Despite his backward ideas on psychiatry.
From 1990-95 I was living a board & care home with 12 or 13 other men. It had the reputation of being the best board & care home in San Jose, California. San Jose is one of the top ten largest cities in California. Anyways, I moved in when I was in my first few months of being clean and sober and I also had a part-time job. Shortly after moving in I enrolled myself in community college and took two classes a semester for the next 5 years. After three years my job ended but I got a new one in less than a month.
The home got its reputation because of its cleanliness and the way the owners ran it. It was relatively safe and comfortable but ironically it was on a street that had a reputation of being infested with drug dealers and drug users. Despite that, I thrived there. I owe it to being freshly clean from my four year addiction to crack. But I had the job I mentioned and school. I took the bus every where and I started going to 5 or 6 AA, CA and NA meetings a week. I either walked to these myself or took a bus.
Anyways, I was not popular there. The main group used to sit on the porch a lot every day and smoke cigarettes and drink soda. I wasn’t hated or strongly disliked but I usually wasn’t included but I sat there often, usually when there was nobody there or only one or two or three of the clique was there. The problem was that I was one of only two or three people there who worked and no one went to school but me.
Also, almost all of them drank or did drugs which did not fit with my new status of being drug and alcohol free. So I was an outsider pretty much. And thus I was looked down on and they didn’t hang around me and I didn’t go places with them or hang around as friends. To be honest, it didn’t bother me. I had a relatively full life anyways with family and I had one close friend and I was friendly with many other AA members and I talked small talk with them and I had several regulars in the 12-step program who liked me and talked to me from seeing me around so much and I was gone a lot of the time out of the board & care home.
But yeah, I was basically a loner at the home.
But the owner was aware of a lot of what went on including knowing a little about the drug use that went on. Most people there just hung out together and he saw I was a little ostracized.
The owner had put a nice TV in the main living room and he put a VCR there and a cabinet full of cool movies. I mean literally every movie there was cool. He stocked the cabinet with mostly action movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, etc. He had complete sets of First Blood and sequels, Predator, Total Recall, Lethal Weapon, Robocop, Dirty Harry, Steven Seagal movies and more and some that were even cooler than the ones I listed!!
And Top Gun. The movie starring Tom Cruise as a fighter pilot in the 1990’s. This home is where I first saw it. And I loved it, I was hooked. I asked the owner to put it on for me and I probably saw it more than two dozen times. The owner always laughed at this. But he used to walk around almost daily taking care of the immaculate landscaping that was on the property. And he saw the situation between me and the other residents. Let me say here that I did not hate or even strongly dislike most of the other residents. I thought most of them were cool and I mingled with them and talked to a few of them occasionally.
But I was ostracized a little and looked down on for being so straight arrow. The owner saw this and then he started calling me his Top Gun in front of the other guys He did this often to show up the rest of the guys. He always made a point of calling me his Top Gun for my accomplishments in front of the other guys. He did it to make them mad because they looked down on me so he looked down on them. I always thought it was funny and I learned to like it. I always impress someone in the least expected situations, lol.
And as a footnote, my past two years often have been hell with many unwanted life changes and facing up to the realities of life and my place in it. I lived in very bad situations, with not very nice people. I was often happy but it could get really bad But nevertheless, even the people in the home before my last one I had my fans and people who liked me. I worked the entire time I was there for 15 months but so did a few others so the main guys even started talking to me or just glanced at me as I walked by with neutral or friendly looks or I sat with them at meals. After living there at the half way point I was left alone but I was friendly and on OK terms. I couldn’t be close friends with most of them because they were mostly druggies, but like I said, I had my fans and supporters. Me, Maverick and poor Goose against the world, lol.