOT want. I wanted to clean this mess up without her ever having known, because I KNEW it would only lead to more jibes from the house bullies. As the water from the overflowed toilet began to spread out on the floor, I could hear Mikey downstairs rattling off his tattling followed by the bellowing of orders by Ms. Forbes. In the six months I had been in the Rathje cottage, Mr. Forbes had never once stepped foot on the stair case leading upstairs, so she was giving Mikey directions on what to do next.

I heard the sound of tiny footsteps running up the stairs at top speed and Mikey burst into the bathroom, out of breath, saying “you’re in troooooooouble!” At this point I was quite fed up with little Mikey and said “Get me a fucking plunger you little shit!” Mikey looked at me with a dumbfounded expression on his face. He’d never been ‘ordered’ to do ANYTHING, other than by Ms. Forbes, much less had he been cussed at.

Once again, he pivoted on his tiny feet, and ran down the stairs screaming “Ms. Forbes! Ms. Forbes! Mike said a curse word!” FUCK! Now I was in trouble. Cursing in military school meant that you had a bar of soap shoved in your mouth, and soap tastes nasty. I just hung my head and stood there as water creeped around my shoes.

Because the building was SO old, the water KEPT coming out of the toilet. I know NOW that if the water keeps flowing in a toilet, you just jiggle the handle, but I was in sixth grade for fucks sake. At this point, the damage had been done, I knew that I would have a mess to clean, but it would be minimal because there was a drain on the floor a few feet in front of the stall. However, as the water hit the drain…it became apparent that it was clogged because the water just passed over it and kept rising on the floor.

Mikey once again ran up the stairs and said “Ms. Forbes sais to keep flushing the toilet!” What did I know? I flushed the fucking toilet. The water began flowing more furiously from the bowl, and NOW my turds were cliff diving into the ever rising bathroom lake being formed on the floor. I told Mikey again to get a plunger, and he told ME that Ms. Forbes said we didn’t have one.

At this point about 2 inches of water had filled the bathroom and was starting to flow out into the hallway, we could HEAR the floor creaking from the weight of all the water, and suddenly we heard a loud crash. From downstairs Mikey and I heard Ms. Forbes scream like an infant, and he ran back down to see what had happened. As he did, I reached into the water and pulled up the grate from the floor drain. I stuck my hand in and yanked out the most disgusting tangle of toothbrushes, hair, and goopy mess I’d ever felt. However, the water still wasn’t going down.

I ran out into the hallway to grab a hanger from one of the closets so I could snake the drain, and I could see that the water was now flowing down the stairs like a waterfall. I could see pieces of my shit everywhere. After I grabbed a hanger from the hall closet, I ran back towards the bathroom just in time to see Mikey running back up the stairs at top speed, as he got about 4 steps from the top, he slipped and landed face first in one of the bigger chunks of shit floating around like a life boat from the Titanic.

He got up, soaking wet, with MY shit smeared on his face and said “The ceiling in Ms. Forbes room cracked, there’s water and poo all over her…you’re in BIG trouble”. Even in my youth, I always had a comeback. I told him: “yeah? Well I may be in trouble, but at least I don’t have shit all over me.”

It’s a shame that I didn’t have the same sense of humor THEN that I have now, because I would LOVE to go back in time and enjoy that moment for ALL it was worth. I basically shit on TWO people I hated without ever having meant too. Sometimes life puts you at the front of the line for the ‘payback’ concession booth.

A plumber had to be called out to snake the floor drain professionally. The plumbing in all the toilets had to be changed, and the ceiling in Ms. Forbes room had to be replaced. All in all, my shit caused about ten thousand dollars worth of damage, and because they couldn’t MAKE my mother pay for it? I got suspended…for taking a shit.

Even though I was filled with prideful joy at having had unintentional revenge on Ms. Forbes lazy fat ass, these stories rarely end on a happy note. The week that I spent on suspension, my mother had to take off of work, during which time I was not allowed to leave the house. From morning until night she took her OWN form of revenge on ME by drinking and beating the shit out of me with her belt daily. You would think that her ‘mad on’ would have dissipated after a few days, but it lasted right up until the time she drove me back to school the following Sunday night.

That Monday, after school, I was transferred to another cottage. Ms. Forbes didn’t want to see me, so I was whisked off to live with a smaller, more manageable group of boys. I didn’t mind that at all.

6

After my first six months at Glenwood, I finally stood up for myself and earned a reputation of ‘leave that mother fucker alone’ from my classmates. The problem was that this only made the OLDER kids pick on me more because it made THEM look cool to pick on the ‘tough guy’. I was NO tough guy.

One Sunday afternoon, I was taking a nap in my cottage. I used to LOVE catching those z’s because my bed was RIGHT by the window in our dorm room, and I could stretch out like a lazy cat in the afternoon sun. As I slept, my world slowly began to fill with laughter…a low mumble of it at first, but as it grew louder, I sleepily awoke to a room full of laughing kids. I was lying on my stomach and as I came out of my dream state, I could feel something cold and wet on my back side. I LEAPED out of bed and was horrified to find that the leader of this pack of bullies, who haunted me daily, had put a dildo he had found in the river by our campus down the crack of my ass.

Have you ever been SO full of rage that you don’t quite remember what happened while you were in that state? I awoke from this rage state as my house parent; Mr. Pros was dragging me off of this ass magnet while I was beating the living shit out of him by a tree outside of our cottage. I don’t remember HOW I got there; I don’t remember how the fight had led us outside. All I know is that I was crying, I felt like my body temperature had gone up to 110 degrees, and this kid’s gaggle of bullies were standing around him with stunned expressions as he lay up against that tree with blood all over his face.

I was later told that after I had flown into a rage, I tussled with him all through the cottage until we ended up outside. Apparently, as is often the case with bullies, he didn’t put up much of a fight. Once I got him up against the tree, I started punching him in the face until he fell down. When he hit the ground, I jumped on top of him and continued to pummel him until Mr. Pros came and dragged me away, with my fists still punching at the air.

After that? Those kids left me the fuck alone. I found out later in life from my cousin, that my father had much the same kind of temper. Luckily, this was the only time in my life where I ‘hulked’ out. Mr. Pros just told me to clean up and calm down, and after about two hours of ‘cool down’ time, he came to talk to me. I was frightened because I thought I was going to be in some deep shit, but he only told me that he was proud of me for finally sticking up for myself.

That was one of the best lessons I learned in military school, because in life people, politicians, bosses, significant others, family, and even strangers will pick on you and make you feel like a loser, but when you finally walk up to the car and George McFly Biff in the face, you will ultimately get some fucking respect. It’s fucked up that it has to come to that, but I’m sure that’s ONE step in our evolutionary chain that’s never been skipped.

To Be Continued…