Andy Warhol made movies of folks doing nothing. George Costanza,
in the comedy “Seinfeld”, tried to persuade NBC to make a TV show about
nothing. As much as I like “Seinfeld” and Andy Warhol, this journal won’t be
about nothing. I won’t try to make something out of nothing. I will try to
focus on the turning points, the moments of heartbreak and high drama (at least
as they seemed to me). Not that I won’t engage in some navel gazing but I will
attempt to cut away the rind, and get to the juice. Many things will be left
out. In no way will this journal be an all inclusive representation of the
events in my life. It will be more of a series of vignettes, incidents, stories
and poems. Memory is a funny thing. It is not an event in itself but the
fragmentary replication of an event, made of fleeting impressions, feelings and
images. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is dependent on us, on our brains,
on human consciousness. In the end, memory is a kind of fiction, an illusion, a
magician’s trick, where the past is revived and pulled out of a hat.
On French TV, I once saw an interview with an American actor who
used the expression “12 step program” instead of AA to protect his anonymity.
In subtitles this was translated as Alcoholics Anonymous. The American actor
did not break his anonymity, the translator did. While I will refrain from
using last names (including my own), those referenced may recognize themselves.
They may be wrong, or not. So be it. Of course, as the details of my life
emerge in these pages the possibility of who I really am will become narrower.
Then again, I may be making all of this story up or at least parts of it. Half
remembered conversations certainly will become fictionalized. One cannot
experience an event like God and see and remember all things. What happened
decades ago flashes back to us in an instant, but it is not reality. Reality is
long gone. Maybe the past is out there somewhere in an alternative universe,
but access to it is uncertain. It seems to be locked away in a house with very
few windows (where we can peer in and glimpse its inner secrets). It is in the
realm of ghosts, the realm of dreams; it is in a far off country that one only
hears rumors about (and no one really knows if any of those stories are true);
it is in another world.
Folks whose names I have forgotten will be given new names; in
more than a few cases, I will intentionally change even the first names of
those who were once close to me.
We miss much of what goes on around us. In writing this, things
may become clearer to me. I may discover things that have been buried,
repressed, forgotten. So we will take this journey together. We will see what
we can see.
.________________________________________
1971 was the best year of my life. My dad got sober. I turned
fourteen. I had my first wet dream. I found love. It was also the year, I
discovered drugs. We moved into a new house: a big two story with a fireplace
and a rec room with shag carpet in the basement (where I could play my electric
guitar and listen to records). It became my studio apartment and later band
rehearsal space. I was in heaven. Even so, I had a lot of strong feelings for
the old house. In the winter, I could ski from my backyard to a park that had a
tow rope and ski hill, or I could walk up the block to a skating rink and play
hockey. In summer, I played endless innings of baseball in the neighborhood. I
played football in the fall. While I had many great experiences in the old
house and neighborhood, the new house promised something new, something
different, and it delivered. While the new house was on the fringes of
the Minneapolis suburb of New Hope; New Hope was, both figuratively and
literally, just on the other side of the road.
I would change schools. (Later I would attend high school with the
same kids from my old junior high and grade school.)The new house was just a
mile away from the old house down Medicine Lake Road (where my father once crashed and
rolled a car while drunk). But that was while living in the old house, that
other life, before my dad found permanent sobriety (over forty years).
The years before that grand event were both magical and traumatic.
If not my for my dad’s drinking, my life would have been perfect, idyllic. Even
so I had a lot of fun. In the fall, my father would take me deer and pheasant
hunting. Since my dad’s drinking was periodic, when sober I could not have
hoped for a more tender and loving father. During vacations, I would go fishing
with my grandfather (my mother’s step-father) in southern Minnesota. A one time big band leader, my
grandfather played saxophone and owned an organ and electric guitar. He loved
Ray Charles, Hank Williams. He always reminded me of an old bluesman; he had
black kinky hair (he was Black Irish). He championed my interest in learning
how to play guitar.
The move to the new house meant that I would have to give up my
morning paper route. In winter, I would have to get up before five (on my bike
in summer the route took less than thirty minutes; when there was snow and ice,
it took over an hour). In many ways, I enjoyed my morning paper route. In the
late night hours the world is mysterious, full of long shadows, most everyone
is asleep (except for paper boys and insomniacs and those up to no good). One
morning, I saw the shadow of a man digging a hole in his front yard. I imagined
the worst. The move took place in January, so there would be no more delivering
papers in the cold, subzero dark. It was soon replaced with an evening paper
route in the new neighborhood.
On my route, I often would listen to music from my transistor
radio with an ear piece, privately, so as not to wake anyone up. Late one
night, while in bed at home, I heard the news through that tiny ear piece that
RFK had been assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles(that too was a traumatic memory from the
old house).
* * * *
On my first day of the ninth grade, I arrived at the bus stop
early. Johnny O soon joined me at the bus stop. We did not know each other
well but over the next few years we would become close friends. Johnny was a
year younger than me and had recently formed a band with my old pal Roger on
bass. Johnny was the front man, the guitarist and singer. He was small, good
looking—he had that whole David Cassidy, Mick Jagger thing going for him. With
my long wavy, blonde hair, I looked pretty good myself (earlier that summer I
had gotten chubby but I dieted on Fresca and yogurt and with the help of a
major growth spurt; I was once again a contender for the girls’ hearts). I was
dressed in my new schools clothes, a lavender shirt, corduroy bell bottoms and
boots. (Soon there would be no division between school clothes and play
clothes; I would wear blue jeans and whatever shirts my mother had laundered
that week.)
The ninth grade would be wild. While I wouldn’t become a
total stoner (that would come later), I would dabble with drugs whenever I had
the chance. I would find the girl of my dreams and then lose her. I would then
be asked to join Johnny and Roger’s band (the best junior high band in the Twin
Cities) and then be asked to leave. The thing about good fortune, about good
luck, is that there always the chance of a reversal of that good fortune, of
that glittering prize being stolen or lost. But a loss (and in particular a
loss in love) can bear its own kind of fruit, its own kind of wisdom,
bittersweet and dark. This dark night of the soul can change us, transform us,
if we let it. After all, it brought us the cantos of Dante after the
death of Beatrice, and a whole world, no a whole universe, constellations, of
poetry and song.
* * * * *
There was a pond behind my house, and beyond that another pond and
a large field and creek. In winter, the ponds would freeze and everything would
turn white. In a few months (that coming spring) Roger and Johnny O would name
the field Peachland (after the cover art from the album “Eat a Peach” by the
Allman Brothers). As long as I can remember I loved Christmas vacations and
this one was turning out to be the best yet. Dressed in my father’s old Air
Force overcoat, I trudged through the snow. I pulled out a corn cob pipe and
filled the bowl from a dime bag of marijuana (mind you, this was nineteen
seventy one; I’m sure prices have changed).
I lit the bowl and took a puff. My eyes turned upward and I began
to ascend into the clouds (in that Air Force overcoat, I was a pilot alright).
This is what I had been looking for, I thought, total bliss. But I could
not just stay up there in the clouds, I had a mission. I had bought a gold
locket for my girlfriend, Laura, as a Christmas gift. Inside the locket, I
placed a picture of myself from my Canadian fishing trip, one that I had cut
out from a group photo—all that remained was a kind of head shot, and really
all that could be seen was my hair shining in the sun.
Laura had an identical twin, Lisa. In the beginning, I could not
tell them apart. But that soon changed. To me, they were just sisters—as
different as sisters can be. Not that they weren’t close, there was a bond
between them. But their personalities were their own. They shared the same
interests and history but there was a difference in vision and attitude and
there certainly was a difference in how I felt about them (I had no romantic
feelings for Lisa and she had none for me).
The twins would often accompany me on my paper route. My customers
did not consider that I was a long haired stoner, opening their doors and
invading their space. They thought I was a girl (my sister, Anne, often
collected for me). I would correct them when they would call out to a spouse:
“the paper girl is here.” During this time, I grew as tall as my mother (five
foot four) and then to my father’s height (five foot seven). Soon I would tower
over both of them and I would no longer be mistaken for a girl no matter how
long my hair was.
I first noticed Laura the spring before when I saw her and Lisa
out smoking cigarettes in Peachland. They waved at me, I shouted back but
nothing came of it. Later we hooked up and made out at a party at Boone’s farm.
(I call it that after the two bottles of cheap wine I drank before I arrived.
Still it really was a farm.) Johnny and Roger’s band played that night. Roger
asked if I wanted to play Johnny’s cherry Gibson ES335. I tried to play but I
was too drunk. (Roger insisted that I was a good player). But Johnny was not
impressed.
Laura and Lisa lived close by, just across the field and up the
block, ten minutes by foot. (Later, after the break up, it was if Laura lived
on another planet, she seemed so far away. That distance, that feeling of
emptiness, lingered in my soul for a long time.)
After I arrived at Laura’s house, I pulled the gift box from my
pocket and gave it to Laura as Lisa and her mother looked on, smiling, touched.
“But I haven’t got you anything.” Laura said.
“That’s alright,” I said.
“I will get you something.”
She did get me something, a watch, but the gift I wanted, I
already had, Laura. Such an intelligent and tender girl, a true paradox, wild
yet innocent, and like Roger sadly prolific in her use of drugs, including LSD.
* * * * *
On the last day of my Christmas break, late in the evening, the
doorbell rang. Upstairs in my bedroom, I could hear a man’s voice. “Do you have
a sixteen year old son with long blonde hair?”
I was fourteen, but I fit the description.
“Billy come down here,” my mother called out to me.
I stood at the top of the stairs, just out of sight, my heart
beating rapidly, dreading making those final steps down into the foyer. I took
a breath (as if I was going underwater) and descended.
“You son has been dealing drugs in the neighborhood. He sold some
marijuana to my daughter.”
The man who stood in the foyer was Kurt W’s dad. I had been over
at Kurt’s house earlier smoking dope with him and his nineteen year old sister.
She offered to roll some joints. She obviously had kept some for herself. I
hadn’t sold her anything. Actually, I had gotten the grass from an older friend
of Kurt’s. And this is what I should have said. I should have just gone with
the truth. But I panicked. I did not want to admit to any part of it. I did not
want my parents to know I was smoking grass.
By this time, my dad had joined in the conversation and it was
decided that my dad and I would go over to Kurt’s house and talk it all out.
When we arrived, Kurt was sitting in a chair in the living room
with a look of stern disdain on his face. His sister was in her bedroom,
crying.
Mrs. W joined in the conversation. “She was walking around the
house, smoking that stuff like it was a cigarette. She was in the hospital just
two months ago for treatment.”
The questioning went on. I continued to deny any involvement. I
realized that the drug dealer that Mr. W was looking for was Kurt’s friend
(Kurt knew this too). Kurt said nothing (he wasn’t going to rat out his friend
and he hoped I wouldn’t either). I suppose if I had told the truth about where
the marijuana came from, it might have been bad for me. Through all of this, my
dad stood by me (he was ten months sober and was now used to hearing and openly
discussing situations involving alcohol and drug abuse at his recovery meetings).
Finally, my dad said “maybe we should get the police involved.”
“No, we shouldn’t do that.” Mrs. W shot back.
My dad’s statement about the police deescalated the
situation. Soon after, we went home.
Back at home, my mother had made some discoveries of her own. “I
found bits of marijuana in the pocket of your coat. All of your coats are full
of the stuff. Your brother said he saw you smoking pot with your friends when
you were babysitting.”
My brother was four, almost five, and while I did smoke dope
with the twins at the house (when no one was around), I never did it in plain
sight. Apparently baby brother had been spying on me.
“He said he came down the stairs when you thought he was asleep
and saw you.”
“No, not true.”
“Don’t deny it. How would he know about that?”
“Maybe he saw it on TV.”
My mother’s anger (which I had seen for so many years when my dad
was drinking) would soon turn into worry and then sorrow. The marijuana ride I
had been on that Christmas had come to end. That bubble had popped. It was back
to earth for me.
* * * * *
After the breakup with Laura, I would often see a rusted out old
Dodge sedan waiting for her in the junior high parking lot. I caught a glimpse
of the driver a few times (and had heard rumors that he was in his thirties but
no one said too much to me about it). I no longer spoke with Laura so I did not
what was going on with her (we had shared a locker—since the one assigned to me
was on the far end of the school—but after the breakup I began using my old
locker once again). Only years later did I realize who the guy was in the Dodge
sedan. He had been a chaperone at one of the school dances (where rock bands
would play). Laura and I had found a dark corner in the school gym to make out
(actually we were dry fucking). The chaperone approached us and asked her, “Why
are you with this guy?” At the time, I simply took it as a warning that we were
going too far in our very public make out session. I realize now the guy had
much more sinister motives. He had targeted Laura (a young girl with seemingly
no sexual inhibitions) and wanted her for himself.
A month later, on a Friday night (with Laura’s parents out of
town), I went to Laura’s house. There were kids everywhere—there was a party
going on—but no Laura. I waited for over an hour, still no Laura. Despondent, I
went home. Finally, I called her. I sheepishly asked if she wanted to break up.
She was crying. Between her sobs, she said “Yes.”
Many years later, while looking through an old high school
yearbook, I saw a photo of Laura wearing the locket over her sweater (I had
never noticed the locket before; actually it was my sister’s yearbook, so I may
not have seen the photo before). The photo was taken a few years after I gave
Laura the locket. Laura was smiling (the same beautiful brunette that I’d
known). In my mind, I considered her wearing the locket as a sign, as a kind of
message, a message that she still thought well of me, that I would see the
photo years later and know she stilled cared (probably wishful thinking on my
part). But I wonder, was my photo from the Canadian fishing trip still in the
locket? Or had she thrown it away? I don’t know, I’ll probably never know.
* * * * *
