by Brian Posehn
Their music may seem dumb and aggressive, but I would argue that they were and are one of the smartest and nerdiest metal bands ever. Plus, the logo kicks ass, and their mascot, Eddie—well, Eddie fucking rules.
My Maiden love would deepen even more in ’82 when they’d get a new singer. I thought the twin guitar playing of Maiden’s virtuosos Dave Murray and Adrian Smith was incredible. I thought Angus Young had the coolest guitar sound and that Eddie Van Halen was a badass. And then I heard Randy Rhoads. Randy was a fucking wizard among mere human guitar players.
Much like discovering Def Leppard, I owe it to a record store clerk in a mall record store. It was the Warehouse Records in the Terra Linda mall where I had bought KISS, Alive II, and then I had been on a KISS mission. With Ozzy I was in the right place at the right time—browsing through the vinyl when a record started on the store’s sound system. It was insanely fast picking, with a driving beat and the guitar threw some black-magic wizard shit on me with this nutso-insano flourish. Then the king of nutso-insano started singing, and I made a beeline to the record store clerk. “Who is this?” “What is this?” “How much is this?” “Can I have this already?”
The song was called “I Don’t Know,” and the band or singer was called Ozzy Osbourne. I knew that name. “He was the singer for Black Sabbath and they kicked him out. They blew it!” He was right. They did blow it. I had heard Black Sabbath with Ozzy, and it was cool enough—“Paranoid” was catchy, but I had been scared of them. This had a scary album cover, Ozzy looked like a nut and had a crucifix in his hand, and my Christian Spidey sense was screaming, but this music was fucking incredible.
And the guitar player, this Randy Rhoads kid from California who Ozzy had found, was a metal messiah. If following this new messiah would secure my place in hell, then I was more than cool with it. Metal was becoming my religion, and Randy was my new god. The music of Ozzy and Randy Rhoads made my first couple of years of high school almost livable, and even if you are barely aware of who Randy Rhoads is, you probably know how tragically his story ends and what I and a million other teenage fans had waiting for us in 1982.
NINE
HIGH SCHOOL: THE WORST TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE
The worst two years? Not just of school, but of life? Sure, I know that sounds dramatic as fuck, even for me. But after a brutal year and a half, by the middle of my sophomore year I felt pretty alone. I thought my situation would never improve or change. Kids thought I was a weird loser, so I felt like a weird loser.
When I would slam my door and plop onto my tiny bed and cry, it felt really shitty and hopeless. I was sad and angry a lot. I didn’t think I was that ugly or weird, and I didn’t understand why people would make me feel like that. And other days I agreed with everyone: I was ugly and weird. I was the ugliest weirdo to ever ugly a weirdo. Around then is when I started to question God: Why would he let a nice kid who worships him lose his dad, have a mom who hates him, and let most kids treat him like a joke or a punching bag?
It felt like everyone was against me before I started high school in September of 1980. It was about to get much worse: I would soon lose a lot of friends. A year later my best friend would be gone forever. At the end of my first week of Sonoma Valley High School I lost the guys I’d hung around with since fifth grade. I had already been singled out by quite a few older kids during the first four days of school, and my pals decided to let me go. After a rocky first week as freshmen, life was going to continue to be rough for them if they kept me as a friend.
Their solution? Wait until lunchtime, when we were walking off school grounds to a local deli to tell me. And by tell me, I mean they threw rocks and dirt clods at me to make me stop hanging around them. Like I was a weird stray dog with a milky eye and a near-constant erection and they were rednecks who decided they didn’t like the “boner dog” anymore and weren’t familiar with the words “Go away, boner dog.”
It wasn’t all my friends who threw the dirt clods and rocks and insults, but they were all there. Robert with glasses, Karl, Seth, Monte, my friends since Dunbar were the guys who were the loudest and most physical. Russ, Darren, and Hinchman were there too. They hadn’t jumped in or defended me. Either way, I got the message: “Go away, Brian Posehn.” I kind of prefer “boner dog.”
That was the worst lunch of my life. And I’m a road comic—I’ve eaten lunch at IHOP. The International House of Pancakes. In the middle of the day. By myself. When you eat alone at an IHOP the waiter should just put a party hat on you and shoot you in the face. Anyway, I can’t remember if I even got that sandwich that shitty Friday of that shitty first week of my shitty ’80–81 school year. I do remember crying on the bus on the way home. And that went over well. Everyone wants to hang out with the crying kid: “What’s the deal with the crying kid? What’s he got going on? Posehn is a mystery!”
Thirty-five-plus years later, and I’m still not sure if my ex-friends had a formal meeting, but it was clearly premeditated. Ah, the days when kids had to meet and decide to ostracize another kid with a good, old-fashioned rain of dirt-clods instead of an impersonal “die, loser!” email or mean Facebook taunts. That year wouldn’t get any better for me. It’s a blur of awkward and sad mixed with punches and yelling.
I ended my freshman year with no one willing to sign my yearbook. Except for me. I signed my own yearbook. Yes. I did. How fucking sad. “Brian, you’re a nice kid. Maybe next year will be better, Brian.” Jeez. That’s some sad, morose shit. And this was before I heard The Cure and The Smiths. And somehow sophomore year was worse.
In high school, just like in elementary school, even at my lowest there were several kids who had it way worse than me. A kid from my neighborhood was allegedly working it in a bathroom stall, and these dudes threw a cherry bomb in on him. So mean. I didn’t see it, but I did hear the loud-ass explosion, and witnesses said he stumbled out of the bathroom holding his ears with his pants around his ankles. There was a Christian kid named Earl. Oh, man. Fucking Earl had it rough. He was poor, so he used the shower at school every day. No one did that. People noticed and made fun of him. Kids took his Bible and screamed “shut up” in his face when he would talk about God. Well, not people—just one stoner bully.
When Earl showered, a lot of guys in PE noticed he had a huge hog. In his dick’s defense, you couldn’t help but notice the dude had been given a large dick. People made him pay by smacking his dong with towels and throwing him in the pool in front of girls. “Take that, Earl, for being weird but really because you have a giant penis and we’re the weird ones.”
The special-ed kids got it worse than me. We only had about four, and I would see them get teased all the time. I tried to stick up for a kid named Flemming one day, and it blew up in my face. Flemming was mildly developmentally disabled, had a pretty drastic speech impediment, dressed like a ten-year-old, and still carried a lunch box. So he got made fun of. Of course, he did. I didn’t really like the kid because he had shitty taste in music. He lived in my apartment complex and often carried a boombox around, playing the worst shit I’d ever heard, pop crap all the time.
One day in PE I saw some freshman dicks fucking with Flemming. They took his gym shoes and ran out of the locker room and chucked his Tiffs on the roof. They were the same kind of shoes Ken the Monster had tried to get me to wear, so maybe I felt bad for Flemming for having to wear fucking Tiffs. Regardless, I climbed the fence and got his shoes off the roof. Nice thing to do? The right thing to do? Yep and yep. Stupid? Totally. The second I got off the fence the several freshman jock dicks cornered me.
Paul was a popular rich kid. His parents owned a grocery store near me. Paul was a spoiled little dick and a total fucker. I already had been teased by him and hated his guts. Now he was pissed that I spoiled his shitty prank and demanded that I threw Flemming’s shoes back on the roof. I wouldn’t do it. So they got physical and started pushing me. I fucking hated that. I don’t even like being touched. Maybe the bullying is the reason. Anyway, it didn’
t take me long to crumble. I did as they demanded—I threw Flemming’s Tiffs back on the roof. I hated doing it, but I hated confrontation more.
Soon I would have a worse confrontation. Two hours later, as I’m walking toward the school bus I was cornered by that fucker Paul and his dumbass dick friends and Flemming. They pushed Flemming toward me, and he wanted to know why I threw his shoes on the roof. I said, “I didn’t.” Paul and his dickhole posse had clearly convinced him I was the bully here. Flemming was upset, and nothing I said could change that. Paul got him pumped up. Soon Flemming was pushing me. He hit me with his Space: 1999 lunchbox. Ironically, I was probably the only other kid at my school besides Flemming who liked Space: 1999.
I didn’t fight back. I wanted to. Then Paul said, “What’s-a-matter, Posehn? Afraid to fight a retard?” YES. He was right: there was no way I was hitting this poor kid, no matter how pissed I was that he was misguidedly hitting me. I knew my mom would kill me. And I knew if I hit back, it would escalate, and I’d be the kid who hit the special-ed kid. So I took a couple of lunchbox hits. It got worse anyway. The bus arrived, and we all got on. They continued to give me shit the whole way home. Soon I was finally in my room and alone.
An hour or so later Flemming’s mom showed up pissed. She informed my mom that I was a bully. I had thrown his shoes on the roof of the gym and then got in a fight with him at the bus stop. I swear to you people, that is not what fucking happened. Guess what, though? My mom believed this woman she had maybe spoken ten words to over the years over her own son. Why would she believe me? I acted up, so bullying wasn’t a stretch.
The worst day of my sophomore year started like most days: I got on the school bus and rode for thirty minutes in to school. I guess I’d spent some time that morning staring at the new kid, a tough Mexican girl in Ben Davis jeans and a wife-beater T-shirt. She was wearing a ton of makeup. I’d never seen her before, and I’d never seen anyone dressed like that before. I later found out she had moved from a tough school in Vallejo, California. She said I was staring. I definitely was. I hadn’t seen Colors yet, so I’d never seen this tough-girl stereotype on film or in real life.
Suddenly, as soon as the bus stopped, I guess, “it was on” for her. Not for me. I didn’t know what was fucking happening. Her chest was puffed out and her arms at ass-kicking position; she was super-aggressively pushing and yelling at me. It was some prison shit—she was the “new fish,” and I guess she thought she’d strike first on the wimpiest kid around. She had a good nose for wimps. I’d had assholes call me out before, and I always turned them down. I turned down the tough girl too. Then she started throwing fists at me. I clearly wasn’t fighting her, but why would that stop her from hitting me? Luckily, right behind me was Tracy “Fucking” Ferguson. She said, “He’s not doing anything. Leave him alone.” The new girl then made the mistake of saying, “Stay out of it, bitch.”
I’ve seen women in movies or on TV flip the fuck out when they get called the “bitch” word, but that was the first time I saw it in real life for sure. Tracy unloaded on her. The teachers shut it down pretty quickly, but everybody heard about it. I don’t think Tough Girl ever fucked with Tracy again. And I know she never fucked with me again. In fact, eventually she apologized. At the time, though, it sucked real hard. There was no winning that fight.
Sure, I took the high road by not socking her in the mouth the second she yelled at me. But I was actually scared of her and knew repercussions would be even worse if I stuck up for myself. I’d get in trouble, and kids would make fun of me for trying to hit a girl. Instead, they just made fun of me for getting my ass kicked by a girl and having another girl save me. I wasn’t mad at Tracy for stepping in, though; I actually thought it was pretty cool and, of course, developed an even bigger crush on Tracy.
Soon everybody knew of my “fight,” and my reputation took another hit. Now I was Turtle, the kid who got his ass kicked by a special ed kid and a girl, and I felt what a new low felt like. At that moment no one had it worse than me at our school. Not even big-dicked Earl or the cherry-bomb beat-off guy. Only Hinchman, Russ, Darren, and the kids from my church were nice to me, presumably because their parents told them to be. Because of Christ and all.
Drew still teased me in high school sporadically. By then I didn’t hate him as much; he was a straight-up Copenhagen-chewing, Wrangler jeans–and John Deer cap–wearing redneck. I thought it was funny how hard he tried to fit in with the good ol’ boys at my school that I wrote off him teasing me to him trying to fit in. Actually, I do now. Not then. I fucking hated him.
Do you like weird segues? I feel like I was exposed to death more than most kids, at least kids who also grew up in a picturesque tourist town. Not if someone grew up in a known murder place like a war-torn nation, Chicago, or Santa Carla, the murder capital of California. Outside of my great-grandpa in his casket, the first dead body I ever saw was a newly deceased motorcyclist next to his wrecked bike. I was with the Hinchmans as we drove home from the rodeo. I didn’t love the rodeo, so seeing a dead body was kind of the highlight of the evening. I guess I acted too curious or interested in it—his parents were rightly creeped out.
On my paper route my freshman year I would see a few crazy car accidents in the rain, some sketchy near-misses, and two resulting in fatalities. One afternoon I watched a guy try to avoid rear-ending a car; he swerved too hard at too high of a speed, and his Subaru went up on an embankment. He never slowed down; his car launched over a driveway and smashed into a tree. He had a half a cord of wood in the back, and of course it crushed him on impact.
This was pre-airbag, so he just sat there pinned until the paramedics showed up. He screamed at first, but not for long. I saw him die. It was pretty terrible. But I couldn’t really go back to my boring paper route without seeing this through. Because I had seen the accident and told the owner of the corner diner to call the cops, I felt a responsibility. And once I realized how bad it was, I couldn’t really move. I just stood there terrified. And transfixed.
Same with the motorcycle accident I witnessed that same year, again on my paper route. And again the guy was trying to avoid hitting a car at a high speed. He skidded and then lurched his BMW bike forward. He hit a different car and was thrown off his bike. Incredibly, he cleared the car and hit the telephone pole behind it. Well, you know those metal footholds that the phone company uses when they’re scaling telephone poles? Well, his helmet hit that. Hard. I was across the street, waiting out the rain under a Shell gas station overhang; the Shell station was owned by Goodman’s grandpa. I stood there with a root beer in my hand and my mouth open. The guy’s body soon fell to the ground. His helmet stayed up there. With most of his head. GAH! Two terrible accidents in one year. That, of course, fed my fear that I was the son of the devil. The Exorcist and The Omen I and II had opened my eyes. It all made sense: my dad had died, my mom’s boyfriend died, my mom was evil, and people died in front of or near me all the time, just like Damien, from The Omen. We both had babysitters hang themselves and had random people die horribly in front of us. Only thing: my mom wasn’t really evil, animals loved me, and I like to think the anti-Christ wouldn’t be an apartment kid.
Because of my babysitter Gary’s sad story, I actually had a homophobic period during my teen years. Here we go, SJWs. “Social Justice Warriors, Social Justice Warriors, come out and play!” Hold on. Let’s all give this sad young nerd a break. I was sad and already pretty beaten down by life. Angry a lot. And when I obsessed on the Gary story, it made my mind wander and it made me mad. I only knew the story because my mom had relayed it to me for some reason. I had completely forgotten about it, and my mom refreshed my memory. Not sure why.
Anyway, even though I don’t think Gary went anywhere beyond wearing my mom’s clothes, I hated him. I felt confused by it and violated. I know he never touched me. I’m fucking positive he didn’t. Then, I wasn’t so sure. And I didn’t understand why he would do even what he did in front of me. If you have to wear m
y mom’s clothes, do it when I’m asleep. Now, I’m sure the poor kid was going through something, whether gay or trans—it was 1970, and clearly things were rough enough for him to kill himself when his parents found out his truth. It hurts my heart.
But my young, dumb teen mind wandered, and I guess I didn’t know what would make someone wear my mom’s clothes, and “trans” was a completely foreign concept to me. I didn’t know what a pedophile was really, either. I think I lumped them all together. I thought I understood what gay was, but I didn’t, so I thought he “must’ve been gay, and that’s weird, so all gay guys are weird.” Typical fucked-up angry-kid logic. Thankfully, I’d get turned around.
Around my sophomore year in high school I was seeing my therapist, Hank. I once went on a homophobic rant against him in his office. I was probably mad at my mom over some minor slight, but I took it out on Hank and called him a “faggot.” I had been called it before, so I knew it would hurt. He said, “I’m not even gay.” And I said, “But you wear Birkenstocks and you talk like that.”
And Hank said, “Birkenstocks are a comfortable shoe and not necessarily gay, and I talk like this because I’m Jewish and from Brooklyn.” I’m still embarrassed by my teenage homophobia. Now I know Brooklyn accents. And I haven’t been homophobic since 1983. I don’t hate anyone just for being a part of a group—except Springsteen fans.
High school dances were a goddamn nightmare. I went to most of my freshman and sophomore dances. I never danced with a girl. Not one time. The only time I did dance was when I pogoed to the Ramones with a couple of punk kids. One dance was deejayed by popular Bay Area rock DJ Dennis Erectus from KOME in San Jose. Dick joke in his name and dick jokes were his bread and butter.
