The Party

The pity party is one that I don’t like to attend often. It’s full of smoke blowing and half-hearted empathy from those that stop by and peek through the window. As a 23 year old, I always try and cheer myself up that I’ve got years and years to enjoy my life. Time enough to go out and make friends, to go to parties and the like. At the same time however, I am constantly reminded that I am 23 years old with a total of 7 friends and never went to parties and the like. I don’t know how I missed out on that though. The few acquaintances I had throughout high school were party animals. They went out every Friday, had house parties while their parents were away and generally lived the lives you see in the movies. I never experienced it, not once. I guess that’s why they were just acquaintances and not friends. I remember one time during the start of my senior year I got invited to a bonfire, I waited. And waited. I put on my black hoodie and Adidas and waited. I sat on a dining room chair in front of the TV for two hours. My parents asked me if I was going somewhere, and I said “Maybe.” The reason I said that is because I knew, deep in the memory of my heart, I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. I sat silently for two hours, trying not to well up over something that seemed so trivial.


Trivial to most, but to me was a big night in my life. Never once had I even been spoken to by the people who had invited me. I guess though, that’s why I knew it wasn’t to be. In spite of that however, it still hurt that no one came to pick me up as promised. That one day was the one day I felt like a real high school persona. A character in the drama filled laugh fest that was the high school movie. That night when I went to bed though, I knew that I would never be one of that crowd. I know that sounds melodramatic, but you have to understand where I come from on this issue. It’s not like I was a leper or anything, or even one of the weird guys that were so out there that they were automatically outcasts. No, I was just a normal kid going to high school.


The problem started long before that, though. I’ve harped on this before to others and at risk of sounding patently annoying, I do fault my grade school situation as the root of pretty much all that has unfolded upon me in the 11 years since that time. I didn’t come from an abusive, a broken or even a lower class home. I didn’t have massive social factors playing a part in my ostracism like race or religion. The only thing I had was my grade school. Missing the boat seems to be a theme in my life and grade school to junior high transition was the first time I was left standing on the dock watching the harbor cruise sail out. You see, long before I’m able to recall, my parents made a choice. That choice is something I wish to god and back that I could change.


The two options for school were Catholic school or French immersion school. My dad, being a staunch opponent of religion in school was dead set against Catholic school so the decision, it seemed, was already made. I understand my parents’ reasoning for putting me in the school insofar as I am able to comprehend. They wanted me to learn another language as a child so it would be easier for me to understand it. My anguish, and it genuinely is that, comes because that school was 20 miles away from my home. 20 miles seems like a trifle of a drive but to a 4 year old kid, it is a lifetime away. Instead of going to the school that was less than 2 miles away, I was bussed to a school ten times farther away. I’m not sure how many people sit back and think about what life could have been like had they gone back and had a different experience in grade school, but I venture to say not many do. It happens almost daily to me though. I think back to what people I met upon moving to a “normal” school for junior high would say about their grade school. The teachers they all shared, the birthday parties they all went to together. I wondered what it was like, but at the same time I realized that I was already behind. I hadn’t gone to their schools; I hadn’t known them for most of my life. More importantly, they didn’t know me and kids, being the vicious and cruel things they are, made me know it.


Immediately I was the outcast. They asked what school I had gone to. I said “Knox” assuming that they might know it from Jim. They looked at me with a peculiar expression on their face and smirked with a couple eye roll and brow furrow and walked away. All it took was one week for the entire school to know that I had gone to a “special” school where they taught nothing but French. I can honestly say I tried to make friends with people. I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem like anyone cared. Everyone it seemed, was all stocked up on friends and didn’t need or want another one. After all, they had all been together since they were five years old. My friends from grade school on the other hand, were scattered throughout the city of San Diego, and much like the school twenty miles away, the city was just too big for a twelve year old kid to keep friends nearby.


Recently I’ve been trying to find one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life and I, like Grimace did, type her name out in hopes that she occasionally does Google searches for her name.


Hi Lark Ellsworth, it’s me, Brian Carver from Knox elementary.


She was the one person that I grew attached to as a kid and never wanted to lose as a friend. As life would have it though, she, just like the school we shared, was twenty miles away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep in contact with any of my friends from school. That proved to be somewhat devastating to my social sanity once I moved onto junior high. With no friends to speak of and no aid in sight, I was relegated to the bottom rung of the social ladder.


Over the course of two years there, I stumbled along the path of least resistance in order to get by. While I kept trying to make friends along the way, it seemed to me that I had made enemies without doing anything to deserve them. The saddest part though, is that I got more attention from those who hated me than those who liked me. It was because of those people that for some reason, I was deemed “at risk” by the administration and singled out for attention from the guidance counselor. She was a nice lady, but I think starting her approach to me with “What’s wrong with you?” kind of makes for a difficult guidance session. Through various death threats from Asian gangs and demented white trash (Ian Bare. I hope to god you Google your name from prison some day), I realized that I must have something wrong with me.


I examined myself closely one day after school. Among the bruises handed out to me by said parties, I did not find a birthmark in the shape of a bull’s-eye anywhere on my body. Furthermore, I wondered if perhaps it was my penchant for keeping to myself after being spurned from the lunch tables for a solid year that was bringing this hate down on me. After all, who is going to pay attention to the guy no one pays attention to? A bitch of a cycle, really. Later, I was to learn that the administration did not in fact actually care about me at all. The most blatant example coming when they did not bother acknowledging me after I burst into the office and slammed the door. Ian had told me earlier in the day that he was going to kill me after school. When the last bell rang, I decided the best thing to do would be to wait in my sixth period class for a little while to make him think I left school early. When I explained to my teacher why I was waiting, she said that she had to go so I could wait outside. I tried to explain that as long as I’m in her classroom, I at least had cover under a desk should he try and hit me with the baseball bat he had shaken at me while making his not so veiled threat. She looked at her watch and told me that it was too bad, I had to get out. As soon as I did, I saw Ian at the other end of the corridor. I booked it and he did likewise after me. When I got into the office and explained the situation, the very same guidance counselor told me that Ian was a nice boy. That nice boy however, was pacing back and forth just beyond the campus grounds, bat in hand.


At any rate, junior high seemed to set the tone for what my life was to be like in high school. This time however, the pool of students grew immensely so that those 300 or so from my junior high might be scattered enough for me to evade more persecution. It was and I was able to make a few friends over my four years there, but those few friends were barely more than acquaintances. Don’t get me wrong, they were more than acquaintances, but barely is the key. We would see each other at school, and maybe even hang out a little afterwards, but always on campus. Not once did I go hang out with anyone at their place outside of stopping by on the way to water polo practice. A greater person may have realized that they were not to be a part of that revered high school clique and set aside the life they hoped for pursuit of the greater good. That good, being advancing well in school and attaining impeccable grades in order to ultimately conquer those who did not keep their mental daggers sharp.


For five years, I was not to be deterred in my quest for the life instead of that great good. In those years, my grades slipped and I hid my emotional baggage in sports and mental musings. I hoped that maybe, just maybe if I excelled in one area of school that someone would notice. I did excel but the memory of my tired heart was only refreshed as no one took notice. I guess being one of the only people to letter in four sports over the years isn’t enough to merit his name spelled correctly the three times it’s in the yearbook every year.


What goads me the most though, is that night I spent two hours ignoring the truth I knew was to come that night. It was the night that it finally clicked in my head. My life in high school was not going to be what I had hoped for. My only way to live what I hoped for was to do it out of high school. That night being at the start of my senior year, I decided to try and reverse everything I had screwed up those three years prior.


I hoped that in spite of the fact I had a mediocre G.P.A. and hadn’t applied to schools during my junior year, I would get into somewhere out of San Diego. I worked hard, I studied, I actually did home work. For the first two months of school, I had improved greatly and was on track to put up a respectable graduating G.P.A. It was right before the winter break that they took my counselor away and moved her to the K-P grouping. She had helped me tremendously during the start of the year and promised that my replacement counselor would be just as adequate. It turns out though, that she wasn’t. She was barely out of school two years and this was her first permanent placement. Instead of making the calls and writing the letters my old counselor had promised, she quit after two months. So with five months to graduation, and eight months before I had hoped to attend a real University, the school installed the tennis coach as my counselor. He was a great coach, but a horrible counselor. I kept working hard though and finally boosted my G.P.A. to the level that I was told would get me into at least a state school if not a UC of less than stellar stature. But that still meant I would be able to get out of San Diego. Start anew. Live in a dorm. Party, hang out, and make real friends that I would be able to keep for longer than a school year. But that never happened. The tennis coach counselor was just the latest in bureaucratic let downs.


With no getting out of San Diego and living the college life I had dreamed of, I took the last vacation with no care in the world I would every take. Upon getting back, I took a job at a restaurant and made what turned out to be one of my best friends ever, Marv. Through him I would meet his brother and through his brother I would meet Bryanna. For the time being though, Marv, the rest of our loose knit group of co-workers and I had one of the best summers of my life. Earlier in the summer, I had enrolled in my local community college. A rather dream shattering moment if I do say so myself.


Towards the end of summer, I met Gina. The whore through whom I would eventually get to experience a portion of that college life I wished for.


I feel I should explain that Gina was not actually a whore at the time of our dating, nor do I know if she turned into one after or is one now. What I do know is that she would hang out with an ex-boyfriend of hers and take road trips with him and tell me about them weeks later. She also went on to tell me that on those trips, he would tell her how much he loved her and that he wanted her to be with him. As if that wasn’t enough, she would always remember to bring up how attractive he is and how much she still cared for him. It was all really creepy looking back. The icing on the cake came when she wanted to pledge a sorority at Riverside. She would beat around the bush about the process but never failed to ask if we would still be together if she had to do things to get into the sorority. So let me be clear in my contention that she was a whore is based solely on those factors. But that is beside the point.


For the first year and a half of my time in community college and hers at Riverside, I spent countless days with her. In that time I got to experience fleetingly that first year of college that freshman are privy to in the dorms. What I missed out on though, was experiencing it myself. The intermediary that she provided gave me a glimpse of what that life is like and man how I wish I could have had it. Now that I go to UCSD, I am not bothered by the fact that I missed the time in the dorms or the keggers at frat houses. It’s the friendships that people have I’m envious of. It’s the getting the hell out of where you grew up and forcing yourself to make a new life that I wanted. It’s the ability to go back and meet up with friends from your college days that I wish that I had. Transferring from a community college to a university in your home town doesn’t afford you those luxuries. Being a community college transfer student is just another way of getting left on the dock.


For all the things I’ve missed though, I have to admit that overall I’m happy with my life. Sure, there are times where I get depressed thinking about what I’ve missed out on. The hardest part though, is when I try and justify what I’ve done as being comparable to what I haven’t. What I have now though, is something I would not trade in for those memories and abilities. I would do anything for the chance to go back and do it all over again, this time right, from grade school on and keep the seven friends I have now. And it’s realizing that I would want to keep those seven friends that makes me 51% glad I fucked up so badly.