Benni Fairchild

OVERVIEW

Benni is essentially just coasting along with life, getting high and spreading the love. Has a lot of trouble applying himself because he doesn't think he's good at much of anything and figures its easier not to try. 

BACKSTORY

Benni has not had an easy life.

He spent much of his childhood listening to his parents fighting and screaming at each other and spent equal parts wishing that they'd simply get divorced. Despite his wishing, he wasn't prepared for the day when his mother left them - left him.
For the longest time he felt that he must have done something wrong to make his mother not want him and though he waited for her to come back so he could apologize, she never did.
In the interim Benni would try to be good and do everything his father asked because he was scared that he would leave him too.

But his father, who was always mean, turned into an even meaner drunk and often took his temper out on Benni.
It didn't seem to matter what Benni did, he could never appease his father and he quickly learned to make himself scarce in the wake of his father's anger or to make himself small when things got especially physical.

As a result of the near constant abuse he faced at home, during elementary school he would alternate between two extremes of being quiet and unassuming or being the loud boisterous kid who told fantastical tales to the kids around him to explain away his scrapes and bruises - which somehow always looked too serious to pass off as simple playground accidents. He wasn't sure if any of the other kids ever believed his tales, but it made it easier for him to cope with the dawning realization that his bruised and battered body wasn't normal.

Come junior high he began acting out a bit more in school. Learning quickly that teachers and other adults were less likely to look at him with pity or concern in their eyes if he acted out - switching their concern for abuse into simply shrugging off as him getting into fights with other students. While this didn't earn him any favor with the teachers and bought him more detention time than any normal kid would care for - he relished in the extra hour after school. It was an extra hour that kept him out of the house and away from his father.
It was during this period of his life that Benni was first introduced to marijuana and from there it was easy for him to slip into smoking it everyday. It served as a new outlet and as an escapism in a time where things started to go down hill for him again, but it got him through his preteen years and the normal hardships of growing up.

By the time he was in highschool, things were at their darkest for him.
While his father drank heavily before, it seemed as though more often than not he could be found with bottle in hand and already three-sheets-to-the-wind.
After receiving a couple of severe beatings, one of which was due to his father finding his various drug paraphernalia, and another which sent him to A&E, he began trying to avoid going home as much as possible.
He did this by trying to stay with friends during the week or hitting party after party throughout the weekends.

It wasn't a sustainable lifestyle and it just served to foster the resentment he had towards his father, who was always ready for a fight that Benni didn't want to pick or endulge in.  
As a result Benni began acting out more in school, getting not only detentions but also a few notable suspensions. The latter of which he would spend the entirety of smoking bowl after bowl to stay blissed out of his mind.
Since he would often have so much free time on his hands and having a lifetime of experience of watching his father's alcoholic cycle, he would wait until his father was blacked out and would steal money in order to get tattoos/piercings and/or drugs.

During highscool, Benni found a lot of solace working in the mechanics shop both due to an affinity with building and taking things apart as well as seeing a father figure in the mechanics teacher, who never treated Benni any differently than the others and always pushed him to try harder. 

Despite being absent one way or another throughout highschool, he managed to barely pass which was good enough for him as he had no aspirations to do anything with his life.
In the year or so after his graduation he kept himself busy working a few odd jobs, when he could get hired, but mostly stayed deeply entrenched in his party lifestyle enjoying getting high or having sex as much as possible in the meantime.
But even in his late teens he was beginning to feel dissatisfied with his experiences and in order to try and feel something he began experimenting with different drugs - whatever was available at any given time.

Even though his life, to other seemed to be spiriling slowly out of control, he eventually saved up enough money to "officially" move out of his father's house and into Sunset Drive - taking over the old room of an acquaintance who had made it known he was moving out.

MISC FACTS

• Although Benni towers over his father, he has never defended himself against his father's abuse.
  
  • He can be somewhat of a pushover
  • Is terrified of losing his temper and hitting somebody.
• Despite his rough childhood, Benni is more or less kindhearted - a gentle giant, who has an especially soft spot for animals. 
• While he is rather intimidating in looks, he smiles easily and that is usually his default response
• Though he has no problem with other people drinking, he himself does not because he considers himself to be especially vulnerable to alcoholic tendecies.
  
  • Ironically, he does not see that addictive-personality mirrored in his drug use.
• Would love to be a mechanic, but doesn't apply to the trade school because he believes that his grades in highschool are too low. Despite acing the mechanics shop course.
  • Can usually be found tinkering away at small projects.