The Artist In Me

I was perfectly fine being a slack ass loser in Boston. Running around with my useless ridiculite alterna-friends. My days would be filled selling and eating hot dogs at Fenway Park. I was like the character Ignatius J Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. But I wasn’t the fat, obese horror show that I am now. I was a chubby, lovable happy go lucky maniac. Not quite depressing yet. Not the desperate mess I am writing to you now.

That was my job though. I’d sell hot dogs on the streets at different events. Concerts, ball games, car and air shows. I knew the city and everyone in it. It was wired for me. Scalpers. Bums. The street prophets. I knew all the record shops and pizza places like the back of my sweaty hand.

I worked with my friends, and as greasy and hard work as it was, I look back on it now as a time of security and joy. I guess in retrospect I’d rather be doing that shit and feel some sort of joy and stability than what’s been going on for the past few years. I miss the innocence of going to this job that I loved and savoring all it had to offer me. It was strange and street but I excelled at it. I did it well.

By night I’d hang out all the alternative clubs dancing to The Smiths with my little to cool for school crew. One in particular was ManRay. I didn't even know who he was at the time. They were one of the first clubs to plug into the 80's New Wave revival. Playing bands like New Order, OMD and Yaz. We'd all put our costumes on and dance into the wee hours.

The place was inhabited by such creatures like Ashton. Ashton, or Lord Ashton, as he went by, was a dark lord vampire. He even had his teeth filed. He slapped on flour white makeup and sported long black locks. He spoke in an old English manner and insisted you treat him as a creature of the night.

By day Lord Ashton worked at Circuit City.

Afterwards we’d go hang out at someone’s place and have Morrissey dance offs. I know. Gay. So fucking gay. “Well I do him before he was solo.” I'd say.

We’d walk around trying to dress and wear our hair like Morrissey. This was the time that I was with Karen. Karen was and I guess will always be the love of my life. We met when she was a senior in high school and I was just a year out. 1992. I was a horrible student, graduating from Special Ed. Karen was a timid little creature who wore flower dresses and combat boots. Smart. Sensitive. She was innocent and harmless. I was a ragged, fucked up rebel wanna be. She thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. Go figure.She was really into Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs. I got her into Morrissey. We’d sit and talk about music all the time. We would have debates about who was the better and cooler band REM or The Maniacs. Natalie and Michael Stipe were close. We modeled ourselves after them. At the time I thought we were being silly, but now I wish we could act like that everyday still.

I was an ass in the beginning. She took me to her senior prom and I acted like it was this big chore. She had to buy my tux for me, which as usual she was more than happy to do. She was always more than happy to do anything for me. I think I abused that. At her prom I danced with just about every other girl there except for her. Again, I was clueless. Unaware. But she never lost faith in me. Through all my nonsense she stood by my side and after a short while we became inseparable. Eventually that would come to an end.

The whole time I was with Karen I was constantly living some half wit fantasy that I was an "artist." An artist? I didn’t even create anything. This was long before LA, and before I made my crazy move to NYC. I didn't execute any actual acting or writing, though I thought I was a combination of Morrissey, James Dean and Arthur Rimbaud. These were all just my delusional daydreams. I read too many book jackets and spent too much money on posters and CD’s. I never even stepped foot in a library. The only reading I did was liner notes and baseball stats.

I would dress like these people. I wanted to be them so badly. Like I said before I wasn’t that big at this point. Much thinner. I mean I still looked ridiculous, but not as bad.

One time I got my haircut real short and tight after seeing a book cover of Jean Genet's. Genet - the rebellious, vagabond French writer. I really thought that I resembled him. Karen and I would get into these balls out fights, usually brought on by me of course. They were over nothing. Just strange arguments I would start over nonsense. Like I said I was nuts. To this day I don’t know why she put up with my problems. No one in his or her right mind would ever stay with someone like me.

So I go to see her one afternoon all excited with my new hairdo. I ask her if she thinks I look like the man himself. She replies - “Well sort of." I was like what? I totally put her on the spot. “I mean you... well I guess you might a bit.”

“What do you mean a bit?” I was furious now. In my mind I was Jean Genet!

I would do that. I had anger problems. I would just lose it like that and go nuts on who ever was around and unfortunately it was usually Karen. Poor girl.

“I fucking look like Genet! I’m a fucking artist! I look like him and whoever thinks I don’t can fuck off. Fuck you all!! Fuck!!."

THIS IS ALL TRUE. I really did this and acted like this. I was fucking crazy. I thought I was an artist.

I'm A Boy

I sat in the backseat of a station wagon outside the Six Pence Motel in Orange County. I was wearing a pair of Ferrari sunglasses. The kind that fold in half and has it’s own case. They were a big deal to have for a little dude like myself. This was California 1979. The 70’s. Solid gold. Three's Company. That’s the kind of California I knew. Lived in and remember. Not the LA I know and live in now. Not the sunny TV LA. I was in Orange County. Not the OC. Not the beach or Laguna, but Tustin. It’s like the Reseda of Orange County. We were somewhat near Disneyland though. My mother had relocated us here. To this motel. It was like Alice (The TV show with Linda Lavin.)

It was me and my older brother Jim. I didn’t know it at that moment sitting in the hot car looking all around at my bricked up surrounding of a wall, a supermarket and a school, but this was to be home. We weren’t getting a room for the night but for the next year or so. We were going to be living here, in this motel. The Six Pence Inn was to become my stomping grounds for the next year. I would eat, sleep and play here. I would go to school down the street. I’d make friends and possibly get molested here. I think.

Now think for a minute. I lived in a motel. A fucking motel. Not a hotel. This wasn’t even the Ramada Inn. I wasn’t Dylan from 90210 living in a nice skyscraper penthouse on Sunset. This was a dreary ass little motel south of the 5 freeway in smoggy California. There was a pool though and that was about it.

By day my mother was a maid at the motel and by night a waitress at the local IHOP. She did what she had to do. What the woman lacked in emotion she made up for in responsibility for her own. She made sure we ate, went to school and had some amount of fun. She really did try. She took us on trips via the bus to Disneyland and Magic Mountain. She tried to make the whole experience somewhat normal, not that there was much normality there. She didn’t have a chance to do much though due to her day and night work schedule. To make sure we made it to school and had dinner she had befriended some of the other maids and transients that inhabited the place.

Yeah, that was the strangest thing and the most comforting at the same time. We weren’t the only one that had this lot in life, that took this route. There were other families there. I made some good pals there that were in the same predicament as we were. This one kid, his name was Jimity. That was his name. Jimity. He was this little redheade. I met him one day when I was packing my stuff and "running away." I literally packed a little red suitcase I had and made my way out the door and headed towards the motel exit. My mother let me, knowing I wouldn’t really get that far. Jimity was sitting on the motel steps as if waiting for me. Waiting to befriend me and get me to stay. It was as if he was planted there. He became a good pal to me in those days. He would help me with a lot of things. Getting to school. Collecting cans and stealing change from the soda machine. I mean is it just a coincidence that I was a lying, almost wooden boy who felt like he had no parents and then I become friends with a Jimity?

This became my life. This motel. Hanging out here by day and night. I went to a little elementary school around the corner from the motel. It was probably the only normal part of my world at this point. I didn’t get in much trouble and was an ok student. It was at home where my trouble came. I had by now accumulated a little crew that I hung out with. Some were motel “guests” while some from school. Now Jim, my older brother wasn’t around. So with free time and no one really keeping an eye on me I became a little arsonist. It runs in the family. I wanted to be like my dad.

One afternoon my pals and myself were sitting behind a wall that led to the carpet factory near the motel. It was a big, bland factory warehouse where there was just rolls and rolls of carpet and pitchforks to move them with and a bunch of Spanish workers. I would just think how boring it must have been to work there. Now I know how fucking shitty and boring work, any work can be.

That fateful day out in back of that carpet company where we were looking for Playboys in the dumpster. Man did we ever. There were a fucking ton of them too. Hustlers and Playboys. Tits and ass and pussy. I don’t think I had ever seen it before except for on my mom, when she got out of the shower of course. These girls were so hot. I think I got my first hard on. I didn’t know what to do with it but it was there. It’s funny that porn surrounds my life now. Then, when I was just discovering it I had no idea that it would become one of the major time takers in my daily existence.

Porn and thoughts of sex live in my head at least 75 % of a day. Whether it’s watching, reading or dreaming about it. The filthier the better. I don’t like that nice, model or Skinemax bullshit. I need Barely Legal. Anal teenagers. Filthy sluts that get paid $100.00 that day to take a load of cum in the face. I sometimes think about starting a website or getting cards made up saying I am a photographer or mogul of porn or some shit like that and luring young girls into a motel room and fucking them in the most disgusting way ever. I like young girls. I go on those pre teen Lolita websites. I would never fuck them but I think about it often. Usually when I jerk off it’s to me going to Tijuana or Brazil and hooking up with young hooker for a week a fucking her like e little pig everyday. I think the dirtiest thing I ever did was one night was coming out of a movie theater and there was some baggish type of lady sitting at a bus top. She didn’t look too bad so I circled and asked her if she needed a ride. I was in my friend’s car but I was being inconsiderate and picking up a street person with it. I mean, that is a bit harsh. She wasn’t a bum or anything. She had bummish qualities, like carrying around bags and looking a bit dirty and haggard, but ya know what, I been a bit dirty and haggard on many a night. So after circling I asked her if she needed a ride. She looked like she needed a one and no one should have to talk the bus in LA so I asked, she accepted and the rest is history.

She got in and we glided through the Pasadena streets. Her name was Vicki D. Yep VD. She seemed pretty normal. She told me she was looking for a place to crash because her 0ld man gave her the boot the night before for spending the rent money on speed. Normal. We all been there, right? So I listened. That’s what I do. Listen to woman when they speak. I am the sensitive type. I think I really was smitten once she told me she was 54 and her grandkids called her rock ‘n roll grandma.

Now at this point I got the idea to take her to a motel and either one-kill her or two fuck her. I did the latter. I convinced her we should get a room and “party”. She knew what I was talking about. She didn’t want to at first but I offered to buy her a pack of smokes and she was in. So I bought the smokes, a 40 oz. and a pack of rubbers and we were off to the prom. When we got into the motel room she emptied out all her bags for some reason. I watched her do it and started to get a little nervous like her “old man” was going burst in any moment and I was going to be a part of some homeless lover’s quarrel that ended in me murdering the both of them or being the one killed. The door didn’t even have a lock on it so I was watching the door the whole time. She took out of her bag candles, and an answering machine. An answering machine? I don’t know why. She told me she found it dumpster diving. The funny thing is that none of this bothered me. I didn’t think any less of her for putting out candles that she found in the trash. She was trying to make things more romantic and who am I to put down any candle?

Next she took a shower. Said she hadn’t taken one in days. Again, was I looking at her strangely? No. I have gone days, even weeks without water touching any part of my skin. I watched her shower. She had the body of a female junky in her 50’s. It was beautiful. She had a hawk tattooed on her right tit. Her flat tit. Tits. Sorry. She did have two ya know. I got naked, flipped on the tube and waited for my princess. She came out. The Spanish channel was on and I asked her to blow me. She asked me if I wanted her to take out her falsies (teeth that is). I said it wasn’t necessary. So she proceeded to give me a horrible BJ. Then I fucked her. I think my condom came off. I did make her cum. I thought about fucking her in the ass but I wanted to get out of there after I came. I left her the room for the night and drove home ashamed. What had I done? But grotesque as it was there was still something exciting about in a sense. Alas I did worry all night that she would OD and be found dead and the room traced back to me. So after my humble beginnings with these Playboys from the dumpster I end up back at the dumpster.

Now on this day we were looking at these magazines we were in the mood for damage as well. Pussy and fire. A great combo. That would make a great drink. The Flaming Pussy, or a great bar. For some reason we started lighting these things on fire. T he mags. I don’t know why we did but we did. What started out as a small flame grew to become this big little fire in the alley behind the carpet factory. Next thing we knew it was out of control and getting nearer to the carpets. We booked it, leaving the flames behind. As we hid in the motel nooks and crannies we watched on as the fire department put out the blaze. It was a close call. We never got caught and no serious damage came of it.

Life at the motel was quite normal most days. I’d go to school, come home afterward and play. Then we’d have dinner – on a hotplate, and then watch TV and go to bed. At the motel my love affair with television grew more and more. I would fall asleep watching shows like All In The Family and Happy Days – which of course I had always loved.

Around this time Rocky II came out. Now I had not seen Rocky I. Didn’t even know what it was. I was far too young but when I saw the ad on TV - my world lit up. Finally something new. KISS was the quencher for me years prior and aside form TV I had gone lifeless since Gene and the gang. Rocky was big, and triumphant. The music. The fighting. The man. Rock. It was a perfectly painted scenario for a kid my age in my position. I hadn’t seen the film yet but knew the story already and the music and I would hum it in my head as I did pull up on the motel banisters. I didn’t even know what Philly was. All I wanted to do was see this movie but my mother was too busy and we were too broke so my life went on and on picturing what this thing looked like. It existed in my head only. My own version.

Weekends consisted of my brother and I looking for cans to recycle for cash. Every once in a while we’d find something cool to play with but for the most part we’d come across rotting meat in the alleyways behind the supermarket. We also would come across homes or even condos and I would look at them from the alley or sneak onto the premises and imagine if I had lived there how great it’d be. It’s like I was an orphan looking for parents. In a way my life was very Dickensian. I was sort of like an Oliver Twist. Running the streets all day with my weirdo pals looking for scraps and then by night huddling to sleep in my little corner patch in the motel room.

Even Christmas was an event here. We celebrated it best we could.

By this time we had made friends with some of the other gypsies and opened the connecting rooms doors for one big happy merry motel Christmas. We had a tree and made ham on the hotplates. The kids ran around with 99 cent Store gifts. I laugh at it, but it was Christmas no matter where or how it was. People find ways to seek out joy. We are resilient in times of weariness. This is something I value most about myself and family, even if we are all on the outs and have been for years. That’s the thing, we were a family more in the hard times than the good. Not that there have been many good times. I can almost remember no joy as a kid, unless I made it on my own. I have never really felt a family unit. Closeness, security, protection.

Eventually we did get out of the motel and moved into a crappy little duplex neighborhood. It was a bit rundown to me and my brothers and sisters it was Bel Air. It went under the name Fairview Duplexes and it too was in the OC. In this house I would become the most badass lip sinker in 5 states. I went off yo. I learnt the words to every song on the radio, but my favorite was Mr. Robot by STYX in ’82. that’s where we are at by the 1982. Just to keep some kind of timeline for ya’s. But, yeah STYX. I was a Mr. Roboto fanatic. I would tape it from the radio and perform my cat for my mother and Marge. Marge. I’ll get to that in a minute.

I’d turn out all the lights in the living room, bring the music up and then hits the lights and bring the audience to their knees with my lip syncing techniques. I was a pro. I had all the beats and lyrics down and even choreography. After a while I was teaching me moves to my little brother and sister for their post – supper shows. Supper is what we called it. You sophisticated folk know it as dinner, but we say supper and tonic. That’s soda or pop. Tonic. “Are we having tonic with supper mom?” Now as far as this name that I just brought up, Marge. Margie as we knew her as kids. Margaret being her proper name. Margaret Wilson form North Carolina. She was moms “friend.” Know what I mean. We knew her as that. Mom’s friend. The friend who also disciplined us and yelled at us and talked to us like she was our mother too. She was the dad? I guess you can say that. I didn’t know that my mother was “that way” until kids in the neighborhood pointed it out to me. In a nice civil way. By calling my mom a filthy lesbian. Lesbian? What the fuck was that?! I just learnt about pussies and tits and now I find out that girls like to also look at other tits and pussies. I guess the more I put it together it was true. They lived together and slept in the same bed. Marge was a butch for sure. She was big. Had had a tattoo and wore sunglasses a lot. She was a hardass with us kids, showing patches of affection at times. Her and my mother did argue a lot but in the end were inseparable. It just became life. The life we knew and lived. There was nothing strange about it after awhile. It was around this time that I started to tape my TV shows. I would tape them right from the television and into a tape recorder that I got for Christmas. My brother got a 10 speed and I got a tape recorder. I also got some Star Wars toys. I was so into Star Wars too. I had all the figures. I would live in these things like I would later with records. But when I was a kid it was all about Star wars toys and baseball cards. I knew this kid next door to me that hid his baseball cards and I set up a scheme to steal them. He had an awesome collection and I stole them. Fuck him, he had cable. I was poor. My brother and I were in competition for who had the better set. He had older and better Red Sox cards. After awhile the pressure got to me and I started to steal his cards too. It made me happy to have these things.

My Best Enemy

Sitting in front of me was a blond haired curious young fellow. His hair resembled that of my hero Morrissey. Then I saw this kid in front of me was wearing a trench coat as if he was a 60 year old man. I kept peeking over his shoulder to see what he was doing, because whatever it was, it wasn’t school work. He had a journal and his walk man and a mix tape. The title said Elvis Costello. Elvis? This guy stole his name from the King of Rock?! I think I had heard the name but it was all fuzzy. It must have been somewhere between my Motley Crue to Morrissey switchover. It wasn’t the smoothest transition. I kept peeking over enough for the kid to finally stop what he was doing. He turned back to me and - wow was he a special looking guy. His golden hair flamed up and out the sides much like the actor I had just discovered. Christopher Walken. His eyebrows were blond too. He had the face of a literary figure. Soft and pale. Almost out of a painting. A romantic, golden tone surrounded him. His collared shirt was decorated with purple flowers and covered by his green trench. What the fuck was this kid doing here? What was he hiding? It was like he had secrets for me. Magic tricks to show. He clearly belonged in a think tank on Venus. He was like a little prince amongst peasants. I just felt from the first moment I met him that there was something special there. Something alien, new and exciting and I would not be disappointed.

His name was Mason. Mason Lucia. Lucia. Even that sounded royal or saintly or poetic. He was a young man with a flowing mane of energy both polished and raw at the same time, that I was attracted to right away. At the risk of sounding gay, like I have many times in this memoir, I could have fallen in love with him at that moment and I may have. I wanted to take all my lessons from him and blast The Smiths floodlights down on the two of us. The two of us, hatching schemes and dreams and plans. I was at least smitten. A crush. A non sexual man crush. I could see at that moment why so many would come to love him and why I would someday hate him.

But for now, for purpose of story, if that’s what this is - I will stay the course. Steady. Strong. Weary. Alone.

I wanted to be friends with him or something. Anything. I wanted to follow him around with a tape recorder and magnifying glass and soak all that he exuded. Carry behind with a bucket. Everything that his mind and energy possessed. I wanted it to transfer from him to me. To let it all in and roll all over me. I wanted to be him and this was something that, as much as I hid it and denied it, knew it the very moment I laid eyes on him.

Not all friendships or relationships are the same. Not all are normal or dull or boring. Some are adventerous and made of the caliber that only applies to the great works of art. Some carry great drama and tragedies are reached. This was and would become one of those. Mason and I would become like comic book heroes and villains. Our stage was Medford and we would battle and also support one another for the entirety of high school.

Together we would lay about in the flourescent Smiths album sleeves and pour over comics and old volumes of books that I never read. We wore sweaters on warm afternoons and listened to AM radio with the shades down.

Mason and I started hanging out together on an everyday basis. This was due in part to me not leaving him alone. Believe me, he would have rathered have not met me. I was so fucking intrigued by him. He was everything I always wanted to be and he was good at it too. He was good at looking cool. Sounding smart and sexy. He was confident. He knew he was smart. He knew he had a different look. He was so far ahead of me, the school and anyone I had ever met. Any adult or kid older than me that I once thought was cool, that all went down the shitter when I met Mason Lucia. He was my Tyler Durdin. He read what I wanted to read. He listened to the music I wanted to listen to. Saw the films I wanted to see and wrote like I could never - and still haven’t been able to write. He was the mad man in the woods. He roamed the streets salivating for anything he write about. He was a literary warrior, stripping down and breaking apart everything I thought I knew was right and cool. He was the neighborhood beat. The suburban Burroughs. He broke it down and reshaped it right in front of my eyes. He taught me about Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and opera. He told me to accept avant garde films and that GoodFellas was as much an art film as Cocteau was. He taught me about Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet and the excitement of books. I found out who Duchamp and Manray were from him. How they felt, smelt and made you powerful.
Mason took me into his world and walked me through his process one step at a time. He cloaked me under a dark cape that I refuged in like a wet dog.

The first day I went to his house we yelled and screamed and sang at the top of our lungs to music and then ate like pigs and then passed out. It was primal. A change from the usual Friday night drinking marathons I shared with other classmates and pals.

Together we were a tender force to be reckoned with. I became un afraid of being sensitive and lathered myself in a whole new form of rebellion. The intelligent kind.

Late at night we walked through the town cemetery. He did this often. It would creep me out at times but there was a real peace to it as well. He showed me that it wasn’t so much scary as it was tranquil and quiet. I had never seen anything like him. Nor did the city we lived in. He was a strange little bird amongst vultures and pigeons.

We lived in a hockey jock town of Italians and cops and snow plows. This was your typical New England city scape. Keggers. Girls with rake hair styles that all sounded like Fran Drescher.

Thing about Mason though - he knew how to deal with them. He made them like him and respect him somehow. I think anywhere or anyone else they would have strung him up on the flag pole but Mason went the opposite route. They feared him in a sense, like he was the kid from Powder or something but they loved him like Rocky Denis.

See it was a known fact that he was a genius. He had a high IQ than most of faculty so it was ignored when he would not show up to class or retreat to his study room. He and some of the other more intelligent kids, not being me, would hang in this room called the "writers room." They would actually write too, not just talk about it like I did.

The class was run by a haggard old English teacher who was on the fringe of the staff himself. You could tell he was a former nerd or misunderstood poet/student himself back in his day. The kids in the writers room were protected by him. The had their own little world in there that the rest of the school was not allowed to see or be a part of. I'd get an occasional pass in because of my friendship with Mason. They even had their own literary magazine called Shakespeare and Co. It was a monthly compilation of work done by them and their fellow outsiders. How I longed to be a part of it, alas I had nothing to contribute but I was excited nonetheless every time an issue came out.