Black River (ebook): The Story of The Broken Comedian

By Dutch Van Alstin

Meet Oscar Bakker. He was “almost a someone once.” Oscar is referring to the fact that he left his economically depressed hometown of Rochester, New York for Hollywood in 1977 after dropping out of high school to pursue a dream. Oscar was on the verge of becoming a successful comedian and rubbing elbows with Hollywood elite. But his lust for cocaine, and his impulsive and self-centered behaviors derailed his boyhood aspirations and he traded Tinsel Town for rehabs and prison stints. Oscar’s Hollywood days included a toxic presence disguised as love via the graceless and troublesome southern beauty, Annabelle Foster. Their decades long and never-ending relationship is replete with sporadic dalliances that only cemented their codependency.

After his career crashed, and his life followed suit, Oscar went to a local saloon one night hoping to score some coke. What he found was a local motorcycle club just coming from their brother’s funeral. Oscar sat and listened to their words and the talk of the open road, freedom, and brotherhood and by night’s end, he had fallen idealistically in love with the whole concept. Feeling an epiphany had taken hold, Oscar spent his remaining cash on a used motorcycle and travelled around the country for the next year.

He landed in Okeechobee, Florida where he meets Michael (Ghost) Wright founder and president of the one-percenter MC Black River. Ghost is a strong and stoic leader of the club who always has their best interest at heart. The Wright clan are pariahs of Okeechobee County due to Ghost’s father committing a brazen and cowardly murder for which he was executed in 1965. Ghost and Oscar’s friendship grows quickly and eventually he invites this broken comedian to join Black River MC. Despite their closeness, both Ghost and Oscar hide secrets from one another that cannot stay buried indefinitely. But only one of their secrets can destroy Black River forever. In a true test of sacrifice and brotherhood, both realize the right choice doesn’t always end in true Hollywood fashion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781365287589

Book preview

Black River

THE STORY OF

THE BROKEN COMEDIAN

Dutch Van Alstin

Copyright © 2021 Dutch Van Alstin.

Cover design by Dutch Van Alstin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts

used in critical articles and reviews.

Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to individuals or events past or present

is coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-365-28758-9 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-365-28757-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-365-28756-5 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021920497

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Acknowledgments

I must thank some very special people who have been instrumental to me in my writing, each in their own unique way.

My very best friend, Jennifer JZ Zabetakis, a woman of wisdom, kindness, and extraordinary talent behind the lens that is only overshadowed by how much she means to me personally. Her friendship is invaluable.

B.B. Blaque. I could almost cut and paste the words above because she has been very influential in my life through her masterful writing and the erratic joy I feel in life. I am uncertain what I would do without her. I rely on her to help guide me in my life. We promised!

Miss Laurie Jo of Full Throttle magazine for all her kindness and help with my writing. I am so blessed to have met you.

I have to thank the one and only ‘Miss Cricket’ for her insight into this book and her many wise and creative suggestions, all of which I adopted. Whenever I’m stuck, I bounce an idea off her and it is returned to me tenfold. She has a special place in my heart.

My sister, Brenda Buckley, who has been encouraging my writing for many years.

I feel I must, again, include my friend and fellow author, Joseph Gary Crance, author of The Ryland Creek series, whose continued encouragement and support is indispensable to me. I wouldn’t have put pen to paper had it not been for him.

Chris Evert, a great supporter and friend.

Lee Hagood, husband, father, and a good man. Lee portrays Oscar on the cover.

Kit Andrew. Words cannot describe all you’ve done for me and any attempt would minimize it. Seriously. You keep me going.

The following were beta readers whose input and friendship have been instrumental:

Steve Austin, who not only did an in-depth reading of this book but has been a great companion from across the pond.

Michelle Barkes, who first heard me on the radio and is now my confidante when the world goes dark on me. She has pulled me up more than a few times.

Tonya Phillips (Almost there . . .), whose natural humor and charisma keep me grounded and focused. I appreciate her and treasure every second I spend with her.

And, again, a special huzzah to my very patient copy editor

and proofreader, Joyce Mochrie (www.onelastlookcopyedits.com) for her flawless, detail-oriented assessment of this book and her overall kindness to me throughout this process.

Roger Hickok. There are NO words, my friend and brother. NONE! You’re the best!

Good people, good music, good bourbon, good dogs, and the feel of the wind in my face as I race the rain. I never have the same ride twice. When I do, I will stop riding.

Holding her hand by the bay on a brisk, winter night, whomever she may be.

Crossing the Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida at dusk, hoping and praying the last of the orange stays with me forever and a day.

Dedicated to

Jesse James Mullen

On the 11th of July, 2020, a man died and a legend was born. I miss you, my brother. I can NEVER thank you enough for what you’ve done for me.

Save me a chair . . .

#Legend

Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedicated to Jesse James Mullen

CHAPTER 1 Death

CHAPTER 2 Escape

CHAPTER 3 Acknowledgement

CHAPTER 4 Now You See Me . . .

CHAPTER 5 The Drag Races

CHAPTER 6 The Eviction Procedure

CHAPTER 7 Boots, Belts, Bottoms

CHAPTER 8 A Damn Shame

CHAPTER 9 Missouri Bound

CHAPTER 10 Groundhogs Day

CHAPTER 11 I’m an Artist!

CHAPTER 12 You’re on the Road, It Doesn’t Count

CHAPTER 13 The Circle

CHAPTER 14  Familiar Faces

CHAPTER 15 He’s a Grown-Ass Man!

CHAPTER 16 Gum on My Shoe

CHAPTER 17 Curtain Number Three

CHAPTER 18 The Perfect Plan  Requires Perfection

CHAPTER 19 Artistic Pathology

CHAPTER 20 Dog Piss on the Floor

CHAPTER 21 Aunt Polly

CHAPTER 22 The Phone Call

CHAPTER 23 A Great Time to Buy Lotto Tickets

CHAPTER 24 The Announcement

CHAPTER 25 Monsters Under My Bed

CHAPTER 26 Mighty Mouse

CHAPTER 27 Make Me Feel Alive

CHAPTER 28 One More Time

CHAPTER 29 Hell

CHAPTER 30 Regrets

CHAPTER 31 The Right Thing

CHAPTER 33 You Had It All

EPILOGUE The Seed Was Planted

CHAPTER 1

Death

Somewhere in America Some Years Ago

T

he fire raged. The flames snapped with every inch that it grew. The heat could be felt by anyone within five hundred yards. The powerful rage of the blaze dominated the scene, battling those trying to tame it, but the fury was in control of the situation and continued to rule for hours. The red helmets rolled out miles of hose, ran to and from, and shouted out orders to one another, but their skill and dedication could not overcome millions of years of scientific certainty— fires burn.

How did you get out of there in time?

I don’t know . . . I . . . grace of God . . . I don’t know.

A gift from Prometheus, but an unwelcome endowment to those trapped inside the fallen structure. You could hear the screams throughout the valley until they were no more.

Dead. All of them, dead.

CHAPTER 2

Escape

Oscar / 1977 – Rochester, New York

"Oscar, life isn’t a joke. Life is serious business, and you don’t take it seriously. Being a

class clown isn’t going to be enough."

I’m more than that, Dad.

"No, actually, Oscar, no, you’re not more than that. You just fuck around in high school,

giving teachers a tough time, smoking grass, and thinking life is some easy ride."

You don’t think I know this will be hard?

You’re sixteen years old, Oscar—

I’m almost seventeen, Dad.

"No matter. You have no idea how hard life is. You have no idea how hard it’s going to

be. You’re supposed to do the right thing, Oscar."

"You sound like Mom, Dad. I’m tired of hearing how I’m supposed to ‘do the right thing’

all the time, and I’m tired of hearing what can’t be done."

Your mom is right.

"No, she’s not. I’m not rehashing all this shit again, Dad. The country is falling apart.

Unemployment is skyrocketing, gas prices are starting to go crazy, and America is in decline."

You’ll be graduating in a couple of years. I can get you in at Kodak. It’s a safe bet.

Nothing is safe, Dad. You’ve been laid off—

They’re going to call me back!

No, they’re not, Dad! Face it! There’s no future here for me.

"And you think dropping out of high school for some pipe dream out in California is

going to save you?"

"I’m not looking to be saved, Dad. I’m looking to find life. I’m looking for my passion.

I’m looking for me. I’m looking to live."

There’s the door! Enjoy failure, Son. I’ll see you when you come back after the weight of the world crushes you underneath its feet. And it will.

January 2021

Y

ou gotta love life. Perhaps it’s not mandatory, but if there was a way to make it so, I would do it. I see no other reason to get up every day and go about your daily life if you do so in abject misery. Life is full of highs and lows, as the old saying goes, but on balance, your happiness shouldn’t be in the red. Even in my darkest hours, I still would never surrender to the notion that life was supposed to be this way, or that it would never improve.

I learned you simply have to redefine what happiness is, and then acclimate your current situation around that concept.

I’m Oscar. I have no idea why my parents named me that. I’m not named after some long-lost uncle, nor is it a particularly popular name. It’s more popular in the Hispanic community, but my pale skin and ever-graying, red hair tell me I have more Irish than anything else.

My last name is more Danish than Irish, though. It’s Bakker. Yes, that’s with two ‘Ks.’ I can’t tell you how many times I have had to say that. No, not one, but two. I’ve had people question it even after I explain it to them, as if I somehow am unaware of how to spell my surname. No, I have no idea why it is spelled that way. No, I haven’t done any genealogy to research it. Because I don’t care. And I don’t. I believe it’s far more important to blaze a trail than research the origins of whose feet trekked behind you in some other path.

I had an agent who once dumped me as a client because I wouldn’t drop one of the Ks from my name for the sake of continuity. I didn’t like his train of logic. He tried to manage me instead of my career.

I guess explaining why I had an agent at one time may be of some benefit. You see, Oscar Bakker was almost a somebody, once. Oh, perhaps nothing huge, but if you Google my name long enough, you’ll see articles about my quick flirtation with stardom in the early to mid-1980s. I was an up-and-coming comedian–actor for a few years. I made some good coin and created some enjoyable times in my life.

It was my first time as an adult. Lots of people always said that Hollywood will break your heart. You can’t trust its loyalty to those who love it most. But I make it a habit not to listen to self-described soothsayers who tell you what can’t be done. I have found that those people are usually the ones who have tried and failed or failed to try. There’s something comforting for people to kill dreams in those who have them. Misery and loneliness go hand in hand. The goal for some is to keep their circle of unhappy people as large as they can. Somehow that will keep every man’s immortal enemy at bay—regret.

I have no regrets. I will never mourn something that created such happiness in me at some point. I will always love Hollywood and the days I had with her, but when you realize you meant nothing to her, and she rejects you, it’s a stinging and poisonous rebuke of your sanity. You can either spiral down with it or adapt. Oscar Bakker adapted. Many won’t. Many can’t. My heart goes out to them because I know they will never heal completely.

I dated Martha Davis in the early 80s. She was the lead singer of The Motels. I still have a few pictures of us out on the town in our heyday. She retired to Portland some time back. Once, about twenty years ago on a trip out west, I stopped at her home and tried to get in and see her. I never made it past the security.

My career as a comedian peaked in 1985 and was over by 1989. As I stated earlier, if you Google my name long enough, you’ll see stories of my quick flirtation with stardom. The truth is, you’ll have to wade through the plethora of articles about me in rehab, or me being arrested, or me being sent to prison. Every story starts out with that toxic word—former. Former comedian . . . former star of television . . . former this and former that turned cocaine addict and criminal. I almost made a comeback when I was originally cast in a new comedy series called In Living Color, but at the last minute, the powers that be pulled the plug on that and gave it to an unknown but up-and-coming comedian, Jim Carrey. The producers didn’t trust my ability to stay off coke and out of trouble. I proved them correct approximately six months later when I was swept up in a drug sting in New York. I was nobody’s comedian in Attica for two years.

For the next fifteen years, I was in various prisons, rehabs, and halfway houses. The bulk of money I had was gone, and I was washing cars for income. In 2002, I got a letter from some attorneys in California who sued to have me receive royalties from a movie I had a bit part in with Sylvester Stallone in 1982. My agent apparently sued so he could get his 15 percent. Now, every time that movie is sold, downloaded, or what have you, I get a $1.87 royalty after my agent takes his 15 percent. Such an amount may seem meager, and it is, but it does add up to approximately twenty thousand dollars per year for me. Part of the lawsuit gave me close to eight thousand dollars in retroactive payout—a far cry from the quick peak of my career, but between that and welding with my club brother Ghost here in Okeechobee, Florida, I live a good life.

But it was a tough fifteen years leading up to this idyllic life I have now. I left, or was thrown out of, so many rehabs in between prison stints, toxic relationships, and one on-again, off-again nightmare relationship.

Drug treatment is supposed to be tailored to the individual, but it seldom is. The facilities are normally rigid and inflexible, and the N.A. meetings are filled with know-it-alls who like to point out how your recovery is doomed to failure if you don’t do it their way.

Like any organization or institution, it is comprised of people, and with that comes all the moral and intellectual failures and propensity for corruption. There’s no exemption for civic organizations. They, too, are replete with arrogance and the need to control people.

The cold, hard fact is that I have not used cocaine since 2002. That’s nineteen years, if you’re doing the math. At age thirty-nine, I knew it was time for me to change things up a bit, but that was not my first intention when I had eight thousand dollars in my hand. The last thing an addict needs is newfound cash. I was living in a small town in eastern Washington. I don’t recall what brought me there, other than tagging along with a woman. She left, I stayed.

I took my eight grand, jumped in my truck, and went to a local bar that I knew to be a biker hangout. I was hoping to strike up a quick conversation, score some coke, and be on my way, but when a local motorcycle club rolled in, that quick conversation grew into hours. I remember one guy in particular named Teddy. I think he was their president.

They all just came from what I surmised was a funeral for one of their club brothers, and at first, I just listened in and heard them talking about the brother who died and what he meant to all of them. Then they all shared stories of their journeys with him all across the country and, without trying to do so, made me fall in love with the notion of the open road and poetic nature of it all. I wanted to know what it felt like to be Teddy. I hung on his every word, and his depiction of riding the highways of America was both stirring and profound.

As I ride today, relaying this story to you, I cannot recall a single word he said, but I recollect every second of the night. I still see the visuals of them in my mind’s eye, raising their mugs and laughing, and even crying, at times, over losing one of their own. They were a mixed family of misfits who all came together to share the passion of motorcycles and freedom.

I think all boys dream of this when they are young, but time, circumstances, and experiences often derail that dream into this quagmire known as life, and they never find their way back. The blessed ones never stray from the dream. The lucky ones find a means to return.

I left that night, never trying to buy the cocaine from them, or anyone else, for that matter. I took the eight Gs, bought a used 1988 Softail Springer, and set out to ride. I’ve ridden a few times—a friend’s dirt bike here and there—so I knew the basics of clutch, shift, lean. I took to it so naturally, I felt like I’d been in the saddle my whole life.

I spent the next year riding wherever I wanted. I rode south along the California coast and rode right past my old life in Hollywood and kept going. I zigzagged along the Midwest, then into New England, and then down the Eastern Seaboard, winding up at a diner in Okeechobee, Florida, and from there, I never left. No sooner did I drop the kickstand at this diner the day I rolled into town and wiped the dust from my eyes that a giant of a man, both in size and stature, pulled in next to me. Ghost was his name, and he proudly wore his club patch, Black River MC. He bowed his head at me and commented on my license plate.

All the way from Washington? he asked.

I just nodded.

That started a long friendship, morphing into brothers to this day. We were friends for nearly ten years before I decided to join Black River, but the point is that the second I threw my leg over the seat back in Washington, I never used cocaine again. Many people don’t believe me when I say to them that all it took was me, a motorcycle in the wind, and no direction to anywhere to find my way. But it’s true.

I may have a shot of whiskey when the situation dictates—a toast, a celebration, or some such thing. Purists in the recovery movement try to lecture me all the time about how anything other than total abstinence from all drugs, including alcohol, will definitely lead me back to cocaine. Since many of them smoke and drink coffee, I ask if their theory includes nicotine and caffeine, both drugs that spike your dopamine levels. I have learned that, too often, many people believe the correct way to do something just happens to coincide with the way they do things individually. Unfortunately, that level of hubris often drives their desire to force their personal choices onto other people.

Today, I am a proud member of Black River Motorcycle Club that Ghost founded in 1998. I, along with sixteen others, worked hard through the prospect process and earned our way. We all live the club motto, Esto humilis, patiens, fortis—be humble, be patient, be strong—and we do so, proudly, together. Ghost is only five years older than me, but he is my mentor. I’d die for him and any of these men whom I call brother.

He came up with the name Black River from a scary story his dad used to tell him when he was a boy about monsters who lived in the black river near an abandoned coal mine. Ghost won’t say the name was chosen to pay homage to his dad, but he admits that is where he got the idea.

As I was saying, the naysayers, the self-identified purists, are wrong. You find sobriety where you find it. You find family where you find it. I found my niche. I escaped my old life and found anew.

I found my passion. I found Oscar.

CHAPTER 3

Acknowledgement

Ghost / 1965 – Okeechobee, Florida

Did your dad buy you that bicycle with the money he stole?

Leave him alone, Mister Davis!

Now, ma’am, I meant no disrespect. I was just wonderin’ if your boy here knows he’ll always be known as the son of a killer.

Leave my son alone!

Says the wife of a killer!

Leave my mom alone!

Weeeell . . . lookie here! The boy’s got himself a temper like his pa, don’t he?

Shame on you, Mister Davis! Torturing a young boy who’s got nothing to do with any of this!

Now, I wonder if the Widow Radcliff is thinking the same way. I betcha since your daddy put a bullet in her husband’s head and stole eighty dollars from their cashbox, she ain’t gonna think too highly of a boy who’s already showing signs of a killer at his tender age.

You’re a despicable man, Mister Davis.

Gee, I don’t know, Missus Wright. I never shot no one in the head for no eighty dollars.

Ignore Mister Davis, Michael. Let’s go home.

Will they be calling you the ‘Widow Wright’ once they fry your husband in Starke tomorrow, Missus Wright?

You bastard!

Y’all need to get out of Okeechobee County, ma’am. All of y’all. Nobody wants you or your family here no more.

January 2021

"I

have to admit, sometimes I’m tired of being seen as the redheaded stepchild of MCs in this state, Ghost says. He then looks at me and smiles. Bad analogy, ain’t it?" he continues as he musses up my Irish locks.

No, I get ya. I know what you mean. Why do Demons Rising and Rebellious Youth get to be officers on the coalition board, and we keep getting passed by? I inquire.