Our next-door neighbor’s son, Scotty, regularly practiced his batting skills in his backyard. Robert frequently said, “I wish you were more like Scotty.” I’ve often wondered if Bea ever told Robert how much she preferred other children over him.
The neighbor on the other side of our house was named Sonny. While he was at work, Scotty vandalized his home and told his mom he saw me do it. When Robert got home and heard what Scotty said he witnessed, he whipped my ass. I proclaimed my innocence through my tears, but to no avail. Later that evening, Robert learned Scotty was the perpetrator, and I was telling the truth. He was truly remorseful and apologized to me. What Robert never realized was the physical pain from a whipping I didn’t deserve didn’t compare to not measuring up to his standard of a son. I was never compared to Scotty, nor did his parents and my parents ever speak to each other again. But Robert wasn’t ready to drop the sports idea yet.
Richie
Richie lived down the street from me. Despite the fact he was very athletic, we were close friends and had a lot of fun together. We took turns spending the night with each other on the weekends. Richie had one brother and three sisters, so I, being an only child, enjoyed the crazy commotion which permeated his house. I also had a crush on his sister, Nancy; I even kissed her once. Richie, on the other hand, enjoyed the calm he found at my house. So, I stayed at his house on Friday night, and he stayed at my house on Saturday night.
Our favorite game was a painful endeavor called “Smear the Queer.” The rules were simple; run with the football as long as you could while everyone else tried to tackle and, if possible, hurt you. Richie’s little brother, Robbie, always wanted to play, and we were exceptionally rough with him. The yard we played in was lined with cactus and yucca plants, both painful to the touch. Whenever Robbie had the ball, Richie and I would fall back until he ran past one of the plants and then push him into the thorns. If only a Smear the Queer league had existed; Robert would have been proud of me.
Robbie wanted to be included in whatever Richie and I were doing. So naturally, we tortured and tormented him unmercifully. We physically assaulted him, broke his toys, stole his food, hid from him, and called him names. Hardly an hour went by that Robbie didn’t flee the room crying because of something we did to him.
Many years later, I was standing in line at a night club while the bouncer checked ID’s. He was one of those huge body-builder guys you definitely didn’t want to upset. When he got to my ID, he said, “Brett?”
“Yes?” I responded as I studied his face, trying to determine if I knew him.
“Do you remember me?”
“No.”
“I’m Robbie.”
So, this is where my life ends. Well, at least I’ve had fun. “Uh…Hi.”
Robbie was genuinely happy to see me, and we spoke several times that night. Either he didn’t recall the pain I inflicted on him or was grateful for the role I played in him getting so muscular. Either way, I dodged a bullet that night. The first of many.
Behind our neighborhood was a ditch we called the Big Hole, which was approximately 200 yards long and 25 feet deep, narrow at both ends, wide in the middle and surrounded by trees. Behind the Big Hole was a large holding pond. For Richie and me, this place was paradise. Some of the most epic dirt clod fights in human history occurred there.
Richie and I discovered two rusty, pedal-driven toy cars buried in the mud at the pond. We carefully removed them from their earthly tomb, took them to Richie’s dad’s garage, hammered the cars back into shape and painted them. Richie had recently learned a new word, which he wrote on the back of his car; the word was “twat.” His mom was appalled when she saw it. I can’t specifically recall where I learned most profane words, probably from Mom when she was driving, but I know exactly where I learned “twat.”
Once the restoration process was completed, we took our cars back to the steepest, deepest part of the Big Hole and took turns pushing them over the side, laughing hysterically as they flipped and rolled down the hill before crashing into the ditch. After several trips down the hill, the cars were reduced to mangled pieces of rusty metal.
The next morning, the restoration process started again. Reshaped and sporting a new paint job, the cars were ready for another round of destruction. We wrote words on them like “tits” and “turd” and “tonnie,” which was a word we invented that had no meaning. Afterward, we went back to the Big Hole for more demolition. This routine went on for two weeks until the cars were to the point where repairing them was hardly possible; they were wads of jagged metal.
We performed one last half-assed restoration and went back to the Big Hole for the last drop. I rolled my car first. The crash was entertaining, but after two weeks, the process was losing its thrill. I climbed down the hill to examine the damage. Richie, who was still at the top, announced he was rolling his car. He was directly above me, so I took two steps to the left to avoid being clobbered by his flying ball of tetanus. As soon as Richie released his car, it lunged left and started rolling straight toward me. I took three more steps, but the rolling death ball cut even further as if it were following me. I started a full run as the car reached the bottom, ripping my shirt and cutting a gash on the back of my right arm. I heard Richie’s bellowing laughter from the top of the hill. I enjoyed the process of building it up then destroying it, perhaps a little too much.
Richie knew no shame, and I loved that about him. I was eating lunch one day when he called. “Come down to my house quick. You’ve got to see this.”
“But I’m eating.”
“Just get your ass down here. You’ve got to see this.”
I jumped on my bike and pedaled down to his house. As I burst through the door, he was standing in his living room with a plastic cup in his hand, holding his other hand over the top. He held it up to my nose. “I farted,” he said with pride. Richie had indeed captured his fart in the cup because I smelled it.
His obsession with excretions was legendary. He once walked into the room, dropped his shorts, bent over, spread his butt cheeks, and pushed the tip of a turd out of his asshole. He then sucked it back in. He pushed it out then sucked it in repeatedly while my friend, Geoff, and I laughed hysterically.
Once, Richie shit on a public restroom floor, picked it up with a towel, and smeared it all over the door handle. We spent the afternoon watching people grab it and smell their hand.
Like I said, I had a lot of fun with Richie.
The Dress
Richie played football and baseball, so when Scotty was no longer an acceptable comparison, Robert said, “I wish you were more like Richie.”
To make matters worse, Robert insisted the two of us go into our backyard and throw a baseball. I was always hesitant to do anything with him because I never knew if it would end pleasantly or dreadfully. For example, after I finished the game I created on my computer, Robert asked me to show him how I did it. He quickly got frustrated with the way I was explaining it and stormed out of the room, calling my effort “stupid.”
Another example, during a bowling game my parents and I were playing, Robert ruined our outing by belittling me because I added numbers in my head incorrectly. The reason I have a mathematics degree was to prove to him I am good at math, a point he never conceded.
One of the last baseball sessions in our backyard ended with him saying, “You should be wearing a dress.” I’ve often wondered if Bea ever impugned Robert’s manhood or belittled his successes.
Eventually, Robert dropped the sports idea. I guess I won, although I didn’t feel like a winner.
The Human Remote
As much as I disliked Robert’s unpredictable behavior, the way he treated Mom irritated me even more. When I was a child, televisions didn’t have remote controls, which wasn’t a problem because only three stations were available. Also, the channels were chosen by turning a dial instead of pushing buttons. If you ever hear someone on television say “Don’t touch that dial” before a commercial b
reak, that’s what they’re talking about. No matter which channel you happened to be watching, a dial turn to the left would lead you to the second channel and a dial turn to the right would lead you to the third one.
As Robert sat on the couch doing nothing, and Mom prepared our dinner in the kitchen, he would yell at her to drop what she was doing and change the channel for him. At this point, Mom had a 50% chance of turning the dial to the program he wanted to watch. Thus, 50% of the time she got criticized for making the wrong choice, a situation which could easily be remedied by Robert getting off his ass and changing the channel himself, allowing Mom to finish our dinner. I would seethe over his impatience with Mom, who was only trying to be helpful. I swore I would never ask a woman to do something I could do myself, a noble idea as long as I never got involved with someone who behaved like Robert.
The Dog
The difference between my mother and father can be explained best by describing what I experienced while learning to drive a car. Mom drove a Monti Carlo with an automatic transmission. We began on a road in our neighborhood. She explained the function of the two pedals near the floorboard, instructed me to place my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, and while coasting, guided me on stopping and turning until I felt comfortable driving faster. Mom always kept a calm demeanor, although she must have been terrified.
In contrast, Robert drove a white Toyota truck with a standard transmission. He failed to explain the function of the third pedal. He told me the proper hand positions were right hand on the steering wheel and left elbow hanging out the window. At that point, he simply said, “Go.”
Driving a car with a standard transmission without using the clutch is impossible. Thus, Robert was forced to share some information with me. My driving was tenuous. As I started to get the hang of it, a dog walked into the road and stopped in front of the truck.
“Keep going,” Robert said.
“But that dog’s in the way.”
“The dog will move. Now go!”
“But the dog—”
“Kill the fucking dog!” So, I lunged forward as instructed, and fortunately, the dog moved.
I endured Robert’s yelling and inconsistent instructions until I turned wide and flattened two tires on the edge of a culvert. Another failure for my father to witness.
I could go on, but you get the point. Robert’s responsible for my knowledge of computers and mathematics as well as running a small business. Yet, a tension has always existed between us. Whenever we’re together, I tell him what he wants to hear instead of how I truly feel in a desperate attempt to make him proud of me. He has made me a smarter, more driven and skilled person, and, at the same time, caused me to hate myself. I wish he could love me for who I am. The funny thing is I had not yet given him a reason to dislike me. But I will.
Brett
You may be thinking, There’s a drug addict somewhere in this story, right? Well, here I am.
My parents were products of the 60’s. I have Polaroid pictures of them wearing bell-bottom jeans, leather vests, round lens glasses, and headbands. They were in their teens when I was born and in the partying stage of their lives when I was young.
At the age of five, I opened my parents’ sock drawer. Instead of socks, it was filled with dead plants. I didn’t know what it was; I just knew none of my drawers were filled with that stuff.
I never saw my parents smoke pot or do any other type of drug, but I recognized changes in their behavior. When they had friends over, I noticed everyone would regularly leave the living room and go into the kitchen, followed by an odd smell which permeated the room. I didn’t know what was happening. I just knew this only occurred when guests were over.
I have always felt disconnected from other people. I guess I still do. For the first ten years of my life, I had long blonde hair that fell past my shoulders. I was always being mistaken for a girl. My clothes were a little too “hip” for a child my age. My parents had an 8-track tape of the Broadway musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I listened to it so often, I had every word memorized, including the sound of the tape changing tracks. One morning, Mom took me to a laundry mat, where other children were playing amongst the clothes racks. The kids were singing nursery rhymes, none of which I was familiar with. So, I started singing the only songs I knew.
A five-year-old belting out songs from a Broadway musical may make one question my sexuality. I’m not gay, not that’s there anything wrong with it. I was running around the laundry mat singing,
“Jesus Christ
Superstar
Who in the world do you think you are?”
The other parents were staring and whispering to one another, but Mom thought it was funny.
I’ve always looked at life differently than most. When I was six, a teenage girl in my neighborhood molested me. Instead of being traumatized, I went to her house the next day and asked her to do it again. She refused. I guess molestation is not as thrilling if the victim is asking for it.
While my teenage friends were listening to bands like Journey, Van Halen, and AC/DC, I listened to one artist and one artist only, Barry Manilow. I was very unapologetic about it. I even wore a Barry Manilow t-shirt to school. Just a reminder, I am straight.
In second grade, our teacher used an overhead projector instead of the chalkboard to teach lessons. The projector had a role of transparent film and a light source underneath, which projected an image of what was written on the film into a head, that contained a mirror which displayed it on the screen. I knew a mirror reverses an image, so I thought Mrs. Raye, my second-grade teacher, was writing backward. I couldn’t see the second mirror in the head that corrected the image. One day, Mrs. Raye asked me to write the spelling words on the projector. I panicked. I had never written backward but was too shy to say anything. The first word was “ship,” so I walked up to the projector and wrote it in reverse.
My classmates burst into laughter. I turned around to look at the screen and was amazed to see the image looked exactly how I had written it. I then examined the projector head, saw the second mirror, and understood how it worked.
“Just what are you doing?” Mrs. Raye asked.
“Nothing.” I stopped looking at the projector head.
“Erase that and write it correctly.”
The teacher thought I was trying to be funny when actually, I was trying to be normal. At the time, I thought everyone in the class understood how the projector worked except me. I now know I was the only person in the class who thought about it.
My favorite Barry Manilow song explains how I’ve felt my entire life. I think most people feel this way. At least the ones worth knowing.
All the Time
by
Barry Manilow
All the time I thought
There’s only me
Crazy in a way that
No one else could be
I would have given everything I own
If someone would have said you’re not alone
All the time I thought
That I was wrong
Wanting to be me
But needing to belong
I would have given everything I had
If someone would have said you’re not so bad
All the time
All the wasted time
All the years
Waiting for a sign
To think I had it all
All the time
All the time I thought
There’s only me
Crazy in a way that
No one else could be
I can’t believe that you were somewhere too
Thinking all the time there’s only you
All the time
All the wasted time
All the years
Waiting for a sign
To think I had it all
All the time
I cry every time I hear that song. Again, I really do like women.
Which leads us to my most impo
rtant revelation so far, other than no tube socks for Christmas.
Shit I Know To Be True
1. Don’t give tube socks to children for Christmas… EVER
2. A preoccupation with external appearances is sometimes used to hide something unattractive on the inside
3. The closest we come to immortality is the positive legacy we are remembered by
4. Those things that make us different, make us better
I was at Richie’s house talking to his older sister, Carol, when she mentioned she was looking for some pot. I naively informed her my parents had lots of it, and I could get some for her. When I delivered it, Carol said, “You know you can sell this stuff.”
That idea had never occurred to me. Thus began my marijuana business. Although I had no idea what the street price for pot was, my efforts were quite profitable, being that my cost-of-goods was zero. I tried smoking it but never felt any effects. Unlike most of my friends, I didn’t smoke cigarettes and didn’t know to inhale. I actually pulled a Bill Clinton.
Almost overnight, I went from unknown loser to king of the seventh grade. My favorite clients were the popular girls who, before my new business venture, never knew I existed. Of course, they didn’t really like me. They were just using me, an arrangement I had no problem with. I enjoyed having extra cash, but that wasn’t my motivation. I finally fit in, or at least I thought I did.
The money I made went entirely toward my most intense interest: video games. Across the street from Cordova Mall, a closed Waffle House had been converted into a video arcade called The Silver Nugget. Imagine 1200 square feet packed with the classics: Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, Missile Command, Centipede, Joust, Tron, Food Fight, Dragon’s Layer, Tempest, Galaga, and the greatest video game ever created, Robotron. Modern arcade games are designed to be unbeatable, forcing you to keep putting quarters in the machine to continue playing. Classic games can be played forever on one quarter, if you have the skill.
American Drug Addict: a memoir Page 4