My first tour of Seattle, I lived with family on my mom’s side. I hadn’t applied to any colleges my senior year, and as my AP Government teacher told me “I had a lot of shit going on.” It’s fair to say that I was sent up to Seattle the first time. It was a family decision. I was a bit of a project.
My mother had two sisters who lived in Redmond, Washington with their husbands. Both couples had children that ranged from baby, to just younger than me. I worked at the family Fun Center that my uncle managed while applying to Ricks College (which soon after expanded and became BYU Idaho.) I got into Ricks College despite having earned a 2.4 GPA in high school. The Bishop of my congregation (ward) in Seattle was very charismatic, and as far as I know, he’s the reason for my matriculation.
The First Tour was 2 years, from the summer I graduated from Scripps Ranch (1999) until the Summer I left on my mission (2001.) I attended two semesters at Ricks College- Winter 2000, and Fall 2000 (Yeah, it’s backwards.) When the fall 2000 semester ended, life was all about preparing to go on my mission. Ricks College was in Rexburg, Idaho, but for the sake of chronology, I call that entire two-year period the First Tour.
The Second Tour was vastly different from the first. My 16-month mission didn’t really go as planned. I “wasn’t really Mormon anymore,” I’d tell people, (not my family though, I just kept quiet about that shit unless they prodded.) I returned to San Diego after my mission. I was all fired up and excited to write about all my experiences in The Church, though I had no idea how to go about that. It was the beginning of this long ass journey that I’m still on. I was really fired up. I wasn’t Mormon anymore, but I didn’t drink or do any drugs for almost two years to show people that I didn’t leave to have fun. I meant business.
I worked a couple of jobs until I eventually landed a job at a movie theatre, which to this day is the only job I’ve ever had where I never looked at the clock. It was with some really awesome folks at the Mira Mesa 18 that I had my first Miller High life. And I met my first girlfriend. I wrote about that relationship here on the blog in a short story called Ether 12:27.
But I wasn’t content being young, happy, and in love because I had a world to change. I needed to move to Maine “to write,” despite having been accepted to California State Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo (It’s gotta be the longest name in all of collegia.) I’d been receiving emails from the journalism department. It was real. Amy went to Cal Poly. She was on the phone with me till, seriously, the midnight deadline-like down to the fucking minute-helping me with my application.
Pretty sure the family intervened again when I went to Seattle the second time. It was a compromise. I don’t think anyone was too keen on me just picking up and moving to Maine. My older brother Adam and his new wife had just moved to Seattle to join the rest of the extended branch up there. He called me one day and asked if I wanted to move in with him. I really wanted to go to Maine, I told him. But he had a job lined up for me, so that was that. I’d been planning on moving to Maine with about $2000, and no job lined up.
I lived with Adam and his wife in suburban Redmond for about six months, then I moved to an awesome little Seattle neighborhood called Greenlake. Both Redmond Greenlake compose my second tour. The sole purpose of me moving away was “to write.” So below is the first thing I wrote up there. I plan on posting more 2nd Tour stuff in the future because I am really fond of that time. It’s kind of juvenile. I’m going to try to keep that feel. I kept most of the original run-ons. Much of the editing was done for clarity. This is the beginning.
I’m writing this now on April seventeenth of ’06 and I’m writing the date out because my last daily journal is all fucked up because of indentations. It sort of made it’s own little format where I press tab and the curser goes all the way across the page. It thinks it knows better how to write a date out. It doesn’t indent the normal way. Fuuuuuck it. Fuuck word. Today was a Monday and I had the day off. I bought a shirt at j-Crew for $20 and it’s still in my backpack and I went to Natalie’s restaurant and she wasn’t there then I found her house so you could call me a fucking stalker. Wow. Slgdjflkj;sfdlkasfdlk;jsafdkl;jsafdlkj;lk;jsadkl;lkj;asfdlj;lkj;dfsal;jlk;asdfl;lkj;sdaflj;klkj;asdfljklk;jsdaflkj;sdalsdflj;kl;asg;lds;asldfka;sldfka;sldfkas’lgk;asdfasdfasdf;’;’lasdd’l;sjdfg’alskjas’dlgfasdlkjasdljfkasldgjfaslkjfaslgjflsk
That was yesterday. I was listening to “I won’t be home for Christmas” by blink-182 and I started rocking out on the keyboard. (That’s all the sldfka; shit.) It was kind of ironic frustration, making fun of myself. After, I threw the cordless keyboard on my bed, (mattress only really) and decided to run some stairs. So I killed myself doing that and drank tons of water and I was really tired at work today, tired when I told Dawn “Pretty girls shouldn’t smoke” and she said that was cute, tired because I woke up at least three times to pee all the stair-water.
The 24th was today. Monday. I went to my new house. It’s in Greenlake. It’s owned by a 28-year-old woman named Abbey. Her boyfriend Sid lives there. He’s really cool. He’s a little bit younger, about my age. Adam went with me to look at the house. He told me that Sid’s for sure a stoner. I asked Adam how he know and he told me he just fuckin knows. Sid musically accompanied Abbey and I into every room in the house. Upstairs he had this hand drum that he’d bang on. When we were downstairs looking at my room, he switched to guitar. He’d play a little chord or hook when there was a quiet moment and just let it ring out. I’m supposed to write about a bunch of things. I broke up with Amy. My new downstairs roommate is a girl who has already graduated from Emerson College in Boston. Her name is Lilly and she’s going to be a writer and write a book about Boston.
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