This thread was only supposed to be a handful of posts but it turns out my life has been pretty complicated. As we get into my high school years the cans of worms that open up are too numerous for this thread, so I will unpack them in future threads. There will be a thread describing the awakening of my mind through reading philosophy, sci/fi and fantasy, which led to readings in mathematics and science, social psychology, and military history. There will be a thread on my involvement with music, how it saved my life and gave me an identity leading to endless opportunities. There will be yet another thread on how my alcoholism developed over a ten year period leading to a very hard bottom at the young age of twenty-three. Another thread will deal with my misbegotten relationship with an eighteen-year-old schoolmate that began when I was still sixteen, and how it contributed to my utterly disastrous early adulthood. And there will be a deep dive into my psychological problems, a many-headed hydra that still horrifies me. But for now, let me just tell a couple more stories and sketch out the logistics of how I emerged from childhood a member of Generation-X.

As the winner of the High Achievement music award I was given a scholarship to go to music camp. This was not a mountain retreat. It was held on the campus of a private university, hosted by the conservatory of music there. Kids came from all over the country. It was amazing. There was a junior music camp comprised of a pair of two-week sessions through the month of July, and a senior music camp that lasted the whole month, for older high school students. There was some kind of mix-up which, by the time the dust settled, resulted in my attending the month-long senior camp as a bassoonist. Many of my friends from junior high school were attending the junior camp, and I turned out to be the youngest student in the senior camp. There were sections for choir, band, orchestra, and a piano master class. As a budding pianist I was particularly in awe of the musicians in the piano master class who all seemed to be leagues ahead of me. One day I managed to find — unlocked — one of the practice rooms with a grand piano. I had recently purchased a copy of the Brahms piano sonata in F minor, so I settled down for a first run-through, sight reading, never having even heard it before. While I was still midway through the first movement there was a loud knock on the door. Oh no! I was not supposed to be using that piano as it was reserved for the master class students, and I was a mere bassoonist who had just turned fifteen. I sheepishly opened the door to see two of the guys from the master class. One had just finished high school and was going to attend UC Berkeley the following year. The other was from Las Cruces, New Mexico, who was about to start his senior year of high school. I had heard them both play: they were the best in the class. They together shouted, “Who are you?” I told them I was sorry to be using the room as I was just a lowly young bassoon player, and they replied, “Oh, no, you go ahead and keep playing. We were just wondering who it could be who had the chops to play the Brahms sonata so well. We know no one in the master class is playing it.” I told them I had just bought it and was trying to sight-read it. They were amazed to hear that, and told me I was going to have to hang out with them. After that they took me under their wings and at lunch they introduced me to the master class instructor, a world-famous concert pianist. I was euphoric. I ended up paling around with them all month, walking on a cloud. They told me, “Next year you have to sign up for the master class.” It turns out I did attend the master class two years later, but those details will have to wait for the music thread.

I was also embraced by some older orchestra musicians, one a brilliant violinist and pianist who later became a professional, another a clarinetist who was pretty obviously gay. One of their friends, an alumnus of the music camp who was now in college and also pretty queer, came to visit one day and the next thing I knew I was whizzing along in a car with them to go to a music store. It was strictly forbidden to leave campus except on supervised activities, so I was risking being sent home in shame if it were discovered, but I was too jazzed up by all the attention they were lavishing on me, telling me how talented I was and treating me like a king. The visitor and I got to talking about Rachmaninoff and being bisexual — it seemed a natural blend of subjects at the time. At the music store he bought me the score of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and said, “You better know this by the next time I see you.” I have never quite mastered it, frankly. Perhaps I wasn’t as good as they thought, but my self-esteem was rocketing upward at the time. And yes, even then I understood that this was grooming behavior, but I didn’t care. They treated me respectfully and I didn’t feel in any danger. I don’t think there was any.

My high school years were dominated by music. I had jazz combo (on piano) before school, symphonic band (bassoon) and marching band (tuba) during school. At lunch time the jazz big band rehearsed (baritone sax). Last period I had music theory. After school I went to the voice teacher’s studio to accompany piano lessons (paid), and on Saturdays I taught piano lessons at the local music store. In the evenings in the fall we had marching band practice for the Friday night football games, and in the spring time we had musical theater orchestra for the big spring musical production. I was busy. But my brain having awakened, I was also taking all the college prep courses, including chemistry, physics, Spanish, psychology, creative writing, rhetoric, etc. I was one of the top students by now. One day my creative writing instructor, a hip/cool veteran of the Vietnam conflict, asked me to stay after class. He inquired about what I planned to do for a living after high school. I said, “I’m kind of thinking composition.” I meant becoming a composer of music. I dreamed of writing movie scores while I improvised on the piano for hours at a time. But he thought I meant English composition and said, “Hmm, I wouldn’t recommend that path for most people, but I think you could actually succeed at it.” He entered my name in a national creative writing competition, but I freaked out and never submitted anything. Awkward! Then my chemistry teacher took me aside and said, “You know, this is a thankless profession and I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy, but you have a special gift. That presentation you did in class reminded me of your father. You could be a great high school chemistry teacher!” The next year my physics instructor took me aside and said basically the same thing, but for physics: “That presentation you did on diodes had everyone hanging on every word!” Finally, my band director asked me to sit down in his office during my senior year (I had never even set foot in his office before!). He asked me about my plans for the future, and by then I was planning on attending the University of California at Santa Barbara for chemical engineering (long story, see girlfriend thread coming soon). He said, “Oh, I thought for sure it would be music. And I would say, don’t even waste time going to college for it. You should head straight down to LA and start doing studio sessions. You’re already better than half of those guys. You know everything you need to know to get started.” Man! I was flummoxed. Too many choices for this neuro-divergent to possibly process. So I went to UCSB because I wanted to learn to surf.

When my older brother, Dan, graduated, he went to live with my Dad. That left just three of us at home. I enjoyed having my little sister in band with me my senior year — she played clarinet. My little brother learned the drum set and played in a punk metal band when he got to high school. As my own graduation approached my mom decided it was time to sell the old Victorian house I had lived in since birth and move ten miles away to the university town where she worked. The escrow closed before the end of the school year and I had to commute the ten miles to finish the last two weeks before graduation. It’s all a blur, but it pretty much ruined the end of my senior year for me. I wasn’t able to celebrate with my friends properly. I never even picked up my diploma. The graduation ceremony was pretty cool, though. There were nearly five hundred students in my senior class. Normally the entire symphonic band would sit on the football field endlessly playing Pomp and Circumstance while the students filed through to get their diplomas. This was a bummer for the dozens of seniors in band who would have preferred to be with family and friends. This year the jazz combo volunteered to play instead. There were only six of us — piano, bass, drums, guitar, saxophone and trumpet — so that freed everyone else up. We played it straight: pomp and circumstance in all it’s regal solemnity. But after a few choruses we mixed it up, doing a blues version, then back to straight. We did a country version, a rock version, and a jazz version too. The crowd loved it!

By the time I was in college my younger brother and sister alternated years living with my dad and I was starting to lose track of where everyone was at any given time. The childhood home was a thing of the past and we were scattering into our adult lives. My older three siblings are all classic Baby-Boomers in their general outlook on life. But I became much closer to my younger siblings who came to define for me the attitudes of Gen-X. We were essentially latch-key kids, on our own for the most part through high school. We each had to carve out a life for ourselves with very little parental guidance or support entering adulthood. All six of us meandered through our twenties, working hard just to survive. We all turned out very different, but we all made it. The older we get, the more we appreciate each other.