Booby-Trapped between Hormones and Hope.

I was in Hensheys on the fifth floor. Hensheys in Santa Monica was upscale for those of us from Venice. Excited to be buying new clothes I was, “bouncing off the walls” according to my mom and all the other regular people in the store who were freaking out about the earthquake.

I wasn’t really there at all. I was back at Saint Monica’s thinking about the time I was cornered.

Darting from clothes-rack to clothes-rack, my  mind traveling back as if I was right there when Marilyn and Theresa cut me off and trapped me in the hallway. I felt like the wounded gazelle on one of those nature shows on TV.

“Well?” Marilyn said with hands firmly planted on her hips, in the way Sister Godzilla and the nuns did at Saint Marks every time I was in trouble.

I looked at Marilyn then to Theresa, then back to Marilyn, and did this a couple times before opening my mouth.

“Well…well…well what?” I asked with great trepidation. Not knowing what I was in trouble for, feeling like the girls were about to pounce on me and rip the flesh from by body.

This could be a problem. Not because Marilyn was about 9 feet taller than me or that she outweighed me by a good 50 pounds, but because we had two rules in our house.

Rule 1: Dad said that us boys were never…NEVER ever…EVER to hit one of our sisters i.e. girls.

Rule 2: I can’t remember what the second one was.

Anyway, I wasn’t really afraid that they could beat me up, after all I had taken on members of the Wolf Pack more than twice my size before. I was more afraid that if war broke out between us I would have to let them beat me up and was also afraid for them if my crazy-psychotic adrenaline stuff kicked in ( I didn't want to go to prison). It was a Game of Thrones. Who was in charge here? Definitely not me.

Trapped.

With pupils pinpointed they waited for my answer and held their ground, blocking any chance I had of escape.

I had no idea what they were talking about. I felt like I was in History or Latin class—nothing my teachers said made any sense to me.

“What’s wrong with you?” one of them said demanding an answer.

You know that proverbial “Deer in the headlights of an oncoming car” look. That was me. The same look I give my teachers whenever they asked me a question in class.

      Today would probably not be a good day.

I opened my mouth. No words. What do I tell them?

There were a lot of things wrong with me—duh!

Where do I start?  Do I tell them that I was tested to see if I was retarded? At least, that’s what my oldest brother said. He said that was the reason Aunt Mary had taken me up to Loyola University. Usually I didn’t believe him, but felt it had to be true because all of my other brothers agreed with him, when they laughed about it at the kitchen table.

“I’m retarded.”  I thought. No, that wasn’t the answer they were looking for.
“I’m hyper.” All the nuns at Saint Marks said so.

I ran down the list of all my faults, “I’m a robot,” “numb” “adrenaline junkie” “PTSD” “memory issues.”

I don’t think any of those explanations is what they were looking for. AND I certainly wasn’t about to share my deepest-darkest-secrets with anyone—EVER!  Fear. Shame.

Sighing, I shrugged, hoping they would give me a clue for this ambush.

“What’s wrong with you,” Theresa led off with again followed with, “why didn’t you do anything?”

While processing the words, “Do anything” Marilyn jumped in. “Yeah. Why didn’t you go after her?”

Stunned and having no idea what these crazy girls were talking about, I stared as the oncoming car came speeding toward me. This was not like Marilyn and Theresa, they were my friends—I didn't understand.

(Marilyn pictured to the right)

“Andrea!” blurted Theresa like an erupting volcano that couldn’t hold back the pressure anymore.

My brain was processing—slow—too slow. “Andrea?”

“Why didn’t go after her?” Marilyn said looking down at me.

Blank stare…processing…processing…This was like Brother Coleman asking me to translate some Latin. Omnes viae Romam ducunt—I didn't have a clue, it was like a foreign language to me.

The building shook. People panicked and screamed. I didn’t know. I wasn’t there. I was still back in that corner being interrogated by the hungry cheetahs.

“Well?” Theresa said trying that line of questioning again.

Three words squeezed out as I stared up past the boobs, which were at eye level and distracting (the advantage and disadvantages of being short), “Go after her?”

“Yes,” Marilyn said frustrated.

Like magma flowing down the side of the agitated volcano, “That whole thing in the school yard,” Theresa said, “was for you.”

“The whole thing?” I carefully asked more confused than ever. "Me?"

“When Andrea hugged that boy, over by gym...that was for you.”

“That was her cousin, stupid. She was trying to make you jealous.”

One thousand thoughts flooded my brain cells. HOPE! I felt like not all was lost because “someone liked me?”  Me?

The whole leg-lift and head-tilt thing Andrea did. The hug of 1971 was intended to make me jealous. I was jealous and hurt but now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get her phone number or how to approach a girl or what the next step is. “Ugh…I just wished these two girls would get their boobs out of my face and tell me what to do next”

Help me, I pleaded. I guess spoken words on my part would have been better. I am a looser, but a happy one because someone liked me.

Coming back to planet earth, I looked to see all the people in Hensheys clutching the floor and crammed in doorways. It was a big aftershock, but I had no idea that the old building had been violently swaying back and forth.

I calmly walked over to the cashiers table where a pile of red clothes were stacked up and asked what all the commotion was about.

Incredulously, three ladies stared at me as my Mother explained that we had just experienced another earthquake.

“What Earthquake?” I asked.

My mom laughed knowing that I had been totally oblivious. She knew that  it was because I had been moving more than the building and that I had probably disappeared into one of my out-of-body day-dreaming experiences. The others ladies joined in and soon everyone on the Fifth Floor was pointing at me and laughing. Fun on the Fifth Floor. It didn't matter—but it did.

On the way home, from the back seat of the car, I told my mom and Mrs. Exstromer that I really didn’t feel like the whole Europe thing was real yet—that’s why I was so calm.

“Calm!” my mother chortled from the driver’s seat, breaking out in laughter.

“Calm!” Mrs. Exstromer barely managed to get out after spraying her Tab cola all over the inside of the windshield when the two of them broke into a hysteria of laughter.

The two of them laughed so hard that mom couldn’t see because of the Tab cola and the tears in her eyes and had to pull the car over.

Gasping for breath like both of them could die of laughter, they volleyed the “calm” word back and forth between them.
(Pictured L-R Mom, Herb Williamson, Mrs. Blaser, and Mrs. Extromer. Mrs. Extromer was the Secretary for Saint Marks grammar school in Venice).

I sat in the back of a car in the parking lot of Kenny’s shoes watching the two ladies who I felt might have need medical attention at any moment.

Embarrassing…hello! This was the first time I had ever seen adults wet their pants.

Happens to the best of us, I guess. Oh well, at least with my new red Hang Ten shorts, and my red Hang Ten T-shirt, and my red Hang Ten socks I’ll be the best dressed kid in Germany. This had to be better than the stupid reverse turtleneck with the zipper on my first day of High School.

On the following Friday, my big, squishy, beautiful Irene, saw me dressed in my red Hang Ten "outfit" and said that it was probably better that I was going to wear this in Europe rather than in Watts, where she was from (I didn't know what she meant, but we both laughed).



Hormones were kicking in...being booby-trapped wasn't so bad... :)

Maybe not "Straight out of Venice."
Via Europam Amantissima ac spei plenus

Pictures Credit : Hensheys of Santa Monica posted on Facebook by Michael Hayashi; May 16, 2016 “You know you're from Santa Monica if”

Pavlov's Tortured Dog - Damaged Goods and Me!

Ring the bell, drool. Ring the bell, drool. Raise the fist, flinch.

Continued from last time that began with with the shirt.



Everyone thought it was funny—except for Brother Michael. So I went with it and let my classmates think I was doing one of my comical bits. In reality, however it was my PTSD. I didn't want them laughing at me. I wanted them laughing with me.

My brother Bob had come home from Vietnam, as well as two of my neighbors, Robert Tripp and John Gillemot. They looked fine to me on the outside, but they had this Post Traumatic disorder thing that made them flinch and caused them to react wildly and to do weird things at times.

This was understandable for them—they fought in war!  BUT WHAT WAS MY @#*%#@#^% Problem?

(Bob pictured above)

 (John Gillemot pictured to right) 

Like the returning Vets, I looked fine on the outside, but was all messed up in my head and hated myself for having no control over my wild reactions.

I don't know why my brothers felt they had to raise their hand up in the air like they were going to strike me in the head every time they walked by. But they did. Either it gave them a sense of power or they just liked to see me cover my head and duck—or both, I guess. They would gesture violently in my direction, I would cover my noggin, cower in fear, drop to the floor which always made them laugh.

Haha.  I was the laughing stock at home—make me cower or make me vomit—the ironic thing was it that it was the "peace loving" hippies who burned their draft cards that loved to hurt me. Their was nothing peaceful about them. 

I had been hit so many times on the head I was like Pavlov's stinking dog. Ring the bell and I drool only in my case I "stop drop and roll." And if the boys got really lucky, they could make me vomit up my guts which was the height of entertainment in our house.

Every time my poor dad raised his hand—I fell to the floor and took cover.

THANK YOU WOLF PACK.
Let me see if I can make you happy by getting all schizoid whenever you treat me worst than a dog. 

I don't know why my brother Chewbacca had to squeeze my temples or lift me by my chee-chees or by me neck or had to repeatedly slug in in the leg. I don't know why "Flea-Bait" felt he had to beat me up every day. I don't know why I had to be electrocuted, Jalapeno'd or buried in pits. I don't know why I was the one who was chased - hampered - shot - dropped - dangled and tattooed.

Anyway, I realized how bad it was in Brother Michael's class the day after he caught me half-naked in janitor's closet.  

He smirked and talked about Catherine the Great or something in history that excited him when Earnestine raised her hand to answer a question.





Earnestine had graduated with us from Saint Marks.  She was a girl. She was a friend.  A 14-year-old girl for Pete's sake. The 14-year-old girl who sat in the row just opposite me, raised her hand to answer a question and like some mental case I flinched, covered my head and dropped to the floor.
















How retarded was that. Everyone started laughing so I went with it—acting as if it was just some dumb comic bit. I was a hero and comic genius. All the stupid kids in 9th grade loved me.
   
Brother Micheal sent me to some guy with a name like "AutoBelly." Autobelly, what kind of name was that?  

It was worth a trip to the Dean's office, because I made Brother Michael hate me which I counted as a victory. I win!

Raise your hand, flinch. Raise your hand, flinch. Raise your hand, flinch. I felt like I was worst than Bob and Robert and John who had returned from the Vietnam war. Something in me was broken. I was Pavlov's stupid dog.





I was sure there was love in the world somewhere—maybe next door at the Blasers or over at the Lennon's house across the street—it certainly wasn't something I could find at home. 

They seemed to like each other.  That's all I wanted. Love may have been asking too much for my family. I was starved and willing to feel liked.



This guy, Waldo Autobelli, stuck his finger in my chest and began yelling at me. It didn't matter. He could scream his head off all he wanted—though I stood at attention like any real kid—I was nothing more than a Zombie who was dying a little more inside each day. 

I was becoming a robot and his finger couldn't penetrate my steal plate exterior. 

Alex shared his pickles with me as I thought about poor 'O Billy Joe MacAllister - he died and it didn't matter to anyone.  Same thing would happen in my house I thought.   

 "Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas

"Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please"  

"Hey, Alex could you pass the pickles please." 

The Summer of Love. The Summer of Manhood. Both? Neither?

June 1970: it was a big, big year.
             "A Rite of Passage"







I was finally graduating from Saint Mark's grammar school and would become a man.

Well, maybe not a man, but I would begin a new life as a Freshman at Saint Monica's High School.



This sacred rite of passage, however, seemed to be lost on me. The other normal kids in my class seemed to know things. They knew about love and sex and English grammar. The knew about the three branches of our American government, how to spell and lots of stuff about God and Jesus and Mary and Joseph and also stuff about science.

   Me?  Uh-uh!

I had been too busy running for my life, dodging needle-tipped arrows, digging myself out of pits, surviving electrocutions, fighting off ambushes by the "Angry-Little-Man-Crew," pushing our fleet of broken down cars from one side of the street to the other, not to mention the psychological torture of the Catholic nuns at Saint Marks, and most recently, the bullying and physical torture of the "Wolf-Pack" hippie clan that repeatedly threw me over the cliffs in Malibu - TO ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING.

I was okay at math - accepted into the "Zero Period" advanced math program at Saint Monica's, but other than that I barely knew the difference between a noun and a verb. I was so preoccupied with ducking every time one of the kids in my class raised a hand - thinking I was going to be belted in the head - that I didn't have sufficient brain synapse to learn a blinking thing.

Why, I was so ignorant that I hardly knew where babies came from. 







It seemed my only "rite of passage" was the fact that I finally outgrew my dad's frugal invention of the infamous sugar-water, gel-concoction that attracted the mosquitoes to California.





I graduated from the hard shell helmet-look to the  dry-look with my long bangs as a junior-hippy.


The girls in my 8th grade class seemed to like my golden locks and began doting on me - you would think this was good... right?  Well, I don't think it had anything to do with any sort of romantic inclination. At our graduation party at Mike Dunagan's house the girls sat me on their lap and combed my hair as if they were 8-year-olds (in touch with there mothering instincts) playing with me like I was a doll. 

I didn't put up a fuss. It made me feel good. I enjoyed actual human contact and physical touch that didn't leave bruise marks or some kind of road rash. Though it wasn't love (other than Irene), this was the closest thing I had come to making contact with what might have looked like love.

I sat on the front steps of our Venice house, watched the world go by and surveyed the landscape - trying to take it all in.

I think the Lennons knew what love was.


I think the Blasers knew what love was.


I think the Tripps knew what love was.





My friends next door and across the street... surely Tommy and Jeffry and Joey and Ricky knew... right?







The girls in my class knew. Marilyn and Theresa and Andrea - they had to know... didn't they?











There was a normal family behind us - across the ally - the Arnolds - they knew. Right?


 (Photo courtesy of Cheryl Arnold - Miss Venice, Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA)






So what is wrong with me? COULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME! I wanted to believe that what I felt for Andrea was love, but was so insecure that I couldn't utter one coherent word in her presence.

I was either retarded, like my brothers said, or I was damaged goods.  I began to wonder if I was even capable of something so grand a notion as love?

Numb! An Island! A Rock!  I had spent considerable time building a wall around my heart to protect myself - afraid of becoming vulnerable and afraid that only by being vulnerable could I know what love truly is.  "In case I need it when I get older."



Do I just blurt it out! Do I tell Andrea that I love her?  We didn't use the word in our family and I couldn't get the "L Word" past my lips.  Andrea, please, read between the lines.


I've traveled so far... I wanna know what love is. Please someone show me.



Do I let down my guard and trust my brothers? Maybe, one small steps at a time!  Take a little time and think things over. I have this mountain I have to climb.

Tomorrow, we are going to set out for another great adventure. It's always a great adventure when my family goes camping.

As usual we will cram a hundred bodies into our Ford station wagon and drive up the coast to visit our neighbor, Roger Sasson's, new property up by the Russian River.

I'm sure that I'll be perfectly safe and nothing will go wrong.... NEXT TIME "Russian River, The Man Hunt, Elephant Man and The Plague"    

Two Days later - The Alien Zombie!

As you might image, Thanksgiving at our house was totally insane. We didn't have any rattlesnake escapes or rooster attacks, just the noise of 195 people crammed into the 5 rooms of our downstairs. We really didn't have 195 people there -  it just sounded like the cacophony of one hundred and ninety-five very loud and rambunctious people.  With Nana, Aunt Mary, Walter Daniels, all the hippies who live in our house and Pinky and Kleghorn and Mario and Red and Primo and Chewy and last minutes stragglers brought home by my dad - like Roy Spenjamin - plus a couple weirdos like Jim Andel (who was a Lennon Sister stalker) and the guy with the funny voice everyone called "The Quaker" our large house was packed. Add in all the older boys girlfriends it was probably in the neighborhood of 60 plus people at our feast-turned-circus-event.

Dining room




























(Nana in chair and Harry, "The Quaker" very back center - be sure to check out the TV with rabbit ear antennae)

Some of the Lennons, Blasers and other neighbors came by in a long standing tradition just to gape open-mouthed at the lunacy of it all. This allowed them to be on the fringe of our neurotic madness and then escape back to normalcy of the plain-wrapped life.

(Pat Lennon and Bruce Grant to the Right)





                   




  (Left- Dad "Mr. D" partying)

We did not disappoint. Just after dinner, Dooh-Dooh Pants "cut the cheese" with the nastiest silent-but-deadly ever recorded in history and crop-dusted the entire living room in a fashion that he had become notorious for. I was caught in the middle and barely made it to the bathroom before puking up all the turkey and mash potatoes I had gorged myself with when playful rough-housing ensued because of the gas attack.

To stir things up even more like striking a hornets nest with a stick, Donny Blaser got his hands on a loaded Daisy BB gun and began to open fire. Puke Breath ran upstairs and came back armed with his Red Rider repeater and war broke out.

One of the returning Vietnam Vets began having a PTSD flashback. He took cover under a folding table where he loudly cursed and started calling everyone "Charlie."  

Donny shot a hole in our large front picture window and nobody seemed to care. I did. I knew dad would be upset or that he should be upset - other parents would have been mad, but he was too busy horse-playing like a teenager and engaged in the ruckus to notice.

My mom tried to calm down the reckless folly by screaming the, "Under-Pain-Of-Mortal-Sin" clause but since it failed to make a dent in the din she parted the Red Sea of bodies, went up stairs and locked herself in her bedroom.

"How convenient" I thought with prophetic utterance knowing exactly what this meant. It meant that Pinky and I would have to spend the next two days cleaning up the aftermath of this colossal mess and towering stacks of dirty dishes. Chewbacca and the older boys felt I deserved it, since they had blessed me with an extra two days off of school by covering my body in a thousand red marker pockmarks.

Every year they had always managed to come up with some lame excuse that meant I had to clean up the mess. Mostly, it was because they didn't seem to mind the clutter and it was my job to hold back the second law of thermodynamics: increasing degree of chaos. No one cared how dirty our house was by me. The older boys weren't even embarrassed to have their girlfriends over to see the pigsty. I couldn't stand it. I felt to me like the dark Paranormal Ooze was winning and cleaning was the only way to hold the demonic substance at bay.

I put up a fight to make them feel good - they liked a good fight(like I did with the hamper trap Hamper Trap ), but cleaning up after everyone was more than a duty it was my cause. I didn't really feel a part of this family, but felt as if I had been sent to them from another planet to save them and dug deep into my superpowers to wash the one hundred billion dirty dishes. Like a robot drone, I stood next to Pinky who was still in his pajamas and washed one dish after another and daydreamed of what it might feel like to love and be loved. Then and only then would I know what it was like to be human, until that time I would walk among them - alone and distant like a lost, orphaned Zombie that needed to be saved more then them all.

Who Started the Great Fire of 1969?

(Continued from last time) The Great Fire Who-Dunnit?





No one got killed. Mr. Blaser, my Dad and my brothers managed to save everyone inside.
Bobby Tripp didn't have to go to jail and the grand old house on the corner of Harding Ave and Grandview had been burned down. The next day while the charred remains were still smoldering,Tommy Blaser and I decided to sneak inside the ruins to explore inside even though our parents told us it was not safe and forbade us to go anywhere near the place.





I was a kid on a mission. Yep...I, Markie D, decided to take on the arduous task of  helping the Venice Fire Department with their arson investigation (every fire department needs a just-turned 13-year-old to muddle in their affairs...right? I thought so!) And so I sneaked with my pad and pencil and began taking notes.

As a mentioned last time, I had a long list of  possible suspects.

The 2 prime suspects of this harrowing fire that were on the short list of the Secret Service and of Fire department were immediately ruled out.







The first being Chet Young, the cowardly fugitive who gunned down Bill Lennon and who was now on the run. The second was Charles Manson and 25 of his murderous renegades known as "The Family" who had been briefly arrested on August 16th at Spahn Film Ranch for the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders and had been under close surveillance since the botched arrest.

1) Chet Young
2) Charles Manson and gang
3) Mr. Blaser (I didn't tell Tommy but his dad made it on my list because of what it was doing to the price of                       real estate on our street) but if he was a suspect then he would have burned our house down                         a long time ago.
         Since he tolerated us and our Venice Tower of bamboo trash, then I figured that I could rule him out.
3) Mr. Blaser 
4) THREE of the four Harding boys who had dressed up as girls and wanted revenge for feeling rejected.
5) Susea Grant might have done it for payback for being dropped on her head from the second story                                     balcony by her brother Cameron to the boisterous chagrin of the Frat guys

6)  Mr. D (that's my dad) he made it on the list, because we needed more parking for our eight hundred cars                                            and armada of trucks filled with trash and car parts.

7) Johnny Gillemot - the paper boy who had not been paid for the subscription to the Santa Monica Evening                                 Outlook by the guys at the "Frat House" who kept giving  him the "run around"
8) The Catholic Nuns who lived behind the "Frat House" which was nothing more than a den of iniquity.
9) Leeland, the guy on the corner of Crestmore who built bombs and liked to blow up things and wanted the                   barn to himself for his "Sin Bin"
10) Walter Daniels... Well, because they lived behind the big old house and for the fact that he was Walter                                     Daniels (don't try to figure it out - just accept it).
11) The Nargies - because they owned the property next door - enough said.













12) Tommy Blaser - because he walked in his sleep and liked to play with matches - NEVER a good                                           combination.

13) The Owner - Mr. Malon. Since the world had turned to conspiracy theories every since the                                                                  assassination of JFK back in '63  (i.e. including the moon landing last month)                                                we might as well add the owner of the property (seeing that it was worth more                                              for the insurance then what he could sell the property for.

This is not comprehensive by any means, but it is my list and one that had many more suspects on it than the Venice Fire Marshall had on his list.

Jimmy the "slurper" who sucked boogers into his mouth when his nose ran and licked his lips so much that he looked like he was wearing Bozo the clown makeup - road me over to the fire station on the handlebars of his Schwinn Stingray so I could present my list to the Fire Chief. When I read my list the Chief rolled his eyes, but I think that's because he was intimidated that I have more people on my list than he had on his. He didn't know things I knew. He didn't know about Susea getting dropped on her head or about the Fraternity jipping Johnny out of the paper route money they owed him or about Tommy and his hankering to burn things with matches or that Leland liked to blow things up. I did!

The Fire Chief didn't know about the four boys who lost a bet and had to dress up like girls and try to schmooze their way into the house and had to get the"Frat boys" to "hit" on them.

The Chief certainly didn't have the Saint Mark's Nuns on his list - but that's because he didn't go to Saint Marks school and didn't have Sister Godzilla in the Fifth grade or have Sister Shultz for homeroom.

Psshaw... What did he know?  Lucky for him I was his 13-year-old Harding Avenue, street rat, who was now his confidential informant.    

But for now, I got to say good bye. It's time to run inside and watch the Lennon Sisters on the Jimmy Durante Show.