Fear and Loathing in the Midwest: A Brutal and Savage Saga into the Heart of it All in Conjunction with the It after All

Part One

This piece is about Ohio as well as the Apocolypse. This is the first of many parts of said saga. A saga is, after all, a long and involved piece of writing. This will most likely be a book one day. One day. A day far, far away from now. As of now, this is appearing only on my blogger. Legal-speak will appear at the bottom of this entry.

I'll start near the beginning. It all started, and I mean, REALLY started, in 1993. I was 6. It really didn't come around again until I was 9. But it flooded me like a typhoon. It peeked in at me in 2nd Grade, randomly, and was gone before it really settled in. It roared into my life in the summer of '05. It hit me like a fucking frieght train, and almost flattened me, a few Tuesdays back. I remain standing, taller and stronger than ever.

WHAT IS IT!?! I would ask myself the same question right about now if I were you. I am prepared to attempt to answer that question for the first time in my life in any semblence of a public manner.

IT, in one word, is, in fact, EVERYTHING.

But how? I think I know. It all starts during Babylon and ends in ALMOST EXACTLY FIVE YEARS FROM THIS VERY MOMENT IN TIME.

Did the headiness, and heavyness of that statement sink in yet? Hopefully it will soon if it hasn't already.

Allow me to re-intoduce myself. My name is Eric. And I can now, legally, and, amazingly, quasi-contractually, preface it with a Sir. And amazingly, almost am required to, somehow, end it with an Esq. I have a Middle and Last name in there somewhere too. They're both real, and actually sound alright to the ear after you let the foolishness of it all mock too many traditions. You'll probably hear the whole damn thing sooner than I would like to believe.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! A proverbial and literal, WHOLE FUCKING SHITLOAD, more.

Let's get into the Fury that is now almost in full swing. The easy and stupid word for it is the Apocolypse. Everyone knows that word. What everyone doesn't think to ask themselves, unfortunatly, is the question that should automatically raise a mental red flag: THE APOCOLYPSE OF WHAT!?!?!

I'll attempt to explain. Without getting at all into world history as we know it, or at all into religious history as we somehow believe it, I'll pose a quick allegory that relates to corporate office management. The Middle Managment is about to take their revenge on us, the public, but the Front and Upper Managment, was right all along and will, indeed, prevail. The wonderful news is that the Public, society at large, will be fine.

How in the fuck can I attempt to say I know this!?!?! I would ask the same question if I weren't who I now know and fully believe I am. I, as in I. I, in fact, am not really all that remarkable at all. I just kept my ears, and mind, way too OPEN, for a little bit too LONG.

This is where it gets weird. (As though it all already hasn't, I'm thinking to myself.)

It's basically all in the Genes, the Jeans, and that lady named Gene that you forgot about a few decades back. She may have been your neighboor, your teacher, your mom, your doctor, or just some bag lady that really stuck out in your mind at the time as very unique. She was, in fact, pretty damn unique. She could have been a He. She may have been a He-She, even. Whatever s/he, meant to you is really not that remarkable on the surface. But, is more than remarkable when you really think about how right that person/thing was. Let that sink in.

That's really what this is about. Not a feeling, not a person, not an action, not a label. Just a few random things you may or may not remember that had a few huge and remarkable courses of impact on your life as you have come to know it up to this point in time.

Talk amongst yourselves.

I don't care about ANYTHING else that is going on around me at this time, save ONE person, more than THIS.

THIS IS EVERYTHING. IT IS NOTHING. IT IS THE VERY FABRIC OF BEING. I AM NO ADDICT FOR DRAMATICS. THIS IS AS REAL AS REAL CAN EVER GET.

To be honest, most of the answers to my questions were answered in one 25 minute span by a man I met a few Tuesdays ago while I was in Jail. I was in jail on a federal warrant that didn't actually exist. This man's official title was quite high. For the prison system in my state, he is second only to the Govenor. He only comes to my old place of incarceration for two hours once every two weeks. It is beyond lucky that I met him.

He told me everything I ever wanted to know about my life but had been unable to ask. I was unable to ask these things not because I was scared to bring them up, but because no one I knew could possibly know the answers to my questions.

The thing is, this man knew things about me that no one should have possibly known. He knew my inner thoughts from years back. He knew about, when I was nine, when I had almost jumped out of my bedroom window on the second floor in an attempt to kill myself. The funny thing was, I NEVER told ANYONE about that. But he knew.

He also knew what stopped me. It was the voice of my 'grandfather', or at least, the man who I thought was my grandfather at the time. No one should have been able to know that. Yet, this man did.

He went on to tell me who my real grandfather was. The man who really is my mother's father. He is actually quite famous. He is also, according to popular legend, quite dead. I now know that he is very much alive, for he was introduced to me personally for an all too brief time while I was in that room with him, in jail.

Where this gets weird is I actually met this man in real life, randomly at a bookstore in Cleveland, about 6 months before he 'died'. It gets even stranger that this man is my favorite person ever who is not actually related to me. Well, was my favortie person ever who wasn't related to me. As I had long suspected, he really is. As I had never suspected, he is my mother's dad, my blood grandfather.

The man who raised my mother and lived his life as my grandfather was, as I knew when he passed 1993, actually the older brother of my real grandpa. I knew this because he told me so. He spoke his last words to me and me alone and then died. The strange thing was he actually didn't stop 'living' until the next day, Easter Sunday. He's still a really good person and I respect him greatly for what he did for my mother and I. I will still always refer to him as my Grandpa.

My other Grandfather, my dad's dad, passed away in May 2006 at the age of 73. This other Grandpa I had passed away in 1993 and everyone said he was 73. This real grandfather of mine 'passed away' in 2005, and was 73 at that time. Why is this 73 number so important? I really have no idea, actually. I just happen to know that every man in my life dies when he reaches that age. At least, he appears to.

Um... where do you go from here...

Alright, we'll go back to when my mom was born in 1956. Times were different, and it wasn't alright to just have a baby because you were having sex with someone. You had to be married, you had to at least appear respectable. So that's what my Grandma decided she was going to do.. appear respectable.

Pretty soon after she got pregnant with my mom she must have decided either on her own or with the help of my Grandpa that she was going to marry his older brother.

I really can't say whether my aunt, her second child, is from the same man as my mother. I do know that the two brothers look remarkably similar to each other so it'd be pretty difficult to know for sure. What I do know is this: in my family tree, of which I've done extensive research (with the help of my grandma, my mom's mom, coincidentally), and noticed that the divorce of my Grandma Mary from my 'Grandpa' Herb was the only divorce in that family tree.

What's further, it happened a long time ago, when my mom was still in high school and my aunt was in middle school. What's further, Grandma Mary remarried a man only a few years later and pretty much immeadiatly left Ohio to go live in Nebraska. My mom stayed behind (she was 16), and my aunt went with them.

My mom had already graduated from high school at this point, so for a few months she lived with Herb while she worked full time to save enough to begin college that next spring.

My mom met my dad in college, at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio (where I started my college education), sometime in their freshman year of 1974. They both graduated in 1978, and were married in 1981. I came around in November of 1986.

My Dad is now part-owner of an accounting/financial planning business and is a raging alcoholic. Coincidentally, my Dad is brilliant.

As ever, my Mom is making at least 3 times as much as my Dad. She used to be a Realtor, moved on to Mortgage Banker, and now is, for the fist time in over two decades, "in between careers". She is still bringing home most of the bread, but is also going to school full time in hopes of becoming a para-legal.

I am now 20, almost 21, have had my first child almost exactly 4 months ago, and am, for the first time in my life, homeless. I'll admit, I didn't have the child, but it is very much mine and was birthed by a lady named Courtney whom I still love very deeply but am more or less forced not to see for at least a little while.

To make a long story shorter: the day before I got kicked out of that house, I paid my share of the rent.

To make matters worse, my car, along with almost all of my shit inside, my phone, and the $14 remaining dollars I had to my name... were towed away 2 days after getting kicked out.

So for 8 full days I was homeless on the streets of Columbus, Ohio.

Somehow I made it back to Dayton, with my car and all of my shit, minus my cell phone, and came straight to my parent's house.


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