Bleeding Blood Brothers & The Riley Brothers

(On the verge of a temper tantrum I have no answers to explain my inability to write on a more regular basis. Close friends stay on me to do it and I often get approached by strangers that have just read this essay or that essay and ask what’s next. The what next is always “I’m writing one… it should be out soon” but the honest answer would sound more like “I’m writing one, and I already hate it, and I’ll never finish it and I will eventually throw it away” or “I’m going to the gym, and then work, and then play Ms Pac-Man and not write one word. I am my own worst enemy- obstacle-enabler and, no matter what I’m doing, when I don’t write it makes me feel lazy.)

Names are changed

I’d been smoking cigarettes for two months and not inhaling, of course to fit in. Fit in and cough. The Riley Brothers lived in the biggest house over East Lake, fit with a literal parking lot for a driveway and six bedrooms. On any given night-day-midnight-ever there would be a dozen plus Wolves, jeans-tattered and scattered with skateboards and simple drugs. Six packs of beer. Small weapons, knives to knuckles. There was a bomb shelter basement and the grey brick walls were covered in glow-dark loud colors. None of the wall art was very good, but way better than I could do, skulls, lyrics and peace signs. Bands, a handful from all over, practiced there and sprayed above the entrance were the words “Hardcore Cafe”.

I got high for the first time, first of ten total in this lifetime, with Todd sitting on milk crates over cut-out squares of ash-burned carpet. We went back and forth choosing songs on a D-battery boombox. He played Led Zeppelin. I played Agent Orange. Him… Hendrix. Me… Suicidal Tendencies. To this day, neither one of our musical tastes have ever strayed very far. The ceiling was too low for me to stand up straight, even at twelve-years-old, a good four inches shorter than my height now.

Todd’s younger brother Jordan had been my best friend since kindergarten, him showing up in the middle of class, a re-locate from the deep North. Jordan was the reason I first drove a car, and first dropped acid. We skated until our knees bled, talked about (but not to) girls, and dreamed of putting together rock ‘n roll bands. His band and dream would change the world in sold-out stadiums, my band and dream would be loud and angry and very “fuck you”. And neither one of our dreams ever changed. We skipped school and cut our hands open behind the library, bleeding blood brothers until the end. 

The ladder-down age difference of the Riley Brothers was responsible for me getting such an early start. Chad, the oldest of the three Riley Brothers, was 18… chasing addictions and a high velocity nightlife. And what 18-year-old in America, USA, couldn’t get their hands on whatever social medicine they needed in the eighties? So then Todd, just a few years younger and driving everyday at 15, was old enough to share with. And it would trickle down from Todd to Jordan with his East Lake trash friends, all of us spinning around 12 or 13-years-old.    

Chad had the biggest room in the Riley house, upstairs and at the end of the hall, and he would sleep the sleep of the dead. His time was filled full of writing one-man plays, bands at The Nick, and disappearing acts, days to weeks at a time. Whether he was passed out or MIA, Jordan and I would sneak in his room and raid his tape collection, skipping over all the 80’s New wave “crap” I would one day worship. Psychedelic Furs, The Plimsouls, the Cure, makeup wearing fag-stuff like that. Jordan would steal the sixties heroes, I would steal the Black Flags. Jordan would also go through his jeans from the night before and pocket the remaining amounts of pot, never touching the pills or powders. The room smelled awful, Chad wearing the late night parties home with him, falling asleep on the floor with a burning cigarette in his hand. The singed carpet burns mixed with his alcohol sweat for an unpleasant… sensation, but why would I care, I was just in it for the cassette tapes.

The Riley Parents, both doctors, were textbook workaholics. They left early and came home late, hiding in their wing of the house on the ground floor. The kitchen door was never locked, the alarm code never set, and packs of Wolves came and went as they pleased, 4pm or 4am. The only requiem, or so it seemed, was to carry a skateboard, and have fucked-up long hair. I subscribed to both, my hair too long in the front, ridiculously hanging past my chin. My skateboard was always filthy, the board chipped and threatening to break on every ride.

Anthony, a pack leader, lived nearby and the Wolves had cut a path through the brush and thorns, from the Church parking lot to Anthony’s backyard. Coincidentally there was a string of robberies, one being a home invasion, on a handful of the homes along the path. I never really understood who was responsible, but I knew who was. The police found the path and walked it out,  backyard to parking lot. There was an inexplicable alley behind the church playground and Wolves would stand in the freezing cold, all of them inhaling cigarettes, drinking beer and being young wild bastards. Anthony fought with his dad constantly, awful fist-driven affairs, and I never understood those either.

My mom, a once-teenage member of said church told me there was a tunnel running underneath the entire length of property, from the boiler room to a small house on the far end of the lot. As I write this, 1:20 am, I’m trying to think of what to tell my girlfriend in order to leave our loft and find that tunnel right now. Because anything but the truth would sound more believable.   

I finally started smoking cigarettes and inhaling, of course to vomit. Vomit and get sick, turn red. The Riley House was such an open door community and Elkins, bassist in the popular punk band GNP, and recently evicted, stashed his worldly belongings in their garage. I spent hours going through stacks and boxes of fanzines and, with no internet or common sense, my mind exploded around the ideas and designs that were coming out in bigger, tougher punk rock cities. San Diego. Austin. Atlanta.  

Months went by and I was teaching myself to stay up late and get up early ( a trick I still know!) and I could not have cared less about graduating Junior High. Silly emo events happened blah blah boring pointless and I chose to give up all those good drugs, no more acid either. Give it all up YET prove that I could get as crazy, even crazier than the rest of the Wolves. You want to drive drunk? I’ll ride up front. You want to dig up bodies by the airport? I’ll get a shovel. You want to fight scream skip school vandalize skate all night sleep on the ground? I’m all in. I'm just not going to smoke pot anymore, or drink, because that… that stuff’s dangerous yuk yuk.

9th grade and I ran in circles of legends. Wild Billy (name not changed) hosted parties wearing a Columbine-black trench coat and chewing a cigarette. The same bands that played the bomb shelter of the Riley House would play in his family’s barn on the outskirts of Center Point, their horses walking the acres of land, clobbering over the beer cans and plastic cups. It was always too dark, except for the floodlights for the barn stage and I would wander around the yard, sober, bored and alone. No cassettes to steal, everyone around me intent on one specific blood-alcohol goal. I made my first flyers/ads for Wild Billy’s parties. Skulls and loud fonts with fake-wit slogans. My flyers, no shock, here, have still stayed to that course.

Jordan always drove, I always rode. He and Todd were in their band that was going to change the world in sold-out stadiums, currently playing enough original songs to be real and enough cover songs for the drinking mindlessness. I knew the words to all of them, even then a bigger fan of the sloppier originals. Life is too interesting to recite the words of others. And if we’re going to try, then lets give it all we’ve got, and not care if it’s good or bad or dangerous, or down right self-destructive.

Oldest brother Chad finally went over end, declaring war on the rest of the Riley family, terrible shouting breaking fights, ones that would stop only after wrecked cars, silence, and bystander repercussions for the younger brothers. I stayed up with Todd and Jordan all night as they drank gallons of water to beat a 7am piss test after Chad resurfaces one too many times with red crimson eyes and a 150-beats-per-minute pulse. His demons had started eating him whole. Jordan and I quit stealing his cassette tapes and tried to stay out of the way.

The first time the Riley House burned to the ground, I got to watch after school, deliberate arson from this runaway trash boy the Brothers had sheltered. The second fire to the ground was singed carpet and candles, Chad asleep on the floor. The third time I watched, a now off duty firefighter, sidelined in awe of the house’s curse to flames. 

Chad never moved away. He grew into his early forties in the Riley House and died too young, a victim of a past life party that he’d left a little too late. I drove to the funeral home for his viewing but couldn’t make myself go in, I’m not sure why, so I’ll just go with fear. Fear of choking and nostalgia. Chad and I were never close, but his role on my… path into the man writing these words was critical. 

And now…

Now too many scars on my hands have replaced the Blood Brothers cut that Jordan and I made, but it never really goes away does it? There’s something magic tragic and forever with your first self-inflicted wound, even ones given in the name of brotherhood.       

And the glow dark loud colors of the bomb shelter are still there or they were this past summer… surviving the three house fires, and three decades, all while I was busy acting out every wild impulse I ever had. I would eventually put together my band, and it was exactly what I wanted. We toured the country, twice, and we were loud, fast, and very “fuck you”. 

And I’m still proving to those Riley Brothers, and the Wolves, And East Lake Legends, that I’m as crazy as they are, wherever they are now. You want to run into a burning house? Well I guess we need our air masks. You want to break into abandoned buildings and dig through 100 year old documents? As long as I can keep the photos. You want to write about every single thing good bad and dangerous, things that should have killed you, things that will kill you eventually? Get me a pen.  Because there’s something magic tragic and forever in it all. I’ll be romantic about it all and call it “The Promise”.

And if this really is my path, live fast die young live forever, then I’ll write my own words, being that it’s both my obligation and my right to document every single thing I see, or say or tough through. Good bad or dangerous, these words are mine.

Now… get your chisel and carve that on the tree they bury me under. The end.

“I started drifting to a different place. I realized I was falling off the face of the world and there was nothing left to bring me back.” – The Plimsouls

The Shelf, the Surf, and 7am Traffic.

(This one is so bits-and-pieces from so many different moments and memories, and stories I’ve been told, that a part of me thinks I should label it a work of “fiction”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all true, I just took severe liberties in timeframes and locations in the interest of story telling. You were warned; I'm just trying to play fair.)

The first day was not the worst because I had no idea how bad things would be, or could be, or shouldn’t be.

            

My desk was something old and wooden, too big really for such a small office but I was happy to be there, I was happy to fight my way through 20 miles in gridlock, the roads covered with others going to their oversized desks and their small offices. I had a tie on, and I had worn one before many times, but only for very specific reasons- funerals, weddings, and high school proms.

            

One night Exhaust even wore ties to a show in Montevallo, it was my idea and I have no clue why I thought it was such a good idea. It was the middle of summer, and punk rock sweat drenched our white button downs, we laughed at everything and screamed songs all night over the radio. A pack of kids showed up from East Lake and bought our records and asked us to sign them, and I was so high that night, and I was in a tie.

            

But that was somewhere, something, far far away from 8:00 am on a Monday morning in a tie.

            

Today was not his worst and he had no idea how bad things were, or were gonna get, or how he shouldn’t have put himself in that position to begin with.

            

I’d seen the house a thousand times but never stopped, always wanted to. There was an oversized cross and an oversized heart made from mesh and wire, then nailed to the front wood above the gutters.  I’d always wanted to go inside too, but they dragged him outside to sweat and aspirate on the porch steps.

            

Back to other good ideas…

            

I was given files and a computer. Passwords. Parking Pass. They showed me where the copier was, the fax, the refrigerator. I was introduced to my co-workers, a handful of mostly women who had covered their desks in football paraphernalia, and family pictures, and cartoons of animals. Driving in that morning I popped out the oversized gauges in my ears and put them in my pocket. I pushed my ear lobes together, hoping it would make me look a little less… like me. It didn’t.

            

The awful feeling was when their office door shut behind them and the isolation came. I stared at the computer, I stared at files, full of names and places, dates… I had no idea what they meant. A friend called and wanted to go surfing, neither one of us knowing how, and I told him I couldn’t. I was working.

            

But not knowing how to surf and trying to surf, right now, sounded so amazing.

            

The house with the cross and the heart… and he was pale and tall and skinny, shirtless with white-cold sweat and dirt. His breathing was going in and out, his eyes would bulge and press each time he inhaled. There was an 8 x10 photo nailed to the porch wall of three young boys in red gang colors, hardened adult poses, one had both hands cocked like six guns. The oldest was 15, if a day, whatever that fucking means.

            

Tammy swiveled around in her chair on week three, day one and opened her right hand, it had five pills, five different colors and sizes. She said it’s called a grab bag. “You don’t know if you're eating ecstasy, or aspirin,” she said “blue jackets, or Viagra. Or AIDS medicine.” I asked her which one she was going to take and she looked at me like I was disease.

            

“All five, George” And swiveled around in her chair, back to her computer and her share of the files that didn’t make sense to me, no not one bit.

            

The porch décor had bells and doves, rusted… never flying, or ringing, a cherub angel’s head nailed broken on the door frame, it’s body somewhere else and in pieces, I'm guessing. There was half of a couch on the front porch, a large barrel full of trash bottles and fast food bags, a cactus and the windows were all boarded over. I wanted to go inside so bad, but I had no reason, or right, to do so. And there was a large black woman, sitting on a stool blocking the door. Every time it opened I glanced in taking worthless mental snapshots, but the door, it closed so fast, and I’m not always that smart so I just watched him try to breathe, under a mask, under IVs in his arm, and the white-cold sweat. 21-years old and he was suffocating, and I finally knew how I remembered it all… I was having

            

Trouble breathing. I was at my desk and I was having trouble breathing. The sun was so bright and that always seems so awful when you're pinned inside, like the world is that simple, and endless, and yours, and you're hiding from making things make sense. I looked at the clock, 9:05am, I looked at the sun light window, I looked at my paycheck and the balance I got from an office job, the insurance and the re-assurance. I took a deep breath, tried to stay put. I reminded myself how “hardcore” I am and that I have the ability to endure it all… hold on.

            

And I held on. But I was having trouble breathing.

            

And for an even year I held on. Held on to the idea that this was what I was supposed to do. What a man is supposed to do, an adult American man. They sent me to a conference in Phoenix, I wore a suit and a name tag and tried to not slouch or sleep through lectures and presentations. I saw others there, kids like me, who were trying so hard to be grown-up. They had hidden tattoos, piercings that wouldn’t quite close, and we were all oh-so-miserable.           

            

Another month went by and the greatest thing happened, appropriately first thing in the morning, one morning. 

I was fired. And it was so amazing.

            

Blink your eyes and ten years goes by, they say or something along those lines. And, now, Irondale.

            

Irondale and the east neighborhoods of Birmingham City are separated by mere discrepancies.  Trains cars howl and grind at all hours of the night and day, all while I live in my best friend’s basement. And it is so amazing, so necessary for me right now. I can hear the words of the great dead American writers, their voices echoing in the caves and dark bars and yes, basements too, where they defined a meaning. I am cared for by friends and it’s so so amazing to be alive sometimes, and I feel dumb whenever I envision taking my own life, or ever getting another desk job.

            

And now I have fire, and bars, and a daughter, it’s okay.

            

We are all bored, we’re all so bored and sad, and disgusting, it’s okay.   

             

We’re all alone, or not alone, and clueless on what we are supposed to do with the rest of our lives, it’s okay.

            

And we get frustrated, and run out of ideas, or have so many ideas that none of them make sense, or they are dismissed and misinterpreted. It will be all right.

            

I can quote Husker Du, it’s okay.

            

It’s okay to cry your eyes out and run until you run out of breath. And loud loud music, dim lights, a crowd of smiles and band shirts. It’s really good.

            

A life like this? A life like this has to be earned, nothing is entitled. And things hurt, and there will be isolation, and heartache, and I accept it all, I will carry the demons. 

            

It’s okay.

I promise you it’s okay.

            

…

Yesterday a friend asked me if I wanted him to teach me to surf, sometime soon, before summer runs its course. The idea reminded me of sunshine blaring through a Pensacola window frame, and shallow breaths, a suit, a tie, a time clock… And this time, this time, I nodded yes and smiled.

“I’m a man with a one track mind. So much to do in one lifetime. Do you hear me people?” – Freddie Mercury