Die Young, Stay Pretty

 

 

That's Gia Carangi. She was called the world's first super model and up-ended the industry back in the late 70's when all they promoted were tall, thin ash blonde women. Gia shows up as a stark opposite and threw those models off the magazine covers left and right. She was also one of the very few models who used little or no makeup whatsoever, she didn't need it. If you get that famous that fast, the notable photographers like Richard Avedon beg you for a shoot.

However, growing up in shitty circumstances like she did, learning and enjoying being feral as an early teen didn't help her in adulthood. She was raised in a crazy household and that doesn't teach you about how to anchor your life to some secure point nor find a harbor in a storm. So, get real rich and famous as a young adult and knowing nothing of how to navigate life, you smash up on the rocks quickly.

Before Gia discovered drugs while in NYC people said was a charm to be around. No negativity or darkness. However, the drug usage grew (lastly heroin) and due to this and a host of other problems, she became too unreliable, too erratic to be employed in the fashion business. Her bouts of anger, storming out of photo sessions or not even showing up at all wasn't helping her career along much. The photographers began to complain of the track marks on her arms and tried to touch them up in the developing room. It wasn't long after when no one would hire her.

She burnt through her cash and ended up homeless in NYC's shooting galleries. Feeling sick one day, she goes to the hospital and after a bunch of tests, she was found positive for the AIDs virus from sharing needles. This was the mid 80s when this diagnosis was a death sentence.

She died in 1986 and from what those saw who visited her then, she was emaciated and covered head to toe in those skin cancers AIDs patients were prone too. It was months later that the fashion industry had learned of her passing and just one photographer friend from then, sent a Mass card to her parents. Otherwise the business did nothing to remember her.

To replace the mega bucks Carangi used to bring into the agencies and recreate that “look,” they found Cindy Crawford and the fashion world dubbed her, “Baby Gia.” 

Angelina Jolie played Gia in a biopic and said about her character: "When she's free and just being herself, she's unbelievable; that's the tragedy of Gia's story. You think, 'God, Gia didn't need drugs -- she was a drug.'"

 

**

I'll have to be careful about how I write this next story and the reason why is that you're not so supposed to speak ill of the dead or disparage their reputation. So I'll have to tread carefully but tell the truth as well as I can. Yes, the person I will speak of is dead and has been so for over 20 year now I believe. I'll call her Gia.

Since I'm an awful stalker on Google looking up people I used to know, I looked up Gia and she didn't exist. So I put a search through Google images and the first picture that showed up shocked me. I swore it was Gia. The picture linked to a Facebook account that was open and I hit it up.

It was Gia's daughter. I had found out at Gia's death that she had two kids but that's all I knew. The girl on the Facebook page looked like a ghost I knew from long ago. This spectre I saw was a near clone of Gia from then. Spooooky! I never bothered “friending” because all I had were the ugly stories about her Mom.

**

I briefly hung at “Horton's Lot” by the Teknor Apex Chemical complex as a late teen. More truthfully, I was pestered and dragged to hang there by J, who for some reason liked those kids. They all were your real lower blue class types. Their parents worked in shit factory jobs then and because they and their kids were closer to “the street,” they were rougher and more prone to pound the shit out of each other, including the girls.

J. and I show up one night at the lot and Gia (16), Eric(19) and Sue (17) hop into my car and we take off to drive around aimlessly. I had known Eric from the lot but not the two girls. So after a bunch of “Hi's” we talk and listen to the radio. The two girls were pretty in their own right but Gia had something else...a cuteness...a personality that was very engaging. Her heart was in the right place and that can make a girl look even prettier. It's that freshness anyone has, before life beats the shit out of you. Hopeful, full of energy and showed promise. I knew many teens then who were already wrung through wringer and were too soon ruined. But not Gia. Not yet.

Eric and Gia were in the back seat and from the conversation I figured out they were a couple. I had learned that as Gia was trying to hold Eric to a promise he'd “buy her those earrings” she saw at the flea market.

“That's it! Hold him to it!” yells Sue from the front seat to them. Girls must stick together you know! For about thirty minutes the chatter from the back seat is typical teen couple shit, arguing somewhat with protestations of love seconds later.

After a bit, the back seat gets real quiet and I turn my head around to see what's gone wrong. I then see Gia's head slowly bobbing up and down on Eric's lap and I quickly turn my head back to driving. Whoops!, I shouldn't have seen that I think. Sue had turned around too but kept watching.

“Wow, this chick Gia doesn't care at all, and neither does this Sue.” I thought.

A few months go by and I get to know the two girls better. Gia was a pure goofball personality wise. It was a nice goofball mind you, nothing that would suggest malice at all. I figured there was some mental damage along the way that made her ditzy silly. But the problem with that is that there was plenty of pot, coke and pills then and if she took any of those at all, her ditzyness was raised 300%. That also made her an easy target for the boys as well. When the beer and pot made her brains run out of her ears, her panties ran off too. Apparently, the girls of that little clique at Horton's Lot didn't really care that she was like this. Your lower classes start early when it comes to anything “adult.” To add to that, we were just out of the 70s where shctupping anyone you wanted was fine.

I was there at the Lot for a few months when I started to hear my inner smoke detector going off. The boys at that lot were far too willing to be pre-criminals and I could see where this was going to lead, graduated criminals with degrees from the ACI. I didn't want to be associated with this and as the old saying goes, 'You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.' So I stopped going there.

No loss. I wasn't about to caught up in their little petty conspiracies and car thefts. Also, I had turned myself into Mr. College Kid by then and that was the path I wanted to follow.

But, on occasion, we'd drive by there and stop for a few minutes because someone from our original haunt in Slater Park had wanted to go and one night I saw Gia again.

She was high as shit. She had shaved one side of her head down to crew cut style and swept the rest of her long hair over the other side into this puffed up 80s style. She wore torn jean cut-off shorts and her tee shirt was tied up into a mid riff. She was bouncing from car to car, sloppy drunk. When she had some to ours I was already outside, leaning against the hood

“Ronnnnnny!” She had remembered me. I got the hug and sloppy lush's kiss and she had asked me how I was and all that. Before I could get her into a conversation, she had seen something shiny over there and ran off. She still possessed that nice open hearted innocence in her but she was a mess. Life, I guess, even in her state, had not made her bitter and ugly yet. Or perhaps she was too numb to notice anyways. Perhaps she wanted it that way.

By my car, on the side walk against the fence, were three girls I had remembered who still hung at the Lot. After Gia had run off the girls made their pronouncements to themselves.

“Fuck...what a pig!” “Wonder what different kinds of DNA will be in her stomach tonight?” “God...she's sooo disgusting!” The panel of judges ruled her as a bonafide skank and this, coming from girls, is solid sentence of social death.

This, coming from real lower class girls who lost their virginity by early 15 and who could beat on a Pawtucket cop w/o any reservation if need be. That's a heavy judgment when your condemned by them!

Those girls could tell I had heard that and one says, “You haven't been here in a while...you know what Gia's doing now?” I'm asked.

“Her Mom threw her out of the house....she's been fuckin' n' suckin' guys for a places to live now...the last one let her sleep in his car only!”

Then a couple of years go by w/o seeing her.

**

J. who used to bug me to go to Horton's Lot to begin with, now had a small apartment on Barton St. He was in a longish process of leaving RI anyways so our crew didn't visit him much. He was on his way. But one night he had gotten ahold of me and said Gia was just recently staying with him.

Gia and I were alone in my car as J. had gone back inside. She looks at me and asks, “Do you have a washing machine and dryer...J doesn't and this building doesn't either.” Gia's entire life was in a Hefty bag she had thrown in the back seat of my Nova.

I thought about it...and gave in.

She looked haggard now for a 20 year old. Her hair was a bit greasy and you could see the skull pushing through her face a bit. She had lost quite a bit of weight when she had no reason to begin with. She just looked plain worn out and tired. That bouncy ditz I knew were replaced by a look in the eye I've seen in schizophrenics, it's a wolf's look that's always on guard, ready to spot any danger at anytime and ready to flee, or pounce. Those stupid jokes she used to tell weren't needed as they no longer served her, that was substituted by hard core survival duplicity and strategy. Life had sure changed her these past years.

She tells me to leave and blow off J., to just leave him at his apartment.

“He thinks he's gonna get some but fuck that!' she tells me. I guess she was tired of that as well and had an ounce of dignity left.

We get to my house and I sneak her in, then down stairs and she starts dumping her clothing into the machine. She then walked away from me over by the furnace to block my view but I can see somewhat. She pulls off her tee shirt and quickly puts on as far too large sweat shirt I had for her. When she pulled that shirt, I saw her stomach and it had about 6-8 largish mosquito bites with bruising all around them. What was weird was that the mosquito that bit her loved Euclidean geometry, a nice straight line of them.

It hit me what those marks were. “Well, at least she ain't mainlining it.” I thought.

The wash took a couple of hours so we took off driving and I hear about her life, as she told it but it was full of lies and horseshit, trying to cover up what a mess it was now. I didn't bother to extract the truth out of her, what was the point? I let her ramble on.

We get back and collect her stuff and she says to go back to J's house and I drop her off there.

Another five years go by.

Snippets of her life came to us in dribs and drabs. She was living in the shittier parts of Providence. I heard nothing more till around 1999.

**

Rhode Island is a small town. You will hear about people you haven't seen in decades eventually. Since I was friends with the EMT crews on Pawtucket's fire department, I'd hear all sorts of weird stories and on rare occasions of calls these guys went on where we knew the person.

I was talking to D and we were hitting old memories when I mentioned Gia.

“Oh, shit..I was on that call.” D says.

“What call?” I had no idea where this was going.

“Ok...we get a call that two kids were across the street from their home, telling their neighbor's that 'Mom won't wake up.' So the neighbor shrewdly kept the kids at his house and he goes across the street. He was the one who called.”

“We found her in her bed, dead as a door nail. The cops and medical examiner have to come so we wait and when they arrive, they find out who she was...I swear, they knew what to look for and they found it, needles, pills, heroin and the works.” Like I said, in RI, your life is known by all.

I say, “Wow, she finally did it! Straight down!”

“Not really,” D goes on, “her life went to total shit and she got into a rehab program, managed to get off of it, get a job, rent that house and got her kids back from the state. What the medical examiner suspects, she fell off the wagon, got the drugs and shot herself to the moon. She fucked up dosing herself.”

She was 28.

Since it was the Pawtucket FD that went on that call, I asked D. “Where was this house? I didn't know she was back in Pawtucket again.”

“Hell, it's three blocks from YOU...Over by Beverage Hill...It's a good area, a nice house too, clean inside, lawn cut and all.”

I had no idea she was less than a half mile from me, or that she had gone that way.

**

  

It's been years since I used to sneak back to Gia's daughter's Facebook page just to look her photos, all grown up at 22. “You have Mom's face...you're Gia.” I'd say to myself. After a bit I stopped looking, you process stuff from the past and move on. It's what we all do.

 

Canoga Park

 

 

Being 14 years old was great for me. It was the first year after my Dad's death which meant I could do any goddamn thing I wanted, and I did mostly without getting caught. It also was the first year of hitting puberty but that's not what we're here for, but you get the point. A host of all sorts of new discoveries open up for you. So, being 14 for me was like standing up the entire time on a roller coaster ride, hanging onto the safety bar for dear life.

This must have happened to you countless times. You meet someone for a few weeks and they make an impression on you. Then, as quickly as they showed up, they flew away, never to be seen again. I had that experience with a 14 year old kid who was from California.

His name was Tim. The first time we had seen him, he had walked down our street and stopped to talk to us which was weird to begin with. No stranger just stops to talk to you in New England and if they do, your suspicion is greatly aroused. “What...Do you want from me?” is forefront in your mind. But he being a Californian, it's totally natural to do so but we didn't know they were like that.

Tim looked different too and I couldn't put my finger on it till I was much older. We New England kids, especially the boys, dressed with whatever it was our parents could afford. In the late 70's it was a lot of tee shirts or flannel shirts for the winter and the ubiquitous jeans and sneakers. That didn't change too much over time. And there was no attention paid to whether any of what we were wearing “clashed.” Our hair then was longish and not always “kept.” We were sort of sloppy looking. The girls of our neighborhood were constrained by their parent's budget but did a much better job at looking presentable...except for a few who were accursed gutter slop muppets, never to be salvaged from their sad state. There was Rose Mary, a missing front-toothed, malevolent as hell bitch who, if she threatened to beat your ass, you had to sit up and took notice.

Tim just looked...”right...” all the time. I found out why so much later. He was a Californian and they tend to be a bit shallow when it comes to their “look.” They spend more time than most getting it accurate. His hair was styled after Barry Gibb and neat. His jeans were spotless, ironed and creased. Any shirt he wore was ironed as well. His sneakers were impeccable, as if they were new, perpetually new. Our sneakers looked like shit. Our Keds were stained, torn, falling apart or some awful color no one should purchase, like puke green. Hell, the sneakers under my desk right now are ratty as shit. Some things never change!

On top of that Tim was fully tan in June. None of us Irish or Polish kids ever gained a tan till late August. We burned, turned red, peeled then got slightly darker. Tim on the other hand “worked” on his tan and should've been in an ad for Hawaiian Tropic, the Golden Boy. I don't think any of us ever laid out in the sun to “work” on it but he would. If we tanned, it was an accidental tee shirt tan.

Then, anything that came from California was “with it” and cool, or so we East kids felt. Any fad or style that came to us, first came from LA. This was the 70s! Everything prior to 1980 was better! Sex didn't kill you because there was no AIDS, cocaine wasn't so pure as to cause addiction and skin cancer was pretty much unheard of. Being lily white in California was sooo uncool then. When it came to us, we tried but northern European genetics won't allow tans.

Tim made his way into our group fairly easily because we took a liking to him. His natural friendliness we found out was authentic (After our New England-y natural frostiness warmed after we found he didn't “want” anything from us) and he seemed fun to be around with.

So what the hell was he doing in...Pawtucket?

He told us that his Dad was a salesman for a large company and that he lived in Braintree but was staying with his grandmother a few streets over for a while.

Where was his Mom we asked.

“Oh, my parents are getting divorced, so I get to live on both coasts if I want too.”

That really struck me as I had NEVER met anyone whose parents were divorced. We all have heard of it but never met anyone going through or living it. Around here at the time, marrieds stayed together, even if there were weekly scream fests we all could hear a street away. None of the kids I knew at school had divorced parents either. It would take a few more years before our little world learned the phrase, “irreconcilable differences” and what a boon that was to marrieds who wanted nothing but OUT.

“Where are you from..where were you born?” J asked.

“Canoga Park...” Tim says

And...we just stare clueless.....Duuuuuuhhhh...What's a Canoga Park?

“Canoga Park...Ya know...The Valley?” 

We all looked dopey to him when he finally says loudly...

”LOS ANGELES!”

“Oh yeah, that...Yeah, We know it” we all chimed in, finally getting it but that lead still gave us no idea to where Canoga Park was.

**

One time, he and I were sitting on the curb near J.s house behind me, because it's summer and there's nothing to do but waste time when he asks me:

“You know anyone who has 'ludes?”

“Ludes?” I say.

“Yeah, ya know, mandrakes, 714's, lemons...”

I have no clue.

“You have no idea what they are do you?” he says.

So I, being a 14 year old boy and having to seem as worldly as he is say,

“I know! I know! It's just that it's dry here now for them!” It was total bullshit. I hadn't the slightest idea what they were.

Later on that night, I ask my older brother, who was at Providence College at the time, what a lude was.

He turns around and with a shit eating grin and almost accusingly asks:

“Why...do YOU want to know what a lude is?”

So I tell him Tim was asking for them.

He had met and known Tim from seeing him with our gang and figured it out.

“He's from Los Angeles right? Quaaludes are like Tic Tacs there. They're legal and wicked popular.” He had seen some around his college but they weren't as popular as cocaine was. Quaaludes were so well liked because there was no real damage from doing them daily. They were invented as a kick ass sleeping pill. If you could get past the first 30 mins of drowsiness and stay awake the euphoria you felt after was great.

I, and our gang, knew Tim was just 14, but as we got to know him we realized he was older than that. He was far more grown up than we first thought.

And I and the gang, were getting jealous.

All kids want to seem more grown up than they are. We were no exception. We bragged to one another about our worldly knowledge, things we never did but claimed to have. It was typical teen boy posturing. But, Tim was doing it, living it. He was real.

I remember the feeling I started to have. I knew I had deficits in seeming cool, successful and such. Compared to him, I was lagging and I wanted to catch up.  Being a young teen, I had no idea on how to improve it except for one.

I suspected Tim of having SECRET KNOWLEDGE and I wanted that. I wasn't alone apparently, others began to desire that too. What secret knowledge? Looking back on it, it was just plain confidence and probably growing up way too fast for his years. He just had more experience than we possessed. We looked up to that and very much desired to know what he knew. 

And did I ever want to know what he knew. You couldn't just ask him, that would come out as sooo dweebish raised to the nth power. So you do what all kids do, watch and emulate as best as you can.

In this neighborhood, we were strip mall-rat kids. The plaza on Armistice Blvd. was our Sherman Oaks Galleria. We just hung out there like our older sisters and brothers would. One of the stores we hung out in was a CVS. Usually the first week of the month because the new magazines came in and we would read them, but never buy them. Why do that?

So one day Tim comes along with us to CVS and as we enter, I see Nicole S. and a couple of her friends down the girl's beauty aisle.

Nicole...was born fairly pretty and between 13 to 14, sprouted these big Hollywood tits in a damn hurry. We boys were sort of amazed by her. She seemed soo much older than us but she wasn't. I think we all tried to talk to her but being that young, we knew jack shit about girls. If anything, any talk we had with her degenerated into talking to the other boys around and trying to seem as tough as we could. Again, more posturing. It's no wonder you girls couldn't figure boys out because we were horrible at talking to you! What can you learn if you see a boy put another boy in a headlock in a CVS? He's signaling to you about how strong he is but you didn't know that! All you wanted to know was what he's really like on the inside.

Tim's ahead of us as we enter the CVS and he sees the girls and stops as bit. He then goes over to a frisbee display and grabs one, and waiting till their gaze was elsewhere.....then lightly flies it down the aisle till it sort of bounced off Nicole's arm. As it he let it go he followed it quickly down the aisle. In a few seconds he was with them.

“Oh hey! I'm sorry! I wanted to see how this frisbee was...I didn't hurt you right?” says Tim.

Nicole and the girls were taken by surprise.

“I'm Timmy....I live on Liberty St...I used to live in California! Hi!”

Nicole immediately starts talking to him and she and Tim have an easy banter going back and forth. As he is talking, I see him touch her arm and compliment her tan. Tim says something else and Nicole is laughing.

I stood there, watching this and all I thought was:

“How..the FUCK...was he ABLE...to do THAT!??”

My jealousy scale ran off scale high. I mean it's pegged all the way up. I bet my mouth was half open in amazement too. What he just did, was magic to me.

I probably had that thought again, “He DOES have secret knowledge!! I knew it!!” The other thought I knew was this...”Oh PLEASE! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! How you did that!!!”

So after few, he leaves the girls and returns to us.

We boys were silent. We just saw a Jedi Mind Trick Nicole was unaware of the whole time.

“These aren't the droids you're looking for...” (waves hand)

“These aren't the droids we're looking for...”

Or what it looked like to us young teen boys.

Tim: “You'll slide your jeans off...” (waves frisbee)

Nicole:  (Eyes all hypnotic n stuff) “I will slide my jeans off...”

In seconds, he got her attention, talked to her, managed to leave a good impression then leave her like he didn't care about her at all.

I know our boy brains were flat lining the whole time we looked at Tim. “What did we just see? How is it possible?”

Since I couldn't ask him how...that again would seem desperate, I resolved to be with him when we were near girls and I'd go with him if he hit any up, or just plain talked to them. My radar was on HIGH adsorbing anything..anything at all. I WILL get this secret knowledge!

**

Weeks later, Tim stopped coming around. We didn't give it much mind till one of us spoke up about it. We then all went to his Grandmother's house to get him.

“Timmy's gone home to his Mom's...to California.” she told us.

I think we were all let down by that news. He was cool. We were a bit miffed he hadn't said a word about that but that was his lifestyle, moving here and there. It was nothing to him. We never saw him again.

**

Twenty-five years later, I was working at a place in Pawtuxet Village and I had walked down the hall and saw a group of three women and one who was pretty cute. I reached into my pocket, took out my car keys and flung them down the hall. They slid all the way to her feet. As I walked up to her I said, “Ugh! I'll lose these things if I'm not more careful...I'm Ron by the way, you new? You just start here...?”

Thanks Timmy!

 

 

 

 

 

First Concert, My Dual Life as a Kid

 

 

 

So this one will be happier, that last piece I wrote pissed some off...ah, I'll continue to upload my life on here...regardless of what others think.

I was thinking on some of the best moments of my life and my first concert comes to mind, Frank Zappa. Yeah, it's an odd one but I had been bitten by the bug only because my brother would buy his albums and try to learn the leads. At first hearing of Zappa, you think, “What the fuck is this shit? It's awful!” But since it was playing in the background all the time, it slowly worked its way into me. I had been used to the 120 beat from 70's mainstream rock and the ever present disco, so Zappa took some time to “get.”

I was 14 and had thought I knew everything there was, till we hit the Providence Civic Center that night. I had never seen, in real life, a throng of freaks and weirdos like that were there. No one was violent, in fact, it was probably as docile as a Grateful Dead concert, but I had only seen hippies and freaks mostly on TV and none at the Civic Center were from the Manson Family.

The ticket cost..and you're going to throw up, $7.50. You can't get a decent burger for that now. Once we got through the ticket style and passed the security guards, we found our seats and of course, being the first time in there, I thought it was huge. Then it may have held 13,000 people and I had never seen that many in one place. The seats weren't bad at all, we saw the stage w/o too many obstructions considering they still piled the sound equipment on the stage, those line arrays they hang from the ceiling today hadn't been invented yet.

The lights go down and a few seconds later, a spotlight hits Zappa and he rips into “Keep It Greasy.” Everyone stands up including me. About 20 seconds into playing he stops and says in the mic, “Hey, sit down all of you, you'll be here as while, you're also fucking the PA up!”

By the end of the song, my brother had passed me a joint and then about three more were passed between him and me two other of his friends that had come. I was fairly baked. And that's when I could stand being high. Not now..oh noooo.

It's an old maxim but you can't just hear rock music, you have to feel it colliding with your chest as well. The song City of Tiny Lights has a guitar solo and what I liked the best, a deep synthesizer following up. That just thumped into my chest and then I knew why you go to concerts. 

The half time intermission comes and the main lights go on and I saw this, a massive slow moving cloud of marijuana smoke drifting inside the place. I had looked at a Providence cop who was stationed on the floor and...he didn't care. That was a first for me. With the lights up, this was my thought because I had never seen a crowd like that assembled before. “I bet Roman Emperors felt like I do...before the crowd..in awe...happy...” I imagined that I was Caesar, soaking it all in. Don't forget I was 14 and stoned to my gills.

During this half time, another joint was lit and by the time it got to me, I had it in my lips and for some reason I looked over my left shoulder and while sucking on it, I see a women three or four rows back staring back at me, my Goff Hr High English teacher.

“Oh...fuck.” I think as I turn away fast.

I turned back to see her again and she was staring straight ahead like I had never existed.

“Whoops..” I thought.

Looking back on it now, what the hell was she going to do? She was a Zappa concert and a fairly young teacher to boot. She was 70's “with it.”

The concert finishes up and I can remember walking back to the car, commenting on how my ears are ringing and asking my brother will it ever end? I was assured it would. I thought I'd be deaf forever.

We ended up at Sambos restaurant in EP after. Yeah, I know, it's in poor taste but there was such a place then and the food was good. I sat there, still stoned retelling all the songs I heard to my brother over and over again. The waitress was amused as well. First times for everything!

**

The next day was a school day and I had wondered, what, if anything, would transpire between that young English teacher and me when we met in class. So I go, sit down and she comes in, scans the class and our eyes met. I think we looked at one another for, what felt like a good 20 seconds, each sort of acknowledging last night and...then she just went on with the class. OK good, no news is good news.

There was one thing she did a week later that made me suspicious a long time after. Teachers were great for sending another teacher, usually a close work friend, notes. They'd recruit one of us kids to be the courier and it was a nice five minutes out of class.

So, English teacher asks me to deliver a sealed envelope to a Miss Van Dale, a blonde teacher all the young teen boys were enamored with and to wait to see if there's a response. No problem, I'll do it.

So I go into van Dale's class, watch her rip it open, read it and then she shoots a look at me I can't understand. It was sort of a mouth half opened, surprised look on her face. No teacher had ever looked at me like that. She just stares at me...then finally regains her composure.

“You want to send a note back?” I ask her.

“Uhhh....Noooo...” she says haltingly.

I leave wondering, “What the fuck was that about?” and forget that weird episode five minutes later.

I wonder if the note said, “This is HIM...This was who I saw at the Zappa concert”

Mind you I was an A student with a boring, stable reputation at Goff. My second life around my neighborhood was a different matter that the school need never know.

**

Here's another example of how I was sort of found out, wrecking the preconceived notion of who I was. No drugs are in this story...

As I said before in my last piece, the other kids in the class thought what I did to easily learn class material was “magic” to them. One day in Mr Agililo's science class, the kids are asking me how the hell I can take a test so easily. Mr. Angililo was there, leaning against a chem table listening to this.

So I decide to tell the kids how I do it.

“OK, imagine a test question asks, “What color is the sky?” Let's say you have NO clue to what the answer is but you have heard it before, you just can't think of it now. You have four choices, “Blue, Turquoise, Black or Polka Dot.”

“You have to wean the answers down....tell me...which answers do you know are wrong right off the bat?”

“Black and Polka Dot!” they tell me. “Good..you're right.”

“Now, out of the last two, which is it, still make believe you don't know the real answer is 'blue'?”

The kids struggle...talking to one another about it, the pros and cons of each. Meanwhile, Angililo is still listening to us.

“If you struggle with the answer..fight to find it...you'll never get it right.” I tell the kids.

“Huh?”

“Here's what you do, relax, stare at the last two answers...breathe slow...slow yourself down...sort of like you're falling asleep....and keep repeating the two answers to yourself quietly...Blue....Turquoise...Blue...”

“Eventually, one of those answers, will come forward, make more sense...it'll drift from from the back of your head to the front....quietly.”

“That'll be the answer you choose.”

It was then Angililo pipes up.

“You know, that's a very Zen answer, what you just said.” he says.

I was taken aback by that and before I can answer he asks:

“You practice TM? (Transcendental Meditation). This was the late 70s so it was very popular, though many still thought it to be just more whackadoodle California hippy shit.

I don't answer right away because if I do, I'll be exposed to all these blue collar Irish, Polish and Portuguese Catholics who would probably would think I worshiped the Devil himself. I knew they never had heard of TM in their lives. If this gets out then I'll have to explain a whole lot more too as their suspicions of me will grow.

“Do you?” asks Angililo again.

I cave in...”Yes.”

One kid, a L. Amaral, shouts out...”Whoa! You take Tai Kwan Dao or something too?”

One kid understood it.

That of course gets the entire class all curious and ask her a million questions about it...then to me.

Shit, now I have to explain this...they ain't gonna get the first lines to the Tao Te Ching at all.

**

A week later, four of the kids come to me and say they got a higher grade on the last test Angililo gave. Ok, cool, 4 out of the 15 that were going to fail anyway managed to “get it.”

Do I still meditate? Not as much as I used to, but it's great in the dentist chair to keep me from panicking like I had always done before. Dentists are Nazis anyway, who can blame me?

If you know me in real life, you'll know I can spool away a story, from a vast amount I have, I love telling them. My memory from those years past is silly scary clear. However, while typing this out, I had to wonder did I take the ground beef out to defrost. I had to get up to make sure and yes, I had. I just damn well forgot I had done so. Short term memory is a problem for me!

 

 

Here's the first song I ever heard live, "Keep It Greasy."  This girl reminds me of my brother who used to do the same thing, try and learn Zappa.

 

June 1979...On How Some are Too Stupid to Realize There is Honey Instead of Vinegar

 

 

The problem with being a genius in school is that all the morons want the answers for free. OK, I wasn't a genius but I did damn well enough in school to get the attention of dullards who wanted a free ride. Eventually it irked the hell out of me to help them. Most of them, 98% were of the “I'm too damn lazy to do the work myself” and the last 2% really did need help. I wasn't pissed with the 2%. I would help them freely.

Like any jr high school, girls form their “best friend” cliques, until one of them ruins it all with a fight over God Knows What. Boys, money, gossip...mostly malicious gossip.

There was a clot of three girls who I detested because all three were congeniality stupid/lazy and would never ever stop pestering me for the “answers.” There's be a test we'd have to take in whatever class and I'd get the tap on the back or whatever to quickly show my paper to one as she took down the answers then showed the other two as well. We were rarely caught as the teachers were staring out the window or, as I found out later, allowed cheating because it raised the general grade in the class making the teacher look “good.” How do I know that? Because years later at a local bar, I sat with a few of my older teachers and some let loose that tidbit. (cough..cough..Mr. Coughlin of Gen Civics and American Gov't).

Back to those girls..

There was Sandra, the leader, who looked pretty damn butch and could fight any boy she wanted. She also was the biggest simpleton of that group. As we were all 14 or 15 years old, puberty had hit and the girls were trying their best to change from 12-13 year old tomboys to young ladies. New, sometimes bad attempts at mascara were tried. They wore perfume and forever brushed their Farrah Fawcett feathered hair styles. Sandra, I will say, never bothered with that shit at all. She dressed like a boy and her hair style was the Prince Valliant cut. She wasn't a dyke, as I found out later, she just wasn't feminine at all, nor cared to be till she hit high school.

Her two followers were Karen and Beth. Those two were prettier and tended to try to dress “nicer” and more “teen girl” as well as they could. But, being from real blue collar families they couldn't afford the latest fashion nor the new Jordache jeans that were out. Each of these two were pretty dumb as well but it was from lack of even trying in class. They figured out you could skate along, doing little as possible and still make it to the next grade. In Pawtucket schools then, (prob now too) you had to be drooling and falling down in the hallways before they'd ship you to that “other” school, otherwise, they'd pass you onto the next grade, even if you never learned to read, I saw a few of those. 

**

Many of those kids in my class swore that all I had to do, was read something once, and it stuck in my head...for years. That wasn't true, it took three repetitions to stick. That ability I did have. Anyways, I actually did the reading, homework and tried to get good marks. Doing these things actually helps  you pass the class, but it takes effort..WORK.

So, when the dimwits would hit me up for the information I started to get pissed. Why? Because I felt like I was a god damn Welfare Office handing out checks to those who could work, but won't. In fact, I said that to those three once and their reply was:

“HA, We're smart! We pass all the grades and don't work like YOU do!”

No joke, they said that. In their minds, they adopted the slave mentality of long ago...”Do enough work to keep the lash off your back.” Doing as little as possible was the smart way to go about it and what I was doing, studying, was Fool's Errand.

(Shit, I still see this in adults now)

The point being...I did the work and they tried to get a free ride off of my effort. I got tired of it.

So...after being too “nice” for too long I really started to hate them and any others who tried to climb onto my back so I'd carry them around like a baby in a papoose. Most could get a passing grade but were too lazy to do it. So, I cut them off. “Stand on your own two legs you welfare slop muppets!”

Holy Shit! Did they start to freak out. Their well was closed and there was little other way to pass the tests, except to study for them. To do the WORK required.

The third quarter exams were coming up and how they kept hounding me for schemes to set up in all classes to cheat off of me.

“Fuck No” I said.

So, being lower class drogs that they were, they resorted to what works at their homes. “I'll get my brother to beat on you!” “I'll tell the principal who set off the M-80's in the lockers last year!” And the final one...”We'll tell everyone you sell pot!” (That was true, but only to a very, very few select individuals..and those girls weren't on the list)

So I say...

“Go ahead..tell them...tell everyone...who's going to believe that an “A” student who causes no problems at this school...is a punk?”

“I'm an angel!” I added. What I did at school and what I did in my neighborhood were two different things. I never mixed the two. It's a good work ethic to have as an adult too. Know what days to party...and what days not to. I had a decent reputation at school and around the neighborhood, I was a feral animal. I was even called that by a neighbor once.

A few days pass, the exams are getting closer and the clique gets more desperate. Their pestering won't stop.

“Ya know,” I tell them, “the MORE you ask me, badger me...makes me hate you even more!”

So what do they do?

The bug me harder. If you have no other tactics, you just raise the volume on the only one you have.

The day of the exam occurs and of course, they all fail miserably.

Some of the other kids, who were watching this all along, my “strike” and the girls trying to break it asked: “Don't you care they failed?

“Nope! I don't give a fuck!” I really didn't. Once you do a great job at making me hate your guts, it tends to stick for a while.

**

So the last quarter is upon us, then were free for the summer, just one more round of exams and we're done for the year. I had kept those three off my “help” list still.

But since they were in danger of failing for the year, they had to try again. I won't repeat here what they tried, basically it was the same shit, empty threats, begging, pleading and badgering. It didn't work at all. They never once thought of trying some positive...vinegar and honey, you know?

Goff Jr High was a prison-like school. We lined up for everything. Teachers and administration stood in the halls like prison guards when classes changed. The lunchroom was patrolled in the same manner. But for some reason, if you finished lunch, you were free to amble back to the classroom at your leisure, w/o a guard/teacher escort. Some kids took this freedom to amble on home, blowing off the last three classes. 

So I go back to Mr O'Donnel's class and there is just one other person there, Beth, the prettiest one of that clique who were at me.

“Why won't you help us” she says after I sit down.

I turn around, “Are we going over this AGAIN?”

“Why won't you do it? C'mon..just do it...”

I then say.

“OK, make it worth my while, I'll help all of you for $5 a piece.

“FUCK YOU!” she shouts at me.

“FUCK YOU TOO!” I yell back at her and I say further, really ticked off...

“You know, there's NOTHING you or the other two could possibly OFFER me at all to help you! You have NOTHING!”

I spun around in my chair, stewing and thinking. “God I hate those fucks...they never stop!” It gets tiring when you're being constantly hounded by those you don't like anyway....with the same request over and over and over again.

There are those times, in an argument where you come up with the best come back line ever. These lines aren't crafted in advance, they have to come from deep within and are immediate and they crush your enemy. I didn't even know where I pulled up this but it came to me quite quickly.

I turn around back to her and I lock my eyes onto hers. She's still pissed and glaring at me still.

“Ya know, I take that back. You're a girl..right? There is ONE THING you could do for me.”

I let that hang in the air, still staring at her.

It took about...5 seconds...and then she broke her glare at me to staring vacantly at the blackboard at the head of the room. I knew she got it.

I kept looking at her and she kept staring at the wall, trying her best to ignore the fact I'm in the classroom still.

To drive the nail even deeper into the wood I say:

“Look, I like you best out of all three, you're the prettiest. If you do this...I PROMISE to help you pass for the entire year....you can even spit it out if you want to too.”

Silence.

A few more seconds go by and I tell her

“Won't do that either...huh?”

More silence...

More kids filtered into our classroom as they came from the cafeteria. I sat there, amazed that that had come out of my mouth. Eventually I didn't care to tell the truth, those three were on me for months and I had had enough. 

All three never bothered me again. 

That was  42 years ago! Do I regret it? Nope! I can be VERY accommodating with people but I really despise being squeezed and wrung out like a cheap wash cloth. Want to win with me? Honey works, so does equitable treatment.   

By the way, this would work with you if you consider the numerous times you've been run over by the others in your life.