Gary James: Autobiography

By Gary James

Gary James, the story as only he could tell it. He was there, and all detail has been carved into his brain by the hand of the Creator, the One True God, who created him. Born an artist, he has lived the life as an artist in all that he does, and he has done a lot. He has been all over Creation in his travels with the military and all the places in the US, where he has resided since he left home at the age of seventeen on an adventure of life in which few could imagine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098008741

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Gary James

Autobiography

Gary James

Copyright © 2019 by Gary James

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Preface

This autobiography is from me, Gary James, wishing that the reader is entertained, enlightened, and most importantly inspired. It’s my life’s story; this singular life as second. Undeterred, that to which we were anointed to live. Cleansed by fire into a martyr’s death only to be raised whole from it into that singular life, and as God as my witness, every word in this book is the truth. No enhancements, no embellishments within the confines of its seventy pages. It took nearly four years to pen, recorded through audio once, and wrote it in longhand twice. These words are inspired by the Creator; the one true God who came to earth as a man in Jesus. Unto which I devote my heart, mind, and body totally without reservations into a domain unique to us, given to me as the origins of that domain.

I was young during the sixties, too young to be a hippie but old enough to watch and learn from their mistakes. I saw the error of their ways and wanted to live outside that life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It wasn’t for me, and I became a better young man because of it. The old monkey see, monkey don’t do… That was the lot for my generation. We were there but not a part of it. We came of age in the seventies, and for all of its changes, we changed too. That change made me the man I was destined to be, the man I am today.

I am a born artist to live the life as an artist in all that we do. Life for me was preordained by God to do his bidding. One man can be the difference of life unto death and death into life. One man destined to be that voice for all to hear; my message is clear, repent or perish. The choice is up to you. Be the change. God is coming soon. Selah.

Acknowledgments

For my grandma, Carmen, without her sense of dread, my pregnant mother would have died, and I would have never been born.

And for my sainted mother for having me in the first place. My heart belongs to you. I love you for every breath taken since my birth. My sincerest thanks for them all.

For Mr. Joe Swanson, my mentor, my father figure and friend, as well as the wealthiest man I’ve known since 1972, and to Glen Emery, he has been my gallery owner and investor since 1975, I’ll always be indebted to him. And in recent memory, he has been the best wing man a bachelor like me could have.

And for the man I’m the closest to, my younger brother, Frank, the mechanic who saved me so many times with his engineering skills and brotherly love when I needed it the most.

Yours obediently I am,

Gary James

January 5, 2019

My name is Gary James. This is my autobiography. It is my story, my song. It begins at my birth. A miracle birth that begins at 8:00 p.m. on September 25. When my mother’s mother, my grandma Carmen, was struck to the core with a great sense of dread for her daughter, my mother—who was nine months pregnant and was due to deliver soon—screamed out her prophetic name, Maria de Los Angeles (Mary of the Angels), and dressed in a hurry and went and caught the last bus into Tucson, Arizona, from Nogales, Mexico.

She actually almost missed the bus, she had to scream for it to stop and pick her up. She arrived at my mom’s house just as my dad was fixing to leave with the car, and again she screamed for him to stop. She told my mom to get a sitter for my year-old sister, Melody, and for her and my dad to go directly to the hospital immediately, and they got to the hospital.

My mom was sitting in the exam room, and she started to lose the placenta—that’s bad, very bad. The placenta is supposed to come out after the baby is born, not before. Had we been at home, we would have died. Had my grandma missed the bus, we would have died. Had my dad left with the car, we would have died. As providence would have it at 12:12 a.m. on September 26, 1956, I was born Gary Wayne James to Paul and Maria James. I have been a blessed son of God ever since, a child of God, and I know now how it will end because I know how it all really began.

My mother told me a story that predates my earliest memory. We were living in San Marcos, Texas, where my brother, Frank, was born. I was almost four and was outside the back door steps, wearing only underwear. I was calling for my mom to come see this bug, saying, Come see this bug! She opened the door and looked down at me to see a deadly scorpion next to my barefoot. She snatched me up and out of harm’s way and stomped the scorpion to death.

Ever since, I wondered why that scorpion didn’t sting me, well, not then but years later. I’ve always had an affinity for them. My earliest memories start when I etched images in white face powder atop a dark mahogany dresser and watched the dust particles spin into images in the streaming sunlight of a window.

I learned the basics of light on dark and dark on light. I did it every day for long stretches of time or when my mom would stop me from using her face powder. So then, I would just turn and focus my attentions to the floating spinning dust-particle pictures captured in the sunlight of my pictures window.

Life for me as an artist started on the first day of kindergarten. When the teacher got in front of the class and clasped her hands together and said, Let’s see who all the little artists are! And when I heard the word artist, it was as if a thunderbolt had hit me square in the chest, and it almost floored me. I almost fainted. I knew then that I was going to be an artist.

When she said artists, and that we were going to finger paint. I figured artists create, and I found that I knew how to do just that. When all the kids were making a hell of a mess, and I was off to the side, I had covered a piece of cream-colored construction paper with brown finger paint and etched a sun and wheat field on it. I worked on it and settled on one version and was letting it dry.

A pretty little blonde-haired girl came walking up with lime-green paint all over both hands and said, Oh, how pretty! She touched my picture, leaving three lime-green fingerprints. I screamed and quickly recovered to apologize for my outburst ’cause I scared her, and I said, The prints added much needed color to it, and that’s okay, and don’t worry about it. Inwardly I was mortified.

My first masterpiece was defaced. Well, I took it home and showed it to my mom and said, Mommy, I’m going to be an artist. She kept it forty years and gave it to me. An appreciative gallery framed it free for me back in 2008, and the little blonde-haired girl’s lime-green fingerprints are still there.

That first day of kindergarten, I found out I was heterosexual. It was nap time, and each child had their own little throw rug to lay on. I was on mine behind the little blonde-haired girl and looking directly up her plaid skirt at her bare legs and white cotton panties that covered her bottom.

I was enthralled and had a big grin on my face, then I felt myself being picked up by the teacher, up off the ground by my belt. Hovering in the air, then being turned around the other way, and placed back down, and then I realized it wasn’t okay to look up a girl’s dress, but the damage was done. I was free to find beauty in the females’ form.

By coincidence, it was soon after that I found I was not homosexual. It was a hot September day. These two boys asked me to come see the fort they had made, and I said okay. They took me out into a large field of tall grass where they had smashed down a circular area that kept them hidden from view. They stood in front of me, unzipped their pants, pulled their wieners out, and said Hey, Gary? Wanna fuck? I was shocked and aghast! I split and went straight home and hid behind my dad’s easy chair. My mom asked me, What’s wrong?

I blurted out the word fuck! She said take me, and she took me by the hand, and off we went, but the boys weren’t there. I realized I didn’t like boys, not that way, not ever.

I’m an artist, and it’s the love of God and the love of a woman that makes him create. My first love was in the first grade in Oreana, Illinois. Her name was Kathy Lewis. She was blonde and blue-eyed, and she loved me. She had a big sister in the sixth grade, a huge behemoth who hated me.

You can’t imagine the disproportionate size difference between me and that monster who gleefully beat me to a pulp when she caught me with my one true love. Her baby sister she jealously protected. Yet there were times when I got in some alone time with Kathy.

We were going to get married and live in a purple house with a yellow fence with two kids. A boy and girl, and in 2006, I drew the purple house of our dreams. It’s one of my best creations—the old Victorian house on Main Street. It has a purple sunlit cast to it. Every time I look at it, I think of Kathy and how I took a twice daily thrashing to have her love as my own. She was my first love in the first grade. I’ve been a sucker for blondes ever since.

It was ’round about the second grade, and I came upon a big sixth grader hurting my three-year-old brother, Bruce, pushing him down and making him cry. I saw this and walked up and threw a hard overhand right into that monster’s solar plexus immediately knocking the wind out of him. Doubling him over and then slamming my closed fists on his back, with each blow, he exclaimed, Ka-ha! Ka-ha! I pounded till he ran away crying. I went and picked Bruce up and said, He won’t bother you anymore. That was the first time I ever felt God’s power coursing through my veins. I was half the boy’s age, half his size and weight. We made him run away crying in pain, a defeated foe, vanquished by God’s power that strengthened me to do so.

Early one Sunday morning, when I was seven, we were visiting my dad’s parents in Malden, Missouri. I was compelled to stand by the mimosa tree in the front yard just a few feet from the sidewalk; an old man came walking by. He was wearing a black suit, a white shirt, no tie, and a wide-brimmed black hat. He said hello and went over to a large oak tree by the road, and in the crevice of a root was a huge red wasp flying in place. He reached down and cupped his hands under it, and the wasp was flying in place above his palms. As he was carrying it over to me and presenting it inches away from my face, he said in a kind voice, See? He doesn’t want to hurt you. He loves you!

There it was, this huge red wasp flying in place just above this old man’s hands. I said, Yeah, really.

The old man then returned the wasp back to where he had got it from and continued on his way. And even to this day, the remembrances of the image of that wasp flying in place above that old man’s hands is as vivid now as it was so long ago. Freaky, no? Truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Like most kids, I watched a lot of TV when I was