Patrick Flanigan

I was born on March 15th, 1959 with a degenerative nervous disorder. On the day I was born 'Venus' by Frankie Avalon was number one on the Billboard charts. As a child, I was occasionally restrained in a straitjacket because I couldn't calm down. I spent one night in a hospital because I had jumped down the basement stairs clutching a crucifix to my chest. My dad replaced it with a gun. I remember watching TV when JFK was shot. I was sitting on a pillow. I sang Beatles songs on the bus on the way to school. My favorite was 'Help!' I tried talking with a British accent and pretended to be John Lennon in order to impress the girls. I always get into trouble over girls. I was an Army brat - I moved every year until I was 14. I moved by car with my family three times completely across the US in a '66 Impala. My mom caught me in bed with a girl naked when I was eight. I always get into trouble over girls. My dad came home from Vietnam in 1968. I remember hiding in the basement while my dad sat at the living room window with a gun - waiting for the Black Panthers to throw a molotov cocktail at our house. I am haunted by a 1969 existential movie called 'The Cube'. That same year - I went to Cape Canaveral with the Boy Scouts to watch Apollo 11 blast off. Even though it was the first lunar landing - all I remember was watching Barbara Eden in a white bikini during a live taping of 'I Dream Of Jeannie.' My dad graduated from Harvard Business School so my family moved to Lake Forest - a suburb of Chicago. I spent high school there. Then I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado to study physics, play football and train to be a fighter pilot. It really sucked. But I was so 'committed to excellence' that it took me three years to quit. Upon leaving, I moved to North Carolina, worked on a cattle farm and tended various bars at NC State - and drank a lot. After four years, I moved to Chicago to work for my father. He ran a car telephone company which had repeaters and antennas on top of Chicago's tallest buildings. One day - I installed an antenna on top of the Sears Tower. I ate lunch sitting with my legs dangling over the ledge. Eventually I managed a men's clothing store on Michigan Avenue, decorated store windows, staged fashion shows and lived it up in Old Town. After two years, I gave it all up to chase a girl I was in love with who had moved to Greece. I showed up by surprise in a village on Crete called Chania. She was in love with a Greek fisherman named Georgos. So I moved to the south shore of Crete and lived in a cave for five months studying Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. I never became a buddha. I was weak and hopelessly in love. I always get into trouble over girls. When I finally returned to Chicago, I decided to go back to school to study ballet and linguistics - so I moved down to Champaign. After three years of Sanskrit, a year of Chinese and some dancing - I got bored. So I started studying philosophy and managed a pizza restaurant on campus for six years. Then I met a beautiful girl and she got pregnant. We got married and had three great kids. I returned to school to study mathematics and became a successful software engineer. Then I started trying to create software companies so that I would be rich and live happily ever after. So - for two years I flew back and forth between Champaign and Austin trying to lay that golden egg. In Austin - I started playing with fire - cocaine and strippers. I always get into trouble over girls. Surprisingly - my wife divorced me. So I moved back to Champaign to be with my kids. After seven years I began losing my mind and my life. I had open heart surgery, worked as a software researcher at the University of Illinois - but I still partied all the time. I finally found myself sitting in Union Station - lost with nowhere to go. I decided to quit my job after I got fired - and moved to Chicago in August of 2007 to live as a poet and a clown. I had five more heart attacks, got into lots of fights and went to jail. I always get into trouble over girls. Now I live in a bum hotel and keep telling myself I am living the dream. More than anything else - I wish I could wake up.