From age 13 on, I pretty much raised myself, living in foster homes.
Dr. CW's family taught me to like Charles Lindberg, read Playboy, eat beef tongue, smoke cigarettes, and attend Morningside Park Evangelical and Reformed Church.
Most of my friends belonged to the church. At church I learned to love blacks, gays, and whales--but not war. Pastor K even allowed as how the miracles may not have been physical miracles. The church found me my next home.
I only stayed at the Er home about ten days--long enough to hear Harry Bellafonte sing about bananas, receive oral sex from the grandfather, and motivate my guardian to find me new emergency housing.
The damage had been done. For the next four or five years, regardless of which family I lived with, when I was home alone I would act out--running from room to room, screaming. "Why me, God? Why me? Eventually, I learned to control my rage. Nevertheless, I have become obsessed with child molesters. I am an opportunist. So, when I moved to Mexico and found myself in a bed of child molesters, I decided to exploit them. I write about the drug world only tangentially. Drug cartels are organized and mean. I don't want my head to bob in the bay like a beach ball. Besides, I have never been attracted to illegal drugs. However, my whole wellbeing has been devastated by one old man. So, I am writing a novel about them and humoring them by trying to tell both sides. I have, for all intents and purposes, concluded my research. Molesters are masters of evasive conversation and researching child abuse on the internet could land me in prison.
Anyway, my new home was with the D and S W family. D was the best read door-to-door salesman I ever met. He was Methodist. He sold me on Watchtower, Thurber, Kerouak, Ginzberg, Gandhi, Steinbeck, Auntie Mame, working out, running track, and much more.
Nevertheless, I fell in with some questionable people. We shoplifted to pay for dates, stole camera equipment, and drank beer. An alcoholic tried to claim I had raped her in a walk-in theater. A friend stripped his sister in her bedroom. Next year, she invited me to the Sade Hopkins dance. I hung out at the beach. It was a magical place--edge of the continent--next stop Tahiti. I learned to mat surf and body surf. Normally, I hitched rides. Then, I began hot-wiring S W's car with Juicy Fruit wrappers. Once, we took turns driving Craig Carnival's father's car to our homes from school. The Los Angeles police took us down to Rampart Station. Craig's father did not want to press charges against his son, so they let us go. Weekends, I visited Hermosa Beach--The Insomniac and Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse.
My next home was the Dean S family. J S had been one of the bad boys I had hung with. We slept on the pullout couch. We drove to Wallach's Music City, downtown Los Angeles. I listened to Thelonious Monk jazz. J W tried to walk through the turnstile with a half dozen country albums without paying. We sat in the cop car. J W told the cop that he was a born again Christian and that his father was a preacher and a dean at B A University. The cop let us go. I bought an English Enfield 303 so we could go hunting down near Mexico. I shot a mockingbird. We listened to Marty Robbins sing 'El Paso,' for the first time, on the car radio. J S stole my newspaper route money. He stole the car of a school mate's father. He did not like the kid so he ran the car into a light post. Dean said I had corrupted his son. He sent his son back to North Carolina to a religious school--hypocrites!
My guardian bought me 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
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