Portnoy’s Son
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2011 by T.J. Seitz
Smashwords Edition
The Phone Game
Click
Beep, boop, bop, eep, not, meep, roo
Ring Ring
Wah, wah
“Hey Rhoada, blow me bitch, you cunt, fuck off! Whatch ya doin’? Eating dinner? Feed me! Didja just get home from work? Oh. How much money did you make to spend on me this weekend? Come on, tell me, pleeeeeese. I’ll lick your pussy. Are you going out tonight? Bed? What’s that? I slept once, kind of liked it too. Do you want me…Wait someone’s beeping me. Hold on…..”
“Blowjob! Jackie? I want to fuck you later tonight after I’m through jerking off. Got any food? Cigarettes? Baby oil? Great! I’m on my way! Can I call you back in a minute? I’m on the line with someone else. Who? it’s none of your business. I’ll get back to you babe…”
“I’m back Rhoada honey. Did you want me to come over tonight for dinner? I’ll eat leftovers. I’m not picky. Tell your mom to get off her fat ass and warm…Damn it! Someone’s ringing me again!!! (deep voice) I’ll be back.”
“What! Look Curt I told you I’d get back to you faggot. I’m on the phone. I definitely want o go to that party. If you leave without me I’ll kill you with a strap on dildo! Yes, I’m showered. Fuck you, asshole! I’m not lying (snicker, snicker). Gotta go, my Dad’s on the other line…long distance.”
“Rhoada? Look I’ll call you back later tonight. I got to go to the bathroom to take a shit. Wanna watch? It smells sooooo good! Honest! I think I’m gonna crash for a while. I didn’t sleep much last night. Ok, I love ya too. Bye, bye. Don’t finger fuck yourself tonight without me.”
Click
Bink, bink, loo, ree, tee, uhn, rah, rah
“Ahhhhhhhhh, I’m not an e-mail! I’m just a common Dirtbag! Ah ya is this Lusty Jizz in my Mouth Porn Shop Bar and Grill? I want to schedule a dick rub for tonight at eight. What? Did you say this is the St. Densiophia Catholic Nunnery? Ooops, well that OK. I like virgins. Can I still have a dick rub? I’ll bring my own olive oil. Extra ‘virgin’ olive oil. Great! Lisa do ya know what a hot body you have? No, I’m serious. I could cum all over it and still not get enough. Will you marry me? Come on! Why? Just forget that I’m a bull blooded lesbian bull dyke cuz my mother fucked my brother! Well that’s OK bitch, I only want you for your body anyways. Will you let me take some pictures of you in some sexy lingerie? I want something to jerk off to. I don’t care if you’re only sixteen. It makes the photos that much better. You can’t leave me like this!!! Where are you going? Oh, there, yuck! Fuck that joint. I’ve been thrown out the door of that place more than once drunk off my ass. Why? Well, you see this empty glass did not agree to well with the head of this cunt bartender who accused me, correctly, of steeling tips off the bar. I did it because I needed to get money to pay for the drinks I was buying everyone somewhere….that was just one incident. Do I need to continue? I thought so. Well, call me later, maybe we can have dinner next week.”
Click
Boo, boo, boop, nic, nic, fee, jee
Wah, wah, wah wah
“Is Patty there? Hi Patty how are you today. Ah, I’m OK. I guess. Haven’t eaten anything today. I have not slept for three days either. I can’t afford food till I get that check on Monday. I’m missing Mary a lot lately. I don’t know why. How is she? That’s great. I don’t know. My life sucks so much now. I’m fucking starving to death and I want to sleep, but that asshole next door keeps his TV up so loud at night. It drives me crazy and he ignores all my complaints. Oh, God would you do that for me! You’re great, thanks! Please leave it on the front porch. I’ll get it up after I get up from a nap. I’m gonna crash now for a while. Thanks Patty. I love you. You’re the greatest. Oh wait….are you picking me up at nine on Sunday for church? Ok, thanks again. Someone’s calling me on the other line. God bless you too.”
“Yah Jacky! I knew it was you because who else calls me more than three times in an hour? Are you fixin’ dinner for me yet? Shove a weenie up you twat. Warm it up for me. Are you wearing panties now? Oh ho!!! Kep talking babe….ohhhhhh! I got to go jerk off now. What! You’ll do it for me? Yes! I guess I’m going to try to cop a ride over to visit you. I’m not sure when I’ll be over, maybe between now and when I get there. I don’t know. I got to get the ride first. If I’m not there by eleven don’t wait up for me. I gotta crash for a hour now so don’t call. I’ll be over later, I hope. Bye.”
Click
Soo, soo, eee, aht, jee, kee, bee
Wah
“Curt? Get Curt. Tell him it’s his transsexual lover. Hey dildo, I’m ready. Let’s get going to that party in Buffalo I told you about. Let’s go get you laid! Yes, I’ve shit, showered and shaved! I’m dressed too and promise to not answer the door nude with a drum stick up my ass. Oh , on the way over could you pick me up a pack of cigarettes? I’ll pay you when you get here. Remember Camel Lights in a box. Don’t knock on the window when you get here. The doorbell works again. The landlord attached it back to the wall for me. Chow!”
The Story
I believe that some close friendships in life are not meant to last forever. They serve a higher purpose beyond our immediate understanding and work well until their functionality has passed. The end will be obvious, hard feelings are unnecessary because people change and can outgrow each other's company.
I have changed a lot over time. My tastes in the people I choose to spend time with, living arrangements and ideas of what constitutes fun have also evolved with me.
I don't exactly remember when I met Dirtbag. The recollection is so fuzzy probably because I was either drunk, stoned, or hitting on a girl at one of our regular weekend house parties. I believe that my housemate Tam probably invited him.
At the time there were five or six of us living in half a house on Meigs Street in the City of Rochester, New York. My mother liked to refer to my living arrangements there as a commune but it was more like a Philip Zimbardo social experiment.
I was twenty-two. My conservative parents had indirectly told me that they did not like my present lifestyle and wanted me out of their house if I didn't stop coming home after 9:00PM.
I had moved back in with them after living alone for a year in a nearby subsidized apartment complex. It eventually became too expensive for me and I could not afford to live there and buy a new car so I asked my parents if I could move back in with them. They said OK figuring that I had not changed much during the passing year. They were wrong. I discovered and actually liked bars and partying.
The last straw with them was when my eighteen year old brother and I, along with our current girlfriends, drove to Toronto, Canada. We caught a show and spent the night bar hopping. Our parents had told us earlier in the week that spending the night there was unacceptable to them. They thought my brother was too young.
We thought who were they to tell us that load of crap? Matthew graduated from High School a month ago and was moving to Buffalo in a few weeks for college. We were old enough to do what we wanted and spent the night anyway.
The next day when we got back our parents were livid with us, especially me. They told me that I was wrong to do what I did. “Screw them!” I thought. I'm not going to stop living because they don't like everything I do or believe. I was not wrong in this instance and defended my brother and I for the first time in our lives against their archaic reasoning and actually won.
Matt admitted to me a few years later that he quietly lost his virginity later that night in the bathroom of the room we all crashed in. Jessica and I were sound asleep in our drunken stupor when it happened. I unwittingly lied to my parents saying that he didn’t do anything because we were all sleeping in the same room. I was naive and trusted that he actually knew better. It was me that should have known better.
While arguing, I used psychology methods that I recently learned in a college class. The same techniques my mother usually used against us. She was powerless for once but still had the last word. I was asked to leave ASAP. During the next few weeks I started looking for a new place to live half-heartedly.
One day, about a month later, I was out driving around with a co-worker. We were looking for something to do when he remembered that a girl we met up with several weeks ago, Tracy was his sister’s old roommate and recently moved into a new place. We went there and hung out for a while. I commented that the place looked like a good living arrangement and she responded by asking me if I wanted to move in. The other person who originally agreed to move in with them backed out at the last minute. The rent was one hundred and sixteen dollars a month plus utilities, split amongst the roommates. I said yes immediately and moved in two weeks later.
The house was located on the corner of Meigs and Gobel Place. Five doors down from Dicky's Tavern. A place I crawled home from on my hands and knees a few times after a long night of bar hopping. It was also only two doors down from where my stepfather's grandparents lived until the late nineteen eighties when they bought their condo and moved to Florida.
Our place was smack dab in the middle of the city and close to the expressway. It took about fifteen minutes to go almost anywhere in the county from there. There were also a number of popular bars and a movie theatre within walking distance.
We had an absentee landlord who literally did nothing accept collect the rent. We pretty much took care of the upkeep, which was OK by us because the rent was so cheap when split many ways. The last year I lived there the landlord actually had the place sided, re-roofed and the gutters replaced. The inside was fine but the outside looked like Hell. I think a city inspector drove by and threatened the landlord with a fine if she didn’t make the place took more appealing.
We all got our own room and had plenty of space for other stuff. There were three bedrooms of varying sizes and the attic. The rest of the house had a living room, bar room, kitchen and basement for communal space and storing stuff.
The front porch was where we all hung out on hot summer days drinking beers late into the night, reading books and talking about whatever. We’d put old furniture from the house or a nearby curb on the porch to sit on.
The place smelled like stir fry, stale beer and incense. The rugs were stained all over with mysterious substances and had lots of cigarette burns. The walls were decorated with darts, psychedelic posters, signs and a blood spot wiped on the wall by the bar. A biker friend at one of the stock the bar parties got a bloody nose wrestling with another guest and decided to leave a token of their appreciation behind. There was a Welcome To The Abyss sign over the kitchen door from a Halloween party we had one year. The furniture was a mish mesh of what we all brought in and others left behind. Nothing matched and most of it was held together with wood screws and boards were placed in the seats under he cushions to keep people from sinking down too far.
Tracy was both the house mom and a hippie on Prozac. She was very plain looking and went up and down on her weight, depending on how depressed she was. The clothes she liked to wear were baggy and hid her true figure from most people. She was about five foot five had brown eyes and long frizzy brown hair to the middle of her back.
She was a client service specialist for the local Catholic Family Services and was working on a BA in Sociology from the SUNY Brockport. She went back to school again, ten years later, after earning a BA in Comparative Literature from Berkley. She said the degree looks great on paper but was next to useless for finding a job that was more challenging than stocking shelves or flipping burgers. You need an MA to teach and she didn’t want to teach. Going back to school and getting an AS in Human Resources after collecting unemployment on and off for two years was how she stumbled upon her present job.
Tracy got depressed a lot and spent a lot of time alone in the attic sleeping when she was not at work or school. As a kid she traveled a lot all over North America. Her father was a liaison for General Electric and NASA. Her parents were also abusive and alcoholics. They beat each other and their kids up frequently. Tracy ran away from home in her early teens and lived in some caves for a few weeks on the Pacific Ocean coast outside San Diego during her senior year of High School. She stayed there until she found a job (that would let her still go to school) and an affordable apartment to live in.
She met another runaway on the beach who turned her on to what she thought was decent job for the moment and a safe living arraignment. In exchange for free room and board she sold dope for a dealer. There were two other girls and a guy living in the place and doing the work. Tracy said the situation worked out fine for her. She only needed to do it for about six months, when she graduated, and was smart enough to keep her plans to herself. Tracy didn’t want any trouble from her employer or co-worker. She didn’t tell anyone in the house that she had been accepted in her Junior year to Berkley. A couple days after graduating from High School she packed her duffel bag full of stuff while everyone was gone and hitchhiked her way to San Francisco.
During her time at Berkley Tracy said that she learned more about civil disobedience than analyzing literature. She was amazed at herself and what she managed to accomplish there. She got over a lot of her past and the inner pain associated with it then began creating herself. She did a lot of sit ins and even married an illegal alien from Honduras to help him get his US citizenship. She unfortunately got caught in a joint undercover INS/DEA sting, then was slapped with a nasty fine and a three month sentence in federal prison for her actions. She had no idea the guy was the cousin of an LA gang leader.
Tracy used to call me Junior. She always said I reminded her of the little brother she didn’t have. She also reminded me just how naive I was about life but liked that.
Tracy was very organized about the house and how it was run. Right from the beginning she insisted on regular house meetings where we could vent about household stuff and fairly designate chores for each housemate. She hated it when one person got stuck doing all the chores. We all were responsible for cleaning up after ourselves, things like clothes and dishes, but we all took on responsibility for something around the that needed done regularly. I took emptying the garbage and bringing it to the road every week. Chores no one wanted to do like vacuuming were rotated on a monthly basis. No one but me ever seemed to do it though. She also made sure that group costs and purchases like utilities and cleaning supplies were split right down the middle. I eventually gave up on that idea too with things like toilet paper because no one ever paid on time if at all. I started keeping my own roll in my room after a while because some people in the house would simply use Kleenex, napkins, old magazines or even their hand if there was no toilet paper around to use.
When Tracy got stoned she turned into a whole other person. She’d go through the house like a tornado cleaning and rearranging everything almost to the point the place didn’t look the same.
Tracy dated one of our roommate Mark’s friend’s Alex who was a cook at Perkins. Besides Tracy, Alex’s other two interests were Lego’s and video games.
Most of Tracy’s friends were old hippies like Jeff who looked like Willie Nelson and was the first person I knew who died from AIDS. He caught it from an old girlfriend who did intravenous drugs.
Tracy and I would talk a lot about controversial social topics like the death penalty, abortion and family. Tracy was pretty liberal I was very conservative. We'd try to help each other understand our individual points of view better. Despite having very different beliefs I felt that we’d broadened each others outlook somewhat on many issues because of these discussions.
One time Tracy and I took an ethics class together at Monroe Community College for transfer credit. Both of us go C’s because we questioned the teacher too much.
Tammy was the house nut but could have easily been a Buddha in disguise. We also suspected she was Emo Philips’ long lost sister or female twin because of her mannerisms and the way she looked and talked to people. It was like she was born with a lobotomy and always happy but it was the few pumpkins short of a pie kind of happy, not normal.
Tam seemed to attract every Naturist, spiritual freak and depressed musician within the Greater Rochester area to our place. She was a healer of some sort to those no one else wanted to help or those who didn't want to get better.
Irregardless of her intentions she still drove us all crazy with her antics. We never knew who she would bring home at night. Some days we were woken up at 3:00AM, which sucked when you go to bed at 1:00AM and have to be up at 6:00AM to go to work, by a loud bongo drum and banjo jam session in her room. Other times one might see some scraggly guy in rags who hadn't taken a shower in God know how long, leave her room on a Sunday afternoon. “Oh he was homeless and needed someone to love him, ” she would say when confronted later that day.
Tracy told me that she came home early from work one morning to the smell of smoke in the kitchen. She found a pot of burning lentils on the stove. Tam forgot about them cooking and was taking a nap upstairs. Tracy was furious. A brand new copper pot was ruined by Tam's obliviousness. All Tam said was sorry and made another pot of legumes.
Tammy frequently had to be asked to take a shower because she smelled so bad at times. She didn't shave her legs or armpits either. Sometimes she walked around the house topless or naked without realizing that there were others at home. One time my mother was visiting with me in the living room. It was one of the few times she actually came over unannounced to say hi. Tam came nonchalantly strolling down the stairs and through the room to get a drink in the kitchen with nothing on. She said hello as she passed as if nothing were unusual. My mother’s jaw dropped and her eyes almost fell out of her head as she blushed. Our visit ended at that moment as mom looked at her watch and said she had to go. Under her breath as she left she made the comment that she didn’t understand how considering the way she raised me I could tolerate living under such bizarre circumstances. I responded that it was Tam who was weird not the whole house.
Tam looked and ate like she lived, sparsely. She always had enough money to pay her bills an do what she wanted but never seemed to work much. She had a job at a nearby home for mentally disabled adults. She usually liked to barter for what she needed instead of paying money.
Everyone knew when Tam was having sex, with someone or alone, because she would howl like a dog or wolf when she was getting it on. Some nights she would keep everyone in the house up for hours with her animal noises.
One could always tell when Tam was horny. She would get all touchy and cuddly with people. She didn’t necessarily seem to care who or what either. At parties we sympathized with those whom she latched on to because if she hadn’t bathed recently the smell was nauseating. Imagine being a guest trying to be all polite to her and not knowing how to respond. It must have been a hard experience.
My cousin Milt and I played a bad joke on my brother Joe one time. We used Tam as bait. She was ‘in the mood’ one night after the three of us came back from a night of drinking. She was really into Joe, because she had not met him yet and he didn’t know Tam from a bag of beans. Joe was playing all flirty flirty and macho like. Tam was eating his attention up and laying all over him in response. Milt and I let the chemistry flow between them, watching the event unfold from the armchairs on either side of the couch where they sat.
Nothing happened thankfully for Joe’s sake because he was gradually sobering up. As he was transitioning out of his condition he began to notice a distinct musky scent was not a residual bar smell but Tam. When that realization finally overcame him he quickly decided it was time to go home. He said that he had to work in the morning, ya sure we thought.
Later on in the week I asked him what he thought of the whole incident. Joe said that he had to throw the sweater away that he was wearing that night because the smell would not wash out of it. Milt and I never let him live it down. Joe would have gone to bed with her if he had been any drunker.
Graham was one of Tam's many boyfriends. He just happened to be living with her at the moment. He was also our resident heroin addict and gardener.
Graham was about five foot eight and unhealthily skinny. He hardly ever ate anything solid but did drink a lot of orange juice. He claimed that the juice enhanced and prolonged his buzzes. Graham's face was covered with acne scars from when he was a teenager. He had shoulder length, unkempt red hair and always had at least a week or two's worth of stubble on his face.
His parents were British immigrants who came to America via the Caribbean. His mother was a housewife and his dad was a manager at Kodak. He grew up in a typical middle class suburban environment.
I don't know how much he claimed about himself was true or not but you could at least trust him to be quiet about anything private you told him. He was very accepting and fun to talk to.
Graham claimed to be thirty-two but later on someone told me he was at least ten years older. The amount of dope he smoked over the years and the company he kept, he had a fancy for underage girls, made him appear a lot younger.
He told me his drug experiences started when he was in the Army. He was a Ranger medic and had unrestricted access to whatever pain killers he and his friends desired.
Graham transformed our dank and dingy basement into a vibrant jungle of Orchids through the magic of hydroponics. Along side the flowers grew huge Cannabis plants. The fruits of his efforts provided him with enough cash to feed his daily heroin habit. Graham was also a superb self-taught cook despite not eating the majority of his own creations. He said that he chef jobs where merely a front to disguise the true source of his income. He also claimed to have a few scattered safe deposit boxes in the US and Canada stuffed full of cash, just in case.
Graham was also an intellectual. He said he had a BA in Political Science and had also taken some classes in filmmaking at Rochester Institute of Technology.
I never met a person who could be so simultaneously stoned on acid, dope, beer and heroin and still have a fluent conversation on complicated social issues, literature or play a challenging game of chess against a sober, experienced player.
I recently found out that Graham has been dead now for a few years. He apparently overdosed after going cold turkey for over six months. He relapsed back into his addition and unknowingly got hold of some pure stuff to shoot up with. His system could not handle it after being clean for so long.
All I have left of Graham now are memories and an eerie black and white picture of him hanging upside down naked in someone's basement. He is obviously tripping in the picture. I bet he did it more for a fix than artistic purposes as one might believe looking at it blindly.
Graham introduced me to recreational drug use but it's pleasures never really stuck with me for long. Addiction scares me. I don’t like taking too many uncalculated risks with my life. Also, I could never realistically hold down a full time job and attend school if I got stoned all the time. I won’t willfully surrender control of myself to a chemical which is the antithesis of drug use.
After a short time I grew bored. I never really went too deep into experimenting with different stuff because of my fears.
I smoked pot because I had tired it a couple times when I was fifteen or sixteen to rebel against my parents and liked it. Marijuana had no freaky side effects to make me leery, especially for the amount I smoked.
I tried acid a few times but it didn’t do much for me other than making roads breath and a few dried up leaves in a park turn into Technicolor salamanders for a second or two.
The most profound drug induced experience I had was literally watching time pass in slow frames like a movie for a few fleeting moments soon after dropping acid for the first time. My perception adjusted quickly though and my senses leveled out leaving me with a suspicion that there is more to life than meets the eye. Graham said the reason I wasn't moved too much by tripping was because I was too easy going and that that LSD only had a significant effect on anal people with lots of repressed issues.
Nitric oxide was the only other mind altering drug I tried. Whip it’s were heavenly but too good to be true. Those ‘ding ding’ bells going off in my spinning head were so alluring despite the drool. They went off quicker and quicker the more I inhaled. I realized fast that this shit could easily kill someone if it became a habit. Losing control of myself and passing out was not acceptable to me so I stopped.
When Graham left the house my desire to experiment went with him. I never did more than get drunk after that. Drugs for me were neither religious or spiritual. I knew that the road to my enlightenment would not be found there. They merely were a transitional bridge between two stages in my life. Because of drugs I am comfortable with both rebellion and conformity.
Graham and Tam were asked to leave basically around the same time. Graham supposedly gave Tam herpes. He caught from one of his extra-curricular girlfriends. Tam was furious with him, not about the girl but because of the VD.
She went ‘logging’ in the basement after clearing his couple bags worth of dirty cloths out her room. She flung all of Graham's mature, recently pruned cannabis plants onto the front lawn along with all of his other personal belongings scattered around house that she could find. Tam then called the police.
We all cringed because we knew that was the end of our never-ending supply of good weed. The whole thing was no skin off of Tam's back though because she didn't do drugs or drink more than a beer or two here and there. She was naturally high all the time which could be scary at times for the rest of us.
Graham was no fool, he knew the city cops wouldn't be there anytime soon, from past experiences I guess. He calmly packed his car, smoked a few cigarettes on the porch, drank a beer and said his good byes. Graham promised to come back soon and pay his share of the rent then drove away.
The police showed up about an hour and a half later and asked what happened. Tam described the whole incident to the poor officer in her own nutty way. The cop just rolled his eyes, possibly from the smell, wrote a down a few notes and left.
Tracy in turn called a mandatory house meeting later that night. She asked Tam to be out of the house in a month. The rest of us were unanimously in favor of this decision. Tracy justified her request by declaring Tam put the whole house at risk by being so stupid. If the cop actually believed that Tam's story was more than a typical domestic dispute and searched the house or Graham didn't take most of his stuff we'd all be in trouble. That was not cool. Tam said that it was OK because she was planning to go to Europe for a year or so backpacking. This was as good as a time as any for her to leave. In a month she was gone.
Mark was our resident repair person, physically and mentally. He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet despite his feeble attempts at looking tough. He was a very loyal friend and never made you feel stupid no matter how dumb you were about something you did or said. He did tease though but it never was meant to hurt.
Mark looked like a slightly larger version of one of the dwarves seen in the movie This is Spinal Tap. His hands and cloths were usually dirty with grease and dirt. He didn't shave but twice a week either. Mark worked for Rochester Colonial Window and Door building and installing custom products. He frequently sliced his hands and arms real bad at work and had casts and stitches on.
He never talked much about his family. He had a brother and sister living in another state that he didn't keep regular contact with. Tracy told me that his mother died of an aneurysm a few years ago and his father ran away with the neighbor’s teenage daughter while he was in High School.
Mark liked Harley Davidson motorcycles. He hung out with a lot of bikers and strippers. He was a big drinker but didn't like drugs other than a little pot here and there. He'd seen too many people messed up by cocaine and amphetamines over the years and didn't want to become like them.
Mark listened to heavy metal music. He hung out at tougher joints like the Penny Arcade, The California Brew House and the Roadhouse, anywhere the group The Little Trolls played in this half of the state.
Mark read a lot of science fiction and westerns He was in a few book clubs and received new books regularly. Everyday after work and on weekend mornings he would plop himself on the couch or chair then read for a few hours. He said it was his way of escaping reality and relaxing.
Mark could fix almost anything. He taught himself about subjects like cars, electronics and carpentry. Being a jack of all trades and so helpful kept him busy most of the time. One day he’d be helping an old roommate build a racing car the next he’d be ripping apart our temperamental washing machine in the basement and the day after that he’d be at a someone’s house repairing the kitchen ceiling.
When something didn't work or broke we always called Mark to help figure out the problem and fix it. He’d drop whatever he was doing without complaint and come to the rescue.
Sometimes though his interests though were carried a bit too far. We had car and motorcycle parts scattered all over the house for months at a time. He had lots of incomplete projects all over the place. Mark was so busy helping others that he didn't have enough time to finish the ones for himself.
Mark was almost too nice because he had a hard time with dating and women. Tracy told me about a former engagement where his ex-fiancée took off with the best man right before the wedding. He never talked about it though. Women all wanted to be his friend but not his significant other. They all took advantage of him. He took it in stride though and eventually did find someone but suffered a lot of disappointment along the way.
Billy was a migrant housemate. He was the epitome of a bond hair, blue eyed red blooded Southern boy. Billy was had good manners and was always considerate of others. Tracy's older sister Rachel was friends with him and wooed him into the area from his home in Camden, Arkansas. Rae told Billy that she would be his ‘roommate’ if he moved with her up to Rochester, New York and that there were lots of good jobs up here.
Billy was naïve, he had no clue about what life was like above the Mason Dixon Line and believed everything Rachael said despite her past track record of being pretty unreliable and full of shit. Rae predictably changed her mind about living here within a few days and went back to Arkansas without telling anyone, leaving Billy behind stranded with us and few belongings.
Billy spent the next four months sleeping on the couch and working for three seventy five an hour at a nearby grocery store as a produce clerk, trying to save up enough money to pay his share of the rent and his bus fare back home.
Billy was definitely a redneck but I liked him and thought he was honest. I never really got to know him enough to know whether he was really stupid or consciously honest, either way he told the truth and didn't seem very mysterious to me. He taught me how to make good homemade caramel corn , unfortunately I've forgotten since.
I was the house geek. I was stable and pretty predictable for the most part. Tracy liked that I brought some balance to the house. I was simply reliable and could pay my bills.
I was working full time and attending college full time. My life was very organized and left very little room for spontaneity or chaos. It was very boring but I got along OK knowing that it would all pay off in the future.
My undergraduate major at the time was instructional technology and I minored in English. I wanted to be a writer more than I wanted to work with computers but my employer would only pay for a work related degree.
I figured IT would be easiest education path for me to walk. My boss couldn't argue that it was not work related and it was the least technical computer degree program I could find in the area. Also, my writing classes turned out to be very applicable towards many of the final projects I worked on.
I was into writing a lot of bad poetry. I was angry at almost everyone and poetry helped me heal. I was also very lonely. I left most of my aggression on paper and eventually moved on to writing short stories and opinion pieces.
My studies and writing were an escape for me from my family and my job fixing computers. I could now grow my hair long, wear earrings, get tattoos and buy a leather jacket without criticism from my peers.
I also started expanding my friendship boundaries. I floated between my old timid computer nerd, book smart college friends and the new raw Rocky Horror Picture Show cast member and groupie crowd .
I was very much into reading W. Somerset Maugham and Milan Kundera at this time. A college teacher turned me onto Kundera in a modern literature class and Graham introduced me to Maugham though the book The Razor's Edge.
In fact I was even taking some of Maugham's advice seriously in making my writing aspirations become reality. He believed that if a person really wanted to be a writer it was best them to get a government job. Civil service jobs pay well enough so a person wouldn't starve and are generally speaking not very taxing on the mind or body leaving plenty of time for a person to spend working on their writing.
My job as a computer specialist for Penfield Central School District was something I just stumbled into. I spent so much time hanging around the computer labs and media office of my High School that the administrators offered me a real job when I graduated. It wasn’t very hard and paid just enough for me to live off. The employee tuition reimbursement benefit paid for my BA at a local private college.
Since I worked full time I was not strapped down by the pressures of student loans, crappy part time jobs and high living expenses like most people my age were.
My older more experienced co-corkers quickly taught me how to manage my time at work by not rocking the boat, avoiding authority and making it look like I was always overloaded with work. I learned just how ignorant laymen(school staff, administrators and teachers,) are about supporting computers.
People who don’t understand writing and computers are so naive. They assume that you must be doing something work related because you are writing so intently on your computer. They never seem to read what your putting on the screen or comprehend it if they do. While my peers were passing their time surfing for pornography on the internet and playing video games I used my spare time to do my homework and write.
I was taking a creative fiction writing class at my college under George Saunders during this time. It was just as he was starting to get recognized and published by bigger magazines such as The New Yorker and Harpers. He was a part time underpaid adjunct writing professor and still working full time as an engineer of some sort.
I liked him because I could sort of relate to him. He was doing what I did, passing off personal writing time in front of a computer at work as work.
Most of the class time was spent critiquing each other's awful short stories and doing cheesy writing exercises. George gave us overviews of some of the story plots or character sketches he was working on at the time. We all dreamed of becoming famous but in the end the class was just an easy three credits. Writing is real work and becoming published requires sacrifices the average person won't make. It’s more about accepting rejection then becoming famous.
George also talked a lot about Syracuse University's MFA program in Creative Writing and studying under Tobias Wolff. I dreamed of attending that program too after graduating but realistically knew it wouldn't happen any time soon. I couldn't afford it.
One good thing about the class was that George turned me onto actually reading Wolff’s work giving me a context to read it in outside what the book told me. I saw the movie This Boys Life before taking the class with George and had pictured Wolff as the kid from the TV show 90120 who played him in the movie. Movies tend to do that to me if I don't read the book first. I've read John Irving's The World According to Garp three times now and still picture Robin Williams as Garp. Its not the same though and can get in the way of reading the book. Wolf became more real for me because I knew someone that knew him personally. When I read Wolff's books This Boys Life , In The Pharaoh's Army and essays after taking the class I pictured George's mentor Toby, not a teenage TV star, thanks to the new frame of reference.
I’m really embarrassed about the piece of crap sorry excuse for a short story I quickly wrote late one night for class the next day. I guess I was not really ready for George as a teacher. I needed to mature a few more years and create a stronger foundation of experiences to write from. I needed to feel comfortable writing what I know not making up a big line of shit and passing it off as something I know. I shake my head to myself every time I see another published piece of George's because at the time I didn’t have a clue.
Since my experience with George I've worked more productively with other renown writers such as Marge Piercy Mary Karr and Ken Kesey through informal learning settings. My wife and I lived near Yachats, Oregon in a ten bedroom refurbished farmhouse for a while with her twin sister Kathleen, her husband John and their five kids when we first got married. Kesey was a family friend of John's.
Dirtbag
Parties at the Meigs Street house where like living collages. Bikers would be drinking beer or Jack Daniels on the front porch and lawn while they bragged about and fiddled with their Hogs. Pensive guests would be watching and playing chess or video games in the living room. Blue Grass or acoustic musicians would be jamming in the bar area. Pot smokers would usually conjugate in the attic. They would tell stories to each other while listening to their music. Acid freaks and punkers would bounce between the attic and the font porch searching for their next hit. I preferred to weave my way through all of the people, observing how they interacted amongst themselves and other guests. It was amazing watching so many people with such different ideals and backgrounds dance together so proficiently. There were never any fights and it seemed to me that the diversity created balance at our parties.
I was open and willing to experience anything at twenty-two. I thought I had to go out in the world to find excitement. I hadn't lived long enough to know it was just as likely to come knocking on your door while you're sound asleep or watching TV. Gene was the person thought I needed to introduce me to a side of life I never saw . He did just that.
Eugene LaForte is a drummer prodigy. He started playing at eight years old. His parents thought playing the drums was a more productive way for him to express or vent his aggressions. By the time Gene was sixteen years old he had dropped out of High School and was touring around the West Coast, playing professional gigs. It was not exactly what his parents had in mind for him.
Gene resembled John Bellushi in his prime. Some of us even suspected that he might also be possessed by his spirit. Gene's voice sounded like Cab Calloway's in his signature song "Minnie the Moocher." The famous musician's childhood home is actually a few doors down from Gene's present apartment on Alexander Street.
One never knew exactly what condition you’d find Gene in. One day he’d might be clean shaven, dressed in a black tuxedo and top hat for some fancy dinner his aunt was hosting for local politicians. Gene like to refer to them as crooks though. The next day he’d be all hung over, look and smell as if he spent the night in a dumpster. His clothes were just as likely to appear to have been found there too.
Gene had one particular outfit he loved to put on when going out. He’d wear totally torn jeans, held together by sloppily tied frayed strings. The pants pockets where the only thing that didn’t have holes in them. Underneath he'd have a pair of running shorts or stretch pants. A red or blue bandanna would be tied around one leg. Gene would then throw on an old faded concert T-shirt and beg me for hours to borrow my leather jacket. I was always reluctant because I had already lost one leather jacket to an old girlfriend who lived out of state. If I didn't lend him my jacket he would just compromise and use a black sports jacket that was probably part of a business suit at one time.
Gene was definitely Bi-polar, had Attention Deficit Disorder and Turrets Syndrome. It was the only way one could explain why for the most part he was never interested in anything other than sex or music for any length of time. He was frequently in fifty places one day, then locked in his apartment all paranoid about the world being out to get him or believing life wasn't worth living, for weeks at a time.
Gene would randomly yell inappropriate things out just to watch people’s reactions. At a grocery store he’d scream MOM to see how many women looked. He’d walk past a nursing home on a nice day when everyone was out enjoying the weather and burt out BLOWJOB at the top of his lungs to make people blush. Once we were listening to a free classical music concert in a city park. After the small symphony finished playing a set of Brahms, before people could start clapping, Gene wailed out SABBATH, SABBATH, I WANT TO HEAR SOME BLACK SABBATH, then go up to smoke a cigarette.
Gene’s personality was a warped blend of Kramer from Seinfeld, Lenny Bruce and Joe Gould from the New Yorker short stories “Professor Seagull” and “Joe Gould’s Secret” by Joseph Mitchell. Gene understood people real well and could spot an asshole a mile a way. Unfortunately for those individuals he lacked the scruples to keep quiet and let the world know it as soon as he figured them out. It takes one to know one I guess.
Gene intentions were almost always good but it was like a demon in his head would take over his body at times and make him do or say things he wouldn't do under normal circumstances. He gave up years ago trying to analyze why he did what he did so much. He justified his feelings by informing me that his parents spend a shit load of money on sending him shrinks and specialists all over the country for years who couldn't offer any logical answers, so why should he be able to something they couldn't. It didn't bother him that much anyways. He was who he was, take him or leave him.
Gene really cared about the welfare of all people in general and stood up for those who where ignored or too afraid to speak up for themselves. I remember walking with Gene down a city street one cold and dank Winter night. We were going to get something to eat at a nearby diner. A smelly drunk bum approached us out of the shadows and asked for some money and a cigarette. I tried to blow the guy off by saying I didn't have anything. Gene without being asked, instantly pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket, a newly opened pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket, then handed it all over to the guy. Gene told him to have a great night and to keep warm.
Afterward I asked Gene why he did that. They guy was probably going to piss the whole thing on booze. Gene quickly retorted that it was none of our fucking business what he did with the money and that we all have our own problems to deal with. That person's dilemma just happens to be more obvious than ours right now. The bum was a real person needed that money more than we did at that moment irregardless of our assumptions of what he will do with the money. When you're strung out and down in the dumps like that person appeared to be sometimes all you need is just a quick fix, not a judgement call, to feel better and get on with your life.
When we had to pay for our dinner later on Gene asked me to cover the whole tab because he gave all of his money away. Gene also had me stop at the store and buy him a new pack of cigarettes and a lighter before going home.
No one can really be sure of Eugene's background exactly. You never knew what to expect from him next and whether it was a line of shit or not. He liked to confuse the truth about his past or make himself look more mysterious than he really was. I'm pretty sure that Warren Zevon's song "Excitable Boy" was probably about Gene as a kid.
When first meeting Gene he would always claim he was the bastard son of a poor black child or blurt out that his mother fucked his brother and he was the results. As I got to know him I started piecing together things I saw and that he would say during his few moments of sanity.
I figured out that he was an adopted Jewish kid. His parents were an older middle class Italian couple who rose in social class after Gene's dad invented a chemical process for coating certain kinds of safety glasses and sold the patent. Mr. LaForte then invested the money into lucrative real estate deals and stocks. The family lived well on dividends and rental properties.
Gene's family began here in Rochester but moved around the country a lot and eventually ended up settling in Seattle, Washington. His parents now have three homes. Their primary residence in Seattle, a condo in Hilton Head, South Carolina and a mountain lodge in Aspen, Colorado. Gene has been forbidden by his father to stay at any of them alone.
Gene moved back to Rochester in nineteen eighty eight after Gene’s parents decided it was better for them to live on the West Coast and he on the East. He is only to visit them only a few times a year at their request because of all the aggravation he's put them through over the years.
Incidents like crashing a brand new Porsche and almost killing himself in the accident. He and a couple of his friends decided they were hungry and stole a pizza off of the first delivery person they saw. They carelessly sped away. The car was too powerful for Gene to handle. He lost control and crashed it. One friend was thrown from the vehicle and walked away. The other lost a leg. Gene was in a coma for a week and in a body cast for three months.
Another time Gene embarrassed his parents by docking their small yacht on Bill Gate's property. The Gates' were in the process of building their controversial multi-million dollar high tech home on the same bay as his parents lived in Seattle. Gene was curious and just wanted to get a better view of the project. He parked the boat and started walking toward the construction. It was Sunday and he didn't think anyone was a around. Along the way he had to go to the bathroom. Gene didn't think twice and pissed on a bush. He didn't see the sensor device and hidden security camera inside the shrub. He did see the private body guards who quickly apprehended and detained him for trespassing. The police were called and charges where pressed. Gene's parents though talked Gates into dropping them with the promise Gene wouldn't bother him or his family again.
People looking at him would never believe or guess that he was a legitimate heir to millions and had grown up under very different circumstances. He would tell all kinds of outrageous stories about his past. Some I'd doubt their validity and others I would not. When I did question a tale and it was true and Gene wanted to share more, versus leaving it up to me to believe it or not, he'd dig through the piles of garbage in his place and show me proof. I saw a half dozen tattered concert reviews from Rolling Stone, family Christmas photos taken at his parents' mansion, candid shots of him partying with the Violent Femmes in a trashed motel room and a video tape of him being the opening stand up comedy act for Sam Kineson at a small club in Toronto.
I went over to his place one day and found Gene listening to a new grunge group just as they were hitting the big time. It was the Nirvana. He was laughing and swearing the music. He told me that he and the drummer of this group were in some of the same music classes. They used to jam together after school.
Another time I went with Gene to a James Taylor concert in Syracuse , New York. I bought my ticket. I don't know how he got his if he even had one at all.
Gene had a plan all he needed was a ride. The Pat Metheny Group was the opening band. He claimed to know percussionist Armando Marcal and promised to get me back stage if everything was cool. I told him my seat assignment and waited.
Miles Davis died that day and Pat Metheny did a tribute for him instead of doing their material. When James Taylor went on after the break I saw Gene walking past security the guards, to the back stage area then disappear. I waited grudgingly through the rest if the concert but the fucker still didn't come get me. I drove home pissed. Gene could walk home for all I cared. To rub salt into my wounds more Gene called me at home later that evening, sometime between 1-2:00AM. He called and said he was partying with Pat Metheny's road crew at some hotel and sorry that he forgot about me. Ya sure I thought. He was probably having too much fun to bother remembering me.
Dirtbag, a year or so later, used yet another experience to humble me and another friend. He had recently managed to acquire his own personal form of transportation versus relying on others to drive him around. He found an affordable used car that actually passed inspection and was safe to drive.
More specifically, I sold him my old car for a dollar, figuring I would save money in the long run on gas and future repairs. Giving him the car also spared me the aggravation of him calling me every few days and begging me for forty five minutes every time he needed a ride somewhere.
He promised to pay me fifteen hundred dollars later on which was the price I would have gotten if I had used it as a trade in towards my new Explorer. It was a good thing I didn't expect the money because he never did pay me back. In fact about five months later he started bitching at me about the car because he had to buy three new tires and have some major engine work done.
For a change, Gene took me and another guy he knew named Pad out for an aimless ride. He wanted to celebrate him getting a car but didn't know where he wanted to go so he just drove around for a while until he come up with an idea.
Gene dove us away from the city into the country. We had no idea where he was bringing us and were getting worried because both Pad and I had to be at work in the morning. Eventually we pulled into a dive bar and told us that we were here.
We were at a strip joint and a sleazy one at that. Most of the tavern's patrons were rougher looking, local men and women. They were obviously more interested in socializing and playing pool than the show.
Gene took one look at the stage as we were walking in and said oh I used to live with her. Pad and I said bullshit and didn't believe him. He told us to fuck off and yelled BLOWJOB at the top of his lungs. The dancer then responded DIRTY!!!.
Pad and I were dumbfounded. Gene then said that he lived with Lacy Dreams for a few months while he was dating someone else. When his girlfriend found out Lacy was a stripper and did porn movies she insisted he move out. He said they played around a bit but never got serious about each other. Pad and I spent the rest of the night listening to them talk about old times and eating out humble pie.
Gene had lots of girlfriends. He had a warped sexual appetite that could never be completely satisfied. Gene claimed that the drugs he was on made him hornier than Hell. He professed at times he would fuck a snake just to get off, thus explaining his endless need for pornography.
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