Russell/Moore Eggs

 

RUSSELL/MOORE EGGS

by Spencer Cross Moore 

©️2021

This is a work of fiction. 

Any resemblance to anybody living or 

otherwise is completely coincidental 

A TOM SAWYER MOMENT

It’s late summer in 1978 and I’m eleven. It’s a beautiful hot day. I’m in Glen Ellen. 

Today I was standing on a big rock next to a creek, wearing my swim trunks, holding a rope in my hand. The rope was tied to a tree limb far above me. It couldn’t have been anymore peaceful of a day. I’ve been doing this all summer, so I’m getting pretty good at it. I know exactly when to let go. So I yell: “Geronimo!” and I jump. The swing action of the rope takes me to where I want to be, the momentum takes me the rest of the way. I splash down into the deepest part of the swimming hole. I think that’s the farthest I’ve ever gone.

It’s a beautiful sunny day in what appears to be a wooded glade, with a creek. Also a 70s hippie wooded Marin-style home next to the creek. I walk out the back door and start down toward the creek. I’m eleven years old. I turn back to the house and yell, “Hey Mark! Donnie! I’m heading back! I gotta go meet Dad and my Nom at the restaurant!”

“Okay Benny!” says Mark

“Quit calling me Benny! I’m Spencer!”

Donnie steps out on the back porch. “That’s gonna take some getting used to. Why are you changing your name?”

“I’m not changing my name. I’ve always been Spencer. It’s not my fault nobody ever calls me that. See ya, Donnie.”

“See ya, kiddo.

And I head off down the creek toward London Glen, which was this arty hippie shopping area loaded with esoterica, and the waterwheel restaurant that my dad took over from Juanita Musson and turned into the third Mama’s Royal Cafe.

I move along at a steady clip, whistling, rock hopping, talking to myself, making Star Wars references, as I wind my way up the creek side. It’s not too far. I can see the restaurant start to peek through the trees. It’s a big old wooden building. It’s got a waterwheel, so it’s got to be a mill, right? Well it’s 1978 and I don’t know what a mill looks like. Looks like a big old barn that’s been converted to a restaurant to me.

MY GOOD DEED

It’s 1995. I’m 28. I’m in Mom’s living room, drawing away furiously. I’m a little sweaty and wan. I’m working on multiple art projects, jumping from project to project. The clock says 1:45am. I stop, look at my work and have a cig. Unfiltered Camel. Just like Grampa. I look over toward the kitchen. Mom and Judy are fiddling with their bags.

“What are you guys doing?”

“We’re going to Safeway” my mom says.

“Jeez Mom. It’s two in the morning”.

“It’s cool out” offers Judy.

“It’s the only time you can go when there’s nobody in there” says Mom.

“Okay. Have fun” I tell them. 

And they exit. Two old ladies in long old lady coats with their purses and wire old lady grocery carts. I know my mom and aunt. They’ll be hours. And I need cigarettes.

“Hold on! I’m coming with you.”

The three of us walk through the cool misty Oakland night. It’s a straight shot down the side street to Safeway. Ten blocks. Mom and Judy walk very very slow, while I walk very very fast. So I’m kind of looping them. 

“Hey Mom. Gotta smoke?”

She pulls out a Marlboro red and light me one off of hers and then hands it to me. Mom and Judy quietly argue like hens as we make our way to the bright shining beacon of commerce glowing in the distance. 

We get to the Rockridge Center and there’s Safeway. Couple cars in the lot.

Mom and Judy are starting their aisle crawl. They are going to slowly go down every aisle and look at each product. Many will be discussed. Like I said, this could be a while. I’m just there to buy smokes.

“Hey, I’m gonna go buy some smokes, and then go have one. I’ll see you guys out front when you’re done.”

“Okay Spencer”

“Bye Benny”

As I’m walking away toward the front of the store, I hear them arguing about if the butter top white bread is better than the non-butter top variety. They have opinions.

I buy a pack of Camel non-filter and head out toward the parking lot. Once I’m out the front door, the Muzak is replaced with the cool hiss of the outdoors. Horns and street noises are distant but there. I know I could be waiting a while. To the right I find a little stone bench, I sit down and light up and enjoy my nasty little habit. So about twenty minutes after I first exited Safeway, well into my third cigarette, out comes my Mom with a cart full of groceries. She sits down next to me and lights up a cigarette. I’m starting to get antsy. It's getting late and still no sign of Judy. I'm starting to wonder if maybe one of us should go in and physically remove her from the store. Suddenly, I'm aware of a buzz of activity off to the left, a little swarm of energy just out of sight. From the sound, I can tell there's a crowd gathering. I can hear people mumbling, but the only word I can make out is, "Fight." 

"Big deal," I think to myself. 

Then into my field of vision, as I sit there on my bench, comes a man -- this black dude, not too big, maybe 5'10", a hundred and fifty pounds, arms cocked, fists at the ready, doing a little backward dance that it looked like he picked up from watching Muhammad Ali. 

"This is getting interesting," I think to myself. Then I see what he's backing away from. 

This security guard was a behemoth -- He had to weigh two-sixty. He was huge, and it wasn't fat. He could have been a tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was six and a half feet of uniform and jarhead haircut, big black billy club in his hand. They dance like some sort of insane prison courtship ritual as the black man continually backs away from this giant white angry juggernaut of a security guard, back into the massive Safeway parking lot. 

At that point, I started taking notes in my head. The black man never advances on the security guard. All his friends, and good percentage of Safeway employees are buzzing around the perimeter like flies. This dude looked like he was in some deep water. It was apparent to me that if the two of them made contact, there would be no fight, just a slaughter. But the dude’s got his fists up in defiance, and Goddamn, he looks scared. Now I'm standing up. I look at my Mom to see if she's getting all of this. She looks up at me in disbelief. Then we both look back at the action. The security guard and the black man are pivoting back and forth around the circumference of an imagined circle. The dance continues, words are said. 

"You want to fight? You want to fucking go to it?" 

"Why you need a baton, man? Why you need a stick?" 

They dance and dance. And then they stop, for a split second. Then the security guard makes his move. Like a bull, charging at a matador. It’s a cliche, but it’s true. What happened next happened in probably two seconds, but it seemed to take forever. Time compresses and events happen in slow motion. The look of shock on this man's face as he's about to be hit by a runaway train, probably wondering how this all got so out of control. Then the impact. The security guard throwing him like a rag doll over his hip and to the ground. This massive beast bringing his knee down onto the shin of the now subdued man. 

Snap! 

I don't recall if I actually heard the snap, or if my brain just put it there for the sake of dramatic effect. Looking back, I think I heard it, muffled from under his jeans, but I didn't know yet what to connect it to. In an instant, the security guard had this guy cuffed. The man is strangely silent. Something is clearly not right. I can't imagine what it felt like when the rush of pain hit, when the screaming started. 

"My leg! My leg! It hurts! Oh, fuck!"
Then his friend who was off to the side chimed in.
"You broke his leg, man! You broke his fucking leg!"
The security guard didn't buy it for a second. Until he looked down. 

Whoops! 

It's hard to explain how gut-wrenching it is to see someone's leg bending in two places, like he has a new knee where God hadn't intended one. The lower half of this man's shin was dangling. That motherfucker! That evil motherfucker! Everyone was standing around watching this guy, whose leg was bent in an ungodly fashion, watching him squirm and scream. My heart sank. This was really fucked up. Sensing the impending shitstorm, the security guard who had so ruthlessly snapped this man's leg asunder like it was a twig, was now trying to comfort him. Needless to say, the handcuffs came off. 

"I've broken your leg, sir! Calm down, an ambulance is on the way." 

"Sir!?! Can you believe this shit? He's calling him sir!", said one of the victim’s friends. 

And the fucking rubberneckers are just wandering by, looking but pretending not to look. All the greasy looking assistant managers are standing around in their white shirts watching this pathetic sideshow. I can't take it anymore, so I jump up on the cool stone bench where we'd smoked so many cigarettes, and start yelling. "That's fucked up! You broke his fucking leg! What the fuck was that all about?!? Motherfucker!" 

No one's listening to me, but that's okay. I know what my next course of action has to be. After I catch my breath, I walk up to the victim's buddy and tell him I saw the whole thing. Saw it? Shit! I had a front row seat! I give him my name and number. "The attack was fucked up and unprovoked and tell your friend to give me a call if he wants me to testify." When we got home that night I called the cops, and both of us, my Mother and I, filed police reports, knowing that having an official record at the time of the incident would be immensely helpful to this poor guy's eventual case. I mean, I can't imagine a scenario (shoplifting, assault, whatever) where this guy deserved what happened. Circumstances where having your leg literally busted in two like a twig by a supermarket security guard is justified. It was just plain wrong and nobody seemed to give a shit. A police officer showed up at 5 in the morning, and I told him all about it.

You might say I was at a crossroads. Not that I did anything about it, except whatever it took to not feel the pain I was in, which was substantial. I was becoming a mean and desperate and petulant person. what I did to deal with my feelings was take more drugs and do more art. That was the only answer I had to the situation at hand, but it wasn’t a solution that was going to hold long. I was an accident waiting to happen. If I didn’t pull up the nose I was going to crash my plane into the side of a mountain.

THE DOLPHIN STORY

My dad was extremely hyperbolic. With him, everything was always “the best” this and “the greatest that”. Especially if it was something he did. If asked, I’m sure he’s admit to being the greatest user of hyperbole that ever lived. He routinely claimed to be the best short order cook in the world. He said that what he did in the kitchen stymied great chefs because it was too fast and all made to order, where as chefs dealt with the work load by doing way more prep. There’s thing called a caterpillar... never mind. 

The point is that Dad had been claiming to serve “The World’s Best French Toast” since about 1992. At the same time Steve had his own restaurant around the corner at the Hotel Mar de Cortez that was named after my dad. (Long story, we’ll get around to it later.) Steve and Dad used the same menu, designed by Dad. So Dad also claimed to have “The World’s Best French Toast”. So Randy Mosley asked Steve:

“The menu says you guys got the world’s best French toast, and I was just at your Dad’s place, and he claims to have the world’s best French toast, too. How can it be that both of you guys have the world’s best French toast?”

“That’s easy. Because Dad is lying sack of shit.”

Dad also claimed to be the best liar in the world. And I got to say, he was a very very naturally gifted bullshitter. He was so good at it that more than once I heard him telling different people this:

“I’m such a good liar that I’m telling you that I’m going to tell you a lie, then I’m going to tell you that lie, and you’ll believe it anyway.”

People would people would kind of chuckle and roll their eyes skeptically. And then he immediately launch into the dolphin story. The dolphin story was actually based on something that really happened to us, and of course that’s the key to lying successfully, is don’t stray too far from the truth. What happened was in 1972 in San Felipe, Baja California. Me, Steve, Mom and Dad. I’ll try and tell it chronologically. 

What I remember is a really long drive through a hot desert, along a straight narrow road. It was so hot that off in the distance it looked like there was water on the road, which I think is the basis for all mirages, right?. The far off water that never seems to get any closer.? There were dust devils to the left and right. They looked like little tornados to me at five years old. Driving down the road we drove up behind a Mexican woman slowly driving a pickup truck with two small children with her in the cab. At some point the truck had gotten a flat tire, and I guess she’d been driving for a while on the flat because the tire was in shreds and she was basically just driving on the rim. Neither me nor Mom or Steve spoke any Spanish, and Dad only spoke a tiny bit. But she seemed to be okay and there was nothing we could do for her so we moved on. 

In a market in San Felipe, Dad taught me about how carbonated drinks under pressure don’t freeze in the freezer, but turn into slushes when you open them. That was cool. And refreshing in the obscenely hot Baja California summer. 

Also I remember the shopkeeper kicking an old female dog with her puppies out of the store. I mean literally kicking her out. Like with his foot. And that made me very sad. I always had a lot of empathy for animals, so I bawled. I cried and cried about the shop keeper being mean to that poor dog. I think it kind of weirded out my parents as it was yet another wrinkle in my distinct “hyper-aware and sensitive to the world around me” emerging personality. Of course Mom comforted me.

In San Felipe in the hotel is where I learned that you never drink the tap water in Mexico. 

So we’re on the beach eating tamales that an old lady vendor had sold us. In my experience real Mexican tamales always have an olive in every tamale, so you have to watch out for the olive pit. That day was the first time I experienced that. Mom and Dad were drinking Carta Blanca beer. There’s a little indentation on the bottom of each Carta Blanca, so you can use it to open the next Carta Blanca. Clever Mexican mechanical engineering. 

Steve wanted to explore the beach. Mom says “Take your brother.” Steve kind of bitches but reluctantly agrees. I stick my tongue out at Steve. 

“Well? C’mon, Benny!”

That’s what I was called by pretty much everybody at that time. Except for anybody from school, students and teachers, who all called me “Spencer” cause that’s what it said on the records. Everyone else called me “Benny”, but I didn’t care for it. As far as I was concerned, along with Dad and Grampa, I was a Spencer too. Or rather, Spencer III.

Steve and I follow the beach north until we get to this little tide-pool. The tide has gone out enough that the pool has become land-locked. And we hear this squeaking and chirping coming from the ocean. So we turn and see three or four dolphins and they are squeaking and chirping *a lot*. Like they’re trying to get out attention or something. We have no idea what they’re going on about, but they are making a lot of noise. So Steve and I are looking around trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And then I notice, there’s a little tiny me-sized dolphin in the tide pool, and he can’t get out. He’s stuck away from his dolphin family behind a sand bar.  And the pool isn’t very deep. It’s getting late in the afternoon. Steve mentions, “I think the water’s going out”. I ask “What does that mean?” He say “When it gets late in the day the tide goes out. The water. The ocean lowers.” I ask, “What’s gonna happen to the baby dolphin?” Steve has a grimaced look on his face. He’s thinking. Looking back and forth from the pod of dolphins to the baby. Finally he says, “Go get Dad.”

I run back, almost in a panic, “Dad! Dad! We need you! Come help! There’s a baby dolphin and he’s gonna drown” tears a running down my face. I’m practically in a panic.

“Hold on. Calm down. Where’s your brother?”

“He’s over there watching the dolphin!”

“Watching the dolphin? What dolphin? Calm down! What happened?”

“There’s a baby dolphin and he’s trapped in the little pool, and the water’s going out, and the mom and dad dolphins are crying  and need our help! Come on! Come help the baby dolphin! Please, dad? Before he drowns! The baby dolphins gonna drown!”

Dad isn’t exactly sure what’s going on, but both he and Mom can see I’m serious.

“Aw, Jesus. Julie? Come on, let’s go check it out.”

“C’mon Mom! You come too!”

We all three of us head back and find Steve watching the pod and the baby squeak and chirp back and forth. The water in the tide pool is lower. It can’t be much more than 7 or 8 inches of water at this point.

“The water’s almost gone, Dad”, says Steve.

“He’s gonna drown!” says I.

“Well, Spencer? What’re you going to do?” asks my Mom to my Dad.

“Jesus, Julie. What do you expect *me* to do?” responds my Dad to my Mom.

“Save him, Dad! He’s just a baby!” Says I, tears streaming down my face.

Steve says “You can do this, Dad!” but Dad is skeptical. He didn’t expect this. He kind of has a furrowed brow as he tries to figure out what to do. He asks Mom, “Well? What do you think?”

“Spencer, you can do anything you put your mind to.” Mom had a lot of faith in Dad’s competence.

I’m tugging on him, Mom and Steve are looking at him, waiting for him to make some sort of decision. Finally he say, “Okay, I guess. Let’s save the baby dolphin.”

I shriek “Yay!” Steve does a little fist pump, “Yesss!” Mom smiles. She exudes pride for the three of us. She was alway way more proud of us than she ever was for herself.

Dad to Mom, “Here. Hold my beer.” And he walks into the lowering tide-pool, slowly, slowly, toward a distressed small intelligent animal he didn’t know, with a pod of dolphins squeaking and chirping off to the right in the ocean. Dad gets close to the the animal, who knows he’s in a distressing situation and recognizes the help. Dad slowly lowers down and gently, in one smooth move slides both arms under the baby dolphin. He then smoothly pulls his arms up and back and stands, cradling the baby dolphin in his arms. The baby dolphin relaxes, which surprised Dad. Then it was only a matter of walking about fifteen feet over the the edge of the Sea of Cortez, kneeling down and releasing the baby into the ocean. 

And then they were all gone. And it was quiet.

We all kind of look at each other. Steve says “That was cool!” Mom says, “Good work, Spencer. I knew you could do it.” Dad has a strange look of shock, and pride, and confusion. It’s hard to pinpoint. I hug his leg. “Thanks, Dad”. He picks me up and kisses me on the forehead. 

“What do you say we all go get some dinner?”

“That sounds like a great idea” says Mom. And we all head down the beach to get something to eat.  On the way down the beach, Dad just throws out “You know, San Filipe is known for its great dolphin steaks”

“Shut up, Dad” says Steve.

Here’s what Dad had to say after the fact about the baby dolphin rescue:

“You know, Julie and the kids were saying baby dolphin, baby dolphin, baby dolphin. All I saw was 30 pounds of writhing animal with two rows of sharp gnashing teeth. But once I got my arms underneath it, it completely surprised me. I guess he knew he was in danger and that I was there to help, because he completely relaxed in my arms. What took me by surprise was that he was warm. And that he wasn’t slimy. I don’t know. I was expecting him to be slimy, but he was kind of like suede. It was cool. But the coolest part was the next day, when we rented a “panga” to take up to one of the neighboring islands for a picnic. It was a half an hour boat ride, but about five minutes into it, there had to be a dozen dolphins and they were riding along with us, and they were all squeaking and chirping. And then they started jumping out of the water! All of them. And they literally put on a show for us. We were all agape. We couldn’t believe it. They knew who we were, and they were thanking us. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

And the he continued, “And then about a hundred yards in front of us three UFOs descended from the sky and waited for us on the beach. When we finally got there they shook our hands, offered their friendship and took us all to Alpha Centauri where we lived out the rest of our lives in peace and harmony, and that’s the story that I told you I was going to tell you that was a lie. Never happened.”

Then he’d add, “I don’t know. There’s just something about dolphins that makes people want to believe.”

GOLD DUST WOMAN

It’s March of 1996. I’m 27. Also I’m a ragged mess. I’m behind the wheel of my 1974 Plymouth Gold Duster, which is hanging low from the weight it has to carry. The back seat is piled high with boxes of books, comics, clothes, supplies, and various other miscellanea. There’s a ghetto blaster and a Thomas guide on the passenger seat. There’s a bike attached to the back. 

I left Oakland in a hurry. I packed in shame under the cover of night and scurried out of Oakland like a fucking rat. I did that after managed to fire bomb my lite into a smoldering ruin. In my mind I saw the dogs of war snapping at my heels. Johnny Law in hot pursuit as my life hung in the balance. 

Okay. Maybe that’s a little melodramatic. But that’s the way it felt to me. Two opposing factions rioting and attacking each other as they fight over the right to determine just how sick in the head I was. One faction carrying placards that claiming “He’s a dangerous Lunatic!” their eyes fierce with hatred and disgust. The other faction carrying placards responding “He’s a Not Quite As Dangerous As You Claim Lunatic!” their eyes full of amazement that a supposedly intelligent person could do something that stupid, simultaneously full of cringe-y embarrassment at just how stupid, careless and selfish I had been. That was all in my fevered drug-addled imagination. Mike Roszkopf was going to be mad at me because I stiffed him on rent and left a mess. But in real life, I can’t imagine anybody else gave a shot. Even so, it had been a shitty fucking year. 

As I drove through Gilroy, Gold Dust Woman came on the radio. Stevie Nicks has some questions for me. They seemed a little on the nose to me.

Did she make you cry

Make you break down

Shatter your illusions of love?

Is it over now

Do you know how

To pick up the pieces and go home?”

The answer was a bunch of “yesses” and a “we’ll see”. Then I realized I was driving the Gold Duster while listening to Gold Dust Woman. And Stevie Nicks could could just as easily been asking about either Rona or Kim or fucking whoever.

“That’s pretty cool”, I thought. That’s the type coincidence that had led me describe myself as a “lightning rod for weird shit to happen”. At which point I realized that if I ever was able to turn my life story in to a movie or something, this scene was *definitely* going to be in it.

MY WAKING JOURNEY

My earliest memories are driving through the green. We’re in Mexico. I’m two years old. I’m with my Mom and Dad, and my brother who’s not a baby like me. He’s a kid. The spackled shaded green colors that shift and morph as the light filters through the trees and refracts off our windshield coalesce and dissolve as we’re driving through these parts of Mexico with heavy tree coverage. The shifting gradients of green.  

I remember the smoked fish on a stick. And I remember that as much for the flavor and smell as the remembered image of the fish, but I remember that too. There might be some vague vague memories in there somewhere about Dad getting the fish and the sharing of it. 

Then what I remember is the big old dirty diesel trucks filled with green bananas. And again, it’s the smell. Very specific. Old-style pungent diesel gas, and super aromatic unripe bananas. Mixing and swirling together. 

And I remember driving with the trucks in the same direction as we came out of the green and into a populated area, of warm gentle browns and yellows.

I remember the van we drove through Mexico. It was a green 1965 Chevy Van. That pulled one of those campers with the collapsible top. I remember the texture of the cushion we had on the bed inside the camper. It was a rough brown fabric. Maybe with like sparkly threads woven in? I remember I drank out of a pale yellow cup with a white rim. It seemed normal-sized to me, so I’m guessing it was a pretty small cup.

 And I remember The Beatles. I remember hearing “Got to get you into my life”  on the 8-track in the van, and will evermore associate it with driving through the jungly parts of Mexico. Same with “Magical Mystery Tour”, “While my guitar gently weeps”, and that little ditty, “I Will”, because it reminds me of Mom.

I’ll love you forever and forever

love you with all my heart

I’ll love you whenever we’re together 

I’ll love you when we’re apart

And if I ever met you

I didn’t catch your name

Say it loud so I can hear you

Make it easy to be near you

Cause the things you do endear you to me

Oh, you know I will

I loved to love when I was two. And everybody loved that I loved to love. This song put good words on how that felt to me.

I also remember “I can see for miles and miles” by The Who and thinking that one was hella cool.

I know you’ve deceived me, now here’s a surprise 

I know that that you have cause there’s magic in my eyes

Hey! There was magic in my eyes too! Talk about music talking to you...

And then “Abergavenny” by Marty Wilds!

Taking a trip up to Abergavenny

Hoping the weather is fine

If you should see a red dog running free

Then you’ll know he’s mine

My mind created a dog for me to see when I was two. I see the same dog now when I look back. imagery for the song and has it stored to this day. 

Also I thought he was saying “Abraca-Benny”. Like “abracadabra”. And I was already pretty sure I had magic in my eyes. that’s all I’d been up to that point.

“Abracadabra Ziggley Zam!”, I’d say, to anybody who would listen. 

“Abracadabra Ziggley Zam!”

Soon enough we stopped and met some fellow gringos that were caravanning through Mexico, much like us, but more people, more vehicles, and not freaks like we were. They were parked at what looked to me to be a typical freeway rest stop like you’d find on Highway 5. There was a man there who drew a primitive cartoony cat face on my arm. And there was a woman who gave Steve and I these little Model T toy cars that came in cereal boxes back then. They came unassembled on these little plastic “trees” that you had to put together. Bright colors. Specifically blue, in this case. They were totally common when I was a kid. They came out of cereal boxes. This woman had been collecting them I guess waiting for someone like me and Steve to come along to give them to. She had dark brunette hair and she was pretty. She looked quite normal to me, but by today’s standard you’d say she had big 60s hair. 

When we finally got to the ocean Dad let Steve and I play with these toys we’d bought at a nearby Conasupo. It was basically just a little plastic propellor, in a plastic loop, with a little plastic handle. You kinda rub your hands to get it to spin way up in the air. It was all new and exciting for me.

I remember the restaurant in San Blas with the little green leopards and the little alligators. And the dogs with the big floppy ears.

Also it was while we were driving away from this restaurant where dad said I started talking. About that, Dad had this to say:

“You didn’t start talking when you were two, But you started talking in sentences. And you haven’t shut up since.”

Then he told a joke that’s so old it’s got to be from vaudeville. He said “The first thing you said was “Jesus, Mom and Dad! This food is terrible! Why don’t you go out and get me something decent to eat “ Well we were shocked. So I asked you, “Benny, why did you wait so long to talk?” And you said “Well, up to now, the food’s been alright “ 

Then he told me the truth. 

“The first thing you said to your mom and me was that you’d left your bottle in the restaurant and we had to go back to the restaurant and get it. You were upset when I told you that wasn’t going to happen. But you didn’t freak out about it. And that was it for baby bottles with you. You never went back.

I remember a big raucous parade that went through the streets. There was this guy wearing like a bamboo cage around him that had a bull that looked like straw, and there were spinning fireworks coming out of his horns.

I remember sitting on a low stone wall that encircled a palm tree. I remember it was night and there were all these smiling Mexican women looking down at me, seemingly enthralled. They gave me peppermint patties. I remember that were wrapped in foil. 

I don’t remember getting Amoebic dysentery. I don’t remember almost dying. I always found it interesting that my memory kicked in around the time I got sick. I’ve long wondered if perhaps childhood trauma might be a catalyst that would make the memory banks power up.

GRANDMA & GRANDPA

Soon, we’re back in the USA. We left Mexico through Juarez which deposits us in Nogales, in Arizona. Mom wants to visit her grandmother, Mama, who is old and living in Winslow. When we drive up to Mama’s little white box of a house, it shimmers in the oppressive Arizona heat. The sky behind the little white house is a profound cerulean. The surrounding terrain is the color of terracotta. Mama’s house is a little white box of a house, with a tiny little yard with a lemon tree.  There’s an old car parked next to it.  But aside from the car, the house, and the yard with the lemon trees, there’s not much around. The area is pretty inhospitable. It feels like the moon . As we get closer, Dad sees that the fence around the yard is made of cinder blocks, and all across the top of the fence are multi colored bottles. As we get closer, Mom starts getting excited, but Dad feeling like maybe he’s tripping on acid or something. Maybe it’s the heat.  Dad is amazed by the lemon tree. It’s not a very big tree. And it’s kinda scrawny. But look at those lemons. They’re big and healthy-looking. But there’s no leaves on the tree. Yet the plump and delicious looking lemons cover it in spite of how inhospitable the terrain appears to be. He goes to go pick a lemon, and it turns out they’re all plastic squeeze bottles tied to the dead tree limbs with little wire twisties. Like, thirty of them. Those little lemon-shaped squeeze bottles of lemon juice for making vodka gimlets that they sell at the liquor store. The tree itself is long dead. Then he notices that all the colorful bottles that ran along the top of the cinderblock fence are gin bottles. Dad was starting to get a clearer picture. Mama liked the occasional drinkie winkie.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

Eventually we’re back in LA. We head for Grandma and Grampa’s house in Van Nuys. We’re in the valley and closing in on our destination. Dad turns off a big suburban street with big trees and bushes, and white rural-style fences, on to a smaller suburban street with houses. We pull up to the third or fourth house on the right, and there’s a woman getting a bag of groceries out of a 1965 pale yellow Dodge Dart.

“There’s Mom”, says Dad.

We pull up in the green Dodge Van pulling the collapsible camper, as Mom rolls down the window. The old woman has put the bag of groceries on the hood of the Dart, and is standing looking at us with her hands in her hips. Then she speaks.

“Well, it’s about time you guys got here.”

Mom smiles, “Hi Alma.”

“Hi, Julie. Welcome home.”

Then Dad pokes his head toward Mom’s window. “Hi Mom”

Steve pokes his head out. “Hi Grandma!”

So that’s Grandma, huh? I must have met her, but I don’t remember her. I was too young.

“Well, come on in. Big Spence should be in the garage. Well, would you look at Benny! He’s gotten so much bigger!”

“That’s not all, Mom. Wait until you see this. This is going to blow your mind.”

“What? Why? He has to have started talking by now, right?”

“I’m feeling kind of shy and I don’t really know her, plus I’m nobody’s show pony. So I reach for Mom, and she picks me up and carries me over to see Grandma. She looks at me, and I look at her.

Two minutes later I’m in Grandma’s arms and we are engaged in a serious discussion about who loves whom more (So far it’s a tie) as we all go into the house. The living room does not look too different than Darren and Samantha’s living room on Bewitched, the later color episodes with Dick Sargent, where you can see patio furniture in the backyard. Grandma and Grampa’s house in Van Nuys looks like that. As we near the kitchen, Grandma yells out,

“Spence? Little Spence, Julie and the boys are back!”

A old man walks in through the door into the kitchen where we’re standing. He’s smaller than Dad. He’s skinny: he’s got black hair, a big nose and big ears. He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater and horn-rimmed glasses. He looks at me matter-of-factly. I looked back at him with a pursed brow.

“C’mon Benny. Says hi to Grandpa.”

Grampa takes me from Mom. I’m in his arms as he talks to me.

“Well? Whaddaya got to say for yourself, kiddo? You talking yet?”

“I give him a thoughtful and serious look back, and nod to him a couple times. And we all go I to the back yard.

LOST IN YONKERS

My paternal grandparents are Spencer Thomas Moore, of Irish descent, and Alma Gloria Moore nee Miswick, of Polish descent. Both born in Yonkers, NY. Him in 1910, her in 1923. They both have very strong “meet me at toidy-toid an toid” New York accents. 

Grandma worked for the phone company, known as Ma Bell way back then, and was one of the women that provided the voices that would tell you what time it was when you dialed POPCORN. Her mom, Anna Miswick, who I’ve only ever known as Big Grandma, was a communist agitator in the union wars in the garment district in New York City in the 20’s, getting ink in the newspaper as “Anna the Red”. She was one tough broad. Grandma’s apple didn’t fall too far from Big Grandma’s tree.

Grampa has done a bunch of stuff and had a bunch of careers. He was a writer, industrial film-maker, carnival barker, antique dealer, used-bookstore owner, and producer of incidental television and movie music that were part of music libraries sold to low budget movies who couldn’t afford actual composers. But all that goes back to when he was 36 or so. But I have no idea who he was, in terms of what he did professionally before then. He rode the rails in the mid-1940s. “Riding the rails” is what they called it when hobos would jump into empty freight trains to get from one part of the county to another. Trains road on rails. “Hopping the train”. He did that. And then he got a job with John Mullins who ran a national carnival circuit where Grampa worked as a carnival barker. A carnival barker is the fast-talking guy who enthralls you with his fantastical stories to get you to buy a ticket to the show. I have a newspaper clipping from 1946, it’s a local Yonkers newspaper, with a photo of Grampa standing in front of a big old-style radio mic and he’s wearing a fedora. It’s a grainy old photo, and his face is shaded, but his distinctive profile is unmistakable. The article, which reads like a press release and was obviously written by him, claims that Spencer Moore is going to put on an outdoor spectacle the like of which the world has ever seen and everybody will be there right up to Abbott & Costello and Frank Sinatra. Grampa was nothing if not ambitious in his dreams apparently. The article shows a guy who’s thinking big.

When the carnival finally made it to Hollywood in 1946, Grampa was immediately hooked. Hollywood was tailor-made for a big dreamer and a jack-of-all-trades. Eventually he made it back to Yonkers to Grandma, Dad and Uncle Carl.

Then in 1949, Grampa moved the whole family out to Hollywood, where they moved into a house up on Laurel Canyon just above the general store. Dad was nine, Carl was four. Grampa was thirty-nine and Grandma was twenty-six. He wrote for Holiday Magazine to pay the bills, often giving Grandma the by-line. 

He made industrial films for elementary schools and high schools. One time he went to Mexico City and hung out with Diego Rivera and Frieda Khalo while making a documentary about Diego. His camera operator was a Chinese guy named Shu Lum.

At some point he began working for jazz musician and record producer Geordie Hormel, heir to the “SPAM” fortune. Among other things, Geordie produced libraries of what is known as “incidental music”. Incidental music is background music that you hear on teevee shows. Think of the music used for fight scenes in Star Trek. (Dum de dum de dum, dum dum dumm!). That’s incidental music. But if money’s too tight to hire a composer, buying music libraries is a cheap alternative. All the various music libraries are categorized by mood. Happy music, scary music, funny music, exciting, romantic, tragic. And you can just take snippets of music and then loop it, and voila! A mood for a low-budget science fiction flick is ready. Geordie paid Grampa to make sure the orchestra knew what they needed and then record it. He got composer credit because Geordie was generous and you got good residuals as the composer.

“WHAT’S GRANDMA HOLDING?”

So a couple minutes after I meet Grampa we’re all in the back yard, except Steve who’s watching teevee in the living room.. I’m sitting on the lawn with Mom, Dad and Grampa are talking, Dad has a can of Olympia beer. Grandma is pulling a black and silver box with a circle on the face of it out of her purse. She puts it up to her face and looks at me and Mom. Now I’m really interested, so I run over to take a look. As soon as I’m up, the little box makes a little “click!” On my way to Grandma, I got questions.

“Hi Grandma! What’s that, Grandma? Why did it make that noise? Is that for me? I love you, Grandma, can we go somewhere, Grandma?”

Grandma ruffles my hair.

“He’s a little motor mouth, isn’t he?

“What’s a motor mouth, Grandma?

“It’s *you*! That’s what it is!”

“Yeah. He started talking. In complete sentences. A couple days into Mexico. And let me tell you, he hasn’t shut up since,” says Dad, pausing for a second from the conversation he was having with Grampa. 

“We call him Benny Talk-a-lot” Mom says

“What’s that you holding, Grandma?”

“It’s a camera. It takes pictures.”

I wrinkle my nose. “A camera? Takes pictures? Can I see?”

“Sure. Here, let me show you how it works.”

While Grandma shows me the camera, Dad talks to Grampa.

Dad: “Sooo, what do you think?”

Grampa: “What do I think? I think it’s astounding. I also think you should get him the hell out of Hollywood as quick as humanly possible, is what I think. Hollywood’s a cesspool. It’s no place to raise children. Especially a beautiful child like that. This town’d use him up and throw him in the trash can.”

“Well, we’re gone after Christmas.”

“Good. It’ll be better for him. He’s beautiful. He exudes joy.” Grampa thought for a second. “You know, if he did get on teevee he’d be monstah”. 

“He does look like a teevee kid.”

“I can make some cualls....”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no. I sold the Standard station so we could get out of LA.”

Dad had a Standard gas station for 5 or 6 years near Angel’s Flight that he’d sold. That’s how we paid for the Mexican adventure. What was left after the trip was what he planned to use to buy a house.

Later, Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grampa are drinking coffee and playing Scrabble, while Steve and I watch “Thunderbirds Are Go!” I’m enthralled with this show.

What are your plans?” asks Grandma

“We’re buying a house way up in Northern California. Pretty much right on the coast, near Mendocino. You know guys where Mendocino is?”

“Yeah. It’s up by Fort Bragg” says Grandpa.

“We’re a little south of Mendocino in a place called “Manchester”

Grampa puts down an unfamiliar word in Scrabble. Mom asks “what’s that?”

“It’s a Tasmanian word for the underside of a thatched roof”.

SALTED RAW HAMBURGER BALLS. YUM!

One treat that Grandma gives us in the afternoon that I liked are little balls of raw hamburger with salt on them. Pot roast for dinner, with a cucumber and dill salad, and broccoli. The next day she makes up potato pancakes. They’re super yummy.

CARL’S CURVE

At Christmas I meet Uncle Carl, and his pal Ronell. They street race up on Mulholland, whatever that means.

MANCHESTER

We were in the jungle, then we were in the suburbs, now all of a sudden we’re in the country. It’s 1970 and it’s cold and cloudy. Rolling hills with trees and tall grass as far as the eye can see surround the stark and moody little house Mom and Dad bought. It’s cloudy and the wind whistles through the grass. Inside at night all the rooms are dark and shadowy. The nearby beach is windy and covered in seaweed. Manchester is spooky. It’s January. I’ll be three in May.

When the sun comes out, Mom takes me for a walk over the hill to check out the pasture. We have to watch out for cow pies. We come over a hill and come face to face with a big red bull. Mom gets a little scared and picks up a stick, but the bull keeps it’s distance. We go down to the General Store, which is close by, and Dad buys me some cowboy boots. 

We get two dogs and a pet goat. The dogs are Rover and Fido, and the goat is named Ali Baa Baa.

Steve takes me for a walk down the single road (the house is on Highway 1) and we find a creek. I lose my Cowboy boots there. I take them off to go into the creek, and then leave them there. They’re gone when we go back.

The house itself is pretty scary. The tall grass and sound of the wind outside set the tone. It looks to me like there’s an anchor buried in our front yard. Looking back now, I think it was part of a plow. 

Inside the house is shadowy and unfinished. There’s a weird extra-large door to the kitchen, set diagonally on a corner which is somehow surreal and wrong. Upstairs in the bedroom, Dad has painted a big American flag across the unfinished wood beams and planks that made up the ceiling. He also had this big metal milk container that’s painted like the American Flag. Dad has taken up whittling and has carved out a bust of a man with a beard. And he’s also whittled a happy sun-face on the front of dresser drawer he made.

In the bathroom the sink water is rusty red. It looks like blood coming out of the faucet. That kinda scares me. Also the door on the other side of the bathroom leads to a really dark room that scares me. Mom has painted hippie flowers on the tub.

There’s a boy next door who is always standing out front of his house and he always waves and he’s always dressed in his cowboy suit.

The nighttimes this time of year are cold, windy and pitch black. 

Dad is gone a lot. It’s just Mom, me and Steve up there alone for sometimes days at a time. Mom says Dad is always away with George. I don’t know George, but it seems like Dad is always gone with this George guy. It sounds like they have a lot of crazy plans. Mom didn’t like Dad being gone that long, not one bit. Mom would stay up all night long, working herself almost into a panic, planning how she’d escape with me and Steve should a psycho killer ever break into the house to kill us.

“In that little room off the bedroom? You know the one I’m talking about? There’s a little access panel to the attic. We’d go hide up in there. I’d have to find a ladder or something first...”

Eventually I think it was boredom that got us to Oakland. Dad told mom that George and Carol were partnering up with Shelley and his wife and another couple to start a hippie commune in Oakland, and George insisted that come too. So that’s what we’re doing. 

“The commune is on Spruce St. In Oakland and it’s called “Asphalt Pharm””

ASPHALT PHARM - 1970

“Welcome to Oakland, guys!” dad says as we drive up the 580 across the city limits.

“There’s no “here” here” Mom says kind of to herself. Thinking aloud.

“What’s that mean?” Asks Steve

“I don’t know. What’s it mean, Spencer?” Mom asks of Dad.

“I think Gertrude Stein might have been expecting a better... uh, night life, than what was available to her in Oakland in the thirties”

Mom interjects “You think Gertrude Stein didn’t like Oakland because they’re weren’t enough dykes around?”

“It’s one possible theory!”

“What’s a dyke, Mom?” asks Steve.

“It’s a big structure they use to store water in Holland, hon.”

“It’s two women who eat each other out, Steve.”

“Shut up, Spencer!” Mom yells and smacks Dad’s shoulder while they drive down the freeway. Dad kind of flinches and laughs.

“You guys are crazy.” says Steve, while I look out the window and see Oakland rushing past.

We exit the freeway and get on Park. We pass a big high school and a little corner store. We turn on to Spruce St.

“It’s here somewhere”

“Look! There’s Shelley and Lill’s car.”

“Great” Dad honks.

An exuberant hippie runs up to the Dodge Van. He’s smart looking. He’s got a big frizzy black beard and frizzy black hair. He’s wearing octagonal eyeglasses, Birkenstock’s, overalls with a white T-shirt, and he’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat!

“Shelley!”

“Welcome to Asphalt Pharm, guys! George and Jessie are inside baking bread for the free kitchen. Gary and Squeak are on their way over to the Milk Conspiracy to get George’s truck and I don’t know where Lil is. Come on in and I’ll show you around. There’s a great vegetable garden in the back, plus we have chickens and rabbits back there too.”

“Cool” says Steve.

“And we have a television and a pinball machine in the basement. And the printing press in down there too.”

“You got a pinball machine?”

“Ah no, Steve. I don’t have a pinball machine. *We* have a pinball machine. Go in through the front door, go straight ahead as you go in the kitchen, it’s the door on the right. Careful with the stairs.”

“Cool!” Steve starts for the house, which is a really big house. Especially to me. Before Steve can take two steps, Mom interjects, “Take Benny with you. Benny go with your brother”

“Okay.”

“C’mon Benny”

Steve and I head into our new home. We go straight ahead toward the kitchen and through the door on the right, down a staircase that turns right and deposits us in the basement. Upstairs is bright and warm and orange-y, down here is misty and cool and shadowy blue-ish gray, with streaks of muted light coming in from high windows frosted with dirt. There’s a sofa, a funky hippie table made from a big industrial wire reel, a couple of easy chairs, a barstool with a little teevee sitting in it, a bunch of stuff covered with sheets, and pinball machine ready to be played. 

Steve hits the flipper buttons. The flippers flip repeatedly with a familiar *clack.... clack clack...

GEORGE RUSSELL

Asphalt Pharm is where I meet George Russell for the first time. At least the first time *I* remember meeting him. George is instrumental in the telling of the story you’re reading. He’s going to be around a lot. He’s Dad’s best friend. And Mom’s friend too, but Dad’s *best* friend. Once we’re at Asphalt Pharm and we’re moved in, George becomes my other dad. He’s just like Dad. He’s loud. And he laughs a lot. He’s *really* sure of himself. And he loves us kids. He’s got longish unruly hair and a bushy beard, and he’s balding. He’s intense and jovial and sometimes wears a dress because he thinks society is too hung up on constrictive male/female roles. His wife is Jessie Rex, and she becomes like a mom. 

All throughout my childhood Dad was inseparable from George, who he met when he moved to Hollywood from Yonkers in 1949. George’s dad was an Oscar winning composer who is best known for writing the song “Vaya Con Dios”. Anyhow, Dad and George were absolutely cut from the same cloth. George was Dr. Gonzo to Dad’s Raoul Duke. Two maniacs who became maniac squared when they were together. Which was always. For me it was like being raised by two Gene Hackmans. All the time. Royal Tennenbaum on one side, Wyatt Earp’s dad on the other. Both of them poking me in the chest with their finger, forever asking me if I ever picked my feet in Poughkeepsie...

George looks almost exactly like a cross between Ben Franklin and Brain from “Pinky & The Brain”. Story has it been that a child once became wide-eyed with awe in George’s presence and it made him a little uncomfortable. Eventually the child’s dad came over and told George, “The reason he’s looking at you like that is because he thinks you’re Yoda.” 

He is always either deathly morose or gleefully impish. He’s also a master electrician who does positively sublime work. The job he does routing all wires back to an MSP is the delicate work of a man with an eye for grace and detail. He often says that “Electricians are the prima donnas of the construction industry. Last ones in, first ones out.” 

When he’s feeling impish, he’s got a devilish twinkle in his eye. And he’s as likely as not to take his partial denture out of his mouth and start bugging whoever’s around with it while speaking in a high-pitched gibberish like Señor Wences. Or perhaps he’ll start prancing around singing “A Smile and A Ribbon” by “Patience & Prudence”. It’s a sight to behold to see an 80 year old man do this. 

A smile is something special,

A ribbon is something rare,

So I'll be special and I'll be rare with a smile and a ribbon in my hair.

To be a girl they notice,

Takes more than a fancy dress,

So I'll be noticed because I'll dress with a smile and a ribbon in my tresses...

The bigger my toothy grin is, the smaller my troubles grow

The louder I say I'm happy, the more I believe it's so

So I'll have that extra something,

Because I know what to wear.

So I'll be special and I'll be rare.

I'll be something beyond compare.

I'll be noticed because I'll wear a smile and a ribbon in my hair

If asked about his parents it won’t be long before he get around to his stepmother Inez. About her he’d generally say something like “The woman was a miserable cunt and I hope she’s burning in hell.” Then he’ll break into the “Coffeepot” song that she wrote. Both his parents  were songwriters from the golden age of Hollywood. His sister, who is a pretty high ranking judge in LA, is using their dad’s Oscar as a doorstop. 

He’s a Vietnam era paratrooper who managed to get discharged before seeing any action in Vietnam, after getting injured while parachuting when part of his chute got caught on a snag. One time he was put in charge of some war games they were having in the snow. It was supposed to be an exercise to show off some new equipment, so generals came in and everything. He was given the specific task of losing to showcase how the other team’s equipment worked. And all would have gone according to plan, but the weather had recently dumped a bunch of snow, and George and The Losers came across a bunch of white primer paint, and George doesn’t like to lose. So he had them prime all the tanks white to hide in the snow, and predictably kicked some fucking ass. George’s superior was not happy at all, as you might imagine. And he was ready to severely admonish George and his guys, but a general heaped so much praise on George’s superior for thinking strategically, there was nothing he could do. 

So in spite of his abusive nature, I feel honored and lucky to have known him and routinely witnessed his special brand of insanity. Peter Boyle in “Where The Buffalo Run” is not too far off base. He is simultaneously an irresistible force and an immovable object. The mirror image of Dad. It’s impossible to have middling feelings about either of these guys. They are/were both almost simultaneously horrifying and delightful. There’s no middle ground with them.  They’ll give you whiplash as they ricochet between the two extremes, pole to pole.

“Got the picture, Fellini?”

My first memory of George is him doing a magic trick where he pulls an egg out of his beard. It amazes me. I love magic more than just about anything else in the world at that age. They have a son named Robert Russell. He’s three years older that me. He’s dressed in a 1970 red and white striped pullover shirt. He’s got blond hair in a 1970 bowel haircut and wears black horn-rimmed glasses. So now it’s me, Steve and Robert. We become a unit. Lil is nice, Squeak is bossy, and Gary is nice.

I watch Mr Rogers in the basement. I like that guy. He seems to be talking right to me. Plus the little world he lives in is kind of weird and spooky to me. I’m only three. I also pretty quickly become a big fan of the songs from Sesame Street and Wizard of OZ.

Asphalt Pharm is where I first heard the song “American Pie”

Back at the commune, I am proving myself to be quite the perceptive child. To wit: One day I walk into the living room where all the adults are hanging out. I look at them and state matter-of-factly, "You're all green", then I turn around and walk out. They look at each other and freak out. You see, they are all tripping on acid, and had just been hallucinating that they had all turned green.

CHOCOLATE SOUP

Shelley spent all day developing this “Chocolate Soup” he’s been working on for us. He spend like 5 hours making it. Dad tried it.

“Shelley, this is hot chocolate.”

“No, it’s chocolate soup.”

THREE MIDDLE-EASTERN MUSICIANS

For Halloween, our parents dress the three of us as middle eastern musicians. We all three of us have long black coats, big black hats and long black beards. Steve is carrying a guitar case, Robert has a trombone case, and I have a flute case. We win second prize for best costume at the Oakland Zoo. First prize goes to a girl wearing a bed. We get these blue shirts that looked like Star Trek shirts to me. They have a 44 insignia on them because Channel 44, a local station, sponsored the contest. 

For years to come, my Dad applied fake beards, noses and scars to me and my brother. I think my Father got some sort of artistic/intellectual/gonzo kick out of dressing us up and parading us around in odd situations. But for me (and my brother too, I'm sure), it was just a blast to do such fun stuff. We never knew what to expect with Dad. He sure loved dressing us up. He said he hated costumes but loved disguises. We had to be plausible. One time he glued a fake mustache on my Brother and tried to get him served at a bar. Steve was twelve. It almost worked too. There’s always a lot of baking going on at Asphalt Pharm because we give it all away to other hippies in other communes. Same with the Milk Conspiracy. George had a milk truck and he’d deliver it all over town to make sure it was available to people who needed it. And as much baking as was going on, there was a lot of getting high too. Mom made ten lemon merengue pies. And they were gorgeous. Beautiful plumes of white merengue. But Mom got high and used salt instead of sugar.

I AM THE KING OF THE EVERYTHING

I take to stomping around Asphalt Farm chanting, "I am the king! I am the king! I am the king of the everything!" Jesse sews me a cape with a big "K" on it. I am grateful. The cape really sells the whole "king" effect, although the “K” seems a little “on the nose” to me. Robert's cape has a big eye on it for "private eye". Steve's cape has a "S" on it for "Superman", or possibly "Steve". Jesse sews puppets for us out of nylons (These puppets look to me to be the precursors to Cabbage-Patch Dolls), and George builds us a kid-sized wooden puppet theater for us to put on shows. 

“IT’S NOT YOUR DAY”

At one point, Squeak organizes Lil and Jessie and a house meeting is brought to order. Squeak feels that the childcare should be viewed as a communal responsibility and wants to assign different household members to different days of the week. Dad was cool with it because it meant that he didn’t have to watch me and Steve as much now. And some of the adults really had fun with us. Jessie took us to Fairyland, George took us on the little train at the Oakland zoo. Lot's of field trips to the zoo and all. Dad figures that if anything goes wrong, he'll be close enough to deal with it. Dad's right. We do enjoy it. With a different parent each day of the week, each adult is eager to do fun things with us. One day, not soon after this whole communal parenting thing begins, I leave a mess in the living room. Squeak comes in and starts yelling at me.

“Jesus, Benny! You can’t leave your toys lying around the living room like that. We all live here together! I need you to pick up your stuff right now and take it to your room.”

“It’s not your day.”

Squeak goes to find my Dad. “Spencer! Deal with your son!”

“What happened?”

“I told him to pick up his toys.”

“What did he say?”

“He... told me it wasn’t my day.”

Quiet for a second.

“He’s right, you know.”

Squeak scowls at Dad.

“Today’s Sunday. You get to yell at him on Thursday’s.”

Squeak glares good-naturedly through squinty eyes at Dad, who’s trying not to laugh.

HENRIETTA THE ROOSTER

We have a white rooster named Henrietta. Shelley didn’t know it was a rooster when we got him. Shelley also explains about the nature of life and death, and demonstrates to us how we shouldn’t necessarily get too close to chickens, by grabbing one and killing is by spinning it. Then he chops off it’s head and feet and gives us the feet. Then he takes the bird inside.

Alone in the backyard with Robert, I get to picking snow peas, Robert shows me how you can pull the tendon on a chicken leg and make the claw clinch and unclinch. I’m pretty impressed, as I try it myself. 

Then Robert dares me to get in one of the old broken down refrigerators in the shed behind the house. I do. I fit no problem. Later I get scolded, and it’s explained to me that old refrigerators are dangerous for kids to get in because they lock right when they close, and you can’t open them from the inside. “Then why do we have two of them sitting in the shed” I think to myself.

ABANDONMENT ISSUES

The household has recently decided that it’s time for me to start school. I kind of know what the deal is with School. Steve goes to a big school. He went to a little one in Manchester. The big school looks kinda scary. I don’t know about this whole “school” thing.

So what happened was that Mom tells me that we’re going to go look at a school for me to go to. Okay so far. So George takes me and Mom to a place called “The Jewish Community Center” to walk around and get a feel for the place. See if it’s a place I might want to go. It’s just a short drive from the house.

This place was a completely different tone from anything I’d experienced so far. It looked like a kindergarten supposed to look, but I didn’t know that at the time. It looked harsh to me, the diffuse sunlights as gray, and it shone through the windows making everything look stark and silvery. It was a cacophony of windows that went on forever and it jangled my spider-senses. What with all the windows and boxes and papers on the wall and it smelled like paste with hallways going off this way and that. And all the colors were all off! It looked cold and institutional, and I didn’t like it. So I went to tell Mom that I didn’t want to stay there, but I couldn’t find her or George. I went and asked the lady where my mom was and she told me Mom left. And i burst in to tears. I wasn’t expecting to be tricked like that. And i don’t think mom had ever left me anywhere before. It caught me unprepared. I don’t know what kind of scene I made, but Mom and George immediately came back and picked me up and took me home.

LEON

The next place was a big shingled Victorian up on East 28th st run by a guy named Leon. Leon was cool. I was comfortable there. As I understand it, I learned to read pretty quick. I remember reading Little Hiawatha, in this series of “learn to read” books for kids older than me I think. I befriended a blond girl named Jennifer. Jennifer eventually laid the bitter truth on me: Sea Monkeys are really just brine shrimp.

Leon dressed in white robes I think. Or at least a loose fitting white shirt. I think he may have worn a white beanie. He had a long black beard. And he was gentle. Leon was a pal.

One day I walk into the cubicle area and there’s a cake! It’s got a candle in the shape of a “4”. Today is my Birthday! I turn four! I’ve known about birthdays because my favorite book just happens to be “The Birthday Book” by Dr. Seuss. Plus I’ve had three of them apparently already. But I can’t remember any of them.

I TURN FOUR

And then hey! What’s uncle Carl doing here at Leon’s? Oh? He’s going to take me for a ride to meet Grampa? Where Grampa has a surprise for me? This is getting exciting! So  Grampa takes me on an airplane and it’s the best thing ever. How is it all those houses can look so small. It kind of reminds me of the opening of Mr Rogers. 

Grampa says we’re flying out of Oakland to a place called “Burbank”, and then we’re flying from there to Los Angeles, which I’m familiar with because we used to live there, and the back up to Oakland and then back home. It sounded exciting to me, and it was. Happy birthday, me!

DEATH OF A DREAM

That’s was pretty much the end of Asphalt Pharm though. There was a big kerfuffle among the grown ups (and Steve) and it was over. All I remember is it was night, there was a lot of noise and activity. It feels so how busy. Everyone is running around, and we’re all out in the street in front of the house. Something happened. Everyone is anxious. 

Later I come to understand that Gary Kenecht “freaked out on drugs” which sounds pretty scary. Then he threw a table through a window, and dangled Steve out the window by his feet. We left Asphalt Pharm that night. So much for utopia.

JOSEPH AND ELAINE

And we go from Asphalt Pharm to somebody’s house. It’s friends of Mom’s and Dad’s named Joseph and Elaine. And they have a son my age named Christopher Nicholson. Christopher Nicholson and I become fast friends. I hear Dad explaining to Joseph and Elaine that Gary Kenecht had some sort of drug freak out, and it we had to leave. The living room is warm subdued tones. The “All in the Family” theme song burns itself into my memory. For the rest of my life, whenever I hear “Oh the way Glenn Millah played songs that played the hit parade” I’m transported back to Joseph and Elaine’s home, and then Asphalt Pharm. to this day, when I hear that song, I’m three again.

THE ORDINARY

1971, Mom and Dad get involved in a Creole restaurant called The Ordinary with Joseph and Elaine. Christopher Nicholson is there too! He’s my best friend!  Dad likes messing with Christopher Nicholson’s mind and has him convinced that King Kong is actually a giant duck in golashes. Also Dad calls him Nistopher Chricholson, which I find delightful.

I overheard my Dad and Joseph talking about this guy they were waiting for at The Ordinary named Catman. Remember, this is Oakland in the 70's. He was probably a musician. But the name "Catman" sparked my fertile imagination. I'm pretty sure I was expecting a superhero, or at least a monster of some sort. By the time Catman showed up I had worked myself up into a lather. I was anxious, scared and excited. I hid and watched as he came in to the Ordinary. Turns out Catman was an ultra cool jazz musician. Also he was huge and wore a long black coat. I was in awe. I tugged on my Dad's coat, and looked up at him with those big ole' 4 year old eyes, and asked haltingly, "Is that... Catman?"

THE MIND CAN ONLY RECOGNIZE THAT WHICH IT CAN ORGANIZE

One of the guys Dad and George and Mom and Carol start hanging out with at The Ordinary, and later at shindigs at his house is a guy named Denis Kelly. Denis Kelly is what Dad calls a “wine snob”. I overheard him talking with Dad and George and I figure he must be a scientist or something. Denis and George were talking about crazy brain stuff.

Denis: “George, what I’m actually suggesting is that it’ll be invisible! You see, the brain can only recognize that which it can organize! If the brain can’t organize it, it dismisses it!”

“You really think so? But how would we ever know? How can you ever know for sure if you can’t see it?” says George. 

“Exactly!” 

George cracks up at the irony of it all.

Dad finally interjects “So you think that aliens walk among us, and we can’t see them because they’re camouflaged?”

“Not precisely, but... yeah! Let me put it this way, if your brain were to sense a physical threat from a tree, you’d see that it wasn’t actually a tree.”

“What do you mean “not precisely”? You just described exactly what camouflage is!”

These guys are smart.

BIG YELLOW RAISINS

For a while after leaving East 28th St, Mom and Dad broke up. Mom, Steve and I move into an apartment on Parker St. In Berkeley, while Dad moves in a couple blocks away with two women called the Foster sisters. There’s a little market called Roxy Market around the corner that Steve and I walk to all the time. 

Mom said that while living here we were so poor that all we had to eat was a beet.

But this anecdote is notable because there’s a little boy with blond hair who is a year younger than me, and he lives right across the street with his mom and dad. I’m over there a lot. Often they’ll still all be asleep when I come over. So I took to going in through their cat door. And I’d sit in there and eat raisins. But the raisins were big and yellow! How crazy is that? I’d never seen big yellow raisins before.

THE OAKLAND FREAK SCENE

The Ordinary, being a creole restaurant, in North Oakland with live music in 1972, was of course awash in that gonzo hippie freak ethos of the time where pretty much anybody who was cool enough to be there, or lucky enough to work there, was in a constant state of inebriation from all the drugs and alcohol and drugs and drugs and more drugs that were constantly available at anytime of day or night. The whole neighborhood, this entire sector of Oakland, and up into Berkeley and beyond was like this a permanently drug soaked environment. Cocaine was making a big name for itself at the party. People would randomly offer, and take, a wide variety of Amphetamines and hallucinogenics. Marijuana and a cold beer were just a given pretty much any time of day. And of course all the initials: LSD, MDA, STP. You ever have one of those mornings when you say to yourself, “Hmm, I bet 500 Mikes of blotter acid will get this day off to an interesting start.” Sure, it SOUNDS like a good idea, but 3 hours after taking it, let’s say 1pm, and you’re trying to hold it together, while you play pool with your business partner who is on a completely different drug. Sure, you think you’re holding it together, but they notice something amiss. 

“Uh, Spencer... You okay?” 

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine.” 

Just then, as you take your shot, the pool cue sends the cue ball ricocheting around the room and off the walls sending off cascades of light like someone set off a bunch of roman candles in the dining room. Your friends watch you curiously as you absorb this frenzied lightshow. 

“Uh, Spencer?” 

“Yeah. I took, like, 500 Mikes of acid sometime, uh... earlier than now. I, uh.. think I’m going to go... over there...” 

Then there was the time Joseph Carey took a bunch of speed and decided it was time to label everything in the restaurant with the Dyna-Tape machine, which was this little thigamajigger, it had this little wheel with the alphabet on it, and you could stamp out adhesive labels. So that’s what Joseph did. He just thought he was being thorough. 

“Office.“ “Kitchen.” “Wait Station.” “Cash Register.” “Telephone.” “Garbage Can.” “Door.” “Fork.” “Fork.” “Fork...” and on and on. 

All this craziness is just part of my everyday life. Life at The Ordinary is for me, indeed ordinary. My days are spent in the backyard, practicing counting to a thousand. My nights are spent with my brother Steve, Christopher, and Robert Russell trying to sleep upstairs in the office, while the party rages at the bar down below. The times are crazy. Even at 4 years old, I can tell. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. 

THE DENIZENS OF PIEDMONT AVENUE

In 1972, we are living at 4078 Piedmont Avenue. At this point it's pretty much just blue haired old ladies living around here. The hippies are just starting to arrive. 

When we first move to Piedmont and 41st, there is no traffic light. I have to ask strangers for help crossing the street. 

"Excuse me, Ma'am, I'm 5 and need help crossing the street. Could you please help me?" 

I will grow up on Piedmont Avenue. For the next 5 years, I will prowl its streets, become the child of the denizens. I will know every nook and cranny of Piedmont Avenue. I will locate all its hidden icons of youth. Every creek. Every unfinished apartment building. Every unguarded elevator. Every place too small for an adult to fit. From Macarthur/Broadway Center at one end, and the cemetary at the other. Piedmont Avenue will eventually yield all its secrets to me. These will become my "stomping grounds". 

Everyone knows me. Everyone says "Hello" to me. Everyone watches me:

Vince, Lois and Flo at the Dime Store. 

Phil, the cashier at Piedmont Market who calls me " Butch". 

John and Marsha who own King's Books, and let me come in and read whatever I want. I spent many, many hours sitting hunched on a little stool, in the back of the store, poring over their Children's Section. Also, they let me read the Playboys. Hell, if my Dad didn't mind, who were they to object... 

Craig, the skidrow bum who lived next door to us. A skinny guy with a liver so enlarged that it looked like he was pregnant. He was never anything but nice to me. I think he appreciated the company. 

Mrs. Ow, the old Chinese woman who lived next door. She hated hippies and loved to scream. She was known to chase people with a broom. She spoke very little English, and I was scared of her. 

Nacho, the gay florest. 

There was Henry, around the corner at Piedmont Liquor, always in his blue smock. He taught me how to spin quarters. He looked like Bing Crosby. I'd buy Bireley's Orange Soda, and Ice-Cube's chocolates from him. 

There was Margie, a lonely middle-aged barfly. She would let me visit her. She would give me little packets of restaurant jam to eat. Delicious! Also she had the first lava lamp I'd ever seen. 

There was that old, tall drunk who just wandered around the street, hovering around the Kerry House like a fly. A barfly, more precisely. He looked like Frankenstein. Actually Herman Munster. The spitting image. When I first moved to Piedmont Avenue, he wasn't old. 

And then there were the myriad of senior citizens all up and down the avenue. I knew all their names, and they all kept their eye on me. 

BENNY’S PARLOR TRICKS

I used to be able to do this weird thing when I was a kid, mainly watching old movies, but also with me dad, where I could imagine them as fat. Specifically I remember Cary Grant, and it’s difficult to describe, because they didn’t look different to me, but I was able to somehow shift parameters in my mind of what “fat” was supposed to look like. So all of a sudden Cary Grant looked like a fat guy to me. It was an exercise that I’d do with men of a certain archetype (straight-faced, Roger Moore/Tony Curtis/Gregory Peck). And I’d do it backwards with Dad, where I’d see him as thin. It’s hard to explain, because it’s wasn’t imagination. It was more like adjust what my brain was expecting to see.

It’s like, I could look at pudgy-faced Brian Wilson and like, tell my brain the curve of his face was within the margin or something, and he’d be thin. It was weird when it happened. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it because how would I explain it, and why would anybody ever be interested? But under the circumstances, it actually might be of interest 

HOW DO WE DEFINE INTELLIGENCE?

Joe Montana’s brain was *so* good that he was able put that football *exactly* where Jerry Rice was *going* to be a half second in the future, however many yards away, against hostile opponents in high stress situations.

That’s what a kick-ass brain looks like.

Brains ain’t all about algebra

As an adult, to me these all seem like parlor tricks, but whatever. Not sure how many more I have. I got these two though: 

I could communicate well enough with our dog that I felt it was worth sharing with my parents.I told them I could talk to Rover. I’m not if anybody asked me what River said, but I’ll tell you, she mainly told me she loved me. 

I could correctly attribute color the the shows I’d watch on teevee in black and white, like “Happy Days”. Both those were when I was 5 or so. But what I’d say to my parents was “I can talk to Rover” and “l can watch the black and white teevee in color”

“LET’S GO GRAB SOME CHINESE FOOD.”

Joseph has unexpectedly shuttered The Ordinary. He and Elaine are moving to Concord. Mom and Dad, me and Steve are sitting in The Ordinary. It’s just closed, but it feels shut down already. 

George shows up. He’s a newlywed. His new wife Carol Page is with him. Dad tells George and Carol the bad news.

“Shit!”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess we can open that ice skating rink we’ve been dreaming about now.”

“You know I hate the cold.”

“Well? Then what?”

“I got an idea.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“How bout you and I open a restaurant?”

George laughs that mocking laugh of his.

“Haha! Keep thinkin’, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”

I’m starting to get hungry.

“Dad, I’m hungry. Can I have a crab sandwich?”

The Ordinary’s crab sandwich was very tasty indeed. Crab salad on grilled Toscana sourdough.

“Sorry, Benny. But we can’t eat here anymore. It’s all closed up.”

“Oh... what then?

George chimes in:

“I could use a bite too. Carol, you hungry?”

Carol’s hungry too. We all are.

Dad offers up, “There’s a funky little Chinese place around the corner.”

“We’ve been meaning to check it out” says Mom.

“Okay then” says George, and we all head out. 

Right on the other side of Broadway is the Chinese restaurant. I can read it. Those are all easy words.

“The Royal Cayfe”. I pronounce it like “cave” but with an “F”.

“That’s ‘café’, honey,” says Mom. “What else does it say?”

I read the rest. “American. Chinese. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. But “lunch” is crossed out.”

“Very good!” says Dad. He’s impressed with my command of of nuance and ability to suss stuff out.

We all go in. There are two dining areas. The main one has a couple tables, a booth, and a diner-type counter with ten stools. The secondary room has five booths. The four adults sit at the booth in the main room, while Steve and I both sit at the counter, on opposite sides. 

Before long, everybody is engaged in conversation about the restaurant Dad wants to open, while at the counter, Steve is showing me how to draw a race car.

“So what kind of restaurant were you thinking of?” asks George.

“I was thinking a sandwich shop.”

“Sandwiches?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about that chicken sandwich we got in San Blas. Remember that, Julie?”

“Yeah! I remember both of them.”

“Yeah, well, I’m thinking of the good one. It was a filleted chicken breast grilled like scampi-style...”

“Butter, garlic and lemon juice” adds George.

“Yeah. With sliced tomato and half an avocado on a grilled bolillo.”

“Where are you gonna find a bolillo in Oakland?”

“Yeah. Well, we’ll find something.”

That sounds good to me. “Mmm! Can I have that?”

“Yeah, when we open the restaurant. But not today kiddo.”

That sounds pretty good. Well, if we’re going to do this, we’re gonna have to do it right.”

“Exactly! The best of everything! No corners cut!”

“Never lower the quality. Always raise the prices.”

“Mm hm!”

“But just sandwiches? Think there’s a market?”

“I don’t know. But I got a bunch of sandwich ideas. We can use the crab sandwich from The Ordinary. In fact we can use a lot of Joseph’s menu.”

“Jambalaya?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Dinners didn’t work at The Ordinary. And the food was incredible. And even with the bar and the live music... It’s too much of a production. I’m trying to think smaller.”

“How about breakfast then?”

“I was thinking about that, but I’ve never even flipped an egg. Can you flip an egg?”

“Oh yeah! It’s easy, Spence! It’s just a little hand movement. Yeah. I’ll show you. Piece of cake.”

All of a sudden the old Chinese man who seems to be running the place interrupts.

“Excuse me. Uh.. you look buy restaurant?”

“Uh.. what was that?”

“I hear you say you look buy restaurant.”

“Uh... yeah...”

“I sell you restaurant. I sell you restaurant cheap.”

All the grown-ups are looking at each other, passing glances.”

Mom skeptically thinks aloud. “Sandwiches and breakfast in a Chinese restaurant?”

George cackles, “Well, I was just humoring your before, but when Julie puts it like that...” George thinks for a second, “...how can we not?!”

“Traditional American breakfast and sandwiches served in an authentic Chinese environment!” Imagines Dad aloud, picturing it with his hand, indicating a marquee above.

Now George is really laughing.

Dad looks at the old Chinese guy and asks “So what’s your name?”

“Benny. Benny Yin.”

Mom smiles at me. “That’s your name!”

“No it’s not. My name is Spencer” I say shyly.

“Well, have a seat, Benny Yin.”

Benny goes to grab a chair.

“So, how much to you do want for it?”

“Two thousand dollar. Two thousand dollar get you whole place.”

The grown-ups all look at each other and nod approvingly. That’s a really good price. 

“Except you no own building. You rent building.”

I REMEMBER MAMA’S

In February of 1974, Mom and Dad, with the help of George and his new wife, Carol, open a breakfast place called Mama's Royal Cafe. It's an instant hit. They hit a nerve. It was just a case of the right people with the right idea at the right place and time. classic example of the perfect restaurant, opening in the perfect community, at the perfect time.  

What I remember is a dark little Chinese restaurant, and the seven of us, four adults and three kids, the grown ups talking with the owner. And the next thing I know it’s our place. The Royal Cafe becomes Mama’s Royal Cafe.The place is filled with ancient restaurant equipment. Actual ice boxes from back when you’d buy a block of ice off a truck to keep it cold. Ancient coffee urns and a cash register from the 30s that you can only ring up to $9.99.

Most importantly to me, there’s a dark grimy little storage area up a staircase behind the kitchen. We find some toys (an old remote control truck, and this thing with these metal molds that you’d squirt goo into, then put the mold in and it would heat up and cook the goo, and make little rubber creepy crawly bugs. And the mold gets hot enough to leave a blister. They don’t make  those anymore. The rubber goo smelled great when you cooked it.

The actual restaurant, the business including everything but the property, my parents bought was an old Chinese restaurant from the 20's, so it had all the pagoda roofs and Chinese trappings inside and out. Add to that all the original restaurant equipment from the 20's. It was funky. We never changed any of the decor, although eventually we did alter it and add our own crazy touches (like the dummy named "Art" in the window, dressed up like a cab driver). We were a funky old hippie breakfast place with authentic Chinese decor. 

There were 5 tables, a diner-style counter with 10 stools, and 6 booths. In each of the 6 booths was mounted a really old diner-style radio. 20 years earlier you could plug a nickel in these little radios and get 15 minutes of music. It had been ages since they were connected to anything, but people continued to plug nickels into them. About once a week, my older brother and I or Robert Russell would make our radio rounds and collect our bounty. In 1974 a sockful of nickels seemed like a fortune. Apparently no one had gone through the radios in years, but to this day, I imaging waitresses or dishwashers go through those radios looking for change, just like we did back in the day. 

I *know* those radios have been used to deal drugs. A friend of mine who was a dishwasher at Mama's told me about one time when he was in jail, and he was talking to a guy in there with him. He mentioned to this young black entrepeneurial gentleman sitting with him in the holding cell that he worked at Mama's. 

"No shit! We used to use those little radios in the booths to deal drugs. They just pop right open. The customer would leave the money there, then I'd come and change them for the drugs. Grab a couple a nickels, too..." 

THE CREW AT THE ROYAL

If the total is the sum of the parts, then one has to looks at the parts to completely understand why Mama's was so successful. We had a great crew. 

There was my Mom and Dad, and George and Carol. 

There was Alan Buzzell. Alan was just a kid at 22, but he fit right in. At parties (or at the bar) Alan would chew up cherries and keep them in his mouth. Then he'd start coughing like he was going to die, cough the cherry juice into a napkin, and complain about his tuberculosis. 

There was Tré Arenz. She was an art student at CCAC, and aside from being one of the first waitresses at Mama's, she also designed the "Mama" that we used on all our promotional material. She claimed she could pee standing up, without hitting the long hippie dresses she always wore. In the early days, she helped cement my love of drawing. Dad credits Tré with opening his eyes to the artistic aesthetic of a plate of food. 

"Spencer, I'm not taking out that plate until you put some red on it". 

There was Big Tits Karen, Tré's roommate, who had the distinction of actually having flashed a flasher. One morning, up in Glen Ellen, she went outside in her robe to pick up the morning paper, and there was the town flasher, waggin' his weenie. So she flashed him.

There was Nestor. Nestor Marzipan aka Johnny Veglia. Nestor was the only person who I ever saw streak. Right through the restaurant on a busy day, to a car waiting out front. The only thing he was wearing was a red bow tied around his penis. 

In later years, as restaurant manager, he would have a pretty interesting criteria for hiring new employees. 

"So, you want to work here?" 

"Umm, yeah." 

"Tell me a joke." 

There were the Foster sisters, Mary and Ellen. Mary was the first person I ever heard having an orgasm. I was 6, and I thought someone was beating her up. 

"Is someone hurting Mary, Mommy?" "No dear. Mary's okay." 

There was Ron Pagano, who freaked out when he had to ring in a customer's bill for $34. Our ancient cash register only went up to $10. Rather than ring in $10 three times, and then ring in $4, he would ring in $3.40 ten times. 

Mama's Royal Cafe was the first and the best breakfast restaurant in a movement that eventually made the Bay Area arguably the finest restaurant market in the world. Today, you can't throw a rock in the S.F. Bay Area without hitting an award-winning breakfast restaurant that borrows significantly from Mama's original menu and/or concept. We invented breakfast. 

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION 

I’ve heard the opinion that the location sucked. The argument seems to be that the location is bad because we were not on Piedmont Avenue, we were not in Rockridge, two extremely trendy neighborhoods in Oakland. I don’t see that at all. I see the location as ideal. Way more character, no pretense whatsoever, a 3 minute walk from the trendiest part of Piedmont Ave. No, the location was absolutely ideal, located at 40th and Broadway, We were right down the street from CCAC, the California College of Arts and Crafts, so a large portion of our clientele, as well as most of our staff, were art students. The UC Berkeley campus, where a mere decade before the anti-war movement was born, was only ten or fifteen minutes away by car. The place was also a hit with all the local businessmen and civil servants. After all, they had to eat somewhere, and our location, prices, and quality of food made us their first choice. Our all-nonsense attitude, hilarious staff, and gonzo decor were just an added bonus. We had a groovin' business. 

It was like no restaurant anyone had ever seen at the time. A completely iconoclastic attitude. Our motto was, "We serve food. If you want vibes, go to the circus." It was the only restaurant that I've ever seen where the waitresses were compelled by management to get in the faces of problem customers. Did that guy leave a lousy tip? No problem. Throw his money back at him. "Go on, keep it! I don't need your fucking dime, asshole!" 

Instead of a normal sign stating that we don't accept checks, we had one that said "No checks,!s or Czechs. We want your cash". Eventually we removed the "Czechs" comment from the sign due to an outcry from the local Czechoslovakian community. He didn't like it. 

There was a DJ that worked at popular Bay Area radio station, KSAN, named Terry McGovern. George Russell and my Dad used to call him with local reports about what's goin' on around town. It was just basically an excuse to get on the radio and do guerilla comedy. 

One time my Dad called up on a rant about the decline in the American character, the destruction of American family values at the hands of liberal pinkos! Lackadaisical social mores! Damn hippies! Etc! Etc! He told Terry McGovern how he was horrified to pick up the Chronicle this morning and find pornographic pictures in a family newspaper where any child could find them. 2 full pages of nothing more than graphic images of PENISES and VAGINAS! It was disgusting! I mean, really! What was the country coming to? 

Naturally, Terry was horrified and wanted to immediately get to the bottom of this. On air. He had an assistant fetch him a copy of the morning paper. My Father was more than happy to help. It was a big spread on pages 8 and 9 in the front section. Dad waited on air as Terry McGovern looked up the pages, all the time feeding Terry's rant and decrying the decline of Western civilization. 

On page 8 and 9 was a big article on Rohrshac tests. They had two full pages of ink blotter tests. You know, those psychological exams with the random black patterns on a white background. The kind where the shrink analyzes you by what you see in the random black shapes. 

Dad had a good laugh. Terry McGovern called him a pervert and hung up. 

According to Dad, when George Russell was cooking, on that rare occasion when someone complained about something, he was not above smearing avocado all over himself, donning a dive mask, snorkel and fins, grabbing a pair of meat cleavers, and going out to the table himself to see how he could assist. George himself told me that as great as that story was, it wasn’t true, George said that what he did was to smear avocado all over himself, and put on an old vintage aviator mask that he had, the kind with the goggles, grab a couple meat cleavers, then head out to the table and say “Yesss?” like Mr. Mooney from the Lucy Show. Splitting hairs, says I. I think it was just that sort of personal touch that made Mama's as successful as it was. There was an immediacy to it all. And a sense of “We’re doing art here and it’s up to the customer to figure that out. If they don’t like it, Dave’s Coffee Shop is right down the street.” Even at six year old, it was apparent to me. 

Even though we were a phenomenon, I guess complaints weren't all that rare. After all, we were practically militant as we traveled to the beat of our own distant drummer. Polite society we were not. Remember, this was the early/mid 70's. A time when a lot of "straight" Americans were still freaked out by the sight of a man with long hair and a beard. It was NOT like today. Anyhow, eventually we had to get a complaint department. 

Here's how the complaint department worked: 

If a customer complained about something silly, like a bad attitude, the waitress would express her concern and go get the cook. The cook (my Dad) would come out to the table. He'd tell the customer that if they want to complain about something, they had to go to the "Complaint Department". My Father would then guide the customer to the front of the restaurant to a sign that said "Complaint Department" that had a fuzzy red box with the glued-on felt eyes hanging from a spring. 

He would listen as the customer ranted on and on about whatever it was about our gonzo attitude they didn't like. When they were done, he'd kinda lower his head and shake it a little, as if trying to compose his thoughts. Then he'd say, "Here's what I think." And he'd shake the fuzzy red box with the glued-on felt eyes. 

The box would start laughing maniacally.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, Haaa... Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha..." 

Then Dad would start laughing. Then the waitresses would start to laugh. The cooks and dishwashers would come out of the kitchen and start laughing. Any customers who were in on the "joke" would start laughing. 

It must have been humiliating for the poor sap who had the gall to complain. 

And then there was the time we hired the Mariachi. A real Mariachi, in full white Mariachi regalia (sombrero, spangles, Pancho Villa mustache, everything), to hide in the store room and burst out playing his guitar anytime anybody ordered Huevos Rancheros. 

"Guadalajara! Guadalajara!" "Guadalajara! Guadalajara!" 

He'd sing at the top of his lungs for about twenty seconds, long enough for the customer to get their food, then he'd quickly make his way through the not insignificant crowd, up a rickety flight of stairs, and hide in the store room. There'd he'd sit, in this tiny, dank, pitch black little room until someone else ordered Huevos Rancheros. Just plain disruptive on a busy Sunday morning. 

My Dad's attitude was, simply put, Fuck you. We're doing something different here. If you don't like it, Dave's Coffee Shop is right down the street. 

But the people came in spite of our 'bad attitude'. They all came. Everyone. Ball players, musicians, actors, politicians, hoodlums. Everybody. (One day when I was working there, sometime in the 90's, at the height of the Congressional check kiting scandal, I got to tell Ron Dellums (D-CA) that we couldn't take a check from him. I don't think he thought it was very funny) To this day, 29 years at this writing, people are still willing to wait an hour or more, sometimes as long as 2 hours, to do brunch at Mama's on a Sunday morning. 

Who knew that a restaurant could not only survive, but prosper, under the precept, "The waitress is always right"? 

DAD THINKS HE’S FUNNY

When I was 7 years old, for reasons that I don’t fully understand, Dad cracked an egg on my head down at the Royal. I mean, I think he was probably drinking hard liquor, which he rarely did. I’ve noticed as I’ve observed him over the years that when he’s drunk on hard liquor, he gets this obtuse Gremlin-y stupidity. Where he thinks he’s being really funny, seemingly unaware that what he’s being is a belligerent asshole. That’s the vibe I was picking up off him. Just splat! Right down on my head. I thought it was going to be an empty egg shell: it wasn’t. I was shocked and embarrassed. I burst out into tears. Mom took me into the bathroom and cleaned me up.

CIRCUS

Dad tells us that Shelley has started a new commune with a guy named Carlos (?). It’s in Berkeley and it’s called “Circus”, and we’re all getting together over there, so get ready to go. I like this. I like Shelley. He was super smart and he loved me and Steve, and we loved him back. He also looked and sounded *exactly* like Phineas from “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”. How much did he look like Phineas? He looked so much like him, that it would be impossible to overstate how much he looked like him, and acted like him. So much like him, even with what I would consider keen perception and awareness, I just kind of figured Gilbert Shelton based Phineas on Shelley. He simply *was* Phineas Phreekears. So both me and Steve were always happy to see him. And Circus was a blast. We were there frequently. There were chickens and funky hippie architecture, and the printing press was there. And there were a pair of brother there who were mine and Steve’s age. And Robert Russell was frequently there too of course. 

I think it was through Circus, and Shelley and Carlos, that everybody wound up at Bay High School working on the Merry Prankster’s psychedelic bus. Dad and George and Gary were all experienced car mechanics. In the school garage next to the bus was a candle-making station. We learned how to dip candles, and how to make multi-color candles by dipping in different colors. Lill even shows us how to make hand shaped candles.

The administrative office at Bay High School was up a set of stairs that had a set of windows at the top, the wall behind the staircase was painted to look like the inside of a mouth. At the top of the staircase around the door was a gaping mouth with lips and teeth.

Carlos worked in the wood shop. He used the jigsaw to cut a bunch of scimitars out of plywood for all five of us kids, and then he used duct tape to make the blades silver.

PIEDMONT AVENUE SCHOOL

Dad says if I want to go to school I have to enroll myself. I’m not sure I’m up to that. It sounds kind is scary. Luckily, when Dad isn’t looking Mom takes me down and enrolls me. I’m kind of scared and excited. 

Piedmont Avenue School has a very specific set of smells. Very similar to what I smelled the very short time I was at The Jewish Community Center. Not that much like Leon’s though. My teacher in kindergarten is an old lady named Ms. Koocher. Both Aaron Walker *and* Christopher Nicholson are in there too! So I got friends. And I make more. Rodney Manahmi, Matt Gayton, Kenny Duncan, Kevin Lolly, Andy Toews, Shannon I know cause she’s Toni and Nestor’s friends daughter. Tina Nelson is my girlfriend though. I think we talked about marriage sometime in the future. 

BOBBY GONZALES

When I was in kindergarten, my brother was in 5th grade. One day he brought a friend over to draw dinosaurs. Steve didn’t remain friends with him, but I did for a while. His name was Bobby Gonzales, and I found him and his stories absolutely fascinating. You see, he was really into “The Exorcist”. Like really really into it. We’d sit in Cafe Valerian drinking water with lemon in it, and he’d tell me all about the movie. And he’d even claim to be possessed himself! He’d tell me how his bed would float, or it would thump up and down on the ground, shit like that. Of course I had no frame of reference, never having seen “The Exorcist”. I wanted to, and while my parents would basically let me watch whatever I want, they drew the line with that one. Which was probably wise as the previews alone freaked me out. 

Eventually Bobby Gonzales got too weird even for me. 

Then later I saw that he was going to school down the street at St. Leo’s. That seemed appropriate to me.

In first grade my teacher is Mrs. Van Beuning. Where Ms. Koocher looked like a schoolmarm (Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein is not far off base) Mrs. Van Beuning is matronly. She calls me “the little professor”. I presume that’s because I was a scientist for Halloween.

One day Dad kept me out of class and we went to the movies. The next day I took this note to school:

“Please excuse Spencer for his absence in class. He was captured by pirates.”

That was the best damn note I ever got. The second best note was one dad wrote for me in high school. He wrote in crayon with his left hand. 

School work is easy. There’s a lot of “Fun with Dick and Jane”. Drawing lines from three strawberries to the number 3, four bananas to the number 4, stuff like that. Sesame Street prepared me well for kindergarten and first grade. Sesame Street taught me my first and possibly most important lesson when it comes to critical thinking when Don showed four boxes that had an ice cream cone, a hamburger, a , and mitten, and with a catchy and inviting melody, pointed out that one of those things wasn’t like the other. I still use that lesson today. It’s one of my baseline problem solving techniques that feeds and informs all subsequent problem solving skills I’ve developed. 

So when Mrs. Van Beuning sits us all down and tells us they’re giving us a special test that’s going to tell the teachers how smart me are, I feel pretty confident. It was easy. It was just like tests we were already taking. “How many apples does Susie have?” A) 4 B) 2 C) 5 D) 3. What was interesting and different was that we read the questions out of a book, but we had to put the answer on these little numbered cards by filling in a hole with our pencils. That was fun. I was good at drawing inside the lines.

Aaron Walker is becoming a bad influence. He drops a pencil on the ground so he can bend down and pick it up and look under Mrs. Van Beuning’s dress. I’m pretty sure sooner or later he’s gonna get into trouble.

HEIDI HOUSE

At home, we have a new visitor. It’s my cousin Heidi, who I’ve never met. She’s Judy’s first daughter, and she’s over from Germany where her dad is a filmmaker. Heidi is fourteen. I’m six at that point. From everything I hear, Heidi is a handful. She’s very pretty and very outgoing and quickly gets a reputation for “fucking everybody”. I’m six, so I’m not sure how many there are in this “everybody”, but before all is said and done, it’s at least Jay, Steve, Alan Buzzell and me. But that takes years. But the die is cast when at fourteen and six, she asks me if I want to come in and watch her take a bath. Yespleasethankyouverymuch. She stood up and let me look at her. Then she bathed herself and I watched that. 

She’d continue to show up in my life from time to time for 15 years.

I think it was when she was 16 that she climbed to top of the movie theater, up a little access ladder on the side of the building with Alan Buzzell. She actually got in to climbing buildings. Like, scaling them on the outside. It became one of her things.

In second grade I get Mrs. Carboni. I meet John Liddle in 2nd grade. He wears glasses that strap in the back. We become friends. His apartment doesn’t look like ours. It’s clean and looks more like what you see on teevee. His mom is nice. The coolest thing about John Liddle though was his Mego action figures. Dude has the whole “Planet of The Apes” Action Playset! Planet of the frickin’ Apes! I had Superman, Robin, Aquaman and Spider-Man. This guy was living in style. And he had Tang too. We just had Kool-Aid. And every once in a while he’d have these little chewy vanilla flavored protein bars that came in silver wrapping and were also for outer space, like Tang. Yeah. John was my best friend. 

Second grade is also where I meet Pandora Kuykendall. Maybe “meet” is the wrong word. She’s a girl. I’m a boy. We’re seven. We don’t “meet”. We’re in the same class. But the tendrils of our lives have intertwined, and will stay intertwined hence forth. Neither of us know this at the time.

Then we had this activity in class where we had to draw a Christmas related picture that was done in the style of a stained-glass window, with big markers, and I drew one of the three wise-men, and everybody went nuts. 

All of a sudden there was just a ton of energy around me. Dad said he a friend of his who was a teacher at CCAC of the drawing was any good. The guy said:

 “Yeah, it’s all right. What is he? First year?”

“Uh, he’s seven.”

“Oh.... Yeah. This is really good.”

A reporter from the Oakland Tribune, Asian guy named Willie, who was a friend of Dad’s, came over one Saturday and talked to me for a while about art and stuff. He was nice.

MENTALLY GIFTED MORONS

At home, Dad tells me their putting me in a special program for smart kids, called Mentally Gifted Minors, or MGM. That sound quite interesting and quite exciting to me. Dad immediately takes to calling it “Mentally Gifted Morons”.

Mr. Yin, the principal, became a pretty regular fixture in my life at school. I liked Mr. Yin a lot. I showed him drawing of a magic show I wanted to put on in the auditorium. It had a giant top hat that you could get in to, and disappear though the trap door underneath. He loved the idea. Of course, the giant top hat I saw in “Lidsville”, and the hidden trap door that a magician escapes through I saw in a very scary movie called “The Other”, about a pair of identical twins in 1930 rural New England, one of them is good, and one of them is bad. Brrr!

I ask Ms. Carboni if she likes my drawing. She says she loved it. I tell her I want to be an artist when I grow up. She thinks that’s a great idea, but I better have a back up plan too. Making a living as a professional artist can be very challenging. She wanted to do the same thing when she was young, but she failed to make a back up plan. So when it turned out she couldn’t do it, she was forced to be a teacher. I remember that lesson for the rest of my life every time I fail to heed what she said.

As far as Mentally Gifted Minors go, Ms. Carboni tells me I’m so smart that they’re putting me in class with kids from a different grade. I’m just riding this wave of “whatever you guys say”. To that end, three kids from Mrs. March’s kindergarten all skip a grade and  become my classmates. They are David Sally, Mike Wong, Cynthia Crabbe and Rosellini Lime: The four of us will go to school together for the next four years. I’m instantly smitten with Cynthia Crabbe. She gives me butterflies ans makes my heart twitterpate. As I moon over her at home Steve mocks me, and makes fun of her last name. “Cynthia CRAB! Hahaha!” You love Cynthia CRAB!”  

It’s all very exciting at home too. There’s all this talk about “photographic memory” which is actually called “eidetic memory” and doesn’t really exist. If they’re trying to pin that shit on me, I’m not having any of it. My memory is nothing like “photographic”. Oh sure, it’s good and all. I remember everything back until about two, but we tried that thing where I look at a picture for a second and then I’m supposed to tell you what was in the picture. I just seemed pretty normal at that. But I can do “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, pinions, on a sesame seed bun” backwards. Same with the alphabet. And I’m ambidextrous. But my ambidexterity is strangle task specific. I write with my right hand, but I play sports with my left hand. 

But lots of people seem to be coming over to see me. And I hear “extraordinary” a lot. I’m not sure what it’s for, but I like the attention. It’s probably going to my head. Any time anyone says “extraordinary” I spell it for them and mention that the “A” is silent.

As far as actual MGM activities go, I don’t actually remember having any. I remember going into a classroom with the group a couple times. It’s not long before is a thing is past long forgotten.

DAVID SALLY

Me and David Sally bond over Comic Books and Star Wars. We both like drawing superheroes like it’s nobody’s business. We become best friends and pretty much inseparable for the four remaining years that I’m at Piedmont Avenue School. I practically live at his house before too long. His mom Patty feeds me a lot. His little sister Lynn (Who his Dad calls Phoebe) annoys like a little sister should. 

Together, David Sally and I become super into Steve Martin: Wild and Crazy Guy. The Beatles. We perform bits for his Mom, lip-synching to Grease. We trade comics with Mike Wong, whose house were often at as well. 

One time David and I discover that Pamela Sue Martin, who made quite the impact on me at least was in the latest Playboy. Marsha King had always had a standing order from Dad to let me read Playboy at their bookstore, but that ended when my parents got divorced and Dad left. But I was committed to getting my hands on a copy of Playboy and seeing those pictures. 

So me and David went to Quik Stop around the corner from his house, where to me anyway, upon my personal risk/reward analysis, figured that we seemed to be at least semi-blocked from view from the cashier, and if we were nonchalant, I figured I could make it happen. So I did. And me and David got a full on good look at what Nancy Drew had been gifted by the Lord. And it was good. When we got back to David’s house, we were both worked up, so we basically dry-humped. Then that became a thing between us. I was over there a lot. I’d talk about what I wanted to do to Cheryl Ladd (which I did want to do) and I’d put my hand over his mouth and kiss the back of my hand. We did that shit a lot. Eventually Patty tried to say I couldn’t spent the night, but that didn’t last. David and I drew lots and lots of superheroes. Mainly Marvel. We were Marvel kids. Eventually I started designing my own heroes. I had Sirocco, who became half-tornado. I had Ricochet, who was blind and had two superballs that he could throw to devastating effect, that always bounced back to him. There was Black Shadow, who was a black guy who could turn into a shadow. Mom got a kick out of him because he had a "BS" on his chest. There was Hang Ten who was really good on skates (skates were big at the end of the 70s). But my favorite was The Fly, who basically looked just like Spider-Man except he was all blqck with white eyes. in his alter ego, he looked basically like James Brolin, or perhaps Eddie Rabbit. He had a nicely groomed beard. His wife looked like Crystal Gayle with the long long hair. i designed a lair for them that was based on the cave from "Creature From The Black Lagoon". You had to swim underwater to get in or out.

Eventually David and I collaborated on a character who lives in the jungles of South America in the wreckage of the plane he crashed in. he was called The Savage. We sent it to Marvel Comics. We got a letter back where they politely declined.

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST END

1975. We've had a good 2 years. We have become the darlings of the community. Everybody loves us. But even that can't save the restaurant. Our lease is almost up. And as many people in the community that love us, there are an equal number (more?) that are horrified by our lifestyle. There are some important people that want us gone. I don't know it or understand it yet, but it seems that life is about to change. 

Dad and George worked endlessly trying to come up with a solution, but none were forthcoming. The powers that be wanted us out, and they were going to win. 

Dad, who was extremely good at confusing people to his advantage, managed to buy some extra time by being clever and strategic. He used the system in place to gum things up for awhile. By claiming to have lost ONE document, he got a more recent version of the same document, with a new date and new signature. Then he took it and got it notarized. Then he submitted THIS paper to THAT agency, and (as he predicted) while the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, we stayed right where we were. 

My parents exhausted every possible source in a vain attempt to get someone to lend them the money to buy the building. After all, they were now the darlings of the community. Now that they were little local celebrities, they had the opportunity to party with people who had a whole lot more money and influence than they had. Their undiluted gonzo had served them well in the "making friends" department. Surely somebody had the money to give them. 

George Russell had been invited to the Oakland Yacht Club, to start a yacht race. A perfect place to troll for cash for such a worthy cause. 

The way they start a yacht race is by firing a shotgun off into the air. 

Giving a shotgun to George is never a good idea. Especially when you have an open bar. 

Not a single bite at the yacht club, and George was never invited back.

STRANGE LUCK

It's a done deal. The restaurant is closing. It's really too bad. Dad and George did all they could, to no avail. Dad was always 3 steps ahead of them, but they finally caught up, and in the end, Dad didn't have a very good hand. Our reputation will serve us well, and wherever we wind up, we'll make a go of it. But it's too bad it couldn't be here at 4012 Broadway. This magic location, with all the right ingredients. Too bad it couldn't be here. 

We throw one last big party. Everyone comes. Everyone cries. It's a very emotional goodbye. 

Míracles appear in the strangest of places.

"Uh, Spencer?" 

"Yes, Tré?”

"I can lend you the money.”

It turns out that Tré was a Trust Fund kid. Who knew? 

Anyway, Dad went down with her to talk to her lawyers and get a check. Her lawyers had an entire floor in one of the most prestigious buildings in Downtown Oakland. Dad and Tré had to wait awhile, because there was a meeting going on long with one of their other clients. Poland. 

I mean, who knew? 

Tré lent Dad a lot of money, and they were able to buy the building, thereby saving the restaurant. 

SAN FELIPE

1973. Baja California. Me, Steve, Mom and Dad. I am 7. We’re driving through the desert of northern Baja, on our way to San Felipe. It is hot, dry, and sandy. Desolate. The road disappears through the heat, straight into the horizon in both directions. What looks like a shimmering pool of water sits down the highway, far in the distance through the heat, predictably disappearing as we barrel forward toward San Felipe. It stays in the distance, a mirage. Steve and I entertain our selves trying to find dust devils on either side of the road off in the distance. 

We pass a slow moving pick-up truck. The truck has a tire blown out. The woman is driving on the rim. She has 3 children with her and a look of panic on her face. In his best broken Spanish, my Dad offers his help. But there's not really a whole lot we can do.

In a market in San Felipe, Dad taught me about how carbonated drinks under pressure don’t freeze in the freezer, but turn into slushes when you open them. That was cool. And refreshing in the obscenely hot Baja California summer. Also I remember the shopkeeper kicking an old female dog with her puppies out of the store. I mean literally kicking her out. Like with his foot. And that made me very sad. I always had a lot of empathy for animals, so I bawled. I cried and cried about the shop keeper being mean to that poor dog. I think it kind of weirded out my parents as it was yet another wrinkle in my distinct “hyper-aware and sensitive to the world around me” emerging personality. Of course Mom comforted me.

In San Felipe in the hotel is where I learned that you never drink the tap water in Mexico. 

We’re on the beach eating tamales that an old lady vendor had sold us. In my experience real Mexican tamales always have an olive in every tamale, so you have to watch out for the olive pit. That day was the first time I experienced that. Mom and Dad were drinking Carta Blanca beer. There’s a little indentation on the bottom of each Carta Blanca, so you can use it to open the next Carta Blanca. Clever Mexican mechanical engineering. 

George Marino and Mike Clementi show up to join us on vacation.

Steve wanted to explore the beach. Mom says “Take your brother.” Steve kind of bitches but reluctantly agrees. I stick my tongue out at Steve. 

“Well? C’mon, Benny!”

That’s what I was called by pretty much everybody at that time. Except for anybody from school, students and teachers, who all called me “Spencer” cause that’s what it said on the records. Everyone else called me “Benny”, but I didn’t care for it. As far as I was concerned, along with Dad and Grampa, I was a Spencer too. Or rather, Spencer III.

QUIT HITTING YOURSELF

I was seven and Steve was 12 living with Mom and Dad on Piedmont Avenue, when we had this conversation:

“I bet you can’t fit into this laundry bag.” 

“I bet I could too” 

“Oh, yeah? Let’s see.” 

I get it. Easy as pie.

“Told ya!”

But once I’m in the laundry bag, Steve cinches it shut and ties to pull strings in a knot and them carries it into the kitchen. 

“Hey Dad! Look what I caught!”

“Let me out of here! Daaaad!”

It went on like that for years.

Another fun game was “Blindfolded Taste Test” (all you older brothers, take note) He’d blindfold me and then ask me to identify tastes of various tubs of viscous gelatinous goo that Dad would keep next to the stove to cook with. 

Then there was “Home Intruder”. In that game, my job was to run around the house, and make sure all the doors and windows were securely fastened and shut. Steve’s job was to try and get in the house, so he could hold me down and tickle me till I vomited. 

Or, if he was bored, he’d just shoot me with a BB gun. I remember him that Saturday morning, sitting on the couch with that rifle as I walk in the room. I hear him say, “Hold still.” 

“What?” 

Then he shot me. *Bap!* 

Sometimes he’d take one of those old rotary hand drills to my chest, and and get the material of whatever T-shirt I happen to be wearing all rolled up in it. Mom kept wondering why all my shirts were all starting to develop little single swirltits in the middle. Because Steve is attacking me with a hand drill, that’s why!

The worst, and the most defenseless I felt was when hold me down and hang loogies over my face. He’d slowly let the loogie hang lower and lower until it was almost touching me.... then he’d slurp it up back into his mouth real quick like. He’d do that a couple times. Sometimes he’d misjudge and it was gross.

And sometimes he’d just spit in my mouth. 

One time Mom and Dad went out for dinner, and charged Steve and his new best friend Louis Gonk with babysitting me. After it got dark, Steve and Louis turned off all the lights and got flashlights, then told me that the house was being attacked by vampires. They were going to go out and fight them to keep me safe, and I should hide in Steve’s room. Then they’d go out and make themselves look like vampires and come in and scare the shit out of me! Fucking bastards!

It was around that time I started developing it he blinkies. Which is what i called this stupid nervous tic I developed where I tried smushing my eye closed real hard to push an imaginary button on the back of my eyeballs that provided some weird relief. It still occasionally shows up in times of great stress.

Steve and Louis developed a life long friendship. 

I develop a life long friendship with Louis too. Not quite as strong as Steve’s, but I’ve known Louis for a long time. Good friends are hard to come by.

MOM FINALLY LEARNS TO MISTRUST DAD

Patty arrives into our lives, in 1975, in the form of a new waitress hired by my mom. She tells Dad "I hired this new waitress. I think you're really going to like her". Word that will come back to haunt her.

Dad says the restaurant is doing so good that this summer we’re going to Hawaii. I was super stoked. You see, I watch the Brady Bunch. I all about Hawaii. It was going to be a lot of fun. Dad bought the plane tickets and everything. I held them in my hand. And then the very next day it was all gone and everything had changed.

Dad and Patty kept their affair secret for awhile. Then one day Mom wanted to know how Dad managed to get his bare ass sunburned, and the jig was up. So ended 14 years of marriage. To this day, my Mom has never fully recovered from it.  

Mom and Dad are screaming at each other. I am 9. Steve is 14. Mom has discovered Dad's affair with her best friend, Patty. Dad is buggy. Steve and I watch this nightmare unfold, innocent bystanders. There is no silence. Mom is crying, and lashing out at Dad, who is red in the face screaming at her. 

Mom slaps Dad. Quiet. 

You can literally see the mercury rising in Dad. He strikes Mom full across the face. Hard. Mom is sobbing, bleeding from the lip. My older brother, a full beard at 14, lunges at Dad and starts beating him on the chest, but Dad is a rhinoceros. He lifts Steve by his T-shirt and slams him up against the wall. 

"Do it! Do it! Hit me if you want! JUST DON'T HIT MOM!" 

Dad is poised to strike. Steve stares defiantly him. Dad melts. Tears start streaming down his face. Sobbing, Dad puts Steve down, gets his keys and leaves. Mom and Steve are left crying. I am in shock. 

Just think. The day before everyone was happy and looking forward to going to Hawaii. And two days after that, Dad left. 

DAD’S NEW OLD LADY

I am 2. I am driving through the jungles of Mexico with my Mom, my Dad, and my Brother Steve. My waking journey. Vivid green fills my memories. 

I am 7. I am driving with my family through the desert of northern Baja, on our way to San Filipe. It is hot, dry, and sandy. Desolate. The road disappears through the heat, straight into the horizon in both directions. What looks like a shimmering pool of water sits down the highway, far in the distance through the heat, predictably disappearing as we barrel forward toward San Filipe. It stays in the distance, a mirage. Steve and I entertain our selves trying to find dust devils in the distance. 

We pass a slow moving pick-up truck. The truck has a tire blown out. The woman is driving on the rim. She has 3 children with her and a look of panic on her face. In his best broken Spanish, my Dad offers his help. But there's not really a whole lot we can do. 

I am 8. We are south of Tijuana, driving into Ensenada. On the right, a crystal, blue ocean. On the left, a filthy city. We pass a Mexican naval fleet. The fishy smell of the wharf saturates everything. 

I am 9. We are just outside of Mazatlan driving a convertible Bronco in a severe rainstorm. The rain is unlike anything I've ever seen. Biblical. Plus, we are uncovered. The rain eventually forces us to turn around, and head back to Mazatlan. Steve is not there. Mom is not there. 

Someone new is sitting where Mom used to sit.

PEPPERMINT PATTY 

I’m sitting with Dad, over at Patty’s house, that she shares with former paramour Rick Sampson. Rick is back east right now, visiting his parents. He left Patty the keys to his Bronco, just in case. Me and Patty are listening as Dad tells Patty all about our Mexican adventures. The soundtrack to “The Harder They Come” is playing in the background.

Well the officers are trying to drag me down

Trying to drive me underground

And when they think that they have got the battle won

I say forgive them Lord, they know not what they’ve done 

For as long as the son will shine

I’m gonna get a part of what’s mine

Because the harder they come

The harder they fall

One and all

“Patty, you’re going to love it. On the way to Puerto Vallarta we can stop and I’ll show you this restaurant that we went to in San Blas. Benny, remember the restaurant in San Blas?”

“You mean the place with all the animals?”

“That’s the one.”

I turn to Patty, who Dad has started referring to as Peppermint Patty, and I’ve quickly shortened to PMP.

“It was cool. They had a zoo there. They had these little green leaopards, and little alligators, and these cut dogs with big ears...”

“The little leopards were ocelots, and the little alligators were caimans. I don’t remember the dogs.But it was there that I learned a very important lesson about Mexico and restaurants in general. That’s where I got the CAT sandwich (The CAT stood for chocken, avocado and tomato) we use at the Royal from. We went there on a Monday and I ordered a chicken sandwich and got served the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had. Half a chicken breast sliced down the middle, sautéed in butter, garlic and lime juice, with with avocado and fresh tomato, on a grilled bolillo, which is a Mexican roll. It was so incredibly good that I the next day I grabbed Julie and the kids and told them “you gotta check this place out!” I built it up pretty good, but I guess Tuesday was the cook’s day off and the dishwasher was cooking or something, because what I got that day, if you were feeling generous you might call chicken jerky. A little tiny piece of chicken cooked rip it was no longer edible on two pieces of white bread. But you know, what can you say? That’s Mexico. But it made an impact on me, in that if I’d had a restaurant, consistency would be critical.”

“That sounds so good, Spencer. When can we leave?”

“I’d leave tomorrow, but I got the Dodge Dart, and there’s no way it would make it.”

“Hmm”

“Hmm”

“Hmm”

“I have the keys to Rick’s Bronco.”

“You do?”

Patty holds up the keys and shakes them. We all turn and look at the Bronco out front. It’s blue with a white roof.

Dad’s unbolting the white roof. He and Patty lift it off and lower it gently in the driveway. Next thing I know, we’re driving to Mexico while Jimmy Cliff sings us down the freeway.

Opposition you must fare 

Win or lose you’ve got to get your share

Got your mind set on a dream?

You can get it as hard as it seems, yeah

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try

Try and try 

Try and try

You succeed at last

First stop, Hollywood! We head to Wilshire and La Brea and get some Pink’s chili dogs. Then we find a motel for the night. First time I saw my stepmom naked. Getting out of bed and heading to the bathroom. So, yeah. There was always a lot of female nudity around me as a kid. I never minded. 

Next stop, Palm Springs! Jesus holy fuck, it’s hot here! It’s so hot that I’m dipping my T-shirt into the ice chest and then squeezing the water over my head, and in like three seconds I’m all dry. 

We stop at a gas station, one of the ones with the green stamps and the Mel Mac coffee cups, to get gas. While Dad is filling the tank, I go to pee. When I come out of the bathroom, the Bronco is gone. So are Dad and Patty. Hmm. What do I do now?

A couple minutes later Dad and Patty come roaring back to the gas station and get me. They’re both laughing. Dad is cringing a bit too. Then we move on. 

By now we have two catch phrases: The first is “It’s warming up nicely” in response to the stultifying heat of Palm Springs. And Patty just loves saying “Son of a bitch, Bobby!” A line Karen Black says to Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces”. All of us use both those catch phrases for the duration of out trip. But mainly me and Patty.

We find a place to get some reading material. I get a few paperbacks that have comic strips in them, Peanuts, BC, The Wizard of ID, Andy Capp. Dad comments on how incredibly hot it is, and asks me how I’d feel about going in the snow. I laugh, but he says, “No, come on.”

Next thing I know we’re at the tram station in Palm Springs. The team takes up way up. And I’ll be damned it is isn’t snowy. 

The next morning we take off for Yuma, which is in Arizona. In Yuma we explore the ruins of an old prison. Dad takes a picture of Patty growling like a feral beast behind bars. Then another one behind bars with the same expression, only she’s flashing her tits. We spend the night at Holiday Inn. Holiday Inns with their Continental breakfasts and shimmering swimming pools seem like the lap of luxury to me. Patty and Dad teach me how to play Marco Polo.

On drive through Arizona, heading for Nogales and the Mexican border, Patty gives me two books of cartooning that just destroy me. They open my eyes to the power of the absurd and sublime, the moment I see what this artist is trying to do, my brain is rewired. My eyes are open. I get why it’s funny, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it. I was quite familiar with the usual gang of idiots at Mad Magazine. Don Martin, Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Spy vs Spy. I was also an enormous fan of both Doonesbury and The Freak Brothers. So when Patty gave me “Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head” by B Kliban, I was primed and ready. That and the Cat book provided me with so much grist for my super absorbent eager brain. I have a sketchbook and a big set of Marvy Markers, so I’m good to go.

Then we’re in Mexico.

In San Blas, we hit the restaurant with the zoo! It looks exactly the same except hardly any animals. They just have the dogs with the big ears now.

Eventually we wind up in Puerto Vallarta. We find a funky hotel that’s a bit of a gringo/hippie enclave named Casa de Roger. The place is owned by Roger.

That’s where we meet Gary and Frank. They own a Baskin Robbins near Griffith Park in LA. Gary has a daughter named Hannah who will be visiting soon. She’s my age. Cool. But that’s weeks away. 

Patty gets busted for shoplifting in a clothes store. But problems are avoided.

YELAPA

NOM

When Patty showed up in my life, she brought 'the storm' with her. I had a front row seat for the insanity that was set to engulf my family. Drinking, drugging, partying, screaming, sobbing. Insanity. Craziness. More and more and more. Strangers in my house at all hours of the night, partying hard with no regard for the kids. Crazy relatives coming out of the woodwork. Driving long distances and sleeping on strangers floors, only to be driven home at dawn by a wasted Father who weaves all over the highway on the early morning trip home. Halloweens spent waiting for hours, in costume, for someone, anyone, to come home. When dad would finally show up, he'd be too drunk, and it'd be to late to do anything. It went on for years. It's still felt by me to this day.

After my Dad and Patty had been together a year or two, they eloped. One day, soon after the wedding, we were all sitting around at our new Mama's in Mill Valley, wondering aloud what I should call her. I tell her that I’m calling her my “Nom”. Upon their quizzical looks, I lay it out. Stepmom and Stepmother are too clunky, and Mom is already taken, so I just went to the next letter in the alphabet. Nom. Patty is now my Nom and she loves it. Nom stuck. Both her and Dad used it, and even though we rarely talk these days, she’s still my Nom. 

RAGING BULLSHIT

"I only punched her to knock her out, so she's stop screaming at me." 

Too bad you overcompensated and knocked out her front tooth, Dad. Patty had very pretty teeth. She was very proud of them. 

Patty was sexy, intelligent and funny. She was also occasionally just fucking nuts. But i don’t think that was her fault. Dad just had that effect on some people. People like me and Patty.

For example, one night Dad, Patty and I were eating at Marin Joe's, and I guess Patty’s was at the end of her rope. There was a lot of cocaine and booze being consumed by both of them, but Patty was doing Valium too I think. So she was pretty strained. Dad told me later that he knew we weren’t getting out of that restaurant without an event. He said hey was a foregone conclusion. He could see it in her eyes, he said. The only question was what kind of event was it going to be? In light of that impending certainty, Dad decides to pull the pin. He leans over to Patty and whispers in her ear, "Hey Patty, play Misty for me." 

Patty screams “Fuck you!” then sweeps all the dishes off of the table sending them crashing to the floor, bolts up out of her chair, and runs out of the restaurant crying. Dad looks at me kind of embarrassed. He cringes. 

“Check, please”, he says to a passing waiter. 

“Play Misty For Me” is a psychological thriller about a crazy woman. It’s very good. She’s very crazy.

Dad was certain he did nothing wrong. Dad never did anything wrong. This was Patty being unstable as far as Dad was concerned. 

Later that same night, on the way to San Anselmo to see “The Deep” with Nick Nolte and Jaqueline Bisset, Dad and Patty were engaged in a screaming match, and she jumped out of the car. At a stoplight.  She ran down an alley and hid behind a garbage can. 

But I can’t blame her. Dad was infuriating. He wouldn’t let you be. 

In my case, in the many extensive power struggles I had with him over the years, what he would tell me is that I couldn’t forgive him and That I kept bringing up the past, and he couldn’t keep apologizing for the same things forever. And my response was that it’s entirely valid to bring up old business if the behavior persists. 

And by the way, he was a shitty fucking apologizer. He would never express any sort of regret over anything. And to be frank, I never once in my life ever heard him utter the words “I’m sorry”. If he was in a corner and an apology was demanded, he’d say “I apologize”. And if I mentioned that sort of thing to him, he’d say I’m being too sensitive and splitting hairs. Maybe he was right. But I think he suffered from actual megalomania. People don’t understand how difficult it was to be around him. Not always. He was a brilliant hilarious iconoclastic guy. And life with him could be like living in a funhouse. But it could be a nightmare too.

So he characterized the arguing as him trying to reason with Patty, but Patty refused to be reasonable. I knew better. I’ve watched Dad work for a long time. Same with George. They were the ones that were beyond reason. How can you reason with someone who is never wrong? And if you know you’re right, why reason? He would argue you in circles. It was maddening for Patty, and later it was maddening for me. He’d egg her on and then try and push her buttons by accusing her of being hysterical. He’d talk to her in a condescending tone acting like he’s trying to sound calm. But really he’s trying to to wind her up. He’d use language that made it sound like he’s dealing with a crazy person. He’d accuse her of being “vituperative” and “spraying venom” when they fought.

So I had a front row seat for Dad’s Rasputin-like manipulations. I saw what Patty had to deal with. I finally realized that if I intended to heard by Dad, who gave great lip service to listening, but never ever seemed to hear a goddamn thing other than his own voice, I had to, to quote Spinal Tap, “turn it up to eleven.” It was the only way to get his attention. And if I wanted to get his attention on something that hat was important to me that he deemed not worth his time, I had to pitch a fucking fit. it was a terrible lesson to teach a kid because it’s hard to unlearn coping mechanisms. And it’s hard not to use them.  But learning the lesson that you need to rage in order to be heard is sad. Dad called it “pumping yourself up to two to three times your natural size”.

Seriously. He said that all the time. It was a tool in his toolbox. . 

The night Dad knocked out Patty’s front tooth, me and Steve were trying to sleep in the room right next door, and they yelled at each other for hours it seemed. I could hear Dad pleading with Patty “Just tell me what it is that you want, and I’ll do it!” He was full of shit though. He was gaslighting her. Pushing her buttons with a tone of voice that said “You’re out of your mind.”

Then it’s quiet. The noise from their room stops. Then Patty is crying and screaming. Dad had punched her in the face and knocked her from tooth out. 

Later, his justification would be “She wouldn’t stop yelling at me. I was just trying to knock her out so she’s stop yelling at me.” And he’d motion this soft little “jab” that he’d intended to give her, but somehow didn’t pull off.

I loved Patty. She was in my top three movie dates in the late 70s/early 80s. I hated what we all had to endure, but that wasn’t her fault. It was Dad. He did that to people. He did it on purpose. But it was only with me and Patty that he argued with like that. He got something from it. Some psychological thrill of feeling superior, like “look at these people! I’m glad *I’m* not like that!” It was a constant source of consternation for me. Patty on the other hand was pretty, smart, a great deal of fun to be with, and we went to endless matinees together. She was hip and funny. Her idea of a great Hallowe'en costume was going as Isadora Duncan. The whole costume consisted of a simple black dress, and a really long scarf with a bicycle wheel attached at the end. Eventually the way they dealt with their relationship was, first Dad moved to Glen Ellen and opened up a Mama’s in the waterwheel restaurant. Later after we’d left Glen Ellen and moved back to Mill Valley, they got “his and hers” houses.

ALAN BUZZELL

I’ve only written one tiny bit about him yet, but ultimately Alan Buzzell is well represented in the story. So far the only dialog I written for him is me, Steve and Alan talking about Star Trek, back in like 1984, sitting around Mom’s kitchen table getting high:

Alan: “See, the thing with William Shatner, is that he’s not like, the greatest actor in the world, but you can really tell how hard he’s trying!”

Me: “Act, Jim! Act!”

Alan: “Yeah!”

He’s also there with Celyne watching Michael Pritchard so his stand-up, at Ruby Scott Auditorium at Tam, in like 1983. I know because I sat literally right behind them. But Celyne denied being there with Alan. 

Sadly neither one of them is with us anymore.

Plus the time he was at George Kaye’s corner bar with Dad and George. Alan has to take a leak so he heads to the bathroom and takes a leak. Then he notices the toilet seat isn’t attached. So he thinks for a second.

Then he douses himself completely with water from the faucet. He’s drenched. Then he puts the toilet seat around his neck and gets a mouthful of water, and heads back out to the bar, where Dad and George are talking. 

They stop and look at Alan like “What the fuck?” Already laughing. Then Alan says, as the water he was holding in his mouth splurches out:

“You’re never gonna believe what just happened in the bathroom.”

Alan Buzzell trying to give my big brother the benefit of his wisdom when my brother was fourteen years old.

“You know, Steve, when I was your age, I was sixteen.”

Alan Buzzell named his daughter Springsteen. I know what you’re thinking: If I went looking for her, which Springsteen would it be? 

Alan did this great trick with my dad at a party at Mary and Ellen’s place where he chewed up a mouthful of bing cherries and kept them in his mouth.  Then he and Dad pretended to get in a fight, which culminated in Dad fake punching Alan, and Alan throwing his head back and to the side, while spitting out the mouthful of chewed up cherries. It worked great.

Or he’d chew them up, hold them in his mouth, start coughing like a chronic hacking cough, spitting the cherries into a handkerchief and say it’s just a little tuberculosis. Nothing to be alarmed about...

Dad closed the restaurant every year for the month of August so we could take a month long vacation. And I think twice Dad have Alan a bunch of money to make sure the restaurant was prepared to open right when we got back, and both times Alan absconded with the cash instead. Like eight hundred or a thousand bucks, which was a significant about of dough in the late 70s/ early 80s.

One time at Mama’s in Mill Valley when I was 10 or so, and all the grown ups were hanging around the restaurant drinking and whatever after we’d closed, I saw what appeared to me to be an intricately folded little piece of white paper. I looked at it a said:

“Ooh, orgami!”

...and proceeded to open up the little intricately folded piece of paper, while 7 or 8 feet away, Alan yelled “Nooo!” In slow motion as he leaped into action. But it was too late. There was some sort of white powder inside the folded origami that went *poof!* in little cloud as Alan sprinted at me in slo-mo.

“What did I do?!”

Dad laughed hilariously for some reason I didn’t understand, “Nothing Benny. Nothing.” Alan didn’t look happy.

“I don’t want to be called Benny anymore. I’m Spencer too. Actually Spencer three.

STAR WARS

In 1977 Dad and Patty take me and Steve to go see Star Wars

GORILLA MY DREAMS

In 1977 Lionel Wilson ran for mayor of Oakland. So did George Russell. One of the distinct differences between the two was that George campaigned in a gorilla suit. Lionel Wilson didn’t. Lionel won. Perhaps there’s a message in there. 

One Saturday after campaigning in Oakland all morning, George came over to Mill Valley to hang out with Dad and Patty and Michelle at the restaurant. This was back when Mama’s was on the other side of the building. Before we were forced to move to make room for the Mill Valley Center for Performing Arts. That’s when Mama’s was really cool. That’s when Dad insisted the restaurant have an unlisted number. Also we were a breakfast restaurant that didn’t open until 8am, with pretty much made us unavailable during the week to anybody with a job. Also we were both dingy and dinky. We had six tables, 3 four tops, and 3 two tops. And yet the place made bank. We lived in style back then. 

The building itself was called “The Port”, and it was this kind of run down hippie shopping center. In The Port were us, Jolly King Liquor, The New Yorker Deli, Lila’s Chocolates, Jody’s Scrimshaw, Robert the barber, a couple weird hippie gift shops, a body and bath shop that sold yummy smelling oils, Chez Paul which was a tasty French restaurant run by this Romanian guy and his wife, Moon’s Tea Garden. And most importantly, the most disgusting bathroom you’ve ever seen, notable because David Crosby liked to freebase in there. He’d ride up to The Port, sunglasses, grungy as hell, riding his hog, strapping a .44 magnum, mini-acetylene torch holstered to the bike and cruise right into this nasty-ass bathroom with perpetual plumbing problems and get high in there. I once asked him about it. He said he didn’t remember anything like that and then blocked me on Twitter. But I remember it. 

So we’re all hanging out in the restaurant as it’s closing up, and George shows up with a gorilla suit. There’s a new hire that’s with us, a new bright-eyed waitress. She’s closing the place up while we’re sitting around. Rank doth have its privileges. She goes to the bathroom, and while in the bathroom, George gets a bright idea. He puts on the gorilla suit and goes and hides in the walk-in. A walk-in is basically either a big refrigerator or a small refrigerated room, depending on how you look at it. Most restaurants have them. At the end of the day, everything perishable has to go into the walk-in. That’s was what our new hire was starting to do. She was preparing jams, wiping clean the rims of the little jam jars, and putting them on a tray. 

So we watch her take the tray back to the walk-in, unaware that George is hiding there. We wait. It’s quite for a second. Then there’s a loud shriek! 

“Aaiiyyy!!”

We hear the crash, and the ape noises. She runs out, George doing gorilla moves behind her. We’re all laughing hysterically. She comes over and throws her apron down on the table.

“You guys are insane! I quit!”

And she stomps out of the restaurant. I’m her absence the laughter dies down and they all go back to drinking and chatting, while I’m scoping out that gorilla suit.

“Can I try it on?”

“Go to it, Benny. Have fun.”

So I put it on. So there I am. A ten-year old in a big baggy gorilla suit.

“Can I go play around outside in it?”

“Of course!” George says. They all love the idea. So I head out in the world in this over-sized gorilla suit. It’s a bright sunny Mill Valley day, so I head down the street and eventually wind up at Safeway, for no reason in particular and head on in to see what happens.

I’m running up and down the aisles of Safeway. Everyone shopping there seems to be getting a real kick out of it, looking and pointing and laughing. I’m practicing my knuckle walking and making pretty decent simian grunts. And I’m not half bad! Going up to people making “Ooh ooh!” noises, looking at them quizzically with my head atilt. “Ah ah!” Then stepping back and start thumping my chest.

Eventually I notice there’s a girl close to my age, maybe a year or two younger, and she’s peeking around the corner looking right at me. So I knuckle walk in her direction, but she runs. I get to where she was and look around, but no dice. Then I see her. She’s staring at me. Again, peeking around a corner down the aisle. I thump my chest. “Ooh ooh ah ah!” And quickly knuckle walk toward her, but like a mirage in the desert, she stays off in the distance. It’s a game we play. It becomes a dance. Almost a waltz. As the piped-in store Muzak slowly transforms into an orchestra. In my mind we dance a waltz in the vegetable section as everyone in the store joins in, carts become dance partners, the pineapples and honey-dews signal their approval. It’s magnificent.

Then I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s an old guy (an adult, not an old man) wearing a Safeway smock. He says “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, son.”

The moment is broken.

“Oh. Okay.”

And I leave.

On the way back to the restaurant I stop and grab a Slurpee. As I walk through the mellow Marin summer afternoon, I’m trying to feed the straw through the hole in the mask but it’s not working, so I have to remove the mask to partake of my refreshing beverage. There I am, walking in my gorilla suit, drinking my slurpee with one hand, holding the gorilla mask with the other, everything seems right with the world.

As I’m almost to the restaurant, a shiny new BMW pulls up next to me. (BMWs were de rigueur in Mill Valley in 1977). There’s a mom with two kids in the car. She rolls down the window and tried to get my attention. 

“Excuse me!” she says. I look over. 

“Hi!” I say. 

“Do you do parties?” she asks.

I think for a second. “Uhh. No...”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks anyway!” And she drives off. And I head back to the restaurant and tell Dad and George and Patty and Michelle all about it.

Dad says, “You dodo! You should have said Yes!”

I think for a second. He’s totally right. I should have. I just wasn’t thinking. Oh well. Next time someone asks me if I do parties, I’ll totally be prepared.

GLEN ELLEN - 1978

I just recently moved to Glen Ellen to live with my dad. I couldn’t handle living with my mom anymore. Don’t get me wrong, Mom was great. It was my big brother Steve that was a nightmare for me. He was sixteen and was still being a dick to me. He’d been a scary unpredictable element in my life for years. But sixteen it a little old for how he was behaving toward me. What was the straw made me take steps? Well, my aunt Judy and my two cousins Alison and Lizzy had recently moved in with Mom and Steve and me, so Steve and I were sharing a bed? He wouldn’t let me sleep on the bed. He’d lie on the bed in a big “X” shape, all extremities reaching for corners, and told me to sleep in the floor. 

If just go sleep on the couch, but he was purposefully taking his shit out on me and I was sick of it. So I asked Dad if I could come live with him and Patty. 

It was that quick. Dad said come on over. I moved right in. I’d been coming up to Glen Ellen to visit since he took over the waterwheel restaurant last year. His business partner was a guy named Joe Garrity who totally reminded me of M Emmet Walsh from “Straight Time” which was in the theaters around that time back then. I stayed in the little apartment above the restaurant, until we could find a decent sized place. And even though it was kind of out in the boonies, I liked Glen Ellen. There was plenty for me to do. London Glen was a lot of fun for me. 

Dad had taken the restaurant over after Juanita Musson left. Juanita was a big woman. Large in size, large in voice, large in presence. She was also a successful restaurateur who had opened nearly a dozen restaurants over the years. All the restaurants were these funky kinda hippie sideshow restaurants. She was a bawdy, loud, big-titted lady who wore a flowered muumuu and had her hair up in a bun. If you asked, she’d be happy to wrap her enormous breasts around your head for a photo. Dad and Patty took me to her restaurant up by the delta somewhere near Vacaville I think to get a look. She had like a Ripley’s Believe it or Not kinda museum downstairs in the basement that had jackalopes and bigfoot turds and a supposedly “working electric chair” that lit up and made noise when you pulled the lever. She was the previous tenant at the waterwheel restaurant and her spirit loomed large. 

The waterwheel restaurant, now a Mama’s Royal Cafe, was originally a saw mill and then a grist mill in the 1800s. Now it was a restaurant. The waterwheel still worked but there was no millstone or anything. To eleven year old me, the place looked really cool. On the outside, it looked like a big barn with a waterwheel on the side. Inside it was dark. It was all raw bare dark-stained wood. It looked rustic and unfinished, like a cabin. To the left as you walked in, was the a big bay window across a small dance floor, with the waterwheel slowly churning in the other side of the glass. There was a small stage with band equipment and amps right next to the big bay window. There was a bar and a door to the kitchen, and a large passage leading to the dining room. There was a staircase going up to the little apartment where I stayed when I came to visit. That’s where Bob Rice lived, and Dad stayed when he wasn’t at Patty’s. But I was moving up, so we were going to need new arrangements

But for eleven year old me, I thought the place was really cool. On the outside, to me it looked like a big barn with a waterwheel on the side. Inside it was dark. It was all raw bare dark-stained wood. It looked rustic and unfinished, like a cabin. To the left as you walked in, was the a big bay window across a small dance floor, with the waterwheel slowly churning in the other side of the glass. There was a small stage with band equipment and amps right next to the big bay window. There was a bar. A jukebox. A door to the kitchen, and a passage to the dining room which was a big space.

The coolest thing about the waterwheel restaurant, was at the far rear of the restaurant there was this trap door. Beneath it was a trapdoor leading to a whole hidden level. Beneath the restaurant there was a whole other hidden restaurant. It was dark cob-webby, but the little trigger thingamajig behind the bat that dispensed Pepsi and 7-up still worked fine. 

So I thought the place was pretty bitchin’. There was a lot to explore. Big old abandoned wood buildings filled with ancient rusty machinery. Hidden nooks and crannies everywhere. 

UP AT THE SWIMMING HOLE

Mark and Donnie were friends with my dad and Bob Rice. They lived up the creek a ways. There was as perfect a swimming hole as I’d ever seen by there place. It even had a rope that you could swing out into the middle of the creek and jump. It was a fun place for me to me. It was at Mark and Donnie’s that Bob Rice’s girlfriend turned me on to the Rocky Horror soundtrack. I felt totally at home there. I practically lived there all summer.

It’s late summer in 1978 and I’m eleven. It’s a beautiful hot day. I’m in Glen Ellen. 

Today I was standing on a big rock next to a creek, wearing my swim trunks, holding a rope in my hand. The rope was tied to a tree limb far above me. It couldn’t have been anymore peaceful of a day. I’ve been doing this all summer, so I’m getting pretty good at it. I know exactly when to let go. So I yell: “Geronimo!” and I jump. The swing action of the rope takes me to where I want to be, the momentum takes me the rest of the way. I splash down into the deepest part of the swimming hole. I think that’s the farthest I’ve ever gone.

It’s a beautiful sunny day in what appears to be a wooded glade, with a creek. Also a 70s hippie wooded Marin-style home next to the creek. I walk out the back door and start down toward the creek. I’m eleven years old. I turn back to the house and yell, “Hey Mark! Donnie! I’m heading back! I gotta go meet Dad and my Nom at the restaurant!”

“Okay Benny!” says Mar

“Quit calling me Benny! I’m Spencer!”

Donnie steps out on the back porch. “That’s gonna take some getting used to. Why are you changing your name?”

“I’m not changing my name. I’ve always been Spencer. It’s not my fault nobody ever calls me that. See ya, Donnie.”

“See ya, kiddo”

And off I go, whistling, rock hopping, talking to myself, making Star Wars references, as I wind my way up the creek side. It’s not too far. I can see the restaurant start to peek through the trees. It’s a big old wooden building. It’s got a waterwheel, so it’s got to be a mill, right? Well it’s 1978 and I don’t know what a mill looks like. Looks like a big old barn that’s been converted to a restaurant to me.

I arrive at the back of the restaurant, into the little glade, where the little tributary powers the waterwheel and feeds into the main creek. The shallow incline leads up to London Glen. London Glen is the eclectic shopping area that surrounds the restaurant.

There’s a little girl standing intently at the edge of the creek.

“Hi” I say.

“Hi” she says without looking up.

“Whatcha doing?” I ask.

“I wanna go in the creek.”

“Nah. You can’t do that. Where’re your mom and dad?”

“There up there.” She indicates with her head that their up in London Glen, but she never stops staring at the creek.

“I *really* want to go in the creek”. She’s spellbound and committed. 

“You’re too little. And the rocks are wet. You’ll slip and drown. It’s just as easy to drown in an inch of water as it is to drown in a swimming pool.”

She looks up at me. Looking at me for the first time. “It is?”

“That’s what my dad always says.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “You don’t want to drown, do ya?”

“No”. She’s back to staring at the creek with a furrowed brow. She looks back up at me. “But I really want to go in the creek.”

She looks at me, I look at her. She grimaces. I grimace back.

“Shoot. I’ll take you in.”

“You will?”

Yeah. Why not? Just hold my hands. I’ll make sure you don’t slip.”

“Yay!”

I help her take her diaper off so as to not get it wet. Diapers aboard water, if she slipped the diaper would become dirty and gross and filled with water. Even at eleven years old, I understand how diapers work. Then I walk her around in the water for a couple minutes, like behind her with her arms out stretched above her, holding both hands. There’s not much water but I splash her a little. She laughs and tries to splash me back, but she’s two and not very good at it. We do that for a couple minutes, and she seems done. I tell her I have to go find my Dad and stepmom. I ask her where her parents are and she points up the hill “Up there”. “Okay”, I say. “I gotta go. You’re not going to go in the creek, are you?” “Uh uh” “Why?” “Cause I’m too little and I could hurt myself.” “That’s right” I say and I go.

Me, Dad and Patty drive up to the new place in Patty’s new Bronco, to the new house! It’s got a pool! It’s an above ground doughboy pool, but Glen Ellen is super hot during the summer and a pool’s a pool. Dad says that me and him are going to live there with Bob Rice and his two kids. Sounds good to me.

This is the first time we’ve had a microwave so dad is reading the instruction manual to figure out how to work it. Then in a berating voice he say: “You suck, handle. You’re the worst handle I’ve ever seen. Everybody hated you, handle. You should just kill yourself, handle. The world would be better off without you!”

“Dad, what are you doing?”

“The manual says to open the microwave door, to depress the handle.”

THE HOUSE ON HILL ST.

Bob Rice has one bedroom. Scotty and Jessica, ages six and four, get the smallest room, while Dad and I share the master bedroom. 

After we’ve lived there a while, Dad tells me “Everyone in town thinks Bob and I are gay lovers, so I’ve taken to referring to him as “that bitch”. Bob and Patty were romantically involved before Dad came on the scene. As everybody gets comfortable in their roles and become familiar to the local denizens, Bob and Dad start rehearsing “The Odd Couple” by Neil Simon for a local theater. As perfect casting as that is, nothing ever comes of it. 

MOM!

One time in 1979, a night when Dad wasn’t cooking down at the waterwheel restaurant, but instead Bob Rice was cooking. Dad was bartending that night, and Eugene Levy comes in and is hanging out at the bar. Dad had no idea who Eugene Levy was, because let’s be real, in 1979, Eugene Levy wasn’t really anybody. All Dad sees is a guy with a big schnoz, horn-rimmed glasses and bushy eyebrows. Well, Dad just happened to have Groucho Marx nose and glasses behind the bar. So he moves over to where the glasses are, grabs them, and with his back to the patrons, puts on the Groucho glasses. Then still with his back turned, he positions himself right in front of Levy, turns around, wearing the Groucho glasses and gets right in Levy’s face and says:

“I just want you to know you’re you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

Without missing a beat Levy gets a look of shock on his face and blurts out:

“Mom!”

A HEALTHY, NURTURING ENVIRONMENT 

On two occasions I come home and find large amounts of drugs out on the table being weighed and bagged. Once mushrooms, once cocaine. I presume it’s a side thing for Bob. I’ve never seen Dad deal drugs or any sort and it doesn’t fit his personality. Using them? Oh yeah, absolutely. Selling them? That seems beneath him to me.

One time I’m looking at the little flip clock dad and I use, and I get very curious about the inner workings of it. So I decide to take it apart. Not all at once. I take a single screw off, and then replace it, so I can commit it to memory. Then I do that with the second piece. I don’t want to get too deep in. So every piece I take off, I make sure I know where it goes. 

Until I have a bunch of pieces on the table, and I realize I have no idea how to put it back together. It’s just *not* gonna happen. Shit! Oh well. So I put it all in a bag and throw it over the fence.

“Hey, Spenny. Have you seen the clock anywhere?”

“Me? Nuh-uh.”

“That’s really strange. It couldn’t have just walked away.”

“Huh! Yeah. That’s weird.”

GRAMPA AND ME IN NEW YORK

In August of 1978, Grampa took me to New York City to see Minnie and Pat and meet the rest of the family back east. The only objection I have is that the day we’re leaving, the “Doctor Strange” movie I’ve been seeing ads for is on, and I was really looking forward to it. But there’s no way around it. And I’m able to watch a little bit of it at the airport, where they have these little teevees that you can watch for a couple minutes at a time by plugging quarters into them. So Doctor Strange follows me to the airport, but no further. 

We get picked up from the airport in New Jersey by Cousin Richard, whom I’ve never met. He’s a big guy. He’s Grampa’s nephew. On the way home we drive through Riverdale, which makes me think of Archie Comics. Also Riverdale has Burger King. I’ve never actually been to a Burger King before. They’re not the omnipresent cultural behemoth that the eventually become, in 1978 in California. I’ve never even seen one in real life. Grampa doesn’t care. 

We stay with Aunt Minnie and Uncle Pat. We visit Blaise and Luschia. We do the touristy things. Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, we eat breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria. We went to a clam bar in Grand Central Station, we go to the jade market, a cabbie, a pretty lady Grampa said was stoned, took us the wrong way down the Holland Tunnel. 

He took me to FAO Schwartz where I bought the Corgi version of James Bond’s Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine from “The Spy Who Loved Me” and some Battlestar Galáctica toys. Outside of FAO Schwartz, waiting for the light to change so we can cross, all of a sudden Grampa blurts out pretty loud “You do it, you motherfuckin’ cocksuckuh, I’ll rip ya fuckin dick off and feed it to you!”

What the fuck! Grampa!

I look around, and there’s this big black dude standing right behind me with a big black garbage bag. He starts giggling a pretty creepy giggle and runs off. There’s a lady even older than Grampa waiting for the light too. She looks at Grampa and says “Language!”

We also went to Little Italy. He showed me the restaurant where Joe Gallo was gunned down in 1972. Then we went to the jade market, which might have been near Little Italy actually. 

He took me to a bar in the Bronx called Costello’s to meet the Son of Sam’s father, but it was closed. 

We visited a variety of old people living in the projects in the Bronx.

He took me to meet some guys in buildings behind desks wearing ties for some reason. And he took me to Radio City Music Hall where we saw the Rockettes. That was cool. After the performance, they showed a new Lassie movie starring Jimmy Stewart. The weird thing about the Lassie movie is that it was filmed in Glen Ellen where I’d just moved, so I recognized a lot of the locations. Then we flew back to California and started school in Glen Ellen.

DANIELLE THIBEAUX

The first time I took notice of Danielle Thibeaux was in sixth grade during the Halloween dance party. She was an Indian princess. I was a Jawa. It was 1978. It was my first year at a new school.

She asked me to dance and I said no way

Mr. Cox wound up bringing the whole Halloween class party to a screeching halt because I didn’t want to dance. I *really* didn’t want to dance.

Danielle was my first kiss.

She wound up breaking my heart of course. It hurt so bad and was such a luxurious misery i was feeling, to take the school bus to that little country school in the morning in anticipation of seeing her, delighting in my succulent anguish over her dumping me. Lol.

But don’t fret, gentle readers. We kind of got back together before the school year ended. We slow danced together at the school dance to “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb. But we were 11 so it was all pretty chaste. I do remember her asking me if I was getting any hair yet. She said she was.

STUMP THE DUMMY

I start my new school in Glen Ellen. I’m now in the 6th grade. My teacher is this guy named Mr. Cox.he’s young, has a beard, red hair, and a string Carolina accent. He’s going to wind up being one of my favorite teachers that I’ll ever have. We play games like Slaughterball and Stump The Dummy. He calls all the students “turkeys”. It’s a term of endearment. His favorite joke to tell is about Stymie from the little rascals using the word “isthmus” in a sentence. “Isthmus be the place!”  We seem to be developing a “Bill Murray and Chris Makepeace from Meatballs”- like relationship.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE 

In 1978 I go see Superman with Dad and Patty. I loved it! What’s not to love? It was damn near perfect for me at eleven. The only gripes I had were Lex Luthor had hair, and Marlon Brando as Jor El was all wrong. So was Krypton. Krypton wasn’t an ice world, and Jor El didn’t have white hair. 

I NEVER BELIEVED YOUR STORIES UNTIL THIS HAPPENED TO ME...

So I’m about 12 years old. Still new to puberty, I’m reading my brothers Penthouse magazines, specifically Penthouse Forum. Penthouse Forum are these little porny pretending to be letters to the editor, obviously written in house. They all start out almost exactly the same “I never believed what happened in your column until this happened to me. I’m a janitor down at the local girl’s gym...) Anyway, the story I’m reading is a retelling of a common tale, but it’s brand new to me. It’s this guy’s birthday, and he’s expecting his wife to give him a surprise in the morning, but she forgets it’s his birthday. Then his kids forget it’s his birthday. Everybody forgets it’s his birthday. Except for a sexy coworker who he’s had fantasies about. Anyway long story short, they wind up ah his or her house, she makes some comment about getting more comfortable and goes in the other room. He thinks “this is it!” He gets naked, and had a big old hard on! She tells him to come in to the bedroom. He rushes in naked and boner raging! His whole family yells “Surprise!”

I remember reading that thinking “Shit! That’s messed up! Hope nothing like that ever happens to me!”

MILL VALLEY MIDDLE SCHOOL

In 1979 we move back to Mill Valley. We rent a house on Valley Circle. I start Middle School. I’m in Mr. and Mrs. Tanguay’s class. They teach multiple years, so I’ll be able to stay with the same teachers for the next two years, before entering high school. 

It’s the first day of 7th grade. I don’t know anybody in class. The classroom is made of three attached rooms. The first room is like a lab study room, with the tables all lined up in two rows. The second room is the room with school desks and chalkboards. And the third room has our lockers and a bunch of couches, which is where we’re all currently sitting awaiting the first period bell.

A guy next to me, who I don’t know but will come to know as Reed Fromer, says to another guy I will eventually know as Mike Supinski, “Hey Mike! I figured out how to remember your name! Mike Soup-in-ski!” as he mimes the action of pouring soup into a ski. The joke is a “wakka wakka wakka” groaner of the first degree. Fozzie Bear himself would have been like, “dude. That was a baaad joke.” Supinski looks at Reed with shock and disgust, and cringes at the awfulness of it all, while simultaneously being fascinated by Reed’s deliberate over-pronunciation.

Over the next year Reed will become known to me at the “Don’t sit on my hand” guy. What he would do is before first period when we’re waiting for the bell and everyone is sitting down in one of the six or seven couches in the announcement room, he’d put his hand out, palm down, you know, right next to him, and wait for some one to sit down. On his hand. And then he’d look at them, and then say in this sort of deliberate, almost sing-songy way, it’s hard to describe without hearing it, “Don’t sit on my hand!” And then he’d smile this goofy smile. And depending on who it was, he might just get ignored, or looked at with confusion. It was odd. He was also a pretty phenomenal piano player even at 12. He sang “Please come to Boston for the springtime” for the talent show. He was very good. Our group sang the theme to “The Muppet Show”. I think that was my idea. Kalen Ackerman did The Time Warp, the “cool girls” all dressed in bathing suits and danced sexy. That was pretty funny. The best was Annie, though. She sang “The Logical Song” by Super Tramp, but it was all about food. Suuuuuper charming! “When I was young my parents sent me to veggie school, to learn the rules, of making edible vegetables...”, “I got some cantaloupe, for my antelope...” 

Yeah, Annie won the day.

Mike Supinski was the emcee. He wore a purple and gold lamé tuxedo, and he killed.  It’s apparent that Mike Supinski is one of the two funniest kids in class who also owns his own purple and gold lamé tuxedo. Sean Hannigan is equally funny. They perform together so obviously they’re friends. It looks like they’ve known each other for a while. But allegiances can shift as we grow up. Mike seems like he’s starting to realize the uber-nerd thing might be working against him in the pussy-getting department. While Sean Hannigan has embraced his destiny, complete with a horde of nerdy minions who all hang around one particular wall, covered with food, behind a stairwell, which he has named “The Meatgrinder”. Sean and his minions march around the school during recess and lunch chanting “Meat-Grine-Der! Meat-Grine-Der!” 

It is with this lot of weirdos and whack jobs that I throw in.

Sean often sings songs. In praise of himself, and others.

“H-A-Double N-I-G-A-N spells “Hannigan”....”

“King Sean! You know the name of King Sean! You know the fame of King Sean, ten times as big as as an amoeba!”

“They call her Annie, Annie, faster than lightning, for no one, you see, is sweeter than she. For you know Annie lives on a world full of wonder, swimming there under, under the sea!”

How does one describe Sean Hannigan? 

Well, first off, keeping in mind that I knew him in 7th and 8th grade, he was absolutely fucking hilarious. And really smart. Very neurotic in character, presumably on purpose. He kind of had this needly whiny voice that kind of poked you in the eye with whatever he said. He’d kinda hunch his shoulders and rub his hands together like he was a mad scientist. But he wasn’t diminutive like Woody Allen. He was a normal-sized person, with a pale Irish ruddy complexion, and a thick Irish head of blond hair. And he pretty much wore nothing but Izod polo shirts. He always had a perplexed or bemused smile on his face, like someone was about to punch him.

Sean was a comedy genius is what he was. How funny was he? He was so incredibly funny, that his comedy partner was Mike Supinski. That’s how fucking funny he was. I wonder if anyone remembers the interview show skit where he interviewed Mike Supinski and his SCUBA diving operations? I presume it was lifted from somewhere as they were 13 years old when they did the skit. But even if they did get it from somewhere , it’s still brilliant. I have to presume it’s Bob & Ray. It’s got that vibe:

Hannigan: “Have you ever lost a diver?”

Supinski: “No. we’ve recovered every one of them.”

....and on that day, Sean Hannigan gave us The Meatgrinder. And it was good. 

Also it was sir Hannigan who saw the beauty in decorating all those poor pathetic Charlie Brown trees next to Sun, with garbage strewn around the school for Christmas. Locally sourced, free-range garbage. 

It was Sean Hannigan who sang the Flipper song about Annie.

It was King Sean who showed us it was possible to turn a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a fine paste, and squeeze it into one corner of the sandwich bag by slowly winding the it closed, and squeezing it out of one corner of the bag. 

And our lives are so much richer for it.

The second to last time I saw Sean Hannigan, indeed the last time I spoke to him, was at the middle school 8th grade graduation dance. And it was the first time I’d ever smoked pot, which I’d done not forty-five minutes before at Django Bayliss’ house, with Django and David Lanier. And it was good shit. I’ve heard people say they didn’t get high the first time I smoked. Not me. I got fucking baked. For awhile, immediately after smoking, I began to see the world, specifically my interactions with Django and David, as a series of still shots. Like a strobe. Flash flash flash. I was still super-stoned and pretty much completely incapable of communication when I ran into Sean at the party. 

“What’s wrong with you?” He asked

“Uhh... my mother just died.” I responded. 

I was not prepared for such a difficult out-of-left-field question such as “What’s wrong with you”. I was not a good improviser under the best of circumstances...

The story was that he decided to go to Redwood instead of Tam because he was worried about getting beaten up, which fits well with his neurotic persona. But doesn’t that just feel like a story? Because his neurotic persona struck me as just that, a persona. He didn’t seem like he had that much to be neurotic about. He was intelligent and gregarious and funny. He talked about people wanting to beat him up, but I never actually saw any evidence of that. 

The very last time I saw Hannigan, he took my ticket at the movie theater at Larkspur Landing. Me and Paul Kovin and Michelle Fels were there to see “Blue Velvet”. Sean and I acknowledged each other with a nod, but that was it. Never saw him again. I hope he stayed funny.

I CALL YOU OUT!

Within the first couple days of me being in the Tanguay class, I get confronted by a bully. I’m sitting on a sofa, waiting for class to start, and this blond guy I don’t know comes over and tells me I’m in his seat. I disregard him. I have no intention of moving. Then he says we

“I call you out!”

Oooh! I’ve been called out! What the fuck does that mean? Later after school I told my Dad about being “called out” and he said it sounds like he was asking me out on a date. 

“3 o’clock. After school. You and me.” And he walks away.

I walked over to Mr. Tanguay and said, “I think that guy just threatened to beat me up after school. He “called me out”.”

“Which kid, Spencer?”

“The blond kid in the fake leather jacket.”

“Okay, Spencer. Thank you... David! Would you please come over here. I’d like to speak to you.”

Never heard another word about it. I kinda became friends with David by the end of 8th grade.

THE MEATGRINDER

Yeah, so The Meatgrinder was a wall covered with food. Underneath and behind the exterior staircase that led up to Sun and Mrs. Tanguay’s lesson room. All us weirdo deranged nerds with poor hygiene and anger issues would smear or throw the food we didn’t want against this cement wall. And then we’d find someone to sacrifice to the wall, while we chanted “Meat-grine-der! Meat-grine-der!...” Generally we liked to source locally, and sacrifice one of our own. Even among the misfits, there was a pecking order. 

In the event we couldn’t find local meat for The Meatgrinder, we’d march around school, chanting “Meat-grine-der! Meat-grine-der!...

CIM

One time we found Cintra Wilson. We were marching past Wind, and she jumps out in front of us, hold out her hand like a cop, and commands us to “Stop!”

Well, I think we were all into that sort of thing, I certainly was, so we stopped. In all the years we went to the same school, that is the most in depth conversation we’ve ever had. I always liked her though. Also it was funny to see Caddio St. Phall pants her in Ms. Jury’s swim class.

Eventually Cintra would make a name for herself among the glitterati. That all starts when she writes a play about Fatty Arbuckle. But that’s still a decade away give or take.

ALEX PECK

Eventually the vice principal came and had a discussion with the class. 

“Now, I’m not pointing any fingers here, but.... Yeah. This “Meatgrinder” thing has got to stop...”

We found other ways to express ourselves.

It was around the Meatgrinder that I became friends with Alex Peck. But at first he was my slave. (Yeah. The Meatgrinder may have been a little weird...) But pretty quickly we were good friends. I learned *so* much from Alex Peck. He turned me on to Dungeons & Dragons, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Dark Star, Phineous Fingers, Dr. Who, Monty Python & The Holy Grail, The Prisoner and more. He helped me create and develop The All-New Adventures of Johnny Space Commando!, Jimmy G-Ray and Monkus O’Corpus. Besides Gilbert Shelton, I’m not sure I turned him on to anything. Maybe Tom Lehrer. He was an unkempt greasy weirdo with a pretty sophisticated sense of humor just like me. We both wore puffy coats and had dirty stringy hair. Alex kept a couple ketchup packet with him at all times, you know, just in case. He had a phone receiver in his pocket with the coil-y phone wire attached to his pocket, “I’m case anybody called”. In that vein, I took to wearing a watch on my ankle, just in case somebody asked me what time it was.

CARRAGEENAN AS AN EMULSIFIER

When we first started getting to know one another he told me about the time he went in to audition for a Snicker’s Bar commercial. His mom set it up. He was there in line with a bunch of other kids. The he producer comes up to him and says “tell me what’s in a Snicker’s Bar.” Being the nerd he is, Alex knows precisely what’s in a Snicker’s Bar: “Cocoa, sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, carrageenan as an emulsifier...”

“Thank you! Next! Tell me what’s in a Snicker’s Bar!”

Alex listens to the next kid.

“Tell me what’s in a Snicker’s Bar!”

“Delicious milk chocolate, gooey caramel, creamy nougat...”

Alex winces, and slaps his forehead! “Shit!”

“Yeah, that’s how I didn’t a Snicker’s Bar commercial. Pardon me, I’ve got to take this..”

He pulls the phone out of his jacket pocket.

“Hello?”

I have to mention how much Dad loved that story when I told him. He found it hilarious and listened with baited breath every time I told it. 

SHAWN KAIL

Shawn Kail arrived at the Tanguay’s midway through the year when I was in seventh grade. And although he grew up to be normal size, he was a little tiny guy when I was in 7th grade. He always wore a tan and burgundy puffy jacket and a John Denver haircut, and did a pretty good Steve Martin face. He was a little smart-ass motor-mouth who liked science fiction and comic books, and he drew well too. As such he was relegated to the nerds like us.  

Shawn, Alex and eventually Matt were all a year behind me. 

STERLING LENHEIM

And Sterling Lenheim was even a year before that.

I’m not sure how well Mr. Tanguay liked me, but it was pretty apparent he liked Alex less. 

When Alex and I worked on projects together, we always both got bad grades, but Alex’s were always worse. When we put on the historical drama we wrote, “Don Quixote Goes To England” (You want to do *what* to my windmill?!), I got a well-deserved  “C”, and Alex got reemed. Not sure why I got a better grade. Plus it was FUNNY! 

MR. TANGUAY

Mr. Tanguay could be a dick. To my friends. He was always pretty cool to me. Plus he seemed to like science fiction. He assigned plenty of it in class. Some was quite good. “The Master”. He  had us read “Flowers For Algernon” about a mentally retarded man who gets experimental surgery, that as a result turns him into a genius, but by the end he loses it all and becomes mentally handicapped again. He had us read “The Monsters Are Due On Maple St.” which was an episode of Twilight Zone, a parable about how angry mobs materialize. So he was a smart guy. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate him more. Keep in mind that he looked like a human version of Admiral Ackbar from “Return of The Jedi”

Mr. Tanguay didn’t seem to like Sterling Lenheim either. It seemed to me that he picked on Sterling, and maybe to a lesser degree Alex Peck. I never understood why I was spared.

CAPTAIN JAMES T KEET OF THE USS ENTERKEET

There was a period where Alex Peck and I were pretty inseparable. For years we binge created solidly, all through middle school and well into high school. We’d go for days and days just throwing ideas back and forth, creating characters and scenarios and then actually drawing them out in panel format making actual comics, for like, two pretty solid years. We’d get all bleary eyed from soda and comedy and creating, we’d never sleep. We’d keep each other up all night just wearing out the stupidist jokes you could imagine. We created a lot of work. Anything! Alex would suggest something and I’d draw it, or he’d take existing characters of mine and write panels out illustrated in his hilarious scrawl. He gave Jimmy G-Ray a story arc. In D&D I had a monk that I named Monkus O’Corpus. Alex latched on to Monkus O’Corpus, and paneled out a series of comic strips of him with only one joke. Monkus O’Corpus walks into a tavern, goes to the bar and orders a glass of milk. Everyone in the bar laughs at Monkus, so he kills them all with his mace. Over and over. In different bars. The set ups might move around a bit, but the payoff was always massive unexpected bloodshed. For Alex I drew out an idea he had called “Star Keet” and James T Keet, captain of the USS Interkeet. The basic concept was Star Trek populated by parakeets. 

A couple times Alex and I would wind up in these awful fights throwing insults back and forth and he’d kick me out of his house. That happened a couple times.  His mom Irene told me to not take it personally, that he suffered from low-blood sugar. And we for sure were eating a fuck ton of candy. Eventually the things about me that made him so mad became irreconcilable. I think. There are so many fucking layers! Who the fuck can say what *actually* happened? I certainly can’t. While Alex was always hilarious, he could be mean too. Sometimes both at the same time. Alex had seen me in action enough over the years that he knew my work habits. Regardless of how much talent he might begrudgingly allow that I have, it was more fun for him to beat the “flaky and lazy” drum. 

One of the best drawings he did, or my favorite anyway was an insult to me! It was me sitting in front of a typewriter, furiously typing, desperately trying to finish the script to a remake of “The Blob” I was set to start filming in the morning. I’m wearing a fedora and in the background are like, a thousand boxes of lime Jell-O to play the Blob. As mean-spirited as he might occasionally get, I’m the first to admit the Alex knew my work habits.

HEY SCHNEIDER! GETCHER HANDS OUTTA YER POCKETS!

Thimmaya Snyder was like the main jock in class. I only mention it because when we played softball, he’d stick me way out in left field (as if I wasn’t way out in left field already.) and I’d just count the minutes until the torture stopped. He’d always yell, “Hey Schneider! getcher hands outta yer pockets!” at me way out there. One time we of the uber-nerds decided to take over the “cool kids” couch for a day. They physically removed us. I thought it was a bold stand for us to take.

MATT WEINER

When Matt Weiner showed up in 8th grade, almost immediately a fellow student called him “Greenie” because that student didn’t know Matt’s name and he was always eating a green sweatshirt. Matt was “Greenie” to all of us for years to come. It fit him. It still does.

And Charles. Charles was absolutely the toughest kid in class. He was sort of viewed as a beloved hoodlum that was always getting into a stir. Every class had one, didn’t they? So on this particular day, after strutting purposefully around Middle School seemingly looking for someone to beat up, he cornered me by the lockers in class. Keep in mind that I was scared to death of him. I only assume that all my friends (and everyone else in the school, as well as the faculty, the parents, and anybody else who had ever met you) were as scared of him as I was. 

Anyhow, he appeared to be looking for trouble, his eyes darting from person to person, from thing to thing. I tried to be perfectly still, hoping against hope that I'd blend like a chameleon into my surroundings, spontaneously taking on the colors and shapes of the locker room, while Charles, looking the perfect copy of John Cougar (this is pre- Mellencamp days) in 3/4 scale, sized me up. His eyes locked on me, and he squinted. As I look back today, I'm pretty sure he had just gotten high, something I had yet to experience in 8th grade. Needless to say, my eyes widened in fear as he squinted at me, and sized me up. Then he walked right up to me, face to face, too close for my comfort, and said: 

"You're alright, Spencer. You draw neat pictures." 

Then he turned and walked away. I was never scared of Charles ever again. 

A RARE AND RADIANT MAIDEN

At some point I started getting friendly with this girl named Lenore. We shared 6th period study. She looked to me like Ingrid Bergman, although I think she was Latina. And we talked everyday. And it was nice. And comfortable. And we seemed to be becoming friends. And then one day, she just wasn’t there anymore.

JUDE LERNER CAN KICK MY ASS ANYTIME

One day in the Tanguay’s class, I was reading the Weekly Reader (remember those?), and there was an article that showed a pretty detailed step by step process of applying pretty professional looking “old man” make-up to a kid. This guy in the article did a pretty good job of transforming a 12 year old boy into a 70 year old man. The thing was, due to a pretty much life long “healthy interest” in Hollywood make-up effects, I was already familiar with all the supplies the make-up artist used. Plus I pretty clearly understood everything the guy did to pull off the effect. Halloween was coming up, and this would be perfect, if I could pull it off. I was pretty sure I could do that to myself. I’d already done the “old man” thing, in a much simpler form, plenty of times. Crepe hair and spirit gum for fake mustaches and beards. Non-Flex Collodion for the big, crazy, axe-murderer scars, Morticians wax for fake noses. These had been my secret weapons for years, when the best the other kids could come up with was vampire teeth, fake blood, that waxy fake “Scar Stuff” that always looked so fake (next to the collodion), and maybe those fake bulgy zombie eyes that you had to hold in to your face by squinting hard. So, I already had a little basic training, but this would be the most complicated costume that I, at 12, had ever attempted. And it came out frickin’ barnstormin’. I looked like Walter Matthau, with a little Einstein thrown in. It was amazing. At the restaurant for breakfast before school, the waitresses all freaked when they saw me, and figured out it was me, because at first of course, they didn’t recognize me. they really thought I was an old man. Everybody just got a huge giggle from it. I felt great. I was pretty sure the Tanguays’ prize for Best Costume was mine. 

When I got to school, same thing. Nobody recognized me. They barely even noticed me. they all just thought I was some old man who had wandered into the class. Until role call, then everybody flipped out. The whole class was blissed by it. 

When the costume contest happened, Jude Lerner won first place. I came in second. Jude’s costume was kind of a slinky little black number, and a pig nose, made from construction paper, painted pink with Tempra. She said she was “Miss Piggy”. I couldn’t fucking believe it. Just typical. My costume blew doors on every other costume that year, and I still managed to come in second behind the popular girl. But I gotta say, she was a pretty fucking hot Miss Piggy. And also, she was very gracious in her win. She did a cute little curtsy, and blushed and kinda cocked her head and said thank you. 

Yeah. Thanks. Years later in high school, when Jude would occasionally show up to visit her pals, from another high school, she would grab my attention as a girl that could rock a leopardskin pillbox hat. 

Years later, after much life and drama had happened in my life, my last real interaction I had with her was to leave a little toy gargoyle on her porch, as a mysterious calling card. Let her know somebody interesting came by to see her. Just not who. Later I told her it was me who left the gargoyle, because I wanted to see if she got it. She was surprised it was me, she said she got it and was using it a her parking Goddess.

DEREK

Derek was this guy who was always after my mom. He was over at Mom’s house all the time. He set his sights on her and gave it his best shot. I liked Derek. He was African. I’m not sure which country. He was very black. Kind of diminutive. Seems to me, without knowing for sure, that he probably slept with Mom. That would explain the commitment he lent to establishing himself as a paternal presence if nothing else. 

Oh yeah, he left a couple of pairs of his shoes at her house. They were like, Naugahyde platforms with the zipper on the side. In spite of his terrible taste in shoes, I always liked the guy.

He took me to see “The Blues Brothers” at the UA on Shattuck. It surprisingly was “R” rated, and I was thirteen. So the woman in the booth was like “I’m sorry. But it’s an “R” rated movie so he has to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.”

And this is why I’ll love Derek forever. He looks at the ticket lady and tells her, in his thick African accent:

“Ee ees my son.”

I look at Derek like “what the fuck?” But without missing a beat, I immediately add:

“I’m adopted.”

The manager came out and told the ticket lady to let us in. And “The Blues Brothers” was great.

MY NEW BEST FRIEND

It’s about 1:30am. I’m at a twenty-four hour diner on West MacArthur in Oakland. I’m twelve. It’s now Saturday morning. Dad came over to pick me up to take me to Mill Valley for the weekend, but got roped into hanging out at the Piedmont Lounge with Mom, carousing and holding court. He’s fine. He’s not wasted or anything. He’s normal. Except it’s two in the morning and we’re in a Zim’s or some shit. And West MacArthur at 2am on a Friday night is actually kind of dicey. We’re sitting there, I’m drinking a soda, Dad is smoking a cigarette, and this black kid, maybe 15? 16? He’s a big kid. A little threatening to me, and he says:

“Excuse me. Does yo son want to come out and play?”

Dad takes a beat. Looks at me and asks “Well?... Do you?”

I said, “No. I think I’m good but thank you.”

It was an odd moment.

SORRY!

I started smoking pot when I was fourteen. On the day of the 8th grade graduation dance. I was baked beyond reason. But me smoking weed should come as no surprise as *everybody* in my family smoked pot. Mon, Dad, Steve, all their friends and cohorts. The only people in my immediate orbit who didn’t smoke pot were my friends at school. But I smoked it at every opportunity. Especially at my Mom’s house where I could get away with it without fear of Dad finding out. 

Steve and I took the trip to Oakland, from Mill Valley, at least once a week. That meant taking a bus from Mill Valley to the San Francisco bus terminal, then hopping on BART to Oakland. It was the only way available to traverse the distance without a car. 

On one occasion we were going to Mom, and it was late. Like after midnight. We’re on BART, somewhere around the 12th street station. Nobody else is on the train. At this point I’m about fifteen, which would make Steve about twenty. He’s crashed. Dead asleep. Relying on me to wake him when we hit the MacArthur station. Steve had big appetites at this point, so he was often shagged out. Plus, dude could sleep anywhere.

So we’re cruising on BART through the quiet Oakland night. The two of us are sitting on opposite sides of the train, which provides me a view of both Steve sleeping, and the window of the train, through which I can see the streets of Oakland. 

Then I see a brick flying through the air. Toward the train. Getting bigger...

CRAAAAASH!!!!

The brick lands perfectly center in the window that my brother was sleeping in front of. It’s safety glass, so the brick embeds in the window and turns the window into a spider’s web of a zillion little glass pellets that go everywhere. I’ve never seen a person be jolted awake as violently and unexpectedly as occurred that moment. 

“HO-LEE FUCK!!” yells Steve. I’m fuckin laughing.

Once off the train, Steve and I hoof it over to Piedmont Avenue. Mom lives at 36 Glen, which is a stone’s throw from the Ave.

When we finally get to Mom’s house, she’s there with my Aunt Judy and Alan Buzzell. The three of them are playing “Sorry!” Sorry! is a board game by Milton Bradley. It’s basically the same game as “Aggrevation”, which itself is a take on Chinese Checkers I think. 

“Hey guys! We’re here!” yells Steve as we enter the house.

“Hi kids!” says Mom.

“Hey. You won’t believe what happened on the train! What are you guys doing?”

“Wait! Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’re playing Sorry.”

“That’s amazing! Are you psychic?” says Alan.

“Jesus, Alan! That the only thing she plays!”

“We need to get you a new game, Mom.”

“I like Sorry, honey.”

“Whatever Mom... Is there any food here?”

MEAN NERDS

Just because we’re nerds doesn’t mean we’re not cruel. One time Alex and I were set to go up to Matt’s house with Sterling to play D&D, Matt was dungeon mastering. For no good reason whatsoever  beyond demonstrating what dicks Alex and I could be, we decide to kill Sterling’s characters in their sleep in the middle of the night. I blame Alex. 

But Matt allowed it. But in junior high school and high school, much as in the rest of life, allegiances can shift. 

I went to two D&D conventions in high school. Both at the Dunphy Hotel in San Mateo. The first time I went with Matt and Shawn. Matt got there early and saw Dad spraying Rover’s grotesquely pungent dog-smelling dog bed with Lysol. The Lysol did what it could but it was fighting a losing battle. But my dad gives his handy work a big sniff like it’s fresh jasmine or something:

“Mmm! Smells like a fresh pine forest now” says Dad.

My dad drove us to San Mateo on a Saturday morning. In order to make sure we were able to sign up for decent games we had to be there by 9am, and while we weren’t really “late” late leaving, it was getting close. Dad appeared to me to still be drunk from the night before drinking at the Deuce. And Shawn was getting flustered because he wanted to get there before all the good game slots has been filled. Completely understandable. Understandable or not, Matt and I both noticed that Shawn was starting to lose it. And it seemed to be made worse by the fact that it appeared that Dad was going extra slow just to fuck with Shawn, which I personally can appreciate the humor of. But Shawn was about ready to pop a blood vessel, while Dad seemed intent on needling him.

Eventually we got the Beemer all loaded and we’re packed in and ready to go! Yay! We split.

We’re almost to the freeway when Dad says:

“Oh shit! I forgot my glasses. I can’t drive without my glasses.”

Shawn’s about to have a stroke in the back seat as dad turns the BMW around and heads back to the house.

Once we’re back at the house, Dad says:

“This’ll just take a second” and gets out of the car and heads into the house.

Two minutes later, he’s back in the car wearing his glasses. But they’re glasses that don’t have any lenses in them. Then we’re off like a herd of turtles.

The second time I went to the Dunphy to play D&D, I went with Alex Peck and Sterling Lenheim. 

We got a ride to the Dunphy Hotel this time from Alex Peck’s dad’s girlfriend Kathleen. Kathleen was pretty smokin. On the drive to Hotel I ran down scene by scene the iMessage that I’d been working on for the first Wolverine movie. I had him in The Savage Land. I’ve always been enthusiastic about my project ideas.

And I had registered to be a DM with an adventure Id written myself. It was called “Legend of The Cloud Castle”. The basic premise was that you the player are one of six adventurers who are hired by a very old and powerful wizard. The wizard needs your help locating an associate. The associate is a former nemesis who over the years he’d become chess partners with. A barbarian in the Conan mold. They’ve been meeting to play chess for years now, but the barbarism has been kidnapped by a race of birdmen and he’s being held captive in a castle that floats on the clouds. In order to gain entrance to the candle the adventurers need to retrieve a golden amulet, but the amulet has been broken up into six pieces, one piece on each of these six particular islands. Each island provides a different challenge, I liked the concept. I thought it was strong. Ans like I told Alex Peck, “The name of the adventure is what compels people to sign up, so it’s got to have a strong name.”  

The first thing I did when we arrived at the Dunphy Hotel was to go register “The Legend of the Cloud Castle”, a name that I was certain was a winner. But the guy I registered with said it was too long and wouldn’t fit on the form, so he shortened it to “Legend of the Cloud” which didn’t quite have the same impact.

For two or three weeks before the convention I worked diligently on my campaign, five maybe ten minutes a day. And to my credit, the campaign conceived of, created, wrote and designed was nearly half completed by midnight, in the hotel room, the night before we all played it. That’s me as the dungeon master, and Sterling, Alex and four strangers playing the six adventurers, and paper, pencils, sketch pad, notebooks, all my AD&D books, and this little green purse with all my dice in it. I think Alex was particularly impressed with my work ethic. In fact it was a fight we had after this night where he did the drawing of me finishing the script for “remake of “The Blob” with all the packs of lime Jell-O! That’s right! The dude was acerbic. And eventually grew tired of my bullshit apparently.

Conventions like this, be they D&D, comic book, Star Trek, science fiction & fantasy, they all have different rooms with different activities, and one of the mainstays is presentations of upcoming movies nerd will like. Fertile territory for Lucasfilm. Frank Marshall was there to promote an animated film called “Twice Upon A Time” it’s about these two goofballs who have to stop an evil dream lord. The best thing in it was a critter called a Rat-adillo, named Ratatouille. He’s half rat, half armadillo. He looked great. The animation was purposefully primitive if you ask me. It was done in what’s called cut-out animation. Both Monty Python and South Park feature cut out animation, just to give you an idea. I don’t think we did much else. 

The next morning we played “Legend of The Cloud”.

We started. Me guiding my two friends ans four strangers through the lands I’d created. 

At one point they find themselves on an island with a stone pedestal at the center, with a stone forearm sticking straight up out of the base of the pedestal. Eventually someone figured out that they had to arm wrestle the stone arm. Ans when they beat the stone arm, trapdoors opened beneath them depositing them on a giant chess board, the opposing team being various undead led by a king and queen lich. I thought it was cool.

Of course, by now it had pretty much become a tradition to kill Sterling’s characters, so I trapped him in a magic mirror. Heh hen. Sorry, Sterling. 

No worries, Sterling for me back, with Alex’s help. Those fuckers for some reason decided to ditch me.

REUNSUBLEAPERSY

This one time Alex Peck and I were playing Scrabble, at my Dad’s house on Shell Rd which would have made it 1982 probably. One of us played the word “SUB”. For the sake of the bit,let’s say it was Alex. On my turn I took “SUB” and turned it into “UNSUB”. Alex is skeptical:

“What the heck is UNSUB?”

“Well, if SUB means beneath, then UNSUB is naturally the reverse quantum state of beneath”

Alex thinks.. “I’ll accept it.”

Of course he immediately hits back with “REUNSUB”

I look at him, waiting for his explanation.

“It’s when that reverse quantum state of beneath repeats itself.”

“I knew that.”

Eventually we got to “REUNSUBLEAPERSY” 

Alex: “REUNSUBLEAPERSY? Okay. I’m game. What is REUNSUBLEAPERSY?”

Me: “Well.... It’s all that other stuff we talked about, but also a tropical disease that makes your dick fall off?”

Alex Peck: “Well, now you’re just being an idiot.”

I think about it for a second. “Yeah. Basically.” I quietly nod in agreement.

And then we quit. We were laughing way too hard, and the game had long since ceased to make any sort of sense, so I don’t imagine we finished the game. Probably not. We probably went and read comics. As likely as not something by Gilbert Shelton. But Alex didn’t smoke pot. And I did, but to my knowledge at the time he didn’t know that.

LOOKIN AT THE MAN IN THE MIRROR 

Looking in the mirror I keep catching glances of myself looking like Brando. But it’s only from a certain angle. All the ingredients are there. I got this little crook way high up on my nose that you can’t see looking straight at me, but it’s there at a 3/4 angle. I got a similar forehead and lips too. Cool. I’d mention it to Dad but I know what he’s say. He’s make fun of me. But it’s cool. I think generally speaking I’m kind of plain looking. It would be cool to look like a movie star.

HIDING IN THE CLOSET

Here is an amusing anecdote that happened in Mill Valley in 1982. I’m sharing this to exhibit that I have been a spaz for a long time. I lived alone with my father. Steve has not moved back in with us yet. I was 15, a sophomore in high school. My father was dating “Mexican” Nina, as opposed to “Miss” Nina, another gal he was friends with. Occasionally he and either Nina would take off for a day or two, going to Hollister or Stockton (or wherever) leaving me alone in the house with money or instructions on whatever. It was cool with me. Dad’s away? That’s a day or two that I don’t have to to school. So Dad’s date night to Salinas (or wherever) suited me fine. I get to wake and bake, and jack off all day. Like 7 or 8 times over the course of the day. You can do that when you’re 15. These were the very early days of smoking pot for me, And it just so happened that the pot I was stealing from my dad was some good shit. 

The effect that marijuana had on my young system for those first few years of dope- smoking career was much more psychedelic. I used to have fucking visions. I’d zoom around the universe on a white square of light, all the while laying on my living room floor on my back, stoned out of my gourd. I’d shoot off into farthest reaches of space on a supersonic elevator through the skies, as if clinging to a rocket. I would routinely levitate, and have out of body experiences. All that weed added a whole unexpected layer of subtlety and nuance to “The Three Stooges”. At 15 years old and regularly getting completely baked on my Dad’s weed, “The Three Stooges” were a little gift to me from God in my seriously altered state. Watching Curly get swanked in the head with a ball-peen hammer never ceases to be amusing to me. 

So basically, with Dad gone, I had two full days of ‘me’ time, and I planned on being stoned through all of it. So there it was, Thursday morning, let’s say 11-ish. Laying stoned on my bed, watching daytime T.V. (Barbizon commercial?) I hear the worst noise ever. I heard the front door open and somebody walk in. 

Holy fuck! It’s Dad and Nina! I don’t know why, but they’ve come home early, and I’m fucked! They are totally going to smell the pot smoke, when they come back to this part of the house. It’s unavoidable. But maybe they won’t come back here. They’ve come closer and now I can hear their voices more clearly. They are on the opposite side of the wall my bedroom shares with the living room. Now I can clearly hear that whoever is out there, it is not dad and Rita. Thank god! It’s two men. One of the voices is unfamiliar, but the other one is Louis Gonk.

Even though Louis‘ a good friend, It would be highly embarrassing for me to be found lying in bed in my underwear, stoned and cutting class. But now it’s cool, it sounds like they are leaving. Their voices recede with their footsteps. Whew! That was too close. Wait! They haven’t left, they are walking around to the bedrooms. Oh shit! What are they coming back here for? What do I do? I can’t get caught! I jump up and bolt for the closet! There I am, sitting huddled up on the floor of my closet, hiding in the dark, as Louis and his dad enter my bedroom looking for artwork of mine. Louis is showing me off to his father. Louis is explaining to his father what an awesome artist I am, and how he has to see my work. I have a rather large drawing table that takes over a good portion of that corner of my bedroom. My artwork and a variety of purchased posters hang on the walls. T squares, and triangles, and french curves are strewn around in seeming disarray. Hanging on one wall is an illustration I did of The U.S.S. Enterprise fighting The Reliant in the Mutara Nebula from “Star Trek 2: Wrath of Kahn” and yes I am a straight up science fiction geek. 

The important thing is that I did a great job on this drawing. I’d done the nebula completely with an airbrush, which was new for me. It looked awesome, and I was very proud of it. The room was a mess with art supplies strewn haphazard. Brushes, and pens, and pencils, and pads of paper, and paper and more paper. Pinned to the the drawing board, was illustration I was working on of an even smaller drawing board. And on that drawing board was drawing of a shadowy figure, seemingly with sinister plans. Within the picture in a picture was an impish little man bearing a dagger and wearing a cloak. He seems to have realized that he’s merely a drawing, and is none too happy about it. The dark gleam in his eyes seem to indicate that some sort of plan is being formulated and steps will be taken. Given enough time, this little cloaked man would work his way into our world. That’s the narrative I was trying to sell with this drawing, so it was a perfect drawing for Louis to show his dad first. 

“Wow. He did that, too?”

“Yeah. This is all his work.”

“He’s really talented. Can I see some more?” 

“Hmm. These sketchbooks are all new. There’s no drawings in here. He’s gotta have some with drawings in them around here somewhere. He draws all the time. There should be piles of them laying around. Let me check the closet.” 

Uh oh. 

I’m not sitting in the dark anymore. Louis is towering over me in silhouette. All I can see is his dark outline, but he seems surprised. I completely understand, I’m a little surprised myself. So after too many seconds of silence, Louis finally says something: 

“Uh, do you have any sketchbooks in here that I could show my dad?” 

“Uh, yeah, sure.” There are a black vinyl art portfolio sitting next to me. I hand the portfolio over to Louis. Louis graciously accepts it and turns away back toward his Dad. Then he hesitates for a just a second like he has something to say, but then thinks better of it and closes the door. 

“Here’s some more of his work. I think we should go look at these in the living room. Then we’ll get out of here, okay?” 

“Sure. Okay.”

I eventually talked to Louis about that incident, as an adult. He claimed not to remember.  But I think Louis saw instantly why I was sitting in the closet. He understood. He recognized my need to avoid the wrath of Dad, and Louis looked kindly on me. Dad really didn’t need to Louis about this, but I knew it was safe with Louis. 

BOHO MOFO FOSHO

1982 - Mama’s in Mill Valley.

There’s a new cast of characters hanging out down around Mama’s. Steve hired a guy named Syd. Syd has a couple of crazy friends, Mike and Ray. All three are clearly very smart, and also very theatrical. They call themselves The Bohos. They even have their own call phrase: 

“Boho Mofo Fosho”

They are a pack of clever oddballs, transplanted from Hayward. They all dress like they think they’re in Led Zappelin or Aerosmith or something. Long coats, cut up T-shirts splattered with paint, scarves tied to everything. They’re all Steve’s age, and they all have a crazy creative energy that’s stronger than just about anybody else I know. I’m drawn to them, for better or worse.

The first three Bohos I meet are Syd, Mike and Ray. Syd is the only one of the three that actually works for us. He’s a dishwasher and prep cook. He’s Steve’s age. Actually all three of these guys are Steve’s age. Five years older than me. Syd’s got long curly black hair. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He’s sly. He’s got an acerbic, belligerent tone, but he oozes charm.

“Ray, if I wanted your opinion, I’d give it to you.”

“Fuck you, Syd”, responds Ray.

Mike bursts out laughing. He laughs loud. He finds a lot of shit funny.

“Little Sydney Belligerent!” says Mike, amusing everyone including himself.

“Hey!” barks Syd. “Just Syd Bellige” says Syd, nodding to himself with satisfaction, taking a swig off a Becks and a drag of a nasty ass Tiparillo cigar .

Mike looks almost spookily like blond Catholic Jesus, but without the beard. Just mustache. But he’s tall like a basketball player. He’s loud, fast and funny. And he’s managed to work a lot of John Cleese into persona. He’s unemployed and collecting unemployment. To that end, Dad is happy to sign Mike’s form saying he’s not able to give Mike a job. Lately Mike has been practicing his guitar playing, but the guitar is this under-sized little guitar. So it looks a little off. Mike’s a big guy. 6’8”. But he’s playing this little guitar. He’s concentrating on noodling. Also bending the strings. He testing the tone and trying to find the correct chords. Steve and Louis are there too. Also a girl who works at the New Yorker Deli next door. She seems like she may be Syd’s girlfriend. We’re all listening to Ray regale is with a story about how he had to defend himself with an umbrella against a crazy weirdo at a bus stop in San Francisco.

I just met these guys today. I’m going to know them for a long time.

I’ll wind up working all these guys into my art. In a bunch of different ways. 

One of the first things I do is turn them all into cartoon characters, which suits them because they kind of all ready are. 

In short order I’m hanging out at their house on Fern, drinking beer, smoking pot, listening to music, and doing art. The Fern house is great: Perfect hangout par. These guys will provide be with a pretty good useless liberal arts education. I even write a low-budget slasher movie with these guys in mind, with Mike playing a homicidal unkillable Jesus Christ, and Syd as a government appointed motorcycle riding priest given the job of hunting him down. We never make the movie though. 

Both Syd and Mike are creative powerhouses. Both these guys write poetry. Everyone’s heard the phrase “so bad it’s good”, yeah? Well. These guys’ poetry is actually really good. It also just happens to be really funny.

Here’s Mike:

“Tonight I’d like to read a couple of pieces by Stratford Bellamy Brigham. The first is out of his 1958 collection, “Romantic Garbage” and is titled “Janeane”

Ah Janeane,

She kept me warm 

She kept me dry

With her blue blue eyes

And a simple that flashed 

When she laughed

She always had a smile for me

Even when my clouds rained

Ah Janeane

She kept me warm

She kept me dry 

And I had only a taste of her 

It seemed...

Janeane

“Thank you. Thank you very much. This next poem is called “Thin Floors and Celery”...”

Now Syd:

“This one’s called “A Store Bought Watermelon of Anxiety” and I don’t care if you like it or not.”

“I can’t remember when I met him, and to tell you the truth, I wonder if I ever did. I stared at my hands for a long while, clenched and flaccid. Alternately thinking of him, and wandering thoughts of eternity and dust. When I arose I saw the beacons of my future rising and falling on the grotesque and calculating waves of chance. Soon he flattened the seas of my existence and began filing a fine groove of doubt in my complacency . I found through trying I had nowhere to run so I ran my fingers through my hair. When the rains came I stood wet while he laughed...”

All three of the Bohos, plus one I hadn’t met had recently had a hitchhiking race across the country to New York and then back across the other way and up to Seattle (Mike and Syd won) where they found themselves broke and hungry and miserable in the rain. It was pouring down in Seattle. They are all at the end of their rope. They’re bickering with each other, passing blame, hating life and wondering what to do next. 

The pay phone they’re standing next to rings.

<BRRIIIINNGG!>

...

<BRRIIIINNGG!>

Standing soaked to the bone in the rain, they look at each other

<BRRIIIINNGG!>

Ray looks at Mike. “Well? Are ya gonna get it?”

Mike kinda shrugs back at Ray and grabs the receiver

“Yeeeeyello?”

The voice on the other line asks “Could I please speak with a mister Harry Dean?”

“This is Harry Dean speaking.”

“Hello Mr. Dean. This is Roger Dupar with the IRS. I’m looking over returns you submitted and it look like you’re missing the 3rd and 4th quarter from last year. Are you sure you submitted them?”

“No sir, I did not submit them.”

“Would you mind telling me why not, Mr. Dean?”

“Well, Mr. Dupar, it’s simply that I believe the IRS to be a criminal organization run by micro-dick little sleazeballs such as yourself, in fact if you’d like to come on down here, I’d gladly put my shotgun up your ass and blow your motherfucking head off” Mike says cheerily and nonchalantly.

Then Mike hangs up the phone.

They are all staring at him.

“It was a wrong number.”

Eventually Mike’s older brother Ed shows up and joins the group, and a guy named Larry Guinee starts to come and go. Then Greg Wilker joins them. They are all transplanted from Hayward. They all went to high school together, except Ed who’s who’s like five years older than them, making him ten years older than me. Eventually the third Healy brother shows up. He’s called Brian when I first meet him, but that eventually changes.

SPENCER THOMAS MOORE 1910 - 1985

Grampa died of a massive stroke, following a smaller stroke in 1985. 

Grampa died of a massive stroke following a smaller stroke in 1985. The last time I saw him was in a hospital bed. He had a ventilator on and he already looked dead. 

The thing is, right before then Steve and I took Heidi up to meet him. Heidi was involved at some level in filmmaking. She worked in some capacity for Jim Jarmusch, and was a cockroach wrangler in “Creepshow”, and she wanted to meet him. Grampa had lots of “golden age of Hollywood” stories, and he loved it when pretty women dropped by to hear him tell his stories. 

I just remember him lying on the couch. And I recognized that this might be interesting, but honestly, I don’t remember a single story he told that night. 

What I remember was thinking, “I got to get back up here to get Grampa’s stories down on tape!”

Next thing I heard he was gone. Dad told me very matter of factly, “Grampa’s dead.” Woah! 

We were living at 197 E Blithedale then. The Thelma Fenton house.

The very next night, I’m home alone, smoking some pot and working on an art project in the kitchen, and Dad walks in with a box in a white bag. Back then, ice cream commonly came in a box. So I see what he’s carrying and I say, “Mmm, that looks good. What it’s it?”

Dad thumps down the box in a white bag onto the table and says, “Grampa.”

I was expecting ice cream.

Here’s some things he did. As an old man, he put a gun in the face of a teenager across the street who was throwing walnuts at him. He did it to get the kid to stop. It worked. Grampa, for such a reedy little guy could manifest a “don’t fuck with me” vibe when necessary. Dad always told me that if I needed an unregistered gun to talk to Grampa or Carl. The time he took me to NYC, Grampa took me to The Clam House in Little Italy where Joe Gallo was killed. He tried to take to the bar in Brooklyn called Costello’s to meet the Son of Sam’s dad, but it was closed. This was in 1978; so Son of Sam was fresh in everybody’s mind. Grandma’s side of the family (The Sava clan) has long been in the Mozzerella cheese importation and distribution business. One of Dad’s uncles or cousins ran a high stakes poker game in Manhattan. Grampa always has gold in Krugerrands around the house and loved to go to Tahoe to play craps. Also Grampa came to Hollywood from Yonkers in the 40s and wound up in the music industry.... My Grandma Alma has a sister Minnie Miswick who married Pat (Pasquale) Sava. Lots and lots of Savas in Yonkers. 

TAM HIGH

While hanging out in the library after playing Dungeons & Dragons, I become friends with Mata Ra’a. Mata tells me about how she’s Marlon Brando’s niece. She’s Tahitian. She’s gorgeous! Tam high is filled with connected people it seems. One day I hear she had some kind of freak out in Mr. Devlin’s math class. People say she got dosed. I never ask about it.

THE EVER-POPULAR NOSE BOOP

I’m at the Samurai Sushi Bar with Dad in Mill Valley, and he bets me $200 that he can do that thing where you get someone to look down at your finger so you can bop their nose with your finger? You know what I mean? I don’t know if it even has a name. But it’s annoying. So I take his bet. 

When dinner is over, I walk purposefully and directly to the car. But before I can reach the front door of the restaurant, in a last ditch effort, Dad lobs his car keys over my right shoulder, to no avail.

He never pays me the $200.

APPARENTLY I HAVE SUPERPOWERS

I’m in the passenger seat of Dad’s BMW 320i. Dad is driving over the hump as ce near the Mill Valley exit. Dad is in one of those pontificating moods that have rubbed me the wrong way since I was eleven, because that particular mood usually means he’s drunk. Today, as we drive back home, he’s telling me I have “super powers”, and that I shouldn’t abuse them, and only use them as a force for good. I’m hearing this coming from Dad, and thinking “What an asshole! Why does he do this?” When Dad pontificates I just want to punch him.

OPERATION: STEAL DAD’S WEED

By the time I was a teenager, I had a lot of pent up hostility toward Dad, that to be perfectly honest, was well earned my me. While he was very entertaining he was also always so incredibly proud of himself. And by then the guy I knew was a belligerent drunk who had routinely managed to ruin things I was involved in, and gave me no quarter in terms of allowing me to make my own choices. I just wanted to get away from him. 

So yes, I smoked weed. If I could, I’d steal it from him. He always had the best shit. 

So how did I manage to steal pot from my dad? Well, I’ll tell you.I relied on his own excessive pot smoking, and his deep, deep sleeps. 

I’d wait until it was late, late at night

See, Dad made a habit out of falling asleep in the living room in front of the teevee with his head cocked on a pillow leaning up against the base of the sofa. 

For hours he’d sit in front of the teevee in T-shirt and jeans, smoking weed and eating a smorgasbord of tacos he’d whip up, and eventually he’d fall asleep. 

I’d lean up to my bedroom wall and listen for the familiar brutal grinding of his snores. He’d snore so loudly that it would reverberate throughout the house. That’s how I knew it was time to make my move. Finally when the time was right, I’d spring into action and execute “Operation: Get Dad’s Weed”. It wasn’t going to be too difficult if I could only. Be. Quiet.

He’d be splayed on his back with the paper bag on his chest, surrounded by taco crumbs, rising and falling with breathing as he snorted and snores. The paper bag was open, and inside the bag I could see nearly a complete ounce of killer green Humboldt, minus the joint he’s just smoked. 

Standing over dad’s sleeping body, with a leg on each side, kind of straddling him, careful not to step on any Big Mac wrappers, or Keebler Elves cookie box detritus, and delicately as I could manage, I’d twist and contort myself down like I was playing a game of Twister to be at the correct angle to reach into the paper bag on his chest, which rose and fell with his snoring. When the moment was right, I’d drop my hand straight down into the bag and grab as fat a handful as I could manage of stinky ganj. Whew! Beautiful maneuver! Perfect. I was Kwai Chang fucking-Kane. Snatch the chronic from my bag, young Grasshopper!

Then I’d go back in my room, close the door, roll it up and spark a joob. 

And then I’d watch “The Three Stooges” on my little black and white teevee. When you’re 15, and newish to getting high, there’s practically nothing fucking funnier than the Three Stooges.

“I’m a victim of soycumstance! I’m a man widdout a country! I’m a refYOOgee!”

“I can’t see! I can’t see!”

“Whatsa matter?”

“I got my eyes closed!”

“Spread out!”

Smokin’ dope and watchin’ the Stooges.

Dad was never the wiser.

Until he was.

Finally he busted me and told me to quit stealing his dope. He was a little more upset when he found the naked pictures of my stepmom that I’d found stashed in his room, which is absconded with for jack off material. He acted all upset, but now weirdly, I think they were planted with the intention that I’d find them. They weren’t stuck together or anything. Anyhow, he told be to stop, but I never did. I just began to steal smaller amounts. And eventually found my own source. Which would be “Rich Durham’s House a’ Weed! Come check out our easy credit system!” 

BURNIN’ DOWN THE HOUSE

Eventually my brother, Steve, will move back in with us at the Hill St house in Mill Valley. Patty will move back in with us for the briefest of times. Then the house will burn down. Then we’ll have to move, and all our shit will smell like smoke. On the morning the house burnt down, I told dad that I was skipping school. So I guess we had ‘that’ talk. Unlike the earlier incident, now we seemed to have a complete understanding. If I didn’t want to go to school, I didn’t have to go. My decision. I didn’t take advantage of this a lot, I was still a full-time student. Just this morning in question I felt like blowing it off. 

So, I was lying on the couch, and Dad comes home with Michelle, Patty’s sister, from the restaurant. They are here for a few minutes, they rummage around in the kitchen, which I can hear but not see, and then they leave out the front door. That was it. The sum total of my interaction with them that morning. 

After a couple of minutes of dad and Michelle being gone, I look up from the book I’m reading, and see, from my position on the couch, our old dog Rover standing by the front door, looking into the kitchen, and barking. As I get closer, I can hear the sizzle and pop, and see whisps of smoke waft into the hall. 

There is a black frying pan on the stove filled with leftover oil from fried chicken the night before, and its all on fire! Shit, shit, shit! What do I do? What do I do? Uh...Uh... Water! I need water! (Do NOT put water on a grease fire) Okay. Where do I get water? There’s a hose in the back yard! I’ll run back there, and I drag the hose back. It’s too short. It doesn’t reach the house. Fuck. I gotta do something. I run back in to see that now the walls beside the stove are ablaze. The fire is spreading. Wait! I’ll call the restaurant! Steve’ll be there. He’ll know what to do. 

“Mama’s Royal Café.” 

“Steve, the house is on fire!” 

“Wha?” 

“The house is on fire! The house is on fire! It’s burning down! What do I do?” 

“Call the Fire Department! I’m coming right over!” 

“Right! I’ll call the fire department! Hang up so I can call them.” 

“Okay. Bye.” 

Okay. Now what’s the number for the fire department? Where’s the Yellow Pages? Shit it’s gotta be around here somewhere. And Fuck! The house is still burning down! I gotta do something. I bet the neighbor’s got the number for the fire department. I picture a list of important emergency numbers hanging from the refrigerator. Surely the neighbors will have one of those things. Everybody does. Why don’t we? 

I get the bright idea of stretching the hose from the backyard, not understanding the physics of grease fires. As it turns out, I was lucky the hose didn’t reach to the kitchen. I could have gotten burned really bad, had I hit the fire with the hose. I was just a kid still, and had no experience with such things. After, I learned that the correct way to put out a grease fire is by using sand. And of course we had no fire extinguishers in the house. I take off through the front door, outside and heading up the street. 

I run to the neighbor’s house, but there’s no car! No one’s home, so I move on to the next house. Same story, nobody home. Finally the third house down the block has a car parked in the driveway, so somebody’s there. I bang on the door as loudly as I can, yelling that my house is on fire, I need to call the fire department! Please hurry! I’m losing everything I own! 

Finally a woman comes to the door, and she notices quickly I am panicking. She comes out and I tell her what is happening, and we run to her phone. I finally call the fire department, and tell them my house is burning down. I bet only 4 or 5 minutes have elapsed. 

As I wait for the fire trucks to show up, I sit on the asphalt across the street from my house, watching it burn. There is nothing else to be done, so I sit and wait. Neighbors have started to come out. They try and comfort me. I sit in stunned silence and watch it all go up in flames. 

The fire trucks finally show up, as do Steve and Louis. I explain to my brother what happened. He looks at me suspiciously, or so it seems to me. I tell them about running down the street looking for someone who is home. Steve asks me, if I was running down the street, why didn’t I just run the other way down the street, and go to the fire department? 

“What? What do you mean?”
“Dude, we live like four houses down from the fire department.” “Wha? I don’t...” 

“Jesus, Spenny! You can see it from here! It’s right fucking there! That building? That’s the fire department! And you ran the other way?” 

Steve was right. I felt kind of like a moron for a moment. I couldn’t believe I’d just done that. My house is on fire? I run the other way. Old ‘Wrong Way’ Moore, leading the charge in the opposite direction. I couldn’t believe I’d done that. After all, I walked by the fire department routinely. If not everyday on my way home from school, at least several times a week. Firemen drove by our house all the time, in their big, shiny, new lime-green firetrucks. Somehow, the stress of the situation made all this important knowledge vanish from my brain, right when I needed it. Just like that. It just slipped my mind. But really, as it turned out, it wouldn’t really have made any difference if I had run there first It turned out no one was home at the fire department. It wound up taking the firetrucks 20 minutes to get there, as they were all on the other side of town. It turns out they were all in Tiburon, a good 20 minutes away, practicing maneuvers, as my house was burning down. 

So, we made it in the local paper. They have a picture of my brother, but the picture is labeled as my father. My father is quoted as saying, about the origins of the fire, “I guess the stove must have turned itself on.” Yeah, that’s what happened. The stove turned itself on. They do that all the time. On paper, it was a faulty light that made the stove appear off, while it was still on, and I guess that’s a reasonable explanation, but deep down I really just wanted to know why Dad or Michelle burned down the house, just as I was sure they thought I did it. 

The police questioned my father, trying to suss out any possible arson scheme for insurance money. Of course, there was none that I knew of. In fact, it turned out we had no insurance at all! Dad had just cancelled our renter’s insurance mere weeks before, in a fit of anger, after reading the book, “On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors” So, if my father did have some sort of insurance scheme, it was a very, very bad one. My father, the dumb, dumb arsonist. The faulty stove seemed more credible to the investigators I guess, because they lost interest in Dad.

So, what’s next? What else could possibly go wrong? While we were watching things wrap up, as the firemen packed up all their equipment and left, a repo man shows up in the midst of all this chaos to repossess our car, A BMW 320i. Luckily, dad had the car stashed at Michelle’s house, so the repo man left empty-handed, but it was a good indication of the kind of day we were all having. 

Then it turned out the our old dog Rover went back into the house while it was burning. She was old, and probably confused. Dad likes to think she went back into the burning building to rescue him, but I have my doubts. So the dog seemed like she may have gotten some smoke inhalation. She was never right again. It was too big of a shock for such an old dog. She stopped ever going outside for anything, and began shitting and peeing in her dog bed. It had all been too traumatic for her. She was never coming back. 2 days later we had her put to sleep. She was a good dog, and was with us a long time. She was, to this day, my dad insists she could walk on her tippy toes. When need be, she could silently glide across linoleum. Other lesser dogs would click and clack their toenails as they crossed a kitchen floor. Not rover, she was a ninja dog, silent like the night. 

If anybody is going to actually know for certain that I’m not an arsonist, it’s gonna be Matt Weiner and Alex Peck. Matt listened to me and my dad drunkenly regale him with the story of the house burning down on our trip through Mulege in 1988, and Alex came over the next day after it burned down and help me start to clean it up, much to his chagrin. (I didn’t tell him why he was come over. “Hey! Why’n’cha come over, dude?” Haha!) They both know that A) I’m not anywhere near that good of a liar, and B. ) if I was lying convincingly I’d have to be an absolute psychopathic super villain, and the truth is, when I was 15 I was a sweet sarcastic annoying unencumbered kid with a fucking crazy dad. Those two, almost alone, don’t have to rely on faith that I’m not an arsonist, because they were actually right there when it all went down.

CRYSTAL COURT

After the house burned down we moved to Strawberry. We had an old plastic Coca Cola wall clock that Dad thought melted beautifully in the fire, so we kept it. Also the molten desk set. It’s just another house to me. I’m getting older, and Dad over all seems to be getting meaner.

One day in drama class, the drama teacher, Michelle Swanson, led a discussion with the students to allow us to discuss the difference between “drug use” and “drug abuse”. I brought this up with Dad at home later that night, and Dad, who had definitely been drinking and probably doing coke curtly responded with “All drug use is drug abuse”. I tried to respond and engage him in a discussion, but he wasn’t having any of it, and he kept getting madder and madder at me. And finally he insists that i say back to him “All drug use is drug abuse”, while I actually want to talk about it. But he’s not allowing me any leeway, so finally, as perfunctorily as I can, i repeat back to him “All drug use is drug abuse”, and he screams at me “SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!” That’s the guy I grew up with. He’d say something nasty and stern about me smoking weed, and being 16 or 17, I’d kinda mumble “Dude, I smoke pot to deal with living with you”, and his eyes would get all buggy and he’d turn red and shake his finger at me and scream, “You smoke pot because you’re a fucking drug addict!”

What an absolute prick he was. But there was no winning with him. He was super smart and capable of out-arguing just about anybody. He’d try and catch you in these logic loops, and just wear you down.

On occasion he’d need someone to work down at the restaurant because a dishwasher didn’t show up or something. So he’d come to me and say “I got a favor to ask. I need you to come down and wash dishes”. Had to be a weekend morning, because I was going to school all week. I did it a couple times, but finally I’m like “If you’re asking me as a favor, I’m telling you sorry, but I can’t do it.” So he came up with what he called “extra special favors”, and the thing about extra special favors is that you can’t say no to them. I’m like “It sounds to me like you’re ordering me to come down and work for you”. But he insisted it was a favor. “It’s not a favor if I can’t refuse.”

So finally I got a regular job down at the restaurant washing dishes. Here’s what he offered me to come work down there. This was 1984. He said “I’ll pay you seven dollars an hour.” (Not bad pay for a dishwashing gig at the time) “But”, he added, “I’ll pay you fourteen dollars an hour...” (Wha? Interesting!) “...If you don’t take the money, and let me save it for you.” I had to seriously think about that. Fourteen bucks an hour was really good pay for a dishwashing gig. “Ooo-kayy...” Then he added “But if you quit?... you lose all of it.” Hrmph. Somehow he managed to convince this was a good idea... I tell ya, it was a brilliant move. Like when Tom Sawyer gets all the neighbor kids to pay him for the opportunity to paint his fence. Dad could sell shit to a cow.

Mama’s in Mill Valley on weekends was an insanely high stress work place back then. And one day I was making blintz filling, where you squish cream cheese and ricotta cheese together, and I was doing it in one of these old wooden bowls we had, and I got this fucking splinter all the way up under my fingernail, and I just couldn’t take it or him anymore, and I walked out. He said he was so proud of me for standing up for myself like that. Of course he never paid me for the six weeks I worked. A deal’s a deal.

MY DOPPELGÄNGER 

1983. Dad clips a picture of Matthew Broderick and Allie Sheedy out of the newspaper and hangs it up at the restaurant. The walls are *covered* with newspaper clippings. Anything any of us might find interesting, weird or funny. In this case, Dad has hung up a picture from a scene from the movie “WarGames” starring Broderick and Sheedy. I don’t even have to ask why he hung it up. It’s obvious. Matthew Broderick in this picture looks *exactly* like me. Same haircut and everything. It’s weird and funny and highly notable just how much he looks like me in that photo. The rest of his oeuvre is comme si comme sa with regards to how much we look alike. (Same with John Cryer who was starting to show up in movies and teevee) But in “WarGames” he’s my friggin’ doppelgänger. So I gotta ask:

“Are they making movies about is. Dad?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, son. But *boy*, that sure does look like you!”

“I know. It’s kinda weird.”

“My beamish boy. The movie star.”

“Shut up, Dad.”

A NERD AMONG NERDS

I’d say that Hieronymus Boaz was king of the nerds, but that doesn’t exist. Physics simply will not allow for a “king of the nerds”. They simply cancel each other out. No, Hieronymus Boaz was simply “nerd of the nerds”, which kinda makes him king I guess. Hieronymus was just a little too short, and a little too pudgy, and his long sleeve shirt was a little to buttoned up to the top, while his sleeves were just a little too rollled down and buttoned. His pants were just a little too corduroy and his hair cut was just a little to John Denver-ish. And to wrap it all up in a nice little nerdy bow he had a hand tooled satchel on his belt where he kept all his drugs. I mean tri-corder! I mean calculators! I liked Hieronymus. I thought he was awesome. Although he might have been literally invisible to everybody else at school. I’m not sure.

Monday morning, I’m walking to school, and I see Hieronymus. He excitedly asks me, “Did you go?!” He’s talking about the free tickets we got to “Twice Upon A Time”, which was an animated movie made by Lucasfilm. This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a big blue ticket from Lucasfilm for a movie they were about to release. Sterling and I saw “Raiders of The Lost Ark” like that too, which was phenomenal by the way. We got the free tickets in eighth grade and we both left the theater committed to becoming archeologists. But I bailed on “Twice Upon A Time”. For two reasons. The big one was that it was being shown early on the morning on a Sunday and I didn’t have transportation, so it would have meant multiple busses and transfers. And the second reason was that I’d seen a presentation for it at the D&D convention I’d recently gone to with Sterling and Alex Peck, and it honestly didn’t look like it’d be worth the effort. It was done with cut-out animation, which is fine in small doses when done by Terry Gilliam for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” but was actually kind of ugly. It *did* have a gorilla with a teevee for a head (lifted from another movie) and it also had the “ratadillo” which was  a pet the villain had that was a mix between an armadillo and a rat, hence “ratadillo”. It was so perfect that Alex Peck stole it for a project he was working in and named him Snarl. Then I stole Snarl from him and used it for something else. So while some of it looked interesting and funny, I felt just fine about missing it.

“No, man. I blew it off.”

“You idiot!”

“Huh? Why?”

Hieronymus is apoplectic with giddiness. He yells “The showed “Return of The Jedi!””

Gulp! I spontaneously shrink in stature a little. Yeah, it occurred to me that might happen.

Hieronymus goes on, “Frank Marshall came out on the stage and told us that what we were going to see was not a finished product. He said that a couple effects weren’t done yet, and they got to tweak the sound and fine tune the editing. Then he starts to walk off stage. Then he turns back to the mic and says “Oh yeah, I forgot. We’re not showing you “Twice Upon A Time”. We’re showing you “Return of The Jedi” and the place erupted! I’ve never seen people get that excited! It was awesome!”

Fuck! “So how was the movie?”

“It was okay. Parts of it were incredible! It looked great! Best special effects I’ve ever seen! There’s a scene where there are so many ships on the...”

“Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me!”

“Okay. But it was incredible.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re an idiot.”

“Yeah”. I nod.

FACE DOWN ON THE PIANO

On his 44th birthday, Dad rented out the Sweetwater to celebrate himself by throwing an epic party where he got half a dozen of the best bands from the Bay Area you never heard of to come out of retirement and blow the roof off that place. Eggs Over Easy, Joy of Cooking, John Shine & The Moons, Alice Stewart & Snake. It was an amazing show. Brien Hopkins from Eggs was so drunk that he fell backwards off the stage. Jack O’Hara on vocals immediately interjected “Is there a doctor in the house?... Who can play bass?” I was only 17 but was allowed to hang out downstairs in the green room, and then I’d get to sneak up to watch Brien, who I’ve known and loved since I was like 5, sing his wonderful melodic bittersweet song about lost friendship, “Face Down In The Meadow”, but disappointing for me at the time, Brien was so gone by then that we dubbed it “Face Down On The Piano”. Disappointing then. Later on video, fucking hilarious. Watching him stumble back and disappear. His two legs shooting up into the frame at the last minute. “I’d there a doctor in the house?... Who can play bass?”

Anyway, Dad put on a great show. He always did. No one celebrated Dad better than Dad.

Dad always used to say “You know why Marvin Gaye’s dad shot Marvin Gaye? Because Marvin Gaye was a baaad boy!”

It might have been his favorite joke.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

In 1984, when I was seventeen, I was pretty busy. Dad had convinced me to drop out of high school and start community college. Not that I took much convincing. “If I have to dissect another flower, I’m gonna shit!” is what I was rumored to have said to Dad that led to his suggestion that I take the test and get out. So I did. 

But I was also directing a play at the same time. And the play I was given to direct was no lightweight fluff by any means. It was tough as nails, and I wish I’d been older so I’d have had a better angle on it. As it was, the production I managed to cobble together was “interesting”, which is of course a euphemism for “not very good”.  But it was a complicated production with many hurdles. 

The play was called “Women of The Tomb”. It was written by a gentleman named Michel D’Ghelderode. And it was about all the women involved in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The script had roles for thirteen women and one man, plus me in the director’s chair. 

In hindsight, the play could have been outstanding, but I was barely paying attention. Me trying to direct a production with fourteen actors, on its own would have been challenging. But thirteen women? Forget about it! Add to that, the fact that the language was relatively archaic, I personally didn’t even really understand what the play was about. It basically wound up being thirteen women and Brian Klein, vamping around on stage in flowy gowns reciting dialog they didn’t understand. 

But I did finish it.

Also I was working on “Johnny Space Commando”, “Boise Smith & Roger The Dentist” and “Frogman & Emu: The Kid Terrific”. Plus, I’d started to write an actual screenplay. It was about the second coming of Jesus Christ as a mass murderer, and it was tailor-made to Star all my friends. Plus I was reading and studying everything I could get my hands on about film.

We’d recently moved both our living space and the restaurant. When the house burned down, obviously we had to move. So we found a place in Strawberry, on Crystal Court. And as far as the restaurant went, Irving Shapiro was getting rid of the Port. It would no liver be a hippie shopping center or whatever it was.

All but a few tenants were getting evicted to make room for “The Mill Valley Center of Performing Arts. Jolly King Liquor and the Laundromat could stay where they were, because they were right on the street and wouldn’t be affected. The office spaces on the second floor would also remain untouched. But all the other businesses in the Port were out of luck. And we just got lucky.

Irving Shapiro, the building owner, had one spot for a restaurant on the opposite side of the building. And Irving and Dad made a deal. So we got to stay.  

And then Dad went to town, doing what Dad does. We turned that space into something wild. We have each of the four booths. Their own theme: The Western Booth, The Rock n Roll Heaven Booth, The Picnic At The Beach Booth, and The Casablanca Booth. Support pylons were dressed up to look like palm trees and pencils. Doug Moran came in and painted a bunch of dioramas. It was cool.

It that period, 1984 and 1985, Dad threw two great 4th of July parties. He was good at party planning and event coordination it turned out. But in 1985, he sold the restaurant. He wanted out. He wanted to try something new. He was getting bored of Mill Valley. 

So when I was eighteen, my Dad ran away from home.

Frequently Dad had told me over the years, “If you expect to go to College, you’re going to have to get scholarships.” We never had that kind of money, and supposedly I was some kind of wunderkind. So why not? I’ll tell you why. In order to get scholarships, or be eligible for any kind or financial aid for school, your parents’ tax returns are an absolute necessity. This is not negotiable. Well, Dad hadn’t pain any income tax since 1962. 

But by the time I knew this, there was no point that I saw to even bringing it up.

THOR VS. HULK 

I’m at the 10-C Club doing some art and drinking some coffee. It’s about 1pm. Louis comes through the front door, and he’s laughing to himself, kind of shaking his head.

“Hey Louis. What’s so funny?”

“Oh my God! Sometimes people amaze me. I just heard two teenagers over at 7-Eleven arguing about who could beat who up. Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme. And it was just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re right. That’s completely ridiculous! Everybody knows that Jean-Claude Van Damme would fucking kick Steven Seagal’s ass, twenty way to Tuesday!”

“No way. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a little tiny guy. One solid connect (indicates the power of his fist) from Steven Seagal would lay Van Damme out flat.”

“Dude, are you high? Steven Seagal has like thirty pounds of flab around his waist. He’d never be able to lay a finger on Van Damme!”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous, Steven Sea...”

Louis stops mid-word and looks at me. I grin a “gotcha” back at him. Sometimes it’s just too easy.

MIDNIGHT

It’s noon. Beautiful hot day in Mill Valley. I leave the Fern house with Louis and we start walking toward Mama’s. Walking toward us down the street is a devastatingly beautiful young woman. She’s black. Looks about my age, maybe a little older. Just stunning. She’s wearing like, a sequined red tubetop. She smiles at Louis and I as she passes. Louis says, “Hey, Midnight.”

“Hey Louis.” 

As she walks on by, Louis engages her, “We’re going to be playing tomorrow night at the Sweetwater. You should come by”

“I’ll try, Louis. But I’m super busy this weekend.”

“Okay, well if you can, it would be great to see you, but if you can’t it’s no big deal.”

“We’ll see” she says as she continues down the road. I have to know. “You know her?”

“Yeah. She’s hot isn’t she?”

“I’ll say”

“Midnight?”

“Her name’s Rachel. But her stage name is Midnight.”

“Ah.”

“She’s a singer.”

“Is she any good?”

“I’ll say.”

Eventually, Rachel starts showing up at places where me and my friends hang out. Louis keeps trying to insinuate himself into her story, and it’s not working. Rachel doesn’t like him like that. It’s sucks to be wrapped up in someone who doesn’t feel the  same way. I sympathize with my friend Louis. 

But Rachel kinda looks like Lisa Bonet. There’s fair, and then there’s fair. And never the twain shall meet, ya know?

Anyway, with hardly any provocation on my part, somehow I find myself in Rachel’s company., I’m talking to her at her job. She’s at work. She works at a spa in Mill Valley. The place is closing up. 

Rachel offers me a massage. I gladly accept. She presses her breasts into the back of my neck while she works my stress points. 

Then we’re at the movies. We’re watching “True Stories”. The David Byrne movie. The movie is all right. 

What’s better is when she decides to start sucking my dick in the movie theater. That was cool.

Soon we’re back at my hovel above Mama’s, I’m laying back on my bed while Rachel works furiously to get to my creamy center. She succeeds. Good to the last drop.

Later that night I wander over to the 10-C Club. Louis and Don Wietes are there in the living room. Louis sees me as I come through the front door and asks:

“What’s up?”

I hesitate for a moment. Thinking.

“Rachel just gave me a blowjob...” I say, sort of in a daze.

Louis stops in his tracks. Kind of looks around with a furrowed brow. Then sort of gives a loud silent “harumph”. Then he looks at me. Then he marches into his room.

It’s quiet and Don and I look at each other. Then Don, who is grinning with a sick amusement and ironic detachment, looks at me and says:

“Well... he’s gonna kill you now... or he’s gonna kill you later.”

God I love Don. Quick with the sage words of wisdom.

DAD SELLS MAMA’S IN MILL VALLEY

VIDEO DROID

When I’m eighteen, I get a job through Louis‘ roommate Don Wietes, at a local video store in Mill Valley that had opened recently called Video Droid. The place is so new that, not including Louis who only worked there for a couple days, I’m the sixth employee they hire. 

Mitch Lowe is the boss. He owns the business and is CEO of Interaction inc. 

Then there’s Kara Perras who is petite, strong and funny. But mostly petite. She’s the store manager. 

Also there, is Don Wietes (who for me the job) he’s an old Bay Area freak. He used to work with The Family Dog. He’s known Mitch since high school. They’re old pals. Therefore he has a job title that represents his stature with Mitch: Video Guru Emeritus, esq. I like Don. He’s a cool cat. His last name is pronounced like “Wheaties”. Breakfast of champions, right? 

Then there’s Tom, who I guess is assistant manager. He’s an old queen and a culture vulture with a strong movie and music database in his head. 

There’s Rich Brunton. Rich has the strongest and most complete knowledge of film and all its various tributaries and eddies and associated jargons and minutiae more than anyone I’ve ever met up to this point. Maybe even more than me. Maybe. Plus he’s a hell of a nice guy. Charming and collegiate, he looks sort like a tall, slim Francis Ford Coppola in a cardigan. He’s particular and educated, and always interested in what I have to say. 

And lastly there’s Liz Dunkel. She’s a ... Holy smokes! 

Where did she come from? She’s the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. ‘Hey Don. Who’s this “Liz”? What can you tell me?’ was a conversation I intended to have at the first possible opportunity. Liz Dunkel was a bombshell. But she wasn’t a Jennifer Marlowe bombshell, she was an Elaine Nardo bombshell. Her simple presence on that first day put me into a trance. 

When I looked at her it was easy to imagine her meeting my gaze with a gaze of her own. One where she didn’t blink, she didn’t look away, and a smile slowly crept across her face. It was easy to see a version of her that would be agreeable to a version of me going in for the kill. I saw us standing in a small greenish room, dimly lit by a single 60 watt bulb and a curtain or sheet hanging where there ought to be a door. It was easy to imagine me kissing her. It was easy to imagine her kissing me back. But it was just my imagination running away with me. I was 18 years old and a virgin. I didn’t have the faintest idea how to get from Point A to me and Liz playing Strip Crisco Twister together. I’d literally just met her moments ago, but I was already on the case. 

In my mind’s eye in some unpredictable future, I can see myself encountering Liz at work. She’s behind the counter at Video Droid, but its a different Video Droid. Smaller, more intimate.I can see that we’ve known each other for a couple years. As I walk through the front door, she’s sitting behind the counter. I walk up to the counter and flirt shamelessly with her. She’s playing a Rolling Stones concert on the big screen. Mick Jagger is yelling at me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I can’t always get what I  want. I tell him back that I’m not so sure of that. I think my god is a benevolent god and maybe I can in fact get what I want. To that end, I grab a couple video boxes and bring them up to Liz, who then exchanges them for the actual videos which are kept in back, and proceeds to check them out for me. As she hands them back to me, I touch the boxes but don’t take them from her. Now we’re both holding the videos. I say to her “You know Liz, this song is completely misunderstood. People have it backwards.” 

She smiles at me, kinda smirks too. “What do you mean, Spencer?” She knows a joke or something is coming. 

“Everyone think of it in terms of like, ‘deal with it. You can’t alway get what you want. It didn’t happen, move on.’ That’s the common interpretation, right? But that’s not what Mick Jagger says. He says ‘you can’t *always* get what you want. He doesn’t say you *never* get want. See what I mean?”

Liz is entertained by this. She smiles as she nods. 

“Ergo, you can in fact sometimes get what you want.” I say with a smile and shrug. “It’s kind of comforting, isn’t it? Who wants to live in a world where you never get what you want? That sounds like a terrible and hopeless place to me. I don’t know about you, but I’m a “glass is half full” kind of guy.” 

Liz looks at me. The smirk on her face is saying “You sly motherfucker” and  we kind of stare at each other, I’m smiling my big Spenny grin. Then a smile creeps across her face too. That smile tells me what I exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. We look at each other and take the moment in. 

“Yeah okay, Spencer Moore” she says, kinda shaking her head and smiling.

“God gave them eyes but they can’t see” I say as I leave the building. I feel good. I knew that I would.

Then I see us kissing again. Same room. Same circumstance. Same green room. Same 60 watt light.

When I was 18 and I went to visit Steve in San Diego, Liz was all I could think about or talk about. At or 20 or 21 on a trip to Julian to see my Dads new Mama’s, I wrote Liz a bunch of  vacation postcards with vintage products logos of olde on them. But instead of telling her how it was going, I spun a wild tale about how I was kidnapped by pirates and forced to work in a diamond mine in Japan, only to escape to equatorial Africa, where I happened upon a scientist in the middle of the jungle, who was breeding a giant breed of geese that you could ride and that’s how I got home. It took 5 or 6 postcards as I remember. She never mentioned receiving them to me. She was dating Mike Albanese at the time, but in spite of that she and I had a constant ebb and flow of electricity. I had her number at work and I used it often. I could show her the invisible stuff and point out things she hadn’t  thought o and tell her stories she’d never heard. But I could never seal the deal.

Then all of a sudden, Greg Wilker’s on the scene. And now the three of us are working together at the Droid. Greg has just started working there, but I can see he’s already hanging on every single word she says, every little thing she does. Yeah, Greg liked her too.

“Hey! Back off man! I got here first!” I loudly think at Greg.

“Finders keepers, losers weepers, muthafuckah!” Greg loudly thinks back at me.

We can both clearly see that Liz is walking around the store the store in a bad funk. I have no idea what‘a going on with her, and it’s really none of my business, but she just seems so sad. And defeated. So I walk over to her and gently get her attention. 

“Hey Liz?”

“Yeah?”

“You know, once, there was this little old ant? He though he could, you know, move a rubber tree plant. Well, everyone knows an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant? But... he had high hopes. I mean really high hopes. He had high “apple pie in the sky” hopes....” I try and give her a look that says “we notice, we care”.

“So anytime you’re feeling low? Instead of letting go, just remember that ant.”

I look at her, she looks at me.

Just keep that in mind, mm Kay?”

She kinda shakes her head and kinda laughs.

“Spencer, you’re a dork.”

Greg is looking at me kinda confused, bemused. Like ‘what the fuck was that all about?’

It’s 10pm and the clock on the wall says it’s time to shut’r down. So I get on the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to bring this party to a close. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. In furtherance of the goal us getting out of here quickly, I will now entertain you with song. This is “Take me home again, Kathleen” as done by Reilly from that old episode of Star Trek. One! More! Time! Take me hoooome again, Kathleeeeeen!.....”

The last couple of people leave, Liz locks the door, Greg gets the lights, I grab the videos out of the video drop box in the back.

Greg and I are putting away videos while Liz is doing the end-of-day tallies. As Greg and I walk by, under her breath we can hear Liz singing:

“Whoops there goes another rubber tree, whoops there goes another rubber tree...”

When Greg and I have walked out of immediate earshot, he looks at me, kinda stunned and says “How did you know?” 

I kinda shrug back “I dunno.” I just did.

I remember Video Droid before Greg showed up. The hot summers in Tam Junction. It takes me back o being nineteen or twenty. I remember her dropping by the store on her way back from the beach. She wore a kind of  deep pink bikini? Is “deep pink” a color? It was slightly lighter than a magenta, with little white diamond shapes all over it. She could feed a starving man with a glance and make your dick hard with smile. 

With a look she told me:

“I think I may almost understand you, Spencer. Not quite. But almost.”

That look made it a little easier to get up in the morning and made me excited to go to work and sling videos. It seemed to me that we shared a deceptively deep connection. 

Then at my 21st birthday party somehow we wound up alone in my bedroom. We were talking. And then we weren’t talking anymore. It was quiet but for the din of the party going on outside my room. I wanted to see what I could find in her eyes. And what I found suited me just fine. She didn’t blink she didn’t look away. A sly smile crept across her face. Her kisses were sweeter than wine and I wanted her desperately. But I was in no hurry, and at that particular moment, the timing was off. I had a previous commitment. Such is life.

Then Eventually she and Greg started dating. Greg was still my friend. Liz gets to make up her own mind about her life. I was fine with it. It was nice to see Greg happy. I remember when they first got together, and Greg was gloating like “Yeah I gotta a go see my GIRLFRIEND!” And Mike’s doing his crazed grinning hillbilly-thing, “Are ya whooped, Greg? Are ya? Are ya, Greg? Are ya whooped?”

Greg closes his eyes and shows his shit-eating grin and nods. He’s happy to admit, “Yep. I am indeed whooped.” And damn happy about it, judging from his demeanor. So, no. In the “hard feelings” department there were none present. Not at all.

SARAH FREGULIA

1988 was a banner year for me. It’s the year I turned twenty-one. Also the year I finally got a girlfriend. It was also the year Matt and I did ‘cars, ferries, trains and busses’ across the breadth of Mexico. The last year of Reagan as president. It was the year the Soviet Union collapsed. It was also the year of the Iran/Contra scandal so the world got to know Ollie North and Fawn Hall. I was working at Video Droid. I had a tight knit group of friends in the Bohos. We spent our time cruising the mountain, doing art, getting high and listening to music. Commander Casual was going strong. We were playing a lot of croquet down at Boyle Park. There’d be four of us walking down East Blithedale, walking like we think we’re gunslingers or something, leisurely dressed for a sunny Mill Valley day. Each of us with a croquet mallet in one hand (resting on the shoulder) and a six pack of Ballard Bitter (Ya sure! You betcha!) in the other, looking like we thought pretty highly of ourselves. And we did. “We’re not a gang. We’re a *club*”.

I liked croquet. It was one of the activities that we did that required hand-eye coordination that I was the least sucky at. Dave Collings had sort of emerged as a secret weapon. He had a knack. The same knack he’d displayed at billiards. Mike Healy dubbed him “Deadly Dave Croquet Collings: Undisputed King of All Leisure Sports”. Somehow Dave managed to stay humble. 

Sometime in March I come into Mama’s in Oakland on a late Saturday morning. Chris Furbee is talking to a girl in the rear of the restaurant. I walk up and say hey. 

“Hey Furb.”

“Hey Spenny”

Furb is talking to Sarah Fregulia. Pleasantries are going back and forth. I know Sarah from Tam.  Or rather I know *of* her. Her reputation preceded her. I feel she was generally seen as kind of a nerdy “bad girl”. I think that’s a pretty fair description. She was like three years behind me I think. And her dad is a teacher there.  The image I had of her as a wild chick was not all at odds with her obvious nerdiness and wit. She’s undeniably goofy, and she leans into it. Reputation Shmeputation, I like her. I horn right in on whatever Furb thinks he’s doing. Sarah and I got a rhythm going. The witty reposte is strong with this one. I’m sensing good things and it’s giving me a mind boner. Sorry, Furb. “Find her finer”, man. So I lay it on the line with Sarah.

“I’m throwing a party for my twenty-first birthday in May (right now it’s barely March) it’s gonna be a blast. It’s gonna be at the 10-C Club, above Nellu’s Attic. Commander Casual & The Cool Cat Crusaders are going to be playing. So... want to come?”

“Sure”, she says. “Sounds fun. Give me a call.” She writes her number down on a piece of paper and gives it to me. Yesss! I give her my number.

“If I’m not there just leave a message on my machine” she says.

“And if I’m not there, you can leave a message on *my* machine” says I.

“Well, shoot. If this doesn’t work out, maybe our machines can just get together” is her finisher. I’m sold.

I call her that night. Then I’m at her place (her Dad’s house) sittin and a chittin and a chattin.

“Yeah, I noticed when you invited me to a party that’s still two months away.”

“Well, I had to do something.”

“You did alright.”

There’s kind of an awkward silence. Uh oh. I hate awkward silences. After a moment Sarah kind of awkwardly says:

“Sooo....

“How about a little penetration?”

Yes please. I enthusiastically go to town. Sarah reciprocates. She seems to be having a good enough time.

And just like what I have a girlfriend. 

Sarah develops this really soothing way of saying my name. It’s hard to imagine how to write it out. It’s like “Spee-incer”. It was inviting and comforting, It’s hard to describe. It took thirtysds

For my birthday Sarah gives me a cupcake with a little plastic baby on the top.

My birthday party is a total rager. Commander Casual is pretty tight, and they have a bunch of clever songs. Sarah is there with me. Everyone seems to love me. I’m gliding. 

It’s late in the evening, and some of us have decided to take shrooms. The party is so big that not only is the house filled with people, but so is the back deck, and down stairs in the back, below the deck. People are starting to trickle out, but others are flooding in. The party is getting its second wind. My roommate Duane has this little black old and decrepit dog named Odie, that is completely blind, and has an inner ear condition that has left her deaf on the left side, the main result of which is that she just walks around in circles. All the time. That’s what she does. So Odie is out on the back deck, walking her circles, and she miscalculated, owing to the fact that she’s deaf, blind, and like a thousand in Lorne Green years, and she walks off the back deck down to the party below. Oh shit! I run back there to take a look. She’s laying on the ground, and a puddle is forming underneath her. Fuck! Duane isn’t going to be happy about this. Plus I’m starting to peak on mushrooms. Think quick! I see Furb.

“Hey Furb! Go find Louis! Tell him Odie’s fallen off the back deck and she’s leaking something!”

Furb finds Louis.

“Hey, Odie fell off the back deck! She’s leaking something!”

Louis is tripping on mushrooms and has visions of blood splattered everywhere. It’s action time! Me and Louis were able to get approval from Duane for the party provided Louis was the steward and made sure everything stayed under control. Odie falling off the deck and popping like a balloon full of ketchup was going to cause some rancor between us and Duane. Louis is running worst case scenarios as he moves through the crowd to the back deck. He gets to the railing, looks down and sees:

Odie walking around in a circle.

At rhe 10-C club, if you need to get to the bathroom, you have to go through my bedroom. That’s why that curtain is up in my room, so I can have some privacy while allowing people to use the toilet. As I’m headed to the bathroom, Liz walks out, and we pass I say “Hey Liz, come her I want to show you something.”

“What do you want to show me, Spencer?”

“You’ll see. Come on. You’ll get a kick out of this.”

She laughs and follows me: She’s drunk too.Once we’re both in my room. I look at her. Then I look closer. Looks are powerful things. 

“You got something in your eye.” I squint a little as I take a closer look into her left eye. It’s not easy due to the 60 watt bulb and the green walls. I pull back from her a smidge to get a better look at her beautiful face. She’s look at me, we’re maybe a foot apart. My fingers touch her face. 

We kiss.

We continue to kiss.

Then we kiss some more.

Me: “I have a girlfriend.”

Her: “Yeah. I know.”

A look passed between us. We part. The moment passes.

The next day we find that someone has sprayed shaving cream all over the bathroom. When we’re done cleaning we have four of five big bags of garbage piled into a mountain, surrounded at the base by a forest of beer bottles. Good party. And now I’m twenty-one. I think I’ll go fuck my new *girl-friend*! 

But the relationship with Sarah was doomed from the day it started. Planned obsolescence. Sarah was going away to art school in London at the end of July. So we were living in borrowed time. She taught me about the Dead Kennedys, turned me on to They Might Be Giants, and told me about a time this evil witch talked to her through a Ouija board. 

“The witch lives in a magic hut that walks around in chicken legs.”

“You’re telling me Baba Yaga talked to you though a Ouija board?”

“Yeah! That’s her name! Baba Yaga!”

I was entirely skeptical and Sarah didn’t like my skepticism.

When I’m not with Sarah, or the Bohos, Matt and I are planning our “Big Trip”. We want to go overland, around the world. Louis has a big world map on the wall in his bedroom, and Matt and I trace our trip. We’re going to go north, up through Canada, then through Alaska, then across the Bering Strait, in to Russia, across Asia, to Europe, across the Atlantic to New York, then hitch back to California. We’ll start out journey after Sarah leaves for London.

I drive Sarah to SFO. On the way I see the road signs for Junipero Serra and tell Sarah she should start spelling it SERRA. I think it sounds cool. I see her odd at the airport, and all of a sudden life is quiet. I drive home alone.

MATT AND I TRAVEL OVERGROUND THROUGH MEXICO

Matt and I have come to our senses about our trip. So instead of around the world in 80 days, we’re gonna backpack to Belize. Belize is a British protectorate that is positioned between Mexico and Guatemala. It used to be known as British Honduras. The population there is largely black. “The Mosquito Coast” was filmed in Belize. Both Matt and I thought “The Mosquito Coast” was great. Me The movie, Matt the book. Matt would throw quotes by the author around. I though it was close to the best performance I’d seen from Harrison Ford, as a crazy, brilliant, toxic father who hauls his family down into the tropics of Central America. I had a certain amount of overlap with the movie, and I could relate. Ford gives this energetic, prickly, motormouth performance as a guy too smart for the world or his family. So when Matt suggested Belize, I was all in.

But first we got to get there. 

OCEAN BEACH

So we drive Matt’s little piece of shit four cylinder late 70s Honda Civic to Ocean Beach near Sea World, where we park his car at Rick and Celyne’s place, and then we ride down to Mulege in Baja California with Dad in his big ol’ 1970s Ford F-250. 

MULEGÉ

Once in Mulege our next course of action is to get really drunk. We’re at Paco and Rosy’s. Dad has become their business partner in the restaurant slash bar, which gives up total access to the bar. So we drink. And we drink. And Dad drinks. And Paco and Rosy drink. Everybody drinks. A lot of Bacardi and Coke. We get lit and stay lit. Billy Bop and Cowboy Sean from Mill Valley are their. Dad likes to have a party going around him and Billy and Sean are happy to oblige. 

I LEARN A NEW SKILL

Sean, an ex-Delta Force from Vietnam, teaches me the correct way to head butt. It’s not difficult. You have to have your head tilted slightly forward. You don’t want to hit them with your forehead. You’ll hurt yourself if you do that. You’ll hurt yourself more than you’ll hurt whoever your head butting. So tilt your head down a little. There’s a spot pretty much midway between your forehead and the top of your head, it’s rock solid. So you tilt your head, aim for their forehead. Or nose. Or face in general. Then swing your head straight forward, hardly any arc at all, and aim for about three inches behind their eyes. And be really drunk. That really helps. Billy Bob and I practice head butting for awhile. 

I PUNCH DAD

It’s getting late and we’re getting to the “I love you, man” stage of the evening. But it veers off as Dad and I are getting serious (and seriously drunk) at the bar. He’s going off on one of his “Dad’s wisdom” spiels, captivated by the sound of his own voice. I keep thinking “Man, Dad’s drunk advice just rubs me the wrong fucking way. He thinks he’s em parting pearls of priceless wisdom, but it all just sounds like the squawking of a goose to me.

He’s telling me, “By the time I was old enough to take my Dad on, Grampa was already so old and frail, that I’d have put him in the hospital if I’d punched him. If you’re ever gonna punch me, make sure you do it before I’m so old that you put me in the hospital.”

So I punched him.

Sitting down on the barstool next to him. It was a punch that connected solidly enough to get his attention. My left fist to his right cheek. With the impact, his head swung to the left. As his head slowly came back to looking forward at me, the expression on his face evolved from shock, to “You piece of shit. You wanna play?” His eyes got all buggy.

So I punched him again. 

This time he fell off his chair. And I stood over him in boxer kind of stance with my arms cocked. He’s looking up at me. And he starts to cry. 

“You want to hurt me? You want to hurt your father? Is that what you want to do?”

I see him crying, and I start to cry. I hear “Hey!” Its Cowboy Sean. “Don’t beat up your father!”

It’s funny. We laugh. We’re laughing and crying and it’s cathartic. I managed to release some pent up sit that I’d been holding on to.

Even later on the evening Dad and I regale Matt with the story of what happened when the house burned down. Dad and I have food rhythm when we tell stories. Matt is enthralled. 

We both have to sleep now. Tomorrow morning we go to Santa Rosalia, where we catch a ferry to the mainland. The ferry will drop us off in Guaymas. From there we can catch a train to Mexico City, and it’s busses from there, baby! We’ll take a bus from DF to Chetumal, and then we’ll cross into Belize. On the road, I’m reading “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. The book makes mention of “Mill City”, a little hamlet right north of Sausalito. Sounds like Mill Valley to me.

GO WITH THE FLOW

Cowboy Sean was a Vietnam vet who claimed with authenticity that when he was in Vietnam he was a member of Delta Force.

“Green Berets are pussies.”

He had this to say about a young hip couple we’d recently met in Mulegé, who were exploring Baja and testing their survival skills, who ran into car trouble.

“The survivalists accidentally left the interior light in their car on all night. Now they have a dead battery”

One night, after the party had died down at Paco & Rosy’s, Cowboy Sean, Tom O’Callahan and drunkenly made our way up to the Villa on the Hilla.

“Should we drive?” 

“It’s only right over there.”

“Can you drive?”

“Shit. I better be able to. I’m too drunk to walk.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Whose car?”

“Jesus, it’s pitch black.”

“Maybe we should crawl.”

The Villa on the Hilla used to be Paco & Rosy’s Cantina. No it was Dad’s house. It was a classic old thick-walled clay and stone edifice with a thatched roof and thatched shutters, and disintegrating wooden doors that were falling off the hinges. Very classically Mexican. Something you might see in a cowboy movie. The old Mexican building was sitting at the top of the driveway situated across  the fruit tree grove and above Paco & Rosy’s. Sean had smuggled in little bit of high-quality hash, pressed onto a quarter. The coin. A George Washington quarter. It was a chunk of has probably about as big as a pencil eraser. Way more that enough to get us really stoned. 

So we’re really stoned, and Sean is trying to impart some wisdom on me. Jefferson Airplane is playing in the background.

“Go with the flow” he says,  making flowy-swimmy moves at me with his arms, wiggling his fingers in my face.

“If flow goes this way...” 

He turns 90 degrees to the right, now making flowy motions with his arm to the right

“Don’t go this way...”

He turns 180 degrees so he’s now facing to the left, making the same flowy motion, just in the other direction 

“Go this way!”

He turns back to the right again, arms still flowing.

Then he turns to me and puts a hand on each shoulder. He looks me solemnly in the eyes.

“See what I’m sayin’”

I nod.

“Go with the flow.”

“Go with the flow.”

Then he lets out a horrendous belch

ON THE WATER

The ferry ride is smooth. It’s like an 8 hour trip of something. Neither of us leave the cabin. I keep thinking about that ferry disaster in like the Philippines where the ferry took off without closing the big doors where they store cars, and everybody died. I *really* hope the captain remembers to close the big doors. 

We make it safely to Guaymas the next morning. Cargo bay doors closed, disaster averted. So we head out in search of the train station. It’s getting dark by the time we get there. The train leaves the next morning. So we got twelve hours to kill or so. We buy tickets and go sit down in the train station and wait.

A TRAIN STATION IN GUAYMAS

We’re sitting in the main train station waiting area and it’s night now. The edifice is not dissimilar to Union Station in LA. Big stone building with arches under which you can see Mexico outside, and rows and rows of bench seats. It’s getting late and there’s nobody there waiting for the train but us. When we talk, we can hear the echo of our own voices in this big empty building. Then we see a little boy. Four or five years old probably. He’s a street kid. No shirt or shoes. Ratty pants. He comes up to us and starts asking us questions. Where you from? Where you going? I’ve seen this before. He’s gonna try and sell us Chicklets. Or ask for money. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico. Matt hasn’t. This is Matt’s first Mexican experience. And he’s going with it. Matt often said that everybody had a story, you just had to ask the right questions. He’s having fun. I’m not here to be a wet towel or anything. 

Well, eventually the kid leaves. And it’s just Matt and me again. But then the kid comes back. And this time he has a baby I’m his arms. He walks up to us and asks us if we want to see the baby. Matt says sure and looks at the baby. I’m thinking “Hmm.” While Matt’s talking to the kid about the baby he has, these two Mexican guys walk in. Cowboy hats, vaquero boots, satin shorts, groomed beards. They walk up to us and engage Matt and me in conversation, but I’m not talking. I’m watching. One of the men is telling us about how poor the country is, and how the kids have to go without basic necessities, while the other guy has moved around and is now standing behind us. Before the two men came in, I was expecting the kid to like, throw the baby at us and grab a pack and run. Not anymore. Now the guy is telling the kid to take the baby and get out of there. The kid is playing around. He’s got a big grin, and he shakes his head and says “No”, So the guy looks at him angry-like and goes for his belt, like he intends to take it off to strap the kid with it. “Get the picture, kid?” The kid gets the idea and starts to go. At this point, I lean over to Matt and say

“Grab your back pack. We’re walking out of here right now.”

Matt says “Huh?” Then looks around, sees the two Mexican dudes in Cowboy hats and nobody else anywhere on sight, and says “Oh yeah.” We both grab our packs and head for the outside. Calmly, quickly. Calmly, quickly.

Immediately outside the train station, is a lawn, generously populated with indigent locals sleeping on the grass. It’s about 9 or 9 thirty. It feels dangerous around there. So we wander. We have ten hours to kill. 

We find a Chinese restaurant. (In my experience, Chinese food is both quite common in Mexico, and uniformly awful. I’ve had a lot of it. It’s never any good, only varying degree le of atrocious) We just want coffee though. And we only want that as an excuse to sit inside for a bit. But they won’t let us sit and nurse our coffee. They ask us to leave pretty quickly. I get the vibe that they think were grungy

Americans. Neither of us are grungy. Yet. We will be, just not yet. 

BONGO BURGER

So we’re walking around in the Guaymas night once again. Eventually we find a brightly lit neon place called “Bongo Burger” and they let us sit there. They’re open all night, so we wait until dawn and then head back to the train station. We’re about to embark on a thousand mile train trip that will take us to San Lazaro, the heart of Mexico City. It’s pretty exciting. Matt and I are gleeful. 

ON THE TRAIN

The train gets fully boarded. We have good seats. Comfy. Then the train takes off. 

Seven minutes later it stops. Some people get off. Some other people get on. 

And we’re off!

Eight minutes later it stops. People get off, people get on.

And we’re off!

Five minutes later it stops...

This is ridiculous. We have a thousand miles to go. At this rate the Mayan calendar will end before we get there. So I ask the porter. 

Yeah. We got in the wrong train. This train goes to Mexico City but it stops every couple minutes. We want the express. He gotta get off at the next stop and wait for it. “When does it arrive?” In about eight hours.. 

Eventually we get the right train and we’re on our way. Next stop Guadalajara.

GUADALAJARA 

Guadalajara is mountainous and green and wet. The trains chugs along along the side of a mountain that were there to be an accident, it would surely spell our doom. 

Guadalajara is beautiful and well kept and seems pretty cosmopolitan. We find some people to tag along with and we go to the central market which is like a Roman coliseum filled with stalls selling tchotchkes. Then it’s back on the train to Mexico City.

D.F.

We finally arrive at San Lazaro station in DF (Districto Federal. That’s what Mexico City is called in Mexico) the train station is beautiful in a creepy run down way. As we exit the train in the lower levels of station, we’re met by an old Art Deco diner. Lovely and detailed with its charm shining through the grime. No food to speak of.  One we felt comfortable eating anyway. 

As we’re leaving the station we’re discussing what to do. We know we have to get to a bus station and start the final leg of this journey to the Yucatán. Quintana Roo being our final Mexican destination. But what now? Find a hotel, I guess. A young teenager with one eye who seems to live at the train station seems to have decided we’re marks. I’m trying not to be. Anyway, he hails us a cab and the cab takes us to a hotel. 

PILLOW FIGHT!

Once in the hotel I spy a well dressed old man with a stunning woman in a black dress in the hallway headed to a room. I see them on my way to grab a soda, and as I’m coming back, I see them getting off the elevator, headed for their room. I say something along the lines of “Aha, we meet again!” Neither really notices me. I predict some sort of sexual Congress will shortly be happening between the two of them. Matt and I have a pillow fight.

We decide that we’re going to spend the next night in a youth hostel. The next morning we set out to find it. We walk the whole way. It’s fucking far away. It was only like an inch away on the map. We eventually get there and spend the night in wooden bunks that remind me of Hogan’s Heroes. We also meet a Czechoslovakian med student coming from Cuba. He gives me a pack of Partagas, Cuban cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but I give it a shot and they are very harsh.

The next day we head back to San Lazaro. Sitting by a bandstand, some kids try and steal out shit, but we’re both hyper aware at this point. We got one to kill so we go check out the San Lazaro open market. Mexican open markets are cool if you’ve never seen one before. But this market in particular gave me an experience that really reminded me of when I was two and me and Steve and Mom and Dad were in Mexico. It brought back some deep sensory memories that physically transported me back to being barely out of infancy. And what it was was walking from the fish market into the flower market. There was no mingling of smells. Both smell were strong, pungent. The fish market did not smell bad by any means. Just fishy. But walking into the open air flower market was like walking in through a veil into a garden. It took me back.

ON THE BUS

Finally we grabbed a bus for Chetumal. Pretty uneventful. I had “Daylight Again” by CSNY, and “The Legend of Jesse James” with Levon Helm, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Charlie Daniels and Pink Floyd: The Wall for my Walkman. I asked Matt if he knew a particular song, and sung a bit. He said “Not your version”, which was his version of:

“Hey man, what did you do with the money?

“Uh, what money?”

“The money your mom gave you for singing lessons.”

Same joke. Fuck you, Matt. I sing like a fucking bird.

THE MEXICO/BELIZE BORDER

Uneventful trip. And we were in Chetumal. Its bright and tropical where we are. We hop a bus to take us across the Belize border. The closer we get to Belize, the more Jamaican it feels to me.

We get to the border, and the guy in the booth gets to us and says “Pasaporte por favor.”

I don’t have a passport. I’ve never had one. I’ve never had a reason to need one. You don’t need one to get into Mexico. Just a driver’s license. Same with Belize. I made damn well sure before we left.

“Uh.. no tengo pasaporte. Dice que no necesita pasaporte para entra Belize, no? Solamente una licencia para, uh.. manejar! De veras?

“No. Disculpa. Cambia los reglas la jueves pasada!’

“You changed the rules, last Thursday?”

“Si”

He points to a sign. Its an index card that says that Wednesday August 31 is the last day you van cross to Belize without a passport.

“You’re telling me that if I’d made this trip last week, I’d have been able to enter the country?

“Sí.”

What are the odds?

Okay, so a change of plans. Dude, have fun in Belize. I’m gonna go check out Tulum. We’ll meet back here, at the bus terminal, in 15 days. Synchronize your watch. Neither of us is wearing watches. Okay. Just be back here, then. See you Friday in two weeks. And we part ways.

CHAC MOOL

I hop a bus back to Tulum. I want to see if any of it is at al familiar to me from when I was two. I cant wait. Its like a three hour bus ride. The bus drops you off at some Mayan ruins that are absolutely stunning. They hang over a cliff over looking the Gulf of Mexico. Lush green foliage. Bugs everywhere. Dogs everywhere. Tourists everywhere. The are all wearing white T-Shirts with 1988 slogans on them. They all have cameras around their necks. Lots of fluorescent visors and sunglasses.the road is lightly muddy. We’re in rural Mexico.and its something. Its hot and muggy. The dense dark green foliage over the browns of the mud, and the panoply of colors that make up the buildings and the people, under the azure sky punctuated by white popcorn clouds, over the aquamarine and teal of the ocean, with diamonds dancing on the water. It all actually did look familiar to me. I’d made it. The place I’d looked up in my preparation for Mexico was a place called Chac Mool. And I’d made it, Chac Mool was right down the road, with a sign pointing the way. It said Chac Mool, and had a guy in traditional Mayan dress engaged in ceremonial dance. So down the road I went. I spent 13 of the next 15 days on that beach. All I had was what was in my backpack. A sketch pad, a notebook, drawing stuff, a Walkman and three cassettes, clothes, shoes and sandals, deet, suntan lotion, a frisbee, and “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. And very little money. I had to be smart. Matt had money, I didn’t.

Great beach at the end of the road, cool stone gazebo-like structures, and a restaurant. The restaurant was run by a gringo who had been a professional musician of note, he said, and at one time he had been in Zulu Spear, and his German girlfriend. There was a Mayan woman working there, and her kid who was delightful. And it was a typically European beach, so all the women were topless. So that was an unexpected bonus.

I’m sitting on the beach, under a coconut palm, trancing out on the crackle and hum of the ocean. I have a straw hat, and army green slack rolled up to the knees. My sandals are somewhere over there. I hear “Excuse me...”

This nice woman is leaning in from the sunlight to talk to me. “Uh, excuse me, uh... we... we have a” She’s totally trying to communicate with her hands. There’s a guy with her and he’s holding a big slab of watermelon. Like a full ear to ear slice. She’s trying to give me this slice of watermelon, but apparently she thinks I’m Mexican, and she doesn’t speak Spanish. So when I say “Gee! Thank you so much. What a nice gesture. Thanks!” she’s both taken aback, and relieved. I wind up hanging out with the two of them a bit over the next two weeks. They buy me dinner once. Its huachinango. Not a huge fan of huachinango. Also the wife sunbathes topless. She has pointy little tits. 

There are a group of young Italian dudes there when this kinda nerdy dude hets stung by a stingray, and he’s really worried. One of the Italian guys, trying to be supportive says “my friend specializes in this sort of thing. What’s the problem?”

“I got stung by a stingray!” the guy says in a freaked out voice. “What does your friend say?”

The guy talks to his friend in Italian. They kind of nod a little. He turns his head back and says “He says your going to die.”

The nerd turns pale white. His mouth drops open.

“Just kidding. He say it nothing to worry about. Just stingray.”

The Italians all crack up.

The Zulu Spear guy says “Aww, you can draw!”  I wind up trading drawings for food.

Three young French travelers show up. Two guys, and a girl. About my age. All very pretty. I remember one of the guys was named Pascal. And he seemed like he was in to me. I.d been sleeping in the stone gazebo, but I was getting bitten to FUUUCK by all the no-see-ems at night. I could count like a hundred bites on the back of my hand alone. 

So Pascal said I could sleep in his bed. 

Where they were staying was cool. Big round rooms, constructed largely of carizo, which is basically bamboo. Nicely buffed “stone” floor. Really cement, just nicely done. Two beds in the middle of the room, both with mosquito nets. Very Gilligan’s Island. What can I say? Gay guys like me. Personally, I think everybody likes me, but gay guys are emboldened to test the waters. And women operate on a different level. They don’t “test the waters”. Anyway I got a free night in a nice place. 

Then I decided to go back and check out Chetumal. Next day I hopped a bus. Three hours later I was in Chetumal. Hung out there for a day. Had an ice cream. Then i went back and waited at the terminal for the bus back to Tulum. I saw some Mennonites at the bus terminal. Apparently Guatemala has an actual Mennonite population. They live up in the Guatemalan hills. The men dress like they’re from “Witness” and the woman dress like Whistler’s mother. They look Amish. One of the Whistler’s mother’s women had a plastic grocery bag full of bottles of sodas and the bag broke, and the sodas crashed to the floor making a mess and a racket. I run into a gringo there and I show him my drawings and talks about Sarah. Then the bus came and I headed back to Tulum.

But I fell asleep on the bus and wound up in Playa del Carmen. I parked on the beach under a palapa. It was the middle of the night, but there was plenty of ambient light. I tried to sleep, but it started raining. It really came down. Even under the palapa, I got drenched. But it was warm rain. Pretty cool. As day was breaking, i watched as aFerry full of tourists from Cozumel unloaded on to the beach. When day broke, the rain left with the night. I explored Playa del Carmen a bit, and caught a bus back to Tulum. I explored the ruins a bit more, then headed back for Chac Mool.from Chac Mool I decided to explore the beach to the north, toward the Mayan ruin that overhung the cliff.

IZZY OR IZZY NOT?

I found a busier beach.there were like 8 French high school students topless on the beach. I like this beach! I set up camp there and stayed the rest of my time on this beach. I met a young woman whom given the chance could have been my heart’s delight, but she was there with a guy. British girl named Izzy Klingels. She was an illustrator who worked in pen & ink, so was I. She had beautiful eyes! So did I! She had great tits! Me, not so much. Kinda light in the titty department.  

Anyway, Izzy was also going to art school in London, just like Sarah. Oh, you’re from London! Do you know Sarah? Just a coincidence. Anyway, I promised myself that I’d never forget her name and I never did. Eventually the internet was invented, and she’s a real human who still exists and does excellent pointillism. I wonder if she remembers me?

Tulum I’d like a jungle thats on a beach that’s on the ocean. The jungle is right there. I’m walking through it and i meet a drunk Mayan soldier. He’s okay. Just a little belligerent.

Night falls and Ive managed to ingratiate myself to a group of Europeans around a campfire drinking. I meet this girl named Françoise. She’s studying theater design in Paris. She’s almost one year older that me to the day. She’s May 5th. I’m May 4th. She was born as her parents were traveling through Transylvania, and she wonder if she might not be a vampire. I let her know she’s welcome to bite my neck and see what happens. We do it on the beach. But there’s no moon out, so were in total darkness, except for the stars which are brighter than Ive ever seen them. You can see the Milky Way streak across the sky.

Afterward, we’re lying there on the beach, and growling. All around us growling. I’m hearing five or six different dogs. Ooo-kay. What now. 

But that’s it. Just growling. On and off all night long.

In the morning we see this an actual three-legged dog, old crusty guy, with what appears to be a young female Dalmatian. There was a group of dogs that were trying to interfere on his thing with the Dalmatian, and it looks like they were using us for cover.

It was just a thing. Didn’t plan on it. Izzy was who I wanted. Bird in the hand? Anyhow, I saw Francoise one more time, we exchanged looks as she was leaving in a jeep.

And then it was time to go back to the bus terminal in Chetumal and meet Matt.

But on the bus ride back to Chetumal, I kept counting the days I’d spent, like day by day, and I kept coming up with 16 days.

I FIND MATT

But then I thought about it, and... no, I didn’t stay that extra night. Its only 15. But is it?

I was a bit nerve-wracked by the time I arrived. But there was Matt, sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall. He started laughing. I started laughing. Nice to see you agin, dude.

We hopped the bus back to DF.

On the way, Matt said he went down the Mosquito Coast river, from the movie. In fact, come to think of it, it might actually have been Harrison Ford and his wife that I shared the boat with. It was somebody famous anyhow. Whoever it was, he’d just finished making a movie with Francis Ford Coppola, Matt said. 

That’s Jeff Bridges he was talking about. The movie was “Tucker” about a guy who invents a car that’s too good, and gets destroyed. How the fuck can Matt know who Harrison Ford is, but not recognize Jeff Bridges? When he’s literally right in front of him? Sometimes that boy worries me.

This is good. Matt also told me about this beautiful Belize girl he met where he was staying, who propositioned him for money to let him fuck her, so she was probably a hooker, but she said skinny medium-sized guys like us always have the biggest dicks. Sounds about right. I nod in agreement.

We’re on the train platform at the San Lazaro station waiting for it to show up. Its the early in the day and we have maybe an hour before the train comes. This English speaking Mexican dude with a heavy cholo accent starts talking to us about our lord ands savior Jesus Christ. The guy is interesting so we both listen to his rap, see what he’s got to say. He says in a thick cholo accent:

“To some, Jesus is a dream. To others, he’s a nightmare!”

Me and Matt look at each other.we’re both thinking the same thing. Matt says:

“You can’t fool me. That’s from “Excalibur””

We look at each other and nod. “Right? Merlin says it to King Arthur right before he disappears and goes to kill Helen Mirren! We’ve both seen it!”

“Like, a bunch of times” i nod in agreement.

Finally the train shows up and we board. We’re goin straight through, no connecting trains. There are a lot of people but we both manage to score decent seats.

A couple hours into the trip, this Mexican guy sitting across from me, dressed all in white, with a straw hat, pulls out this little white plastic jug, and takes a swig. Then he looks at me ans asks me if I want one. Why sure. I’d be more than happy to. He says its mezcal. Its kind of sweet for a supposed tequila. It also has this musty wet cement undertone. But it’s Loretta smooth. 

Next I know, I’m drunk on mezcal. I’m talking to everybody, I’m doing drawings of people, regaling the crown witty hon mots which I translate into Spanish with absolute mezcal powered precision. If I forget someone’s name three seconds after they tell me, or if I have trouble pronouncing complicated names like “Bernardo” it has nothing to do with the pint of dirt cheap rot gut cane alcohol I just put away. Spanish is tricky. Besides, everyone in the train at seems completely enchanted by my hyjinx. Who could resist such timeless classic likeMove out of the way. I’m drunk and American’. I was told later that its generally thought to be a bad idea to hold conversations with people in other cars, by sticking your head out of the train window.

And finally, it became obvious to me that the seat i was in didn’t suit me, and if i were on the floor of the train in the aisle, i could stretch out. 

So I laid down. In the aisle. But I thought maybe I did it too quick, I kind of splashed to the floor. But I didn’t want it to look “ungraceful”. So I sprung right back up to standing again to do it right. Then i did a little pirouette, dropped, and got some shut eye.

I think on a subliminal level I became aware that it had started raining, and the runoff in the train car was sloshing up and down the aisle picking up that Mexican train floor goodness.

When i finally awoke in the daylight, someone was in my chair. I remembered the splash, spring, pirouette, drop, so I figured it out pretty quick. Matt was all smiles.

Eventually I got a seat. Matt said, “You know, there was a point when then crowd turned against you. It was almost an audible click. Like a light switch.’

The train is blasting through the night. But it’s gotten into a habit of going for a while, then it will stop for twenty minutes, and then go backwards for a half an hour. I’m starting to get a little tired of it. I’m ready to be in the US again. I ask somebody about it. They say the train had to back up on to another track to allow another train to pass. Okay. Bit it’s getting old.

It happens again, and this time they say we’re going to be here long enough, so feel free to get off and walk around. I’m getting agitated. Not that there’s anything I can do or anything. Then they say that the reason they stopped was because they’ve run over a guy who was on the tracks. Oh. Okay. That’s a good reason. Then they say we shouldn’t worry that the train killed him, he was probably already dead. Gangs do that to hide murders. In 1988 no one really knows from “cartels”.

When we finally start moving again, the train moved in one direction only, taking us home-ish. 

But it’s also the end of September, and the train is filling up pretty good. Then we realize that every single Mexican in Mexico is headed back home or to school. And little by little, it becomes clear that most of them on our train. There comes a point where we literally can’t move, for all the people on the train. Literally packed in like sardines. Women laying on the floor of the train, with three children lying on top of them, youngest on the top. I’m feeling the exhaustion, and I feel like I may have amoebas or something. 

Finally the train arrives in Obregón and everybody gets off the train, leaving us practically all alone. And it’s the very last leg of the journey. No changing trains, no nothing. It’s a straight shot. Six hours and were at the border. Matt says it’s time to celebrate and to this part of the journey is style. To which he brings out a bottle of Jamaican rum he bought in Belize, the Partagas from Cuba, and a bottle of sleeping pills! Rock on, Matthew! Rock on. 

We both take some sleeping pills and wash it down with the rum and smoke a harsh Cuban cigarette. It’s quiet and peaceful.  As the rum and sleeping pills and nicotine and exhaustion all work their magic, both Matt and I can’t help but wonder when the train leaves. So I ask a porter.

The porter says, “Oh no. Thai isn’t *your* train.”

“It isn’t? Which train is ours?”

He points out the window to a nearby train.

“That one.”

I’ve never seen so many people simultaneously trying to get through the same door at the same time in my life. If you’ve ever seen a grain silo filled with rats spill out an unending flood of rats? It was kind of like that, but backward. As we walked toward president he merciless throng I said “fuck it” and threw myself into that human miasma with everything I had to give. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t getting in that fucking train, if I had to step on a little old lady to do it. 

Six hours after the train left, we were at the border. Then we were in the USA. We made our way back to Rick and Celyne’s and there was Matt’s car, just like we left it. We drive straight to Isla Vista, which is basically just Santa Barbara. Matt had to get something.

By the time we made it to Isla Vista, we’d gone 4 or 5 days without sleep. We were no longer functioning at maximum efficiently. Matt tried to get on the 101 north be getting on the off ramp. By the time we made it through San Francisco, at the Waldo Grade, the sun was coming up, I was driving, we were both laughing maniacally, and Matt had removed the cassette deck from the dashboard and was hanging out the window by its wires.

We made it back to Mama’s in Mill Valley, and we looked like refugees and literally smelled like shit. It was a Saturday morning so the place was busy. We received a heroes welcome at Mama’s. 

Sherry the waitress gave me a big warm hug and thanked me for punching Dad.

TOTAL LOSS OF EQUILIBRIUM

Matt and I wind up going out separate ways. He heads down to Isla Vista to start school at UC Santa Barbara. I stay in the Bay Area, rudderless. Right now I have no job or place to live. Also, I’m fucking exhausted after that long sleepless unhygienic 5 or 6 day bus/train/car trip from Mexico. So I head to Oakland and see my mom. I crash at her place on her couch which is just a bit too short for me.

I’m woken up by the ringing do the telephone. I get up off the couch to go pick it up, and find that I have no equilibrium. None. Zero. I immediately collapse onto the floor with vertigo that has the world spinning me ass over elbow. 

Laying on the floor, I discover that I can’t even raise my head without spinning off my axis.  It from my position, I’m able to answer the phone. It’s Mary Foster. She’s looking for Mom. I explain that Mom’s not here, and that I currently experiencing difficulty determining which end is up, and bid her goodbye. Then I literally roll myself like one might roll up a carpet, to the bathroom. There, holding onto the side of the clawfoot tub Mom has, I run myself a hot bath and shamble into it. In the tub I promptly fall asleep. When I awake my equilibrium is restored but I’m burning up. Mom is home by now so she takes my temperature which is 104, but I can already feel that I’m getting better. The hot bath and rest seems to have broken my temperature. 

BACK TO ISLA VISTA

I decide I’m going to follow Matt to Isla Vista and do what he did: go to Santa Barbara City College. Grandma enlists Carl to help me do the move. We pack Carl’s station wagon up with my stuff and he drives it all down there to the dingy college apartment that I share with three people I’ve just met: Suresh Ratnam, Pete Swearengen and Tom Trerise, all three good dudes. 

I enroll at City College and start taking classes. But I have no income so I have to focus on getting a job. I don’t hate working, but finding a job is something I don’t like at all. It brings all my fears and anxieties right to the surface. Going into unfamiliar places and meeting unfamiliar people where they will assess my worth which is something I’m already skeptical is even there. So I don’t even know where to begin. I talk to Dad about it and he agrees to help me out with $200 a month. Which will cover rent but nothing else.

Then I call and talk to Mom and she informs me that Nestor has died. He’s been fighting cancer. It looked like he was in remission, but Toni found him dead in the bathtub. I turn around and call Dad to give him the bad news.

In Isla Vista I able to freely indulge my love for Meister Brau Lite. (It’s *so* cheap!)

JESUS 1999

Drunk at a party in Isla Vista, talking to Jimbolicious, Matt says “Jesus 1999: He used to turn the other cheek, now he’s taking a stand!” I remember that and turn it into a cartoon. Eventually it becomes T-shirts. I make them but never sell any. Maybe I sold like, one.  

DIE FREE OR LIVE A SLAVE

One late night I come home after a party and turn on the teevee. It’s after midnight. On the teevee is a news anchor telling us the we are now at war with Russia (!!)

What the fuck!

I run upstairs and try and wake up my roomie, Tom. 

“Tom! Tom! Wake up! You gotta see this, man! We’re at war with Russia!”

“Leave me alone! I’m sleeping! I have class in the morning”

Tom isn’t getting up. And neither Pete nor Suresh are here for whatever reason. Shit! 

I head back down to the living room and see what the latest is. 

On the teevee now is Newt Gingrich. Gingrich quotes Frederick Douglass but attributes it to Benjamin Franklin: “It’s better to die free that to live like a slave.”

“Not good”, I think.

They cut back to the anchor who says this is now a nuclear war. The missiles are in the air. Heading for us.

“Fuck! This is bad! Maybe it’s better I couldn’t wake Tom. Shit! I wish *I* was asleep!” I tell mysel as I intently watch the 15 inch Sylvania Superset that Grandma gave me. I’m glued to the screen and sweating bullets. 

Then I’m watching a nurse talk to a doctor. (?)

They’re talking about impending nuclear war.

She’s on the verge of tears wondering what kind of future they’re leaving the children. 

He holds her close and comforts her.

Huh?

All of a sudden the news has become a soap opera. I’m confused. 

It takes me a minute or two. 

Slowly it dawns on me that I’m watching a show where the news is meant to look like the real thing. 

Apparently we’re not in a nuclear war at all. I’m a little disappointed. I suppose it’s better this way. I head off to bed. 

When I get up in the morning, the Duster is gone. I’m kind of fucked. I call the landlord Rich Sorich (Rich So Rich we call him) and tell him. He asks if I was parked in a marked space. I never say any indication that spaces were marked. I go and look at where I parked last night, and I’ll be damned. There’s a “4” there, nearly invisible under years of car grease. 

There goes all my food money. 

I go and retrieve my car and bring it back to the apartment, this time making sure I don’t park in someone’s space. I just park it on the street behind the apartment complex. 

I’m inside the apartment watching teevee, and Suresh walks in.

“Hey man. Your car is getting towed out back.”

What! 

I run back there and a tow truck has the Duster lifted already.

“Hey! What age you doing?! That’s my car!”

You’re parked in a fire lane.” He points to the sign. 

<Fire Lane - No Parking> 

Shit! But actually I’m glad I got there before he left with it and it cost me more money than I had. I ask him to lower it, promise to move the car and try to explain the situation. He says once the car is lifted it costs $45 bucks to lower it. I’m so fucked. But I have the dough, so I pay it and get my car back.

But now I have less money than I need to pay rent, to say nothing of eating. What do I do now?

I do what I always do. I pack up in haste, putting everything that will fit into my car and abandon everything that won’t fit. And I run. I haul ass out of town when no one’s looking and drive to Mom’s house. What would you do?

THERE’S PLENTY OF “THERE” IN OAKLAND

Once In Oakland, back at Mom’s house, I take stock of my life. It’s not good. My self-image is shot. I’m sinking into malaise, depression and anxiety. Who am I? I had constructed in my mind this illusion of what I thought my college life would be like. I’d been nursing this illusion since high school. Maybe even middle school. The illusion was informed by my love of Doonesbury. I had this image in my mind of me pushing a big color teevee on a wheeled teevee tray table, out of my room into the common area where through my largesse we could watch movies. Real life it seems wasn’t eager to accommodate my dreams. Really, I needed help. I needed some sort of guidance. I was spinning my wheels in loose sand, unable to get any sort of traction. I was really starting to feel like a loser and not only did I not like  it, I didn’t know what to do. I missed Sarah.

So I called her in London. It warmed my heart when I heard her say to me:

“Oh, Spee-incer.”

But she wasn’t coming back any time soon, and I didn’t have the means to get to her. 

I TRY SPEED

I knew Mom had openly been doing speed for a while now. Maybe years, I’m not sure. Waiting tables at the Royal was serious business. It was a high impact job that demanded you pay attention. Plus it helped when you have to be at work at 4 thirty in the morning. 

One night she and Judy were doing a rail and I said:

“Hey. Let me try some of that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Okay...”

So I did speed for the first time. And all my fear and anxiety and depression melted away. And as far as my art went, all of a sudden I could focus better than I’d ever been able to focus before. My instincts as an artist proved themselves to be razor sharp and infallible. I’d make artistic decisions in a fraction of a heartbeat, and they were all right. And they weren’t just correct, they were better than ever. And if they were wrong, I’d just move on to the next thing, figuring making a wrong decision is better than making no decision. And I’ll tell you, indecision became a thing of the past. I’d found a panacea, a cure-all for all that ailed me. Speed was my friend. What could possibly go wrong?

Those poor unfortunate souls 

It’s sad but true 

This one wanted to be thinner 

That one wants to get the girl

Do I help them?

Yes I do...

I started doing methamphetamines in 1989 as a direct result of one of those “fuck it” emotional nadirs that seem to come upon me every couple years. It’s a knee jerk reaction to my inner fight or flight mechanism. Mom had been doing them for years to get up and go work at the Royal, which at the time at least was a pretty hardcore, high velocity environment. She was suffering herself from her own shattered self image from a bunch of stuff, including dad loading heartbreaking yet totally false emotional baggage on her. So by the time I was at this particular low ebb, not only was had I been depressed constantly (with the occasional peak, thank god) for years, I was curious and wondered if it might be a solution for me. It seemed to work for her. So I say “Fuck it. Mom? Let me try some.” And you know what? Not only was my depression gone, but I got a surprise side effect! All of a sudden I could focus. I could maintain attention on a goal long enough to actually accomplish it! But it was really strong. I mean really strong. Way too strong. It obliterated anything like a sleep schedule. Sleep became a thing of the past and only came when I collapsed from complete exhaustion. And eating? Forget it. Food became completely undesirable. Even when my head and my body told me I was starving. It’s like my mouth dried up and my esophagus contracted and closed, even when my belly was growling and churning. But for those first few years, I looked really fucking good. I was 5’10”, and before I was only a hundred and thirty-five pounds but I went down to hundred and twenty-seven pounds and I looked like Mick Jagger. And thanks to my new found concentration my artistic output was superlative and enviable. Like they say, I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

My expertise with a quill pen had transformed into some next level shit. My already significant artistic output went through the roof. I could juggle nuance, absurdity, pathos, sincerity and irony with aplomb. I could instinctually create art with multiple levels of meaning and understanding with hardly thinking twice. It was second nature to me to create works that looked completely different depending on the facet, and who looked at them and under what circumstances. It was a gift, made even stronger through science. Even Underdog got his powers from a little white pill he kept in his ring. If Underdog could do it, why not I?

And... 

THE ROYAL HIRES ME

Mary Foster gave me a job. I’d be a host and busboy at the Royal. It was scary to me. But less scary with the new power given to me by my “power pill”. Plus at this point, I’d been at the Royal all the time for fifteen years. If anybody was familiar with the inner workings of the place, it was me. Plus I had a relationship with the actual building. We loved each other. The building watched out for me when I was young. The building was magic and I knew it. And I was magic and the building knew it. We had a symbiotic relationship. 

On my first day at work, Lari Friedman showed me the ropes. Lari was my age. Maybe a year or two older. He was a musician and a performer. We hit it off pretty well I guess. I’d always a little trouble getting close to people, I never knew why. Something I inherited from my Mom is what I thought. But Lari and I got along fine. 

It was this period of time that I met Viv Savage! He was a regular at The Royal. Viv Savage was the keyboardist for Spinal Tap! I asked him about his response to being asked if he had a message for the world in the movie “This Is Spinal Tap” where his answer was “Have a good time. All the time”. He laughed and said he didn’t think that was actually either good advice or even achievable.

And the women! So many beautiful women at the Royal. Niru, Bessie, Jamila, Paula. All stunning, all in the right age bracket.

APPARENTLY I’M QUITE CANNY

At home, Mom’s roommate Ski, was feeling a little put out by me essentially living there. That’s not what he signed up for, so I made an effort to get out of his way. Also the speed was wearing me down. So I stopped using is and looked for a place to live. 

I found a share rental with a nice woman in an apartment up on Monte Vista. But once I’d moved in I found her particular idiosyncrasies kind of grating. She was very neurotic, and she had this guy who she was sort of involved with who would call and leave like 45 minute messages on her machine. That really stuck in my craw. Also she started tagging me for bills I wasn’t responsible for. 

Eventually I moved out. 

But she kept contacting me for a phone bill I shared no responsibility for, and had no intention of paying. It just wasn’t my bill.

Months later she tracked me down at the restaurant and came in with the 45-minutes-messages guy, who got all up in my face about the phone bill. I paid him no heed, and he didn’t like it. He was very upset and told me he was a lawyer. My response?

“So what?”

Why did he think that him being a lawyer would be of the slightest concern to me? What’s he going to do? Sue me in court for a 35 dollar phone bill I can demonstrate I shared no responsibility for? There are hollow threats and then there are hollow threats. Guess which one this was.

Interestingly, 45-minute-phone-cal-lawyer guy knew Lari Friedman. When he couldn’t squeeze satisfaction from me, he went to talk to Lari. 

Later Lari told me:

“Yeah, so he came up to me to talk about you. He said “What is this guy? Stupid or something?” I told him “No. Actually he’s quite canny.” I liked that. Apparently I’m quite canny. 

Shit. I coulda told you that...

HEADING TO MULEGÉ

Eventually I start tiring of my life as a busboy/host. None of my attempts at dating seem to be bearing any fruit. Maybe I’d have more luck back in my old stomping grounds. Plus Dad’s up here and I have an opportunity to take a break and visit Mulege. But before we leave, I want to go talk to Mitch or Kara about maybe slinging videos for them again. When I’m there, I meet Jennifer Gonzales who had just started working there. We hit it off. I ask for her number. She gives it to me. I tell her I’ll give her a call when I return from Baja.

BACK TO MILL VALLEY

When I get back from Baja, I move back to Mill Valley. Jennifer Gonzales and I start dating. We date for three months. She’s 20 years old and a virgin when I meet her. By the end of our time together, I don’t think she cares much for me, but I’m fairly certain she likes sex a lot. Jen (don’t call her Jenny) has long thick curly black hair, tiny breasts and an outrageous booty. It took her a couple weeks for her to be comfortable enough with me to let me fuck her. But once that flood gate was open, she liked to instigate. At work I overhear her talking to Poppy and Chris Ritter about the size of my weiner. I get a good review. 

Then one day I stood her up to play volleyball and that was it. She smartly dumped me. After that, as usual I spent way too much energy trying to get her back. What’s wrong with me? I send her some letters and she rebuffs me. We go see Total Recall together but no love connection. But I keep trying. 

One time a group from the Droid all go to Sausalito to hang with Rich Brunton and his friend Chris who recently released “Circuitry Man”, and Jen is putting attention toward him, a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But I’m just feeling constant shivs in my abdomen.

At the end of the evening, Kara Perras is is going to give me a ride back to my place. In the car, she says, “Hey, I got this song I want to play for you.” Cool!

So she puts in the cassette, and I guess she had it at the ready. It starts playing “You’ve got a problem! Not a chance! Not a chance!” Real subtle there Kara. But she was right. I attached very strongly and felt lost when a relationship ended. I have always felt that I had some abandonment issues revolving around Mom and George leaving me at The Jewish Community Center, but come on! It wasn’t that bad, but it was disastrous for me! And while I’d had some sexual encounters, they were always hollow and unfulfilling. The only actual girlfriend I’d had was three or four years earlier with Sarah Fregulia, and I wanted that back too. It seemed like such a rare thing for me to find a woman who was willing to love me. So I held right to what I had. I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for me. Women always seemed to like me at a certain point. I knew Liz liked me. I could feel the attraction. And I felt it with other women also, but then something would change. Something always changed. And it was something in them that I could recognize, but not identify. Eventually I had to start doubting my radar that told me that women were sexually attracted to me. Which was weird, because I could see it in the way they carried themselves. At the last minute they’d balk. Or I’d smoke some pot and my ability to communicate would shut down. That happened a couple times. 

At any rate, if the past was an indication of the future, once Jen moved on, it might be years before I meet someone. It was hard to take. But I eventually got the idea.

Then one day working at the Droid with Jeff Day, I mention to him that we dated. He was surprised. 

Later Jen tells me she would appreciate if I didn’t tell our coworkers that we dated. And my response was “Wait a second. I heard you share with Poppy and Chris Ritter about the size of my dick, and you don’t want me to tell anybody we slept together?”

“Fair enough” she said. That’s why I liked her! She could see the forest for the trees. We wound up working amicably after that. 

Did I ever question my sexuality? Sure. But it was a simple equation. Is sexuality determined by what turns you on? Or is it determined by what’s available? I’ve always always always known for me, that what I’ve shared with women, in just the positive button pushing arena, not even talking about intercourse, but the subtle, nuanced, sublime moments. Those are what do it for me. Hearing Liz singing “Whoops there goes another rubber tree plant”. The way Sarah Fregulia said “Oh, Spee-incer”. Talking with Lenore in 6th period. Talking with Jackie Woge in Mr. Brambila’s class. There’s just no doubt where I fall on “the spectrum”. By the way, I find the “spectrum” device to be inadequate and misleading. I don’t see it as a spectrum so much as a hierarchy. And I’ll be damned if someone is going to try and insist that I have to be something to fulfill their vision of who it is I should be.

That said, at points when I’ve been starving thirsty for affection, I have questioned the initial equation. I’ve had to at least consider that maybe sexuality is determined by availability of mates. And it killed me. Not because of the act of sex with someone of the same gender, because David Sally and I had done a bunch of that shit when we were young. No, it was the having to adjust my self-esteem and view myself as not attractive. But then I’d get the vibe from women telling me No, I was in fact attractive to them. And my batteries would be full again. And I’d keep the faith.

I mean, I know what I want. I know what turns me on. I know where I draw power from. I don’t draw power from other men. Not like that. So I was stuck just being starving thirsty.

All of this was when I lived in that basement apartment on Sycamore, with Nick and his mom. I had a couple of hook ups when I lived there. The best was with Marie Sanner. We never had sex. She just wanted to laugh and wrestle, which was fine. Something should have happened between us at some point, seeing as how she kept winding up naked in my bed. But it didn’t. Still it was nice to have her there.

One time I’m in the basement apartment watching the teevee, and after SNL was a David Sanborn-hosted music show. It featured a woman named Syd Straw formerly of The Golden Palominos. She sang a song called Heart of Darkness.

Heart of darkness, shadow of doubt

Sometimes I think it’s good to go without

Your guilt you wear like a crown

It tears you up and wears you down 

Biding time you wait for a vision 

All the while you dream of the perfect condition. 

Your guilt you wear like a crown 

It tears you up and wears you down

I'm looking through your heart of darkness

Past the grey to the light on the other side

The truth can be hard to take

Hard to believe and hard to hide. 

The guilt you carry around tears you up.

All your fear replaced by self assurance

You seem to shine when you stand in your best light.

Syd Straw gave such a rousing performance that it was hard for me to ignore. I came away from that performance on the teevee as a new fan. Eventually I bought her album “Surprise!” and found another song of hers that knocked my socks off called “Sphinx”

My sphinx is a jinx 

She’s had too many drinks

Stood on too many brinks 

And got the shove

She speaks in riddles

Cause that's just the way she thinks 

She’s taken too much abuse 

From above

I ask her point blank 

Just too see if she blinks

Was she ever seduced 

Or in love

She tells me I'm talking 

Just like one of her shrinks 

As she touches my mouth

With her glove.

I was in love

She admits 

But we were opposites

In a battle of wits 

To the end 

In a series of seizures 

And violent fits 

That were mostly make believe 

And pretend

Isn't it hard 

When it finally hits

That your lover is less than a friend

And all your exchanges 

Are just poor counterfeits 

Too tender too precious to spend

I woke up in the dust 

Cross-eyed and concussed

My eyes tried to adjust 

To the light

Sphinx was on trial for 

Betrayal of trust

Her trial had lasted all night

I could not remember 

What we discussed

My mind wasn't functioning right 

But I knew the judge was a jerk

And the jury was

Just 12 men in search of a fight

They sentenced my sphinx

To unsatiated lust 

Some say was sentence was light

My sphinx is a damn jinx

For whatever reason, that song really spoke to me.

PETE WILSON, THE NEWS ANCHOR

Working at the Droid, one of our regular customers is Bay Area news anchor Pete Wilson. He seems like a cool, nice guy, but all he ever rents is porno. Like *a lot* of porno. This is back when VHS porno boxes were these over-sized glossy greasy looking things in hot pink or electric blue with names like “The Sperminator” or “Bodacious Tatas”, names like that. He’d never bother to rent any sort of narrative non-porno movie. Just 3 or 4 pornos every couple of days. We behind the counter noticed it, noted it and chuckled about it after he left, because of course we did. He was a famous local symbol of normalcy and rectitude, and he was renting an awful lot of porno on the regular. Enough that we had to wonder if maybe he was doing it for research or something. But even then, that’s an awful lot of research, ya know?

IT’S EARTHQUAKE WEATHER

I’m hanging out with Louis at the 10-C Club before I have to go to work. It’s a hot, dry October day. While we’re coming back from the Sev, Louis gets this look on his face like something bothers him. Taking in the day he quietly proclaims “It’s earthquake weather.”

The Loma Prieta earthquake happens later that day. This seems to have the effect of making Louis think he can predict earthquakes. 

To my knowledge, Louis has never accurately predicted an earthquake a second time.

JUST AN EXCITABLE BOY

I’d been partying with Mike Healy, Kyle Hurst and Kyle’s girlfriend Mary. By partying I mean we’d been drinking and smoking pot all afternoon into the evening until now. Later in the evening we’d scored some coke too. Coke makes me paranoid very easily. Much more so than speed. So I was already primed for paranoia as we were sitting around the table in the back of Mama’s in Mill Valley, when Mike, Kyle and Mary started singing “Excitable Boy” at me, real loud, all three intently staring at me, Mike with his wide Cheshire Cat grin:

Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best

Excitable boy, they all said

And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest

Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

He took in the four A.M show at the Clark

Excitable boy, they all said

And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark

Excitable boy, they all said

Well, he's just an excitable boy

He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom

Excitable boy, they all said

And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home

Excitable boy, they all said

Well he's just an excitable boy

After ten long years they let him out of the home

Excitable boy, they all said

And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones

Excitable boy, they all said

Well he's just an excitable boy

- Warren Zevon

The first time I heard that song was a bit of a strange experience, I’d have to say for everybody involved, I’m pretty sure. I was probably 23 or 24. We were all just sitting around Mama’s in Mill Valley, after hours, just hanging out and drinking. All of a sudden, everyone starts singing this song (which I’d never heard). I swear they were all staring at me and singing the song, at me, like it was some sick joke about how they could all see exactly how fucked up I was. 

“Stop!” I screamed. I freaked out. I certainly got everybody’s attention, as I broke down, ranting and crying about how ‘nobody understands me’. I’m pretty sure we’d all been doing coke all night long, which is a drug that’ll make you paranoid. But everyone had been doing the coke, and I was the only one having a spaz over a song. So it was pretty bad. After I’d quieted down a bit, they explained that they were just singing a song and it had nothing to do with me, at which point it dawned on me that that was exactly what had just happened and then I got very embarrassed. Mike told me I needed to relax, and he was right. I did. But the only way I knew how to relax was with Beer, and pot. Then later cocaine. And later still, speed. So I was taking cocaine and speed to relax. It wasn’t working. THE LAST TIME I SAW RONA

SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BOHOS 

One day I’m hanging out with the Bohos (Mark II - the new crew) down at Boyle Park, smoking pot, drinking beer, as we are wont to do. It’s a beautiful sunny relaxing day in the shade, when one of my compatriots throws out “I’m glad there are no black people in Mill Valley. They make the town look dirty.”

That was it for me and Mill Valley. Beyond the pale. Time for me to get the fuck out of here. Oakland beckons.

So I quit Video Droid again and get a job at the Royal. Again. 

I go see “Thelma & Louise” at the Piedmont Theater. It reminds me *so* much of Mom and Mary Foster. The movie is almost an analysis of the loving long term friendship between my mom and Mary. I think it was Mary that game Mom “Sorry!” The thing is, when she was In her thirties and forties my Mom had a very strong Susan Sarandon/Ann-Margret thing going on, and she was a waitress. The movie just captured their vibe. Just one of those things that make you go “Hmm..”

THE BOZO DEVICE

I had a dream once that I had invincible magical armor, but it was broken, so it flickered on and off. This armor made me impervious to all damage, but when it was on, I looked like a circus clown. This magic armor was appropriately called my Bozo Device. In the dream I got a message to meet my friends Mike and Dave at the bottom of Monte Vista St, which was at the base of a hill that I walked up nearly every day as a kid. The meeting spot was a block away across the Piedmont Grocery parking lot. I’m trying to cross the parking lot, but my legs aren’t working so it’s frustrating. Then I notice I’m being followed by my childhood dog, Rover, who was like, born old. Old black lab/mutt. She’s a harbinger of doom. When I finally get to the  meeting place, Mike and Dave have already left. We were supposed to go on this adventure to save this race of sweet cure little doll people who live in this ginormous underground city, and are all being eaten by basically Evil Incarnate from “Time Bandits” but it’s Robin Williams. But I’m too late, they’ve left without me. But there’s a note! It’s from Mike! It says “check your Bozo Device”, so I do. And it’s shorting out, it keeps flickering on and off. So if I’m going to go on this mission, I’m going to have to do it alone, and without the aid of my Bozo Device!

Ain’t dreams grand? I love it when my subconscious gives me “EZ2 Interpret” dreams. “Dream Analysis 4 Dummies!”

I REMEMBER MAMACITAS 

Was I starved for affection, sex and love when me and Rona first met? Abso-fucking-lutely I was. Let’s see. I met Rona in February of ‘92 I believe. I was 24. I think the last woman I had sex with was Eva Stallone. Eva left a note for me my co-worker at the Royal, Kristen, that she wanted to meet me. Kristen acted all surprised, and complemented Eva on her taste in shoes to me. Kristen was right. They were cool. They were those cool muted color Converse-like sneakers. “Good going!” was Kristen’s basic message. Although it was a little condescending. 

I’d been interested in many women who frequented the restaurant, but I could never make anything happen and I felt like a dud. They were all really nice, like exceedingly nice, and friendly. 

There was Lily Khadjavi who was gorgeous and had beautiful olive skin and a great chin. She brought me art supplies. Then she invited me over to her house to meet her friends, and it at once became clear to me that she was a lesbian, and all her male friends were gay and she was trying to set me up, which is cool. It was a very nice gesture, but not my thing. But I totally got along with Lily. Aside from presumptions about my sexuality, we meshed well. Turns out I get along very well with dykes. This should come as no surprise. The much maligned prop comic Gallagher once said “Maybe I’m a woman in a man’s body and I just don’t know it because she’s a lesbian.” That thought crossed my mind frequently to this day. I mean, why not?

There was Julie, who was into Camper Van Beethoven. She was slim and tall with sun bleached sandy blond hair and a kind of freckly complexion. We hung out a bit, but it turned out she was interested in my friend and coworker, Geoff. So I set them up together and they started dating. They seemed great together. It would be cool if they were still together.

There was Dazey, who kinda had a Carol Burnett thing going. She was lovely and smart and seemed unassuming, but who can really tell? We went out once. We went to the Holy City Zoo in SF for stand-up open mic, where I planned to go up on stage. But I had next to no material. I had a “Hard Rock Cafe: Beirut” shirt that I’d made up. I’d painted it all out, and then burned a bunch of holes in it. Plus I was tweaking on crank, nervous about Dazey and didn’t really want to get on stage anyhow. Anyhow, the evening ended with a kiss on the cheek and that was fine. 

There were Deanne and Dierdre, the twins that worked at the Royal. I almost moved in with Dierdre, and was kinda sorta interested in Deanne. (Or was it the other way around?) But not that much. I wanted a clear signal. I wanted to be really into someone and have them equally into me. I wanted unstable nitroglycerin driven over a bumpy mountain road.

There was Bessie, a fellow espresso drink-maker slash money-taker like me, who seemed super cool and smart and interesting both inside and outside, but she was a lesbian! I was sensing a pattern.

There was Jamuna. Jamuna, who is drop dead gorgeous in an ice blond kinda way. She looks like she’d be a lot of fun. But Lari is all over that. I don’t see an angle. Also if anything were to happen between me and Jamuna, I think it would fuck with Lari’s brain. As it is, she comes in all the time and we manage to build something that was more than just acquaintances but not quite friends. How close can you get to somebody taking their order?

There was the girl who looked like Greta Scacchi who was reading Bukowski. She was smokin’, and I managed to chat her up whenever she came in. Kristen said she was really impressed that I shot so high, which again, was kinda back-handed. Plus as soon as Kristen said that, I lost my nerve. 

Also, I realize looking back, if it’s gonna take a bunch of nerve on my part to make a tryst happen, I’m gonna fuck it up. I’m gonna overplay my hand. Or underplay my hand. Or completely miscalculate everything in the worst most embarrassing way imaginable. Or dip my tie in the soup. History has shown if I can fuck it up, I will. 

Whenever it’s happened for me it felt effortless. So it’s got to feel effortless. It’s the same thing as lying. As soon as I have to pretend to be something I’m not, it’s a lost cause. I stumble and sputter and lose my place and get embarrassed and it’s a disaster. I eventually figured that out. Everything good I’ve ever gotten came to me. I didn’t have to hunt it down.

There was this crazy homeless chick. But when I say crazy and homeless, I mean crazy and homeless in the *good* way. This girl was a trip. She looked like a Dr. Seuss character. She wore a two-foot long striped knit cap. We watched some movies and she spent the night, but nah.

There was Anna’s friend La. La was fukin cool. Hardcore punk. Black roadleathers, bleach blond, cute as a button. She was totally in to me. She kept trying to get Anna to set us up. But she was only fifteen. But I was only like, twenty-two or something at the time, plus both those girls seemed firmly in charge of their own destiny. Somehow I wound up drinking with them one night. La and I made out a little, but it didn’t feel right, so I stopped it, and that was that. 

There was a group of girls that would come down from Oakland Tech, which was right up the street, at lunch or maybe as we were closing, to flirt with me and Lari. That was nice. 

KIM ROBERTSON 

Kim was from Texas. Her mom was Japanese and her dad was Caucasian. She was acerbic and funny and had a great sense of style and she liked weird horror movies and Tim Burton and she drew and made art. And she did drugs! Tom Waits says in a song “Your eyes are enough to blind me. It’s like lookin’ at the sun.” It was like that. As soon as I laid eyes on her walking into the Royal I was like, “Yah. That’s what I want. I want some of that.” Someone called her a doomer chick, and that seemed to fit. She was dark and funky, but she was so not goth. She had what I wanted and it was a girl who wore granny glasses and old-fashioned gas station attendant shirts that said “Gus” in script on the pocket. Not in my favor was that in a lot of ways we clashed. For example, she was hella cool and I was a fuckin’ idiot. I had long hair and wore loud Hawaiian shirts and shit like that. I was kinda clownish. Plus she had an on again off again with this more-rugged-than-I dude who seemed like a nice guy.

One day she’s working the reg, and I’m over by the tea section marrying ketchups, just kinda taking her in, trying to not be to conspicuous about it, and I hear a whisper in my ear:

“Ain’t never gonna happen.”

What the fuck! I’m jolted. Who’s behind me?

It’s the dishwasher Matt Cox. A guy who I think others generally kind of underestimate cause he’s got a kind of scuzzy exterior/vibe, but i kinda like the guy. He’s smart. And tuned in.

So I look at him. He’s got a bus tub full of dirty dishes sloshing around.

“You’re not her type”, Matt says with a smirk on his face. Then he grins his evil grin and sloshes off singing a song to himself.

“I’m too sexy for this job, to sexy for this job, so sexy it hurr-urts.” He wasn’t. To sexy for that job, I mean. He was appropriately sexy to be dish doggin at the Royal. Which is to say not at all. Watching him saunter away, I think to myself:

“Well... Never say never, brother.”

I asked Kim if she wanted to go see Jurassic Park and she declined. I fukin hate that shit. 

By now Mom’s living in a trailer park in Saugus and I’ve moved in with the speed freak Aleister Crowley/Anton LaVey worshipping OTO devotees. And it’s awesome at first. I love speed and they always have a lot of it. Good ephedrine-based lemondrop biker crank. But as everyone knows, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. But before we get there I make tons of 

headway on my Roy G Biv comic, plus a bunch of other stuff I’m proud of and all too happy to show. They turn me on to Ren & Stimpy, so that was cool. But I start getting really cranky. I’m lonely and alone, I never sleep or eat. I got no romance on the horizon. 

Then the lead speed-freak, the Guy in the Top Hat, tells me about how he got his girlfriend to huff Aquanet and she died, and he said he felt kinda responsible. That fuckin’ pissed me off. I’m like “you *kinda* feel responsible? Really?!” And later he tells me about how his drawer at work was short a hundred bucks and how his boss suspected him, but he said it in such a way that I felt he was trying to imply he *did* steal it? And they were having their kinky OTO sex parties and not inviting me. So I was jacking off to Cherry Poptart comic books, while they were all off getting laid. That kinda bugged me too.  

But the chick from Bitch Craft was very attractive to me in a way that made me think impure thoughts. I actually like all four of those people and I certainly hope they’re doing well. Especially the chick from Bitchcract. Yum.

And then Ray the Boho called me to hang out and we went to see “Wayne’s World” (Party time! Excellent!) at the movies. And there’s a really drunk guy who reminded me of me, enough so that I noticed anyway. Wayne and Garth try and sober him up, but he’s blackout drunk. I can sympathize. After the movie Ray, who’s always been a total mensch with me, cryptically tells me “Look man, it’s about time you faced it.” I wasn’t sure exactly what he was referring to. I figure it was either that I was drinking too much, because of the guy who looked like me in “Wayne’s World” (and I was drinking too much) or that I was gay, because I always kind of felt that he thought I might be gay. At any rate, in the next couple days I met Rona so who cares.

Then one day all five of us roommates that shared the apartment, were on the roof of the Frederick Arms getting some sun, so we were all in various stages of undress. I was in my underwear. Finally all my roommates have to split, so they go and I’m alone on the roof, which is fine. I still wanted to get more sun. But when I went down, they’d fucking locked me out of the apartment! and I was in my underwear.! Standing in my tighty whiteys in the hallway! It was perfect. I’d come to find the dude in the top hat, who I’d initially liked, turn out to be frustratingly flaky. The roof lock out was kind of like final straw. It really wasn’t that big of a deal but it seemed like a dramatic exchange at the time.

I kicked in the front door. It wasn’t difficult. Just, “Boof!” One swift kick. Thin door, popped it right off the hinges. When the came home, they were pissed at me, I was pissed at them. Apparently the back door was unlocked. Nobody told me about that. Tempers flared. In hindsight, it’s a door. BFD. Anyhow all parties decided I should move. So back then you used newspapers to find share rentals. So I started looking. I probably had 10 pages of my Roy G Biv comic inked and basically done, so I headed down to CalArts, an art store in Downtown Oakland to get some proofs made up of those 10 pages. That’s where I met Rona. 

RONA FERNANDEZ 

Rona was working at the art store I went to for supplies. When I first met her she was wearing what you’d describe as either a white shirt with thin black stripes or a black shirt with thick white stripes.like a French prisoner kind of. She was Asian, I figured probably Filipina. She liked my work and we hit it off. So I asked her out. 

We went to the Grand Lake Theater, a big classic art-deco marquee theater in Oakland right next to the lake, and we saw “Memoirs of An Invisible Man” with Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah. But first we went to a little coffee shop before the movie to talk. We did what you did in the 90s in such a situation: We read SF Weekly. We both went right to Pope Artaud. He’s the best astrologer there is. It’s this guy named Rob Brezsny. And he’s clever and funny and interesting, but mainly he’s a good writer. But you know, he’s still an astrologer, so you take it all with a grain of salt. Rona’s reading it. “What’s your sign?” she asks. I tell her I’m a Taurus. She says “Taurus. You’re an idiogical juggernaut kicking in doors that get in your way.”

What?!

“You’re an idiogical juggernaut kicking down doors that get in your way.”

“That’s really weird.”

“Why?”

“My roommates locked me out of my house in my underwear and I had to kick the door I. To get back in.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. Yesterday. I guess I take back what I said about astrologers”

“Well, Rob Brezsny is really good.”

“Yeah, but there’s really good and there’s *really good*, right?”

“Maybe he’s psychic.”

“Nah. I’m just a lightning rod for weird shit to happen.”

“That sounds cool.”

I just want to say this now. At this point I’d only seen her once before, so sitting in this coffee shop with her, I was taking in a lot of information about her. You know, I was sizing her up. I don’t have x-ray vision or anything, I was calculating whether or not her body was going to be as great as I was predicting it would be. It appeared to me that she most likely had a perfect body under those clothes.

The next day I called her from the pay phone at the Royal. She wasn’t there but she said hi to me on her message:

“Hi. You’ve reached Rona Fernandez. I’m not here right now. Leave a message. And if this is Spencer, hi! Call me tonight!”

So I did. We wound up at her place. 

And so far it looked like my premonition about Rona’a body was following the path I’d predicted. We were laying on her bed talking, I know she’s sizing me up too. But I think the sizing had been done. She decided she was going to let me fuck her the moment we met, I was pretty sure. Then she gives me “the look”. I would pretty quickly become familiar with “the look”, but this was the first time and it’s like the room suddenly depressurized.

The next thing I know my hand is now lightly touching her, running my fingers up her neck, looking kind of quizzically at her like she has the most beautiful mote in the universe in her eye. I just need to get a closer look to make sure. Next I’m gently biting her lip.Seems to me she’s doing the same thing. Soon there is like no more than a single molecule separating us. I can smell at least three scents emitting from her at this range. Shampoo of some sort, her body and sex. Plus nag champa burning is in the room. I want to touch the warmth and wiggle of her body with my hands, so I put hands on the sides of her torso right above her hips. My hands already know the contours of her body before I even touch her, like some ancient genetic memory, the soft warm fuzz all over her body greeting my hands. She’s wearing a bra and I have her shirt open, but almost as soon as my hands are under her bra I can feel her nipples lightly pressing against my palms. I begin to rev up, but she stops it right there. 

In between our second and third date I’d moved into this rundown Victorian in Berkeley a couple blocks from the Ashby BART Station. The house was owned by this freaky hoarder lady named Adele, where she lived with her husband, her boyfriend and their 3 year old son. He husband was this guy named David, who was shell shocked or something. Every day he was out on the front porch trying to repair the front steps, which were literally disintegration from dry rot, with Elmer’s glue. They lived in the basement packed in tight with hoarder detritus. 

Upstairs in the real house part of the house, I met my new roommates, Stephen and Rose. Stephen was a student at UC Berkeley and Rose lived with her boyfriend Mango. Rose and Mango. 

Stephen and Rose both took the actual bedrooms, and I took the living room, which being in a Victorian, it’s got like a 15 foot ceiling and a big piece of plywood to separate the room and give me some privacy. I have my Alien Gladiator helmet I made, and a mannequin. I think if you’re a 24 year old artist living in Berkeley you may actually be legally required to own a mannequin. I’d have to look it up to be sure. Also I had a newspaper clipping that said “CHILD’S HITLER COSTUME CAUSES FUROR.”  I couldn’t pass it up.

The place kind of had a Addam’s Family vibe. turn the main big front room and the attached foyer into my room. My futon right in the front window. It was in to this new environment that I brought Rona. 

It all happened pretty quickly, so I’ll just get to the good part.

She offered her honor and I honored her offer. You can guess the rest.

As soon as she’s let me, I peeled off her clothes. Her skin was the color of a perfect cup of coffee in bed. Her breasts though were a shade lighter. Conversely, her nipples were two shades darker than her breasts. I wanted to taste all of her at once. I wanted to simultaneously lay my lips on every square centimeter of her body. Sadly I only had one the one pair, so I figured it could take a while. I hoped she wouldn’t mind.

She seemed like a patient sort. 

Her nipples were just slightly puffy, so I wanted to test something out, you know, for science. What I did was try and make my tongue as pointy as I could, and I lightly poked her slightly puffy right nipple right in center, just barely touching. And then I started making tiny circles with my tongue. Just a little. And my prediction proved correct. Her nipple instantly puckered up and pointed out, looking like the little pink eraser you see on the end of a pencil. Then doing my due diligence, as my mouth paid special attention to that right nipple, I slid my hand up her front to her chest to see if her left nipple had followed suit. It had. I approved. Like I said, I think what she really wanted was for me to bend her over and fuck her right there in the art store three days ago. In the back aisle next to the wall of colored markers, while all the customers watch her getting fucked but pretend they weren’t.

In pretty short order, like two and a half minutes, I’m pulling her panties off. And in no time at all, like fifteen seconds, I’m running my tongue up and down the slit of her pussy, feeling my way around her bush a little. My tongue darting in and out whenever it finds something slippery and metallic tasting. I’m also paying strict attention to that area where her inner thigh meets her pussy lips, either side will do. I find these curves to be particularly aesthetic. I like to poke around with my tongue  checking the bounce and resistance of the flesh of her vulva. With my arms around the around her thighs, I eat her out using every trick I could think of or make up, while my freely exploring hands run over her Venus mound, through her jet black pubic hair (there’s something about a jet black triangle, man) and my fingers spread her pussy open for a better angle on which to approach her clit. She’s writhing and bucking under me and I fucking love it. I’m pretty sure Rona and I are on the exact same page at this moment, in that we both really want to know what my cock feels like sliding in and out of her. 

There’s just  a tiny bit of resistance. That’s because I’m bit thicker than the the hole where I want to go. I just push though that resistance. She stretched right around me. Pussies are designed to stretch, so I just slide right in like Moses parting the Red Sea. 

I study her face, watching and logging how her expressions change every time I slam into her. With every impact, she jumps a little, like she’s getting an electric shock. As he begin working faster in rhythm, she closes her eyes and kind of opens her mouth a little and tilts her head back, breathing quickly and shallowly with that syncopated rhythm going faster and faster. I tell her to flip over onto her knees and to raise her ass, which she did eagerly. I looked down at the two round curves of her ass as her pussy demanded to be penetrated. And who am I to argue? I watch my cock slide deep into her and slam against her ass, compressing and rebounding with every thrust up to the hilt. She bounces back round and succulent as I quickly retreat and slam her again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

We’re facing each other with intense concentration as we near our destination, intently looking for answers to the riddles of the universe in each other’s eyes. It almost feels like we’re trying to Vulcan mind meld or something, and I kid you not, we both come at exactly the same time. 

Then we rest. She’s glistening. 

We share a profound and peaceful sleep. Tomorrow is a new day. 

I hope she lets me fuck her again tomorrow.

If this were a movie, there’d be a fuck montage now. A fuck-tage, if you will. I was Sir Edmund Hillary, and she had the twin peaks of Kilimanjaro. I explored ever peak and valley, nook and cranny. 

The next night the phone rang as we were taxiing for lift off, and she just leaned over the desk and answered it, while I slid her panties down over her ass, and then fucked her from behind while she was trying to talk to her girlfriend on the phone. 

We seemed to have a sexual chemistry that was bonkers dating all the way back to day one. All the way through everything we eventually went through together.

That night was the start of a trend. She fit me like a glove. . I wanted to be so deep inside of Rona in those early days that she had to ask me to stop holding the top of her head for traction.

“Ooh. Sorry bout that’l

YESSSSS!

All of a sudden I had a girlfriend. Months went by and she stuck around and she was magnetic. She says I remind me of Candide, by Voltaire. I’m familiar with the name “Candide” and I’m *pretty sure* Voltaire is a French philosopher from the 1700s, but that’s all could tell you. She tells me that Candide is the ultimate optimist. That he gets hit with all these challenges and he never loses his rosey outlook. Cool. She buys me a copy and tells me to read it. I do. It’s kind of a bummer. This guys just keeps getting hit with one shitty thing after another, over the course of his entire life. Bad shit in his village, bad shit at sea, bad shit as he’s an old man covered in boils and living in the gutter. I don’t remember. I’ve stricken it. That’s probably completely wrong. I didn’t get the “eternal optimist” message. The message I got is more like “endure. Life isn’t what you expect it to be.” I think that’s more what I got from it. I’m glad I read it. 

We saw “Deep Cover” with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum. Charles Martin Smith intently telling deep deep undercover cop Laurence Fishburn, “Whatever you do, you *do not* give up your cover!” 

We saw “Zebrahead” about a white guy in high school who dates a black girl and it kinda goes all “Romeo & Juliet”. 

And then “The Fisher King” where Jeff Bridges plays an ex-shock jock who has a complicated relationship with a crazy street person who thinks he’s seeking the holy grail, played by Robin Williams. During a dramatic moment I lean over and tell Rona I love her. She got an “Oh shit” look on her face, and I felt I made a tactical decision. But everything seemed fine afterwards.

Rona got me to change from tighty-whiteys to boxers. And I never looked back.

My birthday rolled around and Rona was still  there. 

But while my 24th birthday was this total blowout where everyone from work was there and Commander Casual & The Cool Cat Crusaders played in my mom’s front yard, like many rager before, only Morte, Kristen and Bessie came from The Royal and only Louis came from Mama’s. And me proudly encoupled with Rona.

A couple of nights later, we’re lying in bed user the front window of that decrepit Victorian. I don’t remember what she said to prompt it, I think it was something from a biology class she was taking at Laney, anyway she’s taking about hormones. And I ask her if she knows how to make a hormone. And she says no. And I say “Like this” and I start tickling her. 

Well, she freaks the fuck out. She thought I was calling her a whore, and she says it’s over and gets up and leaves. And that was it. She was gone. It was quiet. “Fuuuuck!” I guess it was fun while it lasted.

“If you find a one in a million girl don’t let her get away, because the next one in a million girl is a million girls away...” I can hear Liz Phair saying in my head.

I’m down at the Royal again, sitting in the back room working on one of my “passion projects”. I want to do a stage version of “Franny & Zooey” by JD Salinger, starring me as Zooey, Elena Staab as Franny and my mom as as their mom, Bessie. Mom and I had read the scene between Zooey and Bessie aloud a bunch of times and it really worked, but I needed to transcribe it first. And it’s a lot of dialog. And this is pre-computers so I’m doing it all by hand. I was never going to be able to get it made in a million gazillion years but for me it was more about the process. It’s such a great piece. And in my mind it worked perfectly. So I’m working on it, and a waitress I work with comes up to me and asks me what I’m doing, I tell her about it. She says:

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Are you gay?”

“Uh. No.... Why do you ask?”

“Someone I know was wondering.”

“Really? Man or woman?”

“Woman”

“Cool.”

Never heard another word from Bev on the topic again. But she did invite me to go up to that little beach at Lake Temescal on Broadway Terrace, with her two friends Sarah and Jerome. Do I want to go? Sure! Sounds fun!

It’s a beautiful day at Lake Temescal. A lot of people for such a small beach. I didn’t feel like Bev was into me, so I felt free to wander around the beach, and I run into Rona who is there with two friends. Next thing I know Rona and I are on the other side of the lake, just the two of us, just chillin. 

Then we were up at my place crashing into each other like the crashing rocks of Greek mythology. We’re just together again. No words were spoken about it. 

The next day at work, Sarah comes in like her clique always does, but she reads me the riot act. “You just don’t disappear like that without telling anybody!”

“Yeah, Jeez. I’m sorry. My head was somewhere else.” It was selfish of me, but what did I care? I had Rona back. And I was making friends with my new roommate Stephen. Friends and lovers, man. What could be better. 

Valentine’s Day is upon us, and Rona and I are together! We go to celebrate at this Italian joint in Alameda near her Mom and Stepdad. The place is quite busy. Not a big surprise considering it’s Valentine’s Day, but we eventually get seated. The owner is a big, fat, old Italian guy who talks with his hands a lot. It takes us forever to get water, but it’s hella busy. But then I notice people who came in after us holding menus, which we don’t have yet. Then they’re ordering. We still don’t even have menus. Now they’re getting their food. Us? Still no menus. I talk to the waitress. She’s rude to me and Rona. She’s hella busy, but she’s still rude. So I talk to the owner, big loud Italian guy. He’s disrespectful to both me and Rona. This is getting ugly. We step outside. I’m pushing this guys buttons, pretty secure in my sense that there’s no way in hell this guy is raise a fist to me. He’s an owner. He knows better. Which just gives me more entitlement to needle him. I know he wants to clock me. After a particularly intense exchange, I guess it looked like maybe I was about to be forced to eat my words, Rona jumps I’m between us and starts yelling “You leave him alone!” I like that. God I love her. She’s exactly what I want. True love never dies.

One day at the house, my roommate Stephen tells me, “Hey! So Rona offered me a massage. And we talked about it, and I just want to let you know we decided it was better if we didn’t do anything. We good?”

Brrrrrriiiing! Brrrrrriiiing!

“Hello!”

“BRRRNNNNGGGGAA!” (Loud ‘survey says’ noise from Family Fued) “You lose! Bye!”

I hung up on her and broke up with her this time. I’m sad to say I didn’t find Stephen’s attempt to be supportive to be comforting in the slightest. I could not envisions a scenario where the two of them didn’t fuck. It didn’t add up. No fucking way. So we were done. Over. Finito.

Unfortunately now I don’t have a girlfriend. It was difficult to find anybody. I was such a freak. Kris Kammler kept talking me I needed to read “Geek Love”.

I started hanging out with Morte more. Doing speed more. Again. But then not soon after that I found myself hanging out not only with Morte, but with Kim too, out by the water on the rocks in Emeryville. Next thing I know we’re snorting crank in Morte’s garage. Ahh, the burn of it! That gave me a positive feeling about the possibilities. Of course that’s what crank is supposed to do. So that seems like maybe with some work it might could possibly be viable. In the interim I go out with Rebecca Wong. So now it’s dykes and Asian girls seem to be my prime likey-likey zone. Rebecca works at Fenton’s and is into kendo. We have bad sex. My fault. I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it. The next morning Rebecca is talking to me, Rose and Mango about her kendo, which is Japanese sword fighting. (basically I think) after she leaves Mango says he could take that sword from her in about two seconds. 

Around that time Mom had moved back to Oakland, and was living at Val’s old house. Jay was living with her. And I was there working on his Amiga computer, finishing up the horror screenplay I started when I was seventeen. And I liked the progress I was making. It was good. But like “Franny & Zooey”, I never really had any expectation of getting it made. I was too far away and too disconnected from Hollywood. I just finished it because I could play the movie in my brain. And who knows? Art for art’s sake. 

Then at work, I start to notice that after our closing shift Kimo had started going to the bar with Mary Foster and Sherry Jean. Lots of good dive bars around that area. One night I tagged along to this little red lamé place across the street and down a bit from the Royal. Seeing as how I’ve known Mary and Sherry Jean since I was a little kid, it was easy. They’re like my mom two closest friends. Things were clicking. I’m having drinks with the three of them at a red lamé dive bar in Oakland. It was all really normal actually. I tell her about the screenplay I’ve been working on and how I’d like somebody to read it and tell me if it sucks or not. Maybe she’d be interested in looking at it?  I think it’s a pretty quirky horror flick and I’d like her opinion. She looked like she liked horror movies. She’d be happy to, so I give it to her. Mary and Sherry Jean were ready to go so I ask her if she needs a ride. And she does. 

So I got to see her place. It was super-cute just like her. It was kind of blue-green with lots of Formica and Chrome with red bits. It totally suited her. Also she had a big dental chair in the middle of the room. Lots of cool knick knacks. A bunch of “Nightmare Before Christmas” figurines. LaVern Baker albums. She played The Latin Playboys for me which was cool because I was a David Hidalgo fan. She’s got a dartboard. A really sold, old school heavy cork and wire dartboard. Nice.

Kim calls and asks for my help. Her best friend and a guy who we both work with had had a baby. He was a punk Oakland radical who had been working with a needle exchange program. The both of them got hooked on dope. She asked me if who could go with me to their house and get the baby away from them before something horrible happens. Of course. Glad to help. Do I have any idea where we could bring the baby? Well, my mom just moved back, and she’s living at Val’s house. I bet she’d be happy to help. So we did that.

 

LIFE IS HARD. THEN YOU DIE

Pretty quickly I fall into a funk. I’d stopped doing speed for health reasons. I switched to coke. I didn’t want to be where I was anymore. So I moved in to Ray’s house. It was a good change of scenery for me. But really I wanted Rona back.

So I figure I got to do something dramatic. Something that will get Rona’s attention. I got it. The perfect idea.  gonna cut my fucking hair. I’m gonna go from 70s Mick Jagger to 80s David Bowie. That’ll catch her by surprise. No way she’ll be expecting that. And even better, I’m gonna see if Kim will cut it for me. Seemed like a brilliant idea to me. And it worked. I got Rona back in my life and I vibed with Kim

 too. Rona was all into Morrissey and metrosexuals and gay culture, and I was a thin, good looking white guy who apparently everybody presumed was gay. And now I had the haircut to match. This might actually work. 

So I called Rona from my new place, and she was glad to hear from me. We made arrangements to have lunch. We’d meet at Ratto’s deli in downtown Oakland. And yes, the haircut surprised her. She touched it of course. We ate lunch, it was nice. We had a good time. She said:

“You know, I’m not going to sleep with you” she said, staring into my eyes so deeply I felt she could see the back of my head.

Twenty minutes later I was ripping her clothes off and throwing her down on the bed. Just like that, we’re back together again. She moves into a new apartment. We go to San Francisco for the day. We head to the Museum of Modern Art. As we’re walking there I start walking like Quasimodo. She’s laughing, telling me to stop. I tell her “You only love me because I’m a hunchback”. This homeless dude hears me say that, turns around and sees the two of us with me walking like Quasimodo, and breaks out laughing. I like a good audience. This emboldens me. Then we head to Aardvark’s Ark to check out vintage clothing. I get a vintage black and yellow pinstripes sharkskin jacket. It totally fuckin’ rocks. With rhe crazy long head of hair I’m getting, I kinda look like a rockstar. 

We get invited to a Halloween party. I wear the jacket. Also I color my hair black and slick it back. I put on a goatee, and put a big fake collodion scar across my face. Basically trying to look like a Robert DeNiro-type that you don’t want to fuck with. And to top it off. Big goofy Mickey Mouse gloves. Anytime anybody asks me who I’m supposed to be, o say in the most threatening voice I can muster “Mickey Mouse”.

Bill Clinton beats George Bush and Ross Perot and is elected president. 

I get word that Dad is drinking himself to death in Cabo, and tell Rona I’m going to see if I can help my Dad and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I won’t be down there forever but I can’t give her a specific return date. I fly down to try and save my dad. But instead of me pulling him up, he pulls me down. It was more booze than I’ve even drunk in my life. And that’s saying something. 

Celyne’s husband, Hippie Rick, is this big burly kind of intense looking hairy guy. He’s one of those guys with so much body hair that he has to arbitrarily decide where to stop shaving, because if he wanted to, he could just keep on going. Total “hair sweater”. He’s also got long frizzy hair, generally he’s wearing a  pink baseball cap, white T-shirt, shorts and sandals. He’s really kind of this super goofy bear-persona with a valley guy accent that’s so strong rhat it’s hard to avoid. He’s a boat painter by trade, and a neon sign designer for the hell of it. Dad told me about the time Rick got a bunch of cocaine and a and a Sawzall and decided to put a sunroof in his 1958 Dodge pickup.

“Yeah. Not the best idea I ever had”, says Rick. “It turned out to be a wind and rain roof too”.

One day the whole lot of us decide to take a stroll through Cabo to go get some ice cream. It’s November in Cabo, though. When it’s not raining torrentially it’s muggy 100 degree weather. So we’re suffering just doing a simple thing like walking down the street. Rick hits us with some insight:

“I’m so glad it doesn’t snow in Cabo.”

Yeah. We all nod in agreement, not really listening.

“You know what a pain in the ass it would be to shovel snow in this heat?”

Rick eventually gets really fucking sick of me telling everybody about that line.

Things are about to begin to spiral.

One particular crazy night had me and Celyne at the Giggling Marlin playing chicken shit Lotería, where the bar has this game painted on the floor, and rhe chicken walks around and regardless of where he shits, you get really fuckin’ drunk. So I wound up making out with Celyne on the beach, who I was pretty sure was still romantically entangled with my Dad. And married to Hippie Rick. That was fun. Celyne was hot. Especially in 1992. She was only like 8 years older that me, which would have made her thirty-three. But as big of a fat-mouth I am normally, I’m even bigger when I’m drunk, and being the idiot I am, I mentioned something to Dad about it. That fucked everything up. Dad acted like he got a big laugh out of it, and he kind of made fun of Celyne. And she fucking hated me for it. Hippie Rick threw a punch at me, but I dodged it. I finally split in December with everybody more drunk than when I got there, especially Dad.  

GRANDMA ONCE TOLD ME...

“I understand why you turned out the way you did, but I have no idea what happened to your father.” I had to presume a lot about that statement. And I’m sure I was completely off base with a lot of my presumptions. I was still completely in the dark and was going to remain in the dark for the next 6 or 7 years at that point...

And my take is that what happened to Dad was that he became vainglorious with power.

HEEERE’S MICKEY!

It wasn’t a total bust. I’d been working in an impression of Mickey Mouse doing a scene from “The Shining”, and that seemed to go over pretty well. “If you hear me in here, and you hear me typing”, tap tap tap “Or whether you DON’T hear me typing, whatever the FUCK you hear when I’m in here, that mean I’m BUSY and I don’t want to be DISTURBED!” all in that familiar high pitched Mickey Mouse voice. I was glad I got to present that. But it was time to go home. Hope Rona was there. Hope Mary will give me my job back.

I pulled into Berkeley on Amtrak. Rona picked me up. I was home. I remember getting Christmas blues. Rona wanted to break up. We went to a Christmas party. I got a quarter gram of cocaine and talked Rona out of going. She said I got intense and she liked it. I didn’t tell her about the cocaine. 

Then we went to a New Year’s Eve party at the same friend’s house. He friend had set up a place for us to sleep, so we dropped acid and fucked all night.

She started at UC Berkeley in January. Since the last time I’d seen her, she’d finished at Laney and fast tracked to the UC system. I was really happy for her, so was going places. We were happy for a while, but marital bliss didn’t last. She moved into one of the big rooming halls at Berkeley called Chateau. Kind of like a ginormous fraternity but a rooming hall. She made a 

bunch of new friends, really caught her footing, and then we started fighting more and more. She was bonding with the UC community of color and finding her identity. And a white guy who was five years older than her I think started seeming superfluous to her. And told me she wanted to break up. 

So we broke up again. Again. Eventually she calls and wants me back. She proposes that we have an open relationship. She’s got some new found sexual capital and she wants to check sick size around UCB a little. Not happy with the idea. But I *do* want to fuck her. So okay. Some Rona is better than no Rona I guess. We make it a while. I like some of her friends. Bao Tran Trang is cool. (No. I am not forming an outdated and cliched pattern here. Not one bit. Why do you ask?) 

This is the period of time when “The Naked Guy” Andrew Martinez shows up a UC Berkeley and becomes kind of a local celebrity. He goes to Chateau. Nice guy. He walks around campus, Chateau, really everywhere, naked with a blue windbreaker tied around his waist. 

DUMPED WHILE ON ‘SHROOMS 

One night Rona invites me to come over to Chateau to meet her friends and take shrooms. Never being one to decline an opportunity to take shrooms, I accept. While I’m tripping, she tells me all about Motorcycle Dude. It’s a guy who maybe looks similar to me? But he’s got a Kawasaki Ninja 750. And he’s fucking Rona. And I’m on shrooms. She says: 

“I’m thinking about heading off with him”. 

Okay. 

Not really what I want to hear when I’m peaking. 

“Do you mind if I head up to your dorm room to, uh... lay down I  can fully appreciate the feeling my soul infinitely falling into a black hole that’s collapsing in on itself”. I don’t think that’s exactly what I say. But it captures the spirit.

Me no likey Motorcycle Dude.

So off she goes. This time for sure.

BEST HALLOWEEN EVER

Eventually it’s Halloween. Lari Friedman has been putting on these little talent shows at the restaurant to showcase the skills and abilities of the people working there, with George Marino’s blessing, every Halloween for a couple years now. They’re fun. Tonight Anita the kitchen manager and her sisters are singing as The Kitchenettes. Also They Who Walk Through Walls and The Non-Whites.

Me and Morte grab a sixer and wind up hanging out with Kim at her place after the show. 

Then Morte splits.

The stars seem to be aligning. We’re both pretty drunk. I reach down for her hand. She allows me to take it. I’m holding her hand lightly by the fingers. She slides her hand I to mind and squeezes. I find myself making out with her in the darkened kitchen of her little place by refrigerator light.  

I’m able to touch her skin. I slide my hand up under the sweat shirt she’s switched in to. Her breasts are soft and ample. It goes on like this for a bit. I’m not gonna be too pushy. I’m not really in a hurry. 

But my hand is on her belly so I slide it down to the top of her mons veneris and twizzle my fingers at top edge of her pubic bone in the curly black hair I find there,  it take it no further. I want to, but she’s wary. I attribute this to our stylistic differences. “West Side Story” and what have you. She wants to stop. That’s fine. Another time then. She tells me about a time she was raped by this Samoan dude when she was drunk. She says she’s drunk and needs to go to bed, but I can sleep on the couch if I want, so that’s what I do. Tomorrow is another day. We never speak of it. But we wind up as friends and hang out quite a bit. Beer, weed, speed, cigarettes, art, and funky movies. Sounds good to me.

MEANWHILE...

Rona has broken up with motorcycle guy and seeks me out. I’m game. We do it again. We discover that raspberries work perfectly on her as nipple cozies, as we play The Boss and His New Secretary.  She was also seeing this other dude then who characterized himself as bi, and all I ever learned about him is that he used to be in the army and that he said it’s totally gay. So I was basically just in the rotation. I was doing a lot of cocaine and writing around then. The cocaine was good, the writing was less so. Or I’d be down at Amoeba records. 

We saw “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story”, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, “The Crying Game”, and the time I wanted to see “Cliffhanger”, she made us go see a foreign film called “Leólo”. She was right again. Extraordinarily weird, beautiful and touching movie. “That was the first time my grandfather tried to kill me” narrates Leólo Lozole, as his grandfather tries to drown him as a child.

We go see “True Romance”. Maybe it’s the cocaine, but something about that movie disturbed me. Like the movie knew I was doing coke. 

UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES 

Rona gets pregnant. 

And I’m not at all certain it’s mine. It might be bi-dude’s. I think I mention something, but whatever. At the very least she needs the help, and bi dude doesn’t materialize, so I accompany her. She’s 13 weeks along when she gets the abortion. Back at home that night, she starts bleeding, so I take rush down there with her, and sleep all night in the chair in the waiting room as she’s getting her procedure done.

Back at my place she feels physically like shit, and she’s feeling emotionally like shit, and she’s talking about our baby in heaven, so it looks to me like she’s feeling guilty about it. Like her catholic upbringing is telling her she’s a bad person. She’s not. She looks like she wants to be taken care of. So I go out and buy some coloring books, and I find these Crayola Crayons that are all like multi-cultural skin, hair and eye color. I also find these little kid-style faerie butterfly wings. I though she’d get a kick out of that. She did. 

Then she moved in.The problem is that when we get together it kinda goes without saying that we’re going to make a lot of noice, one way or the other. And my roommate wasn’t expecting her to live with there with us, so he asked up to leave. We moved from Emeryville back to Oakland, into this super cute four-plex studio, walking distance from Safeway on 30th. A good-sized room, with a decent kitchen behind it, and a nice enclosed back deck with a back yard. The building was from like, the 1920s with great original fixtures. And an accommodating and  eccentric landlord who had white hair and wore a cowboy hat.

And I started doing speed again. I think I was getting worn down. But she was writing and leaving me love letters. That was pretty cool. But also she was kinda doing her thing, and I was kinda doing my thing. I was hanging out at Ki’s a lot. I got a haircut from her, but she was really drunk and it was a terrible haircut. One time Rona and I hung out with her and her boyfriend. Not sure of the expectations there. But what she was doing with him seemed like the same thing I was doing with Rona. Just constant “they’re together , they’re *not* together. They’re together again!”

Rona and I went to the Grand Lake and saw “Batman: Mask of The Phantasm”. I loved that. This was the time of Tiny Toons, then Batman TAS, then Animaniacs. If I’d had any idea what I was doing, I’d have been in Burbank or Sherman Oaks or North Hollywood trying to get into animation, but I didn’t even know that existed as an option at that point. I’d tried to get Mike Farrell to maybe make some introductions or at least point me in the right direction, but he was unresponsive to me. Plus my sweet sweet misery was intoxicating. Rona was becoming more and more unfulfilled every day. She was mad at me. That’s when she indicated she knew I was using. One day in haste and maybe a dash of anger “she said something about her doing some of my speed to clean up around the house”, and that kind of scared me. I didn’t want her to get involved in that. Eventually she moved out. 

I shift my focus back to Kim. Kim is dating this skater dude who makes his own beer, but it all tastes like soap. But she doesn’t seem super enthused with the guy. We hang out and do stuff. We go to the park. She shows me “The People Beneath The Stairs” and tells me all about the  Jodorowsky movie “Santa Sangre”. The movie sounds fucking nuts. It’s her favorite movie. All this is happening simultaneously as the OJ Simpson double-murder scandal is raging in the media.

TRIP TO CABO 

Me and Stephen Gehlbach decide to go down to Cabo San Lucas and visit my Dad for the 4th of July. Then before flying out, I help Kim move out of her cute little place, into a big shared Victorian in Berkeley. As we’re sitting with Dad and Fred McCarthy and Fred’s Girlfriend at Mama’s on the Beach, the only thing anybody is talking about is OJ Simpson slowly driving his friend Al Cowling’s white Bronco down the 405 tailed by about a million cops. That’s all anybody is interested in. 

On the way back through customs, the customs officer asked Stephen and I brought any “left-handed cigarettes”, I just presumed he meant weed and said no. And we were home.

I DREAM OF LIZ 

While I’m in Cabo I have a dream that I’m sitting on a beach with Liz Dunkel. And we’re talking. The dream was simple, peaceful and comfortable. Hardly sexual, but it had “sex as a healing force” undertones. In the dream we on the beach somewhere in Baja, and we’re sitting under a palm tree, and we’re just at peace. In each other’s company and on a beautiful beach. It’s hot out, and you can here the waves lapping on the shore, because it’s the Sea of Cortez and there are no waves. And you can smell the ocean and the suntan lotion, and hear the seagulla was cawing in the distance. And she’s wearing that deep-pink bikini with the little white diamonds on it. And she’s looking at me, smiling and shaking her head. I know she’s thinking “Spencer Moore, you are such a dork.” Then, with my forefinger, I lightly touch the fabric of her bikini just above her nipple, indenting it a little. and then lightly flick my finger down over her nipple like I was turning off a light. And she smiles.

That’s the dream. It occurred over the 4th of July in 1994, around the same time that OJ Simpson drove Al Cowling’s white Bronco down the freeway, which was a challenging period of time for me. It brought me great comfort.

So when I got home from the trip to Cabo I made a decision to call her and and see what she thought about the dream.

Greg: “How did you know?”

Me: “I knew because I’m psychic and she told me.” 

LIZ COMES IMMEDIATELY OVER TO OAKLAND TO SEE ME

All those years and all that desire finally culminated after all that time in probably the most appropriate way I could think of: The transference of emotional energy and it’s eventual release through love, empathy, understanding, and clumsy bad sex.

When I called her that night she drove over without hesitation. She drove to my place on Harrison in Oakland from San Rafael within an hour. I had an old Amiga computer with some art program installed that I’e used to do some interesting stuff on the computer. She was at the desk looking at my work on the monitor, which shone icy blue light on her in the darkened dimmed light of front room. She asked me about the image on the computer, which was drawn pixel by pixel with a mouse, of an African tribesman and his child. But I had to lean over her shoulder to get a look better at the monitor. Her hair lightly brushed against my face. It smelled terrific. I turned my nose toward her to get a better smell. Mmm. It made me close my eyes for just a nanosecond. I asked her:

“Now what did you want to know?”

She seemed to like my breath on her neck, I presumed. She didn’t move her head away from mine. I brushed against her hair and then, being intrepid, I lightly rested my head on her shoulder near the curve of her neck. She kind of tilted her head slightly. I viewed this as an opportunity so I lightly bit her neck. She let out an “‘mmm”, and then she inhaled. I noticed this because I did too at the same moment. She had on a sweater. Standing behind her as she was seated, I reached around and touched her on the sides of her torso, belly level, under the sweater. Her skin was cool and warm at the same time. I could feel the soft fuzz on the cool/warm skin near her belly. As I bit her ear, I made a kind of snarl noise. She turned her head to the side toward me, pushing her face into mine as I slid my hands up along her torso. Then cupped her in my hands. Her breasts were heavy and weightless at the same time, just like me. Just like Liz. It was a characteristic shared by both of us in that moment.

This was happening concurrent with one of the final break ups between me and Rona, so I was pretty emotionally tortured as well. She could see and feel this. I felt terribly gaunt. She told me I looked like Michelangelo’s David. I kissed her and loved her the best I could.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. That was when speed kept you up all night long. Or longer. We had sex again on the morning. She talked about wanting to be in my life. I concurred. Or I tried to. I have no idea how well I was communicating. We got coffee from Starbuck up at Rockridge Center. I think it started to rain. And I think I my car (The Gold Duster) wouldn’t start. Eventually I got her back to her car and she drove home.

The next time we met, the spell was broken. I still saw her another dozen times perhaps. She was working at Video Droid when Elena Staab hired me for the Larkspur store. It seemed like she might have been with someone else. That was kind of the vibe I think. Eventually it occurred to me that it was Greg. Then later I heard the two of them got married.

STARRING O.J. SIMPSON AS OTHELLO 

The OJ Simpsons show continues. This older black lawyer who kinda reminded me of of an old black Orson Welles who frequented The Royal said that in lawyer circles they were suggesting the OJ was actually protecting his son. That theory sounded interesting to me, but I never heard it brought up again anywhere by anyone. 

Anyway, I hung out with Kim one time at her new place. We played with clay all night. Then she dumped me. As a friend, a companion, a prospective paramour. She just turned it off. Flipped the switch. That was it. She had new friends, and they seemed to kind of think I was an idiot. This is 1994. I started using cocaine in 1987. Syd’s 25th birthday. I remember that specifically. So I’d been using cocaine habitually for seven years at that point. And I’d started using speed in let’s say 1990, and that’s four years. When I wasn’t using speed, I was using cocaine. And drinking like a fish and smoking pot since I was a teenager. It was starting to catch up with me. And I didn’t have anything. All my time had gone into these two women, and whatever it was I thought I was doing with my art. I just had never had a moment to think about the future. The moment was too important. I had no networking skills, no resume, I’d quit community college four times I think at that point. My charm was starting to wear thin. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t know what I was capable of doing. I just kept thinking:

“Build it and they will come.”

But they never did. What I had was a bunch of properties I’d developed pretty well. I actually had a shit-ton of them. But no place to show them because I never gave a shit about... I don’t know... interpersonal relationships, how to market myself. I certainly wasn’t in the right city to try and do what I really wanted to do, but I didn’t really know that, and nobody else really seemed to know either. Or if they did, they weren’t telling me. I know Lari Friedman finally moved to LA to pursue a career in the industry. But I wasn’t in touch with him, and I didn’t really know to contact him. Or anybody. “Build it and they will come” was what I had. Rona was gone, Kim was hostile at work, and I was fucked up, Kristen would walk by me at work singing “Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer, he’s a demon on wheels” under her breath. I’d moved out of the place I lived with Rona, and moved I to a *more expensive* place, because. Actually it wasn’t totally unsound thinking. The place I lived with Rona was $400 and it was a one bedroom studio. 

I GET A NEW ROOMMATE 

The new place was $600, but it worked as a two bedroom studio. Unca Jay moved in with me.

The two room studio Jay and I shared was pretty damn cool. The other units still even had functioning Murphy beds. Great old building, with a great nighttime elevated neon view of downtown Oakland. Elevated because we were up the hill on Harrison. But as much as I loved Jay, we clashed immediately. He was recently divorced from his wife. All he got out of the settlement was pretty much what he had going in, and a shiny red car. We were supposed to go somewhere with his daughter, and he insist I sit in that back seat. I was like “you’re kidding, right?” But no. I’m like “Fuck that. I’m the adult. She’s eight. I’m not sitting in the back. And furthermore, thats kind of pussyish.” 

“JAY’S EGGS”

Rona had a new place and we were floating around each other. I was at her place, she was at mine, back and forth. We were still involved. Jay seemed to take issue with her. She accidentally ate one of his eggs, and he complained about it. So I took a Sharpie marker and wrote “Jay’s Eggs” on each of his eggs, just as clarification. I though it was funny. Jay didn’t. Jay’s a stress case and a hypochondriac although he refuses to acknowledge it. He keeps swearing he’s having tiny heart attacks by having to live with me. One evening he saunters into my room and in the gravest tone imaginable asked me “Spenny? If I should die of a heart attack in the middle of the night... will you please remove the pornography from my room before the police get here?” I assured him I would. Brothers in arms, old friend. I’ll guard your porn for you.

SUSPICIOUS MINDS

Meanwhile, at Mama’s an envelope with the days cash drop is stolen. It was probably a couple hundred dollars. I closed the register that night, so I’m at least on the radar. The drop safe hadn’t been emptied in long enough that it was completely full, so an enterprising individual with the correct tools, say perhaps a coat hanger, could have retrieved it. And the cleaning crew came in last night to deep clean. It had to be the night crew. But I was concerned that my coworkers would think it was me due to my drug use, and that they’d presume that George Marino let me slide because of who I am. The only real defense I had was that I didn’t need the money. I was receiving a $440 a month stipend that guilt tripped Dad into giving me.

Also I had my final tense confrontation with a customer before it was time for me to move on from The Royal. I was working that day with Lari, Kim, Lauren and Niru. I had the booths. This guy and his girlfriend tried to get an order of waffles. But it was 11:35 and we stop serving waffles at 11:30. The gentleman felt I was being rude to his girlfriend. I wasn’t. I was being matter of fact. At any rate, he was a large black gentleman, and he confronted me at the counter. Kim was on one side of me and Lauren was on the other. Both Lari and Niru were right there. This gentleman insisted that I apologize to his girlfriend, which I did. He did not feel my apology was adequately sincere (Dad: “SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!) The guy and I had a staredown. I don’t think my face belied the fear I felt, but my hands were behind my back, and they were shaking. Eventually everything settled down. I’ve never been one to quietly acquiesce to others’ demands. I’ve also never backed down I don’t think. I’ve always relied on my sense that no one really wants to get in a fight. And as much as that guy would have liked to have cold-cocked me, it wouldn’t have been worth it. In the end, it’s the other guy’s own risk/reward analysis that has kept me from getting clocked in situations like that. It’s very possible that I may misjudge at some point and get a broken nose or worse. But so far so good. Also I felt like I put on a good show for Kim and Laurel.

THE SIX WEEKS I WAS A DENTAL TECHNICIAN

I leave The Royal, when I’m offered a job across the street making teeth. But I’m an emotional and physical mess. Really I leave the Royal because coming to work and seeing Kim and Laurel everyday was kind of unbearable. I was kind of unraveling. So when Sabrina came in and told me that her boss liked my drawings of teeth and wanted to offer me a job, I jumped at it. But it wasn’t a situation I was ready for. My drug use and life in general were wildly out of control. And after all this time, Rona and I were still going back and forth. Recently she had gotten a job at a bead store on Telegraph called Orb Weaver. Jay was ready to move out too. He’d go up to Reno to visit a friend of his and they’d build 3-D models on his friend Amiga computer. He showed me one of the models that they’d rendered, that Jay insisted was original. “Uh, Jay, that’s the Eagle from “Space: 1999””

“No. It’s an original design.”

“Ooo-Kay...”

I ACCIDENTALLY FORMAT JAY’S COMPUTER

I think that the final straw with Jay was when he went up to visit his pal in Reno, and while he was gone, I inadvertently formatted the hard drive of his Amiga. Whoops! I wasn’t even supposed to be on it. This was in 94 or 95, so everything was still done with floppy disks. So it wasn’t the greatest surprise to come home to. But I left him a nice note: 

“Jay,

Someday we’ll laugh about this, but while you were gone...”

So Jay moved out. I was still seeing Rona on the regular. It was from from the house on Harrison that I called Liz out of the blue and told her that I’d had a dream about her while I was in Cabo. And she responded by coming over. And after ten years of knowing her and pining for her, she acquiesced to my desires and let me in. Had I been in a better state it might have been a continuing thing, but I wasn’t.

“JOHNNY’S BACK! (AND HE’S NEVER EVEN BEEN HERE BEFORE)

Also around that time, I got Matt Weiner and Alex Peck to come over, and I made us dinner. I was able to lasso Alex back into developing Johnny Space Commando as an actual property, and the work he produced was absolutely bravura. But both of them pegged me for a mess, I’m pretty sure. Because I was one. As if to prove that thesis, on the way out I asked Alex if I could borrow a couple bucks to get a pack of cigarettes. 

I was living at the Harrison house when I met that girl at Safeway at 3am. We were waiting in line to pay, both buying cigs I imagine. And she came up to me and said “I don’t know why but I really think we should get to know each other”, which could conceivably ended really well, but I have a thing about sharing speed with people. I don’t want anybody to get hooked on it. I have enough problems as it is. I don’t need that weighing on me. So it wound up being an awkward night.

LESBIANS STOLE MY CAT

It was at the house on Harrison that Semaya my cat disappeared. I searched high and low for her. I went into the sketchy on the street below knocking on strangers’ doors to ask if they’d seen her, to no avail. No dice. She was a sweet cat and I’d had her for years. In the end, I’m pretty sure she was “adopted” by the lesbian couple upstairs, who might have felt it was in the cat’s best interest to remove her. From time to time I’d hear what sounded like a cat doing laps upstairs. And they didn’t have a cat, supposedly. 

Working at the dental lab is actually pretty interesting. Aromatically, the place stinks. It smells like formaldehyde and bad breath. But the actual process is making the teeth is cool. Had I not been so screwed up in all the ways I was a screwed up, I might have made a go at it. But it didn’t work out that way. As it was, I was fired for calling in sick. Which was okay. I saw it coming. But now I had another problem. How was I going to pay rent?

I talked to Dad, and he said that if I came down there, he’d buy all my CDs. The music kind, not the investment kind. But that meant I had to find a way down to Cabo San Lucas. Luckily I managed to score a spot in the Green Tortoise Bus bound for Cabo. Green Tortoise Busses was a bussing company that was essentially run by freaks. It was a fleet of old busses all painted green. There used to be a competing company called The Gray Rabbit, run by this guy we met in Cabo named Wolf, but the Gray Rabbit went belly up, and Wolf was eventually murdered in Cabo, found rolled up in a rug. So Green Tortoise it was. 

They called it “The Miracle Bus” for all the stuff they managed to utilize: refrigerators under benches, a funnel at the front of the bus in case anybody (almost always men) needed to take a leak while the bus was moving. The whole back half of the bus had been converted into a big bed, with a hidden storage area underneath. It would take a week to get there, but I was on the bus and headed for Cabo.

TRINA LITCHENDORF

I was on the bus, but it was last minute and I didn’t bring anything. The first night, when it got cold, this girl Trina let me share her sleeping bag. We were together for the duration of the journey. In her diary she wrote that I reminded her of Puck from “The Real World” on MTV. I didn’t know if I should be honored or horrified. 

Eventually the Green Tortoise got to this little hidden beach south of Loreto where we stayed for four days, Trina and I functioning as a couple on the beach. Lots of people who started the trips as individuals coupled up pretty quick. Trina and I were two of them. We built a lean-to tent sort of thing on the beach that worked alright. One peaceful mellow day I washed Trina’s hair on the beach. It was a pleasant bonding moment. 

After a couple days we drove the Green Tortoise south to Todos Santos and spent the night there. I showed Trina this bit I’d been working on from “The Legend of Jesse James”, which in the scene is James/Younger Gang member Coleman Younger telling a reporter about their attempt to Rob the First National Bank of Minnesota in the city of Northfield, which was a bloody disaster that wound up with everybody either dead or in jail, except for Frank and Jesse James. It’s a great piece and I’d been working on it forever. But afterwards one of the people on the bus with us, a lovely young woman who seemed to dig my performance comes up to me and says, “You know, you’re completely different than I thought you’d be.” I interpreted this as a complement and thanked her graciously. But it does occur to me, “We just met. How could you have a preconceived notion about someone you just met?” Fuckin’ hippie chicks.

Eventually the Green Tortoise made it to Cabo, and then I made my way to Dad’s restaurant in Cabo. He’d moved since the last time I’d seen him. The previous 4th of July, Mama’s had been on the beach. Now it was in the “Old Town” section. It was nice to see Dad again. I have him a suitcase full of CDs and he gave me money. He said nothing about how I looked, nor did he ask how I was doing.

Before long, we were back in the Green Tortoise on the road to the USA. And from there, to the Bay Area. I was home back at the house on Harrison early afternoon. The only problem was that somehow I’d lost my keys. Also, I knew I had some speed stashed in the apartment. So I figured out a way in. It wasn’t too difficult. I just needed motivation. The little window that led to the bathroom was ajar, and I knew it would open if I was able to reach it. The only problem was that the window was maybe nine feet above a pathway below. The pathway was maybe four feet wide. I was on the edge of a raised abutment across from the window. I had to calculate it like a cat. Four feet away from the opposing wall, the bathroom window (closed) maybe two and a half feet above me. A pretty easy jump, but if for some reason I missed, or if I slipped, or if I couldn’t manage to get the window open enough to enter, I’d fall eight or nine feet. But fuck it. I jumped. I grabbed on and held on to the window ledge. While hanging on with one arm, I opened the bathroom window with my opposing hand. And I shimmied in.

Once in, I went out and grabbed what stuff I had, I snorted a rail of speed, and I headed down to Orb Weaver to see Rona. 

RONA

When I got to the bead store, Rona was closing up. She seemed pleased to see me, because we crashed into each other so hard we emitted sparks, we went into the back room of the store where we were entwined half a heartbeat out of public view, my hands missing her body as much as her body missed my hands. She stared so deeply into my eyes that I felt she could see the bottoms of my feet. And I stared so deeply into her eyes, I could see the back of her head. A woman never fit any better into a pair of 501s than she did, but those 501s needed to be at half mast like, now. I needed to feel the warmth of her brown skin, to feel the fuzz on her lower back. With that in mind, while I was kissing her, my hands were all too happy to unbutton the 501s and push them down over her rump. We were both on the same page. We both wanted to feel my dick inside of her, and when we finally crashed into each other in the back room of Orb Weaver, we crashed like the Symplegades. Boy howdy, did we ever.

I thought of a song that I’d known forever. A song about love. And desperation. And adoration. A song that oftentimes seemed like it spoke directly to me.

I remember her in the trailer at night

With her hair all wet and black and rolled up tight

With the ribbons around her fingers waiting for her hair

Like the visions of a dreamer curling through the air

I remember her blue kimono in the moonlight

Drifting across her breast in the moonlight

And I cupped her in my hands just like two rainbows

While she kissed me upon the mouth of Colorado

And I remember her anger anchored on a night of sailing

Cause the captain was drunk with the Gypsy bitch on the railing

And with a sigh she cried beneath that bastards' boom

But her mast it slashed like a dagger through the Spanish moon

Thats by Terry Allen. He’s great. He writes desperation well.

THE UNDERLYING LATTICE OF COINCIDENCE 

After we’re all done, and we’re holding each other, Rona tells me “I dreamt you gave another woman a bath”, she said with a frowny voice meant to evoke a sad child.

“Don’t be ridiculous”, I told her. “I just washed her hair.”

It seemed like a pretty on-the-nose thing for her to say. What can I say? I’m a lightning rod for weird shit to happen.

Rona eventually starts dating another dude. I can’t remember the name of a single guy she fucked while we were involved in each others lives. Except this guy, whose name I *do* remember. His name was Michael Taylor. Slightly built intelligent looking guy with big horn-rimmed glasses. Rona and I are almost over. The writing is on the wall. 

I’M RAOUL

I watch Rona graduate from UC Berkeley. I’m so happy for her. For reasons I’m not exactly clear on, she’s asked to give the commencement speech for her graduating class. I ask “Doesn’t the valedictorian usually give the commencement speech? You’re not valedictorian, are you?” She says no, she’s not. It has something to do with her ethnic studies. Cool, whatever. I’m just happy for you.

In her commencement speech she talks about tripping the light fantastic til dawn at the Champs Elyseé with a guy named Raoul. 

I’m Raoul. I know that much. I created the character. 

I SPIN OUT RONA’S CAR ON THE 80

To celebrate, she has a house party at her place. She lets me borrow her car, so I head over to San Pablo Dam Road to see Blue and get some speed and I spin out on the freeway, taking the ramp from the 580 down to the 80. At least I didn’t flip it. And luckily there was no traffic on the freeway that night. It was scary, to say the least.

The ramp was and still is really uneven and really poorly graded. Plus I was driving too fast. The car had some front end issues, so when I took it too fast, the front end began to jiggle, and by the time the car had adjusted for the jiggle, I was on flat straightaway again, and the car, a bright blue piece of shit 80s early 80s sedan that it was, spun out. A little over a complete loop.

LAUREL NATHAN

And then my coke dealer’s niece started working at the Royal. Her name was Laurel Nathan.

Laurel and I hit it off pretty well. Then she read some funny thing she wrote at Lari Friedman’s final Acme Dark Halloween extravaganza called “Bad Hair Year”. It was good. She was funny. And cute. We went to see “The Flintstone’s” movie together. We made out once up at her place. (she had nice tits). She has a red and white motif going in her place. Kinda like a Johnny Rockets. 

I FUCK UP AGAIN

One evening after work I have an opportunity to score some speed from Blue, but the Gold Duster is on the fritz. Alternator problem. I ask Laurel if I can borrow her car. She agrees, but says I have to be back by 10pm because that’s when her last class at CCAC ends. No problem. I score the speed, and have some time to kill, so I head to Mill Valley, to Candy Paine’s house. Mike Healy is there with Jeff Bornkamp. I wind up arguing with Jeff about Prop 187, which was some racist policy being put through by then governor Pete Wilson. On the plus side, I absolutely decimated Jeff Bornkamp’s argument, which surprised me with how quietly racist it was.

On the bad side, I didn’t get back to CCAC until midnight. And by that time Laurel was unbelievably (yet reasonably) angry with me. I’d ruined what could have been an actual friendship or some other type of relationship with my myopic selfishness. She seethed at me, “I see through your disguise! I see what you *really* are!” That hurt. It hurt bad. But I wondered what she really saw. And I wondered how accurate it was. Was I a villain? Was I unapologetically a force for evil in the world? I didn’t see myself that way. Of myself, I thought at worst I was a whirling dervish. I was an id creature running amuck. I was a drug addict lost in despair. I didn’t have any illusions about that I thought. It didn’t feel like a fair summation. But I understood where she was coming from.

VISIONS OF A DREAMER

One afternoon while Rona and I are lying in her bed, she tells me about how we’ll see each other in twenty-five years and secretly crash into each other, and how whoever we’re with at the time will be extremely jealous of what the two of us have shared. It’s a lovely and romantic sentiment. But it’s in the air. The end is nigh. 

Rona asks me to print out some Maganda T-shirts for her. I agree as ruse to get her to come over, which she does. But she does it to explain how it’s over. It’s finally over. It gets very emotional. We’re both crying. I coerce her into having sex on my couch. She leaves crying. 

MY APARTMENT FILLS WITH SHIT

With Rona gone, seemingly for good this time, I’m reeling. I’m floundering on drugs to deal with my misery. I start picking my skin until my face is pocked and bloody. Within the next day or two, the toilet in my apartment starts to overflow. And overflow, and overflow. In a day my apartment fills with shit. The landlord sends a plumber over who informs us both that a tree root has busted and blocked the sewage pipe. Not a small job. I manage to finagle a free months rent out of the landlord, but after that, I’m out of there. No job, no place to live, no girlfriend.

So I move back in with Mom. I sleep on her couch. When I’m not sleeping, I’m doing drugs.

THE LATER DUDE GOES TO MOSCOW

I’m at Mom’s house and I get a long distance call from Tim Vanderweil! The Later Dude! Haven’t seen him in ages. A couple years anyway. He’d joined the Navy. I remembered that. But he said he was no longer in the military. He was some sort of sales executive for Playboy Magazine, the Russian edition. He was calling from Moscow! What the fuck, Tim! Great to hear from you!

He had a proposal for me. He wanted me to draw a comic strip, along the lines of Little Annie Fanny for Moscow Playboy. That was pretty original. Never heard that one before. We talked about it a bit, then I got off the phone and put my thinking cap on. That was the last time I heard from Tim Vanderweil by the way. Word was he came back to the USA and was killed in a botched drug deal. But that was later. Now I had to come up with an idea. So I thought I try and run it by Matt Weiner. See if maybe he had any bright ideas. So I called him in New York City. His message machine said something about leaving an interesting message. I did the best I could:

“Matt old boy! This is Spencer. I was calling to see if you’d be interested in helping me write a nudie comic series for Playboy in Russia. I might have an opportunity. Call me back.”

Matt had too much on his place, but that was okay, because I already had a name for the comic. It was about a Russia assassin called “Bad Penny”/ she’s always turning up like bad Penny:.. I thought that was a pretty good start. 

I never heard back from The Later Dude. But Bad Penny stuck with me and would pop up from time to time over a long period of time.

GERDIS

The other cool thing that happened was that I got a piece of FAN MAIL! 

AARON MOUTON

It’s 1995. I’m 28. I’m in Mom’s living room, drawing away furiously. I’m a little sweaty and wan. I’m working on multiple art projects, jumping from project to project. The clock says 1:45am. I stop, look at my work and have a cig. Unfiltered Camel. Just like Grampa. I look over toward the kitchen. Mom and Judy are fiddling with their bags.

“What are you guys doing?”

“We’re going to Safeway” my mom says.

“Jeez Mom. It’s two in the morning.”

“It’s cool out” offers Judy.

“It’s the only time you can go when there’s nobody in there” says Mom.

“Okay. Have fun” I tell them. And they exit. Two old ladies in long old lady coats with their purses and wire old lady grocery carts. I know my mom and aunt. They’ll be hours. And I need cigarettes.

“Hold on! I’m coming with you.”

Later, as I got deeper into drugs and despair, I did some stupid romantic comedy Lloyd Dobler shit that I probably shouldn’t have, like putting poems on Lauri’s car, or what I thought was her car. I was beginning to look like the ghoul I figured everyone already thought I was.

ANITA THIBODEAUX 

To make some money I did a portrait of Anita Thibodeaux’s baby son. I made a little money on it, but barely enough to cover supplies. But she told me she’d feed me at the Royal, which was good enough for me. I guess I was looking pretty bad, because after the second time I got something to eat, Terry Sanders calls me on the phone, calls me a worthless sack of shit who is leeching off of sweet giving Anita, and if I show my face around the Royal again, he’s gonna kick my ass. He was yelling at me on the phone threatening me, he’s much larger than I am and in much better shape, so I take the most prudent step and say something guaranteed the iron out the situation:  I called him an Oreo. He didn’t like that. What the fuck was I thinking? She offered to buy me food for it, I hadn’t gotten anything yet, I don’t think. Maybe I had, but not much, and a sandwich is like 7 bucks or something. She got a painting she’s going to have forever. She paid more for the frame. So I felt justified in coming to get something to eat. Apparently I was wrong. He screamed at me that he was an old school nigga and he and his friends were gonna fuck me up. After that, I slept on the couch with a kitchen knife under the cushion. I was hurt and angry on a couple levels. It sucked being thrown out of the place my parents created, by an interloper. For one thing, the painting I did for her kid was very nice and worth something. For another thing, my association with that business, that building, that family, predated every single person who worked there, except for Mary Foster who arrived at the Royal at the same time I did. I was self righteously indignant about it. Who the fuck was he to tell me jack shit? And he was most definitely *not* an “old school nigga”. But he *was* a big dude who was in the process of becoming a fireman for the Oakland Fire Department. But the melodrama and entanglements around that restaurant were starting to seem unhealthy at best and medieval at worst. I wanted to create a scene with Terry. But I didn’t want to get beaten up in the middle of the street. 

COMIC RELIEF

Then Rory Root from “Comic Relief” which was a comic shop on University in Berkeley, gave me a job. I’d known Rory since I was a kid and he became partners in “The Best of Two Worlds” which was Bob Beerbohn’s business. Rory looked the spirit and image of Philip Seymour Hoffman,  it with long blond hair, mutton chops, and a big goofy fedora. A lot of people have had a lot of less that nice things to say about Rory over the years, but he was always super nice to me, putting my ‘zines in his store, promoting me around conventions, and even eventually giving me a job when I desperately needed it. But it didn’t last. Nothing bad happened or anything. 

ELENA STAAB

What happened was that Elena Staab, who was now managing a Video Droid in Larkspur offered me a job. So after however many years away, I found myself back at my old alma mater working for Mitch Lowe again.

For a while I commuted. Eventually the opportunity to live near Video Droid with some compadres of old presented itself. I ran into Mike Roszkopk and his wife at the little breakfast place adjacent to Video Droid. The same spot where days previous, a stranger started talking to me about my art. I don’t remember how the conversation got started, but she turned out to be Mike Albanese’s mom. Mike Albanese was a guy that Liz Dunkle dated for a good long time when I worked with her at Video Droid and quietly pined for her. Apparently she knew who I was. She said Mike and Liz talked about my artwork all the time. And upon looking at my work, she concurred. She worked at the Marin Civic Center in the courthouse. I believe she was a stenographer, I think. It was 25 years ago. She very seriously suggested I become a courtroom artist. It sounded like a great idea, but I had no idea how to find that path. But it was at that diner that I ran into Mike and Liz Roszkopf. And a couple days later I moved from Oakland to Corte Madera, and in to my new place. 

COPS SEEM TO LIKE ME

I was a full-steam-ahead speed freak at this point, and had been for quite some time. But the ugly physical manifestations were just starting to appear. Nobody ever said anything about it though. I did get pulled over twice in Corte Madera for basically being sketchy looking I think. Both times they let me go. The second time they actually had something they could take me in on. There were some up to date cat tags that had been sitting in a drawer down at Video Droid since Is started there again. Eventually, my need to have up to date tags out weighed whatever minor moral issue I had with taking them. And it didn’t work anyway. I for pulled over almost immediately. The cop took the tags but let me go.

ONE LAST TIME

I was working at Video Droid one evening when I got a call. A familiar voice on the other side of the line said “Hi.”

“What are you doing?” the voice asks me.

It’s Rona.

“I’m coming over to see you I’m pretty sure” I said back to her.

I raced over there after work. She said she just wanted to be around me. We weren’t going to have sex, but I could watch her masturbate, which I did. There was a sadness to it. And a finality. I think she was sad to see me like that. I was a physical, emotional and spiritual wreck.

MARSHA, MARSHA, MARSHA

On the other side of the Richmond Bridge, I’d been not so secretly harboring a crush on Elena Staab since she was sixteen and she asked me to accompany her to Spike and Mike’s Animation Celebration at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She currently has a dude, but I had a lot of things I wanted to tell her. I wanted to talk to her about doing “Franny & Zooey” despite the fact that we’d both aged out of it by then. I had a great time with her at Halloween, where she was Marsha Brady and I was Mr. Orange. Plus I kept thinking about that time she kissed me unexpectedly at the Pirate Party years before. When I talked to Tom McIntyre about it all, he said with conviction that I should tell her how I felt. And I agreed with him, so I worked toward that. But everything was coming to a head at the same damn time!

A MASH-UP FOR THE AGES

I still had feelings for Lauri, much too her chagrin at this point no doubt. I was still tripping on trying to get her back in my life. But I had no angle that I could think of.  

Until that night after we closed and  I was cleaning up the store. Someone had made a big toy mess. We had Star Wars figures, Star Trek figures, Batman Forever figures, Pocahontas figures, Disney’s Gargoyles figures... And all these Disney Pocahontas kids mugs.I just happened to put a bunch of the Gargoyles figures into Pocahontas mug. And upon seeing the kismet that was created when is put these tow disparate ideas together, I thought it inadvertently created something. A beautiful woman with long black hair who had her own demons. Plus the quality of the toys was pretty good. So I pocketed the mug and the six little figurines. Within the next couple days I wrote a note, then I put it in a little box, and sent out a gift that I’d have been ecstatic to receive. I was aware of the possibility it might be misjudged. But what is courage for it not doing something in spite of thinking it might bring the hammer down on you.

I never heard a word.

 

THE WORST BOOTY CALL OF ALL TIME

And then I crashed into the side of a mountain. Yeah. There was no chance of hiding the extreme nature of this transgression. There were 15 messages. In my minds eye, I see these messages being played over and over again at cocktail party after cocktail party, slowly building up steam, powering the engines of fate. Hairdressers, and gaffers, and ADs, and craft service guys and gals forming that long feared, long mistrusted by me, “Take Back The Night” booster rally/lynch mob. But this time I was pretty sure that the “poor sap” they were going to string up was me. It was only a matter of time before the various strings of horror stories and anecdotes (some true, some not) from both sides of the bay, coalesced and gravitated together, weaving itself into what I knew would become a pretty fucked up noose to hang my reputation with. 

To this day, nobody has told me a thing about what happened after I left. I picture town meeting with lots of angry socially conscious people, most of which do their own composting, converging on city hall with pitch forks and torches. I didn’t know if I should expect the police to knock on my door at any moment, or not. Shit, I didn’t know if what I did was actually illegal! I assumed it was heavily frowned on, I but I had no idea if I was any real trouble or not. I figured probably not that much. I’m a young, clean-cut white guy, with no criminal record, who is smart and affable. So I guess I thought I was pretty safe from the cops. But this whole incident had pushed me to a personal bottom with my drug use. I needed help. 

MEANWHILE, IN CORTE MADERA...

I was being given the gift of desperation, as they like to say in the meetings with the secret hand-shakes. I knew very little about any 12 step recovery programs at this point. They had not yet come into my sphere. I was only aware of them because my grandfather, Spencer Thomas Moore, used to go all the time. he was always helping out some young guy with alcohol or substance abuse problems. He’d practically adopt these young guys, help them get to court, get work, stuff like that, and he’d tag me along with him often. So I wasn’t completely unawares. I knew I could probably look in the Yellow Pages for a phone number (back at this time we had this thing called the “Yellow Pages”. It was a comprehensive list of all the phone numbers for every business with a phone in that particular county. What will they think up next?) And that’s how far I got. Looking up the numbers. Smokin’ up some shit, and lookin’ through the phone book. Yeah! And lookin’ good while I’m doin’ it! I was getting pretty pathetic. 

How do I know Lauri liked the present? Well, duh! Of course she did. Maybe not immediately, but I trusted her to ‘get it’ pretty quick. Really, it was the most perfect gift ever. Never has there been a present better suited to a particular person. Far and away the best gift I’ve ever had the good fortune to give to a girl. I’m very proud of it. If there was any problem with it, it was that it came from me. I think in her eyes, I committed the cardinal sin of being cheesy. I can’t deny it. I could really lay the schmaltz on heavy. It was a part of my personality, very strong at the time, and I could not tone it down. It was who I was.

Did it go immediately into the garbage? Did someone send it to the F.B.I? Is it sitting on a shelf in her house somewhere? Has Quentin Tarantino seen it? Maybe Brad Pitt? Or Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman? Perhaps Gwyneth Paltrow has seen that little cardboard box from the inside. Does Al Swearengen talk to it at night in his office upstairs at the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota? 

Picture this: I am sitting at work at the video store in Larkspur, and I see the toys on the shelf, a third of the way across the store.

I took a moment from my day 

Wrapped it up in things you say 

Mailed it off to your address 

You'll get it pretty soon unless 

The packaging begins to break 

And all the points I tried to make 

Are tossed with thoughts into a bin 

Time leaks out my life leaks in 

You won't find moments in a box 

And someone else will set your clocks 

I took a moment from my day 

Wrapped it up in things you say 

And mailed it off to you 

“Wading In The Velvet Sea “ by Phish 

 Upon seeing them, imagine the first note of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” from 2001: A Space Odyssey come chiming in. As I slowly walk up to our Point of Purchase pressure sales rack toy display, the music hits the familiar notes. I pick up a “Pocahontas” vinyl coffee mug based on the Disney cartoon, and a handful of figurines from a Disney cartoon, called “Gargoyles” (we have a lot of little disney figurines, most of them pretty decently sculpted) As the music comes to its familiar crescendo, I put the gargoyles into the coffee cup. That’s what it was. They fit in perfectly. So I looked at my creation, and I deemed it awesome. The gargoyles folded into the cup perfectly, they almost look like a rose. A gray rose. Or a phalanx. A perfect image of a haunted raven-haired woman, with a head full of demons, and all these beautiful dark images that she collected and created, her whole aesthetic. It was crazy! 

A HAPPY ACCIDENT 

I looked at this this thing I put together accidentally, And I knew I had to send it to her. I knew this in about 2 seconds, after I created it. That’s how well it worked, it practically flew together of its own accord, I was just the vessel that was chosen to assemble it. Sure, the toys had started talking to me telling me to go slaughter a mime and fuck a dingo. And I’d have been concerned, but as it was, I was so full of the power of the Lord that I was able to hold those urge at bay. Good for me! Yay! You know, you kill just a couple of students under the dark of night on a college campus and all of a sudden you’re a “Serial Killer”. Lighten up, people! This was a gift from God. “Here my son, take this in good stead, and go freak the shit out all your former coworkers” It’s like God reached up from hell and gave me the most efficient way to just completely destroy my reputation in one (two, actually) fell swoop(s). Thank you, God. 

But I think it was also a great example of found art. Not as good as the plastic Jesus heads with lightbulbs in them, 5 or 6 of them glued to little stone displays creating the little blinky Jesus head rocks I found in Mazatlan all those years ago. 

I knew when I was putting it together that there was just a huge chasm for misinterpretation on this particular present, I didn’t dwell on that aspect of it very much. I just really hoped Lauri would see the inherent beauty of this dark artifact. It was a rare piece of art from me that wasn’t comic book illustration, There was no way I could NOT send it. It was too good. 

So I went and got a little box, wrote what I thought was a funny note to Lauri, wrapped it all up, went down to the post office and sent it to her, both invigorated and sick with fear over her response. But only hers, I could give a fuck what anybody else thought. Of course it could be argued that i wasn’t exactly thinking straight. 

IN RETROSPECT...

I was in such a sad state, and at that point generally antagonistic to just about everybody I knew in my life (no, everybody), You could say my judgement was sorely lacking. Probably shouldn’t have done the “secret admirer” thing. I suppose that could have been viewed as the psycho cherry on the creepy cake, but at the time, in my skewed mental and emotional state, I thought it was kind of romantic, what with the note to meet me at the art school, and then the flyer hanging up on the bulletin board at the art school. Error in judgement? I don’t know. It the words of the Bard, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” 

I talked to Sasha over the phone shortly after I sent it. Sasha told me in a particularly sing-songy voice you might associate with that kind of gentle teasing, “Lauri’s got a secret admirer”. She certainly didn’t sound freaked out. Then a couple of days later, I talked to Morte and told him I sent it. I explained to him what had gone on between me and Lauri, but I wasn’t bragging. I was in some way, trying to make what happened between the two of us seem more real. I felt had to tell somebody, somebody who knew her and could understand how radically unlikely it was for us to bump into each other like we did. I wanted Morte to believe in miracles with me. I don’t know, I sort of sensed that talking about it at all to anybody would likely be considered skeezy. “What a dick! If he comes around here again I’m gonna kick his ass!” Stuff like that is what I imagined in my drug induced paranoia. 

Probably a year earlier, right at the end of that period of time that Lauri and I hung out socially, I’d been trying to get her come over to my place, finally she agreed. She said okay. So when she finally came over to visit me at my new place, she brought a dude with her. I assume it was her new romantic interest, but I have no way of knowing. I never asked. He too was way cooler than  I was. I didn’t feel there was any way I could compete. It was immediately apparent. He was a kick-ass black dude with dreadlocks. I was me. Anyhow, I put on “Picture of Nectar” and we all had a couple of beers while we listened. It seemed well-received for awhile, until: 

“This sounds like Cal Worthington and his dog, Spot!” Lauri’s pal said, then began to sing, “If you need a better car, go see Cal. For the best deal by far, go see Cal” 

As soon as that song ended, I knew Lauri and I were done. She and the dude left soon after. So I just got high and drank the rest of the beer. I was lonely. Rona was gone, except when she wasn’t, and those times often as not, were filled with screaming. It hurt like hell. 

The next time I saw her was to bring her a couple of books I’d found that I thought she’d like.

“GIVE IT UP, DUDE!”

I was devastated every time she refused to meet my gaze when our eyes passed each other in the mirror in the back dining room at Mama’s in Oakland, which eventually evolved into her just looking away when I walked into the room. I tried as long as I could to handle it with my signature Grace and Dignity, but it was becoming a heavy load. Until finally one time I called her, she asked me not to call her anymore. So I didn’t. Never called her again. I never spoke to her again.

CABO FOR GOOD 

I was in such bad shape driving down to meet Dad at the border that it took me three days to get to San Ysidro. Dad was reasonably pissed. He was staying at the Americana which was not the cheapest place in town, and it should have taken me half a day. Making him wait three days was kind of unreasonable, but I needed the sleep. I think the Gold Duster was packed by 8 or 9pm and I was ready to go. Gary Lambert showed up at the last minute and bought some T-shirts from me. Then I kissed Mom goodbye and headed out the door. 

The Gold Duster was packed so full, it was hanging low; and it was mostly books. I hadn’t even left yet and I was already late to meet Dad. Such is the nature of speed, after you’ve been going way to long. I submit that the quality that speed possesses that makes you so crazy shit and be scary is the lack of sleep. And not eating for days is also a big factor. The underlying factors that made speed so attractive to me was that it was a solution to the depression and lack of focus issues. The enthusiasm that came with it was a bonus. But I like food and naps. I’d have rather been eating and sleeping. But I made my decision.

On the way out I just had to drop by Casa Maria on my way through Corte Madera and get my mountain bike.

When I got to Casa Maria, no one was there. But my mountain bike was chained up. “Sorry, man. I need it.” There were some hedge clippers on a table in the back. They worked just fine. I attached the bike rack I had to the Gold Duster and loaded the bike on the back. The car went even lower under the additional weight, but fuck it. I jumped in and I was gone. 101 south. 

As I get over the Golden Gate Bridge I’m in the wrong lane. I’m in the far left lane and I need to get over to the 19th Ave exit, I have no choice, I *have* to get over there, so I swerve and cross two lanes, and am immediately pulled over by the cops. The cops hold me on the side of the road for a bit. I don’t look great. And I have a big 70s American sedan filled with books and a bike on the back. Maybe I looked suspicious. A cop asked me where I bought the bike. As it turned out, I knew that one. As I’d bought the fucking thing. Castro Valley Cyclery. I figure he got the store name from the water bottle in the little wire holster on the bike. Kinda clever. 

Well, eventually they let me go and I continued down 101 toward Dad.

I think I made it to like, Milpitas, and the morning sun had come around, so I pulled off to a gas station, gassed the car up, pulled the car around to the side, parked in a parking space, turned the engine off, and crashed like a fucking brick.

Not sure exactly how many hours it was, maybe 5, I jolted awake. And I didn’t know where I was. I had to piece it together. I was in my car, at a gas station, full of my stuff... I was on the road! Headed... where? Away from the horrible mess I had made. Going to see Dad. In San Ysidro. That was it. 

Jesus Christ. What a disaster.  I had become a ghoul. I didn’t intend on becoming a ghoul. It just kinda happened, one turned door knob at a time. Where did that kid with the infectious grin and the ebullient spirit go? I had big plans when I was a kid. I was a Golden Child! And everybody knew it. And somewhere along the line, they didn’t anymore. How did it all go so horribly wrong? Was there a moment I could pinpoint? I looked for it, but every time I try I thought I had pinpointed the moment my destiny shifted and my luck soured, I’d have to rethink it and adjust earlier. “Nah! I was already a mess by then...” It seemed like one bad thing and cascaded into another, which in turn cascaded into another. It just went back further and further. It was starting to appear I was fucked from the get go. As I drove south, I blasted that album of Saturday Morning theme song covers on the ghetto blaster that was sitting on the passenger seat. My psyche was retreating to what comfort it could find in childhood nostalgia. Plus the album is great.

I pulled off the freeway in King City and got gas, and then I found a telephone booth and called Trina Litchendorf. We talked for a while. I told her that I hoped she’d come down and visit once I got situated. She liked the idea. We said goodbye, and I got back on the road.

I had to pull off in San Luis Obispo to crash again. A police officer tapped on the window and asked if I was okay. I was. He could have ticketed me for sleeping in my car, but he didn’t. He just checked to make sure I was okay.

I arrived in San Ysidro the next morning. I knew where Dad was staying because we always stayed there. As soon as he came out of the motel he started yelling at me. I threw my keys on the ground, in his direction, which became forever characterized as me throwing my keys at him.

In the motel, I turned on the teevee. On MTV Jewel was asking me who was going to save my soul. 

I dunno, Jewel. I dunno. 

It reminded me of that Marc Maron bit about the guy who sells his soul to the Devil in a bid for to secure wealth, power and success. The devil tries and tries and tries with this guy, and gets absolutely nowhere. Finally the Devil comes back to the dude and says “Hey man, I tried. I really did. You’re just not very good.”

CABOBUNGA, DUDE!

On March 23, in 1996, I wound up back in Cabo. 

I was a wounded animal. I ran in fear, in anxiety, in sadness, in panic, in loss. I ran to save my life. What I experienced with the loss of Rona was difficult to quantify. I’ve never been able to fully unwrap or understand everything I lost when she left. I’ve analyzed it but what I lost was so huge, that when I look at it I can only see a little bit of it at a time. 

I ran back to Dad. And Steve. 

And that’s how on March 23rd in the year of our Lord 1996 I wound up the fuck back in Cabo. Cabo San Lucas, a sunny place for shady people. The land of water-soluble relationships. But I was ready for it. I was polluted. Mind, body and soul. 

The caveat for Dad was that if he was going to put me up and give me a job I had to go to AA. At this point, amazingly, Dad was three years sober. I figured I was going to have to be a tea totaler if Dad was sober, but somehow I didn’t anticipate on AA, which is kind of strange considering Grampa’s long history with AA. I don’t think Grampa had more that five years sober when he died, but he’d been going to AA since the 40s.

ON AND ON ANON

So walking up those stairs, past the Wellness Center, into the Hacienda Group (The Not-So-Wellness Center as Dad dubbed it) was a brand new thing for me. “Being sober” became the new “getting high”. I was down for it and approached with a gung ho spirit or so I thought. I met some great people. The first night I went, Dad was leading the meeting:

“Hi guys. My name is Spencer and Im an alcoholic.”

“Hi Spencer” said everyone.

“Tonight’s topic is going to be ‘Summer fashions and the alcoholic fashionista. For those of you who aren’t well versed in haute couture for the low-bottom drunk, please feel free to share about whatever’s on your mind. Let’s go around the room. Please introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from. Anyone can attend but only alcoholics can share. And remember guys, what we say here, and what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here.”

“Here here!” said everybody in unison.

I met a lot of people there who would become family. There was Charlie H.

“You see, my problem was that I was a vomiter...” 

“I talked to one guy and I asked his what the secret of the program was, he told me “just hang on”. That I asked another guy the same thing and he told me “just let go”! So I don’t know. All I know is that it works if you work it.

and Kenny Mac.

“This is a million dollah program shoved up your ass one nickel at a time...”

Kenny had over twenty year sober. He sold timeshare in Cabo, but in his day he was a professional basketball player for the Nicks, then he owned a string of restaurants called “The Salty Dog”. Then he was a used car salesman, which is when he got sober. He was tall and thin and tan. He was in good shape. He had a thick Brooklyn accent, wire-rim glasses, and a big luxurious mane of snow white hair formed into something of a pompadour. And he wore a vest I can only describe as an organ-grinder monkey’s vest, with no shirt underneath, to show off his deep bronze tan topped of with thick white chest hair. 

“Yeah, I can get on my pity pot real easy. But I know when it’s time to get off the pot. It’s always ‘poor me, poor me, pour me anuddah drink.”

One time I was watching Star Trek with my Dad, and it was the episode with “Vaal” the big stone temple that’s shaped like a giant lizard head, and the primitive natives who have to collect their bounty and deliver it to Vaal, and Vaal in turn takes care of the villagers by ensuring a good crop. In this episode, the villagers all being from the same alien race, all look alike. They’re all this deep orange color, with big white heads of hair. Dad called it “The planet of the Kenny Macs”

Texas Diane:

“The thing was, the horns on his head fit into the holes on mine.”

I met Bones. Bones looked like if Frank Zappa decided cut his hair and become a tennis player. Cut the hair, but keep the ‘stache.” He was smart and intense and opinionated like Zappa, too.

“People say this is a selfish program? That’s bullshit. If you want to keep it, you have to give it away. Getting sober doesn’t make it okay for your self-absorbed selfish behaviors. If you want to stay sober, you better be going the other way. I got sober to change my selfish nature. I don’t think about much, but I’m all I think about, ya know?”

It was Bones who first told me the Bill Wilson was high on LSD when he wrote the 12x12, which makes sense when you read it. It really flows and is poetic and full of good ideas about how to run a society that can function with a leader who doesn’t rule. An anarchist collective syndicate if you will. They down talk much in the meetings about Bill Wilson flying on acid when he wrote the rules for sobriety though.

There was Chris with the wonky eye.

“Every problem I have is either pink or green. But I try not to stress on it. That will lead to future tripping, which can take me right out if I’m not careful. And like a wise man once told me, he said “Today’s Thursday. Do Thursday’s stuff on Thursday.”

There was German Rik.

“Hello, my name is Rik! And I am a chroooonick alcoholic!

Rik looked, and sounded, like, and I believe actually was, an aging German rockstar. Skinny guy, song straight kind of stringy gray hair, with a mustache/muttonchops combo, leather pant with cowboy boots and a studded belt, T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. I dug German Rik didn’t have a higher power. What Rik talked about was an “untapped inner resource” that we all had inside of us.

“Ya seeee? My problem was, I had to find an “untapped inner resource””

There was Connie, she was kind of hot. She her had  own ‘rockstar’ thing going on, or maybe ‘rockstar’s girlfriend. No, that’s not fair. The Wilson sisters from “Heart” are rockstars. She looked like that. She was coming up on a year sober.

“They say not to get in any, you know. romantic relationships in the first year. And definitely not in meetings! What do they call it when people who have been around the program try and pick up newcomers? Uh,  the 13th step! That’s right. Don’t be thirteen stepping the new-comers! The thing is, thirteen is my lucky number...”

Then there was Ed. Ed was a regular visitor from Canada, he spoke slowly and deliberately, and boy did he like to share. And share and share and ahare and share and share. We even talked about creating a special meeting for him that we’d call “On and On Anon”. Ed would hold the floor for the whole meeting if the secretary let him. Whenever he’d share, about a minute into it Dad would lean over to me and whisper “Thank you, Ed”. Then fifteen seconds later, “Thank you, Ed”. Then another fifteen seconds, “Thank you, Ed”. And on and on and on.

Although it was officially an AA meeting, there were no other 12 step options in Cabo, the group consensus seemed to be that alcohol is a drug, thusly was open to drug addict too. There wasn’t anybody in the group who didn’t have a drug problem too. Which is how Mary Clemons, who was a pill-popper wound up there. She been involved in 14 car accidents in the past 4 years. Maybe she had a problem. 

“...when I finally woke up... came to... whatever. When the pills wore off, I couldn’t remember what I’d done, and I felt so ashamed. And I went to look at myself in the mirror, and there was a chocolate bar stuck to my face.”

“For me, God stands for Good Orderly Direction. They say that we can’t manage our own lives? Well, I’d developed a “hands off” management style...”

AA flourished in Cabo. Cabo was often described as “A sunny place for shady people” and “the land of water soluble relationships”. Dad said “when people ask how I wound up in Cabo, I tell em, if you take the US and you turn it upside down, and shake it real good, whatever’s not bolted down real well, or has a screw loose winds up in Cabo”

About AA, he’d say, “We’re all here because we’re not all there.”

When we ran into someone difficult at a meeting, he’d say “There’s a reason it’s not called ‘Wellness Anonymous”.

The meeting I attended with Dad, the Hacienda Group, was in the Hacienda Hotel, which was an absolutely gorgeous old hacienda-style hotel, all painted white with brick archways, terracotta tile floors with cobalt tile highlights. In the lobby the had a big wrought iron a filigree birdcage with a 30 year-old macaw. 

We’d sit in a wide open meeting space probably 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, again, painted with with the terracotta tile floor an big open archways all around. From the second floor we had a wide-open vista from hotels on the palm tree-lines beach filled with sunbathers, swimmers and vendors, and the blue sky meeting the deep blue green ocean speckled with glittering diamonds on one side, with a secluded Bougainville-covered patio on the other. The meetings themselves were almost entirely gringo. This was in fact the gringo meeting. It was also a hangout, and if you were sober and wanted to sell timeshare or work on a boat, it was a pretty good place to get a job. The meetings were 75% timeshare salesmen and boat captains. Lots of white T-shirts, Bermuda short, sunglasses and sandals in AA in Cabo.

I was having fun. These guys were alright by me. 

What Dad had been doing in Cabo before I got there was opening up two more restaurants in addition to Mama’s in Cabo. First he took over the restaurant and bad at The Mar de Cortez, which was a quaint family-owned hotel right in town, a three minute walks from Mama’s. In a grand display of humility he named the restaurant after me: “Spencer’s Garden Court”. Then he gave it to my brother Steve to run. It had the same menu as the Menu at Mama’s. Steve had been making Dad’s menu professionally since he was 17. He had it down.

And there was Felix’s Tacos.

It was going to be a taco stand, but with a twist; Felix’s was going to have a Salsa Bar. We would, on a daily basis, offer a rotating selections of salsas, with 30 of them available at any given time. It was a good idea. 

ASPHALT PHARM STRIKES AGAIN

It’s a beautiful dad at Mama’s in Cabo. We have a patio full of customers. I’m in the rear of the patio at Mama’s in Cabo painting chairs. It was always something with those chairs. They were falling apart and demanded a lot of work. Constant either painting, glueing or screwing.

Anyway I’m in the back of the restaurant fixing chairs, and a customer comes back to say hello and introduce herself. She was an Asian woman in her thirties and she wanted me to know that she lives with her family in the house we had on Spruce St. in Oakland when I was a little kid! She lives at Asphalt Pharm! How cool is that! I shake her hand and thank her for coming. 

I mention it to Dad later and he said he didn’t know anything about it. 

“Well... if you didn’t tell them, then how did she know I’d lived at Spruce St?”

Dad and I look at each other. We both look at each other like “that’s weird!”

We both do the Twilight Zone tune: NIni NIni...

THE REAL JOHN HUGHES

One time walking down Hidalgo toward Mama’s with Dad, I see a guy dressed in a red gorilla suit wearing a tutu on roller skates. What the fuck? I look at Dad with a somewhat bemused look on my face.

“That’s John Hughes. Local color.”

“I’ll say!”

From time to time for years, I’ll see John Hughes roller skating around Cabo in a red gorilla suit wearing a tutu. There’s something admirable about that. I’m not sure what. But there’s something.

LOS HERMANOS MORA

It took us forever to get Felix’s up and running. But we got it done. Bit by bit. Steve and I were down there everyday trying to drill into fucking cement. When we were done, we had a cute little really awkward “L” shaped restaurant. See, Dad had rented a whole corner, except for a smaller corner where a timeshare front was. He had to coexist. When it came time to staff up, that’s when we met Toño and Fermin. Cabo’s own Rosencranz and Gildenstern, freshly arrived to make their mark in the world from Mazatlan. 

Toño had kind of a friendly Cholo vibe. He was always smiling and basically was/is the living real world embodiment of Michael Peña in “Ant-Man”. Toño is the guy who first said “Hey! Spenny boy!”, an called me that for the remainder of the time I knew him. We hired him as a cook for Mama’s but it turns out the guy could burn water. But Dad fell in love with him, because if Toño is anything, it’s lovable, and hired him as a waiter for Felix’s. When we needed a bartender, Toño came through.

“Spenny boy, my brother Fermín is the best bartender in Cabo.”

“Really? That’s great, Toño. Is he available?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask. It’s high season, though.”

In spite of it being high season, we haggled and got Fermín, who turned out the to be the slowest bartender I’ve ever seen in my life. Every margarita for him was a science experiment. Every shot of tequila needed to be closely visually back lot and  inspected. Every. Single. One. But he was just so goofy. And had such a wide eyes look and guileless smile. He was also a cartoonist with the imagination of a mad man. And after seeing “Fargo” by the Coen Bros. took to saying “Yah!” with a thick “Minnasoota” accent. Aliens walk among us. He was/is unique and amazing. But damn he was a slow bartender. And the one-two punch of Toño and Fermin together was hilarious. And they both got that. I think they worked it. 

Once we’re open and serving food, I start getting a salary. First order of business is to get out of Dad’s hovel and find a hovel of my own.

MY FIRST SPONSOR

I wind up in this little trailer at El Arco Trailer Park, which was on the highway to San Jose del Cabo, on the outskirts of Cabo San Lucas. As soon as I moved in, I found some Mexican gank weed in a drawer. And I smoked it. Didn’t tell anybody. It lasted a day. The world didn’t self-destruct. I didn’t self-destruct. I didn’t start drinking, I didn’t go out looking for more pot, and I certainly didn’t do any speed. And I kept going to meetings. But I felt guilty about it. And I didn’t tell my sponsor. Actually I didn’t have a sponsor anymore. He went out. Over a woman. He was a junkie beach bum from Santa Barbara. Japanese dude named Steve. He’d cleaned up his act five years ago and opened the Santa Barbara Cafe in Cabo. Right next to Squid Roe. I worked the steps with him and everything. We had a weekly big book study at this woman’s house, and she was a newcomer. And she also look fucking phenomenal in a red string bikini. She was hot as shit, and kind of loud and funny, and kind of seemed like maybe half the time she didn’t get the joke, but really so totally did.Bikini bod of the Gods. Anyway Steve had five years sober when he tried to get with her and she wasn’t interested. Who knows if he ever made it back or not. Last time I saw him he was drunk and explaining to me how difficult his life was. You and me both, brother.

JAMUNA LLEWELYN 

Before too long, I had my own place in Cabo. A place I rented from Jack, from Whitefish, Montana. He was this old guy, another AA ex-pat in Cabo. He owned this pretty cool duplex near downtown. He lived in the downstairs apartment, and was perfectly happy to rent the upstairs to me. Jack was going back up to Montana to have his knees operated on, a tricky proposition at 72. All he wanted was that I take care of his dog while he was gone. The dog was a pretty solid beast, some sort of pitbull mix. Jack, being aware that I had adopted a stray kitten I’d found at the restaurant, warned me that even though his dog got along well with people, he’d try and kill any other animals that came around. That’s just the way he was. I was pretty sure I could make it work. I was good at keeping doors closed, and I wasn’t NOT going to take the place. It was too nice. I’d find a way to make due. 

Around this time, I got an extremely pleasant surprise, in the form of Jamuna! Boy was she was a sight for sore eyes. She seemed as amazed and delighted to see me as I was to see her! And guess what? She was in The Program! She mainly did Narcotics Anonymous, because, like me, it was crank that had been her drug of choice. But there was no NA in Cabo, so she was all to happy to attend AA meetings with me. 

After an AA meeting, a bunch of us went out for fajitas, and she came right along. At dinner, I started getting nervous when I could sense Kane gearing up to put the moves on her. I was very concerned. That never worked out for me. Whenever I liked a girl, practically over the course of my entire life to that point, whenever I’d be making progress, some cooler, taller, handsomer, more charming guy would just swoop in and take her to the moon. Usually this happened amongst my friends. So when Kane started making the moves on Jamuna, I was worried. He was tall, blond, traditionally handsome musician and surfer, with chiseled features, and I was me. But to my amazement, I soon realized that I shouldn’t have been concerned. She listened politely to Kane, laughed politely at his jokes, while shooting me glances saying “This guy thinks he’s SO cool.” We shared a secret smile at Kane’s expense. 

I was amazed. Over the years, in Oakland, Jamuna and I had run in to each other frequent times. At the restaurant, and at local music venues. But I’d never felt anywhere near this close to her. Invariably, when I’d run into her at a show, it was because we’d both show up to support Bari, yet another musician I worked with at the restaurant. And Bari was VERY into Jemima. I always felt vexed by him, sure I couldn’t compete. Yet here I was, making out with jemima, just after sunset, at the top of the hill above the beach. Just me and Jemima, engaged in passionate discovery. No Kane or Bari in sight. 

Over the next couple of days we became entangled. The next night, we made out in Felix’s unfinished hull of a restaurant. In the dark, among the pots and pans, and equipment and furniture. Soon enough we were back at my place, out on the patio, under the palms, in the balmy desert air. We whispered, and touched, and kissed, and nuzzled. She showed me how she was able, in spite of never having gotten pregnant, could express drops of milk from her tiny smooth breasts. Eventually we found our way to my bed. It was getting pretty hot, but Jamuna wanted to hold off. I did my best to convince her with my tactile skills. In a classic case either jumping the gun, or just fucking going for broke, whichever you prefer, I took out my dick. It’s just a dick. She’d seen plenty of them before, I was pretty sure. Shoot I was pretty sure she’d routinely fucked her boyfriend in the bathroom at the restaurant in Oakland. Upon seeing my erect penis exposed, ready for any adventures that may come, She simply said, “Yeah. Okay. Nice cock.” She was getting flustered, feeling it was time to either pony up to the action, or get the fuck out of there, she opted for the latter. I gave her a ride back to her hotel, with a mutual promise to meet again. 

2 nights later, we snuck into the Hotel Finisterra, a beautiful resort, right on the Pacific Ocean, with its incredible view, and its multi-tiered reception areas, and a series of pool bars covered by huge beautiful 50 foot palapas. As we rode the elevator down to the beach, I tried to do the ‘elevator’ thing. She had to ask, “What is it with Guys and elevators?” I didn’t know. Until she mentioned it, I didn’t even really realize it was a ‘thing’, even though I’d seen it in a dozen soft-porny Joan Collins flicks on Cinemax, when I was younger. 

Once we were down on the beach, where it was perfectly quiet, and perfectly dark, save for the starlight, and seasonal sparkles of phosphorous, that came in on glowing waves in the night, and deposited in the wet sand. The phosphorous glowed like diamonds on the beach. 

We sat and talked, and made out, and rolled around in the starlight, ostensibly out of sight, on the far side of a small dune. It was there I relieved her of her panties and went down on her. Afterwards, she returned the favor. For awhile we sat in the darkness, in orgasmic bliss. I wonder to myself quietly what would have happened if instead of going down on her, I’d tried to fuck her. 

By the time her and her Mom are ready to return to Oakland, Jamuna are quite entangled. After she leaves Cabo, for the next good while, I start receiving letters from her in the mail. The Mexican Postal service. In spite of the fact that all the letters are starting to scare me, I want to be with her, even from 16 hundred miles away. Quickly enough, we are discussing her coming down, permanent like, to be with me. As its about to be very real, I get cold feet, and stop calling her. Eventually, through the grapevine, I get word that I hurt her pretty good. I come to realize that at six months sober, I’m capable of making really shitty decisions, as I continue to fuck with peoples emotions, and leave damage behind me, like one of the many hurricanes that pass through Cabo on a regular basis. 

POOR LITTLE KITTY CAT

One night I come home to my place. The cleaning lady has left the door open. I find my kitten lifeless on the floor, and the big dog smiling and happy that he’d done such a great job. 

Soon after, my apartment, being all open windows and palm fronds, is easily broken in to by some neighborhood needys, and cleaned me out of my possessions. Fuck this! I can’t live in an insecure environment like this. I’d been robbed before, and it always felt like I’d been violated. As soon as it happened, I made up my mind to move. 

Then I get word that Jack, from Whitefish, Montana, has died under the knife. He won’t be coming back. A young woman has taken over management of the property, telling me I have to move. She also tells me I owe her 400 bucks. I balk and tell her that as I look at it, my deal was with Jack, and it died with Jack. Good luck on getting any more money out of me, which I don’t have anyway. 

So, Dad and I decide to get a place together again, and eventually we moved in to a pretty nice place. A place with serious air conditioning, and new tiled floors, and new furniture, and satellite TV. Interestingly, it turns out that our landlord, this guy named Richie, who at one time had been a hairdresser, was a major cocaine trafficker. His story had been featured in a movie that had come out recently, called “Blow”, with Johnny Depp, and Penelope Cruz. Very cool, right? Richie’s part had been completely rewritten in to a character named Derek Foreal. He was played by Pee Wee Herman. 

KIM BLANCHARD

Then, while I’m still living at the trailer park, who bit Stephen Gehlbach shows up! And he’s got this 18 year old hippie chick named Kim from New Zealand with him. He wasn’t planning on it. He picked her up on the way down. They met of the goddamn Green Tortoise! 

Miracle Bus is right!

I’d decided to move out of Dad’s place. Too much personality under one roof, not enough space. So I move in to this shitty little rundown trailer in El Arco Trailer Park. I kind of like it. Over my years in Mexico, I’d spent plenty of time in strange little shitty campers parked in the middle of fruit groves, on beaches, in the middle of the fucking desert. I’m used to these types of accommodations. The type of place that when you first move in to, you might open a drawer to find a diseased rat guarding an ancient stack of Mexican porno. Lots of character, these places have. 

Kim  is young and pulchritudinous, and every time Stephen is not around, the energy between me and her is palpable. At first, it’s touching her leg against mine while we’re driving, as she expresses her concerns that Stephen is kind of a dink. I don’t contradict her. Eventually we kiss on Medano Beach. As we exit through the Hacienda Hotel, I try and hide my woody. Later it gets even more brazen. One night at Felix’s, while Stephen is eating, she and I go at each other in a little nook next to the bathrooms. The employees all see this, but they keep their mouth shut. As far as I was concerned, this girl Stephen had brought with him, so round, so firm, so fully packed, was absolutely fair game. Stephen was a slut, with no regard for the boundaries of others. He’d fuck anything that moved, was my informed take on Stephen. One of those “anythings that moved” that I’m positive he fucked was Rona. Stephen and Rona denied it up to the gates of hell, but simple reasoning led me to believe they were both full of shit. It had happened years before, and ostensibly it had been dealt with, but it left me with an image of Stephen, as somebody who, in spite of the fact that he’d readily screw your girlfriend behind your back, he was also someone who trafficked in a lot of pussy. So I didn’t mind having him around, especially if I could fuck his girlfriend behind HIS back. It seemed likely that entanglement was eminent. Kim and I had been going at it pretty frequently when Stephen was looking the other way. The time was right, so in a move of extraordinary assininity, with Kim on my arm, I decide the best course of action is to inform Stephen that I’m stealing his girlfriend, so he better find some place else to stay. Stephen is none too happy about this turn of events. He suggests a three-way. I’d been talking to my brother about the whole situation, as it was unfolding, and he was the first to bring up a three-way as a possible a possible solution. So when Stephen again suggested it, in that tiny trailer in the dark, I was open to it. I figured, “What the hell.” But almost as soon as we started, seeing Stephen’s little cock in Kim‘s hand, I realized I wanted her all to myself. So I kicked Stephen out into the Cabo night, while Kim and I had mediocre sex, Stephen sat by the side of the road with his backpack, waiting for a good citizen to pick him up and take him someplace he could crash. 

The next morning, after our night of mediocre sex, it was clear that Kim had tasted what she wanted, scratched that itch, and was ready to jump ship back to Stephen. By mid-afternoon, as we walked on Lover’s Beach, she clued me in to the fact that she just wasn’t that in to me, and was going back him. 

Stephen and Kim stayed in Cabo until Christmas. They rented a little place. Stephen endeared himself to the local Mexican hippie artist scene, while I hung around like a beat dog, hoping she’d change her mind. But she never did. When she eventually left Cabo alone on the bus, she left with both me and Stephen feeling like lovelorn chumps. Interestingly, the 2 of us weren’t alone in our feelings of loss. Toño, my waiter, was experiencing his own loss. So much so, that it made me curious what had happened between Toño and Kim. He was displaying all the signs. He seemed lovelorn, too. he was buying her presents for her bus ride. Toño was as smitten as either Stephen or I. Clearly he’d made some sort of progress with her, that Stephen and I were unaware of. So there the three of us sat, heads hung low, wondering how this simple girl from New Zealand had gotten the better of all of us. I tell you, the power of pussy.

THE HOTEL MAR DE CORTEZ

Lastly, Dad was opening a restaurant in a local hotel down town. An old style Mexico place, when 4 star resorts were starting to pop up everywhere. This little quaint hotel in downtown, had a beautiful pool, and an attractive dining room and kitchen area, but the rooms were small and dank. There was no telephone, or even T.V’s in the rooms. Had I been there earlier in the decision making process, I would have voted against to hotel restaurant. I liked my comforts. But, as it turned out, 3 restaurants was the correct number for us to have. One for Dad, one for my brother, and one for me. 

I was living sober. I was going to AA meeting on a regular basis. I was learning stuff, about myself, about the program. Living sober was such a different experience for me, that I could almost convince myself that my new state was so odd for me, it was almost like being high. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was on the road to somewhere other than ruin. It was getting to the point where I could ignore that voice, that feeling, that crept in and reminded me I was still damaged beyond belief. Unfortunately, when I kicked the drugs out of my life, I seemed to have driven away the muse as well. No drugs equaled no art, or at least art at a seriously diminished capacity.

WILLOW, TITI & EDINA

So we managed to actually get Felix’ Taco Stand open! We featured a “Salsa Bar” with over 30 fresh homemade salsas that we put out everyday. Pepita from Magic of The Moon across the street was one of our first regulars. As were Willow, Titi and Edina. They were these three very attractive young women who decided that Felix’s would be “their place”. Willow was a light-skinned black woman from Cali, Titi was white, and French and drop dead gorgeous. And Edina was statuesque and stunning at nearly six feet tall. She was also an accomplished flautist. I saw her play at one of the local gringo bars. She rocked. As it turned out, she was also a stripper doing the Mexican circuit, currently at Mermaids (a local strip club). All three of them were. I found this to be provocative. I never went to watch them perform. That seemed rude to me, and an intrusion. I wanted Felix’s to be a safe place for them to go. But that didn’t stop me from going an visiting them to suss out it I might be able to make some headway with Titi. I never did, but she did flash her pussy at me. So the was nice.

They were all gregarious and friendly, and more than happy to tell me about their misadventures at The Lusty Lady, which was a female-owned strip club they all worked at in San Francisco. They loved talking about one guy in particular.

“I could drop dead at any moment because of the purple pus I got pumping through my heart!” said Edina in a mock-tough guy New Yorker voice, which made all three of them break out laughing.

Then Willow repeated, in the same comical “tough guy” accent, “Purple pus pumping through my veins!”

“What’s that from?” I ask.

It’s this guy who was a bouncer at the Lusty Lady. He was *hilarious*! He was this Italian bouncer, about five and a half feet tall, and perfectly round...” said Edina.

“Like a bowling ball!” added Titi in her sexy French accent.

“Like a bowling ball” said Willow and Edina in unison.

“Johnny Marsa... chiello?” asked Willow tentatively.

“Marchesciello” responded Edina.

“That’s right. Johnny Marchesciello. That guy was too much!” said Edina.

“He was like a walking talking cartoon character”, said Willow. “But he was always really nice. He never tried anything with me” said Willow.

“He lent me money for rent” said Titi. “Even though he had ‘purple pus running through my veins’” she finished with the fake tough guy New York accent, but she couldn’t quite pull it off with her French accent, which I found sexy beyond measure.

SEPTEMBER RAIN

After 6 months in Cabo, September finally rolled around. And as everybody knows, Dad likes to close the restaurant  for one month every year. In Cabo, that’s September. September it stultifyingly hot. And muggy. And empty in Cabo. Nary a tourist as far as the eye can see. So that’s the month we go shopping in the US. 

Dad and I head up to the he USA in his silver piece of shit Chrysler. First stop: Hollywood. Always Hollywood first. Dad grew up drag stripping on Sunset Blvd. doing his best to avoid getting pulled over by the Sheriff’s dept. The local LA cops were one thing, but the LA County sheriff’s were the ones that would fuck with you, Dad often told me.

So what do we do? You guessed it. We head to Pink’s at Melrose and LaBrea for some chili dogs! After that, we’re on La Brea so Dad asks me if I want to check out the LaBrea tar pits! I do indeed! So we go there next.

The tar pits were just that. Black goo bubbling from the Earth. They had a sabertooth tiger skeleton in a glass box that used some technology to make a simulacrum of an actual sabertooth tiger appear around the skeleton. It was kind of hologrammy, but I doubt it was an actual hologram. It was some kind of reflective projection trick I think. 

Anyway after that, we went and stayed in a motel in Tarzana that looked like the motel that Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese stay in at the beginning of the last act of “The Terminator”.

The next morning we went to Universal Studios specifically to see the “Back to The Future” ride that Douglas Trumball created that was supposed to be so innovative. Here’s what Dad had to say about the ride:

“It cost 50 bucks to get in. We had to wait an hour to get on the ride. The ride was 2 minutes long. It was worth it.” He was pretty impressed with it. So was I. And it was very innovative.

Dad showed me Fargo St. in Silverlake. The key to give someone the best experience of Fargo St. is to drive slowly. There’s a small incline/bump/rise in the road. Right as you hit that bump, punch the gas hard and yell “Oh shit! The bridge is out!”

You see, Fargo St. Is the steepest street in Los Angeles. Dad thought it was hilarious, I spilled my drink and nearly swallowed my tongue.

The next morning we headed north to see Grandma in Santa Rosa.

Say hi to Grandma. Jeans, green turtleneck, Vantage cigarette. We go with Carl to see Tracy Nelson who’s playing right in Santa Rosa. The show’s great. Dad asks me to go buy some cigarettes. I buy Camels even though his whole life he’s smoked Marlboro. Just trying to be different I guess. Judy smoked Camels. I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, Dad gets really mad at me about it. Like yelling at me mad. Like I can never do anything right mad. Whatever. It’s a pack of cigarettes, dick.

All four of us, me, Dad, Carl and Grandma, go see “Lone Star” by John Sayles. It’s excellent. While waiting for the film to start, we talk movies. Carl talks about how much he loved “Platoon” because it spoke to his experience in Vietnam. Grandma says one she saw recently at the theater and loved was “Smilla’s Sense of Snow”, of which I’ve heard good things. Never seen it. The next day, Dad go to Oakland so I can visit with Mom. We hit the DMV on Claremont on the way. It’s time to renew the registration on the Gold Duster. After that, Dad drops me off at Mom’s apartment.

THE LAST TIME I SAW RONA

I greet Mom, we share some pleasantries, tell what I’ve been up to. Then I call Rona.

Rona and I make plans to meet. 

I take BART to the Ashby station and then walk over to where she’s living. It’s the same place she lived at when I left. It’s all smiles.

We’re in Rona’s car. The same blue one I spun out on 80. I’m in the passenger side. She asks me to turn away, which I do, kinda sorta. She changes her shirt in the car. I catch a glimpse of her back. 

Rona’s mom is going to take Rona’s car to the mechanic to get something repaired. So we’re going to drive to Alameda, drop off the car, and then take the bus back.

On the way to Alameda she tells me about a guy she’s been seeing. I was to say he’s Arabic. So so will. He’s Arabic.

We drop her car off at her mom’s house, but nobody is there at the moment, so we walk to the bus stop.

On the bus back, she snuggles up against me and falls asleep with her head on my shoulder. I get off the bus at my stop on Oakland. She stays on the bus, presumably to get off near Ashby.  It who can really say? Maybe she was abducted by aliens before Ashby. All I know for sure was that it was the last time I saw her. It was bittersweet.

When I get to Mom’s I score. Of course I do.

WENDY NOONAN

The moving to the new place with dad coincided with the , at this point long awaited opening of Felix’s. So yeah, we were finally up and running. One of the first thing that happens is I meet an Australian girl named Wendy. Super cute. Little bobbed hair cut. She had a serious Meg Ryan thing going on. I jump at the opportunity to chat her up. I show her one of my collections of illustrations that I’d printed up in the Bay Area to sell in book stores and comic shops. They all sold pretty well, but I managed to bring half a dozen copies down with me. After I give her the ‘Zine, “Innuendo And Out The Other” and we’d just started going over it, to her absolute enjoyment, and my absolute astonishment at her extreme enjoyment, just as it’s getting fun, my brother drops by the restaurant, needing my help, moving a ficus tree from Dad’s old place to our new shared digs. Shit! I don’t want to go! Can’t he see I’m doing something? I try to wheedle my way out of this particular move, to no avail. Big Bro is insistent. So we go. Leaving Wendy behind to work her way through my artwork with no guidance. I figure, “How long could it possibly take to move a fucking little tree in a pot?” I figure I can do it, and get back to the restaurant before she leaves. In our (my) haste, we break the tree. And when I finally do get back to the restaurant, Wendy is long gone. Fuck! But she left a note: “I don’t just love your work. I “loave” your work. I “luft” your work.” Nice letter. It makes me smile, in spite of the fact she’s long gone when I return. Also she seems to know enough to crib Woody Allen. Wendy shows up a couple of days later, for dinner, around closing time. We chat awhile. Eventually I kiss her. She responds by saying she wasn’t sure if I was gonna make a move on her, because she thought I might be gay. 

“I’m not”, I say as we proceed into the night. Soon enough, we are on the roof of Felix’s. First base. Second base. Third base. She’s wearing a bikini bottom that I manage to move aside with my finger in a hook shape. So sweet. 

Soon enough, we decide to move it back to her hotel room. All of a sudden it flashes on me: Why did I suddenly get the feeling Wendy is a call girl? As hot as she is, naked and wiggling under me, over me, beside me, I can’t fucking shake it, and it’s making my dick go limp. I finish up with no trouble, but I’m left wondering if she WAS a call girl, who could have set it up. I finally settle on my sponsor at the time, Ted Wooten. He was always talking about the therapeutic necessity to occasionally have “one’s tubes drained”. So I settle on him. I never ask about it. 

DOING MY CIVIC DUTY

The deposition was fun. 

Aaron Mouton was suing Safeway. Safeway’s position was that Safeway wasn’t responsible for the actions of the security guard because they contract out. Thusly, Mr. Mouton should be suing the security company. I actually have no idea how the whole thing turned out, but it sounded  my testimony might have been valuable. In situations like that, where youI’m glad I was able to help. I hope he won. The best part was when Safeway’s lawyer asked if I’d ever been arrested for any drug related offenses. Before I could answer, Aaron’s lawyer objected and said something about me not having to answer. So I said I didn’t want to answer, and Safeway’s lawyers seemed uplifted when I said I didn’t want to answer. Both sides informed me that in a deposition, I have to answer and the judge then determines if it’s admissible or not. So Safeway’s lawyer asked me again:

“Have you ever been arrested for any drug related offenses?”

“No” I said with a smile, as I looked Safeway’s lawyer straight in the eyes.

I was very high.

On the way out I asked Aaron and his lawyer how I did. He said I appeared to be someone wouldn’t lie regardless of the circumstances.

FIRST CONTACT

“She came in once before. Before we put the patio in..”

So one day, this woman came in to the restaurant. She sat and quietly ate dinner with her friend. The two of them, to petite blonds in bright red jackets, that had they been mustard yellow, would have indicated they worked for Century 21. But these jackets were bright red, and I took that to mean they worked in the timeshare industry.

Anyhow, I saw them, they fit the bill (young, pretty, American, lived there), They were both cute. Kinda like sisters. So I tried to chat them up. Either one. Just introduce myself as a viable human. They show no apparent interest. They were too busy talking to each other to even notice I was there. 

"So much for that", I thought. No big deal. 

I don't know how long it was before she came in again, because I don't remember exactly when she came in the first time. 

But I can tell you the exact date of our second meeting. It was May 5, 1997. I know because it was the day after my 30th birthday and the big chili cook off. It was a Monday. 

MIMI HOPE

She came in for lunch with her Mom, and her name was Mimi Hops. Her given name was Mimi and her even nickier nickname was Mimi. We had just opened our new patio the day before, and it was quite an improvement. It doubled our seating, plus now we took over the entire corner of the block, which seriously increased our visibility. All of a sudden we were an attractive restaurant, and not just a hole in the wall. 

Maybe a week before, I had returned from the US where I had given a deposition in the assault case I had witnessed years before at Safeway in the middle of the night. Aaron (that was his name, Aaron Mouton) had a strong case against Safeway, and my testimony seemingly was the lynchpin in his case. Having a witness step forward (not to mention a witness who had the foresight to file a police report) is indeed a rare thing. 

So Mimi Hope was sitting on the patio eating with her mom, Maggie. I recognized her from before instantly. She was one of the cute blond sisters in the red jackets! I was feeling pretty good about doing my civic duty in the United States, and it showed. It was easy to engage Mimi and Maggie in conversation. Moms love me! My wit sparkled and my tongue was golden. Conversation flowed effortlessly. Words cascaded off my golden tongue like... uh... what’s that word again? All kidding aside I was happy to be engaged in conversation with Mimi. I had a yearning around me that I didn’t understand. A thirst for love. And I don’t know where it came from. Was it just in me? Did circumstances create it? Some unease. Like, a dis-ease. Is it a sickness to want love and never feel like you’re getting it? We communicate in so many different ways.

Talking to Mimi felt like an oasis in the desert, because I could see love and attention in my future. Love and attention and sex. I felt like I was ex starved, but honestly I’d had sexual with more women in the last year in Cabo, than in probably the five or six years before that. But I still felt lonely. Fifteen minutes into chatting with Mimi I wasn’t lonely anymore. I can’t pinpoint the different. I could say a lot of facile romantic mumbo jumbo, but it wouldn’t be any of that stuff. It’s something else, that’s quantifiable, I just can’t see it.

I think maybe I saw a hunger in her eyes. And her hunger fed mine.

I told her my story about testifying. It was the mode of conversation. We conversed in the same style. Funny and fast. And we both recognized it. 

I would be remiss in not mentioning Maggie, who incidentally laughs exactly like Witch Hazel from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. She doesn’t laugh so much as cackle. Maggie talks a lot, and she kept unintentionally feeding me straight lines. She asked if I was Jewish, 'cause she really liked Jewish guys. A real Jew-o-phile.

“No, I’m not Jewish. But I have a Jewy center”.

Mimi looked at me and rolled her eyes, but kept a straight face.

Maggie didn’t hear it or didn’t get it. She wouldn’t shut up about this chick named Dominique, or Destiny. Maybe it was Destiny. Anyway, she’s a friend of Mimi ‘s and she perfect, for me! She’s tall, and athletic and loves sports... everything a guy could ever want in a woman. Every quality Maggie to exemplify the “perfect woman” seems to be the literal antithesis of Mimi, whose defining traits seem to be short, blond and funny. None of this was lost in Mimi who seemed to be embarrassed. I could tell instantly that Daphne or Desdemona or whatever was not my type. But that Mimi Hope fit the bill. Was it love? Was it a series of signals? Are we programmed like a Simon game to react as predicted when our buttons are pushed in the right order? Does it make a difference? You see, Mimi Hope was cute but she had sharp edges. Additionally, Bette Davis wishes she had eyes like Mimi Hope. While Maggie blathered, I sized Mimi up. Me likey. Me wanty right fucking now. And yet the game is the game and it’s not going to play itself. There’s an order to things. Step one? Make it clear to Mimi where I’m coming from.

“Maggie, why  are you raving so much about this person? You have this beautiful woman, who happens to be your daughter, sitting right next to you. Why aren’t you raving about her?”

Mimi looks at me. Yeah! 

I air-five God in my brain. That got her attention!

 I asked for her number and she gave it to me without hesitation. She gonna go out on weak limb on the Crazy Tree here and say she wanted me to call. 

I called her the next day, 

There was a little bit of game playing, but that’s okay. I was up to it. I was fearful and riddled with anxiety, but I was up to it. There was an unspoken proposal was on the table and it behooved me to call. 

OTHER PEOPLE’S CASH

She worked at the Westin Regina in Cabo, and she  identified herself as a concierge. But she wasn't really a concierge in the strict sense. She was what’s called an OPC. OPC stands for “off-premises contact” or “other people’s cash”, whichever you like. (“Get down with OPC!”). Basically a shill for timeshare. The OPC is the first contact. It was her job to rope couples on vacation into a sales presentation. 

There are different types of OPC's There are the guys in the street who yell at you from their booths, as you try to walk down the street. 

"Hey honeymooners, you looking for golf?" 

And there are the guys at the airport. 

"Hey honeymooners, you need a shuttle to your hotel?" 

But she had the best job. She was what was known as the “cute chick in the lobby". They were everywhere, these “cute chicks in the lobby”. All of them pretty young women sitting behind desks in opulent hotels lobbies. There to make sure the tourist on vacation got what they needed. They were there primarily to answer all variety of silly questions, and sell activities: golfing, off-road ATV’s, all manner of water sports. Whatever the customer needed. One thing was for sure, a good concierge could pull in a lot of money. And Mimi said she was the best.

I used the pay phone down the street from the restaurant to call The Westin Regina.

“Hola. Puede pasarme al escritoreo del concierge, porfa?... Gracias.”

At this point in time, cell phones in Cabo were practically nonexistent. And land lines were just starting to be common in homes and  businesses.  We didn't have a phone in Felix's. I could have used the one at Mama's, but then I would have had to make the call in front of my Dad, and that was NOT going to happen. So I used the pay phone. 

I called and...she blew me off. 

"It's really busy here." "You called at a bad time." "Could you call again some other time?" 

Uh... sure. No problem. Bye. 

Bummer. Didn't exactly work out like I had hoped. 

I called again rhe next day but she wasn’t there. Mimi appeared to quickly be becoming past tense.

Then the next night, to my surprise, lo and behold, she came into the restaurant when I wasn’t there and left me a note. 

Pablo was working at the restaurant at the time. He would eventually take over and manage the place when we moved to LA. And then he would prove himself to be the total rat fuck that we were all pretty sure he was. But at this point he was helping me manage, and he was merely an overbearing jerk, but he was also an in-law, and a friend. Anyhow, I came in one evening and Pablo handed me a note. 

"Some cute little blonde with glasses dropped this off for you." 

"She did?" 

"Yeah, it was really weird. She was sitting here, waiting for you I guess, and all of a sudden these three Mexican dudes show up and sit down with her. She got all nervous and upset. Got up, came over, wrote the note, told me to tell you she came by, and she split." 

"Really." 

"Yup." "Hmm..."

OUR FIRST DATE
So story, story, story. Mimi Hope and I went out on a date.

We were to meet for lunch at the La Concha Beach Resort at the Melia. Nice place. The food sucked though. That's the deal in Cabo. Gorgeous desert paradise, crystal clear blue ocean, rustic setting, beautiful restaurants, shitty food. Except our three restaurants. And a  handful of other places, but that's another story. 

Right now I had to meet the woman who would eventually crush my soul, dismantle my psyche, obliterate my ego, incinerate my super ego, defenestrate my id, and bear me a son. 

Also, at the time I just happened to be reading a really thick hard-covered book, so I brought it along with me. Just so she'd know I was smart. 

“What are you reading?”

“Reading? I just use this book so my table at home doesn’t wobble. I grabbed it on the way out the door thinking it might make me look more smarter-ish.”

“More smarter-ish?”

“Hopefully.”

“You’re in luck. Hope’s my middle name” she says as she looks at me and smiles. “The book looks interesting. Tell me about it.”

“Actually what it is, is a series of interviews between Peter Bogdonavich and a bunch of legendary golden-age Hollywood filmmakers. And it’s called ‘Who The Devil Made It’. 

“So you can read?”

“Small words.”

“What do you do with the big words?”

“Skip them.”

“So basically you read a lot of ‘if’, ‘and’ and ‘the’?

“Whoa! Hold your horses there, Suzie Q. What do I look like to you? Some kind of brainiac?”

Witty reparté. Easy conversation. Sexual tension. Similar stories. Similar values. She can keep up. She's smart, funny and sexy! The trifecta!

As we’re leaving the beach club, climbing the hill back to the parking lot, two young newlyweds, still in tuxedo and gown, pass us. Mimi leans over and whispers to me: 

"I just want to scream at them, DON'T DO IT!" 

Witty remark. I like witty remarks. Time to start keeping score. I award her a point.

"You get a point for that", I said in a kind of an offhand way. 

Good conversation, great weather, gorgeous drive back to her house. The smell of the ocean. We cross over the washboard hill known as “the saddle” into Venados, which is the name of a Mexican neighborhood. It looks kind of run down by American standards but, in reality, there's a huge real estate boom going on. New little matching houses cover the hillside. I'm reminded of that Pete Seeger song... 

"Little houses, little houses, little houses made of ticky tacky. There's a blue one, and a yellow one...", I sing. 

"...And they all look just the same", she concludes. 

So now, she knows esoteric music AND she finishes my sentences for me. I was starving thirsty from the heat and life just handed me an ice-cold glass of Mimi. 

Again, with the point system. "You get a point for that", I say without really thinking about what I'm saying. 

"Really? How many points do I have so far?" 

I'm a sap. I can admit it. I’m falling for this woman. In my serotonin-induced hopefulness I become oblivious to all previous pain, all the damage I’ve sustained, indeed even oblivious to my own personal torment. Every pain I’ve felt, injury I’ve sustained, every bitch slap my psyche has endured since the early nineties has been mysteriously wiped away. Suddenly I’m calm. With no emotional maelstrom churning inside of me, the angst has nothing to grab onto and subsides. What it feels like to me in the moment, is love. It feels like something out of a movie. Falling for Mimi and her falling for me. It’s like the light that had for years shone on Rona and Lauri, and illuminated and accentuated every failure, everything I wanted, everything I needed but could never manifest, every missed chance or blown opportunity, those photons that made up the light that showed me the house of pain I was living in were now mysteriously warping around it all, making all the loss of suffered become forgotten and invisible. To have this rare witty woman unexpectedly drop in my lap seemed like gift. 

So I dropped by her house the next day (Remember, no one has phones here, so everyone is constantly dropping by each other's houses). She lives in a big white two story house on a rocky bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I’m not even joking. It looks like Greece. She's not there, so I leave a little plastic figurine of a very hopeful looking raccoon. Corny I know. So sue me. 

The day after that is Mother's Day. I bring some fresh baked yummy muffins up to her house for breakfast. I guess I feel confident enough to be cutesy. She and her Mom are getting ready to go to church. 

Hmm. Church? I hadn't thought of that. I'm not religious. In fact, I'm really about as non-religious as a person can get. Literally, I was raised by a devout atheist. It shouldn't bother me, seeing as how, like, 95 per cent of Earth's population believe in God. But still... 

Maggie asks me if I want to come to church with them and I say that I’d love to but I can’t because I worship Satan. 

“Oh... Okay”, says Maggie. Later I’d find out Maggie was a fundamentalist Christian. Hey! Somebody’s got to be!

That cracks Mimi up. Her Mom is bemused, at best. This is too good to be true. But there's something else going on. I can feel it. Something not good. 

Who were those guys at the restaurant? 

Somewhere along the line, in those very early days, I found out what was going on. And his name was Gustavo. Ahh, Gustavo.

Gustavo, you see, had been put on Earth with the sole evil, dastardly, nefarious purpose of thwarting my plans with his longtime girlfriend. 

I know! Who does he think he is, right?

But no Gustavo yet. First she invites me over for coffee. And I head up to her house. She’s playing music. It’s nice. Kind of familiar. It sounds like Madonna. I ask her what it is. It’s the soundtrack from Evita. Right! It is Madonna. Singing Andrew Lloyd Webber. I like it. It’s catchy. 

“Colonel Peron...” 

“Eva Duarte...”

“I’ve heard so much about you”

I’m a huge fan of Jesus Christ Superstar. I have been since I was a little kid. I know all the words. And I have since I was a little kid. This nice. We have coffee, we talk for awhile, and then she invites me to come back later that night. When her mom’s asleep. I like how this is going. The same Madonna song has been playing on repeat the entire time we’re talking. It’s on repeat. Man, she must really love Madonna.

When I come back that night, the Madonna song is still playing. 

I say, “I’ve got to ask. Why are you playing that song on repeat? It must have been playing all day.” 

She says “I’m trying to memorize it. I like it. It’s a great song.” Then she talks about how important it is to have the song lyrics included in it’s the CD, and I admit that I read the song lyrics too. I don’t remember if I kissed her goodnight that night. I think I tried, and she kind of turned away. The important thing is that she wanted to see me again. And I

we both knew where it was headed. We was both gettin’ ready to head ta Hump Town.

Next, it's the middle of the night and I'm at Mimi’s isolated house high atop the rocks, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The sky outside is black in it’s inky blueness and magenta. Cabo San Lucas is at the very tip of the Baja peninsula and is so far removed from civilization that the stars shine twice as bright due to the lack of ambient light at night so the stars shine at night like twice as bright. There are so many stars visible to the naked eye that you can see the  The Milky Way as a streak of light across the sky. You could almost reach out and touch it. 

Meanwhile waves crash in the distance. All the lights are out. Mimi is in her nightgown which was sheer enough to see the shape of her breasts in rhe moonlight, but not sheer enough to see any of the good bits. She’s sitting on my lap. We're in a rocking chair, making out like teenagers. Her Mom is upstairs, occasionally yelling something out, a stupid question or something, just to interrupt the moment. 

Too late, Maggie. 

TODAY IS A VERY GOOD DAY

Next, we're having lunch at Spencer's Garden Court. She’s wearing a black sleeveless blouse and very pink polyester slacks that the Westin Regina has her wear. We’re talking about traditional sexual roles. She’s got opinions. She likes them. She feels they serve her interests I think. She says likes chivalry. She likes it when guys open the car door for her, shit like that. But really, how often does that really happen? That’s a movie complaint. That said chivalry is big in Mexico. The down side is that chivalry comes supra-bonded to machismo, which is annoying as hell. But she just deals with it. She puts up with the machismo because she loves the adoration. That's why she's been with Gustavo for so long. Over 2 years. 

Gustavo. Whatever.
"So, you want to give me a ride home?" 

Next, it's right after lunch and I'm in her bedroom. We’re making out on her bed. Her shirt is up over her chest, she’s wearing a bra, but it’s not doing it’s job. She’s got great tits. which I’m familiarizing myself with. Next those pants are coming off. I peel those obnoxious bright pink polyester pants the Westin makes her wear right off. My life is good. 

Take that, Gustavo. 

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

It was fun and exciting when I first started with Mimi, going out to this beautiful resort everyday to visit. Her coterie of friends, if nothing else, were one of the most pleasing to the eye groups of women I’ve ever seen. The few guys that were mixed up in this particular group, struck me as dopes and weirdos. But the women were something else. Aside from Mimi and Megan, there was Paty, and Lucinda, and a tall, statuesque Canadian girl named Clementine. Clementine seemed permanently in mid yoyo with her skeezy yet charismatic boyfriend, Abelardo. And the big daddy of this group was this big, charming guy who sweat too much, named Francisco, who wore painfully tiny Italian shoes, satin shirts, and a not insignificant amount of gold. All the girls seemed devoted to Francisco. 

The whole thing, the totality of the concierge program seemed particularly aimed at the husbands. Men responded to this kind of sell, imagine that. Obviously, the concierges were there to assist everybody, but they never tried to sell the wives on anything, they were called WBs, or Why Bothers. Of course there were plenty of exceptions. This was a man’s game, and the “cute chicks in the lobby” worked it. All the hotels did it. But Mimi was certain she worked for the best team at the best hotel. She was certain she was the best around. And as I got to know her, I found her confidence to be a powerful attraction. Smart, hot, laugh out loud funny, petite, with piercing blue Bette Davis eyes. Mimi has great eyes. 

Looking back, it's hard to believe that the first 3 months were only 3 months. We went through so much, and it seemed like we knew each other so well at the end of it. Not all of it good, not nearly. But mostly we seemed like an uber-couple. We were inseparable. We thought other couples were jealous of our relationship. That's how perfect it felt. As they were fighting and bickering and not getting along and crying and breaking up, we were making each other laugh so hard it hurt. We worked off each other so well. But Gustavo was always lurking in the shadows with his own evil plans brewing. He wanted to take the girl I loved away. The girl I had loved for eternity. So what if he knew her first. She was mine now. 

WORKING THE TABLES

As much as my desire was to hang out with Miriam as much as humanly possible, I still had a restaurant to run. My responsibilities were ordering and shopping for food and liquor, doing the books, hiring firing, and working the tables. It was ostensibly my place so my presence was a big factor. I just hated sitting around an empty restaurant. But we weren’t always empty. We had customers from time to time. And the longer we were open and the more we worked to promote the place, business eventually picked up. But customers weren’t always happy, or on their best behavior. One night we had a four top, from New York, and they had dollars. We accept dollars, but it’s not a legal obligation. We accept them as a courtesy and because it’s smart. Well, one of the men at the table (it was two couples, men and women) didn’t think our exchange rate was acceptable. The exchange rate at the time was like 10.5 pesos to the dollar. But we offered 11 pesos to the dollar, and the guy was adamant about bargaining me down. But they’ve already eaten the food, and the exchange rate is appropriate. I’m not interested in negotiating. The exchange rate is what it is. But this guy had a couple drinks under his belt and was starting to get belligerent. The other three guests were getting embarrassed. The guy looks at me and tells me that I don’t accept the exchange rate he’s offering to pay, that he would complain, and that would not be pretty. Now, bear in mind, this is 1997. There’s no social media. There’s barely the internet. It gave me a perfect opportunity to act dumbfounded and steal a line my dad had used on a customer in the same situation:

“You’re gonna complain? Dude, it’s my restaurant! I’m the boss! You’re gonna complain? What are you gonna do? Call my mom?!” And then I laughed at him. He grumbled as his friends apologized for him and paid the bill.

There was another two top in the patio. A young couple. So I go and ask them how everything is. They tell me that everything is wonderful. It’s such a quaint little restaurant, and the salsa bar is so pretty. They were interested in what brought me to Cabo San Lucas of all places? It was a common question. I answer it all the time. I gave them my standard answer:

“Hey! Everybody’s got to be somewhere. I came down here, fell in love with Cabo and had an opportunity. I have family down here so it was an easy decision.

The woman says, “That’s so great. We thought maybe you were a drug addict who ran down here to escape and your Dad have you this restaurant to keep you out of trouble.”

I’m struck silent, mouth open. I look at them. They’re both smiling looking back at me. 

“That’s really and interesting guess. No. Nothing that crazy. Heh heh.”

Later that night I’m like, “Miriam, the weirdest thing happened tonight...” and I told her about it. She’s like “That is really weird. How would they know? Your father?”

“I dunno. Seems like the most obvious choice. Him or Steve. I’ll ask them tomorrow.”

I asked Dad and Steve the next day and neither one had the slightest clue.

Just a lightning rod for weird shit to happen.

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH

For some reason I decided to buy Mimi a bouquet of roses. Clearly I guessed something wasn’t right. There was some bad hudu in the air. My spider sense had been tingling all day. I felt some sort of display was going to become necessary. And with no toys around to mash-up, and no drugs to fuel my creativity, the best I could come up with was flowers. Suddenly I was in a rush to stave off some ugly destiny I sensed would soon come knocking. I found her at the Nowhere Bar with some friends. I say hello to everybody, and give Mimi the flowers. She takes them. I can't put my finger on it, but something ain't right. I’m pretty sure I’m history. So I tell Mimi that I'll meet her at her house. She says she'll be there shortly. 

I'm lying on Mimi bed when she comes in with that look on her face. That look. 

"I'm going back to Gustavo". 

Huh? 

"We have so much history together." "I have to give him another chance." "He wants to change." 

Blah, blah, blah. 

As I plead with her to stay, I am reminded of John Malkovich in Dangerous Liasons. As Michelle Pfeiffer begged him to stay, Malkovich just looked at her with his cold stare, repeating “It’s out of my control”. 

“But why?” 

“It’s out of my control”. 

She leaves. I watch out the window as she gets into Gustavo's car. I watch his headlights shrink in the distance, and then disappear around a rocky outcropping. 

I lay on her bed, alone, in shock. 

The pain. The paranoia. That sinking feeling. Over the next couple of days I drive past Gustavo's house many times. Sometimes her car is there, sometimes it isn't. It really doesn't matter. It all hurts. All of a sudden, I'm antsy. What was she thinking? She told me how destructive her relationship with him was. I'm not sure I've ever heard or read words to accurately describe that feeling. The longing. 

THE MOON WATCH

Two days later Mimi comes back saying she made the biggest mistake of her life. She didn't know what she was thinking. Gustavo has nothing to offer her. Would I please take her back? 

I am too elated to even think of saying no. 

Everything is right in my life again. We get reacquainted on a glass bottom boat. Sitting on the luminescent blue green ocean, gently rocking in the breeze in the significant shade of the arch, she gives me a moon watch. It seems like after so much desperation, looking, searching, questing for something as simple and pure as true love or as pure and true as simple love for that matter, and never finding it, I’m starting to think maybe I’ve finally found it. It seems I’ve found my soulmate. I’m not really paying a lot of attention to the emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on for years. I’ve kind of just blanked it out because I’ve found peace. And it already seems like it’s slipping through my fingers. I already can’t relax. But I’m not thinking about Rona and Lauri. It’s another world away that has kind of slipped away in a haze.

A week later the watch breaks in the shower. The fucking thing was supposed to be waterproof. Another fine example of quality Mexican workmanship. Mimi got ripped off. You see, she bought it from one of those little tianguis, where there ain't no such thing as a return policy. Kiss 20 bucks good bye. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. 

VU JADÉ

"I'm going back to Gustavo". Huh? 

"We have so much history together." "I have to give him another chance." "He wants to change." 

Blah, blah, blah... 

At this point, I should have been analyzing my romantic relationships. It’s like the past is gone and the present takes me too much by surprise. It would have been a time to seem counseling or something. But romance and feeling I’m loved or desired or desirable seems like it’s been so rare and really difficult to replace so as to be irreplaceable. I’ve chosen to make accommodations for people, accommodations that I don’t like, in order to keep people with whom I share a sexual chemistry around. I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, but it was like Rona wanting an open relationship. I could have ended it if I thought monogamy was more important that what I got out of being with Rona.  If I’d looked at it like that back then, the outcome would have been different. But I wasn’t ready. What I felt was this:

Oh, you've got to be fucking joking. Not again! You crazy fucking bitch! How dare you! Boy did I let loose on her. I don't think Mimi thought I could get like that. I puffed myself up to 3 times my normal size, and got all buggy. Man, I lost it. It was the first time I scared her. I would like to make it clear that under no circumstances would I ever hit a woman, but have been known to use words to devastating advantage. When I need to, I can really cut you to the quick. I never feel good about it afterward. Almost never. 

But, really. What was I doing wrong? Was it me? Was it her? Was she a freaky chick? This was worse than before. One afternoon, I saw Gustavo drop Mimi off on the street, and they kissed goodbye. Daggers, man. Daggers. 

Anyhow, this latest episode coincided with her cousin, Chandra, getting married. She had to fly back to the Los Angeles to go to the wedding. Up until "Gustavo: Part 2", I was sort of planning on accompanying her to L.A. This latest turn of events sort of put the kabosh on that idea. I was pining hard. 

I had moved out of Rick Murray's castle-on-the-hill in a misplaced attempt to save a few bucks, and was now living in one of the Cabo A-frames. I never really understood why somebody would build A-frame houses in Cabo. I mean, we're in the Mexico, in the desert. And aren't A-frames specifically designed to keep the heat in? If there is one thing that Cabo has too much of already, it's heat (But dust is right up there). Later I found out that they were originally intended as stables, and somewhere down the line they added walls and turned them into housing. 

The next day (the day Mimi was leaving) I took a cheesy poem I wrote, and a new Walkman (I knew she need one for the trip), and dropped it off on the doorstep of her house. I only hoped that she found it before Gustavo got to it. I'm sure he was expecting something on my part. Had he found it first, I'm sure he would have just thrown it away. I mean, I'm sure I would have if the tables were turned. But he didn't find it. 

Mimi called me from Los Angeles. 

She loved the poem. And the Walkman. She wanted to see me when she got back. 

Things were looking up. She called pretty much every night she was gone, from then on. But I had my doubts. Don't get me wrong, I sincerely hoped she would come back to me, but I had sort of lost my mental footing a little. I wasn't sure the sun was going to come up tomorrow, and I figured that as soon as Gustavo got his hooks in her again, we'd just start all over again. But I still anxiously awaited her return. 

I knew when she was coming back, and I thought we had an understanding that I'd pick her up at the airport. But when I got there, I couldn't find her. 

Oh shit! Gustavo must have picked her up! 

Long, anxious drive home. 

I run into Dad at the restaurant. He says Mimi came by looking for me. 

I burn rubber up to Mimi’s house. On the drive over the washboard road.

She's not at her house.
I drive home, moderately bummed. 

When I arrive at my house, she's there waiting for me, looking extremely contrite. I hold her in my arms, and I don't let go. We go into this extremely stuffy little A- frame, and we make love. I have convinced myself that I am much much better. I’m ready for an intense affair with this woman. I fail to notice, or be even the slightest bit aware of these trends in my past relationships. I am nowhere near ready, but I don’t want to let her go. And I’ll fight for her. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me (that should tell you something) I had no idea how to have a relationship. I was a needy mess. I wasn’t present at all. I was completely absent. Sometimes I’m just blind to what’s going on. It was a trait I developed honestly over the years, so much trying to hold on to people. But they slip away.  Trying to stave off poachers, who were always my friends! Fuckin’ Greg took Liz. Liz made her own decision, I know. But still. And What about Tim Talbot? Thinking about that time at that party where Talbs just took my date upstairs and fucking her right there. How did I get over it! Why did I even allow that? But then how does a person disallow another person to do anything? Just ditch my friends and exit my life? If I got rid of my friends every time one of them did something shitty to me, I’d run out of friends super quick. On the other hand, what friends. My relationship with all my friends had evolved into something unfamiliar too. But to be perfectly honest, after my spectacular fall from grace the year before, I wasn’t sure at all what the nature of my friendship my Mill Valley peeps was all about. The whole thing seemed tinny and hollow. After I’d disappeared from the Bay Area, nobody made the slightest effort to get in touch with me and see if I needed any help. And I was so embarrassed by my behavior that, at the beginning anyway, I was glad to be distant. But still, it struck me as strange that nobody ever reached out.

At any rate, I was tired. And I was aimless. Completely without tether or mooring. And I didn’t know that. And I didn’t know I didn’t know that. I’d been operating under the notion of “build it and they shall come”. That was almost even a conscious game plan. The most generous take I had on approach to manifesting myself into the world as a successful artist was based on the idea that if I put in the 10,000 hours into my craft, when combined with my natural gifts, I would be formidable as an artist, and everything else would take care of itself. At this point in my life, I’m internalizing the emerging reality, that 10,000 hours or not, my life as an artist seems to have been derailed, or at least changed tracks in a pretty serious fashion. Of course, I am not acutely aware of any of this. I just intend on holding on to Miriam, and trying to make this work. I have to make this work. 

A WHIRLWIND VACATION

I met Miriam, we dated, moved in together and got married all within a year and 2 months. The fact that we got married in that kind of haste goes a long way to showing how screwed up I was. Absolute insanity. I had for so long been lacking in that particular area of my life, that it was almost completely alien to me. I was like a guy crawling through the desert, who happens upon an oasis. I never wanted to leave, and I couldn’t see why I should. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision to me. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what it takes to have a nourishing healthy relationship. As someone who’s life had been pretty much devoid of success his whole life, I was sure I was making a reasonable decision. Plus Miriam loved me, and she seemed unstoppable. 

We had been dating maybe 2 months, when on vacation in the Bay Area, we decided to buy wedding rings. They were beautiful rings. From a place called Pavé (pah-VAY) in Berkeley. The design on the rings was supposedly Maori, but it looked very much like a Celtic knot. They were lovely.. People may say we bought the rings too soon in the relationship. People may say we were being impetuous. Considering that 2 months in, Mimi had already left me 3 times to go back to her ex, I’ll grant that maybe those people saying we were being impetuous were right. I had no idea what I was getting into. All I knew was that I wanted to marry this woman, and that I wanted to be with this person for the rest of my life, conveniently ignoring the fact that she kept leaving me. 

Even if I wanted to break up with her, I had no idea how to do it. I’d never broken up with a girl in my life. Sure, I’d NOT CALLED girls back plenty of times. But actually be the one to end it? I don’t know. I shouldn’t have worried, Mimi would give me plenty of chances to be the one to end it. And a couple of times, I did. 

Then some fucked up shit happened. A situation occurred with Mimi, that could have been out of a text book on how to hurt me in particular, stuff specifically made to really fuck with me and, like, attack my particular fears and anxieties. This was before we set the wedding date, but we were living together as a couple, in a nice house with our own puppy. I was starting to feel positively grown up. The two of us were hanging out with Clementine and Abelardo. Abelardo was quite the clever OPC who it seemed to me could probably find anything a tourist might need, and of course Clementine was a concierge. She worked with Mimi. And Mimi had told me repeatedly how much she attracted to her. Clementine seemed to have the effect of making Mimi’s panties extremely moist, just by virtue of her presence. Mimi was like that. She liked girls. I knew this, and had no problem with it. I saw it as a possible boon sometime in some possible future. So when Mimi told me that she was extremely hot to fuck Clementine, I gave it the thumbs up. Mimi had discussed Clementine in extremely naughty detail, what she’d like to do to Clementine given the chance. Mimi spent plenty of time planning what she would do if she got Clementine alone. Mimi was a planner. And hell! It seemed like a good plan to me. So I never tried to talk her out of it or stop her. In all honesty, I totally wanted to see where this was going to end up.. So we all started hanging out a bit, in an attempt to put Mimi’s plan into action. Mimi and Clementine dragged Abelardo and I to what was the only gay bar in Cabo at the time. The Rainbow Room. Both Abelardo and I went begrudgingly, as we could see where this was going. Mimi and Clementine were at the bar drinking, laughing, while Abelardo and I suffered the slings and arrows of gay guys hitting on us, or at least possibly thinking we were gay, because we could see where this might be headed, and I think we both wanted to be there when it finally got there. 

Walking to the bathroom, I see Mimi and Clementine making out! “This is getting good”, I thought. 

A couple of nights later, Clementine and Abelardo were over at our house having drinks. I‘m excited! We all know where this is headed. I’m wondering how this is all going to go down. Right as it’s getting interesting, I get a call from Felix’s. I have the only keys to close up. Fuck! I have no choice, I have to go down to the restaurant and close it all up. Shit! Story of my fucking life! 

I figure, maybe if I hurry, I can still make this work. It’s 10 minutes to drive to the restaurant, 10 minutes to close up, and 10 minutes to get back. I think I can do this. I tell them I’ll be right back. I really want to say, “Don’t start the orgy without me”, but I don’t as I’m pretty sure that would be very awkward to actually say. I assume a lot goes unsaid when planning an orgy. Surely God wouldn’t screw me over in these circumstances. Surely the powers that be have got my back. Surely my wife to be wouldn’t start without me. 

So I get home maybe 45 minutes later, and Clementine and Abelardo are gone. Fuck! Shit! Mimi has a guilty look on her face that you could see from space. Uh oh! What happened? Do I want to know? No! And yes. Yes won out. 

“Jesus, Mimi! How could you do that without me?” 

Mimi, pouring guilt from every pore, explained that after I left, Abalardo broke out some cocaine, which Clementine and Abelardo proceeded to do. Mimi didn’t do any. She’s never done anything harder than pot. They did some coke, and drank some Jimador, after which Mimi and Clementine proceeded to get down to business. She said she ate Clementine’s pussy out while Abelardo watched safely from a distance. I was pretty fucking distraught by the whole thing. Mimi seemed pretty recalcitrant, and she kept hammering away that Abelardo was NOT involved. To be perfectly honest, in spite of her protestations, I was having a hard time seeing how Abelardo could possibly have NOT been involved in what went down, in some capacity. I thought about if our places had been switched, if I’d been there at the house, while Abelardo had to leave in a rush. Now, I’ve never been in that particular situation, I’d have to at least give it some sort of shot, right?

It’s an indication of how fucked up I was, and to a large degree probably still am around relationships, that I didn’t cut it off immediately, but I didn’t. In fact we went on to start planning our wedding, and that incident was quickly forgotten, or at least overlooked by me. I was surprising myself with the type of treatment I was willing to tolerate. I never should have let it slide, but there you are. 

I FINALLY MEET THE FAMILY

Miriam and I flew to Bethesda Maryland to meet her family. When I meet her father David, the first thing out of his mouth is:

“You DO know about my daughter, right? You DO know what you’re getting in to?” 

I didn’t like the tone or the sentiment behind it. Although perhaps I should paid heed. I was absolutely unaware of how damaged I had been by the previous seven or eight years. I clean up well, and I’m gregarious and I guess slide on charm. And I wasn’t thinking about the context of everything that had occurred in the past decade. I had stuff right in front of me that needed my complete attention. I met Miriam’s grandparents. I liked them. I met her Dad and Claudia, Miriam’s stepmom. Her aunt and uncle, Barbara and John, and her siblings, Anna, Joel and Aaron.

Miriam’s immediate family was highly religious. Her father was a Jew for Jesus and a Promise Keeper. Her brother Joel was an Orthodox Jew dabbling in the militia scene. Neither Aaron nor Anna seemed particularly religious, but they are all raised in a home schooling, snake dancing, tongue talking, church in the basement far-right Pentecostal lifestyle. All four kids rebelled against their parents beliefs, to different degrees. Miriam and Anna were definitely left-leaning. Miriam had gone through nearly every possible way of thinking that might occur being raised in that environment, from absolute faith to complete angry contempt, finally settling somewhere in the middle.

One of the things we do in Maryland, Mimi and me, is we buy fabric for our wedding clothes, for her gown and my tux. We buy the necessary fabric and patterns. Mimi is right on top of this. Buy fabric in the US, get a tailor in La Paz to make the tux, and a seamstress for the gown. Its just so non-traditional, I’m happy to just go along for the ride. We also go to Arby’s. Then in no time, we’re back in Cabo, with our wedding day creeping closer and closer. 

Mimi meets a woman by the name of Leanne, and brings her over to the house to meet me. She seems like just the nicest of women. The reason I’m mentioning her here, is that she happened to be au pair to a major American comedy icon. Leanne tells us all about her life with the icon. He sounds he’s the same person in real life that he portrays on TV and in film. Leanne is very happy with her job. It sounds like she may have problems with this dude’s wife, who she describes as either a costumer or make-up artist who managed to land a legend. 

Mimi’s creepy old masseuse guy, you I neither like nor trust, manages to convince Mimi that a wedding’s a bad idea, but it doesn’t stick. It looks like we really are getting married. 

THE WEDDING

June 26, 1998. June in Cabo. The "Big Day" is upon us. Metaphoric wedding bells are ringing. Mimi and I are to wed at Mama's.. The restaurant is gaily decorated. I am sweating like a pig in this damn black wool tuxedo. What was I thinking? Shoulda' gone with white. Like Mr. Roarke. 

I don't know about Mimi, but I was completely high, out of my head, man. Not on drugs or anything. Just pure adrenalin. It was like this magical grinning state I was in. I was outside my body looking in. Mimi arrived in a mint 1962 silver Porsche Roadster. She looked awesome. 

She walked down the aisle. Well it wasn’t an aisle so much as the cleared out outdoor dining patio with a bunch of folding chairs set up with various friends and relatives sitting in them. But it seemed like an aisle to me. A huge long aisle in big a giant church. I was in shock. It was all extremely overwhelming. I was numb. 

As we were standing at the altar staring at each other, both of us in a daze, Mike Healy, who was an ordained minister, from the univeralist church of the freaky lights, or something, towering over us, Chewbacca the Minister, waiting to start, Mimi whispered to me quietly: I’m not wearing any panties” That took me by surprise a little bit, but I came back with a quick rejoinder: 

“I’m wearing edible panties. But its so hot out, that they’ve melted and now they’ve adhered to my body” 

Christ! It was hot! What was I thinking wearing a black wool tuxedo? It had to be 104 degrees out there. Mike, the only one close enough to hear our dazed little exchange, broke out laughing. 

We started. 

Mike read his oratory. What he wrote was nice. I don’t really remember exactly what he said, except for the bit about frayed and tattered ends of string being woven to be the strongest rope. I liked that. I only hoped it was true. Cabo San Lucas, land of water-soluble relationships. I only hoped that Mimi and I could beat the odds. 

My pal Stephen Gehlbach, who had driven from Canada for my wedding, sang a song for us. 

Mike, accompanied by my oldest friend Louis Gonk on Guitar, sang a song he wrote for us. Mike even took the extra step and had the song translated into Spanish. Then they sang “One Cell Amoeba” a great riff they’d worked up on “Guantanamera” 

One cell amoeba
I got a one cell amoeba

One cell amoooeeeeba

I got a one cell amoeba

Perhaps an omen of things to come... 

Finally we said our vows. 

I surprised myself by having to choke back tears. Mike pronounced us man and wife, and we kissed. Boy did we kiss. 

Afterward, we had a reception on a local catamaran yacht, called “The Kaliedoscope”. It’s silly I know, but we just have to do it, so we hang off the bow of the boat with our arms outstretched, and I get to say, “I’m king of the world”. Extremely corny, but it felt good, and the pictures are good. 

GEORGE RUSSELL RETURNS

George is at my wedding. I hear him reminiscing with Dad about when they decided to get into real estate in Hollywood in the 60s.

When it was in the news that Sonny Bono had died by accidentally skiing into a tree, George asked Dad, “Remember when we rented a house to Sonny and Cher, and when they moved out, Sonny stole our stove?”

“Yeah?”

“Payback’s a bitch, idn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

PERDIDO EN TRADUCCION

We never take a honeymoon, but is going to some sort of training seminar in Cancun, at the Westin Regina there, and she worked it so I get to come. She spends a lot of times in seminars. I spend a lot of time wandering around Cancun alone. We start working on a script based around that basic premise. Wife away at seminars, Hubbie takes his camera and sets out to sort of find anything interesting, finally meeting a girl. Continually feeling estranged from his wife who is working all the time, eventually he and this girl start some sort of meaningful relationship of a million small gestures. When I read what we wrote later, I am kind of surprised by it. It seems like kind of an interesting story, actually. And the tone. The tone was so melancholy. But after leaving Cancun, I never pick it up again. 

HOLLYWOOD BECKONS

Eventually we decided it was time to leave Cabo, and go chase down our dreams before we were too late (it was already too late), in Hollywood! A few months later, we were full on board The Short Sighted, Lack of Planning Express. Now boarding! At Completely Divorced from Reality Station. This train is leaving! Next stop? Hollywood! 

Hey, honey. I got an idea. Lets give up our okay-paying, but steady jobs, and our status as medium sized fish in this small pond that is Cabo San Lucas, and move to Hollywood, possibly the biggest pond in the world! When I’m in my 30’s! Yeah, that’ll work! What could possibly go wrong? How difficult could it be to break into show business? Shoot, with my drawing ability, and these tenuous connections we’ve made with Disney, when we talked all night with that drunken couple we met who worked for Disney, 

WE ARE SHOE-INS!!! 

So armed with a fistful of phone numbers of people who we were sure would be standing in line to give us jobs, an almost complete lack of pertinent skills in my “Chosen” profession, and something like 40 thousand dollars inheritance from Mimi‘s side of the family, we packed up the 4- Runner, and made out for L.A. 

HOLLYWOOD! 

We got an apartment pretty quick, in Valley Village, which is in the fabled “Valley” of L.A. Specifically between Studio City, Burbank, and Van Nuys. It’s a typical little two bedroom LA apartment. Nothing remarkable at all. A place to stay, until we can get our bearings and figure out what the fuck we’re doing. We quickly go about getting to know our neighbors. First Hadassah and Lorelei come and introduce themselves. Like everyone else, they are in LA following a dream. We become pretty fast friends with them. There is also a beautiful young woman living upstairs named Madison. Undoubtedly an actress of some sort, but her sole credit was a Quentin Tarantino flick about vampires. We talk a little. Eventually the conversation steers around to me being an artist. “Perfect!” she says. She writes some sort of sex column, and she asks me to do some illustrations of her for it. She gives me some drawings someone else did of her, al anime-style, sitting on the toilet. I take the pages from her, and nod my willingness, but the truth is, the muse seems long gone. 

One night, Lorelei comes with Mimi and I to see the latest Woody Allen flick. One of the great thing about living in the United States. I hadn’t seen a Woody Allen flick in the theater in years, so I was excited. The best scene in the movie has Bebe Neuwirth teaching Judy Davis how to give a decent blowjob on a banana. Hilarious scene, and strangely kind of a turn on. I like Bebe Neuwirth. She was Lilith on Cheers. Nice to finally see what she looks like with a banana in her mouth. Ha!. 

Yeah. Among a whole list of other things, I am REALLY bad at getting jobs. Once we landed in LA, all my personality defects came out to party. I had no resume, and the skills that I had were really hard to quantify on a resume, anyway. I just couldn’t find work. I didn’t even know what I should be looking for. Mimi seemed to want me at a job where I had a suit and tie. What that meant in the real world was it was time to go shopping for a wardrobe. Mimi wanted to buy me clothes, and I was happy with that. In spite of the fact that I couldn’t find any sort of decent job, we were flush with cash. The way Mimi explained, her grandparents were rich. And old. They felt it was time to start sending fat checks to all the grandkids, in an attempt to make an end run around estate taxes. First we got 40 thousand dollars. Ten thousand from each grandparent to each of us, me and Mimi, yen thousand bucks being the magical number a person can receive from someone else as a gift, and minimize their tax liability. Then when her grandfather died, we got a bunch more inheritance. 

Same thing when Mimi‘s Grandma passed. So, at least for the moment, we were flush. Mimi didn’t like me touching any of the cash. She felt it was hers. I must admit to a slightly different viewpoint. It seemed to me that Mimi managed to double her yield by marrying me. If she hadn’t been with me, she would have only gotten 20 thou from that initial cash influx, not 40 thou. So I admit to feeling somewhat entitled. I certainly was not spending cash hand over fist. I went and bought a drafting table. Mimi was not happy about it. 

Mimi, on the other hand, is very good at getting jobs, it seemed to me. She was making all the connections, spending hours away at meetings practically every day. She looked Hollywood, she sounded Hollywood. She seemed to know where to look to find these great jobs that totally suited her. Not me. I was jealous of her ability to stay busy and make money, two things that did not come easy to me. This was a continuing theme that ran through the whole period of time we lived in L.A. 

I swear, within 15 minutes of landing in L.A, Mimi had a job working for Stevie Wonder, and months later I was till cold calling every screenprinting business in the phonebook. See, screenprinting was something that I actually knew how to do. But it’s messy, labor intensive, low paying work. I was finally hired by this little guy named Bob Fierro. His company was called Zebra Marketing, but really all he did was print T-Shirts. He said he hired me in spite of the fact that it was a low paying, shit job, that he’d normally give to an illegal from Guatamala, because I could talk the talk. Like I said, I knew something about screenprinting. 

Bob Fierro’s big claim to fame was that he knew Boy George pretty well. Boy George was by far his biggest client. Sadly, I never got a chance to meet him. Oh well. But you know who I did meet? Rick Springfield’s drummer. That’s right. You heard me right. And you know who he was married to? Peg Bundy, from “Married: with Children”, Katey Sagal herself. Six degrees of separation, right? But I never met her either. 

I learned interesting stuff working for Bob. I learned that Stevie Nicks used to like it when you packed a straw with coke, and blew it in to her pussy. I wasn’t sure that would ever be useful information, but it added texture to otherwise backbreaking work. 

One day Bob surprised me by mentioning that he used to be the manager of two 70’s fringe music acts that I was pretty sure only me and a small circle of friends would possibly be aware of. Wild Man Fischer, and Christopher Milk. It was such an amazing coincidence, as I was actually pretty familiar with Christopher Milk’s only album. Me, about three other people, and nobody else on Earth, knew of Christopher Milk and Wild Man Fischer, so this was a pretty big example of “small world” syndrome starting to slap me in the face. But to me, it was just a really neat coincidence. 

I got to tell you, It was dirty, back breaking work, working for Bob Fierro, but it was the best job I could find, so I did it. And I felt I did it with gusto. But he fired me anyway. The problem was, that being a pampered white boy from Mill Valley, there was no way I could compete with the dude from Guatamala. I guarantee you, that whatever you are doing now, an illegal immigrant from Guatamala will work WAY harder than you ever worked. Or at least harder than I ever worked. 

Mimi worked for Stevie Wonder, The Neilson Company, Disney, she could always get a temp job without breaking a sweat. Headhunters seemed to fawn over her. But one more than any else. When she met Bennie Buongusto, the two of them bonded like drying cement. So she started her career as a headhunter. Interestingly, she went in to Grace International hoping a headhunter would help her find permanent work in LA, and Bennie hired her, not for a listed position, but to train her as a headhunter, practically on the spot. I was elated for Mimi. It sounded perfect for her. I was actually quite jealous. She seemed to be getting much more glamorous jobs than me. 

Mimi is just amazing. The first thing she had to do, as a new headhunter for Grace International, was trip off to Montreal for three days, for orientation. I wanted to come. Of course I did, I’d never been to Montreal. But Mimi said she talked to Bennie about it, and it was out of the question. Oh well. Guess I‘ll have to survive three days alone in the Valley without my lovely new spouse. Oh yeah, here’s the amazing thing. Mimi has an absolutely incredible capacity for languages. After three days, she returned from Montreal able to speak french. She spoke next to no french when she left, just Menu French. But that was just the kind of rabbit she’d pull from her hat in those days. Same with Japanese, and actually a wide variety of languages. She spoke Japanese well enough to converse with any Sushi chef who might feel talkative. But the only language other than English that she spoke fluently, was Spanish. And speak fluently she did. Her Spanish was so good, sometimes it eclipsed her English. Everything about Mimi, just filled me with pride, and deepened my love for her. She seemed pretty amazing to me. For God’s sake, the girl could speak Korean. Not a lot, but way more than I could. 

In this time of her life, Mimi gave off a great air of competence. You knew you were in good hands with her. She’d get the job done and then some. She absolutely thrived in the LA environment. I didn’t. I could barely get a temp agency to even look at me. I was all wrong for every job I applied. It seemed that all the experience I had was the wrong kind. I thought about lying on my resume, but I don’t think it would have mattered. I was uncomfortable in interviews, It seemed that whenever I tried to seem confident, I came across as cocky. When I tried to seem humble, I came across as terribly weak, or worse, disingenuous. I could never get the correct balance. It was starting to get to me. And Mimi, too. The situation was starting to cause stress in our relationship. 

After she returned from Montreal, we decided to go down to Cabo for a visit. For the life of me, I can’t remember our reasoning for going. What I remember is being broke, but being under pressure to help make it happen. So I borrowed 15 hundred bucks from my Mom. With that money we went to Cabo. I remember nothing of the trip. What I remember is that horrible sinking feeling when she went to visit Gustavo. She insisted nothing happened between them. They were just friends now, but they shared common interests and friends. This did little to make me feel better. I took her at her word. I’d never caught her in any sort of a lie, which was perfect, because she was solid about never lying. It was just something she was no good at, so she didn’t do it. Really, that was good enough for me, but I couldn’t help shake some nagging feeling that somehow she was being less that forthcoming with me. But I didn’t dwell on it. There was no time. Once we got back from Cabo, Mimi discovered she was pregnant. 

Also, once we got back from Cabo, I discovered I no longer had a job at Zebra Marketing. Very inconvenient, what with a baby on the way. I scoured the want ads. Amazingly, I found a single job that was a perfect fit for me. This brother and sister team had written some sort of corporate instruction manual, and they wanted black and white pen & ink illustrations for it. It was a slam dunk. I was satisfied, if not ecstatic with my output. I did all right on that job. The clients seemed happy for the most part. There was this one drawing of a busy beaver that I couldn’t get right, so someone else did that final illustration, but primarily, it was all me. A quick five hundred bucks. Then, as luck would have it, Hadassah hooked me up with this woman she’s met, Carrie Halberman, who was looking for someone to do storyboards for a concept she wanted to develop, and then sell to a studio. It was surely a ‘ground floor’ sort of job. She worked for a production company, sure. One of the coolest in Hollywood. A little upstart video production company that was getting used to blowing people away with their innovative video work. But this was a children’s story about a gay squirrel lost in New York City. Far from the edgy fare produced where she worked. There was no way she was going to take this project to them. So she put the feelers out for a talented cartoonist to work with. Hadassah was there when Carrie explained what she was looking for. And Hadassha did me a solid, and set up a meeting between us. that was a fun project, and a decent source of income for awhile. 

So Mimi said she left the pregnancy test out on the counter in the bathroom, where I was sure to see it, for hours. Of course I never saw it. She cleverly pushed me in that direction. Asked me if I could get her something from next to the sink in the bathroom. I brought her what she asked for, without ever seeing the pregnancy test. So she tried again: 

“Look on the counter, next to the soap tray.” “Okay.”
“What do you see?”
“Uhh. I don’t know. Bathroom stuff?” “Look closer. You’ll see it.” 

“Well, I see our toothbrushes. There’s a soap tray, empty. Hey, we need soap! I see what looks to be one of those pregnancy test thingys. There’s your Lady Schick.” 

“Okay. Go back one.” 

I eventually figured it out. We were going to have a baby. It was very exciting. I was very happy about it. I was very excited about being a parent. Plus, it was a perfect distraction from the problems that were arising in our relationship. Are you having concerns your wife is cheating on you? Are you concerned that maybe she’s losing all respect for you? Have a kid! Having a kid is a great way to keep a failing relationship alive and on the tracks. Your life is just so overwhelmed all the time with everything going on, physically, emotionally, logistically, there is just simply no time to analyze anything. There’s a baby coming, and he’s coming whether you’re ready or not. Decisions need to be made. A household needed to be put together. 

LIZ & GREG

Liz and Greg got married and had kids. Eventually having three of them. Two girls and a boy. Their first child was named Robin born just before my son was born. Alex was born in 1999 so I’d say Robin must be 1998? When I heard they’d had a child, I called Greg and Liz and told them that it was “a really strange coincidence that you guys just had a child and named it Robin, because my wife and I just had a child too, and we named ours Batman. Gimme a call.”

Soon after, Miriam and I took Alex up to Mill Valley to see Liz and Greg and meet Robin. This was when Alex and Robin were just babies. It was a nice, pleasant, uneventful meeting between the four of us, kids not included. But I still wonder what Liz was thinking that day. And if Greg was aware the energy she and I shared.

For a lot of the time we were entangled, I didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t even really sure who it was that I had been. How do you communicate with someone when your whole life is redacted?

She’ll always be a part of me. We shared history. She was formative. She was a mad desire, maybe my first. She knew it. She never seemed to object to it. Over the years, we transmitted a lot of energy back and forth, even from a distance. If I listen, I can still hear her voice in the ambient noise of the universe, saying my name. And that’s in the book and it’s in the universal database. You can’t “unwrite” it. Everything that happens, happens forever.

LEMP AVENUE 

So we bought a house. In the NoHo Arts District. That’s North Hollywood, to you and me, right next to Valley Village. 

The house was super cute. We both loved it. A little two bedroom, 1930 latin style classic Hollywood bungalow, with a beautiful backyard. It was great. Plus, finally I started getting gigs! Drawing gigs! Not much, but it was a start. 

So Mimi and I bought a house. But I found it. I was the guy who was actually driving around that neighborhood and saw the sign. I parked, and went and peeked into the back yard. Almost as soon as I saw this place, I knew, that if the price was right, this would be the house my child would be born in. I was the discoverer. But Mimi payed for most of it. 

We paid for the down payment on the house pretty much entirely with money her grandparents left her. So she had most of the money, she had and all the credit. My credit sucked. I was pretty sure nobody was going to give me any money to buy a house, but it seemed Mimi‘s credit was good enough for the both of us. The only saving grace I had was that all my bad credit happened a long time ago. Because I’d been living in Mexico for so long, my credit history was surprisingly blank. The mortgage we both covered, but really Mimi made so much more money that I did that it seemed to her that she was paying for it all. Any money I put in was put was seen as a token gesture. I could tell she was starting to resent it. 

Mimi had gotten a job at this place called “Children’s Time Machine”, a sort of educational arcade, a sort of “Chuck E. Cheese” for wealthy Hollywood moms. It paid well, it was a fun environment, and they wanted to hire her even though she was pregnant, and would need to go on maternity leave almost immediately after starting the job. That’s how much they loved her. 

The place was run by Hollywood Power Moms, and Mimi fit right in. All the upper management positions were filled with women - strong, poised, intelligent moms. Hollywood Power Moms. They were all tan, blond, beautiful and over 40. And the big boss of the corporation that actually owned Children’s Time Machine, HerbaLife, why she was a 70 year old, blond Hollywood Power Grandma, and she was the blondest and and most powerful mom of all. And they all wore power suits, every last one of them. 

There were various other mid-management position and custodial staff, but 80 per cent of the staff were employed to supervise the children playing there, and throw birthday parties and the like for the kids. And every single one of these chaperones was a good looking talented struggling young actor. Down to the one. There were a whole lot of hopes and dreams, and beautiful people there. I suppose its like that most places in that part of the valley. Really it was like that anywhere you’d go in that part of L.A. Literally, everyone you meet in L.A. is either going to or coming from an audition. What I discovered is that I could go into any Starbuck’s in the valley from Burbank, to Studio City, to Van Nuys, all the way up to Encino, and randomly ask in a loud voice how the audition went, and 3 or 4 people would always nod and say it went great, thanks for asking. You should try it. Its fun. 

So back to the Time Machine. It seemed to be just this great place to work, run by cool, powerful women. Mimi fell in love with the place, and I guess so did I. It was a pretty fun group of people. Eventually Mimi even got me a job there! They needed someone to manage to kitchen, or they thought they did. And they paid me quite well, as I’d been managing restaurants in Mexico for years. There was just one little problem. No one knew what it was exactly that I was supposed to be doing. I certainly didn’t. I didn’t cook, they didn’t need me for that. They already had a couple of classically trained struggling celebrity chef’s doing all their menu design. I didn’t shop, I didn’t do any ordering, I didn’t do any menu design. I was basically in a constant state of panic as I tried to not look stupid. I’m not sure how well my plan worked. My role was to try and sound like I knew what I was doing. But it was hard, I had no cover. Basically, it seemed to me, they were paying me an L.A. restaurant manager’s salary to be a cashier! If that’s what they wanted, it was okay by me, but it seemed to me that eventually somebody in authority would notice that I wasn’t really doing anything. I just kept my head down and tried to blend as best I could until the hammer fell, which it eventually did. 

So, as Mimi continued to get closer to term, we started realizing that this was going to be a lot of work, this having a kid thing. Mainly we just needed money. Or help. Preferably money to pay for the help, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen any time soon, so we did the next, most obvious thing, that a lot of people do, but is guaranteed to be the WRONG decision and will only cause huge problems in your household. We invited Maggie, Mimi‘s mom, to live with us. Yessir. The old Mother- in-Law. All those problems that went away when Mimi got pregnant were coming back home, and they are all bringing their own problems with them. 

Mimi and I started doing all the things that expectant couples do, Lamaze classes, CPR classes, breastfeeding classes. And we toured hospitals too. We went and toured one hospital, and came to the same decision, apart, at the same time. We wanted to have the baby at home. 

Let me tell you what got me about the hospital, aside from just the natural, yucky, fluorescent, and all the impersonal sounds and machines. And the smell! Hospital’s are just not very pleasant places. Plus they are filled with sick people. But what bugged both me and Mimi, they way they were trying to push formula on us. That really grated heavily on my ear, when they tried to give us all the formula. The thing is that the hospital makes such a big deal about how the most important thing is what’s gbest for the baby, and then they shill for the formula companies? Nah. Don’t get me wrong. Formula has its place. Our child wound up having to drink formula from a bottle for awhile. But the hospital was presenting it in such a way, contrary to what we thought was common knowledge, that uexcept for very specific reasons breast feeding is always the better alternative. So they had that mark against them. 

But that wasn’t the only thing. We’d been doing a lot of reading, as expectant parents are wont to do. There are just a lot of reasons to not have the baby at the hospital. One that really stuck out for me, was something called “whitecoat hypertension”, Apparently a woman giving birth is more prone to freak out when a bunch of people in long white coats run into the room. A woman gets nervous, her heart rate goes up. The medical criteria is filled for the doctor to perform a C-section. Also, C-sections are way more common in the U.S. where they might be covered by insurance, than in say, poorer nations, where the hospitals don’t give you the option. It is my understanding that this fact no way affects the mortality rates of these babies or these moms in these poorer countries. It appeared to me and Mimi that the hospitals were preventative C-sections, “just in case”. Maybe to avoid lawsuits or something. So armed with these and other facts, we just worked ourselves up inot a lather about those fucking hospitals. 

We were definitely having the baby at home, there was just no question about it. So we set out looking for midwives. Actually Mimi did. I pretty much left that up to her. When Mimi had made her choice, I went with her and met the midwife. Her name was Lani Jeansdottir. She was, as you might imagine, very down to earth. Very sweet , very reassuring. She’s done something like 8000 births, all live, with one exception. But the baby she did lose, clearly wasn’t her fault. Unrelatedly, she’d been battling cancer, and died soon after our baby was born. Looking back on it, I can’t imagine doing it any other way. The birth went off pretty much with out a hitch. And it only took 4 hours. 

JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS, ANOTHER ME 

Earlier in the evening Mimi had been getting pretty cocky about the contractions. “I can handle this. These things are a breeze”, was her general line of thought. Until 10 pm. Actually, Maggie, Mimi‘s mom had just shown up at the door from Indiana moments before. I bet she caused Mimi to go into labor. 

Mimi was walking from the bedroom to the bathroom, when she stopped and flinched in pain. She stood in silence for a sec. “Well, that’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” 

“What happened?”

“I think my water just broke.” 

I called the midwife, and started waiting. 

On November 23, 1999, at about 2 in the morning, Alexander Abraham Moore was born. She went into labor at 10 pm, and was wrapped up by 2. 

At 2 am my son, Alex, arrived, covered in cottage cheese and strawberry jam, and I caught him. I caught my son. It was pretty cool. 

I heard the doula ask how much he weighed. Someone else said he weighed 8 pounds even. Someone (the midwife, the doula, or their assistant, there were 3 women attending) asked how long he was. I looked between his legs, then up at the doula, and held my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, and nodded enthusiastically. He seemed appropriate size. My boy looked just like a little Winston Churchill. But then don’t they all, or at least a lot of them, look just like Winston Churchill. It’s just one of the ways they come out. 

As easy a birth it was, there was one problem: Lani, the midwife, decided not to give Mimi an episiotomy, and as a result, Mimi got a little torn up, you know, in the vaginical area, but life happens, decisions are made and you live with the results. Over all , neither one of us could have been any happier about the whole birth experience. Eventually once we all started to come down, and everything began settle, and I finally had a moment to think, I came to the realization that there are now 4 of us living in this pretty tiny house, and one of these people is my mother-in-law. Yay for me! 

———

So, in spite of this new huge source of love in our midst (the baby, not the mother-in- law) Mimi’s and mine relationship continued to deteriorate. It seemed I was building a landscape of chronic unemployment in L.A, occasionally punctuated by low paying gigs. 

Eventually Carrie showed up again, out of nowhere, with a new art project for me to help her with. She felt she wasn’t getting any traction trying to develop it as a cartoon, so she came to me with the idea of turning the work we’d done, into a children’s book. I was happy to oblige. It was Carrie who helped me the most while living in Hollywood, and for that I’m grateful to her. She was a good lady, and she kept throwing me work. 

In what appeared to be Carrie’s final act of largesse, she hooked me up with a hot, up and coming filmmaker, who wanted to make the jump from rap videos and shoe commercials, to feature films. this project was going to be a no-budget production, being sponsored by Cinemax, to showcase young “urban” (read black) filmmakers. 

So we set up a meeting, and I went out to this uber-cool production company, looking for some sort of future. 

We met at a table, in a conference area toward the back of the rather large office area. There I met with Carrie, and the filmmaker, who went wild over my work, thank god. He and his brother had written a script that was basically a take on Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell`Tale Heart”. It was to be very dynamic, with lots of camera movement. He felt I’d be a perfect fit. We set up a date to meet at his apartment, so I could get a copy of the script, and meet his brother. When I got to the apartment, it was apparent to me, from the state of his apartment, the state of the neighborhood he was living, the state of his burnt-out car, sitting below us, right across the street, recently torched and still smelling of burnt ruin, that this guy hadn’t quite “made it” yet. He’d woken in the morning to his one and only vehicle having been torched. He seemed to be taking it okay. 

Finally, after a modicum of small talk, I got a copy of his script, then I left. I went home and worked on it. I worked pretty solidly, providing hundreds upon hundreds of storyboards. I added shit where I could, any little flourish I could think of. I kept them simple where they needed to be, and ornate and complex where the story suggested. I made 5 hundred bucks and a promise of a screen credit I’m pretty sure I never got. The term “paid volunteerism” started to make much sense to me. But hell, a job was a job, and this filmmaker seemed to be going somewhere, so I wound up being cool with it. 

Eventually, the filmmaker paid me another 5 hundred bucks for my work. Lastly, he hired me to do production drawings for this video he was doing of some Japanese pop star. I got another 5 hundred bucks, but in all honesty, the work I did for that particular video, I was not happy with at all. It was not an appropriate job for me, at that point in life as an artist, but I was all too happy to take the dough. I had a family to support. But that filmmaker never called me again. 

I wish him well, and I follow his career, because I worked with him on his first narrative feature. What’s cool, is that my fingerprints are all over the movie. Little throwaway details I stuck in the storyboards, wound up in the actual movie. That was pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, the movie sucked! Just terrible! But it was a first try. And it wasn’t all bad, there were a few flourishes here and there. And of course my stuff. All my stuff was awesome. 

I was never able to find another storyboards gig. I really tried, but things were just not clicking, and they were not clicking all over Hollywood for me. I was told over and over again that “I wasn’t up to their standards”. It was disheartening. 

———

“Hey, sorry about yesterday. That was really mean what I said. I’ll try and do better.”

“Cool. Thanks. What did you say?”

“You mean you didn’t notice?”

“Uh, no... What did you say?”

“I swear, sometimes you’re like an absent-minded professor!

“You know, for a guy with such a “brilliant mind”, it seems like there’s a lot of big stuff that just goes right by you! Why is that?”

“Idunno. It probably has something to do with all the drugs, alcohol and insanity.”

“You think?”

“Beats me. Sometimes I’m just distracted, I guess.”

“A lot going on upstairs?”

“It takes a lot of brain power to keep the universe running smoothly!”

She laughs.

“Overseeing the totality of everything across all time and space ain’t child’s play, toots!”

“Do you think your the Kwisatz Haderach or something?”

“Nom myoho yngvie malmsteen renge kyo, byatch! The blithering idiot in me recognizes and honors the blithering idiot in you.”

I make a little hand movement genuflect kinda thing like I’m blessing her with holy water.“Blithering idiot is right...” she sarcastically says with a grin and a gleam in her eye as she heads back to the kitchen.

———

To be perfectly honest, I was never sure what Mimi was doing as a headhunter. It all seemed very vague. Mimi and Bennie seemed to spend all their time buying clothes, and drinking expensive coffee drinks in trendy bistros. And taking meetings. That becomes Miriam’s signature. It’s comical the amount of meetings that woman takes. And nothing ever seems to get accomplished from them. It seems to be just a constant search for the next gig, the next client. 

Over the years, Mimi and Bennie would become very close friends. Then not so close. The close again. But I really don’t trust Bennie at all. She’s maneuvering my wife against me. There is something weird going on between her and my wife. A couple of times, Mimi leaves me with the baby, while she goes to visit Bennie in Palm Springs. At least that’s what she was saying, but I as I sat in our bed alone, with Alex asleep in his crib, I just had this overwhelming sense that Mimi was cheating on me, and using Bennie for cover, but I kept it to myself. I had no proof, just a feeling. and if I confronted her about it, she’d just deny it. So I just filed that feeling away, and decided I was being silly and hypersensitive. 

Mimi found another unusual gig that seemed to pay pretty well. She was blessed. This next project we both worked on. It was called “Cyber Youth”. The idea, owned by this fat, greasy, creepy guy, was to place web cams, which were all but brand new on the market, and place them in nurseries, so parents could watch their kids at school, from the comfort of their own home. The product was riddled with problems, the main ones revolving around how no teacher in the world is going to be comfortable teaching the kids, while the parents spied in from home. So it was a product that seemed to me to be on the fast track to nowhere. My feeling was that Mimi and I should just get as much money from this destined to fail project. Shit, the guy was intent on spending his cash, why shouldn’t we be the people to take it. Even though this particular concept, predating nanny-cams, was clearly a bad idea riddled with problems, the basic technology seemed to work. I felt sure he’d eventually figure out how to turn these new-fangled webcams into cold hard cash. It was just a matter of time. In the meantime, he was putting money in our pocket, and food on our table, so I wasn’t likely to complain too loudly about what a shitty concept it was. 

Eventually I wound up waiting tables at this nice restaurant in North Hollywood, but my heart wasn’t in it. Mimi and mine’s relationship were desperately sliding down beyond repair. Day by day it seems like my home life was getting worse. It seemed to me that Maggie had her daughter’s ear, and was feeding Mimi a constant stream of amplified, angry messed up bullshit about me. 

And Bennie Buongusto, that evil little Irish gnome of a woman that constantly had Mimi‘s ear, she seemed all but intent on turning Mimi against me. She’d say to Mimi: “All this? This isn’t real. This is just a temporary thing”. She felt Mimi was wasting her time with me, and to be perfectly honest, I was having a hard time coming up with a counter argument. I was starting to feel like a bit of a loser. Again. 

At work, I get to witness my boss going on a huge coke bender drunken escapade, and loses his wife and newborn baby. They seemed like kind of a great couple, but he fucked up and she split. I’m watching this guy’s life implode right in front of me, he just becomes a desiccated husk of a man. I’m thinking, boy I’m glad that’s never gonna happen to me. 

One night I stay down at work, after we close and have a couple of beers with my coworkers. All my coworkers are a bunch partying, pot smoking unemployed actors. Basically, I wound up hanging out with them a lot, drinking. I also started smoking pot again. I pretty much had managed to avoid the cocaine, so far, that evil bitch that had done me so much damage those years before. But I knew I wouldn’t be avoiding it much longer. 

This hanging out with the guys from work thing and drinking and getting high is starting to become a semi-regular thing, so I figure I’d better tell Mimi. So the next night I sit with Mimi on the couch and tell her that I’ve started drinking and smoking pot again. And right there she throws me out of the house. Bam! ‘You gotta find some other place to stay. Right now! You can spend the night on the couch tonight, but tomorrow I want you out of here.’ 

Fuck me! I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about it. 

I get a place right away, but right away I’m living beyond my means, especially considering how much I don’t want to be waiting tables. Eventually I wind up behind on my rent, I really have no idea how I’m going to pay my rent. Then my landlady borrows my bike without asking, and goes out and gets hit by a car. Broken ribs, wired jaw, bump and bruises all over, I feel bad for her, but I also feel bad because she borrowed my bike without asking and destroyed it. I wound up trading her the price of the bike against the rent I owed her. Then I moved out without giving her any notice. She was not happy with me when I left. Another in a ever increasing line of landlords that seem to think I owe them money. I have an almost supernatural ability to piss them off. I swear, she was spitting foam at me as I was getting out of there. Storming around,trying to scream at me with her jaw wired shut, rampaging around the apartment, circling cobwebs with a permanent marker. But she could act however she wanted, I was not giving her any more money. Sorry lady. I’m gone. 

And of course I left. Mimi let me move back in! But it wasn’t to last. I was already going down a road of despair and self destruction. One day she smelled tequila on my breath when I picked her up after work from Disney, with the baby. I had to leave again. 

I didn’t have anywhere near enough money to rent an apartment or anything, so I wound up sleeping on my mom’s floor, in her one bedroom in-law unit she shared with her sister. I could see that my options were rapidly dwindling. I knew what I had to do. 

That night when I went to work, waiting tables at the café., after work I asked Chuy the dishwasher if I could get a quarter gram of coke, and pay him tomorrow. He reluctantly agreed. That night me and James, my coworker, got drunk and played pool, we worked our way back to his place, where we crack a six pack, and proceeded to do blow for then next couple of hours. 

And when the coke is all gone, James says I’m welcome to sleep on his couch, he shambles off to his room, across his apartment where his girlfriend has dumped him, and I try to get comfortable on his couch that smells like cat piss, in his apartment that smells like cat piss. Sometime before the sun comes up, as I layed there dreading the arrival of the day, I decide to shamble home, or rather to my mom’s house, to her comfortable floor. 

I have the morning shift at the restaurant, Fuck it. I blow it off and sleep. Later I call the restaurant to inform them I won’t be coming back. I’m quitting. The manager is not happy with me for leaving them in the lurch this morning, but so what? I got other problems to worry about. 

That night I call my dad down in Cabo San Lucas and let him know that Mimi threw me out again, and basically it’s over and we’re getting a divorce. Lawyers have been talked to.... Jobs have been quit.... I said “I think I want to come back down to Cabo, what do you think?” 

“Absolutely. Hey! September will be here in a few days, and the restaurant will be closed for month. It seems I have the time, so how ‘bout I come up there and meet you in L.A, and we’ll caravan back down here to Cabo? Is it a plan? Great!. I’ll see you in a week, so get ready. Start packing.” 

6 days later, I’m leaving L.A. The 4-Runner packed up with the small amount of shit that Mimi would allow me without causing a huge scene. I got a small selection of guy stuff. I got the 4-Runner, the home entertainment system, my big blue and white Mac G3, some tools. My clothes. Not much more. Mimi got everything else. She got the home. She got Alex... 

And I said “Seeya!” Fuck you, Hollywood. Mexico, Here I come! 

Mimi was furious at me. The way she saw it, I abandoned my family, and that’s how she characterized it to all her friends. Needless to say, that’s not how I saw it. I was making the best move I could make, the only move I could make. I was playing my last card. But I knew what to expect. I knew I’d be in safe surroundings and have my daily needs met. And I knew I had a job. I’d be able to start sending money to her immediately and frequently. I was glad I could. All of a sudden I would actually be making money, something I hadn’t done with any regularity in the 2 and a half years I’d been in Hollywood. If I’d only known somebody there. But all the connections that my father always claimed to have turned into shit. 

ON THE ROAD BACK TO CABO

Dad and I left for Cabo San Lucas, in separate cars (Me in my 4-Runner, Dad in Grandma’s Honda Accord) on September 3, 2001. We were back in Cabo by the 5th. The first thing I did was grab my art supplies (pencils, erasers, paper, ink, sharpener, like that) and head out to Medano Beach, stopping off at El Gallo for a six-pack of Negro Modelo on the way. So I sat down on the main beach in Cabo, emptied out due to the low season, and I drew out that sight I’d seen at The Hacienda Hotel so many years ago; The crusty old Mexican vaquero, pistol holstered to his belt, where his riata hangs, a deeply tanned and crevassed face that had seen at least 10,000 sunrises in a row, anachronistically drinking a bottle of Evian. I also drew the arches, the hotels, the clouds, a couple of babes resting under an umbrella. I got some good stuff that I knew I could use on the menu for Mama’s of Felix’. Finishing those particular drawings coincided with me polishing off the six-pack, so I went home. 

9/11

5 days later, in the morning, Dad rousted me out of a deep sleep to see the most amazing and unexpected turn of events in all of our collective lives. A 747 had crashed into The World Trade Center in New York. The talking heads were considering what the nature of it all meant. Some kind of horrible accident, maybe? Then the second 747 flew into the second tower, and instantly everyone knew we were under attack. I was awoken seconds after the second airliner hit. The first thing I did was call Mimi. She was at work in Burbank, working for The Disney Corporation. She worked in the tallest building in the neighborhood, and it had a big pair of Mickey Mouse ears on the top of it. She hadn’t heard when I called her. She understood my fears, that if the US is under attack by coordinated anti-american forces, there are safer places to be than at the top of a skyscraper with Mickey Mouse ears on it. 

HURRICANE JULIETTE

Eventually, late in September, Cabo is hit by Hurricane Juliette. There is a lot of tension locally around the impending landing of this gust. It’s been hanging off shore for days, causing a lot of wind damage, bringing a lot of wet with it. The gusts are so strong, that i can jump straight up into the air, and land 2 feet away. Juliette is force 5. This could be bad. I’ve been flirting with my wife constantly over the internet and phone since I left. I am desperately in love with her. I try to be consistent and persuasive in my push for reconciliation. I want my family back. Hollywood was a huge bust, but I know I (we) can make a go of the restaurant down here, and have it be hugely successful. I know it. This is the angle I tilt Mimi’s ear with. We are on the right track, it seems to me. She is concerned about my wellbeing during the hurricane. I try my best to assure her that everything will be fine (hurricanes in Cabo are old hat. The town might as well be built of Legos. Every couple years, the wind’d knock it all down, only to have Cabo’s manual labor force just put it right back up again. same story told many times), but at the same time, preying on her concern, I want to leave the door open a crack that we may all be seriously fucked. Don’t want her taking me for granted. One thing’s for sure; when it finally hits, Cabo’s going dark for awhile. Usual pre-hurricane hubbub of stores boarding up windows, civilians stocking up on water and batteries and candles and dry goods and such. Huge, huge, ridiculously huge lines for gas. 2 hour wait, easy. I came in at dawn and filled up before the line even started. Ha! I’m a seasoned hurricane rider! 

Eventually, inevitably, the hurricane lands. Dad and I are sitting in our ramshackle little double-wide, listening to the meanest howling wind I’d ever heard. Angry banshees in the dark. Like, ten thousand of them. It was loud, and the dogs were not happy about it at all. CNN had Juliette right on top of us, now merely an ugly force 3. I managed to get that finalt E-mail off to Mimi before Hurricane Juliette landed, when we’d surely lose power. And judging by the weather, it could have been any minute. The E-mail said, simply: “It’s here...” I liked it. It had a playful, ominous tone to it. I especially liked the dot dot dot. Nice touch I thought. It was late when I sent it. I knew Mimi wouldn’t get it til the morning. I also knew the lines would be down by morning, and Mimi would have no way of contacting me for several days. Now I just hoped the hurricane didn’t kill us all. 

The hurricane hit like clockwork. It blew hundred mile gusts in one direction for 2 days. The the eye crossed over us and everything was calm for a day. Finally we had 2 days of hundred mile an hour winds blowing the other direction. After 5 days, it was over. And everybody in town, poked their heads out to get a look. We all came out of our shelters to assess the devastation, which was substantial. Telephone poles knocked over, roads gone, 

In the aftermath of the devastation, I get to hang out for a couple of weeks with these 2 German girls. We all have a great time as I take them on a tour of weather ravaged Baja. One of the German girls and I have a little fling. One of these girls is drop dead gorgeous. I make a tactical decision to leave her alone, and go for the friend who is not gorgeous. Don’t get me wrong, she was totally fucking cool. Just not archetype of beauty that her friend was. Why did I make that choice? Perhaps either of them would have been up to it, I don’t know. But, through my own experience, my own trial and error, I’d kind of internalized the message that that kind of beauty was not a gift that was generally given me. So I didn’t even bother. No regrets. Nobody gets hurt. There’s no way Mimi‘ll find out (until I tell her, which I did) Plus, to be perfectly frank, Mimi‘s most consistent vocal opinion around that time was that she wanted a divorce. No rules were being broken.

DAD’S AWAY, LET’S DO SOME COKE!

What happened was Kieth Famie got a show on the Food Network. Keith Famie was a contestant on Survivor. I think he made it to the number three position before being voted off. Also he’s a professional chef and he burned the rice. That was his deal. After Survivor the Food Network gave him his own show called “Keith Famie’s Adventures”. We were on that. So Felix’ is getting some press! We’ve been on teevee! The Food Network has us as the number 1 thing to do in Cabo! Reno Television has dubbed Dad “The Salsa King”! So maybe I was right. Maybe I made the right choice. Things are moving at a good clip in to uncharted waters. Dad and Celyne are going to the US so Dad can appear on ABC TV, and make some salsas. He and Celyne are driving, so they’ll be gone for a week or 10 days. I wager I can run the restaurant solo for a while. Not a problem. You guys go! Have a great time! 

At some point, while Dad’s in Reno, one night Steve comes over from his much nicer, and much more well preserved double wide next door, with his glass of scotch, and asks me if I want to get some blow. 

With out missing a beat: “Yeah!” 

Steve tells me to come with him. says he’s gonna show me a little secret. he takes me to an empty dirt lot, with a single cinderblock building on it, fence all around this seemingly square piece of undeveloped property. There’s a single guy sitting in there in the dark. He knows Steve, pretty well it seems. I guess Steve’s a good customer. Steve and I split a half gram. 

On the ride back to the property, I’m thinking: “This is not going to end well”. 

Steve and I chatter and do blow for a couple of hours. Eventually, the blow runs out and Steve goes back next door. I head out into the night, back to that property, and score another half. On the drive back, I’m thinking: 

“This is reeaally not going to end well.” 

I up for the rest of the night, working on art! It’s such an awesome release of ideas onto the paper. It’s nice to do art again. I guess I’m doing cocaine again! I find that groove pretty quickly. Coke is available on practically every corner it seems. there are tons of these empty buildings with one or two guys sitting inside them with pockets full of grams. I just walk the 2 blocks from work to score, before I head out to my new bungalow on the beach. That’s right! Steve has set me up with a place on the beach, right on the Hotel Corridor, between Cabo and San Jose. It’s a beautiful compound right on the beach, with a bunch of surfer bungalows and a couple of houses, right in the middle of a palm grove. The place is absolutely gorgeous, and helps cement my feeling that I made the right choice returning to Cabo. The morning summer swims in the ocean from a empty bleached white beach help to make me feel like I’m in heaven. And I’m not even doing that much coke yet. 

I send Miriam $600 a month child support, plus make plans to fly up to LA to see Mimi and Alex, then bring Alex back down with me for a couple of weeks, which Mimi has agreed to. Money is flowing pretty good. I’m happy. I like where I live. I like having a sense of belonging that I feel in Cabo, that I never felt in LA. My son, recently 2, is turning in to simply the most beautiful and charming child ever. Plus I’m horny and really want to fuck Mimi, who seems hotter than ever to me, and that seems to be steadily heading where I want it to go. I am no longer broke and powerless like I was for 2 and a half years in North Hollywood. 

The next time Mimi sends Alex down to visit, she sends herself with him. The time she and Alex spend with me on that trip seems to suggest reconciliation, something I am actively boosting for. Mimi seems to slowly edging her brain toward that conclusion. The family unit, happy and healthy, seems to be having an intoxicating draw on Mimi, as we lie peacefully in bed one morning, listening to the erns, and the white noise created by the ocean, calmly advancing and receding. I lie next to Mimi, rear spoon in typical spoon formation, as we both watch as Alex stands in front of us, on his tippy toes, staring out the window down to the beach. He’s so beautiful, and he’s growing and evolving and changing in to something even more beautiful right before our eyes. It was awash in that spirit of hope and love and wonder, that my hand moved from its resting place on the side of her abdomen, to lightly trace my fingers across her breast. With my hand reassuringly at her breast, I lightly flick my fingers around a little, to determine where and when a nipple. When my forefinger finds her nipple, it seems half asleep and pliant. But it comes to attention all too quickly. Quietly, Mimi sort of shifts her weight, and arches her back a little, changing the angle of her body just slightly, discreetly providing me with a welcoming point of entry for me, so I slide my cock right in and quietly plow my wife while my son looks out the window, completely unaware of the terrible things his mom is allowing me to do to her. Alex’s obliviousness to what were doing is an unexpected turn on. 

So things seem pretty much on track. Seems like Mimi have taken some sort of step. She’s still somewhat skeptical, over all. i figure that’s okay, I’m sure enough for the both of us. But really, things aren’t fine between us. Things are weird and clouded and up in the air. Also I haven’t told her about all the cocaine I’d been using. 

The three of us go to Johnny Rockets in the Cabo Mall. When Alex gets his hotdog he says, “My goodness that’s an enormous hotdog!” Miem and I both laugh then I tell Alex “You know, if you’re anything like the rest of the Moore men, someone’s gonna be saying that to you someday!” Alex laughs but I don’t think he got the joke.

One time when I go up to LA to visit them, Mimi is cold and distant. There is no heat between us. 

In my little house by the ocean, I start writing a story. I call it “How I met Your Mother”. It starts just as a collection of anecdotes about my family, and of course, how Mimi and I met. I fantasized about Alex, all grown up, coming across the manuscript, in a dusty old steamer trunk, tucked somewhere in the darkest corner of the attic. Not to over-dramatacize it... 

FEAR AND LOATHING EAST OF BARSTOW

Mimi got the bright idea that we should go to Vegas so I flew up to North Hollywood. Miem picked me up at the airport with the goofball. He was growing up so quickly. Miem was happy to tell me every hilarious little detail about our wonderful son.

“You won’t believe this kid! He argues with me about everything!” Miem actually seemed delighted by it though.

“Yeah, I know”, I admit. “Same with me. We need to break him of this habit of negotiating everything.”

“It’s become a joke. I just say to him ‘you’re a contrarian’ because I know he’ll say ‘No I’m not.’ 

Then Alex says “No I’m not!”

That’s really cute actually.”

I laugh. Mimi’s right. “You’re right.”

“And now I’m calling him Helen Keller.”

“Helen Keller?”

“Yeah.” Then to Alex, “Isn’t that right Helen Keller?”

Alex says “That’s right, Mom!”

“Because he just runs around the table like a mad man! It’s like he can’t hear me!”

The next day Mimi, Alex, Mom and I went to Las Vegas. 

DAD HAS A STROKE

Eventually Mimi and I reconcile. She and Alex are going to move down to be with me. Finally! I’m going to fly up to LA, and drive back down with Mimi and Alex, in Mimi’s car. Once I’m in LA to get them, wanting to recommence this relationships with an air of honesty, I tell Mimi that I went out, and that I’d been using cocaine. Her reaction to my confession is to call the whole thing off. I’m devastated and embarrassed. rather than driving down the Baja peninsula in style, with my newly restored family, I’m forced to fly back down, by myself, having to explain to my family why Mimi and Alex aren’t with me. I’m pretty broken. I move away from the beach house, and back in with Dad, who promptly has a stroke. 

Dad made chili sizes for dinner that night. So for me, chili sizes have come to represent death. Or near death. Loss. Pain. Devastation. 

Let’s make no mistake. Chili sizes have always been low class and nasty. that’s part of their appeal. It’s diner food. It’s a hotdog, on a bun, liberally topped with chili con carne (preferably from a can. Nothing homemade here!), with a couple of slices of american cheese and chopped onions. Yeah. It’s just a disaster waiting to happen. 

So, we ate dinner without event, and after dinner, Dad sauntered off to the bathroom, with no idea that part of his brain was about to burst. 

I’d noticed that Dad hadn’t come out of the bathroom, and I made note of it, but I really thought nothing of it. When I walked by the bathroom, Dad was lying on the floor, on his side in fetal position, with his pants down around his ankles, quietly mumbling something to himself about some childhood friend he thought he was having a conversation with. When I saw him, I rushed to him, got down to look at him. I steadied his face with my hands, looked directly in to his eyes, which seemed distant, and tried to get his attention. 

“Hey, Dad!” 

He mumbled something incoherent back to me. This was not good. Dad had a stroke. The good kind, apparently. If it’d been the bad kind, the doctors said he’d be dead. But he’s not. He’s alive. 

Mimi comes down with Alex, to be supportive. We put her in the hotel where Spencer’s is. I stay with her there. We’re staying at the Hotel Mar de Cortez. After a long spell, I fuck Mimi while Alex sleeps. I can see her laying back on the bed with her legs spread, the pink of her gash presenting slightly open, her blouse lifted above her tits.

I did manage to finally convince Mimi to move back down to Cabo. To be a family again. But I was already pretty far gone on the drugs again. At this point, I was buying coke from Mexican plain clothes cop from La Paz. I didn’t know he was a cop at first, but eventually I figured it out. How did I start buying cocaine from a Mexican cop, you ask? Simple. It happened like this: I was buying from a variety of guys, the connecting factor being that they all worked tjis particular tienda and they were all too happy to help a good looking young gringo like me dig himself into a hole. So I go talk to this one guy, in hopes he’ll set me up. He has no time on his phone. I let him use mine. It was that simple. That’s how I got the phone number of the guy that seemed to have the best coke around. Next time I needed something, In stead of heading to the tiendas, I gritted my teeth, and dialed the phone number left by the other guy. When he answered, I explained who I was, and what I was looking for. he was all too happy to oblige. I was buying from him regularly. Using a lot. I knew there was gonna be some hell to pay eventually. Mimi was moving down at Christmas, and I just kept putting off quitting. Every time I’d explain to my dealer that it was necessary that I quit. My wife and son were moving back down to be with me. So at some point in the near future, he should expect me to stop calling. Just not yet. Finally the last time I bought coke from this guy, that’s when he confirmed he was a cop. He wasn’t trying to arrest me or anything. Just this particular time, he had a radio with him, and there was something else about the way he dressed and carried himself. So I asked him: “Are you what I think you are?” “Si”, he admitted kind of humbly. He seemed to have access to the evidence room or something. Finally something that felt kind of off happened. I could have just been being paranoid, but he seemed to be trying to get me in a particular place, near a church. I had to seriously consider the possibility, due to his demeanor, and everything else, that at that point I was being filmed. Something about it just felt like a set-up. I wasn’t sure why anybody’d be setting me up, surely there were bigger fish to fry than little old me. I wasn’t sure if it was even true, or if I was just being paranoid from all the coke, but that whole situation was starting to make me a little nervous. But in the end, nothing ever came of it, no cops ever bust down my door and arrested me. Life just went on, business as usual. And eventually I just stopped buying from him, and changed up my source. 

When I arrive in LA, by plane, so I can drive Mimi and Alex down, Mimi is twittering with excitement. Something is going on with her, something good, and it’s aimed in my direction. I wonder if she made some deal with Disney for some of my characters or something. I just take notice. I don’t grill her about it or anything. She has this beautiful Christmas book, ostensibly for Alex, but from her mannerisms, I conclude that somehow it’s really for me. What? Am I getting a three picture deal at Tri-Star come Christmas? I let her have her little secret. It seems to be making her happy. 

TOGETHER AGAIN IN CABO 

So, Mimi, Alex and I arrived back in Cabo the day after Christmas 2002. By January 1st, we had a house. February 1st I moved out, into a house nearby, And I never came close to living anything like a human existence. I never even got the electricity turned on. I’d do drugs, and watch porn on my laptop in the dark. I swore, whenever I came, I could hear people next door cheering. It seemed all very fucked up. 

And then she looked at me and she had a big sweet smile on her face. She looked at me and said “You know me. I never lie.”

And she had just the barest hint of the barest hint of a squeak in her voice when she said it. It wasn’t even a squeak. It was a bouncy lilt. Whatever it was, my antenna caught it.

That was just when we moved into the big white house across the street from Nidia’s house where we’d been staying. Like after 9/11. Things were really bad between us. We were back together, but I was fuckin pissed. And I was doing all this shit to act out, including doing drugs and other stuff. But I had no answer. I honestly don’t know if it would have even been possible to salvage what we had. What did we really have?

Where was the point? The pivot. Where everything went so wildly out of control? It seemed like every time I’d think of a point where it is only done B instead of A, everything would have rolled out groovy. But every time I’d nail it, I’d think of a time earlier and realize, nah, I was already screwed up by then. Dad cracking the egg on my head? Could be. Eventually I came to attribute punching him in Mulege as a response to the egg/head smashing. In hindsight that kind of feels like payback to me. I don’t know what that says. I don’t know that it says anything. It’s Just something that happened. That’s all any of it is. Just shit that happens. Someone should write that down. It would look good on a T-shirt.

Right from the get go, everything is wrong. I’m all speedy and can’t sleep, but mainly, just a fingernail scratch under the surface, I’m furious at Mimi. Her treatment of me over the past couple of years has taken its toll on me. I’m antagonistic with her from day one. 

But it wasn’t all bad. Alex had just turned three and we spent Christmas in a hotel in San Ysidro. We watched “The Preacher’s Wife” with Denzel and Whitney Houston. Miriam got the book “The Polar Express” and we read it to Alex. We got some great photos of Alex in San Ignacio, and one time on the road in Baja he threw up strawberry milk all over himself.

When we got back to Cabo, the first thing that struck me was just how angry Dad was with me. We arrived back to Cabo in the evening and we went right downtown the restaurant to check in. It was reasonably busy, Dad was ringing up checks. And he was seething at me. My presumption was that he was angry because I left to go to the US at the height of high season. But come on! After two years of confusion and pain and wrangling, Mimi was coming back to me! She was bringing my three year old son! For Dad to be angry at me for leaving under those circumstances was petty and hurtful. It shone a light on and reinforced his own selfishness I felt.

Miriam and I find a studio we can stay in until we find something better. The studio was an in-law apartment owned by her friend Nidia. I remember laying in bed there when Miriam told me about how ET: The Extraterrestrial was a Jesus parable. Then she laid it out and it sounded good to me. She said that Spielberg and Kubrick bonded over that, which led to Spielberg taking over AI: Artificial Intelligence after Kubrick died. Then we watched Close Encounters with Alex who seemed to like it.

Walking down Cabo San Lucas Ave, I’m having a discussion with Mimi that ends with me saying “with great power comes great responsibility. It’s painful but true. I’m totally Tobey McGuire in Spider-Man.”

Mimi gives me a sideways glance. What can I say? I thought Spider-Man was great. It totally spoke to me. Something about it reminded me of Disney movies with Kurt Russell when he was a teenager. “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”, “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t” and “The Strongest Man In The World”.

Miriam may be back, but I’m harboring a major resentment toward her. And I’m doing drugs when she’s not looking. But I’m sincerely trying to find a way we can be a family together. I have this sense that Dad isn’t happy with it. It’s not even a sense. He’s fighting me at every juncture. Dismissing every attempt I make to improve the ambience of the restaurant, which is looking really shoddy. It’s just plain falling apart. Years of intense weather has taken its toll on the building Mama’s is situated in. It’s old and poorly built. The chairs that he religiously assigns me to constantly maintain are disintegrating. There aren’t isn’t enough Elmer’s Glue, wood screws or “L” brackets in the world to keep these things together anymore. The way the pointy end of some of the screws stick up out of the chair seats look like a tetanus hazard to me. 

We have dead bougainvilleas that are so overgrown and dry that they’re a fire hazard. There’s no lighting at night! He types out the menus for the restaurant in Word and they have no character, rather the character they give off is one that’s says we don’t give a shit. The bathrooms are absolutely disgusting. It’s no wonder business is suffering so badly.

But any changes I try to make are met with naked hostility. Every idea I have is a “dumb idea” that will “never work”. That is until I just do it. For instance I redesigned the menus and they were beautiful, and well-received by everybody who basically just said “It’s about time!” Suddenly something he told me was a “dumb idea” that would “never work”, suddenly apparently he supported it from day one! In this period I painted the restaurant, removed all the dead over grown bougainvilleas, majorly prunes the bougainvilleas that managed to still be alive, replaced all the disintegrating wooden chairs with wrought iron chairs, designed and oversaw a whole lot of signage for the two restaurants, designed menus for both restaurants. Basically I worked my ass off, brought the place back from the dead and was constantly told I was a worthless lazy fuck. I finally just told him:

“Dad, this is unacceptable. You can’t treat me like this. I have a wife and a child and I intend on running  this restaurant with Miriam as a unit.”

He made some snide comment about him giving me partnership in the business after his stroke.

“Yeah Dad. You made me a partner! I’m you’re partner! The problem is that you don’t want a partner! You want a sidekick! I’m not your sidekick. I have a family I need to support!”

The fact that it was soon discovered that I was using drugs, presuming that wasn’t known all along, created a situation where Dad felt he was justified in being a monster. I don’t think he was. He was creating a situation that was untenable, and I had a wife and child. I was fully aware of this and it steps needed to be taken I wanted to have researched them. So I asked Miriam what she thought about having Dad declared incompetent. Somehow word for back to Dad that Miriam wanted to declare Dad incompetent, but that was all my idea, not hers. I truly believe I had the greater need and the greater ability and therefore, it seemed to me, the best chance of being able to turn business around. The only thing Dad had to offer as a solution to save the business was to be there more often, something he couldn’t do due to his stroke.

It was right about this time, while we were still living in Nidia’s in-law apartment that my 4-Runner was stolen while parked in front of Nidia’s house. Celyne told me about how robbers use tennis balls to open locked car doors. It’s true. 

Well, that really sucked. It was an enormous set back and blow to my ego, as well as throwing on a bunch more weight for my psyche to carry. I presumed it was one of the guys I was buying Chuki from, but I have no evidence.

Eventually they found the remains of the 4-Runner, but a bunch of other stuff had to happen first. 

First we had to move into the big house across the street from Nidia. Miriam had to bond with Pedro and Monica, which as a result Alex became besties with his cousins Manny and Pablo, who were both more or less his same age. Additionally Miriam and I had to become friends with Fernando and Carolina. Rather, I became friends with Fernando while Mimi became friends (and lovers I suspected) with Carolina. Pronounced “carro-LEE-nuh”.

It was my hostility toward Miem that led me to get an unsuccessful blow job from a hooker I bought some Chuki from. I couldn’t get it up. I totally had “crystal dick”. But as this woman valiantly tried to suck some life into the wet noodle that was my dick, I literally said to myself “This is SO going in the book.”

On another day I’m with Miriam at the new house, and she looks at me and she had a big sweet smile on her face. She looks at me and said “You know me. I never lie.”

And she had just the barest hint of the barest hint of a squeak in her voice when she said it. It wasn’t even a squeak. It was a bouncy lilt. Whatever it was, my antenna caught it.

That was just when we moved into the big white house across the street from Nidia’s house where we’d been staying. Like after 9/11. Things were really bad between us. We were back together, but I was fuckin pissed. And I was doing all this shit to act out, including doing drugs and other stuff. But I had no answer. I honestly don’t know if it would have even been possible to salvage what we had. What did we really have?

Where was the point? The pivot. Where everything went so wildly out of control? It seemed like every time I’d think of a point where it is only done B instead of A, everything would have rolled out groovy. But every time I’d nail it, I’d think of a time earlier and realize, nah, I was already screwed up by then. Dad cracking the egg on my head? Could be. Eventually I came to attribute punching him in Mulege as a response to the egg/head smashing. In hindsight that kind of feels like payback to me. I don’t know what that says. I don’t know that it says anything. It’s Just something that happened. That’s all any of it is. Just shit that happens. Someone should write that down. It would look good on a T-shirt.

THE CLEANING LADY FINDS MY COCAINE

And then Glafira, the cleaning lady, found the coke I had left in my pocket and gave it to Miriam. It was an oversight on my part to leave it there. Mimi throws me out. Just another shitty thing in a long string of shittiness. I really feel fucked with. 

Also the shame and embarrassment I felt in front of Dad. I had to face that now. “Welp. I fucked it up again. Guess I’m just a fuck-up!”, I’m thinking. So much for taking over Mama’s and running it with my family. I guess that’s off. Any currency I’d felt I’d earned through being right on my issues with Dad, was of zero consequence.

MY CONCERNS OVER MIMI’S EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES MOUNT 

One day at work, a customer, a local woman in timeshare, comes up to me and pointedly asks me if I knew what Miriam was doing during the lunar eclipse that had just happened. I told her we were separated, and I had no idea what she’d been doing for the eclipse. The woman just stared at me and said, “Hmm, I wonder what she was doing during the eclipse. Instantly I knew this woman knew where Miriam had been during the eclipse, and felt it was information I would be greatly interested in. “I wonder what your wife was doing during the eclipse...” she said as she left. 

So I went home and called Miriam to ask her. 

“Hey Miem, I was just curious, did you go see the eclipse last night?”

“It’s none of your fucking business. Stay the fuck out of my life!”

Well that was a response that could have been tailor-made to fuck with me peace of mind. It piqued my curiosity though. While simultaneously making me scared and panicky and holy fuck, what do I do now? Plus it was an incredibly short span of time, for her attitude toward me to sour so completely. Like, less than a day. I thought that was a reasonable question. She had different ideas. 

Then I thought, “Gustavo!” I was pretty sure she’d rekindled some sort of relationship with Gustavo, behind my back, years ago. But panic over the very real possibility of Miriam being with him the previous night really, added to my existing concern she’d been cheating on with him for some time, hit me hard. 

So I did some speed, and head out for the airport in San Jose, where I knew he’d be. I was pissed, and panicking, and on some really good speed, which made all those emotions bubble over into some sort of primal miasma of anguish. I was also sweating profusely. Side effects of the speed. Man, you sweat like a river in the mildest heat. So, Pablo called me while I was on my run to the airport. Hmm. Mimi must have called him. Anyhow, I did my best, in my state of rage and panic, to explain what was going on. he made a cursory attempt to calm me down, but he had a timbre in his voice that told me not to trust him. I made it to the airport and found Gustavo. I was about to confront him, when I ran into someone from AA, who managed to calm me down. 

There was an attempt to make me see the necessity and importance of AA as a solution, which I did. I actually met a couple times with Brad Dana, and I liked him, and respected him, But I was not only dealing with (or not dealing with) my marriage falling apart ostensibly for my inability to stay sober, but I’d never adequately dealt with my feelings about Rona or Lauri (or Laurel or Liz or Jamuna or any woman I’d been with, really) So I had a lot going on. Shit. I actually thought my love for Miriam was based on mutual understanding, rather than the reaction of a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. 

When Mimi threw me out, I had no place to go, so I moved into the little office that Miriam had built in the storage room. An office to which Dad strenuously disagreed with building, but I was grateful for. I had my computer and internet connection. I had keys to the restaurant so I could eat. But I was too ashamed to show my face. So I’d hide in the office behind lock and key during operating hours. If I had to pee, I’d pee in a bottle and take it out after all the employees left at night. That was my mental state. I was in a serious crisis that was the culmination of a series of previous crises. All those previous crises all teamed up and coalesced into a single mighty “Voltron of Crises” and it nearly fucking killed me. I remember Dad disowning in front of the restaurant. “You’re not my son!” That was fun. 

MIMI BURNS HER HAND

I get a panicked and crying call from Miriam. She was making coffee and accidentally poured boiling water on her hand and she’s freaking out. She said the skin on her hand slid off and crumbled like decaying parchment. Dad and I drive over to take her to IMSS for medical treatment. Her hand is all wrapped up when we take her over to the doctor.

———

Eventually I do move into a house. One of these little houses that line the hill, row after row within walking distance from Miriam and Alex. My place is a great vantage point up on that hill. I could see all the houses and businesses in the valley below. But it just felt like more eyes on the disaster my life was becoming again. Also there wasn’t a refrigerator so Dad said I could use his ice chest. Typical Coleman Cooler. But he plugged it with paper, or someone did. When the ice melted, the cooler leaked all over the house and destroyed a bunch of art that I did that I really liked. It was unfortunate.

I watched Mimi and Alex from the sidelines, as my life continued to crumble, I started noticing signs of intimacy between Mimi and my Cuban brother-in-law, Pedro. It made Pedro’s tone over the phone that rankled my ear so bad, it made that make a lot more sense. But the truth is, I had no way to judge if I was being paranoid or not. I sure was doing a lot of speed, and that can make you paranoid. Plus the fact that literally everybody I knew told me I was being paranoid. But even then, at that relative early stage of this particular season of wierdness, I was having a real hard time accepting that. And let me tell you, when I saw Mimi stroke the back of Pedro’s neck, to feel his new haircut, I hit me like a ton of shit. I didn’t like it one bit, but as with a lot of other areas of my life, I grinned and bore it, and eventually everything seemed to return to some semblance of normalish, except Mimi and Alex were gone, and I was starting to completely lose my mind. 

That summer a couple of things happened that really kind of bitch slapped me a little. Twice, in two different movies, two big budget summer blockbusters, I saw Lauri, and it was freaking me out, as I hadn’t thought of her in years. Don’t misunderstand me, it wasn’t actually her, it was actresses that were made up in such a way, as to really remind me of her. And in both movies, she does the same move. Like, a jumping scissor kick where they get the guy between their thighs, and then rebound off of him. And the guy she was doing this move on bore more than a passing resemblance to me. I had no idea what this meant. I was really fucked up, and things were slowly ceasing to make any sort of sense. I started seeing all sorts of crazy shit, in the movies and on TV. Shit that apparently nobody else could see. Anytime I mentioned seeing anything weird, I was immediately rebuffed as being delusional, and on drugs. Well, I certainly was on drugs, but I was pretty sure I was reading the signs correctly. But my family, and everybody else I knew, would have none of it. 

I was going to NA meetings on a semi regular basis, and let me tell you, they were excruciating. I was too fucked up. I had lost my grasp on reality, in one fell swoop. What I felt was real, everybody else denied was happening. My only exit seemed more drugs. But I did still go. I learned stuff at those meetings in Kevin’s backyard. I learned freaky shit. Crazy stuff that everybody denied has real, but all made a strange kind of sense. At one meeting, we were talking about Pedro when someone mentioned Pedro’s wife. Kevin’s girlfriend, who was new to the Cabo scene said, “That’s Mimi, right?” Umm,.. no. Mimi would be my wife. So that whole dynamic concerned me. The next thing that happened was pretty fucking weird. We were at a meeting in Kevin’s backyard, and the neighbor’s are drunk and talking really loudly, and they sound like frat boys or something, and they are saying, very conspicuously, “Then I fucked her on the pooltable, and later I fucked her twice on the floor.” These guys are talking way too loudly, and I decide they must be talking about Mimi. 

I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. Tone of voice maybe. I was sure they were talking about Mimi, I was certain. It was bizarre! but I felt certain these guys next door were talking about fucking my wife. I even asked if anybody else in the group was listening to this? At the very least, it was obnoxious and they were talking way too loud. But again, everyone insisted I was crazy, I was delusional, I was on drugs (which I was). I was quickly coming to not trust these people around me. 

One day I ran into her on the street, in front of the restaurant, and I told her I’d been thinking about the whole Clementine and Abelardo situation that went down all those years ago. can we talk about that? I was hoping to go over some of what happened again, as the first time around, it didn’t really seem to make a lot sense to me. The thing was, I really wanted to understand. I was trying to process it, so I could deal with it, and become maybe even the tiniest bit healthier in my head. But my head-wellness was not of much concern to her. So she did what she did every time I brought up something she didn’t want to talk about: She exploded. She screamed at me, told me to mind my own fucking business, and stormed off, winning no points for originality. As she drove off, I mentioned to the head waiter, Jesus, “I’m really having this horrible sense that her has been fucking everyone in town.” Jesus kind of grimaced guiltily. “And everybody in this stinking little town knew about it but me.” Jesus looked ashamed. If it was possible for me to be more concerned that ever, I was. 

IT?S ALL IN THE DETAILS 

Anyway, things weren’t completely mega-super bad yet. I still managed to occasionally enjoy myself. Like when The New Yorker Coffee Shop opened up. I’d stop by there frequently, often after an AA meeting, to say hi to Matilda, the girl who ran the place. The New Yorker Coffee Shop seemed like just what Cabo (and I) needed. It was also a book store, and at the beginning, they even had some good books. But the coffee was good, and Matilda was sweet and gregarious. Cute too, if a little on the skinny side. I focused my attention on her, way more than on any 12 step meeting, and it quickly showed. As the months wore on, and I continued to shrivel up from drugs, Matilda stopped finding me charming. 

It was about that time that for some reason, it occurred to me that they’ve been trying to sell the same books for near on a year, or however long it was, and all the good books had sold out long ago. Judging from the decor of the place, the quality of construction, the education and charisma of their employees, they certainly weren’t lacking for funds. But the books stayed the same. At the very least, it seemed like an unworkable business model to me. Plus they appeared to sell all of 3 coffees a day, or something. Certainly no where near enough to keep them in business. And they seemed to be making no special push towards trying to get new customers through the door. Matilda, and her seemingly retarded assistant, Favio, seemed perfectly fine with the way it was. Something about it all, struck me as odd. So the first chance I got, I asked matilda point blank, “What are you guys REALLY doing here?” Matilda looked shocked, and stuttered, “Wha- what?” 

So I continued, “Are you the good guys, or the bad guys?”
“I... I don’t know what you mean,” she said to me with a strained, plastered on smile. “This place,” I said. “It’s a front for something, right?” 

Matilda didn’t say anything, while she thought. “Why would you say that?” she queried. At which point I gave her the rundown of my observation. “So I finally concluded you gotta be a front for something. Are you drug dealers? Or are you cops?” Matilda hastened an exit without answering. 

The next day she was gone. She gave me some whacked out sounding story about how her boss was a freak and tried to rape her, but to me, she wasn’t convincing in the slightest. Over time, the stories of why she left, and how she left, would evolve, when told to me by Favio, Matilda’s seemingly mentally challenged assistant. 

LADY DEATHSTRIKE

This is where I lose it. The pressure of forever is taking its toll. I’m watching X-Men 2 with Alex and Dad, and this character Lady Deathstrike shows up. She’s like Wolverine with the claws ans healing factor, but most importantly is how fucking much she looks like Lauri Robertson. A lot. A whole lot. A really whole fucking lot. And I think about WarGames.

“Dad, are they making movies about our family?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

And I think about Thelma and Louise.

“Dad, are they making movies about our family?”

“Don’t be ridiculous

Then for some reason “The Stepmom” with Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts come to mind.

“Dad, are we...”

I don’t even bother to ask. I know the answer.

But that’s fucking crazy. But Lady Deathstrike more than looks like Lauri. It feels like her. 

All of a sudden I’m thinking about “Mystery Men” and “Reality Bites”. Then “Good Will Hunting”. Then “Boogie Nights”. Then “Moulin Rouge”. Then that Nil Lara song “How was I to know”. I’m spinning like a top. What the fuck?

I wouldn’t call “Jesus and Hutch” with Eric Stoltz the straw that broke the camels back, but it didn’t help. I was freaking out. It was really starting to appear to me that Hollywood had been using our lives as inspiration or something. But why would Dad lie? 

So I decided to look though my personal experiences, to see if there was anything strange. What I came up with was what had happened between Mimi and Clementine and Abelardo. 

All of a sudden, it became impossible for me to imagine a situation where Abelardo didn’t insinuate himself between Mimi and Clementine. I mean, had it been me instead of Abelardo, I’d have absolutely made the move. And Abelardo was way more sketchy than I was. I wanted to know how far he sat away from them. Did he jack odd? Did he touch Clementine? What *actually* happened?

When I ran into Mimi, I asked her about it, and she went nuclear. 

“Mind your own fucking business!” she hissed at me.

THE NIGHT THE CIRCUS CAME TO TOWN 

One night, in my empty little shell of a house, devoid of electricty, while I was busy with my nightly ritual of shame, The Mexican police started driving by my house, in one of their F-150’s, gunning it as they passed my house, all night long. Eventually there were more and more police. It appeared to me, as I peered through the blinds, that the entire neighborhood was up to watch the show. I sat cowering in my house, while the cops buzzed my house all night long. Then, as dawn came, I starting hearing people talking. It was the guy next door, and they guy he was talking to didn’t sound very happy at all. He was telling my neighbor about how drug addicts in Mexican prisons can count on getting repeatedly fucked up the ass, and how if you try and resist sucking some Mexican Prison Bubba’s cock, they just knock all your teeth out. I was very, very nervous hearing all this, so I went out to confront the guy. he was this wiry, scary looking dude with a perm, a pretty impressive Mexican Cop Mustache, scary aviator sunglasses before dawn, and intensity and aggression just bursting off of him. So I said, “Uh, excuse me.” he yanked off his shade and shot me a look that sent chills through me.

“What?! You having a party, and you didn’t invite me?!” 

“Okay”, I said. “Yeah. I just going to go back inside”, and I scurried back into my hole, freaked within an inch of my life. 

Once I went back inside, the whole thing finally dispersed and went away, leaving no trace. 

Maybe two hours later, my Father shows up to pick me up and take me down to work. I’m so freaked I can barely talk. I try to explain to my Father what had happened. He doesn’t believe any of it. When we get down to the restaurant, and I turn on CaboMil, the local radio station, “Psycho Killer” by The Talking Heads comes blaring on. Dad says coincidence. This is just way too fucked up now. I don’t know what’s going on, but everybody seems in on the game. 

Anyhow, I never spent another night in that house. the next day I moved in to the office at the restaurant. We call it an office, but its really a hot dank little store room with no light from the outside able to reach it. In this room I sat, day and night, heartbroken and insane, convinced everyone was out to get me. I’d had what seemed the entire Cabo police force over at my house all night, while the entire neighborhood seemed to watch. When I tried to explain what happened to my father, he just poo- poohed it. Said it didn’t happen, was all in my mind, was the drugs. This was a battle I was losing. I was starting to exist in two different worlds. One world where her was managing to keep some heavy duty secrets from me for years. It was starting to look like Mimi was an unrepentant whore, had been as long as I’d known her, and it seemed like everybody knew it, but was willing to go to extreme measures to keep it from me. Like Mimi was Cabo’s dirty little secret, but if anybody told me, the Gods would turn everybody to pillars of salt or something. It’s like I found myself in an english psychological horror film from the 70’s. I was doomed. So I hid in my dirty little back room we so generously labeled an office, and I went insane, a little further, day by day. I was so scared and ashamed and generally freaked out that I only came out at night, after all the employees were gone, lest I meet their critical sneer. And when I came out, I came out armed. I found this shovel in the store room. About a foot of the wood handle had been cut off. It was a sawed-off shovel, very sturdy, nice weight, impressive visual. I took to carrying it with me, and if anybody (anybody who happened to be on the street after midnight, cause that was my daybreak) looked at me sideways, I tried to make sure they understood that I wasn’t fucking around. When I’d come out on to our patio at in the night, I could swear there were people behind the bamboo that borders our property, hiding in the dark! It’s just so fucking paranoid sounding! I was crazy and needed help! I was hearing people and seeing shadows in the dark! They were talking but I couldn’t understand it! Was it because it was in spanish? Or because it was all in my mind? I sank into my insanity, jacked off marathon-style, and starting peeing in bottles, rather than be seen by our crew during the day. It was pathetic. I was almost completely fallen apart, and I couldn’t get any foot hold to even come close to understanding what was transpiring in my life. So I’d sit and masturbate while the voices in the darkness I couldn’t understand seemed to mock me. 

Then I heard Effluvio’s voice from beyond the bamboo. And it all started to make just the tiniest bit of sense. Then in mid-stroke, I hear some female Mexican voice say, “Jeez! You’re Mother know what you’re doing in there?” 

In my mind, I was started to compile a list of events, or perceptions that I’d had, or that had happened to me, that seemed less likely to be explained away by paranoia. Things like my early morning confrontation with mister fun-guy Mexican badass cop, explaining the ins and outs of my asshole in prison. Shit like that. In the mean time, I had a conversation with my Father on the street, where he disowned me. At least I still had my integrity. 

Again, eventually everything calmed down, and back in to my Dad’s place. Things get weird immediately. Little things, like hearing Steve’s Mother-in-Law, on the phone, speaking in hushed tones, “Do you think he knows? I think he knows.” It was just constant. But most of my energy was spent trying to convince my Dad that Mimi was out to get me. That was the conclusion I was coming to. She was so committed to keeping her life a secret from me, that she had somehow orchestrated people to fuck with me! Dad was incredulous. he felt it was preposterous, and he wasn’t even willing to throw me the lifesaver of pretending to believe me. It simply was not true. He openly scoffed at me that I thought I was so important, that the entire police force would come out to my house to harass me. Well, that’s not actually what I said. In my estimation, I said it looked like the whole police force. But Dad, rather than give even the slightest inch, chose to mock and ridicule me. I was a mess. 

So, I was crying about it all at an NA meeting, and on the ride home, Francisco, a friend of Pablo’s (and mine), and ex-wife to Catalina, who was now fast friends with her, pulled me aside and said he had something to tell me, that he thought I should know. Something important. 

What? 

“You were right. Mimi orchestrated the whole thing (meaning the midnight cop run on my house). Mimi talked Pedro in to using his connections with the Judiciales (the Mexican police) to go to your house and fuck with you. That’s what she said she wanted. The Judiciales to fuck with you. She was tired of you interfering in her life, and she was willing to take steps to make it stop. They were going to beat you up. That was the plan. they were all set to work you over, and Mimi got cold feet and decided she only wanted to scare you”.

I was horrified. Horrified and delighted and scared shitless and feeling vindicated and a hundred other things simultaneously, as my brain raced in every which way. I fucking knew it! Finally, some confirmation. Now maybe things’ll start making a little sense around here. 

Uh uh. Not even close, my seemingly sole ally, my Father, still wasn’t having any of it. he didn’t know this Francisco guy. Besides, he never said it didn’t happen, he only said that he thought everyone in the neighborhood being there to watch was preposterous. Frustrating and heartbreaking. 

Soon after that, I was shanghaied by my NA group, and thrown in to an awful, dirty, ineffective, hot and sweaty Mexican rehab, with really shitty food, and bunks straight out of Hogan’s Heroes. I didn’t like it there at all. I didn’t like being behind a locked gate. Felt sorta like a jail. After the second day, when the drugs began to wear off, and I began to realize where I was, I started to panic. I really didn’t want to be there. I begged and begged my Father to take me out, all to no avail.So I was there a week or ten days. I had a plan that would get me out, and it was simple: Get Dad to take me to lunch, and then just don’t go back. That’s what I did, I jst told him, Fuck you, I’m not going back there. If you want me in there, he better bring help, cause I intend on putting up a fight. But it never comes to that. Dad just gave in, and things gradually went back to normal: Me doing drugs, going insane and having fucking conversations with the TV, alone, with no one to plead my case. 

It was about that time that Mimi started dating a clown. Literally. A Mexican party clown named Bozito. The guy has kind of a european Roberto Benigni vibe going on. Around then, that’s when I discovered that when your wife leaves you for a clown, you take quite an emotional beating. I couldn’t believe Mimi was doing it. She was really leaving me for good. For a fucking clown! A suave clown, but a clown, none the less.  

THE CLOWN DRAWING

I’m sitting in my room, after a meeting, getting high, ruminating on the horror show of my life, and wondering how it all got so messed up that my wife would leave me for a clown. Wait a second. “My wife leaves me for a clown.” Why does that sound so familiar? Then it comes to me.“Holy shit! It can’t be,” I mutter to myself, under my breath, as I quickly finger through a stack of drawings that have been following me around forever. My pulse rate quickening as my fingers reach their destiny. I don’t have to dig deep at all. I’m looking for a drawing, and it turns out the drawing I’m looking for, one among thousands, loose in piles and in boxes, is practically right on top. Almost too lucky. I whip out the drawing with purpose, and stare at it and try and understand what it could possibly mean. 

A resounding, “No!” I answer to the question I posed to myself, 10 years ago when I did the drawing sitting in Mama’s. No, given any choice in the matter, I would not let this dude dance with my wife. I did that drawing fully 5 years before I’d even met Mimi. How the fuck did that happen? My belief system left no room for miracles. Everything had a scientific explanation. We, as the human race, may not know or fully understand every scientific process. But just because we might not understand the explanation, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It means our brains aren’t privy to every mystery of the universe. But that’s all theoretical stuff on a micro and macro level; Black holes and string theory. Everything one runs in to on a day to day basis is easily explained by science. Up until that point I was secure in the knowledge that I’d never see a ghost, or a UFO, or time travel, or anything like that. I felt sure my whole life that I’d travel through this sphere without having my mind boggled by some unexplainable real world event. But with Bozito drawing, now I wasn’t so sure. In fact I was starting to lean toward the “miracle” side. Using Dr. Manhattan’s offhand comment about a miracle being an event having occurred, so rare in the universe, to effectively be impossible. So I started thinking about the likelihood of it all. It seemed really unlikely. First of all, the likelihood that I would draw the drawing at all has to be infinitesimal. But that’s a useless number. How about the likelihood of your wife leaving you for a clown? That surely is extremely unlikely. But with the right information, it wouldn’t be difficult to calculate. Pretty simple, I think. First, how many couples have ever existed in the span of human’s time on Earth. Now, out of all those couples, in how many did the wife leave the husband for a clown. Pretty simple math, I think. And while the number is certainly guaranteed to be low, I’m also fairly certain, across the breadth of human existence, I don’t sit on that particular bus alone. It’s happened before. That’s an easy one for the law of averages. 

But how about if you put the two things together? A guy’s wife leaves him for Bozo, he does a funny drawing about it. Doesn’t happen very often. Our numbers are getting pretty small. How about if we reverse the events? A guy does a absurd cartoon about a guy realizing maybe it wasn’t the best idea to let that clown dance with his wife. Five years later, he meet a woman and gets married. Five years after that, she leaves him for a clown. The day it happens, he comes across a drawing appearing to predict the future. What the fuck? Is this one of those events so unlikely, so as to effectively be impossible? I’m seriously considering it at this point. If it’s not, it’s the closest I’ve ever seen. Shit, no one else is even in the race. This was spooky. 

I start ruminating on the nature of time. The regularly describe time in the terms of being an arrow. I’m starting to see it more like a river running over a waterfall. The future is the river. The past is the falls. The present is that singular space on the edge of the rocks, where the water goes from river to falls. 

I decide that instead of being like rocks, each person is like the edge of a knife, and the quality of the hone on the knife dictate how well we see the falls (the past) and anticipate the river (the future). 

Science shows us how space and time are actually the same thing. You can’t travel through one without traveling through the other. They only appear to be different because they fulfill such different responsibilities in our Earthly lives, but it’s all an illusion. And it’s fascinating stuff. Pure Einsteinian physics. Then you take it a step further, and there are plenty of scientists who operate from the position that the past, the present, and the future are all happening, all the time. That the totality of the universe exists this thing called space/time, and all the events in the universe that ever happened, are now happening, or ever will happen, exist like the proverbial mosquito trapped in amber. 

Looking at the clown drawing, the idea of the past, the present, and the future playing out simultaneously, is starting to take on real world value to me. I start thinking about foresight. Everyone’s got it. In some people, it’s spooky. We’ve all heard plausible stories of unexplainable phenomenon, and thought “Well, there’s more on Heaven and Earth. There’s more going on than I can fully explain. Some people can just occasionally kinda see the future. There’s no explaining it”. Finally, I settle on an idea I like. I decide that, yes, he are like knives in a river, some people’s knives allow them to occasionally bob to the top of the river, and catch a glance. And that’s what happened to me. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. I have a real difficult time getting the people in NA to understand what the fuck I’m talking about. 

Although I did wonder if I somehow wrote a note to myself in the future? warning myself about Mimi? Nah! But boy, it seemed beyond reason to me. But eventually, everything settled down to a bit more normal, or at least I stopped needing answers about it so acutely. 

End of clown story. 

SPAM STORY 

Also, By now, I’m sure I’m being monitored on camera. I don’t know how, or where they are, but I know they are there. I can feel it. It just becomes second nature for me to walk around the house, gesturing to wherever I think a camera might me. I spend a lot of time winking at the smoke detectors. Smiling at light bulbs, stuff like that. 

One night, I’m up watching TV, and I get hungry. I go into the kitchen to make myself something. All Dad seems to have in the larder is fixins for Spam sandwiches. I’m fine with that. I like Spam. You have to cut it very thinly, and fry the hell out of it. In spite of the peace I’ve managed to work out with Spam, I know others feel differently. I also know that Spam is just such an weird, iconic thing, that it deserved to be recognized. To I held up the can of Spam, to where I thought the camera might be, as if to boldly declare, “Yeah! I’m going to make myself a Spam sandwich. Deal with it”. 

Without missing a beat, a Spam commercial came on TV. Right at that exact second. And it came on LOUD, like it wanted to make sure to get my attention. It did. I was blown away. Everyone I talked to about it denied anything weird. They all attributed to freaky coincidence. 

ANDY KAUFMAN’S BIOGRAPHY 

What I thought about the disintegrating 25 year-old double-wide mobile home Dad and I lived in in Cabo San Lucas is that I found myself wanting to compare it to the psycho hillbilly cannibal house, invoking “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but the truth is we wished we had their standard of living. They had nice hardwood floors and solid core doors with original fixtures, solidly built, good foundation. I was in a disintegrating mobile home made out of press board and Elmer’s glue.

There were these things Dad would do specifically to fuck with me because he knew I was getting high. He always said the same thing: “You’re paranoid. It’s in your mind.” If that’s the case, then here are couple examples of things he didn’t do:

I’m in my bedroom, and I can hear him leave to go to work. I get up and head to the kitchen, passing the living room as I go. There are books all over the floor, and they are kind of lined up in a swirly sort of shape/line that when followed leads to his easy chair, ans on the chair is an Andy Kaufman biography by Bob Zmuda.

If I asked Dad about that, he’d look at me and convincingly tell me with a straight face that I’m imagining things.

Same with the time he left for work and I hear this weird clacking coming from his room. On his bed is novel “White Jazz” by James Ellroy, about Hollywood in the 50s, with a pair of wind up clacking teeth sitting on top of it.

He would just up and deny it. So whether, you the reader decide to believe or not, at the very least, I can accurately deduce, even though he’s openly stated and demonstrated this to be true, I can determine that he’s not afraid to lie, that he does it, and that he’s really good at it. And that his word, at least on trivial matters, is no good.

BE MY VALENTINE?

Valentine’s Day was almost upon us, and I’d come 

DAD: FRIEND OR FOE? 

Eventually, I am forced to recognize the possibility that my Dad is not an honest broker in all this, as much as it pains me, as much as flies in the face of the lifelong overtures about trust and family bonds he seems to enjoy spouting. So I snoop on his computer. Not much. I look though his email. Doesn’t take long to locate a bunch of correspondence between him and Mimi. The body of the messages is of no import. What I noticed immediately was that they seemed to be very friendly. dad is cordial, funny, even avuncular. This bothers me, as he routinely states what a snake he thinks she is. I mean, he really expresses such negative feelings about her to me, and then turns around and appears to be maintaining a sunny relationship with her on the side. It’s all too much. It’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands to more. I tell him he’s a liar, and he’s full of shit, and he’s part of whatever it is that’s going on in my life that is driving me insane, that he seems so dead set to blame on the speed. Of course he denies it and mocks me. This escalates until I am in a bloody rage. I say “Fuck you, Dad” and grab a wooden dowel that was laying around the house, I go out to his car and start beating on his windshield with the dowel, until the windshield starts to give way, and little spiderweb cracks begin to appear. Then he comes up behind me and slams me across the back with an axe handle kept by the door for protection. I turn around and head back in the house, Dad following me with the axe handle. dad gets halfway through the door, with the axe handle, when I slam the door on him, trapping him in the door, and I try to take the axe handle away from him. We struggle and yell. Moments later, Steve comes over from next door, and everything begins to settle down. At least that episode is over. 

Eventually, I am just a frothing mad man, careening around Cabo San Lucas like a pinball. It was about that point that everybody, in my absence, decided the best course of action was to stick me in a mental institution. A Mexican mental institution. A creepy place with long hallways, and reinforced doors tended by armed guards. My particular wing is cared for by a nurse who looks like she hasn’t seen the light of day in years. She has deep circles under her dark twinkleless eyes. The whole vibe of this place would be right at home in Jacob’s Ladder. It’s all very oppressive and ominous, with cracked paint and long shadows. 

I am kept on some serious hallucinogens, which everyone denies. They insist what I’m experiencing is the backside of the speed. The coming down. Bullshit. I’m not buying it. I’m too familiar with the drug, to be sideswiped by unexpected side effects. No, they’re doping me up, and denying it. And worst of all? Everybody seems to know it. Mimi and my father present a unified front of lies, and I don’t know why. 

A SHORT TOUR OF MEXICAN MENTAL INSTITUTIONS 

Yeah. I spent some time in the old sanitarium in a third world country. When somebody asks me what it was like, I ask them if they’ve seen “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. Invariably, they have, so I ask them if they’ve seen “Midnight Express”, then I go on to tell them that Mexican sanitariums are worse than the first, but not as bad as the second. The first place they put me, might have been right out of Jacob’s Ladder, with evil nurses who stare at you with dark-pitted eyes. 

“What am I doing here?”
“Why, you’re here because you’re dead.”

“But... I’m not dead...”
“You’re not dead? Then what are you?” 

“I’m alive!”
“Then what are you doing here?” 

As they wheel Tim Robbins, strapped to his gurney, down a poorly lit hall, all pock- marked walls, and peeling yellowed paint. That was on my mind a lot at that first place. Like in that old no-budget horror film from the 60‘s by Dennis Muren, “Equinox.” Honestly, they might as well have strapped me to a gurney when they brought me in. In my mind, I kept seeing that last guy from equinox, after his run-in with Lucifer, strapped to that gurney, screaming for his crucifix. “Where’s my cross!” I need my cross! You don’t understand!” Yeah, that first place was a little bit evil feeling. 

They pumped me up with what they said was Haldol, some anti-psych drug, but whatever it was, it made me trip like there was no tomorrow. I stood in front of that broom closet door for I don’t know how long, waiting for that elevator to come. It never did. I plotted escape routes that involved, leaps and jumps, and just-so timing, and WW2 prison camp escape movie music. Agility, both of body and mind, and the ability to blend in, were the order of the day. I’ll distract the guard, while you jump to that rain gutter, and shimmy over the wall. Perfect! That sounds like a great plan. Now if we can get somebody to make sure and hold the elevator for us, this should be a piece of cake. 

I alternately thought I was at the mall, in the hospital, in jail, and, for some reason I’m not entirely clear on, sleeping on a pool table at Harry Knowles house in Texas. I’ve never met Harry Knowles. We don’t know each other. What the fuck am I doing on a pool table at his house. I mean, I know what I was doing. I was sleeping, very comfortably. But why? 

Twice, four or five orderlies held me down, pulled down my pants and hypoed me with something. One time they held me down, and did something with my eyebrow. Cutting in to my flesh, and then putting a little butterfly bandage after, like they were taking a sample or a biopsy, or something. 

After 10 days in “El Hell Hole de Jacob”, I got moved to a much nicer place. This new place actually had an open air courtyard, and activities like football, and futbol. And they had solid food! I wound up spending a month at the Chateau Lunatico.
Dad came and visited every chance he got, which was pretty much once a week.
He’d bring me care packages of books and magazines, and impossible jigsaw puzzles. But most important, of course, were the cigs and the candy. This was closer toward the beginning of the new millennium, when M&M’s were advertising them selves as the candy for the new millennium, remember that? Because 2000 in roman numerals is MM? I guess M&M Mars felt they oughtta represent. Anyway, that was when all the M&M’s got drained of their color. I was already paranoid, and man, all the black and white M&M’s were freakin‘ me out! But I ate ‘em anyway. Mmmm! Candy good! Especially when you’re coming down off meth... 

Dad would bring Alex when he could. Even Mimi and her new clown come out to show their support, by bringing me a big box of books and magazines. Shit, Mimi even brought me a big, over-sized felt Mad Hatter hat, she’d picked up from Disney on her last trip there. I was not so far gone that I didn’t appreciate the humor of her gesture. Actually, I thought it was hilarious. I loved it, and I wore it to the first meeting I went to, along with blue-tinted John Lennon shades. People at the meeting didn’t know what to think. I looked like “Shade” from that gang of super villains that always fought The Justice League. But that was later. I didn’t sport the Mad hatter lid, while in the booby hatch. Not much anyway... 

All the patients at this place were guys, except one. there was a single woman, and she was a nut, which should come as no surprise as she was in a mental institution. I mean, she wasn’t super duper crazy or anything. But she wandered around, and she muttered to herself, and just seemed, in general, completely removed from reality. But I guess pussy is pussy, because all of a sudden she had a boyfriend. Some cholo dude who wasn’t crazy at all, but probably just unlucky or on drugs or something. So they hooked up, and they were such a cute couple, until I guess he started realizing that there was a reason she was in a mental institution, for like, being crazy, you know? Because he ditched her. All of a sudden, she’s walking around the hospital naked, moaning and crying and screaming. Love hurts, I guess. especially crazy love. 

The hospital had much, much prettier nurses than the evil subterranean Insanitarium from before. Much prettier. I actually kinda fantasized about one of the nurses who was Mexican, but appeared to have some black blood in her, with fuller lips, and curlier hair. She was a cutie. “I wonder if she dates insane Americans?” I thought to myself. Plus, the orderlies were funny, and they’d give you cigs, and there was a little stand outside that sold coffee and cigarettes and candy, and I could draw or write if I wanted. And I met another guy in there who could draw pretty good. He looked a lot like Fermin Mora, the slowest bartender in the world, but with an Osama beard. He could draw a pretty decent scorpion. 

I was assigned a doctor named Nadia, who was warm and affable, and very attractive. We’d talk The Shining, or Jesus Christ Superstar. Shit, I even got her number. “I wonder if she ever dates insane Americans?” Shit! That’s probably not nearly as off the wall as it sounds. 

So after 30 days, when I had convinced them I was well enough to leave, and go get my life back, when I get back home, and got into my room, I found some meth that had been left there. Certainly enough to get high. So I did. 

Dad eventually picked up on it, and he had a big freak out, and we were fighting and screaming, just like I’d never been gone. So he starts making noises like he’s gonna stick me back in the looney bin. I totally freaked out and lost it, and started bawling, and told him there was no way I was going to let that happen again. So, instead, I went to my closest ally, the teevee, and asked her what I should do. She told me very clearly that I should trek across the desert with my story, everyone willl think I was crazy, and nobody would believe me, but eventually I’d be reborn as a Starchild. I shit you not. That is what my mind was telling me. I clearly had lost some bit of grip, I knew it. But I felt, even though, that it was still better advice than I was getting around here. So when the lady on the teevee pointed for the door, I knew it was time to go. 

Oh, those damn signs. Signs, signs, everywhere are signs. And the signs had been pointing to the US for a long time, so I made the decision, before everybody else made it for me, and packed up a bunch of clothes in 2 Hefty garbage bags. Then I grabbed what looked to be somewhere around 200 dollars. In quarters. Yes, we had 200 dollars in Quarters laying around the house for a reason that is too arcane to bother explaining right now. I was off to the Bus Station. Dad begrudgingly bought me a bus ticket and saw me off. He made sure I knew that he thought I was going to wind up dead, or living under a bridge somewhere. He did not seem confident in my ability to survive my own life without his help. Hey, thanks for the support, Dad. Whatever. I knew I was doing the right thing. Everyone else in this whole fucking town seemed to be going out of their way to hinder any sort of progress or happiness for me, so fuck them. Everyone wanted me to stick around and go to AA and NA meetings. Every last one of them was 100 per cent positive that was the solution. They said I was “pulling a geographical”, and that never worked. Man, I’ve never met a group of people who know so little, yet think they have the answer for you, than I’ve met in the rooms of AA and NA. Still, it’s a good program, with a lot of great advice, and it works if you let it, and it’s FREE! It can’t be underscored enough how important that it. they say today that nothing is free? well AA and NA are. It’s just those fucking “old-timers” that seem to display such monolithic bone-headedness. Anyhow, the answers I was receiving weren’t getting me anywhere but closer to dead, so I decided I’d just have to defy those book-thumping fuckwads and save my own life. So that’s what I did. 

SIX MONTHS IN A HALFWAY HOUSE IN L.A. 

I was in LA, actually mine and Mimi‘s old neighborhood, at this sober living shop for 6 months. The old guy who managed the joint, always seemed to me to be trying to pimp me out or something pretty fucking weird like that. 

I wound up at a sober living house on Chandler called Chandler lodge. The first day I showed up there by wandering by on accident was the third day I had clean and sober. I’d stay that way for seven years give or take. 

Glen Ellen crossed my mind. And the little girl at the creek. I literally hadn’t thought of that since it happened. So I go over it in my mind.

ONE MORE TIME

It’s a beautiful sunny day I’m winding my way up the creek. It’s not too far. I can see the restaurant start to peek through the trees. It’s a big old wooden building. It’s got a waterwheel, so it’s got to be a mill, right? Well it’s 1978 and I don’t know what a mill looks like. Looks like a big old barn that’s been converted to a restaurant to me.

I arrive at the back of the restaurant, into the little glade, where the little tributary powers the waterwheel and feeds into the main creek. The shallow incline leads up to London Glen. London Glen is the eclectic shopping area that surrounds the restaurant.

There’s a little girl standing intently at the edge of the creek.

“Hi” I say.

“Hi” she says without looking up.

“Whatcha doing?” I ask.

“I wanna go in the creek.”

“Nah. You can’t do that. Where’re your mom and dad?”

“There up there.” She indicates with her head that their up in London Glen, but she never stops staring at the creek.

“I *really* want to go in the creek”. She’s spellbound and committed. 

“You’re too little. And the rocks are wet. You’ll slip and drown. It’s just as easy to drown in an inch of water as it is to drown in a swimming pool.”

She looks up at me. Looking at me for the first time. “It is?”

“That’s what my dad always says.”

“He does?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “You don’t want to drown, do ya?”

“No”. She’s back to staring at the creek with a furrowed brow. She looks back up at me. “But I really want to go in the creek.”

She looks at me, I look at her. She grimaces. I grimace back.

“Shoot. I’ll take you in.”

“You will?”

Yeah. Why not? Just hold my hands. I’ll make sure you don’t slip.”

“Yay!”

I help her take her diaper off so as to not get it wet. Diapers aboard water, if she slipped the diaper would become dirty and gross and filled with water. Even at eleven years old, I understand how diapers work. Then I walk her around in the water for a couple minutes, like behind her with her arms out stretched above her, holding both hands. There’s not much water but I splash her a little. She laughs and tries to splash me back, but she’s two and not very good at it. We do that for a couple minutes, and she seems done. I tell her I have to go find my Dad and stepmom. I ask her where her parents are and she points up the hill “Up there”. “Okay”, I say. “I gotta go. You’re not going to go in the creek, are you?” “Uh uh” “Why?” “Cause I’m too little and I could hurt myself.” “That’s right” I say and I go.

I climb up the hill next to the waterwheel to find Dad and Patty. They’re talking to another couple. I’m waiting for them to finish up, so we can go look at the new place we’ve moved into.

The little girl comes around the corner and sees her parents. “Mommy!” She runs to her mom, who picks her up. “What happened to your diaper? I instantly decide I don’t want to be there anymore and run to the car to wait for Dad and Patty.

 I start thinking “this is something.” So I sat with it for awhile. Then i brought it up with a guy at the sober living house that I’d become friends with. He’s like “What? Did you finger her or something?” I’m like, “What?! Jesus, no! That’s not the point! Don’t you get it? I’m at the center of a vast conspiracy!” 

“Yeah, okay. Whatever dude. When’s dinner being served tonight?”

“5:30. I’m making stuffed peppers.”

“Really? Again? Dude, those things suck.”

THE FINAL DESTINATION OF MY WEDDING RING 

When I finally made the decision to go back to Cabo and see my family, there was no turning back. Once the decision was made, fate made it difficult for me to do anything else. No more work that I could find. Plus I was asked by the management (the old guy who kept trying to pimp me out to his faggy Hollywood buddies) to leave. So the timing was right. The only problem was that I didn’t have enough money to get back. Not near enough. By my calculations, I had enough money to make it to Loreto, still 300 miles shy of home. But Mulege has a significant gringo population that I’d spent significant time with years and years before. I figured there was a solid shot I could find somebody I knew there, that might be willing to lend a hand. 

“Pardon me, but could you help out a fellow American who’s down on his luck?” 

The bus pulled into Mulege late at night. So I wandered around the quiet, empty town for awhile, finally settling under the bridge to find some ground not to hard to sleep on. After an hour or so, some poor mexican guy jostles me awake, and tells me that’s not the greatest place to be sleeping. Dogs, ya see. He’s shows me where he’s got a little encampment with his family, and I was welcome to join them for the night. It’s a little area, maybe 7 feet by 3 feet, and 3 feet of head space, enclosed in a blue vinyl painters tarp. Seems like heaven to me. 

The next morning I buy my bus ticket to Loreto, then I use my last very last cash to buy a couple of swordfish machaca burritos for breakfast, which I load up with lemon and Tapatio. Nothing ever tasted so good. 

In Loreto, which is only 70 or so miles out of Mulege, I totally lucked out. I just didn’t get off the bus. I just sat there and tried to do my best imitation of a mouse. Quiet, quiet, quiet. And.... It worked! I couldn’t believe what good fortune I was having. I just kept a lo-pro, and no one ever asked me about a ticket. 

It was a different situation in La Paz, though. Everyone had to get off the bus. It was a different bus heading to Cabo. If I wanted to get to Cabo, I was going to have to make some sort of deal with the bus driver. Boy, did he ever get a great deal. It was a beautiful fucking ring. If I ever got married again, I’d want the same rings. With it’s etched Maori design that all the world like a celtic knot to me. It was something like a 7 or 8 hundred dollar ring, so he got a pretty good deal for a hundred and fifty mile bus ride. But, what the hell? I had to get home, and the ring bore no meaning for me anymore. I felt I got my money’s worth. 

The bus pulled in to Cabo at about 2 in the AM. From there, everything I owned on my back, I hiked up to where Mimi and Alex were living with Bozito. it was a long hike, with a ton of shit on my back, and when I finally arrived, I was more exhausted than I’d ever been. 

I woke Mimi up. her and Bozito came down and let me in, and we had a small reunion. Alex was 5 at the time, and the 6 months away was significant enough for him, that I could tell by the look in his eyes, that he wasn’t 100 per cent sure I was who he thought I was. It was heart-wrenching to see that look of “Who are you?” in his eyes, but that look soon left his face, and he knew his Dad was back for him. 

THE LAST SEVEN YEARS OF SOBRIETY 

So I was finally back in Cabo, and reunited with my family, such as it was. I embarked on the longest period of relative peace and quiet I’ve ever experienced in one extended period, and I was grateful for it. For the next seven years, everything was basically good. Peaceful. Mellow. tranquil. In my absence, Mimi and Alex, and Bozito and his kids, had all formed quite the little family unit. But when I returned, they were quick to made space for me. We all wound up good friends and a close-knit family unit, working together, and eating together, practically everything but living together. I just wasn’t getting laid, was all. Someone else was getting the pussy I... what? Wanted desperately? Felt entitled to? Felt ashamed of losing in the first place? All of the above? At this point, I hadn’t been laid in years, and wouldn’t again for years to come. I remained 100 per cent pussy-free for what certainly has to be some kind of world record. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but it wasn’t intolerable. 

There was this woman in Cabo, she was blond and always wore a jacket that said “Personal Trainer” on it. I think she might have been a personal trainer. Anyhow, I’d see her at AA meetings. We were friendly. Not overly so. Maybe cordial is a better word. But there was something weird going on with her. One time my brother started going to meetings. She was astonished to find out that was my brother, because were different body types. Steve’s the Beast Rabban (a big guy) and I’m Feyd (a scrawny dude). So she’s like “Wow! That’s your brother?!” And I couldn’t help myself, it was just there to say, so I said it. I said “Yeah, we look completely different, right? Well you’d be surprised. In a lot of ways we’re very much alike. For instance, we both have enormous penises.”

Then there was an awkward silence. Not sure she was amused.

There was just something about her that needed goosing. She was kinda serious, and semi-oblivious. Like I said, she gave off a weird vibe. She probably wrote that out in her journal as an unwarranted sexual proposition

———

One night, watching classic Star Trek on DVD with my Father, he brought up an interesting possibility. We were watching the episode where Spock has to go home and get laid or he’s going to die. Kirk wonders why he’s never seen Spock act out like this before, Spock all of a sudden breaking out in rages, or tears. Basically Spock was experiencing Vulcan PMS. Spock explains that Kirk has never seen him act like this before, because his volcanic outbursts stem from a biological need to mate. A need that hits Vulcans every 7 years. The bottom line was that Vulcans only mate every 7 years. So Dad looks at me and says offhandedly, “Maybe you’re Vulcan.” 

Fuck you, Dad.

ALL RIGHT. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT? 

When he was 5, Alex watched “The Shining” with Grandma. Good thinking Grandma. Actually, The Shining is probably my number one favorite film to re- watch, so I wasn’t particularly upset with my Mom. Plus, he didn’t seem really that scared of it or anything. I just thought it was a not-particularly-grandmotherly move, is all. 

Months later, when I’m back at the Hillbilly Cannibal Shack, living with Dad, and Alex is visiting, I’m watching “The Shining”, which happens to be on TCM or something. And I guess Alex heard and recognized those familiar, spooky cello chords from the beginning of the movie, because all of a sudden he’s not asleep any more, he’s right behind me. 

“Dad, are you watching “The Shining”?” “Yes.”
“Can I watch it with you?” 

I was such a Proud Papa. Of course my son could watch one of the greatest movies of all time with me! Anyhow, he watched it for a little while, until the twin ghost girls showed up. Then, in a flash he understood why it was so fucking scary, and figured he’d be better off in bed. Then shortly after that, he figured he’d be even better off if I was in there with him. So of course I turned it off, and went to bed to comfort my little boy, who’d just come face to face with his first scary girls. I felt so warm inside, to be in such a privileged position, knowing I was his champion. I was the one he’d call upon in dreams to keep him safe. And I would, too. If I had to, Alex knew I’d find a way into his dreams to rescue him from his id. If that’s what was called for? I’d find a way. This wasn’t just any boy. This was MY boy, and he was heir to some powerful hudu. I was going to make sure the world understood this as I did. 

A BASIC, NORMAL HUMAN EXISTENCE

Mimi is now able to provide me with illustration work, and a regular stream of it. What she pays is a crime, but the work is right up my alley and kind of fun. I do a variety of gigs with Mimi and the magazine she’s begun editing. Eventually the magazine folds, and I decide I need to make more money anyway. 

I make the decision to go back to work at the restaurant, and that’s what I do. My life stays relatively peaceful, with room for the odd freak out. Everything is coming together. Even though I’m not with Mimi, I take great comfort in the family unit we seem to have cobbled together. 

PART OF A MR. POTATOHEAD 

Alex’s best friend, Geoff, is having his birthday party! Alex and Geoff are in kindergarten together. Mimi is fast friends with Geoff’s parents, Lila and Derek. They live on an undeveloped chunk of property at the edge of town. Nice people. It’s just absolutely precious to me, to watch Alex interact with his friends at this age. Of course, in a town full of squareheads, these kids have never met anyone like me, and don’t know how exactly to take me it. The thing is, I talk to the kids like they’re adults, they understand the meaning of what I’m saying, but the tone is all wrong and it confuses them. I love it. So I’m heading up with Mimi and Alex to the party, which is going to actually be a bit of a production in terms of food and activities. I’ve just met Lila and Derek recently, but we seem to be getting along well enough. On the way out the door, I get an big idea that I think’ll be funny, and I grab a potato. 

We get up to the party, and it’s rockin’. Music, lots of good food, lots of parents drinkin’ and having a good time. getting ready to blindfold the kids and give them a stick to whack at a “My Little Pony” filled with candy. Alex and Geoff run to each other. I yell, “Geoff! Happy Birthday!” He responds like every kid in the world since the beginning of time, “Whatcha’ get me?” I enthusiastically come back with “Part of a Mister Potatohead!” Geoff pauses for a second to think. What the heck is this adult talking about? So he asks, 

“What part?”

I toss him the potato I had in my pocket.

Later, Dad tells me, “Shoot, if you’d had Mr. Onionhead and Mr. Mayonaissehead, you could have whipped some Mr. Potato Saladhead.”

Over the years, Mimi and Bozito’s relationship becomes threadbare. Finally they split up. Mimi is devastated. It really seems to fuck with her emotional world, and she starts making all the whack decisions out of nowhere, that just reek of some sort of bi-polar disorder. She manages to keep people in her life though. She meets the daughter of the owner of a local gourmet deli, Deanne Delagnes. Deanne’s cool. The used to be a promising concert violinist, but that was a long time ago, life occurred in the interim. These days, as cool and smart and funny as she was, she was chronically obese and hugely self-conscious about it. The chronic halitosis was something somebody should have told her about. Mimi also made a tight bond with Cher Feldman, a local aging real estate maven with a reputation so bad, even I had heard of it. It’s just common knowledge that she used to be a prostitute, and a kinky, enthusiastic one at that. DVDA is what all the local Jimmy Buffet listening, Bill W. espousing Cap’n Jim’s of the area called her when she was out of earshot. In these days Mimi covers her pain at Bozito’s absence by throwing herself in to her work. She has her fingers in a number of pies. She designs numerous real estate websites, tries her hand at restaurant branding, conceives of an idea for an internet directory specifically for Cabo. It seems like for the longest time, she and Deanne and Cher were always taking meetings, making plans for the eventual release of some vague product that never sounded like it really existed to me. 

AND THE CURTAIN FALLS ON MY BROTHER 

Then my big brother, Steve, dies. We all take it very hard. It’s hard for me, because in spite of all the problems between us, he’s one of the three people that have been around my whole life. And the other two were my parents, so Steve and I shared a special language. A shorthand, like all siblings do, I assume. We new the same jokes, and would recite the same movies. That’s actually what I may miss the most was getting drunk and reciting Young Frankenstein to each other, one line at a time: 

“My grandfather’s work was doo doo!” “What knockers!”
“Frau Blucher!”
“He’s going to be very popular with the girls.” “It could be worse. It could be raining.” “Igor, help me with the bags” 

“Sure. You take the blond, I’ll take the one in the turban.” 

We could just go back and forth and practically act out the whole movie for each other. And we both did pretty good Gene Wilder impressions, if I do say so myself. Yeah, I sure miss those moments with Steve. God bless him. 

STEVEN JOSEPH MOORE 1962 - 2007

I must say, after all I’d been through, I’m wasn’t sure I believed Steve’s death was actually real, but in the end I had to accept that he was really gone. He died from heart attack due to unchecked diabetes. His blood sugar level is somewhere around 800 when he dies. In his apartment, we find stash after stash of candy, soda and sweets. Root beers hidden behind a desk. Three Musketeer Bars stashed over head. Fucking bags of Skittles everywhere. 

Death by Skittles. What a way to go. 

What do I take away from Steve’s death, if anything? I quit smoking after something going on 20 years. Even more exciting, is that my Mom, who for years had suffered greatly from chronic emphysema, managed to quit to. Mom quitting smoking was something I never in a million years expected to come to pass. But she does. Good for her. She manages to stay quit also, until she eventually dies years later from just general poor health accrued from decades of the absolute abuse she’d give her body with drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. I’m proud she did as well as she did, considering the complete lack of tools she possessed to guide her through life. 

Eventually Mimi and I gravitate together, the way we always do, because when you get right down to it, when you shed all the lies and deception, we really seem to enjoy each other’s company. Especially when Alex is around. he always prefers us to be together. With Bozito finally gone, my family seems to be being pulled together by the slow steady pull of gravity. 

Dad and I move out of the Hillbilly Cannibal Doublewide, and find a beautiful home, perfect for the three of us. Dad, me and Alex, for when he comes to visit. And an added benefit? Mimi is completely and totally jealous of this awesome new pad I have landed. the world turns and circumstances occur. Mimi is miserable and lonely, and has been for a very long time. So am I. 

We’re making out on the couch. 

We’re downstairs, in my bedroom, entwined in each other, as I furiously try and remove her clothes. The softness, warmth and volume of her breasts, the taste of her breath, the overwhelming anticipation as she maneuvers her body under me, providing me the correct angle. 

So, for three Months or so, it looked like Mimi and I were right back on track. Well, not the whole three months. By the end of even three months, it was falling apart. Mimi had begun to act weird. She started pushing, and became quite demanding around the house. She put her office upstairs in the huge main living room area, which was fine by me, but she really spread out quickly, and took over the house. No, that’s not it. That bugged my dad, not me. I’m looking back, and trying to recall the nut of the trouble that drove us apart, and finally drove Mimi bonkers, to the point she was climbing over cyclone fences, in roller skates, to go argue ethical land management, with some poor unsuspecting Mexican bulldozer driver. Yup. That’s right. One time, someone other than me loses it. Believe me, when Mimi loses it, she loses it good. 

I’ve given it a full three or four minutes thought, And I seem to recall the problem between us, this final romantic psychosexual emotional tryst, was that I felt I was too healthy to put up with Mimi‘s bullshit. So when she started getting demanding, and inconsiderate, and pushy, which she was. You could see that day by day, she was getting more and more stressed for some reason. 

She had started playing music in earnest again. First with Tiffany, a freewheeling friend from L.A. who was starting to spend a lot more time in the Cabo area. They’d go and play at a bar in Pescadero called The Sandbar. And later got invited to sing with this old lesbian who made boastful claims about life as a rockstar. I went and listened to her sing, which I always enjoyed. Mimi had a beautiful voice. 

She was starting a new business with this woman, Pam Dobber, whom she met recently, building a website where people could post industrial rentals. 

She was getting her web design business up and running again. She even had a new employee, who was over at our house all day long now. 

The thing was, all these new activities were taking Mimi away from me. Physically, she was around all the time. But none of it was for me. She was becoming cold and distant. But not like John Malkovich. This mood was heavily loaded with smiley, wide-eyed wackiness. This was more like being John Lithgow. She was becoming this different person. It’s like she was making some sort of concerted effort to be someone new. The problem was, I didn’t particularly like this new Mimi. This was when Breaking Bad had just started and I was trying to get her to watch it with me. She said she didn’t need that kind of darkness in her life anymore. Now she only wanted to attract lightness. I’m thinking “Lightness?” “Like, what? Who’s The Boss? That kind of light? Mimi, this might possibly be the best teevee show ever! You have something better to do than spend an hour in front of the teevee with the man that loves you, watching history being made? Who are you?” 

I actually asked her that. The “Who are you” part. I looked in her blank eyes and thought, “This is fucked.” About that time, Mimi announced to me that she wanted to have a happy healthy home, and life as a family together, where we love and support each other, just no sex. No sex ever again. She wondered what the big deal was when I laughed in her face. I told her she had to be joking. There is no way in Hades I was going for that deal. It was out of the question. No sex, no relationship. She went ballistic. Told my father I was kicking her out because she wouldn’t fuck me. I think she told that to a few people around town. 

I REMEMBER MOM

I can remember back to about when I turned 2 years old in Mexico. But the first memory I have where I can picture my mom is when we’re in Manchester and she takes me for a walk in the pasture behind the stark lonely house we live in. I remember her picking up a stick when we came across that bull. 

After that, my next memory where I can actually picture her is making all those lemon merengue pies with salt instead of sugar. I can picture her.

The next memory would actually be a dream that I think I had at Asphalt Pharm, and I suppose I’ve had it repeatedly, or perhaps I’ve just re-remembered it on a regular basis. Because I had the dream when I was three year old and it’s still vivid. In the dream, me and Mom are running down the street, a typical Oakland neighborhood, houses from the 40s. We’re being chased by lions. But they are all female lions, no manes. So we’re running being chased, and we come to a brown shingle house. Mom gets to the front door of the house before me, gets in the house and closes the door before I can get in. So I run as fast as I can so the lions don’t catch me. And then I like, run through a big piece of black construction paper, into blackness. In the blackness is is a photographer, he’s got blond hair and sideburns and a strong chin, he’s wearing like, orange-y yellow sunglasses and a beige safari jacket with a turtleneck. And he’s clicking away taking photos of the Wicked Witch of the West, who posing with her broom, shifting, moving, posing, broom this way, broom that way, swing left, vogue, blue steel, click, click, click.

Next I remember her at East 28th St. I remember seeing her standing over me and smiling that smile that told the world how proud she was of us. It might have been a dream, because I think she disappeared.

It was her house at 36 Glen in Oakland that I think I most identify as my “home”. That was the house with the breakfast nook where she’d hold court and we’d get high and play Sorry or Rummicube. Or card games like Spite and Malice. Or  Gin, or Gin Rummy. Raise your hand if you knew that Gin and Gin Rummy were two different games.that was the house where my family hung out. That’s where Steve and Louis and Unca Jay would all play guitar.

My Mom would unintentionally misundertake what she was saying or heard to have understood, and would blurt out some unintentionally funny shit, and she herself was funny enough to know that and repeat this shit for years. Like the time she went to get a Pap smear at Kaiser. This was at Mama’s when her and George Marino were partners in the business and Johnny Veglia aka Nestor Marzapan was managing the place. 

In the process of getting the Pap smear the doctor asked her if she has any partners. And she just responded, “George Marino is my partner, but Nestor is my manager.” And the doctor looks at her like “Say what?”

Or the time at Asphalt Pharm when she made ten lemon meringue pies, and they were so gorgeous. But she used salt instead of sugar.

Or the time she and Judy made Thanksgiving and the bird finally came out of the oven at like 4am. It was beautiful crisp golden brown on the outside, but frozen solid on the inside.

Or the perennial favorite “Come look at the moon, mother! It so full!” “That’s a street lamp, Julie!”

She fucking swore up and down that I went in to her closet and tried on her clothes, but that never happened. I did go in there and steal weed from her though when I was 15 or so. It was total gank weed that she got at the Royal as a tip from a customer.

You could picture Amy Adams in any of these vignettes and you wouldn’t be too far off.

Then “Mystery Men”. Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler. Then I thought about the time I spent with Lauri, and spotted some signs there too. And then I remembered that seeing Lauri in X-Men 2 was the straw that broke the camels back in the first place. And all of a sudden, I didn’t know anything or understand what was happening. It was freaked. That meant that while we were together, she was... what? A fucking secret agent? Did the word even exist yet for the mantle she’d taken on? I don’t know. It was all too weird and crushing. 

I told Mimi she didn’t have to move out. If she wanted, she could move in to Alex’ room, but she refused to hear anything that sounded like compromise. 

The thing is, and this is very important here, the power dynamic between us, possibly for the first time in the entire time I’d known her, had made an almost complete reversal. Throughout the course of the length of our relationship, in all it’s various fucked up permutations, Mimi had always been the one with the power. And because of that power imbalance, she could always get me to do what she wanted, with little or no complaint. Whether we were romantically involved, or separated, and even for the whole time she was with Bozito, I hung on everything she did. If she ever needed anything, I was there to help. 

But slowly, that changed. And she did it all to herself. I watched, in pain, on the sidelines for two years, as she kept rubberbanding with Bozito (when you rubberband with a clown, does it make a funny noise or something?) I watched her be miserable when she finally had the courage to leave that relationship. I watched her spin like a whirling dervish, in desperate tries at love. It was that same search that led us back together. But the crazy had something different in mind for Mimi. 

The only other people in town that seemed to notice were Deanne and Cher, who both described run-in with a psycho/bitch. All of a sudden, her two best friends wanted nothing to do with her. 

She made a deal with our landlady for another house on the compound, but after a week long jamboree bash, where Mimi invited multitude of people to live with her that the landlady didn’t know, the land lady had enough, and wanted Mimi out. 

MIMI BECOMES STEVE MCQUEEN, AND CLINGS TO THE HOOD OF MY CAR, THEN SCALES MY HOUSE TO SNEAK IN, BUT GETS CAUGHT 

Around this time, Mimi announced that she was going to stop using money. She would only barter from now on. On roller skates, apparently, because there they were

———

This is how I remember it: Mom had died. And the timing of that was weird. I was absolutely imbedded in the mystery. I’d been aware and seeking answers since 2002, but when I got sober in 2004, I made a conscious decision to put the mystery on the back burner. After all, I had a four year old son who needed a dad and I had a business to run.  So it was just an evolved version of the solution I’d been using for years. I let it run parallel, and looked at it and thought about it and played with it, but there was a barrier between it and me. I didn’t invest anything in it. But I was acutely aware to the ways I felt I was similar to Walter White and Tyrion Lannister. That never left. I’d quietly wait for answers every Christmas that would never come. 

And then Miriam broke up with Jorge. And she took Alex on what looked like a manic trip to DF. When she came back, she had a new girlfriend. Lara. That fell apart ugly, pretty quick. But in the meantime, Dad and I had moved from the Hillbilly Zombie Cannibal mobile home, to a really bitchin’ 2-story house with a pool, that we couldn’t afford. The positive part was that house seemed to push my do-ability quotient up, because Miriam started fucking me again. So that was good.

But it didn’t last. And she started acting crazy again. Like when she ran to Mexico City. She hada weird vibe. She was acting strange. Dressing in bright sun dresses and smiling way too much. She did a bunch of stuff, but it culminated in her climbing into the second story of my house to see Alex. I won’t get into the details here because Miriam acting weird is just the beginning. Just a single factor of many. 

Also important was that 80,000 tax debt hanging over our heads, and owing two years of back rent at the restaurant. And paying more than we can afford for the house. 

Then my car got crushed by a flying cow.

Plus I thought everybody had been gaslighting me for the past 8 years. 

The weight on my shoulders seemed heavier than ever. So with seven years of complete abstinence from all drugs or alcohol, I decide I want to smoke some pot.

I talk to my friend Victoria, who gives me a phone number. And I call the number and make arrangements to get some pot. Then I get the pot, and drive over to visit my Mom, where I find her dead. 

R.I.P. JULIE ANN CROSS 1942 - 2011

She’s in her little shithole hovel, lying dead on the floor, naked, ass up in the air, with her head under the bed. I’m thinking that she was maybe trying to get cool or something while having a heart attack? Who knows!

Then I go home and smoke the pot. And I continue like that for maybe a week. I think. Then I think “You know, I bet if I were to snort a rail of speed, I bet I could figure some shit out”. This is not without precedent. So I go get some speed, and I get high. 

And boy to I figure some shit out. The weird thing is, it’s not like it took *more* thinking on my part. I just had to ask “what if?” and then be receptive to the answer.

Previously whenever I’d touched on this line of questioning, I’d dismiss it as too far-fetched. “Nah! No fucking way!” I’d think. But when I got high, I asked myself “What if this far-fetched theory I keep dismissing were actually true, what would that look like?”

Specifically, while I *knew* something weird was going on, I specifically characterized it in my mind as some sort of practical joke that was a direct response to when I’d left those gross messages on that woman’s phone. Whatever was going on was clearly set in motion in 1996, so I never examined anything that happened before 1996. Until I got high after Mom died. 

The question I asked myself was “What of this started before 1996? How would that manifest itself?” And almost instantly, I thought of Adam Sandler singing “What the hell happened to me?” And “Steve Poppachronpolus”. And then the song “Runaround”. So I watched the video for “Runaround” and it strongly reminded me of me trying to get Lauri to notice me. Then I’m like “Shit!”. Other things start popping in to my mind. Pat from “It’s Pat!” on SNL had a life partner named Terry who was Dana Carver in a wig and caftan, and even at the time recognized that he looked like me. And then two teevee shows on UPN in 1995, “Strange Luck” and “Nowhere Man”.. 

POST SOBRIETY 

After Mom dies, I go out and get loaded. After 7 and a half years clean and sober, I feel the time has come to switch gears. The weird thing with Mom’s death, and me going out again, is the timing. That day, I decided I wanted to smoke some pot, which I’d kinda been thinking of for awhile. So I went and got some pot. Then I stopped by the restaurant for a sec. Celia was there. She had some mail for Mom. So I took the mail to my Mom. That’s when I found her dead, naked on the floor, on her knees, with her head under the bed. Looks like I picked the right time to go out, eh? I smoked pot of a month or two, but eventually, I did buy some speed again. 

Boy did things get interesting then. Sort of to honor Mom, and also cuz I was on speed, I started working on this manuscript again. I realized what the solution was. I finally, after all these years of concentrated pure fucking torture, I realized why. All I had to do was write it all out. Basically just continue what I’d been doing off and on for years, but just finish the fucker. Write the story of my life with Mimi as it happened to me. So that’s what I did. That’s what this is. In the process of remembering and writing it all out, theories started developing. Some gaining more traction than others. As I documented it all, I was struck by how it seemed my life wasn’t my life at all. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the slightest bit of help from anybody. I sought transparency, and people shut me down. 

MY CONVERSATION WITH CELYNE

So Mom’s dead, Steve’s dead, and Miriam has freaked out to the point that I’ve taken steps to get  her kicked out of Mexico. It would have been easy, because she is in the country illegally. But in the end I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be that mean, plus it would have adversely affected Alex. Better that I just endure her craziness. But on top of all that, Dad and have had to move to a smaller place. And the 80 thousand dollar Mexican IRS debt as well as two years of rent at the restaurant still hang over our heads like the Sword of Damacles. 

Plus I’m using again. 

I’m also really lonely and completely anxiety-ridden. It’s under those conditions that I decide to proposition Celyne. I know she doesn’t have a boyfriend anymore. We had out moment an eternity ago. I’m a good looking guy with an enigmatic story. I don’t imagine she’s getting many offers. So I go over and ask her. She declines. Then feeling let down by own presumptuousness, I add, “Huh, I thought you liked me.”

She responds “Like you?! I *hate* you!”

Whoa. I’m taken aback. I didn’t know this. I know we had a minor scene back in 1992, but that was ages ago. We’ve been in each other’s presence nearly perpetually for the past twenty years. And yet this news shocks me. But she never really makes it clear to me where I at coming from, and as usual, I don’t ask. But we keep on talking. I talk about me not wanting to be in a sexless relationship with Miriam. Celyne indicates that’s short-sighted on my part. I vociferously disagree. Sex is a critical part of a partner-type relationship. That said, I would love to have had Miriam stay with us, I just needed her to help out in the rent. Instead she appears to have gone off the deep end.

So much for fucking Celyne. But I wonder if she really hates me? Or if that’s some psychological trick? Or is it like Chrissie Hynde said? There’s a thin line between love and hate? Whatever. What I know is that even with a direct question I wouldn’t get a straight answer. So I take my bloody wounds and go home. 

LUCY IN THE SKY IN CABO

SO LET’S WRAP UP 

And so the first part of this story ends, and not on the happy note I had long hoped for. No, that would be too easy, I guess. But let’s not give up hope too quickly, strange rumblings move the Earth, nothing is what it seems, everything is up for grabs, and what once seemed to be just an outrageous impossibility, now seems almost an absolute certainty. Wow, Mimi! What have you done? The one undeniable fact seemed to keep coming up: Mimi‘s kept huge portions of her life secret from me. And as much as I try and twist her arm in to telling me, she’s never gonna talk about it. Which would be okay I guess, except now she’s got Alex and she’s making demands on me: , Unless I stop asking questions and prying in to her past, which I’m not gonna do, she’s not going to let me see my son, which of course is unacceptable. 

So now I need to find answers. Where I used to be willing to overlook the bullshit and lies, I can’t afford to anymore. Those days are gone. I have a trail of breadcrumbs to follow, and I’m pretty sure that somewhere along the way I’ll find a way to make Mimi give up the ghost. Because regardless of what Mimi says, there’s something much bigger going on here. Something everybody seems to know about but nobody wants to talk about. But I’m fast and tricky. 

I still have a trick or two up my sleeve. I’ll get to the bottom of this, Angel Heart be damned. Gotta get to the truth. I have a feeling that’s when the story starts to get really interesting. I’m at odds with a woman who seems to be willing to go to extreme lengths to keep her secrets. I used to believe in win/win situations. The problem is that the only win/win situation Miriam believes in, is when both wins belong to her. Well, that was fine for awhile, but not anymore. So now, that means if I’m gonna win, Mimi’s gotta lose. That’s something I’ve had a hard time dealing with over the years. But not anymore. Mimi may have to learn this the hard way, but sometimes there’s redemption in losing. So, game on, I say. I got my game face on, and I’ve come to play. And I’m ready to give, you guessed it, a hundred and ten per cent. Bring it on! 

The time finally seems about right to leave Cabo. I leave my son in the care of his seemingly not-well Mom. I wish there was a better way, but there isn’t. He’s 12, and he chose his path. I have a feeling he knows exactly what’s up with his Mom. To his credit, I think he made the right decision. Stay and protect your Mom, Alex. Watch over her, she needs you right now. You’re a smart kid. You know what the right thing to do is. And you can always use the Bat Signal to contact me in a pinch. Honestly, Alex knows how to contact me if he needs me. But I have to do this, and I have to do it now, or I am sending entirely the wrong message to him about what little I know about being a man. 

You know, every time I’ve come to Cabo, I’ve come with nothing. And I’ve always left the same way. With nothing. This time I don’t leave with much, but it’s something. This time I have a mission, and that’s enough, because it seems to be a doozy of a mission, and I have a weird feeling it might be the single most incredible story I’ve ever heard... that, like, actually happened to somebody. Is that too much build up? Because where my brain is taking this story, it is the most incredible fucking story I’ve ever heard. Fucked up and horrible. Lot of pain inflicted. But that’s okay, I’ve been in pain my whole life. And besides that’s where the pathos lies. Right at the heart of all that ugliness. That’s what makes it so beautiful. Ironic, no? But before I can begin to tell it, I have to find someone to tell it to me first. 

Or I could be wrong. Because I’m always wrong. Honestly, I actually hope I AM wrong. But if I’m right? A word to the wise: I only know how to play one game, and it’s called “I win”. Consider that a heads up. I’ll get Alex back, and I’ll find out what Mimi is so scared of, and I’ll slay that dragon, too. 

And how does Lauri Robertson fit in to all of this? 

TIME TO GO GET MY SON

So I packed up my X-Terra with as much as it would hold, of my stuff, (including all my artwork. 35 years of art. Which should indicate just how serious I was about leaving and not coming back) and I left Cabo, in search of Miriam and Alex. I had no intention of returning, and only the vaguest idea where they might be, but I was going. My goal was to get out of town as quickly and quietly as I could. I needed to get out of here before the net came down on me. It was only a matter of time. I had everybody’s attention, and they weren’t going to let me get away with what I was doing for too much longer, I was pretty sure.

As far as the restaurant goes, I was going to abandon it. My whole point of view had shifted. First of all, I didn’t think I shared any responsibility for the restaurant, if it were to fail. Because I was pretty sure the restaurant was in the process of failing. We just couldn’t get enough customers in the place to carry us through low season. We’d been playing this game for years, and every years we were in a little bit deeper. It was unsustainable. As it stood, we owed 2 years rent to the Hunsongs for the restaurant, and we had an 80 thousand dollar tax debt. I was pretty sure we’d passed that particular rubicon. The restaurant was sinking faster than we could bail water. My advice to anybody opening a restaurant in Mexico is make sure you have decent parking. Don’t rely on foot traffic.

So there were a bunch of reasons I was getting out of town. First though, I stopped by the old drug dealer guy who looked like James Cromwell to see what he had. He gave me something, some sort of powder, and said put it in a bottle of water, and sip the bottle on the way. Which I did. And I got really fucking high on the drive.

As I drove, I listened to WTF! with Marc Maron and Dave Attel. They seemed mad to me. Actually they seemed pissed off at *me*, which was weird. Whatever James Cromwell-guy gave me, it was more than just amphetamines. When you think your podcast is talking to you, you’re tripping. I started hallucinating that I was on an apocalyptic journey, trying to save my son from the end of the world. I was screwed, but I could still get Alex on the only boat to safety! I was so wrapped up in my drama to find Alex, that I missed the right turn for Loreto at Insurgentes, I drove straight through. It took me a half hour or forty-five minutes to figure what I did and turn around. 

I managed to get six-hundred miles, to Punta Prieta which is a little town hardly more than a bus stop. There’s a sturdy cement building there that used to be a gas station but now looks abandoned, there’s a little storefront that serves food, there’s a junkyard. Not much more. Normally I just drive right through. Today I decided, as I might not be back anytime soon, to go have a look at Bahia de Los Angeles, which I hadn’t been to since I went with Dad, Steve and Louis way back in 1983. Bahia de Los Angeles would be a slight detour, but who knows? Maybe I’ll find something worthwhile there. So instead of straight ahead, I hung a right, and drove down that pockmarked and scarred Baja road to that little town I knew was waiting 40 miles away.

When I arrived in Bahia de Los Angeles, the sun was going down. As I drove around the tiny town, checking it out, the darkening sky made the Mexican carnival I spied look bright in the night sky. So I parked the X-Terra and went to get a closer look. 

Bright lights, calliope music, bumper cars, Ferris wheel. Typical Mexican carnival. I decide to explore further. It’s very dark out now, and very little ambient light to function by. The moon is not up. As I wander down the beach, I see a house. It looks like a ranch house. But Mexican-style. Single level, big rooms, porch, made of cinderblocks. 

It was so dark that the hospital green light emanating from inside was invitingly bright, so I walked up to it. The front door was open so I peeked in. I could see a refrigerator in the green kitchen two rooms away. It was an old classic fridge like from the 50s. You don’t see those much anymore. Especially in Baja. 

The place looks empty, and the light has drawn me to it like a moth to a flame. I peek in the front door, and a woman suddenly appears. She’s American. “May I help you?” she asks. I’m kind of startled. 

“Huh? Oh, sorry. It didn’t look like anyone was here. It’s a lovely house.”

“Thank you”, she says, and I move further down the beach. The carnival isn’t more than a large speck in the distance now. The beach is covered with black rocks. The moon has come up and it’s as full as full can be. I sit on the black rock beach and take it in. As I sit, listening to the soft lapping of the Sea of Cortez meeting the beach, the full moon starts to turn red. Eventually morphing into the familiar face of Andy Kaufman who stares down at me. 

I know I’m tripping, but I wonder of it wouldn’t be possible to engineer perhaps a gigantic kite, the biggest kite ever made let’s say, and then somehow keep it stationary at the distance so it would be the correct size to the human eye. Then you’d have a situation where you could light it from the back and project whatever you’d like on the front, allowing whoever controlled the Moonkite to make it red, or put Andy Kaufman’s face on the front with the turn of a dial.  It seemed to me that’s what it must be. A Moonkite.

Eventually I headed back to my car, but I couldn’t find it. The carnival was gone. Without the lights from the carnival, it was hard to even pinpoint where I’d actually parked! I looked and looked and looked, but no dice. Fuck! If it isn’t one thing, it’s another! What the fuck was I going to do without my car?

I wandered around the neighborhood, eventually coming across an old gentleman in his house, which wasn’t more than a shanty, like a lot of Baja. I talked to him for a little bit. I’d been on the move and focusing intently for at least 20 hours. I was starting to feel a little fatigue. I asked the old guy If I could lay down on the old couch he had on the porch. He invited me into his yard and said absolutely. I was feeling parched so I asked for some water. He put a jug of water on the table, and retreated inside. I had some water and then in the dark quiet, I contemplated. The jug of water, when I looked at it, aided by my altered state of consciousness, I could make look like a superhero helmet in my mind. Perhaps Hank Pym as Yellowjacket, I thought. 

I laid there for a while. I’m not sure how long, but fatigued as I might have been, I wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon. The water was all gone, and I was feeling antsy. So I left the secluded little sanctuary of that old man’s home and set off around the barrio again, to see what I could see. 

I was looking at images in the barrio. Painted walls so old they’d been repainted dozens of times, and still old enough that the last coat of paint had flecked off and eroded enough to appear random. But it didn’t look random to me. There were a couple of these deteriorating walls where images seemed to float to the surface. I could see that one of the walls appeared to be Heath Ledger as the Joker, almost abstract, scary and beautiful. It was telling me that Heath Ledger had been a clone. That Hollywood is populated by clones, and they have no human rights.they’re well taken care of, but when they’ve outlived their usefulness, they are eliminated. And that’s what happened to Heath Ledger. And others. A *lot* of others. This was particularly scary for me. I thought perhaps I was to be one of those “others” not too far down the line. Plus I felt that any usefulness that I might have once had, I’d long since outlived. I didn’t see myself as particularly useful. I was sure I was living on borrowed time. 

Another decaying wall image reminded me of my Grampa, and somehow Gregory Peck from “The Boys From Brazil”. The aether posited to me that it my Grandfather had actually been Josef Mengele, but due to Project Paperclip he’d been given a whole new identity. I did some of the math, and at least age-wise, it would have been at least possible. Grampa was born in 1910. And if something like that *had* occurred, would there be any trace of any indication of it for me to tune in to and pick up on? Of your parents or grandparent or lovers actually *were* different people than they claimed, how would you know? Like, what if Grampa’s “Yahnkahz New Yawk” brogue and all his stories about being descended from Irish shit-farmers from Skibereen or Dunmanway was all just a bullshit story to hide his sadistic nature as a nazi scientist? How am I supposed to deal with that? What was expected of me? 

I was pretty sure if outlived any usefulness I’d had and was a broken machine mere moments away from being retired. So I tried to make peace with it, and went to look at the ocean and watch the sunrise. There were two lighthouses within sight. I wondered if I should swim out to them. Maybe swim out and don’t stop. Just face my fate head on and swim out past the point of no return.

The sun was up, and I was thirsty. Really thirsty. This was it. I was done. Do with me what you will. Just don’t make it too painful. I was sitting in this sort of marshy, sandy dune area among the reeds, trying to catch little crabs for their water content, to no avail. 

At which point I became convinced there was a cyanide pill in the older of the two iPhones I had. So I began to take it apart looking for that damn cyanide pill!

Off in the distance I could see a Mexican police officer walking through the sandy marsh toward me. He came over and told me that he’d gotten a call about an American going into people’s houses uninvited. I fit the description. 

So they took me in. They gave me a jug of water while I was in the back to the police pickup. The cops were never less than completely professional and pleasant. But they kept me for a a couple three days. In a small dingy cell, with a cinder block wall that must have been painted ten times, and now all the paint had eroded leaving it a multi-colored patina of mainly blue and white juxtaposed against mottled light brown shapes. And as I lay there for the next three days, the wall talked to me about Pangea. And how over the aeons, the tectonic plates of the planet had shifted and slowly moved away from each other.

I told the cops about my car being stolen. Or maybe I just misplaced it. They eventually found it and brought it to the cop shop. It *had* been stolen. Then they said they wanted $200 from me and they’d let me go. I didn’t have it. They offered to take me to a bank where I could pull it out of the bank. I told them I didn’t even have it in the bank. I explained to them as much as I felt comfortable with while trying to sound not *too* incredibly insane. 

Then they let me out.  My car was a mess after being rifled through. I was so anxious to hightail it out of Bahia de Los Angeles that I forgot to get my two iPhones back. Also the cops absconded with a gold watch I had that belonged to my mom. 

While I was looking through the car, the officer asked me if I wanted to get rid of anything. Then I saw the water bottle that I was sipping off of that made me trip, sitting between the seats. I wasn’t sure if they knew what it was or not, but if it was a test, I didn’t need anymore trouble, so I tossed the bottle of hallucinogenic water and got the fuck out of town.

Glad to finally be back on the road, with about 25 miles still to go before I hit Punta Prieta again, my brakes went out.

The brakes didn’t *completely* go out. The X-Terra had power brakes, and they went out. I could still modulate the speed of the car. And if need be, I could still bring the vehicle to a halt by slamming really hard on the brakes. But I was still 400 miles from the border, across desolate and occasionally dangerous terrain, and still a thousand miles from where I figured I was headed. I needed to deal with this first. And I wasn’t sure how to do that. Or even really what the next step was. So I limped my way back to Punta Prieta, where I’d made that right turn (and wrong decision) to go check out Bahia de Los Angeles in the first place. 

Once back at the main road and the tiny dusty outpost that was Punta Prieta, and not knowing exactly what to do next, I drove over to the abandoned Pemex station and parked in the shade. There’s always plenty of shade at the abandoned Pemex stations in Baja. There are more than a couple of them. They’ve been sitting abandoned for the past thirty years. They’re up and down the peninsula and all shuttered up. Usually. Today the locked and chained door to the abandoned Pemex station was open. There was an old man there. Inside what used to be a gas station was now just old furniture and various detritus and accoutrements piled up, some stuff covered up with tarps, all of it covered in dust. The old man was trying to get to a box, but a sofa was in front of it. He asked me if I could help him move the side so he could get to his stuff. 

“Claro que sí”

We move the sofa enough so he can get behind it to his stuff. He pulls out a valise. He’s glad it’s there. He asks if I’d like a soda, and I heartily accept. I step out side to drink my Vita Toronja.

Drinking my grapefruit soda, in the desert in the shade, a white pickup truck with Mexican plates pulls off the road and parks near my vehicle. It’s a man a woman and a child. They’re Mexican.

We get to talking. I tell them what happened. How I’m thinking I need to hop a bus back to Cabo, get some money, then come back to Punta Prieta and get the X-Terra to the nearest mechanic. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving it parked here alone for the length of time I’ll be gone. He points at the Yonke (junkyard), mentions that it’s fenced in and he bets they’d watch it. And as far as bussing back to Cabo, he can get me to Vizcaino, which is where he and his wife live, and is the next town past Guerrero Negro. All told maybe a hundred miles give or take.  It looks like a path is manifesting for me to take, wherever it may lead.

I drive my limping X-Terra over to the Yonke, and talk to the jefe. He agrees to let me park it there within the confines of his fenced area, where it can’t be stripped and sold while I’m gone for however long this is all going to take. Then I hop in his pickup and we head of for Vizcaino.

He and his young pretty wife have a tiangui in Vizcaino, which is basically a junk shop/general store, in a big tent. I’m starting to wind down. The drugs have moved through my system enough that certain unavoidable realities are coming down the pike. The first big reality being sleep. The guy says that if I’m willing to help out, I can sleep on his property. He’ll even feed me. Truly an offer too good to refuse.

I sleep on some cardboard in the dirt under a palm tree. Surrounded by discarded machine parts. When I’m awake and up, I help by cleaning and moving stuff. We have albondigas for dinner. Super yummy. 

I stick around for a couple days. On the third day, he says he and his wife are driving to Cabo in the morning. I’m all set. It’s funny how stuff works out. The next morning we leave for Cabo.

He drops me off at the house in Cabo Bello in the afternoon. I write myself a couple checks from the restaurant, amounting to maybe 500 dollars, then I want into town to the bank and cash one, then a quick stop at the James Cromwell-looking motherfucker to pick up some necessary ablutions for the long arduous journey that awaits, do a line of crank, and then I head to the bus terminal and grab the next bus back to Vizcaino.

On the way toVizcaino, the bus went through a military checkpoint and a routine search, where everyone had to exit the bus where they look though our bags. These checkpoint are manned by kids doing their year of military service, as all Mexican men are required to do when they’re eighteen. I forgot that it was coming up and didn’t concern myself with stashing the drugs in someplace they weren’t gonna look. They were just loose in my backpack and it’s only luck that kept the guard from finding it.

I arrived on Vizcaino at daybreak.  Also I found a lightweight aluminum rod that made a great walking stick, with the added bonus that it looked like it could pack a whallop if the necessity presented itself.

That morning I make it back to the guy and his young wife who have the tiangui. He hooks me up with his friend who will drive me to Punta Prieta and then accompany me back to Guerrero Negro where I can get the necessary parts and he’ll put it all together for me. Sounds perfect! Next stop Punta Prieta!

It went smooth as silk. We drove the hundred miles or so to Punta Prieta where I paid the guy who ran the Yonke and got the X-Terra, then we went back the way we came, about 60 miles to Guerrero Negro and went to Autozone and... they didn’t have the part.

Shit! I knew it was running too smoothly. The guy says Vizcaino only another 40 miles, and there’s an auto parts place there. I’m thinking, that’s fine and sandy but I’ve already gone 60 miles back the opposite direction from where I’m headed, and another 40 on top of that? Not counting that it’s over a week since I left for Cabo the first time. Jesus motherfuckin Christ! Am I ever going to get out of Baja? I’m getting used to the brakes anyway. If I drive carefully and deliberately I should be fine. So I tell the guy that and we part ways. 

Right before San Quintin was the first culling of my personal effects. I felt very uncomfortable driving the car that packed like it was, it was not handling well, it seemed. So I left thirty pounds of books and personal effect by the side of the road.

In Tijuana I spend the night at one of these little drive in motels that I think cater to hookers and their johns. Not low class and skeezy. A more expensive brand of skeezy. These places have garages for your car to pull in so you can maintain your anonymity I guess. It was there that I came to terms that I was still carrying just too damn much stuff. The weight was probably the reason the power breaks failed, right? What do I know? I’m not mechanic.  Anyhow, I left like 25 pounds of books and hardware there. 

The next morning, while I was still in Tijuana, I found a Banorte and went and cashed the remaining checks. You can’t cash Mexican checks in the US.

I hid the stuff I had pretty well, my secret, and I drove across the border. No fuss, no muss. Now I’m in California. Driving north from San Diego. Somewhere around Camp Pendleton/ San Onofre, I decide to pull over. I’m in a very unreal state of mind. I’d pulled over and done a bump in a Shell bathroom in San Clemente. 

Back when I was in San Quintin, yesterday morning, my iPod had begun to malfunction. It had begun to play “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives. Only occasionally at first, but by the time I was approaching Carl’s Jr. it was coming on every couple songs. And decontextualized, it quickly became kind of creepy. Like spooky creepy. The barely disguised malice hidden between the notes of that holly jolly Christmas song were seeping into my ears, making my spider-sense tingle.

I get to Carl’s Jr., park, and then go in and order a burger and soda. When I come out with my food, there’s this old homeless guy sitting at one of the customer tables out front of Carl’s Jr., and he looks just like Burl Ives. “Have a holly jolly Christmas is right!” I think to myself. 

I sit down to eat, maybe see what this guy has to offer. Who knows? Maybe he has side quests for me, right? I tell him about the restaurant and Cabo, and he tells he that in spite of being homeless, he’s actually a skilled sous chef. He starts describing all the food he loves to make. Meanwhile I’m starting to consider if maybe my mad dash to the USA was a little hasty. I’m thinking about it but nah. I’ve come too far. I at least have to go to the Bay Area and check it with whoever’s still talking to me. But it was nice talking to the old man. I bid him adieu and get in my car and drive off. On the way out of the lot, I turn on the music:

“Have a holly jolly Christmas, in case you didn’t hear...”

Creepy!

Next stop, Los Angeles. First thing I do when I get to Hollywood is see if I remember how to get to my ex-in-laws, Chelsea and Justin. And I do! I remember it! I guess I know my way around Laurel Canyon a little bit! We talk for awhile. It was strange. Chelsea is Miriam’s cousin. She worked for Pace Wildenstein Gallery on Wilshire, and Justin was a successful musician even by Hollywood standards. They’re the one’s that took me and Miriam to that Julian Shnabel opening, where we got to stand around with famous people in Beverly Hills feeling uncomfortable. My whole relationship with Chelsea and Justin, through Miriam, has alway... how do I put it? It’s had qualities to it that I could detect, but not indentify. I’m high, it’s late, they have kids, they certainly weren’t expecting me, they want me to go. I can see this. Justin makes some comment about getting mistaken for Caesar. On the surface it seems like he’s making a Planet of The Apes reference, but it makes me think of that line from “Walk Off The Earth” where he says “I sing like Aretha so respect me like I’m Caesar. Even David Blaine had to go and take classes. I got the magic in me. Every time I touch that track it turns into gold.”

Me (on the way out the door): “Hey, can I park in front of your house so I can grab a nap?”

Justin: “No.”

I park down in the valley for a little while. Then I go down to Van Nuys and rent a motel room. Something weird has been going on with my iMac, so at the hotel, I wipe the hard drive. There’s a woman at the motel with a German Shepard that I recognize from a time I stayed there with Miriam.  

Then I go grab something to eat from Fatburger before they close. 

Then I decide to drive from the valley to Hollywood. While I’m driving (it’s after midnight) I see the taillights of a newish-style muscle car and the remind me of red part of Cyclops’ visor, so I follow them. I follow this car all over that region of LA, wasting gas, even running a red light.

The next morning I go down to Melrose to see if I can take some of the stuff of Dad’s that I took from the house when I split (a huichol iguana, and a brass Kali head) and maybe get a couple bucks for it at a prop shop. But no dice, not interested. 

Then I take my iMac to an Apple-oriented store and ask them to test it, make sure the hardware is working, and I leave the iMac with them. 

Then I go looking for an Amoeba Records so I can sell my Blu-Rays. But I don’t have a phone because the Mexican cops swiped it. And even in 2012, getting around anywhere that you’re not already explicitly familiar with without a phone, is useless, frustrating and masochistic. So I can’t find the damn Amoeba Records! And I’m stuck in shitty LA traffic now. 

Eventually I go to see that Bourne movie. The one without Bourne in it. The tablets the guy in the movie has to take to stay alive are blue and green capsules. Just like the Excedrin PM Mom always took to help her sleep. I wonder if those played any role in her death?

Outside the movie theater a few different people are wearing shirts about how much they love “Sherlock” starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Seeing the people wearing  “Sherlock” T-shirts makes me think about that scene that I’d watched recently, where I think Moriarty is yelling at him, “Have you figured out the code yet!” And Moriarty is haranguing Sherlock, who up to this very moment was unaware that there even was a code. Then I think to myself:

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Then I decide it’s time to leave LA and head north. And I get on the 405 freeway and head north.

But getting out of LA, even in the middle of the night won’t be easy for me. Because tonight they’re doing roadwork all over the freeways, with only one lane open regardless of where I go. The machines are loud and the lights are bright, and it appears to me that all the traffic signs on the freeway are down and being repaired or something. Because in spite of being born here and living here as an adult for years, I get hopelessly lost. So I pull over somewhere around the signs that point to Palmdale and Lancaster, and I park. And rest. And wait for the light.

When the sun comes up, I decide to go home and begin my drive south.

As I continued my morning drive south through LA, there was nobody on the road. The freeway was quiet. But cars were stacked up along the side of the road. “It’s over”, I thought. “It’s all over.” I was convinced some quiet apocalypse had happened over night. Perhaps the plants had won. That would explain to total absence of traffic and the cars parked lockstep along the side of the freeway. The plant people don’t need to drive.  They’ve taken us over like Invasion of The Body Snatchers” “The majority of humans have developed telepathy, and they keep it a secret from those who don’t have it” “The beef industry died when the plant people took over. The beef in your beef tacos isn’t beef. It’s non-telepathic humans”

I was cracking up.

I pull off at the same Carl’s Jr. And the same old man is there. I stop and talk to him. I ask him if he’s ready to come down to Mexico with me. He politely declined. He can’t do it right now. Somehow my insecurity about my finances come up. What are my options. The old Burl Ives suggest that I hang out around rest stops and suck dick for money. It’s scary to me that this is even on the board. But I’m not there yet. The freakiness continues. I’m in a state of hyper-confusion. I’m almost out of money again, considering the amount of money motels and gas I’ve wasted on this trip. And very importantly, the universe seems to be sending me strong messages that I’m obsolete and there’s simply no place for me in this new world order, and I’d do well to cull myself, before it falls to someone else to cull me. I drive to Oceanside. The houses in Oceanside look like evil goblins and dragons to me. But message from the universe received loud and clear. The plant people want me to kill myself. I’m not happy with this, but surely everyone else has already transformed. I’m sure Alex and Miriam are already dead. So I buy a half a liter of Sky Vodka and a bottle of some knock off of Excedrin PM. I make peace with the universe as I drive back to Carl’s Jr. I say goodbye to everyone I love.

When I’m back in the parking lot of Carl’s Jr. I take a bunch of Excedrin PM, and wash it down with vodka. And I try to sleep. And I do.

And a couple hours later I wake up. Then I puke. I’m fine.

I wind up selling a box of Blu-ray’s for 15 bucks so I can eat. But now I’m stuck in San Clemente or wherever I am. I got no money, I’m running out of gas and I have no phone. What to do, what to do...

I get my courage up and pride out of the way and I ask someone going into Carl’s Jr. if I can borrow their phone. Surprise of all surprises, they let me! I manage to contact Max Berggren, son of Celyne ans Hippie Rick. Max gives me Hippie Rick’s number. I call Rick! He answers! And he lives in San Diego. A half hour later he shows up with a couple hundred bucks for me, stipulating that I make sure to get it back to Celyne at the first opportunity.

Then I head north again.

As I’m driving through Anaheim, “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse comes on the radio, which makes me think about and then fruitlessly seek out Lauri. But without a cell phone, not a chance.

Eventually I make it to the East Bay in my packed and limping X-terra. 

I have no real plan. And not much money. I park on the side street next to the Church’s Fried Chicken on Telegraph, under the overpass. And I wait. 

Eventually I head out and get some fried chicken and Drum tobacco for rollies.

———

Back in the Bay Area for the first time in a long time. Not exactly ideally, but I’ll survive. I trek over to Piedmont Avenue to check in with the ghosts.

Almost immediately I meet this crazy gregarious homeless guy named Michael, who kinda looks like John Heard. And he instantly starts pitching me in AA and the big book. That’s okay. I was planning on heading that way anyhow. Turns out there’s a meeting all right at 41st and Howe. Meetings all day long, every day. So I got coffee and donuts come red anyhow. 

I manage to get in touch with Dad and he pays my credit card bill, so I can eat anyhow.

So I’m not starving. And I’m sleeping in my car. All the drugs are gone, so I’m clean. And I’m going to meetings. All the time. As many a day as are available. I’ve got no job ans time to kill while I figure out what I’m doing. I figure Alex and Miriam are up here somewhere. I also figure that the weirdness that has eclipsed my life is going to continue, and hopefully will guide me to my son and ex-wife. It isn’t too long before I get a surprise at a meeting. Who shows up at a meeting, but my Nom. That’s right. Patty shows up to an AA meeting. She looks exactly the same. She sounds exactly the same. She’s got the same mannerisms. But her hair is pure white. I guess she got old too. It was nice to see her. She bought me dinner and took me to Target to get me a sleeping bag. I’m feeling good! Things are looking up! And I get the message through the aether that Amy Sedaris likes me! Nice! 

So I do my normal routine. Find a place to park, then grab something to eat and kill time. To that end I look for parking around Piedmont Avenue, which is really crowded lately! Finally I find a single spot on West MacArthur up by the freeway entrance. There’s a whole line of cars parked there, but the end spot is vacant. So I park and the I walk over to Grocery Outlet to get a cheap salad.

———

When I get back to West MacArthur, the X-terra is gone. Not only is the X-terra gone, but all the cars on the street is gone. And the street is lined with “No parking anytime”. What the fuck? Did I hallucinate the cars? This is fucked up. I don’t have any place to sleep. Shit. I don’t have anything. I have what I’m wearing. Everything was in my car. 

All my artwork was in my car. 35 years of work. Concrete evidence of the 10,000 hours I’d put in to honing my craft. 

This is a major psychological and emotional adjustment that I have to make. Immediately. I think I do it well. It’s all just stuff. Plus there’s no way it’s been destroyed. Someone’s got it. There’s too much weird coincidence for too long of a period of time, to culminate with my car disappearing, itself under questionable circumstances. None of that does me any good in that moment. I’m fucked.

I try to sleep in the doorway on the side of Monte Vista Market at the corner of Monte Vista and Piedmont Avenue. A young woman comes by and asks me if I could use the mat she has rolled up under her arm. It’s made out of reeds, sewn together and hemmed. I graciously accept. I’m still cold though. 

The next morning I go to an AA meeting, first thing. Coffee and donuts. And it’s warm and I’m allowed to be there. A woman at the meeting has a blanket I can have. 

Later, I find a little mattress. It’s a miracle!

I haul the little mattress over to that little creek/foot path on Monte Vista that me and David Sally passed through like six days a week back in the day. There’s an incline, which makes it less than perfect for sleep, but the mattress doesn’t slide and the cops don’t bother me. I stay there for two days, and then I know I have to find a better place. This is way too open. There’s houses and shit. There’s a footpath and people use it all the time. 

I head up toward 30th, up Richmond which is a back street. I grew up in this area. I know where to look. Richmond is kind of wooded, and the creek continues there. And there’s a freeway overpass. Seems like as good a choice as any. 

As it turns out I find a perfect hidden little spot. I set up camp there, metaphorically speaking. I have no possessions. No actual camp to set up. But that spot fits the bill and there so stay. Until, you won’t believe who I found.

I hit an AA meeting and Patty is there talking to some old bald loudmouth guy who’s laughing too loud! I know that laugh! Well, as I live and breathe! If it isn’t George Russell!

RUSSELL TO THE RESCUE

First George takes me down to this shelter in Downtown Oakland right across from the police station. He give me some dough and gets me a cheapo Nokia phone. 

I stay with my new friends down at the shelter for a bit. But before too long, I’m sleeping on George’s couch.

GARAGE LIVING

George’s house, which resides in San Pablo up a hill, has no interior. He tore it all out for a redesign, with the goal of getting the house for Robert. But things change. Anyhow, it was all beams and Romex and light cans and half installed rolls of insulation. 

“Get used to garage living” he tells me. The inside of the house definitely looks like garage. 

George puts me to work. I start learning my way around a construction site. I learn how to run Romex and how to wire up light cans and contacts and various appliances. Good stuff to know.

I BECOME A PERMANENT MEXICAN RESIDENT 

I get an email from Sergio Ortiz. He’s represents me in anything immigration related. He used to be the head of immigration in Cabo. Now he facilitates immigration paperwork for gringos. He tells me that my paperwork is completed and I’m now a permanent Mexican resident.

This means going back to Cabo to get my papers. Being a permanent Mexican resident mean I don’t have to renew my paperwork every year anymore. I can come and go into Mexico as I please. It’s useful. So I tell George I’ll be back in a couple months and I head out. George drops me off at Greyhound in downtown Oakland.  Oakland to LA. LA to the US/Mexico border. Walk across the border (super easy going south) Hop a cab to the Tijuana Central Bus Terminal. Then grab the next bus south to La Paz where Dad will pick me up. Pieza de pastel.

Dad picks me up. His place is nice. Plus he’s got the dog, Tina, and my cat Babosa, and Mom’s cat Willa. It’s nice seeing the old fart.

“Home is the place that when you go there, they gotta let you in” is what Dad always said. It’s nice to be home. For as long as it lasts. One thing that’s really apparent to me is that Dad’s getting very old.

I wind up taking the bus from La Paz to Cabo and getting my immigration papers, which are no longer a little gray passport-style book, but now it’s plastic like a driver’s license

THE PHANTOM MENACE

Analyzing The Phantom Menace, I come to the extremely obvious yet completely unmentioned in the media conclusion that Lucas based the relationship between Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui Gonn Jiinn on his long and storied relationship as mentor and mentee with Francis Ford Coppola. Which makes it all the more crazy haw much Anakin Skywalker’s mom Shmee looks like my Nom.

And further more, and this is absolutely nuts, if you isolate his eyes, nose and mouth, and draw a normal shaped head around it, Jar Jar Binks looks noticeably like Marlon Brando. I shit you not. 

“Is Jar Jar Binks suppose to represent like, Marlon Brando’s idiot son?” I think to myself.

———

I look closely at myself in the mirror. Yep. It’s still there from that particular angle. How crazy would that be? My parents lived right in the heart of what is now West Hollywood when I was born, ans had for years before and years after. And Mom was a babe. Could be I suppose. Shit. Can you even imagine? It’s totally insane, but it’s also fun to think about. 

I’m pretty sure at this point that it’s at least possible that Dad is not my biological father. If that were the case, it would fill in some blanks. For one, we look nothing alike in our baby pictures, which is mainly notable for how much Dad said we looked alike in our baby pictures. He seemed to go out of him way to tell me that a lot. And we don’t. He’s got a wide nose and I have a button nose like Mom, at least in my baby pictures. I have happy eyes, her got mournful eyes. I have thin hair, he’s got thick hair. 

I’ve always known that Steve was only my half-brother. That Mom was pregnant when she and Dad got married. She was pregnant by this short body builder named Ronnie Stinton. Again, Dad was very very vocal about that. There was no mystery about it. But he always loved us both equally. But it was always a live part of our ongoing conversation, which in hindsight at this point, I thought could be interpreted as a red flag. If Dad could hear my line of reasoning, he’d likely say “You’re interpreting a logical and reasonable explanation as a denial?” and he’d be right. So I didn’t talk about it.

But all of a sudden, that Winnebago to I got from Mom and Dad when I was seven or eight, the one with the little dolls that looked like Mom and Dad ( especially Dad) struck me as the type of you that a psychiatrist might give a child to reinforce a belief and sense of belonging to a family unit. To me, that really stuck out.

So I started, just for kicks, going over in my head who Mom would have been most likely to fuck. Well, I know for sure that she had a relationship with Jimmy Johnson, who was a pro football player and Rafer Johnson’s brother. The main problem there is that Jimmy Johnson is black. So I can cross him off the list. The other guy I know she has a relationship with was Dean Stockwell. I’ve looked at this one from this way and that, and there’s no similarity that I can see. That doesn’t mean no. But what fun is there in that? So I moved on. Mom and Dad hung out at a bar in Hollywood called The Coach & Horses owned by a guy named Bob Grant. They were close to Bob was my understanding. The three names that I know they knew from the Coach were Harry Dean Stanton, Seymour Cassell and Dennis Hopper. Of these three, Dad really disliked Dennis Hopper. He called him a sleazebag. I don’t look like Dennis Hopper either, but... we do both have pretty intense eyes. So, it could be...

Dad never told me much about Harry Dean Stanton, although I think Alan Buzzell might have had a story or two about him. About Seymour Cassell, Dad said he was an affable drug dealer, which sounds about right.

But Brando kept rising to the top of my brain, like milk fat used to rise to the top in bottles of freshly delivered milk. 

“If it were true, it would certainly explain why Mata Ra’a seemed so interested in talking to me.”

So what I did next was try to do a drawing that looked like both me and Marlon Brando without either of them being a caricature. It freaked me out a little bit how easy it was. Even Dad saw it. But, come on. So I got on IMDB to look for what movies Brando made right before I was born. The only one that was interesting was “Candy”, which is a 60s satire written by Terry Southern. It’s supposedly a riff on “Candide” by Voltaire, which is *very* interesting to me. Rona gave me a copy of Candide and insisted I read it. But I also had previously flirted with the idea that Southern’s book “Candy” might be based on my aunt Judy who was flitting around Hollywood for years. So all that made me interested. And it gave me some fun stuff to consider.

“If it were true”, I said to myself, “I bet there’d be a video tape or something out there or Brando talking to me. Like I was the son he never met! Haha! Would’ve that be hilarious. “My son...”

That stopped me in my tracks. It sounded too familiar to me. “Why does that sound so familiar?”Oh. Shit. 

First chance I get, I hit YouTube and look up “superman brando fortress solitude speech”. It was pretty fucked up.

“My son, you do not remember me. I am Jor El. I am your father.”

Oh, come on!

Jor El continued:

“By now you will have reached your eighteenth year of time as it is measured on earth. By that same reckoning I will have been dead for many thousands of your years. The knowledge that I have, of matters physical and historic, I have given to you fully on your voyage to your new home. These are important matters, to be sure, but still matters of mere fact. There are questions to be asked and it is time for you to do so. Here in this Fortress of Solitude we shall try to find the answers together. How does a ‘good man’ live? What is ‘virtue'? When does a man's obligation to those around him exceed his obligation to himself? These are not simple questions - even on Krypton there is no precise science which provides us with the answers. I can only tell you what I myself believe. To this end, I have tried to anticipate your questions, and in the order of their importance to you.”

Well, fuck me on a stick.

Now keep in mind I did not immediately rush out and proclaim myself the illegitimate son of Marlon Brando. I didn’t do that because that would be insane. And it’s really unlikely to be true. So of course I didn’t mention it to anybody. Why would I? I kept it to myself and moved forward. I looked for clues, I played various free association games that have worked for me. I looked at lots and lots of Brando photos, and I played some “what if...” 

“What if” also called “what would it look like if...” is basically just inductive reasoning, and it’s a way to cross things off your list by shining a light on why something *couldn’t* be. As opposed to looking at the evidence and forming a hypothesis that fits the evidence, which is deductive reasoning, you start with a hypothesis, then you hit it with a stick to see if it breaks. In this case, the hypothesis was “What would it look like if Marlon Brando were secretly my biological father and everybody but me knew it, and it was the basis for all this “prophesy” ridiculousness I’d been experiencing?

I never found anything even close to conclusive. With no one willing to talk straight to me, and me not having the resources to hire Jim Rockford or Columbo or Barnaby Jones to get to the bottom of it, I didn’t find much. 

The most interesting thing might be the movie “The Freshman” where Matthew Broderick is in college and he gets a job working for this crazy shady gangster who also happens to look exactly like Marlon Brando. He’s played by Brando. And Matthew Broderick in WarGames which bla bla bla...

Also “Don Juan DeMarco” where Johnny Depp is a crazy guy in a mental institution who thinks he’s really Don Juan, and his doctor is Marlon Brando. Thematically, I fit right in there. 

Then there was that riff Dad always said to me about gambling. Ask Dad about gambling, and he’ll almost assuredly go into this routine:

“Like my daddy used to say. He’d say son, if a man comes up to bets you a hundred dollars that he can make the Jack of Spades jump up out of a deck of cards and spit tobacco juice in your eye? Son, don’t take that bet, because you’re gonna get tobacco juice in your eye.”

Dad *loved* saying that. He alway told me that Brett Maverick said it in “Maverick”. Sounds about right. That would sound great coming from James Garner. And it may very well turn out that it’s a line from Maverick also. And then would be a wicked coincidence because I recently heard that line in a movie. The movie was “Guys and Dolls”. Marlon Brando said it. So there’s that.

And this one is just romantic and/or sentimental but one of the posters for “Mutiny on The Bounty” has has Brando as Fletcher Christian sitting on the beach with a Tahitian woman, and it you squint, it looks like me and Rona. Again, a lot. And under all buy the rarest of circumstances they would be dismissed before I’d even finished thinking them. But time and time again I’ve had to go back to things I’d immediately dismissed as “too far out there” and re-examine them, deciding I was too hasty before, and eventually accepting them as the most likely scenario. I’ve stopped hastily dismissing things that seem too crazy to be true.

But one thing I never lose sight of in all of this is that it doesn’t matter. It’s of no consequence to me either way, whether my biological father is Marlon Brando or the frickin’ Statue of Liberty. Dad is my dad. He’s the only father I’ve ever known. And yeah, he’s complicated. The only reasons that it might possibly matter would be for medical reasons, like genetic predispositions etc, or if there was a will or something involved I guess. Everything else is either ego soothing or just pointless fluff, generally speaking in a circumstance like this. Pointless conjecture at the very least. But what I’m looking for is a motive for everybody to be gaslighting me for years and years, and this insane construct that I find myself it. And Miriam made *such* a big deal about “Prince of Egypt” when we went to see it, that it makes me think about coincidents of birth and like, “Prince and The Pauper” where he thought he was poor bout really he was the son of royalty. At the very least, I feel these concepts have been fed to me as yardstick for me to measure myself against, and therefore are worth considering, even though they’re probably just pointless exercises in futility.

PANDORA KUYKENDALL 

And then Pandora Kuykendall reappeared in my life almost out of nowhere. We went to grade school together. Piedmont Avenue School. Second grade through fifth grade. As a kid I thought she was really pretty and also kind of snobby. She had an attitude. I have no idea what kind of impression I made on her in grade school. 

But she was out of my life once I moved to Glen Ellen with Dad. I saw her once in the 90s at the Royal, and she was super cute. She had purple hair. She still seemed to have an attitude. 

Pandora and I struck up a Facebook friendship. Before long she was sending me nude photos ans inviting herself to come visit me in Baja. I saw what was going on, but what the hell. I’d wanted to fuck  Pandora since second grade. Plus the new path illuminated some new options for me.

When I say “I knew what was going on” what I mean is that I felt Pandora came down to start something up with me to lure me back up north, to get me out of Dad’s hair. I think perhaps I was too much for Dad. Which is actually really ironic, in the way that if you look up irony in the dictionary it really is the text book definition of ironic and not just coincidental. The irony is him being responsible for the whole thing and, I hate to say this because I don’t like the way it sounds, but him being scared of his own creation. I don’t like saying that because it makes me sound like a monster. And he’s the only monster. Or maybe there are no monsters. Just sick people acting selfishly. Sometimes I feel like people are going to “good intention” me right in to the grave.

It was also in La Paz where I listened to Dad watching episodes of “Superman” with George Reeves and Noel Neill and came up with a theory about George Reeves death. It’s good. It’s got a couple tasty bites of circumstantial evidence. So what’s my theory? I suggest that George Reeves killers himself because he was a neurotic artist who didn’t like being hounded for being a queer because he wasn’t, by the writer’s room, who all were. And it was the 50s where if a man thought he was queer he killed himself. It’s in MASH, it’s in The Freak Brothers, it’s in that Kevin Spacey movie. And that’s what Ernest Hemingway did, right? A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. It’s a miracle that John Wayne and Ronald Reagan lived as long as they did.

So Pandora flew down to see me in La Paz for ten days. I went to school with her from 2nd to 5th grade, but that was a long time ago. And she came into the Royal once in the 90s when I was working and I recognized her. She was super cute. As a kid she looked just like Alice from the Disney cartoon of “Alice in Wonderland”.

I had to drive to San Jose del Cabo to pick her up. San Jose about four hours away from La Paz, under normal circumstances. And the first three hours were just fine. The last stretch is between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. The airport is ten minutes on the other side of San Jose. It should take 45 minutes in the outside. Ans it would have, but for the big marathon. Yes, there was a marathon between Cabo and San Jose on the day I went to pick up Pandora. So instead of 45 minutes, it took more like three hours.

When I finally get to the airport Pandora is not there. It’s getting late. I have to drive back into San Jose del Cabo, where I find a Starbucks. I use their WiFi to contaxt Pandora’s mom Peggy. Peggy says that Pandora called and said she was going to take the bus to La Paz. 

“Thanks Peggy! I might be able to catch her before she leaves!”

I get back to the airport as quick as I can, but she’s left.

When I get back to La Paz, she’s waiting in my bedroom. I haven’t seen her in a long time. She’s a sight for sore eyes. We have sex.

Pandora let’s me do things to her that none of the other women would. In my mind I’m wondering if I somehow managed to get Mimi back in bed if I could convince her to try some of these things. Hmm. Maybe I could get both Mimi AND Pandora in bed and Pandora could walk Mimi through it. Yeah, right. Dream on, dude!

Eventually my situation with Pandora runs it’s course.

Then George calls me and tells me that Carl is real sick. He’s had kidney failure after getting a stent put in his heart. I don’t know all the details. But the end result is that Dad is moving back up here to take care of him. I’m thinking “Great. If that just ain’t the decrepit leading the decrepit.”

I know that there’s no way Dad can take care of Carl by himself. There’s just no way. So I make arrangements to move up there to help. Which is going to be awkward, because for some reason, since at least 1998, Carl has seemed to carry a whole lot of hostility toward me, and I’m not sure why. But it’s enough that he cut me out of the will. I asked him why, and his answer was vague: “Oh, just you being you.” My feeling is that he’s come to characterize me as a loser because of my drug usage. Nothing I can do about that. I still need to go up there to take care of those guys.

Carl got Grandma and Grampa’s house after Gramdma died, so for me it’s kind of going back home a bit. 

Carl has been a nightmare as usual for the nurses. He keeps refusing dialysis, saying he wants to die. But dying like that is slow and painful and horrible for everybody around you because you kind of go crazy first. At any rate, he’s eventually let out of the hospital. Soon enough, he’s back at home, and now my Dad is with him. Meanwhile I’m in the east bay making arrangements to get me up there. Then I get a call from George. He’s crying.

“Carl killed himself.”

Carl ate his gun. Shit. He wasn’t depressed or anything. He just didn’t want to do dialysis four hours a day, four days a week. I get it. So he took care of it himself.

But now Dad’s alone. And boy is he getting old. He’s really wobbly now. So I hasten everything that needs to be done, and I move up to Santa Rosa and move in with Dad. 

CUT TO THE CHASE 2013

The computer store in LA sends me my iMac. I use Find My Apple to locate Alex’s iPad. It’s in Berkeley. I also know Miriam’s login info so I’m able to track her iPhone. Which is in Baja California in the middle of fucking nowhere, driving north. Must be Daniel. He’s back and forth from Baja California to the US a lot.

THE TODD HOTEL

I move into an old-fashioned flophouse-style tenement in Point Richmond. The place is right out of  The Blues Brothers. A single 10’x 12’ room, with a sink and closet in the room, and the shitter and shower are down the hall. It’s an old three story brick building from the 1800s right next to the train tracks, so 3 or 4 times a day, the building shakes while the sound concussive sound of the train passing up challenges our sanity. I know that if I’m gonna stay here, I need a room in the far side of the train tracks.

The hotel is owned by this old Italian guy. Like, real Italian, from Italy. His wife is much younger than him, but she’s still old. She reeks of like, a Taos art colony. She’s got that Barbara Kingsolver vibe. But soon enough, she splits, braking the old man’s heart. Plus she splits with another woman, keeping it interesting. It’s too much work for the old guy alone. So he brings his son Gianni in to take care of the day to day.

Gianni is a total character. He’s about 5’6” or so, I’d say. And he’s almost completely round. Like a bowling ball. He’s a total mensch. We hit it off really well. It brings me a modicum of comfort in my crazy world. 

I’d been paying rent through a management company, but Gianni is taking that over and wants all checks made out to him. So I ask him how to spell his last name.

“M-A-R-C-H-E-S-C-I-E-L-L-O”

“Marsechiello? No, Marchesciello, right?”

“You got it.”

As I’m going up the stairs to my room, I’m thinking “Gianni Marchesciello. Why does that name sound so goddamn familiar to me?”

-“I got purple pus pumping through my heart”-

No fucking way! I am a god damned lightning rod for weird shit to happen! That’s too fucking crazy! Additionally, I have to wonder whatever happened to Willow, Edina and Titi.

It’s in my tiny room at The Todd Hotel that I start asking some good questions. Not that any answers are particularly forthcoming. But I got the questions anyhow. What happened was that I posted a theory that sounded a bit sad I guess, so someone responded with a “sad” emoji. To which I said, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina.”

“Hmm...” I thought. “I wonder if Miriam playing that song over and over again meant anything?” So I checked it out. And it gave me the willies.

It seems crazy but you must believe

There's nothing calculated, nothing planned

Please forgive me if I seem naive

I would never want to force your hand

But please understand, I'd be good for you

I don't always rush in like this

Twenty seconds after saying hello

Telling strangers I'm too good to miss

If I'm wrong I hope you'll tell me so

But you really should know, I'd be good for you

I'd be surprisingly good for you

I won't go on if I'm boring you

But do you understand my point of view?

Do you like what you hear, what you see

And would you be, good for me too?

I'm not talking of a hurried night

A frantic tumble then a shy goodbye

Creeping home before it gets too light

That's not the reason that I caught your eye

Which has to imply, I'd be good for you

I'd be surprisingly good for you

Hmm. Okay. I feel inclined to presume something, but I know I shouldn’t. So I decide to call Miriam and ask her, knowing that it’s pointless. But I don’t want to say I didn’t try.

“Hi Miriam. I was just wondering, so you remember that Evita song you had playing on repeat when we first met? The one you played like 200 times in a row? Did you do that for like, an actual reason?”

“Oh god, Spencer! Not this again! I’m getting tired of this! I swear it’s like talking to a drunk person!” And she hangs up on me. I’m thinking. “This? Again? I’ve never mentioned this to you before.” It seemed like a reasonable question. Maybe a little strange, but reasonable. And one she  could have easily put to rest. Seems kind of like “bingo” to me. While recognizing the possibility that it could be coincidence, my take away is that she was attributing some importance to our meeting. She was kind of comparing her and I meeting to the meeting of Eva Duarte and Juan Peron. That seems a little grandiose. Right? Am I crazy? It’s too much. It’s just too too much.

EARLY 2018

So Peet’s calls me. They want me to come in and interview. Whew! It’s a Peet’s in Berkeley. The one at College and Alcatraz. I interview with Nadia. She’s cute. Of course I think she’s cute. Purely by coincidence I seem to have developed a thing for Asian women. It’s just the way it worked out. Asian women seem to be open to dating me. I actually don’t care about a woman’s race. I like a certain frequency. I don’t know. It’s a frequency that responds to me. If they have than then I try and share the frequency with them. It’s not even about conversation really. I mean, what’s the common factor between Liz and Rona and Sarah and Mimi and Pandora? Smarts? Wit? Infrared vision? 

They all responded in a way that made me want to respond back. It’s like we all have these invisible buttons on our chest. Like a “Simon” game. And if someone presses them in the right order, we get a little hit of dopamine. Or maybe serotonin. It all depend on what buttons get pushed and in what order. That’s my theory. And I think when people don’t get these little social reinforcements, a smile, a meeting of eyes, a supportive word, if we don’t get those, they affect us, we suffer. And the longer we go without the reinforcement of pushing each other’s buttons in a positive way, the deeper that particular brain pattern etches itself into our lives.

Of course I didn’t tell any of that to Nidia. I wanted a job. Anyway, the interview with her went great. Next I interviewed with Matt Baker. Seemed like a pretty genuine guy. Skinny, smart, seems kind of arty maybe, young black dude. So anyway, I got the job.

I now work at Peet’s on College. Nidia is my manager. Like I said, she’s totally groovy. But she’s my boss, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know who I am. I’m not sure what role to take. For one thing, I’m the old shady guy at work. I’m pretty sure everybody knows who I am. It feels that way. Same with the customers. But I get no power from it. I feel like an ex-con. And I’m unable to read anybody. The like me one minute, despise me the next, if I judged on the body language I pick up. So alway in the forefront of my mind is that RD Laing quote:

“I cannot experience your experience of me. I can only experience my experience of your experience of me.”

Meaning, that people can clearly be adept at hiding what’s really going on with them. Really in a few simple steps. Or like they say in AA:

“Don’t judge your inside based on someone else’s outside.”

Same thing. You just never know. Everything point to these people digging me.

Nadia moves to the Vine St. store, which is a big feather in her cap, because it’s the flagship store. That’s where Alfred Peet got it all started. Good for her, but that means we got a new manager. His name is Alex Chancellor. He’s kind of particular. He’s a young guy, tall, skinny. Detail oriented. He’s alright. He kind of goes off in people a little bit. 

But our assistant manager is Krysten, and hubba hubba. She’s a fucking knockout. Great smile, glasses, kind of a nerdy regular girl vibe, enormous breasts that look like they’re holding their shape inside her bra perfectly well, but if she needed me to check to make certain, I’d be happy to help. 

Actually working at Peet’s reminds me of working at The Royal in the 90s. Me working with lots of attractive women in their 20s. But like I said, I’m an old man. I didn’t have great game back in the 90s. And things are a lot worse now. But it’s fun to look. I try to be helpful. I try to be respectful. And I try to not get agitated or grumpy. The first two I do fine.the last one, not so much. I can only take so many hours on my feet before they start to throb. I killed my feet when I walked from LAX to Long Beach to find Lauri. They never recovered. 

Peet’s is a high-stress environment. It’s tough. And Alex is yelling at me a lot. But I endure.

I moved from Santa Rosa back to George’s place in San Pablo, with Babosa. But George is selling the house and I’m gonna have to move. I found a place in Point Richmond. It’s an old-style brick tenement. Like a flophouse from the 1800s. Something right out of The Blues Brothers. 

They don’t take cats. Fuuuck!

I’m so sorry Babosa. I’ll find you something. I like my cat. She’s a survivor. Alex my son found her as a kitten. Then Mimi had her. Then I had her. Then Dad had her. Then Dad stuck her in the cat room at the Cabo San Lucas SPCA, because he moved to a place that had cat-killing dogs. Then I bailed her out of cat jail and got her sent to me in Oakland, from Cabo. So she’s international. She’s a medium-sized Maine Coon-looking cat. 15 or 16 pounds. Long hair. Purrs really loud and drools when you pet her. So then she was with me in Oakland. Then she was with me in Santa Rosa. Then San Pablo. Now I have to figure out what to do with her.

Litza texted me. She’s got a place up in Grass Valley with a big backyard and she’ll take her. Yay, Litza! But poor me. I was fond of her.

It’s at Peet’s at College and Alcatraz that I meet Pete. Pete’s a hip-hop artist. He’s also white. He also has cerebral palsy. His stage name is Tony Gore. He’s a pretty funny guy. He reminds me of John Heard in “Cutter’s Way”.

Then I get moved to Peet’s on 4th street, in Berkeley.

That’s where I’m working when Dad dies.

After Carl killed himself, it was just me and Dad at Grandma and Grampa’s house. The house, which rightly should have been mine, but whatcha gonna do? The house Carl has given to Doctor’s Without Borders, and left George in charge of executing the will. The will stipulates that as long as Dad is alive, the house won’t be sold. I’m working and taking care of Dad, who is starting to need to go to the doctors a lot. Which is fine. I’m happy to help. That’s what I’m up there for. It’s just a lot of work. So George, seeing that it’s tiring me out offers to take Dad to the doctor.

George was careful to guide Dad to the glass door at the entrance to the building with all the doctors. But he let Dad go for just a second, to open the door so they could enter. But it was too long. Dad fell. And he broke his hip. So he was hospitalized. He was 76, he was a life long smoker, he was in bad shape. There was no way that we could afford anything. So he got put in a convalescent center. First in Santa Rosa. He wasn’t pleasant with the nurses. Plus he got something called C-diff. That’s very dangerous for someone of his age. Your intestines turn to mush and you shit blood. He almost died. But he didn’t. When he recovered he was sent to Fircrest in Sabastapol. And there he stayed.

When he first got there, I’d go every day with a sandwich and a soda for him. He seemed to like that. As much as he liked anything I guess. Then it was every other day. Eventually it was once a week. He grew a long white beard. He looked like Ben Gunn from “Treasure Island”. He also looked a bunch like Alan Moore. I actually showed him a picture of Alan Moore so he could see the similarities. He said “Hrmph. Looks like Ben Gunn.”

It seemed like every time I’d go there he’d be watching the Wendy Williams show. I’d sit and talk to him for a while. Just shoot the shit. Try and find music he liked in the past to play for him. He was always lucid. He never got Alzheimer’s or anything. Except one thing: he kept insisting there was a Bob’s Big Boy in Santa Rosa. But my feeling about that was that it was a put on. Perhaps to tell me “You’re a big boy, now. You’ve made your bed...” like that? Sure. Could have been. At this point, when he was in Fircrest, is where I became sure he burned down the house. I actually think I’d been certain for a while, I just didn’t want to face it. At any rate, if I ever mentioned it to him, he gave no slack. He took his lies with him. 

It was when he was in Fircrest that word came through that Celyne had died of brain cancer, another thing that I never bought. I just don’t buy it. Although it’s certainly possible. No matter.

It might have actually been an addendum to his denial of arson that led him to seem to bitterly mock me:

“You think you’re right and the whole goddamn world is wrong. Just like that little old lady watching her out of step son march off to war. “Well would you look at that. Everyone of them is out of step except me poor Johnny.”

He had a point. But again, at that time, I didn’t have the slightest idea what was actually going on. It was still a couple of years away before it dawned on me. Which complicates the message he seemed to be trying to send me. Because in this particular case, he was a destructive force that rained shit down upon me. Celyne, if she’s not dead of brain cancer, knows this. She’s no idiot. And she couldn’t have suspected that was safeguarding that child. Why would she? People need their villains.

Then one morning in March of 2018 as I was getting ready for work, I got a call from the hospital saying Dad was dying, now. And I should get my ass up to Napa, which was where he’d recently been moved to. 

I was thinking about waiting until after my shift, but on the drive to Peet’s, I knew I had to go see him. I was a bit frantic when I arrived at Peet’s.

“Listen, my Dad is dying right now. I can’t stay. I’m so sorry. I don’t make a habit of blowing off work. But he’s not going to make it.”

“No. Go, Spencer. It’s fine. We’ll take care of it. Go see your father.”

Then I jettisoned the scene and got up to Napa as quickly as I could. 

They had him doped up pretty good. But he was still there for a moment. He acknowledged me a couple of times. Then he stopped acknowledging me, and he had that look that’s ghosts have of a the shriek of the dead. His eyes were vacant, his mouth was agape in a frowning rictus. It was a tortured look of the damned. I stayed for a while, but he was alive when I left. 

By the time I got home, there was a message saying he had passed.

R.I.P. SPENCER RICHARD MOORE(1940 - 2018)

Almost immediately after Dad died, George told me that he secured 40 grand for me from Carl’s will. That was helpful. Louis called me and wanted to do a memorial for Dad at the Sweetwater. That sounded like a great idea to me. We decided to split it down the middle, cost-wise. There was going to be music and food. We’d get some of the local players who Dad had always supported to come down and see him off to the netherworld.

In the end though, not many people showed up for Dad’s memorial. It was lightly attended. Not even George showed up. Not that I was expecting him to or anything. Michelle Alamieda, Patty’s sister showed up. So did Candy Bates, who I’d not seen in decades. Audie DeLone and Tim Eschilmann led the musical festivities. Miriam and Alex showed up. Louis of course was there. I finally officially met his girlfriend. I think she might be a therapist. She kept asking why the story I was trying to tell was so important. It was weird. Something was off with her. Miriam sang September Rain, which was the first song she ever played for me. It’s beautiful and apt.

September rain appears like a long lost friend 

Too much time for thinking when you’re all shut in

The palm trees bend their wills to the whims of the wind

Seems like the sun will never shine again

All I ever wanted was to find a little peace of mind

All I ever really searched for was a love that I could never find

All I ever needed was a hand to hold to face the time 

The days go on just like the ones before 

I feel a pointlessness that I can’t ignore

I search your eyes to see if you feel the same

Without your love I hang my head in shame

I don’t know what the moral is

Sometimes this life is not all bliss

But I do know September comes and it goes

And life had to deal out its blows

All I ever wanted was to find a little peace of mind

All I ever really searched for was a love that I could never find

All I ever needed was a hand to hold to face the time 

After Miriam, Louis played something, I don’t remember what. Tim and Audie did a couple songs. Then finally, against my better judgement, I was coerced onto the stage where I did a rendition of the song Bloodlines by Terry Allen.

Oh my mother, she is a mountain

Her breasts, they touch the sky

My father, he is a river 

Flowing through her, sweet by and by 

My sister, she is a songbird

And she’s singing in her flight

And my brother, he is a moonbeam

Falling in her in the night.

There is a river

Runs through the mountains 

Under moonlight 

Hear the song

Of the bloodlines

Gone long before us

Ever after

Moving on

That was it. Then we wrapped it up and parted. As everyone was getting ready to leave, I talked to Michelle and asked her about the house burning down. She was polite, maybe even supportive. Who can tell? But her response was “I don’t remember any of it. I wasn’t there.”

She was indeed there. But that’s okay. It’s clear she didn’t do it. It was Dad and everybody knew it was Dad. He was just a crazy fucker I guess. He was trying to send me a message about cutting school and smoking pot, as near as I can figure. That was the best I could come up with. He was a megalomaniac and making cocaine decisions. What else could it possibly be? I didn’t have a clue. People are inscrutable.

After the memorial, I met Miem and Alex at the Book Depot in Mill Valley, just to catch up I guess. It was then that Miem laid this on me:

“If they’re not going to respect you, they better damn well fear you.”

I took that to mean that nobody respected me, but everybody was scared of me. That seemed a little exaggerated to me, but okay. It’s nice to be liked, but it’s better by far to get paid, right? Why would anybody waste any time being fearful of me? I don’t know. That never made sense to me. Then I went home.

Soon after, my car died. It still ran, but it was unable to pass the smog inspection.

Then of all things, Marcie Espinoza, wife to Billy, both of whom I knew quite well when I was a kid, comes out of the woodwork and gives me an old Seabring.

Then I quit Peet’s. I had money. And a lot had happened. I needed a break.

So for six months I didn’t do much of fuckin anything. I sat with it. I took my own emotional temperature. I checked in with me to see where I was. 

Alex graduated from high school. After high school he planned to attend UC Santa Cruz. At that point I was lucky enough to have some dough, so I gave him 4 grand and a professional grade iMac, which he promptly gave to Miriam’s husband. I felt that was a slap on my face kinda. But it clearly indicated the nature of our relationship. He also vibes me pretty strong, so I just left. I didn’t see him graduate. 

Eventually my dough started running low, so I went to Peet’s on College Ave. and talked to Kristen, who was now store manager. It was nice to see her. She seemed well. She said Peet’s was desperate for shift leads. 

I wound up interviewing, again. This time with Kristen’s AM. 

This time it was Peet’s up by the Claremont Hotel that needed people. Alison Hornback was the store manager and she hired me on the spot. 

There’s not much else to say about Peet’s. I enjoyed working with all my coworkers. But I continued to have the serious sleep issues that had started to creep in when I began working for Peet’s. I’d not be able to sleep for three, four, five days at a time. I wasn’t doing drugs or anything. I think it was the nature of the work, and the nature of my life, whatever. When I went to work, I was a mess. I was about to cry I was shaking with exhaustion. So I pleaded with Reina to let me go home. But with Reina, I didn’t have to plead. I saw the concern and empathy on her face. Then she sort of furrowed her brow and looked at me and said “Spee-incer” and I nearly melted. The last time anybody called me “Spee-incer” was in 1988. That’s what Sarah Fregulia called me when we were together. I recognized it in an instant, and I drew power from it.

I don’t have much to say about working at Peet’s. Everyone was great. It’s a good company to work for, if you need to get a job in the food service industry and no wait jobs are available. Plus the place was filled with beautiful young women. I felt a little like an old lech. But whaddya gonna do? I hadn’t had sex since Pandora and I split, which was 2014. And I still think about getting my buttons pushed. And there were two women who worked there who I actually felt something for. And that was Reina and Laura Bergen. They were both in their early 20s, so it’s not like anything was going to happen, and I had no intention of making things weird. Just.. no. Reina was Japanese with an obviously kick ass tattoo that took up a large portion of her body apparently, and what appeared to be tiny little boobies. And Laura is what you might characterize as a “big-titted redhead”. Two of my favorite things! They were both incredibly charming and intelligent and sexy. And they were seemingly authentically nice to me. It was when I was working with Laura that Bad Penny went from being a sexy Russian spy to being a snarky dysfunctional large breasted redhead. It was talking to Laura that it occurred to me. I thought, “Yeah. This could work”. 

When I finally left Peet’s, those were the two people there that I’d actually miss.

And of course Alison Hornback, the store manager, was a little bit of a big girl, she always looked like she’d be a lot of fun to fuck. I thought about that a couple times. Like down in the break area. But it seemed like she might have been a little hostile toward me at the end. But maybe strangely, that just made me want to fuck her more. I bet she’s got epic tits.

And that was the end of my career at Peet’s. 

One thing of note was when later I found myself in Mexico, Miriam told be that she and Daniel were coming down there. I asked them to get me a pound of Peet’s coffee. So they went to the one near their house, which I knew was the store Reina had been promoted to AM to work at. Which is of no real consequence. Except I recognized her handwriting on the bag and it gave me warm fuzzies.

THINKING ABOUT GRAMPA

Grampa was a complicated guy. I have a ton of speculation about him, and a couple things I know for sure. But I wish I knew more. He was a skinny little Irish guy from Yonkers, born in 1910. I always though he looked *a lot* like Roy Scheider. Dad said he couldn’t see it, which always confused me. I’d think “Dad, are you blind?” Now it kinda make sense to me.

Grampa was the first Spencer Moore in our family. He was Big Spence, Dad was Little Spence. I’m Spenny originally Benny. Everyone called me Benny for years, and I hated it. I didn’t think it represented who I was. I thought it was infantile sounding. Of course I was an infant at the time. I had no choice in what I was called until I started school, where I finally got to be a Spencer. That took years of hard work by me to make my family call me what I wanted to be called. 

Anyway, skinny little New Yawkah with a thick classically New Yawk brogue (meet me at toidy toid n toid!) Road the rails during the depression. Made his way to AZ in the 40s by himself and became a carnival barker. At this point he seems to have developed pretty grandiose plans. I have a copy of a Yonkers newspaper clipping with a picture of him and what reads like a press release written by him in 1946 talking about his work with the Junior Police League, his involvement with some carnival maven, and this big west coast outdoor spectacle he was planning that would star everybody from Frank Sinatra to Abbott & Costello. He for his press release and photo printed in the hometown newspaper so it seems almost credible. At the very least it demonstrates that he had dreams and vision. At some point during his carnival stint he made it to Hollywood and scoped it out. And then in 1949 he packed up Grandma, my Dad and my uncle Carl and moved them all to Hollywood, where the lived at 2260 Laurel Canyon until the late 60s. Right up the road from the general store. He did a variety of jobs in Hollywood. I only know some of what he did. I have suspicions though. I can see him and Grandma being beloved as local color in a small industry town, which is what Hollywood is/was. He was the guy with the crazy ideas, she was solid one who kept it all together. He was the irresistible force, she was the immovable object. She was the mountain, he was the river that ran through her. 

Jobs I know he had? 

He wrote articles for Holiday Magazine, sometimes giving Grandma the byline. He made industrial films, largely for schools I think. His camera operator was a guy named Shu Lum. His highest profile and maybe only film worth mentioning was about Diego Rivera, where he went to Mexico City and hung out with Diego and Frida. 

One time spending time with him up in Manchester Ca, he told me and Steve about his experiences hanging out with Frank Sinatra and The Three Stooges, not together obviously. He claimed that Sinatra called him “Yonkers”, and he said he used to get drunk with the Stooges and they were madmen. He said that at the bar (I imagine The Brown Derby for some reason, maybe he mentioned that) they’d take the billiard balls and pitch them down the gutter on the bar and shatter the mugs of beer. 

The most memorable job he had in Hollywood, that I know of, was in the music industry working for Geordie Hormel of the Hormel Foods family and heir to the SPAM fortune. Geordie was a jazz musician and producer. What Geordie is most known for though is producing libraries of what’s known as “incidental music”. Incidental music is the non intrusive music you hear playing in the background on teevee shows and movies. Normally if a movie or teevee show has any kind of decent budget, they hire a composer. But Hollywood is filled to the brim with people who have projects with low or no budgets. That’s where Geordie came in and that’s also where Grampa came in. Producing albums that are nothing but these little clips of background music, with varying tones, depending on the project: scary, mysterious, happy, funny... like that. So somehow Grampa would wind up with a comprehensive list of the kind of musical loops he’d need, then he’d head to the UK and (supposedly) get the London Philharmonic to play them. He said it was cheaper to go to London than it was to record them in LA apparently. I received a tchotchke from my Dad’s high school girlfriend in the mail, that Grampa gave her in 1958. It’s like this little ceramic espresso cup kinda thing with a picture of the London Bridge on it. I got a story or two about her too. She was Girl Friday for Nick Venet who was the A&R guy for The Beach Boys. Anyway. Somehow Grampa wound up with composer credit on these albums. There are a bunch of them, with maybe a half dozen composers credited, including him. 

I’ll tell you this, Grampa was in no way, shape or form a composer. I don’t think he even had an ear for music. And tonally, he comes across much more as like, a Irish mob lackey than a composer (Spenny Stringbean, right?) But the albums are there. You can buy them on EBay and they ain’t cheap. Someone suggested that what he might have actually been was what’s known as a recordist, which sounds accurate. Anyway, if you check IMDB, there’s some notable stuff there. He gets composer credit on “Night of The Living Dead”. You can find talkbacks with headings like “Spencer Moore - Hollywood’s Cartoon Music Mystery Man” and stuff like that. So apparently there’s a market there. I have a strong suspicion that Grandma and Grampa’s tendrils ran deep in Hollywood. They would be excellent representatives of New York authenticity in a town known for artifice. I can easily see Grampa pitching his ideas to some mogul behind a mahogany desk. He was a jack of all trades and an OG man with a plan. And he could lie at Scrabble like no one else. George Russell said that Grampa’s go-to definition for a word he had made up was “the underside of a thatch roof”.  

My Grampa. Spencer Thomas Moore, 1910 - 1985. He smoked unfiltered Camels and dressed like Inspector Gadget. I have this weird sense that the 70s Hollywood auteurs knew him and kind of revered him. 

When I watch “Jaws” what I get when I see Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss hunting Bruce the shark, is Grampa and Steven Spielberg getting drunk and singing Irish Sea Chantys and talking about Henry Willson and the “scourge of gay sexual predators in Hollywood”. If you want catch an actual feel for how he was in person, watch Daniel Day Lewis in “Lincoln”. Unintentionally or not, it’s super close. Give Lewis a “Yahnkaz” accent and you’d have it. It give me shivers to watch.

BEFORE THANKSGIVING 2020

Then Louis tells me plain and simple, “I’ve known you since you were five or six, and I think you’re delusional.”

All of a sudden; I know what he’s talking about. All of a sudden I understand. I just broke the code. Oh my God. I can even hear him saying it:

“I’ve known you since you were five or six and I think you’re a child molester.”

Fuck. Him. What a fucking scumbag, lying....I’ve known him for almost fifty years. I’ve broken bread with him thousands of times. I... I... I don’t have the words...

What a *colossal* piece of shit he is. How did I never notice it? I did. I did notice it. I mean I’ve been aware that Louis was dim, and that he was a chump, like,  all the time I’ve known him. But that was always offset by him being helpful. At some point I decided his chumpiness was part of his charm. Plus he’s a good musical. Plus he always has weed.But damn. I did not see that one coming. He’s a fucking narc.

Of course Louis is a narc! He’s the narc-iest person I know!

Why do I feel like 21 Jump Street is suddenly in play?

Anyway, here’s a series of emails between me and Matt Weiner that show the train of thought that led me to what the fuck had been going on in my life. For darn near my whole life.

All of them were written while I was on the road from Loreto in Baja California, Mexico, to the Bay Area in Northern California. All of this stuff was coming to me. All these pieces I’d had in my head for a long long time. Almost all of the pieces at least nearly twenty years old, some pieces I’ve had for over forty years. It was on this trip that I began to arrange them in an order that made sense, and for the third time, my reality crumbled. Everything Is known or thought I knew irrevocably shifted. Much of it turned into a horror movie. 

? 

———

11/19/20

NO SUBJECT 

It took me until 2011 to consider the truth about Rona. I’d had crossed my mind repeatedly of course, but I just dismissed it out of hand. There was *no* way! And then Mom died. And I finally said to myself “Okay, what would it look like if Rona *were* involved? Then it was like that 16 ton weight that falls from the sky in Monty Python fell on me. My world disintegrated. By self-image was obliterated. I had an identity crisis like you wouldn’t believe. Who was I? And who was she? For five years we were intertwined. We broke up a zillion times, but we always wound up crashing back into each other. And it turns out that that whole thing was a plot in somebody else’s story? Knowing Rona, it must have turned her on immensely being Mata Hari! Especially early on, like when we went to see “Deep Cover” with Laurence Fishburn and Jeff Goldblum. I can’t couldn’t begin to tell you what was going on in her mind. Except like I said, it must have been a turn on for her. That girl really set my clock. The most significant romantic relationship of my life, and it was a fictional narrative.

More later...

Feel free to respond as you see fit. Conversations usually have more than one person talking...

—————————

11/19/20

LORD OF THE FLIES

Now this has got me thinking about the psychology of kid societies and how they exist and function in the absence of adults. Because like i said, I naturally, maybe instinctively, assumed the leadership role. And I say she was two but I have no real way of knowing, but she was old enough to hold a conversation that used reason, but young enough to still be in a diaper. Seems very two-ish. And the two of us created a little society, with me being the boss, playing at being an adult, maybe? But we had an actual conversation where I explained how the water is dangerous, and she was like, oh yeah I can see that. But as soon as I was unexpectedly around her where there were adults around, the dynamic of the relationship changed shockingly for me and I was unprepared. There the whole thing about taking a ten year old and expecting them to behave and react as if they’re adults. And all though I was a pretty groovy ten year old, I was still ten.

Just me ruminating 

———

11/19/20

THE “KID SOCIETY” THING...

I think that might have played a big role in why I didn’t take her and go looking for her parents. I was enjoying this little spontaneous society we had created. She seemed like a cool little kid, and she was acquiescing the decision making to me. I got to be boss. And from my 10 year old perspective, when an issue arises in a kid society, bosses don’t go running looking for an grown up to solve your problem. So when she still wanted to go in the creek, I was like, “Okay, I’ll take you in.” And then I added, “But take the diaper off. We done want it to get wet” A ha! There’s the problem! But is it really? Her walking around in a soaking diaper might have been even harder to explain. And at the time I never in a million years would have though to explain the dynamics of kid societies. I wouldn’t have even known what that meant.

———

11/19/20

IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

If the parents are ever asked how on earth they could let their two year-old daughter go off exploring by herself mere feet from an easily accessible body of water, they only need four words:

“It was the seventies”

And everybody will be like “Yeah. Okay, sure. That makes sense”, and that will be the end of it.

Embrace the absurdity 

———

11/19/20

RE: DAD

I’m gonna close with this, because I think it’s actually pretty funny. 

Assuming Dad was actually as clever as I think he was (and he was), at some point during the 90s, for a while he used to go around singing “This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! This is not my beautiful car!” when he was around me, like all the time, but I never understood why. Because believe me, he wasn’t a fan. Dad and The Talking Heads just didn’t jibe, so it was always really incongruous to me. 

Now with all this hindsight? I *know* that the reason he sang that particular song snippet was to get it in my head, and if he’d gone around singing “Burning down the house!” all the time,  I’d have put two and two together too soon, and he didn’t want that, but he did want me to know eventually. That’s not any sort of overstatement. That’s absolutely the correct amount of tricky to come from him, and I think we both know that.

———

(That’s another thing! Remember how we used to humor all the crazy people jut to be kind and hear their story? Think of me like that guy whose wife was Alexandria, Queen of the Nile, heir to the Bechtel throne! What could it hurt?)

Again, thank you for corresponding with me. I feel in my bones that that means you actually believe me. And that’s a really good thing for me. Let’s watch it all unfold.

I’m just sitting here at a rest stop in San Diego, corresponding with you, dreading getting on the road to Marin. Gotta take that leap and get on the road....

———

11———

11/20/20

OKAY. IT GETS WORSE. WAY WORSE.

This is a hard one. There are a couple of “safe to assumes” in it. First I think it’s safe to assume that back when it happened, Dad railed away on Mom about how I was a child molester and it was all her fault because of how fucked up and twisted her side of the family is. This is pure dad. It’s safe to assume she believed him, because she was a gentle trusting soul. It’s safe to assume Dad doing this helped push mom Into her downward spiral and being a barfly. Cut to 2011. This is a bad one, but it’s hard for me to see how it didn’t happen this way. I had been sober for seven years at that point. Then I went out and bought some weed. I suggest that Mom got word of this, and killed her self rather than have to face the rough line of questioning she knew was coming down the pike from me. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold out, and thinking she was responsible for me being a child molester, which I wasn’t, and being told by the people in charge that there’d be consequences if she spilled the beans, she chose to kill herself. 

That’s what I think happened. I’m not going to repeat myself too much, but to say that the story about the kid at the creek that I laid out for you is just *exactly* how it went down, to the best of my recollection, and that’s not a qualifier that I’m using to skirt some salient details or anything. It’s the truth. As I remember more, if I do, I’ll fill it out. 

Dad obviously didn’t do this whole thing alone. Dollars to donuts Celyne Poupart was right there with him, as well as a bunch of people whom I can’t identify. I don’t know if you can see where I’m going with this, I don’t want to tiptoe around this, but if I’m right, Dad and Celyne killed my Mom as surely as I’d they stuck a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Dad and Celyne and a bunch of other people I can’t identify. 

Now, Dad’s dead. And supposedly Celyne died of brain cancer, but I don’t buy it. I think that’s a protective veil that’s been put in place because she’s scared I’ll come for her. She doesn’t have to worry about that. Not like that anyhow. But if the time comes and I’m ready and able? Absolutely I’ll come for her, but I’m gonna do it through channels. And then a protective veil of saying so and so is dead on Facebook won’t protect her, because Celyne and Dad killed my Mom. 

Mom lived her life in shame and remorse and when she couldn’t take it any more she killed herself, all because nobody asked me to explain myself.

When I say this is horrifying and repugnant, I’m soft selling it. God, I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but I know I’m not. The only sliver of hope is that they faked her death and got her out of there. But her death was pretty convincing, and she was an old lady with a laundry list of health issues. What in the world can anybody say? Just stand there agape flooded with shame? Good! As it should be. 

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Mom thinking I was a child molester and it was all her fault because of Dad’s overbearing and belligerent way is about as sure of a thing as I’ve ever seen. It was the missing piece. I am beyond beyond beyond horrified at the moment. 

Tell them. Tell them Spenny Boy is coming.

———

11/20/20

OH MAN

Matt,

They *have* to believe I did it. They have no other choice. Their brains won’t allow it. The alternative is just to big. And they’re incapable. I don’t doubt they’ve wrapped themselves up like pretzels trying to figure out a way this is somehow my fault. The alternative is just too big. It means they have to admit to themselves they needlessly killed my Mom, Matt. 

This is killing me with anguish and its breaking my heart to say this, if I had a hundred hearts it would break them all into a million pieces, because through it all I never stopped loving her. To this day I love her. But this includes Mimi. Everybody who let Mom live in shame and remorse thinking it was her fault, when at the very very least, even if nobody else believed me, she would have. She would not have doubted me. Not for one second. I could have relieved her burden had I been allowed.....

Okay. They need to come forward. Not for me, but for their own mental health, but mostly for Mom. They’re not honoring her, and she was a loving gentle soul. my They’re pissing on her grave, man. And they’re blocking their own healing to this horrible and avoidable tragedy. Oh my god. I’ll take the hit, whatever it is. I don’t care. Put me in prison but honor my Mom. Do right by her. 

A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once.

———

MOM

For most of my life I’ve been describing my relationship with my parents, the dynamic between them, and to me, as “Hitler’s Parents Syndrome”. It’s a reference to “The Boys From Brazil”. The movie discusses their relationship in pretty good detail, and shows examples, and the all remind me of my mom and dad. Dad’s a loudmouth belligerent drunk, and Mom’s a doormat. Makes you think, eh? It’s almost like the most insanely comprehensive psychological study of a personality type that is ultra-rare. Amirite? 

It’s about my mom. I don’t know if you ever met her. Alex Peck did a couple times. She was just the sweetest lady you could ever meet. Every picture you see of this woman, she just exudes love for everybody around her, especially me and my brother. Her house was a sanctuary for me growing up, just as a place to get the fuck away from my father. But she never seemed to get an ounce of respect. I think everyone kind of thought she was dumb. But she let herself get walked on and cheated by business partners. And she was a bar fly. And she never learned to drive. And she had this kind of dotty vibe. Like, there’s no way I could ever imagine buying a house. And she’s a fucking legend. She opened Mama’s! If there’s anybody in the world who had the right to lay claim to the name Mama, it’s my Mom. She just seemed to lack some element of backbone. What my dad would call “fire”. He doubted her fire. Dad doubted a lot.

She was no saint though. She got me started on speed. Before me, she bought Steve drugs, because he said he was gonna get them one way or another.

But man, she loved to hold court around her kitchen nook. We’d get high and play cards or board games or talk and talk and talk. Mom and me and Steve. And Judy, and Mary and Val and Alan Buzzell and Andy Clemente. It was joyous. Steve and Louis and Jay playing guitar and singing. Or we’d play gin rummy, or spite & malice, or board games like Rummicube. But her favorite game by far was “Sorry!” She played the hell out of that game.

Boy for what is basically a pretty stupid board game, it was shocking to me how much my mom loved the board game “Sorry!”

I get a picture I’m my mind of Mom crying. She’s looking at me with mournful sad eyes as she sobs and sobs and sobs. Then it slowly dawns on me. I get wide-eyed with shock and terror at what’s forming in my head. 

“It was shocking to me how much my mom loved the board game “Sorry“

“It was shocking to me how much my mom loved the board game “Sorry“

No.

It can’t be.

No, Mom.

No.

“It was shocking to me how much my mom loved the board game “Sorry“

Aww FUCK! Not you too!

Tears are streaming down my face, and I’m thinking of her, I can picture her in my minds eye with a sorrowful devastated look in her eye, and the look on her face is telling me to look down at the kitchen table, and there it is, in 4 color. From Milton Bradley  

Sorry

I look up and mom is sobbing. It makes me sad. 

Sorry

She’s still sobbing, but now it’s Mom in her 60s. 

Sorry

Then young happy married Mom with Dad.

Sorry 

then 20s Mom with me in grandma and grandpas back yard. 

Sorry

Old Mom again. 

I’m so Sorry!

I’m flashing on scenes the past. And hyphen it’s Dad in his 40s screaming at her, “This happened because you and your family are a bunch of fucking deviants! 

“Oh God! I’m so sorry!”

This is *all* your fault!” Dad yells at her

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! How many times do I have to say it! I’m sorry, Spencer! I’m going to carry this guilt until I die! Please stop yelling at me!” Mom yells back at Dad.

“I’m sorry to you! I’m sorry to Benny! I’m sorry for ruining everything!”

Then Mom in her 40s having Dad’s words sink in. 

“I’m sorry” Mom says to no one I particular as she sobs alone at her breakfast nook.

Then old Mom naked and dead in her hovel in Cabo, ass up with her head under the bed just like I found her. 

Sorry

SORRY, MY ASS!

Mom had nothing to be sorry for. She was apologizing to me through the aether for singularly carrying the burden of responsibility for something that never happened. Something that could have been remedied anytime in the past 40 years with a single two word question: what happened? This is really unacceptably fucked up. Unbelievable negligence and idiocy. This needs to be remedied.

While I’m driving through LA in the middle of the night. I start picturing Celyne hard selling Dad on the threat I must have been as a teenager, and her making her case to dad, and all that. And putting it all together, and all I keep thinking is:

“Those fuckers killed my mom. Tell them. Tell them Spenny Boy is coming.”

PETE WILSON, NEWS ANXHOR. AGAIN.

This next bit I could phrase like I was reading the tea leaves or tarot cards or receiving messages through the aether or something, and pretend like it was vague mystical messages I was receiving from the universe? But no. I’ll put it to you as straightforward as I can. What it was, was news anchor Pete Wilson, knowing who I was. Or knowing that someone in the store was part of some bizarre social experiment, creating visual clues that as he understood it, I’d retain in my memory bank available for later when in the process of analyzing my situation I’d eventually come to the point when I’d say to myself “Hey! Pete Wilson used to come into the store and rent a weird amount of porno! I bet that meant something!” And then I’d put it together. And i did, just like that. I spent some time decoding it and what I’ve been able to figure is that Pete Wilson was sending me a message. One single message which was this:

“Porno”

That succinct message had, as I see it, two possible interpretations. Of those two interpretations, one is friendly and helpful, and this is it: 

 “Rent porno, dude. You’re gonna need something, and I suggest porno” which seems friendly and possibly good advice.

The other is snarky and mocking, and it’s this:

“Better get used to porno, dude. Because you’re a freak and that’s all you’re getting”

The second one kinda seems like the message he was probably trying to send me. Dickhead.

Presuming it’s the second one, I’d tell him that I actually did alright for myself.

So if I saw Pete Wilson again (I think he’s dead though) I’d tell him that in spite of his dire prediction, the Gamesters of Triskelion had been pretty good to me. They sent pussy my way on a pretty regular basis for an extended period of time. After all, I was their prize hog and back then at least, they wanted to keep me happy. At least until it was time for me to go to the abattoir to be bled out, chunked out, bagged, tagged and sent to market. They kept me pretty well-fucked for years lest I notice the weirdness that surrounded me and start asking questions before it was convenient for them....

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY?

You can tell them Spenny Boy isn’t coming anymore. I give up. It’s just too much. I have no interest in making anybody’s life any more difficult than it must already be. It’s got to be hard enough for them already without me heaping a truth they’re not willing to hear on them. They’re free to blame me and frame the story however they want, if it brings them a little peace of mind. I’m strong enough to bear that weight, although I think it’s wrong. And obviously, if anybody comes at me, through legal channels or otherwise, I’ll defend myself. But beyond that, however they need to explain this to themselves is okay by me and I fully support. 

I won’t be seeking anybody out. If they want to find me and talk, I’m easy to find. I’m not going to be throwing accusations around or using Mom as a cudgel. In fact I forgive them. Even Celyne. Without reservation. Shit happens. I’d like to think Mom would forgive them too if she knew. She was that kind and generous of soul. I’ll try to emulate that. They should find a way to honor her.

If there was anything I could do to remove the pain and shame they must be feeling, I’d do it. And if they’re in such denial that they blame me for it, good on them. Whatever they have to do to feel whole in the face of this tragedy, I support that. 

But I’ll tell you, you know why you recognize my story as the truth? Because it’s convincing. I’m a terrible fucking liar, so I just don’t do it. I don’t have a philosophy against it or anything, I’ll do it in a pinch to try and cover my ass, but lying gives me extreme anxiety, and I stammer, and it’s super obvious I’m lying. I can’t put my energy behind a lie because I’m also not a very good actor. So if my story is convincing, chances are it’s true. That’s how *you* know I’m telling the truth. I’d have to be the most brilliant and diabolical man alive to weave this whole thing up. Especially in a pinch. 

I’m not nearly as clever as they apparently think I am. I wish I were, but I’m not. Dad is though. More than once he claimed to be such a good liar that he could tell you he’s going to tell you a lie, and even knowing it was going to be a lie, and you’d believe it anyway. Then he’d segue right into the lie, and you’d believe it. Every time without exception. I saw him do this repeatedly, and it was pretty amazing. He took great pride in this ability of his. He’d say “I don’t know. There’s just something about dolphins that makes people want to believe this crazy story” Ask Michelle Alameida about it. See if she can dig it out of her memory. It seems relevant to the moment when possibly the best liar in the world seems to have accused me of a litany of things including being a liar. And then  everybody believed him.  Oh well. Such is life, I guess. He had a cult like grip on his people.Thats for sure.

Before he died, Dad was living up at Fircrest Convalescent Center in Sebastopol, I’d go see him pretty regularly and bring him something to eat. I could tell he was pissed at me. He wasn’t so good at hiding it anymore. One time he looked at with this bitter snarky hissing look on his face and he says “It’s like the story of the little old Irish woman looking out the window watching her ne’er do well son go off to war, and she says “Will ya look at that, ev’ry one of em’s outta step except me poor Johnny!” It was clearly supposed to be a scathing remark about me, but I didn’t have the context, so I accepted it as more of a general ugly comment about me. Now I kind of presume he was talking about Mom’s death. 

I’d like to know what’s the worst that could have happened to me if they’d had me explain myself? If it all went wrong? What? Maybe time in Juvee? Time in a mental hospital? Chances are they would have believed me though, as my story has the benefit of being true, so I can be pretty convincing with the truth. It’s crazy that everyone let it go as far as it did and that no one ever told me what was going on. It tears me up the pain Mom must have been in all those years. And it should anger me that Dad was such a monster that he’d do that to her, but it doesn’t. I’m tired of anger. 

And if anybody can look me in the eye and tell me that they don’t think Dad hectored and berated Mom into shameful compliance that it was all her fault, and made Mom bear that weight, then I’m probably wrong about the whole thing anyway.

Wow. Just wow.

May God look over them and keep them safe. I truly hope they get to a place where they all be okay. I really do. Like I said, I still love Mimi. But I also still love Rona. My love doesn’t die. I don’t love or hate them for what they do. I love them for who they are, and I cherish the time we got to spend together. I hope they can see that someday. 

Except Louis. I’m going to take that fucker down the first chance I get. Again, not a physical threat of any kind. Anything I do will be through channels. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

What now?

I’m in a rest stop about 200 miles to the Bay Area, and I’m nodding off. I’m going to crash. I have no idea what tomorrow will hold. But whatever it is I’ll face it walking tall with my head held high.

I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT AA

As I sit here thinking about my experiences with and attitudes toward recovery, first I want to say that AA will survive me being critical of it. Certain people will immediately cover their ears, stomp their feet and hum loudly to themselves rather than willingly give me the dais. But I’ll tell you, I’m no neophyte. And pattern analysis is like, one of the things I’m actually really good at. Like maybe better than anybody. And I know AA really well. 

You see, I am very familiar with all of it. I know it inside and out. I value it. But there’s a strong sickness that exists comfortably within the souls of many “upstanding members” of AA. The display incredible hubris, and despite what they say at the meetings, they are about as far from open-minded as a person can be. Now, this is only my experience. And it’s obviously only experience that I have with certain people. But there’s a tenor. There’s a vibe. 

There’s a fear and a feeling of anathema revolving around changing one’s consciousness, that’s gaining strength it feels like to me. It’s a temperance movement. And it’s in AA. I have strong disagreements with this line of thought. Drugs and alcohol have their place. They serve a purpose. I think there might be people in AA who object to this when I share in meetings

I think something is sacrificed when you get in to recovery. Boy, will people in recovery deny it. But in my case, the promises never came true through many years of consecutive sobriety. They just didn’t. Neither did I receive in sobriety, the skills to solve major problems that have been vexing me for 2 decades. No. That solution came from drugs. For better or worse, even with seven years of complete abstinence plus another eight with abstinence from hard drugs, what it took was me taking a particular substance. I did that and two months later I figured out how everybody had been fucking me over for 20 years based on false pretenses, fucked up horrific data that was completely wrong, and a total lack of due diligence on the part of people who should fucking know better. And all this bullshit was all very closely orbiting AA, and promoted by people I knew who had decades in recovery who were doing the same exact shit they were accusing me of doing. And I’ve written a book and I lay it all out and the book, if I can pull this off, is a fucking masterpiece of harrowing suspense.

All these old-timers in AA had judged me contempt-worthy without the slightest bit of investigation. They treated me with hostility and malice behind my back for something I didn’t do. 

They don’t give a shit about the steps or the program. It’s all just words they repeat. It’s all perfunctory and done by rote.

But hey! It keeps them sober. And that’s what they value.

And I never would have even considered going out, but for recognizing that nobody was coming. to save my good name. I was expected to. So it was just throw more shit on for Spencer to carry, like it hasn’t already been incredibly traumatic. 

But they all thought I deserved the trauma. It turns out I was innocent of what everybody more than suspected I did. They all *knew* in their hearts I did it, or somebody would have asked me about it. And they all just. Fucking. Had it backwards! This fucking movement has obliterated my life unjustly in to tiny particles. What a group of belligerent idiots.

This has been going on in one form or another since I was eleven. I finally put it together right before thanksgiving. And if I hadn’t been getting high, I would still be in the dark about it. No one was going to tell me. I’m 53 now.

And poetically speaking, I was the best they had to offer. And they chose to destroy me when I was a kid instead and never tell me they were doing it.

The book is good 

It fucking breaks my heart. All this time everybody thought I was a bad seed. 

They thought I was hopelessly broken, and I was the exact opposite. I had an ebullient spirit. I still do, but it’s different now. I’m an old man now.

All that said, if they were available, I’d be going to meetings. One of the biggest issues one faces when they choose to put down the bottle or whatever, is what to do with the time you used drink or smoke or snort away. That’s the killer. It’s not a “my God is the doorknob” higher power. It’s confession and camaraderie and having a place you can be.

11/21/20

SNARK-MASTER SPENNY BOY

I wrote this general letter and posted it to my Facebook page. If I’m wrong, maybe people will probably think I’m a sadly misguided asshole. But if I’m right, and I think it’s really funny, actually they’ll  probably still think I’m a misguided asshole, but maybe they should examine their own behavior first...

Good morning world! 

I hope everybody’s having a pleasant Saturday morning. I’ve been sitting here, soberly going over the events that led us here and I have a couple of observations. First, this is primarily a message for everybody that was involved in the events that led to my Mom’s death, I just want you all to know that I don’t think you’re evil, not one bit. That’s hurtful talk and don’t you believe it! You’re just sick. You’re sick and I love you in spite of it. I love every one of you. I love you, and I *know* you! Lol. Just kidding. 

But sincerely, I really do want to see you guys heal. It’s obvious this obsession of yours to hold me accountable for something that didn’t happen nearly 45 years ago, which directly led to the death of my Mom is a clear sign that you should seek help. You’ve become a group of Captain Ahabs insanely and relentlessly pursuing Moby Dick in an attempt to harpoon him at the cost of your own sanity and peace of mind, and it’s changed you. It’s breaking my heart to see you in this state. You keep trying to change the past and it just never works. 

It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting different results. What I say is If you want a different result, try something different. You have to stop this behavior before it consumes you. You can look at the past until the end of days and it’s not going to change what happened. But I forgive you. I forgive you because I know that’s what Mom would do, and I’m doing my best to be like her. A kind and gentle spirit.

I’m going to say this, and I don’t mean to be mean but I want to suggest that maybe you should see a doctor. It’s not a sign of weakness to seek help from a professional. It’s actually the opposite. It’s a sign of strength. I did it. I saw a psychiatrist, and I’m happy to say he gave me a clean bill of health. Well, he gave me some pills to help me sleep. I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. Apparently I had a lot on my mind. Now, even without aids I sleep like a baby. That’s due to all the work I’ve done to heal. You could do the same. There are many good psychiatrists out there who could provide the necessary insight you obviously need. 

But really, please seek help. Go see a therapist. It’s bad for the kids for you to be this consumed with anger and obsession. They absorb it and take it out on innocent people around them, and nobody  wants to see that.

Much love,

Spenny boy

Well, what do you think?

——-

11/21/20

NO SUBJECT

Shit. Steve was beloved. Nobody didn’t love Steve. He was easygoing charming and funny. I was the prickly strident one. Steve was like our own personal Belushi. My relationship with Steve over the years was complicated. I don’t want to get into a bitching session about how he tormented me as a kid. Who cares? And a lot of the stuff reads as pretty funny. He once bet me that I couldn’t fit into a laundry bag, and when I easily proved him wrong by fitting into the laundry bag, he tied it up and carried me around in it while I screamed to be let out. Eventually he was like “Dad! Look what I caught!” It really kinda sucked at the time, but I admit it was pretty funny. He loved the “quit hitting yourself!” trick. He shot me with a BB gun once. I was probably 8 which would have made him 13. That hurt and made me cry, obviously. Saturday morning, watching cartoons, I heard “hold... still”. Bap! Mom wondered why all my shirts seem to have this swirly pinch in the chest area, that was because he used take this old hand crank drill and attack me with it. Fun! This is all when Mom and Dad were gone, which was often because of the restaurant. He also liked to take me in the kitchen where he’d make me play “blindfold taste test” where he’d blindfold me and make me taste all the weird shit Dad had laying around the kitchen: mustard, hot sauce, lard, whatever was convenient. “Evil Intruder” was the game where he’d go outside, and my job was to run around the house as fast as I could making sure all the doors and windows were locked, because if he got in, he’d hold me down and tickle me until I cried. One time Mom and Dad went out for dinner, and charged Steve and Louis Gonk with babysitting me. After it got dark, Steve and Louis turned off all the lights and got flashlights, then told me that the house was being attacked by vampires. They were going to go out and fight them to keep me safe, and I should hide in Steve’s room. Then they’d go out and make themselves look like vampires and come in and scare the shit out of me! Fucking bastards!

But I loved him even when we fought. We shared that shorthand that brothers do, and that was special. We could go back and forth with lines from Young Frankenstein or Richard Pryor bits and crack each other up for hours it seems. He always had the physical advantage on me and he used it. One time I was able to get him in a position where he had to say Uncle. I got lucky. Physically he was very strong. He once lifted Dad up over his head, single-handed, when Dad was sitting on a barstool. Alcohol was involved. Afterwards Steve had a series of black stripe bruises on his arm from the barstool. How he felt about me? I don’t know. I presume he tolerated me. Sometimes he didn’t. I do miss him though. About Dad he often said “He’s my Dad so I have to love him. Doesn’t mean I have to like him though.” I’d like to think he faked his death and is still out there somewhere looking out for me the way Racer X looked after Speed Racer. If he is? I got 

this to say to him: “Steve! Step up your game, dude!”

HABITAT LIVING

I was in the habitat at 17. I can see it with interactions with Dee Dee in and around Bill Abright’s design class.

How does habitat life affect a person?

That’s for anybody who might think this is about something else. It’s not. It’s about being experimentally institutionalized as a teenager. And never told and never let out.

Every relationship I’ve ever had was with a woman who recognized she was entering an institution to be with me, and understood what that meant.  I have no idea if they did it for money, art, science, glory... love. No idea.

They also all probably thought I was a sexual predator and an arsonist. But came in anyway. I remember that one girl in the Green Tortoise bus, down in Todos Santos telling me, “Your not at all what I expected.” I thought it was an odd question at the time. How could she have any expectation of me? We’d just met. Sometimes I amaze myself with my failure to ever ask any follow up questions. Duh!

If Dad were here today I’m sure he’d say that it he reason i never finished college was because, you guessed it, I’m a drug addict. 

Actually my inability to finish my work started in Mrs. Carboni’s class in second grade. It was an essay on dinosaurs. Something that should be the easiest thing in the world for a seven year old boy. I just couldn’t get it done. I’m fairly certain the only reason I passed 7th grade was because the Tanguays had a mandate to push the kids along. I didn’t know I’d made it to the eighth grade until the first day of school. It was a nerve wracking summer. And I didn’t start smoking pot until the eighth grade graduation. With Django Bayless and David Lanier. So how would he account for the six years before I ever ingested anything “mind-altering”? He was just a dick who was convinced he was always right. Same with George. Someone should ask George when the last time he was wrong was...

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD 

It was in 1983 that I first asked Dad if somehow and for some reason Hollywood was making movies about our family. And then again in 1991. Both times I asked him a direct question, and he gave me what I thought at the time was a direst, unambiguous answer: “Don’t be ridiculous.” And he was right. It was ridiculous. I saw that, but I had to ask. It’s only as I write this, at this very moment, that he didn’t say “No”

First it was “WarGames” and then it was “Thelma & Louise” that made me ask. Matthew Broderick just looked so much like me. Even his hair color and style, which was either a wig or a dye job, because that not his hair color. And with “Thelma & Louise”, it appeared to me to be a thinly veiled analysis of the loving best friend relationship between my mom and her best friend Mary Foster. In her thirties and forties my Mom had a very strong resemblance to Susan Sarandon, and she was a waitress. It was just a vibe that I got. 

But those two were hardly the only ones I noticed. I notice a lot. And I always kept track of it. It was like living in two worlds simultaneously. I stupidly presumed that somewhere along the line, the two would merge into one, and maybe I’d come to know the truth. It was in the early 90s where it got interesting though.

“Family Business” in 1989 with Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick had come out and something about the relationship between the three of them reminded me of me, my dad and my Grampa. This was partially because in “WarGames” Matthew Broderick looks *exactly* like me from certain angle. He even dressed like me in the movie and his hair was lightened and he had my haircut. But I never made that association until much much later. It was “Thelma & Louise” and “Family Business” that was on my radar. 

But you know, asked and answered. And it was ridiculous. In spite of the fact that I was born in what’s now West Hollywood in 1967, and both my parents grew up in Hollywood as did my brother. Dad even grew up on Laurel Canyon right above the general store and had plenty of famous Hollywood celebs that he was friends and acquaintances with. People like Mike Farrell, and Rick Nelson, and Stephanie Powers, and Yvette Mimeux. Not superstars necessarily, but all well known working actors who he went to high school with. That was life at Hollywood High. But why would he lie? I had no reason to doubt him. So I put it to rest. But it was alway there. And in spite of the fact that told me “Don’t be ridiculous” and I believed him, some part of my brain was doing the math and always noticed when a character or situation that seemed overly familiar to me would show up in a movie. 

“Explorers” with Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix for instance caught my eye and got filed in my brain. 

“Goonies” too, as the town *really* reminded me of Mill Valley, California, where I lived at the time, and for years before and after. 

Which led into “Back To The Future”, which of course was a phenomenon when it came out. All that really caught my eye was Hill Valley, which I was pretty sure had to be a reference to Mill Valley, just because Mill Valley was such an elite cultural hub at that moment and strongly associated with the 70s auteur filmmakers like Francis Coppola and George Lucas. Mellow Marin. So it kind of became a game for me. I didn’t attach much significance to it for some reason. It was always just running parallel in my brain, like it was behind a computer partition. 

All throughout that period  it was pretty much anything with Ethan Hawke, or River Phoenix or Christian Slater, Basically any movie with a good looking thin white guy with brown hair. Movies like “Reality Bites” or “Before Sunrise” or “True Romance” or any movie that took place in a restaurant environment like “Untamed Heart” or “Frankie & Johnny” or “Ghost World”. Boy howdy, was “Ghost World” on the nose. Steve Buscemi practically seemed to be some weird amalgam of me and Robert Crumb! So while clearly Dad was right, it *was* ridiculous, I still had fun picking them out. 

“Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” “Benny & Joon”

Then in the double oughts was the period of a bunch of thrillers about a guy named Spencer, who may or may not be keeping a dark secret from his wife: Johnny Depp was Spencer Arbogast on “The Astronaut’s Wife”, while Gary Sinese played Spencer Olham in “Imposter”. And who can forget Harrison Ford as Dr. Norman Spencer on “What Lies Beneath”?

And there something about “Minority Report” caught my eye and made me go “Hmm”. The word “Minority” caught my ear, and for some reason I thought of Niru Somasunduram. 

Then I remember seeing “Gladiator” and thinking “Russell Crowe would play a pretty good Dad”. So my new mind game became casting the movie of my life which turned into actually trying to form a narrative around my story. 

But when “Good Will Hunting” came out it was hard for me to ignore. And then “The Bourne Identity”. And then pretty much anything with Matt Damon. The drivers license photo that was shown all throughout “The Bourne Identity” is hard to deny how much it looked like me. 

So I had to ask Dad, who by that time had taken to say about nearly every action star we’d see in a move except for Denzel, “Bourne could kick his ass”, I asked him “doesn’t that look an awful lot like me?” Dad glibly responded “Yeah, you look like a movie star”. It was hard to argue that it was silly. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t look an awful lot like Mark Wahlberg too! 

So I’d ask Dad if such and such a situation in a movie didn’t seem awfully familiar, and he said “Son, that’s because that’s how movies work. They’re designed for people to identify with them.” And he was right. But still it seemed pretty obvious to me, and the denials seemed to be getting thinner.  But keep in mind that up until 2002 it was more or less just a game I was playing. I didn’t imbue it with any greater significance at all. It was more or less just something to pass the time.

And then X-Men 2 came out, pretty much around the same time as Terminator 3, and that one two punch was just too much. And it was Lady Deathstrike and the female Terminator. It was the tipping point. They both screamed Lauri Robertson to me, who I’d had a momentary thing with in the 90s that had gone horribly sideways. Especially Lady Deathstrike. The moment between Lady Deathstrike and Cyclops (another slim white guy with brown hair) was like a slap in the face to me, or a bucket of water. It totally woke me up. 

Lady Deathstrike and the female Terminator both do the same move, one on Cyclops, the other I don’t remember who. But it was this flying martial arts kick that winds up in a move where for a second you can imagine Cyclops going down on her, because his head is in her crotch, with her legs wrapped around him. That was the point. I’m like, “Okay That’s it. What the fuck is going on here.” And I started asking questions. 

And when I asked Miriam, my lovely wife at the time, she predictably said it was just my imagination. But where Dad was convincing, it was clear to me from the moment she spoke, it was all over her face and in her eyes, she was lying. So then I *had* to know. But I was doing drugs at the time, which providesd them with cover. They told me I was on drugs. It was very frustrating. 

Since then I’ve noticed a gazillion movies and teevee shows and pop songs. Everyone from Walter White to Anakin Skywalker.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

“Se7en” is a spooky one for me, because of something I recently noticed in “Avenger’s: Infinity War”. I began seeing Gamora played by Zoe Saldana as Rona, which led me to consider the possibility of Chris Pratt as Peter Quill as me. But I wasn’t sold on it until Gamora was killed by Thanos, and everybody knew but Peter Quill, and the look on his face as the truth slowly dawns on him, and the empathy on everybody’s faces but they don’t want to have to tell him. 

Whether intentional or not, it’s very true.

And then I started thinking of “Se7en” , so I watched that again. And it’s basically the same scene that Peter Quill has in “Avengers: Infinity War”. In both scenes you can watch them put it all together, as their face slowly changes. You have to ask yourself how would that feel? To have that fear and horror and confusion and  loss just wash over you? 

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

That’s how much I loved Rona. That’s how indebted I felt to her. How grateful I was that she showed up to love me. And how much it broke my heart every time she split. If I’d been told back in 1994? Jack Nicholson or Aaron Sorkin or whoever might have been right. I’d been taking a beating for a long time, and I don’t know if I could have handled the truth. In 1994? No truth-handler, me.

I have to wonder, I have to at least consider it he possibility that Brad Pitt based his performance on how I might have reacted at that time to finding out Rona, and Lauri, and Sarah ans everybody else in on it, to discover they were secret agents or something? I just don’t know how I would have handled it. 

But that’s not even the weirdest thing.

The weirdest part was that I didn’t see “Se7en” until April or May in 1996. 

I sent Lauri the Pocahontas mug with all the gargoyles in it, in a box, around Christmas of 1995. 

“Se7en” came out in September of 1995. It wasn’t even on video when I was working at the Droid. The package was pure coincidence. When I realized that, I seriously got chills.

And then in 2018 I discovers an actual piece of evidence. It’s far from conclusive. But it’s interesting. And if nothing else, it’s sheds some light on the nature of my dad. 

In 2018 I found a major studio Hollywood release from 1980, starring Harry Hamlin and Dennis Hopper, about three guys who race Mulholland. And it’s got a pedigree. The movie was based on an article about guys who race Mulholland, focusing on a guy named Charlie Woit, or as he was known around time, Mulholland Charlie. Harry Hamlin plays him in the movie.

The movie itself follows three best friends, all of whom race the mountain. 

Well, in real life, Charlie’s two best friends were Carl and Ronell. Cael stacked so many times on one particular curve that it got named after him. “Carl’s Curvw”. It’s even on maps. Carl was driving Charlie’s old yellow Dodge pickup when he skunked Steve McQueen in his Jag.

Like I said, it’s not conclusive. And nobody reading this is required to see things like I do.. But to me, like I said, at the very least, it helps paint a picture of my Dad.

To me, this little tidbit put the lie to Dad. It’s the string you tug on that starts to unravels the whole ball of yarn. I can’t envision a scenario where Hollywood made a movie featuring Carl as a main character, whether he’s named or not, that would feature him as a main character, and that my grandparents wouldn’t know. It defies credulity. And if Grandma and Grampa knew, Dad would to.

“Dad, are they making movies about our family?”

“Don’t be ridiculous”

So from that perspective when I asked him “Dad, are they making movies about our family” a reasonable answer would have been “Yeah, they made a movie about your uncle Carl racing Mulholland. It’s called “King of the Mountain”. Why do you ask?”

Right?

What possible motivation would he have for lying about something both innocuous and a great feather in the family cap? 

I dunno...

I have a couple of educated guesses though....

What does it all mean?

Well, as near as I can tell, it think all this makes me the dalai movie pope lama.

Or something.

I don’t have a fucking clue.

3 WOMEN

He thought the idea of Carl and Morey being threatened by him was a turn on to Zoolie. He didn’t think Zoolie liked being told what to think. She’d jokingly think to herself “I may be in recovery, but I’m not *that* recovered!” It could have been his imagination but he swore she vibed him at dinner. Her body language seemed to nervously shift toward him and it made him nervous. And then at a meeting too. He really tried not drawing conclusions, because he was insecure and had been through the mill a bunch, but he *was* enigmatic and he knew it. His story read as ambiguous. It was etched deeply into his deal. And accidentally running in to Zoolie was the only reason he could see to head back up to Montreal.

In his experience a woman could find a man sexy and vibe him and still make an intellectual decision to not get involved for any number of reasons. It’s frustrating but it’s the way it goes.

“On the one hand, he’s a broken baby man-child. On the other hand, I’d really like to see his dick.”

It was the 25th anniversary of the night she told him all about how she imagined them crashing into each other 25 years later. Blueberry pancakes and blueberry pie and raspberries worked perfectly on her as nipple cozies whenever they played “The Boss and His New Secretary”.

She was a company gal and she knew he knew that they both knew that that’s what that was really all about. She showed him the magic tricks she’d learned in the interim. None of what he knew of her from the previous 15 years turned out to be even remotely close to who she really was, and he was shocked, shocked I tell you. She presented as staid and professional but he finally was able to see through that. Staid and professional was just some strange facade she wore that was insisted upon by the company. Whenever he spoke to God, God told him that if he cracked that sucker just right she’d be happy to show him how she could make Hal Holbrook standing in a parking garage in the dark come to his senses and realize “Oh yeah, of course. That how it’s *really* done! How did I never see that?” He had a copy of PowerPoint loaded and ready to go and her technique was amazing. He hoped that when she came over she’d go over the ins and outs of it with him and demonstrate how it worked.

Others on the other hand never had to fix or adjust a Goddamn thing. They just flowed effortlessly from the start. This one seemed to love being the person she was required to be when they were crashing into each other. And when they crashed into each other they crashed like the Symplegades. They would  look so deeply into each other’s eyes that she could see the soles of his feet and he could see the back of her head. He liked it when she said all those words that you never say in front of grandma. It may have been two and a half decades ago, but he remembered stuff from five decades ago in excruciating detail. Two and a half was child’s play for him and the details were far from excruciating. When he closed his eyes he could still see that mole. When he closed his eyes he could see the back of her head.

THE DENOUEMENT (OR LACK THERE OF)

So I’d been going around in my head for awhile about, presuming the perfect ending for this story never presents itself, how was I going to end the damn thing? I had no idea. I kind of figured I could just end it anywhere. The story was strong enough that it didn’t matter. Against all odds I managed to tell the story I’d been thinking of for the past twenty years. 3/4 quirky and moving John Irving-flavored whimsical coming-of-age story, and 1/4 unexpected earth-shattering Hitchcockian mindfuck. I’ve known that’s what I wanted to write since 2002. But in 2002 I was both, still living it, and had no idea how to pull it off. But now I was sitting on the other side of the equation. I still needed a nice way to wrap it up.

Then last night I went upstairs from the basement in the Todd Hotel, where Gian had been supra-groovy is letting me put a cot, and Michael and Gian were watching “The Incredible Shrinking Man”. And it was just as the movie really takes off. When he’s living in the doll house and the cat is trying to get him. And he’s trying to fight it off with a needle. Great scene on a great movie. I’m not going to go over the whole movie. But I forgot about the speech he gave at the end of the movie, when he’s in the basement and in the fight of his life, he’s managed to kill the spider that had been tormenting him. But the physical exertion has sped up his shrinking, and he’s in the process of shrinking away to nothing. And as he disappears from our plane of existence, he say’s this:

“This was the prize I had won. (he’s talking some cheese he’d found) I approached it in an ecstasy of elation. I had conquered. I lived. But even as I touched the dry, flaking crumbs of nourishment it was as if my body had ceased to exist. There was no hunger. No longer the terrible fear of shrinking. Again I had the sensation of instinct. Of each movement, each thought tuned to some great directing force.”

“I was continuing to shrink, to become… What? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens, the universe, worlds beyond number. God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of Man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon Nature. That existence begins and ends is Man’s conception, not Nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something too. To God, there is no zero.” 

“Yeah, that” , I thought. “I wish I could write like Richard Matheson.”

ONE MORE THING

When Dad and George were young teenagers in Hollywood, living on Laurel Canyon, in the early 50s, let’s say 1953, they got the bright idea of selling eggs door to door. Both of them were always extremely entrepreneurial from the very beginning. They bought six cases of eggs. That’s 30 eggs a flat, 10 flats to a case, for a grand total of 1800 eggs. If they sold them for 2 cents apiece, that’s 360 bucks split two ways. Not a bad haul for two kids in 1953. (So their math wasn’t very good. Whaddyagonnadoo? They were twelve.) They hitched a Red Ryder wagon to each of their bikes and put three cases in each wagon, and slowly pedaled up the street as they worked on their spiel:

“Hi ma’am. How are you doing on this lovely day? I’m George Russell and this is my associate Spencer Moore, and we’re trying to raise money for... uh...

 The Daughters of The American Revolution!”

“Perfect! DAR!

 “Uh, Dar!”

“Uh.. you’re obviously an intelligent woman who knows the importance of a healthy breakfast in the morning before sending what I’m sure are beautiful children off to school each day.” 

“Not bad, not bad! Well, we’re here to tell you that there’s no better way to start the day than with a plate of our grade double A eggs...”

 “Farm fresh eggs! from... jeez George. What do we call ourselves?” as they slowly bike up Laurel. 

“Yeah. We need a name for our company” says my Dad. They stop and think 

“I got it” says George. 

“It’s perfect!” They smile at each other. 

“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s perfect!” Says Dad.

 “Russell/Moore Eggs”, says George. Dad scowls at George.

 “Uh, Moore/Russell Eggs.” 

“Russell/Moore Eggs!” 

“Moore/Russell Eggs!” 

“Listen here you stupid Polack, It’s Russell/Moore Eggs!” 

“It’s Moore/Russell Eggs, you pale, lutefisk eating Norwegian!” 

An egg flies through the air and smashes on George’s forehead. 

“Oh you fucker.” 

The most epic egg battle of all time ensued. In the end the company lost money. Eventually they made it back to my Dad’s house where Grandma was preparing dinner. She hears Dad yell as they come in the front door, 

“Mom! I’m home! I got George with me!” 

She walks in from the kitchen to see the two boys covered head to toe in albumin, egg yolk, and egg shells. “Jesus, Spencer, George. What the hell happened to you two?”

“We started an egg company!”

“Yeah. Russell/Moore Eggs.”

“Moore/Russell Eggs!”...

RUSSELL/MOORE EGGS

(George won)

~ fini ~