post no. 819, in which mkf first experiences the magic that is meth

1991 (or maybe '92--fuck, i don't remember)

what i do remember is, the reason i found myself in vaseline alley that particular no-action night had less to do with sex than just wanting to get outta the house, because little arthur and his desperation were starting to get to me.  this also explains why i sat there in my car long past the point where it had become clear that the pickings had gone from slim to none--whether or not i got laid that night, i was determined not to head back to 841 until i was sure our visitor had gone to bed.

and then, suddenly, as i'm giving up, flicking my last butt out the window and reaching for the key, that thing that almost never happens, happens:  outta the 3am desolation, this blond twink fantasy vision in torn jeans, a chain harness and little else emerges from around the corner by the dirty bookstore, starts heading down la jolla, moving fast.

i wait for him to walk toward what must surely be home without even throwing me a disgusted glance.  but no--he looks over, spots me, makes a beeline straight to my window, leans in all bright-eyed, licks my face before i can even react, says, "i need a place to stay tonight."

if two years working the low streets of weho had given me nothing else, it had at least taught me not to question the random gift from god when it drops into my lap, so within five minutes of that first lick we're in my bedroom, and five minutes after that i'm deep inside him.

bliss, right?  turns out, not so much.

i mean, his beauty combined with the novelty of the whole thing carried me for awhile, but after twenty minutes or so of vigorous A-game fucking, i begin to notice some things that kinda take the edge off.

like, for instance, he's distracted--and after two years of generally taking for granted the undivided attention of whoever i happen to be fucking, this is new.  what's more, kid isn't even hard, and what the fuck could possibly be up with that?

but the worst thing is, he will not shut up (and it ain't sexy talk, trust me).

so, what had started out hot fairly quickly morphs into something else entirely--some kinda endurance marathon challenge that has far less to do with sex than with just getting the damn thing done.

and i am determined to get 'er done; it becomes a validation thing, a point of pride.  i pull out all the tricks--bend that boy into every position possible, fuck him hard, fuck him slow and sweet, use long strokes, angled attacks, even resort to quick little asian-style rabbit-punch jabs, but nothing--not even my patented never-fail sideways prostate-tickler special--can get him off.

when after a full hour (because i could do that back then) of futility i finally roll off him, unspent, over it and exhausted, and he looks at me with those bright eyes and says, "that was great--rest a few minutes and we'll do it again," i know i'm up against some new, potent unknown evil force in the universe that is stronger than me; i just don't know what.

what i do know is, dawn is coming soon, i need sleep, and i need to be rid of this freak.  but i promised him a place to stay, and i'm a man of my word.

so i do the first of the two bad things i'll do this night.

as we stand together outside my roommate's door, i reassure the boy once again what a great top paul is (while crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping god won't strike me dead for this egregious lie), open the door, shove the kid through the blackness in the general direction of paul's bed, pull it shut and stumble back to my own room, turn out the lights, hope for the best.

which hope turns out to be remarkably short-lived--before i've even gotten my eyes good and closed, my door flies open, the lights go on, and there's paul, wild-haired, wild-eyed, red nose snot-clogged with sleep, underwear askew, screaming, "a bottom--seriously?  you sent me a BOTTOM? WHAT'D YOU THINK WE WERE GONNA DO--BUMP PUSSIES?!", as he shoves back the gift i'd so thoughtfully sent his way before totally unnecessarily slamming my door.

"fuck, " i think, knowing i'll pay for this.  "what am i gonna do with this kid?  if only royce was here."

but royce isn't here--the roommate who might've actually been useful in this situation is currently bunking with his boyfriend so that his visiting friend, the aforementioned arthur, can use his room at our house while he's in town.

see, royce was constantly inviting friends from texas to come out and stay with us, but arthur has been by far the most needy of the bunch--he'd arrived all innocent and starry-eyed and shit, anticipating a week of decadence and debauchery in this legendary sin city where the fun never stops.  and it's not like arthur isn't presentable, and it's not like we haven't tried to serve his fantasy up for him--we've taken him to rage and mickey's and studio one and mother lode and circus and even spike, practically shoved him at any guy who checked him out--but the shyness that arthur had hoped to leave behind in fort worth has unfortunately accompanied him to LA.

so, bottom line, despite the collective and exhaustive best efforts of three of the biggest whores in weho, poor arthur hasn't managed to get himself laid, and his week is almost up.

as the blond bottomless pit crawls back into my bed and starts pawing at my limp junk, i think about it for no more than a second, figure, hell, it'll give him a story to tell the folks back home, and i might even get some sleep.

and with no more consideration than that, i drag the blond boy outta my bed once more and lead him down the hall to door number three.

ready or not, arthur, it's showtime.

*     *     *     *     *

when i awake with a jolt, remembering, the sun is high in my window.  i hear the tv--paul's at work, so that must mean arthur's out there.  i throw on clothes, walk out to the living room, apprehensive.

arthur's sitting on the couch with his back to me, watching sally jessy or something.  he hears me, whips around, animated in a way i'd never seen him before, his formerly perpetually-morose face splitting into a huge grin.

i just stare at him, amazed--this is a changed boy, and i guess i did it.  i relax.

the words start pouring outta him.  "wow, what a going-away present, mike!  cody told me you picked him out just for me--i can't believe you got me a porn star!"

i smile, willing to let him go back to fort worth thinking that's what life is like in weho--porn stars just routinely and magically appear in your bedroom in the middle of the night.  hell, what can it hurt?

and then he says, "and that crystal stuff--i never knew sex could be like that.  we did it for hours."

and that's when i look closer, notice how bright his eyes are.

paperboys

why?  because this is where my mind is right now.


"a paper route?", i asked incredulously.  "are you seriously telling me that you, a grown man of your accomplishments, are throwing papers?"

it was 1977 and ginger and i had driven down to austin for what we thought was gonna be a relaxing weekend with beau and her sister, gayla.  little did we know.

"yeah," he said.  "and, this weekend, so are you."

since the glory days of the fox's lair, beau had been through many ups and downs, but mostly downs.  here was the thing about him, though--whether he was scaling the heights or plumbing the depths, i never saw him lose his air of self-assurance; he was master of whatever situation in which he found himself, and he always landed on his feet.  but this time, i had my doubts.

"but you can't make money throwing papers," i protested.  "nobody makes money throwing papers--hell, i sure never did."

"that's because you were doing it wrong."

"oh yeah?  then enlighten me."  so he did.

turns out when beau returned from vietnam in the late 60's, broke and at loose ends, he found himself in florida.  he worked in construction for awhile, until, tired of breaking his back for little money, he started looking around for a better way.  it came when, after calling the miami herald for the umpteenth time to complain about his missing paper, the circulation manager apologized for the lousy service, told him finding reliable carriers for his crime-ridden area was a huge problem.  that's when the light went on.

beau talked the guy into giving him not one, not two, but ten routes--morning and afternoon--promised him he could solve all his problems.  he then went out and bought an old step-van, recruited a dozen 8-year-old urchins off the streets, offered each the princely sum of a dollar a day and all the candy they could eat.

each morning at three, he'd pile the kids into the back of the van, pick up the papers and drive while they rolled.  he'd drop 'em off one by one at their assigned corners with all their papers--their little shoulder-bags so full they could barely walk--go have breakfast, come back, pick 'em up, take 'em home, sleep til noon, and repeat the process at three that afternoon.  as more routes became available, the operation grew, and beau became not only the newspaper king, but the undisputed pied-piper/fagin of the hood.

"so lemme get this straight--they did all the work, and you paid 'em a dollar?"

"hey, those kids learned life lessons money can't buy."

"uh huh.  and you actually made a living doing this?"

he smiled that smile.  "where do you think the money for the fox's lair came from?"

*     *     *     *     *

unfortunately for beau, times had changed, and austin wasn't third-world miami--he'd have to do it without the child labor this time.  he figured it out, though.

he had long ago realized that the most time-consuming part of a paper route was not the throwing, but the rolling.  carriers would gather at the station, collect their papers and then spend an hour or two rolling and banding them, loading them into shopping carts, shlepping 'em out to their cars and filling 'em up.

fuck that--he figured if he just tossed the bundles into the car and rolled the papers while he drove and threw, he could do two routes instead of one in the same amount of time.

"your hands are pretty busy, so you drive with your knees," he explained.

he had managed to pick up two large, adjoining semi-rural routes in far-east austin--morning and afternoon--and breezed through each run in a little over two hours during the week, leaving the rest of his day free.  it was the weekends that were the problem, when all four routes overlapped and had to be thrown between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 a.m.  it was a huge undertaking, and gayla got pressed into service on the weekends--and that particular weekend, so did ginger and i.

we stayed up that friday night, eating, drinking and playing board games, and headed out around 2:30 in two cars.  beau had hitched a little trailer to his car, which i didn't really understand until i saw the mountain of paper that awaited us.

"c'mon, this is everybody, right?  this can't all be yours."

he laughed.  "this is nothing--wait'll you see sunday."

*     *     *     *

by the time i moved down to austin the following year to begin my first half-hearted attempt at a UT education (back in the days when you could still work your way through college), beau had talked me into joining him in his enterprise.  since a morning route was outta the question for my sleep-til-noon ass, i opted for an afternoon route instead.  but first, i'd need training in the beau method--and i'd get a crash course.

i shadowed him on his route a few times, sitting in the backseat.  he never used rubber bands to roll, opting instead for the more-expensive bags usually reserved for rainy days, because he could hook a sleeve of 100 under his belt, hang it between his legs, fold the papers once and slip 'em into the bags as he drove.  thursdays, saturdays and sundays were a little more tricky, because on those days the papers came in two parts; rather than opening the main section of each paper and inserting the supplement like he was supposed to, he'd just slap 'em together, fold once and into the bag they'd go.  when the front seat was empty and the floorboards full, he'd reach into the back and pull another couple bundles forward and start all over--all this, understand, while driving at speed, turning corners, handling a clutch and five-speed (and usually a cigarette and cup of coffee), and keeping a running conversation going with me--oh, and throwing papers out the window when appropriate.  it was really kind of amazing to watch.

the route itself was byzantine--miles of unmarked dirt roads, ramshackle houses and trailers with no numbers, and, remembering how much trouble i had had memorizing the orderly suburban route i had had taken on in high school, i couldn't imagine how he had learned it with such seeming ease.

"lemme guess,"  he said.  "you had a route list on paper, and for the first three weeks you'd stop at every street, scan the sheet for addresses and drive at 5 miles an hour looking for numbers.  took you forever, right?"

"well, yeah, that's how you do it."

"well, yeah, if you're an idiot.  i got news for you--three days from now, i'm taking the day off.  you're gonna do my route, you're gonna do it by yourself and you're gonna do it perfectly, in about the same time it takes me."

and, you know what?  he was right.

the next day, he taped the whole route as we drove--"turn left, look left, start counting mailboxes, and throw your fourth one--it's yellow--and then look right, pass the big tree with the rusty buick under it and hit the second driveway", and on and on it went.

the following day, he put me in the driver's seat and watched from the back as the tape played and i fumbled with bags and papers, bumping over curbs and veering into opposing traffic as i turned corners with my knees while wildly throwing papers left and right--and it didn't help that he was laughing his ass off the entire time.  but, by god, i did it.

within a month, i was a veteran of the beau method of paper-throwing--handling my own route, throwing papers across three lanes of traffic with one hand with an accuracy nolan ryan would envy while rolling with the other, and making more money in two hours a day than most of my minimum-wage fellow students would earn in eight.

the best days were when we'd do our routes together--his rural route at one, my urban route at three. the papers were secondary by then--hell, that was automatic.  it was the hours we spent together surrounded by those piles of newsprint that i remember about that time.  it seemed like nothing then, but i'd give a lot for just one of those lost afternoons right about now.

backgammon, anyone?

my shitty memory has been mentioned in past posts--if someone had told me ten years ago that i'd be writing lengthy, detailed stories from my past today, i'd have laughed and asked, "what past?".  but that was before i discovered that just the right amount of alcohol in concert with just the right random golden oldie could trigger a flood of long-buried memories--and thus, this blog came alive.

it was fun while it lasted (or not), but those days may be over, because, without any drama or conscious effort on my part, the falling-down-drunk phase of my life seems to have passed, just like that.  i mean, i still have one from time to time (in fact, i'm having one now), but one is enough these days.

as also previously mentioned, i recently sold my house, and, in the process of moving, went through every box and drawer and thus re-acquainted myself with every single thing i currently own--and what a revelation that was.

long-forgotten things, i was reminded, can trigger memories, too.  this post is about one of those things.

*     *     *     *     *

i remembered the first time i laid eyes on it--cheap, shellacked-linen case with yellowed, marbled plastic pips, flimsy cardboard cups coated with simulated moroccan-leather paper, painted points on cork.

i had just walked into the club for my usual round of after-school vacuuming and puke-removal, to find beau, my boss, and one of the bartenders bent over the board.  i stopped to watch.  he looked up, caught the expression on my face.

"what's the matter, country boy--never seen a backgammon board before?"

"no," i replied, "i'm just surprised somebody like you would own one that tacky."

he narrowed his eyes, looked at me a long moment.  "do you play?"

i replied, "it's like checkers, right?"

he said, "sit down."

"i've got work to do."

"sit down."

so i did, for the first of what would turn out to be hundreds of battles beau and i would wage on that tired old board.  at first he beat me easily, of course, gleefully pointing out my errors as he mercilessly demolished my board, but i caught on pretty quick, and soon we were slinging dice back and forth, doubling each other up to 128 for no good goddam reason and generally having a good time.

our relationship would go through many changes over many years--from employer-employee to equals of sorts to business partners--but backgammon was always the constant.  we'd spend hours facing each other across that board, smoking, drinking and talking into the night.

one christmas, beau's second wife, gayla, surprised him with a new set.  it was nice--leather, fancy stitching, weighted pips, expensive.  he loved it, of course, because he had to.  the old one got passed onto me--"take care of it," he told me. "i've had it since i was a kid, and it's been with me through thick and thin--trust me, it's lucky."  and i've had it ever since.

i last saw beau in late 1985, and our final conversation wasn't pleasant.  he called me the next day, and i let the machine answer, figuring i'd call him back later when i cooled off.  "later" would turn into never.

i've googled him from time to time in the ensuing years, just to check on him--he ended up in dallas, married a third time (gayla had bailed before i did) and started a tour-wholesaling business--but held off making contact, figuring i'd do it one day.

when i opened that box three weeks ago and found the set--musty and uglier than ever--i figured enough time had passed already.

*      *      *      *      *

i finished moving, slammed the door on my newly-rented storage garage and raced to the airport, missed my flight to dallas, stood by all night for the 6am special, drove the 90 miles east to tyler.  i was there to help my mother move into the house my sister had just bought for her, but i had other plans as well.

the next day, i drove the few blocks over to yorktown circle, parked.  the house looked exactly the same as it had when i had last visited it many years before, but i hesitated, headed for the front door instead of through the garage as i always had in the past--hell, who knew if they still lived here, or were even still alive?

when a stranger answered the door, my heart sank; i apologized, was in the middle of explaining when a familiar voice rang out from within:  "michael, is that really you? get in here right now and let me hug your neck!"

the stranger, it turned out, was a nurse; shirley, much older and frailer than when i had last seen her, couldn't get up to greet me, but that warm, sweet smile hadn't changed a bit.

before i could ask, she told me about fritz--he had died of complications from alzheimer's four years prior.  "and let me tell you", she said, "over 800 people came to his funeral.  people we hadn't seen for years, and some we didn't even know, all of whose lives he had touched with his testimony and his music."

fritz had been a well-known musical evangelist in the southern baptist church, and he and shirley exemplified, for me anyway, everything that was and could be good about christianity--and i'm talking the serious, hardcore, grit-your-teeth-smile-and-turn-the-other-cheek type of christianity that would prove necessary in order to have beau as a son-in-law (to the point of fritz's vomiting, rinsing his mouth and then walking out and performing the wedding ceremony at which i was best man--i only learned that little tidbit much later).

"how are gayla and ginger?", i asked, and was glad to hear that they were doing well, still happily married to great guys who loved them.  i would see them both before the week was out, and neither, to their credit, gave me too much grief about dropping out of their lives for so long a time.

and then shirley said, "you know beau died, don't you?"

no.  no, i didn't know that.

*     *     *     *     *

our friendship ended badly, and long after it probably should have.

beau was bad for me--everybody told me so, and on some level i always knew it.  but i didn't care--he got me in a way that nobody else ever had, and he listened to me in a way that nobody else has before or since.  i didn't know then that that's what sociopaths do, but it probably wouldn't have mattered if i had.  he gave me, a callow, naive east texas boy who didn't know shit from shinola, a window into a world i might never have known existed had he not come along when he did, and for that i will always be grateful.

i'm a very different man than the boy i was then, and i have no doubt i could hold my own with him now.

why'd you have to die, asshole?  you were supposed to outlive us all.

a belated father's day post

summer somewhere in texas, and we're on our annual leisure trek, staying at some motel or other.

it's sunny and hot, and we're out by the pool--we lived in the water in those days.  my mom's rubbing oil on my back, my brother's splashing around the shallow end, my dad's in a chaise lounge with the sports section, and my sister--

she had to have been almost four that summer.  just overcoming her fear of the water, she had discovered her ability to float, and, enthralled with this new power, would bob motionlessly around the pool for long stretches of time, gazing skyward, so stable and still that it was easy to forget to watch her.

it was my mother who looked up, dropped the coppertone with a scream, and i whipped my head around to see my little sister's floating body--face down, blond hair fanning out around her little head--bobbing motionlessly in the water.

before i could even move, my father was outta that chair and into the pool so fast he broke a toe on its edge.

and afterwards, when we realized he had merely interrupted my sister's first try at holding her breath, he just laughed with a grimace, and never complained.

he always loved us.  even after what would happen happened, i never had a moment's doubt about that.

faggots

tyler, texas, autumn 1978

i had come home from school that weekend--i was always coming home back then--and, finding myself out of cigarettes, ran across the loop to the 7-11 as i had done countless times since grade school.  chatted with mrs. evans a minute as she rang up my smokes, and, on the way out, stopped to spin the little rack of paperbacks by the door, more out of habit than anything else.

i dunno what i was expecting to find, because it was always the same old shit.  a jobber came by every couple weeks, filled the racks with an assortment of trashy bestsellers, romance novels, true-crime pulps and westerns--whatever he had left over after servicing the more lucrative drugstore accounts on his route--and that day the selection was no different than it had ever been.

except for the one, whose bright-yellow cover screamed a gay slur at me from the confinement of its little wire restraint.

i stood there stunned, the blood turning cold and then hot in my closeted virgin veins.  how this book with its brazen, outlandish title had ever found its way into my dry, baptist little corner of east texas, i did not know.  what i did know was that i had to have it.

the other thing i knew was that i couldn't just walk up to the counter, set it down in front of mrs. evans and pay for it.  which presented me with a quandary:  dare i try it again?  because the consequences of failure this time would be far greater in every way than the last.

see, mrs. evans and i had a history.  plump and jovial, she had managed the 7-11 across the street from my house forever, and her daughter bennie and i had been classmates from fifth grade all the way through high school.

but she had another, much tougher side, did mrs. evans, as i would discover in my fourteenth year the day a friend and i tried to lift a couple packs of swisher sweets when we thought she wasn't looking.  i'll never forget it--as we cruised toward the door, clean getaway assured, i felt a steel vise clamp onto my bony little shoulder, and an equally steely voice say, "give 'em up, mike."

i froze, slowly turned, looked up into a face that was no longer smiling but hard as nails, and meekly did as i was told.

"now, you're gonna go straight home, you're gonna tell your mama what you did, and you're not gonna set foot in this store for three months, because i figure that's about how long it'll take before i can stand to look at you again"

because that's the way such matters were handled in small towns in those days.

of course, there was no need to tell my mother when i got home--mrs. evans had already taken care of that.  and just to add the icing to the cake, my jubilant little brother happened to be the one who answered the phone.

but that was then, and it had been a couple packs of cigarillos.  if she caught me this time, with this, i wasn't worried she'd call the cops.  she'd do something far worse:  she'd tell her daughter, who'd tell everybody.

all this flashed through my mind in the instant it took me to slip the book from its rack and down the front of my jeans with a deftness the artful dodger might've admired, wave at mrs. evans without looking back and walk out the door.  clean getaway assured.

*     *     *     *     *

austin, texas, morning after halloween, a year later

the phone rings.  

"hey, mark, what's up?", and then, "what's wrong?"

turns out, a lot.  seems the night before, after a raucous party, my little brother had piled a bunch of people into his new jeep and taken off across a field near his apartment, hit a mogul and flipped the thing, throwing himself and everybody else hither and yon--except the one girl, whose left shoulder had been crushed when the roll bar landed on it.

"please don't tell mother, ok?"

i tell him, "too late--she's sitting here next to me,"  because she'd come down for the weekend.

an hour later, i'm on my way to dallas in her car, not sure what i'm gonna do or say, but knowing i have to be there for him.

see, my relationship with my brother had always been strained, and we'd never been easy with each other. he was the jock, the good-looking one, the cocky asshole

he went to new york the summer after high school, walked into the only modeling agency he'd ever heard of, slapped a few polaroids of himself on the counter, asked the girl at the front desk if they were interested, and, when the higher-up she'd immediately called assured him that they were, laughed and said, "i just wanted to see if i could" as he walked out the door

who'd never understood why people didn't warm up to him like they did me.  and he'd never much looked up to his older brother, not that i'd ever given him reason to.

when i pulled up, he was carrying a bag of trash down the stairs of his building with a jaunty tweed newsboy cap on the back of his head, looking every inch the model he always had, greeted me like he couldn't figure out why i was there.

it wasn't til we were back upstairs that he broke. "i almost killed her, mike--another couple inches and it woulda been her neck."  and then

"you know, everybody in our family tells me i'm the strong one--i'm the one who's like our dad.

well, thanks for that little insight into how everybody sees me, little brother

"but i don't feel very strong right now.  i hate this life--i don't know what i'm doing.  i don't know why i'm here."

i'd never seen this side of him.  i remember driving back to austin the next morning, crying, asking god why we were all so fucked up.

a month later--girl on the mend, no lawsuit because they didn't do that back then--he's quit his job and is on his way down to stay with me for awhile, because i'd told him he could.

i prepare--not much to clean, not much to hide.  only the book, which goes into a box on the top shelf of the bedroom closet.

it's awkward at first--loft apartment meant for one (or a really close couple), and we're all over each other, no privacy at all.  but i tell myself it's only for a few weeks, until he gets himself straightened out.

but he stays, and stays--never asking, just presuming.  depressed, and brooding.  and judging--i can feel it.

it's not all bad--there was that day we cheered the US olympic hockey team on to victory over the russkies.  that was fun; for a minute we were close.

the weeks turn into months, and it's not until the school year and my lease end in may that i manage to shoehorn his ass outta my life.

he's gone, and i'm packing, and i suddenly remember the book.  pull the box out of the closet, dig through it--nothing.  it's not there.

*     *     *     *     *

since then, out of the catalog of resentments i could cite, the thing i think i've resented most about him

besides what he did to our little sister, which is a post for another day

were the little digs, the out-of-his-way efforts to make me look bad in front of people.

i could always see it coming--we'd be with a bunch of people, he'd get that smirk on his face and start reminiscing, and i'd think, "here it comes".

and, sure as shit, it always did.  usually it was little things, like the time in high school i got drunk and came home and vomited all night, or some other such stupidity--all in good fun, of course.

or the time when my mother excitedly announced to a table full of relatives that i was in san francisco for the weekend and he snorted, said, "yeah, i'll bet it's not the first time."

but it wasn't until that night when his kids were older and just starting to look up to me and he said, "lemme tell you about the time your uncle mike got caught stealing cigars at 7-11" that i really started to hate him.

maybe i'm just paranoid.  god knows i'm an absent-minded sort--that book coulda ended up any number of places.

but i know exactly what happened to it.

of all the books i could've come across as a young, repressed homo to introduce me to the life, the fact that it was this one explains a lot, does it not?

day 7: since we're talking about pianists

.

this one probably never woulda seen the light of day had last night's post not triggered the memory--and even then, probably not if it wasn't for the fact that it's suddenly day 7 and i otherwise got nothin.

picture it:  a summer afternoon in waco, texas, 1970

so i'm thirteen and on a trampoline in some strange kid's backyard in a strange city, having been dragged there by the kid of the friend my mother had dragged me along with her to visit [that's clear, right?].

it's hot and we're jumping and hollering and generally having a good time, when suddenly there's the sound of a car out front and then the gate opens, three grownups appear and the action grinds to a halt. one of 'em (the woman, i think) steps forward and calls out, "c'mere, kids, there's someone we want you to meet!"

"my parents," one of the kids who lives there mutters.  "c'mon, we have to."  obviously, he's done this drill before.

we dutifully dismount and cross the lawn to the grownups.  i'm embarrassed as i always am when meeting new grownups, but even more so than usual because they're all impeccably turned out in their church clothes, and we're a fuckin' mess.

the parents proudly introduce their guest and the kids are all like, yeah, whatever, give him a half-hearted wave and head back to the trampoline.

the parents are obviously mortified by their kids' reaction.  i'm mortified, too, and more than a little stunned--because, unlike them, i know exactly who this guy is.

see, my grandmother had told me all about him as we watched him perform on television one night.  about how he'd gone to the soviet union at the height of the cold war as a callow young kid from the nearby town of kilgore, competed in their fancy piano contest, beaten the russkies at their own game and come home with the prize.

about how america had celebrated his victory with magazine covers and ticker-tape parades.

but more importantly--at least for my grandmother--about how he had vindicated east texas.  because suddenly we weren't backwoods hicks anymore--we had produced a prodigy.

so without overthinking it too much, i walk my sweaty and grass-stained ass up to this elegant, imperially-slim gentleman, stick out my hand and say, "nice to meet you, mr. cliburn.  my grandmother loved you."

and then feel myself flush as it flashes through my mind--"holy shit, is 'van cliburn' like 'van dyke'? does he have a first name i don't know about and i just made an even bigger a fool of myself?"

no worries--he smiles and takes my grubby little mitt in his without hesitation.  his hand is cool and supple, and i marvel at the fact that he'd let anyone touch it, much less me.

we talk for a minute.  turns out the kid's parents are real estate agents and are helping him find a house for his mother.  he asks me about school and about my grandmother, and seems genuinely interested.

and then he heads into the house to talk business with the parents and i head back to the trampoline to join the others, but i can't get back into it.  the afternoon has changed, and i can't put my young finger on why.

alas, the word "surreal" hasn't yet entered my vocabulary.

.

how to not succeed in business by really, really trying [part 2]

.

so i'm in the car the other day and i flip over to a station where the host is interviewing some pioneer in the food truck craze currently sweeping the nation and as he congratulates the guy on his visionary genius, i shake my head and wonder what these hipster gourmets would think if they knew they'd been beaten to the punch a quarter-century ago.


and then i think, "i really need to get shitfaced and finish that post."

and if you have no idea what i'm talking about, go back and read part 1.

*     *     *     *     *

by late may in that fateful year of 1985, the die was cast--the agreements were signed, the money was in place, time was short and we had to move if we wanted to launch by fall.

we found the RV on the first saturday we looked, snatched it cheaply and ruthlessly outta the hands of the new widow whose dead husband had tended it so carefully for us all those years, and had it safely back in the parking lot outside beau's apartment by nightfall.

where we'd work on it all that long, hot summer--from dawn til midnight, all day, every day--until its transformation from common, plebian motorhome to mobile full-service restaurant was complete.

how beau managed to sweet-talk his apartment management (not to mention his neighbors) into enduring all that racket all summer long i'll never know, but then i'll never know how he managed half the shit he pulled off while i knew him.

gutting the thing was easy--we removed everything from the inside we didn't need (i.e.,  everything but the bathroom), while carefully leaving the exterior shell intact.

i remember as we ripped her apart we scoffed at how flimsy and lightweight the construction was, without taking even a moment to consider why.  we'd find out later when we took our twelve-ton, solidly 2x4-reconstructed behemoth out for her first swaying, tire-flattening, zero-to-60-in-two-minutes drive.  god, we could be so stupid.

but by god, we did it--into a cramped space scarcely larger than the sorta jail cell that'd make amnesty international blanch, we managed to fit (a) a custom high-heat three-wok cooktop; (b) a prep area; (c) a three-compartment sink [even though we'd never use it--and even now, 25 years later, may i just say fuck you very much for that little space-eating requirement, city of austin health department]; (d) a bathroom; (e) refrigerated undercounter food storage; (f) a huge noise-isolated generator; and, last but not least, (g) room enough for two people to move around each other and cook.  that motherfucker was an engineering marvel if i do say so myself--and this, largely thanks to beau.

but she was beautiful, too.  unlike the utilitarian food trucks of today, ours was open on three sides, thanks to the huge 3x5 horizontal-sliding windows i picked up at the home-improvement store [safety glass?  we dun' need no stinkin' safety glass], and her interior was a masterpiece of artfully illuminated resin-coated butcher-block and stainless steel.  we wanted people looking in (hell, i even designed a special ribbed-steel ceiling, knowing our customers would be slightly below us looking up).

and, of course, we pulled it off for next to nothing--whatever our differences, that's the way beau and i both rolled.

i'd give anything to have pictures of the thing; problem was, by the time we were finished, we were too exhausted for such niceties--all i've got to show for the effort are some of the promotional materials.

i don't remember exactly at what point our little walk-up chinese restaurant became "WokUp"--i'm pretty sure it happened early on--but once we had the name, the rest clicked together in my brain pretty quickly (because, for better or worse, i was the advertising and art department for this operation).

hell, our logo couldn't possibly be anything but a walking wok, right?

and yeah i know real woks don't have lids--just go with it, ok?

here's our first flyer (with a dollar-off coupon on the other side):

and the mock-up for our first print ad:

kinda cute, huh?  well, considering how bone-weary and brain-dead i was by the time my young, amateurish ass had to conjure all this shit into being, it coulda been a lot worse, trust me.

whatever--by late august and right on schedule, our mobile kitchen was a thing of beauty, our menu perfected and our ad campaign complete.  beau and mkf were finally ready to take their show on the road.

and as exhausted as we were, we were also exhilarated--i mean, having survived our summer-long trial by fire, it had to be smooth sailing ahead, right?  i mean seriously, how wrong could things go?

stay tuned:  in part 3 i'll count the ways.

the trouble with george

.

one of these days i swear i'm gonna codify all the pillow-talk stories i've collected over the years of all the uniquely gay messes all the gays i've come across in the course of my gay travels have suffered at the hands of their various and sundry gay boyfriends/roommates/hookups, because there's definitely a book there.  until that happens...


hadn't seen alvaro in ages, so when he hit me up outta the blue this past week and invited me over, it was a nice surprise.

his new place--a neat little suburban ranch with a pool on a peaceful street in the foothills above pasadena--is also a nice surprise. a far cry from the pico/union hellhole he used to call home, it's a definite step up, and i'm happy for him--at first, anyway.

i note the for-sale sign in the front yard, and, once inside, look around for evidence of roommates.  there is none, and the house has a definite empty look.

"how are you swinging this place by yourself?" i ask him.  and then he tells me about george.

george, the owner of the house and alvaro's benefactor, was apparently a hale-and-hearty specimen of the genus silverus daddyolus--right up until the day his tanned, pot-bellied ass suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack in some bar in palm springs, that is.

[alvaro found out when the last twink george gave his number to called it, got alvaro and told him, "old dude handed me his card, spread his arms to give me a hug and instead of leaning in, got this look on his face, fell backward, and wham! he was gone."

dunno about you, but that's totally the way i wanna go out.]

anyway, alvaro shed a tear or two for george, who had apparently been a good guy, and started preparing himself for yet another move.  he packed his shit and awaited the inevitable call from george's family.

while he waited, he poked around in george's shit, found his will

"weirdest thing--it was right on top of all his papers"

it left everything to george's enfeebled, elderly mother, with the specific stipulation that nothing go to his brothers, who had been mean to him all his life.

alvaro got a taste of what poor george had endured a few days later when mean brother #1 showed up with a u-haul to clean out the house.

"he walked in like he owned the place, and as soon as he did all the lights in the house started flickering--he asked me how long that had been happening, and i told him it had never happened before.  he laughed like he didn't believe me and said he'd call an electrician to fix it.

"the whole time they were moving george's stuff out, i kept tryin to talk to him, and he wouldn't listen--just waved me away.  and the whole time they were there, the lights were flickering like crazy.

"when they were done, he told me i had five days to clear my faggot ass outta there, or he was gonna call the cops.  i didn't say anything--just stood there in shock with my mouth open as they drove away."

and this, gentle readers, is where karma enters the tale.

because, see, the two things alvaro kept tryin to communicate to mean brother #1--but that mean brother #1 apparently didn't wanna hear--were, respectively:  (1) alvaro had found the will; and (2) all alvaro was asking was a little time in which to find a new place to live.  and if mean brother #1 had merely troubled himself to listen to alvaro with even a modicum of respect on that fateful day, this story would've ended then and there.

what happened instead?  alvaro--the sweetest guy in the world, trust me--got righteously pissed, lost the will, called an attorney, got clued into the tenant's paradise that is california, dug in his heels and has been successfully battling poor dead george's mean brothers for the past two years.

yeah, two years--since no will had been filed, probate dragged on forever due to fierce internecine battling between mean brother #1 and mean brother #2 (because by that time mom was half-addled toast), no doubt at great expense to the estate, and every attempt to sell the house once ownership was finally settled has ended badly.

"whenever people look at the house," alvaro tells me, "things just seem to go wrong."

mostly, it's the lights, he says--while they're perfectly fine most of the time, and the wiring has been given a clean bill of health by any number of electricians, they have an uncanny tendency to dim and flicker whenever a prospective buyer (or, for that matter, either of the mean brothers) is on the premises.  or sometimes a realtor will show up with a prospect, the place will suddenly "smell funny", and they'll leave quickly.

whatever--sucks for the mean brothers, but good for alvaro, right?  well, not exactly--his cheap rent has cost him dearly.

"my car died last year.  it's in the garage--it starts, but it won't go, and nobody can figure out what's wrong with it.  and without the car, i'm stuck up here in the hills--i'm barely making it."

we're in the master bedroom, admiring a vintage, beautifully framed, signed and numbered tom of finland print that mean brother #1 had found in a closet and contemptuously tossed to alvaro--the only scrap he'd left behind.  i'm researching it and i hope it turns out to be worth $15,000.

"sometimes, mike," he continues," i think i should just leave the car, throw some shit in a bag and get the hell outta here."

and with that, the lamp in the corner--which, like all the lights in the house had been burning steadily and true the whole time i'd been there--starts flickering.

he half-laughs, looks at me with those big brown eyes and says, "see?  it's like george doesn't want me to leave."

i walk him out to the living room, sit him down on the sofa, and we talk.

before i go further with this story, lemme describe the living room: a large, square space, empty save for that single sofa, its perimeter ringed with track lighting shining perfectly-spaced parabolas of light down onto art which is no longer there.

"look, alvaro," i tell him.  "i dunno if dead george is tryin to use you as a foil to keep his mean brothers' hands off his estate or not, and i don't care how cheap your rent is.  for whatever reason, this place has become a prison for you, and you need to get out--now."

simple and direct, right?

yeah.  it's at this point in time that this transient incident in my life--one of countless such moments i've experienced and have long since forgotten--becomes suddenly memorable.

because the instant those words cross my lips--and i shit you not--every light in the living room goes out.

as my eyes try to adjust to the sudden darkness, i look at alvaro with my mouth open and, in the dim twilight afforded by the shaded windows, i can see him smiling ruefully as he says, "see what i mean?"

as spooked as i am, the hairs on the back of my neck don't come to full attention until i look up and see, amongst all the dead soldiers above me, a single, solitary bulb in the perimeter track pulsing steadily with a dim, yellow glow.  because that can't be--either a circuit's dead or it's not; there's no kinda-sorta when it comes to electricity.

"i gotta go, alvaro [because i suddenly really do].  walk me out, ok?"

halfway up the driveway, i quietly tell him, "listen to me, baby:  you need to very suddenly and without warning clear the fuck outta here--like, tomorrow.  i'll come back and help you if you want."

he nods in half-hearted agreement, but he won't meet my eye, and that's when i realize alvaro's not going anywhere, and george's power over him is far greater than mine.

*     *     *     *     *

as for the above picture:  i snapped it when i was back in the car with the heater running full-blast.


as for the lights:  i called when i was a couple miles away--they were all back on.

as for this post:  just like the last story of its kind for which over the years i've taken no end of shit, i stand by every goddam word.


update: if you're interested in the further adventures of alvaro, click here.

vince

.

[i suppose this could be considered a sequel to this post]

i remember the first time i laid eyes on him, this slim, impossibly cute eurasian boy, as he pulled up to the curb in his shiny red jeep and jumped out to check out our "mike's moving out" yard sale.

i remember literally running over paul (who had already spotted him and was moving fast) and a dozen or so middle-aged russian-immigrant babushkas in order to get to him first.

i showed him everything we had to offer, but he saw nothing he wanted, except me.

the look paul gave me when i called out, "take whatever you can get for my shit" as vince and i piled into his jeep and peeled off into the sunset:  priceless

i remember i shot three times that first night, and vince not once.  i remember that never having happened before, but not caring, because i was smitten--that boy was something.

a senior at USC and a virtuoso trumpet player in its band, vince was possessed of that ineffable musician-cool that carried him through every situation seemingly untouched, and made me melt from day one.

my second-favorite vince memory:  from his balcony overlooking a pool party below, he tosses a water balloon into the chattering midst of a speedo-ed gaggle of weho muscle marys, and, as they shriek and scatter in every direction, looks at me with a twisted grin and says, "not so hot now, are they?''


i remember the last time i laid eyes on him--about three weeks in and we're high and i slip a couple fingers into him as a preliminary to the fucking and he asks for a third and then begs for a fourth and before i know it i'm deep inside him in a way i've never been inside anyone before and everything i hadn't understood about vince--23 years old and already ruined--suddenly becomes clear.

i remember he looked up at me, eyes on fire for the first time, and said, "fuck me, mike", and i did, and he finally came.

*     *     *     *     *

my favorite vince memory:  he and i on melrose in that open jeep on that first day with the sun on his face and the wind in his hair and all the boys looking at him and him rolling his eyes at me, saying, "i feel like i'm on a parade float when i drive this thing", and his song of the moment blaring outta the speakers



[to be truthful, this one wasn't exactly an "it came up on shuffle"--i heard it at the grocery store tonight for the first time in years and it brought it all back]

because i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me

.

so i'm talking to a friend the other day and he tells me his therapist has assigned him the task of doing affirmations between sessions--no doubt he expected me to laugh along with him about such touchy-feely, new age nonsense.


imagine his shock when instead i said, "don't scoff--affirmations work, and you should totally do them."


this stopped him for a minute, and then he slowly asked, in a voice dripping with sarcasm and disbelief, "and you, mr. cynical, would know this... how?"

 *     *     *     *     *

picture it:  silverlake, 2005

so i'm dating this guy and he's slim and hot and i'm not, and neither of us particularly cares until this happens, and then i'm all like, i gotta lose some weight.

understand:  i deal with food just like those overly made-up and perfectly-coiffed fat women who fill the audience on oprah:  i love sugar, i love salt, i crave carbs and fat, and i eat to fill the void.  i can generally handle a healthy regimen for about a week, and then i say fuck it and binge.

so knowing a diet's not gonna work, i'm forced to look for another way.  i find a website telling me affirmations would effortlessly make me thin; didn't believe it, but figure what can it hurt?  i find a pad of paper, grab a pen.


for an affirmation to take hold in your subconscious mind, the website tells me, it must be written in the present tense, as if the behavior change you're trying to effect has already happened.  i think for a minute, write

i am in total control of what i put in my mouth

and then laugh, because that statement couldn't be more completely and ridiculously untrue.  never fear, the website tells me--make it as out-there as you want; go for broke!

so i pick up my pen and add a couple dashes followed by another outrageous lie:

eating right comes easy to me

and then, just to make it completely surreal, i stick a big, fat exclamation point at the end.

now all you have to do, the website assures me, is write your affirmation 20 times each day, while repeating it to yourself with great enthusiasm.  and before you know it, you're on your way to a healthy new behavior!

yeah.

by about the third day, 20 times is too much for my lazy ass, so i cut it down to 10, and i'm barely mumbling the thing to myself as my pen moves across the paper, and between each repetition i pause and say, "this is such bullshit"--but in my own half-ass way, i persevere.

and even though i only spend about five minutes a day writing it, i find the phrase coming into my head at odd times throughout the day--i even make a dumb little song out of it when i run.

the thing about real-life change is, it's never like in movies or TV--there's no sudden, dramatic shift in music or lighting or camera angles to tell you something has happened. in my case, i just looked up one day a couple months after i started the affirmations and realized i'd gone through all the notches on my belt, and i'd need to grab an old one outta my drawer if i wanted to keep my pants up.

and then i thought back, tryin to recall the last time i'd had a coke or a donut or any of that other crap at work, and i honestly couldn't remember.  wow--eating right truly had come easy to me.

*     *     *     *     *

so how did this sweet story end?  well, (a) sam and i broke up (for the third or twelfth time, i don't remember which), and (b) around that time, i shitcanned the affirmations, figuring i had the eating problem licked once and for all.


within about a month, i'm guzzling coke and popping peanut m&m's again, and my "thin" belt is back in the drawer, too small once more.


which brings me to the other thing this experience taught me about real-life change: when the thing you couldn't believe would ever happen actually happens, how quickly you take it for granted.  the website told me i'd have to reinforce my new behavior with at least three months of daily affirmations--but once it was working, i couldn't be bothered anymore.


so, to my dubious friend, i say, "give it a shot--and when it starts to work, make sure you stick with it."


and to those dubious readers who still think i make this shit up,

i really don't.

ghost story

all i have to say about the following story is what i said back then, and what i will maintain unto my grave:  (a) andrew was a singularly supple piece of ass; and (b) that motherfucker moved without any goddam help from me.

*     *     *     *     *

weho, 1992 (or thereabouts)

i still remember how it all started: i was fuckingdating this hot, snarky little blond south african number, to whom my roommate-at-the-time paul took a particular shine. one day when he was over at the house, paul roped him into a discussion of one of his favorite subjects: the paranormal.

having heard it all before, i tried to head him off, but was too late--turns out andrew was into all that shit, and before i knew it, my other roommate royce was involved and the three of 'em had a pre-party seance planned for the following saturday night.

after andrew left, i remember asking 'em what the fuck, and they told me not to worry--it'd be fun.

when i inquired as to how exactly we would be communicating with the spirit world and paul whipped out his ouija board, i couldn't help it--i burst out laughing, even though i knew that was a mistake.

see, it was always two-against-one in that house.  as the guy who was there only because they needed a third, i had met paul exactly once before the three of us moved into 841 north crescent heights boulevard, and royce only on the day of.

they, on the other hand, had known each other for years, were several years younger and had been out forever--and took every opportunity to remind me of same.

oh, and the other thing they had in common?  paul and royce were both poz back when that was still a death sentence--which perilous status, they explained to me on that particular day, had conferred upon them them an extrasensory sensitivity unknown to the rest of us mere mortals.

"let's just say we're both on speaking terms with the other side, mike," paul told me, "but royce is closer."  royce confirmed this with a solemn nod.

when i snorted again, paul asked, "you ever play with a ouija board when you were a kid?"

"of course i did--that's why i find this shit so ridiculous."

"c'mere--sit across from me."

to humor him, i pulled up a chair, did as he asked.  he balanced the board on our knees, we rested our fingertips on the planchette and, working together, spent a few minutes spelling out words royce called out.

it was every bit as slow and jerky a process as i remembered--even a simple word like "cat" required concentration and the coordination of two people's movements in searching out each letter on the board.

"see how hard it is when you consciously try to do it?"

when i nodded, he smiled, replaced the board in its box and said, "remember that when saturday night rolls around, ok?"

i had no idea what he meant, but i'd find out soon enough.

*     *     *     *     *

by the time saturday night did roll around, word had gotten out--we had a full house.  the lights were dimmed, candles lit, margaritas flowing and chattering fags jammed into every available nook and cranny.  not exactly an atmosphere conducive to conjuring up spirits, i thought to myself, but whatever.

the stage was set:  the furniture in the living room had been pushed to the periphery, and two opposing dining-room chairs set up at its center, with a third off to the side for the guy who'd be recording the spirit's every utterance on a legal pad [me, as it turned out].

when the time came, paul called for quiet, and he and royce took their places.

they sat across from each other so close that their feet were almost touching, and balanced the board on their knees.  upon this shaky foundation was laid the planchette, upon which the tips of their fingers came to rest.

as the room fell silent, paul called out, "is there anybody out there?  i'm sure this old house has some stories to tell."

nothing.

paul repeated the question, and waited--again, nothing.

this went on for several minutes, as the crowd grew increasingly raucous--when all of a sudden, the pointer jerked violently across the board to 'yes,' and royce said, "ah, we've got a live one."

the laughter stopped, and the room got very quiet.

our spirit's name, as it turned out, was jackrabbit, and he "answered" questions--from royce and paul, and from the audience at large--for almost an hour.

and boy, was he a chatterbox--i was writing down each letter the pointer stopped at, and i swear to god it was moving so fast i could barely keep up. i further swear that royce and paul's eyes were closed--hell, they weren't even looking down; there was no way they were doing this on their own, and the answers to each person's question were too weirdly on-point to be made up.

paul tired pretty quickly, so several of us took turns at the board, sitting across from royce, with varying degrees of success. some couldn't get the thing to move at all, and others could barely keep it on the board.

me?  i'll never forget the feeling that came over me when i took my place across from royce, placed my fingers on the planchette, someone called out a question--i don't remember what--and that goddam thing flew across the board, completely independent of any conscious effort on my part.  but once it happened, and i accepted that it was happening, it was almost like good sex--i just let go, and let the spirit take me where it would.

please remember--up to this point i had been about as sensitive to the "spirit world" as a pile of rocks, and this was my first tangible inkling that maybe there was something out there after all, even if it was nothing more than a collective consciousness we were tapping into.

anyway, as the alcohol flowed and the crowd's awe faded, the questions became silly, and the session ended when jackrabbit's answers began to take on a childish, petulant tone that quickly degenerated into dark, violent threats against a couple of the biggest wise-asses.  royce, who had warned us earlier to be respectful, said the spirit wasn't happy about not being taken seriously.

whatever--bottom line, what had started out as lighthearted fun turned ugly and scary just as fast, and we quit, headed out for the bars, and those of us who weren't already got shitfaced as quickly as possible.

*     *     *     *     *

we talked about doing it again, but somehow never got around to it--life, as it has a tendency to do, intervened.

andrew and i parted ways shortly thereafter.

royce, turns out, was closer to the other side than any of us knew.  his undoing--paul and i both tried to talk him out of it--would prove to be a late-term circumcision gone awry

a white-faced paul after viewing the damage: "lemme put it this way--if he ever wants a blowjob again, he'll have to drive to silverlake"

the resulting infection from which ultimately killed him.

i'd move out a few months after that, leaving paul with two new roommates--the legendary dougs--to fill the void royce and i left in our wake.

ultimately, paul himself would abandon 841 and move in with his friends rod and tim--who, while they welcomed him with open arms, wouldn't allow the ouija board under their roof.

which is how it ended up in my possession, forgotten until today.

my only regret is that i didn't clean out this corner of the garage a little earlier--this woulda been a perfect halloween post.

friend of bill

"ok, mike--ease it out like i showed you, reeeeeeal easy."

my first driving lesson. i'm 14, nervously hunched behind the wheel of bill's spotless '68 impala coupe which was [unfortunately] equipped with a three-on-the-tree.

instead of easing it out, i pop the clutch, the car flies backwards outta the driveway and across the street, bounces over the curb and mows down a grove of tender saplings in the neighbor's yard before coming to a stop.  i cringe, await the inevitable.

bill's response:  "hmm...maybe i shoulda backed her out for you."

any wonder i loved the guy?

my mother never remarried, but of the two men she dated seriously after my father's death, bill was the first, and by far my favorite.  a special agent for the IRS [i.e., the gun-carrying kind], bill was suave, smart, easygoing and funny as hell. oh, and he got me.

for our second driving lesson, bill took me out in the country in his old chevy pickup, drove up to a big tree, popped the clutch and slammed into it, turned to me and said, "see? you can't hurt this one."

great as he might've been in my young eyes, bill was a tortured soul. he'd recently left his bible-banging frigid wife after twenty years of misery but he couldn't get past leaving his kids, and it ate at him.

so he drank.

at first it was innocuous.  he'd pull into the driveway in that impala and get out holding a can or a glass--if it was something new, i'd ask for a taste and he'd usually indulge me.  the alcohol didn't seem to affect him much; if anything, it enhanced the dry, sardonic aspect of his personality i loved so much.

problem was, bill's problem, as it usually does, got worse.

one sunday shortly after the driving-lesson fiasco, bill, my mother, siblings and i go walking around downtown after a movie and end up at the local pontiac dealership.  bill watches in bemusement as we all go apeshit over the grand prix featured on the showroom floor.

the next day, there's a honk in our driveway and we walk out to find the impala's gone and bill's waving out the window of his new car.

any wonder i loved the guy?


of course i probably wouldn't have been nearly as enthusiastic about said new car had i known then that one late night a couple months later he'd use it to attempt to kill my mother and himself by drunkenly and at insanely high speeds running every red light in town when she picked the wrong moment to try and break it off with him.

how did it finally end?  with me taking the phone away from my mother one day after school and telling bill's by-then irredeemably drunken ass, "don't call here again--it's time for you to go away and leave us alone."

to his credit, he did just that:  took early retirement, crawled off to dallas and drank until he died.

i remember the day--we got the call, my mother broke down and i turned to stone.

*     *     *     *     *

there was my uncle huby before him, my uncle don after him, my mother's friend billie and her new husband fred--and, of course, the club.  object lessons all to young mike of the pitfalls of alcohol.

and they stuck for a long time--i got drunk exactly once in high school.  at college parties, i'd have one or two to be sociable.  when in my mid-thirties i finally came out and hit the bars, i'd buy a drink and carry it around all night just to have something in my hand.

why i waited this long to go from basic teetotaler to falling-down-drunk in five short years has already been dealt with in this blog--mostly pseudo-lightheartedly, 'cause god knows i didn't wanna scare my readers.

now that this blog is dead and i no longer have readers,  i can of course write whatever the fuck i want.

*     *     *     *     *

after four years, v and i hit our first rough patch this summer and our relationship folded like the cheap card table it apparently was.

i miss him every day, and can only hope that's what he really wanted.

*     *     *     *     *

invited myself over to kenny's the other night, asked him what was new in his life--it had been awhile.  he didn't disappoint.  eyes shining, he regaled me with tales of his recent trip to central america volunteering for doctors without borders, among all sorts of other gloriously selfless shit.

when he was done, he asked me what's new in my life, and i told him the truth.

he then tells me what i knew he would, which--fuck the sex, i realize later--is why i'm there.

i protest.  i'm not like him--i'm not warm, i don't do groups, i hate people and people hate me, i don't have charisma and i can't hold an audience in the palm of my hand like i've seen him do--i'm not like kenny, i'm not like anybody.

he looks me in the eye, says it again: "90 meetings in 90 days, mike.  you do it, i promise you'll come across someone who's story's just like yours, and when it happens it'll change you just like it did me.  i wouldn't have the life i have now if i hadn't done it, and you can do it, too."

yeah?  i'll have to drink on that one.

_________________

sober update: somebody asked me why my memories of people are always wrapped up with cars.  i dunno, they just are.

the flip side of "dreamweaver"

.

back in the late summer of 1976, i came crawling back home to east texas after yet another ill-fated adventure with beau [one of several i haven't written about yet], humbly enrolled as a freshman in tyler junior college for the upcoming fall semester and took a job at the nearest ken's pizza [which, unbelievably, is apparently still there] to help pay my way through same.

it was hard, miserable work, except for when it wasn't--once the doors closed for the night, we jacked up the jukebox, cued up our favorites and rocked the night away as we cleaned the place up, and life was good.

until that fateful night when somebody pushed the wrong button and instead of "dreamweaver," we got the b side.  at first we were, like, wtf, and then the bassline kicked in and "let it out" pretty much immediately moved into high rotation on our nightly hit parade.  we kept waiting for gary to release it as a stand-alone single, but it never happened.

*     *     *     *     *

flash-forward 25 (+/-) years:  my baby sister the producer [about as impressed with celebrity as i am, god love her--she once left me a message saying "mike, i'm stuck entertaining the dalai lama tonight--anything you want me to ask him?"], walked in one night, tossed me a cd and said, "i interviewed gary wright last week for a piece on vintage rockers and i know you love him, so i asked him to autograph his 'best of' for you."

to which, after flipping it over and scanning the contents, i could only cry in injured disbelief, "where the fuck is 'let it out'?!"
 

*     *     *     *     *

flash-forward to now:  i'm drinking tonight and this poor, great, unappreciated song is what came up on shuffle at just the right point in my incipient drunkenness [what--you expected a different explanation for this post?].
 

a summer story

.

there's this story my mother loves to tell about the summer i played little-league, and she tells it well--great wind-up, pitch-perfect delivery, dramatic pauses in all the right places--and by the time she's done, she always has her audience in stitches.


i always go along with it, smiling good-naturedly and making self-deprecating noises--but the truth is, she might as well be talking about somebody else, because i have no more recollection of the incident that is the subject of this post than of the day i was born.


how, you ask, could i have so thoroughly excised from my consciousness a memory which will apparently live on in my mother's steel-trap mind unto the end of time?


oh, i dunno--you tell me.

*     *     *     *     *

our team was called the stars, and it was but one of many in a neighborhood full of sons and fathers [and don't even get me started on the mothers] who were batshit-crazy about baseball.

and every kid on birdwood road--all my friends--signed up for the team, so what the fuck was i supposed to do?  and besides, mr. harberger next door and mr. ramsey across the street were gonna coach us, and the uniforms were cool--and what the hell, it'd make my dad proud.

i shoulda been a natural, coming as i did from a family of athletes--my father had played baseball in college, his brother had been a college and pro quarterback, their young cousin alvin was a high-school football star who'd go on to quarterback at baylor--hell, my family was lousy with outstanding athletes, and as the firstborn of the latest generation (and literally from the moment i was born),

expectations for me ran high.

sadly, by the time young mike signed up for his season with the stars, it was pretty clear to everybody that he was hopeless at sports.

and it wasn't merely that i was clumsy and uncoordinated; bigger problem was, i found the whole athlete thing really tedious and boring.

and more than a little scary.  i remember that first week of batting practice i'd step up to the plate, those balls would come whizzing past me--way too fast and way too close--and i'd freeze.

[i remember i kept waiting for mr. harberger or mr. ramsey (or maybe even my father) to notice, take me aside and coach me through my fear, but that shit only happens in movies.]

whatever; by the second week of the season, i'd been relegated to last at-bat when we were up, and center field [because no nine-year-old ever hit out that far] when we weren't.  this arrangement would work well--until the last and most important game of the summer, anyway.

and it's at this point in the story where my mother's memory takes over.

to hear her tell it, everybody's there that day--not only the usual moms in their lawn chairs, but most of the dads have taken off work because it's the championship or some such shit.  and it's gonna be close--the teams are pretty evenly matched, so tensions are running high.

and the game lives up to its promise:  inning after inning, the teams match each other run for run, until

in the bottom of the final inning the stars are one run up, the other team's at bat, they've got two outs and one man on, this big, fat kid steps up to the plate--and on the second pitch, he absolutely and unbelievably creams one straight out to center field.

center field--young mike's chance to shine at last.

as the ball cracks off the fat kid's bat and arcs majestically upward, every eye turns to its inevitable destination--and suddenly every mother, father, sister and brother from birdwood road are on their feet, screaming

mike, mike, MIKE, MIKE!!!


i'd love to tell you, gentle readers, that young mike caught that goddam ball; hell, i'd happily settle for telling you he gave it his all and missed.

but the sad truth is, apparently young mike was far more interested in a high-flying jet passing overhead than anything that was happening around him.

yeah, that's right--in the midst of all the excitement, i apparently stood there dumbly gawking up at the sky, oblivious of the screams from the crowd--much less the game-winning losing ball which bounced harmlessly to earth within ten feet of my limp, useless glove and rolled away.

stevie or davy or somebody--i dunno who--ran out, snagged the ball and threw it in, but of course by then it was too late--the game was over, and the stars had lost.

and since back in those halcyon days little league wasn't the blood sport it is today, young mike was allowed to live.

[sorry if the dénouement of this story was a little flat--trust me, my mother's version is much funnier.]

*     *     *     *     *

flash-forward several years:  i'm bigger, stronger and angrier, and i've got a bat in my hands for the first time in years.

it's only high-school P.E. softball, so the balls are big, underhand and slow.  doesn't matter--i've got something to prove, even if it's only to myself.

i wait for the right pitch, and when it comes, i swing with all my might and connect with a solid, satisfying thwack--a double, easy.  all of a sudden, i understand that feeling i missed out on way back when.

by the time i round second, i'm grinning in triumph--it's only then that i look around and realize i'm all alone out there; everybody else is running toward home for some reason.

i trot back to find out why, push my way through the crowd and see the catcher rolling around on the ground in agony, clutching his knees--turns out instead of dropping the bat after creaming that ball out to center field, in my excitement i'd slung it backwards instead.

*     *     *     *     *

to grant knight [i couldn't name five people i went to high school with today if you held a gun to my head, but i'll never forget him]:  if it's any consolation, (a) i'm still sorry, and (b) i haven't gone near a baseball diamond since.

and to the guy at work who couldn't shut up about his son's little-league team the other day and asked me if i'd ever played:  thanks, asshole, for dredging up this post.