how to get kicked out of your house

So I've been living out of a few garbage bags and backpacks since I was 16 years old. I've never really had a whole lot of possessions or your typical adolescent life. In that span of time, I've made a ton of amazing friends(each of whom I'd take a bullet for), been part of two punk rock bands, gone through three lip rings, two mohawks, lived at five different residences and accrued (is that how you spell it?) maybe twenty to thirty artifacts. I've never been able to hold down a job for more than six months or jump to the next tax bracket. I'd like to preface this by saying, through thick and thin I love my family and hold them to be the most important and formative people of my meagre and penniless life experience.

When I was fifteen, I got turned on to punk rock and that spark ignited a flame that I believe and know will never die. Unfortunately, it instilled in me what some might call a shitty attitude. When I caught the "teenage rebellion fuck you mom and dad bug", I had no idea where it would lead me. At the time, I wore these huge wire frame glasses, polo shirts and khakis and had just finished 9th grade at a Catholic school in Scarborough where a uniform was the in thing. I hungout with the cool kids that played CounterStrike and Command and Conquer on the school computers until 7PM every night. The ones that were too cool for girls, drugs and funky clothing.

I transferred to a public high school in North York and realized that...you know...maybe tallying kill frags on the Dust Map in CS wasn't exactly "hype beans". I became friends with two cynical motherfuckers who thought the music I listened to was garbage but thoroughly enjoyed smoking the marijuana with me. We were all enriched english students. I started smoking the "marijuana" and drinking the "forty ounce". Hopped up on NOFX and reckless abandon I found home, school and the like to be a total drag. My mother and my stepdad, god love em, weren't too sure what to do with the newly hormonal firstborn. I got grounded a lot and a lot of the things I brought home were considered contraband and locked away in a closet in my stepfather's office. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure they were looking out for my best interests; something I've never really been too keen on.

My younger brother and I found the parental regime to be too oppressive so we decided to "take the power back". My parents weren't psychos or physically abusive, but there was a lot of audible tension, fiery words exchanged and heated debates on what was right and wrong. We felt as if we were chilling in Stalag 13. There were random bag and room searches, yelling matches and lots of non-trust. We weren't the most honest kids because we felt as if telling the truth would land us in more shit. Which was a coin toss, because most of the stuff we did was deserved (deser-ved...accent on the ed) of reprimand.

My brother decided to take my mom's keys while she was in the shower and get them cut at the nearest home hardware while our stepdad was at work. We had a small time window to get some of our prized disrespected "treasures" from the dungeon of gloom. Those treasures included porno magazines, my discman and some other things I can't quite recall. I loved my discman a lot. If you know me well, you know how important music is to me and how much of a music junkie I am. There was nothing I loved more than dissapearing into a wall of noise while I walked our dog or just went on a mindless jaunt to nowhere. So my dear brother got that back for me.

The very same weekend, I stole a bottle of high grade whiskey from my grandfather's basement and took it to school in exchange for a quarter of "bomb grass". The person I was to make the exchange with gave me his locker combo and we made the switch in the lockers. There was a note in his locker thanking me for the whiskey and telling me to have some magical fun with the "mad chronics". That day after making the switch I planned to go to my friend's house and smoke myself ridiculous. Pot in pocket, I walked down the hall to find my mother and stepfather, visibly enraged, striding towards me. I was fucked.

I took the headphones off and hung my head. I was pulled into the office and within minutes the jig was up. I spent the weekend at my grandfather's because my family was so pissed off at me. I took all the blame in an attempt to make sure my little brother didn't get in any trouble. Yeah I'm fucking noble, so what?

A few days later I return to my house to see a cop car waiting out front. I was to be arrested and charged with a number of things. I was blown away. My own parents were charging me. Again, in retrospect, I guess it seemed to them that they had run out of options with me. I wasn't going to learn a good lesson unless it was the hard way. Sad fact is, I'm not real good at learning life lessons. I just live and in the end I'm sure that's why Jesus, Mary and the Lord Almighty rarely come to bat for me.

I was taken in and formally charged sometime in March. It was a real shitty experience. My brother found out I was getting charged and THIS RIGHT HERE IS BROTHERLY LOVE, came and turned himself in for the same crimes. So on top of everything, we got nailed with mischief. He was in grade fucking seven.

Things happened very quickly after that. Under the radar, I talked frequently with my dad about me moving to his place downtown. My parents were checking out different rehab facilities for me. On top of the dope and the booze (you know...regular teenage shit), I was being accused of stealing my mom's pain medication (she had a lot of vicious migraines...i can attest, i get them too) and smoking white powder. I got a converted puffer turned into a pipe for pot use, but after police testing, there were "allegedly" some other chems found in it. Till this day, I'm innocent of both and I'll swear up and down.

On my way to get fingerprinted at a cop station with my stepdad, I looked behind me in the car to see all of my shit piled in it. No words were exchanged. After the fingerprinting, I found myself at my little sister's developmental psychologist of sorts, and I had to say goodbye to her and my mom. That was probably one of the hardest things I'll ever have to do in my life. She was six, seven years old and didn't understand. real shitty.

I then found myself at 165 Bathurst St. moving into my dads. my brother came down a week later after spending the week on a fuck you strike. it's like a hunger strike or a silence strike, except he just said fuck you a lot. we got kicked out of there too, but that's another story.


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epilogue:

haha....
it isn't as bad as it sounds. it really isn't. as i said before, i still love my mom, my stepdad and my dad as much as i ever will. they're my family and blood is thicker than saliva and stains deeper than grape juice. so no matter who i kiss or whatever messes i make of any other relationship, i'll always have my family at my back. sure, we had a rough patch, but now i see my mom my two sisters and stepdad and we get along. mildly weird, but it's a-ok now.

the great fire of february 13th, 2007

Last summer, I left my hometown of Toronto to attend Concordia University in Montreal. My father helped me move up. He is an architect in Dubai and enjoys scarlet women of the night and alcohol. Don't get me wrong, he is probably my hero, but not my role model. I found this nice little place on the third floor of a cute little Montreal apartment where I would later spend Christmas alone eating penne and olive oil. My apartment contained things that were very dear to me. Several hundred pages of my own writing, nearly 400 books, 30 vinyl records (including first pressings of THE CLASH), my laptop with tons of university work and all kinds of other goodness.

Six months pass. My heart gets broken once, I masturbated 1342 times, I smoked 1023 packs of ciggarettes and I became a full fledged alcoholic.

February the 12th 2007 passed as any other normal night for me would. I spent the day sleeping and doing nothing. In the evening, I wandered over to the Faubourg Mall on Ste. Catherines and purchased one 99 cent pizza and then to my local depanneur (aka variety store) and buy one large ten percent forty from my friend Ahmed. Earlier in the year, Ahmed would see me enter the store with cute boys and girls from Montreal, buy beer and smokes and return to my apartment above. However by that time, I was buying for one.

I returned upstairs to watch Passion of the Christ and drink my forty. I finish the booze and decide to go to bed. I was hammered. Night passed, the temperature dropped to below minus thirty and I tossed fitfully on my sorry excuse for a cot.

I had class the next morning at 11:45. I was really going to go to this one. My friend Keith was to be workshopped and I had done my homework and was ready to face the day. I set my alarm for 9:00 just to go over my notes and prepare for class. I was trying my damndest to imitate a "good student".

My alarm went off as planned and I hit the snooze button for about forty minutes. At around quarter to nine, I hear yelling come up from the floor below me. I get up and smell smoke. Then, I stumble over to my front door and open it. What do I see? Flames crawling up the walls and smoke bilowing everywhere. I knock on the two opposing doors and run back into my apartment. Funnily enough, the firemen had already come up and rescued the people on my floor. Everyone but yours truly. I had very little time, there was smoke coming up from under my kitchen sink and out from my bathroom.

My room had the fire escape for our floor. If in the case of a fire, people would break the glass near my door handle, enter it and take the fire escape out my back balcony door. I threw on my shitty jacket, my jeans, my shoes and grabbed my laptop. When I get to the balcony, I realize that if I take the fire escape I have to cross a roof with flames shooting out of it. I'd probably fall in.

I look over at the roof connected to ours at the next building. It's covered in snow and ice and there's no way I can take my laptop. I have to leave it there. I jump on to the next roof and make my way down to street level. The temperature is minus 30.

For the next hour I watch as the flames envelope what was once my hole in the wall and everything I once owned. I had no insurance, I was in no position to sue because they still don't know who's responsible and that's all I wrote.