Breaking the Mold

Dearest Friends and Faithful Readers,

The last month has been a whirl wind, I will try to catch you up.

I ditched Eugene. I know I failed to name the sad sack of a city earlier, but that was because I was afraid of father coming after me. Besides the fact that I am no longer there, this is something that I no longer fear as father and I have recently made amends.

Eugene was shitsville. I hate to be crude, but there is no other way around it. It rained, it was cold, the girls were prudes, everyone was a "hippy" (quotes for a reason, mind you!), and the Mexican food was nowhere near as good as Sergei's friend made it out to be. I also spent much of my two weeks there in a barbaric malaise, which is what I will attribute my sudden liking of cheap supermarket paperbacks (Dean Koontz, I take back every kind word I ever uttered about you!).

Things could have been different in Eurgene, but they weren't. The physical abuse I received early in my visit should have been viewed as a sign of things to come. It was not because of my apparent attraction towards acting foolishly. I am a buffoon from time to time, I cannot make excuses for myself, where none exist.

I finally left town when I came to the realization that my host had no intention of being more hospitable. Instead she wanted to analyze Mary Higgins Clarke and try to figure out why all the boys she liked were so terrible. I have a suggestion for you, it might be that you are unwilling to look past the Oregonians that surround you. Spice up your life with a little variety! I find it hard to placate someone who cannot see what is right in front of their dimwitted eyes!

A quick aside, I fully realize that I am using more exclamation points than is usual, but that is because of my new vigorous approach to life. Now that I have extricated myself from both rehab and Eugene, I have come to the conclusion that it is as magical as some of you have made it out to be!

Two days after leaving Eugene I found myself without a cent and in Portland, an unwilling to prostitute my body yet again I decided it was time to call one of my homes. My first instinct was too call mother of course, but for once I decided to follow the passionate implorings of so many of my friends and not crawl back to mother's nest. If there is one thing that rehab taught me it's that mother was the cause of quite a few of my problems. She refused to let me grow up, and when I was with her I was more than happy to stay the baby she wanted me to be. At some point though I must become a man, and this seemed like the time to do it. So I called father, and looked for help from the man I've spent the last seven years running from.

Father set up a ticket and hotel room for me and we met the next morning in Seattle. After spending a week there, we ventured up to Canada and Vancouver, to spend time with father's old Northwestern roommate, Chaz Gentry.

Chaz and my father's lives have both seemed to mirror one another perfectly, with the exception of Chaz's impotence stopping him from having any spawn of his own. Also Chaz's choosing to go back to his native Canada, rather than staying in the States (as he calls them).
With no familial connections other than a wife in Toronto who he has been separated from for the past nine years, Chaz was quick to invite us both to spend the holidays with him. And that is exactly what we have done.

Father is set to return to Southern California next Friday and had asked me to return with him. I politely declined and told him that it is the right time for me to grow into my destiny as a man. After a cigar of thinking he came around to my way of thinking, and along with Chaz we agreed that I would stay with him in Vancouver for at least a couple of months. I will try to look for a job during this time, but neither of them want me to put too much pressure on myself, so father will provide me with a decent sized allowance in the interim. They have both told me that this is my chance and I must take it, something which I agree with completely.

It is time to become my own man!

-AASLXIII