Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (112 page)

My
maternal grandmother was known affectionately as “Babi,” which was a title adapted
from her native Slovakian tongue. We called my maternal grandfather Pap-Pap,
because one Pap was clearly not enough. Babi lived the last two decades of her
life with severe dementia, which could be really funny at times but really
depressing most others. She was one of the most loving people I’ve ever known.

Pap-Pap,
on the other hand, was a selfish, mean, racist son of a bitch. It’s hard to
write that about your grandfather, but it was true. He took me golfing when I
was nine years old and bought me lunch at the clubhouse, which was awesome.
However, he charged his own daughter (my mom) rent when she turned eighteen and
billed my sister monthly to keep her car in his extra garage. He’d drop
thousands of dollars on cars (he bought a new one every year) and electronics
while Babi shopped the clothing outlets for polyester pants. Pap-Pap hated “the
niggers” except for the ones on his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. My brother
(General Wrecker) can be seen in this photograph from Pap-Pap’s birthday party.
My mother is restraining the little bastard, who is clearly trying to blow out
the candles before Pap-Pap can. General Wrecker is also responsible for
memoralizing Pap-Pap by placing a Terrible Towel in his casket at the viewing.

Middle
School & Junior High

Sweet-ass
boombox, right? Attending a Catholic school in the 1970s provided its share of forbidden
sexual tension. In these rare photos of “casual dress” days, captured on the
Kodak Instamatic 300, appear a few of the characters in
Raising Zombies
.
The group shot contains four of my buddies, a few random girls, and that sweet-ass
boombox. I’m sure Journey was spilling from the speakers as that’s all that was
played (and permitted) on school grounds.  The only kid without the black
eyebar is the motherfucker that tortured me for years, Bobby Halloway. I had to
leave his eyes unobstructed so you could see the pure evil residing within. He had
either just finished punching a kid in the nuts or was thinking about punching
me in the nuts as I was taking the picture. Nice fucking Izod, douchebag.  And
thanks for that
Shout at the Devil
cassette.  Seriously, thanks for
that.

Notice
the Journey t-shirt on the cockblocker to the left of Jackie.  Yep, that’s the
Jackie of the infamous “pin the love note on the bulletin board and destroy a
child’s life” incident. How could any red-blooded Catholic school boy not be
titilated by that feathery hair? She had real boobs back then, but like most
girls her age, she liked to keep those puppies hidden.

Fleeting
Moments of Athletic Prowess

Glory
days. You already know the story behind the mighty, mighty Midnights. Here is
the clipping that my mother saved from the local paper. Notice that she
underlined the place where they mention me (as if we needed the underline to
find it) and the pre-spellcheck era typo committed by the underpaid stringer who
wrote it.

How
do you follow up the championship run on a team like the Midnights? You go
travel select soccer, bitch! Here I am in my green and white striped
Monroeville traveling team uniform, even though I played goalie and only wore
my game shirt to church in hopes of impressing the ladies as I walked to
communion (never worked). That is some damn fine hair, if I must say so myself.

The
Rock of Ages

I
had the
Pyromania
, no doubt. Can you guess what cassette might be
playing in the boombox? The collage is a collection of cropped photographs from
our annual family trip to Ocean City, Maryland. The pictures span approximately
three years in the early 1980s, including the transition from “Def Leppard
Chic” to the short-lived “Japanese Cool” phase of 1983 (bottom left picture).  More
on the evolution of my Def Lepparditis on the following pages. . . .

Umm,
Awkward

Behold
the anatomy of a halloween costume culled from 90 percent real clothes and 10
percent rock-star dreaming!  At Bonanza Steakhouse, where I was hired at age fifteen,
the employees would dress up every Halloween. Running cold, slimy plates
through the dishwasher in costume was a real joy.

I
was sixteen in these pictures and clearly not over my Def Leppard phase, which
began three years earlier and most likely peaked two years and fifty weeks
earlier.  The black suede hat came from Wilson’s Leather in Monroeville Mall
and reminded me of
Dawn of the Dead
. I’d wear it in the mall, secretly
pretending I was in JC Penney’s,  taunting the nun zombie. I purchased the
Union Jack headband and sleveeless t-shirt on the boardwalk at Ocean City,
Maryland, at a smelly rathole run by Indians (bathing in Ganges, not casino in
Arizona) charging 125-percent markup on cheap cotton shit printed in Malaysia.
Notice the Mötley Crüe headband tied provacatively around the upper thigh with
whitewashed denim sporting Joe Elliotized vertical rips. A nod to the King of
Pop sits on the right hand, the fingers sliced from the goalie glove that won
the Midnights that glorious championship. Throw in a white denim jacket with
band patches on the back, a random black kneepad, a pair of cheap aviator
shades, guyliner, and a blond wig, and you’ve got yourself a “rock star” Halloween
costume.