Being a hippie and a star ballplayer made my life tumultuous, to say the least. I did get laid for the first time when I was thirteen. That was one good thing. It really wasn’t anything memorable—just an awkward first fuck with a girl I met at a party for the team. I didn’t know her and would never see again, but I wasn’t broken up about it or anything. It seemed like a good first experience—a foreshadowing of things to come.
Anyway, I still had baseball and rock and roll. The Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Zeppelin, ZZ Top—those guys were my heroes. We had this shitty LSD on paper—nothing like what I would get in later years from Tim Leary—but when you’re a kid and you’re tripping balls and listening to music, it’s like pure freedom. I’d try to strum along on my acoustic, and Scott would lie on the floor and look up at me with this goofy smile that said, “Fuck our parents, teachers, and all authority figures. We hate life.” We were nihilists. We didn’t know what that meant, but if it was accompanied with a disdainful, “Fuck you!” we were all about it. The very first time I was actually arrested was when I was thirteen, and Scott’s mom called the police on me for stealing her diabetic needles. That started a downhill trend. I couldn’t go to a Walgreens without getting at least detained for shoplifting.
Getting wasted and stealing cars became a specialty for Scott and me. We had moved on from my dad’s ride—much to his relief. Some kid in school had taught us how to break in and steal a car in less than thirty seconds. You can’t do it anymore because they have all this fancy antitheft technology, but back then it was like opening an old apartment door with a credit card. One day when I was fourteen a guy named Jerry Pinder and I cut school. I wanted to visit my grandmother, who was dying of cancer in Florida, and my parents wouldn’t let me take the time off from school. Jerry just wanted to go to Florida to get laid and hang out on the beach. But I wanted to see my grandmother who raised me.
First we went to Sears to steal a screwdriver that we planned to use to steal a car. Then we went to the parking lot and found a 1962 Buick Skylark. Easy. Pop. Done. We got halfway around the parking lot and the fucking thing ran out of gas. We stole a car with an empty gas tank! Idiots. We pushed the car back into a spot so it wouldn’t just stick out. We felt stupid, but then we noticed that two rows down was a 1963 Impala with a full tank. Perfect. We broke into the car, started it, and headed south toward Miami. We made it to Paducah, Kentucky, right by Monmouth Caves near the Tennessee border. Then we ran out of gas and didn’t have any money; it wasn’t a well-planned expedition. We had about fifty black beauties on us—speed—but no money. So we pushed the car into some place outside this rest area and snuck to a Motel 6 kind of place. We broke into the laundry room and figured we’d sleep there until we stole our next pre-1964 GM. I had a backpack full of smelly clothes, so I decided to do laundry. The motel swimming pool was right next to the laundry room, and I figured, “Okay, let’s do our laundry, and our shower will be jumping in the pool.” So we went for a quick swim, but some early morning swimmers saw us and were like, “Those long-haired unsupervised fourteen-year-olds don’t belong here.” They called the cops on us and when the police came they found the stolen car and arrested us. I was in a jail in Paducah, Kentucky, and I wouldn’t tell them I was underage. I was ready to accept the punishment. I would rather have done ten years hard time than deal with my dad coming to pick me up. But they knew I wasn’t eighteen and threatened me until I caved. My dad came down and it was horrific.
I tried to explain to him that I stole the car just so I could see my grandma. I got indignant. “If you guys would have let me go down to Florida, there wouldn’t be this problem. It’s your fault!” He didn’t buy it. We drove back; it must have been four hundred or so miles from Kentucky to Chicago. He didn’t say a fucking word the whole time. I’d try to talk, and he’d go, “Shhhh!” That’s bad. That’s when you know you’re fucked. We didn’t drive straight back to the house like I’d expected. Instead, he took me straight to a barbershop, picked me up, put me into the chair and had them give me a crew cut. I was kicking and screaming, and he was holding me down. I’d rather serve an actual jail sentence than go through that torture again. I had to go back to school like that, and everyone made fun of me. I was the dumb-ass loser who couldn’t even steal a car properly and came back with a buzz cut. It was strange because now that I had short hair the longhairs thought I was a square and wouldn’t talk to me. It was like I had betrayed them. But the jocks suddenly opened up to me and were okay for a while until I tried to introduce them to coke. Then they were like, “You’re weird.”
After the smoke cleared and my parents realized I had only stolen the car to see my grandmother one last time, they flew me down to Miami by myself to spend some time with her. She was going to the hospital for treatments, but she was dying in her house. I knew it was the last time I was going to see her. She had a malignant growth in her jaw that was spreading. My grandfather—the most interesting man in the world—was paying her medical bills and doing anything he could to save her even though he was no longer with her. They tried experimental medications and surgery. Doctors cut out her entire jawbone to remove the tumor to try to save her, but all they did is turn the last days of her life into a living hell.
When I saw her it was hard to maintain eye contact and not turn away. She looked like Skeletor or some creature from Dawn of the Dead. She had to eat through a tube. Sitting in a room with her in that condition was so depressing. I talked with her a little about baseball and school, but I was choked up the whole time. She was so beautiful before that, and suddenly she’s looking at me with no face. She was all withered from the chemotherapy, and her long red hair was gone. When you know you’re seeing someone for the last time, it’s really hard to know what to do. She died shortly after, but I kind of said my goodbyes at the hospital. That was one of the shittiest experiences I’ve ever had because I really loved her. She helped make me who I am, and suddenly she was gone.
Even at age fourteen I knew it was a precursor to my future. Everyone loses some peers, friends, relatives—it happens to all of us. But at the time I was really angry. Fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t have to deal with that shit. She was the first person I cared about that I lost in a horrible way, and it left me thinking, “Well, what’s the point of living and striving to achieve something if we’re all just going to end up mangled and rotting in the end?” Grandma Carmen wasn’t that old either. She was in her early fifties—which is pretty young to lose half your face. God, I still love her and can’t believe what she went through and how strong she was through the entire ordeal. She never felt sorry for herself. She just endured the barbaric experiments they performed on her until her dying day.
My parents flew down for the funeral, and I was one of the pallbearers. After the funeral, people gathered to tell stories about her and I remember thinking, “Where were you when she was alive?! Why weren’t you celebrating her life then? Now it’s too late and you’re drinking wine and laughing.” That really pissed me off and weirded me out so badly that I swore I would never go to another funeral. My drummer in Lard, Jeff Ward, overdosed on heroin in 1993. Lard vocalist Jello Biafra flew out from San Francisco for the funeral, and I drove him there, but I couldn’t go in. I sat in the parking lot in the car during the entire service while everyone was in there looking at the coffin, comforting each other. I hope nobody comes to my funeral—which they won’t because I’m not having a funeral. I’m going to remember the good old days and get cremated. Then everyone who knew me can get together and have a party and remember what a nutbar I was.
By the time I was a sophomore in high school I was one of the stars of the baseball team. I played third base and was also the closing pitcher. I figured I would be playing big league ball in no time. For one game some scouts came out to check out our third baseman Gary Hanes, and they saw that I could come in and close out a game and could bat. I was batting around .360, so they took notice. But my baseball dreams came cras
hing to a halt when I got hurt sliding into third. My cleats caught in the dirt and I knew right away I was completely fucked. I tore all the cartilage and ligaments in my knee and could never play after that, which really messed me up, because I had no backup plan. I was pretty much a straight D and F student because I never went to class, but I figured I’d have a career in baseball—if not as a star player then as a coach or something. Shit, I was fourteen—what the fuck did I know about how the real world operates?
After my baseball injury, shit really started to snowball. I was mad at the world because my grandmother was dead. I couldn’t play baseball anymore, and I thought my mom was a bitch and I thought my dad was Hitler. So I already started to develop the attitude of not giving a fuck about what I did or what happened to me. I became a perpetual fuck-up, druggie, wastoid with a death wish. On my fifteenth birthday I did twelve blotter-sized hits of acid before first period. I started hallucinating insanely. It wasn’t like the walls were melting or there were pleasant translucent colors everywhere; instead, reality became a nightmare and I couldn’t differentiate between the two. I was in class and saw my teacher turn into a lizard. I started laughing and couldn’t control myself. The teacher said, “Al, is there a problem?!” And I said, “Yeah! You’re a fucking lizard!” She threw me out of the class and had me escorted to the principal’s office. I was still tripping balls and couldn’t act like I was straight. By third period I said, “I’m not feeling so good,” so they let me go home. I walked the whole way home, which was about two and a half miles. And I was still hallucinating like a madman, seeing insects crawling all over me and the sidewalk filled with flames. There were other lizards too, and they looked at me like they were either going to knock me out and eat me or do medical experiments on me. I kept hiding in the bushes because I was so freaked out.
I broke into someone else’s house because I thought it was mine; in the suburbs of Chicago the houses were all cookie-cutter and all looked the same. So I went in and tried to eat some food because I was nauseous from all the acid, and I thought if I ate something I might feel better. I broke in through the back door so my mom wouldn’t see me and hopefully I could just get some food, go to my room, eat it, and pass out. I got into the house and didn’t realize anything was different—I was that high. So I went to the refrigerator and grabbed some lunch meat. This lady heard noises in the kitchen, so she came in to see what was going on and saw this shaven-headed degenerate kid eating bologna from her fridge. She screamed, and then I crumbled into a fetal ball, thinking, “Who the fuck is this lady, and what’s she doing in my house? What did the lizard people do with my family?!” I was making these moaning noises, and I guess she felt threatened because she called the police. Everything sounded like I was underwater, but I heard her say, “Hello, police.” And I was like, “Okay, I know that word. I’m not having any of that.” I ran out and realized I was only four blocks away from my mom’s house, so I ran home, jumping over the snakes and giant slugs on the ground and dodging the flames.
My mom saw me coming in the back door right away, and that was a sign to her that something was wrong. It’s like nothing worked out that day. It reminds me of that Martin Scorsese film After Hours, when it gets to the point at which you feel so bad for the character because of everything he’s been through that you can’t watch anymore. My mom saw me, and I swear to God she was talking two octaves lower than a human voice should go. My eyes were darting around the room at things that weren’t really there, and everything was in slow motion. I could think, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen like a statue, but I know my mouth was open because I remember drooling. I think I sucked my thumb, then fell asleep on the kitchen floor. From what I can remember I went into “I’m defeated” mode—no point in fighting anymore. Next thing I knew I was tied to a gurney.
First, they put me in a corrective orphanage, Maryville City of Youth, which was more like a prison. At that point my parents were tired of my daily bullshit and needed a break. So they put me in this place, then they went off to Europe for a vacation. Oddly enough, I found out years later that the main sponsor for this facility was the Chicago Blackhawks, owned by the Wirtz family, with whom I would become close friends many years later. But back then I had no idea what was happening, and by the time I caught on that something was up I just had time to grab my Martin acoustic guitar, which I played all the time in there because there was nothing else to do. There were about a hundred people in my building, and only ten of them were white, including me. So there was a lot of racial hostility directed at me. I deflected some of it with jokes, but there was no way I was gonna earn any respect in that place without fighting back. Usually I was outnumbered and got my ass kicked, but sometimes I’d get lucky and win a fight or two. Either way, the more I fought back, the more respect they gave me and the less I got picked on. It was methodical like that.
But one time I totally lost it, and shit was anything but routine. They used to ship the kids from the orphanage off to high school on these buses. I would always show up with a busted lip, black eyes, or a broken nose from fighting. I had my nose busted and dislocated so many times that I learned to snap the cartilage back into place so it wasn’t all bent up. I’d bite a T-shirt, grab my busted nose between my thumb and forefinger, brace my fist with my other hand, and yank my fucked up nose back into place. The first couple times it hurt so badly that I almost passed out, but by the third or fourth time I got pretty good at it. Anyway, I’d go to this high school and have no social life because everyone thought I was a freak, so I was always in a shitty mood. Then I’d come home. One time I got off the bus and went to get my guitar and discovered that some of the black kids had smashed it. They broke into my room while I was gone and destroyed it because they knew it was the only thing I cared about. When I found the shards of my guitar on the floor I saw red and went ballistic. I took the shattered neck of the guitar, went out into the lobby, and started swinging it at any black faces I could see. It was an instinctual reaction. It wasn’t overtly racist. I knew it was the black kids who destroyed my guitar, and I went on a revenge spree, guns blazing.
The first person I hit was a black counselor, and that definitely wasn’t smart. It was bad enough that I was taking my blind rage out on race, and if I’d stopped to think for even a second I’d have known that this guy didn’t have anything to do with it. Anyway, I clocked him, clipped six or seven other people, and then ran. A bunch of these guys tried to catch up to me, so I whipped the guitar neck at them, hopped a fence at the edge of the property, and then hitchhiked a ride before anyone could get over the fence and catch up with me. The driver, who was about my dad’s age but softer looking, could see I was in trouble, so he agreed to take me back to my parents’ house in Chicago while they were out of town. I kicked in the basement window and broke in. I kept the lights off at night so no one would see that someone was there, and I lit candles for illumination. I was like a church mouse, a fucking shrew in my own house, and I lived there all summer.
But I lacked the foresight to realize what would happen when my parents got back from vacation. One day I heard their car pull up, their footsteps as they approached the house, and the click as their key entered the front door lock. I was busted again. It was almost worth it to see my parents jump and the look on my dad’s face when he came in and saw me sitting in the living room watching a Hawks game on TV. The victory didn’t last long.
They caught me with a baggie of cocaine, pills, and needles. They then hauled me off to a mental institution called Lakeshore Hospital for twelve months. It was one of the best years of my life. First of all, they gave me free drugs that I had previously been paying for—Tuinal, Seconal Sodium, Valium. They did everything they could to keep patients sedated back then. They gave me a cocktail of shit. So I was high all the time, and while I was there I had this tutor assigned to me who turned me on to books by William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Aleister Crowley, and Timothy Leary—all these guys who
would become friends and peers later in my life. They were my idols back then. The stuff they wrote about was like nothing I’d been exposed too—certainly nothing like the shit they teach you in school. It was subversive and twisted, filled with new ideas, and written with such grace and wisdom.
The first book that really blew my mind was William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. I mean, if you want incentive to either start or stop doing heroin, you can find it in that book. It was a total mindfuck to me, man. There are junkies everywhere, and there’s this character, Dr. Benway, this sicko motherfucker who does this demented surgery. There are Mugwumps, these homo amphibians whose jizz gets you high, and there are all these orgies and decapitations and totalitarian regimes and brilliance and total nonsense. It’s fucking unbelievable. And he wrote that shit in 1959, when being openly gay was like a death sentence. I seriously couldn’t get enough. After I read Naked Lunch I read Burroughs’s first novel, Junkie, which is a more brutal and straightforward account about his experience as an addict. He talks about scoring and shooting dope, withdrawal, beating up drunks for money to buy drugs, and ending up in a sanitarium. I was too dumb to take any of it as a warning; I just thought it was exciting and cool. When I became friends with him years later he said he wasn’t trying to moralize or anything; he was just telling it like it was, the bad and the good. He was unapologetic about heroin until his dying day.
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