Click Pic and Get the Whole Point of This.
I reread these entries and notice that
what I write are mostly memories. Do I write about a future? Not
really. Well, at this age I'm not planning to create a whole new
career path, buy a house or start a family. All those things require
decades of time and the energy to propel it forward. If I plan at
all, it's for smaller things. My desires at this age are quite
different from when I was 25. At 25 I didn't have the cornucopia of
experiences to write about anyway. A blog then would've been more
“daily” and fantasies about a future.
But everyone's different. If you want
to start a hedge fund, climb Denali at 55, go for it. I was looking
to climb up Mt Khatadin and soon realized that any rock scrambling
would require my having to get my legs back. I know I'm 51 and not
25. I ain't too keen slipping off the side of it into a 1,000 foot
chasm below. But don't let me stop you...
I type this shit to entertain myself.
If it makes you giggle, great. If you read between the lines to see
the more pathological aspects of my personality, that's great too!
Don't think I don't know that. I let that slip into here. For you
well read types, it's Sturm und Drang and a sad ripoff of
confessional prose.
For everyone else, no story ever was written that had happy
horseshit all the way through it that was any fun to read. By the
way, YOU too have your darker angels of nature, so I'm not alone, am
I? It's one reason why I'm not that fearful of exposure as I loved
ripping masks off of people's faces. I did it as a kid. It's a
personality trait. So I have to rip the one off mine as well to be
fair. Blame this on experience with 70's “encounter groups” too.
God, am I a child of that era in spades!
**
At the dinner table, my Dad once
commented how that “I talk just to hear myself talk.” I could
interrupt, out-talk and out-story anyone there. It's true. This blog
is the same. Let me satisfy my life long urge to be in the spotlight.
“Look-it ME!” So here it goes again...
I reread these entries and am struck by
the fact that I refer to 1978 repeatedly. A year before, Dear Ol' Dad
checked into Motel Deep Six which freed me up considerably. Prior to
that, my Dad tried to keep his foot on my neck as he was worried I
would “go too far” with everything and get hurt. He was partially
right. I did love to go too far, it was exciting as hell and adrenaline rushes are GREAT!
Once Rick and I climbed high into a
maple tree, to those thinner branches that would still barely support
the weight of a 10 year old boy. Why did we do this? Because a cold
front had come by and the winds were gusting wonderfully. We climbed
up there and enjoyed the swaying back and forth six feet in each
direction. You really do swing too, the added weight of your body
really yanks that bough to and fro. I was aware of the danger of it
snapping and falling 25 feet, bouncing off every other branch on the
way down, but god...the thrill, the provocation..talk about being
wide-eyed ALIVE!
“You GODDAMN idiots! Both of you come
down NOW! My Dad shouted once he saw what we two were doing. We came
down to the ground.
I stood there, hearing my Dad harangue
us both about the foolishness of what we were doing. I stood there,
probably with a wry smile on my face, enjoying the fact I had
been foolish enough to do it. It was fun.
“Yadda, yadda yadda, what if you
ended up in the hospital? Yadda, yadda yadda, I can't believe you
take these risks, yadda, yadda, yadda.” In my mind, I'm thinking,
“Fuck you, old man..you can't hear what I'm thinking..can you...and
I'll do it AGAIN if I can!”
But in '77, Dad was out of the way and
Mom's meek authority sure wasn't going to derail any of my plans.
One neighbor, once opined LOUDLY enough to where my Mom could hear it
(a snarky comment) that she'd have NOTHING but TROUBLE with her two
sons because Dad was out of the picture. He was half right. My
brother and I did take huge liberties but were never caught. As
opposed to his sons, who were stupid enough to get the cops involved
in their lives. My brother and I were too smart for that. It took
me a year to transform into a feral kid, to fully realize I
could do any god damn thing I wanted to.
And I did, but I always had enough
common sense of my own not to go so far as to ruin it all. I have to
thank Dad for that, boring common sense was instilled, but not
stultifying common sense. Moderation, ya know? The trick was knowing
when to quit...and egg others on not to as they provide some great
entertainment as you stand aside and watch. At 14 you do have some
brains at least...some of us did.
In one sense, several variables came to
fruition in '78 that allowed me to control my own life. The schools
I attended were moving far left politically, the teachers were too.
Damn near anything was being discussed in the classroom. I mentioned
before teachers who openly talked about smoking pot to 13 year olds.
I had an older brother who was great for introducing me to all the
fun things he had access too. Dad was out of the way and I was
turning 14 with testosterone starting to inflame my blood. My
brother's band was playing in bars and I joined in at times. These
things just added to my sense of independence. At 10 years old, I
was clandestinely reading National Lampoon and that sure was great
for opening my eyes to every vice that was out there as well. I was
primed even before 14, trying to live a life outside of Dad's
knowledge. Ever sniff glue? I did once. We got the idea from
National Lampoon. Jimmy and I got curious and bought a tube of
Testor's Airplane glue (before they reformulated it w/o toluene) and
a few paper bags and sat outside of CVS when it was on Armistice
boulevard and huffed it. Did we care if people saw us? Nope. We were
14 then and young and reckless. By the way, that glue nearly makes
you pass the fuck out and you flash past Pluto for about 45 seconds.
I'll tell of a funny story of trying to
huff nitrous oxide from a RediWhip can in a RIC parking lot when I
was in college once. M and I had become curious so we left RIC to a
local store to buy it. We returned to RIC after. I sat there trying
to position the can into my mouth as to get only the gas and fired.
It shot whipped cream into my mouth as I inhaled deeply, causing me
to cough the stuff out my nose and mouth onto the inside of the
windshield. M. busted out laughing.
You're young, curious...want to try new
things...
I digress...
Cops today actually did their job
compared to back then I think. Or at least they didn't see young
teens tooling around late at night as any great threat. Ahhh..even
the drinking age was 18 then, so things were far looser. I could
ride my bike to and fro, to Slater Park and the other hang outs,
Wizards, Jaws, McManus's and plenty of empty parking lots at chemical
plants at 3 am and no cop would stop to ask what I was doing.
I was lucky enough to hang out with the
older teens too at times, when they let you in w/o the usual ribbing
of being too young to join in. Jimmy K., one of my brother's friends
drove past me on hot, July Saturday night in Slater Park, asking,
“Where's your brother? Put your bike in the car, jump in, let's get
him!”
He drove one of those old station
wagons with the fake wood on the side and an exhaust system that
sounded like an M1 Abrams tank. It had a 500cc engine because gas was
cheap then. I got in and we searched all the spots where the older
teens hung out. We never found him. So Jimmy, being bored, starts to
race around Pawtucket in this behemoth.
York Ave, near where I live, is about a
good mile long and about 20 feet wide in a residential area. Jimmy
turns onto it and slams down on the accelerator. He blows through
every stop sign and I noticed the speedometer is pushing 100mph. It's
true you know, when telephone poles speed by you like a strobe light
effect. Vip, vip, vip!
He slams on the brakes in time enough
to stop the car, skidding nearly into the intersection. “Shit,
Jimmy! Are out out of your fuckin' mind! Fuck that was fun!” I
yell. Then he yanks the car onto Beverage Hill ave and slams down on
the accelerator again.
He finally drops me off at my house,
around 4 I guess. I go in, turn on the TV softly and lounge about. My
Mom gets up to use the bathroom and asks,
“Where were you all night”?
“Out” I say
“What did you do?” she asks further
“Nothing.” I say.
I swear, that was the usual
conversations we young teens had with our parents then. No cell
phones to track our whereabouts!
And the bars, nightclubs...I got in
most times. I was the occasional roadie for my brother's band and as
long as I humped that equipment in, I was in!
“How old are you?” some bouncer
would ask and I'd never answer it except with the “I'm with the
band” comment. That was enough nearly every time. As long as I sat
near the mixing board, looking like I was doing something, I was part
of the crew. Funny thing though, I did learn about sound equipment
and my fascination with it still is there.
The difference between a 14 year old
and 18 year old is huge. There maturity levels can't be compared so
that's why some of those girls in the bars tormented the fuck out of
me. Also, no 14 year old boy is any threat to a girl of that age.
To me then, an older teen girl looked like a full blown adult woman.
Without my knowledge one night and as a
goof and perhaps as a rite of passage, someone in the band got one
of the girls to pull me off to an empty upstairs room at the
Ratheskellar at RIC to break me in somewhat.
“Your're cute!” she says.
“Huh?” I'm thinking. “What's
going on?” I have no clue at all.
She moves in...giggling...”Want to
kiss?” she asks.
“Uh...ok...yes...I guess.” I say.
What experience did I have then? None..of course I'm going to trip
over my own words.
So we make out and she is working her
best as she knows she's fully in control of the situation. She knew
damn well what she was doing.
She busts out laughing at one point and
says, “You're already hard!”
“Huh? I say. Great romantic I am at
14.
I look down like a fool and of course,
it looks like I have a wrench in my pocket. She moves away towards
the door and before she runs off laughing she yanks up her tee shirt
to sport a pair of the cutest and first real breasts I have ever
seen.
I make my way back down again to the
bar, to the sound setup, and I alert the guys:
“Hey, you see HER? Over there! The
girl with the Farah Fawcett hair. She showed me her tits! I made out
with her! I saw her tits!”
They of course start guffawing as they
knew it was a complete set up. I thought I had finally planted a flag
on Mt Everest, all on my own.
**
Free to make first discoveries, free to
do what I wanted, free to to feel as if I was on top of the world.
Free to drink, smoke, snort, romp and play and plant pot plants all
over Slater park. Knowing I was years ahead of many of my peers. My
confidence level shot through the roof.
“Too young to know, too old to care.”
This was an actual phrase from the 70's that's out of usage now.
It's true though.
The joke of it all too was that I hid
it from people in “regular” life. My Mom knew none of it and at
school I was a geek/A student to the other teachers and a few, very
few select students that could be trusted, knew what I was up to. The only time I was
busted was at a Zappa concert. I looked around the place during the
intermission, with a fat joint in my mouth when I spot behind me,
three rows back, my English teacher from Goff jr High, who is staring
right at me. The next day in her class was interesting when we both
saw each other. But she was cool, she was at a Zappa concert. I
suspect she had told others because I'd get some odd comments from
some of the younger teachers there. This includes you Larry
Tetreault. I remember what you said! “Double-kid”
**
Do I regret any of it? No. Do I think I
grew up fast? Yes, but I did when I was a smaller kid too, for
different reasons.
1978 was great, I grew in leaps and not
just me. Years later I find out others were somewhat like me but in
their own way, but they too kept it quiet till years later. Funny
that, knowing enough to keep private fun, private. Gotta have a
stable, corporate, normal middle class mask to show the world, yes?
As kids, we learned we all were part of the same hypocrisy. It was a
game to be played and you tell and show the adults exactly what they
want to hear.
The only problem that arose, was the
quality of some of the kids I was romping around with. There were
proto-criminals in our group and I did associate with some of them.
The problem? At 14 they're just punks, at 18 they graduate to more
darker, creepier and more felonious hobbies. When I was being drawn
by that current and seeing just where it was headed, I got off that
boat. Again, I knew when to quit certain people. I then became a
typical college kid in topsider shoes and Stafford oxford shirts.
Where there any casualties from that
time? Yep. Mark F., who I witnessed smoking his first joint at 14 in
the schoolyard at Goff Jr High, became a coke addict and shot himself
in the head 20 years later. There was Traci, a spooked out, lost and
pretty girl we all knew discovered heroin. She left us all at 28.
Opposite of that, most of grew up to become middle class ourselves,
worrying about the lawn and 401k's. I myself fret over stock
charts. A scant few of us are still active in that time. Todd makes his life as
a marijuana legalization expert on the West Coast with the likes of
Richard Branson.
Again, I don't regret it at all. The
ride then was fun as hell. 1978 was killer!
