Self-Titled Redux

“thom dunn: rock star. super hero. poet.”-Inscription on a stack of 500 business cards purchased for $5 online after consuming entirely too much whiskey.

I am a Sagittarius that interrupted dinner on Thanksgiving, like my cousin a year earlier.
I am the product of both Irish and English blood that hasn’t waged war upon itself.
I am a child whose heart was born incomplete. And while the metaphor seems striking, I was, in fact, incubated for two days to fill the hole before the doctors let me go.

I am the son of the firsts in their families to attend a college and get a degree.
I am the son of a registered Republican, whose vote in ’04 went to Nader instead.
I am the son of an overly sensitive inner-city schoolteacher whose extreme emotional reactions often cloud her logic, practicality, and grace. She means too well.

I am the brother of a teacher.tennis-player.princess.period. Just kidding. No, I’m serious.
I am the brother of an overachiever whose resume reads like dense instruction manuals.
I am the brother of the roommate of a New York City cop. In their borough, children don’t believe her when she tells them that she’s White, not Puerto Rican.
White people aren’t nice, they say.

I grew up looking over the head of a Sleeping Giant, in the shadow of the Civil War.
I grew up in a microcosm of American diversity, where borders still exist.
I am a resident of Boston, a refuge of the black hole of apathy and complacency that fills the void between the New and old Metropolis of the North. Also known as the Nutmeg State.

I am a survivor of Irish Catholic guilt; reluctantly, my parents both allowed me to escape.
I am the survivor of three broken limbs all collected in the year when I was two.
I am the survivor of more than one car accident by the fault of Asian female drivers; the irony is not lost on me. Neither is the back pain from which I still suffer.

I am likely the most Irish student to have ever been accepted to NYU’s Gallatin School because

I’m Black.

I am going to let that vague anecdote sit for a moment. Good? Okay.
I am immortalized on page 3 of the January 14, 2008 edition of the Boston Metro and I am very clearly not wearing pants. None of my friends were surprised at all.

I am the ex-boyfriend to a fascinating, captivating girl of questionable sanity.
I am the ex-boyfriend of a fascinating, captivating girl of questionable sanity. Again.
I am the ex-boyfriend of a beautiful, ambitious woman that I dismissed arbitrarily as boring, lacking in passion, simply because her stability was confounding to me.

(I am a hypocrite)

I am the proud owner of every issue of “X-Men” since July 2001; I store them in plastic.
I am paid quite handsomely to don a spandex suit and play Spider-Man for promotions.
I am a rabid believer that, while Peter Parker may be a modern-day tragic hero with an emotional complexity akin to Hamlet, Superman is a dreadfully uninteresting archetype lacking in all dramatic value as a character, unless deconstructed.

I’m little more than a little boy in a grown-up body with a Super Hero complex

I am an advocate for a more of a postmodern approach to the establishment of identity; a constant commentary and progressive re-evaluation of the concept, structure, and function of identity in a post-urban setting.
(I am completely kidding about the aforementioned statement; it reared its delightfully pretentious head in conservation fairly recently, and I simply could not resist the urge to include here, for your entertainment as well as my own. Enjoy!)

I am the Sergeant-at-Arms of a National, Professional Fraternity whose membership boasts more women than men; half of those men are bi- or homosexual.
I am the Assistant House Manager and Office Assistant at a multifunctional theater complex run by a reputable regional theatre company; it could pay better, though.
I am a First-Class Boy Scout; it’s really nothing to brag about it, it took me about a year to get there and then I got bored with the militant nature of my Troop but still remained a member with the sole purpose of attending summer camp. I collected all the Waterfront and Arts and Crafts Merit Badges. And Plumbing. Plumbing.

I am the boy with calloused leather fingertips and ringing in my ear. (“It goes to eleven!”)
I am a musician, learned from the Ramones and now playing Gershwin and Lennon.
I am a sell out, tearing punk rock stickers from the body of my beat-up black Stratocaster and rebuilding it from scratch as airbrushed rock art. I am the world’s forgotten boy

The one that searches and destroys.

I am a snob, asserting the authority of superior taste over arbitrary, unimportant forms.
I am typical a fan of malt-heavy beers, slightly caramel, with just a dash of aromatic hops
I am infatuated with New Haven style pizza and I will remind you frequently and with pride that the city is the birthplace of American pizza; I prefer bacon and onion as a topping, but I also recommend the white clam pie. You will then assert that New York City (as a whole) has the best pizza, or you will recall that I previously expressed a distinct distaste for my home state; this is an exception to the rule.

“I am still the optimist, though it is hard when all you want to be is in a dream.”

I am a real boy, struggling with ADHD that evaded diagnosis for twenty years.
I am asthmatic and flatfooted, with allergies to all forms of tree pollens and dust.
I am a fool that ignores the signs his body sends and tends to disregard his symptoms in hope that they will get bored and go away. This approach to self-medication has proven itself to be consistently ineffective, but I’m not giving up just yet.

rock star. super hero. poet.

I think that about covers it.