Books and cocaine 📕☃️
"Stay curious."
—PBS
> newsworthy | cocaine
Growing up in Tulsa, it wasn't long before I wanted to escape the seemingly endless obedience and sameness and conformity of my hometown.
- Still today, the only thing bigger than football in Oklahoma is Jesus.
I dropped out of high school. There were signs of alcoholism well before I turned 21. I couldn’t believe how sublime a cigarette tasted with cheap wine.
But along the way, I developed a love affair with NPR and PBS and newspapers thanks to my dad. 📰 📻
I noticed the attention he paid to the earnest, soothing voices of the NPR newscasters and correspondents and analysts. I noticed that he contributed to our local NPR affiliate in Tulsa.
I noticed the attention he paid to the Tulsa World newspaper every day. A man, I saw, stays informed and stays curious.
- But Tulsa is still a law-and-order town that almost giddily follows the rules.
- For my brothers and me, our heroes were all rulebreakers.
I left Tulsa at 16 for Houston with weed and pills stashed in a backpack.
The thought of dying in Tulsa with its bible schools and sad-looking Subways and law-following filled me with dread.
I heard Austin was the place to be.
So I went there to find the world through punk rock and art and skateboarding and books and cocaine and whiskey and beer.
- next time "Relief from the anxieties and insecurities never lasted."
- listening Fugazi "Blueprint"
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