Drunken Charm

Hello, Andy here (Some of y’all out there might also know me as Tie Guy).  It’s probably safe to say that everything you’ve heard about me is more than likely true. I live to constantly push the envelope and strive to reach my full potential . . . whatever that is.

I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I have risen above so many things that used to unrelentingly hold me down. One of the most notable is the anxiety condition that I’ve lived with for the better part of my 27 year existence. It never gets old for me to hear someone who knows my story say, “Andy, it’s really hard to believe there was a time when you weren’t good with women,” because I know the full extent of how much work it took to get me to where I am today.

I was born on a small farm in Northwest Georgia in a town called Dalton. Dalton, GA is currently the world’s leader in carpet and rug manufacturing, so if you happen to have carpeting and/or an area rug in your place there’s a good chance it came from my hometown (so I got that goin’ for me).

My parents divorced when I was two years old due to the fact that my dad had a hard time keepin’ his dick in his pants. My dad was (and kinda still is) a bit of a womanizer, and it’s become apparent that a little of that has rubbed off on me as well. Don’t get me wrong, monogamy is a beautiful thing, but from seeing my dad burn through four marriages, and the repercussions of it, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not for everybody.

I didn’t really have a whole lot of girlfriends during the course of my adolescence, and there were a couple of key factors to why that was the case.

Unfortunately, I think my mother had a lot to do with it. I had the kind of mom who felt she constantly needed to be in the loop (which in fairness is a very motherly trait to have), especially when it came to girls. If my mom were ever to get wind of me being even remotely interested in a girl she would have been on me like a fat baby on a cupcake. But when you’re a young man tentatively discovering the fairer sex (on top of grappling with puberty, and hormones, and random erections that just pop up out of nowhere), you kinda just want your mom to be respectful and benevolently take a couple of steps back. However, try as she might, this was discernibly a request that she was incapable of accommodating most of the time, ultimately leading me to become a formidable recluse amidst the pubescent female population — it just made things easier.

With my attention momentarily off girls, I had time to pursue other interests, those interests primarily being art and music.

So, throughout the rest of my middle school and high school career I inevitably solidified my reputation as an artist — spending the majority of my time drawing, painting, playing and writing music, and so on and so forth.

I feel it important to point out that, despite my seemingly isolated extracurriculars, by no means was I a loner or an outsider. In fact, I was good friends with the better part of the popular kids at my school — some may even say I was one of them. Just like every other teenager in America, I too desperately tried to figure out exactly who I was in the midst of this crazy world spinning around me. Some chose to conform to general, popular consensus views, while others felt the need to break way and rebel from the status quo in an effort to truly find themselves and discover where they personally belong.

I, myself, kinda straddled that line drawn between the two opposing sides. I made it OK to be different. Who cares if you’re misunderstood? I personally am not a huge fan of the Beatles, but I think Paul McCartney was spot on concluding his song, “The End”, with the line, “And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” If you love people, they’re gonna love you back, and it’s the differences in people that keep things interesting.

When I was around seventeen-years-old, I started getting really big into Jesus, so much so that I was even on the path to becoming an ordained minister. Though as I immersed myself into the innerworkings of the church and all the politics that surrounded it, I slowly began to realize that this was veritably not the course for me. That’s when I started a band and decided to try the whole “rockstar” thing for a while.

It was in this era of my life that I began my first serious romantic relationship. She was a few years younger than me, but nevertheless, had a lot more sexual experience than I.

I was almost twenty-two years old when I lost my virginity, but (unlike a lot of guys) I was perfectly fine with that. Because, even after I had left the church, I still had every intention of “saving myself” for marriage (this was back when I still considered marriage as an option). But, after months of standing firm in my conviction, she finally talked me into fucking her — My life would never be the same. There’s an old joke that goes, “What do you call a musician without a girlfriend?” The answer: “Homeless.” If that ain’t the truth, I don’t know what is.

I did the music thing for about five or six years and, as much fun as it was, I couldn’t ever seem to get to the point I wanted to be. By the time I parted ways with drummer #8, I decided to step away from the business for a while. So, I broke up with my girlfriend and in January of 2006 I moved to Dallas, Texas. I was twenty-three years old.

Once in Texas, I took a couple of months to catch my breath and do some soul searching. I would ask myself, “I’ve been doing this thing for six years, shouldn’t I be further along by this point?”, “What if it takes another six?”, “What if it never happens?” It was at moment that I started to weigh my other options. A few weeks later I applied to art school.

I should point out that, by the time I got to Dallas, things were not going so great for me. It’s safe to say my self esteem was at an all-time low. My insecurities and shortcomings and severe loneliness were beginning to consume me and I was just praying to God that things would soon turn around.

Art school was a very interesting experience for me. I moved into student housing where I shared an apartment with an eighteen year-old party boy, know-it-all (who quickly became my best buddy for some reason), a heroine addicted Mexican dude, and a overweight gay black guy who just so happened to also be blind and a culinary student. I would go to class and meet people, however I seemed to be a few years older than the rest of my peers.

Though I personally wasn’t aware of it at the time, the girls there were really interested in me (and God knows I was interested in them), but it was my limiting beliefs that kept me from ever making a move. I would think to myself, “Why would a girl like that be interested in someone like me?”, which would typically lead me to believe there had to be something wrong with her — the only explanation was that, in some way, she had to be messed up in the head. I had girls that would come to my place after class to “take a nap” in my bed in between classes. They would say it was because they didn’t want to have to drive all the way back to their place, but we all know better (well, I didn’t at the time — but I was an idiot). Time and time again, opportunities would be served to me on a silver platter and not once did I ever lift up the dome and indulge my appetite.

When the weekends came around, instead of partying, I would typically just stay home and work on my art projects. Sometimes when I got a little antsy I would go to a bar (by myself,  because no one at my school was old enough to get in). At the bar, I would order a beer (which at the time I didn’t drink alcohol at all) and just do circles around the venue until last call — never talking to anybody.

Once I was at the mall and was approached by a woman. She said to me, “Hey, aren’t you that guy that goes to Knox Street Pub and just walks around all night?” Needless to say, I never went back there again.

Deep down I knew I was an awesome guy. I knew I had a lot to offer, but for some reason I was just unable to convey that to others (initially at least). My depression and religious views of women (pure, holy, untouchable creatures) were essentially just setting me up on a path to disaster.

Around this time I started chatting with a girl on MySpace. Super cute — former model. She must have really liked me because before I ever met her, I invited her to an open mic night I was doing one night, and she actually came. After the show she came back to my place. We watched Back To The Future and she offered mulitipul times to suck my cock. Me being the “southern gentleman” that I was, declined her offers — letting her know that there would be plenty of time for that later (I know, right? What the fuck was I thinking?). The reason being, because in my eyes sex was only for people in committed relationships. Three days later I made her my girlfriend and we quickly got down to business.

Remember the anxiety disorder I mentioned at the beginning? Well, no matter what you may or may not have heard about art school, it’s fucking hard and hella stressful. So, very soon after meeting this girl, I started getting very ill (which is a side effect of my condition). I had no choice but to drop out of school for the rest of the quarter, and she was right there to take care of me. I very well could have died, but after a couple of days in the Emergency Room and a few trips to a therapist, I was good to go.

A little later in the relationship, after I had recovered, the dynamic of the relationship started to change. Things were seemingly good, but there was a lot more arguing and some sort of constant power struggle that would go back and forth. Long story short, it became a very unhealthy relationship, yet, for some reason, we were making plans to move in with each other. Honestly, moving in together would have made my life a whole lot easier, but deep down it just didn’t feel right.

Finally, one night we were at a store, furniture shopping. That’s when it hit me, “This doesn’t feel right” and so right in the parking lot of the Rooms To Go, I ended things with her.

About a month passed when I got a call from one of my girl friends from school. She was currently working at a popular Irish bar in the city and, knowing I was hard up for cash, asked me if I’d be interesting in coming down for St. Pats day and do a little security work for the weekend. I of course said “yes” and quickly after they asked me to join the payroll and work on weekends.

This door guy job was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. It was now my job to converse and interact with people, inevitabley bringing me out of the funk I had been in for the last year and a half.

I received A LOT of attention from the ladies while working at this bar. Girls would come up to me, hit on me, we would exchange numbers and, if I was lucky, I would eventually go out with them. Keep in mind that at this point, I still had NO IDEA what I was doing. Nevertheless, it was fun and I had a great time working there.

In 2007, while working at the bar, I met Timmy Swagger (from Charisma Arts). He was really more on an acquaintance at this point and at the time, not only did I not know who he was or what he did, but I wasn’t even aware of this secret underground seduction community existed.

Even though Tim and I knew each other, our friendship came about purely by coincidence. I started dating this girl that I had met through another girl I had met at a random club during the first few months of me moving to Dallas.

One day I was on her MySpace profile browsing all the friends on her friends list. In the midst of all the different profile pictures, I notice Timmy’s, and mentioned to her how I knew him — because he would come by my bar from time to time. She then suggested that one night we should all go out as a group and have a drink. I’d love to say that it was a bromance from jump street between Tim and me, but, alas, this was not the case.

It wasn’t that we hated each other or anything like that, we just weren’t sure about each other. Nevertheless, we would continue to all hang out from time to time.

Eventually, my relationship with the girl (Timmy’s friend) kinda fizzled out, and for whatever reason, she and Tim also seemed to stop hanging out as much. Coincidently, at that time, Timmy was in the market for a new wingman. It was then I found out exactly who Tim was and what Tim did for a living and that’s when (after agreeing to a contract that stated I would not have a serious girlfriend for a year) he took me under his wing and the real learning began — and my life changed forever.

After around a year of constant practice (going out 6 nights a week) and growth, my skill set was formidable, and in September of 2008 I “officially” signed on as an apprentice with Charisma Arts (even though, technically, I had already been doing so for over a year) and set things up to begin instructing for the company at the first of the year (2009) in San Francisco, CA.

Long story short, some issues within the company (that I’m not legally allowed to talk about) arose and I decided that working for Charisma Arts probably wasn’t in my best interest.

It was around that same time that a buddy of mine, Troy Dizon, broke off from Charisma Arts and started up his own operation and asked me if I wanted to come instruct for his new company. I immediately signed on. I had a nice little ride with Troy’s company, but ultimately, in the end, we agreed that our styles were just too different to be packaged under the same umbrella.

After parting ways with Troy, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to continue teaching anymore, but I quickly came to realize that my services were still very much in demand. So, I’m happy to announce that I’m still here and I, as Bob Dylan put it best, “ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

It’s a beautiful thing.