Before I Was a Gay Meth Addict I Was a 6-Year-Old Firebug

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 1 Part 1

When I was six years old, there were three sure things about me:

I was a hyperactive ball of nuclear energy.

I was always singing.

And I loved to play with fire.

Fire fascinated me, mesmerized me. I loved watching the dancing amber flames and the white-pink glow of the wood coals that pulsed with every gust of wind. I loved feeling the heat of it, sitting as close as I could, letting the warmth penetrate my clothes through to my skin. I liked watching fire change things, consume things. I would stick crayons under the flames of the basement furnace and watch them liquify like that one bad guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Mom and Dad had gotten pretty good at knowing when I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. Usually — or always — when I wasn’t making any noise I’d be trying to be all sneaky when I would inevitably hear “John, what are you doing?” This made exploring my passion for flames quite difficult. I had to pick my moments.

Like one early fall Sunday afternoon when Mom and Dad left to play a round of golf, leaving my 17-year-old brother to babysit. My brother was like any older sibling saddled with a shift of free babysitting: He didn’t care what I was doing as long as I wasn’t pestering him. So, when he decided to take a nap, I was left to entertain myself.

Might as well entertain myself with this lighter I found in his room.

So there I was, parents gone, brother asleep, lighter in hand, the world my kindling.

So what should I light? I didn’t want to melt things anymore, not since a molten drop of plastic from a zip tie burned my thigh. That really, really hurt, but I couldn’t give myself a way. Instead of screaming, I jumped up and down like an electrocuted frog.

Looking around the basement, my attention zeroed in on our fireplace. On the black brick hearth down in our finished basement (which we never used for some stupid reason) sat a large green glass vase filled with a bouquet of paper tulips with petals the size of my face. The petals were light and delicate, not like the heavy paper dad used in his printer. Printer paper burned slowly with a large fin of orange flame turning the paper wrinkled and solid black. It was even lighter and thinner than the newspaper we got every morning. Newspaper is what was stuffed and lit under the wood in the fireplace. It burned with smaller yellow flames turning its pictures and print into ash.

I knew well how those kinds of papers burned, but not this kind. Clearly, I needed to fix that.

I sat on the hearth, flicked the lighter, and lit the edge of one of the petals.

This thin white paper burned much faster than I had expected!

I blew on it like I blew on matches to put them out.

More petals started catching!

I blew harder.

The flames got bigger!

I stood up and back, arms raised like I was trying to calm it down or something, as another tulip caught, and then another!

I ran upstairs to grab a glass of water from the kitchen. When I got back downstairs, the entire vase had become a bouquet of fire.

I was going to be in so much trouble!

I threw the water, but it didn’t make a dent. By that point the smoke detector was making a horrible beeping sound.

Old enough to light a match but not old enough to understand how oxygen is a fuel source, I thought what I needed was more air than my six year old lungs could provide. I started looking around the room for something that could blow enough air to put the fire out.

There were two couches in the basement: one with green stripes, and the other in red plaid. I pulled one of the cushions off the red plaid couch and began to fan the flames. I brought the cushion up and down as hard as I could and watched as the fire jumped back with each gust. I fanned and fanned, watching as black chucks of charred paper broke free and floated around the room.

Finally the fire was out, and thankfully it hadn’t spread. All that remained was the green vase filled with smoking black stems covered and surrounded by burnt paper and ash.

But the smoke alarm was still going off. It was hanging above a doorway, way too high for me to reach even if I stood on a chair. I ran to a pool table at the other end of the basement, grabbed a cue and used it to knock the alarm off the wall. I pulled the battery out and the beeping finally stopped, though when the room fell silent, my ears rang with a weird dull tone.

I ran back upstairs to see if my brother had noticed anything, like maybe he hadn’t heard the smoke alarm screaming for the last several minutes. Somehow, he was still sleeping like the dead, the way that only teenagers can. I ran back down to the basement, now pungent and hazy, looking at my carnage, tugging on my shirt, not knowing how to escape the huge trouble I knew I’d be in

I had to hide the evidence!

I grabbed the couch cushion I had used as a fan and leaned it against the hearth in front of the vase. Then I took the other two red cushions and the three cushions from the green couch and made a fort around the vase and its charred remains.

Standing back, looking at the green and red box in front of the fireplace, I hoped real hard that it would work.

I’m sad to report my fort of invisibility worked just about as well as when Mom caught me in the backyard sweeping away a burnt pile of matches as I tried blaming it on a dragon.

But I didn’t get into trouble, at least not the way that I thought. My brother? He caught seven kinds of holy hell! As for me, it wasn’t so much that I had made Mom and Dad mad.

It was that I had scared the absolute living shit out of them.

They took me to visit the local fire station to have a talk with Fire Chief John, He talked to me about the dangers of playing with fire, fire safety, and even showed me pictures of the damage fire can do: charred houses, hollowed out cars, and even burnt up bodies.

He was a very nice man with a nice office.

I know because I visited him again after I discovered the magic of candles.

In a way, I’m part of the reason we all learned to stop, drop, and roll as kids.

Eventually, the firebug in me would be appeased. My predilection never really went away — still hasn’t for that matter — but the itch would be scratched by being in charge of campfires during our frequent trips to Yellowstone and the Beartooth Mountains, as well as fireplace fires during the colder months. And, while far from encouraged, if I were to set anything alight, I was only to do it in one of the two fireplaces, and nowhere else.

Comparatively, being a hyperactive kid who never stopped singing wasn’t much of an issue. If I gave full out living room concert of my one and only number, We are the World, ad nauseum, that was perfectly fine.

If I was singing along — at full voice — with the entire cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera in the back of the family van during weekend camping trips, no problem.

If I spent the entirety of my adolescence more interested and involved in doing local community theater than I was in my schoolwork, well…

I wasn’t allowed to be a failing student, but as long as my grades held a respectable mixture of A’s and B’s, Mom and Dad were more than content to let the bulk of my energy go toward what would surely become a lifelong passion for theater.

I mean, it’s kinda hard to light things on fire when you’re singing and dancing.

Still, I couldn’t be onstage all the time.

And I never really stopped playing with fire.

Click here to keep reading

Click here for a convenient one-click chapter guide.

A lot of heart, time, and work goes into each piece. One way you can support me is by signing up for a $5/month Medium Membership. Use this like and I’ll get a percentage of your subscription fee. Huzzah for supporting artists!

If the spirit moves you, another way you can support me is by leaving me a tip. Thank you for reading!