Thursday, January 11, 2007  

Never Whistle While You're Pissing.

Hardly surprising, I'm sure, but I was a total nerd in junior high.

Now, this was in the 1980's, long before computers and the internet ushered in our current Golden Age where it's okay - even desirable - to be a geek. This was when good grades and an interest in comic books would get your flabby ass KICKED, jack. Sure, everybody has a computer now, but back then, possession of an Amiga and a modem was considered a casus belli by every jock on the planet.

Needless to say, such an environment did basically two things: (1) cause geekwads like your humble narrator to develop something of an introverted personality, and (2) make it essential that assorted freaks, dweebs, losers and misfits form something of a loose affiliation and mutual aid society. People who seemingly had nothing in common (computer fiends, metalheads, gamers, &tc, &tc) hung together so as to counterbalance the privileged and popular with sheer numbers, if nothing else.

It was one of these friendships of necessity that led me to meet one Neal Evans. On the surface, we had nothing in common. He chewed tobacco, went hunting with his dad, and owned his own shotgun. But he also loved science fiction and role playing games, as well as the dulcet tones of Ronnie James Dio, and thus was an outcast like the rest of us. He had this neighbor, John Waterman, who was easily the most exotic kid I'd ever met, because he went to private school.

Nobody went to private school except the mentally deficient and the hyper-religious (some would not make a distinction between the two), at least not in my experience. But Waterman, well, he went to private school because he was so goddamn smart. He was the kind of kid that learned crazy math proofs for fun, you know? He also ran all the role-playing games with these incredibly complex and well-planned campaigns, which he'd write in black notebooks in tiny, neat handwriting. You know, like the Unabomber. He was also a year or two older than us.

Anyway, he and Neal kind of adopted me. I'd ride my bike over there, and we'd play games, or listen to music (Waterman was into Fishbone - a definite rarity in Colorado Springs in 1984), throw ninja stars at stuff, or talk about science fiction, guns, and/or girls. I could relax and let my dork flag fly without fear of a beating.

It was during one of these long, lazy afternoons that they loaned me a copy of a book: The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson. I took it home, started it, and promptly lost my mind. This book had it all: drugs, freaky sex, anarchism, revolution, magick, rock and roll. And it was funny. Hilariously funny. It was like 1200 pages long, and all I did for the next two weeks was read, read, read.

That book changed my life. Quite literally, it changed my life, road to Damascus-style. My eyes were opened to all kinds of possibilities. Those good-looking shitheads on the football team weren't better than me. They were idiots. Oh, and my teachers? Pretty much lying to me. Ditto for the government. My parents? Probably. The priests at church? Definitely.

I learned to Question Authority. I learned to be a skeptic, and at the same time, I learned that there was High Weirdness everywhere. I learned that there were people out there who chose not to fit in; there were people out there who reveled in their freakishness.

I also learned that being funny impressed chicks. I immediately began trying to be funny.

So basically, The Illuminatus! Trilogy set in motion the events that would make me the furiously typing guy you see today. Still a geek, still funny, still questioning everything (and of course, simply irresistable to women because of it). Without that book, I never would have been open to discovering things like the Sex Pistols, Charles Bukowski, the Kama Sutra, Modern Savage...the list is endless.

Anway, I've got two little dudes of my own, and I hope to teach them some of the lessons I learned from that book and give them a head start on the saps and squares they'll be going to school with. Maybe not the kama sutra, but you're goddamn right the Sex Pistols.

Why do I bring this up? Because the man who wrote that book and changed my life, Robert Anton Wilson, died today. Hail Eris, indeed.

Farewell, Mr. Wilson. And thank you.

Labels: geekery, RAW, robert anton wilson