RALEIGH, micah bryce

[micah]

TWENTY-ONE. LOCAL. STRAIGHT. GOOFBALL. JOHN OHH.
( MICAH BRYCE RALEIGH )

I SEE YOUR EYES, YOU'RE BARELY SOBER.
I HEAR YOUR VOICE, YOU'RE CALLING OUT FROM ME TO YOU.
the character

...you want to hear about me. well, sorry if this is gonna be boring to you. because it probably will be.

i was born on november twenty-fifth. my parents, julia and marcos, they had only been married for like, two years or so. i don’t really know. i’m not even sure they wanted a kid, to be honest. but when i was young, i felt like my life was okay. my parents took care of me, they treated me well, all that shizz. that was when i was young. when things weren’t complicated. i could run around the house like a little mad man and draw on walls and my parents would scold me and all, but that was alright. no harm done. walls could be washed. spills could be cleaned up. everything was okay. so it went on like this for a while, six years to be exact. when i was six, things weren’t working out so greatly anymore. when i did stupid childish stuff, i didn’t just get scolded lightly, i seriously got bitched at. a lot of the time it was so bad that i would start crying. but i was a kid; i kept messing around and goofing off anyway. and when dad would start yelling, i just sat there and took it. mom didn’t do anything.

about the time that my parents started being all randomly strict towards me, the two of them started fighting all the time, too. maybe i’m crazy, but i’m pretty damn sure there was some sort of connection with that. they would argue, they would yell, and dad would storm out of the house a lot. usually i just hid up in my room during most of this, hearing snatches of what they were screaming. shit like whose fault this was, how art wasn’t a real job, and my name. blah fucking blah blah. kinda traumatic on a six-year-old, not gonna lie. but i tried my hardest to ignore it, at least when they were arguing downstairs or in their room or whatever. it was different when dad was screaming at me for doing stupid little stuff. well, not that i exactly listened to all of that, either. it was all pretty much the same lecture every time. i got used to it after a while, and i didn’t cry about it anymore. i got tough. heh.

a few years passed and my parents were still arguing continually, almost every day. i may have been young, but i wasn’t stupid. i didn’t understand why they didn’t just get a divorce. to this day, i don’t. but whatever. things got a little better when i was like seven, and this new kid moved in across the street. we started hanging out in my garage a lot, and it was nice. i didn’t have to deal with my parents, and as long as i wasn’t causing mischief under their roof, they didn’t care. so ethan and i would sit in my garage and just talk. we were really similar, too, actually, and we became friends pretty quickly. we started hanging out all the time, and sometimes we would just go around town and do goofy shit, pull pranks on people, whatever, and my parents didn’t even care. i wasn’t causing damage to their property, so why would they? for the first time in a few years, i was feeling pretty good. then one day, when we were eight, ethan and i decided that we were gonna be rockstars. i rummaged around in the garage and found this old tin, and we said we’d put all our money in it until we had enough to buy two guitars and a microphone. yeah, i was doing good.

for the next couple years, i still hung around with ethan all the time, and he became my best friend. my parents still stayed together, arguing and screaming all the time. i didn’t seem to even matter to them, anymore. they knew i was there and everything, but i was pretty much ignored. it didn’t matter to them what i did anymore. i was out of their way, so who cared? my life was pretty monotonous for the most part, pretty boring. well, not counting the random shenanigans that coop and i got into all the time. that was just fun stuff, though. it’s not like we caused any harm. (again, that would be why my parents didn’t care.) then we met this girl who started hanging out with us a lot. she knew how to play guitar, so she fit in pretty easily with us. oh, yeah, we did get enough money for those guitars, too. we just didn’t start the band because ... yeah, it wasn’t as easy as we thought it was.

then high school started. i had some other friends, but i still spent most of my time with ethan, and with the other girl, too. i started getting into drinking and partying, that stuff that a lot of high school kids did. i didn’t think anything of it, and neither did coop; we were just having fun, that was all. my parents still didn’t notice; they were too busy fighting and arguing, which really didn’t make sense to me. i mean, wouldn’t you just get a divorce at this point? but apparently not. they were fine with screaming at each other. well, my dad did most of the screaming. he didn’t think that being an artist was a very good job; he said she could do better. i don’t know why they even got married in the first place. they continued to argue and ignore me, until i was seventeen. my two best friends and i decided to finally start that band we were going to have all those years ago. well, my dad noticed that. it was probably the first time he’d really noticed me in years, and he wasn’t happy. he yelled at me like he yelled at my mom, telling me that it wasn’t a suitable career and not something i should do with my life. but i wasn’t that scared little six-year-old anymore. this time, i fought back. i yelled right back at that guy. i was going to do what i wanted to do, and he couldn’t stop me.

yeah, my dad pretty much disowned me after that. he refused to talk to me, he wouldn’t look at me. but for some reason, it was like my mom respected me more after that. she was strangely and oddly nice to me now, because i’d stood up to him. i thought what i’d done would have the opposite effect; she should be mad at me for disrespecting him, right? but oh well. after that, she treated me so ... great, it was weird. but she wanted me to stay home a lot more now, too. i didn’t go for that. i wanted to go out and party and drink and have fun, and practice with the band that was steadily going nowhere. so a lot of the time i would just start sneaking out, and she never really noticed. or i’d say i was staying over at ethan’s for the night, and she didn’t mind. it all worked on her; she thought i could do no wrong, basically. it was such a drastic change, but i was okay with it. i could still go out and do what i wanted to.

finally, i graduated and was able to move out on my own. it felt liberating to be away from that family. coop moved away somewhere to go to this art school for his music, while i was stuck in virginia. i really wanted to pursue music, though. i just knew my dad wouldn’t be too happy with that. because strange as it was, i still wanted to prove to him that i could do something with my life, something that i liked, and still be okay, still be able to make a living. i spent two years at home until i made a very important decision: i didn’t care what my dad said, i was going to become a musician. i uprooted and moved out to california, just like that. and one day, i’ll be successful. i’ll prove him wrong, just you wait.

more about me, though... well, things i like. partying, drinking, goofing off, girls, sex, pranks, food, vitamin water, bright colors, ice cream, skinny jeans, music, guitar, name tags, and driving fast. for what i don’t like: work, hard labor, cats, construction, silence, city water, quiet people, frustration, lint, speed limits, and obsessively clean rooms. if i had to describe myself in a few words... hm. i’d say i’m goofy, friendly, a partier, loud, sexual, rebellious, childish, fun, creative, musical, artistic, troubled, conflicted, and secretive. a lot to take in, i know, but that’s me in a nutshell.

SO SAY THAT YOU JUST WANT TO RUN AWAY.
AND REPLAY ALL THE THINGS THAT I TRIED TO SAY.
behind the character

hey bitches, it's beth and i've been pimpin' these hoes for about five years. i know right, it's great isn't it? need to get a hold of me? hit me up by msn. i'm also in the central time zone just so you know. don't need to be telling you people twice. also meet the rest of my lovely babies, ---!

kids were supposed to have two parents. it didn't matter how old they were, either, so it was more like people in general. but even if you didn't see them all that much, or you didn't get along with them, well, that didn't matter. you still had two parents. maybe one was dead. unfortunate, but it happened. however, that didn't mean you didn't have one of your parents. but bryson... he didn't have a father. he didn't think he had ever known his father. and he had asked his mother about it before, but she'd never really had much of a good answer for him. she would get all teary-eyed sometimes, or she would get really mad. no matter what it was, her reaction was never good. and so bryson had gone on with his life not knowing who his father was, where he was, what he was like, whether he even cared.... maybe he had been around when bryson was really little, and he'd died or something, and it was still difficult for his mom to talk about it. that was possible. who would want to talk about something like that?

it still really bothered him, though. it would have been nice to have a father growing up. someone to go fishing with, someone to teach him how to play t-ball. as time progressed, bryson had gotten to be rather good at some sports, like soccer and swimming, but it still would have been nice to start when he was really young with someone happy to help him. instead he had been more of a momma's boy, learning to cook (against his will) and helping around the house (also against his will). he loved his mom and all, but really, bryson thought that sometimes she just didn't realize that he was a boy. he didn't want to cook, he didn't want to clean! well, not that anyone ever wanted to clean, but still. cooking? that was generally something a woman did, no matter how stereotypical that was. sure, there were guys out there who liked to cook, and as bryson said, more power to them! but he wasn't one of those guys. he would rather play video games and shoot hoops or something. even if he sucked at basketball. the video games, not so much; bryson was actually pretty good at those. well, when you were a techie nerd video game junkie like he was, that was bound to happen eventually.

it was evident that bryson was sort of a nerd when it became known that he worked at a computer repair shop. technically, because he didn't have a college degree, he was actually the cashier at the small shop on state street. but the boss, at bryson's interview, knew that he had real talent and wanted him to be a part of his company. working at a computer repair shop, business isn't always booming, so bryson got to spend most of his time in the back room, actually fixing the computers. and honestly, he was the company's asset; he was the best thing he had, the thing that kept them running. he knew what he was talking about and could fix any kind of technology better than his own boss probably could. and so that was the main reason why bryson was out so late, walking down state street. his boss trusted him enough to close up shop, so bryson had stayed later, finishing up with a few repairs before heading home. he locked up the store and started walking home to his apartment, his mind definitely on other things. bryson's mind tended to wander quite a bit. his mom had kind of teased him for it, but the way he looked at it, it had to be her fault. it was in his genes, after all, and hey, she was the parent! unless it was the father.. the unexistent man... bryson bit his lip as he walked, trying not to think about that. before he knew it he ran into another guy on the street, hitting his shoulder hard. bryson immediately started to turn around and apologize when he heard the other guy's harsh words. "sorry, i was.. my mind was on other things..." the guy might have been looking down, but even from this angle he looked.. strangely like himself... bryson stood there a moment longer, looking at the guy curiously.