I received an email yesterday, on Easter Sunday. It was from a person that I hadn’t talked to in years; the last time that I saw him I was pointing a knife at his face. He’d come to a party at my house in Kent, Ohio to smash me to pieces. I was told that he might come, that’s why I had the knife. I was always terrible at fighting, everything happens so fast. I think people who are good at fighting can slow the movements down in their heads, for me it’s just flailing and then it’s over. The email on Easter Sunday was an apology for the knife event. It didn’t include an explanation, just that he was sorry that it happened and he hoped that I could forgive him. I don’t think I can reply. I wouldn’t know what to say. It seems kind of silly to forgive a person for something that happened so long ago. I have a suspicion that the apology is part of a twelve-step program and the more I consider it, the more I think I deserved to get beaten up. You see, this person’s mother used to babysit me long before the knife incident, and I think I told a lot of people that he used to pee the bed.

I can’t remember now if he did pee the bed or not. I almost remember that he did and that he had bunk beds, but my memory is so awful. It did get me to thinking about all of the times that I’ve been in fights, each of them in the Cleveland area of Ohio. There’s something about Cleveland that makes sense for fighting, but you don’t realize it until you leave. I just thought the whole world was like that; it was inevitable that you’d fight your friends eventually. Sometimes it didn’t even mean anything, like we were just characters from We Are The Lambeth Boys, sometimes having to beat the shit out of each other. A day later we’d pretend that nothing ever happened. I’m sure it has something to do with fatherless alcoholic upbringings or living in a place like Cleveland, Ohio. The thing is, before I ever saw anyplace else, I always found Cleveland to be wonderful. Now when I go back I only see sweat pants and rusty Buick Skylarks. Oh God, I’m an asshole now.

The first time I caught a thrashing was on the playground in middle school. I think the person’s name was Colin or Jason. Now that I think about it, starting with grade five, there was always somebody looking to kill me. I had a giant mouth and I dressed different than everybody else. Not by choice or by statement—I remember one year that I only had one shirt and one pair of pants. I’d have to wear the same yellow Garanimals shirt every single day, with the same pair of brown Bugle Boy pants. These clothes would get dirty and people would make fun of me, I think I may have been the kid that smelled like cat pee. At that age most children really cared about things like that, but my method of retaliation was hardly ever silence. I’d do something outlandish like speak gibberish or put gum in a person’s hair. Colin or Jason vowed that they’d catch me sometime when I was alone and eventually a group of kids surrounded me on the playground, creating a sight barrier. Colin or Jason hit me three times in the head with a rock that fit neatly in their palm, I remember seeing bright flashes every time it struck my temple. I woke up in a hospital hours later, my yellow Garanimals shirt covered in blood. I remember being scared of what was going to happen to me because the shirt was covered in blood; it was the only school shirt that I had. I don’t remember what happened next, but I changed schools tow months later.

There are three other instances of pummeling that come to mind over the next five years of my life, but they aren’t really of note. All of the fights I lost for sure, just because I never figured out how to fight. It seems at this exact moment that I’m telling you that you’re welcome to beat me up all that you want. I’ll probably just ball up and go to some weird place in my head that I’ve created for traumatic events. Look! I’m telling you this!

Jennifer was a girl that I went to high school with. She had a sister named Linda who was older and had an apartment down the street from where I lived. I would go to Linda’s house to listen to Smiths records and drink Cokes often. Jennifer was younger and still lived with her parents. She also lived with a girl with an English accent, I think it may have been a sibling though marriage. Somehow I became romantically tangled with Jennifer, but I can’t remember if it was grave in any way. She was cute and had a wide mouth and she used to call me “little boy,” which I really liked. I also remember prank calling her, simply because that’s a way that I spent a lot of my time back then. Shortly after the prank calling and very near the end of my senior year of high school, I was confronted by two boys while walking home from school. They’d asked my name and then asked if I knew Jennifer. After answering yes both times the smaller of the boys punched me in the face twice with his right fist. I couldn’t imagine how he punched so fast, the succession was so rapid that it made no sense to me. Nor did the fact that I just got punched in the face for what was either prank calling Jennifer or treating her poorly or both. I was bewildered for the rest of the day and decided to take a knife to school with me the following day. Due to clever scheduling I didn’t have an actual class until 3rd period, so I went to school at 10:30 am on most days. Most of the time my walk to school would be desolate because everybody was already in class. On this day, the day after the jaw punching, I walked toward school and noticed only one person at the corner of the school grounds where students smoked cigarettes. As I approached he asked me if I was Derek Erdman and then informed me that I was “dead meat.” It now seemed that everybody that I encountered wanted to punch my face. As he approached, I took the knife out of my pocket and unfolded it, locking the blade into place. I remember saying something really funny like, “I’M GOING TO JAM THIS KNIFE INTO YOUR GUTS AND GET BLOOD ALL OVER MY SHOES”. He stepped back and I continued to the school building. When I arrived the classes were changing and I gave the knife to the hesher who had a locker two down from mine. He promised to keep the knife a secret because he owed me because I'd written an essay for him about Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. I was pulled out of French class during the next period by a school security guard and was marched down to the principal’s office. There I was accused of bringing a knife to school and quickly spotted the person who had seen it. Since being a good liar had always come easy to me, I decided that was the best route to take. Over the next two hours I was questioned repeatedly about the incident and all of my belongings were searched. Denying everything and hiding the evidence worked like a charm, I was released in time for lunch, where I enjoyed pizza bread at a local restaurant while playing a Theatre Of Magic pinball game. Man, I hated high school.

Travis Ritter demanded that I make him a drawing of Devin The Dude but then never used it. HOW UN-AWESOME IS THAT?

• Totally unawesome.

My roommates told me that I could eat the hard boiled Black Flag egg. It was cracked and they said it was "damaged". HOW UN-AWESOME IS THAT?

• Totally NOT UNAWESOME.

What are you doing on Thursday? YOU CAN DO THIS!