How I Became Dameon Geppetto
An autobiography about how I embraced my new persona. A deep dive into my past and what shaped my life. How I lost it all to find myself.
It’s time for me to explain to you the reader who I am. My given name is not Dameon Geppetto. I’ve chosen this name for myself. There are many reasons why I choose to write under a pseudonym, but what I tell the world is usually an ancillary reason and not the main motivation.
If someone asks me why I don’t use my real name, I will tell them that it’s for security reasons. This is not a lie. In the modern world one must protect themselves. Even a small layer of protection, like a pen name, can provide a basic firewall.
The real reason behind my name change is because I’m not the same person that I’d been for forty plus years of my life. Who I am now is nothing like who I was before. After a tumultuous period inside my cocoon, I’ve become a moth. I’m no longer the caterpillar who lived only to consume and react. I’ve embraced my final form.
My life began in the rural hills outside of Los Angeles. I lived seven miles from any commercial building. The windy canyon road to town took a good fifteen minutes to circumnavigate. Sheltered is the best way to describe my youth.
Like most people, the moments of my childhood which I recall are all defined by tragedy:
Breaking my leg at the age of three by jumping off the porch in front of a gathering at my house,
Dancing around the front yard (pretending I was Indiana Jones) to almost step on a coiled up baby rattlesnake in the overgrown grass when I was five,
Trying to help my father fix our vehicles only to be yelled at when things didn’t go right,
And being bullied for the entirety of my elementary education.
There are pictures of me hand feeding a racoon on our porch as a child, going to Disneyworld, and other fun activities that my memory does not recall. The only positive memory I have of my pre-schooling years was chasing lightning bugs outside of a relative’s house in Kentucky (which was from that Disneyworld trip).
While I wanted for nothing as the first born child in a white middle-class family, I spent my free time reading books and running around in the wild hills surrounding my home. The Hardy Boys books were my favorite, and I couldn’t tell you how many I read and then handed off to my brother to read after I finished.
Growing up in the '80’s did not revolve around digital screens like the modern world.
My other fondest memories of growing up were our family trips to rural Bemidji, Minnesota. The first year we went there for a family reunion and drove from L.A. to Minnesota. We took our time, seven days by car, visiting the Dinosaur museum in Utah and a bunch of other tourist traps along the way. The trip back took only three days.
At the reunion I met a ton of extended family that I didn’t know I had. Growing up, I knew most of my relatives on my mom’s side due to them living in California (split between L.A. and San Francisco) but only a couple on my dads side (he was born in Minnesota and most of his family lived scattered throughout the Midwest and South).
The second trip to Minnesota we flew and my brother and I helped my father build a basement roof for a log cabin (his dream). I was twelve years old and spent two weeks of my summer hammering nails onto a massive roof with my brother. We still had fun and made the most of that experience. The log cabin never got built.
Raised by Evangelical Christian parents, I went to a private school at our church from first grade until the eighth grade. My trouble making started in sixth grade and by junior high I was constantly getting into trouble for challenging authority - if the adults were wrong, I wouldn’t agree and fall in line.
The many suspensions, spankings (yes, they had corporal punishment), and other forms of punishment didn’t work. Most of these instances were simply based off of refusing to submit to a teacher or supervisor when they were wrong.
Due to this, my parents gave me a choice about where to attend high school. I unequivocally chose public high school. They wanted me to go to a different private Christian school, but they were gracious enough to allow me to choose my fate.
I needed to make friends that weren’t a forty-five minute drive away from where we lived and I had to escape being the one kid that everyone picked on. Since a young age, I’d been prone to cry. That’s not a trait a boy can live down. The fact that I grew out of this by age ten didn’t matter. I would forever be a crybaby to my peers and if I went to a high school with those same “Christian” people I would’ve been bullied.
It wasn’t just my peers who harassed me. My father verbally abused me my entire life. He didn’t only yell and scream at me as my mother bore the brunt of his insatiable anger. My younger brother and only sibling was spared this treatment. He knew how to keep his mouth shut while I did not.
By the time I entered high school, I had openly rebelled and ensured all of my dad’s toxic behavior would be directed at me. This turned me from a crybaby into a cynical, stoic individual. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sure, it has caused me some serious mental trauma, but I am who I am today because of the conflict I endured.
Making new friends in high school was easy. In tenth grade I discovered cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. I’d found my crutches to survive the harsh world. I smoked both my entire life from the age of fifteen, with infrequent bouts of quitting along the way, but I only drank socially most of my life.
Skateboarding, punk rock, heavy metal, and psychedelic drugs guided me through my angsty youth. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was trying to escape reality any way possible. I was angry at the world and I spent most of my adult life in a severely depressed state trying to understand why I couldn’t just go along to get along.
I’d decided not to go to college while in high school and graduated with a 3.2 GPA - including plenty of honors classes. My parents had decided not to pay for my college (due to my poor behavior), and I opted out of going into debt slavery. I never took the SAT. My college of choice would have been Stanford, but I’d never have been accepted due to a lack of extra-curricular activities.
Nobody tells you the honest truth in life while you’re growing up: Checking boxes is more important to succeed than intelligence or your potential. Subservience is rewarded while critical thinking is frowned upon.
I could have easily went to community college and pushed myself into a state university, if I so desired, but assimilation never was my strong suit. Besides, I preferred getting high all day and playing basketball or video games.
The following years I bounced around working construction jobs, fast food, and other temporary stints. Eventually, I landed a job in the kitchen at a T.G.I. Fridays in Las Vegas (a friend from high school hooked me up).
Who you know is more important than what skills or competency you have. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply unaware of the privilege that they’ve been afforded.
I moved back to Los Angeles and worked as a line cook. At one point I was offered a chance to open a new T.G.I. Fridays in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I jumped at the opportunity. For five cold, windy weeks in spring of 2001 I lived in Hyannis and trained people how to operate the grille - cook steaks, burgers, and other fast-casual staples.
This was the first traveling that I’d done on my own and it changed everything. Upon returning to L.A., I was promoted to kitchen manager right before 9/11 and worked at several restaurants in the area over the following years.
New England kept calling me, so I moved to Rhode Island in 2004. (I’d made a friend while opening up the store in Cape Cod and another friend from high school had relocated there.) I packed up my belongings in my Honda Accord and drove across the entire U.S. in three and a half days.
After less than a year working in New England, I left T.G.I. Fridays and took an insurance adjuster job for Progressive. I took a cut in pay but I wanted to work a 9-5 job like the rest of civilized society. I jumped ship to a rival company one year later and worked from home for them for over a decade inspecting vehicles that were in auto accidents.
My company tried to set me up to be fired due to an incident of insubordination with my direct boss which caused me to have a panic attack and sent me to the emergency room. Shortly after, I went on disability. I knew they were trying to turn their best employee into an expendable commodity due to my mental health liabilities.
Corporations are psychotic by their very nature. You are a just a number to them, don’t ever forget that.
I sued them and after a year of mental health treatment we reached an amicable settlement. Problem was, I’d learned that following the rules puts you at a disadvantage in the world. I’d made more money on disability by not working than I did working (due to Rhode Island having their own disability payment system, T.D.I., and my company having one as well).
The American dream was dead to me. I’d bought a house in 2006 with my girlfriend, we put about $50,000 in upgrades to the home, and it was worth less than 50% of the purchase price in 2015. My inability to find another job put a strain on our relationship and we broke up and short sold the home.
Another lesson that everything they tell you about succeeding in life is a lie.
Disillusioned, I got another work from home job reviewing estimates for a different insurance company. I lived on my own and took to drinking whiskey at an excessive level. That lasted nine months before the company fired everyone. It was the best job I’d ever had because I put in minimal effort and got paid to drink and smoke weed all day.
Lonely and depressed, I tried to commit suicide in July of 2015 after drinking a half bottle of Crown Royal. But I couldn’t give myself up to the Atlantic Ocean (I’d stripped down to my underwear at 2 a.m. and walked out into the sea up to my chin), so I went home to sleep it off.
The police woke me up at 4:30 a.m. attempting to bash in my door. I couldn’t open it for them, due to the damage they’d already done, so I sat on my couch with my hands above my head in my underwear while they smashed through. Then an officer manhandled me for no reason while we were arguing about why they had broken into my apartment. It was a wellness check (I had posted my suicidal thoughts on Facebook).
After that, I sobered up (quit both booze and weed). I picked up a job as an independent appraiser inspecting cars to pay my bills, but something inside of me had broken. The job was good, but I quickly wore myself out driving all over the Boston area inspecting cars and writing estimates. I would leave my house at 6 a.m. and worked twelve hour days, at a minimum.
One night out at a bar, myself not drinking, my friend mentioned that she’d always wanted to travel the world but never had the guts. This placed an idea inside of my mind. I’d had the travel bug ever since I first left L.A. and it was now eating away at my soul since I was sober for the first time in my life.
That October, I sold every possession that I owned which couldn’t fit into two large suitcases in my car and left. My plan was to leave the United States and never come back. I’d planned a trip from Rhode Island through the northern half of the United States to visit friends and relatives. I was saying goodbye.
I visited a few friends in New York and then turned west to Detroit. From there I went north to Minnesota and then west to Montana through the badlands. From Montana I hooked south through Colorado, and then on to Tucson, Arizona. I spent Thanksgiving with my family and dropped off what belongings I wanted to store.
After Thanksgiving, I went to Phoenix to visit my brother and his family and then stopped in Las Vegas for a few days. From Vegas I went to San Francisco and then ended the trip in L.A. where I stayed with my cousin throughout Christmas and the new year.
I left the U.S. on January 8, 2016 headed for Australia.
My plan was to write my first novel and try and find a way to sustain a living after I’d found a place to live. I loved Australia and tried to find a way to immigrate there, but in the end I knew I had to move on. I spent two months in Melbourne, visited a friend in Sydney, and spent a month in Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef.
From Australia I went to the Philippines. I stayed in Manila for a month, met a girl, and lived a good life. I took a solo trip to Palawan while I was there, which is the most beautiful island I’d ever seen. You can’t fly into the Philippines without an exit ticket, so I headed to Bangkok, Thailand after a quick three day jaunt to Hong Kong.
Once in Thailand, I broke off the relationship with the Filipina girl and began my debauchery. By this point, I’d already begun two novels and scrapped them after my real life ended up being more exciting than the fiction I was writing.
I had met another girl in Bangkok, but I’d decided long ago that I would commit suicide on my fortieth birthday - I planned to jump off the twenty-third floor balcony onto the patio below (avoiding the pool was my only concern). Yes, I am that much of a drama queen.
My fortieth birthday arrived and I was sick as a dog. I couldn’t even get out of the bed except to crawl to the bathroom. My deaf girlfriend took care of me by cooking soup and keeping me plied with a steady supply of Asian homeopathy medicine (black tea with honey, lime, and ginger).
The sickness passed completely the next day. Divine intervention.
The novelty of suicide wore off, but my suicidal ideations were still there. They’d been there my whole life. I took a trip to Bali, Indonesia with my girlfriend and finally did some tourist like exploring. I wrote intermittently while in Bali but spent most of the time traveling the island and exploring the multitude of temples there (at the direction of my partner).
In Thailand I could only get a one month visa. My partner suggested I should go to Cambodia to get a two month visa at the end of the month and I booked a two week stay. There was a punk rock bar around the corner from my hotel in Phnom Penh and I met some fellow expats who lived there. I immediately fell in love with Cambodia.
Upon returning to Thailand, I advised my partner that I was going to move to Cambodia in two months. She had no intention of moving with me so we ended the relationship. I became a miscreant and spent every day drunk, except when I was caught off guard by an election weekend where they stopped alcohol sales.
I booked an AirBnB for a month in Phnom Penh, Cambodia closer to the tourist area to determine if I really wanted this to be my new home. I quickly found out this was where I needed to live.
When the month finished I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The entire month there I was bedridden with Dengue Fever. The first of three bouts with that untreatable disease.
I was still sick when I flew back to Cambodia. I took a couple of aspirin to avoid the temperature detectors at the K.L. airport as I refused to be stuck in that country any longer. The second I stepped foot on Cambodian soil, my illness dissipated completely.
If you’ve never experienced the miraculous, you will assume I’m being hyperbolic, but that land is blessed.
It’d been less than a year since I’d left the United States and I found myself living in a foreign land. I secured an apartment, found some friends, and drank and smoked my life away. There was no immediate need to get a job as I’d been living off of my savings and had plenty of credit available.
My intention was to drink myself to death as I was too cowardly to kill myself. The first year living in Cambodia I’d lost so much weight that when I renewed my lease my Khmer landlord didn’t recognize me. She said:
“Oh sorry, you used to be fat but you no fat no more.”
This was a compliment, not an insult - you’d have to live in Southeast Asia to understand.
Instead of getting a job teaching English, like everyone else, I just racked up credit card debt and drank my life away. Phnom Penh is a dumping ground for miscreant foreigners. As the black sheep in my extended family, I fit in perfectly. Cambodia will always be my home no matter where life takes me.
I partied, enjoyed the occasional prostitute, experimented with my sexuality (I am bisexual but attracted to women), and had a few girlfriends that didn’t last long. Also, I did a lot of drugs as well as drinking and smoking every day.
Two years into living in Cambodia, I met a good girl and formed a real relationship. The time had come to prepare for a future I’d never expected, so we bought an American expat out of a lease on a bar that was failing.
Most of the capital I had left was spent on the bar. We opened the business in her name since she was Cambodian. Lucky for us, I knew how to run a bar/restaurant and we were profitable after only a few months.
Nobody else ever had a profitable business in that location. My life was great.
The Havana Bar & Grille will forever live on in infamy. I know that I made the best Cuban sandwich not in the Miami metro area.
Managing the bar on a daily basis allowed me to meet my best friend and find hope for the future. I learned a lot about people and myself while running a successful business. Things were looking up and I imagined doing this for the rest of my life - a meager existence but one that made me happy.
After exactly one year my relationship broke down. Running a business in the name of my former partner, I knew time was not on my side. Sales declined and, while it didn’t lose money, the profit became less and less as time went on. Still, I trudged along.
Then I made a life altering decision to dedicate myself to the old gods. My newfound best friend, Parker Jones, had led me down this path. I’d found the purpose that I’d always craved.
I started meditating on a regular basis and became a vegetarian almost immediately. I am still a vegetarian to this day.
A month later, I quit drinking. Now running a bar as a reformed alcoholic, I realized I needed an escape.
What had once been my home had become my prison.
We sold the bar and basically broke even when all was said and done. I don’t regret a minute of my life in Phnom Penh. Neither do I harbor any ill will towards my former partner(s) or anyone else that I crossed paths with on my journey.
An American friend of mine and bar regular said it best at the time:
“It lasted as long as it was supposed to last.”
Having no income, I quickly went through the last of my money. But I had formed a real friendship based on mutual trust and respect. Parker Jones and I traveled to Siem Reap where we met our Cambodian family from another life. We also took a trip to Kampot where I met my first god in person.
Now if you made it this far you’re probably wondering: What kind of crazy person says they met a god? It’s a bold claim and I can’t prove it with material evidence. Whether you believe me or not is immaterial, it happened. How and why is my secret to keep.
Sadly, my best friend died on November 8, 2019. Rest in peace, Parker Jones.
This devastated me and I made the decision to move back to America and rebuild my life. I came back in January of 2020, right before the COVID pandemic hit. Not only was I broke but I had over $30,000 in credit card debt as well.
Moving back in with your parents at forty-three years old is a humbling experience, especially if you spent your entire life running away from the trauma you endured during childhood. It was rocky at first, but the pandemic ended any chance for me to get a job (not that someone with a four year gap in work history could easily find employment in any circumstances).
What I hadn’t realized by spending my entire life self-medicating was that my parents had aged and they were having difficulty taking care of themselves. Father time catches up to all of us. Living in Asia for four years had taught me the value of family. From the start, I did whatever I could to help them out.
Still, the rift between my father and I loomed large. We fought several times over political differences and other character issues at first, but after a few medical scares, things calmed down. Heart disease is not a joke.
Also, I wrote and completed my novel “Unleashing Hell” in the first year living back in the U.S. I had written five novels and abandoned them all around 10,000 words while overseas but this was the first one I had finished.
In the years since, my duties have increased. I provide complete in-home care: Cooking, cleaning, gardening, landscaping, buying groceries, being a handyman, and chauffeuring them around.
I am doing my duty.
I’ve learned how to couch my disdain and try and provide a quality of life to my father before he passes. He is guilty for how he treated me growing up and has apologized many times, which ironically makes things harder. It is much easier to hate than to forgive.
Now a forty-seven year old man, I am a complete failure by the standards of our modern capitalist society. Yet, I have never been more content or assured of myself. I know who I am, what I am doing, why I am doing it, and what I will do in the near term and long term future.
My suicidal ideation is a distant memory along with my constant state of depression. I have also been alcohol free for over four years. I could care less if I am not contributing enough to the economy or pursuing my own personal desires.
So if you have made it this far, thank you for giving me your time. Everything I have said here is factual.
While I am still working on bettering myself, I regret nothing and accept my status as a middle aged single man with no children or career.
Sacrifice is the doorway to enlightenment.
The story of how I came up with the name Dameon Geppetto is for a different day. All that matters is I have reinvented myself into a better human being.
If you are wondering what I did with my mountain of debt, well, I just let time take care of it. Most of that debt has been wiped away from simply dodging the creditors. After seven years it goes away whether you file bankruptcy or not.
“Say what you must, do all you can, break all the fucking rules and go to Hell with Superman and die like a champion, yeah hey!”
Bad Religion - Do What You Want
In order to find yourself, you have to lose everything first.