The story "Greasy Lake" written by T. Coraghessan Boyle had a special impact on me personally. I could relate to the characters and their rebel without a cause attitude. I was 19, thought I was bad, and there was nothing in the world that could stop me. Unfortunately I had a sobering incident at a lake similar to the guys in "Greasy Lake". Like the characters, the setting of the lake where I got in trouble is going to have a sobering effect on me for the rest of my life.
I was going to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida at the time. My friends and I were young and we thought we were bad. Similar to the characters we would cruise the town at night looking for something to occupy our time, but we usually ended up at a local lake to just hang out. It was a place of refuge for us to relax and catch a high that would take us out of reality for sometime. Our reasoning for going to the lake was the same as the characters as the narrator explains here: "We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff he rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets." (129) The lake always provided a fun social atmosphere for my friends and I at the time, until the day it would change our lives forever.
The night started out like any other night. I was with three of my friends that shared the same bad attitude as myself. We were cruising the strip looking for trouble without ever thinking of the consequences. We came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was go up to our lake, since it was a pretty dead night and we were sure to find some people up there. By the time we got to the lake we had a drank some alcohol and smoked a little pot, but to us this was just a normal night.