Dear Dad (2 page)

THE SLEEPING DOGS & XANADU

When we moved from California to Washington, I don’t recall much. I remember driving up the sun-bleached, oil-speckled highway of southern California. I was part of a small family caravan, consisting of two vehicles and large cardboard signs that we pushed against the window of the car to let the other car know what we needed, large cardboard signs that read “Bathroom” and “snack”. It’s funny to think now there was no technology back then.

As we drove up the highway, my dad hung his forearm out the open window and I could see his long blonde hairs waving on his arm. The air felt like a blow dryer and my dad soon began to spit. It was red because the dry air had given him a nose bleed. There was a song on the radio that I could hear distorted through the heat waves, called Xanadu by Olivia Newton John. It was the Seventies and sex was in the air, but I was young so it sounded like the wind. Xanadu had a sadness to it even though it was supposed to be a happy song. A lot of people during the Seventies were trying to pretend that life was a party. My dad was a square and he was more interested in protecting his family and leading them away from the gangs of California, to the precious and pristine Olympic mountains and the isolated blue waters where he could eventually moor the sailboat he had built in the backyard.

I noticed along the highway there were large brown dogs sleeping. I mentioned it to my mom but she smiled and said they’re deer. I thought about it. There was no idea of death in my consciousness yet. I was as pure as a toe-head running naked through a sprinkler pure. My dad was driving the truck and my mom was driving the volvo. I switched cars and gathered different perspectives from them like a little detective.

A few years later, I was told that Santa Claus wasn’t real. The sleeping dogs on the highway slowly turned dead in my mind. The tooth fairy wasn’t coming anymore. The stars were only stars in the sky, but it was just the beginning of life and those setbacks of fairytales becoming reality only switched to another form of naivete. A naivete that would sustain my innocence longer was the myth of the Rock-n-Roll band. I soon worshipped the Beatles and the Rollingstones. I watched them in amazement on my little black and white TV. I thought that they had powers beyond us. I was afraid that if they came to our town to play a show there would be chaos. I could see girls screaming in the front row and it looked like they were being tortured. Then there was KISS. There was a rumor floating around that they were coming to Port Ludlow, a small retirement community twenty miles away. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that Gene Simmons blew fire. I thought they could burn a place down if they wanted without repercussion, because that’s what Rock-n-Rollers do. I wanted to let people know but I was too busy being stunned by other adult behavior. My mom would cover my eyes during violent scenes in movies and it seemed I was in bed way too early in the evening. Something must be done but it was my ego versus my dad’s. This is a sweet story though, so my dad and I will have to wait.

THE PAST OF A FUTURE

As a boy, I had big dreams, as we all do. If you talked to me about music, a sparkle of the dream shown through. The day of my Twelfth birthday was a paramount milestone, it was equivalent to all mythologies and fables combined. It was the day of Creation. My mother walked in the music store after me, with her little silver & brown Seventies purse, and followed me around the music store that no longer exists, up on Freemont in Seattle. People with long hair were working behind the counter and also sitting in the playing rooms playing guitar, trying to duplicate Eddie Van Halen and playing “Stairway to Heaven.”. These people startled me. I thought they were maybe robbers, trying out the gear before they stole it. I was a Toe head, sweet, naive, thought girls were just wimpier boys. But, I did know that in that music store was my ultimate treasure. That treasure would promote me from beating on the family couch with wooden kitchen spoons, to playing the same instrument that propelled drummers into stardom. But, It wasn't stardom that I craved, it was a constant beat in my head that needed to be transferred into physical form. I needed an outlet for that energy. I was like a magician who didn't know I had powers. A future so bright opened before me, the day my mother bought the drumset and we brought it home and my dad was still at work and wouldn't yell about the loud noise. The drumset didn't even have cymbals yet, but the noise propelled me into ecstasy. In my mind I had already achieved everything I ever wanted.

"We Got the Beat" by the GoGo's played on my sister's record player. I could hear, through the wall, her musical taste evolve with the times. I remember hearing about Prince coming to Seattle for the Purple Rain tour. I heard there was going to be sex on stage. I was repulsed and drawn to the idea equally. I begged my parents if I could go, even though I was scared about going to a wild orgy. My parents of course said no, but the night of the show, I was blaring Prince in my headphones and thought I could see strobe lights from far away. I thought Seattle was celebrating along with Prince.

As I grew older, I craved an audience, money and girls. I didn't get any of them, but what drove me was the beat, the beat, the beat. Then, one day a kid came over from school with long-hair, but I didn't think He was a robber. He unpacked a huge Gladiator Ax looking thing. He plugged it in and plucked a chord and it filled my world with a color I had never seen. I hesitated, but then instinctively hit the snare. A resemblance of an embryo of song emerged.

As my Junior year in High School came to a close, I baulked at starting my Senior Year. I had to make up Freshman, Sophomore and Junior English. I was at the end of my rope. Music was the only thing I lived for. The moment my foot entered a school, I was daydreaming about my music. I was like an animal in a circus that finally revolts against its masters and wont perform anymore. My parents made a deal with me, that if I graduated they would pay for me to enter the Music Institute in Hollywood. It motivated me a little but I eventually wilted out of school.

Looking back now, I’m glad I didn’t go. At that age, I would of gotten into all sorts of trouble in Hollywood. I thought I was immortal and alcohol was just becoming my best friend.

“The funnel of life pours you into the mainstream, if not, you're a wild spark that melts to the sides and eventually dies.”

GOTHIC CRUSH

I was a loner. I had two close friends in High School. Nothing changed much over the course of a year, and each year bled into the last like a torn scab. Until one day, walking to the next glass, I walked past a girl who had long brown hair and was a foot shorter than me, the type of short that is irresistible when she looks up and smiles. A light scent of sweetness trailed behind her as I was left longing and more incomplete than normal. I was speechless and tried telling my friend. My words were as immature as I was and telling people things that interested me fell apart mid-sentence. I was on my own with her face burnt into my eyelids. At night, in my dark room, I listened to King Diamond and Slayer, and closed my eyes hard and rocked on my bed until little dots of white light formed on the eyelid screen, a poor man’s movie screen is his imagination, solitude and his eyelids. A movie formed in my mind of flying over her house. I had dragon wings and I was of course evil, because evil was cool and I wanted to scare the shit out of her for not noticing me.

A month later, somehow with osmosis and adolescent blind ambition I was in her house, legitimately invited. I looked at her bare knees showing from her black cut-offs and tried not drooling. I was beyond virginity, I was like an Albino east Indian with brilliant white hair. Conversation was minimal. I knew she liked New Kids On The Block, so I tried remembering song titles but fell with a “They’re pretty cool.” An hour later, after being rejected, I was burning out in her driveway in my Pickup and leaving in a cloud of dust. That night, I stared at her picture one last time and threw it away. I drank beer and drove around. My friend worked as a security guard at the local mill and at around four in the morning I was talking to him and a stray cat in the guardhouse. The conversation turned towards the cat and I knew it understood my sorrow. I stared into its eyes and looked for a sign. My friend was getting nervous. Was it time for him to become the security guard he was hired to be and take action on my wavering sanity? He was close, I’m sure, but it was getting to be morning and with a foggy head I started up my rig and started to drive away. My friend walked out of the guardhouse, waved goodbye, and went on his rounds. There was a steep hill I had to drive up so I decided to floor it. There was a fine layer of morning dew on the road and as I got to the curve of the hill and was doing forty, I slid off the road. My truck careened up a grassy hill and came to a stop two feet away from a telephone pole. Then it slid sideways all the way down the hill and landed in the ditch. I blacked out when my nose broke the horn on the steering wheel and also when I slid across the bench seat and broke the passenger window with my head. I awoke a minute later to the sound of my truck winding out in third gear. I reached up and across the cab to turn the key off. I then climbed out of the passenger window and began walking down the hill back to the guard house. There was a thin red line of blood going down the middle of my nose. My friend came running up as I gave out a weak laugh and said “I just wrecked my truck.”

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

In 1952, I would have been -20 years old. My dad was in his stride, creating a family, a career, and the big fiberglass sailboat in the backyard. It was in Newport Beach, where in the Fifties the Baby Boomers were pumping them out as fast as the Industrial Revolution was pumping them out. There was a Southern California vitality, a cockiness just below the surface of asshole. My mom and dad probably had friends that rolled joints in the evening, but I would never know this, nor did I know anything before I was Eighteen until I was booted out on my own and living on friend’s floors.