The 1980s were “berry berry good to me.” (An SNL quote from that era for you youngsters…) I moved from Wisconsin to Arizona in 1983, and I had amazing times with family and friends old and new! And if you aren’t in a photo, it doesn’t mean I don’t remember you–We just didn’t all walk around with cameras in our hands back then. But I appreciate all of my family and friends from the 1980s and many of you are still with me!
My favorite Uncle Dick came to visit us in Arizona in 1984 or so. He and my Aunt Cookie were always my faves, and I visited them for a week or so nearly every summer for decades in Chicago. Lots of drinking and chilling. Uncle Dick was a union electrician Democrat, so Eric the libertarian always had to try to give him some shit–Hahaha!
At my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Chicago in the early ’80s. We would play cards, drink and smoke for hours at family gatherings. Note the rather full glass of JD on the rocks…
I was a parking attendant in Milwaukee while was in college at UWM. It was right across the street from a dance club called “Park Avenue” and I got a free membership and free beers all night long because I knew the owner and all the bartenders. Sweet!!! (The music sucked though…)
My ticket to free beer!!!
My good friend Brian and the two of us on our way to visit his future bride Karen in El Paso. Smell the Glove!!!
A Halloween party with Brian in about 1982. Like my eye makeup and ascot? Hahaha!!
The entire gang of skinitches in Milwaukee in the early ’80s. I can recognize The Beave, Satchel Ass, Scooter, Paws, Teddy, and The Pin. We all had nicknames that have pretty much stuck with us to this day–Hahaha!!
Brian and Scooter drinking and probably trying to harmonize on a Beatles song.
Visiting my bro Kevin and his buddies at the University of Dayton. The school bookstore used to sell shirts that read: “UD–It’s a Great Vacation” but I think they put a stop to that much truth in advertising! And it was certainly true as you can see from this photo of Kevin, Jersey Jim, Lenny and I–Hahahaha!!!
My last stop before driving to Arizona was to visit Kevin in Dayton. UD really was a great vacation!!
Party in Puerta Vallarta with Kevin and his future wife Sandy in 1988.
I arrived in Arizona and discovered a really cool band called “The Effects.” And a chill bar called “Ninth and Ash.”
My nephew Brad as a baby. Funny pic, Sis–Hahaha!!! Is that some kind of veegie swill?
Me trying to look suave for my girlfriend Cindy back in 1984.
My friend Robert and I hanging in the ’80s. He calls this pic “The Monk and the Choirboy”–Hahahaha!!!
My friend Kitty back in about 1987 or so. She married Robert’s best friend Matt but he had a real job so Robert, Kitty and I would go out and hit the Tempe music scene back in the day.
ERIC THE BABYSITTER
Believe it or not, I was a babysitter for Bridget and Alex, my friends Val and Mary’s kids. There was no “real work” after graduation so I babysat and wrote term papers (check out that story of you are curious…) I met them through my friend Robert as well.
I also babysat for Alex, my friend April and Michael’s son in the late 1980s. Alex and I both had our funky costumes!
Me, Alex, his GF Sami and mom April in 2018. Alex turned out to be a great kid and I wish him all the success in life!
You’ve already seen band pics if you checked out any of my music stories, but here’s a few for grins in case you haven’t. I did play a lot of music in the 1980s before I started my real career in advertising. It was always a hell of a lot of fun!!!
My second band “Flashback” in about 1982. Still friends with these jokers too–Hahaha!!
Flashback live at Thoma’s in about 1981…
“Cleaver Beaver” live at Zak’s in Milwaukee 1981. My lifelong friends Kevin and Dano on the left.
I joined St. Bernard after they released their 45. Imagine a vinyl record, although I hear rumors vinyl is making a comeback these days…
Playing a gig at some funky record store on the east side of Milwaukee in 1983.
I was in a band called the Toasted Notes in Arizona in 1987. It was a fun mixture of material, and our leader Luke was a great songwriter and teacher in terms of his musical vision. I can honestly say that I owe Luke a huge debt of gratitude in terms of raising my level of musical ability to make me a competent player of reggae and ska music with a rock edge in the vein of his old band “The Effects.” I learned the songlist on the right, and the cover songs became the basis for my contribution to my next band “Brave New Groove.”
I did get to play “with” the Effects on one recording though, and here it is…
We had several versions of the band, but I’m not going to tell that story here!
I moved back to Milwaukee from Arizona in 1988 for a couple of years. That’s its own story and it definitely involves a woman! But I did have the pleasure of playing in Brave New Groove, and you can hear some of our stuff in my blog story about them. It’s good stuff–Have a listen!
One of our regular gigs at a place called Bunker’s in West Allis, Wisconsin. The band got paid $250/night and all the beer we could drink! Needless to say, I got my money’s worth…
As you might have figured out from some of my stories, I’ve worked with a few well-known people over the years doing commercials and photo shoots, etc. And I met some others through my musical and political adventures. Of course, it was generally verboten to pose for pics unless the celebrity offered, and here are a few for your amusement…
I’ll start with my two favorites whose last name is coincidentally “Paul” in both cases. This is Les Paul who pretty much invented multi-track recording and designed the famous guitar which bears his name. I met him in the 1990s in NYC where he played a regular gig at the Iridium.
I met political freedom guru Ron Paul while working on his presidential campaign in 2008. I was a huge fan since he first ran as a Libertarian in 1988. Ron is a super mellow dude, but of course I (being the occasional dumbass that I am!) managed to commit a major faux pas when we talked for a few minutes. I was trying to kid around with Ron a bit and I brought up a really old interview he did on the Morton Downey, Jr. show back in the 80s. Morton Downey, Jr. was a total hack TV talk show host back in the day, and he managed to piss Ron off and made him lose his shit on the air. I foolishly brought this up to Ron thinking he would find it humorous, but he got pissed at me instead! In hindsight, I shouldn’t have treated Ron like he was one of my buddies that I was razzing for fun and like the more dignified Dr. Paul that he really was. My bad, Ron!
Blues god Otis Rush and I in 1984. Most of you haven’t heard of him, but he was a huge influence on a lot of well-known rock guitar players of the 60s and 70s. He was playing a local show in a small club with my good friend Bob Corritore’s band. And I’ve got my eyes closed again!
An early fashion shoot from 1997 with Kate Moss. She was super chill but I think she had some chemical help back in those days. (Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that–Hahaha!!!)
Sandy and I with Jane Seymour back in the day. We did several shoots for a clothing brand she had in the ’90s. I got to sit next to her at our crew dinner once for over an hour and she was super fun to talk to. She and her husband were friends with Johnny Cash so we mostly talked about music, and that’s certainly one of my favorite topics as you know!
Speaking of music, here’s one of me with local legend Alice Cooper. My cousin Chris turned me on to his “Love it to Death,” “Killer,” and “Billion Dollar Babies” records when I was about 12. Those were his best albums and best band by far, and I started playing guitar around the same time.
I met Ted Nugent at an NRA convention when he was the guest speaker and I was in a political activist band called “The Cartridge Family.” Talk about the irony of us playing and Ted speaking! Of course, I saw Ted at least a half dozen times since the 1970s. No matter what you think of his politics, Ted had one of the greatest guitar tones out there!
Jimmy Carl Black and I at a Grandmothers show at the Rhythm Room in around 2005. Many of you don’t know him I’m sure, but he was the original drummer in my idol Frank Zappa’s “Mothers of Invention” back in the 1960s.
Grandmothers sax player Bunk Gardner at the same show. He was also in the original Mothers of Invention.
The Grandmothers show. That’s Don Preston, the original Mothers keyboard player, on the left.
Got to hang with Chris Elliot on a shoot all night in my motorhome back in the old days. He was super chill and we sat around playing cards most of the night with his manager and agent. The producer didn’t like it that I was playing cards with them, but they needed a fourth person, and I knew a lot of card games, so…
Most of you won’t know my doppelganger Kim Simmonds from the old-school English blues rock band Savoy Brown. He played at the Rhythm Room a few times in the past 15 years, and my friend Bob the owner always invited me down because Kim got a charge out of the fact that we looked like brothers or cousins. I think there’s a resemblance, but I’ll let you be the judges of that…
Sandy & I were wandering the streets of New York one day and saw the fantastic Aretha Franklin. I just happened to have my camera around my neck, so I politely caught Aretha’s eye and held up my camera with a questioning look to ask permission to take her pic. She nodded that it was cool, and there you have it. She’s one of my favorite vocalists, and most of the stuff I like of hers is not the five big hits everyone knows. She really has some amazing soulful stuff that most people haven’t heard. I actually have the vinyl versions from the 1970s.
I think Lance was the “bad guy” from the army that was chasing Mr T. and the gang on “The A-Team.” We shot him in some commercial back in 1996.
If you’re reading this, I’ve already left Planet Earth for who knows where. (unless I publish this too soon by mistake–My tech skills may not be up to par and I apologize in advance for that–Ha!) I sincerely hope there is a heaven (“Hi, St. Peter,” if my Christian/Catholic friends turn out to be correct!) and that I get to meet Zappa (again!) and Hendrix in person, but maybe there’s just nothing. Even the Bible says: “Ashes to ashes; dust to dust” and this would seem to imply that there is no afterlife. Or life could just be a giant computer simulation (thanks, Tim!) and the motor neurons in my hard drive got fucked up a little early somehow…
This is as close as Eric the dumb chimpanzee can get to “the eternal truth.” And some of you thought I was arrogant–Hahaha!
Hell–Even Carl Sagan admits he doesn’t know much and he knows a hell of a lot more than I do! I think my Bro the K-Man knows more than I do too because he took a science class in college titled “Cosmos!” (inside joke here–hahahaha!)
Being a Zep fan, I hope this is true, but who the hell knows?
And there is this possibility!
Mark Twain always was a smart mofo who really had a pithy way of getting right to the heart of the matter. His words give me a substantial amount of peace…
If you know me personally or have read any significant amount of my blog, you know that freedom was one of the highest values I held. I think I was born with it hard wired into my brain, and I discovered this at age 4 in kindergarten (and I posted a story about that of course!) I expressed my love of freedom in so many ways throughout my life in work, friendships, love, and just a WTF attitude in general. Take a chance—”You only live once” was pretty much my motto! I was generally a person who didn’t much care about a lot of artificial, largely self-imposed societal norms that would limit my life, and I was a political anti-authoritarian to the point of preferring anarchist libertarianism to any form of “Red Team”/Blue Team” authoritarianism by those who are constantly fighting over who will get to control the masses at the point of the State’s guns.
Beer and a WTF attitude go together like white on rice!
The opposite of freedom is fear, and although I had very little social fear, one of my greatest fears in life was the power of the State to lock me in a cage and control me. I had the thought more than once in life that I would much prefer death to a 25-year prison sentence. Of course I completely understand that there is great irony in the fact that I didn’t obey a lot of “the rules” and could have indeed found myself locked in a cage for a hell of a lot longer than the few hours I was actually there! (Read “Fun with the Police—Chapter 2” if you’re curious…) Ironically, I even had fun being locked in the cage for a short while…
But the alternative was living my daily life in fear of the so-called “authority” of the insecure wannabe alpha chimpanzees to make all the rules for me. That’s definitely a master/slave relationship, and I just wasn’t wired to accept a life like that so I simply ignored a lot of “the rules.” Of course, the irony of being imprisoned in my own body by a relatively obscure disease hasn’t escaped me—Life and death are full of the Zen irony of a universe we don’t understand, or maybe my Christian friends are right and I’m being punished for being a “sinner” and breaking some of the rules. But I’ve confessed almost everything good and bad publicly here, so that must be worth something!
My attitude toward the wannabe “alpha chimpanzees” who see themselves as “in charge” of others…
That said, I tried to be smart about things and obey the Eleventh Commandment (“Don’t Get Caught!”) as much as I could within the parameters of living a life of relative freedom. But please don’t think for one second that I believed there were no rules for living an ethical, happy and successful life—There are, and for me the oft intertwined values of love, honesty, integrity, kindness, and a spirit of fair play (even with people who made that difficult at times!) were the rules I chose to live by.
I wouldn’t call myself a member of any religion, but I have a strong belief in the Taoist dichotomies of good versus evil and right versus wrong. The Golden Rule always made perfect sense to me as a very real expression of love and respect for others, and although I don’t call myself a Christian, I think that the example of Jesus in the New Testament was also an excellent expression of honesty and love with a definite sense of rebellion against “the rules” of his day. Jesus was a rebel who preached love and empathy as higher values than “the rules” of his day. (And “Jesus Christ, Superstar” totally rocks—It’s my favorite rock opera by far!) I did my best to live by the Golden Rule, and I always felt bad about the times I failed. That’s how you learn, and the faster you learn the karmic lesson that the fewer people you hurt and the more you love, and the happier you are! At least that was my experience in life.
It’s important to me that all of you understand why I chose to end things when I did, so I’m going to do the best I can to explain what I went through on my way out with ALS. I’m well aware that some of my symptoms were not always that visible to my friends, and it may seem to some as though I gave up too soon. You can read about the slow torture of ALS in a few of my posts and there is some in this one too. I know other friends will say that it’s not really my right to choose when I die because that’s up to a god to decide. I don’t share any definite belief in a specific god, an afterlife or any other knowledge about what lies beyond, and it’s entirely possible that there is nothing else after this wonderful (and all too brief for me!) existence. I truly loved life, and I’ve said many times that I’d love to live for 1,000 years and experience at least a dozen more lifetimes. All that said, this one was pretty damned good; I’ve got nothing to bitch about except the painful ending. So please know that I don’t take death lightly, and I need to explain it the best I can and hope that you understand.
For me and I assume most
others who love freedom, ALS was the worst torture imaginable. Having ALS is like slowly being imprisoned in
your own body; your completely sane mind knows there isn’t a damn thing you can
do about it, and it’s only going to get worse (and probably pretty quickly). I’ve recently read a couple of pretty good
descriptive metaphors for ALS that really hit home for me. One person described ALS as “feeling as
though you’re being buried alive,” and another described it as
“feeling as though you’re receiving a slow transfusion of liquid lead into
your veins.”
I’m sad to say that both
descriptions are quite accurate, and mere words don’t really do it justice because
you just can’t imagine not being able to move a body part that is
unencumbered. Sure, you can imagine
clomping down the street if your leg were in a cast, but try to imagine trying
to take a step and your leg simply refuses to obey your mind’s command and doesn’t
move. Your mind still expects it to move
so you lose your balance and fall on the ground. I’ve fallen down about 20 times in the nearly
two years since my symptoms first appeared.
Or worse, imagine that your uninjured leg simply won’t engage the muscles enough for you to get up off a chair. Now take that feeling and spread it throughout your entire body until you no longer walk, talk, write, type, eat with your fingers, or move any other part of your body. You can’t even roll over in bed because the motor neurons in your brain are mostly destroyed and won’t engage your core muscles. For many months now, I’ve slept in a hospital bed and can’t even roll over without a supreme amount of effort grabbing the rails and inching my way around.
And there is always the constant pain from the constant muscle spasms that affect you from head to toe, even while you are sleeping. For me the pain started in my lumbar spine because I had herniated my L5 disc a few years ago, and it gradually spread throughout most of my body. To even stand and limp around for 50 steps on my walker is excruciating on my legs and back. My legs feel like incredibly stiff metal pipes that sometimes won’t move at all if they even have the strength to standing upright. My right shoulder and hand are in nearly constant spasm and pain as well, and it’s spreading to the left side as I slowly and painfully type right now. My hands feel like stiff, tensed up claws that won’t move, can’t grip things, and every day everything gets worse.
At some point, most motor neuron disease victims also lose their ability to chew and swallow. I’m starting to choke on food about now, and as this gradually happens over the course of a couple of years or so (typical but not predictable at all), the walls close in around you and you gradually lose all the things you actively enjoyed doing in your life. (I will make a partial exception here for true “couch potatoes” but even they like to eat while they watch TV!) But the worst thing about the failure of the muscles in your mouth and throat isn’t the inability to enjoy real food–I could live without that. The real issue is that you can no longer swallow at will, so you are always choking or aspirating, and that is the real torture. It is quite literally a feeling of being buried alive. At this point I’m literally afraid to eat, and the only real option is a feeding tube in the stomach. YUM!!!
And of course what kills most ALS victims is when the diaphragm muscles stop working and you can no longer breathe. It’s not visible to others, but I’ve felt the crushing weight of a diaphragm that is slowly losing strength for many months now, and death by suffocation is not something I’m willing to endure as long as I have a choice. It’s gotten to the point that I feel like I’m suffocating fairly often now, and I’ll gasp for as long as I can, but much like smoking, you’ve got to “quit” ALS sometime!
But this process doesn’t happen all at once, and it’s quite confusing at the beginning. Please know that I fought as hard as I could physically and mentally every step of the way. And I owe at least the last 6 months of my life to all my friends and family whose love made me want to go on and fight through the extreme physical, mental and emotional pain. I got to re-connect with some of you after many years, and I even connected with a few people from my biological family that I never would have met otherwise. I am so grateful for everyone’s love and support because it gave me some extra time living the life that I always loved so much!
Fighting through it as hard as I could may have helped me stay functional a bit longer, although the scientific jury is still out on that. The one thing I do believe is that my being an athletic gym rat and trail runner gave me a much higher mountain to fall from, and I think it bought me some time in terms of functionality. It stands to reason that if you start out very strong, it’s going to take a bit longer to bring you down. Of course, Lou Gehrig was in the same spot and 20 years younger than I, and he only lasted two years (the average is about 2.5 years). And it may turn out that extreme physical activity increases the risk of ALS. Older research has shown a 25% greater risk among very physically active people and I read a recent study claiming a 400% greater risk, but that doesn’t really account for many cases overall.
I’ve talked about my decline in a couple of my other posts, so feel free to skim the next few paragraphs or read those posts for more details if you like. It’s important to me that my friends and family understand my journey though and know how hard I fought and lived what was left of my life the entire way. The first motor skill I lost was the ability to run. My right leg suddenly became too uncoordinated to engage in a running gait with the left leg. But I would keep trying to run every day just to see if I could, and once in a while the nerves would work at 70% efficiency. So that day I would run as far as I could and hope that whatever was wrong with me (I thought it was my lumbar spine at that point) was improving. For about a 9-month period, I was able to do an awkward jog for about 100-200 steps at a time, so I alternated that with a few hundred steps of walking and still managed to squeeze out 2-3 miles. But the mileage I was able to go decreased along with my stamina.
I stayed in the gym the entire time, but I had to alter the exercises I did as things declined. Naturally, I fell on my ass at least 10 times trying to do shit I could do the week before but had to modify as my strength and balance deteriorated. I gradually moved from free weights to machines, and from crippled jogging/walking to the elliptical and the stationary bike. For about 3-4 months, I was in the gym and at work with a cane, and at the very end I hit the gym in my wheelchair about a dozen times.
My last workout in May 2019. 🙁
What finally stopped me
altogether was the extreme pain and 3-day fatigue from what had gradually
become a pretty tame workout for me. And
in the past 6 months, my level of physical and mental fatigue has become
unimaginable. Eating a meal leaves me
breathless and exhausted. Having a short conversation is almost overwhelming,
even on the rare occasion when you can understand what I’m saying now.
I also loved my work and kept going until the very end as some of you might have noticed. I was limping around for almost a year and added a cane for the last 3 months on the job. I finally realized I could no longer give my clients and crew everything they deserved from me, and I had to hang it up at the end of March 2019. Man—That really hurt, and I’m not even thinking about the money. I really enjoyed my work hanging out with awesome people in cool places and solving problems quickly and just getting shit done!! It made me feel useful and valuable, but more than anything else I miss hanging out with all of you work friends and making fun of the crack-smokin’ clients—Hahahaha!!!
But being held prisoner in your own body to the point that you can no longer communicate meaningfully and efficiently to other people is absolute fucking torture to a social person like me. For me, the ability to communicate with all of you is really the crux of the biscuit in terms of the meaning of life. Hypothetically speaking, (although it would certainly suck!) if I were paralyzed from the waist down and could still speak, type, write, and engage with all of you in a meaningful way, I would definitely choose to continue living. But living like the people in the photos below with feeding and breathing tubes, having my ass wiped 24/7, and trying to communicate with one eye looking at letters on a computer screen (at approximately 2.3 words per minute or whatever snail’s pace is possible!) would be constant torture for me. For me, the most difficult emotional/psychological thing so far has been the rapid decline in my ability to speak, text and type over the past several months. It’s been totally awesome to have so many friends who want to come over and visit, keep me company, love and console me, and most of all feed me—Hahahaha!!! But when I can’t talk, text or type back to you and fully engage, I get really frustrated, sad, angry and depressed all at the same time. It’s fucking torture, and I can only take so much of that…
Uh…NO!!!
Just for grins I decided to see what the “latest technology” could do for ALS vicitms. It’s hinky Microsoft shit and I would estimate you could communicate at 3-5 WPM if it actually worked. As FZ says, “The Torture Never Stops…”Based on what I know and have experienced so far with ALS, I’d rather be this guy. And that lightning bolt inside the head is my fried motor neurons. Ironic that the name of one of my favorite bands has become my epitaph slogan…
And then of course there’s the financial aspect of living like a total criptard on 24/7 caregiver assistance. Based on what I’ve learned, it would cost me between $30K-$50K/month to live like that, and I just wouldn’t want the money I’ve worked so hard for being squandered paying for such torture. I’d much rather be out of my misery and have the time and effort I traded for the money I saved and invested be used and enjoyed by my family and friends. I’ve always believed the expression “time is money” could also be stated in reverse in the sense that the money you save is really the time in life you spent to earn it. And I want my time/money in this life to be enjoyed by others I love rather than used to torture me and drag out death for no good reason I can think of! I was hoping to use my “earned time” for a really fun retirement with all of you, but it was not to be. The next best thing is to give my life/time/money (all the same thing in a very real sense) to others to enjoy. If I can buy someone else some fun time I couldn’t use, then that’s the best use of my life as far as I’m concerned. I’m damned sure not giving it to some fucking MegaMed care company to prolong my agony. No thanks!
The trick to knowing when to end things is twofold. The first decision is knowing when I’ve had enough physical and psychological torture (a very difficult thing when you love life!), and the second is knowing that if I wait too long the State will be in control if I don’t take charge of my own destiny while I’m still able. I’ve been wrestling with how much torture I can endure for the past few months, and I’ve also been mindful of the fact that if I become physically incapacitated from a fall or some other medical mishap and can no longer check out when I want, I will be forced by our shitty medical and legal system to endure yet more torture while MegaMed sucks up my money until I likely suffocate or endure forced starvation for 7-10 days. (I’ve heard this is legal, and my friends with my legal powers know of my wishes.) And this is ultimately why the end of freedom is the end of life. If I no longer have the freedom to control my own destiny and enjoy life with my family and friends, I say: “Peace, out…”
Final update: It looks like what will force my hand is the inability to swallow and breathe effectively. In addition to the extreme physical discomfort, these medical issues create a lot of emotional stress and constant anxiety that isn’t really effectively relieved by meds. And I’m going through regular phases every day where I can’t stand up and walk with my walker, but I could deal with that if I could eat, speak and breathe! I think I’m literally less than a week away from being the bedbound ALS victims in the photos above, complete with breathing and feeding tubes. ALS is literally a head-to-toe proposition–You’re all in but in a really bad way. And I just can’t go there, so I have to end my life the most effective way possible, and I hope you all understand…
Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for your friendship, love, and everything else you gave me in life. Whether working or playing I had so much fucking fun with all of you, and I hope you feel the same way about me (even when I was being an irreverent, snarky, obnoxious pain in the ass—Hahahaha!!!) I really do feel lucky and grateful to have lived what I’ve called my “55 rock star years,” and I want any of you who are sitting complacently on your asses to get them in gear and live life to the fullest. Life is far too short to waste, and remember—If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong!
Oh, yeah–And let’s not forget the “after party.” Backstage passes for everybody. It’s on me and I insist!
Please feel free to have a party or several if you like. The drinks are on me so that means I’ll definitely be there “in spirit”–Hahahaha!!!
Play some music for me. You all know what I like… And for those of you with no musical talent, please join in on the Funeral Kazoo! Note to Dano–Even a kazoo is “Better than bagpipes!”
I promise to at least text you if I can!
Lots of life wisdom from the Fab Four. Notice that “Baby You’re a Rich (insert lyrics here)” is not on this meme, Brian–Hahaha!!!
And the Stones have their own insane longevity. They started in 1962, the year I was born and they’re still touring!!! Seriously?!!!
I care about beautiful Planet Earth too but it’s all about perspective. Planet Earth will be here long after we fairly clueless human chimpanzees are gone…
SUICIDE METHOD SUCCESS RATIOS AND OTHER RELEVANT DATA–I’m including this so you understand things a bit better and I was surprised what my research revealed. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just take a handfull of pills and go out peacefully. A LOT of stuff could go wrong. I found that very disappointing to say the least…
Not to be too morbid, but you know me–I need to make sure something is actually going to work successfully if I do it! I was surprised by the low level of “success” with prescription drugs. I’m not happy about that because that seems like a very peaceful way to go. Don’t even get me started on why humane assisted suicide is only legal in a few places and even then the State’s “rules” surrounding it are absurdly problematic for people with degenerative, deadly diseases. “Grrrrrrr…”
As you can see from the pics, I had a pretty typical awesome childhood with great parents and a cool sister. We grew up in a place called Mequon, Wisconsin which was a suburban/semi-rural area just outside of Milwaukee. The pictures speak at least a thousand words, and I’ll be adding more as I find them. Love you Mom, Dad and Sis! 🙂
Me and my new little sister, Kristin
Why do I look a little nervous here? Hahaha! I was about 3 or 4.
My 4th birthday party. That’s Mom and my little sis Kristin in the background.
Me and Kristin around 1967 or so…
Kristin and I with our dog Mister back in the day… I was 5 and sis was 3.
“Ricky” (as I was known then) and Kristin probably around 1970 or so.
That’s a funny one–Dad is too wide-eyed, and I’ve got my eyes closed!
My 10th birthday in 1972. Gotta love the dates on the old photos–I’d be lost without them!
I was about 12 or 13 in this pic with our distant relatives in upstate NY. And that is real champagne!
Christmas in Grandma & Grandpa’s basement. I was about 13 here. Cool chair!
About age 16 in 1978 or so. I’m smoking my Marlboros at my Aunt Cookie and Uncle Dick’s house in their den/barroom. And I’m sure I was drinking in the barroom too! Everybody had one in the Midwest in those days.
My first “real job” at age 14.5 when you were legally allowed to work in Wisconsin back in the day. Of course, I worked “illegally” as a golf caddy at a country club when I was 12 and 13 during the summers before.
I’m guessing this was Kim & I on our way to the my junior year homecoming dance at Marquette High. Looks like I’ve got my eyes closed as usual, and Kim looks cranky that her dad (the infamous “Marty Kaye, private eye”) was bugging us by taking photos. Photography and tapping Kim’s phone line were dad’s favorite hobbies, although Kim and I didn’t know it at the time–Hahaha!!!
Me getting ready at home and then my HS girlfriend Kim K. and I our way to the Junior Prom. The 70s were pretty fun and funny!My high school girlfriend Kim K. and I on our way to the senior prom at MUHS. Why are my eyes always closed? Brian, Heidi, Kim & I getting ready to go out for Halloween, which was always my favorite holiday. Like my buggy sunglasses? Hahahaha!!!
Grandma and Grandpa on my Mom’s side visiting us in Cheeseland. Kit and John (we called them “Nana” and “Baba” pronounced like “Bubba”) lived in Boston a block from the ocean. And the spoke with really funny accents–Hahahaha!!!
Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Boston. My cousin Debbie recently sent me these pics and told me that I was amazed to see a house built entirely out of wood! It was a tiny bungalow with a cool porch where the adults had cocktail hour every day. I seem to recall my grandma clinking glasses with my Mom and saying, “God bless the mark (pronounced “maaaaaaak”) or something like that. 🙂 You can see the tail end of the ’63 Dodge Dart in the driveway. They always had problems starting it–Chryslers sucked in those days, but my cousin Richie gave us rides in his ’72 or so Vette! That was almost as fun as my cousins Debbie and Eddie taking us out for “frappes” (look it up because this Midwestern boy sure as hell didn’t know what a “frappe” was!) It rhymed with “crap,” but sure as hell didn’t taste that way–Hahahaha!!!
My Dad with his in-laws or future in laws. I’m not sure when this was taken but Nana looks nervous–hahaha!!!
Mom and her family. Her brothers were my Uncles Jack and Paul. And yes I know that apostrophe doesn’t belong there. “Dohertys” is plural, not possessive. I thought schools were better back in the day. Or so we were told–Haha!
Mom and Dad’s engagement picture, which meant it was from about 1958 or 1959.
A little bit of humor, but honesty actually works on the good people and weeds out the bad.
As you already know if you’ve read any of my “work” stories, film and photo production often beats a “real job.” And if you’ve read some of my life stories, you can probably tell that I’m pretty open and honest, often to a fault! Whether it’s business or personal (and the two overlapped for me to a huge degree), the most important quality one can have is honesty, both with oneself and with others. As I said in my story about “How I Learned Honesty from My Mom” (via spanking!), honesty is an essential component of trust, and without trust you really don’t have a valuable relationship with anyone. Oh sure, it could be potentially “valuable” in the short term to lie about money in a business relationship or something else in a personal relationship, but it’s my firm belief that dishonesty can only generate short-term rewards and will not provide any long-term success or meaning in one’s life.
Having been
self-employed my entire adult life, I know the value of honesty better than
most by working with all types of people from all over the world. In my film and photo advertising career I did
over 900 projects with about 500 different clients and their producers/account
reps, etc. Having to negotiate the terms
of all those projects from scratch, I’ve seen the entire range of humanity in
terms of those who were 100% honest and trustworthy to those I wouldn’t trust for
a split second if my back were turned.
And if I accepted 900 projects, that means I turned down over 2,000 of them
because they weren’t willing to pay my crew and I a fair amount of money or wanted
me to participate in some other dishonesty to cut corners in some way or
another.
I made kind
of a serious joke to my friend Rob when he bought my company that 70% of the
calls you get won’t be “real jobs” that you can accept. He looked surprised at that high percentage,
but the fact is that about half of the 70% simply don’t know what they’re doing
and are asking for the impossible (I referred to them as “crack smokers”
because they would have to be really high to think what they were proposing
were even remotely possible either logistically or for their very short money—Hahahaha!!),
and the other half of the 70% know damned well they’re bullshitting you about
money (and likely a lot of other details as well!) and are just looking for a
sucker who will agree to their bad deal initially and find out later what a bad
deal it really was. (And I had many
names for them as well…)
Fortunately,
I learned this lesson early on, and here are a couple of examples. Back in my early days (probably around 1994
or so), my partner Marc and I had a 36′ Dodge Allegro production motorhome that
we would rent out and drive to shoots for use as a production office in the
front half, and a hair, makeup and wardrobe space in the back. That thing was a beast to drive, but we
customized it fairly well so that it was quite functional for film and photo
shoots. We had about $20K and a lot of
sweat equity invested in it, and we rented it out for the princely sum of
$325/day, and that included one of us driving it. A standard day in our industry varied
depending on your job, but the motorhome standard was 10 hours, and after that
the driver got paid overtime. The
driver’s rate was also a princely sum–$125/10-hour day, and I don’t think it
was too much to ask for time-and-a-half based on that blue collar rate!
Driving “The Beast” on the cheap and learning the biz…
This
particular job was a Nissan commercial featuring Arie Lyundeyk the Indy car
race driver. In 1993 any car commercial
was a big, expensive proposition with a large crew, and having a real race car
driver made it even bigger. My good
friend Denise was the local production manager, but this was a big shoot so she
had to answer to a couple of other producers above her on the food chain. She was getting pressure from them to save
money anywhere she could because the client and ad agency were trying to pay
for this somewhat over-the-top shindig any way they could. Hell, Arie’s agent probably charged them six
figures for two days’ work just to say three lines and drive the Nissan around
for a minute!
There’s Arie looking pretty suave!
At one point just before the shoot, Denise told me to expect very long shoot days and ask if I would work on a 12-hour day instead of a 10-hour day based on the lie she was told that “the shoot was on a really tight budget.” (I was a relative newbie at the time and hadn’t yet learned that there was really no such thing as a “low-budget” car shoot in 1993!) I scowled a bit I’m sure, but since Denise was my friend I agreed as a favor to her. I showed up on the shoot day at zero-dark-thirty as usual to get things set up in my motorhome, and a few hours later the Japanese clients came cruising onto the location in two or three large passenger vans. Now normally a big shoot like this might have anywhere from 3-6 people on the client side, but Nissan literally sent about 20 people all the way from Japan for this one! For me this was a huge red flag that we were being lied to by the main producers in terms of the project having a so-called “tight budget.”
I casually asked Denise where all these undoubtedly “essential-to-the-shoot” Nissan clients were staying while they were here on their “tight budget” project, and when Denise replied, “Oh, they’re at the Biltmore” (one of the most posh and expensive resorts in Phoenix!) I think steam came out of my ears as I told her we were back on a 10-hour day. We went back and forth a little more on it, but I stuck to my guns and told Denise that if any of those lying SOBs had a problem with Eric the motorhome peon being fairly paid while a bunch of Japanese dudes got an all-expense paid vacation to Arizona in high season, they could talk to me directly. I never heard another word and I was paid based on a 10-hour day.
No comment needed!
That
valuable lesson and a few others early in my career paid off in spades as I got
more experience and became a producer myself and started my own production
company with my ex-wife Sandy. We
figured out pretty quickly that I had a pretty good nose for bullshit, so I was
the default project estimator and negotiator pretty much from the start of our
company in 1994. (And I had a nice deep
voice on the phone that said: “Don’t fuck with this
guy”—Hahahaha!!) Sandy was much too
nice and sweet, which made me want to marry her, but I did not want her on the
phone with a lot of New York City liars (even if she was from New York!)
We’ve all heard the expression “shit flows downhill,” and I was actually told this more than once by an arrogant client, producer, or other brainwashed idiot over the years. But I had a great response that went pretty much like this: “Shit may flow downhill, but if it hits me I’ll pick it up and fling it right back up in your face.” Yes, I actually said exactly that more than once, and it tended to shut the arrogant liars up pretty quickly. I definitely never viewed my business or industry as a “ladder” with the client on top and various levels underneath, each of whom was required to follow the orders of those above them in some imaginary “food chain.” Of course it was my goal (and my job!) to do the best work I could for the client to make them happy (and want to work with me again!), but I viewed the production process as a wheel with me the producer as the hub of the wheel rather than a ladder with me somewhere in the middle trying desperately not to be knocked off and sent flying!
The crack-smokin’ creative trying to melt the project down after we’ve got everything in place. I’m the guy labeled “Prod” for producer with the “Oh, shit!” look on his face! But I could usually talk the crack-smokin’ client down off the ledge or figure out some way not to crash the production.
It was my job to organize the client, crew, talent, location owners, vendors, etc. (the spokes of the wheel) and keep kicking them all in the ass so they would be in sync and the wheel would keep moving forward! Our industry had very tight deadlines, so a “ladder” model didn’t work nearly as well as a “wheel” in rolling out a project in record time. And I was always honest with everyone so they understood why I needed decisions made now and shit done immediately afterward. And that honesty made for much easier and successful shoots, so I got lots of repeat business and referrals based on the idea that I could be trusted to tell the truth to everyone and get the job done smoothly and without undue stress on anyone.
We did a lot of fashion catalogs in the 1990s, and they were notorious for sending out their own very inexperienced “producers” (fashion catalog production was considered an entry level job in NYC back then), yet they conveniently didn’t put any money in their budget (or so they told me) for us to be paid for most of our local production work that was actually necessary to make the shoot go smoothly. Their hope was that they could rent our motorhome, have us set up their shooting locations, hook them up with our best local people, and then turn them loose on our town for a week or two even though they had never been here before without charging them another dime for the entire shoot! Their “logic” was that once everything was set up during the 2-3 prep days they paid us for, they had us “on call” for a week or two to work for free on any last-minute changes the client or photographer might dream up! And believe me, there were almost always lots of questions, changes, last-minute requests, ad infinitum to keep us busy throughout the entire shoot.
After a
couple of shoots like this I learned my lesson and was honest right upfront and
said that this business arrangement was unacceptable. We needed at least a few thousand more
dollars to cover the inevitable shit that was going to hit the fan when the
crack-smokin’ creatives hit town, and it was simply an inevitable part of the
“creative process” that shit was constantly changing with the
majority of clients. I got some
“how dare you who is below us on the business ladder presume to dictate
terms to us,” but I quickly pointed out that I ran my own business and
would gladly turn the job down if I weren’t being paid enough for the
work. In 90% of the cases, they would
begrudgingly pay up because they knew I was telling the truth and that earned
me a certain amount of respect for not being a dumb schmuck from the desert as
the New York fashionistas sometimes viewed us!
I could cite a few hundred other examples of client and fellow producer BS, but I essentially learned the high value of honesty in business by observing the chaos and bullshit that was often the result of the dishonest people running the show. I was on some of their shoots as a location scout/manager, and even though I made sure my department was run honestly (despite the best efforts of the lying sacks to lie to me and get me to lie to others for them!), and that resulted in less stress on my location owners and I, and most importantly led to me being invited back, which had HUGE value at the end of the day. My reputation for honesty meant that I had literally dozens of homeowners (and probably hundreds of other location owners) who would turn me and my crew loose in their million-dollar homes for the entire day based solely on the fact that they trusted me and could take me at my word. I would tell the property owner up front if a given client were likely to be a pain in the ass and would give the them a chance to say no to a project even if that isn’t the answer I wanted. But what was interesting was that 95% of the time they said yes to one of my more pain-in-the-ass clients BECAUSE I was honest and they kind of felt bad for me and wanted to help me out for being honest with them. Karma definitely exists in the business world, and honesty breeds good karma which in turn breeds trust and success.
The same
thing was definitely true on the crew and vendor side of the equation as
well. Even though the crew and vendors
who technically below me on the hypothetical “food chain” because I
was paying them (which wasn’t my philosophy as I mentioned above), I was always
brutally honest with them about the project and the pain-in-the-ass level of a
particular crack-smokin’ creative upfront.
It was important to me that everyone knew what they were getting into
from the start because realistic expectations all around meant that the shoot
would run as smoothly as possible with the least possible “attitude”
from everyone on the proverbial “production wheel.”
Another important karmic effect of being brutally honest with my crew and vendors was that the best people would always want to work with me. Not only was this essential for long-term business success, but it made my business life much less stressful. Honesty all around and the resulting trust meant that I could explain what was needed once and turn everyone loose knowing that they would give it 100% effort and be honest with me if there were any issues or problems that needed to be worked out. And going right back to the beginning of the story about the lying clients and producers who claim to have “no money” or a “low budget,” I always made sure I demanded and budgeted enough money from the start to make sure my crew could do a good job and be fairly compensated for their hard work.
In my production world, I took good care to make sure there was as little “shit” as humanly possible, and I would never let it “flow downhill” onto my crew and I. I always considered it part of my job to fling that shit right back upstairs before it hit my crew. And I’m eternally grateful for the good karma and financial success that was the end result. As crappy as my health issues are right now, I can’t even imagine what they would be like without so many good friends looking out for me, many from work, and I feel really bad for anyone trying to navigate a nasty illness like this without having any money to take care of things. I’m beyond grateful for the fact that I have an abundance of friends and money to take care of myself the best I can and find as much peace as possible. Life really is connected in a lot of ways we don’t expect, and Karma can be either a bitch or a sweetheart, depending on how you treat her!
Ok—I know I’m going to catch some shit for discussing this topic in an unorthodox way and for my somewhat snarky title, but please remember that I was born in Wisconsin in 1962 and that was a very different time and place. So please don’t judge my behavior in 1979 by 2019 standards or I’ll be calling you a freakin’ snowflake!
To be very clear about the different eras, when a cop pulled you over late on a Saturday night in the 1970s or 1980s (and it happened to me three times, once while I was underage) the first question he asked you was how many drinks you have had. The question was not today’s, “Have you been drinking?” because they knew damned well that you very likely had been and you had better not insult their intelligence by lying about it. With that in mind, you had also better not insult the cop’s intelligence by saying “a couple of beers” at 2am. He also knew damned well that you had probably been out partying for 4-6 hours, so the “correct” answer was “I think about 5 or 6, officer.” People’s jaws drop when I tell them that today because that answer would mean instant arrest for DUI. But back in 1980, the cop would talk to you for a minute to see if you were coherent and then give you a few field sobriety tests with the actual intention of seeing if you were capable of driving reasonably safely, not for the express purpose of arresting you for a DUI.
As I said, I was pulled over three times late at night after probably having 10-12 beers in a 4-6 hour period, and I actually could walk, talk, and drive. (More on that to come…) I think twice I had a taillight out and the third cop was just checking to see if I was OK at 3am cruising down our dark country roads. All three stops went pretty much the same–I talked calmly to the cop for a minute or two, he told me my taillight was out, had me walk the line, touch my nose, shined his light in my eyes, etc. and every time I passed the tests and he let me go. During the one stop when I was only 17, I thought for sure the cop would bust me for being underage, but he just made an offhand comment as he gave me my driver’s license back about how I should be more careful having working taillights at least until I was 18 in a few months–Hahaha!!!
My first car–A 1970 Dodge Challenger. Of course mine was an old bomber that I paid $600 for!
We’ve all heard the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” but I’m going to lay my personal driving track record stats on you and then explain why I’m grateful in a variety of ways.
Eric’s Lifetime Driving
Miles: Approximately 2,000,000 in 40 years
Eric’s Lifetime DUI Miles:
Approximately 500,000
Eric’s Lifetime Auto
Accident and DUI Record: 0
Let me begin by saying right upfront that my heart goes out to anyone who has experienced the potentially deadly result of people who don’t drive safely whether in a sober or DUI condition. (And I do believe that there are actually plenty of sober drivers who are more dangerous than DUIers for a variety of reasons.) Given my current experience with a deadly disease, I definitely have plenty of empathy to go around for anyone’s suffering no matter what the cause.
This pretty much says it all to me. Well, not really all–I’d add eating, doing your makeup, messing with your kids, looking at your dashboard map instead of the road, etc.. just off the top of my head.
The first and probably most important thing I’m grateful for is my somewhat Zen ability to be at one with a car and the road, and I think I must have been born with this. From the time I first drove my go-cart at age 10 (Thanks, Dad–You probably saved my life at least once!) to sneaking out in our parents’ cars when we were 14 and 15 (see “Learning to Drive in 1975” if you’re curious), I always LOVED to be behind the wheel and felt totally comfortable from the get go.
Zen and the Art of DUI
When I first got my license, I had already been drinking and smoking weed for a couple of years, but just to be cautious I didn’t smoke or drink and drive for the first few months to see how confident I felt about driving all over town and to places I’d never driven before. Even at age 16 I felt a responsibility to know my limits, and after a few months I felt comfortable enough to enjoy the freedom of driving to bars and partying with my friends. (The drinking age was 18 at the time; I looked about 14; but a few bucks, a friendly attitude and a fake ID would get you into a lot of places!) After all, if you couldn’t drink a bunch of beers and a take a few tokes, why were you going out with your friends on a Saturday night?! And FYI—I don’t think the phrase “designated driver” even existed back then. To us, the “designated driver” was simply the one with the best overall road skills at closing time whether DUI or sober! And due to my overall driving skills and sane attitude, I was usually elected as the “DDD” (“designated drunk driver”).
What made it work for me
was my attitude of focus and diligence behind the wheel, and I’m very grateful
I always had this attitude that driving was serious business. The fact that I was chemically impaired never
altered my personality to the point that I became completely irrational, overly
emotional, or had all my sanity filters removed. I could be in the bar or at the party for
hours drinking, dancing, smoking, jamming, and generally living it up with my
friends and feeling totally free as a bird.
A lot of my DUI miles and years were racked up when I was playing in
bands and going to live music shows from age 16-30. But when the gig or party night was over and
I got behind the wheel, my party attitude immediately switched off and my 100% focus
was becoming one with the car and the road so I could get everyone safely home
without drawing the attention of the police. If I got in a wreck or got busted, my freedom
to have fun would be gone, and that was definitely strong motivation for a
teenage boy! I literally treated every
buzzed drive as if I were taking a driver’s test. My mental routine was to double-check
everything possible in my mind before I even put the car in drive. Headlights on? Check.
The route home? Check—Run it
through my mind (no, we didn’t have GPS dashboard maps talking to us in those
days—Hahaha!) Weather conditions? Check—It’s snowing tonight so be extra
careful in that rear-wheel drive car with the nearly bald tires! You get the idea, and I would never speed,
tailgate, swerve around or drive in any other dangerous or risky way. But I had friends who did, and I’ll be
getting to them shortly…
What you younger readers and many of you from Arizona don’t know is that although DUI was obviously illegal everywhere even in the ancient 1970s and 1980s, the punishment in Wisconsin was a $180 fine and you lost your license for a whole 3 months with an allowance that you could still drive to and from work! And I don’t think they even raised the fine or the loss of license time until your third or fourth offense. While people today would consider that appallingly weak enforcement of DUI laws, the fact is that Wisconsin in the ’70s and ’80s was a drinking culture (and still is), and what me and my friends were doing was pretty much (except for the weed!) what our parents, their friends, and even the cops were doing on their party nights out. I will confess to being a little bit worse than the older generation in the sense that I typically did a “wake and bake” at 7:30 in the morning on the drive to “high” school. Of course, the older generation often had booze in their offices (I know my dad’s office did!), so we were probably pretty even on this score except that they waited until 10am at least—Hahaha!
Having said all that, I did have some incidents that challenged my driving diligence to a pretty extreme degree, and I can honestly say that I occasionally just got lucky. I generally tried not to drive while taking psychedelic drugs, but it did happen a few times. There’s nothing like driving through a storm of florescent purple snow while the road is melting in front of you! (The road where this happened was ironically named “Lake Shore Drive,” and I’ll leave it to you to figure out the irony we saw in that—Hahaha!) Talk about needing all your mental powers of focus… Seeing double from too much alcohol was also a challenge as well. Fortunately, there was a simple remedy for this in that you could close your non-dominant eye and focus on the lines on the road. Voila–No more double vision!
But these were very rare occurrences, and it’s also important to know that in these 2am situations there was generally not much traffic on the road, and any mishap would only injure me and my fellow party animals in the car. And I am so grateful that never happened with me behind the wheel. I wouldn’t be the same person today if I had hurt or killed someone (most likely a close friend) because of something stupid I had done while driving. I tried to strike a balance between my WTF attitude that life was meant to be wild and fun with the idea that life is at risk when you don’t do your best to mitigate the risks you can. I think I did a pretty good job balancing risk and reward, but I am also grateful for the luck that was involved in achieving half a million trouble-free DUI miles.
OK—So that was my attitude
toward diligent DUI in the ancient days, but unfortunately not all of my
friends shared that attitude. Like many
young men, they thought they were Mr. Invincible and Mario Andretti (you
youngsters look him up) all rolled into one whether sober or drunk. I can’t even begin to count the number of
times I’ve been scared shitless by some of my friends’ driving behavior in a variety
of both sober and altered states.
One of my most memorable scared shitless moments came when four of us were driving from high school downtown about 15 miles or so to our friend Marc’s house after final exams one semester in high school. I’m sure we fired up a fattie and popped a cold one in my friend Tim’s car on the way out of the parking lot, but DUI wasn’t really the issue that day. Tim had a souped-up 1974 Firebird that really hauled ass, and he never missed an opportunity to let you know it!
TIm’s 1974 Pontiac Firebird. He was pretty handy and souped it up himself.
On the way to Marc’s house, we ran into some road construction and an ensuing traffic jam on the highway where they had closed off one lane and only left one lane open. Of course this slowed us down from 70mph to 10mph, and we had a case of cold beer waiting for us at Marc’s house! Well, Tim weaved back and forth for about a minute trying to see how long the traffic jam was, and it looked like it went on for quite a while. The left lane was closed, the right lane was open, and I was sitting in the minuscule rear passenger seat with the rather narrow emergency lane to my right outside the window. Tim kept jockeying in there to see if he could get a look ahead, and this brought my face to within literally inches of the 4′ tall solid cement retaining wall next to the narrow emergency lane. This didn’t bother me much when we were stuck in traffic at 10mph, but Tim quickly became impatient and decided to drive in the narrow emergency lane instead. (Apparently, he wanted that beer pretty soon!)
For the first few seconds
at about 25mph I was cool with my face so close to the retaining well that I
could count the rebar pieces, but as he quickly picked up speed I started to
get pretty nervous. There was literally
only about a foot between the line of slow cars to our left and about a foot
between my face and the cement retaining wall.
All it would have taken was one other curious driver to weave into the
emergency lane for a second to assess the jam ahead, and we (particularly me!)
would be toast.
When we hit about 40-50 with a line of nearly stopped cars to the left and the retaining wall almost touching my nose, I started to get really scared and yelled at Tim to chill out and slow down. Tim kind of laughed at me in the rear view mirror, so I gave a quick glance in Tim’s younger brother Brian’s direction in the rear driver’s side seat beside me and kind of raised my eyebrows as if to say: “He’s your brother-Can you please say something?” Brian kind of shook his head with a smirk as if to say: “Dude, you shouldn’t have said anything—It will only encourage him,” and damned if he wasn’t right about that! My fear and Brian’s knowledge of his brother proved to be accurate as we immediately got going to around 70-80mph because “that was closer to the speed limit” as Tim said later. The stopped traffic was literally a blur on my left as the cars flew by, and the retaining wall was so close I could have kissed it. I yelled a few more times to no avail, and eventually closed my eyes and STFU hoping I wouldn’t feel any pain as I died. The jam turned out to be about a mile long, and at 70mph that meant we made it through in about a minute, but I have to say that was one of the longest minutes of my life! So my gratitude in this situation is for the purely random good luck we were given that no other impatient drivers decided to have a quick swerve to look at the jam or to do what we did and veer into the emergency lane unexpectedly to “beat the traffic!”
A few years after this, Tim and I were college roommates living in downtown Milwaukee. One night we decided to go out drinking at a place called the Midget Tavern (also infamous serial killer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer’s regular hangout, and I’ll get to that in a minute!), and my car must have been in the shop because we took Tim’s motorcycle, a rather tiny Honda 350 road bike. The Midget was only about 3-4 miles away, so I thought nothing of it. (I never learn—Hahaha!) Of course we stayed until closing time (3:30am on Saturdays), and we were definitely pretty shit faced! I asked Tim if he was OK to drive us home on the bike and he told me I could wear the helmet! We were in the city so I knew we wouldn’t be going too far or too fast, so I hopped on.
That was a tiny-ass bike for two guys to ride on! But at least it wasn’t very heavy…
I asked Tim if there was
anything I needed to do as a passenger, and he told me that whenever we stopped
at a light I should not put my feet down but keep them on the pegs and stay
centered on the seat behind him. He
would do everything else, which turned out to mean everything except stay awake
long enough to get us home in 10 minutes!
We got to a rather long stop light only a few blocks from our apartment,
and I noticed Tim was slowly leaning the bike to the right for no apparent
reason. Like a good passenger, I
followed his instructions and kept my feet on the pegs right up until we kept
leaning further right and eventually hit the ground! Of course we weren’t hurt and I apologized
for not putting my feet down and asked him what happened. He rather sheepishly (or sleepily) admitted
to me that he had literally fallen asleep at the traffic light! Obviously, this isn’t a particularly scary
story, but if Tim had fallen asleep while we were going 35 on a main drag, the
story could have had quite a different ending indeed! So I’m grateful for that bit of good luck
too…
Jeffrey Dahmer Wedding Sidebar
Ok–So it’s time for the Jeffrey Dahmer sidebar story here… The Midget Tavern had been a favorite hangout of Tim’s and Scooter’s since our high school days, and they knew the owner Mike very well. The “Midget” was a very apropos name for the place because it was a tiny neighborhood bar that seated literally maybe 20-30 people. Needless to say, Mike the owner was on a first-name basis with almost everybody who came into his bar. When Tim and Kathy got married in the early ’80s, they had a little pre-wedding get together at the Midget for the wedding party. I went to the wedding, but I missed the Midget gathering because I wasn’t in the wedding party. (In hindsight, I certainly wish I had been in the photos below!)
In the photos below, Tim and Kathy are the third and fourth people from the left, and best man Scooter is standing next to Tim. Tim’s niece Becky is the cute little flower girl on the other side of the bar, and the dude in the baseball cap right behind her is none other than infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. He lived only a few blocks away and was a regular patron of the Midget. He and Mike the owner were on a first-name basis, and nobody knew at the time that he had a bunch of dismembered bodies in his freezer that he was scarfing down on a regular basis!
OK–I know the meme is rather snarky, but you can see that it’s definitely the same guy.
OK–I saw this and just had to share…
Yeah, it’s over the top but…
Back on the Road with Crazy John…
Although Tim was often a
fast and aggressive driver, my high school friend John was absolutely nuts when
sober, and he got even worse when drinking.
He would mouth off to guys twice his size, insult entire groups of
people when it was just me and him (and I’ve never been in a fight in my
life—Seriously! And I’m grateful for
that too!), and he would drive like an absolute maniac when alcohol lowered his
inhibitions and removed all filters from his brain (and they were defective to
begin with). John had already gotten in
at least two pretty serious wrecks by the time he was 18, and fortunately they
were both one-car collisions and there were no passengers in his car. Until wreck #3 where I was the passenger…
We had been to a party in
an outer suburb of Milwaukee and we were staying at my house in a different
outer suburb about 35 miles away. So we
had a good long drive ahead of us at about 2am, and the dozen beers each of us
had didn’t help matters. I should stop
and say right here that if it had been one of my other friends, I might have
been offered the keys as the sane, focused DDD (designated drunk driver) and
things would likely have turned out differently. But John had an ego the size of Texas and he
was going to drive come hell or high water.
At that time John drove a ’74 Triumph TR6 convertible, and it was summer so we were riding with the top down. When we left the party around 2am, we noticed that one of our buddies had disconnected the two front seats from the floor and they were completely loose and floating on the floor! We didn’t have the tools or the patience to reconnect them then, so we lined them up in their tracks the best we could and headed out to my house. When we got about 5 miles away from home, we were on a rural road I knew quite well (it was that “Lake Shore Drive” again!), and we were going about 55 in a 35, but it was 2:30 in the morning so I wasn’t too worried until we started approaching what I knew to be a hairpin turn. I mentioned it to John at least ¼ mile in advance and figured he would slow down, but he told his Triumph could handle that “no problem” because it was a “sports car,” it was made for that, and he babbled something about how he was going to “oversteer” or some arrogant driving geek bullshit that would allow him to navigate the hairpin turn flawlessly without touching the brakes.
The oak tree wasn’t quite as big as that one, but that flimsy tin can and we two dudes would have been toast had we hit it!!!
I started to panic when he
didn’t slow down because I knew a few things he didn’t about the turn, namely
that even in a “sports car” you couldn’t go faster than about 30, that
there was no guardrail on the hairpin turn, the ditch was literally about 6
feet deep, and there were large oak trees planted just beyond the ditch in the
yard adjacent to the road! Knowing this,
I yelled at him more loudly and firmly but to no avail. We hit that turn at about 45 as John hit the
brakes at the last second when he had his “Oh, shit!” moment, and we
of course went careening right off the road and into the deep ditch before we
even made it halfway around the turn. I
can still remember seeing one of the oak trees approaching the window directly
in front of me, and I thought I was a goner.
But by some miracle, the car hit something else underneath a nanosecond
before and shifted the car far enough to the left that I didn’t end up eating
the oak tree as a midnight snack! And
remember, our seats weren’t even attached to the floor and we weren’t wearing
our seatbelts because of that! I would
have likely been launched out of the convertible at 40mph to almost certain death.
We crashed to a stop in
the ditch without hitting a tree, and miraculously neither one of us was even
hurt. I think John may have bumped his
head on the steering wheel, but that was it.
I let out a huge sigh of relief as I realized we had made it through
this potentially deadly disaster unscathed but John was having none of that.
The word “gratitude” did not exist in John’s vocabulary (nor the
concept in his mind apparently either), and the first words out of his mouth
were something like: “Why didn’t you tell me it was a REAL hairpin
turn?!!” as though it were now somehow MY fault that he had crashed his
car! I barked back that I had been
screaming at him to slow down for a ¼ mile, the sign on the road said “15
MPH” with a 90-degree curve icon on it, and I never stopped telling him to
slow down right up until he hit the brakes at the last second when it was
already too late.
That shut him up long
enough for us to think about how we were going to go the 5 remaining miles to
my house (there was no Uber and Lyft in 1980—Hahaha!), and we certainly didn’t
want to hang around until some neighbor called the cops and John got a
DUI. This was rural BFE land in Mequon
(my semi-rural suburb at the time), so there was nobody around at 3am. We started walking down the road and my plan
was to make it a mile or so to the more major intersection and dream up a good
story I could tell my Mom when I called her on the pay phone. As we were walking, a car approached and just
for grins we put our thumbs out to try and hitch a ride. We figured nobody would stop at 3am, but it
turned out to be a cool dude about our age who did us a total solid and drove
us all the way back to my house!
I thought we were home
free, but my Mom heard us come in and I made the mistake of telling her the
truth about John putting his car in the ditch.
I told her we weren’t hurt and we were going to hit the hay and deal
with it in the morning. What I hadn’t
counted on was my Mom’s “play by The Man’s rules” authoritarian side
rising out of bed at 3am and insisting on calling the local police to report
the “accident.” I told her we
didn’t hit any other cars, nobody else was remotely involved, etc. but to no
avail. Mom had to “do the right
thing” in her mind, and although I was a bit nervous (for John really—I
wasn’t driving), I thought the cops would just tell us to sort it out in the
morning since we had already left the scene, and they wouldn’t want to schlep
out there at 4am, etc.
Unfortunately, I
underestimated how little the Mequon police had to do at 4am, and they insisted
that Mom drive us both back to the scene of the accident so they could investigate,
write their report, etc. So into Mom’s
’74 Eldorado we went, and there were four cops there when we arrived. My Mom had figured out by this time that we
were quite drunk and she told us both to shut the hell up and stay near her car
while she went over to talk to the cops.
That actually surprised me, but Mom was walking the tightrope between
trying to follow “the rules” while still trying to protect us from
the wrath of the law. The cops didn’t
have too much trouble figuring out what happened, and we figured John would get
breath tested, arrested, and be on his way to a DUI.
Buuuuuut…We got really lucky in that one of the cops was Robert, our former next-door neighbor for about 10 years, and our families knew each other very well. In fact, Robert’s family were the local farmers who developed our neighborhood and we actually bought our house from them! My Mom confirmed Robert’s suspicions that we were probably quite drunk, and Robert had the kindness to not take things any further. They made John show his driver’s license, sign the report, and arrange for the car to be towed out of the ditch, and my Mom had already told both of us to shut the hell up and be nice to the cops because they were doing us (well really John) a huge favor as long as we didn’t say something stupid and piss them off. For once, John listened to some sound advice! Of course my Mom had to call John’s Mom and tell her what happened, and of course John bitched about that. I don’t think I need to explain the huge amount of gratitude I have for escaping my closest call ever with a premature death. Sure, things are pretty ugly now but that was nearly 40 years ago and I’m very grateful for that near miss with death and several others as well. I’ve already had nine lives, and I’m very glad “Lake Shore Drive” never got me over the years! (And it gave me my “Eric the Nudist” story, so I really can’t complain about the Tao of LSD, er—I mean “Lake Shore Drive.”)
It’s often said that people are better off not seeing death coming because death can obviously be a very unsettling and sometimes depressing idea, particularly if it involves suffering dragged out over a long period of time. I think we’ve all heard multiple variations of a phrase like “I hope I go suddenly in my sleep” from a stroke or some variation of a quick, painless death, and most of us have probably even said it at lease once or twice ourselves. I know I have.
Fortunately
we live in the modern era where medical science can alleviate some of the
suffering with pain meds, surgical treatments and that type of thing, and death
doesn’t have to be quite as painful as it was 100 or 200 years ago. Imagine having “doctors” (and I use
the term loosely!) cutting off limbs with no anesthesia and shit like
that! Hell, the person removing your
limb and trying to make sure you didn’t bleed to death, die from an infection
(before they knew what caused them!) wasn’t even likely to be a doctor because
you probably hacked up a limb working on your farm, and the nearest doctor was
a few hours away on horseback! A friend
or family member would have to “wing it” on the fly, and I can’t
imagine how brutal things must have been in say the 1800s. It’s absolutely hideous to think about and makes
the pain I’m feeling now pale in comparison.
Even in the modern era, people do still suffer incredible pain from certain illnesses and even their potential treatments. I’ve heard that the pain and suffering caused by the side effects of chemotherapy can be worse than the cancer itself. I’ve personally suffered a lot of physical pain from my disease and additional pain from both prescription drug side effects and herbal protocol reactions. (No, because it’s “herbal” or “natural” does not mean something is automatically harmless or won’t mess with you. Plenty of toxic poisons are “natural.”) And it’s obviously very difficult psychologically to deal with the idea that you stand a good or pretty much guaranteed chance of dying from your illness, and that stress is obviously a constant weight that constantly chokes your psyche. But you still have some time to experience both suffering and joy. I read something another victim wrote about ALS “feeling like you’re being buried alive” and another that wrote “it feels like lead is flowing through your body and it’s slowly getting heavier.” Both of these descriptions are sadly quite accurate, but I still get to have joyful moments with my friends and family as the dying process evolves.
In contrast, many people are suddenly diagnosed with a disease and told they have only a few weeks to live. I can’t even begin to imagine the level of stress involved in having only mere weeks to “get one’s affairs in order” and try to say goodbye to all your loved ones. I sure as hell couldn’t get all that done, and I’m a “get shit done” kind of guy!! As I’ve said throughout my writing, I’ve been lucky enough to have a life filled with so many awesome people that I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to everyone, tell everyone how much I love them, deal with the legal and financial aspects of death, much less have the time to ruminate and reflect on my wonderful life and write a few hundred pages worth of memories about it! Sure, the physical and emotional pain of seeing death coming totally sucks, but not having the opportunity to reminisce and write your own swan song of gratefulness probably sucks even more. Hell—even if I die suddenly in my sleep tonight from an unexpected or yet unknown condition completely unrelated to my ALS, I’ve had the opportunity for many months now to deal with death in my own way. And as much as it hurts at times, not having a chance at all or trying to do what I’ve done in the past year in a mere month or not at all would be far, far worse in a lot of ways. I’m certainly not sure whether life is simply a series of random events or something with a higher purpose, but I started writing this blog because I needed to wrap my head around what was happening to me and if there was some cosmic reason I got ALS and what it all meant. I sent the text thread below to my friend Jean discussing this very thing and made a note to myself to think and write about it.
As a Taoist,
I’ve got to look at life and death as two sides of the same coin, and
experiencing both to the fullest is truly a blessing rather than a curse in a
lot of ways. I’ve said WTF to a lot of
things in life, and why should my inevitable death be any different? I’ve
experienced an outpouring of more real friendship and love than I ever thought
possible in recent months. I’ve cried
together with many friends knowing that we will genuinely miss each other
greatly. I’ve remembered cool happenings
and stories long forgotten and been reminded of many others I had forgotten by
friends who shared their fond memories with me.
I wouldn’t have experienced any of these things if I died suddenly or
even on a few weeks’ notice.
For me the biggest challenge is making the decision about when to go. If I wait long enough, the ALS will decide for me, but I don’t really want to end up like these people in the photos below just to hang on another year. The decision is made infinitely more difficult by the fact that I love life so much. I want to squeeze out every last drop of joy, fun, love and minute of experience from life, so that makes it that much harder to say goodbye. It’s a really delicate balance in terms of how much pain and suffering is too much versus reaching for a few extra moments of joy. The million-dollar question is whether having the power to make that decision is a blessing or a curse.
My friend
Denise recently posed a really interesting quality-of-life question to me
recently. Her question was: “If you
had a choice between living one more year of life at your physical peak a few
years ago versus five more years in your current state, which would you
choose?” My first response was kind
of snarky, although it makes sense in a way.
I replied: “How about a compromise where I get to live three years
limping around on a cane, but actually being able to work, drive, go out of the
house often, hit the gym, etc…?” My
next thought was of course that I would take one quality year over five more
painful years, but I’ve got to say that the more I think about it, the harder
the question becomes to answer. I have a
lot of bad days and few horrendous ones, but there are some not-so-bad days and
great moments in there too.
I’ve also thought more about how a lot of other people suffer pretty much in silence (or not—Hahaha!) throughout their entire lives, yet they somehow have the will to stay alive and keep suffering for decades. I’ve been thinking recently about my cousin Michael and a friend Sandra’s son David who both suffered from schizophrenia since it kicked in for them during puberty. Michael lived to be about 45 and died from chronic alcohol abuse as his remedy to fight the imaginary voices in his head destroyed his liver. David endured about 10 years of suffering before he died, and he struggled constantly with the exhausting side effects of the meds versus the other option of daily mental torture at the hands of schizophrenia. I’ve known others who are chronically anxious and depressed for most of their lives. They haven’t had anywhere near the amount of enjoyment I’ve had, and after a few bad reactions to meds, I can’t even imagine living most of your life feeling that way. And then there are many others who live pretty boring lives (by my standards) and really don’t seem to experience a lot of joy, happiness, pain, suffering, or much of anything at all. I do think about that as write about my life, and even if the end is shitty, I would never trade my “55 rock star years” for 85 or even 95 boring-ass years!
I’ve recently been thinking too about others who have lost family members and friends far too young. My best friend Kevin and Sandy’s son Ryan had a rare birth defect called Trisomy 18 which took his life at only 9 months old. My high school friend Chris lost his brother in his 20s in a windsurfing accident when Robbie had an epileptic seizure. My good friend Robert nearly died getting hit by a car on his bike when he was in his early 20s, and he’s probably had at least a dozen different prosthetic legs during the ensuing 40 years. And my friends Tim and Kathy’s son Luke was born with some cognitive birth defect so rare it doesn’t even have a name! But Luke has been going for 26 years with the mind of a kid aged 9 months to a few years old, even though he’s now in the body of a full-grown adult. I know it’s been quite a challenge for Tim and Kathy to care for Luke all these years.
Geez—What do I have to be so sad about? I’ve been lucky enough to live many decades with many moments of pure ecstasy and very little pain. The worst health problems I’ve ever had were some asthmatic allergies as a kid and a couple of minor injuries in the gym. Hell–Both my parents are still alive and they are almost 90!
What all
this has made me realize is that I probably should have had a lot more empathy
for others over the years. I’ve received
an outpouring of empathy since my health went south, and I think I could have
been there more than I was for some of my friends over the years. I’ve always been kind of an energetic Type A
personality who typically focused on my own business and my own pleasure, and I
don’t think I really fully related to the pain others were going though as much
as I should have.
That said, I think I’ve always been an honest (probably to a fault—Hahaha!) fair, open-minded person that has tried to be a good friend to everyone (when I wasn’t too busy working or hanging with other friends!), so hopefully karma will be good to me if such a thing ultimately matters in the universe. And seeing death coming has also allowed me to become more generous and start helping others personally and financially as well. I’ve set up a trust to take care of my parents. I’ve given away some of my prized personal possessions to friends who will really appreciate them, and I’m thinking of how I can help others with money I’ve saved that I’ll never be able to spend. And it makes me feel good each time I do it, and I’ve honestly been more motivated to do that by all the unselfish love everyone has shown me. You guys taught me the largest lesson of love late in life (how’s that for alliteration!), and I’m going to do my best to pay it forward as much as I can in the time I have left. Life is a delicate balancing act, and I’ve had so much of the good stuff it’s probably just my turn for some pain. I’ll just hang in there as long as I can and grab all the joyful moments I can…
My apartment “studio. The drum set is where the kitchen table should be–Hahaha!
The “Ole 4-Track” as Kevin called it.
Back in the old days, if you wanted to record anything on the cheap without a real recording studio, you used some version of the Teac Tascam 4-track cassette recorder I had. The sound was nowhere near what a recording studio was in those days, but the cool thing about it was that it was small enough and could run on batteries so you could take it to make live recordings anywhere you wanted! And you could record live stuff in stereo and use the other two tracks for overdubs without getting involved in any elaborate mixing schemes.
Me in 1987 with my Stoli and Marlboros–Hahaha!!! Thankfully, fake shit like the computerized pop groove machine didn’t exist back then. Plastic music wasn’t too popular back then…
Yuppie Schmuck
This was a parody of a parody that Kevin and I recorded in my “home studio,” (see above) The original song was “Hey Joe,” made popular by Jimi Hendrix of course. Shortly after it came out, Frank Zappa used it to parody the hippie culture in his 1967 version called “Flower Punk.” In 1985 or so, the “yuppies” ruled America, so Kevin and I got the bright idea to update Zappa’s parody and morphed the song into yet another parody of a parody called “Yuppie Schmuck.” I’m not sure if you’ll understand the lyrics, but I may get around to putting what I can remember up here someday. Just think back to 1985 and you’ll get the gist of it. As I recall, I’m playing drums and bass, Kevin is playing keyboards, and we’re both singing.
“Yuppie Schmuck” and a couple of the other songs on this page are definitely too outside the box to interest most people, but listen if you dare and download if you like. One interesting factoid about this song is that it did receive radio airplay (back in the day when people listened to FM radio!) during morning drive time (peak listening hours) on KSLX, the major rock radio station in Phoenix. So that means that 50,000 people have heard this weird song! On a whim, I had sent a recording to a guy named Bob Boze Bell, one of the morning DJs over there. He was the kind of guy with a WTF attitude, and he and his partner Jones played it just for the hell of it based on my letter explaining what the hell the song was. So Kevin and I had our five minutes of radio fame…
Spider Walk–Phase 1 was actually a song I wrote as part of a term paper to hand in for one of my students back in the day when I wrote term papers for a living (See “Do You Have the Term Paper Blues” if you are curious about that!) I think the paper was for an English class, and the gist of it was that the student had to describe the creative process as they created some artistic work. When my student brought this to me, I first asked her whether she was skilled in any artistic area and whether she had an idea in mind for the theme of the project. She said no, and I of course immediately thought of music, and that’s partly because I had no abilities in any other artistic endeavor. The best thing I could draw or paint was a stick figure, and I don’t write fiction!
When I first proposed the idea, my student wasn’t a fan because she didn’t actually play music, so I came up with the way I would explain that in “her” paper as part of the creative process. I ended up creating the song and playing all the parts myself on “the ol’ 4-track,” but I described her role in the creative process as a collaboration with her “friend” Eric in that he would play all the background music and then teach her how to play the lead solo on the 1967 Farfisa organ. I described how I marked the right organ keys to hit to stay in the right key on the song and how I gave her a few lessons and a lot of trial, error, multiple takes and editing involved so that even a novice could play some kind of a”space jam.” It’s certainly not my best work because I’m a guitar and bass player who can fake an easy song or two on the keyboards, but I have no business playing drums as you will hear if you dare! 🙂
Kevin had a college friend named Dale who was pretty much a solo singer/songwriter type guy and he was weird and funny as hell! I’ll let Kevin write a Dale story if he likes, but the gist of Dale was that he was a cacophony of contradictions in terms of his real personality and his music. He could write stuff that ran the gamut from beyond rude and crude to downright maudlin sometimes within the same song! Pain and Strife (Kevin always called it “Anal Strife” to annoy Dale–Hahahaha!) was perhaps one of Dale’s most maudlin efforts. “I Like My Women Buck Naked” on the other hand…
I was visiting Kevin in Dayton around 1982 or so and of course I brought the “Ol’ 4-track” in case some musical inspiration struck us while we were in an altered state or something… One night, Dale came over; we all started jamming, and I graciously volunteered to record Dale’s song for posterior–er, I mean posterity, on my 4-track. You can judge this maudlin love song for yourself–Hahahaha! (And if you ever read this Dale, you know I’m just messing with you–sort of… :-))
This tune was my personal version of Frank Zappa’s “The Gumbo Variations.” I was experimenting with my 4-track to see what I could accomplish all by myself in my home “studio.” You can decide for yourself how well I channeled the musical vibe of my idol FZ. Of course, he had an entire band of real musicians playing on his studio recordings! I did the best I could for a 20-something kid, but I would recommend a little bit of a trendy chemical amusement aid first…
More early experimentation with the 4-track. I was lucky enough to get Tom Coulson to overdub drums for me after I recorded these sans drums. I actually recorded these in mine and Cindy’s first apartment, and Tom was a teacher at her school. (And I know–I’m sure as hell no singer!) At least my rhythm was solid enough that Tom could overdub drums on top of it.
If you’ve read my piece about learning about sex and love in the 70s, then you know things began with me learning about sex from stone-age things like magazines and of course I did the usual experimentation with a couple of girlfriends in high school. I’m still debating whether to tell any of those stories since we were minors (although what the hell–It’s not like I’m going to live forever!), but I feel a little safer in the modern era where information never dies talking about my two girlfriends from the 1980s when I had moved to Arizona at age 21.
If you’ve read my story “No Guts, No Glory” then you already know that I met both of my serious girlfriends Cindy and April on the dance floor at clubs listening to live music. One thing that was very cool about both of them was that they were real music aficionados like me. We all liked real music played live by real musicians. None of this crappy “dance club” plastic pop music would cut it for any of us. I was literally out at clubs listening and dancing to live music 3-5 nights a week for most of my 20s, and I played in bands as well at times.
I met April first because we used to follow a reggae/ska band with a rock edge called The Effects. There were a half a dozen other bands we followed as well, but this was the favorite for both of us. As I said in my other essay, we met on the dance floor constantly, and she was a cute Asian chick so I was definitely interested! I was only 21 at the time, and I really couldn’t tell her age (not that Mr. WTF would have cared anyway!), so I did my best to flirt and hit on her. What I didn’t know initially but she eventually told me was that April was 36 at the time! She didn’t look it but certainly got plenty of attention from guys more in her age bracket. Actually, she was quite the outgoing type and got plenty of attention from everyone! But I remained undeterred and continued dancing and hanging out with her, and I was the only guy who could keep up with her on the dance floor. We were both WTF types who just liked to have fun at the live music clubs. I tried for at least several months to get her interested in more, but we remained just dancing and partying buddies for the time being.
April in the 1980s–She looks like fun, right?!
As I said in my other story, I met Cindy at a Big Pete Pearson show because we were both big blues fans. Cindy was somewhat serious about school and not quite the party animal I was, and she was actually 27 when we met at Tony’s New Yorker. That said, she loved music and dancing too, and she ended up making the first move by having our mutual friend Harmonica Bob introduce us and buying me a beer. (One of the reasons I love older women–They weren’t shy back then.) We danced the rest of the night away and ended up spending the night together at her house (lucky me!!!)
This pic was taken a few years before I met Cindy, but you get the idea! 🙂
A pic of me in our apartment with my first silver bar.
Cindy must have woken up before I did and was probably looking at me sober in the morning light thinking: “Holy shit—Is this guy even 18?!” I did look really young for my 21 years, and even a 6-year age difference is already a big deal when you are in your 20s. (FYI–The drinking age in AZ at the time was only 19, so anything was possible.) Cindy apparently had to be sure I wasn’t lying about my age, so she went into my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license while I remained blissfully unaware sleeping in her bed. She lived in a house with 3 roommates and took my license out to the kitchen so they could all have a look in the daylight. Now it’s important to know that in those days (1984) an Arizona driver’s license was filled out by hand in one’s own handwriting, signed by you, and then scanned, printed, and issued to you by the DMV. Well, my birth year was 1962, but a piece of the “f” in my last name below the year extended into the “2” in the year making it look like it could be a “4.” I had never thought about it before, but when I looked later I had to admit you really couldn’t be sure either way.
By the time she came back in the bedroom I was starting to wake up, and we engaged in some morning after small talk before she “popped the question.” I must admit I was rather shocked when she simultaneously showed me my license and asked whether that was a “2” or a “4!” I told her truthfully that it was indeed a “2” and explained that I had simply signed the “f” in my name so that it accidentally looked like a “4” and I could understand how she might think what she had. At this point, I had woken up enough to begin wondering what the hell she was doing in my wallet without asking in the first place, but I can say that I was in no mood to start a fight with a sexy older woman who took me places a mere few hours ago that this 21-year-old had never been before—Hahahaha!! If she was a little nosy, I sure as hell didn’t care as long as I could get another date with her!
Fortunately, I had passed the age test, and Cindy & I started dating on a regular basis. I did find out a few weeks later though that her roommates’ secret name for me had been invented that morning and I henceforth became known as “Barely Legal” to them—Hahahaha!!! I was jealous of Cindy’s roommate Chris who gave me the nickname because his nickname was “The Centurian.” Chris claimed to have banged over 100 women in his 40-some years on earth, and judging by the parade in and out of his bedroom across from Cindy’s I couldn’t call him a liar! In my young mind his nickname should have been “The Inspirer!”
Blackface Jim (you sure couldn’t do that today–Hahaha!), Cindy the Witch, “Mr. Barely Legal” Me the Bee, and “The Centurion” Chris. I wish I had more pics of us, but it was a different era!
Cindy and I hit it off quite
well, and in a few months or so I asked if she wanted to be my girlfriend. I was honestly shocked when she said
“no” but that we should continue dating, be open to dating others,
and see how it went! We got along great,
loved the same music, always had a blast hanging out, and the sex was definitely
happening for both of us, so I was somewhat confused and frankly a little
hurt. But I got over that fast enough—It
wasn’t like the fun or the hot sex slowed down, so what the hell? I was young and just wrote it off to me not
understanding “older women.”
Maybe I was just a fling for her, but what 21-year-old could bitch about
that?
The beauty of this
scenario was that I was still free to date other women, so of course I
redoubled my efforts on April, my other favorite party girl! Well, April knew I was dating Cindy, and I’m
not really sure why, but she eventually decided that if some other “older
woman” liked me that I must be worthy for some reason and wanted to at
least give me a try. Sooooo…One thing
led to another and before long this young dude had a 27-year-old and a 36-year
old showing him the “ways of love!”
And I don’t need to tell you how grateful I was to have not one, but two
super fun, sexually experienced women keeping me busy almost 7 nights a
week. Talk about nirvana!!!
My nirvana continued for a couple of months, and April knew I was also dating Cindy (April was dating other guys too, including her 18-year-old neighbor half her age!), but Cindy didn’t know I was hanging with April as anything more than a dancing friend at the live music clubs. But to be clear—I wasn’t cheating or anything. I had asked Cindy for an exclusive relationship; she had said no to that, and that it was fine to date other people. So I wisely kept my normally big, honest trap shut for a while and went along with the flow. There was one Saturday morning when April and I were out having breakfast and shopping on Mill Ave. and we almost accidentally bumped into Cindy though. April came rushing nervously back to me after wandering into a store telling me that Cindy was in the same store! My response was to shrug and point out that nobody was doing anything wrong, but I guess women have an intuition about these things that I sure as hell didn’t at the time.
That incident did get me thinking though about whether I should tell Cindy or not. It’s my nature to be honest and I would have felt better with everyone knowing what the score was. And it was getting steadily harder to schedule two women every week without complete transparency all the way around. So after a couple of months of nirvana, Mr. Dumbass blew it and casually let Cindy know about April one day when we were scheduling our upcoming week of fun at the clubs. Cindy was a bit of a “hippie chick” in those days; she hadn’t mentioned my exclusivity offer in the several months since I made it, so I mistakenly assumed that it just wasn’t important to her and I honestly thought it would be no big deal. Boy—was I wrong—Hahaha!! It just goes to show how naïve a young guy can be and how little I really knew about women. The minute I opened my mouth and inserted my foot, I got an earful about “how could I do that, and with HER?!!” and a bunch of other stuff I won’t go into detail about.
The end result was pretty good though—Cindy immediately changed her mind about my boyfriend/girlfriend offer, and we moved in together in short order! We actually were quite a good couple at the time, and we continued our fun life together sharing musical stuff, hanging out and partying, and of course the loving got even better as we became more intimately acquainted. We both had such large record album collections that when we merged them together, it took up half the living room! Fortunately, neither of us gave a shit about television and didn’t own one, so we spent a couple of years going to school, working, and having lots of fun together!
My current music collection, but mine and Cindy’s was about like this (minus the CDs of course!)
Cindy used to live in Flagstaff and took me on several trips up north for my first experiences in the beautiful mountain woods. She had a nice Ford F150 pickup truck, and I can still remember camping on a mattress in the back of the truck in the open air. We eventually broke up when Cindy graduated and got a job in Sedona but continued to reconnect every once in a while for some friendship and fun (lucky me!)
In the meantime, April had gotten serious with a guy close to her age, they had a son Alex together, and she dropped off the radar as my club dancing buddy. She had taken it well when Cindy gave me the ultimatum. I think she pretty much laughed at my youthful stupidity, and she wasn’t in love with me or anything. We certainly did like each other, but we were pretty much party friends with benefits.
Fast forward about five
years (I was about 26 or so by then), and I ran into April with her man at one
of the old clubs we used to frequent. I
knew him from the old days too (his name was Michael and he was in The Effects,
one of the bands we loved), so we all just started talking and rekindled old
friendships. It started slowly at first,
but I had graduated from college in a pretty crappy economy and was just
starting to write term papers for a living (see my piece called “Do You
Have the Term Paper Blues?” if you’re curious…) and was also ( believe it
or not!) a babysitter for another friend’s kids on the side. April mentioned that they sometimes needed a
babysitter for Alex and voila!—Our friendship was ramped up initially because
of Alex and my “babysitting skills”—Hahahaha!!!
Unbeknownst to me initially, April and Michael were having some issues, and I eventually became more her friend and confidante than Michael’s. I won’t get into the gory details on a public blog, but I will admit that April and I started rekindling the old flame, and I am ashamed to this day that I did that to Michael, who was also my friend at the time. I had been cheated on, and I already knew that it didn’t feel very good, and I’m still very sorry I did it to someone else. That said, I think I was a “soft landing” for April to get out of a bad relationship, and we ended up as boyfriend and girlfriend for about a year and a half. We moved to my home state of Wisconsin for a year, and it was April’s first time in her 44 years living in a snowy climate! While we were there, I joined the best band I would ever be in, and April went out to many of the Brave New Groove gigs and danced for us all night long. The gringo Polacks in Cheeseland didn’t know what the hell to make of April! Some things never change… 🙂
April in the late 1980s–40s and Fun!!
Eric in the late 1980s–20s and Fun!!
I’ve never had my own children, and it was very cool for me that Alex lived with us for that year in Wisconsin. He was about 3 at the time, but he knew me quite well since I had been babysitting him since he was about 9 months old. That part was pretty chill—It wasn’t like he moved in with a stranger, but things were a bit difficult for him because he was uprooted at such a young age and I know he missed his dad. I doubt he remembers a lot of our year together, but I certainly do and I am grateful for it to this day. He taught me (at age 3-4!) how to play some primitive video game called “DigDug” I think! There aren’t a lot of photos from the ’80s era with Cindy and April, but fortunately April saved some pics of Alex, and they bring back some great memories of all the fun things you do with little kids.
SuperAlex on Halloween, I think!
Alex’ first time as a snow angel
April eventually put together a scrapbook for Alex and included the Eric and Cheeseland chapter.
Eventually, April felt a
little bad for Alex because he missed his dad (and I honestly don’t think she
was all that fond of the Wisconsin winter!), so she decided to move back to
Arizona after a year or so. I moved back
about 6 months after she did, but the gap in time had made things a little
weird and it didn’t really work out on a permanent basis. I started working in film and photo
production shortly after I moved back to Arizona (see “It Beats a Real
Job” if you are curious about how that 28-year accident changed my life!),
and I met my future wife Sandy on a fashion shoot in 1992.
April wanted to remain friends but that didn’t really work as Sandy and I got together, but 20 years after that, April and I became friends again, and we are still friends to this day! Cindy and I are still friends as well, and I’m very grateful to have both of them as friends to this day. I don’t think there are a lot of guys who can say they are still friends with their girlfriends from decades ago unless they have kids together. Cindy and April have both reached out to me with kindness and concern since I became ill, and April and I have even enjoyed a few music shows together like the old days. We also went out to dinner with Alex and his girlfriend Sami, and I’m glad to say that he turned out to be an awesome dude! I’m a lucky guy in so many ways…
Me, Alex, his GF Sami, and April last November.
April & I the day of my last live music show in March.
We saw a tribute band called “Led Zepagain” which explains my shirt!
Einstein is obviously much smarter than I am, but he needed to be a bit more Taoist in my humble opinion…
I actually started out writing about this topic before and got sidetracked into how we learned to drive back in 1975. So the first couple of paragraphs will be similar, but I’m not going to talk about driving much at all. The basic point about driving and technology was that in the low-tech “olden days” you had the freedom to go anywhere you wanted because nobody was tracking you with GPS devices, etc. Hell, they didn’t even have cameras on the roads back in those days, and the best anyone could do was check your odometer (assuming it worked, and that was pretty easily remedied if you were inclined to!) The downside was that there was no Uber or Lyft, and if you were out partying you damned well better have great DUI skills because that was the only way you were getting home. (I’m contemplating that essay right now, but my thoughts on that topic will piss a lot of people off in the high-tech era!)
Actually, it was more like 2% of it, and I’m definitely grateful for that–Hahaha!
Actually, we usually just stole smokes from our parents…
That said, I’m actually quite grateful to have grown up in what were really two distinct technological eras. The reason for that is that both eras have allowed me a great deal of freedom though in considerably different ways. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a freedom lover, and I’m going to do my best in any era to have as much freedom and fun as humanly possible! I’m also kind of a Taoist at heart, and there is always going to be a balance between the positives and negatives of any given thing or situation, and technology is certainly no exception to that.
Of course human technology has always been advancing, and things were obviously different between birth and death for our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but the rate of technological acceleration seems to have gone off the charts in my lifetime. I’m amazed at certain things, and I’ve probably said to at least 1,000 people that if you had told me when I was 25 that I would be able to hold a tool in my hand (as I wave my iPhone around) that can access almost all of the world’s knowledge and communicate with over a billion people via the spoken word, the written word, photography, video, music, and ALL PRETTY MUCH SIMULTANEOUSLY, I would have thought you were crazy. And all of this for under $1,000 and about $50/month. Wow…Talk about freedom!
The interesting thing
about the technology of the 1960s-2000 and 2000-present is to me the way it has
impacted the amount and types of freedom I’ve experienced in my life. Back in the “old days” of the
pre-PC era, there was a great deal more personal freedom in many ways because nobody
could “track” you, and there was no digital history of what you were
doing. It’s been said that once
something is online it lives forever, and I think that’s going to be pretty
much true until the world as we know it ends or changes in some very drastic
way. On the other hand, the ability for
immediate personal expression and connection to virtually half the people on
the planet is a hugely liberating thing that gives even a lone individual
degrees of freedom nobody could have imagined before the modern technological
era.
When I was growing up in
the low-tech era, there was so much anonymity that I could easily afford to have
a WTF attitude and take more risks in a variety of ways. You could get drunk and say whatever the hell
you wanted, and the only people who knew about it were your friends and other
people who were actually physically present.
And if you were at a party or a bar where more off-the-cuff conversation
and behavior were likely to happen, chances are that the others in the room
were in a similar state and would either laugh at or join in any stupidity you
might exhibit, or at least wouldn’t remember it very clearly the next day! Hell—even if you offended 100 people (and
most of them probably wouldn’t even know your name), in a week or two all would
be forgotten and perhaps most importantly, THERE WERE NO CAMERAS IN EVERYBODY’S
POCKETS AND HANDS to provide a permanent record of any stupidity you may have
committed. Not to mention, there was no
internet to post it on so that your stupidity (or even just outside-the-box
self-expression) could INSTANTLY BECOME VISIBLE TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE
FOREVER.
The worst that could happen in the “olden days” was that a small circle of your friends would remember “the X story” and every once in a while you would have to hear something like: “remember when Eric said or did such-and-such to so-and-so, and the other person did this or that?” And everyone in the room might re-live a laugh at your expense, but that would be the extent of it. Hell—My attitude was and is so WTF I actually enjoy making other people laugh, even if it is at “my expense.” I’ve told some of those stories here, and I want you to get a charge out of them and think, “that dude is kind of crazy—I would never say or do that!” (But I’ll bet some of you wish you had—Hahahaha!)
Now think about the old days relative to the all-knowing modern era for a minute. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all heard stories of people who did one thing that wasn’t necessarily even “wrong” in everyone’s eyes had their entire lives negatively impacted by one foolish moment or even worse, a false accusation. I have a friend whose son was falsely accused of something sexually inappropriate by a crazy young woman who has accused at least 4 others (that I know of!) because she likes the attention of being a public “victim.” He was temporarily banished from his college campus and only his parents spending over $50K on a really good lawyer got him back in school. And he went through a shit ton of emotional trauma that he didn’t deserve and could negatively impact his psyche for life. If something like that had happened to me at age 18, I sure as hell wouldn’t have had my WTF attitude and nearly as much fun in life!
Now I’m certainly not saying that all accusations are false (but I know this one was—I’ve seen the digital evidence!), and there has already been a ton of stuff written about this topic online, but think about how modern technology has negatively impacted one’s propensity to take a chance and have a WTF attitude if you don’t even have to actually do something for someone else to say you did in front of THE ENTIRE PLANET. That’s a little scary to me. If a future employer can “Google” your name and find out about something foolish, wild, or a little “outside the box” (or untrue!) decades later and not hire you, I would say that definitely inhibits one’s freedom to take some risks and enjoy life to the fullest. Fortunately, a lot of people are actually human and regularly say WTF anyway. Modern technology just makes the risk that much greater.
Now there’s a pic that would have cost me a “real job” if someone had tagged me on Facebook. Thankfully, I never applied for a “real job”–Ha!
Another area that has been impacted by modern technology for both good and for ill is creative license. The propensity for good in the high-tech era can be found in the freedom to create whatever the hell you want and make it available to the world on a moment’s notice. Back in the old days, to make a video, record a song, or write a book and make it publicly available took a huge amount of time and money, which meant that corporate interests tended to exercise much more control over the creative process. And you generally couldn’t get it done without a pile of money! Although this was the case, corporate interests like record companies, etc. really didn’t care about the content itself as long as it sold and made them money. In a way, this gave the artists a lot of creative freedom to say WTF, because they knew their audiences and what they liked. And the old cigar-chomper guys in the office didn’t really look too closely at the creative content while they counted their coin…
Of course there were
certainly do-gooder censorship types who would raise a stink in the local media
or in Congress once in a while (anyone remember Al’s wife Tipper Gore trying to
rate/censor “obscene, violent, sexist, insert your evil adjective here
rock music in the mid-1980s?). My idol
Frank Zappa actually went in front of Congress during the hearings for Tipper’s
bill (and she wasn’t even a legislator, but her husband was a senator, so I
guess that was close enough to censor rock ‘n’ roll!) But the end result of this was kind of ho-hum,
and a few heavy metal albums were rated as “nasty” in some form. Sure, some parents probably became more aware
of what their kids were listening to, but most parents in that era didn’t like
rock music so they would pretty much ignore it.
Mine sure did even though I played it constantly.
Here are a couple of songs with lyrics by a couple of my favorite artists that were released in 1968 and 1978 respectively. The first one is the Rolling Stones’ “Stray Cat Blues.” The gist of it is that the protagonist Mick Jagger is trying to entice a 15-year-old girl and her friend to “come upstairs” to his room for some wild sex. In the live version of the song, Mick changes the girl’s age from 15 to 13. Somehow I can’t see this happening today without a huge amount of instant outrage on social media, etc… (On second thought, perhaps all those wealthy executives and powerful politicians who hung out with Jeffery Epstein on his “kiddie island” might not object to it. Or to Hitlery killing him either–But I digress…)
The second song is Frank Zappa’s “Bobby Brown,” and the gist of this song is that some arrogant jock dude (Bobby Brown) “fucks this dyke” who cuts of his balls and turns him into a “homo.” FYI—I bought the Rolling Stones’ record when I was about 15 and the Zappa record when I was 17 or 18. Ahhh…The creative freedom of the ancient age when nobody was the wiser… Have a listen if you dare. But be prepared to be “offended” even though the song is intended as a complete satire on arrogant Joe Jockstraps, who are certainly a safe target these days–Hahaha! Hell–I even played this song in front of audiences a few times in a band…
Now, I’m not of fan of most modern music (mostly because they play it with computers instead of real humans creating a real groove with real instruments, but hey—I’m an old guy who used to play actual instruments…), and I’m guessing that equally nasty lyrics abound and you can find songs like that on the internet. But, much like the person who holds back from saying something “offensive” or having a WTF attitude, I think that the threat of instant backlash on the internet is going to create a lot of self-censorship even as the songs are being written, particularly if the goal is to sell as much music as possible in whatever format they sell music in these days (digital downloads?)
I’m guessing this self-censorship is similar to the person at the party who doesn’t want to take a risk because everyone has a device connected to the internet, and one mistake could ruin a career or at least one’s social life. I think this is especially true in the current PC era where every snowflake wants to have their 15 seconds of fame on the internet signaling their virtue and being “offended” by something racist, sexist, misogynist, ad infinitum, ad absurdum… Feel free in the comments to point out that I’m completely wrong though. I would love to hear some edgy new stuff very soon!
And finally, the moment
you’ve all been waiting for—Dating in the low-tech and high-tech eras! The first (and rather obvious) thing I must
point out is that the advent of modern technology did not eliminate the old
school ways of dating and mating in any way, shape or form. The great news is that even with Match,
Tinder, Bumble, Fumble (yeah, I THINK I’m kidding on the last one—Hahaha!) and
100 other dating sites and apps, you can still meet new people the
old-fashioned ways at work, at bars, on the dance floor (one of my faves!), in
a store, anywhere else in person, or being “fixed up” by a mutual
friend (how I met my last girlfriend Sherry if you read our stories in
“Imagine”). So technology
hasn’t really detracted from the dating scene at all but only added to it.
I met awesome Sherry the most old-school way known to man–We were “fixed up” by our mutual friend Gina. I’m definitely grateful for that–Thanks, Gina!!!
I’ve done my fair share of
dating over the recent years when I was single, and I’ve met fun, interesting,
beautiful women in both low-tech and high-tech ways. They both seem to work
pretty well. Obviously, the advantage to
low-tech is that you usually meet in person first, so you already know if there
is a physical attraction at least.
Photos online aren’t always accurate (often by design, and I worked in
advertising so I ought to know!), and people can spend a lot of time tweaking
their profile so they sound more attractive than they really are.
On the other hand, the high-tech method of meeting potential dates is that you literally have the opportunity to meet 1,000 times more people than you would just going about your day, and you can pre-screen people based on 50 different characteristics. I was always very open-minded in terms of age, race, occupation and stuff like that, but I did prefer women who were really into good music or had other common interests like hiking and the gym. Even though you won’t hit it off with the majority of on-line dates, I liked the social WTF nature of meeting new (and potentially “strange”–Hahaha!) women for happy hour (always my first option!) I can say that many people tend to overthink this aspect of things in terms of putting too much emphasis on what a person’s online profile says. Live a little and just say WTF, for Chrissakes! Life is short–What have you got to lose by taking a chance and meeting someone new?
OK—You asked for it. Below are a few G-rated photos of some of the interesting and beautiful women I was lucky enough to meet using both low-tech and high-tech realities in recent years. But I’ve gotten plenty of X-rated ones over the years too which I never once asked for. (I certainly love a woman who shares my WTF attitude in the modern era! But I won’t post them–Scout’s honor…) So now you know why I’m damned grateful for living in both eras. Talk about the best of both worlds! And thank you very much ladies for saying WTF and wanting to meet me. I really enjoyed your company on a date at the very least and sometimes we hit it off! What more can a guy ask from life?
I met Marie the low-tech way while I was out walking the Scruffs in our ‘hood wearing nothing but tiny running shorts. She told me later she had seen me before and thought I was either European, gay, or some combination thereof–Hahahaha!!! Our dogs hit it off and then it was our turn!
I met Cindy the old-school way. She was a bartender at my favorite live music club.
OK–This one is slightly naughty in the modern “selfie” style, but I don’t think Dr. Deb would mind. I met her on Tinder advertising herself as “married with a hall pass.” It’s not like she didn;t sare my WTF attitude!
I met this lovely “married with a hall pass” woman online as well. But she likes to keep a lower profile so I will certainly respect that!
I met this lovely young DeeDee online. My friend Marc said she only went on a date with me because of the cool Benz I bought from him–Hahaha!
I met the fun and lovely Eli through my friend Marc. And it wasn’t about the Benz, man!
Kim & I met on Tinder, I believe. We had quite a lot in common musically too, Some of our best dates included us playing guitar and singing together. How fun!!
Lani & I met on Tinder too. She was very sweet but I wasn’t ready to get married quite as quickly as she was! But she reached out to me a while back and said she found the right man and they were very happy together! And I’m sincerely happy for you too, Lani. Life is too short!
And if you’ve made it to the end, I’ll point out that with only two exceptions all of these women are all in my age bracket (around 50). (And if you try to guess which ones, you’ll probably guess wrong!) I can honestly say that I felt so lucky to have experienced the “dating life” in the modern era with so many sweet, fun, beautiful women my age. And since I was no longer a boy or somewhat clueless young man, I had the time of my life and I think all of the girls enjoyed themselves hanging out with me. At least I hope so because the real beauty of the man/woman thing for me as a straight guy was the yin/yang vibe of hanging out with awesome girls and simply enjoying some time and life together. (Disclaimer: To each his or her own and no judgement express or implied regarding the sexual preferences of others–Hahaha!!)
