The trucker let me off at the outskirts of Winnipeg. The police picked me up hitchhiking down Pembina towards my home. I told them I’d thought of going to New York , got all the way to the border, ,changed my mind and now was heading home. They put me in the back of the police car. When I got out I went inside and went into my brother’s room. I heard the police and my dad talking in the hall.
“We caught him on Pembina. He’d not even left the town. Good thing we caught him because he was going to head to the border. He said he wanted to go to New York. You know Mr. Hay, I hate to say it but there’s only one thing a kid that’s run away needs. You’ve been too soft on him. He needs a lot more firmness if you know what I mean. The straighten your back kind of firmness.” And he laughed. And Dad showed him out of the house.
Well this all had been preceded by mom being angry at me. I don’t remember what I said but she’d said as she usually did,
“Don’t you take that tone with me, Mister.”
A favourite expression of hers was,
“I’m not taking any of your backtalk!”
And if she was really mad she produce her kind of tough talk,
“You’re not giving me any more lip!”
Mostly she was a pushover but things had been escalating. This time she pulled a strap on me. I don’t recall her giving me the strap any other time. She just lashed out at me hard hitting me on the back as I was walking away. She’d been a mother that threatened things and raised her hand and stuff but never really hit us kids. This time she did, big time. I was stung by the belt and angry in return. Shen she raised her hand to hit me again, I reached up and took the hand by the wrist. She twisted in my hold. I was a very strong kid, “You’re not going to hit me ever again , Mom. Do you understand.” Then I let her go.
I turned to walk out. She called my brother to stop me. Iwrestled with him to get out, the two of them on top of me until I escaped and left the house to walk about before coming back
Come to think of it, my brother had smashed me in the back sometime around then. We actually fought like dogs and cats but pulled punches .When we were younger being bigger and older he’d always win. On this occasion he didn’t. He said I’d used his brush. Maybe I had but he hit me from behind. and I sprawled into the bathtub hurting my side. I was hurt and angry. I climbed out awkwardly. Then I walked into the bed room where he was standing glaring at me and kicked him in the face. He went down hard. “Don’t stand up or I’ll kick you in the head again. Don’t ever hit me again.”
As my bigger brother he’d been used to hitting me. He tried once after that but I did the old jujitsu toss and told him “I told you. Don’t make that mistake again. I don’t want to hurt you.” We never physically fought after that but in years to come we’d hug more than a few times.
Now my father who had taught me to box once asked me to around then to show him what I could do. He and I had gone out on the lawn. He’d made a grab at my head. I ‘d done a slip kick hip toss and took him down hard winding him completely. I thought though, this is my father, I can’t do this too him. So I fell down like I tripped and let him pin me. I could tell he knew I’d won but let him save face.
One day years later my father and brother had it out. My brother didn’t hold back. My father went down hard in my parents bedroom and my Dad didn’t get up for a while letting my brother calm down. I don’t know what that was about because they never physically fought that I ever knew. I just remember my Dad saying then they “You boys are both too old and big for me to be doing any more of this. From now on if you don’t like it here you can get out. »
The last time after Mom and I had at it and Dad came home a day or two later because he’d been working out of town again, she said “John, your boy needs a licking. He took the strap out of my hand when I was trying to give him a licking. Now you have to do it.”
Dad said,”I told you Jean I’m not here to fight your wars. I work all day and you should be able to handle the boys. »
« Well, I couldn’t and you as his father need to discipline him. »
« I don’t want to do this, Jean. »
I was standing in the hallway, Mom having accosted Dad as he came through the back door into the green kitchen.
Dad gave me no warning. He just charged, mowing me down under his weight, taking no chances. As I was trying to twist free under him he grabbed my head and began bashing it back against the iron radiator. . He was furious. I could tel it was not just with me but with Mom as well.
As he held me down I didn’t think I was going to make it. I couldn’t get free and I felt my consciousness fading. At that moment Mom climbed on top of Dad pulling him off me shouting saying, “Enough John. Enough John . I don’t want you to kill him.”
That’s when I left. I’d seem my Dad had lost it for the first time. He looked really defeated, he’d left home after his father had given him a terrible beating. I don’t think he ever wanted to be like his father. But there he’d been in rage wailing on his kid. I’d had enough of this home. Everyone of them had beaten me and when I tried to stop them they’d nearly killed me.
As much as they blamed me for everything I couldn’t help but think that I’d made them face something in the,selves they didn’t like. After that I seeing me reminded them of that.
It never occurred to me to stop doing whatever it was that was bothering them. Mostly I was walking out. Mom and I had some argument and then Mom would mostly say. “I told you no back talk”.
Like the year before when she found the condom in my wallet.
« What’s this doing in your wallet? »
« What are you doing looking in my wallet? »
« Don’t give me any lip Mister.just answer my question? »
I snatched back my wallet with the condom sticking out of it and just before I stomped out I shouted,
« You should be thankful it’s still there, it’s not like it’s a used condom »
Adults called me a smart Alec and my name wasn’t even Alec.
Now I’d tried to leave, gone almost to the the border, got cold and hungry, turned around and thought home wasn’t that bad. Then the police lied and told my dad to hit me some more. It was too crazy. At the school I’d been caned and strapped and at home nearly died.
I’d left gym too because when I took off my shirt the other kids had seen the welts of the strap and said “you’ve been whipped. You’ve got the marks of being whipped like some sort of slave, that’s really bad. I’m so sorry. ” I was so ashamed . I put my shirt on and didn’t go back to gym. I was crying. They were just shocked and trying to make me feel better but nothing made me feel worse than people taking pity on me,
Around that time I wrote the song “Hey Man what a fuck up” . I was playing it and singing it in coffeehouses. A youth minister had climbed up on the stage one night and smahed into me , knocking me backwards off the high stool. I landed on my back with his hands around my throat strangling me. A half dozen kids pulled him off. I was just worried that my guitar would be broken.
My parents took me to the emergency that night the police dropped me off. I don’t know what craziness I did but I knew I was done. The world was insane. I was going to have to kill myself to stop this. I wasn’t going to take any more beatings. I didn’t want to kill someone. I should never have returned.
At the emergency I grabbed a black marker and wrote that on the wall. They put me in an room on a gurney. The psychiatrist was called. Before he arrived the ambulance brought in three people who had survived a car accident. I got up and helped a person all bruised into the stretcher. I didn’t need it. . One person had bones sticking out of their leg. I gave up my room and helped wheel the stretcher with the guy with the mangled leg into another room. I reassured the guy that he was going to be alright. The nurses began running lines and I went out.
The psychiatrist had been there watching me the whole time.
‘Are you alright?” He asked.
“Yea.”
‘How can I help you. What do you want?” He sat in a chair in the hallway and motioned me to join him. I sat down beside him, people screaming with pain from behind me,
“I want people to stop hitting me. The teachers have been hitting me. My family have been hitting me. My father doesn’t want to hit me. But the police told him he should hit me more. I can’t go to school with belt marks on my back. “
He asked to see and I showed him
“I saw your manifesto written on the emergency room wall.”
“I’m sorry about that. They wouldn’t give me paper and said I couldn’t have a pen so I stole the marker.”
“You like to write.”
“Yeah.”
“If I talk to your parents will you come back and see me in my office next week.
“Yea”.
He talked to my parents. My mother was furious. She wanted to smack me when I joined them. “I should smack you for causing all this trouble.” She said. My Dad said, » Jean you promised.”
“Will you come home with us.” She asked
“Could you take me to the theatre school.”
Dad and mom said, “Okay Billy”I don’t know what the psychiatrist told them but something had shifted. I thought he was a nice man. My mother hated him.
The theatre school was just closed but Mom talked to some one and they let me go up to the Green Room. I felt safe there. I sat on the couch. I remember the moon light on the rug in the centre of the room. AFter a while Mom and Dad came and asked if I was ready to go home, that the janitor wanted to leave.
I said, « yes ».
When we saw the psychiatrist he just asked my parents with me in the room to not hit me anymore. It wasn’t like they’d been hitting me a lot before that. But he said, “Billy’s too old to be hit. You’ve got to treat him like another person. ‘
“He’s my son and I’ll hit him if I want. “ my Mom said defiantly.
“No you won’t, Jean.” My Dad sais.
“But he’s my son.” She said once more but with no force in her voice.
“You can’t hit him anymore. That’s the law. Mrs. Hay. The police were wrong and the school should have done something about the teacher throwing a hammer at him. “ The psychiatrist said.
Mom stormed out of the room .She’d later say the psychiatrist didn’t know what he was talking about. She’d never try to hit me again. I’d not have to see the psychiatrist again.
Dad would say “I”m sorry I was at work. I didn’t know all that was happening. .”
My brother had rather liked his favoured son position. He didn’t like that the alliance which had been Dad and him against Mom and me had shifted to Dad and me against Mom and him. Dad had just said, « no more hitting your brother » the fact was he’d not hit me except when mom called on him, since the time I kicked him in the face. He just didn’t lie Dad being mad with him,
There wasn’t peace in the home after that. A kind of detente. It didn’t last long.
The sociopathic drug dealing kid came over and dad, that night , said I couldn’t have some drug dealing stray staying over. I didn’t like the kid but I thought my room should be my room. The kid had heard my Dad calling himwhat he was. I didn’t think my Dad should be calling my « friend » names. I felt sorry for him. His parents had kicked him out. I’d told my Mom this and now my dad was shouting
« I’m not going to have some kid in my house whose parents kicked him out and won’t have int theirs ».
Admittedly the kid was dressed like refugee before grunge, stank and had long greasy hair. My father who was a good just of character had had one look at the creep and he hadn’t measured up to anything.
Still I left. My father was at the front door. I screamed “I’m leaving.” He screamed “I’m kicking you out’. I said ,”You can’t kick me out because I’ve already left.”
I’d called my friend Jon who’d showed up with his car, I only had my big pack sack.
I moved in with Jon. He had one bedroom with a king bed that filled it. His room mate slept on the couch which took up half the living room. There was a tv and a large closet. One bathroom with tub. Jon’s roommate was away so I slept on the couch. When he came back I shared the bed with John. We made all these gay jokes about that. Neither of us were gay.
I was expelled from school sometime before then only to be reinstated and then kicked out of my home because I left. Jon didn’t like the creep either. Jon didn’t drink or do drugs.
I’d set up a noon hour folk concert at the school. Danny had played and I’d recited poetry. I think someone else was on. Right after when I was in the library. “Billy Hay, come to the office. Bring your poetry. ” rang over the loudspeaker. All the kids in the library rose clapping. Everyone who saw me on the way to the office, slapped me on the shoulder.
The principal asked if I had the poetry. He said “I’ve heard there was a poem you recited which was offensive.”
The little weasel English teacher I’d fired to go to Kavanaush’s English class was there looking all brown nose superior. I handed zotolov the Christian poem I’d written. He read it. “I don’t think it’s this one.” He said. “There must be another one.”
I handed him the poem “Hey man, what a fuck up. The shepherd screw their sacred sheep because the price of meat is far too steep. God watches stoned from afar......”.
“Yes this is the one”.
“This is the one that was upsetting, Mr (English).”
“Yes sir.”
“You say it has no literary value, Not a shred of poetry and just meant to shock and get attention. Utterly disgusting rubbish. I think were the words you used. Not poetry at all. And you’re the English teacher. You should know.” The sycophant nodded with his whole body
“Wouldn’t you agree.” Mr. Zotolov said looking now at me.
« No I said. It’s a poem. I think it’s a very good poem.”
Well, Mr. (English) does’t think so and he’s the English teacher. It’s certainly vulgar. I’m just concerned that mothers are going to be calling me about allowing this profanity in the school. I’m sorry to have to do this but I’m going to have to expel Billy. As of today you are expelled from high school today.”
And I was expelled. It didn’t matter. I didn’t really care. I was past caring.
I got home and asked my parents to to sit down because I had something to tell them. I’d never done that before. I set it up with sufficient suspense that my father blurted out “you haven’t got someone pregnant, have youBilly? »
« No dad. »
“I was expelled from school today.”
The relief they both had on their faces was incredible. They didn’t quite say ‘is that all? » but their faces said it. Then they got all stern parental and asked for details . I told them. Mom was very upset about the shepherds and said it was the act of the devil. Dad said ‘we didn’t bring you up to swear.’
I went to my room, The next day I went out to get a job
I got a job immediately in a wood store. I was learning carpentry and selling carpentry supplies. I loved the smell. I loved the guys I was working with. I was a good salesman. I was enjoying planing and sanding. We’d work on wood work between customers. It was a great time.
It only lasted a few weeks.
“The principal says you can go back to school.”
“ I don’t want to go back to school. I like doing wood work.”
“He’s saying now he didn’t expell you and that he only suspended you. No parent complained. Only that English teacher was upset so he says you should come back to school because there’s time to complete the year.”
I went back to school . I was really behind and missed a lot. Because I ‘d been straight A’s I had enough credits that I passed even with the tests I’d missed.
I crammed with Kirk doing chemistry one evening. I found I loved the periodic table. It was a mystical experience. I was learning it then all the letters and elements filled the room. From then on I could see them dancing and lining up with every thing in the room. It was incredible. The experience of seeing the molecules of things and visualizing the elements in nature lasted for weeks. Later in medical school this gift of seeing things like insulin in 3 dimensional shapes in the air would stand me in good stead in biochemistry.
I aced chemistry in high school and grew to love biology and chemistry as much as ils loved literature. I like the arcane knowledge.
I didn’t bother going to the final French exam because I’d not even had a chance to review it. The teacher said she’d have passed me for participation and I’d have passed the exam. We liked her because she was French and pretty and necked with her long haired husband who dropped her off before the class.
I’d be left with 4 out of 5 courses and could have gotten the whole shebang if I hadn’t sold myself short one French.
Now Gr. 12 was over.
A couple of sisters and a musician wanted to get an apartment and make a band together. I didn’t think I’d go to university any more. After being expelled I was off school. Especially given an English teacher didn’t know poetry. I figured it was time to get real. After that experience with the English teacher, I was less angry with being expelled as having him tell me my poetry wasn’t poetry. I knew lots of writers didn’t go to university and figured if university turned out English teachers like that I wanted nothing to with university. Of course I forgot that Mrs. Kavanaugh and all the other teachers I liked and even Leonard Cohen had been to university. I didn’t need it.
I was having lunch with Mom in the Bay around that time. Meeting for a meal which I really enjoyed because I was hungry a lot. Dad wasn’t talking to me but I was keeping in touch with Ron and Mom. Not living together I found I liked my brother Ron more even if he was square. He was at the university and dating his beautiful fiancée Adell. She sang like a nightingale as the church soprano.
The kid who had messed things up for me in a way, my defending him, turned out to be a theif and scuzz ball. I’d left him when he’d almost got me caught stealing steak in a store. I’d just walked in and next thing he was screaming run and I was running after him and I didn’t know why. He showed me two steaks he’d shoved in his pants and thought I’d think he was cool. I thought he was a thief and almost got me caught. He knew all these bad folk. We stayed at this commune of sorts.
Sometime around then I hitchhiked in the winter to the graduation of my friend Doug who had gone to Baptist Bible Study. No one was keen to see me. I had my beat up guitar and just dropped in. Everyone was gracious but it was the Baptist Bible School and I was by then the ‘hippy’ friend. Long hair, navy wool sweater, jeans, RCMP Riding boots. Black Beret. I thought I was pretty cool. Doug and his father were in suits and ties, his mother and all the girls there in white dresses and gowns. The parents didn’t think I was dressed for the occasion, all the other guest and everyone in suit and girl party dresses. It was all very awkward. Doug loved that I’d come but said that he had to get back and there was no where for me to stay. I told him I hadn’t planned to stay.
It was Calgary. It was winter. I didn’t need a place to stay. I just walked out of the Baptist Church School nowhere to go but figuring Banff would be cooled.
I hitch hiked the hour or so to Banff. I met some guys with musical instruments, They told me about the Grizzly Bear Restaurant. “You can play a gig up there and the owner will feed us.”
So I played a gig. I was singing “Draft Dodger Rag” and reciting Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne and Fannegy Finn. And some more of my own love songs. It got us a pizza and cokes. The most my music ever got me was a $100 for a night. Mostly I’d get $10. The pizza and coke was great. I just remember for a year or two after I left my mothers home I’d almost always be hungry. I came to appreciate how much my parents provided that I took for granted. Girlfriends were great for having stocked refrigerators.
After the Grizzly Bear we went to the post office and sitting on the floor by the heat vents jammed. One of the guys had a banjo. There were a couple of other guitars and a ukulele. We made some kind of music. The elk herd came down from the mountains and stood outside. We serenaded them. They stood listening seeming to lie our music. We serenaded the elk.
That’s when these ski instructors said we could crash with them. Two beautiful older voluptuous blond and beautiful ski instructresses offered to let us crash on their couch. That’s the first time I heard Leonard Cohen sing. They had his album. They liked that I knew Suzanne. They played the album fire crackling in the fireplace snow falling outside. Candles in es es. It was magical. The beautiful blond girls served tea and ice cream.I was listened to Leonard Cohen sing for the first time. There were great pines and spruce outside with huge drifts of snow around. The girls had a fire going. We were warm. . I slept in and left in the morning. The girls had said they had to leave to teach skiing.
Hitchhiking back I got a ride in the car with a crazy guy He was speeding on the black ice missed hitting a semi , lost control, and did three consecutive donuts down the road. Only to say’ man that was a rush.” He had dope. I think I smoked dope for the first time on that trip. I know I responded .”Wow man.”
Dope wasn’t readily available till the summer after school but even then it was always somebody with one joint and a half dozen people taking a toke.
I liked the real commune I stayed in. It may have been Calgary or some town in Saskatchewan. A guy playing classical violin, naked girls showering in the communal shower with us. People passing around a joint. Woodstock heaven. Commune stew. Home made coarse bread.
Our gymnastics team cheer leading squad broke up simply because of everyone having too many commitments. Another gang decided to pick up on the theme. They approached me to join them and help them. They were a mixed bag of guys. Beer drinkers. Not athletes, not scholars but funny. They wanted to do the men’s cheer leading routine like the south with all the guys in white shirts and pants and a megaphone caller. It went over well a few games. Our signature number was Vincent Duck Massey Mouse with the caller shouting in the megaphone ‘give me a V......etc ...what do you have, Vincent Duck. What do we need, Massey Mouse. The rest of the guys would be lined up in the middle of the floor in a triangle pattern shouting back at the caller. We’d sing some too. The girls would then come on and do the Pom Cartwheel gorgeous girl traditional cheer leading .The crowd loved it. There would be lots of cheers..
It was Gr. 12. We’d won the provincial championships in Men’s Volleyball. I was spiking and serving but twisted my ankle and was pulled from the end of the game so felt I’d not contributed to the win. I was really critical of myself as a kid. It was great winning the provincial championship. The team was great. Working together with those guys and the guys in the gym club gave me a template for a well functioning team. I’d know when this was missing in later years and know second stringers just didn’t have a clue a birds in flight.
I had time for the cheerleading squad because I didn’t do basketball. We got disbanded by the prinicipal about the third game. The caller called, “Everybody ready, nobody sad,” and we shouted back “Yea Man”. Then we all shouted. “If everybody is ready and nobody is sad, we’re going to beat those bastards and beat em bad’. Principal Zotolov disbanded us right there. I think he was amazed the squad kept it clean three games.
The Wise Eye was going big time, people being turned away and musicians asking me to line them up. There was so much money and success the YWCA assigned a psychologist to the group. A drug addict street person suddenly joined the group. This is the creepy stray I would bring home eventually and leave and get kicked out of my home for. He’d latch onto me like I’d later let people do. I i looked for the best in people and just wasn’t raised to see the use of others as opposed to just being. I thought he was weird and egotistical.
But suddenly this psychologist says he should be the MC and I should give up the list and the booking of the sets should be done by him. Now I guess this guy probably complained to this new guy. What?! Well, I agreed but after 2 years of being at the Y every Sunday night I saw it as time to move along. If I didn’t need to be on stage then I didn’t need to be there. Suddenly too this smooth good looking older guy was linked up with loser dude. He was working some psychological experiment on the group and I just left. I came a few times but it wasn’t the same. A different vibe. Overnight once the psychologist arrived the attendance tanked. This guy was getting paid and the girls and I had been doing everything volunteer. I resented the intrusion but then my interest was the music and the stage. Because I’d been an entertainer myself and was going around the other places when I could I knew what worked .This psychologist thought it was good to get this ass on stage. The ass was not liked by the musicians. He was too much wanting to be cool and not being cool and the psychologist looked like a surfer police due out of uniform. I left and some of the girls left. I remember thinking it fitting the place didn’t last without me. The fact was it all coincided with the dropping of the drinking age from 21 to 18 and all the coffeehouses dying as a result,
Worse creep I didn’t even like showed up at my place not that long after late one night. He his parents had kicked him out. I let him stay the night in my room downstairs. In the morning I heard my father yelling at my mother that he didn’t want an unknown stray kid whose parents kicked him out of their house for drugs staying in his basement.
The kid was really disheartened to hear this. I felt badly for my latest ‘stray’ . I came up and told my mom Dad shouldn’t be talking so loud when I had a guest. Mom told me I had to tell him to go. He left and that evening I left.
I chose a stupid sociopaths over my parents but that’s what adolescence is about. Teens versus adult. I really didn’t think people over 30 should be allowed to be alive. There was this thing going around about euthanizing the old to save the planet. I remember thinking it wasn’t such a bad idea. Everyone was concerned there was going to be an ice age. Silent Spring had come out so we were being told all going to melt with acid rain. We envisioned the sky opening and sulphuri acid pouring down eating everyone’s face who looked up. She said the fish would all be dead. So why not just live for today. « Shannanana live for today. Don’t you worry about tomorrow.” Was thé song of the times. Lots of glom and doom prophecies. The Vietnam war in the background. Nuclear holocaust always there,Carpe Diem was all the rage then and we were all hanging posters of ‘go gently » I’d eventually have Don Quixote and Sancho Panzez done by Salvador Dali on my wall but that would be a year later.
Before that would be the summer of the band and the three guys and Good Time Charlie’s Back in Town again.Good Time Charley’s Back In Town by Alfred Silver was the quintessential tale of that summer. I’d get raped then too. A busy summer indeed. And I’d thought I was going to go to university or get drafted into expanding Vietnam war. Instead I smoked dope and was the roadie for a band getting them their first album because the producer wouldn’t make a deal unless they gave them a boy. They gave him me. I was so stoned and so trapped and so lost. More sociopaths and more betrayal.
The band got shut down because all the stoners came to the show. It was the most popular band at the time but an under cover cop had been a lead singer in a band and it was a great sting. I’d made a photograph that was lithographed to a poster. That went all across the country and became this iconic poster. All because of the pot plant which I hadn’t even known was a huge pot plant. Without my knowing that drummer a major pot head had put his huge marijuana plant in the back behind the band. That got the police thinking I , as the roadie and photographer was a major drug dealer. Next thing I’ve got police surveillance, guys taking telephotos of me in my room, our house always watched and everywhere I went RCMP were following me. At first they’d tried being discrete but after the story broke about the sting it was out and out open and intimidating. They smirked and questioned me and eventually figured I was just the poet.
As for the band, they phoned all the venues the band had in the year to come and told them they’d have liquor license issues if they hired us. That’s what agent found out after he’d been told by the police he’d best no longer promote us. The drummer had smoked a joint with the undercover singer. He’d not gone to jail but the band got pay back partly because of that and also because Lonny was such an ass too. Overnight we were shut down. The band was breaking up. The sociopath had lots of ideas like sociopaths do. No one had paid me.
I went home. I’d been getting dope from the gay guy and fucked him in exchange for food , dope and records. He was a producer so he gave me records. Now I was disgusted with the whole thing. It really was a prodigal son moment. I really was living with the pigs and it wasn’t looking any better.
.
I was hanging out with some dancers and offered a scholarship in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. I met Arnold Sporr, the gay director who was a real gentleman and didn’t do any funny business. He was a friend of the producer. Another choreographer did offer me a lotus and a contract if I joined his company but he said he’d expect to have sex with me. I was going to all the art high society parties in the gay world with the leading lawyers and politicians, getting champagne and tokes but really feeling hungry most days. There was never enough food at the parties.
At our apartment in the house near the Village we’d had blow up furniture. Cigarettes and and seeds from joints had deflated it all. We’d painted walls horrific colours like the fire engine red kitchen and gloomy navy blue and black living room. We had no food .
I liked Al the base player. He was totally into music and practice but my friend was becoming more and more of a shit insisting I didn’t get a job but totally controlling and me with no money and the band having fallen through. It was all his show and him being musical but stupid and lower class and somehow needing me the smart middle class to be his servant. It was him that betrayed me to the gay guy taking me to the party I said I wasn’t into and me getting drugged all so he and Lonny could get their record deal. The gay guy told me. « You were the reason I backed your band. I only promote gay bands. That’s my thing. » I was wasting time her. The lesbians next door were beating each other up each night too. Al was talking Nashville
The summer of 69.
I ran into my brother and told him about wanting out. Told him about being raped. Told him about the drugs. Told him I was tired of it all and wanted to come home. I told him too I couldn’t tell Mom about the sex and drugs. He said he’d talk to Dad. Dad met me said I could come home. He said he was sorry what had happened to me. Said he’d known of guys who were raped it the military. He was Dad. Short in words, awkward. Kind. My brother Ron had been my advocate. My father said “you have a choice in life.” No drugs in this house. My mother would never know what happened. She was glad I was home « You’ve lost so much weight. Let me get you something to eat. For the first time in what seemed like months I wasn’t hungry and I slept through the night.
I slept and ate. Mom was thankful. A few weeks later I got a job in dance. Life moved on. I was one of the lucky ones. I had a brother and a father and a mother who loved me. I got out.
on the streets were. I don't k
now where the New
Yorker
s were but who ever was '
manning' 
the city while these proverbial 'rude people' were away did a really fine job. 
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