Read Online Dislocated by Max Andrew Dubinsky - Free Book Online

is beyond me. 
    Dad’s carpentry jobs kept his hands busy all day. If he wasn’t cutting hair, he needed to be building something, or taking it apart. Ma always said it was because of his injury. He was destined to be a tennis pro. His entire high school career, he was up before dawn to run five miles, eat a breakfast made of protein, shower, shave, and still pick her up in time before the first period bell. Scouts from across the country came to watch him play during his senior year. Four years in a row he carried The Spartans to a championship victory.
    Celebrating a full ride on a tennis scholarship, he got drunk with his buddies and drove home, smashing the car into a telephone pole. They lived, but not without something to show for it.
    When my father was released from the hospital the following day, his father was at home waiting for him. My grandfather asked his son if he intended to be this careless with his talents, and the lives of others. He said if my father couldn’t be responsible with the gifts God had given him, he didn’t deserve them, and proceeded to drop a thirteen pound bowling ball on my dad’s right hand—shattering the ring and pinky fingers to such a critical degree, he still couldn’t close his hand into a solid fist thirty years later.
    But if he couldn’t be the world’s greatest tennis player, he could hang his hat on being the father of the world’s greatest tennis player: my brother Russell.
    By the time I was born, Russell could wield a tennis racket better than he could use utensils at the dinner table. I tried to play, I really did, but I’m no athlete. It didn’t matter to Dad. I could do whatever I wanted. He was living vicariously the life he’d always intended for himself through his first-born.
    I did whatever I could to get dad’s attention. I even intentionally started picking fights I knew I would lose, hoping that if I showed up with a black eye, he’d teach me to throw a few punches.
    I was desperate for the connection.
    The attention.
    By the time I was in high school, I’d picked so many fights, I was sent to what Ma referred to as an “alternative school” to anyone who asked.  But I’m not trying to impress anyone here. It was a school for screw-ups. Rumors spread quickly upon my arrival, and no one wanted to mess with me even though I’d intentionally lost every fight I’d started. But I’d started them. Which was apparently all that mattered to my new classmates.
    “Stay away from Will Scott. He’s explosive. He’ll punch you in the mouth just for smiling at him if you have a better set of teeth than he does.”
    And so began my seclusion from the human race, along with my inability to communicate properly without the comfort of that plaster wall in my face. For the students of our school, the Internet was believed to be our future, but only because no one believed in our chances of working in the real world. With so much time alone, I had plenty of hours to develop what would become my eventual career as a hacker. Which was actually something hip and edgy to aspire to in the nineties. Much like being a hipster is today.
    During my entire four years at Screw-Up-Never-Going-To-Make-Anything-Of-Yourself-Academy-High, only one person gave me the time of day, and saw that I wasn’t, in fact, a violent and volatile man at all.
    Then I got her pregnant.
     
    I open my eyes.
    I’ve slept. I can feel it in my bones. It was restless sleep, full of nightmares, but I slept. I’m grateful for the lack of sunlight, but I’m not appreciative of feeling like I’m a puzzle just taken out of the box. The last thing I want to concentrate on right now is reassembling myself. I’ve been doing that for months, and it hasn’t proven effective.
    My clothes are wet. I’m lying in something warm. I’m afraid I’ve pissed myself this time, but I can’t find the strength the lift my head. 
    They say the best cure for a hangover is another beer. I’m just going to