Young Enough Not to Care

A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.
-Meat Loaf, “Everything Louder Than Everything Else”


I hang out in the gamer-anime-nerd-freak crowd and sometimes, I’m really surprised by it. Ok, so that social group has a reputation for emotional repression. But, I remember the days when being the balls-to-the-wall “freak” was cool and accepted. The other evening, at an all-night iHOP coffee grind (a gamer institution if ever there was one) we got round to trading funny stories. As everyone started dragging out their "I can't believe I actually did this" tales, I found that mine were some of the only ones that sounded in the least risky. What the hell, I thought. I wasn't THAT dangerous and street as a teenager...was I?

I guess it’s a question of time and place; when I rolled into this scene (in the mid-90s, for some of you as distant as the Precambrian Period) Anne Rice was still trendy, clove cigarettes were the thing and being a gamer-geek didn’t mean you had an aversion to bacchanalia. “Emo” was called “Goth”, long hair and trench coats were the fashion, free love and the occult the order of the day. Indeed, when I started hanging with the crowd, such rowdy behavior was par for the course. So, being teen-aged and impressionable, I grew my hair out, stuck a cig in my mouth and went with the flow. And what a flow it was.

The freaks of my youth didn’t throw keggers; they threw wild bashes that would make Bluto and Bacchus both sit up and shout “ok, what the fuck is going ON over there?” Hard alcohol, nudity, fire-breathing, sword fighting (usually with foam weapons but NOT always), casual semi-public lovemaking, and philosophical rambling all combined into a series of hazy, crazy nights. Hardly anyone got sick or hurt (though there was the occasional injury, accident, or trip to the hospital for stitches and stomach pumping); people mostly just had a good time and dealt with the hangovers. I still remember my first serious gamer-party; within an hour I was making out with a twenty-year old sex kitten sporting a tongue piercing, blue hair and a tattoo, thinking I’d died and gone to heaven.

Sometimes I miss being sixteen and easily amused.

I can recall, with wistful clarity, being shown the proper way to imbibe Whidbey’s Liqueur; off an attractive female’s nipple or stomach. I also remember, with somewhat less clarity, on another occasion drinking “spodi” (a flammable and potentially lethal combination of diced fruit and strong spirits left to macerate in a trash can for several days) until I passed out. I greeted the cold dawn that day wearing nothing more than leather pants (that weren’t mine) and a hickey collection; as to the origins of both, don’t ask me, I’m still not sure.

I had bad times, I had good times. I screwed some women, kissed some boys (deciding that such probably wasn't my thing), did some drugs and had awesome intoxicant-drenched adventures in an era when being a hard-drinking, chain-smoking freak was not yet the anachronism it currently seems to be. I never once got horribly injured or arrested (though my grades suffered and I scraped through some horrific morning-afters) and I learned a little something about the seamy side of life. Also, I came away with some great stories to tell in my old age should I ever, you know, decide to grow up. Someday, if I’m really drunk and sitting at my computer, I’ll do a post about the six hits of gelatin LSD, the ten foot alien, and the woman known as “Aleena, the Potato Queen” (word to the wise; no matter how much I may advocate youthful misbehavior, do yourself a favor and never EVER drop acid at a sci-fi convention).

But that, dear reader, is why the current generation of teenage gamers make me more than a little sad. Oh, they’re good kids; they are fun to be around and just as bright and bushy-tailed about the RPG cosa nostra as I once was. I try and listen to their “unique” character concepts and in-game braggadocio with as much interest as I can muster; I remember being 17 and thinking I was pushing the boundaries of gamer-dom, and I know that learning you really aren’t is something that only comes with time. Besides, if I actually take a moment to listen, I find that more often than not they are indeed being insightful, unique and creative. Just because I’m a jaded old gamer-carcass doesn’t mean that I have to be an egotistical prick about it (as so many gone-to-seed roleplayers I know tend to be; more on this in another post).

But these bright, loveable kids just aren’t taking any risks. These days, I sit and tell stories of my “misspent” youth (only exaggerating a little when pleasantly drunk), and I either have a rapt audience of wide-eyed youngsters, or a bunch of said youngsters giving me the “oh, bullshit” look. (That thing with the Potato Queen really happened, I swear). My life can’t have POSSIBLY been that interesting, unless everyone else’s suddenly became boring by comparison. And considering I steered clear of more than I tried, that fact is a little depressing.

Now, before anyone bristles at my glib romanticizing of drug use, rampant alcohol consumption, and casual sex, listen to this. I am fully aware that I could have been hurt doing what I did. I could have caught AIDS from one of those girls I so casually bedded, or made a trip to the hospital (or a six foot hole) from a bad reaction to the drugs I did. I could have been arrested, or saddled with a child. One of those freakazoids who I partied with could have knocked me unconscious and cut my kidneys out for sale on the black market, or simply buggered me, taken my wallet and left me in a ditch. And I DID do a bunch of puking in the bushes (though not as much as some), got horribly grounded and had to deal with more than one scary situation. A thousand bad things could have potentially happened to me, and more than a few did.

But I am still here.

I’m still mostly healthy, with all my mental and physical faculties intact. I am not a father or a felon, and the only scarring I suffered from my youth was a bad high school GPA and some parent-child fighting (and you’ll have some of that no matter HOW good you are). I came out of my freak time without any addictions (except to cigarettes, stay away from those WHATEVER you decide) or serious life-altering consequences. And, I consider my life fully enriched by my shenanigans; having felt the joyous adrenaline of saying “Oh my god I can’t believe I just DID that and got AWAY with it” more than makes up for the pain of having occasionally, well…not.

Life is risk, and risk makes you feel alive; ignore that fact at your peril. Youth is the TIME for indiscretion. Waiting until you are older just means that you are behaving badly when people (children, spouses, employers) are depending on you. And the midlife crisis happens because you look back at 40 and think, “damn, I missed out; I’ve spent my whole life being good and now I’m bored, I want to play”. By then, it’s usually too fucking late. You have a mortgage, kids, a good job and a body that’s not up to the things you want to put it through. And outlandish, childish, hedonistic behavior causes people to shake their heads in disgust because you are, at that point, “old enough to know better”.

So if you’ve gotten an invite to a party that involves things that aren’t EXACTLY legal, aren’t EXACTLY healthy, and aren’t EXACTLY safe, take it if you think you can come home intact. I’m not advocating anyone to go smoke crack with five-dollar whores, or shoot up in alleyways, have rampant unprotected sex with animals (I’m not merely being hyperbolic; some sub-groups of homo sapiens constitute a lower form of life). Just get a little crazy, confront the risks with a hefty measure of good sense and you don’t have much to fear. Remember, though, that you are taking a risk and that there always is a chance that you can get seriously messed up. And even if you don’t suffer permanent damage, chances are it will hurt a bit, but that’s ok. A serious, stomach-shredding, head-pounding oh-my-god-its 3am-where-am-I-FUCK-these-pants-aren’t-my-pants hangover is something I think everyone should endure; it at least imparts upon one a gut-level respect for the power of controlled substances.

Here’s a bit of hard-won advice. When choosing to be daring, make sure you do a good cost-benefit analysis, educate yourself on potential consequences and NEVER let anyone make important choices on your behalf (remember; your friends don’t have to live with the fallout from drinking/smoking/fucking that, you do). If you are informed, perceptive and somewhat careful, you should get through with nothing more than a headache and a colorful anecdote. And if the damage is permanent, learn the lesson Fate is handing you and take your scar as a badge of honor; it was earned in an error of commission.

Hopefully, when you do decide to settle down, you can have some “been there, done that” wisdom to impart to your children when THEY start getting into their OWN trouble. The fact that my parents misbehaved, lived to tell about it, and gave me a no-BS rundown on drugs and alcohol is the reason I survived my bad behavior mostly intact.

Pleasurable stupidity can hurt. But, you only get one chance to be young enough not to care.

Take it.

(Note: I wrote this while polishing off a half-full bottle of Captain Morgan’s and staying up all night, in case anyone questions my Hedon-cred.)