Feral Little Savage

Nicknames can be fitting, or not. We knew one guy we nicknamed “Sputz” only because it sounded silly. Saying Sputz nearly makes the spittle come flying out of your mouth. Sputz signified nothing. I think we called him that for a month and a half until we became bored with it.

I have several, all given by others, as you are NOT allowed to nickname yourself. Over the years I've been called, Barroter, FangFace, May, Perfesser, Animal, Ronimal. FangFace was cruel. As my adult teeth came in, the right upper canine came in a bit above and over-hung the others. I did have a singular “fang” that was prominent. It has since relocated to a point where you'd have to really look to notice any unusual positioning of it. But when your a young teen, your peers do and say things that would make a Japanese WW2 POW prison commandant blush. Perhaps the worst nickname I heard, given in typical teen maliciousness, was “The Missing Link” to a kid I barely knew in high school. The poor kid, going through puberty, which doesn't make things better at times, had perhaps, not the most handsome face that a teen boy could have. Flat black hair, thick glasses that distorted his eyes when you looked at them and a mouth that pooched out due some weird jaw genetics. Ok, in a word, he was ugly, but that moniker was mean in my estimation.

What strikes me about Ronimal and Animal was that I was given those two nicknames by people who never knew each other. Add to that, it was decades apart. Hmmm...there must be something there for two groups of people, in very different times, to come up with such similar nicknames.

“Animal” was given to me when I was 15 due to my behavior in gym class. I wasn't then, nor now, any good at sports that had rules, methods or anything else that regulated it. That needs coordination and that I had little of. What sports I did excel in and loved, were any that were a free for all. No rules, no regulations and anything goes. “MurderBall” was one of my favorites. You know this game, divide up a bunch of kids into two teams, throw out 25 basketballs and the object is to hit the other guy with a ball and disqualify him from the game. I was great at it! I loved it! I loved it so much that apparently the look upon my face was of wild abandon. I could rampage across the floor as much as I liked. Most times, I won it. I was the last guy left standing. Why did I like it? I suppose because I could do any damn thing I wanted on that floor. No rules! No laws! When I was “deregulated” I was at my best and the real talent could show forth. If I could get my adrenalin flowing in torrents, God did I enjoy the feeling. I might have made a good Viking raiding a village?

You know, thinking on it, there was a third person who considered me an animal as well, my bitchy neighbor Mrs Crabbitz. Mrs. Crabbitz and my Mom never did get along and they would have bickering, wifey disputes at times. Mrs Crabbitz sneered at my Mom's lack of housekeeping skills and my Mom loudly denounced Crabbitz's self-appointed Queen Bee status of the neighborhood.

I think were were around 13, when Jim and I decided to have our own light saber duel in my driveway using...are you ready?...axes. We two were play fighting but with dangerous tools. That made it more “fun” and thrilling you know. We both weren't trying to cleave one another's skulls open, just make the tools hit, clank and thump and we would parry the weapons off one another. Stupid? Yep. Hair raising? Yep. As we were doing it, Jim hit my axe pretty hard as I was trying to swing, deflecting it right into Mrs Crabbitz's little white fence that separated our driveway from her yard. It bit the fence deep enough where I had to twist and yank on it to pull it off. As I was doing this, guess who's looking through her curtains, Mrs. Crabbitz. Shit...

So...the yelling erupts, getting my Mom to come to the door to bitch back to Crabbitz.

“Oh for God's sake...they're BOYS!” my Mom yelled. God...this could only happen in the past when we kids weren't really chaperoned too well. Today? Axes? Making Evel Knievel ramps for our bikes? BB gun wars with guns that weren't dry fired? Ugh...no fun with supervised play dates with helicopter parents now, is there? Where has all the amusement gone?

Crabbitz in the end says, referring to me and as a final fuck you to my Mom: “He should be LOCKED up in a cage!”

Cages are meant of animals...aren't they?

Now the nickname Ronimal was given to me couple of years ago. This is odd because I'm pretty damn sedate now, being in my 50's, compared to when I was a 15 year old kid. The idea of sitting down appeals to me now at my age. So does wrapping up my knee with an Ace bandage when I feel it needs it. I don't go on sprees too much anymore and yet, I was adorned with the nickname.. Hmm? Perhaps now, I am an animal at heart still? God knows how I betray and telegraph those traits in me that I had so long ago?

Dream Work, Rehoboth and the Such.

I love afternoon naps, if I can get away with them. Nothing's better than feeling your eyelids get heavy and that wave of sleepiness hit you and you realize you can lie down for a bit. Do this in late spring with the window open with sound of the birds and breeze wafting the curtains. All that's missing is the crash of the surf. The feeling of satisfaction is complete.

What I like about them too are the dreams. I find the dreams are more meaningful vs. the ones I have late at night. They seem more vivid and I can remember them. The memories of dreams I have at night, if I should wake up right after them, dissolve like fog in the sunlight.

An old friend long since passed, Vin, was a psych professor at RIC and we developed a friendship for years after I graduated there. We would hang out on occasion and we would rap. Rapping for those who don't know what it means....

Since Vin was a full blown psychologist/therapist/voodoo priest, I told him of a dream I had that once struck me. He surprised me with his caution about reading too much into them. He said it was borne out that dream therapy, was kinda total horseshit. The images, scenes and things you encounter in a dream are highly specified to your life, not humanity in general. Falling in a dream does not always mean loss of security, going out of control or whatnot. To you and only you, falling has it's own definition.

In the dream I related to Vin, I was living atop a mountain. It was rocky, lacked any vegetation and quite windy. Also on the summit, was a very cubist looking sculpture of perfectly angled bars.

Vin thought for a few seconds then said: “Uh-huh...What wasn't in the dream?”

I sat there perplexed for a minute. “What wasn't in it?”

He asked again, “Ron, what wasn't in the dream?”

I thought for a few seconds and said: “Other people. It was just me up there.”

“That's more important than any Cubist sculpture you'd encounter in real life on any summit!” he tells me. This little trick was done to me to further flesh out what I was really thinking about the dream.

**

This afternoon I had a pleasant dream about being a 51 year old adult riding my old Murray banana seat bike down by a part of East Providence where Dr's and lawyers live in homes built during the 1700's. It's a nice area bounded by a lake, woods and is pure New England in feel.

At times, the lake would have 14 foot swells crashing on the shoreline, soaking us with seawater. As dreams do morph, this one then morphed into me riding in a Mercedes convertible with a rich guy I felt I knew well but was a stranger I had come across anyway. We rode to and fro, in that neighborhood which had the feel of one in Martha's Vineyard. I was taking pictures all along the way and being told about “life” by this said rich stranger. After a while I was dropped off by that lake again and told “I'm not in your life like I was, but I keep up with you on your blog.”

I woke up, sat there wondering, “What the hell was that all about?” It wasn't an unpleasant dream, just a weird one that seemed to lack any identifiable anchor within it.

I thought on it...”Who was that guy in driving the car? I wondered. I started to put one and one together, the area, the wealth, the time. My dream was just a few miles off. It was Rehoboth I was dreaming of, not the finer areas of EP. There was only one person I knew who fit that description who lives there too, a man nicknamed by us all, Lobo.

Lobo was an ad/exec, writer, and gadabout who was with the magazine my brother worked at a long time ago. Lobo had the luck of being born to a Dad who was filthy rich. Lobo and I eventually became on again/off again friends and he showed me around the finer/richer/most fucked up party spots in Providence. It's where I learned the more well heeled people were just as fucked up, if not more, than any workaday schlep in the middle class. I wrote about this before in detail before. The jist of what I wrote? The rich have the time, energy and money to cultivate some real neuroses. You and I, who work, don't have the time to raise our particular problems into monster ones.

Lobo was bored with life as I could tell. When you have access to anything since you were a kid, you tend to burn out quick on excitement. It needs replacing and the fix doesn't last as long either.

His home was something to see though as I remember it. On his coffee table, cut from some mahogany tree, sat Civil War relics as decorations. There was a ratty looking round of canister shot, a cannonball, one of those fat bastard 44 caliber capshot pistols and an old American flag that looked like it would turn to dust if you touched it.

“That must've cost plenty.” I said, pointing to the relics.

“They were free...five fingered discount.” Lobo tells me as he waves his fingers.

“You stole them?” I ask.

He did. He was in a museum out in Pennsylvania with girlfriend #64 and for a thrill, for some fun, he started to drop museum pieces out an opened window that was nearby. Since the museum was dead empty on a weekday, he figured no one would see this happen. There were no laser nets, motion detectors or ancient security guards that would've caught him once he removed the items. Pretty lax precautions.

He and the girl left the building and drove around to the side where the relics had landed and scooped them up and they were on their way.

Another cheap thrill and the memories lie on that coffee table.

I never met a real, true gang member before. I did through Lobo once, three of them. The Latin Kings, or soldiers from them, showed up at his home to watch a football game. Three black men, all accessorized in red (I guess “colors” do mean something) sat down around the TV with Lobo and I. Why were members of the Latin Kings in his home? I come to find out that if you want buckets of cocaine, you go straight to the source, and Lobo had one hell of an addiction, so bad he was having seizures from it. This started ten years ago he told me.

One of the Kings kept looking at me suspiciously. I guess so, my straight white hair makes me look like a judge that would send him up the river. The other two were more amiable and would talk. The game ended, they left and I never met them again. It was a little disconcerting, as I never ran in those circles before. I wouldn't by choice either.

A few weeks later, I get a panicky phone call from Lobo who wouldn't tell me why he needed me to drive him to some spot in Providence that night. I asked about his car, it was fine...then why me? I got no answer.

My personal smoke detector started screaming. I never showed up. I haven't seen him in over 13 years.

As Vin would've asked this time around, “What wasn't in this dream.” I asked myself that and realized this, when I was driving around in that Mercedes, I wasn't comfortable. There was an air of “threat” in that dream as I had it.

I wonder where Lobo and his inherited money is now?

Sir?

Not much happening so I'll bore with day to day trivialities.

I used to dye my hair. I had been doing it on and off since I was twenty-five. By thirty-five, I was completely white, Steven Martin hair if you will. At that age I was still young enough to believe I was still “with it” and vain enough. A few years ago, I gave it up as it's a pain in the ass and I'm not paying CVS their outrageous prices for Miss Clairol #14. Painting your hair is nearly the same as painting the ceiling, you ought to put drop clothes around to avoid the splatter. Guess what I didn't do when I dyed my hair. Hint: Clorox takes colorant off your bathroom walls.

Now that I have this mop of white hair, there are times when I'm reminded how people will judge me for it.

There's a Quickie Mart nearby my house, run by a group of Jordanians. I hit it up enough so that the owner knows my name. But last week, he had hired another much younger Jordanian who was in his early 20's and he was running the register when I showed up. He had no idea who I was.

As I was leaving the store, with a stuffed bag full of 2 liter Coke bottles and a ProJo in the other hand, I was trying to open the door, with some difficulty. I have a habit of that, doing things on my damned own no matter how incapacitated I may be. So, as I'm fumbling with the door handle, I don't see the young Jordanian run up behind me and say:

“Sir! Sir! Let ME do that!”

Before I can say a word, the kid takes the soda and opens the door, goes to my car, opens that and puts the goods on the passenger seat. He spins around with this silly smile. He looked like he just earned his “Good Citizenship” badge for the Boy Scouts.

I'm now stuck in that situation where I have to thank the kid and at the same time, feel a bit miffed as I'm not 75 yet.

“OK...thanks” I say.

I ride home, miffed still and look in the rear view mirror and see that pile of white hair. “Jesus...is that what ALL 20 somethings see if I happen to pass by?” Guess so...

**

I got a laptop the other day, so I can have access to the great Internet anywhere I may go. I need the power of a computer vs. a damn iPhone. So, after stripping out all that pre-loaded crap that Microsoft loves to put on, I install my own programs. Most of this went well until the damned thing hung up and wouldn't install a defragmenter I use vs. Microsoft's.

“God Dammit! Do it you fuckin' abacus!” I then smacked the side of it. I then had a flashback to my own Dad when he was trying to get a mower running one summer afternoon. He was yanking on the cord, priming the carb with gas and swearin' and cussin' and hittin' the machine. I hate to say it but watching Dad get infuriated with a dumb machine was kind of funny, though I was careful enough not to laugh out loud.

I sat at the kitchen table and realized I was doing the same thing to the laptop.

Like father, like son...

**

In Stop and Shop today...

“Excuse me...Sir?” I hear from behind me.

Oh, Christ..there's that “Sir” again. I turn around and there's this little, dried up raisin of an old man.

“Can you reach that? The jelly..the Trappist jelly? The marmalade one? He asks.

I get it for him. He drops it into his basket and tells me that he'll eat that jar in two days flat. “I don't care anymore...I'm 77...I eat anything I want now.” He ambles off and gets three boxes of Count Chocula for his basket as well.

Sound thinking for a 77 year old. What? His future includes winning the Iditarod?

When I shop, half of me is chiding myself for purchasing calorie bomb type foods, the other half is throwing a temper tantrum about getting it now! Alot of times, I walk away and get the more sensible foods. I then think of that elderly guy I met minutes ago and then shove that kielbasa I was eyeing into my basket.

“Life's short...do it up.” I say to myself. C'mon...400 years from now this decision won't even matter!

Here's a recipe for Glop I adore.

Make enough rice to feed Peking. Get long grain and not that crap Minute Rice. I've had that “rice in a mesh bag” and it tastes like the mesh.

Slice up red, green and yellow pepper, celery. Dice some onion, smash some garlic. Amounts don't matter, just do it to taste. Slice up the kielbasa into coin-like pieces. Got snow peas? Great, use them too. Anything else lying around in the fridge? Toss it in!

Fry up the kielbasa halfway to release the grease and remove for later, then toss in the veggies to saute to your liking. Remove. Put the kielbasa in again and then fry that to Kingdom Come till you get that carmelization on the pan. Don't be an idiot and go to the next room to watch TV, you'll burn it!

Either toss in water or white wine (if you're feeling snobbish) to deglaze that pan and reduce it, but not all of it. Toss in your rice and mix around til it turns into a disgusting brown, greasy mess. Add the veggies, kielbasa back and toss around again. Salt the fuck out of it if you like that and fill a bowl with too much and eat it. Get up again and refill that bowl to eat again if you so wish. Realize your adding ounces to your waistline and remember why you did this in the first place. Because a little old man reminded you of how short life is...

Psychedelia and Paste

Jesus, they're dying like flies. Now Paul Kantner is dead from a mediocre diagnosis as a heart attack. He didn't flame out ripped on DMT while racing his car over a cliff. No, he died of something any medical coder of ICD-9 regularly types in, Code 410.

I expect more to start being toe tagged soon due to commonplace causes.

I haven't played any of my Jefferson Airplane cd's in a while so I put a few on. As they played, I kept getting memories of cutting construction paper, gluing it and whatnot in Miss Eno's 4^th grade class. Why there? I had been reminded that she'd play her acid rock albums in class while we kids were busy eating paste and doing “artsy stuff.” It was nice time, being 9 years old and relaxed, hearing reverb guitars in the background, Grace Slick screaming away and making a collage of badly cut out animals.

I think hearing a song like “Triad” was completely lost on us kids then, what did we know of menage a trois? I'd hum along absentmindedly while John Ashburn, next to me, smeared paste on his all over his shirt. Meanwhile Slick was asking about the demand to choose amongst her two boyfriends, “”Why can't I have both of you?” I wonder where John is now? Great kid he was then.

This class was where we had our first “encounter group” though we didn't know it. Think of group therapy with a teacher guiding it. She was trying to deflate any long standing friction between various kids and cliques. I actually thought it fun because she assured us that “telling the truth” of what you're feeling was perfectly A-OK. The funny thing is that it actually worked, thought it needed booster shots every two weeks or so as newer issues would pop up between kids. Mostly the girls though, as they get their roots deep into each other and all hell breaks loose if someone's feeling are hurt. Even at 9, girls have doctorates in that. It wasn't for years until I learned in college that it was Fritz Perls, at Esalen, who popularized those groups. Shit. Miss Enos trying to reproduce her own little Esalen in Pawtucket. Ah, she didn't do too bad of a job copying Perls.

She moved onto one to one therapy one time. I went through a bastardized version of Transactional Analysis (another 70's pop psychological movement) with her. Put three chairs in front of you and each chair is either the “child, adult or parent.” You sit in each chair and from that perspective, you talk of an issue from that particular perspective. You have to jump from chair to chair, perspective to perspective quickly and lo and behold, you get all sorts of personal insights. That does happen but whether it really solves anything permanently is up to debate. I think it's been mostly discredited now. But in her class, we did it while it was thought to work.

I look back on all that and wonder why none of the parents stopped it or complained. Ahh...it wasn't so litigious back then either.

Miss Enos was thought of as a space truckin' loon by our principal, who was from an older school of thought. But what he probably didn't know or wish to accept, was that a good dose of counterculture was infiltrating his school quickly then. He lost complete control by 1975 and wisely tried not to prevent it.

Anyway, hearing the old Jefferson Airplane cd's again was cool...reminding me of the environment I grew up in back then. It's all memories now but what a hell of a time to be part of. You can't get away with this shit now in classroom, though at times I think it might do some good, at least in teaching kids self determination..and to think on their own vs. listening to some adult who was a loser at life anyway (and I met plenty of them as a kid). 

Too Young to Know, Too Old to Care

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!

Puberty and Hair Rape

Montreal 1987. Either the Crescent or L'Europa hotel, I can't remember. A topic of conversation came up while we were all good and drunk where we discussing the first time jerking off. Don't worry, I won't go into the details but the jist of it all was the absolute eye opening surprise we all admitted to when we realized it was doable and what it felt like. I can remember my comment and contribution to the exchange, “I damn near fell down in the shower!”

That ends that topic. Here's the other one.

Every young teen boy hasn't much clue how to approach a girl, nor did I. My very, very first attempt, at 14, was completely unconscious and without malevolent motivation. I don't know what came over me.

It happened while we were all lined up in Mr Agilillo's science class, getting ready to be marched to cafeteria for lunch period. We used to pronounce his name as Angi-Lilly-O. He'd constantly correct us, “It's Angi-Lilo,” but we never did say it correctly. Anyways...I was standing there looking into the blonde hair of this small girl, Bethany. I kept looking and noticed how fine and soft it looked. I guess the entire world fell away as the only thing mattered was her hair, otherwise I probably wouldn't have done what I was about to do.

I reached out and started petting it. This was completely unconscious, impulsive and w/o any malicious content. I had to feel her hair, something in me demanded it. So I did it.

I got about three strokes in when Bethany spun around, held up her hand and her fingers splayed out with those tiny razor sharp nails pointing at me. I leaned back quickly expecting to be scratched. She never did. We both just stood there, looking at one another for a second or two when...

...every kid there who saw it, yell out a collective “Whoa!” That's quickly followed by accusations of my “falling in love” with her, or a “Ron likes Bethany!” The poor girl, she turned beet red and she herself, being a young teen girl, had NO idea on how to handle it. I think I turned the same color too.

Bethany then starts to get angry, more probably at the attention we both were receiving. She blurts out, “I'm gonna get my brothers to kick your ASS!” She's then circled by the other girls, to provide protection against a rapist like me.

“Wha—Wha—What?” I say to her. I felt at the moment I had done nothing wrong. The bell rings and we're all marched to the lunchroom. Within minutes, I totally forget the whole episode as not counting for anything. Big f'ing deal. The boys who surrounded me at the same lunch table we all sat at, asked me NO questions. It was forgotten...I figured.

But the girls wouldn't let it go. I completely violated her personal space. The rest of the day they get very inquisitive about my motives, ask me Q's about “Do I like Bethany” or this one which was more common, “Why don't you apologize to her?” I felt neither one was worth my time or effort. I felt it was nothing as soon as it was over. But as the school day passed, they were easily getting riled up as they ruminated over it. I was finally warned by another girl I “ought to” apologize because Bethany was getting really pissed over it and all the attention she was getting. Not from me, but the attention she was getting from the other girls about the incident.

I figured I had better too eventually as I didn't want this to spiral out of control and meet her nutcase brothers on the street. Plus, it would probably end the girls interrogation of Bethany about it all.

I managed to get her alone. Alone being out of earshot of the other girls who had initially circled the wagons around her. I made a half sincere, shitty young teen boy apology to her. It worked though. Out of deep curiosity, she asks:

“Why did you do it? She was confused, being a just turned fourteen year old girl. She had no experience to process this or even how to respond to it.

I tell her that I didn't know why. I really didn't. I just did it. I wanted to feel her hair. I think when I mentioned that it was very soft is what cooled her jets. A compliment. No lie, it was surprisingly soft to me. I had felt girl's hair a zillion times when I was younger, romping on lawns, through games and such, but this time it was WAY different.

Later that day, I sat in Judy Stachurski's English class and as she sat at her desk, shot me this look and then started giggling.

“Oh Jesus” I think to myself, “Even the teachers know now.”

Know What They Do to Your 401k?

The Tibra Computer. It ain't a Bank of Fridges on Sale.

What's in the Basement of Money Center Banks

Those aren't supercomputers for NASA, NOAA or some research university. They're high frequency trading supercomputers. These are what the Big Boys use to trade stocks. High frequency trading is a legal form of theft. Like the name suggests, these computers can make millions of trades in a second and all they hope to do is make ONE single penny on a trade. Think that's crap money? Here's a lesson in cumulative effect.

.01 x 1,000,000 TRADES PER FUCKING SECOND = $10,000

It's been estimated that now, in 2016, perhaps 90% of all stock trades are between these computers. There are real humans out there still trading, but since retail stock trading is dinosaur slow, it no longer counts for the majority of trades in a day now. My supposedly “fast” desktop is an abacus compared to what Goldman Sachs or Societie Gernerale has in their basements.

Another thing, stocks aren't traded in NYC anymore, not really. That news story you see of guys running around on the floor or when you hear the bell ringing the open or the ending of the trading day is just a remnant now. The real gaming goes on at the NYSE Euronext Data Center in Mahwah, NJ in a 400,000 sq ft building.

This is where it's all done now. The Force Awakens Looks like this, No? Your 401k is in there somewhere.

High frequency traders aren't just satisfied with satellites, microwave transmitters either. They've now opted to use laser data transfer over the air because microwave tech is too damn slow! More of these transmitters are being installed on the radio masts in Mahwah. 

So, how does these buggers screw you in a trade? They have myriad ways. One is front running, where a trading company fucks over their own clients on information. Since their supercomputers can process this info faster, they can beat a few thousand dollars out of their own clients who are late in catching up. The lesson here? Never trust a bank or trading house to look out for your investments because today, they'll rip off their own customers.

This is legal.

Another sleazy way is called market making. Their computers will toss out thousands of fake buy or sell orders where they have no intention of finally executing them. It's an “intention to buy or sell” but never puts out. They can move a stock's price by this alone. So, they can make a herd of blind traders move up or down, and scalp them as they pass by.

This too is legal.

So, how do you beat the fuckers? You NEVER place a market order where they can beat your ass silly by raising a price on a stock you're trying to buy or pushing it down when your trying to sell. Their damn computers will chase your trade and try to trip you up.  You place limit orders, but even with those, they try to screw with you too but it's much harder.

What these computers do has nothing to do with determining whether say, Apple is a good buy today or if they should unload Exxon stock. The financial health, future earnings of a compnay has shit to do with it anymore.

It's all about watching herd behavior in the market and getting ahead of it or manipulating it. These computers see every trade, attempt to trade, every trend. They even filter news stories that are breaking in order to get a second or two ahead of everyone else in order to scalp you.

That nutbag who shot up his office Christmas party last month in California? The computers were trading that information, knowing it would depress the markets, before most people heard the story. If they can do it for two minutes, it's enough to make thousands.

You think betting on the Patriots is dicey, play this game instead.