Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 169: Joe

Prompt: "A song about cycles"

Selected by Joe

"The Same Boy You've Always Known"

The White Stripes

White Blood Cells, 2001

Okay but if there is a difference between being right and being kind, then the difference matters less when you are right and unkind and a faceless institution is the one who is wrong and at the receiving end of your ire. That's why I have no problem showing up in this space as many times as necessary to say FUCK YOU to La Salle University. I am unkind, I am right, I sleep very well at night, thank you. That college is fucked and I'll be totally satisfied when it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. I know this is me repeating myself. That's fine too. It's satisfying to be self-righteous about a university, an entity that whose feelings can't be hurt, because it's just a collection of buildings. I have no problem punching up. Hopefully I can punch up enough times that the institution will fall and my punching up will turn into punching the air in celebration. FUCK LA SALLE.

Here's my latest reason for hating this fucking place. I was informed of this at a wedding on November 2nd, and it's been stewing within me for all that time. And then multiple people have shown me the Instagram announcements. La Salle is now partnering with so-and-so to make their own La Salle brand alcohol.

click to enlarge

A few caveats before I blast this shit. Originally I was told that they were brewing their own beer, and this isn't beer. I don't know if the Explorer who told me about the beer was mistaken, or if there is a separate beer being brewed, also in honor of La Salle. I couldn't find anything online about a beer. And I will clarify that La Salle is not actually doing the brewing of this alcoholic tea, but are instead supporting and advertising for students from La Salle who are making it.

Still, let's be clear here. La Salle is promoting drinking. Which is fine, and totally in their right, and totally makes sense. But how do you think this makes me feel? These fuckers absolutely crucified me over my drinking while I was a student there. I received countless harshly worded letters in the mail. I faced multiple tribunals. I was told that La Salle didn't want me, literally, in black and white in an email, from an administrator on their payroll. I was made to feel small. I was made to feel unloved. These fuckers had only two guys on the homecoming court instead of just inviting the third guy who applied to participate. These motherfuckers stole THOUSANDS of dollars from me, while I was 21 years of age, for drinking in the presence of minors. And now they are telling their students to drink alcohol?!?!

It's just not fucking right, man. It's not. It gets me really fucking angry. The worst part is that there is no one to actually be angry toward. Everyone who fucked me is gone. The main person, whom my dear departed would-be Ireland travel study advisor Geoff Kelly described as a "fucking nazi," and whose daughter would jump down my throat right here in the fucking blog comment section if I dared say the name in blogging print, is long retired. The kids who are fifteen years younger than me and working on brewing this tea would see me as an old cranky man and will never know the struggle of being told you are a fuck-up for daring to be an alcoholic at the age of nineteen. I can spit on the brick buildings at the corner of 20th and Olney all I want, but the brick can't feel. Not like I can.

At the same time................. okay, so I'm not working the steps. Didn't seem like it was necessary. I am where I am today and am happy where I am and so there's really no point. But I do think about them occasionally, the steps, and what they might look like if I had attempted them anyway. In my mind, I am stuck on the amends. If I hate La Salle then there's probably a reason for that, and that reason is probably because I was wrong, and that wrongness is why I would need to apologize, to make amends. To swallow my pride and say that my alcoholism is all on me and that it wasn't La Salle's fault for any of it. I would apologize for hating La Salle for so fucking long for everything that I felt like they inflicted upon me. I was say sorry, just for me, just for my own actions. I'm sorry.

And even if La Salle is a dying institution, that doesn't change anything. It's on life-support and I'm sitting outside of its hospital room, nervously twirling my Stetson hat w/feather, trying to work up the courage to enter that room and apologize to that son of a bitch for everything that I did, even though they— no, no. It's on me. I could've just, ya know, not drank so much, not pushed buttons, not forced their hand. I'm not better than my worst actions, the punishment was deserved. I could've just not drank and then eventually gotten the Instagram announcement about the hard tea and then kicked back on a lazy spring evening and had a few hard Olney Teas and thought back fondly on my time at my alma mater, when everything was normal and I was well-behaved and I was treated with respect because I had nothing but respect to give. That's on me that that didn't happen. I am sorry.

But there's no one to say sorry to. They're all gone. All that's left is a half-empty shell of a college and some fucking shitty alcohol tea and some fucking burnout who started the path toward burning out at some fucking college that isn't going to exist soon.

It's a never-ending cycle. I get angry. I remember that there's no real reason to be angry. I get all apologetic. I am reminded about the indignity. I get angry. Same boy La Salle has always known.