All the Wild Children Read online

  At lunch time, here are the options.

  1) Go to the cafeteria and risk having your money taken or not have it taken and having to eat the crap they served.

  2) Eat in the library with the other scared White kids, and be branded soft, an easy mark.

  3) Hang in the quad with all the drummers and dancers and singers. Problem, that area is Black only.

  4) Cross the quad fast, cross the no man’s land near the administration building, clear the gate and hit the parking lot, or the burger joint across the street, hangwith the rest of the smokers and druggies. Tomas and me, go with door number four.

  At the same time, Lark runs with Tanner, a skinny midget from Atherton. No really, he is under five feet tall, rock star hair and clothes, cute as hell, girls love him. But he is a midget. Father is a doctor or some other cash machine job. Never saw the father. Saw the manse, they have big bank. Tanner is a teflon junky. Someone else always overdosed, someone else died or went to jail. Tanner is bullet proof, and the little fucker knows it. He plays pool down on the razor, bets on a game, doesn’t have a dime in his pocket. If he loses they will kill him. He loses. He lives. Don’t ask. I don’t know. When we got caught for creeping houses, Lark and I are arrested for grand theft, felony B&E. Tanner’s name is never mentioned.

  Lark also runs with Sammy, Donald Green and Lovelace. Three hardcore ghetto princes. They never roll unstrapped. Everyone knows them. Most fear them. Lark makes a point that I am seen in the parking lot with them. I am traveling under a diplomatic seal from then on, at least with the criminal set. Doesn’t do a lot for me on campus, but in the parking lot I am solid.

  Saturday. Tomas and I take the train to San Francisco. We go to Market Street and buy badass platform shoes. I get a grey felt pimp hat. I have a brown leather pimp coat. Tomas has a tan one. We look in store windows as we walk by. Our reflections are badass, Superfly.

  THE FIRST POTENT CROSSROAD

  Tomas and I are walking back from lunch, we’re both a wee bit high. Tomas shoulders me. I bounce off a locker. He laughs hard. He coughs. We don’t notice we have crossed into the quad. We haven’t shown respect to the natural order of Ravenswood.

  “You know where the fuck you are, boy?” He’s big but dope skinny. He has the slur and ashy skin of a junky.

  “Yeah, do you know?” His friends are not in any better shape. There are three of them. A finger hits Tomas’s chest and shoves.

  “This look like bean town to you, you see your sister sucking my dick? No? Then what the fuck are you doing here?” Tomas doesn’t answer. He is in battle mode. Coiled. Ready. I’ve seen him drop full-grown men in Kung Fu class.

  I slip my hand into my jacket pocket.

  “You gotta pay the toll you wanna cross our yard.”

  They aren’t looking at me. Tomas is clearly the threat. If it goes pear shaped, they will gang drop him, then me.

  I snap the Buck knife’s blade open. My hand curls around the handle. I focus on the neck of the young man standing next to me. I am ready to bury the knife in his throat. I know I will. If Tomas swings, I will stab. It is the only option that doesn’t end up with us in the hospital or morgue. I am calm and detached.

  The ashy junky is getting aggravated at Tomas’s unemotional face. He spits. Alugieruns down Tomas’s cheek. If it is going off, this will be it. But Tomas simply looks at the junky and smiles ever so slightly.

  “Come on J, let’s roll.” He turns, exposing his back to the junky and his pals. It says take me if you think you can, cause I ain’t worried. They can read it as well as I can. I step past them and Tomas and I walk down the hall. When we are finally out of the free-fire zone I close the Buck knife. Tomas hears it click shut and nods. He wipes the spit from his face with a bandana from his back pocket.

  “Man, I was sure you were going to take his ass out.”

  “J, he’s a junky. Why do I care what he thinks of me? You on the other hand, you spit in my face and I will rip your liver out and feed it to Torso.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Good.”

  And like that, it is over. We move on. There is plenty more day to try and get through. You get hung up on the past, you won’t be present. And that can get a fella killed.

  In hindsight I recognize that was the crossroad I could have turned left and stabbed that kid. There’s no turning back. I go to jail. A White boy who killed a Black boy. They have to toss the book at me or they have riots. Whatever the outcome. My life is completely different.

  “Homes, did you hear that crazy shit went down in Belton’sclass?” James is smoking, leaning against Jorge’s bug.

  “I didn’t make first period.” I had been getting high.

  “Homes, Lovelace and another cat drew down.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. No one shot, but I just about shit myself.”

  “That’s about the right response.”

  Things at Ravenswood were starting to get hectic.

  Two weeks later we’re standing in the parking lot smoking, laughing, Tomas, James, Jorge, and me. Doing a whole lot of nothing good. First it’s a police helicopter flying in low over the apartment building across the street from school. Then a brother jumps from the second story window. He runs towards us, he’s maybe twenty, sweating and frightened. An unmarked cop car squeals around the apartment building. The man clears the parking lot and runs onto the football field. The chopper is hovering above him.

  “Put down the gun and lay face down.” The loudspeaker in the chopper sounds metallic and inhuman. I can see a cop with an M16 leaning out the chopper door. They are only twenty feet above the guy. Grass clippings swirl into the air. The young man turns and points a pistol at the chopper. The gunshots are almost lost in the helicopter noise. The young man falls like a broken toy. Arms and legs twisting into unnatural angles. They call an ambulance. We all know that’s just for show.

  Drama. Static. Hectic. Screwed up.

  Worst part? It didn’t really freak any of us out. It was detached from reality. Just some shit that happened over there, not here.

  Tomas and me, if nothing else, we saw that a knife and Kung Fu wasn’t going to get the job done any more. Enterprising young lads that we were we started dealing hash and Mexican rag weed in the parking lot. I started to carry a Beretta Jetfire .25 ACP automatic. It would fit in the palm of my hand, conceal in a coat pocket. Held five shots in the clip, one in the chamber. Tomas, ever the over achiever that he was, had a Browning 9mm in the back of his pants. Jorge his brother didn’t have dick. He was just our driver. We were fourteen, rolling hard, staying stoned.

  The Funkadelics say, America eats its young, and Curtis says Freddy’s dead. And there’s a diamond in the back, sunroof top, digging the scene with a gangster lean. Oh Oh gangster white walls.…

  DRUGS

  Blame it on the seventies, blame lack of parenting, blame it on teen melancholia, whatever. Fact: Drugs and booze were ever present. Forget my mother's pot brownies, write that off to the times and her wanting to get laid. Forget my old man’s multiple acid trips searching for the new Godhead, hell if he’d found it, we’d have called him ahero. Point is, I didn’t need their encouragement. From the moment I learned getting high meant getting out of your head I was in.

  I am 12, I’m huffing Pam, the spray on anti-stick crap. Heard some kids got in trouble for doing it in the park, so naturally I have to try it.

  Lift the cardboard tube to your mouth.

  Spray a liberal amount of Pam.

  Breath in. Fall over. See the pretty lights.

  I think it coated your lungs and cut off the oxygen to your brain. The first time I try it my mother comes in. I am belly down on my bed and can’t talk. I hide the Pam can under my chest. I tell her I think I am the Devil. She gets on the phone to one of those prayer lines. Has Christians all across America praying for me. Whether she thinks I am possessed or that the prayer will help with my new madness is unclear.

  We never spe
ak of it again.

  From eighteen years sober I can see clearly what was so murky then. I can see that the drugs and alcohol kept us alive. Kept us from going insane. Self-medication my shrink called it. Seems about right. Pot for fear. Hash for obliterating all shades of sadness. Booze to pour on top of all the stuffed down feelings. Speed to keep upright.

  I kept a stash of white crosses beside my bed. My mom or Shaun would wake me with a glass of orange juice. They’d leave, I’d pop some amphetamine, and go back to sleep. Ten minutes later my eyes would pop open and I was good to go.

  I am 14. The bottle of 151 in my sock bangs against my ankle. The theater is dark already, on the screen is the dancing hot dog and candy box. We sit in the smoking balcony. We pour 151 into our cokes. We watch Shaft, hush your mouth, but I’m talking aboutShaft. I love being in a Black theater, it is all interactive entertainment.

  “Behind you mother fucker!”

  “Homes turn around.”

  “I told you! Dumbass.”

  We watch Cotton Comes To Harlem. GraveDigger Jones carries a marine flare pistol. Damn. Dirty Harry carries a .44 magnum, most powerful handgun made. Do you feel lucky punk? Well do you? The Wild Bunch has shotguns and .45’s. They’re men, and wish to hell I was with them. The Godfather has a family. The Godfather has lots of guns. And then there was the apex of film. The one to which none could hold a candle, Superfly.

  Eddie: You're gunna give all this up? Eight Track Stereo, color T.V. in every room, and can snort a half a piece of dope everyday?! That's the American Dream, nigga! Look, I know it's a rotten game, but it's the only one The Man left us to play. What the FUCK are you gunna do except hustle?

  That movie taught a generation in the ghetto how to walk, talk and dress. Taught us the same. Can you dig it? Sho nuff.

  Bay Area being what it is, they play art films at the drive-in. Truffaut’s The 400 Blows double billed with Godard’s Breathless. The girl in the back seat wants to make out with that wild Stallings boy. Lark’s in the front seat with Joy, macking. I want to watch the movie. We can fuck later man, this is Truffaut.

  Andy Warhol’s Dracula plays back to back with Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. Udo Kier is Count Dracula, it’s shot in Eastern Europe, the cast is all European, all perfect... well but one. Joe Dallesandro is possibly the worst actor on the planet. He fumbles and mumbles his way through the film, his thick New York accent butchering every sentence. The plot, Poor Drac can only drink virgin blood. Joe’s is going to make sure there are no virgins left in the shire.

  I have to fuck you it’s the only way to save you.

  Shaun and I sit on the hood of the Pontiac, leaning against the windshield. We are drinking Kahlua and vodka from baby bottles. We are tipsy and laughing our asses off as Joe takes an axe to Udo. This will lead to series of jokes that still make Shaun and me laugh like loons. “Why did the Flamingos stand on one leg?”

  “Why?”

  “Joe Dallesandro cut the other leg off.”

  I miss my little sister. I miss us all at that age. Running wild. Full of hope and pain in equal parts. Up for whatever life had to toss at us. Fierce defenders of each other. The seams were starting to tear but we couldn’t see it yet. We were rolling hard and fast down a steep hill never noticing the brakes were shot.

  I’m twelve and Lilly moves to Los Angeles. She looks like a star. Henna red hair, purple leather mini skirt, motorcycle jacket and feather boa. She will become a stripper and shoot heroin. She will meet Iggy Pop. She will live with a mountain lion.

  I fly down for the weekend. She and her boyfriend Michael Pierce pick me up at the airport. Michael is a cross between Mick Jagger and a foppish empire era professor from a Jules Verne story. He always wears a black velvet blazer and carries a parasol in the sun. Their cottage ceiling is covered with tiny plastic babies hung from clear fishing line. The ceiling undulates with the wind. They have finches but no cage. Birds glide and chirp over our heads.

  Lilly gives me Hunky Dory and starts my lifetime love affair with Bowie. 1971 and the androgyny glitter train has just left the station. The press won’t notice it for another four years, but my sister and brother are stepping into the middle of it. 1971 Iggy meets Bowie for the first time at Max’s Kansas City. Mott the Hoople and all the other young dudes are making the scene.

  This is the year I find a black album called Queen II, I like the way it looks. I put on my turntable and it only leaves the platter to be flipped for the next month. For that moment it is the perfect album. If asked I’d say my favorite album is Parliament, or Iggy Pop or what ever I think you would think was cool. But Queen are my boys. Later I hear Freddie Mercury was in the closet, if he was, it was made of Plexiglas. His band is named QUEEN, he flounced around the stage in flowing robes. And as for Elton? Come on. Really? Didn’t know? Dumbass.

  1972, I am 13 and about to get a lot older. We are headed to Mexico on a road trip, Lilly, Lark, Michael Pierce, and Kowalski. Kowalski looks like David Johanson, lead singer for the New York Dolls. He likes to wear sharkskin blazers with torn T-shirts and jeans. He is alternately brilliant and dumb as a rock. He is two years away from dying of an overdose. China white, more pure than he expected, will stop his heart. Lark said once that when you shoot dope, sooner or later, you will O.D. So look around, are you with friends, will they put you in an ice bath and revive you when you stop breathing? When they are giving you mouth to mouth and you vomit in their mouth, will they keep going? Apparently not, in Kowalski’s case. Whispered rumors put Tanner at the scene. It is never proven. He is never questioned. The teflon junky, slick as ever.

  Our trip to Mexico is based in some obscure plan involving a cougar cub, rum and Durango. I don’t care, I’m rolling with the big boys, I don’t need a plan. We don’t even make it out of Los Angeles clean. Michael rear-ends a car on the 405. Michael gives the old lady fake insurance papers. We wire the hood down and keep moving. At night we glide through dark mountains, heading for the Tecate border crossing.

  Blue and red rolling lights fill our back window. The cop is a big bellied, middle aged father. He shines his flashlight in on us, and shakes his head slowly, kids what are you going to do?

  “Shell station couple miles back, say you hit their oil display and drove off.”

  “We what?” Lilly is behind the wheel.

  “They say you or someone fitting your description hit an oil display.”

  Michael fights a laugh, “We are being accused of pulling a hit and run on an oil display?”

  “Silly I know, you better follow me back, we can get this settled.” The cop looks in the car again. “Look, it’s dark, these curves they block my view of what is behind me. If anything were, say, tossed out a car window, I wouldn’t see it.”

  He pulls away. We pull away. We give him some space. Lark starts to guzzle what’s left of the rum, then tosses the empty out the window.

  “The odds are good they will search the car and us.”

  “Fuck dude.”

  “Time to get rid of everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.” They pull pills out of their jeans and coats. They can’t throw drugs out. It is totally against their code. Lark takes a couple pills. Lilly takes a couple. Michael takes a couple. Kowalski takes a couple. The rest they pass to me. I eat a small fist full of multi colored pills. A cacophony ofuppers, downers, screamers, and wailers. I swallow without even thinking. If it was dangerous my siblings wouldn’t let me do it.

  We spend exactly six minutes at the Shell station. The officer convinces the hick owner to drop it and we drive off. We are never searched. It is too late for that information to do me any good.

  I am... what’s the word... shit I can’t move my arms... fucked, that’s the word, I am fucked... I can see the light in the window... I’m in the front seat... I think... is Lilly driving?.. fuuuuck... Was that a lightning strike?... My eyes are closed... no, they are definitely open, I think... fuuuck... Am I breathing? Am I?… My tongue is
made of fluff... My legs are gone... where are my legs... What are those words... I remember words... Why is Lilly talking in slow motion?

  “J o s h , J o s h . . . a r e y o u o k ?”

  “I... no I... I’m not OK... very not...I think I... my feet, I had feet... I... well... I... is that lightning inside the car?”

  “Josh, you’re scaring me, say something.”

  Fuck, I didn’t say that out loud. Move your fucking lips Josh, come on.

  “Josh?”

  “My body... is asleep... my mind... My mind is awake.”

  Lilly laughs. Relieved.

  I am 13. I am totally fucked sideways. I don’t mind one bit. In fact I kind of like it.

  It’s not half bad once I stop fretting. Lay back and watch the syrupy lights slosh past me.

  A litany of true weirdness from the road:

  Mazatlan, the booze takes us by the neck like an unpaid whore and shakes hard. We drink in Sénior Frogs. We drink in a red basement bar called Hell. Kowalski is a dick, he has no cash, but lots of attitude. Kowalski wants to bang Lilly. She flirts with him behind Michael's back. Kowalski takes it personal. His mistake. My sister only has two ways of dealing with guys, flirty, a NorCal version of a southern belle, or treat them like idiots. She usually starts with the first and moves to the second after she is sleeping with them. She learned it at our mother's knee.

  Lark and I are the golden princes of our family, told no man can live up to us, and we are fantastic. Then treated as if we are idiots who can hardly tie our shoes. The messages in our home were so mixed that I stopped listening years ago.

  In our hotel room things are crumbling fast. All three of them are junkies. None of them have had dope in days. Nerves are threadbare.