Bad Boys for Life
[Two years ago Francis Nally, a.k.a. the notorious Pilleater, contacted me to suggest I contribute a piece to a book project he conceived as a new generation's Apocalypse Culture or an "Angry Young Men 2019" anthology. The project never ended up coming together - and I now hear that it never will - so here, for readers' entertainment, is the short autobiographical essay I had written for it.] I was always bad. When I was a junior in high school, I got booted out of a painting class after a series of escalating altercations with the instructor that had begun with me facetiously accusing the woman of “communist sympathies” and ended with me being regarded as potentially the next Columbine kid in the clueless eyes of the school’s administration. To fill the slot in my schedule, I was given a study hall in the school library, and that was where, to pass the time, I picked up Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , the first book I ever read with no academic obligation. I kn...