I was undefeated. Nineteen and 1/2 years and I was literally unbeaten. Never once did love knock me out. It didn't even touch me, actually. I parried every advance at me, every warmth of feeling.
Nine years old with AWOL parents, already too much fight-dog in me, already too guarded. I didn't believe in anything and I didn't trust anything. I learned that I had to be tough, made of metal. Because I was the only one who could do that for myself. I couldn't rely on anyone to do me any favors.
So it was nineteen and 1/2 spun out years of this internal anger, external pride, ostensible indifference, this roughneck attitude. And isolation--always alone. Most of those years were charged with alcohol and drug addiction, too. The wonder of the party life that I thought was my passage to happiness.
I said I didn't believe in anything earlier. Well, I take that back. I believed that I was smart. A genius. Everybody that fell in love was an absolute numbskull. Life was meant to be lived solo, by hedonists, by anarchists. Start trouble, ride the wave with surface friends, eat the breeze hanging out of a convertible.
I believed that with every rocky gulp of air I took out of a Marlboro red. Until something awful happened to me. I got knocked out.
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