Everything in here is true. The innumerable legal infractions, the adulterous debacle, the death of my grandmother, and the bit about my brother. If I could change it all, I would, but life hasn't given me too many second chances. Above all else, this piece ought to serve as a cautionary tale—and one with a simple yet sobering message: actions have consequences.
Having grown up in a big city without a whole lot of direction, I got drunk on the idea that I needed to get all my living done before I lost sight of what was important. Only now do I see the irony in such a belief. I don't know that any one thing tipped me over the edge, but I was reading Kerouac, listening to Cobain, and watching James Dean. In short, the idea that life was a party excited me, and I was about to try really fucking hard to get myself killed by twenty-seven, to live or die trying. There was no question about it for me: it was a sin to die of old age, and I believed that wholeheartedly. This was the beginning of a gyre. My life was about to spiral out of control, and I loved it.
I knew that to fund the kind of nights I had in mind, I would need some kind of income, and I found it. To put it delicately, I dealt in hustle: it was a currency for me. I was dealing all kinds of shit to my delusional prep school peers who might best be characterized as young, rich, and stupid. Drugs, booze, you name it. I was even selling placebo pills that these kids bought without thinking twice. Of course, they didn't know, and they didn't care. Money was nothing more than an object to these kids.
Armed with a steady source of income, the outrageous escapades began. From yacht parties in the Hudson to skinny dipping with socialites at The Gansevoort Park Hotel, I sought out the most story-worthy adventures and embraced them wholeheartedly. Once I woke up with two French girls on a beach in The Hamptons and thought that I was dreaming. It turns out some Ukrainian Oligarch had invited everyone in the VIP section at The Boom Boom Room to some party in the Hamptons and had quite literally chartered a private helicopter to get us there. As for my lack of adequate recollection, I had a most potent mixture of MDMA and Columbian to thank for that. And it was never enough. I always wanted more, and it's probably that desire that pushed me over the edge. I was "enchanted" as Fitzgerald once so eloquently wrote "by the inexhaustible variety of life," the partying wasn't enough. I needed to get it all out of my system. I needed to live. The answer was fight club.
I had a routine: a shot of Jameson to loosen up, two lines for speed, four painkillers to nullify my nerve endings, and a kiss from some girl in the crowd. This was fight club. The guy organizing it—he also owned the bar—was an ex-marine who believed in the art of violence as a means of cleansing the soul—so did I. We met on Thursday nights beneath The Trinity Pub on 85th between second and third at 4:00 and stayed until 7:00—bars in the city close at 4:00, so we didn't have to worry about cops walking in or anything like that. It was really just like the movie. There were no tryouts, anybody could join, and we fought to KO or tap out—whichever came first. We wore mouthguards, used an old wrestling mat, and really just the beat the absolute shit out of each other. It was glorious.
I'd been hit in the face many a time, but never quite this hard. In a window of ten days, the walls of my perfect little world all came crashing down. It was at once thrilling and wonderful to never have to worry about finding something to do or somewhere interesting to go. As Kerouac once so poignantly remarked: "there was nowhere to go but everywhere." Life was one big party, and I was so focused on generating content for my memoirs that I lost sight of reason and somehow forgot that that actions have consequences, and they eventually caught up to me.
One fine evening, more specifically, a married man came home to find a smug teenage jackass in bed with his wife of eleven years. I could feel his rage from across the room and managed to make it through the fire escape before he could try to kill me, but I did pity the man. She never mentioned a husband, but I saw the tan line on her finger and knew full-well that she was married, but because she was gorgeous and horny and paid for my drinks, I really didn't care. Only after I had made it to safety did I realize that my sexual appetite had destroyed a marriage. That man never wronged me in any way, and though the woman was equally responsible, I made a fool out of him, and it sickened me.
And it didn't end there. I had left that apartment at 6:00 and didn't get home until 7:00 at which point I passed out on the couch. I awoke a few hours later to a call from my aunt. My grandmother had passed away suddenly that morning after suffering a heart-attack. After a short investigation, the police concluded that the last thing she had done before biting the dust was read a copy of The New York Post. There was an article that morning about the arrest of an ex-marine who ran an illicit underground fight-club. Accompanying the article was a picture for which my back had been to the camera. I have a tattoo on my left shoulder, however, and my grandmother knew this. What's more, I had gone to breakfast with her a few weeks earlier and initially refused to take off my sunglasses; when she eventually convinced me to do so, she saw a big black eye, the cause of which I evidently lied about, but that is no matter. She wasn't an idiot. With the encounter in the back of her head, when she read that article and saw that picture, she had a heart-attack and died. I went through the paper with a fine-tooth comb, and there was nothing else in there that would have upset her. In short, I was responsible—at least I felt responsible. Had I not been out there battering the shit out of people and getting the shit battered out of me, the most unfortunate situation could have been avoided altogether.
Two days later my younger brother was rushed to the emergency room and stayed in a coma for three days after overdosing on molly. When I got to the hospital and saw him hooked up to all those machines, it broke my heart. In spite of my escapades, save a hiccup here and there, he had always managed to stay on the straight and narrow. He was a good kid, and as his brother, I wanted better for him. The kid was so focused on school and on doing well for the family—he'd even earned a scholarship to attend Phillips Academy Andover—that he would never have thought of molly as anything more than a clichéd female name were it not for me and my hedonistic debauchery. And it wasn't just what my behavior encouraged him to do, it was that I hadn't been there for him. He didn't have any other legitimate male role models in his life, and I failed him.
This was all just too much for me to handle, and I needed out. Was it irresponsible and irrational? Of course, it was, but no more so than anything else that I had done. What I mean is that after seeing my brother on life-support, I hitched a red-eye to Paris and stayed there for about a week. I bought a big carton of cigarettes at the airport, slept at a hostel on the Boulevard Saint-Michel near The Luxembourg gardens, and spent my days by the Seine off of Rue de la Huchette. I just sat there for hours at a time burning through cigarettes and thinking about all that I had done and what it meant, if anything. Six days and eleven cartons later, I came to a few conclusions. Nietzsche once remarked that man would rather have the void as meaning than be void of meaning, and I finally seemed to understand what he meant. It all seemed to make sense—at least temporarily—and with the help of my Lucky Strikes I was able to dismantle my bravado and recognize that I needed something other than stirring up shitstorms to which I could devote myself.
I got home just in my time for my grandmother's funeral and was washed with relief to see my brother there. After the overdose, though, he was never quite the same. In short, he picked up where I left off, doing everything that I did and then some, lost his scholarship, and never quite managed to get his shit together. I'll never forgive myself for what I did to him.
Though I'll still hear about parties and get anonymous emails about fight club, these days I settle for leaving my adventures on the page. That was the grand conclusion in Paris. Writing was that worthwhile pursuit to which I resolved to devote myself. And while I have plenty to write about, part of me would give it all up to just go back and be a kid. For Christ's sake, I was only sixteen when most of this shit happened. I had a beard, dressed well, spoke well, and nobody ever took me for anything less than a college student, but I was just a kid, a stupid kid, but that doesn't make the consequences of my actions any less real. It took the destruction of a marriage, the death of my grandmother, and the corruption of my brother for me to finally sober up and realize that actions have consequences.
My work has been published in various literary magazines. I've received scholarship offers to a few colleges. I frequently get invited to workshops around the country, and my first book is set to publish in June. Even still, I would give it all up for the security of my brother and another conversation with my grandmother. They haunt me. Everything that I write—this piece included—is for them, and while I may have plenty of story-worthy material from which I can draw, the acquisition of that material came at an irreconcilable price.
And so, if I have any advice it's this: if you're going to fight for something, fight like hell—just make damn sure you know exactly what it is for which you're so desperately fighting.
