Much of My youth was spent moving around the city, so much that I had been enrolled in and withdrawn from at least five different school districts before I was even in the fourth grade! Well, the fourth grade was when our trail-blazing ceased for a time, long enough to actually settle in for more than a grade or two. We still bounced from residence to residence, but I was able to stay in the same school and actually maintain friendships.

A few years later and I graduated to "junior high school" or "middle school"...or whatever the hell it is called these days. Whatever, My point is that I was there, within the same district, and while there I had realized a keen interest in writing. I was churning out page after page of Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy crap. As I say, I had an interest in writing, but I wasn't especially good at it. Over the years, though, My writing developed and I actually entertained notions that it was what I wanted to do for a living. To this day I have yet to get off of My ass and pursue that dream.

One other significant interest I developed in middle school was the subject of Satanism. At the time I ran around with a collective of hoodlums, the leaders of the pack being a pair of twins (twins come in pairs, you know) named Doug and Dave. They had an appetite for knowledge that was sated in books about WWII and Nazi era Germany...and, oddly enough, the writings of Ray Buckland and other "white" magic/wicca oriented publications. Having had to sit with My grandmother through endless church laden sundays and all the bullshit that came with it, I had little stomach for the flavor carried by My friend's interest in that particular branch of the occult. It rang too soundly of the same christian bile I had to endure on a weekly basis, so I paid no mind to their discussions. That is, not until they brought up the subject of The Satanic Bible.

As a topic of discussion, the twins considered The Satanic Bible to be a book that should be avoided at all costs. They laid across it the same stigma and ridiculous rumors that were universally associated with Simon's Necronomicon. Being the type of kid that I was, all the warnings were met by a deaf ear and I pushed MySelf to seek out and procure a copy of LaVey's inflammatory book. Once I had it and had read each and every word, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had read nothing more diabolical or insidious than what had already been the contents of My own Mind. The chapters that comprised the first half of the book echoed every musing I had distracted MySelf with during the sunday morning sermons, or while locked away with the "youth group" at My grandmother's church. God had been dead to Me before I was even of school age, but at 13 I finally had his most tangible tombstone in My hand.

Having found an appreciation for the writings of LaVey, My freshly established philosophical alignment made Me rather unpopular with the very circle of friends that (albeit inadvertently) had set Me on that path. By the time I owned My first Baphomet we had all but wordlessly parted ways. Soon I was in high school, where I became a bit of a hot topic as I shamelessly flaunted My satanic jewelery (including the beginnings of the Abyssus) and My now battered copy of the Satanic Bible. My audacity knew few boundaries as My previously fantasy-oriented artwork turned to a more heinous form of expression, mockeries of christian iconography that were reviled by students and faculty alike. The good ol' days.

The third quarter of My sophomore year greeted Me with another move and enrollment into another district. The next two years (leading up to My dropping out of school altogether) found more scandal and controversy to be left in My wake. This new high school was an extraordinary playground for the kid with the devil in his eye, and a lot of fun was had in hearing the rumors and tales spread like wildfire concerning yours truly. At that second high school, whether you loved Me or hated Me, the bottom line was that you knew who I was. And that carries with it a type of power...