Chapter One
At sixteen I was embittered, probably not more so than any other teenager, but less than I was at fourteen or fifteen. It was my senior year, and I had achieved a sort of a cheerfully jaded outlook. I knew the system was set up to squash my freedom and kill my spirit, but I also knew how to work it.
Because I had started school in a foreign country I was a year younger than most of my classmates, and as a son of academics I was precocious as well. This served me well in middle school when I was still adjusting to American culture and I could retreat into my studies, but by the time I hit high school I was just a small, nerdy loner who didn't know how to spit or fight, two skills apparently essential to manhood in the USA.
I went from a small country school to an institution of thousands completely socially unprepared and unfamiliar with all the cultural touchstones, as my family did not 'believe in' TV. In a way this was perfect preparation for my future life as an outsider.
About halfway through my freshman year I realized that all the algebra, chemistry, and literature classes were ancillary to the real lesson I was supposed learn here. 'Conform or you will be bullied.' This had the opposite effect on me, and awakened my inner rebel. I refused to be cornered and I figured the best way to work the angles was to simply not show up to class.
When you go to school, but not to class, a whole new world opens up for you. A shadow world populated by stoners, perverts, and retards, not jocks and socialites. This was a world where maybe you could get laid by accident, without all the stupid games. It was also possible to be raped, or at least repeatedly scammed.
This was the school of hard knocks, the best school, and the one that made me who I am today. We would show up early, meeting in the smoking section, and take inventory of our pilfered goods from the night before. All was shared as we panned out across the landscape in the general direction of away from the compound-like classrooms and hallways.
Some would head up to the hills to steal marijuana crops, some of us would make out in sports equipment sheds, hiding in forts we had built from the gym mats. Still others would simply torture the resident narc all day, luring him out on long chases in his ridiculous golf cart.
This was my tribe, the punkers, misfits, and scrotes. Not the bettys and the barneys. Of course running with a bad crowd brings violence, and in order to survive you had to sub-sect. My crew was the gutter punks.
This was the 80's, before Hot Topic and the commercialization of punk, so you could still get bottles thrown at you daily for sporting a mohawk. Punkers were reviled by every group including other outcasts like the metal-heads, who teased their hair all day and wore make up, but still held you down and called you faggot while ritually punching you in the neck.
Survival meant running in a pack, which I hated, so me and my best friend would hide out off campus instead, engendering more cat calling and bottle throwing from the jocks as we slunk off from the lunch tables every day.
When my best friend turned into a junky and disappeared into that world, I discovered art, and the continuation school (name redacted to protect the innocent) I had ended up in had many free materials and no real adult supervision. In fact the school was so loose that the art teacher had been busted for selling mushrooms to her students and still kept her job.
This was ideal, I could show up to school frying on acid and just hang out by myself in the art barn, painting with expensive oils all day. And this is how I achieved my high school diploma. Perhaps through some deep seated academic guilt I still have nightmares that I have to go back and actually pass algebra, but I think just showing up for the last year of school was enough to get that stamp on my forehead. I do remember having to swallow some force fed American history about how Nixon was really a hero for opening up China, and we were made to watch the Columbia shuttle disaster live over and over again. But other than that it was all just a blur of swirling colors.
Needless to say this left me with no clear direction for my adult life, and as the youngest of six, my parents, over it, promptly kicked me out. I spent the next six months careening into homelessness and alcoholism, just trying to keep up with my peer group. We didn't know any other way to have fun. This was a very dark period of my life, pregnant with many cautionary tales, but the result was that by the end of that winter I was the most haggard sixteen year old you ever met. While other kids my age were busy getting laid I was hanging out under bridges with people you wouldn't want to touch with a rubber glove on. I had played around with some girls in school but had never been with a woman.
All of that was about to change...
Chapter Two
Shortly after turning 17 I began to worry that I wasn't gonna make it to adulthood. Among other problems I had developed a bony growth in the middle of my forehead which I joked was my third eye exploding, but when it grew alarmingly fast and started throbbing I knew something was up.
My parents made an appointment to have it removed but I was nowhere to be found, hiding in a stupor somewhere. The hospital charged them a hefty cancellation fee and when they did finally catch up with me everyone was furious.
Of course, like any good nihilist I thought the whole thing was hilarious, making jokes that they were taking away my alien brain as they dragged me into surgery. In fact what they removed was the size of a walnut and did look remarkably like a little alien brain, with two distinct halves and it's own capillary system.
I was informed that it was a benign cancer called a bony growth, and no I couldn't keep it, as it was now the property of 'science'. I thought about my sister who had miscarried a year before I was born. If she had come into this world alive my parents would have stopped at six kids, essentially denying my existence. I imagined this -along with my extra row of bottom teeth- as a spectral echo of her lost being. My supplanted, semi-parasitic twin, reminding me of how close my soul had come to oblivion.
After this incident my parents broke down and decided that I needed an intervention. This came in the form of a stern sit-down and an ultimatum:
“Son, we're afraid you're gonna hurt somebody, we're afraid you're gonna hurt yourself. So we're gonna send you to live with your brother in New Zealand where you can get the perspective you need and learn to earn your own way.”
I could tell by the way that they looked at me that I didn't have a choice. It was get out of Santa Cruz or die.. and I knew it.
This was their old-fashioned way of caring, tough love and all that. “You gotta throw 'em outta the nest before they can fly”. They couldn't have forced me to go, but agreeing to take the one-way ticket and get on that 15 hour flight was the best decision of my life thus far.
Upon arriving, I settled into the converted chicken-coop that I was to stay in, and the enormity of my isolation began to sink in. Here I was on an island at the bottom of the world, a million miles from anywhere, with no prospects or money, and a brother that needed rent right away. I had grown up on the same rural property as a child and I remember having fun wandering the rainforest and building tree-forts all day, but as a teenager, living out in the boonies was just a pain in the ass. Somehow the five miles I used to cheerfully barge to school every day on my stubby little child legs, now seemed an interminable distance to get to work. I needed a car, and quick.
In desperation I called my Grandmother to ask for a loan of a couple hundred dollars for transport to find a job. Her response shocked me into reality and was one of the best doses of tough love I have ever received.
“Dear, when I was your age it was during the Great Depression *insert Grandson sigh* and I had a job as a kindergarten teacher to put myself through college.” I was exasperated and whiny. “But Grandma, you already had a job. I'm trying to get one.” She wasn't listening. “Well, I had to bicycle all the way to my job and I remember having to scour the dump for spare rubber to patch the tires. You know.. rubber was very scarce in those days and...” as her words faded into my disappointment I stopped listening, but the lesson of what she was saying hit like a thunderclap. “Young man, you are on your own.”
There is a great Doc Watson song 'Walk on Boy' ~ “Walk on boy. Walk on down the road. Ain't nobody in this whole wide world gonna help you carry your load...”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikW8D4fncoI
I didn't know about Doc Watson at the time but when I listen to it now, it always reminds me of that moment in my life, when I felt so sorry for myself and angry, and yet empowered by the dawning realization it was all on me. No one was there to commiserate with and coddle me, or to kick my ass into gear. If I was to survive, I had to turn my downward spiral upside down.. all by myself.
Luckily, Henderson had a pretty good unemployment office, and within two weeks I was placed as a hole puncher in a sheet metal factory that manufactured BBQ parts. Hole punching was the least dangerous part of the assembly line, and after you had mastered the art of piercing and stacking thousands of sheets a day, they moved you to the massive sheet folding machines, where one wrong move could easily leave you missing a finger, either by the angry, stamping presses themselves, or by the ever-slicing razor-sharp sheets of metal flying around. The company required work gloves but it was impossible to pick up the sheets fast enough to make your quota while wearing them, so you just acquired dozens of fresh cuts in your hands every day. Always the foreman was screaming at someone to get their numbers up, and the endless.. Bowmmp!.. Screee!... Shssss... of the sheet metal folding machines and their fingerless, humpbacked attendants contributed to an environment that I imagine approximates hell.
Every Friday the manager would gather us in the office to give us our checks, but before that happened there were cases of beer lined up that you could buy directly from the company. It was a tradition to polish off quite a few cases before heading home for the weekend. This system insured that the company owner would keep the workers in his pocket, and some of them went to the factory solely to pay off their beer debts to him. This was my first real eye opener to cut-throat capitalism. Keep 'em down, keep 'em indebted, and keep 'em addicted to your supply, and you've got the next most profitable thing to slavery.
My brother's friend Terri saved me from that job, and along the way saved my spirit from shriveling. He and his wife Vicky who lived with their infant son Rueben in the property rental cottage took me under their wing and smoked me out when I would be just dying after a day of pounding metal. He would load up a round of 'tips' into his honeybear bong, crack some beers, and slip some cerebral New Wave into the stereo. As a hardcore punker I hadn't really opened my ears to some of the artsier music going on in the 80's, but Terri's influence broadened my tastes in a whole new direction with bands like The Cure, Joy Division, and The Art of Noise.
Vicky soothed my soul in a different way, insisting that I help her tend and learn everything about her immaculate veggie garden out back. To this day I am thankful for my friendship with her as I remember to use every inch of garden space for my family's sustenance.. as I slow down my day to a merciful crawl with the perfect meditation of pulling weeds.
They had a friend, Bill Zurich, who owned a panel-beater business, which to you yanks is auto-body work, and he was looking for an apprentice full time for $150 a week. I had never heard of such fantastic money, and not knowing anything about the job, I was excited to sign up.
Kicking my dilapidated and uninsured Datsun into gear, I headed out into the cold morning full of naïve promise. Little did I know that this workshop would be the unforgiving forge of my early manhood, as well as a cauldron of workplace and social hazards conspiring to kill me...
Chapter Three
Psychologists tell us that we replay old stories in our lives by assuming and projecting three archetypical roles onto ourselves and all those with whom we interact. They have identified these players as The Victim, The Hero, and The Villain.
What role you play or put on your friends and family depends on what is most convenient for your ego and it's twisted rationales for your behavior-- hell, all human behavior. These scientists hypothesize that we are constantly reinforcing these categories upon situations in life in order to feel safe within the familiar. That the only way to discover our true identity and to grow as a human beings is to recognize these preset roles, and try to live beyond the boundaries of their constantly recurring stories.
Some shape-shifters can comfortably toggle between identities or find clever combos to play with, but to me the purest and most interesting moments in life are when you have no idea who you are. When you head out into the unknown without any story to rely upon.
The morning when I rolled into the dark cul-de-sac of my new job at Bill Zurich's workshop was one of these moments. The sun hadn't risen yet and the dank mist buzzed at the flickering streetlights as if trying to invade their cracked domes and shut them down for good. Noone was around so I checked the wind up alarm clock perched on the peeling dashboard of my $100 jalopy. 6:55, five minutes early.. great start!
Not knowing what else to do I sat my butt on the cold concrete in front of the roll-gate for workshop #C and waited. Half an hour later the deafening roar of an approaching Harley split the silence. Hairy Mike pulled in, and it was like the world parted to make way for his motorcycle. Perfectly scuffed boots planted firmly in front of me as he pulled off his helmet. Even though there weren't obvious patches on his leather you could tell by his carriage and grizzle that he was affiliated. My best friend's father-in-law had claimed to be with the Ghost Mountain Riders back in the day, but you could tell he was lying. In Mike I had met the real deal and he was instantly my hero.
“Parkin' on that wet concrete'll give ya piles, yank.” he snarl-chuckled. “Get off your ass kid, it's time to work. The boss'll be in late.”
When Bill did arrive it was with full bluster, as if we hadn't been waiting half the morning for him but rather, “why the hell are you standing around, and where is the coffee?” I could tell by Mike's smirk that this was the norm, and I soon learned that keeping the coffee pot full and bubbling was the most important thing in the shop. Whatever happened in the the two years I worked there, the boss's answer to was to proclaim, “Well! Time for a cuppa then eh, Ricky? Get on that.”
This ritual was useful either as a celebration of a job well done, or to break tension after a disaster, but mostly it was our only escape from the endless top forty blasting from the radio in back and the acrid paint fumes searing into our lungs all day.
My first job was something we might call an initiation, but really it was the shit work no one else wanted, or could be paid to do. This is a good job description for any apprentice, but someones gotta do it, and its true that you must learn how to crawl before you fly. An old Aston Martin had to have all it's rusty paint taken off and the most toxic paint stripper was required, something akin to agent orange but more vile. All the sleeves to my jump suit had to be sealed with rubber bands that also cut off the blood flow to my extremities forcing me to loosen them halfway through. When my putty knife would scrape one of these dollops of toxic waste into my sleeve I would scream out from under the car and dance around like a circus freak trying to get the burning chemical cinders out of the suit and off of my blistering skin.
Needless to say, this provided immense amusement to my co-workers, raucously cheering me on and dubbing me “Michael Jackson” due to my “smooth moves.”
As I hacked up streams of green paint at the end of the day, Bill shook his head and looked derisively at my attempts on the car. “Well, I guess we know what you'll be doing for the next couple weeks,” he chirped.
Bill Zurich was the perfect mentor for me at the time, his juvenile demeanor, yet adult standing provided the perfect paradox for me to ponder how this all works. He was of the Yugoslavic tradition which dictates that all boys are Mama's boys until they get engaged. He was in his mid twenties but still lived at home, and on the days he was actually at work he would call his mother and demand loudly that she deliver him lunch without a shred of embarrassment.
In the world of men, power is measured in inches if you know what I mean, and one of the best ways to compare is how women treat you in front of other men. This flagrant display of culturally arrested development did nothing for our respect for him, but I gather in the Deli world it is the perfect example of how to be a man-- at least until you get your wife to become your mother.
Bill wasn't necessarily a good business man, none of his projects were finished on time and he was never in the shop, but he was a good boss in that he was fun to be around, and he invested in us the knowledge and encouragement that we needed to get the job done-- then he would trust us to do it well. Unfortunately, he was terrible at spot-checking our work and human nature as it is, we often took advantage.
After a couple of months a routine developed where Bill would roll in mid-morning, bluster about for a couple of hours, then declare that he had to go look at a car or something and take off. Hairy Mike would finish off his obligatory minimum daily quota, and then split, instructing me to finish prepping all the cars he didn't want to.
Gravity being as it is I knew that shit rolls downhill, and if the jobs didn't get done I would receive a heaping of abuse, but a seventeen year old apprentice is not equipped to run a body shop on his own, and I would often find myself helplessly facing the purple rage of customers who had come by to see WTF was going on with their car. After a while whenever I would see feet approaching the office I would scoot further under the chassis of whatever car I was working on and start furiously grinding away, hiding behind a shower of sparks and flying metal until they left. If they caught me in a vertical position, I would point at my respirator and goggles as if they were locked onto my face and there was no way I could talk to them.
At some point I could no longer dodge them all, and this became the worst part of my job; not the grinding of rusted metal centimeters from my face, not the inhaling of colorful, cancerous fumes all day.. but the cloying disappointment of these unsatisfied customers, desperate to extract from me some assurance that all was well with their babies entrusted to our care.. that they weren't being lied to and avoided.Of course that was exactly what was happening and I decided that I couldn't effectively cover Bill's tracks by my attempts at looking busy, so I had to follow his lead and find a way to disappear myself during the middle of the day when people would walk in.
One day I went to get some supplies from the storage loft above the shop. The area was obscured from view by long hanging sheets of opaque plastic and as I rummaged around the corner of one wall of stacked boxes I discovered my boss's secret Shangri-la. Behind a pile of rags was a bong and tin of weed, and next to an oddly placed throw pillow were a dozen or so Penthouse magazines.
Jackpot! I wasn't gonna steal his marijuana, but I had my own and I knew that noone would smell it over the chemicals. Also from this vantage point I could see if anyone was driving into the cul-de-sac and recognizing my boss's tires I could run down the stairs in time to get back to work. As I gleefully pulled a smut mag off the pile, I set about my first experience in getting paid to smoke and jack-off. Good work if you can get it.
The most harrowing part of this whole scam was putting everything back exactly the way it was afterward so that I wouldn't be discovered. Every flake of ash had to be blown away, the Penthouses stacked in perfect order, and the pillow placed back in it's weird starting position. Every time I would enter our scummy little oasis I would scour the area for minute changes that I imagined were subtle traps set for me by Bill to expose my activities. The more I smoked the more paranoid I became that he was on to me, yet anything was better than facing the random customer outrage below, so I soldiered on.
I don't know if you have ever read Penthouse Forum. It's the section where readers supposedly write in about their outrageous sexual experiences, but it's really written by professional smut smiths, and was a staple of many an adolescent boy's first wank sessions at the time. The letters always started out with premise of two strangers meeting in public, eyeing each other up, and then slipping off to have sex in the most craven and implausible way possible. Or perhaps a bored couple agrees to get a third party involved and of course it goes incredibly well the first time out. Heavy on the “oh fuck me with your gigantic rod, you hot stud,” etc... Good stuff for the first few times-and it sure beats scraping paint-but after a while the stories all blended together and became less of a turn on. I began to look for any deviation from the formula, devouring the advice columns for hints of perversion beyond the ol' in-and-out.
I came upon a letter that was definitely different. In it a man described his confusion at being attracted to his best friend, how they had gotten drunk together and somehow ended up in the bathtub. He talked about there being a moment of looking into his friend's green eyes and realizing that he had to kiss him deeply.. that nothing could stop what was happening. He then went into a graphic description of their 'love-making' that was far more romantic and exciting than anything I had read in porno up until then. I think this must have been before the AIDS crisis because the letter was obviously written to appeal to a bisexual audience. I doubt you would ever find anything like it in Penthouse today, if it still exists.
There was a glitchy pattern emerging. I found my sessions starting out with the usual fodder to get going without guilt, and then always returning to that one page of the magazine towards climax until it became well-worn and dog-eared. After ejaculation I would become immediately wracked with remorse and OCD, attempting to smooth the pages over and over so that noone would ever know.
One day I climbed into what I now thought of as my spot, and turning to my favorite letter I discovered in horror that it had been torn out. Panicking, I scanned the surroundings but nothing else was out of place. Sick to my stomach, I realized the jig was up and that my relationship with my boss would be forever changed. But fight or flight is a funny thing and at the same time I grew amazingly empowered with the knowledge of all the things I could blackmail him about. I also resolved then and there that I would never be embarrassed of who I fall in love with, whether they be a woman or a man. I don't think you can choose, and not giving a fuck is golden.
I never went back into the loft after that, and my boss never mentioned it, but we were soon to clash in the most heterosexual way you can imagine. Over a beautiful woman his own age, and he never saw it coming...
Chapter Four
I've always had an iffy relationship with cars. I can remember when I was around three my sister Lauren came home from the hospital wrapped like a mummy in bloody gauze and bruised beyond recognition. She had been run off the road by a group of local boys in a truck while biking home from school on our rural road. I was horrified by her injuries and I can still clearly hear her tearfully recounting what happened... "they pushed me right into the ditch and drove off laughing, they didn't care if they killed me, ma! It was like a game to them."
Our family station wagon had its own frightening and contradictory set of connotations. My father would pile all six of us kids in for a trip to the beach or into town, and it would always start out in the spirit of a rambunctiously goodnatured jaunt. We lived on an isolated rain-forest clad mountain top, up a dirt road from the idyllic, orchard spotted Henderson Valley, and as every child in a large family knows, each journey was huge effort to get together. By the end of the day nerves were frayed and the pressure cooker of that sealed and steaming torture chamber tearing through the night was the stuff of nightmares. My father had temper issues, and when challenged in this situation, he knew he was in control and it would bring out the worst in him... "Do you want to see us all die?", he'd scream. "I swear woman, I'll drive us all off the cliff if you don't shut up!" To prove his point he would lurch the car at high speed towards the precipice of our gravelly road, only pulling back at the last second. We never knew if someday he might just take us all over, and the arguments ended quickly, but the helpless and silent terror of those evenings lingered far beyond childhood.
When I looked at my father since in moments of true anger I always wondered who that man was that could contemplate offing his whole family and himself over a disagreement... Who was that demon that possessed him and what made him stop before the edge? ... Was he a cruel and bluffing bully ... or was he just crazy and really meant it?
Regardless of his psychology, I still clench when someone gets upset while driving. Sometimes I just blame the car and the feeling of power that comes with being a driver, and what makes me shiver when I think about it now is how easily his trick could have gone horribly wrong. The gravel on the road was loose and produced a hydroplaning effect on any car going over 20 miles per hour. His threats could have easily been realized by mistake, but he must have known that and got off on it.
On the other hand I maintain that I'm a great driver -even when angry!- and I have many warm memories of my Dad setting me on his lap and teaching me to shift the gears and steer up and down that same windy gravel road as he worked the pedals.
I just never developed the love of cars that many boys my age did. I was incurious about how they were put together and was actually pretty unsteady about most things on wheels. My best friend Phillip Coppins and his older brother Michael lived about a mile down the road, and when I tried to fit in with them by collecting hotwheels toy cars or wobbling down their driveway on a banana-board, they would laugh and laugh. "It's a skateboard, not an airplane, stupid!" Philip howled, arms outstretched ridiculously, mocking my awkward attempts at balance.
They knew I would rather be building tree forts or weirdly talking to my stuffed animals, and that set me apart from the world they were born into and were forming their identities in.
My parents were good parents and they set us on the path of independent thinking and healthy bodies by not having tv or sweets at home, but they were also dedicated academics and were always working at the university. Some traditionally important things were never passed on. There is a heartbreaking story from my dad's collection of memories where I ask him at age six to go throw the ball out back with me. "I'm sorry son, I can't," he writes wistfully, "because my father never taught me." Supposedly at this point I offer to teach him how, but I have no memory of it. I suspect the story has been romanticized in it's re-telling over the years because we never got around to tossing that ball, and I can remember a strange gap in father-son relations from my early childhood. Later on we bonded over Joe Montana and the 49ers but this was borne from exhaustion over our constant conflicts . To this day I credit the healing salve of our mutual hatred for the Dallas Cowboys for keeping us from killing each other during my teenage years.
When the Korean War draft was instated my dad was eligible, but as a Quaker he made a conscientious objection, breaking his own father's heart. He was assigned as an orderly at a military hospital stateside and his drill sergeant father scoffed, calling him a 'wet-nurse' and a 'sissy'. Nevertheless, I believe it was a positive stage in his life where he learned many useful disciplines that he tried in vain to pass on to his children. He could make a bed that you could bounce a quarter off of in ten seconds, and he gleefully trained us in the joy of cleaning the toilet bowl without gloves, but I never once saw axle grease on his hands.
My image of the Coppins' dad is that he would generally be parked under the hood of his jalopy in the driveway, tweaking this or that and causing mysterious and caustic trickles of dark liquid to chase us down the hill. The boys always kept a careful distance until their father called them over to inspect some accomplishment or fetch him a tool. They'd rush over with reverent heads bowed, yet brightly alert, eagerly waiting for the latest gem of knowledge to drop from the secret world of men and their cars. I recall feeling distinctly uninvited.
Bill Zurich's panel-beating workshop would have been like an adult playground to those boys, but to me it was a baffling array of shit I knew nothing about. On prominent display in the office was a toy model of a '56 Chevy, and Bill would point out the subtleties of the paneling and paint job like an art lover describing how Monet renders light. "Look at that chrome work!", he enthused. "It's like classy jewelry on a beautiful woman with a smokin' figure. I'll tell ya Ricky, It's all about the detailing." I was more focused on the details of the naked ladies caressing power tools adorning the walls, but clearly there was some common ground to work with.
One of the things we shared was a love of marijuana, and while coffee was the officially sanctioned drug during work hours, once the day was done the blinds would be shut and the bong pulled out.
It was on one particularly grueling day that Bill and I were finishing up with one such hard-earned smoke after several hours of overtime. We had busted our asses to get these projects done and a special sense of fellowship permeated the office along with a thick weed haze. In those days repainting a car involved sanding an entire panel down to the metal and then doweling in fiberglass filler called 'bog' to fill the dents. On this day we had moved several of the cars outside to sand in the sunshine, but New Zealand weather is changeable, and as any chemist knows when it rains on bare metal, rust envelops the surface like an instantaneous skin cancer.
Like all good stoners we were reactionary not precautionary and we had failed to bring the cars in before our session, so when the rain came suddenly down we panicked at the sight of the giant dollops of wasted man-hours pummeling our precious panels. Rushing outside to a red Honda hatchback I couldn't tell you whether I put my right hand on the broken headlight to push, or right above it and slipped, but either way in one instant a half of my wrist was gone. The next few minutes were like watching a horror film, frame by frame.
I raised my arm and a perfect arc of thick red blood burst from my artery and flew four feet through the air splashing across Bill's face and chest. His eyes grew stark white behind a red mask and he ran into the office grabbing a dirty towel and instructed me to bind the pulsing wound tightly. We walked quickly-not running-to his car in the parking lot, along the way realizing that all the other shops in the cul-de-sac were closed and we were the only souls there.
As we got into his sporty Mazda I noted how clean the interior was compared to our office and I laughed to myself ruefully about how that was all gonna get fucked up. My boss turned to me in shock, looking like a blood-streaked zombie.. turning the ignition on, he said almost to himself, "It's gonna be ok, yer gonna be ok..."
And then he fainted.
At that moment I had to laugh. Here I was with my boss out cold, bleeding to death with no hope of rescue. Remember kids, this was way before cellphones, and for some reason I thought it was too late to run back to the office and try and call someone. I couldn't even remember what number 9-1-1 was in New Zealand. Figuring I was a goner, I sat there with my gushing wrist in the air for a few seconds, and what came to me was the memory of a fumbling and embarrassingly brief encounter with a girl on her period a couple of years before.
As a thin smile stretched across my bloodless face I blissfully resigned myself to the one thought in my seventeen year old boy's mind that made it okay for me to die at that moment...
"At least I'm not a virgin."
Chapter Five
Serendipity is defined as a divinely happy accident and I'd say that describes a lot of pivotal moments in my life. I've met some of my most important people more by accident than design, and what saved me in near-death was a minor wrong turn by two surf-lifesavers in a GT muscle car. That night as I sat bleeding to death in my bosses' Mazda, they had gotten lost and were using our empty cul de sac to turn around and head back to the main road. If they had been driving a smaller car they could have easily pulled a U-ey on the street and never had seen me, but as it was they spotted me jumping out the door and waving them down with a bloody wrist-rag while my boss was slumped over the steering wheel - out cold.
These guys were my guardian angels, in the perfect place at the perfect time to save my life, and as lifesavers for the Piha surf club they knew how to calm me down and stave off the shock as we peeled out down the motorway in the fastest, most bad-ass ambulance possible. Thank you Piha life-savers whoever you are! I guess when you're that good at what you do your work just comes to you.
As if in a dream, they swooped me over to the hospital, dropped me off, and seeing all the blood, the whole place sprang into motion. Nurses strapped me into a wobbly gurney and banged me down a series of long fluorescent corridors.. Thinking they'd knock me out from the pain - I was wrong - New Zealand has a state run health care system and they're always looking to save money. Injecting numbing agents directly into the wound and washing out the glass shards with a shower hose and brillo pads occupied the next couple of torturous hours. In between telling me to 'hush up', and 'don't be a baby', the nurses informed me that I was missing half of my wrist. My main arteries had been severed along with the Ulnar nerves and Carpal tendons that control the sensations and movements of the outside half of my right hand. Above all I was damn lucky to be alive, another couple of minutes sitting in the car and I would have bled out.
Reconstructive surgery to repair the pathways for nerve regrowth all the way up from my wrist was attempted and the whole mess was sealed up in a globby Z shaped scar extending from the top of my wrist halfway down my forearm. This has sometimes pegged me as a suicidal. To this day my right pinky sticks out weirdly and catches on stuff and that side of my hand is still numb. My parents dream for me to be a concert pianist was instantly over.
I'll never forget the look on my boss's face when he showed up sheepishly at the hospital the next day to apologize. This man who had intimidated me so much over the past few months looked small and scared in the sterile room light. No longer the big man barking orders, that day he cowered in the corner, looking at the floor and waiting for me to say something. Ironically, even though I had done something stupid and careless by getting myself hurt, I felt like the hero that had pulled it through with bravery, and as I assured him that everything was ok and accepted his apology for passing out, I realized how tenuous and prone to sabotage these positions of power truly are. Sure I was on top right now, but if I accepted his offer to come back to the shop I was sure he'd find a way to get back at me. No matter, I appreciated that it took real balls for him to admit that he fainted at the sight of blood.. but then to promise to rehire me despite my klutzy ways was a stunning display of chutzpa. Besides.. I had nowhere else to go, I needed a job if I was ever going to get back to The States, so I said yes.
The next three months I was laid up at the house on disability and I learned to do everything with my left hand. It was a rich time of the year with summer and the garden in full bloom and I enjoyed the time off but not the loneliness of being isolated up on the mountain. My teenage hormones were going crazy and maybe my left hand felt new and different, because I began finding dangerous places to masturbate while everyone was at work or somewhere else on the property. I've always been turned on by warm sunlight and it must be true that idle hands are the devil's workshop because my unemployed hands were hardly idle that whole summer. One day I thought that I had the house to myself and I walked into my parents old master bedroom to bask in the sunlight pouring through the picture window onto the waterbed below. The only problem was it was my brothers bedroom now and he walked in on me violating his space. I remember looking at him like, "what?", and carrying on like nothing had happened. The look of shock and confusion on his face was priceless as he stormed out. I didn't give a fuck. Sometimes you do the worst things to your family, because you can.
Towards the end of that year as my wrist was healing well and the time was nearing to get the cast off and go back to work, my sister-in-law Ali's family were about to get together in Auckland, the main city down the way. She mentioned that it was a pool party and that her sister Liz would be coming in from Sydney for the holidays - in the southern hemisphere the height of summer is during the holiday season, and Ali talked in envious tones about how good her sister looked in a swimsuit. Eavesdropping on her conversations I gathered that Liz was a bit of a troublemaker and that it might be a source of tension at the party due to her having dated a black man recently; despite her parents disapproval. I was instantly intrigued and vowed to somehow ingratiate myself into getting an invitation.
Soon the day arrived, and as I self-consciously pulled the dinner jacket sleeve down over my gray and musty wrist bandage, I squared my shoulders in the mirror and vowed to make it an adventure. Little did I know…
At the first glimpse I caught of Liz out by the pool I was dumbstruck. I felt a catch in my heart like a hook was lodging in my chest. Her looks were beyond stunning, like someone out of the pages I had been jerking off to - but classier, and for real - moving about gracefully happy within herself. I'd never seen anyone with such poise, and with such a suntan!
At 24 I was sure she was way out of my league, but still I could look.. Her hips and breasts were shapely and inviting, like a beautiful stringed instrument just waiting to be strummed.. So supple and athletic was her body that it it took me a long moment to look up and admire the sensitivity of her face. It seemed that a thousand expressions hid behind her faint and mysterious smile. In an instant I saw her boredom with her situation and her struggle to conceal it. Her pride and her vanity in her feelings of superiority over her loved ones, and her embarrassment at being aroused in front of them. I summoned her whole story from looking in her eyes. She loved her family but she loved herself and her freedom more, and she was looking for a way out without breaking their hearts. More on my mind was that she was looking for a way to rebel.
All of this was enjoyed from an observer status as I watched her interactions over dinner. Her sisters jealousies and her parents ire were gently inflamed with offhand remarks about exciting and scandalous evenings on the town with her famous theater buddies, and in between she would look at me with a devilish and flirty glint in her eye as if I was in on the game.
I slowly realized that she was including me in her club, that she was silently communicating that she knew I was a black sheep too! We were artists - and comrades in arms - oppressed by the norms and expectations of our parents and older siblings.
I was smitten that night and I would have poured my heart out to Liz given the chance, but something about the way she held herself and the subtlety of our flirtation gave me the most powerful poker face. I dared not show any interest at the table yet the attraction was overwhelming between us.
It was a succulent and forbidden moment of excruciating fantasy and restraint; I had no real proof that she could feel the electricity in the room, but I had a feeling.. and it tasted like a 9 volt battery on the tip of my tongue.
Years later she sent me what she wrote in her diary that night~
"He glides into the garden cutting a schism of silence through the frantic family chitchat. (here a line is crossed out … in borrowed leather pants?) Tall, pale and awkwardly graceful he accepts a glass of something from Ma who is herself loosening up in the spirit of Festive indulgence. He crouches by the side of the pool. I sneak a look through a screen of wet lashes, swirling my toes in the water aware of my body, solid, tanned matter emanating a sudden and sharp rise in energy. I am lifted out of the stifling lethargy that always grips me when I go home, as though I revert to being twelve years old again and the soporific routine that revolves around preparing and clearing meals and interminable small talk wearies me and I am plotting my escape to a life of adventure … the real, adult me has been left behind in Sydney.
It’s warmer than usual for Auckland, slightly humid. His arrival is like a cool, milky evening breeze. The stuffy gathering takes on a charged atmosphere, but everyone else seems oblivious and only I notice that something beautiful came into the space like a swan gliding past on a glassy river. The others start to sound like insects, faintly buzzing in the background as if the volume has been turned down. Ma is still fussing, the ever-attentive hostess organising more drinks and passing nuts and chips. Alison placidly pregnant and helpful, always the good daughter, assists her… Fiona locked in some inexpressible misery (that I can guess at) craving attention… My father, frowning at a world full of disappointment, frustration always percolating just below the surface. I am deaf to them and mute.
My mind rattles, churns and analyses. He looks like a clean-cut, all-American boy with a handsome face and skin like a baby, deep intelligent eyes and a shy, withdrawn, sad quality …like … Holden Caulfield! He is a Catcher in the Rye! If he were an actor I would cast him in the role, perfect! … Not that Salinger would ever sell the film rights to Hollywood!
I look. I look away. I don’t want to get caught. He looks like an observer. Will he recognise another? I blush as though he … anyone could read my mind. I move to the spa pool absorbing the sensual tingling of warm bubbles. I feel detached, pleasantly inebriated, unsettled, stimulated, conscious of an inescapable, nonverbal communication. Though the voice of doubt makes fun of me, who knows what is going through his mind?
The evening passes crackling in an exhilarated limbo. I can barely make eye contact. I feel exposed as if my hormones are ricocheting round the room with a life of their own and on some level everyone can feel them. Ma and Pa would definitely find them inappropriate, unseemly!
Ma draws attention to his cut wrist, which I think is tactless, but she is probably innocent of malice. He answers her questions with a deliberate politeness, a completely charming (to me) seriousness. I wonder if he really is very straight? Maybe he is an obnoxious, preppy college kid (he’s young, younger than me)? … No … I wonder if he is a virgin? I dismiss such thoughts as unworthy of me, though another part of me is laughing at such spontaneous lust. I am surprised that something can just hit you like that, with such clarity. The last time I remember that happening was with John. I am surprised that it seems beyond any semblance of control or decision. Suddenly this visit back home doesn’t seem quite so onerous!"
~ It's amazing to me that a fumbling 17 year old trying to conceal his hard-on could inspire such prose - but I'll take it - and looking back I think it may have been purely chemical. Liz inspired in me a new level of sexual excitement, one that I had to be cool as a cucumber to maintain, or I'd have come right there in my pants. Perhaps she mistook my silent terror for calm confidence, but at any rate we were entangled together in bed within days.
Liz taught me to how slow down with a woman, and she walked me lovingly through the first thrilling lessons of slowly rising pleasure, showing me where, when, and how much to grow our quivering, dancing excitement. The first time we came at the same time was at the apex of a long spiral column of light that we had climbed up to for what seemed like hours. It was heaven. Like being bathed in a warmth so healing and sacred that your whole being is cradled in joy and fulfillment. It was True connection.. both of us feeling the same thing at the same time and riding a mutual rhythm through peaks and valleys of indescribable ecstasy.
For me, re-attaining, and holding onto that feeling became an obsession and it's what sometimes killed the mojo of our sex. I would always ask afterward if she had come, and just saying it put me right back into amateur hour status. Still, she was a patient tutor and would coax my tender hermit crab ego back out of it's shell and then ride me like a dirty carnival tilt-a-whirl.
One day when I was just back at work a couple of weeks, Liz told me that she was headed back to Sydney and we had to see each other one more time. I called in sick and we met that dewy morning, in a hidden glen on my family's property. Ringed by giant Kaori trees slowly nodding their approval we expressed our love like never before - wantonly.. upright.. and then on all fours - rolling around through beds of wet grass and pinning each other down in the hot sun. Dripping with sweat, our young bodies slid all over one another, and we cried out so loud you could have heard us in your car coming up the driveway.
When we were finished and panting I turned around to see my boss standing at the entrance to the glen, staring at us. I don't really know how long he had been there, but I heard he had a busy day at work and he needed my help, and perhaps my brother had snitched on me being home. But what made it worse was that he had asked Liz out a couple of times before and been rejected. And here was his punk apprentice on top of her, when he's supposed to be at work underneath one of his cars.
I guess shock, disappointment, and surprise, doesn't really describe what I put my boss through in that moment, it was more like he was broken. From that day on I could feel the pendulum of power swing my way even farther; I knew he would never fire me for a story that he couldn't live down with his mates. Around the shop we never mentioned Liz again, but in the back of my gut I could sense that payback was going to be a bitch…
Chapter Six
In which I learn the importance of color-coding, I'm scouted by Auckland skinheads, run away from a local Maori punk rocker, and my balls finally drop.
After the incident with Liz and my boss in the glen, things were socially awkward around the shop but productive for me professionally. The subtle shift in power and prowess had afforded me a bit of wiggle room and given Bill Zurich a little humility, so we used the long silences to get down to business. To his credit, Bill was a perfectionist when he set himself to task and because the quality of all of his paint jobs depended on my preparation, he really took the time to make sure I had every aspect of the skill-set mastered.
I would sculpt and sand a panel down for many hours with an ever finer grade of paper until it felt as smooth as any plane of glass. I would shift back and forth nervously as Bill squatted down to train his critical eye along the light beams cast across my work. "You see where it ripples, there? And you have a dip before the panel ends here?" And then with a smarmy wink, "You gotta treat this fender like you would a bird, mate. Don't let up until she's straight, eh?"
And so it went until I saw myself settling into the trade, the life of relative calm and wholesomeness that the Henderson Valley offered, and my entire being bristled against it. It felt like getting old at 17, and all my friends from California were sending me letters begging me to come back home and bragging about how much fun the burgeoning hard-core punk movement was becoming in Santa Cruz. There was a venue called Club Culture run by this guy Richie who was bringing all the big acts into town. I had seen Black Flag there in '86 but they were already seeming tame compared to some of the crossover punk-metal bands packing the club such as DRI, Slayer, and the Cro-Mags.
What my friends weren't telling me about was the increasing violence in the scene. How skinheads and punks were regularly clashing at shows and on the street, and how heroin and gang affiliations appropriated from Southern California culture were quickly splintering and killing off our once united and self-preserving community of misfits.
I experienced a little of this in my own uninitiated way when I ventured in Auckland on weekends to look for like-minded scalliwags to hang out with.
Auckland is a large city, and with a population of just over a million it's home to one third of all New Zealanders. Still, walking around, it has the feel of a provincial town just small enough where everyone is polite yet large enough to be surrounded by strangers. There is a small Middle Eastern and Indian immigrant population and I would go up to to the Jordanian halal food carts outside the library in search of something spicier than the usual kidney pies or vegemite sandwiches most Kiwis scoff for lunch.
Sauntering down the central Queens Boulevard munching my gyro wrap, I would search for anything interesting or unusual within the faces of the crowd. Now don't get me wrong.. I love New Zealand, it's the place where I grew up, and it's people are incredibly generous and down to earth.. But, it's not the melting pot that is the United States, and like my hometown of Santa Cruz, it suffers from a limited gene pool. The effect is a sort of whitewashing, where all the faces start looking similar and any diversity is met with fear, or seen as intriguingly exotic and is sought after with a kind of hunger.
In this environment of staid politeness within an urban setting, bizarre contradictions in cultural norms would stand out to my observers eye. Motorists would become frustrated to the point of conniption before sounding their horn, and then only do so with a quick tap and a look-away, as if to deny it. Sidewalk benches were dutifully provided every half block yet no one sat in them, perhaps for fear of being seen as a loiterer or vagrant, although I never saw any bums in Auckland.
Up the hill from downtown was beautiful Albert Park with folding green hills sprinkled with Victorian fountains and gnarly, old trees offering massively outstretched limbs. I never saw anyone relaxing in the grass or climbing those trees other than myself and my crazy brothers when I was a kid... And when I went there as an adult it seemed like I had the whole place to myself.
The town had the feeling of a clean and efficient metropolis where everyone went about their business without interruption and eye contact was forbidden. Not because it might lead to a fight or a fuck like in New York, but because people were genuinely afraid of random human interaction.
There's something so charming and limiting about the self-deprecating Kiwi nature. From my childhood social molding I still automatically nod to people in the acknowledging, submissive nose down gesture.. rather than the more aggressive, nose up, american-style gesture of 'what's up?'. Try out both kinds the next few times you greet people short of a handshake. It's illuminating how different the feeling and immediate placement in the social pecking order each one gets you.
But I digress.. The point is when I looked around Auckland in 1987 the whole place screamed out for disruption, chaos, or any kind of variety. Buskers would be a nice start I thought.. so out of desperate boredom, I plucked a blade of grass from one of the many perfectly blossoming medians, and sitting down at a bench in the middle of the busiest throng, I placed it tight between my thumbs like a reed. Blowing loudly through my hand, I produced the most piercing, high pitched screech you can imagine. Looking around for any reaction from the crowd I saw none, so I threw my faded brown fedora on the ground and launched into a tortured version of 'old man tucker' on my DIY ear-splitter.
At least fifteen minutes past without a glimmer of acknowledgment. Not even a look of annoyance! I was splitting my sides at how spectacularly I was being ignored when finally the lady running the jewelry store across the way came out and gingerly asked me to move along. I obliged, and figuring I'd wander down to the docks I noticed a young short-cropped fellow giving me the once-over.
"What's up?" I said, giving him my best show of yankee confidence. "Oh, a yank eh?", he said hearing my accent, and now he was really interested. "Have you been to the record store then? I bet we could find better music than what you're playin' 'ere."
Eager for a friend and with a few bucks in my pocket I decided to go along and we headed out together in search of better tunes. I was exhilarated, feeling like I had been recognized by a fellow misfit, someone I could relate to because we shared a similar style. He even had on a pair of Doc Martin boots like I did, and at the time that was the ultimate hardcore status symbol next to a leather. I hadn't been able to afford one of those yet so I sported an army coat. My friend was wearing a green bomber jacket so we looked like two soldiers going to war as we trooped down the street demanding leeway.
Looking back it's amazing how blind I was to the similarities in dress code between the two of us. Under the impression that by being 'punk' I was asserting my individuality, I was unaware of the strict categorization that was beginning to militarize and restrict the youth culture at the time.
I should have known something was up when my new friend ushered me straight towards the 'rock-steady' section of the record store, but I figured 'roots-reggae' was nearby and there might be some middle ground there. Shortly my host looked over impatiently and muttered something about, "getting that yabbo shoppie to play some 'screwdriver'." Alarm bells starting going off.
Skrewdriver was a controversial racist skinhead band from England who professed to be 'pro-white' and working class, but really they were part of a nazi national front movement fighting Pakistani and other 'undesirable' immigrants and miscreants in London. All their songs were about beating up fags and sending the monkeys home. At that point I knew I was in trouble but I had no idea where I was in the city so I followed him outside as he tiraded on, red faced. "That poncy wanker, wouldn't dare play our band!"
I could tell he was trying to test me, reeling me in, but I had to get directions back downtown somehow, so I followed him to a public pool where he said his crew was going to meet him. Protesting that I had no 'togs' on me, he brushed it off saying we were there to beat up the 'bungas' and, "make sure they don't get in one of our 'sheilas', eh?".
I had to get out of there but we were already at the pool and descending down a long outdoor stairwell into the screaming, splashing mass of playful children and teenagers below. If we going to pick a place to beat up on 'bungas' this was definitely the wrong one. New Zealand racial demographics are about 15% Maori or Pacific Islander and about 75% 'Pakeha' or of European descent. That day the public pool was evenly mixed with plenty of cross-racial socializing going on between pretty white girls and large brown dudes that could have easily drop-kicked us over the wall if they felt the need. I grew intensely uncomfortable as it became clear we were attracting attention, the only fully clothed people on the pool terrace, my 'friend' glaring menacingly out at the water, his jaw set for a bruising.
Not wanting to wait for things to get worse, I made some lame excuse and darted away exhaling as his face dropped, realizing his mistake. "You fuckin wanker! You can't leave me here. When my mates come we're gonna find ye and kick ye bloody head in .. useless cunt!" I believed him. Despite my lucky escape and the stupidity of his miscalculation that day, every encounter I had with skinheads after that, I was chased and beat up by odds of at least five to one.
Incredibly I drew no lessons from the experience and continued to venture into Auckland, searching for trouble, without changing my look or demeanor one bit. Oddballs have always been drawn to me, and I figured the skinhead incident to be a fluke. Wanting to branch out socially, I asked a Maori punk rock looking kid I met hanging out at the docks if he knew where to get weed and beer. He lit up at the possibility and we headed out to a part of town that had a huge parking lot canopied over for a weekend flea market. Finally! A place where I could tell I was in a real city. Stall grills poured delicious smoke out of holes in tattered, hanging tarpaulins, and the loud voices of Polynesian and Arab shop-keeps and hagglers punctuated the air. This was the hidden Auckland.. full of incense stands and tacky South Pacific bric-a-brac. A place where pasty white modesty went out the window and people bargain hunted with glee.
My new found friend and I located a pot dealer at one of the costume jewelry shops and did the deed in the back behind racks of brightly touristy t-shirts. New Zealand money is very colorful with pictures of birds flying out of it and I commented to my friend that it seemed like play money compared to US greenbacks. We laughed at the thought, but our dealer was unamused. "Well then, lets play at giving me some more of it, eh?", he growled at me.
Beating a hasty retreat, I felt a threatening chill in the glance exchanged between my mate and his dealer as we left, but wanting to get somewhere where we could crack open some drinks and smoke, I thought nothing of it. Carrying our shoulder-tapped beer up the hill we inched ever closer to a giant motorway overpass and the poorest neighborhood in town that was built underneath it.
Leading me down a series of tightening concrete vestibules that seemed to be built on top of one another my Maori friend and I eventually opened the door to a dank, clammy hovel, the size of my renovated chicken coop home but with about a six flatmates huddled around a stack of empty wooden beer crates and passed out along a filthy pull-out sofa. A beaten-down Sony turntable dominated the room and broken pieces of whatever used to be furniture and food packaging seemed to spew forth from it across the room and pile up at the edges of the couch. Broken glass covered the floor and stained and peeling posters of american punk rock heroes like Darby Crash and GG Allin slumped off the walls in sickening defeat. From the layout of the room the equation was clear: music + booze = violence.
The only thing animated in view was a skinny Maori kid with a dreaded mohawk holding court in the center of the room. The others looked on glumly as he fidgeted wildly with his lit cigarette, flicking sparks into the sleeping punk's hair and singing along to the Misfits record playing on the stereo. This kid really knew the song, "Texas is the reason that the president's dead.. Gotta suck, suck, Jackie, suck."
I was intrigued at the venom, the anger, and the authenticity exploding from this person. Here was a true punk rock band leader with a chip on his shoulder and rightly so. I was immediately infatuated and would have done anything to drink a beer with this guy. Rushing over to introduce myself, he noticed my eagerness and took the beer out my hands without a hint of resistance. Beckoning me over to the stereo he led on, "Always bring beer to a party, eh yank? That's a good start... Whattaya reckon we pick out your favorite record then?"
Sensing a trap I plowed ahead into the pile of records anyway, not wanting to give up the fact that I had been listening to quite a bit of softer new wave music lately and was culturally behind. Finally I picked a Misfits record that had come out years before that I felt safe with and I set the needle to vinyl. Before the end of the first bar my new nemesis was spitting out every syllable of the lyrics in my face, fast and intimidating, a direct challenge to my credibility, my knowledge of the best music from my homeland.
"Here in this place lies the genie of death
Touch it, see it
Here in this place is a means to your end
Touch it, feel it
Green hell....
You've come to this like no one could
I bet you never knew you woke it
And don't you run away from anything
I bet you thought you really could
You've come to this like no one could
I bet you never knew you woke it
We're gonna burn in hell
Green hell!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-T_HHcrj4o
I was busted, unable to keep up I blurted out made up lyrics that stumbled awkwardly into his perfect rendition and mangled themselves against the floor along with my dying pride. Half way through I gave up, admitted my fraud, and stared at the ground. By the end of the song my tormentor, not satisfied with my humiliation, took his lit cigarette and stubbed it out on the toe of my brand new Doc Martin boots. "So what about taking those boots off now, yank? Or maybe we could cut 'em off right through those pretty white laces?" He hissed, producing a switch blade from his back pocket.
Everything moved very quickly, yet in classic slow motion. My attacker lunged towards me as I leapt to my feet and my friend from the docks grabbed my arm and pulled me outside.
Slamming the door behind us we raced down the slick stairwell to the street and all the way down the hill before I noticed he was laughing and hugging his sides as we ran. "You should have seen your face mate! I thought you were gonna shit your pants!" "I was shitting my pants!" I cried out genuinely upset and frightened, "what the fuck is wrong with that guy?" "Don't you know anything?" he replied, "It's your boots and shoelaces, mate. He doesn't like white power skinheads." Flabbergasted, I pressed him to explain. "Yeah, white laces mean white power, red are nazi, and blue are the punks color." "What do black laces mean?" I queried. "They're neutral," he said. "They mean nothing at all."
And so to this day, I'll wear nothing but black laces, and I only wear boots when I'm hiking.
Over the next year I felt my time in New Zealand winding down. I would still make trips into Auckland but only to make a payment at the travel agent on my return ticket to the states. I applied myself at work but only so far as I wanted to learn a trade I could pick up back at home. Socially I had clocked out and was depressed, and I think Bill and Hairy Mike noticed it. They were nicer to me overall and Bill made a real effort to be a good mentor and boss.
I visited Liz in Sydney for a couple of weeks and although our connection was rekindled it became clear she considered me too young to take seriously. When she returned for a visit to New Zealand we took ecstasy and tramped through the fern-choked jungle together. Coming to a clearing at the top of a tall waterfall she sat me down and staring into my frightened eyes she gently, wordlessly, let me go.
Having paid off my ticket, I gave my notice at the shop and made my final plea to Hairy Mike to sell me his leather jacket for $200. "Come on man! I have the cash right now!" And cash was the magic word to Mike. Slipping into the buttery, yet rough-hewn armor I felt my childhood leaving me. Here was a jacket that demanded that I push my shoulders back and walk into life confidently; in the face of any enemy, real or perceived.
All of this seemed to amuse Mike and Bill immensely as I would show up to work early every morning those last two weeks beaming brightly in my freshly oiled leather, bursting with excitement for the Return Home.
Something was in the works but I had failed to learn the lesson of my experiences on the streets of Auckland - When you are giddy with the anticipation of what you think is coming, you fail to see the clear and present danger. There was nothing complicating my path back to america, and in fact my boss said he was going to throw me a party on my last day.
Finally, the day arrived and when we closed the roll gates and put on that last cuppa it dawned on me how much I was set to leave behind in Bill's shop. I had left a chunk of my right wrist inside one of his car's headlights and I had left my innocence behind jerking off up in his attic hideaway. I had lost my pride by getting caught, and gained it back by beating my boss to a girl we both wanted.
I had learned to work, fight, and almost die like a man; and I had immense gratitude to the institution and the people of Bill Zurich's Panel Beaters for taking the time to mold an awkward, young fledgling like myself into someone you might be able to trust around a car and socket wrench.
As the evening wore on and the coffees turned to beer, the honey pot bong was produced and the stories began to get long in the tooth. Mike and Bill looked at each other at the end of one particularly good gut-ripper and pulled me over to the table where some long, white, powdery lines had been laid out. "Go ahead mate," Bill urged me on, "This is good coke and it'll see you through tomorrow."
Not wanting to ruin the moment I leaned over and eagerly snorted the largest line. With my new leather jacket and identity I felt as if this was part of my induction into the bad ass club. Full of myself, I thanked the boys for all the good times and began to launch into what I thought was a hell of story of my own.
Before I knew it my vision was swimming and I was doubled over with severe abdominal pain and nausea. The faces and laughter of my co-workers weaved in and out of a blurry, white, whirling centrifuge that grew ever larger until it swallowed the whole room.
I was running to the bathroom, and clutching the bowl white-knuckled, I threw up browns, reds, greens, and yellows all the way from the bottom of my stomach into the toilet over and over.
I spent the next few hours holding onto the shop beanbag for dear life as the entire world buckled and heaved underneath me. Having never been exposed to heroin before I didn't know what I had been poisoned with, but by catching snippets of conversation from the other room in between rushing off to vomit again, I gathered that they had dosed me with some nearly pure china white that had come in from Malaysia hidden inside one of the motorcycles on the shop floor. One of Mike's 'Mongrel Mob' buddies had delivered it and they were testing it's purity by guinea pigging me with it. Judging by my reaction, they said it was fair dinkum, and they all had a good laugh about it.
Disgusted and ill, I stumbled into the office and demanded to be driven home. Perhaps surprised by how sick I really was, Bill agreed right away and we trundled off into the night and drove his ill-fated red Mazda up into the dark mountains.
As we headed up the last mile of my gravel road I began to talk uncontrollably. I told Bill how grateful I was that he had hired me and how much of a prick I thought he was for testing his dope on me. I told him how I had beat off to his magazines in the attic while hiding from his customers, and how we all laughed at him when his mom brought him lunch. I told him how great Liz was in bed, and how much I loved him for teaching me the trade even after I rubbed his nose in it. It was a blubbering mess of an all-out confessional to a captive audience. All the things anyone should hate, but I think when the shock wore off Bill was maybe a little touched. I'm not sure men are supposed to acknowledge each other this way, but in his eyes I could see a change, a belated appreciation of who I had become and who he was losing; And in that look he returned to me a clear reflection of the future I was escaping.
The next day my best friend Terri tried to take me fishing at dawn as a proper Kiwi send-off, but I was knackered and useless and stayed in the car all morning throwing up.
When I left for the airport, Terri and Vicky hugged me tight. They knew what was in the cards. "I s'pose we'll never see you again, and we never got to go fishing." Terri deadpanned. I tried to tell them how much they meant to me, how hard these years were and how grateful I was for their advice and solace; but I'm sure the words came out as garbled nonsense.
As I settled into my seat for the 15 hour flight back to america I pondered the changes within myself. I bunched up my leather into a pillow and leaned back, thinking about how much had happened to me in the last two years.
I had learned a trade and in the process nearly died. I had participated freely in corruption and still attempted to redeem myself. I had been defeated and humiliated and then returned to the fray.
I'd loved and lost, and I'd lived a story worth sharing.
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