On May 31st, 1986, the single most miserable ordeal of my entire life came to an end.

I graduated from high school.

Some people loved high school.  Best years of their lives.  After that, it all went down hill.  They spend the rest of their lives wishing it was all like it was back when they were 17 and on the football team/cheerleading squad/Key Club/student council, etc., etc.

For me, that would be like John McCain spending every day of his life yearing for a Vietcong POW camp.  Each and every school day from about sixth grade on, it wasn't a question of whether or not I would be bullied and tormented, but how badly, where, and when.  Would some baby George F. Allen spit on me on the school bus, or would I just get my tray knocked out of my hands and on to the floor in the school cafeteria?  I ran a daily gauntlet.  I was the School Fag.

Jack, my wonderful English teacher and mentor watched all this with a mixture of bafflement and undying support.  He was a very nattily turned out gentleman (with fabulous shoes!) and his preppiness afforded him a certain amount of cover.  I, on the other hand, was a jangling mess of silver bracelets, crucifixes, skulls and crossbones, eyeliner, and clothes the color of tar from head to toe.

"Just hang on 'til graduation, David, honey" he'd say, "After that, everything changes," he told me, over and over until he was practically blue in the face.

And damn if he wasn't right.

I remember the goddamn graduation ceremony taking forEVER and EVER.  Tick...tick...tick...tedious speech, syrupy music, rinse, repeat.  I just wanted to throw my goddamn hat in the air and give those people one-fifth of a wave goodbye for good.

It finally ended, hugs were exchanged, and then my twin brother, our friend Mike Bell, and I sprinted to my brother's 1969 Chrysler Newport Custom, a pea-green monstrosity named "Sid" (what else?), and of course, I clamored for my brother to put my Dead of Alive tape in so we could hear the ten minute long remix of "You Spin Me Round" and as I recall, my brother actually humored me for a minute, but as soon as it came blaring out of the cheap speakers, he and Mike both shook their heads at me with that look of disdain that only teenage skate-rats can really pull off to full effect.

Patrick put in Hüsker Dü's "New Day Rising" (a decision I thank him for in hindsight) and played the title track over and over (you have to since it's only 71 seconds long) at full volume and we rocketed out of that auditorium parking-lot and into our respective futures.

I found that song on YouTube in another one of those incomprehensible mashups, this one featuring Leatherface from the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".  But turn on your speakers and crank the volume and dance around the room to this one.  Then start it over.

We've earned this, gang.  We are some seriously bad motherfuckers today. 

 here's your wallet

Look, you dropped your wallet.

(Honey, I'm home!  I got here at about four this afternoon and fell hard into bed.  I slept the sleep of the righteous for about six and a half hours with a cat on either side.  And there was much rejoicing throughout the kingdom.)

WHOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO, y'all.