All the Wild Children (26 page)

We lose our rental house.  We move to Pinole, East Bay Nor Cal.  We live with Shaun and her husband.  I am going to work as an editor for Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio in S.F.  I don’t have an interview.  I know no one there.  I go knock on the door and get nowhere.  This, I will later learn is called a geographic.  I move my family four-hundred miles, and expect different things to happen.  But it’s me, and I’m drinking, and nothing is different.

Back to L.A.  We park our VW van in Bear and his girlfriend Jane’s driveway.  We live in the van.  We are home-fucking-less.  So I do what any other smart guy would do.  Bear, Jane and I start
Moving Targets
a rock video company
.
  We shoot unknowns, but they pay well.  Our biggest act is John Kay and Steppenwolf.  Jane directs, Bear shoots, I edit.  We dream and think about making feature films.  Bear and I accosted the lead singer of the Go-Go’s at a drunken party, trying to convince her she should make a film with us.  We always had six projects in the hopper ready to go.

When the company crashes and burns I panic.  I no longer believe life will protect me if I have an open heart, a dream and a gut full of whiskey.

I have a reel of rock-videos I cut, and a need for a steady paycheck.  I get a job cutting action trailers for Cannon films.  Death Wish 3, Delta Force, Chuck Norris, Michael Dudikoff, Van Damme and all that crap.  Money is good.  Hours are long as ever.  The days are fueled by booze, coke and fear.  A week doesn’t go by I don’t have to work all night.  I vowed to take care of my small family and I do.  By sheer will.  My workaholism beats my alcoholism and the checks keep rolling in.

I am busy building a career. 

I want a second child.  A sibling for Dylan.  A baby.

It is four years before Erika consents and we have Jared.

At birth he is beautiful.  Perfect.  Sweet.  I love holding him.  I whisper to him vows of the father I will be.  I sway him back and forth in a slow bluesy rhythm. 
Summer time and the living is easy...

In the hospital waiting room I introduce Dylan to his new little brother.  Old soul meet new.  Dylan sits calm as can be.  I lay Jared on his lap.  Pure joy beams from Dylan and he stares down.  Jared is still befuddled, not yet touched down.  He screws up his forehead.  At twenty hours old he shows signs of having been passed my worrying gene.

I am 5.  The VW van throws a rod, on the 101 just north of Ventura…

MOM’S VERSION -
We called Eleanor and Harold (my grands) but they couldn’t or wouldn’t help.  You father found a mechanic, and while he called up north and tried to find some one to help us pay for the repairs, I went to a small country store.  I bought a loaf of white bread, it was all we could afford.  I grabbed that loaf and you kids and we went to the beach.  I made us a bread sandwich picnic.  Made an adventure of it.

MY VERSION -
I’m 5 years old.  We break down in a strange town and are too poor to get the van fixed. 

I am 5 and afraid.  Afraid we won’t get enough to eat.  I’m a skinny kid and always cold.  I’m afraid we have no place to sleep.  I’m afraid the adults may have no plan what so ever.  I screw up my brow and worry.

I leave Cannon Films to work for man who pays me a lot of cash because I have long hair and earrings and thus am hip.  Assistants are peons.  Cannon cutters are edit dogs.  Editors on the movie ad agency side are treated like rock stars.  I make a company buy me a Harley as a signing bonus.  I am a cynical sumbitch, and arrogant.  I want to be writing and directing films.  Editing is just a means to an end.  This job that most would kill for, I mentally shit on.  It is never enough.  I am driven into dark depression.  I drink and smoke and snort my pain away. 

Dylan has to be taken to sensory integration therapy.  Speech therapy.  Physical therapy.  It is a constant battle with the L.A. Unified School District to keep Dylan in the proper classroom.  All of this Erika does without complaint.

Jared at four will tell his mother it isn’t fair, his brother getting all her time, all her attention. 

She has the good grace not to argue the point.  No, she agrees with him.  It isn’t fair.  But it is what it is.

There are also angst free days of cowboy boots and squirt guns.  Days our boys rip up and down the hill behind our house.  No war toys.  No societally imposed male violence forced on my sons.  No way.  They will be raised in a gender neutral home.  All well and good in theory.  In practice Jared is pure boy.  He turns his bamboo flute into a sword.  He bites his toast into the shape of a pistol.  BAM!  BAM!  BAM!

“
Game’s up honey, let’s let the boy have a cap gun.”  It takes some talking to convince Erika.  She was raised with mostly sisters.  She was raised in an intellectually feminist Unitarian Universalist home.  She can’t see that gender neutral in our son’s case is gender neutered.  To be fair, neither do I at first.  Once the door is opened we are caught in a flood of sword, shield, gun laser, razor plastic mayhem.

“
But I want it, look how cool it is.”  We are at Toy’s R Us. 

“
I know, but it’s a GI Joe, remember we talked about how soldiers think killing is the way to solve problems, and we don’t agree, right?”

“
He’s not a soldier.  He’s a ninja!”  Jared’s right.  The black robe and mask have no military insignia.  It is a ninja.

“
OK.  But we can’t tell your mom it’s a GI Joe, OK?”

“
Yes!  Ki Ya!”  He leaps the six-inch killer across the cart.

At home I am careful to remove all packaging.  Bury it in the recycling under old newspaper.  Then walk in casual as can be.

“How was the zoo?” 

“
Good.  Dad took us to the toy store.”

“
Really?”  She gives me that arched eyebrow.  We had agreed to do only one thing on an outing, and not always take them shopping.  But I’m working hard and making bank.  Fuck it.

“
What did your father get you?”

“
Look, a ninja.  It’s not a GI Joe.  I promise!”  And I’m tossed under the bus by a four year old.  Erika shakes her head at me, but can’t help smiling.  We call GI Joes “puppets of a fascist regime.”  We were raised on Vietnam. 

At 50 I look back at my arrogance.  At the time the country had been between wars.  Soldiers were a concept.  Sixteen boys died today in a helicopter in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan.  Not soldiers.  Not puppets.  Boys.

“IeeeeYaaaa!”  I am greeted home by the flying scissor kick of a naked assassin.  Jared’s little arms flail windmill and strike a pose.  “Wanna see my moves?”

“
Yeah, do your baddest move.”

“
IeeeeYaaaa!”  Arms and legs move at once in strange akimbo battle stances.

“
Where’d you learn those?”

“
Ninja Turtles.  Master Splinter.  Did you know that Michael Hummer’s dad works in the sewer?  That’s the coolest, right?”

“
That’s pretty damn cool.”  

Jared shares his father’s love of shedding clothing.  First thing either of us does coming home is strip down.  Me, I like to keep my briefs on.  Jared, the more stylish of us, rocks the “Nake with a cape.”

I am 8.  Lilly and Lark composed the
Ballad of the Underpants Kid
to tease or celebrate my love of lack of clothes.

I am 10.  We are camping in Big Sur with Pop and his soon to be second or third wife depending on whether or not you count the one night marriage to the WAF when he was in the army.  We are in Big Sur.  They take us to our one dinner out.  A fancy organic restaurant overlooking the white capped Pacific.  As we kids pile out of the van, they notice I am wearing a long black velvet cape, tighty whities and nothing else.  From my father’s frustrated face you'd think this was the first time something like this has happened.  I sit in the van while they eat dinner.  I guess you would think I would learn from this, that this is a teachable moment.                              Nope.

I am 5, my father is taking us to Keplers bookstore.  The sidewalk is smooth.  The wind is nil.  Air clear.  I suddenly fall over.

“
What happened?” - Pop

“
I forgot to walk.” - Me

I am 9 and Mom is taking the horde to the ballet in San Francisco.  We are all packed in to the monolithic Vista Cruiser, a station wagon with fake wood paneling on the side.  Our long hair is clean and semi-combed.  We are dressed as best as we can put together.  As I step onto the parking lot asphalt I realize I have forgotten my shoes.  Mom shoots me a - what the hell is wrong with you - look.  Grandma Eleanor saves the day; she gives me a spare pair of her shoes.  They have big, real big, brass buckles.  I am a precursor to that glitter rock pilgrim Adam Ant.

“
I want to be nake with a cape.” - Jared age three. 

Nake with a cape he stands on the coffee table.  Yellow silk flutters behind him.  Tallywhacker in the wind.  Free.  A flute sword held high overhead.  “Ta-Da!”

These are wild wrestling matches, two boys on one dad days.

These are two boys in one bath, sing us to sleep, tell us a talking story days.

These are golden, bottle them and save them for darker times days.

These are days when it is all ahead of us.

Winter will come.  Days get shorter.  Nights get longer, colder.

But these are the golden days.

The snuggling with my boys and hope it never ends days.

Nothing lasts forever.  Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it could.

MY NECK, MY RAZOR

I made my bones with the
RoboCop
campaign.  After that my editing skills start to be noticed by the trailer world.  I win some awards.  I don’t get fame I get the consolation gift, cash.  Buckets and buckets of the great green.  Enough cash I can afford to buy a house a
n
d have a hot tub helicoptered in to the highest point in the property.  It is not enough to even slow the river of whiskey I’m drinking.  I stay up all night typing.  I drink to quiet the voices in my head.

It is in this lush rich world Jared is raised, his daddy’s rich and his mom’s good looking.  Two poor kids like Erika and me, when our annual income breaks $100,000, it blows our freakin minds.  For a time I run a boutique trailer company for a man who randomly drops checks on me for thirty or forty grand.  Crazy.  Insane.  But in the 80’s in Hollywood that is chump change.  Crazy cash is normal. 

These are the steak and amethyst days.

The long weekends in Catalina and Taos days.

The don’t look at the price tag, if you want it buy it days.

These are also the hard work, no sleep, coke driven, this is why they pay me the big bucks days.

The man who tosses sacks of gold at me, we call the devil.  I am Faust.  I drink twelve year old McCallans to quiet the voice screaming, “
Sell out bastard no art making ass sucker.”

I drink from the top shelf.

I drink so that my internal editor shuts up long enough for me to write.

I drink because I’m sad.

I drink to celebrate.

I drink because it’s Tuesday.

Christmas my brother calls, “Jingle jingle jingle, are those sleigh bells?  Oh no little brother that’s the sound of the harness slapping against your neck.”  I laugh, but it is gallows humor and we both know it. 

I am 24 and unwilling to look reality in the eye.  Under my drinking and bravado, under my young editor strut, I’m afraid it will all fall in on me.  That I will fail to support my family.  That I will run South and become my father.  That I can never live up to Grandpa Harold's shadow.  Dylan’s birth made me a father.  It also split me into two distinctive selves.  John Q Citizen, the father, husband, bread winner.  And my shadow self.  He who stays up all night drinking scotch.  He who runs wild in his mind.  My boy and wife are down by 10 PM.  From then until dawn is my time.  I use cocaine to keep going.

Chop chop snort a line.

Hell yes I’m fine, work all night.

Chop chop snort a line.

Make it a fatty, they need the cut by nine.

Chop chop snort a line.

Who’s coke is this anyway?  Doesn’t matter.  I’m flying on your dime.  I’ll buy the next round.  Fuck I’m high.  Can’t sleep.  I’m an editor and they need the cut.  3am time to go home.  Chrissy my assistant slips me a joint.  Little boo makes me sleep.  It’s wicked strong new pot.  Haven’t smoked in years, and they changed the game.  I’m up all night hallucinating.  The next morning Erika and I take an anniversary trip to Catalina.  On the ferry I seriously want to blow chunks.  My head is full of glass shards.  My vision weak.  “No baby I’m fine, great.  Yeah let's take a walk along the beach that’d be fun.”  Lie.  Keep moving.  Do not throw up on the nice old lady in the sand.