Chronicles of a post graduate year, pt 1

Around April of 2003, I stumbled into strange territory: I had fallen in love with a girl and I was actually dating her. This was something new, because all of the girls/ loves of my life have never been anything near normal dating circumstances. They usually followed one of three paths. 1. Absolute lovelorn and she didn't care. 2. We could get along on the phone or IM but in person it was like watching paint dry (this also was probably helped by the fact that when I was talking to them, I could play videogames and look at porn). 3. I realized I actually liked this girl but her train had sailed. So there I was, dating a girl who I didn't want to leave in the morning, and living out the twilight months of my college experience with reckless abandon.It was new territory and as wonderful as you can imagine the early stages of love to be. At the time, my friends were actually thinking of making a false newspaper whose headline read: David Turner actually has a girlfriend." For a man who had an amazon black woman run out after fooling around, this was gold to them.

Also added into the mix was my roommate and best friend in Kris, who moved in the previous September. Why are these two related? Well, in one of the long pillow talks me and my ex shared during the time, I was talking about the genesis of my friendships. She asked me, "so when you met Kris, was it love at first site?" Essentially, Kris was the first person since I left high school who made me feel like I was at home again. It's truly a weird experience. I had a slew of good to great friends, but with Kris, it was like a meeting of kismet not seen in years. We pushed each other to extremes in drinking, goofing off, pranks, purchases (more on that later), and late nights listening to the Clash. It was like freshman year all over again, staying up to late times with people of kindred spirits. However, this time, me and Kris usually yellled through the walls, to much agita of out neighbors. My favorite was a discourse that went something like this:


Me: You realize we killed a 24 pack of high life tonight?
Kris: And the few beers that Walter left (our 3rd roomie)
Me: Why do we drink?
Kris: At this point, with graduation looming, mostly to keep the gun out of my mouth.

I could hear numerous windows shut in response to my uncontrollabe laughter.

Another one of these earlier in the year led to the following. It was one of the first weeks of school in the fall semeseter. I, of course, had Fridays off and had gotten bombed the night before. He had decided to take a class on Afro-cuban music. I, using my Friday off, decided to go for a drive to nowhere and figure out what the hell to do with a free day (god bless the non working man). Driving along the 10 in LA, I saw a small plane descending into landing at the Santa Monica airport. I knew what I was going to do. After watching rich men take off on 3 day weekends for Vegas and Big Bear, I knew I had to go up into an airplane. Long story short, 40 minutes later I was airborne with a man with poor English dialect who loved my enthusiasm headed for an airport 40 miles away. This of course, was all free for me. We landed, talked to a guy who owned a plane, and flew home. I left around 4 in the afternoon and caught a stream of traffic on a Friday in that you see once a year in LA. All the while, I had Led Zep 4 blasting at full volume. Somethings in life are far better than sex. This was one of those few moments, where I had spent not a dime, and had a high as great as anything in my life.

So Kris got home and found me on the couch watching the 730 simpsons. He looked at me with a look of disapproval, thinking I had spent the whole day on the couch (which was not unwarrented, mind you). And follows:

Kris: Man, I just had one of the best days of my life. I went to class and learned an entire samba and was taught by this awesome professor who talked about everything in life you could imagine. A discourse on love life and music, and I got to play congas. What did you do.

Me: I went by plane to van nuys all for free, and got to actually fly for a while.
Kris: Damnit. How can you do this. I have an unbeleiveable day and you top it without effort.

The end result: By the end of the next day, he had bought a set of $500 congas and I had a set of bongos. From this point on, our neighbors hated us. Add in to the equation that we had an enormously powerful home theater system which we would blast Zep, the Clash, Elvis and the stones on at 3- 5 in the morning, always topped off by me yelling "JUMANJI" at the top of my lungs, and you have a good idea of what our nights were like.

So back to the waining days of April and the beginning of May. We continued like this and were living college at full blast, i.e. postponing papers because wacky races was on Cartoon Network, coming up with new drinks made of vodka and frozen box wine and a dash of fruit punch for taste, and doing Elvis Karaoke twice a month.

Then it was graduation night. My parents had just come into town and I was going to go to sleep early to get up for the mass ceremony at 7:30. I went to bed after the 1 am sportscenter and was going to get a good night sleep. Of course, in comes Kris with 8 friends and 2 cases of beers. Obviously I wasn't going to bed. So I got up and hung out, with the full intention of getting up of course. Flash forward to 6 am with me, in full cap and gown attire going to Mac Donalds to get breakfast and drinking a drink consisting of Vodka, frozen box wine, fruit punch, and coffee grinds, which I was sure would keep me alert. Needless to say, I didn't wake up until 12:00 the next morning, barely in time to make my own graduation. ( I am still pissed at USC for not reading my post-graduation plans which were: President for life in Argentina)

So after the tearful goodbye from my parents at the end of the weekend, it began. I was no longer living off my parents and I was going to make a name for myself. Right after I ran out of graduation money.

And so it began. But we needed a name for it. And it came in mid May when me and Kris were watching MTV hits on cable at 3 in the morn. It suddenly dawned on us that Hillary Duff's song "why not" was awesome. Albeit that we were hammered, but this song RULED. I mean, not only did the video have the sweet, sweet Hillary Duff, but it had a theme we could relate to. Why not. I mean, wasn't Marilyn Monroe right when she said: "Did you ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?" From this point on, we were free. It would be 4 in the afternoon, 1 hour earlier than the acceptable drinking hour, and he'd look at me and say, "wanna drink?" I of course would say "Why not."

As an added bonus, we had now inherited another couch for our living room now that friends of ours were leaving, leading us to rename our apartment "Couch-a-chutess" or my fav "Rancho-couch-a-mounga." We had three huge sitting spaces and had no intention of letting them go without asses to meet them. For a while, one of my freinds was sleeping on these as a home, and although he cut into my PTI time at 2:30 and I had ill feelings for him for that, there are few greater feelings than waking up to find another friend rare and to go for another day in the life. We were followed by LAPD choppers not once, but twice. I got three letters from our landlord in one week. Two for "noisy drinking parties" and one, because I have a tendency of writing "for sensual massage" in the memo field of my rent checks, "for inappropriate remarks." It was like being in high school and recieving detention again.

One time, Kris went out with his father for lunch and I had a friend over and we went to the market to get beer so we could watch a movie. When they came home, me and my friend were buzzed and an hour into the Godfather, also armed with a large inflatable high life bottle to boot. His father looked at me and said: Isn't it a little early to be drinking?" I responded: "yeah, but it's a little late in the day to go out and find a job"

And so June transpired as such. Me and Kris would push each other to levels of creative drinking, including one such incident:

Me: We should do something tonight.
Kris: We could do the century club.
Me: Nah. (my girlfriend was with me)
Kris: We could do double century club. 2 shots a minute for 100 mins!
Me: That's just crazy enough to work! (needless to say my gf was not happy)

This continued for a while. I would get up around 1, look for jobs online (and in the rare case of being invited to an interview, I would go, nail it, and then be told I was inexperienced, which to me is a crock of shit. I mean really, it's like the NBA draft, where the employers looked for paper potential instead of character and intelligence) My father would barb me constantly about getting a job. He would call, and I would have to tell him that I was failing at getting a job anywhere respectable. He would tell me to get a job so I could have a good life, but really, all I wanted to say was: "hey dad. I am getting drunk 4 nights a week. I am sleeping with a 19 year old virgin. I am living with my best friend, hanging out with great people, and having the time of my life. This is what I have always dreamed of!"

But it started to slide. We had G2, which was graduation 2 i.e. a month past graduation and worth celebrating, and everything went downhill. Many of my friends had a falling out. Many were leaving, some because of the events of that night, and that night of beer pong in the apt. complex parking garage would be the end. A week later my gf left for a 10 day vacation, both of my roomies had left (one went to Europe, the other moved out). I kept looking for a job and was failing (see my thoughts above). Finally, my lease was up and I had to move out. The wonderful summer of Why not had turned into the period of Why, God Why, and everyone was miserable about their lot in life. No longer were we coasting on hopes, promises and money given to us by family and friends and were forced to vie for our own.

So I moved to another apt. and got ready to live another chapter. The only job I got was as a busboy at a cheap Cajun diner. Soon after me and my GF broke up, futher solidifying the end of an era, and leaving me with a meaningless and awful job, a heartbreak that would last 7 months, and the general feeling of "I am better than this, I deserve to be somewhere, I went to college Damnit!"

But the hard thing is, I really never actually truly desevered great treatment. I mean, sure I did all of the typical things, and was far more educated than my co-workers, but that didn't make me a better busboy nor did it mean that I was due. But that entire feeling of insecurity about self worth is wildly unnerving and when it was amplified by a rent check bouncing and watching The Two Towers and playing Madden 2004 and having to deal with the fact that sometimes fantasies are far off for a reason. By the beginning of October, I was let go by the Cajun restaurant and had only the 2003 baseball season to pre-occupy my time. It was blissful but at the same time, I knew that that time was coming. I had become part of the working class by unfortunate circumstance and was having to deal with what would be a month of poverty and borrowing from friends. Added to this all was the horror that was the Cubs loss, and it was a mass of misery.

But come November, it turned around and the love of blue collar came to be beautiful.

But thats for the next time.

Until then part 2 awaits.


David