Forever Nerdy

by Brian Posehn

  He would play rock and metal and say hilarious shit like “Don’t touch that dial—it’s got KOME on it!” I barely knew what come was, but I thought it was funny. Sadly, this dance was the highlight of that year. I loved Def Leppard’s second record High and Dry, so I requested that Dennis play the title track. He did, and that’s as good as it got for me that whole fucking year.

  Ken the Monster actually got worse as I got older. By high school he was in my face constantly. What irritated me the most was that he always seemed to be trying to do and say “Dad” things without actually being a dad to me. I know he thought I was spoiled, but when was it ever his fucking business? At least at that point there were a couple of other positive males in my life. Two of my best pals had stern dads, but they loved their boys. They both occasionally said racist shit, but at that point I already knew they were wrong.

  They also called the people my mom worked with “feebs” and “tards.” I knew it was wrong but found it kind of funny. Politically incorrect humor before I knew politically incorrect humor was a thing. So flawed, but present, loving dads. And there was Cliff, my friend’s divorced dad. My friend Chris and his younger brother, Greg, lived in Sonoma with their mom and went to private school. They would visit their dad every other weekend. We met at the apartment complex and became friends; we bonded over music and movies. And I almost feel bad for how much I would hang out there when they were in town.

  Cliff was such a cool dad. He never seemed annoyed by me, and the boys loved him. We would watch movies on HBO and Showtime, two things I didn’t have right away. We’d listen to music. And we’d laugh. Chris and Greg were funny kids, probably because Cliff was so funny and cool. I kind of envied what they had with Cliff on their weekends.

  At my church there was Pastor Rich. He was a really good loving guy. Initially he hired me to do yard work and projects at the church for extra money and, I think, to connect with what was clearly a troubled kid. We wound up spending a lot of time together; I would do small home improvement projects at his new house. And we’d talk. He told me I could always talk to him. We did. We talked about Ken, my mom, bullying, death, anger—everything. He was never preachy, just awesomely sincere in a sweet Nor-Cal loving way. He seemed to really care about me, and that meant a lot. He never directly said, “It gets better,” but he indicated as much. He was right—it did. But first it got way worse.

  So before I tell you that my Grandma Clara died, I’ll give you one more story that shows how great she was. On one of my last visits, we were driving together, and she let me play the music. I put my Back in Black cassette in her cassette player. We listened to the whole thing while we ran her errands. She never said one negative thing. She wanted to know what I liked about AC/DC. I loved that. At that point I needed that from a relative—a bond, a connection, understanding. There you go. So she died.

  In January of 1982 my Grandma Clara died after checking into the hospital because of heart palpitations. My poor mom hated telling me so much; she knew I would be heartbroken. I was. It wrecked me. I felt so alone. She was not just my favorite grandma; she was my favorite person. In those years my mom was never my friend like my Grandma Clara was; she didn’t really “get me” or even try. She just yelled and pushed me away. But Grandma Clara loved me and wanted to know everything about me, and if she didn’t always “get me,” she was willing to try. I honestly still miss her presence. Outside of my wife and son, I have never been around somebody as loving and engaging as she was. But don’t worry: it got better.

  TEN

  JUNIOR AND SENIOR YEAR: IT GOT BETTER

  Not to co-op “it gets better” from people who have been through much worse than being an awkward nerd afraid to throw a punch, but I can attest that indeed it does. In my experience, though, a couple of factors need to happen to make it better. You need to know: it’s not you that’s the problem; it’s usually other people’s filtered view of you. You are weird to them: Maybe they don’t know what weird is. Maybe they need a little weird. Maybe they’ll never get weird and they just put up with you. Or maybe fuck what they think.

  The good news is it gets better, and it got better for me. Even though at the time I didn’t see it that way. But it did: my social life and mental outlook changed greatly. I would have several setbacks in my twenties, but at the end of it, my situation improved. Sometimes you need to make it better. I learned on my own that you can improve your own situation by changing it or moving. Getting the fuck out of Sonoma was the best thing I ever did. All three times. That improved my situation with my mom, and I found my life’s passion and eventually stumbled into my dream girl and made my dream life.

  My high school situation, though, would improve without me having to move. Junior year I made new friends in some of the different classes I was taking; I met cool kids in art, woodshop, drama, creative writing, and beginning computing. I also made friends in the classes I hated like algebra, Spanish, and history while I was fucking off. I didn’t hate history; I just hated my teacher, Mr. Grace. He wore a wig, a super-obvious one that no one ever made fun of to his face.

  That is, until one day during class, my old friend Robert Also-Glasses, from the “boner dog” story, got in trouble with Mr. Grace. He was sending Robert to the office in a real showy way, humiliating him on purpose. I had forgiven Robert, and Mr. Grace was annoying, so I said, “Mr. Grace, have you flipped your wig?” Well, he really flipped his wig when I said that. Everybody laughed. In current social media terms, I got a lot of likes. I could still hear the laughs as Robert and I walked to the office.

  I walked to the office a lot. There were three guys you could talk to if you were sent to the office—the dean, the vice principal, or the principal. You usually just talked to the dean, a well-liked guy named Dean Osborne; everyone called him Ozzy, which made me like him. He was pretty even keeled and put up with my shit a lot for those last two years. He would just shake his head, “Again, Posehn?” I think he knew I was a good kid just going through shit. Obviously I wasn’t throwing punches or threatening anyone like my eighth-grade Columbine freak-out. They were minor infractions, low-level class clownery, a lot of lateness, disrupting class, not participating, and general fucking off. I also ditched a lot of classes those last two years.

  I paid attention to the classes I cared about, but when I was bored, I would entertain myself by drawing and writing short stories. The more popular I got, the more my grades deteriorated, which would continue to piss off my mom. The vice principal, Mr. Kruljac, was all business, but I didn’t have a ton of run-ins with him. The principal, Mr. Grey, golfed with my Grandpa George during school; I even joked about it with him one day when he was rolling in late: “Hey, Mr. Grey, how’s my grandpa today?” My knowledge of those weekly games kept me out of any real trouble. Thanks, Grandpa.

  By the end of junior year everyone would know me, and not in a bad, “that’s the kid who got his ass kicked by a girl” way. I was actually hanging out with the cool kids and got invited to parties. All of them. I suddenly knew about all the drinking spots I’d never heard of. I went cruising with two of the most popular kids in school in a cherry Camaro. I didn’t win prom king or join the football team or anything ridiculous—I didn’t even go to prom.

  But compared to my previous time standing alone at dances or crying at home on a Saturday, light years had passed. As I got nerdier about music and film and books, I had less and less in common with my old pals. I was also actually making friends I had more in common with—my metalhead pals, some dudes who liked Rush, some kids who also liked horror movies, and my freshman skater friends who loved Iron Maiden, video games, and Blade Runner.

  Joel Myers was one of the most popular kids at school. We weren’t really friends until my junior summer, but he was always cool to me. He was not your typical jock: he was a smart, good-looking, funny, cool kid. He was a wrestler, super disciplined, and not a cocky dick like a lot of football and basketball players. In the five years I knew him from junior high
and high school I’d never seen him bully anybody, and more importantly, he was always cool to me. We both wound up in summer school to make up credits that year.

  We talked about music and Eddie Murphy. We both had memorized Murphy’s stand-up record Comedian. Next thing I knew we were at his house and he was recording Pink Floyd’s Final Cut for me because I had to “hear it on headphones to really experience it.” I couldn’t believe the biggest dork in town was hanging out with the coolest kid in town. My life was an awesome eighties teen movie.

  Junior year I was clueless with girls and had a crush on every cute girl regardless of grade. I thought I had a better chance with freshman girls when I was a junior—because how could they know I sucked?

  I guess by looking at me. Or talking to me. By senior year I had a lot of female friends. I didn’t act on my crushes very often, so I only got my heart broken a couple of times. Senior year I met a really cute girl in my apartment complex, Stacey; we hit it off and talked a lot. She then met my friend Russ. A couple of days later we were at a lake with other friends, and Russ was making out with Stacey, and I was reading Christine in the tree. I just felt like I never had a chance. At least they were talking to me. I was in an awesome eighties teen movie, but sadly I was Duckie.

  I was obsessed with Stephen King—reading all the time. I wasn’t a big comic book reader at the time; Alan Moore and Frank Miller would get me back in the late eighties, but my main obsessions were heavy metal, comedy, and movies. Eddie Murphy was a god in both worlds. I loved him on SNL, viewed his special on repeat at Joel’s, and rented 48 Hours every weekend for a while. My mom wouldn’t pay for movie channels, and she definitely wouldn’t buy a VCR, so I rented one. Every weekend I would ride my bike to one of our town’s many video stores. I would bring home a deck and a bunch of videos. I watched current stuff like Taps, Bad Boys, Risky Business—all Tom Cruise classics.

  I watched everything—action and horror and comedy. I got heavy into John Carpenter; he and Kurt Russell ruled the early eighties with Escape from New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China. I would later draw from Russell’s character, Jack Burton, and Ash from Evil Dead II when I wrote Deadpool. So how did I pay for VCR rental, movies, music, concerts, and all the beers I was drinking? Easy—five jobs in two years. I rode my paper route into the ground and stumbled into a series of menial jobs I would fuck up. Two restaurants, a French place owned by two mean hippies and a Chinese place where the owner cursed at me in Cantonese when I dropped a dish. That happened a lot. Once in front of my grandparents.

  I worked at two gas stations, one for about a week. The other one was a dream job; my buddy Dan worked there and hired me. I stuck around there for almost two years. Man, was I a fuck up. Like high school, I valued fun over trying. I figured it was all temporary and really didn’t fucking matter. So show up late, do a half-ass job—who cares? It would suck later when I liked my bosses, but my early bosses were all dicks, so I didn’t care if I burned a bridge.

  At home I was in trouble all the time as my grades got worse, and the older I got, the more mouthy I got. “Son of a bitch” story earlier? Soon Ken left us—they didn’t break up, but he moved out, so I took it as a win. Things between my mom and myself did not improve miraculously after, though; it wasn’t Ken who was stopping us from communicating like humans. Her strictness and anger and frustration with me continued, as did my attitude and acting out. Somehow our new Monster-free apartment made things between us even more strained and intense. I was just kidding with the “somehow”—I know how. She totally resented me for pushing that furry dick out of our apartment.

  I’ve always done dumb shit. And so did Hinchman. When you put us together, shit got really stupid. Like when we were dicking around in his garage one day and found that you could use aerosol and the flame would be super kick-ass like Gene Simmons. And then two minutes later realized it was a can of black spray paint. Which, in case you’ve never used spray paint, it sprays black paint when you press the button. Two fucking dummies. We didn’t even think ahead, and we royally fucked up his dad’s garage.

  There was paint on the ground, the counters, the fucking wall. Thank god there wasn’t a car in there. At least his dad wasn’t legally allowed to beat me. I felt like I was growing apart from Hinchman. As I was getting more into metal, he was getting more into country music. Our interests connected on partying: we both liked drinking. That ended badly for me one night. Spray paint, Clear Lake summer trip: I started to notice that we were growing apart. He liked activities and girls; I liked reading and being by myself.

  I had my first and only fight my junior year. And it was as pathetic as you’d imagine. Worse, I bet. It was the saddest nerd fight ever. Ian lived in my neighborhood and was actually my friend. He was a funny, nerdy, punk kid on my paper route, and we became pals. I even had a crush on his stepsister; she was super cute and preppy, and they hated each other. Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what happened between us, but me clearly wanting to fuck his freshmen stepsister couldn’t have helped.

  Anyway, we had both had enough of each other’s shit at the bus stop and decided to fight. We each took our glasses off and put them in our pockets. Then we started fighting—well, light wrestling while standing up. No knockouts like in YouTube fights. Fists were barely even thrown. At one point his glasses landed on the ground. I thought I’d show him: I was so mad at him that I stomped on his glasses. But they were my glasses. I’m pretty sure I blamed him when I told my mom I needed new glasses.

  I really am the asshole in that story. He knew I liked his stepsister. I know for a fact I jacked it to her. I fantasized about every girl I liked at school. And a couple of the moms on my paper route. I forgot to tell you guys earlier: for these last two chapters I was jacking off that whole time. The sad stories. The funny stories. All the fucking time. I probably worked it right after I found out Randy was dead. I spanked it in every room of our shitty apartment. Well, not my mom’s room—that would be weird.

  I was a bully a couple of times to people below me. That felt like shit even when I got laughs. And “below” me? I hate that I ever thought that. But I wasn’t intentionally bullying; I was always going for a laugh, I swear. I didn’t make a kid throw another kid’s shoes on the roof to lead him to a year of humiliation, but I definitely made jokes at other people’s expense. I remember singing “Tomorrow” from Annie to a freshman girl who looked like Annie. Not to, actually—more like at. It was definitely not cool, but in 1983 I thought it was at least creative bullying, better than just going classic bully with “red” or “Carrot Top,” and it was before the antiginger moment. Plus, I sang. Automatic bonus bully points. Right?

  My other big bullying moment was even meaner. And also clever as fuck. The early part of my senior year my pal Jon Krop and I were fucking around in journalism class; we were supposed to be writing a column, but we were really just sitting by the window and talking about music. We were on the second floor of the main building when I witnessed a kid hitting his high school low. Everyone called him Crazy Legs because he had a muscular disorder that caused him to have a walking impediment. So, of course, assholes called him Crazy Legs.

  Crazy Legs had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and in turn, his parents kicked him out. Everyone knew. So he was living out of his car. Fucked up, huh? Wait… it rained all the time and people wrecked a lot, remember. So Crazy Legs was leaving school, his car hydroplaned, and he smacked into a eucalyptus tree. So I said, “Holy shit, Crazy Legs crashed his house.” Which is really funny because he was living out of his car and really fucking mean because he was living out of his car. I got laughs, but I didn’t feel good about it. I definitely didn’t like being the bully. Sometimes, though, I used my powers for good.

  I barked at a teacher who killed a dog. Mr. Whoville—not his real last name—was kind of a dirt-bag history teacher. He slept with a senior the year before and kept his job. But she wasn’t allowed to graduate with her friends. Dick. I really hated him be
cause he made the local news when he had been dogsitting for a friend, the dog had been barking incessantly, so instead of walking it, letting it in, or maybe finding out why he was barking, he fucking killed it. What about closing your door? Or headphones? Or earmuffs? Or barking back at the dog? Or calling the police? Or, really, anything other than killing a fucking dog.

  Anyway, this dickhole shot his friend’s dog. It made the paper. Everyone at school knew. So one day, as my bus was leaving the school, we drove by Mr. Whoville, and I thought of barking at him. So I did. I barked. I howled. I was right at my open window, going nuts. He looked pissed. Some kids on the bus got the joke and joined in. It got around. A couple of days later, after I’d gotten compliments from kids who weren’t even on the bus, other people started doing it.

  Soon a lot of kids started barking at Mr. Whoville. I was pretty proud of myself when I heard barking and howling kids were disrupting his class. Ha ha. Instead of shooting us, Mr. Whoville transferred away from our school. Later, dog-killing dick. I had been a dog lover my whole life, and not a lot upsets me more than cruelty to animals. I wish I could bark in the face of every asshole who’s ever abused an animal.

  One of the repercussions of fucking off in school is that the grades take a hit. My grades were already bad sophomore year, but they would really start to tank my junior year. I flunked out of a couple of classes. *Cough* PE, Spanish… I won’t blame my failing grades my sophomore and junior years on my grandma, but it couldn’t have helped that I was sad about her for a while. I failed a couple of classes. I think you’re allowed three, and I had four or five Fs by my senior year. At the beginning of the year my completely inept counselor informed me that I was going to have to make up credits if I hoped to graduate in the spring.