My Dark Places

a stroke. He wasn’t going to die and he might well recover. His left arm was partially paralyzed and his speech was indecipherable for now.

I was afraid he’d die. I was afraid he’d live and kill me with those big wet eyes.

He started to recover. His speech capability improved within days. He got some movement back in his left arm.

I visited him every day. His prognosis was good—but he wasn’t the same man.

He used to be a virile bullshit artist. He became a soft child in a week’s time. The transformation ripped my heart out.

He had to read kiddie primers to get his tongue and palate working in sync. His eyes said, “Love me, I’m helpless.”

I tried to love him. I lied about my progress in school and told him I’d support him when I scored big as a writer. My lies cheered him up the way his lies cheered me up years back.

His condition continued to improve. He came home on November 22nd—the day JFK bought it. He went back to smoking two packs a day. He went back to Alka-Seltzer. He talked his old raunchy talk with just a slight slur—but his fucking eyes gave him away.

He was terrified and defenseless. I was his shield against death and a slow fade in a charity nursing home. I was all he had.

The old man went on Social Security. We downscaled our lifestyle accordingly. I stole most of our food and cooked most of our high-salt, high-cholesterol meals. I ditched school most of the time and flunked the eleventh grade.

I knew my father was a dead man. I wanted to care for him and see him dead simultaneously. I didn’t want him to suffer. I wanted to be alone in my all-pervasive fantasy world.

The old man was now stiflingly possessive. He was convinced that my mere presence could divert strokes and other acts of God. I chafed at his demands. I ridiculed his slurred speech. I stayed out late riding around L. A. with no destination in mind.

I couldn’t get away from his eyes. I could not fucking negate their power.

I got busted for shoplifting in May ’64. A floorwalker caught me boosting six pairs of swimming trunks. He detained me and hassled me for hours. He jabbed me in the chest and made me sign a guilt waiver. He cut me loose at 10:00 p.m.—way past my prescribed time to be home.

I rode to the pad and saw an ambulance in front of the building. My father was strapped in the back. The driver told me he just had a mild heart attack.

My father zapped me with his eyes. They said, “Where were you?”

He recovered and came home. He went back to smoking and sucking down Alka-Seltzer. He was hellbent to die. I was hellbent to live my way. Life was the Lee Ellroy Show. It played to unimpressed and vexed crowds in and out of school.

I provoked fights with smaller kids. I broke into the shed behind the Larchmont Safeway and stole 60 dollars’ worth of empty pop bottles. I made obscene phone calls. I called in bomb threats to high schools throughout the L.A. basin. I burglarized a hot-dog stand, stole some frozen meat and tossed it down a sewer hole. I went on kleptomaniacal missions and sulked, skulked and nazified my way through a second pass at grade 11.

I turned 17 in March ’65. I was now a full-grown 6?3?. My pantlegs terminated several inches above my ankles. My shirts were stained with blood and pus from cystic acne explosions. I wanted OUT.

The old man deserved a quick out himself—just like the redhead.

I knew he’d hang on and die slow. I knew I didn’t want to see it.

I threw a Nazi tantrum in English class and got suspended from school for a week. I went back and did it again. I got expelled from Fairfax High for good.

Faraway places beckoned. Paradise loomed just outside L.A. County. I told the old man I wanted to join the army. He gave me his permission and let me enlist.

The army was a big mistake. I knew it the moment I took the oath.

I called my father from the induction center and told him I was in. He broke down and sobbed. A little voice in my head said, “You killed him.”

I got on a plane with a dozen other enlistees. We flew to Houston, Texas, and caught a connecting flight to Fort Polk, Louisiana.

It was early May. Fort Polk was hot, humid and overrun with flying and crawling bugs. Hard-ass sergeants formed us into lines and harangued the shit out of us.

I knew that my freewheeling life was over. I wanted OUT immediately.

A sergeant got us squared away and settled into a reception center barracks. I wanted to say, “I changed my mind—please let me go home.” I knew I couldn’t take the hard work and discipline upcoming. I knew I had to get OUT.

I called home. The old man was incoherent. I panicked and buttonholed an officer. He heard me out, checked me out and walked me to the infirmary.

A doctor examined me. I was frantically agitated and into a performance mode already. I was afraid for my father and afraid of the army. I was calculating advantages in the middle of a panic attack.

The doctor shot me up with a high-powered tranquilizer. I weaved back to my barracks and passed out on my bunk.

I woke up after evening chow. I was woozy and my speech was slurred. A notion took tenuous hold.

All I had to do was crank my fear for my father’s safety up a few notches.