I was born in a small town in New Jersey called High Bridge. I think it was named after this bridge near my house that was pretty high up, and which was closed for a few years while I was little.

When I was smaller my friend Scott lived across my backyard and we spent a lot of time making shit up- like, one time he told me that his cousin died and he put an ice cube on his head as he died AND HE MELTED- and making messes and esploring our backyards. Because, y'know there's dinosaur bones and "indian rocks" all over your back yard when you're a little kid.

Also there was a rusty wheelbarrow in my backyard and we put every kind of liquid we could get our hands on to make poison. It probably would have killed us if we drank it, but we weren't going to drink it. We were going to feed it to bad guys if they showed up- y'know, tell 'em it was applejuice and they'd drink it and die and we'd be heroes.

Also I had a swingset. And we had some woods and one time I decided to make a torch so I taped some newspapers to a stick, lit 'em on fire, and then couldn't figure out how to put it out. So I threw it in a creek and ran away. I'm pretty sure it went out somehow.

Eventually I was also friends with this kid Chris Cunha and then he and Scott moved away and I became friends with Paul Veneziano. This was like '85 or '86 or so, I guess, and we were big into Nintendo, so we played lots of Nintendo. One time we were playing the Nintendo game adaptation of that movie Top Gun and, to land the plane on the aircraft carrier, you had to follow the directions it gave you. And it was all, "pull the plane left! left!" And I didn't know my right from left but I didn't want to admit it so I just picked a direction and pulled the plane that way. And uh, I picked right, crashed the plane, and tried to play it off like I was just joking, crashing the plane on purpose, but man, how lame.

And also one time I got Paul a shirt for his birthday- had this shit made up special- that said "inside this shir tis the best nintendo player in the world." Which was a lie because man, I was totally better than him. I've always been better than everybody except, like, Mambo. And now I'm out of practice so y'know. I'm not accepting challengers.

So yeah me & Paul hung out all the time, he lived down Cregar Road so I couldn't really walk over, so my mom drove me over just about every day. Hmm... Oh yeah and before this we had like a bike gang and jumped off this little ledge from my neighbors'- the Velardis'- driveway into the street, over and over, circling around. And then we inherited all these old shutters and made ramps for our bikes. Hell yeah. We were awesome.

So yeah then in third grade we moved out of High Bridge to the next town over, Clinton. Which is where my parents have been ever since. In fourth grade I was the new kid so I tried to be a tough guy hardass which didn't work because I'm a pussy. So instead of being cool I just, like, got in trouble and looked like a dork, but in fourth grade you can't play it off like you mean to be a dork, so I wasn't very cool at all.

One time? I made a sign and posted it on my desk. It said "don't get any closer of I'll fart." This was pretty funny shit, back then, you know? But Mrs. Marinelli saw it and made me bring it home to make my parents sign it. (Her note said "notes like this are not allowed in school." I remember this phrase because fucking duh.) Except I wasn't allowed to say "fart" so I erased where it said "fart" and replaced it with "gas," which, I mean, how lame. And it was obviously erased and my mom knew it and then Mrs. Marinelli knew it and she was exasperated, but she didn't say anything.

So yeah, grade school and junior high were lame.

In junior high I met these kids Mambo and Jofus. And also Brett and John and Phat and, I don't know, probably some other people. I dated two girl in junior high and I was kind of afraid of both of them and I'm pretty sure the first girl I smooched in my whole life was this girl Julie, on the ski club bus one time, but I'm not 100% sure. I mean, the more I think about it the more I'm pretty sure that's how it happened, but also I'm afraid she'll see this somehow and be all, whatever, weirdo. You totally made that up.

But no! We dated for a while! I remember going to see some movie with her. Well, I don't really remember what movie it was, just that like, I had this lame hunter's shirt that was insulated and I was wearing it without a jacket, feeling all cool because I didn't need a jacket because I had this rad shirt, and yo. The shirt wasn't very cool. It was like orange and purple plaid. Psssh. And we went to the movie and I think we kissed on the ski club bus. Then she grew up to be gay, but she dated Mambo after she dated me, so I'm guessing it was something he did, not anything I did. Y'know.

Also I think one time I tried to look up her friend Kelsa's dress and then I got caught and I felt like a jerk and also everybody hated me. This is a vague memory though, maybe kinda blocked out.

In high school I was on the fencing team and after my freshman year I went to nerd camp and I met some people. Lots of people, actually. I was taking writing classes in the summer and I met this girl Kerry who sorta has a livejourna- she got a permanent account so she doesn't have to update it any more- and through her I met these other kids including my friend Jason who is a rock star and this is pretty funny:

When I was first at nerd camp, I was hanging out with the kids in my dorm, y'know? And they were, like, pretty fucking nerdy. Like to the point that, after I met Kerry and Jason and started hanging out with them, the kids from my dorm were like, "Oh, I see you met the cool kids," implying that I'd sold out & shit. Which is awesome! Because I mean, y'know, these cool kids were the ones who'd qualified for and elected to take all these classes, like, college level biology at age fourteen and shit. In the summer. Nerd camp was fucking awesome.

And then I dated some other girls in high school, and our fencing team never won the whole state championship but I did win the district championships once. I got carried around on teammates' shoulders, it was pretty rad.

So yeah, also in high school I had a crush on this girl Jen and I hung out with her a lot and we played punk rock in her basement, and went to some rock shows and her brothers were punk rock, too. She was a painter and she was a year older than me and I don't know whether it's cool to say who you lost your virginity to in your biography so never mind. But I had to wait til she went to college because I wasn't having much sex in high school.

And also before that we discovered drugs and while I was winning distrricts and schooling suckers on the fencing strips I was spending my weekends taking E at this shitty little club called the Freightyard and hanging out with these girls, Del and Clarissa, and then Del & Leslie, and mooching heroin off my friends who were addicted to it. There were a lot of drugs senior year.

Oh and at some point I dated this girl Emily, who, after we broke up, she dated Mambo, and her parents caught them humping in her driveway. Mambo's furry ass sticking up over the seats & shit, I guess. That's pretty funny. I never got it on with her.

And then after that I dated this girl Emily and we were together for like four & a half years, while I was in college and she was in high school and then while we were both in college. We went to different schools and she didn't get along with my friend svery well and the whole thing was sort of a fiasco and eventually we broke up.

Oh yeah! And when I was in eighth grade I went to this "peer leadership" retreat and met this kid Tyson, except I thought his name was toki, or maybe I just called him Toki. I forget. But there was a game called "Toki goes ape spit" that I never played, but Toki was a monkey. I don't know how that whole thing worked at all. And then we were friends and the first day of high school I had the Genesis version of MORTAL KOMBAT and he came over to my house and we played it and the sound effects were fucing lame.

So I sorta half-assed did some fencing in college but sucked ass at it and gave up. Then I slacked off at everything and I lived in a couple houses with these kids I haven't mentioned yet but they are my friends: Jeremy and Scott and Artie (but not Artie; a different Artie) and Sean and William and Albert and Sameer and Tom and Matt and uh Nick and Ryan and Steve and maybe there were some others. And Mambo got booted out of college for spending a semester playing Contra instead of going to class.

And he can still beat it without dying.

Then eventually I turned 21 and Kerry got pulled over and had to walk the line because she was honking her horn, even though she wasn't drunk. And then I broke up with Emily eventually and I dressed up in drag a couple times for parties or halloween and Mambo and Jofus discovered ecstasy and then plowed through about a billion pills in a couple months, and one time Mambo took a bunch of acid, and maybe I shouldn't talk about other kids' drug experiences here. It's my biography.

For a long time smoking weed made me throw up, but I got over it.

Now I don't really take drugs or anything I just drink. I learned to drink scotch and I met this girl Sarah in a creative writing class- see, at the end of the class we had to write and memorize and recite a poem, and she did one about like ten foot tall bullet-shaped tits or something. I forget exactly. And then I read a poem (it started: look at the stars; see how they shine FUCK YOU) and I was nervous so I mumbled and fumbled and she yelled from the back of the room for me to read it agian. Which was awesome because she's kinda quiet.

And I didn't have time to read it again in class, so I gave her a copy of it that I had, afterward. And I was like "damn! if I was smooth, I woulda written my phone number on that shit." She said, "you could still write your number on it." So I did, and then I asked for hers, and she gave it to me. And then I waited too long to call her, apparently, because she gives me shit for it. I was just whetting her appetite because I'm smooth.

So now we've been together since, I don't know, early 2003. And we are in love and we are going to move to New York when we're not broke any more. And go to graduate school and get MFAs. That's awesome.

I think maybe I missed some stuff, but y'know. That's the biography in a nutshell. Oh! Except one time Artie put Tom's head through a windshield, and Jeremy got his nose broken in a related incident when somebody tried to steal a keg-tap from a party we were having. And you know those annoying kids with the techno glowsticks? Tyson showed me how to do that shit so I know how and if there are glowsticks around it takes a lot of restraint for me not to start twirling them.