Fathers and Sons - Part 2

1985 was the year that i discovered hardcore, there was a small group of us in our working class suburb that began to reject the notion that the only thing one could listen to was Zeppelin, The Who, Journey, Floyd, fucking Grand Funk Railroad, basically anything played on the radio, of course when i began to show interest in different things my big sis turned me on to a band called New Order which in turn led me to Joy Division, she also introduced me to David Bowie and i began to discover some other post punk/ indie bands, most notably The Smiths, but before even Mozza and Marr there were these cassettes being passed around, bands like the Circle Jerks, G.B.H., the Dead Kennedy's, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I., Fugazi, the Misfits, and of course Black Flag, the band i loved most of all, of course with this new music came a new attitude, a rejection of everything i'd been brought up on, i began to question everything about the burbs and it's morals and it's facade of decent people doing decent things, i began to realize it was a fucking lie, of course this is the 15yr. old me, i shaved my head (no i was not a skinhead) and began going to shows, the first one in some shit Slovenian hall on the west side of Cleveland to see Suicidal and boy did that open the eyes of this skinny white kid from the suburbs, suddenly there was a whole new world out there i just had to go and find it and i would eventually in all it's sordid glory but that would come later, for now like most 15yr old's having an epiphany the possibilities were endless...

Of course along with my new found love of bands with names that scared the shit out of my mother came a sense of rebellion, typical teenager that i was it was time to push the boundaries all while remaining faithful to the game i loved, Kurt Cobain would've hated me, i was the hotshit basketball player who hung out in the counter-culture, though i'd say i was a bit more Jim Carroll, i played my game and did what i wanted in my spare time, hung out with guys who weren't playing sports, guys who were my friends cuz we were friends, guys who liked to chase girls and drive to fast... and did i mention that my new found love of hardcore, my surplus army jacket with writing all over it, my Chuck Taylor's with the anarchy symbol drawn over the label (original wasn't i) began to attract a whole new set of girls? Girls my mother would say were of questionable moral standing which was the exact sort of moral standing i was looking for at the time...

and so at the beginning of my junior year i turned 16 and kept listening my bands and my attitude kept getting worse and since the parents had been through this once with my older sister they had an idea where it was going except for the fact that i was a better liar and could cover my tracks better and after a a pretty good hoops season spring rolled around and all hell sorta broke loose, you see for a guy who's done every drug known to man i got a bit of a late start, i wasn't until the spring of my junior year in high school that i began to start drinking, of course i took my first drink on a monday and by wednesday i was looking to score weed and by friday i was sitting at a park with two of my best friends blazing up the first joint of my life, and then of course another one, it was like the sky just blew open, i think my reaction was something like "holyfuckingshitthisfeelsgood" and i guess we could all grin and say the rest is history now innit? Of course what does this have to do with my old man? well i'm getting to that, you see along with my shiny new badassness i picked up a girlfriend who's nickname among the PTA set was Wendy the Wabbit, basically cuz Wendy liked to fuck and fuck alot, i would spend many a night that spring fucking her in her daddy's Chevy Caprice, light blue with vinyl seats, even better she worked at Taco Bell so half the time she smelled like a burrito which was bliss to my stoned senses, yeah i know it's odd but hell what did i care, i was sweating up her old man's back seat, figure the taco smell might cover the smell of sex...

So now we have the sex crazed girlfriend, the music that Tipper Gore was quivering in her boots over, a new found love of booze and weed, the last thing was to fail out of school and though i didn't actually fail out i gave it a good shot, the 1.7 gpa i had earned that first spring quarter was just what i needed to get my dad's attention, not that i didn't already have it, i had already come home one night so ripped off my ass from a baseball game that if it wasn't for my mom the old man would've crucified me, and yes it was a school night, i was so drunk i fell over in the kitchen and pretended it didn't happen, i also pretended i couldn't see the blazing glare of my father who just put this evil grin on his face and said "go to bed son, i'll see you in the morning", and see me he did, i awoke with a splitting hangover and my dad's face about an inch from mine, he had me by the shirt that i had slept in and spat out "you're going to fucking school... if i have to be late to work you're going to fucking school, wanna pull a stunt like that, think you're a grown man than you can act like one and get your ass out of bed" and with that he released me and walked out of my room, i immediately passed out until he walked by my door and shouted "GET UP", i sat up and held back vomit and my sister handed me some Tylenol and some Tums and disappeared before she was caught aiding and abetting, i stumbled out to the kitchen and attempted to eat a bowl of cereal while my mother stood around fretting and trying to be pissed at me, basically she knew that if the old man left i'd work her over into letting me stay home a bit longer and i can remember sitting at the table half out of it as my old man made his way to the garage, "God dammit you better not let him stay home, you hear me, drag his ass to school if you have to", it was the angriest i'd ever heard my father, to this day it might be the most pissed off he's ever been at me...

So dad leaves and i work mom over, conning her into letting me go in for half a day, which means i can sleep in the nurses office for three periods and then sleep through my lit class and then come home... now as i began to sober up it dawned on me that i might want to stay at school cuz the old man was like a hurricane of pissed at me and if my old man had one trick it was this 1000 yard stare, a stare that had scared the shit out of me since the time i knew to fear it, he'd just lay it on you and never say a word, didn't have to, you'd just crack, some of my friends had seen it and said man your old man can scare the shit out of me sometimes and my dad was universally well liked by my friends for as long as i can remember, so i go home and pretend like all is cool and then the old man comes home and the glare is going full on, by this time now i'm a 6'3 inch kid and even then i wouldn't look up, did anything i could to avoid his eyes, the only thing he said to me all night was, don't plan on doing anything this weekend you got that? i shook my head and did my best to hide the rest of the evening, i think i slunk off to my room, turned on the Smiths, jerked off and passed out, it had been a long fucking two days...

I was grounded and it was friday and the old man was out bowling i believe, he was a top notch bowler and rolled in some of the classic leagues in the city, the kind of leagues that i soon learned where big money could be earned and since he was gone Wendy showed up and my mom gave me the business about how i was supposed to be grounded and i said Am i leaving? and then of course with my acid tongue i added a few more things and before i could say "nice job asshole" i heard a thud as she had thrown a box of something at the plate glass door and was in tears as she cursed me up and down and screamed, "wait until your father gets home" and i was like fuck me and so Wendy and my friends split and my mom stormed off and i stood on the porch and thought "man am i fucked."  to be cont...