The Maternal "Criminal" Outlaw

By around age sixteen, I escaped my father and stepmother. My father had worked for the fire department. This required him to stay at the firehouse every other twenty-four hours, enabling my stepmother to stir up all sorts of controversy and convince my father that we had a good whacking coming when he arrived home. She so enjoyed watching him beat us and worked overtime in her attempts to incite him against my brother and me. She had other methods of emotionally abusing our sister.

Early one evening, my brother dropped a plate of hot spaghetti and meat sauce on his bare foot. As he hopped around on one foot, he said a cuss word. Stepmother immediately went on the attack, “don’t you talk like that in my house,” she screeched, in her feigned southern accent. Roger had been wearing a thick chain and medallion around his neck. She grabbed hold and twisted it, until he was choking for air.

As she twisted the chain even tighter, she pulled him around the room, while the chain cut off his oxygen and dug into his neck, rendering him helpless. At some point, I took hold of her shoulders and in a calm, stern voice, ordered her to let go.

She let go and Roger gasped for air, and then bolted out the door. I was close behind. We ran for a couple of blocks and stopped to access our situation. The chain had skinned Roger’s neck and produced red and purple welts.

To get money, I went and collected a couple houses from my paper route. Roger went to stay with his friend Dennis and I hopped on a bus to my grandparent’s house in a nearby town. They welcomed me and were especially concerned for Roger. I called my dad and he hung up on me. I called again the next night and he hung up again.

Midweek, I received court papers calling me a habitually disobedient minor, in need of special supervision. My father got in touch with my grandfather and told him to get me home or he would have us both arrested. Grandpa complied, but when he saw Roger’s injuries, he began to lecture my father on child abuse; this fell on deaf ears.

I stayed out of their way until court. I virtually attempted to fade into the woodwork. They were calling me a runaway and said if they had their way, I would be going to the training school.

The court hearing was interesting. The judge listened to all the testimony, examined my brother’s injuries, found that I “ran away” to the home of my maternal grandparents and had tried to notify my father of my whereabouts and was hung up on; the judge began to get the picture. He was really impressed that my dad had hired a lawyer to help the juvenile prosecutor prosecute me. He asked my dad “WTF?”, in his proper judgelike way, and told him this sort of thing was highly irregular.

The judge ruled that I hadn’t done a damned thing and allowed my mother, who was suffering serious illness, to take custody of me. He ordered my father to pay her child support, but he never did.

My brother and sister soon joined me and my mom. Unfortunately, her health continued to deteriorate. During this time, I attempted to keep us all together. As mother’s health spiraled downward, I adopted antisocial survival techniques and became bitter and hard. It was us against the world and the world was winning. Each of the four of us was stretched to the outer limits. Every day, my mother got up early and caught a bus downtown, she had to transfer along the way and this commute added three hours to her workday. Often, she would get home, go to bed and cry the night long. The cupboards were bare and she really couldn’t do anything about it. Minimum wage didn’t go far in the sixties and since my father had been ordered to pay child support, we were not eligible for public assistance. Never mind that he never paid it. My mother’s parents blamed her for being a divorced woman and would offer her nothing but contempt.

One day, she simply could no longer get out of bed, so she didn’t. We soon lost our rented home and mother wound up in the hospital, scheduled for emergency surgery in an attempt to save her life. My brother and sister went to live with my grandparents, but I was not allowed. I really don’t blame them, as I was pretty over the top, out of hand by this time.

One of my friends suggested I could live with his brother and his friends. He took me over to meet them and they let me move in. They were outlaw biker types and one of them, a guy by the name of Pete, was a member of one of the four most notorious motorcycle clubs in the United States. He was in hiding in Nebraska, while avoiding questioning as a person of interest in a murder on the east coast.

I found a job, routing freight for a bus company. I worked from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm weekdays and had weekends off. I now lived with Pete, Markey (my friend’s brother), Griffin, also from the east coast and Pete’s righteous old lady Debbie. Debbie was amused to wear precious little clothing and embarrass me with suggestive talk. Pete would laugh and say things like, “You’re f**king crazy.”

Every night, when I got home from work, the party was in full swing. We lived on the north side, in a minority neighborhood that had no streetlights and was no stranger to violence. I would walk into a cloud of pot smoke and a house full of people who were in various stages of drunkenness and often undress. I found several of the women irresistibly attractive and was amazed, despite the hard exteriors, how friendly and welcoming they could be in the right situation. I craved female nurture and simply could not get enough. I so wanted someone to love me, but these would not be tamed. I smoldered in quiet desperation.

Drugs and alcohol flowed freely. It was not unusual for someone to ride a motorcycle through the house and on occasion, someone fired a firearm, or a few swinging fists were exchanged. The atmosphere kept me constantly on edge. I loved Pete. He always carried a gun and wore his colors when he went out. He took me under his arm and looked out for me. Frequently, Pete and I would be the only two awake when the party died down and everyone else either crashed or left. Many four or five o’clock mornings would find me and him sitting on an old couch, tripping our brains out on acid.

Pete had been shot, served several terms in prison, moved thousands of dollars’ worth of guns and drugs and was covered with tattoos. He was the most counterculture person I have ever known, a true outlaw, and he just plain didn’t give a damn. He was without fear and had a violent contempt for any semblance of societal authority.

There were a few odd, seemingly misplaced people who would frequently attend the ongoing parties. One of them, a strange looking geek by the name of Rick Cotton, never indulged himself in alcohol or drugs, but was always trying to chase down one of the women. He had no success; they found him creepy and often laughed about him. I seriously didn’t like this guy, but had no idea the part he would soon play in our demise. Pete thought of him as a joke.

One night, Rick Cotton came in with a baby food jar of low quality pot, a cigarette roller and some papers. He told Pete he planned to burn some people and wanted to know if it was okay to roll up some joints. Pete told him whatever.

I thought something was seriously wrong with this. First of all, who needed a cigarette roller to roll a joint in 1969? Secondly, this guy was seriously out of place. He always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t take drugs, but had once asked for a couple of hits of acid, saying he wanted to do them some night after work. Pete had given them to him. Pete just didn’t care.

On another day, I walked out on the porch and spotted a police car just down the street. It was facing our house and there were two men in the front seat that appeared to be watching us. I tripped right back into the house and told Pete we were being watched. He was not in the least concerned. “If they were going to bust us, they’d have already busted us,” he said. I knew something was wrong, but forced myself to trust Pete’s judgment. I knew we had illegal substances in the house, but had no idea how much.

Later that week, Pete had to go pick up someone from the airport. The guy’s name was Larry. He was young, looked to be no older than eighteen or nineteen. He was clean-cut and preppy and was there to deliver Pete an envelope. I know it was a large sum of money and a significant quantity of LSD and a small taste of heroin. Pete was especially proud of the acid, which he said was Owsley. Whatever it was, ½ tab was too much and caused me to trip so hard and so long that I missed a couple of days of work, just trying to recuperate.

By this time, I was experiencing no peace in my life. I was a high-school dropout and had already saturated myself with drugs. These are choices that put an indelible mark on my life; they were choices I made; I can blame nobody but myself. I know that I had fallen into a deep depression at the time and was increasingly anxious concerning my future.

The depression and hopelessness undoubtedly contributed to a number of unpleasant LSD experiences. One early morning, when the party had fizzled, Pete and Rick Cotton decided to go out to look at a motorcycle that Pete had his eye on. As he prepared to leave, as always, he tucked his pistol into his pocket. For some reason, I asked him why he needed that. “Because I’m not going to jail tonight,” he answered. I needed no further explaination.

Earlier in the evening, I had sat on my mattress, drawing water into one of Pete’s syringes and squirting it back into a glass of water. I did this over and over, while partying and talking to people who came and went from my bedroom as the party rumbled on. I guess it gave me something to do while I tripped my brains out.

About the time Pete and Cotton left the house, I was close to peaking on the acid. I remember pacing through the house. Everyone was sleeping or passed out. I may as well have been alone.

I went into the bathroom and took a leak. The bathroom was very small and fitted with a sink, toilet and bathtub. The light bulb had burnt out and nobody had bothered to replace it. The mirror above the sink had been splashed with beer or coffee and was stained. The light from the next room dimly illuminated it.

Looking into the mirror, I noticed a pimple on my chin and picked it. Immediately, I felt a thin stream of blood flowing from my chin where the pimple had been. I pressed my finger on it and applied pressure, which appeared to stop the leak. As I washed my hands, I felt the small gusher of blood start up again. It seemed to be a small stream of blood about the size of and under about the same pressure as the water through the syringe had been.

I made several attempts to get it to stop, but to no avail. Fearing I would bleed to death, I decided to wake someone up. I walked around the house and went room to room, trying to find the least frightening person to disturb. I decided Debbie would be my best bet.

I sat on the edge of her bed and watched her sleep. When I got my nerve up, I shook her. “What do you want?” She asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. The sheets and blanket covered her lap. She was wearing an amazingly sheer top that did nothing to hide her ample breasts.

“Debbie . . . I picked a zit and I’m bleeding; I can’t get it to stop. She looked at me and said, “You’re f’n crazy.” She laughed. “It’s just the acid,” she said. Where’s Petie?”

I told her he was out, trying to figure out how to steal a motorcycle. She leaned up against me, and in a very seductive voice asked, “How long has he been gone?” I told her I didn’t know. I had no concept of time. “Well then, you’d better get out before we get ourselves in trouble.” She said. I went into the living room, sat down and began to contemplate this.

Soon, Pete returned. Cotton did not come in with him. I told him I thought my chin was bleeding. He took a look and had quite a chuckle. He made some coffee and we smoked a joint. He sat and talked with me until after the sun came up. Later in the day, he called work for me and told them I was sick and wouldn’t be in. That afternoon, I stepped out and saw that the police were still parked down the street watching. I didn’t worry about it.



To be continued...