William David Ashburton
Interviewed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 15, 2008
Born: 1989, in Yuma, Arizona
“Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial."
— Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Trachiniae
"At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?”
— from Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
We sit in the sunny weather on William’s patio, in the hills above Albuquerque. William is waxing his legs.
WA:
Ouch, shit!
LS:
All your pain is being preserved.
WA:
Thank goodness! So what are we kind of looking for?
LS:
The question is, what was your relationship to learning things? How did that change as you grew up?
WA:
I wasn’t very good at it… learning things? It’s an interesting question. I’ve never been asked that before… I really, honestly, don’t understand the question.
LS:
Think about boredom, that’s usually where it begins: boredom and frustration at school or at home.
WA:
Yeah, I guess I could say I was bored. But at the same time I was having fun. I had a lot of friends, which made it harder, actually.
I guess it all started in elementary school. We had just watched a movie on gun violence. I started to pass notes, weird notes. I sent a note to this girl named Angela Dansala — who was my friend — and I said, “I want to blow your brains out.” It was a quote from the movie. That was my first time getting suspended.
I thought being suspended was kind of cool: got to stay home, didn’t do shit. I decided to get suspended more often. In 5th grade I got suspended more than 7 times. Some days I just stayed home, because I didn’t really give a crap.
I started smoking cigarettes in 6th grade. My parents didn’t know that. They thought I started when I was 18, but I actually smoked on-campus in 6th grade. I had an older friend who was in high school at the time, her name was Stephanie Sherman. She wasn’t legal age to smoke yet either, but we got cigarettes anyway. When I took that first puff, I knew I was going to be a smoker. That hurt me a lot, when it came to school.
7th grade was good. I didn’t do anything. I did my work. It was a new school, a new environment, trying to get used to people.
When I hit 8th grade, that’s when I started to ditch school. I told my parents, “Oh yeah. I’m going to go to school.” But I would ditch, I would go to this place called Sugarloaf, which is here in the hills. I wouldn’t drink a lot, but I didn’t need to. I was really tiny in 8th grade, and a 12 oz. bottle of beer would have me on my ass. I ended up really liking drinking. I still like drinking, just not as much. (laughs)
9th grade was pretty crazy. I wasn’t quite to the age where I went to the club yet, but I got offers to go many times.
LS:
What’s the scene here? What’s the social environment that you’re growing up in?
WA:
There’s a lot of scenes in La Cuesta high school. I associated myself with all the different scenes: the drug scene, the dance scene — the dance scene came with the drugs. I guess that’s the scene I was in, the drugs. I didn’t care.
Back then I didn’t care if I was alive or dead. I wouldn’t kill myself, but I’d get to scary points doing drugs that would nearly kill me. A lot of stuff has happened. It’s kind of hard to tell the full story, ‘cause so much has happened.
LS:
What were you looking for? What were you hoping to have happen?
WA:
The reason why I started doing all the drugs and stuff, and smoking cigarettes and drinking, is because I wanted to get attention from my parents. I felt like my whole family didn’t love me at all. Later on I found out that that wasn’t true, but at the time I just felt pretty unloved. Doing drugs and drinking took that away. I just made me feel better.
10th grade I ditched; every day. I missed half of the school year and, again, I was doing drugs.
When 11th grade came along I was a mess. I was going to all sorts of places that I probably shouldn’t have gone to, like hookah bars. I wouldn’t just do hookah there.
LS:
What’s a hookah? Do they smoke hash?
WA:
It’s like flavored smoke, but it’s in a bong. A hookah has a lot of leads coming off of it so people can smoke together. It’s not illegal; it’s only illegal if you’re under 18, which I was.
We’d go there because my friend — I won’t use his name because he’d get pissed — he would take us. We’d smoke meth… not out of the same thing of course, you couldn’t do that. That was 11th grade. In 11th grade I didn’t go to school at all.
LS:
People thought you were going to school?
WA:
Yeah. They found out I wasn’t going to school. This is when the story gets kind of bad.
I loved snorting crystal meth, I loved it. I had a best friend, her name was Sophia, and we went to the club. My first time doing it was at the club. I was so fucked up in there I almost got raped in the bathroom, third stall. Luckily Sophia wasn’t too fucked up, she just said, like, “We just have to go. Let me call my boyfriend.” And she’s talking all weird, just like me.
That night we decided we needed more, because it wore off. We had this friend named Rex, who actually lives down the street, and he said he could get it for us if we went over. So we went over — ouch! — we went over, and he took us to this bridge where his parents live, they lived underneath the bridge.
That’s where I did too much. I was fine at first, but when we got back here — I was walking down the driveway — I started to hyperventilate. They put me in this chair. My eyes were rolling in the back of my head. That was a very long night. It was just starting.
I got my breath back and said I was OK, but when I got to the stairs I collapsed. So they had to lift me. Sophia’s boyfriend Tom lifted me. He came from Corrales because Sophia was freaking out, and he took me to my mattress. I didn’t have a bed, back then I had a mattress on the floor.
I was overdosing on crystal meth, and we were… I don’t know… this is where I became unconscious… so this is what Sophia told me happened. When we got to the bedroom I said, “Please don’t tell my parents! Please don’t tell my parents!” And she was, like, “OK, I won’t tell your parents.” And there were 4 of us in there: Rex, Tom, Sophia and myself — ouch! — and I tried to sleep. I wasn’t shaking any more but my eyes were open. Then I stopped breathing.
Sophia was on top of me, pounding my chest, and I woke up! (laughs) That’s when my parents walked in. It was pretty noisy. So that was that night! Two days later, I went to a psychiatric hospital.
LS:
Did you want to go?
WA:
Hell no. Hell no! I put up a fight. I said, “Oh no, I don’t need to go. I’ve learned my lesson. An overdose is enough.” But I went anyway.
I met really interesting people at the psychiatric hospital. I made a really good friend, her name was Delia. Her arms were probably as thin as this chair leg, and she made me realize, “Why the fuck am I here, and she’s here. I didn’t do anything like she did.” She would do an 8-Ball — I don’t know what an 8-Ball is — but she’d do an 8-Ball of coke and smoke pot every day. I wasn’t like that, and I thought that I shouldn’t be there because these people were crazy, and I wasn’t crazy.
After we became really good friends she got to a point that she couldn’t stay any longer, so she had to leave. But she wasn’t ready to leave. I started to freak out in the psychiatric hospital when she had to leave. I said, “What do you mean you have to leave?” And she’s like, “You’re ready to leave, but I’m not.”
That made me think, hmm, maybe I should work this because I did some of the same things that she did, but not to her extent. She would talk to me about doing drugs, and I would say, “Oh, that sounds like so much fun!” I didn’t feel ready to leave.
When the therapist said to me, “You get to leave in 2 days.” I was, like, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” So he let me stay as an outpatient for two weeks. But I still wasn’t ready.
I was doing fine for a while. I wasn’t in the public high school, I was going to a continuation school because I missed so much school. I did that for about a month. Then I did something really stupid.
I slept over at my boyfriend’s house, his name was Rick, and I had school the next day. He was a hard-core drug addict; I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s dead now. I haven’t heard from him in a long time.
I did speed at his house, and then I went to school. I was really fucked up. I had a therapist at the school, and she noticed something was wrong with me. I’m usually an honest person, so I told her what I’d done. She called my parents. I got pissed… but whatever.
LS:
You thought she would be confidential about it?
WA:
Yeah, she’s my therapist! So she told my parents, and they arranged for me to go away to school in Utah. I went to Utah. I learned so much there. I hated my parents before I went: I hated them. I hated my sister, I hated my brother.
LS:
Where did that come from? Did it come from the whole growing up scene?
WA:
I think so. I got their attention in a way I didn’t want. I didn’t want them to send me away or anything. But I got too deep into everything, and they thought I needed help. I probably did. I got help. (sighs)
The school really taught me a lot to do with… about having a family. Everyone there had a problem. Again, in the beginning, I thought I didn’t need to be there, and I hated my parents for sending me. For 2 months I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t look at anybody.
Most of the kids in my room had a problem with their parents, and their family as well. But listening to them made me feel, “How can you hate your parents for that?”
I remember going to bed one night, and this boy named Juan, who slept above me, we had bunk beds, he was talking about how his Dad is so rich, and he hates him for it. I didn’t ask him, but I said in my brain, “How can you hate someone for being rich?” I don’t know why, but that got me to think that being mad at my parents wasn’t OK. I mean being mad at my parents was OK, but hating them wasn’t OK.
The place was a year-round school, and in the third month I was there I started getting a really good GPA, which was not like me. I usually get a GPA of 2.5 or something, and now I was getting 3.9. That’s when I realized that, well, I’m pretty good at school but I just don’t apply myself.
I learned a lot at that school. It’s hard to talk about the school because I still don’t like it, but I learned a lot. The people I met there were really interesting, even thought I’ll probably never talk to them again (laughs).
LS:
Can you give me an example?
WA:
Marshall, who was another gay. I don’t know how it changed me, but he made me realize that you could find love anywhere. Marshall and I did love each other, at least that’s what we think. But it changed how I looked at people. I used be very into how people looked: if a person didn’t look good, then I couldn’t do anything. I wouldn’t even do drugs with them.
It’s so hard to tell stories. It is so hard.
Just last summer I went to visit my friend Peter, whom I met at Heritage, which is the school’s name, at his house is in San Francisco. I took a plane. Second night there I drink a whole bottle of cooking brandy, just ‘cause I wanted to get drunk. And he took advantage of me. And then, later that night, he and I took… he took 4 sleeping pills, and I took 14. I had a seizure, and I went to Marin County Hospital, or something. I never heard from him again! (laughs)
That was maybe 2 summers ago, I don’t know. It was a while ago. It was the summer after I got out. It was June 2007. I haven’t done drugs since then.
LS:
What’s changed between now and then?
WA:
Just a change in friends. Sarah has not always been my friend. In fact, in high school she said she didn’t even know who I was. China is incredibly against doing any kind of drug, except for alcohol. All of us drink. I just feel like I don’t need that stuff anymore. It just got old.
I had help from my friends. They’re, like, “We don’t want to see you go back there.” I’ve had too many near death situations: I don’t want another heart attack, I don’t want another seizure. I’ve stopped popping pills, and snorting, and smoking. I even stopped smoking cigarettes. (laughs)
LS:
Do your friends still smoke?
WA:
They quit with me. They quit cigarettes with me.
LS:
What’s this process of learning? It sounds like for you it’s very experiential.
WA:
It is.
LS:
Not at all intellectual. Is it emotional? Fear? Fear sounds like it’s a big element. Maybe “terror” would be a better word.
WA:
What do you mean “terror”?
LS:
I mean terror as a palpable sense of something that’s real, in a world without much meaning. It’s just that your story has more to do with death than life.
WA:
(sighs) I’ve died more than I’ve lived.
LS:
Tell me more about your family. You mentioned them before, but you didn’t mention them in the story.
WA:
I had a terrible relationship with my father. We fought a lot. We used to hit each other. We don’t fight any more. We kind of joke around, but it’s not serious. I’m not going to say that we don’t fight anymore because everyone fights, like my sister still fights me, and my brother still fights me. Even my Mom still fights me on certain things, like taking out the garbage, but it’s not as serious as it used to be.
I used to be very violent… very, very violent. One time my housekeeper, who was my baby sitter at the time, wouldn’t let me use the calculator for doing homework, and so I stabbed her… with a pencil.
That was bad. I’d never done anything like that before. I just got so mad so quickly that I thought it was OK (laughs… sighs), but it wasn’t. My Dad said I was lucky she didn’t press charges. What could she have pressed charges for? I don’t think it would have killed her. It was right here (pointing to his arm)… (sighs) Oh, what a life.
LS:
Where are you in the scheme of things now? As you look at the past, do you see something similar in the future?
WA:
I definitely don’t see the same “me”. I’m not going to do the same things.
LS:
What are you going to do? Do you have things that you want to try out?
WA:
I don’t know. I know I’m not going to do drugs again! No idea yet. I’m still learning about myself
My sister and I have changed a lot. She and I are best friends now. Best friends and siblings. And… that just came out of the blue, like I don’t know how that happened.
I woke up one day and she and I were this close. I don’t know. I never talked to her like I did that one day, and now that’s how we talk all the time. It scared me. (laughs)
It was the day I came back from the treatment center. And she just… she gave me a hug for the first time ever. She had never given me a hug in my teenage years, ever. It felt like she loved me, and I started to cry. I’ve never gotten a hug from her. So I had to love her back, I just wanted to be the same person that she was to me.
My brother and I still have our problems. But it’s not as serious. He doesn’t threaten to kill me in my sleep anymore with his weapons, like he used to. “I’m going to use my flip knife “ — or whatever it was called — “and I’m going to slit your throat in your sleep.” (laughs)
I love them all. They’re my family. I just wish some of them wouldn’t do the things that they do, and I bet they wish the same thing for me.
Part of the reason why I was so violent, I think, is because my relationships were violent. I used to get hit, not just by my parents, but also by boyfriends; my friends wouldn’t hit me. That’s what makes me want my friends to approve of someone I like before I start talking to them seriously.
My friends have a big influence in my life. Sometimes bad, sometimes good! Like this (referring to the waxing — Ed.), it hurts! (laughs)
LS:
What are your interests? I put everybody in this project into a bin according to their interests. For the younger people it’s a bit contrived, but I do it anyway.
WA:
Like what am I interested in?
LS:
Yeah, like what are you going to be when you grow up?
WA:
I would love to be a photographer. I love taking pictures. Actually, I just started. Most of my pictures are of myself (laughs) in different backgrounds.
LS:
How do you do that? Do you hold the camera in front of you, or do you set it on a stand with a self-exposure?
WA:
It’s actually not a very good camera, that’s why I wanted to get a better one, but it has this 10-second timer thing. I find somewhere to put it, like a branch or something.
LS:
You should get a little tripod. That branch bullshit never works, I find it rarely works.
WA:
(laughs) It doesn’t work, because the branches go like that, and the flash doesn’t get you, it gets the branch. But, some of my pictures are nice.
LS:
What do you like about them, or is it the process you like?
WA:
I love taking the photos, but what I love the most is putting in different effects, like decorating. I use Photoshop. I think it’s fun. I think it’s really fun, My friend Junior is helping me, but it’s kind of awkward. He’s a photographer, a professional, but his boyfriend and I had a thing, so it’s kind of weird. I can’t see Kelly. If I see Kelly I’ll freak out.
LS:
Well, have you thought about school for photography, to take classes? They exist.
WA:
Really? I know that at La Cuesta High School there’s a class for photographers.
LS:
Have you done other things like that: painting or drawing?
WA:
I used to be very artistic. I used to paint and draw. I used to dance. I used to sing.
Most of it was in school, but singing was more professional. I was hired to the Albuquerque Opera, in the Albuquerque Children’s Chorus. I sang a solo as Tiny Tim at the Alex Theatre. I sang “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” for a Christmas production.
LS:
So it was interesting at the time… but that stuff didn’t touch you?
WA:
I got fired! I got fired from each one for bad behavior. I was not a good boy.
LS:
Well, a lot of people don’t want to play along, but they usually shape-up when they’re threatened with something. But I guess you didn’t care. Or did it come as a surprise to you that you got fired?
WA:
Ha! No, no. I knew what I was doing: I knew that if they found out I’d get fired, and they did find out — of course they did — it was right in front of them. I was swinging on the props, and breaking things, and I cussed out Ann Thompson, the Director of Albuquerque Children’s Chorus.
LS:
Did you cuss her out because she deserved it, or because you just enjoyed doing it?
WA:
I don’t think she deserved it. I felt like doing it, I just felt like cussing, and she was there.
LS:
It sounds a little bit like the family situation. It fits with the whole sort of violent, angry, rebellious approach.
WA:
I’m far from violent now.
LS:
How about rebellious?
WA:
I love rebelling.
LS:
You do?
WA:
Yeah.
LS:
If you can imagine other people in the space where you were, a few years ago, people without the clarity that you have now, what could you tell them that would help them get the kind of clarity for themselves that you have now?
WA:
I’d say, “it comes from yourself,” but I really can’t tell them. I wouldn’t want to tell them. I just want them to learn on their own.
Do you mean if they were in my shoes, or what?
LS:
There are different kinds of “shoes.” There’s some people who don’t act, they just remain numb. And other people defeat themselves when they act, because they don’t know what to act, or what to act on. I think most people are just bored. Nothing really grabs them. It’s my impression that a lot of people stay that way for the rest of their lives.
WA:
Well, I know that’s why I started drugs and stuff, it was because I was bored. I wanted to see what they were like: curious. Also, I wasn’t happy. But I don’t know what I could say to people to find their clarity.
LS:
What about happiness? Did you find your happiness? Would it be better to say it that way?
WA:
My happiness is off and on, so it’s still not clear.
LS:
But off and on is not the same as being unhappy. Do you mean to say that you’re happy and unhappy, or happy and just sort of neutral?
WA:
Happy and then neutral. I’m not sad or anything.
LS:
You’re not miserable.
WA:
No.
LS:
But you used to be?
WA:
Oh yeah! I was miserable back then, but now I’m just… here, I’m OK.
LS:
Say there were 5 people just like you, at age 13, and you saw the same thing was going to happen to them that happened to you. Could you say anything to them?
WA:
If I said something, it wouldn’t help them. People said things to me, I didn’t listen. I didn’t really give a shit.
LS:
But if you could say something that they would listen to… What should you have listened to?
WA:
Someone told me to think about my family. They did tell me that, and I didn’t think about my family for a second when I was doing those things. Maybe for second. Maybe I was, like, “OK, maybe this will hurt Mom or something.” I don’t know.
Maybe I should have listened to that. That’s the only thing I can ever remember anyone ever saying to me: “Think about your family. Think about yourself and your family, and who you’re going to hurt.” Like, I knew I hurt people, but I didn’t care at the time.
I don’t know what I’d say to people to help them, because they wouldn’t listen. People like me: they’re just not going to listen.
They might listen, keep it somewhere in their mind, and then when they’re done with the process of getting clean and healthy, then they might think about it, like I did. But I still… I wouldn’t know what to say in order to help somebody find happiness, or clarity in the future.
