1978

1978 - The Overture

Sexy at Six and Seven

I am the hottest guy in my first-grade class. Fashion model hot. The other 6-year-olds can’t compete with my good looks. Put me on a Toys Are Us magazine playing with Legos or on a Mickey Mouse Hoppity-Hop and they will run out of stock. I’m not just sexy but confident, a confidence that isn’t tempered by modesty.

I smile at the teachers. I flirt at the grocery store. I walk around shirtless in my neighborhood; body confident, curly blond locks, chubby cheeked and struttin’.

I look like a White Supremacist’s painting of the Christ-child. Christ-like, if the Messiah were born to a farmgirl named Donna Lyn from the Ozarks. Like Mary, Donna Lyn was an unwed, brunette teen, surprised to find herself with child. Mary went to Bethlehem; Donna Lyn went to the back-forty on the dairy farm. Neither had running water. Both had sons with visions of standing in front of multitudes; one with a scroll, the other with tap shoes and a smile.

The future doesn’t worry me, I just need to make it past thirty-three.

Wooden Spoons and Mornin’ Glory

Mom chased me around the kitchen with a wooden spoon last night. Hair like Linda Ronstadt, eyes like Charles Bronson; she was quick, accurate, and justified. She was making dinner after coming home from work and trying to get to her night-school class on time. I had paper and a 64-pack of Crayola crayons spread over the table. She asked me twice to clear my mess and set the table. When she asked the third time I said, “Make me”.

My strategy was to keep running around the kitchen table until I outlasted her outrage. On my last lap I ran into my dad’s belt buckle, the one with “IXOYZ” inside the outline of a fish. It was attached to my dad.

I am enjoying Mom’s olive branch. We are in line to see Star Wars. I’m wearing my official T-shirt: the one that looks as though it was designed by a graphic artist who has not seen the movie and works mostly designing covers for romance novels titled Come Love a Stranger, Savage Spirit or Morning Glory. On my shirt Luke has a chiseled chest and a six pack. His legs spread gripping his erect lightsaber straddling over Leia who has huge breasts, long slender legs and a force me look. For some reason she is wearing a cape, which I think is fantastic.

in line with me is my little brother Aaron who is holding onto our mom’s leg. I’m networking with another boy whose mom drinks from a little glass bottle in her purse. When I’m caught staring the boy says, “My mom gets thirsty.” She looks down, smiles at me and says, “Hi honey.” She has breath that makes me think of the circus - all cotton candy and caged animals.

Aaron is wooing another mom while perfecting his, I’m shy and if you talk to me, I’ll flash giant dimples, look. I have more charisma than Aaron but I’m losing my hold on most adorable. I should have been an only child, or an orphan, or both. All my favorite characters I pretend to be are orphans with no little brothers to compete with. Pete in Pete’s Dragon, Tony in Escape from Witch Mountain, Diana Ross in The Wiz.

If Star Wars weren’t a hit there would be no follow up and Luke would forever be an orphan. If he had parents, or if Owen and Beru weren’t killed, Luke might have stayed home. He could have developed a passion for computer programing or made those sand art windows that sit on desks and when flipped simulate colorful sand dunes being formed. He could have sold these at the Thursday night Tattooine Arts and crafts show.

I love Arts and Crafts shows. We spend every Thursday through Sunday at various shows around southern California selling dad’s pottery. All the potters and carpenters and stained-glass artists look like my dad; a big beard, a parrot on a shoulder and a leather belt stamped with either “John 3:16” or “Who’s got a doobie”.

My job is to wrap up the pottery in newspaper after a sell; windchimes as a wedding gift wrapped in a picture of Ted Bundy, a ceramic piggybank an old lady bought for her grandson wrapped in “Roman Polanski flees after pleading guilty to sex with a minor.” After a sell, my dad the patron and the parrot talk about Jesus.

I also ran errands; parents did not regard child molestation as a popular hobby then, and at seven I had free roam. If I found and brought back an android, like Luke did, with a secret message from a woman with a white shawl over her head, big brown eyes and dark hair glimmering in a luminous light, my parents would have declared it Idolatry - Mary worship. They would insist it be destroyed or returned.

But not if they were dead.

I don’t have fantasies about my parents dying. I have fantasies about being an adoptable boy soprano who has an invisible dragon or befriends a pickpocket in the streets of London or finds a golden ticket to a chocolate factory. As I consider myself unfortunate while standing in line, I see the Purse Drinker lean down to her son and whisper, “If you don’t sit still during the movie, I’m going to give you a woopin’ and send your body to Alaska.”

This confused me, gave me a fear of Alaska and an appreciation for my mom.