How to Meet Super Famous People: 1982
Shortly after 1982’s first hangover subsided, Ma’s kind friend, Robin, let me have her super-cheap, street-level, one-bedroom apartment. Three days before my seventeenth birthday, I got my own pad to come and go as I pleased. The place was a block from Los Angeles City College, in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood littered with small, independently […]
How I Gained a Whole New Perspective in 1981
And so, back to the real world to witness years fly by from a seated position. Pops’ newest house had a pool in the backyard, which my therapists thought was great. By simultaneously providing buoyancy and resistance, pool therapy is the best exercise for gimp fucks like me. In theory, one could float, swim, goof […]
A Fourteen-Year-Old Boy Has Great Plan: 1979
A day later, I sprang from Ma’s Kawasaki KZ 750 twin, semi-eager to enroll at my newest school. Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High boasts several illustrious alumni, but a girl named Norma Jeane Baker attended decades before me and tops the list. South of the campus, a golden trumpeter sat atop the Mormon Temple, and […]
These Were the Best Days of My Youth: 1975-78
We rented a place at “Our Town Apartments.” The mega-complex, billed as “A Place for Kids and Their Families,” sat right across the street from Orange Coast College. It sported a community center with pool tables, swimming pool, BBQs, and a “Teen Center.” Pops had Mondays off, and we’d play pool or go see movies […]
How I Learned to Love L.A: 1965-74
February 1965 – a baby boy they called Rached entered this world ass-first, screaming like thunder. Not from the smack on my bottom, but because the doctor yanked me from a warm, moist environment I had grown quite fond of. My resistance to the world broke my fucking arm and I spent the first five […]