Sex, Religion and Motorcycles

By Peter Payne

Peter Payne survives his psycho/alcoholic family and years of Catholic school to emerge into a vibrant and fun world. San Francisco provides a fine backdrop to the story as well as biking vacations in Europe and Australia. His love life is populated with wacky females and a tempestuous relationship with a horse. Fun read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Payne
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311142580

Peter Payne

currently on extended vacation in S.E. Asia

Book preview

Sex, Religion and Motorcycles

A Journey by Peter Payne

Published by Abyss Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Peter Payne

Any resemblance to persons or places is strictly coincidental. All events in this story are fictional.

This work is dedicated to my Mac Book, Dragon Speech and the very few who believed in me.

All copyrights and rights to reproduce or distribute this work are solely the property of the author

Table of Contents

Forward

Nine

Nineteen

Twenty-nine

Thirty-nine

Forty-nine

Fifty-nine

Foreword

Due to the extreme dyslexia of the author this work was begun with the aid of a transcriptionist. Unfortunately the transcriptionist couldn’t spell very well so the work was continued with the aid of a copy editor. Through no fault of her own, being an extraordinarily beautiful girl, she partied very heartily and missed quite a few things. The author finally invested in the ‘speak and spell’ program Dragon, added this to a very powerful little Mac Book and empowered himself to complete the work. It was then that Dragon was discovered to have some flaws of its own and a lot of homonyms had to be hunted down and corrected. If you discover any errors in this text please give yourself a great big pat on the back but don’t go looking for someone to blame, the errors in this text could’ve come from a multitude of sources. As the work was begun on the beaches of southern Mexico and then completed on a delightful little island off the coast of Thailand, there have been a great many distractions. The author’s dedication to correct and finish this work came only from his strict religious upbringing and complete avoidance of celibacy. No motorcycles were harmed in the writing of this book. With any luck, Chapter 69 will be coming out later, possibly in 2017 if we all make it to there

Nine

It was 1957, I was nine years old and I knew I was fucked. One day while standing at the head of the classroom I noticed a news clipping that had just been pinned up. Sputnik, baby moon circles earth. The clip went on to say that math and sciences were to be stressed in future education, the nation had to catch up with ‘ The Russians ‘, scientists were needed in thousands and by my deduction, the poets were screwed. I had no talent for math, not even times tables would stick in my brain. I should have taken my dreams of winning the Nobel Prize in literature and trashed them at that very moment. Math was always my downfall but reading had always been my salvation. Readers Digest, National Geographic and our family Colliers Encyclopaedia gave me more than I got at school. It was still a few years before I would eventually get the glasses I needed to be able to see the blackboard, so I just sat there, back at my desk, bored and catatonic, while the nun created those unseeable marks on the chalkboard. At the end of the session I would run up real close and try to take some furious notes to understand what had gone on in class that day and write the pages to do for homework. Once I had a text in my hand, things went better unless numbers were involved.

It turned out to be very handy that I had my face pressed up against the chalkboard because the rat pack couldn’t figure out that I was secretly keeping an eye on them. One day there were just four of them speaking together conspiratorially and pointing thumbs and fingers in my general direction. When they left the classroom and bolted down the stairs I edged over towards the windows to see where they were going. They ducked into the bushes up in front of the convent, picking up rocks and sticks to launch an attack as I walked by, hopefully oblivious to their ambush. As long as I kept my intelligence hidden I could pretend not to notice and find routes to go home to avoid their little fun and games. I saw that some parked trucks were blocking their view of the intersection, so I left by the side door, skirted alongside the building and dashed across the street where they couldn’t see me, another daring daylight escape. Now it was on to my home two blocks away to run the next gauntlet

Through the beveled glass at the bottom of the stairs I could see that the fish had not been fed yet. That meant hot-headed brother S2 had not arrived home. The baseball bat and glove were still leaning in the corner, showing that Eldest Son was not home yet either. The other two I could outmaneuver, so I boldly opened the front door and sneaked up the stairs to my sweet little home. Mama was standing in front of the sink, as usual, muttering away and scrubbing on a pot, dad would not be home for another few hours, so I made my run to the upstairs bedroom on silent cat feet. I threw off my black and white speckled corduroy pants solid blue shirt and blue school tie, changed into forbidden tennis shoes, Levi’s and a T-shirt and made another quick dash to the freedom of the streets.

It was just two blocks away to Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park and the trees, lakes and wide-open grassy meadows full of life and freedom. Escape was tricky, upstairs, out the dormer window, over the roof, walking softly. A leap to the porch roof and then a ballet walk across the tops of the fences all the way down the block to the empty lot, where I could make it safely to the street. I perfected the art of walking along the tops of the fences so I wouldn't be in anyone's yard, and only in the no man's land of the fence top. As long as I was in no one’s back yard the barking dogs and pulled back curtains couldn’t harm me.

The Sunset District was like a flat sheet cake, cut into equal squares of city blocks, numbered streets running north to south, alphabet streets running east to west. Not like an artistic plan or something but functional. The seemingly endless, little square blocks each with a hundred homes, was broken by the massive green zone of Golden Gate Park. The park started right at Ocean Beach and trailed off all the way to downtown: a massive area of nature surrounded by concrete, streets, houses and commercial enterprises.

A dash across four lanes of killer cars and death buses and I was safe. A dive into the bushes and I was free. No more concrete, no more assassins to dodge. Dirt, grass, trees, lakes and ponds randomly scattered for miles. Birds, bunnies, squirrels and small animals of all kinds as well as well stocked duck ponds. A nature preserve in the middle of the city where even I was safe from attack.

My first destination was usually Stow Lake, it had a boathouse with canoes, motorboats and snacks. Pink bricks of popcorn, mustard swathed hotdogs and candy bars were there if you had the money. A really flush day and an electric motor boat could be mine for a cruise around the circular lake. I could become a majestic captain at sea in command of my own ship, silently sailing past the waterfall, under rock bridges and through flotillas of ducks. On the best of days, after a majestic cruise, a short walk would lead to the back entrance of the Japanese tea garden. I would stroll as a Japanese noble, admiring the carefully tended gardens and Zen displays of bonsai. Artistic bridges of zigzag stones, stepping-stones and high arching bridges, it was an Eastern philosophy Par course. For $.39 I could take a seat in the teahouse and be honorably served by a blushing geisha in full regalia bringing me Jasmine tea and rice cookies. She would always give a sly smile as I gave a bow from my chair and sipped the tea, contemplating the gardens and carp drifting in the ponds. Feeling like a samurai I would arise and walk slowly away to the DeYoung Museum.

I would wait by a rear exit for someone to come out, and then make a sudden rush through the open door to avoid the entrance fee. The hall of arms was my favorite. Suits of armor, swords, spears and a World War I Renault tank were my private armory. The tank had a shell hole in it and I would have mysterious dreams of who was in it and whether they survived. The galleries of paintings had to be avoided, too many guards and ushers. It was just a quick rush past the Rodin sculptures and then back outside. If it wasn’t Sunday, the band shell would be empty and a sense of grandeur was found standing on the conductor’s podium, gesturing musical movements to the pigeons under the well pruned trees.

There would be another patient waiting by the exit at the aquarium, when someone walked out and held the door open there would be another free ticket to the fish and reptiles within. The crocodile pit was fascinating. I spent a lot of time there watching and I kept planning how to lure the rat pack in there and somehow get them over the railing where they could be nudged into the pit and devoured as I watched with joy. As often as I waited there they’d never appeared, the closing announcements would drive me away from the darkened halls of fish tanks and back out into the evening Park. I would wander through the arboretum or return to the rock bridge over the lake and watch the ducks and swans cruise back to their island homes. In the fading light of dusk I’d drag myself back home for the evening feeding.

The table was presided over by Dad, usually half tanked by then. On his right was the Eldest Son, Eson was a blockhead, and few things short of a wallop to the skull even got his attention. I found a hidden certificate of emergency baptism hidden in mama’s secret drawer, research showed he was born dead but perked up later but not much. Second Son, 2son, was a hothead with a temper like a short fused bomb. Eson and 2son had titanic battles. Mama would rush the stairs to their room Aw they’re killing each other again! was her battle cry as the walls shook and smashing sounds were accompanied by screams of death. I enjoyed those moments. Opposite each other were 3son and 4son, their battles were always one sided with psychopathic 3son pinning scrawny 4son to the wall or floor and attempting to scare him to death. Those two seldom drew blood but made lots of dramatic noise. I was considered to be beneath notice, guilty of the heinous sin of being born, as well as the unforgivable condition of being young. To resist the will of any family member was a desire beaten out of me early by all of them. Sins, such as breathing, were punished unmercifully unless I could run away and hide until the short memory syndrome came to my rescue. Even as an adult, if I hear an angry raised voice I start for the nearest exit, even if it is a window.

One day I was trying to decide where to go in the Park after school, Wham! Came the knuckle on the top of my head as the nun snatched up my paper of doodles. This goes into your permanent record, she shouted, my daydream of wandering in the park shattered. Now and forever those little ships and airplanes I was mindlessly doodling would be held against me. I would face God at the Final Judgment with those doodles being waved at my face by the Devil’s Advocate. The only way out, confession, prayers at the alter and a firm purpose of amendment to never doodle again.

The nuns wanted all us kids nailed to our crosses and sent right up to heaven, after sufficient suffering, with our permanent record nailed up over our heads. The nuns were terrifying, tall, all dressed in black with white starched bibs tucked under their chins and white starched wimples above their eyes. Their huge black dresses were held on with a 3 inch wide leather belt, the tail of which hung down almost to their ankles making a real handy strap to pop kids with. From the other hip hung a huge chain of rosary beads with beads about a half-inch wide. I saw one running kid get lassoed around the neck by one of those. He jerked back and hit the ground like a calf at the rodeo.

The nuns all wore little wedding rings on their hands; they were the brides of Christ. I was in terror that one of them would tell Jesus what I’ve been doing, and he would fling me into the fiery pit. You don’t mess with God’s wife.

I was walking to school a little early one morning, and just as I passed the convent, a black robed nun was picking up milk bottles to bring inside. Come up. Help me she said. I could barely stop from pissing on myself, trembling with fear I went up to the forbidden doorway, picked up some of the glass jugs of milk and followed the giant black robe into the forbidden Temple of the Virgins. Shaking so hard that the bottles rattled in my arms, we entered the kitchen, I put the bottles down on the floor just as more nuns came down the stairway. They were in white dressing gowns with white hoods over their heads and began to giggle hysterically as they saw my little self in the kitchen. I bolted for the door as the half-dozen women cackled and laughed. I grabbed up my book bag and ran for my life.

The nuns had always terrified me. All four of my wild brothers had already gone through eight years at that school. On my very first day in class the nun read out our names and when she came to mine she stopped, called on me to stand up and said, now you listen to me young man, I’ve had all of your brothers in this classroom and I’m not going to take any nonsense out of you at all. I am going to watch you. For the next eight years I was very seriously watched. I could not raise my hand to defend myself without getting thrown in a headlock by some giant woman in huge black robes. My brothers had left a reputation I was not going to be allowed to live up to.

There was a little dead time during our perpetual religion class and Sister Precious Blood asked if anyone had any questions. Being naive, I remembered that I had been browsing through Dante's Divine Comedy down at the Public library and stumbled across some very surprising information. Sister, I have a question. Yes Peter, what is it?, Why is Pope Benedict the 13th in Hell? Because I was reading..... I stopped talking because I realized Sister Precious Blood's face had knotted up in the shape of a hideous mask and turned bright cherry red. A shrill scream of Where did you read that? left me terrified enough to leave a piss puddle on the floor.

I crawled out of the office of Sister Superior, after a near death experience from a tongue-lashing. I was handed a copy of the Index of Forbidden Books and was advised to read it carefully. Before I returned to class I folded the paper up for later reference. I thought I might need to consult those books.

I got into my usual play clothes grabbed the sheet of paper with the forbidden books on it and headed off up the street to wait for the streetcar. The green and cream striped street ship came wallowing down the rails, the Mama in a bottle sounds of the brakes started rattling as it slowed down to pick me up. The brakes made the sound of bottle makes when it hits the concrete floor but bounces instead of breaking, mama in a bottle was the rattling sound as the big brakes pressed down between the steel wheels to slow the street car to a halt.

A cyclopean single headlight on the nose glowed weekly in the sunlight on the nose of the streetcar; it slowed, rolling like a boat. When it stopped the double accordion doors glided open, stopped for a second, started to close and then slid open only to start closing again. The streetcars were starting to get old and they malfunctioned now and again. I timed my move carefully and darted between the doors, dropping my dime in the fare box. I found a seat near the rear with an old magazine lying on it. It looked like a crushed Field & Stream but as I threw it onto the floor I saw that it was an Argosy normally I would’ve picked it up and read it but it obviously been sat upon and you just don’t know what that could’ve been left on it.

The big whale-like beast rolled and pitched down the street, between curbs, sidewalks, houses a half inch part and the occasional old store. I rode the rolling boat in the concrete trough of street, curb and endless structures. People getting on and off, faceless, unknown passengers paying fares, finding seats and silently looking out at the river bank of stucco and cement passing by. A boat load of unseeing bodies in silence, watching a familiar landscape flow by the windows, little islands of stores here and there, a bunch of them at Ninth Avenue where the steel wheels squealed and made a one block S-curve from Judah down to Irving. Irving Street had a string of small dark bars and cocktail lounges. Darkened doorways with barely visible red leather stools and booths. The Embers, The Whirlpool Lounge and Girls on the Rocks all slid by in the rolling diorama.

The squeals and lurching began again when the beast swung hard left and plunged into the dark tunnel, picking up speed, wallowing, pitching, and rolling, almost scary. Little round pod lights in the roof went on, blinding the windows, the vague black concrete walls flying past, faces reflected in the darkened glass emotionless. The brakes rattled wildly, the great streetcar slowed, springing out into the light, screeching onto Market Street beneath the massive granite Federal Mint, that didn’t mint anything anymore. It made it to Civic Center and stopped at my other place of peace the Main Library.

San Francisco Main was a massive granite fortress filled with books, wonderful books, and vast stacks of books with two huge vaulted rooms just holding the card files. A palace to literature, marble sweeping stairs, gold encrusted chandeliers, vast oak tables and chairs on which to feast on stories, facts and ideas. I breezed past the catalogue cards and made my way into the back stacks. Then I realized I had my sheet full of forbidden books from the nun. I turned back to the huge files of cards. I thumbed my way through the alphabetized catalogue cards but none of the books could be found. I decided to check the stacks. There were the stately and neat open shelves of common books, popular books and reference works in the grand public areas of the library. The stacks were more like the closed nether regions of a store or lumberyard, rough and full of raw materials. The metal racks of books were 2 or 3 stories high with a sort of catwalk for the adventurous readers to browse through them.

I went through to my normal grazing grounds in the 700s to 800s. The 700s were crowded up with old greasy men in suits. They blocked my free movement, interfering with my browsing so much that I had to clear them out. First a dry hacking cough got their attention, then a wet sneeze with a fake booger wiped off on my hand. It was the big buzzing fart that got them running, they moved off like a herd of animals to the 400 and 500 section leaving me in peace, the 700s were mine.

The clunking cart came down the large walkway, a pale spidery guy, a librarian, was reshelving. He bumped me with the cart let me by please, as he slid the card past my butt he muttered that was pretty rude. I ignored him. He saw my book list and snatched it out of my hand. I stared silently at him. He giggled none of these here he said but if you want stuff like this come. Warily I followed him from far behind. He minced down the dark walkway and took the metal stairway leading to the depths of the stacks. At the bottom floor level, in the bowels of the building, he ran his hand over the wall and flicked on a light. Check these out I held back until he moved away from the row of shelves. It looked like some sort of a trap, I saw there were escape routes open out of the row in back and into the sides, I looked in carefully. Take a look at House of Dolls and some of the others next to it he said. He gave me sort of knowing look as he went back up the stairs to finish reshelving.

I leafed through some of the books he mentioned, they seemed incredibly interesting. The stories were about people in some kind of a prison, presided over my murderers. I could identify with that, being in Catholic school and living with my family of beasts. There were other titles and authors I never heard of. I grabbed some of the books and made notes on my copy of the Index with the stubby pencil the library left out. I found myself in a nest of holocaust literature, reading them I felt a comfort, knowing other people had lives like mine.

Before dark I caught the streetcar home and got off out of sight of the house. I snuck in through the garage and hid my books, to pick them up later. The family did not approve of my reading and any sort of possession was considered contraband. Once it was quiet I snuck them upstairs. I spent most of the night secretly browsing and reading through some of the books I had picked up. I was fascinated and terrified. I had finally found stories about people whose sufferings were worse than my own.

I barely made it to school on time the next day and sat sort of vacuous in my desk waiting for the day to end so I could back to my books. My coma was broken up by the speaker box at the head of the classroom broadcasting a Peter Payne, Peter Payne, come to the office, bring your books. The last phrase was ominous, it meant that I was in for a long session.

The summons to the office was mysterious because I had done nothing for the entire week, I just sat paralyzed in my desk. I dutifully and shamefully walked the death mile down to Sister Superior's office. Sit down, Sister Superior directed me to a seat. A boy from the 8th grade was sitting in the other chair in manacles with a black hood over his head. A 6th grader was hanging crucified upside down over the entry door, there were muffled sounds coming from a locked trunk by the radiator. A gnarly white bony hand emerged from the black nun’s outfit and pointed at me, Your parents are coming for you.

Now I was sure this was some kind of a death sentence. Even the eighth grader shrank away from me. No one had ever returned to school after being picked up by their parents in the middle of the day. The only other such occurrence happened after Phil had been caught peeking into the girl's bathroom. I believe he died after five days on the cross after his parents had disowned him and stricken his name from the family records. While I was preparing my last words, the green '52 Pontiac Chieftain four-door pulled up at the foot of the stairs. The right side back door swung open as if by itself, just as it would when dad would track me down somewhere in Golden Gate Park and come sliding up in his silent way. My mother was in the car, a very unusual thing, as she never left her kitchen. I walked out of the frying pan of Sister Superior's office and into the potential flames of the Pontiac.

While driving, my parents actually spoke a few words to each other but I was too terrified to actually listen to them. After pulling out from the curb, my father did not reach under the front seat, pull out a brown paper bag and unscrew the cap from the half pint of Bourbon Deluxe as he always did. All the signs were that something exceptional had happened.

Sitting in the waiting room, hugging my pile of schoolbooks, I watched a doctor and my parents walking away from the Emergency Room and I heard the doctor say, He will never walk again. My mother put her hand to her face and sobbed. In all my life I had never seen her do anything close to that. 2son had hit a cement truck with his car and had broken his neck.

They kept my 2son in Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco and as his birthday was coming up in a week, my father decided to throw a big birthday party for him at the hospital. Once again I knew I was screwed, because my brother's birthday and mine were exactly ten years and one day apart. On the day of his birthday, mom and dad and I arrived at his private room where he was lying in a bed and a set of what looked like ice tongs drilled into the side of his head. Some weights on a rope were dangling off a pulley attached to the tongs. Gradually all my father's herd of drunken friends began hoofing in. There were drunks out on the fire escape, there were drunks out in the hall, there were bottles and paper cups everywhere, and in my brother's room were the heaviest concentration of the heaviest drunks.

Big, red-faced, Sergeant Sullivan, in his blue go-to-church suit, wanted to emphasize a particular point and raised his right foot to place it on the bedrail as if it were a bar rail. He missed. He put his foot on top of the weights, attached to the tongs of the traction system, leaned forward and ripped the tongs right out of 2son’s skull. Chaos broke out. Nurses were running my brother’s bed to the elevator to go back down to the operating room and the head doctor had my father pinned to the side of the hallway giving him the dressing down of his life, except for the worse one he got from my mother when we got home. Twice now they had actually spoken to each other.

That was the last drunken party that my father ever threw. For the rest of his life he sat in the front room jingling ice cubes in his highball glass alone. No more big parties where I could hide under tables and behind couches as stumbling feet and crashing chairs filled the house with the music of the drunks. There was no more table of card cheating uncles slamming chips and shouting discoveries of hidden aces, no more drunken aunts sobbing and slobbering, no Christmas, no St Patrick’s day, not even a birthday. My brother seemed to recover from the whole incident although we were given the big hairy eyeball every time we went to the hospital.

The rat pack still remained to terrorize me. Five undersized fellow classmates had formed a pack that went in search of small creatures to torture and vacant lots to torch. They even bragged of plans to steal cars once their legs could reach the pedals. On Mondays out in the schoolyard I could hear them giggling and laughing over all their latest adventures of arson and anarchy

I became a favorite target. Mama had convinced me not to fight back at my sadistic brothers to maintain peace in the house. I already had learned that resistance to six people twice to three times my size was futile and painful. Any form of violence that involved me at school was instantly my fault, due to the history my brothers had rung up. The rat pack gleefully found that as soon as I heard a raised voice or saw a raised hand I was off and running at full speed.

The rat pack took advantage of my training and even though most of them were a foot smaller than me, I accepted their attacks without striking back. Even chasing them off didn't work, as a nun would see a larger kid after a smaller one and grab me and slap my ears off.

The critical day arrived when the smallest kid in my class confronted me with a waving fist, expecting easy glory. This kid was not a relative or a member of the rat pack, so I decided to send a fist flying at his nose. He panicked and began swinging wildly as the gathering crowd urged him on. I let three good shots go to his chest and he fell crying. The mood of the crowd shifted; they called to me hit him in the face, hit him in the face! even the rat pack was impressed and I found peace for a while.

We were given an emergency fire drill. It was a test of the new liberalized system. After a few dozen children were burned to death in a fire at Queen of the Angels Grammar School in Chicago, the powers that be decided to loosen the rules of hierarchy. Instead of having to go through several layers of religious management in order to declare a fire, it was decided that someone who noticed the school was on fire could go outside the hierarchical channels of the Church and take the risk of pulling the alarm with out seeking ecclesiastical permission.

The test of the new streamlined system, permitting anyone to pull the fire alarm whenever they detected the presence of fire, instead of referring to church law, was going to be implemented carefully, bad publicity was seen as more harm than the dangers of free will.

The Fire alarm sounded and as orderly as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, we marched down our assigned staircases and formed up in files in the schoolyard. While standing out there I began to remember scenes from some of the books I’ve been reading. Prisoners called out to stand in formation, supervisors dressed all in black, Army officers and soldiers carrying rifles all making sure that there was no resistance.

I wasn’t really all that surprised when my eldest brother joined a religious order. He had moved out of mama’s house for about 48 hours after high school when he realized his life was completely unmanageable and turned himself over to the Brothers of the Sacred Service. He could’ve been a priest but instead he joined a religious order where men behave mostly like nuns. They wore big black dress-like outfits with two little bucktooth looking squares at the neck but had no religious duties. They taught mainly in high schools and lived communally with vows of poverty chastity and obedience. I was still confused that he did this to himself, but at the time, giving your life to God seemed like a good idea especially if it came with free food and housing.

When my third oldest brother, after being thrown out of high school, was encouraged to join the United States Marines by a judge who offered that, or jail for a good long period of time, I began to really wonder what was going to become of me. My four older brothers, who should’ve been upstanding role models to a growing boy, had all pretty much given up on going out and having a life. Another judge sent brother number four, into the Army, as he didn't think the Marine Corps needed two Paynes and the jails were full of stupids already, I was thirteen years old and it was going to be a long road to high school. All four of the giant monsters had suddenly been cleared out of the house. Almost at a stroke the hospital, the church and the military had swallowed them up.

At last I had a room to myself, where I wouldn't have to pretend to be asleep, when a drunken brother would stumble in, to bring terror in the night. I could touch things around the house without screams and threats driving me to run out of doors. From birth into the Payne family I learned I couldn’t hide. Furniture could be pulled away, curtains torn off, beds flipped over, hiding in closet and bathrooms didn’t work as doors could be ripped open or kicked in. Escape from the monsters was only possible outside where small size and quick thinking could pay off. But then, in just about a year, they were all gone, now only Mom and Dad could clobber me.

I didn’t miss the terror but the days became a deadening sameness, Mom at the sink, muttering and cursing her pots, Dad in his chair in the front room drinking his highballs and 2son in his bed, flailing his stick arms and calling out, Peter, come here for a minute, one thousand times a day and night, demanding the bed up/down, pee bag drainages and more water in the drinking jug.

Peter, come here for a minute became an unceasing pain. I began to hate the sound of my name and the 'minute' that became an hour of fussing and adjusting. Never was anything done right or often enough. The grinder pounder in the kitchen had a new thing now, 2son worship, he was now her reason for living. Any move I made towards the front door would be met with Go in and see what 2son wants and always he’d want something, adjusted, moved, cleaned, filled, emptied, raised, lowered, turned up or turned down or off or on. A terribly crippled person brings out sympathy from even the worst of us. I felt terrified to see this violent crazy hot head so terribly smacked down but after years and years of dependency and need, rewarded with spite and denial, I began to harden over to it.

The Park became more and more the only escape for me besides my books. My reading was always interrupted for a minute and Mom added, those damn books to her muttering. Tranquility was in the grass and trees. Nature, at peace with itself, was a heaven beyond the nuns, school and hideous home life. Hours spent quietly contemplating a lake was a thousand times more of a comfort than 'home'.

The St. Suffering Sebastian’s Elementary School gave way to the Sacred Bleeding Shroud High School of the Brothers of the Sacred Service. Now, instead of a short walk, a bus ride across town was added to my education. The Brothers of the Sacred Service all live together in a big four-story house attached to the high school. They were a funny group of fellows, all wearing big black dresses, living in a house composed entirely of men and spending their days in rooms full of young boys. I should’ve been much more suspicious of them but as my big macho Elder Brother had joined up I simply let myself believe that was all to the greater glory of God.

When I made it to my first day in high school my mind was made up that this was going to be different, any attempts to bully, intimidate or push me around were going to be settled right away. I was not going to spend years being terrorized by a little rat pack, as it was back in grammar school. After being issued a locker number and purchasing the standardized lock down at the little bookstore, I was just getting acquainted with that self-same new locker when little Michael Culack crouched down next to my knees, gave me an elbow and said, Get out of my way. I knew that this was the moment. I put a few well placed kicks and a knee to the middle of his shoulder blades and Michael Culack had just about totally occupied his new locker, at which point I kicked the door shut on Michael Culack. I walked away slowly and honorably. Never had a moment’s trouble in that locker room for the next four years. I was learning.

In the next four years Michael Culack would return to confront me, sometimes with back up, I’d simply kick his ass again. I was looking forward to this high school thing. I found myself sitting in a classroom under the authoritarian thumb of a man in a big black dress as opposed to the previous woman in a large black dress. Within a week I found myself spending as much time staring out the window as possible, while some jabbering guy in a large black dress scribbled with chalk on a blackboard, babbling about theology, math, history and science. At least I had finally gotten