SUCKBLOG: 1969

TIME IMMEMORIAL: THE SUN AND THE EARTH

I am descended from a long line of peasants and nobodies. The historical memory of my family only dates back to my great-great grandparents on either side. No great people to be found there. My Mother's grand father was the tailor to ROCKEFELLERS back at the turn of the century. Besides that, there is little of note to rest on. What you do find on ether side of my family is more than a few frustrated eccentrics and defeated oddballs that never had the chance to express their individuality. There is are a couple of suicides in my ancestral history, as well as some mental illness. Great way to start....

MY FATHER is from England. He came from a poor working class family in the broke part of London. His father was a postman. His mother was a house wife who was missing a knee cap, so one of her legs was shorter than the other. She had to wear a big platform boot to make up for it. It was the bane of her life and I understand she was not a very happy or educated person. My grandfather was actually kind of dashing, rakish guy. He was in the military and had spent time in India when it was still a British colony. Apparently he had quite a time with all the pretty brown girls when he was down there. He was an artsy guy too. He made little dioramas and shit. I don't think he really wanted to be married to his wife. I think he had to marry her for some less than noble reason. Anyway, I'm glad he did cuz they produced my father. I guess dad was a little boy when the NAZIs rocked the blitzkrieg onto London. He had to go away to the country to avoid getting blasted. When the war was over the kids who stayed in London during the war were pretty hard on the kids who left for safety. Got bullied and accused of being pussies and shit. SO that was that. My father was forced to quit high school at 15 and go to work in a machine shop. I guess that's what the poor kids had to do. He never went back to school. He learned all his skills in the feild and would go on to become a great engineer, clocking bank designing all these complex machines and flying around the world fixing them. But before that he busted his ass to get away from his family who were living a miserable existence. He finally escaped to Canada when he was 20. The only person he knew in the entire North American continent was his childhood pen pal, a 18 year old girl from Brooklyn

MY MOTHER: My maternal family originated in NAPLES ITALY. My great grand parents came to New York thru Ellis Island and settled on BAXTER street in LITTLE ITALY. My grand parents lived across the street from each other, got married young and moved to Borough Park in Brooklyn. My mother was an only child and had I guess a pretty typical tomboy life. She was into the old EC horror comic books and cowboys and guns and pirates. I think she was kind of a bully and used to terrorize the other kids on the block. Apparently her father was some kind of tortured genius. He was supposedly a very creative guy who had all these "ideas." But apparently he was a coward and a drunk. I think he was discouraged by his family and learned to dream small. He got a job at the post office, just like my other grandfather, and he played it safe for the rest of his days. He would come home from work and rant and rave about god knows what. He was a germ freak and was over protective of my mother. My gradmother would just give him wine as soon as he got home and would keep filling his cup until he passed out. She didn't want to hear his bullshit. So that's the environment my mom grew up in. She was a little genius who was also discouraged by her family. Normally she wanted to escape and the big adventure of her early life was an affair with a very famous Broadway actress, GWEN VERDON. Somehow at age 15 my mother was able to get this 30 year old woman into bed and would keep her as an on and off lover for the next 40 years. Nevertheless when My father showed up on the scene, they got married. It was still the 50's or early 60s and that was what you did when you got to a certain age. Both my parents wanted to get away from their families so they just hooked up with each other and went thru the motions. I'm not sure if they really loved each other, but they liked each other enough to give it a go. So they tied it up and moved to Greenwich Village. I guess that's where the SUCKSTORY really starts..

MARCH 27, 1969: GETTING BORN

So my parents, on the run from their lame family situations shack up and make a go at being married. I don't think they were necessarily right for each other, but they were like 21. Neither of them went to college and the whole idea of finding yourself and self-actualizing didn't really exist then. The sixties hadn't officially started yet, so they were living their lives based on an old model. RIght away there were problems. My father just wanted a bland, normal life. He wanted to live in the suburbs, white picket fence. He makes the $$$ and his wife cooks and cleans. Plus he's British. He had some very rigid ideas about what was "proper." My mom on the other hand was as aspiring beatnik. She was into Metaphysics and the Beatles and the burgeoning counter culture. She went from beat, to hippy, to yippie, to revolutionary. She would rock bandoliers of bullets around while pushing my baby carriage, but I'm getting ahead of the story....
My mother wanted to live in the Village, my father wanted to live in Long Island or maybe even, god forbid, New zealand. Thank god he lost that argument or god knows what kind of lame life I may have had. I don't think the marrage was working out. Aside from the fact that my mom preferred women, she also preferred the free life and wanted to participate in all the happenings. The 60s were coming into their own. My mom didn't do drugs, but she was into all the other aspects of the counterculture, the music, the fashions, the scene. I don't think my father was too into it. He was a bit of a stuffed shirt when he was younger. He would get looser later on, but back then he was kinda a drag to my mom. He was still trying to go ahead with the marriage as if it was normal and was pushing hard for a kid. Mom was not having it. she didn't want the responsabilty or the deeper bind to my father. I think they weren't really having sex, but pops kept trying and trying to knock her up. She was giving no play at all. But he kept on it. Finally one hot night in august 1968, my mom figured out that she was exactly 2 weeks away from ovulating, so in order to shut him up, she gave him "one shot." So he took the shot and either her timing was off or the sperm was good cuz the SUCKLORD took root. Moms was bummed, pops was psyched and they would be stuck together for the next 8 years. I finally slid out on March 27 1969 at Beth Israel and went home with my parents to our apartment at 125 Christopher street. Some humble beginnings huh? I don't think we had much money, we never did. I was a good, but quiet kid, kinda sensitive. A little fearful. I was coddled and pampered and indulged. My father was kind of harder and more distant at the time. I don't think he knew shit about raising kids. My mom and grandma were all over me. I guess once I came out, mom dukes got way into it. I got whatever I wanted and I was over-protected a little. I think both my parents were kind of unprepared. I am an only child and I think I inherited a lot of karmic bills from both sides of my family. I come from a long line of unfulfilled geniuses, apparently; poor losers in Europe that never had the chance to seek their individuality. Many of them came to a bad end. Suicide and whatnot. I feel like I have inherited the burden to resolve this karmic circle. I am that crazy genius too, and I have to realize my greatest potential and actualize my self in my purest form or I'm doomed to the same fate as my ancestors. Creative annihilation and death. Fortunately for all their flaws, my parents gave me some important tools to achieve this. My father is the most practical guy you'll ever meet. He's a brilliant liner thinker. He can solve problems logically and he is a master engineer and crafts man. He's a bit dry, but he can build anything and figure out all kinds of technical shit by instinct. he's an expert with his hands and many of the suckskills have their roots in his influence. My mom, on the other hand, can barley turn on a stereo. She has no mechanical inclination whatsoever, but she is perhaps the most imaginative and intuitive person I have ever known. She can think in the abstract like a mother fucker, She is in tune with the spiritual and subconscious worlds of creativity. This is where all my imagination and rebellion comes from. I have had many hang ups and shortcomings, but one thing I came into this word with was my imagination. I never felt inhibited artistically. I have always been confident in my creativity. I never had any kind of artist block or anything. The ideas just pour our of me freely. This is the gift my mother gave me. Coupled with the practical discipline and technical skills my father blessed me with, I was launched into life to become...whatever I am. You know the old Beatles song:

MY MOTHER IS FROM THE SKY
MY FATHER IS FROM THE EARTH
BUT I AM OF THE UNIVERSE/ IF YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S WORTH
I'M LONEY....WANNA DIE....

MARCH 1970: THINKING IN THE ABSTRACT

This is the tale of my first memory. I may have the date wrong, but I guess it may have been around this time. First some background. I was of the generation that was born with TV. Much like we remember the invention of the internet, my parents remember the invention of TV. when their parents first got one, how it changed their lives, how marvelous it was to connect with the rest of the world etc. Not we of the so-called "generation x." TV was always there. A constant presence from before I could speak, soothing and pacifying as I took my first steps toward self-realization. I watched the first moon landing from my crib in June of 1969. I don't remember it, but there are pictures. This, I believe, is telling. This moment in history was to my parents and their parents before them, a turning point. the beginning of the SPACE AGE. Anything was possible. The future was now and man's potential was limitless. The sixties were still happening. Consciousness was expanding and the universe, before unreachable, was in humanity's grasp. And here I was just being born and coming into awareness of myself. Maybe I perceived how revolutionary the times were, but probably not. I was too busy shitting, eating, and sleeping.
This was also the beginning of the 70's. The time of Doctor Spock and a new sensitivity to a child's growth and development. All the harsh and strict discipline of my parents upbringing was replaced by coddling, "educational toys," and all kinds of other soft hippy shit intended to help a child grow into a better, more emotionally intact person. This was also the beginning of SESAME STREET, another important innovation of the time and one of my first obsessions. The actual first memory I mentioned is about Sesame Street. I'm in my crib, I don't know how old I really am, I'm still in diapers yet able to talk. Was I one year old? It doesn't matter. I remember asking my mom if I can watch Sesame Street now. Of course there are no VCRs or DVDs or anything. You actually had to wait until the show came on to see it. She told me it wasn't on until 4:30, which was an hour away, so I had to wait. I guess the normal reaction of a little kid like that would be to cry, not understanding that my gratification had to be delayed. Instead I simply said, "That's okay mommy, I can just THINK about Sesame Street." Not a great intellectual feat by any means, but to me it was a huge revelation. This was the first time I realized you can use your memory and imagination to enjoy something even if it wasn't in front of your face. I believe this was the moment I crossed that developmental threshold from being a baby who only thinks in the present and has no concept of the past and future to a young child who can think in the abstract. It was like a light went off in my head and I understood on some infantile level that this was a profound discovery. I would proceed to spend the next 37 years of my life inside my head, playing around in the past and the future and only doing the minimum required for dealing with the present. But yeah, it seems interesting to me that my first memory is my discovery that I had a memory. It's like the tape started recording there

1970-1973: A LITTLE BITCH

So here I am, a little waking, talking, eating, shitting little thing living at 125 Christopher street in New York City in the early seventies. My memory is kind of spotty around this time, but I remember a few things, most of them bizarre and weird and sort of unfortunate. One thing I know was that I was really into the Volkswagen Beetle. I think this car was fairly new at the time, I don't know, but It was I think the first thing in the outside world that I gravitated to on my own. I called them "poops" and I would always point them out to my mom as she pushed me around in my stroller. I had a habit of kissing them as we went by. Not actually putting my mouth on them, just making that kissing sound with my lips. This weird habit lasted until I was about 10, if you can believe it. So my mom started buying me little VW beetles and Buses and even the Karmann Ghia cars. I guess I knew they were all VWs cuz I recognized the symbol in the hubcap. Such a smart little fucker... yeah. That was one of the first things I ever collected. Before I could really even speak that much I was a discerning toy enthusiast. I was told that wherever I was when my mom or grandmother asked me where I wanted to go I would just point. they would humor me and go where I directed them until we would up invariably in the toy department of Lampstons on sixth ave. I always knew what I wanted and I got it. I was quite spoiled actually. My father was a bit of a stuffed shirt when I was really little and I don't remember him paying too much attention to me. I think he was kind of strict, sort of acting out the way he was parented. What I do remember about him from my very early years was pretty traumatizing. He's a Brit, and they don't do circumcisions back there, so I was left uncut. I had no conception of what this meant, but he did. I guess You have to be able to roll back the foreskin from the penis head in order to clean under there and stuff. I remember being laid out on the kitchen table with my pants pulled down and him trying to check to see if my foreskin rolled back properly. I guess it didn't and it hurt like fuck and I cried. My grandmother put a stop to this and the foreskin issue didn't come up again for many years. I wish it had, cuz as I'll get into later on here, it was a source of great misery in my young life.
Yes, my Mom and my Grandmother, two Italian women. They kinda muscled my father to the side. Shit between him and my mom was not so good, so my very early baby and toddler years were dominated by them. They indulged me everything, maybe too much, cuz I was a soft little kid. I was kinda of cool with being pampered and I was scared of other kids. I just felt weaker than them and I had no confidence around them. The super of the building had a few little kids a bit older than me and they were so wild and bold. They made me nervous and I retreated more into my mental sanctuary. when I was home I could do what ever I wanted without being self conscious. One thing I did, which was telling, I think, was take to a weird habit of transvestitism. I used to like dressing up as a girl. When I was 3 or so I would dress up as this character "JANE" and pretend she would always be getting into trouble. I would pretend she would fall into a hole or get kidnapped or some such tragedy. I don't know where I got these ideas, but I was supported in them 100%. Does this all sound a little troubling? The pampering, the cross dressing, the avoidance of other kids? I don't know. I think it may have been better if I had an older brother to knock me around and toughen me up a little bit. When I finally went out in the world I found my self to be quite timid and thin skinned. I heard a quote from Jimi Hendrix once where he said something to the effect that an artist is someone who hasn't been handled so much by the world; a person who still holds some connection to that other place we all came from. I use that to justify what I pussy I have been for a lot of my life. I credit my creativity somewhat to the fact that I was pampered and protected from getting too involved with the world. I was given a space to just be what I was. Well that may be true, but there is a price to pay for not being worldly, and I would pay it..