How I lost my virginity and almost died. Part 6 (The Final Chapter)

How I lost my virginity and almost died... Part 6

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." Terry 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.

How I lost my virginity and almost died part 5

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…

I want to live intentionally. In other words I want to act with intention. I don't want to keep stabbing at any old hole, scuffing my knuckles against the wall, hoping wildly to connect. I want to choose exactly what I mean to do and go about it with the right tools and precision.
I slide my alan key deftly into the slot and with focus on the task at hand I tighten the screw exactly the amount of turns it needs to be snug. Simple.
So unlike life as it comes, this ideal, so fantastic a desire in the face of love.
The best I can do is hone my will to kindness, and try not bang every extremity as I walk through this next door.

As One

The Devil was caste down from Heaven and rightly so...

Yet, there are days when God feels less than Whole, and staring in the mirror, they agree to meet on Earth and play again as One.

At these times all the world shudders in disbelief...

Drowning

.

I was along the edge of a tall cliff in Hawaii, navigating the crumbling precipice and I didn't want to go farther. My older, more adventurous brother kept pushing me.. "Just around the corner is that beach you love." But as we got there a small wooden shack was blocking our path. We had to enter as the waves were beginning to swell and crash at our feet.

When we got inside there was an old deaf mute woman who lived there.. and my father who has been gone almost a year.

She pointed to the only window facing outwards, and coming towards us taking up the whole horizon was a gigantic green glacier, churning the ocean up in heaving violence. "Alaska is so trippy." said my brother, and my father said, "I'm going to sleep now." and laid down.

I looked at the old woman getting smaller and I said "We're dead, aren't we?" She nodded yes as the tide took us out.

We all have to return to the ocean eventually....

How I Lost My Virginity and Almost Died Part 4

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."

New York Stories II – Popeye and the Leaning Tower of World Trade

Popeye and The Leaning Tower. Of World Trade-

There are many well known things about New York City. It's people are abrasive, the rats are legendary, almost everything is way overpriced, and it's a horrible place to drive or own a car.

But take the time to walk around the corner from the $50 breakfast joint, and you might find the soft and pleasing underbelly of the worlds most ambitious and inclusive big metropolis.

Dollar pizza slices! A perfectly designed and beautifully efficient public transportation system! Every language, cuisine, musical style, and sub-culture is represented in New York. Wander into the East Village on a Saturday night and 'melting pot' doesn't begin to describe it.

And walking and biking. All New Yorkers do it. Fast and purposeful, the life spirit and blood of the city flows on street level. One of the more common sights down here are the two thousand or so brave -and some say crazy- bike messengers tearing up and down the avenues or bustling in and out of midtown skyscrapers, all geared up and on-task, like steely-eyed urban insects.

New Yorkers abhor a delay, and due to a state of perpetual gridlock on the island, all major Manhattan businesses depend upon bike messengers to get important items across town quickly. I became a messenger in the winter of 93-94, and that job sometimes sent me downtown to the World Trade Center.

Whenever I delivered to the WTC, I could feel it was a death trap. Most buildings in the city bear the weight of history with a sort of weary patina, but in the towers there was a palpable tension. Due to the recent bombings in 1992, entry required that you go through metal detectors. To a bike messenger, time is money, and the long lines at security and between elevator banks made me lose commission every time. Some buildings you could get around the messenger access rules if you knew the doorman, or clients could call down to the front desk, but at the WTC there were no exceptions for anyone. You and the CEO of JP Morgan were both just workers in a hive, and everyone had to wait in the same queue. That made all of us equally pissed, and feeling cornered.

I've always suffered from a mild sense of vertigo, and one of the most disturbing sensations I've ever experienced was feeling the bottom drop out from under me when I finally did get into those high speed elevators. It would take at least a full minute to get up to the sky lobby on the 86th floor, and I imagined it as sort of a reverse Day of Rapture, that balls-up-into-your-stomach feeling as you realize you are being shot straight up to hell in a metal tube.

But those feelings of claustrophobia were less intense than what the busboys and other staff of the famous restaurant on top of the North Tower experienced daily. It was called the 'Windows On The World', and at one time it was the top-grossing eatery in the United States. My friend Popeye was one of those busboys.

Popeye had about 15 different jobs in the city. Everything from bike messenger and construction worker to male stripper or wedding DJ. A soft, memory-stricken smile spread across his pale and boyishly aging face, as he recounted what it was like to work in the restaurant on top of the world...

“Y'know I couldn't take it seriously, and I only lasted about 8 months. I mean, this was an old-school, high-class joint with a strict dress code and the owner was very proud of that image. The manager -we called her the 'Dragon Lady'- would line us up every morning in our uniforms like catholic school boys, and then inspect us for dirt underneath our fingernails.”

“Some days I'd go out the edge of the revolving dance floor, by the windows and stare at all the twinkling city lights spread out below and reflected on the East River snaking uptown. You can see the bridges and avenues laid out in order, and then look a 1/4 mile down onto the street at the toy cars and ant people crawling around. It's a feeling of sheer terror...

"They designed the buildings to sway about 15-20 feet in the winds, and when they keep blowing the towers lean ominously towards and away from each other, making all the tourists seasick and clearing out the restaurant, leaving the poor band playing Sinatra standards all day to an empty room. The Dragon Lady insisted that the show must go on, and she would never let us take a break. Even if there was nothing to do, the busboys would get their knuckles rapped if we were caught leaning on the furniture..."

"I'll never forget the eerie scene of the musicians diligently banging out 'My Way', this-time-with-feeling, as the bored and immaculate wait staff tried to look busy on the sides ... the slowly swaying towers keeping time.”

Popeye's a squatter on the Lower East Side and we talk about where we were on 911. I tell him about how I went to work at my bike collective in Santa Cruz that morning and was shocked and dismayed by the -“They Deserved It.”- sentiments expressed by some of my co-workers. All I could think of was the feeling of being trapped inside those buildings, and what a horrible way to die that would be.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” remembers Popeye, “when we were watching the towers fall from our rooftop, some people were shouting -“Death to Capitalism”- and I had to tell them to shut the fuck up. All I knew was that my friends were burning to death, right there in front of us.”

All 72 employees and managers of The Windows On The World died that morning because they were trapped above the impact zone of American Airlines Flight 11. The owner wasn't there that day, but afterwords he set up a fund to help the victims families. The controversial picture of 'The Falling Man' plummeting to earth face down to escape the smoke and flames was identified as restaurant worker Jonathan Briley.

Today there is a gleaming new 'Freedom Tower' under construction where the World Trade Center once stood. As workers have built to the 107th floor they've reached the height where employees of Windows On The World looked out and saw the jumbo jet hurtling towards them.

Some say that up there on a cold night, you can still hear band playing 'Fly Me to the Moon' on the wind blowing in from Hoboken.

'Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars ~ Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words .. Take my hand..'

After all, the show must go on.


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