After getting rolled in the dirt and being embarrassed, I'm not too sure that Tommy had much of an interest in being a member of the Troop 32 ruffians. Jeffery, on the other hand, was looking for something that pushed the edge of the envelop and was a little beyond the pay-grade of being a Lennon. He could wet his appetite for dangerous living by hanging out with me at my house, "Hotel Crazy," and cut his teeth on adventure by joining The sickness of this rowdy troop from Venice.
BUT FOR NOW - it was all about PAYBACK! My older brother, Chewbacca, had drawn all over my body with a Marks-a-Lot and derailed my chances of finding out about love: HE HAD TO PAY and I had a plan!
When Jeffery sneaked over to my house, he was as giddy as a little kid the night before Christmas with the thought about handling snakes and dead things that were being preserved in our freezer.
The house was quiet because hippie Wolf Pack was out back in the ivy cave smoking it up and mom was locked in her bedroom. Like paleontologists, the first thing we had to do was chip out one of the two dead Diamondback rattlesnakes that were frozen in the glacier of the refrigerator frost (that we had found at Leo Carrillo state park in Malibu) .
Picking away at the thick ice crystals with an ice pick and a heavy metal spoon we scooped out loads of the snow and began eating the stuff. Chipping away at the snake skins, Jeffery and I shoved gobs of the delicious fluffy white refrigerator snow in our mouths...gobs and gobs of it ...and even made snow balls and threw them at Chewbacca's gross pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator.
Jeffery was in heaven - nothing like this would ever take place at his house. We threw freezer snow balls at the flying one-eye'd" parasite carrier and shoved more of the fluffy frost into our mouths UNTIL...
...UNTIL I got a bite that tasted like it had made contact with the dead rattler... I guess it could just have been tainted with the rancid blood of old chicken but my overactive mind conjured up snake guts that incited my superpowers; heaving and gagging I ran to the vomitorium. Jeffery laughed and continued to dislodge the old rattler carcass from the freezer as he listened to me throw up my guts in the bathroom. I was a hot mess
So much for payback. Chewbacca, was already winning and he was out back getting high with Bob Dylan and friends - It's not like Bob Dylan was out in our backyard. It's just that they were just doing what Bob said, "Everybody must get stoned." They were smoking the infamous "Mexican tomato plants" which gave us time to lay our devious little trap.
In order for our plan to work we had to thaw the thing, so I made Jeffery put the snake under his shirt - he loved it and thought it was groovy - but I put a rubber band about the mouth of the snake so the fangs wouldn't accidentally poison him with deadly venom.
With the snake warming under his shirt, we headed up stairs to the third floor bedrooms of the Wolf Pack and to the (not so secure) snake cages! I didn't want to kill any one really...just put the fear of God into Chewbacca, so I didn't mess with the rattlesnake cages. I did however make a nice soft warm nest right in the middle of Chewbacca's bed. Pulling back the covers, I carefully placed one garter snake at a time in a pile of snakes I would leave for Chewbacca to discover when he came stumbling to bed.
Where Plan XYZ gets really good is that we were going to take the thawing rattlesnake and place it among the living ones. My hope is that with all the slithering and movement from the real snakes he would think that the rattler was alive and have a complete conniption fit and go crazy!
When Jeffery put the warm rattlesnake in the mix the other snakes freaked out - and wouldn't you know it - in the panic - one bit me in the arm! DANG IT! This payback better be worth it!
I was hoping the Wolf Pack would turn on each other and that a ruckus would break out on the third floor. In the middle of the night I expected to hear the the sweet sounds of this delicious payback!I climbed into my loft bed near the place where the ooze was released from the pit of hell and smiled as I fell asleep.
And it happened just as I planned! I heard a screech that sounded just like the girls did when the older boys took them to the Albino camp... I heard the boys yell at Chewbacca...I heard a wrestling match break out on the third floor. YES! PERFECT! All was right and good in the world (only Jeffery was home and missing all the fun)... UNTIL...
...UNTIL...I heard my name! "MARKKKKKKKKKKKKK!" came the bitter sounding screech from the third floor. "I'm going to kill you. You little twerp!"
Footsteps! Lots of them coming down the stairs and heading my direction. I was trapped!
The boys grabbed me, stripped me down to my tightie-whities, tied a stand of Christmas lights around my ankles and hung me out the second story window!
Luckily it wasn't long, but there I hung until morning. Mom walked under me and mumbled something about the "pain of mortal sin" and when Jeffery stepped outside his house and saw me hanging nearly naked he knew that PLAN XYZ was an epic fail and that being a Lennon wasn't so bad after all.
When the mom who drove the Saint Mark's advanced-math kids to Saint Monica's in the morning pulled up and saw me hanging there she - burned rubber and sped away to Santa Monica as fast as she could!
My only hope was to pull some kind of Houdini and escape before Andrea would see me in my underwear on her way to school. This was certainly not the way to exact revenge.
YOU WON THIS ONE CHEWBACCA!
I guess it was a good thing My dad and mom had prepared me for this when I was young.
So you know what, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" or something...
...or SOMETHING!
All I know was that I was still trying to figure out what this love word was all about. Clueless in Venice!
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