Reading · I Think This Is Great! with Clay N. Ferno

I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be lots of things. A G.I. Joe. A ninja. A sign painter. Since the first and most important job there was based on math, I guess that was out. My imagination it would have to be.

My portfolio consisted of 10 black-and-white slides of my charcoal drawings, my art camp drawings, and some sculptures from ceramics class. There was a square vase that currently holds a dead plant on my porch—a vessel for my shame of picking up smoking again after 10 years in deep depression. There was a Fish-Hook mug in tribute to my dad, and also a pretty accurate but unglazed ‘Space Penguin’ from the Lobo DC Comic—see Supergirl this weekend to see Aquaman play Lobo!—, the latter of these two items is on my dad’s shelves somewhere.

Our high school art teacher was a great guy and he helped me shoot these slides, even after my best friend and I would mock his voice in class until he finally had enough and reprimanded us. That wasn’t cool. But we made it up by excelling in his class, collaborating on comics and Exquisite Corpse drawings, and working hard to get into art school.

I was accepted to a few places, one in Maryland, which seemed…far? My life would have been much different had I gone there. At MassArt, a state school with the benefit of in-state tuition, I was accepted on the portfolio. The grades? Not so much. They started me off but conditionally. The core academic classes (I would be getting a Bachelor’s after all)—one (1!) math class, English, computer, and history and social sciences—HAD to be passing or better for the first semester. It was like starting school, which I had already thought to be a prison, on parole.

It was fair enough. I spent my time ‘acting’, singing, drawing, goofing off, reading comics, and spending time on the outskirts of—let’s call it—being a PA on my friends Dursin and John’s films. I mean, I had little to do with them anyway. I’m not sure my involvement would be credited as more than “one of the guys over there” or “guy holding a thing” for one of the many scenes they were working on. Not that I minded! Just glad to be doing something different, I guess. With friends.

I got into the normal kind of trouble, getting drunk in the woods or whatever, and definitely being scared of being in trouble, but besides the missing homework, I was an OK-behaved kid. I liked running cross-country and track. I had friends, but always felt we were the outsiders. Even when we started bands, with virtually no competition, we weren’t doing it for anything other than for something to do. I loved screaming into a mic. I still do.

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My classes were mid in high school. Not in the modern parlance, but like, mid-level. My math was “SO” or “SW,” which was the lowest you could get before going into the special offices for more help. I think the joke was the “S” was for “Slow”—or at least, I thought that. Whatever, man, who needs math? Certainly not the would-be astronaut whose only skill was being able to name, unprompted, the original Mercury astronauts from memory (something I did for my niece the other day). I wasn’t in honors classes at all, except perhaps in history. And science, but when that math for pre-chemistry or physics dropped on my desk, I had no idea what was going on and went on torturing more teachers. Life science, biology, experiments—heck, I was great at those. But it turns out math and science kind of go hand in hand. My junior year Spanish teacher, who insisted on speaking Spanish, reluctantly passed me (and others… and others) because I didn’t know the tú form from a toothbrush (heck, I didn’t really care for the second of those either, to my wallet’s chagrin 30 years later).

Onto Massachusetts College of Art, where I met my first gay friends, my first lesbian friends, my first gay professor, and my first friends of color. I mean, our hometown was very white—part of the reason I wanted to get out of the place. I didn’t see racism or homophobia firsthand because there weren’t any Black people or out gay people around. But I did hear how people talked, and I know I didn’t like it. And neither did Minor Threat, or Bad Religion, or the Dead Kennedys. So with those role models, I modeled a tolerant society that I knew wasn’t around me but seemed possible—a progressive place that maybe existed outside of my hometown. I just needed to GTFO.

I was surprised at my inner dialogue, meeting and interacting with others not like me—or perhaps people like me who just didn’t look or act like me, but were people with the same problems I had. Those hometown voices were part of my inner dialogue. Through progress, not perfection, I accepted. I learned. I listened to the people, not the voices. And in one way, I did something physically to change. I wanted to perform spoken word (I am fast-forwarding here a year to my sophomore year; the time jump will go back, I promise), so I trained myself out of the Boston accent I had lived with my whole life. Not that it was bad or shameful—I love it, I do. But to be heard clearly when on stage was important. I was with an Australian comedian the other day and he, possessing a strong accent himself, seemed disappointed over dinner that I didn’t have “the accent.” Well, years of training, I guess.

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I think around this time in my MassArt sound studio, I had our friend, my old drummer, pierce my tongue, and I ate ice cream for a week. Just an unlicensed guy piercing 18-year-olds' tongues near some old Macs, sound baffles, and mic stands. Normal stuff. Who among us hasn’t done that? I’m not even sure piercing was legal then, or maybe I was just too cheap to pay for it if it was. It lasted a few years, as did my earrings—long since scarred over, a physical manifestation of the days of my youth going to garage raves and snorting Special K.

Back to freshman, parolee, “Wicked Dumb at Math,” seventeen-year-old me. Accepted into the college. Orientation. Sort of a big assembly in the hall or perhaps the gymnasium where Fugazi played (and I didn’t go?). The president or someone made a speech. There were lobbies all over the place from the Frankenstein buildings that make up the campus—double doors and foyers and another set of double doors. These first days, the lobbies were filled with credit card sign-ups and student organizations you could join. Not exactly Doogie Howser, but I was notoriously always the youngest person in my class because I started kindergarten the year before they made a slight adjustment to the age requirement. My birthday is in October, just after the start of the school year, so I think everyone thought I was “close enough for rock and roll.” Teachers always blamed my shitty math on this age gap. Were they right? Maybe. But as things resonate, I can’t imagine my life going any other way than it is today. “Such is life.”

The president or someone made a speech. Maybe it actually was an older student? I’m not sure. But he said something that just stuck. I thought he was talking about the maze of buildings and all the doors and the art supplies and guitars and easels and boxes.

He said, “Open Doors For People,” and then went on about it for a bit. I took it quite literally and opened every door for every person behind me. I listened. Not chivalry or just common courtesy, but yeah, that too.

And I think about this at Dunkin’ and at work and everywhere else I go. I don’t ask if I can get the door. I say, “Let me get the door.”

At #CNF50, I am also given the opportunity to be a reference for someone, get a band their first show, or provide some other opportunity. This must have been the second part of the speech that I can’t remember, but I obviously listened to.

Open Doors For People

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