20 Roosevelt Boulevard

In upper Connecticut, bordering Massachusetts, directly following the Korean War, the bulldozers of developer Ledger Starr arrived to knock down all trees and level the ground. Afterwards, with wooden stakes and plum-bob lines, cellars were dug and houses were built, each one on a half acre lot. It was an instant neighborhood of barrack-like houses that varied not in size and shape but only in color. Through a low interest loan via the GI Bill my father and mother bought one of those houses. It was painted brown and would be our home for the first fifteen years of my life.

My earliest memory: It was night time and my mother and I were holding hands. We were in a well tended to field and it was crowded with people, most of them it seemed taller than me, and fireworks were exploding overheard. Suddenly my mother and I were no longer holding hands. I plunged into fear. Years later a therapist would urge me to think hard. Did your mother let go of your hand? Or did you let go of hers? The answer I inferred by my therapist's insistence was central to understanding the core of my being. But that night in that field I knew only that I was utterly lost.

A year or two later I was a first grader when the news was announced through the classroom speaker overhead. We were dismissed hours early from school and I ran home as hard as I could. I had to tell my mother. When I got home she was vacuuming the living room. I was almost too breathless speak. She urged me to calm down and when I finally did and told her the news she said, "Oh my God," and hurried to wake up my father. Together the three of us gathered in front of the television. It just couldn't be. But it was true. The date was November, 22, 1963. And President Kennedy who was Irish and Catholic just like us had been assassinated. The following days unfolded in black and white as Walter Cronkite ushered us through our grief. Some images of that time remain indelible: A horse drawn cart with a flag draped coffin, and a riderless horse with one empty boot in a stirrup.

Somewhere around that time I had my mouth washed out with soap for saying something improper. Forty seven years later I could still taste that bar of soap.

I liked fire and played with matches. In the woods behind our house I lit small fires and snuffed them out. But one day one of the fires got away from me. Suddenly there were walls of flames on three sides of me. I was mesmerized. I almost let myself get completely surrounded by flames before I ran. I was later caught and grounded to my bedroom and the backyard for several months. Years after in therapy I would learn that playing with fire was closely associated with early sexual abuse. During that time I was in therapy my mother would offhandedly remark that one of my earliest babysitters was later led away in a straightjacket. The news flushed through me like icy water. It suddenly all made sense, all those feelings I had of being smothered that seemed to have been born before I had words. I knew intuitively that I had been sexually abused. My mother as if reading my mind told me that nothing ever happened, that she would have known if that woman ever did anything to me. But I thought, what about all these other things that happened under your very own roof without you being aware? How could you tell me you know what happened?

Our backyard was mostly sand and patches of grass with a hill that had a couple trees atop it. One afternoon I hog tied my brother and hoisted him up by the feet into one of those trees. As he dangled upside down from a limb I called my parents. My mother cried from the kitchen window, "Let him down." I swiped at the rope with a serrated knife severing it. My brother plunged head first into the ground. But the gods were with us. The fall didn't break his neck.

Jerry Wiggins lived next door in the house to the right of ours. He was my younger brother's age and he kept a photo of his penis in his wallet. When he was sixteen he crashed his motorcycle just up the street at gentle bend in the road. When he did so he plowed through a wooden fence and into a tree destroying his motorcycle. He was laid up in bed in traction for a number of months with many broken bones. A year later almost to the day after he was healed and had bought a new motorcycle he smashed once again through that very same fence and into that tree. This time the crash killed him. His father who tinkered with short-wave radios filed for divorce. He left the house to his wife and daughter. The ex wife drew the shades closed and never opened them again.

In 1969, following the Manson Family murders, there was a rumor that a naked madman was running through the woods behind our house. For at least one night I stared out my bedroom window with vigilance. The following September I was thirteen and would be taking a bus to school for the first time. On the initial day of classes I made it half way to the bus stop where other kids were waiting before I turned around and went back home. I entered my backdoor in tears. My mother had to sooth me. "There, there," she said. "It's ok to be scared." Two years later I would be dropping acid. And a year after that we would move and leave 20 Roosevelt Boulevard behind.

Further musings on an Allston stay

Toby was a thief, sociopathic in scope. Be it a kid's bike with streamers, a ladder mistakenly left out over night, or someone's morning paper. It did not matter. He'd steal it. He was not partial in any means in his thievery. He stole, conned, and robbed, from institutions, strangers, friends, family, and anyone he professed to love. They were all his victims. So too were Rick and Scott. They had this brought home to them in painful clarity when they were served an eviction notice and papers threatening to turn off utilities. These were all bills that Scott and Rick's roommate Toby had claimed to have paid. He had instead scammed them both of cash and snorted the money up his nose. When Scott and Rick kicked him to the curb without any restitution he blithely moved into the house across the street. That's when I entered the picture, moving in with Scott and Rick in the second floor apartment of 26 Haskell Street, in Allston, Mass.

My move-in costs were direly effected by Toby's thefts. I had to help pay unsympathetic creditors. It was after all no concern of theirs where the money came from, just as long as each bill was paid in full. In my first week of living there I lurked in the shadows of our porch clutching a knife. I had it in mind to kill Toby, and I was as mad as any seething protagonist in a dark Russian novel. Call it grace if you will but eventually my madness abated and I was able to chalk up the loss as one of Life's lessons: There is treachery even among friends.

It was 1987, and I was in my Junior year as a full time student at Emerson College where I was pursuing a BFA in creative writing. I was also waiting tables to pay my way, and over the next two years I would work at a succession of restaurants, cafes, and bistros. Sometimes the money was good and I would treat myself to little rewards for working so hard. Other times my earnings were lean and it felt a stretch when rent came do. But it was alright. Rick and Scott and I were best of friends and a struggle is not so debilitating when home life is warm and hospitable.

On nights I was not waiting tables we'd eat our dinners together in the mid hours of the evening. Then we would spread out before the television watching Boston teams, the sport depending on the season. When basketball time came 'round we watched the Celtics while listening to the radio play by play call of Johnny Most. And we would crack up at his dramatic and indignant shouting over minor infractions committed by visiting teams. Most nights we drank espresso and devoured bowls of Haagen dazs ice-cream, our favorite flavors being Peanut-butter Vanilla and Macadamia Brittle. Breakfasts were staggered affairs with some scheduling that over-lapped. The first person up however retrieved the Globe from where it had been tossed on to the first floor porch and we'd all have our turn at it. I'd read it from first page to the last while consuming several cups of coffee before readying myself and heading off for class. Lunch time found not one of us home.

One of the perks we enjoyed at Haskell street was the haven of our front porch. There was a hibachi out there on which we cooked up many a steak and burger. There was also in that space a couch and easy chair. And the nights were numerous that we lounged out there. One afternoon as Rick took a seat in the easy chair he heard mewling. A quick investigation revealed that a neighbor cat had given birth to a litter of kittens in the depths of the chair. Then one day we got a notice from our landlord stating that they were going to fix the porch. It was a tad unstable. They tore three levels of porch down and replaced it with only one. We were then without a porch. A couple of months later when we renewed our lease the rent was considerably higher.

Overnight guests set us off or so it seemed on tangents of late night swilling of shots and beer. When Ed arrived from Colorado, one night bearing magic mushrooms we careened through the hours with hoots of laughter and shenanigans. Then when I begged off with the coming of dawn and retired to my bedroom, closing my door, I could hear the scurrying and giggles of others not ready for sleep. I braced myself against my bedroom door. And soon there was an industrial fan aimed at it with two drunks dropping chocolate chip cookies into the whirring blades of the fan. The cookies scattered against my door as if a soft shotgun blast. In the morning we gathered 'round the coffee pot giggling once again over our late night antics.

Rick made plans to move to South Carolina. On one of his last nights in town we celebrated with a six pound lobster. We put the crustacean in the tub and turned on the shower, cold water of course, while we headed out for some errands. When we got back the lobster was dead. Never the less he was boiled into one spectacular dinner. Jeff replaced Rick. He was a bit spastic and always wired. It didn't help matters much that he drank cup after cup of coffee. In time Scott and I adapted to him. Things weren't the same without Rick. But we ventured on. After awhile the three of us were all accustomed to each other's peccadilloes and habits. And there was harmony. Then Scott announced he was moving to Atlanta. Rather than look for a third roommate Jeff and I decided to go our separate ways while still remaining friends.

I decided to purge myself of most of my possessions. I emptied my bedroom of furniture, barely worn clothes, books, and several hundred albums of rock 'n' roll, blues, and jazz. We also went at the apartment with the same goal in mind. Purge, baby purge. None of us wanted the furnishings and bric-a-brac and doo-dahs and such that had accumulated over eight odd years. Down to the curb it went. The pile when we were finally done measured some six feet wide, fifteen feet long, and four feet high. All of it perfectly fine goods. I even dumped a pailful of pennies on the sidewalk, sticking a plastic into the pile. Our neighbor downstairs could not understand. "It's money," he stammered. "It's money." But I could only see the coins as a burden I no longer wished to bear. When the three of us were done with our toiling we shook hands and went our separate ways, except for Jeff. He stayed in the apartment for one more night. Two days later he told me of the carnival atmosphere that evening as car after car and neighbor after neighbor stopped to assess the pile and divvy up our goods between themselves. It went on said Jeff late into the night. In the end the only thing they did not take away was the memories.

My first venture out of the nest.

In the weeks leading up to our departure I recorded over 120 60-minute cassette tapes, most of it rock and roll. Also in that time my father paneled the interior of our van and equipped it with a bed that had underneath storage. When the day came to hit the highway headed west the four of us stowed our gear, cranked up the tunes, and said our goodbyes. We were off to visit our friend Ed in Fort Collins, Colorado, and then to seek our fortunes in Hollywood, California.

Ed was studying Forestry at the University of Colorado, and on our first night in town he took us to a party on campus. We weren't there but a minute when a preppy couple came up to us all smiles and asked us what house we were pledged to. When Ed explained that the four of us were merely visitors the two of them lost their smiles, chirped, "Oh," and walked off with out another word. Thus was I introduced to Greek life. The following morning Ed took us repelling.

We stood on a cliff some three hundred yards high looking down at passing cars that looked smaller than match boxes. Ed was the first to go over the side. "It's easy," he said. Then he disappeared beneath the lip of the cliff we stood upon. It was the last we saw of him until twenty minutes later when he scampered back up to where us four were huddled with our second thoughts about repelling. After hemming and hawing I swallowed my reservations and volunteered to go next. Ed outfitted me with ropes and clips and backed me over to the edge of the cliff. With a lump in my throat I went over the side and promptly got snared in the gear just out of sight neath the lip of the cliff. As I struggled with the tangled ropes I glanced over my shoulder at the void below me. It frightened me as I'd never been before. But there was only one direction in which to go. Down. I cried out for help and as best as he could Ed coached me blind. It was a long thirty minutes before I touched the ground. Rick went next. He fired down the rope as if shot from a gun. At the very last moment the rope locked up and he dangled upside down some two feet above where he'd almost smashed into the ground. The leather gloves he'd been wearing were burned through to the flesh. Chick and Steve followed with incident free falls. The four of us declined Ed's offer to go again.

In Denver the next afternoon we visited a museum that had on display a rickety four wheel wooden cart that was called we learned by its accompanying plaque "The Death Cart." The text went on to explain that it was considered an honor to be touched by The Death Cart. From then on The Death Cart and the honor of its touch was a source of inside humor between the four of us. That night we Parked atop Look Out Mountain. All of Denver was spread out before us in multi colored twinkling lights. It was magical. In the morning we headed for California.

When we reached that golden state we went looking for Hollywood and Vine. Somewhere near Rodeo Drive Chick saw someone he swore was Johnny Mathis. A moment later at stoplight we saw a fully outfitted Leather Daddy. He was straddling a Harley Chopper. We ventured onward the whole while gawking at pedestrians on sidewalks. It was hard to tell who were actors and who were not. As the day wore on we headed further west until we stopped for the night at Zuma Beach. The next morning we backtracked and eventually made camp at a municipal parking lot at Huntington Beach. And there we stayed for a couple weeks.

On weekends the lot filled up with RVs. The driver of one parked next to us spread out lawn-chairs and posted a sign that had his and her names. Week day or weekend we spent the afternoon hours on the beach sunning and swimming in the warm Pacific. We passed our evenings in copious drinking. Late one afternoon a single woman parked her RV aside of us. We chatted and later that evening she invited Steve and I inside. By then Steve was into his fourth quart of wine for the day and he and I had each dropped several hits of acid about a half-hour beforehand. Our stay was an aborted one. We were asked to leave when Steve began seething, "Don't you talk about my mother," after the woman innocently said, "You must have been a handful for your mom."

Steve and I retired to the van where Chick and Rick were fast asleep. I plugged a Doors tape into the tape deck. We had seen Apocalypse Now the night before and by the time The End was playing the nearby lifeguard stands looked like thatched huts and the crashing surf sounded like explosions. I turned around to get some reassurance from Steve. But he was passed out, his quart of wine clutched in his hand was spilling out on to his chest. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head and his eyelids were blinking rapidly. I thought, oh God, that's going to be me in another hour. Thus began my worst trip ever, one that would leave me shaken for many months to come. The following morning when the woman next to us was up and about I explained how Steve and I had been on acid. She invited me in and went on to tell me she was on the run from the DEA. At the sound of a small craft flying overhead she scrambled for a window and told me they were out to get her. She showed me a pistol and then emptied a Pringles container in which beneath the chips she had in a plastic baggy a half-ounce of coke. She told me it was pharmaceutical grade and to take as much as I wanted. I laid out a thick line and hoped it would clear my head.

A day or so later we faced the ugly fact: The four of us were just drunks going nowhere in that milk and honey dream land. It's not however that we didn't try. We had one day during our stay at Hunington Beach, gone in search of jobs. We wound up in the industrial bowels of outer Los Angeles, where semis and dump-trucks reigned. We went from one smoke belching factory to another hoping to land work then and there. We had after all no address or phone number with which a potential employer might reach us. Our searching netted us no work and our California dream seemed suddenly mighty bleak. This was not where we would one day shine. We were just four nearly destitute guys living out of a van in a municipal parking lot. It was time to move on. We dropped Steve off at the bus station. He was headed for Oregon. Rick, chick, and I drove on to Tucson. We did so bypassing the Grand Canyon. It was after all only a hole in the ground.

We went to Tucson, because Chick's girlfriend, Terry, had gone there to live. He hadn't seen her in several long months. Their reunion was one of jubilation. But beyond that our prospects were bleak. We had just enough money to pay for a little food and a one week stay a cheap motel. Things however worked out better than they had in Los Angeles. We each got jobs, Rick painting houses, Chick working at a saw mill, and me at a foundry. Until our first paychecks it was one peanut-butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch and one hamburg apiece for dinner. One morning the peanut-butter jar slipped from my hands and smashed on the floor. I put the shattered jar back in the refrigerator. We were that broke. The next sandwiches we made we extracted glass shards out of the peanut-butter we spread.

It was my first time not living under my parent's roof and I was making minimum wage and shell shocked by the dictates of circumstance. I could only see before me in Tucson, a life of scrambling from paycheck to paycheck. I was not alone in my thinking. Rick and I decided to head to Florida. Chick was staying on. He and Terry were entertaining thoughts of either splitting up or getting married.

Rick and I were cruising through Texas, when we came down a hill around a blind corner. Parked behind a bridge abutment with a radar-gun was a Texas State Trooper. He pulled us over. He said he'd clocked us at 80 miles per hour. We had never had that van up over seventy. He told us we had to go to court and to follow him. We crossed over the highway and up over the bridge. On the other side was a trailer with a sign announcing traffic court and the honorable judge so and so. There were four cars parked in front of the trailer. They all had out of state plates. The inside of the trailer was paneled in dark wood and there were a number of black and white 20" by 16" photos circa 1963 of car wrecks. We were given two options. Pay the Hundred fifty dollar fine right then and there. Or post a bail of two hundred dollars and return in two days to fight the ticket if we were so inclined. We paid the fine.

Taking stock of our funds we faced the fact. We had just enough money to buy gas to take us to Florida with about twenty dollars left over to start a new life. Or we could go back to Connecticut. The unknown with a certainty of struggle? Or the comfort of home? It wasn't such a hard choice. We headed back to the nutmeg state.

The Summer of Reggie

Reggie and his parents moved into the house next door to Mike and Mark Shea in the summer that Mike was twelve and Mark and I were eleven. He was in his late twenties and had black hair, a mustache, and a trim beard. He quickly bonded with us. Soon we were all hanging out together every morning and afternoon. We'd pile into Reggie's convertible and he would drive us to a nearby school yard where we would play tag football. Riding there and back was the best, the wind rushing all around us, we talked as loud as we could. Reggie was so cool. He smoked cigarettes and everything. He even taught us all the different swear words there were and also what bands were really cool. For instance he told us about the MC5 who had a song called Up Against The Wall Mother-Fucker. His parents owned a little yapping dog that was tied to post in their backyard and sometimes the dog would yap so hard he'd throw up. Then he would eat his vomit.

My parents didn't understand how cool Reggie was. Like once after hanging out with him and playing tag my mother asked me if he touched me in a funny way. It was a question that made me ask what do you mean? You know, said my mother. Funny? I sorta knew what she meant. But I couldn't figure out why he would want to do that. Then one day Reggie invited us into his house. His parents where somewhere else. He showed us his record collection. He even gave us cigarettes so we could be cool like him. Inhaling made us cough. But Reggie told us that he had cough too when he was our age. So it was cool. And when we told him that we were headed off to Camp Norwich for two weeks and that we wanted him to buy us cigarettes he gladly took our money and did just that. We got four packs, two Kents, and two Salems.

Camp Norwich was located in the lower Berkshire mountains and was owned by the YMCA. It was rustic, coed, and spread out around a flagpole in a central yard. The girls slept in cabins with bunk-beds. We boys stayed on the other side of the camp in four men tents that had wooden floors and army cots for beds. We all had footlockers too in which we squirreled away our contraband cigarettes, matches, and candy bars. There was so much to do at Camp Norwich. There was archery, and it was fun pretending you were indians. But it hurt the inside of your left forearm when you didn't let the arrow go just right. We also had arts and crafts where we made stuff with glue, paper-plates, and elbow macaroni. And a hike away up a nearby hill was a rifle range where they let us shoot 22's at paper targets tacked up to a wooden wall. I got my shooting privileges taken away from me when, after getting bored shooting at my target, I closed my eyes and shot up over the wall and into the trees.

The campgrounds were laid out aside Lake Norwich and many of our activities were centered around its waters. There was swimming, sailing, canoeing, and water-skiing. You had to be rated a Shark in order to water-ski however. I never made it past Pike so I couldn't ski. Sometimes I would pause by the dock where the skiers entered the water. One of the skiers was a nephew of Bob Barker the TV game show host. Whenever he was skiing and the boat came anywhere near the dock he would splash the awaiting skiers. Every time he did so the girls would squeal with delight. And I would think before going on my way that some day I would be more famous than him.

During Free Swim you had to swim with a buddy. There was a board with hooks that you would hang you and your buddy's name tags on. One side of the tag meant you were in the water. The other side meant you were out. One day I forgot to flip my tag over when I got out of the lake and went back to my tent. When one of the swimming monitors took a quick heads up to make sure everyone was accounted for my name came up as missing. Authorities were called and soon the waters were being dragged by two alert deputies with grappling hooks. Some time later a camp employee came upon me hanging out at my tent. He said that I was supposed to be dead. He sent me back to the lake to let them know I was very much alive. As punishment for my blunder I wasn't allowed to swim for the following two days.

One night after that I slipped away while walking through the woods with Mark Shea. I hid behind a large rock. When I didn't respond to his calls he returned to camp. Soon flashlight wielding searchers were calling my name and shining their flashlights in every which way. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But there was such a warm feeling hearing others call my name. The search went on for quite some time. I later returned to camp and when I was asked why I didn't reply when called I said that I never heard them. As to their questions of where I'd been I mumbled nowhere. A camp councilor told me to go to bed. Now. A couple of nights later all was forgiven and I gathered in the activities center with others to watch in all its black and white horrors The Fall of The House of Usher.

A following afternoon as I was headed to archery I spied on a leaf two bugs, mating, one atop the other. Later that evening as the Sheas and I smoked our cigarettes while hidden in the shadows aside the wooden shower stalls a pretty girl happened upon us. She told us that she had up until then not thought that there was any one cool in the camp. She took a drag off my butt, coughed, and bummed three cigarettes off of me for her and two of her friends. After that whenever she saw me she waved in a very friendly way.

At meal time we all gathered in the camp dining hall. Each meal was served with a sweet concoction called Bug Juice. You could drink as much as you wanted, three meals a day. One night we were served what we were told was buffalo meat. It tasted alright. There were also rules about how you ate in the dining hall. If you were caught with your forearm resting on the table a councilor would call out your name and make you pace around the dining hall while everyone else chanted, for instance, "Mark Shea, young and able, get your elbows off the table, this is not a horse's stable..." After dinner the snack shop opened up and you could buy candy-bars and goods with Camp Norwich motifs. There were also some items for sale that had nothing to do with the camp. One was a poster of a hawk with his talons dug deep into the word Hawks. I bought it to hang in my bedroom at home the whole time knowing that I was a Dove, the opposite side of the political spectrum. I wanted however to show my dad that I was just like him.

At two weeks end we made our goodbyes and boarded a bus that drove us back to our demarcation point. Soon we were home and Mark Shea went to struggle on the can and when he failed his mother took him to the hospital. He had gone the entire two weeks of camp without once taking a crap. As for Reggie, he never crossed the line with us. And soon after our return from camp he and his parents moved away with their vomit eating yapper in tow.

The RPMs

Through a stand of skinny trees some thirty yards thick a rutted dirt road wended into an oval clearing of tall grass an acre wide in circumference. The road you soon learned upon breaking free of the trees was lollipop shaped and off to the right of it on any given Friday or Saturday night during my early teens you'd find me gathered there with friends around a blazing bonfire in that clearing of woods we called the RPMs.

The name was derived from a defunct car repair shop that had been housed in a barn shaped building that was later turned into a youth center. It likewise folded. One night two friends and I shot off fireworks while perched atop the building. The police soon arrived. We fired bottle-rockets at them until they told us through a bullhorn to come down off the roof, a signal to run if there ever was one. We didn't get far before we were in a flashlight beam being told to halt and get on the ground and spread 'em. The officer handcuffed the three of us and put us in the back seat of a cruiser without patting us down. As he went off looking for other miscreants we took the opportunity to empty our firework bulging pockets. We stuffed our booty beneath the back seat of the cruiser. Afterwards patting us down and finding us free of fireworks the police let us off with a stern warning.

Some time later one Sunday afternoon in a clearing aside the building we played a game of football. I did so after swallowing four downers called Yellow Jackets. It soon felt like all my movements were occurring underwater. Everything was so slow. I loped about and when I got tackled it seemed to take ages before I hit the ground. Of the dozen kids who partook of the pills stolen by Jay C. from his family doctor ten were admitted to hospitals as ODs. I was not one of them. Upon stumbling home my parents placed me in the cold blast of a shower and slapped my face while asking who was I and where did I get the pills? This they kept up for what seemed like hours. Finally they let me go to bed, my mother keeping vivil at my side monitoring my vital signs. I woke some many hours later to find that I was grounded for the next several weeks.

Once again after I was no longer confined to the family home I made my way to the bonfire of the RPM's. Most nights we drank and smoked pot in peace. But every so often police came with their blue lights flashing and we'd sometimes run into the woods to wait them out. Other nights they came we mumbled fuck 'em and stayed in place. On one such night I chose like several others not to run. The cops started patting us down. It was not their usual response. Every other time they'd merely told us to put out the fire and hit the road. That night however we were all searched. Unfortunately for me I was holding an ounce of pot. Because I was under age and it was my first offense I was able to plead Youthful Offender. This meant the record would be later expunged. At the hearing I was asked by the judge if I had anything to say for myself. Disregarding the advice of my lawyer I told the judge, God bless my father who stood silently aside me, that I didn't think there was anything wrong with marijuana. This put another crimp in what was quickly becoming an adversarial relationship between father and son.

Regardless of the familial tension there was for a time a ritual around our family kitchen table on Friday nights. We would gather one and all to wolf down cheeseburgers and glass after glass of coffee or mocha flavored milkshakes, the conventional wisdom being it was best to coat your stomach with milk before a night of heavy drinking. Afterwards I would hitchhike to the RPMs where I would gather with friends and pool our money. Then someone of legal drinking age and a companion or two would make a run to the liquor store while others gathered wood for our communal bonfire.

Some nights in games of dare we'd pile on wood until the flames shot up six or seven feet and we would leap through them from one side to another. Every once in a while however someone would miscalculate his jump and wind up in the bonfire. One morning following such a jump I woke reeking of wood smoke and discovered upon looking in my bathroom mirror that I had singed my then as of yet unshaved peach-fuzz. I'd also given light to my hair, eyelids, and eyebrows.

The following weekend found me once again gathered in fellowship around a bonfire. And there I would be every Friday and Saturday night sharing banter, whimsy, and illegal substances until I reached a legal drinking age. Then I left the woods for the welcome of bars.

And now as I enter my autumn years I look back upon my time around those bonfires of the RPMs as halcyon days. There was much good humor carefree and unmoored from responsibility. We drank and smoked in fellowship, exchanging bravado, laughter, and knowing looks. And, fuck it, the life that awaited us all beyond the woods would be there long after the bonfires burned out and the coals had grown cold.