AutoBio 1st Draft

Corey Davis
03/01/2010
Sharon Marshall English Comp.
Autobiographical Essay

My life… I could sit here and give you dates and stories about how I was young and had a great childhood, but that doesn’t usually make for good stories. My life has always been more complex than that. Behind the Merry Christmas and gifts were always some catch 22. The realization that my Mom and Dad weren’t married, or even that I really could depend on my father because for months at a time my phone calls would go without being answered. Though this is all getting a head of myself. I think that you should know my background and then I can start my story at my freshman year of high school. Because at this point I think that I really became self aware.
My name is Corey Davis; I was born and raised in the Washington DC Metro area. I’m the youngest of two; my older sister’s name is Gabriele. My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-aunt, and great-great aunt raised me. My father never lived with us but he was around in my life for burst of several months or sometimes years at a time before disappearing for a while from my life. I assume that I was a normal child; I had an obsession with video games and toys growing up. In middle school I had girl-friends and played sports, though more because my mom signed me up than because I wanted to. I loved music and had an obsession with being an artist for several years.
Now that you know a little about my child we can start with my life. I went to Gonzaga College High School. It’s like a mini College Campus nestled on the edge of one of the poorest neighborhoods in DC and the Capitol building. I knew that the next 4 years were going to be a challenge for me this school was an all boy’s campus and I was that one kid in middle school who just chilled with the girls. I never really had guys to hang around with my family had moved too much for me to pick up neighborhood friends. The only advantage, I was I had signed up for freshman football and being thrown together with ninety other guys in the middle of a humid DC summer could make worst enemies friends.
Football was the only thing that really dominated my life for the next two years. And it seemed that with every practice I seemed to get better. I was actually pretty good at it and it created a network that I could use in school I was never going to be a jock but this allowed me to be a part of something. When your 14 or 15 years old all you really want in life is to belong to something bigger than yourself. The only problem with my life was that I didn’t want to play football. I remember waking up late for my sophomore orientation and running around the house getting dress and then realizing that my dress shoes didn’t fit because my feet were swollen because of the three-a-day practices I had been doing for the last month. So my mother offered to drive me to my grandmothers so that I could find a pair of shoes that I left over there. And in the car ride over I just kind of lost it. Everything that I had wanted to say came out: how I only played football because I didn’t want to disappoint her and my Dad, how I dreaded going to school each day because I knew that I would have to go to practice afterwards. It had become something similar to a dead-end job in my opinion and I had no way out. It was the first time in years my mom had seen me cry and she knew that this had all been about not letting her down. And she told me to quit that if she had known it was doing this to me she would have never forced me into it. So what did I do, quit the team and then two weeks later after a long conversation with my father about the money he had spent on me I rejoined the team. I was first string offensive and defense, but I made it clear to everyone that I was not coming back next year. That in my mind I was paying my dad back and once we were even I was not going to it again.
Freshman and sophomore year in away were the best and worst years of my life. They piled on me the worst things that life could offer. I was living out of a one bedroom apartment with four people. I was doing things because I didn’t want to disappoint my family. And I was so scared about what the world think of what I really was that I was just nice to everyone. Its why to this day people still refer to me as a Teddy bear or a gentle giant. It was my coping mechanism. But they did show me what needed to change in my life. And were to serve as a reminder of the person I was growing out of. My world radically changed when I came back to school junior year. I was so tired of being something that I wasn’t that it hurt. So I started to delve into English and Music. I was reading a “Streetcar Named Desire” and “Sula”. I was listening to “Rent” and rediscovering “Lauryn Hill” and “Kanye West.” I was ready to speak and be heard. I was a 16 year old kid that for the first two years of high school had just had acquaintances I was ready to let somebody in. I had never even spent the night at a friend’s house it was sad.
It really all started with my friend Mike’s house. I can safely say that lived there for just about a year. It had gotten to the point that his mother was doing the laundry that I left over his house. Mike taught me to, for lack of a better word to “not give a fuck” which was a phrase that he used often. Mike then lead me to Danny who developed into another environment that Mike was never a part of, the club scene. Danny was the first person that I explored back rooms of clubs and DJ booths with. He was the first person to show me the grimy and beauty of alleys behind clubs. He just built up another side of the world that I never knew I would love.
All these relationships and interest were building parallel to each other and I could safely say that I was happier than I had been in years. They were the escape from the world that I had never had before. They also helped because around the same time that I had quit football I think my Dad decided to quit me. It seemed like without the outlet of sports he had no reason to be around. And I say no reason for me to be the bigger man and call him when the phone had always worked both ways. This all lead up to Kairos, which in my school is shrouded in mystery. So I decided to go on it. It lead me to my best friend Will. We as I have described to others as the other half of my soul. It was the beginning of the perfect friendship. He taught me so much about myself, and dragged into the world that I needed to see. How there was so much more than the main stream and that every city had a culture behind the culture.
And where was my family when all this happened, my had just let me go. It got the point where all I had to do was call and say I was safe that she would let me stay out. I asked her about this recently and she told me that she say the person that I had become, and she saw the person that I was trying to be and after how she shelter me that I needed my freedom now more than ever. And she also trusted me. When I was a kid a studied her bartender notes so I hadn’t had much experience but I knew how to drink and how to take care of myself etc.