(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
