Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in monkeybucket's LiveJournal:

Saturday, December 30th, 2006
1:04 pm	Capter 2: The New Digs, Another Nose Dive and Finding Phase I think I moved into my Dad's place during the school year. I should point out that up until now, I was used to having my own room and no siblings to have to share with. This was going to be a new concept for me. I would be sharing a bedroom now with my step brother Ray. The room had seperate entry door to from the outside. The bedroom had all these trouphies and the walls were decorated with Hawaiian stuff. The whole apartment had a Hawaiian theme. My step mother Becky,was Hawaiian. Ray and my half brother Bart were both half. The Island theme carried over into the clothes as well. For special occassions, we all wore the same Hawaiian print shirt. There were closets full of these things. I'm not sure, but I think Becky actually used to make these shirts and her dresses herself. She seemed angry all the time, even when she was happy. My dad told me that she was going through the change of life, and that some women go through it for years and never come out of it. He was waiting for he to come out of it, but didn't think she ever would. When it came to all matters inside the house, she was the boss. You didn't question it, and if you did, you found out. At some points her logic was from some other planet. I never really got just where this woman was coming from. It seems she was always cooking, cleaning, sewing, babysitting and drinking. Both she and my dad liked their beer. They were on a bowling league, which was basically an excuse to drink more beer. Both she and my dad seemed to be living in seperate worlds that sort of met at dinner time during the week, and sort of bumped into each other on the weekends. It didn't seem like they talked in the same way my mom and Al did. Their conversations seemed to consist of her barking out an incomplete sentence in pigeon english so as one had no idea what the hell she was talking about, with my dad responding with a loud "What?" This might go on a few times before he could finally figure out what it was she was trying to say. The usual response was "Ten four" or if it was something that was interupting his game "Oh goddamit, alright!" Hey always refered to her as "The Crazy Hawaiian". I remember when I first moved in and he told me that she ran the house her own way, and if she wants it done such and such a way you were better off doing it because you didn't want to have that crazy hawaiian on your ass, because then she gets on everybody else's ass too, and its nag nag nag nag( he would move his hand in a yapping motion.). I was now living in Hawthorne, and still going to my high school in Carson. So since I had my license, I would drop my dad off at work and take the car to school, or if Ray needed the car, he would drop me off. This was a concept I wasn't used to. When I lived with my mom and Al, I never got to use the car. In some ways, I felt I had been let out of a cage in another country. I didn't really feel like I fit in there. My dad knew I had issues, and he was trying to reach out the best he could, but even he admitted he wasn't sure how to deal with them. He was sure that if I had gotten into football, none of this would've been happening. Ray played football, and he turned out okay. I began to realize that I didn't really know my dad very well. I could see where the previous two divorces had taken their toll on the man. He was still very bitter about the divorce he went through with my mom. He didn't have a very high opinion of Al, and didn't mind saying it publicly. For some reason he thought Al had all kinds of money, because of the house and the pool. He would ask me where Al got all this money from. He told me that at some point during the divorce, he had met or had a conversation with Al's then wife (soon to be ex wife), and she told him he had all this money stashed away. Al could squeeze blood from a turnip, and if he had any big money stashed anywhere, it sure wasn't obvious to me or my mom. At one point my half brother Bryan from my dad's second marriage came to visit for a few days. I hadn't seen him since he was two, and now he was around 8 or 9. I could see how he took after his mom. I remember taking him back home to Riverside and seeing my ex step mother and the guy that she left my dad for. I wouldn't see my brother Bryan for another 8 or 9 years. Letting me have a car for the whole day was probably not a good move for a kid who was unstable, smoked pot, prone to ditching school anyway, had no concept of sharing with siblings and hopelessly crazy for a guy named Jack. To my then deranged thinking, this was yet another tool to be used to bring me closer to the man of my obsession. I didn't waste any time with that either. Ray got me on at the Jack in the Box where he worked. The guy that managed the place had a few of Ray's football buddies working for him. This dude was a bit of a player and drove around in a Porche. All he talked about was getting laid. He flirted with all the cute beach type women that showed up at the place. That paper chefs cap and shirt with the Jack in the Box logo on it must have really impressed the ladies. "Hey baby, I run this place, wanna ride in Porche?" I guess he did pretty good in that area. I remember one night he came in and got all these cheese slices because he had some woman in the car that wanted him to melt all this cheese on her or something. Ray and his buddies got another job, and I ended up working there with some strange hours. I would work two night during the week from 6 to 12, and go to school in the morning. Then on the on Friday I would go in at 6PM and work till 10AM the next morning. My dad or Ray would drop me off, and pick me up in the morning. I would come back later evening and repeat the same hours. I don't know how they worked that out on paper in accounting, but for a kid in high school I was making some money. I didn't go to any parties because I was working on the weekends, but I was building up a nice record collection. There was one time Ray taught me a lesson about payback. He had a janitorial job in Ingelwood and I needed to use the car to go up town for the premier of "Frank Zappa's 200 Motels". After the movie I was then supposed to come back and pick him up. I forgot to pick him up and he had to walk home, which was a few miles. That weekend when I was expecting to be picked up from work, nobody showed up and I called over at the house. My dad told me Ray had the car. I told him I had been waiting for about an hour. He said, maybe he is paying you back for leaving him stranded the other night. He started laughing, and said "It looks like you will be walking home today." He couldn't stop laughing. Jack was having problems at home, and had run away a couple of times. He would tell us all stories of his parents using physical force and beating him. He decided to run away again. I wanted to help him get away from these people that were causing him all this mental anguish. I was hoping he could come stay with me, but my dad told me to stay out of it. I didn't want him to run away and be out of my life. I just knew if I could help him, he would see how much I cared, and maybe then he would come around to my way of thinking (stop rolling your eyes!). Somehow he envisioned that I might help him get his big Hammond B3 organ, Leslie cabnet, and Grand piano out his parents house as well. I wasn't going to be doing any of that. I would however take him up to Griffith Park. He was a former boy scout, so he knew how to take care of himself in the wilderness. So I drove him up there and dropped him off. I was worried that I would never see him again. I actually believed he would head up to Oregon or something. The next day his parents were worried shitless, and started looking for him and calling around. They were like any other parent whose kid turns up missing, frantic, and prone to doing things outside of their normal selves to get their kid back. This would include calling around to his friend's houses and stating they were officer so and so from the police department, to the dad showing up at the house in person ready to fight whoever. So one night, my dad woke me up and said "You need to get up, that friend of yours ran away and his parents are coming over with the police because they think you helped him run away." It was around eleven at night. I remember we were all sitting in the living room waiting for them to show up. My dad asked me "Just be honest, did you help him run away?" I had to tell him the truth, and saw that he was already pretty sure he knew the answer and was very disappointed. "Goddammit! I told you to stay out of it." I remember the look on his face when he asked me the next question. "This doesn't have anything to do with that other thing does it, that fruity business. Because you aren't like that, you think you are, but you aren't." I told him yes that it had everything to do with that. Becky looked confused and she was. "What fruit ting?" "Ah he thinks he might be fruity." He told her. He clearly didn't want to be having any conversation in that area. "You like boys? You need to find a girl. Ask Ray. He find girl for you." My dad just shook his head angrily "Goddamit, this is your mother's fault. If I could of had you with me, we wouldn't be going through any of this. You know you might have to go jail tonight?" It got to be after midnight and nobody had called or come to the door. Dad just told us all to go back to bed, and we would deal with it when ever they showed up. No one ever did, but now there was tension that wasn't there before. Eventually it blew over, and Jack's parents consented to him staying with this other guy named Ron. I thought this was funny, because Ron was a way bigger stoner than I ever was. He was more into psychedelics. The good part was that I could at least visit. Jack and Ron told me they were going to hitch hike up to the Whiskey to see what at that time was probably the only all female rock band around called Fanny. I had never been to the Whiskey, and had wanted to see this band, so I tagged along. First we had to hang around in front of a liquour store and find an adult that would buy us three pint bottles of Bacardi 151 for the trip. That turned out to be pretty easy apparently. I was more of a pot smoker and never really did much in the way of alcohol at this point. We ended up getting a ride from these Somoan girls who were going to the Forum to see Grand Funk. We decided that if we could get tickets for Grand Funk at the box office, we would do that instead. There was a time Grand Funk tickets would have been sold out, but I guess by this point, interest was starting to subside for this band. Our seats were way up in the nose bleed section, and we were pretty much the only ones up there. The three of us were pretty much drunk, and that was a new experience for me. I remember at one point we noticed some men in uniform coming up our way and decided we better ditch our Bacardi bottles, and tried to kick them discreetly away from where we were as to eliminate all signs of possession. In the process, the bottles got showed just enough to make a loud audible clink clink clink noise down the concrete steps. We instantly froze, and felt very busted, and nobody noticed. I don't remember much about the concert other than when we were leaving and trying not to look wasted amongst the crowd. I remember we got out to the parking lot and bumped into the same Somoan girls that brought us there, and they dropped us off at the Jack in the Box that I worked at. I called the house and my dad said my brother Ray would come pick me up there after he got off work. Ron and Jack were tired and didn't feel like hitching all the way home. Ron tried calling people to come pick them up. We waited out in the back of the parking lot, so as not to attract the attention of the police by our wastedness. It was cold out, so we covered ourselves with our jackets. Jack was pretty much passed out. That was a typical state for him most of the time. Ron had done something else besides the Barcardi we were drinking, so he was sort of walking around or something. I think he may have been trying to see if he could find someone to pick them up. For some reason, Jack and I were pretty much there by ourselves. Here is one of those moments in my life, I would wish I could take back and start over, minus the clouded judgment. As Jack was laying there passed out, I happened to notice that it looked like he was hard. I wasn't sure, but it looked like it. I put my jacket more over him to hide my actions, and let my fingers do the walking. Sure as shit, it was just as I thought. It was cold out, so I figured I would just keep my hand over it so he won't be cold there. Thats right around the time I noticed Ron standing there watching what I was doing with a look of great disgust on his face. He didn't say anything, and I quickly took my hand away. I knew I was in deep shit now. That little move caused me decades of mental anguish, guilt(hey I was guilty!)and anger at myself. Soon, my brother Ray showed up. He was tired and wanted to go home, and annoyed that I was drunk, and even more annoyed when I asked him if he could drive those guys back home. I was hoping that if I got them home, the hammer wouldn't come down so hard. That was not to be. The next day at school I was hoping that there was a possiblility that maybe Ron was too spaced out and didn't see anything and it was all just my paranoia. It wasn't my paranoia. Another friend of ours told me that Ron told Jack what happened and that Jack didn't want to be around me. I fucked up big time. I betrayed the trust of a close friend. I just wanted to die. I knew this shit wasn't going away because this time I was actually guilty. How could copping a feel be so devastating? Before all this took place, I should mention Jim had started going to our school and was hanging around with this same group. We had patched things up and were friends again. When he got word of this he just shook his head and said "I don't know what to tell you, you fucked up again, big time." In spite of that and our previous history, he wasn't afraid to be around me, even after this incident. He was dealing with his own issues. His parents were now divorced, and he was into the habit of breaking into friend's houses and stealing their musical gear. It seemed that whole group had become a regular gypsy den of thieves and drug dealers. I was an emotional wreck, and just stepped away from this group once again. Every once in a while someone from that group would come up to me and see how I was doing. I thought they all knew what had happened. Years later I found out that not that many people actually did know about it. There was one guy who was a loner type that used to sit and write. His name was Alan. He was this tall red haired guy who played string bass in the orchestra. He was part of the big band fiasco of the previous year. He was older, very intellectual, and had great wisdom. He noticed something was up with me, and took an interest. I told him I did something really stupid and because of it, I lost all my friends. He said "I didn't think you considered those users your friends." He went on to tell me that he thought I was more original than most of them, and the whole reason he liked me was because I wasn't different than them. I told him that now I was branded a faggot, and it was probably going to be true. He told me that all the jocks thought he was a fag because he stopped playing basketball to do music. He just let them think what ever the fuck they wanted to think. "I like to fuck girls, and if they don't think I do, who gives a fuck what they think?" He lived in a small mobile home park across the street from the school, and invited me over to hang out with him. "I'm working on some music, and you play guitar, come over and lets work on it. I have this other girl coming over who plays piano and flute, maybe we can get something going. It'll take your mind off all this other bullshit." I showed up at Alan's place after school and had my nylon stringed acoustic with me. He introduced me to this other girl who was there named Cheryl. She was a short plump girl that played in the orchestra. She played a bit of piano, cello, flute, and glockenspiel. We started playing around with an intro he had written for a piece titled "Lamentation". It was in a minor key and we worked it out in a chord chart I could follow. The two of them could sight read. I was taking a class in Harmony, so I could read notes, but not read and play at the same time. Alan was actually a member of some Los Angeles based orchestra at the time, but I don't remember which one. We were both big Zappa fans, but Alan was the one who really pointed out the amazing orchestral work that was going on in his music. I was trying to learn how to play some of the stuff on the "Uncle Meat" album, and was discovering suspended chords. So we composed a simple piece where I could play this simple Dsus chord thing, while they did this classical sounding free for all with flute and piano. We called it "One Thousand Telephones In America All Ringing At Once". We used to smoke dope sometimes before practicing, and on one of these occassions I wrote this thing called "From The Bottom Up" that we put to music. It was this little thing about being in picked up by a tornado and all the other things that one might see whizzing by. We actually played our compositions at some musical group function, and got applause. I was pretty proud of this little ensemble. It was like magic the way it happened. It was one of those things that isn't even cool till after you do it. It seemed like everybody I knew was getting laid on a regular basis but me. I still thought I was in a phase, because my dad told me I was. I had this habit of showing up at friend's houses at the wrong time. I remember knocking on Alan's door once, and he would open the side window and say "Goddamit Zit, I have so and so over here and I was just getting ready to cum!" Nothing like being at the right place at the right time. I still would visit my mom and Al on occassion. That always proved to be strange and awkward at best. I actually would spend a lot more time down the street from them jamming with Steve. He managed to buy himself a portable Hammond B3, and was bulding a Leslie cabinet. Steve and I were planning on doing another band thing with Bunk. Steve was also going away to college, but his younger brother Ivan and I had become friends as well. Ivan used to hang out with the family across from my mom and Al, and was getting into smoking pot. So we had something in common there, as I always in my great wisdom, carried a lid in my guitar case. I was also still trying to dress myself in the style of Jimi Hendrix. I would go up to the suplus stores on Hawthorne boulevard where they always had low budget but interesting clothes like oddly striped flared pants and floral shirts with big colors. I would find scarves and thread them through my belt loops and sometimes tuck the pants legs into my boots. Some people used to refer to it as my pirate period. An old friend reminded me recently of the time I was wearing some such attire and he and I were standing around talking at school and this one conservative type teacher came up and and asked me why I was dressed up like a fag? My friend tells me I responded without missing a beat with "maybe I am." One day Ivan and I were talking about anything and everything, and it was something about what he was saying that instantly made me see him in a different light. Something that made me think in the back of my mind that we both might just be in the same "phase". I can remember the that it was almost sundown and we were standing in front of his garage. One of us said something that made us both really step back and look at each other for a moment. I had to leave to pick my dad up from work, but I remember that look, and the smile that came after that seemed to linger till I drove off. I didn't dwell on it though, because that sort of shit had caused me enough grief already. The funny thing was I hadn't ever looked at Ivan that way before, so it came as a bit of surprise when that happened. A day or so later I was over there and Ivan and I were listening to some music and we ended up wrestling around, and one thing led to another and all of a sudden there we were. It was that look again. It was that smile again. My hand was right where it wasn't supposed to be, and he was not pushing it away. Then I noticed his hand was where it wasn't supposed to be. We both looked at each other as if to say welcome to the first phase. This was followed by the first kiss that really ever mattered, and went full throttle into phases 2 and 3. We were both pretty amazed by that moment, and quickly reassured ourselves that it didn't mean we were queer. I was still thinking this was a phase, but at least we can have fun with it till the straight thing finally kicks in. I mean why waste a perfectly good phase right? Use it to its fullest potential. I at least knew now, that if the other one never kicked in, that this would work for me just fine. As it turned out, Ivan had been down this road a couple of times before back in Pennsylvania. So it was probably no surprise that I showed up after school the next day for round two. This went on for a while, and almost became a before and after school routine. Sometimes we would both ditch school and find ways to entertain ourselves through out the day. The beauty of it was nobody knew, yet people almost walked in on us a couple of times. Now I started developing strong feelings for him. So much so that Jack would'nt ever have to worry about being my obssession ever again. I had moved on. At this point I was inspired by the movie Mick Jagger was in called "Performance", and the song "Triad" by David Crosby. I thought it might be fun to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. Three just seemed to be a good number, and if everybody was on the same page, it seemed like it could work. I mean David Crosby wrote it, and Grace Slick even did the song on the Jefferson Airplane album "Crown of Creation". There must be something to it, right? Ivan seemed to be up for that idea as well. The thing was, Ivan had that David Cassidy Tiger Beat quality going for him, and he didn't need me to help him get girls. They were all pawing at his door as it was. I found out that I had girls pawing at my door as well, I was just oblivious to it (make that totally clueless!). I suppose it would have helped if there was some actual interest on my part in that area. Enter Hope. Around the time I started hanging around with Alan, I started hanging around with Hope as well. She origianlly hung out with some of the original group, but she was her own person, and didn't care for a lot of those people. I didn't know that she had issues. Everyone thought she was strange, and she was. I happened to like that quality, because I'm pretty strange myself. So if you are reading this and consider yourself strange, and one of society's little outcasts, we are probably going to get along great. Hope was into all kinds of interesting shit. Her parents were right wing Christian fundamentalists. Her dad reminded me of Pat Robertson. He had that strange smile that those sorts of people always seem to have. Her mom was an alcoholic and took prescriptions for all sorts of things. Faye told me that when here mom would get tired of her dad's lecturing, she would drug his food so he would go to sleep.They had this old player piano in the family room and all these rolls of music they could load into it. So when ever Hope had friends over, it wasn't uncommon for her dad to come out and entertain us all by popping in a music roll and sing along to one of those wonderful ditties from yesteryear and act like he was actually playing the thing himself. You could hear this same crap at Shakey's Pizza Parlours everywhere. Not only that, you could have pizza and not be creeped out by this Pat Robertson looking guy with the weird religous smile singing to you, while Hope would be blushing with embarassment and lightly pleading for him to stop. Hope's dad was an ex military guy and very patriotic, and he and his wife would open thier home to military guys on leave. Hope used to tell me that some of these guys would end up getting drunk and end up crawling into her bed with her and try to get her to put out. This is the sort of trauma this girl was subjected to, so it was no wonder she was a bit off. She and I used to go out to this ice cream place called Farrell's. We would order this huge mess called a Mount Whitney, that had something like seven scoups of ice cream and all these toppings. We would dig into this thing with the serving spoons istead of the regular spoons. This was the type of place where when you were finished the servers would come marching by ringing bells and making all sorts of racket, make you stand up after eating this thing so you could make a nice loud obnoxious pig noise for everyone in the room, and they would give you a ribbon for it. Their regular dish was a thing called a Trough that only had 2 or 3 scoops. This other thing was a monster. We would go there and let people know we were there. We did goofy shit everywhere we went. It seems like everyone that took the beginning psychiatry class in school always wanted to use either one of us for a study. I used to wear that one like a badge of honor. Hope used to go out with me and Ivan on occassion. There was another time Hope and I went on a double date with Ivan's brother Steve and this girl that had to get back home early. Hope and I also double dated with Bunk and this other girl he was seeing, when he sat in with Richard Berry. At this point, I actually got to sit in with Richard Berry and his band once. I was beginning to thing I was a hot shit guitartist because I knew how to play some Zepplin and Hendrix songs. When I sat in with him they were going to play a song I didn't know called "In The Ghetto". When Richard saw I didn't know the song, he just whispered over to me, just do an E minor and clank your strings. Then he gave me a chance to do my crappy solo with lots of wrong notes. I didn't care, I got to play with the guy that wrote "Louie Louie". I was thinking I was on my way to the big time now. I just played the Jolly Roger with Richard Berry. I even found myself talking to him after the bar closed about playing full time with him. I should probably mention, I was going to this bar and I was only 17. I looked older, so they never carded me. I didn't drink alcohol anyway. I had my pot in my guitar case. Another highlight around this period was that I got to see Led Zepplin at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood. I remember walking to this gig some geat distance, and walking home. This would have been right before they released their third album. I remember being surprised that their was no opening band. The lights dimmed and came back on and it was them. They started out with "Immigrant Song" and did this set that just had me spellbound. They had two intermissions, and I think the whole concert lasted about 3 or 4 hours. There was a bootleg out of this show called "Live On Blueberry Hill". I remember them doing the old Fats Domino classic "Blueberry Hill" for one of their encores. Like many boys then and now, I couldn't take my eyes off of Jimmy Page. During my walk home to Hawthorne from this show, I would be doing air guitar riffs and windmill hand motions. To say Mr. Page made an impression on me would be an understatement. I also managed to catch Sly and the Family Stone at Long Beach Arena. At that time, I was trying to see if I could start something with these other two guys that was influenced by Sly, Hendrix and Zepplin with a bit of jazz tossed in for good measure. We were down in Long Beach and noticed Sly was playing. We checked at the box office to see if tickets were still available, and they were. So we got tickets at the last minute, and got to hear part of the sound check as well. We couldn't believe we were able to get tickets so easily. We were excited as fuck. Mountian was the opening band. None of us knew who they were before they went on, but we never forgot them after they played. Leslie West is still one of my favorite guitar slingers. They kicked off with "Mississippi Queen" and rocked us shitfaced. Then we sat and waited for Sly and the Family Stone to come on. We waited, and we waited. They said there was a delay due to technical difficulties, but years later we would come to find out about Sly's problem with drugs. I think we waited an hour and half before the band came on. When they came out, they were fucking awesome. Sly wanted to see the audience, so about three quarters of the show was done with all the house lights on. From that point on everybody was standing and dancing. To this day, that was one of the most amazing shows I have seen. No fireworks, flash powder, light shows, lasers. Just the band doing what they did best, and making everybody in the room feel it. Sheer fucking awesome! I started trying to build up my equipment so I started hitting the pawn shops on Hawthorne boulevard, and would always be checking out the used gear at Hogan's House of Music. I did buy a John Lennon style Rickenbacher there once for $75 cash. One of the pick ups needed to be replaced, but it had the other two. I also picked up an old echo plex (tape echo) at one of the pawn shops for $40. It needed a new tape, and some other adjustments. It had tubes in it, and was sort of dusty and noisy. I still didn't have an amp though. I now had two electric guitars, a classical, an electric lap steel, and no amp. It always seemed that when I was ready to get an amp, something would come up and make it impossible to get. I started to equate girls and amplifiers as being illusive only to me. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
2:03 pm	Chapter 2: Surviving My Own Stupidity I thought I had been handed down what would be my life sentence. No band and now I was sure everyone had heard about my latest blunder. I lost all interest in everything. I was basically a C average student to begin with. Math and Science were my absolute worst subjects. I had always hated Gym class, because I wasn't interested in sports at all. I was a big kid, so the football coach wanted me to go out for football. Of all the sports you could name, that was the one I hated the most. I told him no, and that made me a big pussy in his eyes. That was okay, because to this day I still hate that guy. I was a pretty good runner, and they also wanted me to go out for track, and again, I wasn't interested in any of that shit. My dad figured I just needed some nudging in that direction and for Christmas, gave me a choice between football shoes or track shoes. I picked track shoes, and when I got them, my mom took me back to the store and we exchanged them for a jean jacket. My dad was disappointed. He kept insisting that if I would have at least tried it, I would start to get some much needed confidence. To this day I still find it illusive. It always seems that when it is my turn to have some, it explodes in my face some how. So I've learned to do without. Its a pretty shitty way to go through life, and though I don't have much myself, I try to help other people find it in themselves just so they won't have to go through life feeling like I always seem to. If I can achieve that, then I what I get back is sort of the methadone version of something like confidence. It isn't the real thing and it isn't long lasting, but it is better than nothing. At this point I started to become a loner. I didn't fit in with any of the other groups. There was this group of kids from French class that I sort of hung around with, but I mentally and emotionally I was off somewhere else. I just figured it would be a matter of time before they started hearing the rumors. By this time I was starting to get any idea of what the word fag meant. Everyone always talked about this one guy in school named John who wore make up and was very flamboyant. They had to give him a private locker for gym class because nobody wanted to be around him. One day we were at an assembly on the football field that took up the bleachers on both sides of the field. Somebody near me pointed to the bleachers across the way and said "Look, theres John!" I had heard so much about him that I asked where, and one girl pointed to the area of the bleachers where people were sliding way over in all directions as if the dude were a hornet's nest. "Over there where nobody is." she said laughing. I could see this tall lanky figure swishing his way over to sit in the middle of the this big ever widening circle of emptiness. He was waving at everybody and talking shit right back at them. I have to say I was rather impressed. The other thing I found interesting was the reason he didn't get his ass kicked on a regular basis was because he hung around with all these Samoans. We always had a large Pacific Islander population in this area. To this day, I never learned why they protected him, but they did, and I thought that was pretty cool. One day at lunch period, I was standing around with the French class people, and one of the guys said "You want to meet John, here he comes." John came swishing over, and he had this other little guy that was also a queen, and his side kick. John was the shit, and this other guy was living in his shadow. This dude had pancake makeup caked on, and did the whole eye make up thing. You didn't really have a conversation with John, he was more of a performance. He would do his over the top queen bit to let everyone know he was there, and excuse himself to go call some girl over on the other side of the campus a bitch. This was the first out gay person I had ever met. It also left me feeling rather puzzled, because it left me wondering that if I am truly queer, am I supposed to look and act like that? School was winding down and we were coming on to Summer vacation. I wasn't looking forward to that either,as I didn't like living at home anymore than I liked being at school. The only difference between school and home was there were more people to fuck with me at school. Summer was going to be spent working at the catering house and cleaning the goddamn pool that I hated so much and pulling weeds, neither of which I seemed to do to anybody's standards of perfection. Yes, I did reside there, but I didn't think of it as living. I was also being reminded on a regular basis as to whose roof I was living under, as if he was doing me this gigantic favor. During the school year I did manage to meet some other artsy musician types who knew of and liked Frank Zappa. There was this one guy named Eric who played drums in this band that we played with. He was sort of an asshole, but he was a pretty talented musician and we shared a lot of the same tastes musically. I had previously taken guitar lessons twice where other people paid for them, and both times they never met with Al's standards of what music was. This time, since I was working at the catering house and making my own money, I figured I would pay for my own lessons on my terms. Jim and Tom had learned a bunch of stuff from Brad and taught it to me before we abruptly parted company due to my foolishness. Brad had also taught me some stuff. There was a little music shop in Torrance called Marshall Music. It was about a mile from the catering house, so I could walk there. I pretty much walked everywhere anyway. I started taking guitar lessons from this jazz guy there who had this nice Gibson L5. He handed me a copy of The Mickey Baker Jazz Book, and started teaching me all these jazz chords. I didn't really understand what to do with these chords, but I was impressed with their complexity. Since I wasn't sure how long I was going to be able to take lessons for, time was of the essence, and the one thing I wanted to come away from there knowing was the version of "Greensleeves" on the Jeff Beck album "Truth". Brad had turned me on to that album one day. He found me walking in the rain after school one day, after all the bullshit happened between me and Jim. He took me over to his place, and had this cool stereo system with nice speakers. By this time Al had let him go, and he felt sorry for me. One, because he knew how Al was, and two, he knew how much I really wanted to be in a band. He asked me if I had ever listened to Jeff Beck? I didn't know who Jeff Beck was. He gave me the run down, and told me to just listen to this album, and he would take me home afterwards. At that time I had been listening to Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin, The Rolling Stones, Mothers of Invention, and The Beatles. This album really expanded my horizons. I wanted to learn to play some of this stuff. My guitar teacher was familiar with Jeff Beck, and wrote it out as a chord chart for me. This was the first really impressive thing I learned to play on the guitar. I also learned all these jazz chords that I actually knew the names of, but didn't know what to do with. I ran out of money and stopped just as he had given me the chord chart for something called "Green Dolphin Street". At this same time, I managed to put a used Les Paul Jr. they had in the store, on lay-a-way. It was $175. I made payments all summer to get this guitar. It was from the 50's, had one black soap bar P90 pickup, and didn't stay in tune very well, but it was a Gibson, and it said Les Paul on it. When I finally got the guitar paid off, I was beaming. I walked back to the catering house and showed Al. He seemed surprised it was an electric guitar. He asked me why I got an electric one that I had to plug in to an amp. How is anybody going to hear me play it? I told him I was going to save up for an amp next. Thats when he told me I wasn't bringing an amp into his house. At that moment you could just feel the love in the room. Then when we got home he started in on my mom. "Why didn't you tell me ol sport here was buyin' an electric guitar? He wasted his money now." Then he looked at me and said if it was him, he would go back down to the store and try to get his money back. I told him I wanted to keep it anyway. Then he told me "Alright, if you want to waste your money like that, fine, but don't think for a minute you are going to be bringing an amplifier into this house!" As if that wasn't enough, he also had to throw in " I don't like this Beatles and all this other crap you listen to. To me its just noise, and your lucky I even let you listen to it at all." Home is where the heart is. There was a point my dad tried to intervene and suggest to my mom that since I was interested in music, maybe they could work together and support it. Al wasn't going to have any part of it. So now I had this guitar, and occasionally I could go over to somebody's house that had an amp and plug it in. I did take it over to my dad's apartment a couple of times. My dad played a bit of guitar and new Gibson was a top name brand, and he knew who Les Paul was. He also seemed to like that I could do some fast (but very sloppy) fret work. He would tell the neighbors that I played better than he did. He didn't like that rock and roll stuff I did, and he didn't particularly like the loud music or the long hair, but he was happy I was taking an interest in something that he sort of agreed with. He would have been a lot happier though if it was football. By this time my brother Ray was playing high school football, and even had a cheerleader girlfriend. So thankfully Ray was there to fill the football void for me. I also managed to see Jimi Hendrix again at the Forum. I walked there from my grandparents house and walked back after wards. That was about a 5 mile walk one way. I even remember the opening band was Ballin' Jack, and the second band was The Buddy Miles Express. I was a big Hendrix fan at that point. I used to try to dress like him as much as I could get away with. I found that Hendrix could get away with it better than I could. I had this little reputation that was circulating, and so if I wore a scarf or jewelry it meant something else. Oh yeah, and Al didn't like that shit either. I attended some of the school dances during the summer that had all the local bands. The band that I was in broke up after I left, and Jack was playing with some other people. I tried starting something up with some other people, but I didn't have an amp, so that left me very limited. I had envisioned starting a band and calling it California. At one of these dances I met up with Eric, the drummer from the one band we played with. I told him the band name I was contemplating using, and the next time I saw him, he was in a new band called California. I also remember telling him and some other people that I had a Marshall amp just so they would take me as a serious musician. The first thing Eric said was I should let him borrow it. He was always borrowing shit from people. Especially cymbals. It seems all these drummers would borrow each other's cymbals, and try to return other cymbals that were cracked and what not. The other thing I noticed about drummers in particular was they all seemed to have an attitude. I think the reason may have been, that there were all these guitar players, and only a few drummers. Eric's old band used to use these Heathkit amps. These were amp kits that you assembled yourself. He actually gave me one of the Heathkit amp heads he didn't want anymore, and an old speaker horn. He figured out I didn't have an amp, and I met Al, so I guess he felt sorry for me. So I came home with this amp head and speaker horn and told Al I was keeping if for Eric. That wasn't going to fly with him, and he told me to keep it for him in the garage, and he better come pick it up soon, or it was going in the trash. By this time I started hanging around with this guy that played organ down the street. His parents were Hungarian and they had just moved from Pennsylvania. His name was Steve and he had a younger brother named Ivan (not his real name.). Steve went to a different high school in the area, and was one of those straight A type students. He was into electronics, so I took the amp head over to his house as we were talking about putting a band together. He had been in a band on the east coast, and he could play stuff like "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and all the other fancy organ songs of the moment. The other cool thing was Al and my mom seemed to like him. The new school year was beginning, and I was going back cool. I had already given myself a freaky name. I started introducing myself to the hippie types, and the people around the music room as Captain Zit. I didn't have any zits, but it sounded freakish and amuzing and people would remember it. To this day, people remember that name. Oh yeah, by this time I had told my grand parents, Dad, Mom and Al that I was pretty sure I was queer. My dad told me I wasn't, and that it was just a phase, and if I went out for football, I would snap out of it. My mom told me she would never accept it, Al asked me if I had ever been touched by anybody, and my grandparents were very concerned that there was something wrong with my head. So I went to a shrink for a little while. He asked me all sorts of questions and showed me some really bad porno magazines so I could point out to him what I thought I liked, and possibly try to explain to him what I might do if the oportunity presented itself. The thing that really made me want to stop going was when he asked if I could pretend he was this Jack person that I was interested in. Not in a million billion years. Hell I still didn't know anything about sex, other than how babies got made. The only real advice I got from this guy was to go out and find out from first hand experience. He also said a lot of guys go through this phase at my age. All that time and money and that was the best this dude could come up with? I wasn't very impressed. So now I learned that what I was going through was a phase a lot of guys my age went through. My thinking on this was that maybe this could be a fun phase till interest in girls kicks in. I was up for it. No matter what my dad had said about football, I didn't like it and I hated the guy that coached it even more, so I wasn't going to be taking the football "cure" any time soon. I was up for any takers that wanted to play along with the phase, or help me out of it. Now came the hard part, I was clueless how this game was played, and I already had this reputation with some guys, even though I hadn't been with anybody in that way. Some of the jock types would say shit to me when they passed me in the hall or in gym class. "Are you really a sissy?" At some point late in the summer, Jack and I started talking a little bit. We had both started smoking pot, so we had another common interest. He was in another band, that was constantly gigging. There was a point where I did punch him out when it came to my attention that he and the drummer of his new band were telling the memmbers of the band I was trying to start that I was queer. Another incident that took place around then was when a car load people pulled up and got out and started to give me shit. I had my Les Paul with me, and I was on foot. I needed to get me and my guitar out of that situation fast. I let my size work for me, and knocked all three of these guys on their ass, and grabbed my guitar and ran to my drummers house. From then on I had to start taking different routes home, and I learned to keep my guard up. That thing about turning the other cheek, wasn't gonna fly with me anymore. That day, I learned by accident, that I could do some damage if I had to. I was trying to hang on to the peace and love vibe that we supposedly had going on around us. I should have listened to Zappa more deeply than I did back then. That man was telling me it was all bullshit, and all I was hearing was the funny noises in his music. Better late than never I guess. I had some neighbors across from my parents house who used to deal. It turned out my friend's dad used to sell whites. These were uppers and you used to buy them by the roll or a jar. Truckers used to do these things to stay awake for the long hauls. The dad wasn't very particular who he sold them to, and it became pretty obvious to the rest of the neighborhood what was going on as well. The cops were always there, and they never seemed to find anything. Soon the oldest son that we used to play street football with was dealing not only whites, but pot, acid and just about anything else. All of us kids were getting stoned on one thing or another with the exception of the new guy Steve. He didn't do drugs, but he did like to drink from time to time. I remember at some point meeting up with a group of hippie stoner types while discussing music on these benches near the gym class. One of them heard me talking about Zappa and this got the attention of the other guys. I remember one of them saying "I think I like this guy, he sort of twisted like me!" His name was Homer and we seemed to hit it off instantly. The other guys next to him was a guy named John, and another guy named Lee. Homer introduced me to another strange artsy type girl named Hope. Hope was one of those girls that definetly was marching to the beat of her own drum. I knew this other girl that for a brief period was my girlfriend. Her name was Debbie. She was very much a hippie chick. One time I was sitting on her bed with her, and she had this James Taylor album going on in the background, and lit some incense, and took a birth control pill in front of me. I was completely oblivious to the obvious, and told her I needed to be heading home. She was pissed off at me for quite a while and I just couldn't figure out why. This ended up terminating our so called romance. Homer came up to me one morning and told me he and some friends were going to meet at the first break at this one tree in the quad area of the schcol over near the stage area. I got there and found Homer and Fay, soon came John, then Lee, then Jack, then Eric, then Debbie. There may have been some others, but I really don't remember. So far, these were all the people that to my mind seemed cool and different. We were sort of the hippie type outcasts. Soon other like minded people came aboard our freaky little tree commune. One was a guy named Frank who used to draw these victorian houses for people he liked. He had this awkward freakish quality and these big eyes. On closer inspection, most of these people were musicians and artists. Jack and I seemed to be getting along again, which made me happy. I think because we both shared much admiration for Eric and his band California. Jack sometimes sat in with them. Jack was in a new band that did Chicago covers. My interest in him hadn't diminished at all. If anything, he looked even hotter to me. My secret plan was that he already knew I went through that phase, and if he was interested in exploring that phase, he could make the first move. I did however try my best to make sure I would be where ever he was if that thought should ocur to him. Meantime, I was going to make sure I was seen with girls. Then maybe the jocks who fucked with me the previous year would back off. With this band of gypsies I had started to experiment with acid and mescaline. I remember getting these hundred hits of acid for $10 on graph paper. I remember it being rather speedy. I ended up giving most of it away, as I wasn't into dealing. I also managed to get some Orange Sunshine from the kid across the street. He seemed surprised that I had done acid before he had. He was sitting in a car with a friend of his dad's doing it for the first time. So I started making faces and funny noises at him. He couldn't stop laughing, and his friend ended up pulling a knife on me for some reason. About a year previous to that me and another neighbor kid had gone to the market and bought a few bags of cat nip and sold it to guys who had never smoked pot before. This dude smoked some and told us it was some pretty harsh shit and didn't smell right. We thought it was funny at the time, we didn't realize we could have really gotten our asses kicked. I started ditching school on a regular basis with Jack and Eric. We used to go down to Hermosa Beach to this place near the pier called Taco Bills and get taco burritos. These were ground beef tacos wrapped up like burritos, and they used to put sour creme in them if you wanted. We would also hit all the record stores and pawn shops. Back then you could go into some of these independent record stores and by bootlegs. We all had nice little collections of these things. Some companies were crap, and others were pretty good quality. I was at the point, I could give a shit about school, and I was always arguing with Al. They tried restrictions and taking my music away, and it wasn't going to work. I didn't give a shit anymore. One way or another I was going to do music. Jack was having problems at home as well. Where as I would do stuff occassionally, Jack was doing stuff all the time, and unbeknownst to all of us was becoming a major alcoholic. We thought he kept a bottle of Southern Comfort in his locker to be a rebel, but he had a serious drinking problem back then. I remember one day at school being called to the VPs office, and finding my mom sitting there with a big scowl on her face. Evidently the school called her, and she was there the day before when I was ditching. So I was in deep shit once again. Around this same time, Jack was getting in trouble for the same thing, and his parents thought I was the one that was leading him into all of this type of behavior. When it came to that stuff, he was in the advanced class. He started running away from home, and hiding out at other people's houses, and his parents would always call mine like I had something to do with it. I remember Eric telling him one day, "you know,as smart as you are, there are times I really don't think you are very bright." One day, Eric was telling me about this jam session he went to in Rolling Hills. He told me about this guy named Bunk, who played saxophone and was really into Frank Zappa. He gave me his number and I called him up. I told him my name was Captain Zit. He thought I was fucking with him because he had a big acne problem. We talked about getting together and jamming. I somehow managed to get Al to let us jam at the catering house at night, and my mom agreed to rent me an amp at Hogan's House of Music in Lawndale. I think the amp I ended up renting was a Fender Showman. We pulled up at the catering house kind of late, and Bunk was sitting out front on his saxophone case. Homer came by soon after. I thought Eric was going to be there on drums but he never showed. It turned out to be a bust as far as any real jamming went, but we did try playing "King Kong". I had no idea at that time that Zappa's music was so complicated. Bunk was tolerant, and a bit of an asshole. We did seem to click though, and became great friends over the years. Steve and I finally decided to start our band. He could get his hands on an amp for me to use. I met this one guy Rod who had a drum set, and Steve knew these other guys from his school in Wilmington. I called Bunk. The first thing he asked me was if he was getting paid? So the day of the gig, Steve had his little combo organ, and Rod showed up with his drum kit and thats when we found out he couldn't play drums at all. We had a bass player, and another drummer that could play a bit. Bunk showed up and instantly made himself the leader. Eric showed up with his band in tow just to hear what we sounded like. He ended up sitting in with us so we could have a drummer for the night. The second time we got together, Bunk brought a friend of his along called Link, who was a good drummer and very arrogant. This time we actually got into some interesting stuff. We did this boogie number by Richard Berry (Louie Louie) called "Get That Church" and another latin style jazz tune called "Sombrero Sam". On "Get That Church" I actually got do this wonderfully sloppy but heartfelt solo that seemed to impress a few people. We also did an instrumental version of "Evil Ways" so Steve could do some of his organ solo stuff too. Bunk was into showing off as well, and did this thing where he played two saxes at the same time, like Roland Kirk, but without the skill of Roland Kirk. Bunk used to sit in with Richard Berry at this one club from time to time, and introduced me to him. Bunk was responsible for my appreciation of John Coltrane, Eddie Harris, John Klemmer, and Stan Kenton. My mom and Al seemed to like Bunk because he carried himself like and adult and came off as a professional musician. Steve and Bunk seemed to butt heads a bit. Both thought the other was an arrogant asshole. I think I could safely say that both were right. Sometimes I would ditch school and go over to Bunk's apartment. He lived with his mom in the L.A. strip part of Torrance. He was handy with tools, and fixing stuff. It seemed he was always working on a valve or something on his horn. One day I went over there and he was trying to solder something onto part of his horn by holding it up to the burner on the electric stove. I think he actually made that work too. He also did these abstract paintings that were hanging all over the apartment. I remember after we got to be pretty good friends, I told him I was reasonably sure I was queer. He smiled, and one eyebrow went up and he said "Uh, thats cool, but this isn't leading up to anything is it?" It wasn't, and that was the perfect thing too. There was no way I was attracted to him in any way like that, so this friendship could actually work. Bunk used to get laid quite a bit. He even set me once with a girl he deemed easy just in case I needed help deciding. As it turned out, that girl wasn't interested and neither was I. Bunk looked older than he was. He was only 18, and could walk into any bar, and they would serve him. I also admired the way he would challenge everything, especially authority. I remember one night we were down on the midway of the old Pike amusement park in Long Beach. There was a group of people coming out of a bar and checking out the Fool The Guesser booth. This was one of those things where you give the guy a quarter to guess your weight or age, and if he gets it wrong you get a prize worth about a nickle, like a one of those chinese finger traps. So these people were standing out in front, and Bunk happens to take a liking to one of the women in the group who is having a go at the game. He told the woman "You don't actually believe this guy is for real do you?" The group all looked at him puzzled that he would even say that in front to the guy's booth. He continued "Any asshole can put out a banner and do this. Give me $5 and I'll tell you how old you are within two years!" She opened her wallet and gave him $5, and he actually did guess it right. Then he told her "See you learned something here tonight, if you would have stuck with this guy, it would have only cost you a quarter." I should probably have mentioned that the other thing we both had in common besides Frank Zappa, was our love for Groucho Marx. Bunk's mom was one of the coolest women you would have ever wanted to meet. She had this big voice and a very hearty laugh. If she disapproved of something you were doing, she would say "you have been a bad puppy!" She was very proud of him, and was second mother to all us other strays he brought home. So Steve got us a gig at his high school. We had about six songs worked up, and we had a band with two drummers. The reason we had two drummers, is the original one could play so so, and the other one could play really well, but the so so one was the one the consistantly showed up for practice, and we didn't have the heart to tell him he couldn't be in the band. We named the band Trout Fishing in Amercia, after the Richard Brautigan book. Debbie had given me that book when we were going together. It was a strange book of short stories with titles like "The Kool Aid Wino". I was playing my Les Paul through the Heathkit top that Eric had given me, and a borrowed Sears Silvertone speaker cabinet. At this point I was still trying to dress like Jimi Hendrix, and did part of my guitar solo with my teeth. The crowd seemed to really like what we were doing. Our audience was mostly latino and black, a you could look out and see all these big afros bouncing to what we were doing. It was beautiful. I was in French class, and the teacher was in charge of throwing the annual foriegn language banquet. Since my old band had played one the year before, she asked me if I could find someone to play this one. I called on everyone I knew to surprise everyone with a giant rock band made up of members of all bands in school. We could do this great Zappaesque thing. We didn't need to rehearse or anything because we were all so good already, right? I just love all the thought I put into things back then. The show was advertised over the the morning announcements for two weeks. We called ourselves Captain Zit's Contemporary Rock Ensemble and Magic Show. We ended up with 5 guitars, one bass, one organ, one grand piano, a trombone, a trumpet, a sax, a flute, two drummers, and an electric tamborine. My good friend Alan, also known in our school paper as Red Bass led us off with a little arpeggio on the piano, that launched us into a booming free for all version of "Louie Louie". All the older people were sitting at this long table right at the front of the stage, and the amps were all turned up. To say that they didn't care for what we were doing was and understatement. The facilty memembers and the VP got up and marched rapidly up the side stage stairs, and the VP put his hand in the air signaling everyone to cease playing. The French teacher addressed us with "What in good God's name is this racket you people are making up here? If you don't turn it down, and play something nice you can just leave now, you are spoiling this wonderful ocassion!" She obviously didn't get that we were reaching out to our peers with this great art that was making a statement of our times. So they left the stage knowing that we were warned, and we started back up. I actually got pissed off that they were censoring this great performance we were giving. Once again they started walking up the stairs. I wasn't having it, I unplugged, put my guitar in the case and left. From what I understand, it became a battle of the bands vs. the administration. Everyone kept playing until they were individually thrown out. I'm told the last number was an attempt at "Wooden Ships". So many feathers got ruffled, and I got put on restriction again for playing in a band when I wasn't supposed to be. By now, I really didn't give much of a shit about anything at home, and I told both my mom and Al, that my dad and my step mother had told me I could come live there, and that is what I intended to do. This would actually save my dad from having to pay at least one child support check. He was on his third marriage, and he was still payihg out to his second ex wife for my half brother Bryan. So arrangements were made, and I moved in with my Dad, Stepmother, step brother, and half brother into a two bedroom apartment. I had a big learning curve ahead of me now. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 9th, 2006
8:11 am	Chapter 2: New Catering Business and My First Band Al grew tired of the gas station business. When you have a franchise type business, you are still beholding to the corporate name and all the bullshit that they dish out. On top of that you have competition from other guys with franchises, and now even the Blue Chip Stamp people were thinking their shit didn't stink either. If I remember correctly, some of the other guys that had gas station franchises got together and started comparing notes. They were finding variations in their wholesale prices for the gas they were buying from the same supplier. On top of that, the company was trying to force some of the franchise guys out. Around this same time, the stamp people starting jacking the prices up on the stamps these guys gave out. The stamp company felt they were so necessary to having a thriving business, that they started jacking up their stamp prices. Stamps were used as a tool to help bring in customers. What most customers didn't seem to realize was they were actually paying for these thing in their gas prices. Some guys were actually giving two and three times the value of stamps to bring in customers. So if you bought two dollars worth of gas, you got back four or six dollars in stamps. This cut in to the station owners profit. Al always said the actual profit he made on gas was in pennies, the real money was made doing oil changes and tune ups. The stamp company guy told Al he had to not only pay the new inflated price but had to buy more rolls of stamps as well. Al told the guy to go fuck himself, and stopped giving stamps, and lowered his gas prices. He lost customers because he didn't give out stamps. It didn't seem to matter much that the price of gas was cheaper. People would point across the street to the sign at the other gas station and say look over there, he is giving three times the amount of stamps and you aren't giving any. This was all bullshit, and it was time to get out. Al sold the station and looked at other businesses to get into. He looked pretty long and hard at the self serve car washes. I think his problem was getting the land to put one on. He just didn't have the funds. He ended up buying a catering house that made sandwiches for liquor stores and catering trucks. The place was in downtown Torrance behind an old movie theater called The Strand and small bowling alley. Both of those places were closed down, but the theater was bought and became (much to the horror of many of the nearby residence!) part of the Pussycat Theater chain. This chain specialized in hard core adult cinema. The bowling alley was being taken out, so Al actually bought a couple of the old bowling lanes. These were made of good thick wood and he cut them into 8 foot length ( which was hell on a saw blade!),and used galvanized steel pipe for legs, and made them into tables to make sandwiches on. They were really good tables when he got done, and I want to tell you that even a section of those lanes was heavier than shit. On the weekend, I would go clean the place, and when school was out, I worked at there cutting the meat and making sandwiches with all these older women. This was where I learned that women talk just as dirty as guys do. There was also a whole cast of characters who drove catering trucks that we had for customers, and a new brand of politics to deal with. The Catering trucks then didn't cook food, everything was prepackaged, and you had inspectors that would go out and check these trucks all the time. These guys were always in a hurry. You couldn't miss your stop because they could get somebody else at the snap of a finger. It was my understanding it could get pretty brutal if one guy wanted to try to take another guys stop away. Some guys had routes that they would sell to another guy, and if the people at the stop didn't like you, they would get someone else in their, and that is when you had broken headlights, flat tires, get jumped, and all other kinds of wonderfulness. Most of the catering truck companies demanded that their people buy their food stictly from them and not independence. You would not only have to buy from them, you would have to pay them a percentage of your return, rent your truck and usually buy your route from them. It was a real racket (probably still is, and very cut throat to boot.). The problem was the sandwiches these catering truck were being forced to buy weren't as good as the ones they could get from the independent catering places. So they might buy the minimum requirement, and they would come to Al to get the stuff they could actually sell. Sometimes the owners of the catering truck companies would park across the street so they could see which trucks were buying from Al. It was all very weird and strange. I took Journalism as an elective, and because of that, worked on the school annual that students could buy at the end of the year. I was in ninth grade, and had a few pages I designed myself. I remember the title was going to be Reflections '69. There was a show on TV that was very popular at that time called Laugh In. We recorded some commercials for the annual on my reel to reel recorder. I was listening to a lot of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and started trying to copy some of the stuff I was hearing there, and put it into these commercials. They went over the sound system that went into all the class rooms in the morning. I was hitting my stride with these things, as they proved very popular to most, strange to some, and annoying to the old folks. It was a team effort, and we all pulled together and managed to do a good job. I was actally sort of happy around this time. Al actully let my mom buy me some flared pants and my first pair of bell bottoms, which my dad used to refer to as "sissy pants". I was actually a squad leader in gym class now. This happened because I was older, and they had some kind of a mix up that put me in gym class with the younger people. Because I was a squad leader, I actually got awarded a letter for the jacket I never got. On the plus side, my dad got to go to a sports related award ceremony where I was an actual receipiant. This came about mostly because of a clerical error, but I was able to finally say "Look dad, I got my letter, now shut up about this football nonsense". I found myself highly attracted to this one kid I will call Jack (Because it doesn't even closely resemble his real name and he knows who he is, by some twist of fate happens to still be a friend of mine, and may not want me to drum up all this shit up in the first place.) on the annual staff. We became friends because we were both interested in all the same type of music. This guy was very intelligent. By that I mean way smarter than me, and more disiplined. He was a boyscout too. I tried that once for about two weeks, and decided it was too much like being in the army, and I wasn't big on things like camping anyway. Prior to this I never had an attraction that came on as strong as this did. I finally realized I had a major crush on him, but I couldn't tell anybody, especially him. He and I hooked up with a couple of other guys one day at his house to try and play some music. He studied piano for years, and played really well. This other guy Richard started playing bass, and his parents bought him a bass and amp. There was another guy, Tim, who played drums in the marching band, and could only sort of play drums if he could see the sheet music. I sort of knew some chords and the couple of Beatle songs, but for the most part I was just there as an on looker, and because I wanted to be anywhere Jack was. Jack could play the Doors hit "Light My Fire" on the piano, so that seemed like a good starting point. After a while the other guys worked out an acceptable version they could do without mistakes. They needed someone to sing it, so there I was, and I sorta could sing I guess. So I became the singer of this new band with this guy I had a crush on. What could possibly be better than that? What could possibly go wrong here? We had a drummer who could sort of play drums, a piano player that was pretty good, a bass player who was learning bass, a singer who was me and all that went with that. We managed to work up "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", "Light My Fire" and "Proud Mary". Now we had to start getting some other equipment. I knew I wasn't going to get very far in that area, because Al wouldn't let me have anything that had speakers in it. I used to listen to my reel to reel throught headphones. Blue Cheer on 10 through headphones makes one say things like "huh?" a lot. I went with Jack and his mom to the only big name music store there was in the South Bay at that time, Wallich's Music City. This place had a record department with listening booths, so you could hear the stuff before you bought it. You could hang out there all day and listen to shit. I'm sure if you did it to much they probably threw you out, but it was a good concept. This was one of those stores that they had someone to play the piano so you could hear the arrangement of the various sheet music they sold. They sold instruments there too. Right in the front of the store was this little Wurtlitzer organ, stand, bench, and amp combo for something like $200. I'm sure we would rather have one of those cool Vox or Farfisa organs that all the cool bands used, but this would do the trick. I did manage to get a microphone that we also plugged into the bass amp. Wow, we had equipment now, we were rollin'. One day we were practicing and Jack had his neighbor Jim (not his real name!)over. Jim was about two years younger than us, and he played drums. Jim's brother Tom (not his real name!) was our age and in most of our classes. Our drummer Tim was having a hard time with this one drum part, so Jim came over to help guide him. Jim could actually play a full drum set better than Tim could. Jim sat in and played all the songs we knew and Tim decided it might just be best if he stepped down and Jim be our new drummer. This seemed to make things move along a bit better, and then Richard had to leave us because his parents moved to another city further away or something. So now we had organ and drums. Jims brother Tom played guitar and had an amp. We both took guitar lessons from the same guy, but he took them longer, and knew more songs than I did. We also had this other guy Leonard who had a deeper voice, and the next thing I knew, I was sharing vocal duties with this guy. Looking back, I know I was on the strange side, and sometimes wonder if I was more obvious than I thought I was about my feelings toward Jack. I didn't know what to make of this, and I wasn't going to let myself get phased out completely. I had completely fallen for this guy by now. I don't know how obvious it may have been, I wish I could go back and look at it frame by frame from the point as a casual observer. I just want to see all the stupid fidgity nervous body language I was putting out then. I'm sure I would now find it embarassingly hilarious. This is the kind of thing that takes years of mental anguish and torture to get over before you can actually can see the humor in it all. There was this guy that worked for Al named Brad that delivered sandwiches to the liqour stores. He was probably around 18 or 19 at the time. He and I hit it off. Al didn't want me talking to him as he was always about a half a step from letting the guy go because he wasn't showing up at some of his stops and other such things. When he heard I was in a band, he told me he played guitar and also worked part time in a studio. One day he offered to come by and teach us some songs. I told the other guys that he might be dropping by that night, and they were all a little suspicious of this guy. We were now practicing at drummer Jim's house. Jim's brother Tom played guitar pretty good. He had this really cool Crown semi hollow body and a nice 40 watt Elk amp. He could actually play Creedence songs, which sort of made you the Shit back then. Sure enough the door bell rang, and there stood Brad. We played "Light My Fire" for him, and he asked if he could jam with us. The other guys said yeah, and Tom handed over his guitar to him. The first thing Brad said, was the guitar needed some better strings. He told about these strings made by a guy named Ernie Ball called Super Slinkys. He asked us if we wanted to bomb down to Wallich's Music City in Torrance and pick some up. So we all got in his station wagon and rode down there to get these strings. On the way there, I finally saw the side of Brad that I didn't see at work. This guy was pure rock and roll, and talked the good talk. Yeah, but could he play Creedence? We got the strings, and he restrung the guitar. He tuned it up, and asked me and Leonard if we minded if he just jammed with the keyboards and drums for a bit, just so he could see where they were at. We said okay. He asked Jim and Jack if they knew the Cream song "Politician"? They sort of nodded, and he worked out the changes with them to a point where it was satisfactory. From the moment they launched into that song our jaws were all dropping. The dude could play, and I don't mean a little bit. None of us had every heard anyone play like that in a living room before. We were awestruck. After that, they tried other songs that were called out. This dude was unstoppable. He knew how to play everything from Jeff Beck, to literally any Beatle song, as well as all the Cream stuff. After that, he pretty much became our mentor and savior. He played some shows with us, including a Boy Scout pancake breakfast, where we performed the Steppenwolf classic, "The Pusher" in front of all these conservative parents and their kids. We were so cool, we wore sunglasses. At one point he even had us doing The Beatles "Abbey Road" album in it's entirety. I was actually starting to get some confidence in my vocal ablility. Leonard did the songs in his range, and I did the songs in my range, and we were even starting to harmonize a bit. Leonard was trying for the cool stand still singer type, and I was starting to do my Mick Jagger moves. At one point, the band was pressuring me to have a practice at my house. There was no way in hell Al was ever going to stand for that, but the pressure was there, and I was going to have to find a way to make it happen or I wasn't contributing. At that time my mom worked for TRW, and they were having one of their nights at Disneyland. When the night came, I told her I wanted to do band pratice at Jack's house instead, because we needed it. She thought that was odd, but said okay. I never had people over, house parties or anything, so this was going to be a major deal to pull this off. Right when they left, I called over to Jack's house and told them to come on over. The doorbell rang, and it was not only the guys, but Jack's mom showed up as well. I always felt that she looked at me with a great deal of suspicion anyway. She asked where my mom and Al were, and I told her they went to Disneyland for the night. Soon she left, and we started playing. I had my reel to reel recorder out, and we did an impromptu version of "Constipaction Blues". I all seemed to go well until a day or two later when Jack's mom called my mom to thank her for letting the boys practice over at our house. The shit didn't just hit the fan, it was as if it was shot out from a cannon. I was on restriction. It didn't end there either. From here on I made one bad move after another. One of the first ones happened one afternoon when I was sitting around the living room with Jim and Tom. I don't know what we were talking about, but somehow the subject about queers came up, and I heard myself say to them, "I'm a queer". Here I was 15 years old, and I pretty much knew I was something like that. I didn't really know anything about it other than it meant you liked the same sex. I had never heard any else about it, and I was clueless as to what queers did sexually. In fact, at this point I hadn't heard the word "Fag" yet. It wouldn't be long now before I would start hearing that word quite a bit, and still didn't know they were talking about me. I was so green, and oblivious. Right after I heard myself utter those words, Jim and Tom looked at each other and sort of laughed, and then Jim told me they both knew. I asked them how they knew, and they said they just always did. They seemed to be fine with it, and thought it took some guts to admit it. They also told me that as long as I didn't try anything with them, they didn't care. I felt empowered now. My friends are cool with it, thats great! Beaming with this new sense of pride and bonding, I brilliantly told them they didn't have to worry, because I was interested in Jack. What a great moment of honesty we were all sharing here. Hell, I was worried I might have just said something really stupid. Thats when Jim suggested that I didn't want to tell that last part to Jack, because he would get pissed off. It was getting to be around dinner time, and I had to be getting back home. I was leaving their house feeling a great sense of accomplishment, and the future was looking rosey. Jim reassured me as I was leaving, of how that really took a lot of guts to admit all that. I got on my bike and rode home with a big smile on my face. I learned this part later on, that no sooner did I ride off into the sunset, Jim and Tom called Jack with their "You won't believe what just happened here" story. Later that evening I got a call from Leonard, and he told me that they had told him, and that Jack knew about it as well. I remember that sinking feeling I started to feel when it dawned on me that maybe I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer after all. I called Jack. He wasn't pleased about the situation, and I remember him saying "I don't know what to tell you other than I'm not like that." The hard part to hearing that was not only the disappointment in his tone, but that he was telling me that it was never going to be. My crush was crushed. The story I would love to be writing right here is one where I learned from that and moved forward, but sadly, that wasn't the case. The little voice in my head was telling me to try harder and that maybe he just didn't understand that it was meant to be. To top it all off, I wasn't even smoking pot yet, so I don't know where that shit was coming from, other than some deep rooted denial. So there I was at Jim's house. We were just hanging out, and I was starting to play guitar now, after being so inspired by Brad. I was trying to to do all the fast fret work like he did, and was bending my strings and shit. Jim and I were in his room playing music with the black light on. We were both laying around listening to some album and for some reason I thought it would be funny just to jump at him with a psychotic look on my face. This didn't go over nearly as well as I pictured it, because the kid was scared shitless. I think it caught me off guard that he didn't know I was playing around, and I remember being stunned by his response. I remember thinking "What the fuck did you do now?" So there it was. In one stupid move, I set myself up for some major grief for the rest of the school year. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 4th, 2006
12:32 pm	Chapter 2: Junior High and New Class Of Bullies I started going to Junior High School. This was sort of the three year transitional thing before high school. Here you had a homeroom, and different rooms and teachers for each subject. You also still had the "A" and "B" classification before the grade you were in. The first year took some getting used to. You had a gym class, and you took showers with everybody. That was sort of a new and frightening experience if you weren't used to that sort of thing. I was shy back then anyway. By this time, my neighborhood had more kids on it that were my age, so I was in most of the classes with the kids on my street. That gave me an element of comfort. We had all started to pretty much hang out together. As much as I hated football, we used to play it in the street. I look at that street today, and it looks way too narrow for us to have been playing that sort of game. I never could catch or kick worth a shit, however I did get to a point where I could throw a football pretty good. I was only picked for this at school and on my street because of my size. For the most part, I was pretty lame at anything in sports. I was a good runner though. In gym class you would always start the class by running laps, and I would always be in the top ten. If it involved running and jumping over shit, I was terrible. I could never get myself to jump over a hurdle if I was running toward it. When they would do the decathlon stuff, I would run where it counted but would have to stop and step over all of the hurdles, and try to make up my time on the stuff I was good at. The coaches always wanted me for football, wrestling or basketball, but I wasn't interested. I wasn't a particularly good student. By this time I was into more than just the Beatles, as were most of the kids. I was still piss poor at math. I was pretty good at English and sort of at History. They required you to take some shop classes if you were a boy, so I took Graphic Arts and Metal Shop. I find it fascinating now to look back and realize that the first project they had us make in Metal Shop was an ash tray. I was really into John Lennon, and because of him I tried my hand at writting and seemed to have enough of knack for it that some of the teachers noticed. I would try to write acidic things like Lennon did, even though I was totally clueless about most of the things he was going on about, I liked the imagery that rolled by in my head when I read his stuff, so I tried to do the same. I do remember writing a poem for one assigment about a fish wife for an English class. I saw the word in the lyrics of "I Am The Walrus". I didn't know what a fish wife was, but I wrote a poem about one anyway. This poem could have been sung to the music of "I Am The Walrus". Most of my writings for classes could have been sung to some song it was inspired by. I didn't read poetry, I listened to records. I was still a bad reader. I used to walk to school, and in the process encountered various obstacles going to and from there. One of my first experiences was on my way to school. I met up with this tall older black kid that came walking toward me. He just said "Give me a nickle." I told him I didn't have one, and he hit me in the face and said "I said give me a nickle!" I was in shock, because I had never had anything like this happen to me before, and I was now scared, and told him I didn't have one. He said "What you got for me in you pockets, cause you gotta give me something!" I don't know why he let me go, but I remember going straight to the office and reporting it, and found another kid who encountered the same type of thing, but with a different kid. I remember another incident where I was walking home, and there was this freeway overpass that you had to walk under, and there was always this group of older kids that hung out there. As I started to walk by this tall black kid hauled off and just punched my in the nose. I didn't even know this kid, and he did that. I ran back to the school, and met up with my gym coach and told him what happened. He got two of the other gym coaches and we got into his VW Bug and went looking for them. They moved further up the street and were hanging out on this wall. These were like drop out type high school kids. It was mixed race group of kids, and there were like three or four black guys that may or may not have been the kid that hit me. It happened so fast, I couldn't tell. All of a sudden two cop cars showed up and they making these guys face the wall. The cops seemed to know these kids and they are talking to the gym coaches, and look at me with my bloody nose and start asking which one did it? Thats when I heard myself tell the cops "I don't know, they all look a like to me." I didn't know how white bread that sounded till a few years later. If I had gotten a good look at the guy I could have told them who did it. This wasn't going to be the end of this type of harrassment, but it did make me keep my eyes open as to what was going on around me. I found other routes home. Most of the them were twice the distance, as they were more for getting around than through a situation. I never learned how to fight. My dad used to box, but never showed me. He always said if I had gone out for football I would have learned how to deal with that sort of shit. Yeah, but I hated football. I remember this dude that lived behind our house was a bit of a bully and trouble maker. He punched me out on the way to class one day. I didn't even know the dude, but became a target of his. He came at me riding on dirt bike one day when I was coming home from school. I mean barreling toward me full throttle. If I didn't run out of the way, he would have hit me. I was scared and very pissed off at this point. I wasn't going to get help from anybody at my house and I was tired of being the wimp. Al kept telling me to do something about it. His suggestion was if the guy came at me with a dirt bike again to stand in front of it and kick the front tire upward and he would go flying. Al would always make it sound like I deserved all this shit that was happening to me. I began to hate him even more because of this. I remember being so tired of being fucked with by this guy, I came home and grabbed a knife, and I had every intention of stabbing this asshole with it. Al saw me with it, and grabbed it away from me and made a move like he was actuaaly going to hit me. I was tired of being fucked with, and all I had known from this point was what I learned in Christian school about turning the other cheek. By this time I was a very angry and confused kid, and I wasn't getting anything in the way of support or encouragment from anybody at home. When I would try to talk to my dad, football or some other kind of sport activity was always his solution. On top of that, I would get teased by the guys my the street that didn't have to walk to school. Eventually I started riding to school with my friend across the street. Around this time they were beginning to teach sex education in the science class. They would separate the boys from the girls and try to explain things to us. This was new ciriculum back then, and you could tell this wasn't easy for the teachers. I remember at some point around this time, my friend Steve from across the street got tickets for The Steve Allen Show. This was a variety talk show, sort of like The Tonight Show, but it came on around 5 or 6 in the evening. So we got out of school early to go up to Hollywood for the taping. They tapped the show on Hollywood Blvd.. That was the first time I had actually seen a copy of the then undergound newspaper called The Free Press. We were approached by a guy dressed like Julius Ceaser who was selling copies of it, and I bought one. I had always heard the hippie people on TV talk about this paper and I finally had one. It was one of the only papers you could read where they freely used the word "fuck". That was a big deal to a young impressionable kid who was watching the whole hippy thing unfold in the media. The show we were in the audience for was rather boring other than when my friend's dad got called up to demonstrate how he could pull the skin on his elbow down about an inch. He got on TV, and got something like a $50 gift certificate. I was the only one in our group that didn't get on TV during the audience shot. I even wore my Sonny vest for that. Back then Sonny Bono was made these fake fur vests popular. Al wouldn't let me have bell bottom pants or a Nehru jacket, but he let me spend my birthday money on this black fake fur vest that I just loved and wore everywhere. There was another show called Groovy that was on channel 9 in the afternoons. It was one of a handful of teen dance shows that were on TV. You had Boss City, Shebang, and Groovy. Groovy was done live on the beach and they always seemed to have one of my favorite bands, The Seeds on.They had a regional hit called "Pushin' Too Hard" that I still like today. In fact The Seeds were my first ever concert when I turned 13. They played this place called Melodyland in Anahiem across the street from Disnyland. I think its a church now. I took my friend Steve along with me. The headliners were another band I liked called The Strawberry Alarm Clock. The theater was in the round. I remember meeting Strawberry Alarm Clock at Bogarts in Long Beach once back in the nineties, and they were telling me that was an interesting show, because they had these Vox Super Beatle amps, and they weren't sure which way to face them because the theater was round. It was a great show though. Another highlight around this time was meeting another big name band around that same period. They were called Iron Butterfly, and their big hit was "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". My friend Mario was always keeping me informed of all cool things rock and roll. His dad used to take him to all these concerts and the clubs on the Strip. There was a record store opening up in Lawndale called the Groove Company. They had a couple of stores open at that time. The only place you heard commecials for record stores like these was on an FM station called KPPC. I think this is the same studio that KROQ uses today, because it was in Pasadena under a church, and it was 106 something on the dial. The Groove Company was having a grand opening for this little hole in the wall record store run by hippies, and Iron Butterfly was going to make an appearance. There was also someone else making an appearance, and I remember talking to him and I knew he was supposed to be someone well known, and I knew Mario knew who he was, but I didn't. It was Albert King. Today that is probably a bigger deal than Iron Butterfly in comparision, but he wasn't on TV like they were. There weren't a lot of people there for it, but the limo pulled up, and out came Iron Butterfly. wow, they even looked like themselves. You know when you see somebody on TV, and sometimes you see them in person and they don't look anything like that. Well, they looked like the Iron Butterfly on TV and on the album cover, and I was about to wet myself. This was a big deal. They talked to us for about an hour and a half, and I followed Doug Ingle to the Taco Bell next door and got to see him actually eat a Taco. Thats a big deal for an impressionable kid who had ambitions of being in their shoes one day. I remember Eric Braun was wearing this cool red velvet suit. He looked rock starish to me. I think later this same evening Mario and I went to my dad's house and my dad took Me, Mario and my step brother Ray to the Forum to see Jimi Hendrix. I remember the opening bands were CatMother and the Alnight Blues Boys followed by Chicago Transit Authority. I remember when Jimi Hendrix came out, he had short hair, and didn't really look like the guy in the posters. He was awesome though and extremely loud. I even bought the concert program book they were selling. It was titled "Electric Church", and had all sorts of photos of Jimi and the Experience in it. One of the photos was a large color photo of Jimi beaming this big mischievious smile as you could see he clearly had a hard on in this photo. Years later I remember reading about the photo shoot for that particular picture, and how the photographer was waiting for Jimi's hard on to go away, and Jimi told him "Go ahead man, take the picture." (Comment on this)
10:53 am	Chapter 2: Dad Gets Divorced and Marries Again My dad and stepmother moved nearby into this large new gated apartment complex that was across the street from one of the main shopping centers in town. It was big boring place. They had a big pool and a big grass field, but beyond that, there really wasn't anything to do there. At some point the phone company sent him to work up in Sacramento for a long time, and my stepmother stayed down here. I remember he had his own horse up there, and he lived with some other guy who used to get drunk and drive his ride on mower into the bar. I'm a little hazy on this period and the time frame. I know at this point, while he was up there, my stepmother started seeing some other guy that played steel guitar in some country band, and she left my dad and took everything. The other guy even forged my dad's signature on some checks. I just remember my dad crying and telling me she left and took everything. This was the second time this happened to him, and the second time he was totally clueless. When he came back from Sacramento, he came back to a totally empty house,saving account, and bills up the ass. There was a time she came back for a little while, and then split with the same guy again. By this point, my dad had pretty much become an alcoholic. He soon met up with another woman named Becky who would soon become my next stepmother. I remember when my dad came over to get me one day he told me I would be meeting another woman that was he was seeing and her son Ray who was a year older than me. Me and Ray hit it off right off the bat. Ray had a fairly rough growing up, and never really knew his real father. My dad took him under his wing. Dad and Becky used to argue quite a bit. She was Hawaiian, alcoholic and talked pigeon English. You couldn't always tell what it was she was trying to say because she would spit out fast and not always get the words right. She came off kind of mean or angry. It was always "Goddamn kids!" or "What? You bad ass?" Ray told my dad early on that if he ever left her, he was going with him. I could understand why. Ray was good for my dad because he actually liked football, and that was the only language my dad really loved. They ended up moving to various apartment locations throughout Hawthorne. I think Beck used to get into arguments with people and they would be forced to move. I never really got what planet this woman was coming from, and I never really felt at home around her. When ever I would go over there and visit, dad and her would always be drinking. I remember being at home one Saturday and my dad called and asked said they were going to the Long Beach Pike, and would I like to go? My mom said it was okay, so he stopped and picked me up. He was driving this big car that belonged to this other guy who wasn't driving. The car was loaded with more people than it could hold. Becky was pregnant with my future half brother Bart and was in the passenger side up front, and somebody else was sitting between her and my dad. The back seat had like four of us, with somebody sitting on somebody else's lap. We got to the Pike which was an ocean side amusement park with a big roller coaster and all sorts of rides that no longer exsists today. We went on the rides, and then went through the midway which had all types of carnival games and dark rides. They also has these diners and open air bars. My dad gave me and Ray money to play carnival games and go on rides, and the rest of them all sat and drank at the open air bar. We spent a couple of hours there. They had one carnival game that both Ray and I seemed to like that had all these glass bottles lined up on shelves, and for like 25 cents they would give you ten marbles that you would use in sling shots to try and break as many bottles as you could and get prizes. For two boys that liked to break stuff, this was ultra cool. We amassed quite a collection of ceramic horses and other cheap what nots. It was time to start heading back, and the adults were even more enibriated than they were before we got there. I should also point out, they were sort of there before they came and got me. My dad was going to drive back. We all piled back into the nice big shiny new blue car and got on the Long Beach freeway. When we got to the turn off for the San Diego North, my dad drove us straight into the divider. He hit steering wheel, the person in the middle hit the windshield, as did Becky. Everyone in the back seat got bruised up as well. I had a deep cut on my right shin like I had been hit with something sharp. My dad claimed there was someone behind him that was tailgating. The police came and wanted to take my dad in. I don't know if he was arrested for that or night. I remember riding home in a police car and the officer explaining to my mom that I was in an accident. I didn't see my dad for a while after that. For the longest time after that, everytime I rode in a car I would be putting the brakes on in the passenger side. I was affraid to ride in a car for a good year. Al would always look over at me and ask, "what are you doing?" I don't think my mom would let me be in a car that my dad was driving for the longest time. My dad had a history of car accidents in every marriage he was in. Not fender benders, but major go through the windshield sorts of accidents. He used to tell me he had blackouts from them. I wasn't sure if it was from that or his drinking. I believe the next time I saw my dad was when I was at my grandparent's house. I was sitting in my grandfather's chair in their living room watching television, and from out of no where my dad came up and said "Here, have a baby brother!" and handed me my brother Bart. (Comment on this)
9:46 am	Chapter 2: Fitty Cent Worf A Effel and Gimme My Stamps Now that the pool was in, it was time for me to learn about life in the so called real world. I was 12, and needed to learn some responsiblilty, so I went to work at Al's Shell station. This was actually one of the best learning experiences I had growing up. This would have been around 1967 I believe. I can't remember if I started working there before or after the Watts riots. The station was in Compton, and at that time the area was predominantly black. All of Al's employees were black. They called me Junebug or Junior. My first day, as soon as I got out of the car, Al introduced me to Jimmy, who immediately threw me a rag to put in my back pocket, and had me go with him to take care of a customer who just pulled up. He gave me some towels and window cleaner and said "get the man's windas!" He started pumping the gas, and went over and lifted the hood to check the oil. He showed me how to check oil and transmission fluid. He pulled a air pressure gage and a pen out of the cash box and told me to put them in my shirt pocket. He showed me how to check the air in the customer's tires. Back then, when people bought gas there wasn't any of this self service stuff. They pumped your gas, cleaned your windows, checked your tires, oil, and water, and gave you stamps. Back then there were trading stamps that you usually got at the market and most gas stations. There was Blue Chip Stamps and S&H Green stamps. Some stores let you choose which ones you wanted, others just had one or the other. You would past these into books and take them to the redemption stores and exchange them for merchandise. They had cataloges so you could see what you wanted and how many full books you needed to have to get what ever it was you wanted. This was a big deal to people bag then. When a customer bought say $2.50 worth of gas, there was a stamp dispenser that you would dial up first the $2.00 worth of stamps, because the dollar stamps were bigger sized stamps, and then you would dial up five ten cent stamps. The stamp books that you pasted these things into had pages that were lined up in rows. There was a big space at the front of each row for a dollar stamp, or you could have ten ten cent stamps on that row. I don't remember how much each book was worth back then, and my amounts may be too high now that I think about it. Gas back then was like twenty nine cents a gallon. Yeah, I know. I got the hang of it. I got to the point where I was pumping the gas, checking oil and water, tires, cleaning windas, dialing up stamps, taking cash and making change. The guys even let me fix some tires. Jimmy was somewhat of a mechanic, but our main mechanic was this one guy everybody called Smitty. Everybody around the area knew Smitty. He was an older man, and a part time professional musician. He even belonged to the musician's union. I remember once they were having some problems with gas stations being robbed in the area, and Al told Smitty that if that happened there at night to just give them the money. Smitty told Al that he would do better than that, and that he would hand over the keys and tell them to take the whole fuckin' station and get his ass out of there. The main guy that Al put in charge over everybody was an older gentleman named Pert. Pert was an old military guy, and he had that sort of attitude. He didn't want anybody just standing around if things were slow. If we weren't busy when Pert was around, he would have me clean the rest rooms or grab a broom. That is something else, when someone came up off the street and wanted to use the rest room, you gave him the key. There wasn't any of this "out of order" or "we don't have one" shit. Jimmy was a player type. He was married I think, but he used to flirt with every woman that came in there. I got the impression from the way the others talked that he was a busy dude when it came to women. I still didn't know about any of that sort of stuff, but I can still remember hearing the other guys talk when he wasn't around, and I remember how he was when ever a nice looking lady pulled up. He would tell me, "I got this one, you go sweep the floor or somethin'!" We had this other guy on and off named Junior that claimed to be a bit of a player. Sometimes it would be just me and him working there. All Junior liked to talk about was pussy. Al used to pay all his guys in cash. I remember one day he gave Junior his pay, and he was counting it out and smiling at me. He held up fifty dollars and showed it to me like he just struck oil. He said "You know what I'm gonna do with this here Junebug? I'm gonna find me some nice looking woman and I'm gonna show here this and say I want fitty dollar worf a yo pussy." I would turn all shades of red because I really didn't quite know what the hell he was talking about. I do remember that he was the one who turned me on to the Jazz Crusaders. He knew I was into The Beatles, and he asked me if I liked that song they had called "Elenore Rigby". I told him yeah, and he said "Wait till you hear this version by the Jazz Crusaders!" He pulled up his Edsel convertible and popped in a 4 track cassette (predecessor to the even more popular 8 track cassette) and cranked it. I have to say I was quite impressed. I was still too much into The Beatles to really appreciate it then, but I did like what I heard. It was interesting working at the station, because every time a car pulled up you got a different personality to deal with. We had one lady that was a good loyal customer. She was an older woman who drove a beautiful Cadillac. She kept this thing immaculate. You would have other people come up in nice cars and they would say "I want fitty cent worf a effel (ethal)and make sure you check the oil, tires, and clean my windas and don't you fo get my stamps neither!" Looking back on it, I don't know if they ordered everyone around like that or if it was because I was a young white kid. It didn't matter, because I was going to do all that anyway. Sometimes you would get these stoned out or drunk types that would be talking to their buddies and turn around thinking they were going to be talking to someone else. " Yeah, hey Brotha, oh.....check this out........this ain't no botha by no long shot(laughing).......yeah well look here....I want fitty cent worf........regular now....dontcha be puttin' none of dat high test in there.....I ain't rich like yo daddy is....an check my tires and oil too........hey and get my windas too........hey...ya all give stamps too right?" (Comment on this)
8:29 am	Chapter 2: A New Pool At this point I can't recall which order this all happened in, but I'm going to guess the pool came first. Al new about landscaping, and one of the many jobs he had in his life was building swimming pools, and now it was time to put in a swimming pool. I was glad to have anything that would replace me having to pull weeds, or so I thought. There were two empty lots next to our house, and since we were doing the sweat equity thing, we would be digging the dirt from our yard and hauling it one wheelbarrow full after another to the furthest one over. He rented a small digger and started to dig, and my mom and I loaded up the wheelbarrows and started hauling dirt. After a while it got to be just me doing the filling and the hauling. This pool was going to be a fairly big sized monstrousity. It was 4 1/2 feet deep at the shallowest end and 9 1/2 feet in the deep end. The pool was divided by two shapes. The square end was the shallow end that went into a circle shaped bowl that was the deep end. Skateboarders would have loved this thing. Not only did we have to dig for the pool, but there were all the trenches for the piping. There was also the patio we were building as well, and I think we were also starting to landscape the front yard around the same time. We finally got this big hole dug, and I think I remember it raining a bit too. Fianlly the guys came to put in the piping and the rebar. I had to help those guys too. Since Al was going with this Island theme, he brought in this huge truck full of lava rock, which I first had to unload off the truck, and then move to the back yard, to later be moved again. The foundation for the patio went in, as did the cover. I do remember we had to redo the patio foundation because it started cracking. With every operation you had to have it inspected. Finally the tile guys came, and then the plaster guys, and it was time to fill the fucking thing with water. Once it was filled we had to get the filters and everything working. Then I quickly learned weeding still be a factor, and as an added bonus, I was elected to sweep and vaccum this new beast. We started getting all these palm trees and placing all the heavy lava rock all over the place. Al built this fountain for the patio, a fire pit, dressing rooms and we got a bar from my grandfather for the patio. I remember within a day or two of the pool being filled we all went in it with the stipulation that we couldn't touch the plaster, as it was still curing or something. My mom and Al went to the hardware store and bought redwood lounge chairs and umbrellas, and picked up some tiki looking bar stuff. Oh yeah, drinking was big around the house. All their friends drank like fishes. I remember going to the drive in with my mom and Al to see the tittie movie "Barbarella". My job was to sit in the back seat and mix drinks for them. I was probably 11 or 12 around this time. We needed more island stuff for the backyard, so one weekend we met up with one of Al's brothers and his family because they had another vehicle to help haul stuff from Tijuana. This was my first and only time there, and that was plenty for me. We bought all these carved tikis, and these large tortise shells. These tortise shells were 3 feet long and 2 feet wide. I think he bought six of them. I think he bought them there, I'm not sure. Then we had to cross back to the US side. Al was Italian and at this time had a gaucho mustache that to the guards at the border made him appear to be Mexican. So they had us pull over, and Al was all pissed off, and was insisting he wasn't Mexican. Then we had the long drive back, and the fun of not only being tired, but having to unload all this shit and haul it to the backyard. I don't know what these tikis were cut from, but I remember carrying some and they had sharp thorny things on them that were cutting my hands. We put all the tikis and palm trees in place, and then went down to San Pedro to find some fishing net. Al had family that made their living as fisherman in that area, so he knew where to go find this stuff. He wasn't going to pay the prices for the decorator stuff, when he could get the real thing cheaper. We went to this other place and bought all this ocean stuff to put in the net. He hung the stuff on the fence, and up on the ceiling of the patio. He bought these puffer fish to put over the light bulbs in the patio. We were the only people on the street that had anything like this. I think people thought we were well off, which was far from the reality. If you are the only kid on the block with a pool and also don't happen to have any brothers or sisters, this presents some problems for you. The kids that treat you like shit during the school year, want to be your friend in the summer months. Then when school starts up again, you would have these same kids tell other kids that you are so spoiled that your parents put in a pool just for you. So then these other kids that don't even know you, think you are this spoiled little asshole. Pool maintenance is a bitch. Especially if you live near a freeway, a refinery, and pastures. You have to sweep the thing every other day. This isn't a quick and easy chore, and we didn't have the automatic sweepers that do it all day like we do now. You had to slowly move the dirt toward the drain at the bottom of the deep end. You didn't want to move it to fast or it would cloud up and then you had to wait for it to settle and try again. According to Al, I never did this right. On the alternate days you would vaccum the pool. This met dragging out the long hose and then plugging the one end into the filter plug. This met you had to put water in it, and blow in the hose and plug it in real quick. Somedays it took a couple of trys. You never knew what was going to be lurking inside this hose you were blowing in either. There were all sorts of dead drowned things that you would find in the filter basket as well. Gophers, mice, potatoe bugs, and birds. That reminds me some of the other things about swimming at night in the summer. You would turn on the pool lights, and dive in, and when you came up out of the water there would be all these june bugs on top of the water. Sometimes they would hit you in the head or get you in the eye as they were heading toward the lighted water. There was another fun way to get back at the kids who fucked with you at school in the winter. We would turn the heater off in the winter months, but I would tell them it was heated and they should come over and go swimming. Now to do this right, you have to be willing to sacrafice yourself a bit to get the big payoff. So before they would get there, you would have to get in the water yourself and freeze your nuts to the size of snow peas. When the friends showed up you would make like it was like a warm bath, hoping they wouldn't have the good sense to know you were not being truthful. They would jump in and come out screaming, or if they wanted to coax another unsuspecting person in, they would go along with it, and say, its fine, come on in. To this day, I don't want to ever have a pool. They are a pain in the ass in every respect. I hated that fucking pool. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
10:10 am	Chapter 2: Back To Public School ,Camp Hell and The American Dream I don't know if it was the expense, or the less than the bang for the educational dollar that was the reason for me being taken out of Christian school, but by 5th grade I was back in public school. The school was up the street from my grandparent's house. I knew about a third of the kids in my class, because they all lived and played on my grandparent's street. They didn't pray or have chapel here. This was the first time I would have a man for a teacher as well. Towards the middle of the semester I became the favorite target of this one group of kids led by the son of the manager of my mom and Al's apartment complex. If that wasn't enough, there were the older friends of this other little asshole kid that lived upstairs. I learned in Christian school that you always turned the other cheek when you were harrassed, so this made me a whimp. For the most part I suppose I was. I was taught to turn the other cheek, and boys don't hit girls. What I found was that girls seemed to be the ones that would antagonize me even more than the guys with their "you can't hit me because you'll get in big trouble" stance. At the same time, the school would encourage you to play games like dodge ball where you actually throw a ball at other kids in a circle. These girls would always be encouraging each other to aim for his balls. We had a variation on that where they placed a bowling pin at the foot, and the kid would try to block kids from knocking it over with the ball. This was a little better, because they were aiming at your feet instead of other vital areas. I remember playing this game and one of the girls I didn't care for was in the middle of the circle guarding the pin, and was taunting me with all her usual shit, and I had the ball. Whoopsie, I said as I threw the ball full force right at her stomach. They also put me in a special education class for reading. This class was really easy for me and they took me out of it after a few weeks. To this day I have a bit of a problem reading. I will finish a paragraph, and go back to the top of it and start re reading it again. I'm not aware that I'm doing it till I eventually catch myself. I think my mind wanders off or something. I've never been able to figure out what is going on there. So I tend not to read as much because of it. I'm also a very slow reader. Summer came and I was sent off to YMCA Summer camp in the woods again. This was the second time I was sent off to this thing, and I suppose I must have agreed to it or got talked into how great it was by somebody. I hated this shit. I'm not a woodsy kind of guy, and I never will be. Nature scares the fuck out of me. I wanted a television, bathroom, and my Beatles records. While the other boys did things like boating, where you had to carry the boat up hill, or hiking, or other manly things, I would stay around the main camp ground and do arts and crafts. I never really volunteered for anything, as I didn't want to be there in the first place. They had one big camp out where you packed all this shit and went hiking through the back trails to this little lake area and camped out for a day or two. This was very dismal to me. I was in hell. Even the hell that was home was better than this kind of hell. By this time, my mom and Al were looking at houses. We would go out looking at all these new developments that had foundations laid and maybe some framing, and walk through that as they tried to envision a house. They were going for the American dream thing, and finding affordability an issue. They finally found a developer who had finished building some houses and went broke. So we moved into this new house in an unincorporated area that bordered Long Beach, Torrance, Wilmington, and Gardena. It would later be called Carson, back then it was pretty rural, with a refineries nearby. Other areas nearby were used as dumping grounds for everybody for years. This neighborhood was on a culdesac street that had old homes and new homes on it. Some of the families on the street farmed the various fields in the area. One of them lived in one of the new houses like ours, and their dad parked his tractor in the drive way every night. Our house didn't have a fenced in back yard and butted up against and about six feet abouve the house behind us. There were also some unfinished property line issues left behind by the original developer. This area was also different from the areas I had grown up in previously, as the racial make up of the area was very diversified. I think this would turn out to be one of the most positive things in my growing up that I'm most proud of. It took some getting used to though, and I found out that yes, some of the sterotypes do actually exist. Once you got off our street, the surrounding neighborhoods varied between new and old developments, and mobile home parks. Some of the neighoorhoods including parts of our street didn't have sidewalks. The main steets didn't have sidewalks or drainage, but had these asphalt strips built up on mounds with a ditch. If you had a bike and had to pass someone there was barely enough passing room, and you would end up crashing in the ditch. This was more fun if you tried it in the rain when the ditch was about two feet high with water. After a heavy rain, the water would come over the top of the asphalt strip or cause it to sink in. I used to walk to school in this shit. What was even more fun was if you had a bike in the rain, and you would have groups of kids that would push you in the ditch as they passed,just to be pricks. Rain wasn't a picnic at our house either. The front and back yard was nothing but dirt, which became mud, and would cover the front and back walk way to the house. It was my job to keep that area clean. With the rain the weeds would come. I would have to pull the weeds. I hated pulling weeds. Al and my mom would always insist you pull every fucking weed out by the roots and would never like the job I was doing. I didn't give a shit about the fucking weeds, they weren't a priority in my life, and it wasn't my house. To this day I don't like pulling weeds or any sort of yard work. I have always been an indoor type anyway. I didn't like being out in the sun, which as we now know isn't good for you anyway. The first year at this house was very strange. There weren't many kids my age. There was this kid next door who came over a couple of times. I didn't relate very well with him. There was another kid who moved in across the street, and we sort of hit it off and then they moved. There was a family across the street that had a catering truck. They had a son that was sort of my age and in a wheel chair. He and I seemed to have a little bit in common. There was the family downt the street who parked the tractor on the lawn. They were a mix of Filipino and Mexican. They had a son that was in my class. He had a buisness mind way back then, and mowed lawns as well as worked in the fields with the rest of his family. There was a family next door to them that that consisted of a single mom, a grandmother and two boys. The oldest boy was a year or two older than me. I instantly had a big crush on him, which I don't know if he ever picked up on. This was probably the first guy I actually used to dream about. I would have been in sixth grade by now. If I wasn't thinking about boys before, I was definetely starting to think of them now. I didn't know about things enough to know how I was thinking about them yet, but it was coming on fast and furious by now. I was in sixth grade and in the Los Angeles Unified Public School system. In this system they divided the semester in half. So I was A6 and sometime after Christmas vacation would become a B6 and would be moving to another classroom with another teacher. This was a very confusing concept for me. To this day I don't understand the thinking behind that. One thing that sticks out in my mind from this period that I found highly amusing was the issue of pornography on the playground. One day all these kids had all these pictures they were sharing with each other. This caused other kids to go home and go through their dad's special "collection" and bring those pictures to school. It was all over the place. Since all I had ever seen before was my uncle Jim's Playboy magazines, I never knew about this hardcore stuff. Some of it was crude black and white stuff that some of the dad's must have picked up overseas or something, because a lot of it seemed to be asian. I remember one kid pulling a picture out of his pocket one day and showing it to me with great pride. I couldn't make out what I was looking at, and he told me "Its a lady with a stick in her pussy!" It seems the biggest source of this stuff was coming from one boy's dad's private stash of porn and this kid was selling these pictures to the other kids on the playground. I remember hearing that someone approached the boy's mom about it, and her first response was laughter. In this time period you had kid shows on television in the afternoon with hosts. I used to write for tickets to these when back when I was in fourth and fifth grade. By the time I was in sixth grade and a bit too old for it, I got tickets for The Billy Barty Show. He had a circus theme and showed Three Stooges. My mom thought we could go and take my younger cousins and one of their friends. He was on channel 11, so we left after school and got up to the KTTV studios in Hollywood. They used to do the show live, and they shared the studio with another kid show which was Hobo Kelly. Hobo Kelly was an Irish hobo type clown with leprechauns and a toy making machine. She did her show live and the two stages were separated by a curtain. When they let us in the studio they told us that Hobo was doing her show and we could come in and watch if we were very quite. The next thing I knew all these little kids went racing past me hollering HOOOOBBBBOOOO!!! I remember I didn't get seen on this show either, because by this time I was taller than all the other kids, and so you could only see my pants and shirt. This was my second TV show. The first one was right after the Watts Riots my mom, step sister Linda, and I went to one of the first tapings of the new season of the Red Skelton Show. His guest was Bobby Darin. That was fun. The sketches were good. Red Skelton played his character called Dead Eye on this night. This was also going to be the first year his show was going to be in color. It was a big deal when shows finally started going from black and white to color. I remember before the taping Red Skelton coming out and talking to the audience and telling us "Yeah, we're gonna be in color this season, so if you want to know a good place, I can tell ya where you can get a color TV set cheap. It will be scorched, but it will be cheap!" Towards the end of this school I was one of the winning contestants of a writing contest under the title of "What America Means To Me". I can't remember what I wrote, but I'm sure it was something all the adults wanted to hear, because I was one of the kids who got to stand up and recite it at the sixth grade graduation. So I guess back then, I was not only a wimp, but a brown noser as well. Looking back on it now, I suppose I would have kicked my ass too. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
6:39 pm	Chapter 2: Mom Finds Me Some Religion and Brimstone Moves In First grade showed me I couldn't read, write or do arithmatic. Summer came, and since my mom had to work during the day, she needed to put me someplace. At the time, she and my Grandmother were still on the outs. So she put me into a Jewish day camp. We weren't Jewish, and nobody in my family was. Being Jewish wasn't a requirement for belonging to this day camp, and I guess the cost was fairly reasonable. I didn't know anything about Jewish people, and the day camp was pretty fucking cool. Every week they took you someplace like Disneyland or better yet, Pacific Ocean Park. We used to call it POP. It was in Santa Monica , and it was one of those cool amusement parks on a pier with a big roller coaster. This place ruled! They were into praying all the time, but that was okay. They taught us regular day camp songs and Jewish ones as well. The songs were in Hebrew, and I didn't know any of the words, but I learned to sing them in words that sounded to my ear like what they were singing. This proved interesting when I started to sing my dad a song my Rabbi taught me. "Your What?!!" It seems my dad had a thing about Jews for some reason. To this day I don't know what that was all about, but he did end up bringing it up to my mom about this Rabbi business. When she told him about all the activities and the cost, he seemed to mellow out. I'm not sure how he took to my wearing a Mezuza. I won it in a contest one day. I wore it everywhere. I ended up going to this day camp again the following Summer, and some neighbor kids in our apartment building went along with me that time. By Second grade, my mom heard from somewhere that the private schools were a better bet for a lad like me. So she lied through her teeth to get me enrolled in a Lutheran school a few blocks away from my grandparents. To go to this school you had to be a member of the church, so I think my mom actually went once or twice to convince them we were members. By this time, my dad had remarried, and my new step brother Paul was going to another Christian school in the area. They made you wear these ugly ass uniforms at that one. My new step mother was sort of big on religion, and praying, and saying grace at every meal, and my dad seemed to like this idea as well. I was finally going to be getting this so called top notch education. As it turned out, they were even more advanced in reading, writing and arithmatic, and I was further behind. If they thought I was lost in public school, I was really out of my league here. The one thing I did seem to take a fancy to, was I like the pastoral robes and the white collars the various ministers wore. I would get home from school, and put on a cape, and white collar, and I got me a box to stand behind and spout my version of "The Word" to all the other kids on my grandparent's street. I was a regular Jim Jones.I didn't get religion at all. I don't think I actually felt one way or the other about it, but I liked the colors in the stained glass of the chapel, and the way the acoustics in the place could give a guy this god like boom voice. First I started taking the bus, but eventually my mom and my grandmother started talking and I got to the point I could walk to my grandparent's house after school, and my mom would pick me up after work and take me home. At this school they graded you every week on whether you went to Sunday School or church, or Sunday School and church. So I started going to Sunday School near our apartment for a while. On one occassion there, I even managed to walk up to the alter and tell them it was my birthday, just so I could blow out the candles on the plastic cake and say my name in the microphone. That was a big deal for a kid like me. The thing I liked about the whole church thing was the big loud organ. I thought I wanted to play piano and work my way up to playing organ. My mom looked into it, but she couldn't afford it. Since I wasn't in public school, I actually thought all kids prayed in school, and studied religion. I didn't know this was something that was going to make me come off as being an even bigger odd ball with the other kids. By this time, my mom and I had moved to an apartment down the street from the school. This was also only a few blocks away from my grandparents. My dad and stepmother had moved to an apartment a few blocks between our apartment and my grandparents house. I could walk or ride my bike to any of these places. At this school,I mostly hung with the girls or the nerdy guys.I hated sports and didn't want to play kick ball, dodge ball or any of that. I had crushes on guys in my class way back then. There was this one problem kid that was a bit of a bully that designated himself my friend. I couldn't stand this prick, but he would always end up walking home with me. He had this habit of punching me in the stomach all the time. In that school they taught you to turn the other cheek, so for years I would just take what ever shit anybody felt like dishing out towards me. This school was also big on corporal punishment. All the teachers had paddles or rulers to hit you with. After school so of the neighbor kids and I used to play school. Its funny that part of that included smacking a ruler loudly on the desk, and acting out all the disciplinary shit seemed to be the main focus of play. One of my friends from school lived right across the street from our new apartment. He and I became close friends by Third Grade. By Fourth grade we were close enough to play doctor. We kept at it though the Fifth grade too. What I'm talking about here is completely innocent discovery type stuff. Needless to say, I was very definetely into what I was discovering, and tried to discover it with other boys as well. I should state that I was never molested or anything, and I don't know where this great interest all came from. All I know was it was firmly in place at an early age, and didn't take much coaxing for me to go there. It was around the Forth Grade that The Beatles were becoming very popular. I credit my mom for igniting my interest in Beatlemania. She was the one who told me about them, and made sure I saw them on Ed Sullivan bought me my first two Beatle albums. Like many kids of that time, I was very Beatle obsessed. I collected the Beatle bubble gum cards. I also collected Monster bubblegum cards. I was really into monster movies and Famous Monsters magazine. That was one area I was able to relate to other boys with was our common love for monsters. We couldn't wait for Friday night to come, because in the evening on channel 9 was Strange Tales of Science Fiction. They showed all the wonderful Universal stuff, as well as some of the great low budget stuff. Saturday night was Chiller on channel 11. They showed great stuff to like "The Monster From Peadres Blances". This was a lower budget Creature of the Black Lagoon knock off. Later in the evening was Jeepers Creepers. This show actually had a horror host named Jeepers. This guy had a crazy laugh, and would read the letter of the week which usually had a recipe for some sort of ghoulish party concoction using brains and eyeballs. It wasn't till a few years ago that I learned the theme music for that show was written by a very young Frank Zappa. I was now around 9 or 10, and my mom and Adam announced they were getting married. I remember them asking me what I thought about it. What do you say, no? They went with a couple of friends and got married in Las Vegas one weekend. I was now in the habit of calling Adam by Al. I think Adam was used to throw my grandparents off track at first when he and my mom started having their affair. I was into the Beatles and wanted to learn to play guitar so I could play Beatle songs. My grandparents had this old spanish guitar they gave me, and got me guitar lessons at a place called Chucks Music that was right near their house and across Hawthorne Blvd.. I was having a hard time learning the usual old style guitar tunes that they taught kids back then like "On Top of Old Smokey" and stuff like that. To this day I think a kid is going to get more out of music if you can teach them to play something they listen to. I think my grandfather must of felt this way too, because one day he went with me and asked the instructor if he could teach me some Beatle songs, as he thought that might generate more interest. The instructor started teaching me the chords to about three Beatle songs. I learned to play "I Saw Her Standing There" first, and then "I Want To Hold Your Hand". I took to them like a match to gasoline. I thought I learned them pretty good, to my young ear. Al quickly became the domanating force in our house and in my life. He ruled with an iron fist. He had a different opinion on music. He didn't like the Beatles, and didn't think I was learning to play right, so he put his foot down and stopped the lessons. This was very devistating to me, and I really took a big disliking to this man from that point on. There was no turning back. Al became the dominant foe in my life. When he married my mom, the gloves came off, and he ruled the roost like a tyrant. He had this big loud voice, and he intstilled my fear of authority figures. He used to try to help me with my math homework because he was very good at it. I just didn't get math at all, and he would end up yelling at me on a nightly basis because I wasn't getting it. The louder he would get, the more I would tune try and tune him out. I started to build big high emotional walls to get away from him. My mom was no help at all, as she would always take his side. My own dad, didn't care for Al, but took a hands off approach to the situation. He more or less stuck with his football games, cigars and beer for many many years. I hated coming home after school. This also drove a wedge between my mom and I that would last for decades. If I could point to one single thing in my life that stunted my development, and any hope of having any sort of confidence it would be this man. He would make me feel like less than dog shit into my adult years, and in some cases, even now. Because of him, I pretty much gave up trying anything. I retreated into my own surreal little world. I would have friends here and there, but not close friends. I became more of a loner and stayed to my fantasy world as much as possible. My grandmother was probably the only person I would ever let in. She and my grandfather knew what was going on, and they became my allies, and my closest friends. I would try and spend as much time at my grandparents house as I could. For me, my grandparents house, WAS MY HOME. Al always used to tell me I was using them. He just didn't get that they were my only out from the hell that was his house. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
11:56 am	Chapter Two: The Babysitter ,Kindergarten, First Grade, and a Bit Further Since both of my parents had jobs, I stayed with a babysitter on the weekdays. This was going on before and after the divorce. My mom tells me about one woman I used to stay with at the beginning, and I guess I vaguely remember her. The one I do remember was a woman named Pauline. I don't recall her husband's name, but they had two older kids, and had two more over the years I stayed with them. Looking back on it, they lived pretty close to where my parents house was. I can remember getting there in the morning, and Pauline would be getting the kids ready for school, and I would watch cartoons on TV. They had the typical backyard with the swing set, and off in the corner near the garage was a sand box that later turned into a nice dirt pile that seemed to be where we did most of our playing. You can do some really great stuff with a big mound of dirt. Around noon time the older kids would come home from school and we would have lunch and watch Sheriff John. He used to show this interesting little cartoon called Clutch Cargo. It was sort of surreal because the only thing that moved on the characters were the lips. The lips were superimposed over the image. Looking back, I think I had nightmares about this too. I remember the old boy, I think his name was Robert, he was into all the hardcore boy stuff like playing army, baseball, and that sort of thing. I seem to recall the daughter's name as being Shirley. She was into girl stuff like dolls and games and picking on me. Pauline was always baking something. Cakes, pies, cookies, and cupcakes. I have some pretty fond memories of her as she seemed to really know how to take care of kids. She was no stranger to using a paddle if you did something wrong. I remember one time her daughter walked off with one of her friends toys because she wanted it. She got paddled and had to tell the picture of Jesus at the Last Supper she was sorry and wouldn't do it again. I seem to recall going through some similar treatment when I used the work "fucker" for the first time. In fact, I remember having to endure having my mouth washed out with a bar of soap on that one. I didn't know what a fucker was, all I knew was her son Robert used to say it around his friends all the time. I remember telling her that and hearing that Robert did not ever talk like that. Hmmmm, I wonder where Robert learned it from? The elementary school was just around the corner from the house. It is no longer there today, as they tore it down sometime back in the 80's to build some fancy new high falootin' homes. I went to Kindergarten and first grade here. I didn't know what to make of Kindergarten. I remember meeting my teacher and she put me in the blue group. She had a construction paper train on the bulletin board with different color cars, and each color represented a different group. She gave me a blue car with my name on it and pinned it to my shirt. I had to go sit on the mat with the kids in the blue group section. On certain days the blue group played in a certain area on the playground like the swings or tether ball, other days was hopscotch or monkey bars. We may have learned letters and numbers. I do remember painting and a thing called sharing. You could get up and share something with the class. They used to make you get up and share whether you had anything to share or not. If a girl brought a doll in, we would sing a song for the doll. They boys didn't have any songs for their toys, so one day, I brought in a doll so they could sing to it. The teacher looked puzzled, and I got laughed at for it, but hey, I wanted them all to sing to my doll. It wasn't my doll, it was my mom's doll. She bought all these dolls to make outfits for, so one day I asked her if I could take one to school. She wasn't sure why, and was probably affraid to ask because she had already suspected I was going to be different. The other thing I noticed and didn't care for much was if a kid had a birthday they would bring out this phony cake and light the candles and everyone would sing happy birthday and the kid would get to blow out the candles, and it was sort of this big whooptidoo. Well, what if your birthday was in the Summer like mine? You weren't going to get any of that glory. So for quite a number of years I would get up and say it was my birthday just so I could get mine. I think it was in Second grade I did that and the teacher called me on it afterward in front of the whole class and informed them and me that it wasn't until July. Okay, you got me, I'm an attention whore. So spit on me, throw rocks and call me stupid. You have the pointer, you are in control. I will just sit here damaged and suck my thumb from now on into adulthood feeling inferior because of this very moment. Thanks a whole bunch. First grade was when I really starte to feel stupid. Two plus two is what? What the hell are you talking about? Add and subtract? I don't get what is going on here. Reading? See Spot go, See spot run. This shit was killing me, I just was not getting any of it. This seeme to really piss people off, and I dug myself deeper into my imaginary hole, and I wasn't coming out because the other kids were going to laugh because I wasn't getting this stuff. The teacher even scared me. I was remember being afraid to ask her if I could go pee because I didn't want her calling anymore attention to my dumbness, so I ended up letting loose right there at my desk. This pissed her off, and endeared me to everyone else for the rest of the school year. From that point on, I stuck to my own little world. By this time my parents were divorced and my dad started dating this woman who he knew from the phone company where he worked. She was a telephone operator, and her name was Marilyn. She had a son that was a year younger than me. His name was Paul.So now I had a playmate when I my dad would come pick me up for the weekend. Marilyn was different than my mom in that she was always doing her hair up and changing colors.She was also a pretty strict disciplinarian when it came to her son Paul. I mean we are talking belts on bare butts here. He parents were even bigger disciplinarians than she was. With them it was more like the "here is my pocket knife, go cut me a switch to whip you with" kind of thing. I think around this time my dad was starting to drink more than he used to. The first divorce caught him so far off guard he it just floored him. My mom also had a friend she wanted me to meet. His name was Adam, and we became fast friends. He would come over on a week night and bring me a bottle of Bubble Up, which was sort of a 7-Up knock off. I was really intrigued by this man from nowhere, and how we always did all this fun stuff. At this point in time my mom and my grandmother weren't communitcating with each other. When I would go stay with my grandparents my grandparents wanted to know all about this Adam person.From what they told me years later, I would just look at them funny and say "he is my friend." Adam was apparently my mom's boss at one point. He had a wife and four kids, and my mom was unhappy in her marriage. She told me years later that she thinks the reason she married my dad was because she like his mom so much. My grandparents pretty much said the same thing about her, so I'm sure she must have been one hell of a good person. My parents were married seven years, so I guess things started getting itchy for her, as one thing led to another, Adam and my mom both ended up divorcing their spouses and started a long courtship. Soon after, Adam went into business for himself with a Shell gas station franchise in the city of Compton. He must have done pretty well because he soon opened up a new one caddy corner from the old one. I do recall one interesting story about this period of time when he owned the station. It was a week night and I was already in bed and my mom woke me up and said Adam was coming over because he had a surprise for us. So we waited together for him to come over trying to figure out what it might be. The door bell rang, and we opened the door, and there was Adam with a wooly monkey in a red suit and hat sitting on his shoulder. He brought the monkey in and it proceeded to run all over our apartment. It climbed up the drapes, and got on top the refrigerator. His name was Jigs, and he must have stood about two feet tall, and had this long tail. We were told that this type of monkey was supposed to be one of the most domesticated. He bought it from a couple that had another monkey, and the woman had made him all these outfits. When you put a monkey in a cute little outfit you also have to put a diaper on it first. This is not an easy task, because you have to try and hold them still and get the tail through the little hole, and they aren't going to help you in any way shape or form. One experience we had was it got away from my mom and shit all over the place. It did have a cage that it slept in at night. I was very popular for a day when I brought it to school. I remember we had the bright idea to take it out of the cage and I would hold it while my mom drove. That didn't work out to well. During the day, Adam took the monkey to the gas station and had him in the window for customers to see, and because a monkey takes a lot of care. This proved not to be as popular as he would have hoped, because at that time Compton was predominately black. This was before the Watts riots. Here in the window for his customer's enjoyment was a monkey in a suit, and locked in a cage with the name Jigs on the front. I guess to some it looked like a black man in a cage, and they weren't having it in their town. It didn't seem to offend Adam's employees who were all black, or maybe it did and they didn't want to bring it up because they thought he might fire them. He lost some customers because of it, and soon talked the people he got Jigs from to take him back. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 28th, 2006
6:04 pm	Chapter Two: So Here We Were I know I didn't get what was going on, and why I was living with my mom at this new smaller place. Neither one of my parents knew enough to think it might be a good idea for at least one of them to try and keep the house. They ended up selling to a couple that just seemed to show up out of nowhere. They had lost their son and were looking to move. They happened to be driving by and saw people moving furniture and made an offer. My parents accepted their offer, and they also took custody of our dog Feller. To this day, my mom still likes to drive by and look at that house. The various owners never did much of anything to the outside of it, except for adding a roof over the patio space between the garage and the back door of the house. I remember us driving away, and my dad watching us drive away. I know this was a hard thing for him. He ended up moving in with a friend of his named Chuck who had also recently divorced. I don't remember too much about the first place my mom and I moved to, other than it was off of Western Avenue in the Harbor Gateway part of Torrance. I think the place was a triplex. The area wasn't a nice area, and still isn't. We lived in the middle unit.It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen and living room. I remember there was a couple in the back unit that had a little girl who was about a year or two younger than I was. I remember before the divorce, my parents had bought a new white Ford Fairlane which my mom got to keep. Back in those days, if a woman was divorced she couldn't get car insurance for some reason, as she was considered a risk. I think my dad had to pay for the car insurance or something. In the divorce settlement, my dad would get me every other weekend. He would pick me up at my babysitters house after he got off work and we would usually go to the coffee shop at Newberrys and have dinner, and then he would take me over to their toy section and buy me something. I always looked forward to that. He would take me to the drive-in and we would watch movies which usually ended up with me falling asleep somewhere through the second feature. For those of you not familiar with drive-ins, they showed a double feature plus cartoons back then.To my mind, they need to bring that concept back. There was one movie about Jack the Ripper my dad took me to see,where Jack gets crushed under an elevator at the end. I had nightmares about that for a week. There were various monster movies that had the same effect as well. Sometimes he would try taking me to sporting events like football or boxing. I will tell you right now that I've never had any interest in any kind of sport what so ever, but my dad had plans for me to play football at some point. The only thing I found remotely to my liking at the time were the cheer leaders and their poms poms. I used to call them the Ho Ho Ho Girls, because thats what I thought they were saying. I remember on one of our nights together at Newberrys, he was looking at these boxing gloves for me, but I wanted the baton and whistle I saw on the other side. He got me those and the boxing gloves(Denial #1).I remember at my babysitters house we all used to watch a show called Romper Room, and they had this thing called a Doo Bee. It wasn't a toy, but an entity on the show. In my childs brain , I thought it was a toy, and like most kids, I wanted that because I saw it on television. He took me to a couple of places trying to find this Doo Bee thing I was talking about, till someone told him it was not a toy but part of a kids show. Sometimes your parents are more than happy to oblige your wishes if they only knew what the hell you were talking about. I used to like going to department stores. May Company back then seemed to have more stuff. They had a big toy department that many parents would drop their kids off in so they could go shop in other departments. They used to sell yardage back then as well. My mom was into sewing , and was always making dresses, or accessorizing old ones. The other fun thing for a kid to do in a department store, was hang out with the other little kids under the clothes racks. They were like a play ground. I remember meeting up with two brothers and another boy under one garment rack, and one of them was the instigator in all of us seeing how many dresses we could look up. It seems one of them had a sister who ended up telling their mom, and it was around that same time that another woman was asking out loud if anybody was missing some boys, because they were being naughty and trying to look up eveyone's dress. At that moment three embarrassed women wasted no time in getting over there and found themselves in a hurry to leave. Hey, it wasn't my idea, that other boy told us to do it. Grocery stores were also a fun place to meet other kids. If I behaved myself, my mom would let me ride underneat the shopping cart. Other kids seemed to have the same deal with their moms as well, and you could wave and make faces at each other when you passed by. This was always followed by much giggling. Most of these stores had the little pony ride out front. Back then it cost a nickle. They sometimes had shooting gallery machines, baseball or pinball. I liked this one Thrifty Mart because it had a rocket ship and a stage coach out front, and inside, they had this train set with sound effects. They also had this puppet one, that would sing and dance when paid. The anthem of every kid leaving any of the stores was "I want one of these!" at every vending machine. These were usually followed by an immediate "No!", because the parent knew the rocket ship and the stage coach were coming up right outside the door, and if they relented to that one, they may have a more peaceful ride home in the car. One game you can play in a car is to pick a certain bill board advertisement, or product brand, and count every one you see before you get home. I think the breweries and the tobacco companies knew about this little game, because it sure seems like I remember counting a lot of Burgie bill boards. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 27th, 2006
12:01 pm	Chapter One: My Grandparents My grandparents on my mother's side, lived in Hawthorne.My grandfather's name was Alvin and my grandmother's name was Grace. I would spend most of my growing years with them. I did have a grandfather on my dad's side. I don't think I ever knew what his name was though. He was divorced from my late grandmother whose name was Gladys. My dad had stopped talking to his dad when his parents got divorced. My mom was the one who got my dad and his dad back together again. He used to come over and bring me M&Ms. Other than that I don't remember to much about him. He passed away when I was in the third or fourth grade. Alvin was a baker by trade. He grew up on a farm in Arkansas. They used to tell people they were from Oklahoma because it sounded more upper class than they were. His family was dirt poor. His father left his wife to raise nine kids on her own, so he could go sow more wild oats else where. I don't know to much about that side of the family other than the boys took to riding the rails. By riding the rails, I mean they would ride under the train car right next to the turning wheels. My grandfather told me there was just enough room for a thin fella to fit, but you had to hang on tight, and if you fell asleep you could fall off and end up hamburger on the tracks. He also said you had to keep your eyes and ears open for the guys that worked for the railroad coming around looking for guys like him. They had no problem knocking them off the train, and didn't care much if the guy died in the process. Thats what they were paid to do, and they did it. My mom says that their mom knew they were doing this, but back then, it was probably better having them running off like that to find work else where because she didn't have enough to feed them if they stayed there. This would have been around the the dust bowl era. The brothers were all pretty good at drinking and getting into fights and jail. They were no strangers to making their own liquor and rolling their own smokes either. My grandmother used to tell me stories about how my grandfather used to make his own beer in the bath tub during prohibition. At that time they lived in a house across the alley from the police station. I guess one hot summer night, he had the stuff all bottled and corked and the weather was just a little too hot, and the corks all started shooting off like gun shots. It woke everybody in the house up, and they had to start dumping all the beer out in the tub in fear the cops would come over and want to investigate where the shots were coming from. Another story my grandfather told me was the time he and his brother Paul were going to pick up some hard hooch from this one guy for a company party they were going to. When they got there the place was deserted like they had to leave real fast. They happened to come across a barrel laying in the tall grass. It looked like somebody stashed it for safe keeping till they got back. Well, the two brothers didn't want to go to the company party empty handed, and this barrel was there and didn't have any sign of ownership attached to it, so they figured they would take it. So they showed up at the party and started to add a bit of spice to everyone's tea. I guess some of the women had too much to drink and started brawling. He told me that when he was a boy on the farm he once saw all these ducks walking funny and falling down over near the silo. I guess what happened is they would store all the wheat up in the silo, and the roof leaked, and formed a little pond at the base. As the water went in through the roof, it would run down through the wheat and ferment and by the time it got down to the pound, it had a nice kick to it. So the ducks were drunk, and soon after his discover, so was the boy who would become my grandfather. My grandmother Grace, came out to California with her mother Annie from the east coast. Annie was divorced from her husband after he had left her for another woman. It is my understanding that he was pretty well off, but when he left, he either took it all with him, or she didn't want anything from him. Grace used to worship her dad. Growing up she was his princess. She used to tell me he was a direct descendent to one of the first famlies that came over on the Mayflower. It wasn't until a few years ago that I found out that most people on the east coast will tell you that someone in their family's bloodline had a direct link from the Mayflower. Oh well. I'm sure she believed it, as she wasn't one to lie. When her dad announced to her that he was leaving Annie and why, she didn't even want to look at him. In a moment's time she was done with him for good. He no longer exited. My grandmother put herself through a course to become a Stenographer. She and her mother were best friends and roomates. They decided to come out to California and see if they couldn't get into the moving picture business. They both had bit parts in the silent versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera. Annie stayed around in the motion picture business, and Grace went to ply her trade as a stenographer. I believe she worked at the Herald Examiner in downtown Los Angeles, and she also worked at an insurance company at one time. At one job, she had to train another woman who happened to be a dwarf. She would tell me how she was trying to demonstrate to the woman how their filing system worked, and the woman proceeded to sit on the floor of the office with her legs out and had the papers all spread out on the floor. I could see where that might have been an ideal work space for someone of that build, but back in the 20's that just wasn't done. Grace was caught talking to another co-worker in the hall by her supervisor. She described this woman as being one of the those stern very business like sort of person. She spoke out to them both to follow her to her office that minute. This was a busy office, and so this was in front of a whole roomful of office people sitting at their desks, and this was very humiliating. When they went in to the office, the woman abruptly shut the door behind them and asked them just what did they had to say for themselves? This seemed to get Grace's Scottish blood to boiling, and she said rather loudly "Well, I think I deserve a raise, thats what I think!" Later in the day, the woman called her back in to the office. Grace thought for sure she was going to get her walking papers, but she ended up getting a raise. Grace had a brother named James who always used to start any conversation with me by telling me he was always interested in the natural sciences. He seemed to be able to back that statement up too. When their dad left, he enlisted in some branch of the military (I'm not sure what branch, I'm going to guess the army.) and got himself in a good position as a photographer. When he got out of the service, he spent some years as a CHP officer, and I think a ranger at one point. Grace was very proud of her brother. He was another strange bird in our family. He married this Italian woman and they had a boy and a girl that they named James and Grace. He tended to favor the boy, and would buy him all the educational boy type stuff. He didn't favor his daughter so much. In fact he used to make her wear boys shoes growing up. It wasn't till my grandfather's death in the late 80's that I found out what cruel piece of work this guy actually was to the women in his household. He had a long bout with either colan or prostate cancer, and instilled in me that people should have the right to die if they so choose. Even though I now know he was an asshole, I hold firm to that belief myself. My grandmother told me once how she first met my grandfather. She was walking down the street and Alvin and his brother Paul came wheeling by in a convertible with the top down. They pulled along side Grace and Alvin started trying to make some conversation. Grace had this fast paced east coast walk, and tried to ignore him. Finally Alvin must have said something that led to her wanting to converse with him, though she could clearly tell he wasn't in her league. She lived a few blocks away, and as it turned out, they lived either right near by or across the street. I know it turned out they lived near by, and he had spotted her walking to work a couple of times before this meeting. As fate would have it, she let them drive her home. They dropped her off, and she figured that was that. The next day, when she came home from work, she walked in the door, and found Alvin and Paul sitting around drinking beer and laughing with Annie and her boyfriend. They had introduced themselves to Annie as their new neighbors. So things went on and Grace and Alvin got hitched. Alvin had always worked as a unionized baker for the various bread makers around town. He was a staunch card carrying union man. He was pretty ornary, and for years would carry a black jack. From what I understand, the police knew him. I guess he had a few encounters at one time or another with the law in regards to booze. He did tell me he smoked pot one time. He worked at this one bakery at night with some mexican co-workers who used to go out on break and toke up. They offered him some one night, and he had never had anything like it before. I remember him telling me he felt so whoozy, and couldn't stop laughing. It wasn't like drinking though, and he knew how to handle that, or he thought he did anyway. He also took some jobs working as a cook in some labor camps and restuarants. It was the Depression, and jobs were tight, so you took what you could. He told me he worked for a while at this one restaurant, and this high brow type lady would come in every night all dressed to the nines. Every night she would order a steak, and every night she would send it back because something was wrong with it. On this particular night, the main chef was having a bad nigh. Everything was turning to shit. She came in, ordered her steak and sent it back because it was too tough. Thats all this guys needed at that particular moment, and he grabbed the steak off the plate and threw it on the floor and stomped all over it, and kicked it all around the sawdust on the kitchen floor. Then he cleaned it off, and threw it back on the fire a bit, and send it back to her. She then sent the waiter back to let him know that was the best steak she had ever had and wanted him to make it like that from then on. Grace never had any experience cooking. Alvin and Annie taught her how to cook. They taught her that you should always know how to make a stew, because you can add whatever you happen to have on hand. So she put on the apron, and from that point on stayed the coarse. She and Alvin managed to raise four kids. Two boys and two girls. The oldest boy was my Uncle Rich. The next one was a girl, who is also my mom Bette. They had two more later on when my mom and Rich were in their early teens. There was my Aunt Shirley,who was named after then film star Shirley Temple, followed by my Uncle Jim, who was named after Grace's brother James. Neither Alvin nor Grace were big on spanking or disciplining kids. They didn't have to, as Grace could make you feel guilty about every wrong thing you did in your life in a second. You really didn't want to disappoint her because the hammer would come down with but a look. She also taught us that you had to have more than one dessert. You had to have cake, ice cream and home made cookies. As grandmother Grace, when all the cousins were over, she would tell us that if we ate our supper, she would put on her housecoat, and we could walk down to Thrify and buy ice cream. This was a big ritual among all of us kids. If she only had vanilla, and you wanted chocolate, on went the housecoat, out came the purse, and we were off to the races. I kid you not, this woman would walk everywhere. It was because of her, that I too used to walk everywhere to the amazement of all my friends. I didn't have a car for years because I enjoyed walking so much because of this woman. My dad used to call her Skipper. He used to be in his phone company truck and driving down Hawthorne Blvd, and see her walking with an arm full of grocieries, and he would pull over and honk at her and see if he could give her a lift, and she would always say no. She really enjoyed it. I completely understand that too. It is very healing to the spirit. I once healed my spirit from Cerritos to the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood to see Led Zepplin. I know I had to stink like hell when I got there, but when the show was over, I walked from there to my grandparents house in Hawthorne. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
8:55 pm	Chapter One: The Train Set And Other Toys I remember seeing an old 8mm movie real my dad took with his Brownie movie camera of one Christmas morning. I must have been three or four in this thing. It was typical Americana for its time. There I was in my pajamas running out to see what was under the tree. There in plain sight, and running was this electric train set. My dad and I used to watch this kids show with a train theme on TV together Monday thru Friday. The host was a guy all us kids knew as Engineer Bill. He had this big fancy train set in front of him, and when the trains were running, he would show cartoons. He had this game called Red Light Green Light that involved drinking milk. When the announcer said green light, you drank your milk, and stopped when he said red light. Engineer Bill always had kids as guests on his show, and hence had a lot of spilled milk on his electric train set. Since I had a habit of leaving my toys laying around my dad decided to build the train set into the wall of my bedroom. He was always stepping on my tinker toys and getting stabbed in the foot when he would get up in the morning. You could always hear him yelling "Goddammit!" when he did. So he came up with this hinged box that was mounted to the wall and the track was mounted on a board that folded out. He painted it up to look like a whole town and mounted some buildings, trees, and cars on it. I can still see him putting this stuff together. I know he was into it. He was in the Army Airforce and liked to build model airplanes too. So I had all these model airplanes suspended from the ceiling. He used to do this for my brothers in his other marriages as well. We would run the trains everynight and play red light green light at the train set before I would go to bed.He would help me build stuff with the tinker toys too. My dad was a big into boxing and football. He had plans for me to go down that path as well. I had the little boxing outfit with the gloves. I liked the outfit because it was shiny, I wasn't into hitting, at least not as in boxing. I also had the doctor kit. I think they realized they made a big mistake with that one. They took me to the doctor and everybody had to hold me down before they could give me any kind of shot. Getting a shot really pissed me off. So I guess I got a hold of a pencil and put it in my doctor kit, and I used to go around jabbing people in the butt with this pencil. If I had to get a shot, so did everybody else. I remember sticking my dad in the arm with the pencil, and he yelled "Owww", and blood started shooting out. He wiped some of it on me, and I started screaming because I didn't want to bleed, it was his shot. I had this record player that had this thick needle and the sound would come out of the arm of the player. I remember me and some of the neighbor kids I used to play with got a hold of these thick records my parents had. I think they were 78s, and you could play them, but what was even more fun was if you dropped them they would shatter and break into a bunch of pieces. They made a great noise when they did it too. We must have broke about ten or twenty of these things before someone came in and stopped us. My mom had this aunt we would go out and see every once in a while. She was one of my grandfather's sisters. His family was from Arkansas, and he had eight brothers and sisters. This aunt was sort of the odd ball of the family. She was into healthy eating and somewhat mystical. If I didn't know better, I would guess she was no stranger to smoking dope. I don't remember her all that well. She didn't have any kids, and didn't take any crap from them either. In some ways, she was kind of scary. When she came to visit, she would bring her own food, and was very insistant that everybody eat what she brought whether you liked it or not. If you didn't like something on your plate, you could bet you were going to be eating it that day, because she was one of those types that would put it down you while your parents stood there looking puzzled as to what to do about the situation. She lived out in the desert and years later would tell my grandmother about all the UFOs out there, and how the people on them would come into her house unannounced and bite her on the hands. One time we went out to visit her and she had this cocker spaniel named Feller. I ended up playing with the dog most of the day, and when it came time to pack up and head home, she asked me if I would like Feller to come live with us. So the next thing I knew, we had this dog. A couple of weeks later this dog would bite me on the mouth. I don't know if I provoked him or not, but I remember having to get a shot. It was somewhere around this time frame things weren't right around the house. Something was up. I just remember one day they furniture was being moved and I was packed into the car with my mom, and watched as nieghbors carried off my rocking horse to their house. Apparently my mom, who was having an affair with her boss (my future step dad), had served my dad with divorce papers. He didn't even see it coming. My mom's friend was the one who broke down and told my dad what was up. My grandmother was furious with my mom, and they didn't speak for about a year. I would get dropped off at my grandparents house for the night, and she would come and get me, and say very little if anything to my mom. At the time, I wasn't even aware this was going on between them. My grandmother and I were very close. Even though she has passed on, she is my best friend, and sometimes when I'm walking, I know she is walking next to me. Me and my dad around 1956 (Comment on this)
12:30 pm	Chapter One: "Booped By The Thweeper" I first popped out into this physical realm in the summer of 1954. I don't remember a thing. I vaguely recall little fragments of fuzzy images, but I'm not sure what order they would go in. I do recollect the first time I realized I was here though. I don't know how old I was, but I was pushing a toy lawn mower around the den of my parents house, and my dad was sitting in the room smoking his pipe and reading a paper. My dad's name was Bob and my mom's name is Bette (That is pronounced Betty). We lived in a corner house on a neighbor hood block in the city of Torrance. This city was concidered the boonies by our relatives who lived in the valley. At the time, I guess it was pretty rural. None of my dad's family could figure why anybody would want to live way out there in the middle of nowhere. My dad worked for the phone company as a lineman, and my mom worked in aerospace. I think one of them worked night shift, but I'm not sure. I'm told by my mom that we lived some other place when I was first born, but all I can remember is this house. They had been married about two years prior to me coming into the picture, and managed to buy this house in the boonies. The house was situated in a rather hilly section near the base of Palos Verdes and next to Redondo Beach. Some of the things I can remember would be the wooden floors of my bedroom. I had a crib that I would shake and the noise of the wheels rolling back and forth on the floor would bring one or both of my parents in to see what was wrong. I think it was the way the light would show through the curtains onto the headboard of my crib at night, that would make me think there was a swarm of white moths moving around on it. I was terrified of these things, and would start screaming and shake the crib until someone showed up. I'm told my dad used to sit and watch Howdy Doody with me on his lap. I don't actually remember watching this show, but I think I was getting some sort of nightmares from it, because I sort of remember waking up screaming a few times thinking this alien puppet thing was trying to eat me or something. They even gave me a toy hand puppet version of Howdy Doody that they used to put in my crib at night. Talk about no escape! Another odd thing was I was strangely attracted to vaccum cleaners. I don't know what that was about, and before you say it, I can assure you it wasn't about what they do,it was more about what they looked like and the noise they made. I used to call them Thweeperths. When ever we went to somebody's house I just had to see their thweeper. At some point before all that started, I think my babysitter or someone must have poked me in the stomach playfully with a vaccum tube and said "boop!" Because apparently I liked to get "booped" by the thweeper. Now take your mind out of the gutter, this was a totally innocent child type of thing. The older people would ask why I like thweepers so much, and I would say "boop!" Its funny looking back on this now, because years later when I was in high school, Frank Zappa came out with an album called "Chungas Revenge". Chunga was a vaccum cleaner that ended up going into a frenzy and inhaling a all the castinets in this village. This was all part of Zappa's bigger work "200 Motels", which featured Motorhead Sherwood as a boy and his vacumm cleaner. Hey what can I say, they make great pets and they clean up after themselves. (Comment on this)
6:22 am	This Is My "Other" Space I just remembered I had this space and figured I'd start using it as well. I will define this as being my Anti-MySpace presence. I don't know what that means exactly but if I just start using it, sooner or later it will define itself. I think I will use this space as more of a public rant to myself. If I'm not noodling on a guitar, I may as well noodle with what one woman once called "my rambling verbage". I'm an old guy, so I'm entitled, besides that, who put the stitches in her cunt? So lets go rambling, shall we? My friend Bene told me recently that if I don't write a book, he was going to come over with his cassette machine and interview me. I found this flattering and interesting since I've always considered myself an under achiever. I don't really see where I've accomplished much of anything in my life that would be worthy of that. The one goal I was able to achieve was home ownership and I couldn't have done that without my partner. I have managed to stay employed for thirty years up until recently being laid off. That part is taking some getting used to and isn't a comfortable feeling for me. I have also had to take on the responsiblity of taking care of an aging parent. That has been one of the biggest challanges I've ever had to deal with. There are some days I just spend screaming and throwing shit. I don't have any kids (that I know of, though the possiblility is there.). In fact, I'm very child-like myself. In fact, I'm glad I don't have any kids, because I don't think I would have been a good or responsible parent. I see a lot of kids who have parents like I probably would have been. That would be a horrible thing to put a kid through. I would have ended up breeding someone that might be even more confused and angry than I am. My partner Jon would tell you he has been raising a kid during the coarse of our entire relationship. He gives me great comfort and basically takes good care of me. There is no one that can come between me and him. I don't care how cute or sexy someone else may be, nobody is going to give me anything close to what I have with this man. I couldn't have said that when I was in my early twenties, I was too busy being a stoned out whore to know about true love. I didn't think gay people had monogomous relationships. The world I was introduced to, or make that thrown into was one where you would go to a bar or street, and pick up as many guys as you could. I knew I was queer from a very early age, but didn't know thats what it was. I always gravitated to other boys. Girls were okay, but for some reason boys were better. I remember when I was in kindergarten and riding to school with my mom and asking her if boys married boys. I also remember seeing a child psychiatrist around that same time period. My mom and my dad divorced when I was around 5, and I guess my mom thought I was confused about things. I don't think I've ever stopped being confused about things. The more I think I understand, the more life seems to shake things up even more. What is here one day, will be mutated to something else the next day, and at various points may revert back to a variation of one of it's prior states at any given moment in space and time. Rambling vergage on a roll here, eh? I've dabbled in music here and there. I used to aspire to be the great queer rock hero. At the time, I didn't know I was limiting my audience(the one in my mind!). I didn't know then that the queers didn't want to listen to the type of shit I was coming up with. All my songs seemed to be in the key of E, and every last one of them was about sex. I think that was because I used to smoke a lot of pot, and the gay world I found myself in, seemed to be into the whole Bowie thing, and it seemed to glorify hustling. Pot made me a hungry walking hard on. When I hear about these people smoking this stronger stuff today, I can't imagine what it must be doing to them. My experience is that it made me lazy, hungry, and horny, and not necessarily in that order. My second relationship was all based on pot and sex. We were into threesomes, foursomes, or anythingsomes. It was a four year fuck fest, with a lot of fighting in between. There was nothing healthy about that relationship, and the fact that I'm still around now is nothing short of surprising to me. I mean we were so absurd, we used to get stoned, order pizza, and then try and seduce the pizza delivery guy. We were totally out of control. So now that I'm looking at this, it seems from this point on, I can safely define this space as being my book. So I am going to dedicate this to my friends Die Bene Tleilax for making the suggestion that I even try doing this, Mr. RoMak for inspiring me to free fall into my own vulnerability, and anyone else who wants to pull their pants down in public. (2 Comments |Comment on this)