Chapter -3- College by Street Name? What?

Section 1

Did I Piss in The Punch?

 (Orange St)

What an exciting time in my life I had just graduated high school “I was on top of the world”… or at least it felt like that. I was coming into my own. Creating art turned out to be the best thing for me I felt amazing when I would create art. It became a symbolic expression of my mind. Developed by techniques I learned while shadowing artist Paul Harryn, I was able to produce up to 20-30 paintings with in a two week period. It really was the push I needed to fall back on that one thing I was good at and it was art.

The next step was to find out if I was going to go right off to college or ifd I wanted to take time and search for the inner “voice”. I had so many decisions and I didn’t know where to go I decided to check out two places really AIU Philly and PCAD Lancaster turns out PCAD is where my life would take me but not for another year. I stayed in my town I did some art shows in the area as well as painted a café in first color it was called Stone Grove Café. A quiet shop with new age books, that kind of reminded me of a small store I had seen in a movie called “The Craft”. There were tons of candles and Franken-something incense. There was a small stage where a live band could play or some depressed emo kid could read a poem about over dosing while wearing girls jeans.

Within that year I really started what I thought was going to be my carrier, by the time I was ready to move from the parents home I was showing art, creating custom works for clients, painting murals and promoting art show i.e. “steal this art” in Reading PA… I was on my way packed up and ready to go out into the world that already had gave me two house fires, a drunken father, a rapist, and the man I would call my dad Joe.

He is the most supportive male figure in my life. By this point I was able to separate the concept of father and dad. A father is someone that provides the second have of the needed chemicals and DNA additives to create live where as a Dad well that is the man that shows you life and how to be strong, brave, creative, expressive, kind, gentle and hard. Above all else they show you what it means to be a man and that’s what he taught me. There was only one thing to do at this point and that was to find a roomie and then a house!

On my way to meeting my new potential roommate I remember being extremely nervous. PCAD had given out theses e-mail list things and I found him on one… they were kind of an early roster of students that needed roommates for there term in PCAD. It had all different age groups because students didn’t live on campus there. They simply had to find an apartment somewhere close to the college so that they could either drive or walk with there supplies and projects.  I chose to walk I didn’t have a car yet so I was hoping to get one soon.

I met up with him and we hit it off I think I went with my girlfriend at the time Christa ( more to come later on her. She wasn’t really the type of person to meet new people. I knew this was going to be interesting. So we just kind of sat around and drank Magic Hat No.9. It was so tasty really it was the first time I had a real beer normally I would have been drinking super shitty beer like Old Milwaukee. I drank this with my buddies under a bridge back in Slatington it was only about twelve dollars for a twelve pack it was extremely cheap. 

We ended up moving on Orange St. in Lancaster PA it was about four or five blocks away from the college. This was perfect! I could walk to school and leave late so I could sleep in plus on days when I wanted to go home for lunch I could.

We had a two floor place very chill you had to walk down a very thin hallway made of bricks it was really very hard to fit some of my things in through.  It had three rooms and I remember it only being like five hundred or so dollars maybe eight a piece. Either way there was one bathroom and one bedroom on the bottom floor, up stairs was the other two rooms with a window in one that you could use to climb out on to the roof that would later be the scene of a winter beach party with a baby pool of water and a blow up palm tree that was a cooler. It was perfect! During that time i had a few people enter life that I can truly say are my friends I would meet people like Molly, Jake <3 him, Justin, Sara and of course Chelsea. OH Chel she became the girl of my dreams I stopped dating Christa and I started dating Chel. Blonde hair, cute button nose, tan and sexy; she became my lover and best friend. But life had a different path set out for me….  I was going to meet a lot of people that were about to show me a side of my self that I had not noticed was there…. all this and I still had to more years before I would more to San Diego!