Besides pissing in cars, it was around this time I began to stay up later at night, watch horror movies. “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th” instant favorites of mine. There was something so thrilling yet comforting about watching people chased and slashed to death. Horror movies, like heavy metal, have always been soothing to me, comforting me in times of distress.
I’d seen the movie “Firestarter” and then read the book. It was the first adult type of book I’d ever read. And oh, how it enthralled me! I was obsessed with fires for a short time, and I began to set things on fire. Mostly newspapers, in the back alley near my house. I loved to watch the paper burn and crumble. I even burned
“Firestarter,” the book, to see if it would give me telekinetic powers, like maybe I could steal, harness energy from the book.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Fuck, how I loved to see the orange flames dancing and moving about from the book’s pages. The power and movement of the fire was so hypnotic!
Sadly, I didn’t inherit the superpowers I wanted, so then, for a while, I wished I had a flamethrower and could shoot it people I didn’t like or things I wanted to get out of my way.
After my fire phase, I got more into knives. I’d fantasize stabbing people, slashing them, decapitating or chopping people up like I’d see in the late-night horror films.
Often in movie theaters, I had these thoughts. Often about people whose head or hair was too big and blocked the screen. I’d imagine beheading them, hacking off their heads with an axe and then sitting back down and enjoying the film, eating my popcorn.
Fortunately, I kept these urges to myself, finding release in watching the horror movies and playing violent video games. Though I did continue physically attacking people, with my hands or feet, occasionally. Nasty sneak attacks…
Like a kid whose name I forgot, who was bending over to tie his shoe, in the hallway, outside our homeroom class. No one else was in the hallway, so, again being a hallway bandit, a berserker, I took it as a cue…
The kid had never done anything wrong to me. I didn’t dislike him. But he was in a position of weakness, vulnerability. So I decided to attack him. I crept up behind him, clenched my hands together, again, like I was holding an axe, and I smashed his spine, as hard as possible, and ran away. He cried, “argh!” as I took off running. I didn’t get caught for it.
I’d also chase cats. Every cat I saw, my own included, we had three, and all of them, I chased.
It became a compulsion. If I saw a cat, I had to chase it, and just chase it too. If I got it cornered, and it began to hiss, claw at me, I’d relent, leave it alone. It was more the chase of the animal that thrilled me than the catching of the animal.
My cats obviously hated me, would run, scurry off, hiss at me, anytime I was near.
One cat tired of my shenanigans too, and ambushed me, pounced on my leg from
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent behind, scratching and clawing at me and scurried off, deftly ducking under a sofa where I couldn’t reach it.
The ferocious little hellion! (Looking back, I soooo deserved it!) Hell am I lucky those cats weren’t the same size as me. People don’t think about it, but a housecat is really no different from a lion. Both are predators. Anyone reading this might not think that their cat is a beast, they might not think Fluffy is a savage, that Fluffy would never hurt a living thing, but if Fluffy were the size of a lion, or the size of even a small human, Fluffy would claw you to a bloody carcass...
Fortunately, for me, our housecats were not the size of humans, nor were they lions or tigers.
I respect cats, I must say. Cats truly are incredible creatures and beautiful, elegant, graceful beings. Despite me probably terrifying the crap out of them, our cats would stalk the garden behind our house, kill birds and rats, leave the dead animals at our back doorstep, offerings to us, the cats’ masters. What clever beasts! Super predators!
It sucked, I’m sure, when we moved, for our cats to leave our home, our neighborhood. It sucked for me too, to leave my childhood home, my neighborhood. I hated my mother for that, for making us move. My mother was always so strict. Sometimes I’d wish she had died instead of my father, and I feel absolutely disgusting for ever thinking that…
Before we left the house, my mother had a skylight built into my room. We’d sold the house to a pair of chubby lesbians, who were difficult and finicky about every stage of the sale, it being their first purchase of a property.
After the sale went through, a month or so after we’d moved out, one cold January morning, the skylight collapsed in my bedroom, seriously injuring one of the lesbians. It could have been me in that room. Maybe it was a ghost, or a karmic punishment meant for me, meant for me for chasing the cats, pissing in cars, throwing eggs, not drinking from the bottle, sucker-punching kids in the hallways…
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent 10
We, my mother, me, my mother’s partner, his two children, moved into a bigger house, two blocks from the house he’d been living in, in a Miami suburb, to start a new life.
The cats that I’d chased moved with us but pissed everywhere in the new house and were banished to the basement, not allowed out. The cats lived down there like subterranean beasts. Eventually they were euthanized. (Though I’m sure they were of the opinion I should have been the one euthanized.) Upon moving into the new house, I continued my role of miscreant.
And while doing miscreant things, burning things, chasing our new housecats, I felt enjoyment, sure, but I wasn’t sure why I did them.
Once, watching “Diff’rent Strokes,” I saw Arnold get in trouble in school for throwing an eraser at a classmate. The next day I went to school, I also threw an eraser at a classmate and got in trouble for it. Was the TV to blame? I can’t say.
I’m sure I’d have committed another mischievous act if I hadn’t thrown the eraser.
Doing these acts, these evil, stupid things, it sometimes was as if I wasn’t the one doing it. Like there were ghosts, demons in me. I was now the zombie. I was the demons’ being, I was their puppet, obeying their unspoken commands. There were times, too, it was an out of body experience, I was watching myself do it, observing my behaviors, indifferent to the mischief, an apathetic, yet deviant voyeur.
And more evil would transpire in the new house. Far, far more insidious than before...
We moved into a larger house, three storeys, an old, pale white, southern, Victorian style architecture type dwelling, with Grecian columns, and a wraparound front porch picture perfect for sipping mint juleps.
It had a gravel driveway and a small tropical backyard garden that was brimming with lantana, hibiscus, and bougainvillea flowers.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Being a somewhat big house, there was plenty of room for my mother and her partner, who I guess I can call my “stepfather,” a 50 something, stout man a few words. A man who bore a striking resemblance to the actor Fred Dreyfus, and who had two kids, both older than me, who I guess I can term a “stepbrother”
and “stepsister,” the stepsister being the eldest.
The parents both wanted to work from home, not have to rent offices, and so each had a room in the house designated as an office, to see patients. There was even a tiny nook on the second floor, big enough to be used as a waiting room...
On the first floor, there was a vestibule, with an antique armoire. A narrow hallway led to what was a small kitchen, far smaller than you’d expect in a three storey house.
The kitchen had a pantry nearly the same size as the kitchen itself. Perhaps not the most efficient use of space, design.
To the right of the kitchen was a large dining room, which was rarely used.
Neither of my parents cooked much because they worked so often. Nor did they eat at home much; mostly they ate out, in restaurants, often at a local Chinese restaurant that my parents dined at so frequently they named it “The House of Boring.”
My stepfather was constantly on call for a mental hospital he did rounds at, in addition to his private practice, and would eat at the hospital a lot, in addition to
“The House of Boring.”
My mother taught a couple classes at a local university, in addition to her private practice; sometimes she’d eat at home, cooking mostly vegetables and lentils, which she’d cook for me, too- until we moved into the new house.
Once we moved in, my mother proclaimed that she’d be too busy with work and couldn’t cook anymore. My stepsiblings and I were ordered to use the microwave, and attempt to learn to cook for ourselves, or use our allowance to eat out.
Mostly we ate out. Tons of pizza especially. We’d frequent the local pizza parlor so much that I got to know the family that ran it, the owner being an immigrant from Sicily, his son a former U of Miami offensive lineman, nicknamed “Bam Bam.”
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent I’ll never forget Bam Bam. He was a larger than life character. And really, he was larger than life, 6 foot something and pushing three bills. Yet, despite being a walking mountain, he was jovial, a wisp of a smile always crossing his lips. His babyface and red puffy cheeks and flattop haircut somehow making him more cuddly than threatening.
The first time I walked into the pizza parlor, again, I’m not sure why, thinking back on it, though I believe it’s because of CTE or TBI from my car accident, or my demons, or PTSD, maybe a cocktail of all of them, but the first time I went in there, I waltzed in like Clint Eastwood, and saw Bam Bam, all three hundred pounds of him, working the counter, taking customers’ orders.
I swaggered straight up to him, this mountain of a man, and started busting his balls. I’m this nine-year-old kid, this pipsqueak, and I’m calling him “fatboy” and cracking fat jokes.
He was shocked. This runt, this little shit, fucking with him, there in the store, and everyone there, all his friends, friends of friends, were shocked, pointing and laughing.
He snarled and stepped away from the counter. Towering over me, he seized me, his meaty paws under my tiny armpits and he hoisted me airborne, pinned me up to the cold, humming refrigerator and was like: “So what do you say now?”
I only laughed, and I knew deep down he wouldn’t do much more than that.
However, after being hoisted to the Heavens in such fashion, I did relent my verbal abuse.
Amazingly, after that, we became close. I think on some level Bam Bam respected that I’d had the gumption to step to him. Not many did. And we quickly bonded, as we both liked a lot of the same action movies.
Bam Bam, his dad, mom, sister, became like a second family to me. I got to know them well. I got to know and would joke around with the guys in the kitchen. They were good people. They looked after me, called me out on my bullshit, pushed me to do well in school, pushed me to join a local little league baseball team. And during this time, with Bam Bam assuming a positive role in my life, I halted my malicious activities, mostly.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent For the first few years at the new house, I didn’t get into too much trouble. But later I did. It was around puberty that the demons returned, and I was back in the demons’ claws, back to being a delinquent, a devious zombie.
And right as I started fucking up, at age thirteen, Bam Bam, and later his father, accosted me on the street, and once in the restaurant, getting into my face, because they’d heard of me smoking cigarettes, being a hoodlum.
Of course, at the time, I laughed it off, was a smartass, but now, looking back at it with the wisdom of time and age, I’m grateful to them for caring.
Tragically, Bam Bam, being so overweight, died young, from heart failure.
He wasn’t even thirty and had suffered a similar fate that’s befallen many former football players. The game, the lifestyle of an offensive lineman taking its toll.
For many years after, a memorial picture of him hung in that pizza parlor, hanging atop the spot he always sat.
After he died, I didn’t go back there for many years. It was too difficult, but later I did, and I would sit in his seat, underneath his picture.
I wonder what would have happened if he’d not died. He could have been the older male figure, a positive role model that I needed; perhaps he could have stopped my downward spiral.
It was unfortunate my stepbrother couldn’t be that guy. He never cared about me. He bullied and teased me, beat me, grabbed me and farted in my face. Yet another sadistic older brother prick. (Seriously, why was every older brother so malicious back in those days?)
My stepfather, too, didn’t want to be that guy. He never gave much of a fuck. He was never around, always working, and when he was around, he was taciturn, remote, physically and mentally abusive as well.
He’d return in the evenings, after seeing crazy people, seriously mental, suicidal, psychotic, schizophrenic sorts, and he’d retire to our living room, listen to blaringly loud opera, sitting with his eyes closed, chewing ice cubes. There he’d sit, alone, and I guess that room was perfect for solitude as it was at the far end of the first floor, behind the living room and kitchen, and had been built, before we
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent moved in, as an addition to the house, and was rather large and spacious and had sprawling panoramic windows and vaulted ceilings, as well as a potbelly stove that didn’t make much sense in Miami…
(The house had burned down, partially, many years ago; its backyard bigger at the time; a horse stable in the house’s rear had caught ablaze, spreading its way to the house.)
((I always wondered if anyone died in the fire, because I’d be home alone and would hear strange noises, footsteps, doors slamming, and once a strange light hovered above me, while I was in bed, and floated through the ceiling. I told my stepsister about it, and she and her friend had seen the exact same thing. Was it a real ghost or a mental demon? Paranormal energy? Demons must come from somewhere, right?))
Back to my stepfather, it’s true what they say about psychiatrists. They are some of the most fucked up people.
He had a twisted upbringing, though, so it’s sort of understandable why he’d himself have mental issues, and why he’d want to pursue his profession. Perhaps he wanted to fix himself?
His story is graphic. As a child, his mother had serious mental health issues. She and his father divorced when he was young, and my stepfather stayed with his mother, who, as well as having mental issues, was a raging alcoholic.
His mother was perpetually drunk. She’d frequent local bars and bring home lots of strange men, a couple of whom would slap my stepfather around.
His earliest memories were of his mother, drunk, cooking horrible food, forcing him to eat the burned slop, and herself slapping, abusing and tormenting him.
(And for this reason, he’d always had a difficult relationship with food, never wanting to cook, eat at home, in part because of these traumatic childhood memories involving his mother’s cooking…)
When he was eight, his mother killed herself, and he discovered her dead body, upon coming home from school, finding her in the kitchen, face down, on the ugly, lime green tile floor, his mother’s cold body lying next to a kitchen table full of burned food, empty bottles of pills and liquor.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent After that, he went to live with his father, who was a nice, decent man, and like him, a man of few words. His father was a cigar smoker who liked opera, guns, and 1930s classic cars. His father didn’t say much, but they had a positive, if not unexpressive relationship, and they’d bonded, sort of, over guns.
From his father, my stepfather learned to shoot guns at a young age and continued the hobby for the rest of his life. One of the few times I bonded with him was when he took me to the target range and taught me to shoot, when I was about ten.
Aside from that, we didn’t talk a whole lot. He’d be gone most of the day, and when he was home, he was seeing patients, and the door to his office was closed, with a white noise machine in the hallway outside his office door, whirring loudly, swallowing sound.
Most of what I remember was him in the evenings, sitting in the living room, with his eyes closed, chewing on ice cubes, as he listened to booming, dramatic opera on his expensive, elaborate stereo system…
Like his mother, he himself was an alcoholic. He went to AA meetings, the meetings being one of the only other times I went with him anywhere.
I remember those meetings; how smoky the rooms were. It was as if the folks there had traded alcohol addiction for nicotine. And caffeine. Good heavens, if everyone wasn’t drinking coffee, guzzling it. Though, given their stories, it was probably a worthy tradeoff.
It was quite something as a kid to hear those stories. One guy, who looked like an alligator, saying he’d been so blitzed that he one morning woke up inside a mailbox. I’m still not sure how anyone other than a waif could fit into a mailbox, and he was no waif.
The thing that struck me most about the meetings was the applause they’d give for chips, especially the 24-hour chip, how uproariously they’d hoot and holler and applaud for those who’d first sobered up. The camaraderie was endearing.
One could think that hearing the plethora of alcohol induced horror tales would stop me from fucking up later in life. They didn’t…
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent That first year or two in the house was okay. It wasn’t until later that my stepfather’s darker side came out.
My stepbrother was the usual “big brother” type of jerk, openly abusive and terrorizing. But my stepfather was more aloof. It wasn’t until later, around the third year we lived together, he became hostile to me.
I once broke a window, by accident, and he picked me up, slung me over his shoulder, carried me up to the room I shared with my stepbrother and slammed me, like a sack of potatoes to the floor. On the way up, I punched him in the nuts, which may have precipitated him throwing me as he did.
Fortunately, I wasn’t paralyzed by the incident, though I well could have been.
I threatened to call the police on him, and my stepsister rushed upstairs and told me that if I did, she’d kill me, and I could tell that she meant it by her icy glare.
I told my mom about it, but she had no reaction, was like a zombie, had nothing to say, shrugged her shoulders and walked off. She too had become rather aloof, was consumed with work. I think my father’s ordeal, death, drained her capacity for emotion…
I found out later from my stepbrother that my stepfather bragged and joked about throwing me to the floor, mimicking my cries, his throwing motion to his kids’ joy and delight. It wasn’t a nice feeling hearing that.
There were a couple more times when I caused mischief, and he chased after me, threatening to beat me, but I was quicker and got away. Once I ran over to my friend’s house and stayed there, but his mom kicked me out when his little sister complained about something I said to her, which I don’t remember.
I wasn’t welcome there any longer, at that house, and wasn’t feeling very welcome or safe in my own house.
I thought of running away, going to live with a relative. But I only heard from my aunt and uncle sporadically and the rest of my dad’s family had disappeared. My mother didn’t have any family that she spoke with, so there wasn’t really anywhere for me to go.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent (My mother’s father was a great guy, beloved by all, and a successful businessman, who for a short time was a screenwriter for Columbia Pictures, though he was blacklisted for once attending a Communist Party Meeting, partly out of curiosity, although more because he was chasing a girl there. A heavy smoker, he died when I was only 4, so I never got to know him.) ((My mother’s mother, also a heavy smoker, died shortly after. She’d been a debutante and housewife. And was a Depression Era child and hardass to my mom, lashing her relentlessly with a belt, slapping her and castigating her. Their relationship was forever frayed, dark, and my mother rarely spoke with her after she finished college. My mother cut ties with the rest of the family after her mother’s death…))
I guess I was following in the family tradition of difficult, fractured households.
And it was scary. It was a scary feeling, a lonely feeling. A terrible feeling. To be a child, so vulnerable, powerless, and living with hostile people.
(Throughout all this, though, I’d listen to heavy metal, watch Headbanger’s Ball on MTV, watch horror movies, and the slasher films and metal videos comforted me, were a testament to the power of music, film and their astounding ability to console, heal, and alleviate psychic pain…) When I told my mother how horrible my stepfamily was, she replied by saying how she had a patient who was chained to a radiator at four-years-old and whipped with an electric cord and raped.
I guess my mom did have a point. Suffering, to a degree, is relative...
And these times weren’t all bad, either. My summers were wonderful, since I’d spend them in summer camps, which were sort of like prisons for middle class kids, holding tanks for us while our parents got some deserved R&R.
These were largely enjoyable times, spent riding horses, camping. The biggest menace there were the occasional camp counselor, sadistic older brother type, who’d beat and torment campers, as well as the wasps that attacked me once, by the camp convenience store. The insects swarming out like a horde of Mongols and stung me all around my head and back. I ran, in tears, and in stinging, electric pain, with wasps still on my shirt, to the dining hall, where a tall, gentle giant of a camp counselor, one of the good ones.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent (A guy who’d nearly died recently from pissing on an electric fence and had also been struck by lightning once while chasing a horse.) The giant ran out and swatted the wasps away, saved me from further onslaught.
It was great, though, mostly, those days at camp. Hiking in the wilderness, off in nature, learning to ride a horse and riding horses through the woods. Playing tennis and lacrosse and golf.
There was much camaraderie there, too, living in a bunk full of guys, cracking jokes, and we’d dance around, lip-syncing to Motley Crue, generally being little animals.
It was so free, then, running around, the freedom of being a kid, having so few responsibilities. The saying “Youth is wasted on the young” is certainly true to an extent. We didn’t know how good we had it. No taxes, kids, jobs, stress…
Although if we knew how limited time was, how much life, the world would change, would youth have been as fun? Or would it have been more like standing on a beautiful beach, under a clear sky, knowing a tsunami would soon arrive…
The camp was up in rural New York state, and I remember how clean the air was, how crisp and cool it’d be, how fresh it smelled in the forest when we’d hike.
Those were fantastic days, those times. When camp would end, we’d hug, talk about “keep in touch,” everyone at the camp, my bunkmates, friends, and counselors, and we would, for a bit, but I eventually lost touch with everyone.
There were kids there from every part of the country, even other countries, even a girl from Austria, who was amazingly gorgeous, and I remember having a crush on her. Little did I know she wouldn’t be the first Austrian to enter my life… More on that later…
Going back home would always be rough, but at least I had my TV to keep me company. We didn’t have TV at the camp, which was probably for the better.
Other than the joy of being reunited with my dear TV, it’d suck to be back. But I’d manage, find things to do, besides watching TV, like school, playing sports, riding bikes, playing video games, reading, learning guitar, and working odd jobs in the neighborhood, mowing lawns to earn a bit of extra pocket money.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Things soon improved when my stepbrother left to live full time with his mom, leaving me with a room to myself, and eventually, my stepfather and I froze into a détente.
We ceased speaking until one morning, when I was 14.
More on that later, but first, a bit about my drug use, which factored heavily into how and why my stepfather and I had our first talk in years, a talk that remains our last, to this day…