Crazy Enough (35 page)

I
did ultimately go on the show, and it was loads of fun. Nobody got stabbed, and me, my man hands, and my man brain, made a big, manly splash on network television.

Even though
Rockstar, Supernova
was, technically, a reality show, it was mostly about music. The producers were top-notch professionals whose main focus was to put on a great rock show every week. They wanted great performances out of us, as opposed to other reality shows.

Every week, we would choose a song to perform for the judges of the show—Tommy, Gilby, and Jason—along with the impossibly beautiful Dave Navarro from Jane's Addiction. We would perform, the judges would give their humorous two cents of praise or criticism, then the live and TV audience could call and text their votes in for
their favorite performers. The three
least
favorites, or bottom three, had to perform an extra song on the next show. Then the judges would choose who, out of the three, would stay another week, and who would be sent packing.

Skeptical as I was, being on television was a game changer for me. It was a good showcase for all my skills . . . well . . . all the skills suitable for television. Tommy Lee was a hilarious and unbelievably oversexed man-child. A total sweetheart. He would tease and flirt with me as part of his shtick as a judge, and we would go tit for tat and have fun. One time he asked to see more of my body and I winked and said, “Tommy, six letters, Google.”

I heard, later, that after that comment aired that evening, the Weather Channel crashed from all the Storm Large Images requests. The power of television, baby.

I got to sing my original, “Ladylike,” the second to last time I appeared on the show. The next week it was on
Billboard's
Hot Singles List at number five, beating Justin Timberlake for one day. That same show, I also got to perform with Dave Navarro, which was one of the highlights of my career, and one of my best moments on the show; afterward, I knew I was done.

There were only five of us left, and two shows to go.

We were allowed to pick and prepare a song for whenever we ended up in the bottom three, as it is meant to showcase your strength as a performer, since you're singing to save yourself from elimination. We all had big, barn-burner rock songs ready to whip out if our names were called. I had rehearsed “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, an epic rock-opera piece, but, as we were heading into the last two weeks, I changed my mind. I just knew that my time was up. I decided to scrap “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and do “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, instead.

Everyone I had ever loved was watching. My brothers, my dad,
all my friends and their friends, a few million strangers, and damn near all of Portland, Oregon; they all tuned in. Everybody in the world who had ever meant anything to me was with me that night.

Except for one, and I dedicated it to her.

Being on television can make best friends out of complete strangers. People who thought I was just weird loud Storm Large from back in the day were suddenly like, “Heyyy, Stormdog! Remember that time you spit in my mouth and pushed me out of a plane? Those were the days, right? Am I right?”

One benefit of that phenomenon was that it brought my mom's half-sister, Grace, and me closer together. She and her family had fun watching me for three months and were no longer hesitant to declare a bloodline.

I have to admit that I hadn't been totally convinced of the relationship, either. Poring through the photos Grace had sent me of Loretta, at multiple stages in her life, along with other family members, I looked for a family resemblance. It wasn't immediately obvious, but shortly after getting off the television show, while on tour through Canada, I got the proof I needed.

We had a gig in Windsor, Ontario, which is a stone's throw from Detroit, and a short drive for Grace. We made a plan to meet there, so she and a friend drove up to have dinner, see the show, and hang out with her surprise niece, the rock star.

The gig was about a week and a half into a heinous tour. Four of us, trapped in a mini-SUV for hours a day, every day. We'd play some gig, either in an actual club (which would be nice), or some crappy bar, pool hall, or tent, then I'd jump offstage to sell and sign CDs and
T-shirts while the boys humped gear into the trailer. We'd then pile into the SUV to head to the hotel for a few hours sleep. Wake up way too early, search in vain for decent coffee (no offense, Tim Horton's, but . . . ew), then drive, sometimes up to fourteen hours, through woods and fields, woods and fields, and woods and fucking fields to the next club or bar to put on another show.

Showbiz, baby.

It was a miserable month and we all wanted to kill each other after the first week.

We showed up at the club in Windsor and were told quickly that crime was so bad there that I should not go anywhere by myself or leave anything in the car. Great.

We had scored some Chinese food (vegetables were a rare commodity in the smaller towns), and I was happy to be sitting in the bar, by myself, pre–sound check, about to eat some greasy broccoli. I had spaced my date with Grace. James walked up.

“Your aunt is here.”

“Shit. Can you put her on the list?”

“She's here . . .
now
.”

I was so tired and just wanted to eat and space out. Not meet anyone, not do anything. What I really wanted to do was to hitchhike home and be a fucking chef. I'm too old for this shit.

“Where? In line outside?”

“Dude. She's behind me.”

I put my chopsticks down and tried to muster up a scrap of energy. I had to get a smile for this woman who had been so sweet, so generous of her time with me. I geared up to be
on
. I didn't want to be a disappointment. I wiped my mouth. “Okay, bring . . .” James stepped aside and a small brunette woman stood quietly behind him. She smiled as she walked toward me.

“Hi!” She threw her arms open for a hug, and I burst into tears.

My mom was totally there, in her face, her smile, her expressions. Grace had darker hair and eye color than Mom, but it was unmistakable. “Oh, my God, it's really you.” I towered over her. I lay my cheek on top of her head as we hugged.

“You really
are
tall,” she laughed into my sleeve.

My tears were leaking onto her head and I couldn't talk right away. It's a crazy feeling to encounter someone physically, who, until recently, had been just a notion. Someone who, in real life, had actually been out there the whole time, living and growing and feeling, eating, worrying, loving, hurting, breathing, all the while sharing your blood. My feelings on family ties are equal parts childish optimism and eye-rolling cynic, but the child won out in this moment. “I love you,” I said.

After meeting in person, Grace and I talked more frequently on the phone about her mother's family. With each call she opened up and spoke a little more freely. So every conversation held more and more revelations and insights into who my mother was, before she even was.

Set up in my usual spot in my favorite café on Hawthorne, I had just finished writing about the first time Grace and I met when she called. We chatted about her kids and what my band was up to, I told her where I was in the book, and how that was all going. We marveled at how our mothers had barely known each other, yet shared so many emotional connections. In their case, the fruit didn't fall far from the tree, even though the tree pitched the fruit as far as it could away from itself.

“You know, it kind of makes sense to me if Mom gave up a child before she met my dad, that would explain . . .” Aunt Grace trailed off.

“What?”

“Her sadness. She was such a great mother and so wonderful with kids, everyone's kids; everyone loved her. But she had this terrible sadness that would take over. It's why she was on so much medication.”

“Medication?”

“Antidepressants mostly. For as long as I can remember.”

“What about your aunts and uncles? Your grandmother?”

“Mom almost never talked about Granny. It was a bad time for her, growing up. Her dad left, well, Granny kicked him out. My mom had to quit school in the eighth grade. She worked three jobs to help raise her four younger brothers and sisters.”

“Jesus. She and her siblings never talked about growing up, nothing specific?”

“Well, Granny got arrested for bootlegging, for starters, and . . .”

“Bootlegging? Wow.”

“It was the Depression, then wartime. Granny was a single mother of five and no one could blame her.”

“For bootlegging? No. Tough times call for . . .”

“She was a prostitute.”

“What?”

“She was a prostitute. She made their house into a speakeasy and would entertain men at the house.”

“With the kids there?”

“I think so. She was arrested a few times.”

“Wow.”

It was safe to assume at that point that my mom's conception was neither immaculate nor even very nice. The more we talked,
the more it looked as though Grace's mom, my grandmother, got pregnant while supporting her siblings who were living in what was certainly a flophouse, quite possibly worse, run by my great-grandmother, “Granny.” And Mom lived her first three weeks there.

So Granny ran the show, Loretta ran away, and little Sandra got run off. These stories of Mom's introduction to the world certainly set the stage for unhealthy emotional development, sadness begetting sadness begetting sadness . . . but crazy? The question of mental illness still hung in the back of my mouth. Loretta, my biological grandmother, had grown up through some thick shit, out of which sprang Mom, a human representation of that tough existence. Who wouldn't want to pretend it never happened? That's not crazy.

When I asked if anyone had been institutionalized or diagnosed with mental illness, Grace said no, no one, as far as she knew, had been institutionalized. There were only some addictions, loads of depression, and some anxiety. Oh, and Granny the hooker.

It was looking like we were definitely related.

We began to piece together the timing of Loretta's pregnancy, Mom's birth, and the early years of mother and daughter after they separated.

Loretta got pregnant, in all likelihood, in June 1942. The timing of the birth was pretty much one year before Loretta married Grace's father, the man she would spend the rest of her life with, a year and a half before the birth of their first child, three before the birth of their second, and roughly four before my mom was adopted out of an orphanage near Yale University.

June 1942 was right after the Battle of Midway in the Pacific. Supposedly, it was the turning point in WWII, so there must have been rowdy celebrations among young sailors throughout the Navy. What better way for a Navy boy to party than with a prostitute?

“Maybe Granny was
entertaining
some sailors and there was an incident. The birth father was a naval officer named Whitey, that's all we know on that end, but who knows if
that's
even true,” I said.

“An incident?”

“I don't know. But
something
terrible must have happened where your mom couldn't stand the sight of my mom to the point of not only never touching or holding her, but burying her completely in some secret she took with her to her grave.”

“You mean . . . a rape?”

“I don't know. No.” I attempted to soften this thinking-out-loud I was doing. I could feel my aunt getting a little upset, understandably so. I thought about changing the subject.
Let's talk about your kids. Do you have a dog? Something light, give the poor woman a break.
“Maybe, or could your mom have been, I don't know,
working
for your grandmother?”

Way to take it down a notch, dumbass.

“Oh, I doubt
that
. Rape does make sense, though, I guess.”

So, your mom was either brutalized by a sailor or was a piece of rent-a-tail, put out by her mother. Change the subject, Storm, for chrissake!!