Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl rediscovered me. I had a pad of my own now. This made me a viable flunky.
They let me back into their clique. A brilliant kid named George made us a fivesome. Fritz and George were USC- and Caltech-bound. Lloyd and Daryl were stuck with another year of high school.
The clique met at my place and George’s place. George’s father, Rudy, was a highway patrolman and a certified right-wing crackpot. He got drunk every night and defamed liberals and Martin Luther Coon. He dug my Boat Tickets to Africa and took a fatherly interest in me.
It was great to have friends. I blew my thousand-dollar roll taking them out to steak dinners and movies. We bombed around in Fritz’s ’64 Fairlane. Bicycle jaunts were behind us.
I stole most of my food. I was on an all-steak diet and filched T-bones and rib-eyes at nearby supermarkets. Two clerks jumped me outside the Liquor & Food Mart early in August. They held me down, plucked a steak out of my pants and called the fuzz.
The LAPD arrived. Two cops drove me to the Hollywood Station, booked me for shoplifting and turned me over to a juvenile officer. The guy wanted to contact my parents. I told him they were dead. He said kids weren’t allowed to live alone prior to age eighteen.
A cop drove me down to the Georgia Street Juvenile Facility. I called Lloyd and told him where I was. The cop processed my arrest papers and dumped me in a dormitory filled with hardcased juvies.
I was scared. I was the biggest kid in the dorm—and recognizably the most defenseless. I was seven months shy of legal age. I figured I’d be stuck here all that time.
Tough Negro and Mexican kids sized me up. They asked me about my “beef” and laughed at my answers. They talked gang-sterese and ridiculed me for not speaking their language.
I stayed calm until lights-out. Darkness jump-started my imagination. I put myself through a string of jail horrors and cried myself to sleep.
Rudy got me out the next day. He cooked up a deal to get me six months probation and “emancipated juvenile” status. I could live solo—with Rudy as my informal guardian.
It was one sweet deal. I needed a ticket out of jail and Rudy needed an audience for his tirades. Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl heard him out reluctantly. I soaked up his shit with abandon.
Rudy was tight with a bunch of crazy cop ideologues. They passed around mimeographed copies of “The Nigger’s 23rd Psalm” and “Martin Luther Coon’s Welfare Handbook.” Rudy and I yukked it up for a string of consecutive nights. The Watts riot interrupted us.
L.A. was burning. I wanted to kill all the rioters and turn L.A. into Cinder City myself. The riot thrilled me. This was crime writ large—crime on a big plot-extrapolatable scale.
Rudy was called to duty. Lloyd, Fritz and I skirted the periphery of the riot zone. We carried BB pistols. We mouthed racist jive and cruised south until some cops made us go home.
We did it again the next night. Live history was groovy. We watched the riot from the Griffith Park telescopes and saw strips of Los Angeles sizzling. We drove out to the valley and saw some rednecks burn a cross in a Christmas-tree lot.
The riot fizzled out. It reconflagrated in my head and ruled my thoughts for weeks.
I ran stories from diverse perspectives. I became both riot cop and riot provocateur. I lived lives fucked over by history.
I spread my empathy around. I distributed moral shading equitably. I didn’t analyze the cause of the riot or prophesy its ramifications. My public stance was “Fuck the niggers.” My concurrent narrative fantasies stressed culpable white cops.
I never questioned the contradiction. I didn’t know that storytelling was my only true voice.
Narrative was my moral language. I didn’t know it in the summer of 1965.
Rudy didn’t care what I did. My probation officer ignored me. I continued to steal and dodge work.
I craved free time. Free time meant time to dream and cultivate my sense of potent destiny. Free time meant time to fall prey to impulse.
It was a hot day in mid-September. I got an urge to get drunk.
I walked down to the Liquor & Food Mart and stole a bottle of champagne. I took it over to Robert Burns Park, popped the top and guzzled the whole thing.
I went ecstatic. I went hyper-effusive. I crashed a group of Hancock Park girls and told them crazy lies. I blacked out and woke up on my bed drenched in vomit.
I knew I’d
The discovery thrilled me. I started stealing booze and experimenting with it.
Heublein premixed cocktails were good. I dug sweet Manhattans and tart and tangy whisky sours. Beer quenched your thirst—but lacked the blastoff potential of hard liquor. Straight scotch was too strong—it burned going down and brought up bile in its wake. I avoided straight bourbon and bourbon highballs. Bourbon reminded me of the redhead.
Vodka and fruit juice was great. You got a fast push out of the gate with minimum gag action. Gin, brandy and liqueurs induced dry heaves.
I drank for stimulation. Booze sent me stratospheric.
It jacked up my narrative powers. It gave my thoughts a physical dimension.
Booze made me talk to myself. Booze made me spritz my fantasies aloud. Booze made me address scores of imaginary women.
Booze altered my fantasy world—but did not change the basic subject matter. Crime remained my dominant obsession.
