Going back east. ( Dead cows and grandpa)

I had one birthday party when I was a kid. All the neighbor hood kids were there. I got a lot of Star Wars toys.  My birthday cake had Tweedy Bird. I don’t know how I ended up with that cake. I wanted a Star Wars one. I didn’t care really though. I was just happy I was having a party. My mom was pregnant with my sister at the time. It was my last hurrah.

I was excited to be having a little sister. I asked my parents how my sister got in there. Mom went to a library and checked out an extremely graphic book. She explained to me about the penis and vagina. I told all my friends about it.

My dad dropped me off at my grandma’s house. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking that the next day I will have a baby sister. I got up the next morning. We got in grandpas’ car and drove to the hospital.  I was too young to go inside. Mom’s room was on the first floor. She opened the window and held my sister to the screen. She was dark and screaming.

“That’s not my sister, that’s some Mexican baby.” I said.

My sister came home three weeks later. She was sick a lot and couldn’t eat. All she did was cry and throw up. I would hear my mom yelling at her to stop her fucking crying and just sleep.  I was scared for her. I wanted to take her and run away so she wouldn’t get hurt and yelled at.

She had a few operations. She started to eat and hold the food down. My parents decided we should take my grandma to Ohio for my great grandparent’s 50^th anniversary. I don’t remember a lot of the trip. My sister throwing up every half hour or so, an electrical storm in New Mexico. I saw cows getting struck by lightening. My grandma told me not to touch anything metal in the car or I might die. I got my head stuck between the bars on a motel balcony. Dad spread the bars apart and pulled me through.

I remember my great grandparents. Andrew and Anna Kichka, they barely spoke any English. She was a tiny little woman. She just in her chair with a huge smile on her face. I sat at her feet. She put her hand on my head and sang Slavic songs to me.  It was uncomfortable, but I liked the attention. Great grandpa was a huge man. All muscle. He took me to his garden and let me pick raspberries.

I don’t know much about them. I know they left Czechoslovakia, went to Hungry and came to New York in the late 30’s. Eventually they settled in Cleveland.

In 1953 my grandma met some Ukrainian sailor and got pregnant with my mother. The sailor left. No one saw him again.

Some how she and my mom ended up in LA, I don’t know how. No one ever told me about it. I never asked about it. I figured if they wanted me to know, they would have told me.

Mr. Anthony's class

2009

 

The mornings are the worst time. I wake up imagining she is waking up in someone else’s arms. Waking up after the best night of her life, something only he can do. If I don’t get up and do something I’ll dwell on it all day long.

Her birthday is this week. Do I get her something? Something small and impersonal, or do I just say fuck it and ignore it?

1988

Danny was my own personal bully. We were friends, but one day in ninth grade he decided he needed to beat me. I’m not sure what happened. He would grab me after science class and slam me into the wall, grabbing my shirt and throwing me. I always did the same thing. I stood there. I never moved. I never spoke. He never actually hit me. He would just stick his face inches away from mine and just yell, shoving me harder into the wall.

This got to be a routine. Everyday after fourth period I would get shoved around. He’d stop and I would follow another group of bigger kids to lunch. A few months of this I started to get tired of it. I knew he wasn’t ever going to do anything. It became an inconvenience more then anything. I’d get shoved, follow the kids, go to lunch and stare at my crush for awhile. Hoping she didn’t see Danny shoving me around and thinking I’m some wimp.

He started flattening my bike tires. Everyday I would go get my bike and the tires were flat. Fuck Danny, I got on my bike and rode it home anyway. I’d patch the tires and he’d flatten them. My mom told me to tell the principal. I tried to tell her how that would make things worse.

Eventually he stopped. He got a girlfriend and started ignoring me. She was a nice girl. I couldn’t figure out what she saw in this asshole.  I guess it was that he was a bad boy.

High School started and I never saw him again.

Larry

1989

I don’t remember the last time I saw my dad. He used to just show up and take us to dinner. He would hand us a few bucks to buy something for the girls and then would disappear for a month or so.  Dawn said it best when it came to him. He has good intentions, but never follows through.

There was never any father/son bond between us. In fact I think he hugged me once. He said goodbye, hugged me and was walked into the Psych. Ward at the VA hospital in Loma Linda. I was 16, no money, no where to live. Being homeless again didn’t appeal to me. I bit the bullet and called my mom collect.

She picked me up and drove me to her house. The ride over was silent. I could tell she wanted to say something.

We got to her house. She asked if I had any clothes or bags. I told her I didn’t know. Me and dad had split the travel trailer the night before. He woke me up and said we needed to go. I didn’t have the time to grab anything.  We got in the car and he just drove around. Five or six hours later we ended up at the VA Hospital. He told them he wanted to die.

Mom told me I could have my own room back and that she would take me out to get some clothes tomorrow. It was weird being in the house again. I had been gone a little over a year and things seemed different. It wasn’t bad at first. We went to a few thrift stores and got some clothes. We went to the grocery store. She told me to get whatever I wanted.  That lasted about five days.

She made spaghetti one night. She poured us a glass of wine. You’re old enough to have a glass every now and then she said. I sat on the couch with my dinner. She sat on the chair on the other side of the living room.  She looked at me and said

“You think you can just move back in whenever you feel like it? You and your asshole father are just trying to take advantage me.”

“Quite mom, I just want to eat.”

“Fuck you. You do not ever talk to me that way.”

Her plate of spaghetti flew towards my face. I ducked to the side. Spaghetti covered the wall and the couch.

“Clean it up asshole” she said.

I went to the porch and smoked a cigarette.

 I decided I would go back to my grandma’s house in the desert.

I took the bus out there. My dad picked me up.

He said he was only in for three days.  I asked why he didn’t pick me up. He said it never occurred to him he should do that.

2006

I get a call form my cousin.

“Your dad’s dead, he killed himself.”

Way to break it to me gently asshole. I called the Coroners office in San Bernardino.

I’m calling about Larry Robison. I’m his son.

The coroner I talked to was very nice. He asked if I wanted to hear the note he left behind.

Sure.

Only a couple things stuck out in my mind. He said that he knew his grand babies would be taken care of and that he hoped to come back as a blue jay.

He killed himself in his girlfriend’s house. He took a shit load of pills, wrapped him self in a blanket and shot himself.

His girlfriend called me a few days later. She said that my father died owning her money. She wanted me to pay her the money and pay for a new couch. I told her to fuck off.

Last I ever heard of her.

I called my mother to let her know. She told me she’d dance on his grave. I hung up.

I had him cremated. I took his ashes and buried them in my grandma’s backyard. I didn’t attend the memorial service. I didn’t feel like hanging around a bunch of people that were pretending to like him.

I felt bad for my grandma. All of her kids were dead. Her husband was dead. My uncle, my dad and my aunt killed themselves. My other aunt got drunk and didn’t bother wearing a seatbelt. She died somewhere on Inyokern road, beer cans littered the area.

Meh..

Meh…


I get up this morning and just go meh. Not sad, happy or anything. I don’t really care today. Got up, feed the cat, got dressed, had some coffee and just went meh. I’ve lost the ability to care at work. It pays the bills and I have plenty of free time when I’m there to do whatever, but I feel like I’m wasting away here. I’m turning 37 in a few weeks, too late to start looking for something else. I don’t want to start at the bottom again. I don’t want some 25 year old kid just out of college telling what to do.



Don was the first person I met when I moved to Ridgecrest. I was taking a machine shop class up at the college. I didn’t want to be a machinist or anything; it just seemed like an interesting class. I thought Don was one of the instructors. He seemed to know a lot about the work we were doing. If anyone needed help he was always there and he was able to fix the problem.

I started talking to the guy and realized that he was only two years older then me. He was just out of the army and trying to start over. He drove a flat bed truck that was usually loaded with hay. Don would give me a ride from the campus back to the high school. Time went on and Don and I grew to be pretty good friends. It turned out that our families had known each other since the sixties. My father dated his step mom in high school.

It started getting really crowded at my grandmother’s place. My grandpa had Alzheimer’s and was bed ridden. My aunt was a hardcore drug addict and her kids were living there. My dad and I shared a room. Don suggested that I move to his place. His parents had a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. I helped out around the place, feed the animals, and chopped wood. I became a half assed ranch-hand. I dug it. At night we would throw on our black trench coats, find whatever vehicle we could get running and go to town. We didn’t really do much. We mostly sat around Denny’s drinking coffee and eating French fries till we were kicked out.



Terrance came up to me in class and said “I bet you sit around and listen to music.”

Actually yes I do was my response. We spent the rest of the day talking music and comparing briefcases’. We both carried briefcases’ to class. We made plans to hang out on Friday. Don and I would pick him. We went to his house, met his parents and left. After a half hour of wandering aimlessly around the desert we ran into a group of Terrance’s friends. He told us he is going to go hang out with them now and split. Don and I ended up back at Denny’s.

How to make a first impression

I had been stationed in Alaska for three months before I met anybody to hang around with. It seems that an indie rock listening to idiot from California is not exactly prime friend material. I had met a few people, but they were the party boys of the dorm. I went to their parties a few times and hung around on base with them. But that’s it. They had no desire to leave the base. I didn’t have a car yet, so I was kind of stuck there. They were my friends for convince purposes more then anything. They tried to get me to dress differently, buy designer clothes, and listen to popular music. Still, we got along and I did have fun with them.

When you don’t hunt or fish, there is not a hell of a lot to do in Alaska. We mostly sat around watching movies and drink beer. I still wanted more. I saved up and bought a used car. While walking through the halls one day I ran into a guy named Jon. I had a Nine Inch Nails cd in my hands. Jon saw it and asked if it was any good. I told him I hadn’t listened to it yet. We decided to go to his room and give it a listen. We threw the disc on and talked for the next hour or so about music. Jon asked why he hadn’t seen me around. I told him how I had just gotten there and had been hanging out the other guys. He suggested I tag a long to a party of base with him and some friends.

Later that night Jon knocked on my door. With him were Ben, Mike and Blaine. I had the biggest car so we decided to take mine. We piled in and drove to Fairbanks. They were shocked that I had never been off base. Before the party they directed me around town, pointing out cool things I should go check out. I saw the Northern Lights for the first time. To me they looked like red glowing curtains blowing in the breeze.

We went to the party and I met all of their friends. They were all very nice and accepting. We drank a lot of beer and talked till about two in the morning. We decided to call it a night.

We started driving back to the base. I had to pee. Badly. We drove around looking for a place to stop. We gave up and stopped at a vacant lot. I got out and started.

I heard Jon say “Jim! Cops!” Again with the Jim, I hated that name. I figured they were fucking with me. I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Stop what you’re doing.”

“I can’t, I’m pissing.”

I turn around and this big Fairbanks cop is standing there.

“We just don’t piss wherever we feel like in this state. Next time I suggest you take a leak before you leave. ”

He wrote me a ticket for public urination. He told me he could get me for indecent exposure. I could hear everyone laughing in the car.

I went to court and had to pay $300 bucks for taking a piss outside.

Your Academy

When I was in the Air Force I had a roommate named Charles. I absolutely hated him. He was the anti-James. He was a hard core Christian. He was always going through my crap. I'd wake up and he would be standing by my bed praying. When my friends would come over to visit, He would take out his knives and start sharpening them mumbling loud enough for us to hear about “Taking out any dumb sumbitch that crossed him”. Very Christian of him.


He told me he roomed with me because god wanted him to watch over me. His half of the room was covered in Reba McIntire posters. Mine was covered in Hubcaps, Christmas lights, bike parts and whatever else I could attach to the walls. I didn’t have any girlfriends. He would ask if I was a “fag”. Being from California and not having a girlfriend automatically made me gay in his eyes.

Chuck would invite his church group over for bible study. He ended each meeting with “Let’s pray for Jim.” He called me Jim, another reason to hate him.

I decided I needed to get rid of him. We couldn't just move out without all this paperwork bullshit. So I decided to scare him into moving out. I started collecting Serial killer/Mass murder books. I had trading cards. I started a correspondence with a couple. I gave my number to Richard Hanson and told him to go ahead and call collect. After about two months Ole’ Chuck split. He moved out to some Christian housing thing. I feel shitty about it, but he was an asshole.

Look up Academy Fight Song by Mission of Burma. It fit the situation perfectly.

Scattered thoughts, or Please don't take me by the hand.

Woke up sad again this morning, that’s twice this week. Am I going backwards? I thought I was starting to get better. I guess not.


Molly II the cat is sick. I got out of bed and stepped in cat puke. Nothing starts the morning like warm, wet, smelly cat food between you toes. I had my coffee and sat for a minute and watched the news.

Before I left I grabbed a CD book to grab some music for the drive in. More cat vomit. I don’t know how she did it, but it was everywhere. I scrubbed it out grabbed a disc and split. I hope she’s ok.

I had a dream last night about this girl from my past. We sat on the bed and watched movies. We kissed each other and went to sleep. It’s strange, I’ve never thought this way about her before. I woke thinking that it was nice.

Am I really ready to start moving on? Is that what the dream was telling me? Do I just want someone next to me, or do I actually want another relationship? The truth is I’m scared to death about the whole thing. I’m scared to talk to anyone, scared to let my guard down. Scared to allow my self to go through it all over again. I’m scared I’ll just mess up a whole new relationship. Will there be someone out there that can take the fact that I’m basically a cynical bastard who uses sarcasm as a second language because after thirty six years I’m still a sacred thirteen year old when it comes to women.

Do I just say fuck it and be by myself for awhile and try and enjoy it?

I really don’t know what to do. Part of me says, yes be alone. Another part of me wants someone, anyone to notice me, take me by the hand and make me feel loved again.

So, I’ll go on each day living. If something happens something happens. I’m not going to try and force anything to happen. You can’t change the person you are and someone somewhere will like me just as I am.