Who I am; Where I come from Pt. 1

My parents met at a coffeehouse in Ashland, Oregon; My half-brother Jeremy spilled a bowl of cheerios and my dad Eric Nelson volunteered to help clean up. He was getting his Master's Degree in English Education... having earned his B.A. from U.C.L.A.. My mom Cecelia was finishing her studies as a nurse, after years in military intelligence in Germany.

Via the cycles of nature, I was conceived carried, and was born into the world from Ashland Community Hospital... the birth was a Caesarean unfortunately perhaps, but I was left uncircumcised by Dr. Jones, a decision I don't regret though being a-typical here, it has caused difficulties(circumcision significantly decreases genitallia-size in males.)

Although it had happy aspects, my early childhood wasn't terribly happy... a second child was conceived(my mom wanted to give it up for adoption...) and they argued fiercely over this, Cecelia eventually giving into the abortion, then starting an affair with Alfredo, a profusely alcoholic Mexican laborer. I cried a bit as an infant and was indicted most guilty for it then and now.

Within one year of the wedding, these factors caused the divorce. Unusually I was left to be raised by my father who attempted this nurturing role, but not without frequent interference... which included a frivolous accusation that he was sexually molesting me. How that came about(I was aware even at the time...) is that I was taken to a new day care(being very young) where my mom knew a staff-woman named Holly. I was told that it was nap-time and showna  bunk, and as I took my naps in simple briefs at home in my private bedroom and being at the stage of learning life's first lessons, I started to take my clothes off. When instructed otherwise, I naturally desisted...  Because this was seen as maternally advantageous in the custody battle, talked to by my mom's close friend Holly: the police interrogated my father and I. One of the things that came out of this was(my being but a toddler with Asperger's syndrome...) my father no longer helped or taught me how to shower. over the following years, a frightening mold developed under my fore-skin because I hadn't been taught to pull that back and clean under it. Because, despite our material prosperity: we like so many, lived in a kind of fear.

My dad took a teaching job and married another teacher Kathy Nelson. When they weren't focused on their full-time teaching jobs, they were busy buying then fixing old worn houses in order to be land-lords and become wealthier with greater speed. I was left day into afternoon into evening at the Y.M.C.A. daycare... This wasn't entirely negative(though it was rather so....) an African-American woman named Coco(of whom I was fond) would sing us songs like "one tin soldier" and we'd discuss and make crayon-drawings based on that. But at the end of the day, every evening, I was the very last child to be picked up for home... night after night, vacant hour after hour, looking out the plexi-glass windows for my parents' head-lights, until they closed the day-care and took me to be with infants; This happened regularly, almost more often than not.

This upbringing was not fit and so naturally I was not a normal child in elementary school... I was the popular leader of a group of upper-crust boys 'the Wolf Pack' for about a year: Justin Fay, Randy "Johnston?" others I forget... due to my social class unusual size and modest fighting ability, there was only a little physical bullying, but there was constant emotional abuse mostly from other students but also from the teachers. I told my father how hatefully unhappy I was with the schooling, but he felt that since he was a public school teacher and a prominent Union rep, that the schools had to be good enough for his son(making no significant intervention either.) At home, my parents fought frequently; there was quite a bit of yelling. I'd spend every other weekend with my mom: the barbarism and injustice was even worse there. You might not accept these things, but I'm testifying the truth as it was. Somehow, at that age(likely better than now...) I understood the situation, what it should be, and what was horribly wrong.

Encouraged by the librarian Mrs. Joliff, I became immersed in reading, after positive child-hood reading like "Goosebumps" and "Singularity," I took up the classics at an early age: first "Robinson Crusoe," "the man in the iron mask," the plays of Shakespeare, news magazines like "Newsweek," then "Catch 22," "Siddartha," (H. Hesse...) The list would go on and on. My reading ability as tested by the state was at the highest recordable level: I understood what I was reading.

In Oregon politics, my father was a substantial player in Democratic politics(having been raised by the retired boxer, judge, and national Congressman Henry Leonard...) my dad had major influence year after year over many many millions in political contributions and besides he was a man whom Governor John Kitzhaber, Senator Ron Wyden, etc., looked to for advice. Showing some generosity, my father took me along on these Portland trips and even sometimes let me dine and converse with the state leaders.

My freshman year was solitary and rather unhappy, so I spent the next year in Sweden... where I made some friends and enjoyed their civilization and their disco-techs a couple times... by candle-light in a forest summer cabin, I avidly read the macabre and mystical poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

When I returned, people were interested in the international adventure... I took a pretty blonde named Heidi Ericsson to the Winter Formal and gave her a high-end floral arrangement at a Chinese restaurant; We socialized and danced, and also made out on the dance floor, causing a gossip scandal which meant I lost her the next day.

It was the next year that I entered an essay contest on "Why it's still important to vote." I won first place, and my essay was read aloud in the local library by Oregon's Secretary of State and I was given a cash prize. The city newspaper saw this, and having an organization to print teenage writers(Newspapers In Education,) but no reliable writers... they invited me on board for a paid weekly column displaying my picture. I brought a reliability and talent to the enterprise that increased it's success, attracted other writers and imitation programs. Every year, Newspapers in Education would have well-attended seminar dinners at which I was a popular and featured speaker. A woman named Barbara ran this organization and I was friends with her and her secretary... and even more so with journalists Matt Hall, Doug Higgs, and to a lesser extent with other reporters like Todd Kepple. At 17, my head-shot in large was put on the cover of the trade magazine "Oregon Journalism."  I was also a successful member of a winning chess team led by now barrister Tyson Willis, and something of a phenom at on-the-spot mathematics competitions; For example that was my specialty on Brain-Bowl teams, in-school and in regional competition; Brent and Grace Roster are still dear friends, the former having been a senior team-mate on said Brain Bowl team.

During these last school years, I was popular with my peers(for example, voted most likely to be a millionaire') and I was also formidable on the Varsity tennis team, while also working as a grocery clerk at the local Safeway. My father was generous with his time and talk(though I felt he was holding back key lessons, as was later verified, only for my brother Jeremy who isn't biologically his son.) My relationship with my stepmom Kathy had positive aspects, but generally I'm of the conviction that the family situation(spanning all parties except my paternal grandparents...) was unjust and abusive toward me.

After this, I went to the Oregon Institute of Technology for a year of straight As and private library study, and then I went to Southern Oregon University where in large I held a Laurels Scholarship: had friends and girlfriends(positively a dark-skinned African-American Monique Teal of solid middle-class parentage, President of our student body...) where I wrote and published my first book of poems, stories and essays: "An Ode to Id" (still in print,) where after being horribly domestically abused in a relationship with a Fawn Beck, I was myself falsely arrested and exposed to the life-wrecking absurdities of our injustice system, and where many things happened which I care to discuss more closely, in another segment.