.... And thats All I Need ... ( Part I )
You might think that , academically making the cut to knock two entire grade levels off your resume at the age of eight or ten or whatever - is a measure of success. Its not. Florida's school system was pretty advanced, when I was going up through grade school. But it the decision to send you in for the test was left to the teachers. Unlike, of all things, the small town in Georgia where I spent fourth grade, my third grade didn't have an accelerated program. The best way to deal with testing out of a grade is to get a kid into an accelerated program and then if they sky that, test them. Also, in all fairness, the second time I tested out was sort of a mulligan that my mom had set up with the school - she had no idea that what she thought was the advanced program was in fact really just an experimental program run by a couple of hippies. Also, bear in mind that in third grade I had the biggest crush ever on my Teacher.
Alright. So. The way this works is pretty simple. I'm going to head back to that time , and then pick off the things I really wanted. The things I visualized myself getting when I was older, and the things that I admired.
In third grade my number one thing that I wanted in the world, was a Leica 35mm camera, made by Leitz. I had pictures of the camera in my room. I can remember even today the precision of the German optics - the purple tint on the lens - the dark arizona sky black body. The red circle logo. This is where the love affair with the 35mm began. Later, in sixth grade, I will scrap up enough money to buy a nikkormat with a standard 50 lens and spend all my lunch money on asa 1000 film. After that, I wanted (and got) a Fox skateboard. I used to go to the school after it was out and surf the halls. Apart from the odd GI Joe, that pretty much summed up what I wanted then.
What I pictured myself getting, was pretty simple. I pictured myself getting a red sportscar. I had a waking vision one day , skateboarding near the lunchroom - of me pulling up in a red sportscar - something that looked like a cross between a 'Vette and a Ferrari. I was wearing mirrored shades, wore a mustache.
I can't remember admiring much, other than my BBW third grade teacher. She didn't sweat.. she +glowed+. In third grade, I went home with a key around my neck and took care of myself until my mom got home. And I played out in the dusky sand behind my home - swam in the pool, and built Ranger Rick Club treeforts and even a complete underground bunker system replete with a lookout periscope.
And tried like hell to avoid getting beaten up by a 15 year old bully that had been sexually abused by his father and had an annoying tendency to kick people in the ribs and pull them around by their hair. One fine day he and his friend found our underground bunker and kicked the roof in and smashed the periscope.
My best friend's mother committed suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills, getting her - and her bigger sister in bed with her and saying goodbye to the world with her two girls under her arms. When my best friend (yes you can have a girl for a best friend) woke up that next the morning she touched the cold dead form of her mother. She never talked about it much. And that was ok with me. Her bigger sister used to help me in school. The best grade you could get was an "O" which meant outstanding. I admired her for being a together kind of girl and I was friends with anyone who would help us hide from Peter the bully and knew the secret wisdom of Ranger Rick. It sort of made up for having an orthodox Jewish Den Mother whose Idea of camping out was to go to the lunchroom cafeteria and make macaroni smiley faces with glue and paper plates.
In the fourth Grade, I was pulled out of Florida and sailed into a small town in Georgia. And for some reason the black coffee of my life was a girl named Nylce who went to SWITCH with me. Although I still had a thing, for cameras - I gave it a rest and took up baseball and playing electric Bass. My stepfather was a Latin American drummer in a Uruguayan rock-jazz fusion band. My Mom met him in Florida , in the same club where she had hung out with Ted Kennedy. We found ourselves in this town after their first album had been cut in a recording studio up on in the hills over Malibu. Apparently it wasn't selling as many copies as they'd hoped, and so he'd gotten a job as a piano tuner.
At or about this time I wanted a Marshall Amp. But mine was good enough (I played a Fender). I think I played Bass for about 2 months, though. I gave a couple of 'concerts'. Basically playing one tune. "Hey Jude". Then I sort of dropped it. I turned my attention to the Clarinet. Benny Goodman FTW.
The skateboard that I'd brought up from Florida worked well enough in the halls of school but there weren't as many walkways . In Georgia, the roads were not as smooth and I didn't get the chance to spend as much time on the skate as I'd wanted to.
What I wanted, then, was more or less the same each day. I wanted a slush puppie. I would walk to the corner with my friends and get one after school, and some potato logs - sort of like big thick french fries - and we'd amp out on the glowing color of a slush puppie and these potato logs from Mercer's fried chicken.
Before God told my uncle to become a Priest, he was an investment broker and real estate guy in the small town we lived. A couple of times I babysat my cousin, and we'd run around the house jumping on the beds. Don't tell him this but one night we even took all our clothes off and ran around nude playing caveman and 'doin the funky chicken' lol. I don't think I would've been paid a keeping-the-order bonus that night if they walked in. Beds make great trampolines. Anyway. As a 10 year old babysitter, I was pretty responsible apart from the (promise) occasional.. isolated incident. I kept them clean and fed and tucked them into bed at their bedtime. When the kids finally fell asleep I'd invariably head over my uncle's bedroom and rifle through the predictable places that adults hide their porno. Scored a direct hit one night with a search between the boxspring and the mattress , "Oui" .. ah.. 70's porno... ++ Jyesss!!! +++ Of course, at 10 the hardware doesn't really work but hey. There's something about a magazine that says "Yes". When they returned from dinner or whatever - I'd tell them how great everything went and my Mom would drive me home and I would get 2.00 cold hard cash. Which I would use to buy Slush Puppies.
Things took a decidedly nonmaterialistic turn , in the 'things' I wanted. For the days that I spent at my Grandmas, in town (she worked as a secretary for City hall) .. I would invariably be found in the library, reading everything I could about the occult. And putting whatever I learned into practice. Numerology. Wicca. White Magik. The Necronomicon. Astrology. Somewhere in those books I knew there was a way to cast magic in the world. I was convinced I could find it. I felt like Indiana Jones in the temple of the public Library. I pretty much forgot about the red sportscar and the leica (which is to say, like Amber Dalton, they still existed in my subconscious mind - always there - maybe making a longdistance phone call when I wasn't looking..) . I rode the skateboard to the library to the far back left end of the shelves and read my way through the books - checking them out and bringing them home and working out the numerological puzzles they had within. I learned that Males had been the first witches and that the rituals of Wicca were centered around the natural world.
I used to sketch pictures of Magic Mushrooms and Cheech Wizard and Flowers. When I wasn't studying the occult ( as I recall neither my mom nor my grandma ever figured out what I was up to ) I was dreaming about LSD. I would draw the the letters in groovy lettering next to a picture of a magic mushroom sort of like the film .. "Wizards".. bear in mind this wasn't about dropping acid .. it was about how cool the pictures looked.
At some point I turned my attention to a nearly full time obsession with Nylce, the latin American girl in my school who would always be skying out the exams with me. I would truck the three miles or so to her place and just sort of watch her door and never get up the nerve to go knock on it. I sent her a love letter that didn't go over very well .. it was kind of ... detailed. Shall we say.
In the last half of the third quarter of my fourth grade year, one day I had to go to the bathroom. The teacher told me to finish my work. I explained that I really had to go. She said, go sit down and finish your work , and you can go afterward.
I sat in my desk with my hands on my desk, in perfect position. My fingers in a five point star. The pain was unbearable. I locked my legs.
After seven minutes passed, I could no longer look at the work that I had already finished and was supposed to be pretending to be doing. I was pulling my breath in, and locking my knees together in a way that my right leg could lock up against the wood of my desk. Nothing seemed to make the pain go away. But my teacher had told me to stay there. And so I did.
After about 10 minutes, I began to hyperventilate. I kept very quiet so no one could hear me except the girl who sat in front of me, and she was wondering what was going on .. the expression on my face must have said something to her that I couldn't. She slowly turned back around.
At or around 12 minutes I urinated on myself. I remember looking down at the floor and seeing a pool of urine forming below my desk. Someone from behind my desk noticed and told the teacher. I was completely humiliated. I didn't cry. It took every ounce of my dignity to sit there. Palms on my desk. The class was led out and I was allowed to leave school. My mom made me feel better when she took me home. She told me that the same thing had happened to her in school - and so she said she just switched seats with the girl next to her! The part of this story that I am really embarassed to relate is that I laughed once and my mom gave me a hug and made me feel better. Fuck you for reading that.
The next day in school I walked up to the playground from the west side. I waited and watched... and decided my best option was to go up to the biggest guy in school. Someone that most kids didn't really like... He started talking about how I peed my pants the other day so I hauled off and beat him like a red headed stepchild. His name was Keith. I was on him, throwing him to the ground. pounding both of my fists into his face. Kicking him. He was so big, it almost didn't hurt him.
The alpha male of our class, a kid named Russ, pulled us apart and said, its ok. They bought into the story that it was an allergic reaction to penicillin and Russ told everyone to lay off me. In the small town where I lived, that was the end of it. I never forgot. But for them, that was the end of it.
Little things marked my work. When all the other kids were handing in their math, and writing "not enough information" I would write 'insufficient data'. Whenever a writing assignment was given out I'd work my way through the assignment to deal with the question of why they were asking that particular question. Every chance I got, I was looking for the patterns and symbols I had been reading about - the magic I knew was in the world. I led my SWITCH team to victory in the state academic competitions, carrying us all the way to the final round. They led us into a room with a single light switch, and asked us questions - whoever reached up and hit the switch first, won. I became really good at finding solvable questions or answers that I knew I, or Nylce, or Russ could handle. For some reason I was also able to field the questions that were really trivia, the ones that dealt with film and the arts.
In the final round , The question that went out in the Arts category was .."This film based on play by Tennessee Williams, starring Elizabeth Taylor .. explored the relationship between dependency, addiction and the tension and dynamic of the human relationship... " and I hit the switch before the question was out - and shouted "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!". Our team started hitting the light before the questions were done. We got the drop on those bastards.
At the end of that year, my mom decided to move back to Florida. As I walked out of the class, to get in the car and head south - My teacher told the class that I was the smartest child they would ever see. Some of them snickered, but she asked the class to cheer me as I got up and left and they did. I left the fourth grade with applause.
The only thing I wanted, I didn't get. Nylce. Given a free pass for the fifth grade from a bunch of tests and because my mom, at that point - had become something of a hippie - I spent the entire fifth grade reading National Geographics and they gave me an A. It was my way of trying to become a priest. I fell in love with a girl named Kaia in the last part of the fifth grade. And returned to my dreams of the Leica. Finally getting a Nikkormat 35mm, which I carried with me everywhere.
In the last part of that year, I could think of nothing else other than a Surfboard - I had seen in the Fox Surf Shop. White on the top. Blue on the bottom, with a cool graphic that looked as if it had been drawn by the same guy who did Cheech Wizard. My mother , who had lost her mind - at that point - trying to save a rapidly deteriorating relationship with my stepfather, and also owing partly to the fact that she'd almost burned down our home with a candle that she left burning - felt that it was time to sell her jewelry. We went to Palm Beach, and traded her gold in for 500.00 and she bought my brother a brand new Yamaha Dirt Bike, and me - the surfboard. I never really wanted it, because of that. But I paddled out for the first time, caught a wave and went over the falls.
Never being really comfortable with the board, I let my mom sell it back . Later on that summer I set my sights on a red Barry Kanapuani (BK) Sunset diamond gun which was perfect for riding the larger waves of the Caribbean.
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