Purge

My ex-girlfriend is gone, and now lives five hours away.

That can be interpreted in a straight-forward way, but to me, there is so much more meaning there. One of my best friends has moved away. My bass player has moved away. My band is in a state of hiatus and uncertainty.

She moved to Philadelphia to start the next chunk of her life. I won't lie, I worried when she didn't go to college after graduating high school. She took her time and did what she wanted to do, and over time, I respected her decisions, realized she was doing what she was wanting, and it was working, and basically became jealous. I wish I would have been able to take my time and let things play out as they should. She moved to the city for a year and worked two jobs, made a decent amount of money, bought things she wanted, and had a great time with new found friends. The band lived on, and we still hung out with all our friends back at home on occasion. Good for her. Take your time and decide what you want to do. She is moving to Philly to experience something new for the summer, and be settled in for school in the fall. School that she has put so much time and effort into planning and deciding and re-evaluating options. Proud of her.

But obviously, there is more to it than that.

This can all be combined with the fact that it is now June 1st, school resumes in August. I absolutely NEED an internship for both the Fall and Spring semesters to be a full time student, to get financial aid, and to graduate and finish up this four year fucking obligation. I have no desire to do this art thing anymore. I like painting here and there, and designing flyers. I like music and the art that relates to it. When my advisor, a nun, overly-structuralizes (I made that up) the Graphic Design curriculum, is extremely conservative in her style of teaching, and provides no sense of assistance in her advising, I feel like I made all the wrong decisions in my secondary education. And my friends have jobs, aren't stressing, and know what they want to do.

Now, this could all be overreaction. She could come home a lot and we could all get back together and have a good time every now and then. But coupled with the anxiety of the last few summers and the difficulty of getting our group of friends together, it just adds to the stress and the realization that we're all growing up and slowly piecing together the puzzle of turning into adults. You get caught up and its really hard to plan even a fucking bonfire that's been talked about for months. It freaks me the fuck out that my best friend from elementary school has his life planned out, he has an 18-dollar-an-hour internship this summer and knows what he wants to do. He can finish school and stay with this company. I can't even begin to force myself to look for an internship in the fall, let alone think about doing this shit for a living.

So even if this is a big jump for Kayla, I feel like it's also on the cusp of a new chunk of my unguided life. School is important, I have one year left, and after that year, I have no desire to work with computers or the programs I have "learned" to use in the past three years. I know what I like to do but at the same time I have no idea what I want to do.

Music is a big part of my life. I have put so much time and effort into trying to get to a state that I am satisfied with. I always tell myself and others I have no goals, and I try to find subconscious goals that may be lurking in my head, but all I find are little ones in music. Record something. Put out a physical object showing what I've done. Do a tour. These are all music related goals. Graphic design? What?

Now if anyone knows me, they know everything that has gone on with the band over the past... who knows how long when it comes to drummers and the trials and tribulations. Kayla moving to Philly may be a good thing, with Jorgan there, they could work on material and have me come in when they have done their parts. The way our band has been, this could be the best thing to happen to it in a while. But what are the odds of that? Even then, how can you keep something so long-distance going? I feel like The Hormones are basically done. I feel like all of my hard work, effort, patience, and trial and error through all these years of playing music has crumbled into nothing again and I'm back at the beginning. Sitting in the basement dreaming of a band, realizing how far out of reach it is. Playing nonsense for hours that only creates an headache and ringing in our ears.

So I am willing to try something new, start a new band, see if a long distance-Hormones works out, whatever. I'm always eager to accept a challenge and see what I can do. But in the end, the school thing just adds to the culmination of all the stress and should be my focal point right now. The ringing in my ears isn't going to go away, and neither is the stress.

I think that covers everything.

Technically two days left in this semester. Cut the ties from this place and I'm gone. The only bad part is the three days straight of work at Sheetz afterward, but they should go pretty quick. And hey, three eight-hour days can be rounded to about 240 bucks, right? Can't go wrong there.

I've had these chest pains off and on over the past week or so. I feel like they're going away but I really have no idea. They may have something to do with the sore throat that I've had for even longer. Today is the day to figure this out.

Excuse me for interrupting your midday kissing session.

Excuse me for interrupting your daily episode of Maury at 4PM Eastern time.

Excuse me for not realizing that you guys go to bed before midnight the majority of the time.

Excuse me, I would like to have my fucking guitar and strap back someday soon.

Excuse me for asking when the "fifth roommate" is actually going to start paying rent.

I would like to please have a parking spot to come home to every night.

Thanks.

433

In one room, a kid sits on his bed listening to Alkaline Trio and Lawrence Arms records, singing choruses and melodies about being drunk, death, and rotting corpses.

On the other side of the wall, a girl is spread out on her bed, talking on the phone and coping with the loss of her ex-boyfriend's mother, and her distant boyfriend who will be going to Iraq.

On the other side of her wall, a slightly overweight guy took some pills and medicine, and passed out extra early in hope to get over nausea, after a day of sitting around watching tv, eating unhealthy, and playing video games.

Under him, a guy and his girlfriend went to bed extra early, spending the night together, sleeping together and keeping each other cramped, too hot from each other's body heat, but in love, of course.

This is in or around midnight. The blunt and honest truth.

I'm back in Greensburg.

Teabags and Peas.

Swelling is kinda crappy, my cheeks feel tight. I don't look like a chipmunk though.

No pain, surprisingly. It's noon and I haven't taken vicodin in 6 hours. Just took 2 advils though.

Bleeding still. Just a little bit, nothing crazy.

Just been sleeping. Going back to sleep now. Icing my cheeks with peas. I was stuffing teabags wrapped in gauze in my cheeks but that just got annoying.

No crazy dreams, no crazy visions, nothing exciting.

I want out of the house.

My mouth needs to dumb itself down.

Wisdom teeth out on Monday.

Not stoked.

I wanna keep it documented as best as possible. Shit should get interesting afterwards.

I'll be at home, no school, no work til Friday, so nothing to do. Go internet, go video games.

Documentation? Please!

And the story goes like this.

Some things in this world you just can't grasp Strange shit happens out of no where that really makes you think. I can get all philosophical, or I can tell things the way that I saw them. I am sick of retelling this story, so I'll type it out

The key to painting a vivid picture is to accurately describe the setting.
It was Valentines Day night, February 14th, 2009. I was never a fan of Valentine's Day, but a series of events led to a hyped up Valentine's Day this year. Gabby, one of my roommates, told us that her boyfriend was coming up to visit from Texas. He isn't home much, he's in the army, and the last time he was up in Greensburg, Gabby had her friends over and they all played beer pong and made a get together out of it. We all like Matt here, so we figured it's time to get everyone together. So henceforth, the big Valentine's Day party.

It wasn't even supposed to be a party, just a get together with our friends.

So then we get to my side of the story. I love my friends, and I love the fact that I have only a handful up in Greensburg. This handful is fucking great. We are tight as shit, yo. So I figured if Gabby and company will be having fun, I'll have Marie, Nick, and Ashlan over. After all, we've been drinking here for the last 3 weekends, the last 6 weekend nights, etc. So let's keep the train rolling.
Anyways, Gabby's friends left around 1 am. Following this was the nightly acoustic guitar session in the living room between me and Nick. Gabby and Matt hung out with the four of us and Matt was all about it singing and playing a snare drum I brought downstairs. They disappeared off to bed a little while later. Of course, when you're drunk, time flies. Somehow, it got to around 3 am. Marie and I were talking about life and realized Nick and Ashlan were passed out. That happens a lot. They wake up pretty easy though.

We migrated upstairs to my bedroom, since my room is always warm. Nick and Ashlan always bring their sleeping bags, and they were in Ashlan's car. Nick decided to go down to the car and get the sleeping bags. Keep in mind, we were all still pretty drunk at this time.

Nick was walking to the car, which was parked down Ohara from our house, where we always park, when he heard a cop yelling a bunch of stuff towards him. "Get down! Get out of here! Get away!" All that kind of stuff. Nick didn't want to look suspicious so he just walked back up to the car. He came into the house and told us that there was a cop outside, so we moved to the room next to my bedroom. Perfect centered view of the street below, all the way down to 130.

Our house is on a hill overlooking Ohara Street, on the corner of Ohara and Harrson. If you drive up the hill on Ohara, you would hit our house if you do not drive around our house at the intersection. Therefore, our top floor windows overlooked the whole situation, which took place down towards the bottom of the hill near 130. The house was near the corner of Concord and Ohara, which was 1 street down from Harrison. We didn't see the house, but we saw the cop cars and the majority of the action.

At this point, cars started pouring off of 130 onto Ohara, and we knew something was up. Police lights and police everywhere. There was a police car parked halfway up the street with a couple of officers taking cover with guns over the side of the car the whole night. The whole time, we had our theories about what was going on, but come on, we had no idea.

I would say at this point it was going on 4:00 AM , we knew something was up, and it was still very dark out. We set up shop in the little room and started to listen in on the action. We opened the windows and screens and froze our asses off while Ashlan and Marie were passed out in my room. We heard slight chatter from the various cops and tried to listen in to the radio. We heard things about a 2nd floor.

At this point, like I said, I was out of it, so I remember details here and there. No specific order.

There were guys coming in and out with a pretty large amount of body armor on. There were shields and rifles.
Some of these guys ran from yard to yard, inching back towards the main house, and then making their way back to safety.
The silhouettes were creepy in the slight light that we could see.

At first, we would hear gunshots here and there, and we would hear breaking glass. Nick and I kept looking at each other. Were those really gun shots?

The police evacuated a house across the street from the ground zero house and had the family leave for the extent of the incident. What really amazed me is the cops ran up to the back porch, and unscrewed a flood light that was on to give themselves some added stealth. This seems like this was pretty much their base and cover.

Police vehicles would come and go, and more personnel would arrive. Pedestrians would drive by and be turned around. We remained unnoticed, perched up in my top floor.

At some point while it was still dark out, a police officer acquired a megaphone and this is when things really started to heat up.

A common phrase was, "Joe, come to the window."
"Joe, you gotta stop firing rounds and breaking windows if we are going to cooperate."
"Joe, you gotta speak up. Come to the window."

We could hear the officer loud and clear, but not Joe. Just the fact that he was yelling.

There was a period of time where they kept asking him for his cell phone number, and his dad's cell phone number. I guess his dad wasn't answering his cell phone, and they asked for the house phone number. I'm not really sure if they ever did get ahold of his dad, which is sad. The phone period went on for a while. They kept telling him to relax, and that they were going to get him a phone.

As it got lighter, more police officers were evident in different areas around the neighboring houses. The big bags that we saw some of the men carrying turned out to be dogs. There were more and more guys in armor, and more and more guys with large guns. Spots of darkness dissolved into three or four bodies at a time.

Also, as it got lighter, I decided to grab my camera and my zoom lens. I hung out of the window and tried to get as many photos as I could. I tried developing them tonight and a lot of the ones that did come out looked pretty dark, so we'll see how that goes. I think I ruined the roll of film.

Around this time, people started walking around, realizing something was going on. A man strolled by walking his dog, and he stopped to talk to the cop who was still in a car below our house.

"What's going on? Car wreck down there or something?"
The cop rolled down his window, "What?"
"Car wreck?"

Out of no where, there were 2 consecutive shots. The first almost sounded like a smaller gun, like the earlier shots, and the second shot that immediately followed had the distinct crack of a shotgun. The guy walking the dog took off running down Harrison. He stopped and came back towards the cop car. Yeah, car wreck, right. Nick and I had a feeling something went down at this point, and there was silence for a while.

"Joe, come to the window."
"Come to the window, Joe."

There was nothing. It got lighter, and an ambulance showed up in no hurry. We figured Joe killed himself, but apparently this late in the incident, he took his FIRST shot at a police officer. Another police officer fired in defense, and ended the conflict. It was obvious that this whole thing was going to end with a sad resolution.

Seton Hill went on lockdown and lots of phone calls were made. We weren't allowed to leave the house for a little while. Nick, Ashlan, and Marie eventually made their way back to Seton Hill and I went to bed. By now, it was going on 9:30 AM. I had to work at 2 PM. The action was over, but the whole incident won't be for a while. School will be awkward and I didn't even know the kid. Rest in peace.