II. Mania as an Initiation to Manhood

I became interested in theatre at an early age. I took classes at a theatre in Fort Worth called Casa Manana. The Theatre is still around today. Starting in 77 I took a tap dance class there and it turned out to be not so good for me. I was the only striaght person in the class. What was worse is the only other boy in the class was three shades of gay and he was completely okay with that. I was terrified by this kid. I had homophobia to the state of shock. What was worse is he could dance like Fred fucking Astaire and I was all two left feet. I wanted to quit that class like so bad, but my mother would not let me. This compounded my depression and my fears of homosexuality. I would not confront those fears until much later.
In the eighth grade I took theatre and I met a silly guy named Scott and we became friends. Scott and I were both fans of Monty Pythons Flying Circus which was being shown on Sundays at 10 on the local PBS station. In the class we would act out Python skits or write our own stuff and sort of steal there material. At the talent show Scott and I performed and we were approached by this shy fellow named Ricky. He had a Super 8 color sound movie camera and offered to help us make films. We worked on silly films all summer. I wrote them and directed but our big project was never fully finished. Scott drifted away after I began using drugs. Ricky was completely striaght in every way, but he became a life long friend and we still see each other regularly. He still has the movies in a can in the dark and claims he is going to digitialize them but it never seems to get done. I think more than likely after thirty years they are dust.
By the time I started High School I wanted to seek out OBLIVION on a regular basis. I chose Alcohol as the best means to achieve this. I had an older high school friend named Gregg who kept me in constant search of pot and sometimes we'd find it. Richard my brother was old enough to buy liquer legally and kept us in good stock of Vodka and Everclear. I never drank socially, ever. When I drank it was in order to completely bloto myself. I even drank to blackouts at the age of 17.