The niceties we portray to others is a lie. Come on tell me how often how many times you hold back from the misanthrope inside you. You’re not perfect. You’re not some goddamn hippy love child that thinks everything is cool. The words come to spew out at how much a fucking idiot the people around, I’m a misanthrope. I have friends, just a few. Most can’t stand my vitriolic mannerism. I told a lady in Walmart who was filling a basket with cocktail chars, after 20 minutes, “To get off the fucking phone” apparently, she was transferring money from many accounts to the one she needed. Twenty fucking minutes. If you buy that much shit you should know how much fucking money is in your account. She was rude to all the people in line, including me, so I laid it on her “how much time does a fucking millennial need to piss someone off.” She got out of there without a word of rebuke. Bitch new she was wrong. Me be I’ve been too much House M.D but I had no Vicodin and no patience. Fuck her I hope she learned a lesson about manners.

   I awake this morning refreshed listening to Jared Browne’s beautiful playing on the piano. He was my roommate 20 odd years ago in Seattle. I asked him if he would not mind me asking to record some Erik Satie and Bartok. I used to wake up in the early morning and he’d be practicing “Bluebeard” along with Bach’s “48 Preludes and Fugues”. What a wonderful way to start the day. Down below our apartment there was a bakery and coffee shop and its delicious scents would waft throughout our apartment in the Mount Baker district.

    I miss those times and I wish they had lasted but I let my baser instincts take a hold of me after being in Seattle for the year. We had met up with a common friend named Wes we ran into at a bar call ‘The Vogue”. It was a Bi-sexual venue which often had BDSM nights we would attend. It was a place where libertinage ruled and we fully took advantage of our vices. Cannabis was prevalent and people did Methamphetamine out of view because it was still a taboo even there. Of course, I partook. The glass squares of the speed were more powerful and intoxicating than any speed had done before and was quickly hooked.

   At the time I had a cooking gig at a place on South Rainier Street called “Rutabaga” where I would start work at 5:30 a.m. cooking fresh baked bread, a turkey, cranberry cream cheese spread and my freshly homemade potato chips. A great, fresh sandwich indeed. Often, I would mix up nut-burgers with some nuts I’d fry in olive oil and tamari sauce, dry them, mix one egg and provolone cheese per 16 patties I would then grill them with onions and serve it on the freshly baked bread. It was one of our biggest sellers.

    The restaurant was owned by two gay gentlemen one of which was a programmer for Microsoft. The other had actually visited Colorado Springs once and saw a “Chip and Dale’s” night at the bar I frequented the most when I lived there. We had some pretty good common ground the three of us. I miss working for them they were so kind and generous and gave me free rein of the kitchen in the mornings. They had even had a Barista from an Italian coffee producer train me on an old Astoria espresso machine. I now had a Barista training to add to my resume.

    One night, the waiter who served the customers during my shift and I were asked to join them for some fine dining in the bank building in Seattle. The meal itself cost hundreds of dollars, but they wanted to familiarize us on how fine dining was done.

    The place was beyond astonishing. The waiting room featured a pizza bar where they would prepare pesto pizzas on thin crust made in wood burning ovens. Where we sat was a bar made out of the most exquisite wood carvings with marble tops. The ceilings were made with some of the most impressive glass sculptures hanging down creating an ambiance unlike any other I had seen before. I asked the waiter how much the glass had cost and he said ‘in the tens of millions” the appraisal he gave me was not questionable. The place was called the Palomino Club and it sat at the top of the bank tower I had mentioned earlier. What a wonderful evening.

    The sad part of this story is I had let myself become a speed freak and eventually left the job in-search of my fix daily. At night, we would dig through the trash cans on Capitol Hill wearing chain mail gloves covered in leather lest we be poked by a dirty needle in our search for valuables to trade for our “ice”. This lasted for months on end. Truly “Sleepless in Seattle”. I watched my “friends”; the other junkies as well as my-self’s soul disintegrate.

    Eventually I left Seattle and returned to Eugene Oregon. Things seemed to return to normal but they had a siege of the city taken over by Heroin dealers in which I became one of the addicts chained to their evil dragon. But that is a story for another day.

Chapter 1

      The ravenous pigs of society gnash their foul teeth against the remodeled breaks in my bones and to my already scarred flesh, using words as the slimy tongues which taste the sweat and chemicals which have poured out. They love it. Can’t seem to get enough. I tighten my abdominal in some vain attempt at gassing them but it only makes them hungrier in their attempt to get deeper into all my chasms for some reason I try to scrape myself to new ground that hasn’t been covered in the slop of others before me. Futile. They’ve been at this for thousands of years. My only hope is that somewhere inside me is a disturbing flavor where even the pigs will find disgust.

      I awake and fondle around for my headphones so Brian Eno may banish the demons of my slumber. I had heard the melody of “Baby’s on Fire” in the land of Morpheus which tethered me back to this banal existence. I’m still not sure which was worse. The dreams of being fed on or the reality of slowly rotting here in this realm known as Sangsara.

      If anyone or anything from the future happens to read this, avoid the planet Earth. It is cursed. The next fossil fuel here will be us instead of the reptilian type which we overused to the point of sickness, war and death. Bloody sands mixed with the oil of those unfortunate souls enslaved to self-righteous dictators. The books you find will claim that they did this because their God’s opposed each other. These writings are all lies fabricated by man to rationalize and enslave the masses to follow their will. I’m sure you beings from beyond know the power of the word. LOGOS. God spoke and it was. If we had only received the gift of fire and not language, we might have lasted longer. With language came observations we became scared of so we chose to ignore them. Thus, the deadliest of all sins was born. Ignorance.

      Sketching with words like charcoal against bleached skins of ancient drums. Looking for the magick without words. Pure primordial positioning atop stacks of censers with miasmas of frankincense. Intoxicated by the knowledge of the wealth burning below and it’s cost upon my soul. The slide rule shows that the books have been balanced. Again, I ask at what cost? Is this a debt I shall pay with blood and tears or will I be able through works make an offering so rich that my slate becomes clean? I’d prefer the latter. Strange homunculus surrounds the streets where I dwell. Their scent is that of unnatural yearnings. I shudder.

      I warn Esperanza and Josh “The next time you visit, be sure to arm yourself with a survival kit. It is not safe here anymore. They are all in it for themselves, with complete disregard to principals and half-truths. Truly, this is nothing new. I just state it as a simple reminder. Look both ways.”

      “I am still unclear why you have traveled so far just to be here. It is not going away anytime soon. We appreciate the visit, but there is much work to do. For us all.”

      “I did not mean to rattle your nerves but these are dire times. The deadlines have been moved up. We cannot afford to be voyeurs of this anymore. There is too much at stake.” Can we really risk what they claim is inevitable. We still have time to avert the outcome, but we must act quickly. No dilly-dallying around. Breaking furniture is our main source of heat. I read “Notes from The Underground”, by Dostoevsky when I was much younger and that’s how he survived the Russian winters. Our little group must surround the fire from getting frostbite, but we have to keep it under wraps or we’ll attract attention. Esperanza is the one with gift of knowing the land and what we can eat. Josh is a crack shot and damn good with a machete. We try not to use guns; Too much noise. I am the makeshift doctor and medic though I’ve had to kill a few in my time. There goes my Hippocratic oath. I have visions sometimes though and I try not to burden them with them. They think I’m half If cracked anyway. If we can just make it 6 more miles, we’ll have a better chance. But, It’s dark, wet and cold outside. I can’t risk them getting injured. I have very few medical supplies and  need to keep them for when we really need them.

      Good, we found a wooden chair and some sticks to start kindling. We got to get warm, and got to get dry. We’re going to need wits to get the next six miles. We got real lucky we found a case of bottled water in the basement. The residents must have left in a hurry, hell there were even Spaghetti in the pantry. No sauce but it’s something to eat. Time to get some sleep.

      I am so tired, but I’m apprehensive about dreaming. That last one pretty freaked me out. I can’t figure out. Why me? Am I only one? I’m so tired my eyes can’t stay open….

      The Forest. I’m not alone. It’s dark but I can smell wet fur around me. I can hear snarls in the night and they’re close. The face of a bear comes within my sight and begins to speak in a low gravelly voice. “Why did you let the world turn to garbage? Before they took our homes and pushed us back into smaller territories their were still those of you who fought for us. All we have is your dirty concrete cities. They are now raping the land we found refuge in. You too are an animal and in the same situation. Why don’t you do something about it?”

      “I’m trying but it is not easy! They run the world now and are willing to cull all of us so they can have their “perfect world”.

      The bear answers “Have we not survived all of your bullshit? We had no guns, no technology, and no food in supermarkets to feed us. Yet we still live. Why not you lazy human? Seems like they’re targeting you now.”

      I tried to explain, “We were stupid and greedy, we used up most of our resources and overpopulated. Wars broke out and the rich banded together to try and shape a brand new world even if that meant billions of us would have to die for their cause!”

      The bear looked at me keenly and even smelled of me and answered, “But not you, you were never one of them. I can still smell the trash of you living on the streets. Getting food where you could. Your more feral than you know. I shall name you The Raccoon. The masked bandit of nature. You’ve lived like one for many years.”

      The bear also adds, “The dreams and thoughts are not common. Listen to them.” Then he puts his paw on my face and pushes me back into the dream world.

      Again I find myself in the temple with all the censors and miasmas but this time they smell of rotting and burnt flesh. When I was living on the streets of Seattle, I saw a building on fire. I ran in hoping to help whoever was in that diorama of Dante’s. There was no helping those I found. Charred bodies and the smell of the wood, plastic, and their flesh made me vomit.

     The walls of the temple I was in was full of mold and decay and I knew at that moment I needed to make repairs to the once pristine palace.

      It’s a cold winter day in Colorado as I awake, still aware of my dreams. I’m dreading going out into this weather, but we need too. We got a radio transmission from Fort Carson. There seems to be a split in the military. Quite a bit of soldiers will not impose martial law on American citizens. They still follow their oath of “Defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic.” We need to hook up with these troops for both supplies and “safety.” I say “safety” because it is a war zone.

      We are close to Fountain, Colorado. From here we can make it towards Route One which is where the rebel soldiers are held up. God, I pray we don’t have to go through Fountain Creek. I’m almost certain there will be guards patrolling the creek area.

      I grew up in Fountain back in the seventies. I know the town and I know the creek better. My parents lived in a house where I could just hop the fence and I’d be in the woods around the water. I haven’t been there for years. I studied to become an EMT and moved to Seattle. There, I had a breakdown and ended up on the streets for years. I would live off the scraps restaurants would throw out, food boxes, and my favorite, Catholic Charities. They would never press their religion on me they just did good deeds. Though I’m not a Christian, I have a total respect and admiration for nuns.

      I hear Esperanza talking in her sleep in the other room. It’s all in Spanish, but I can make out a few words and they aren’t good. You can tell she’s been put through the wringer. I can only imagine what it would have been like being smuggled into this country by Coyotes. She was young and knowing people like I do, she must have seemed like a prize to many. I can see why she’s such a strong Catholic. God must have saved her many times over. I’ll let her sleep for a good twenty minutes more.

      In the kitchen, Josh is half way through a can of cold cream of mushroom soup. He looks to me and says, “Look what I found.” You can tell he’s really hungry by the pace he’s eating. Josh is a country boy so I’m sure he’s used to eating a bit more than just a can of cold condensed soup.

     I’m taken back to the days of teenage dance halls, new romantic melodies and eyeliner.

My name is Alex, I’m a sixteen-year-old runaway dressed in black, androgynous with Billy Idol beats and dog collars, swaying to the illustrious movements of our young libidos. Pupils dilated, hiding behind long bangs of blue-black hair. The vodka princess with stitched wrists beckons. All hail her darkened glory. A diva of death so young. Acid deals in parking lots with Schaffer beer chase. All ideals of self-preservation lost as we danced in the shadow of Ronnie Raygun’s Cheyenne Mountain Monster, only a few miles away from our adolescent den of discordia.

     True nihilism was the dish of the day. Not a care in the world, for we cared not for the world. I was convinced that my life would end by twenty-four. “Maximum Overdrive” was seemingly prophetic. Its AC/DCscore really put the hook in me. We were criminals living in a world, which presumed that its laws applied to us. Who were they kidding? I used to commit a federal felony a day just to keep my edge. We used to go dancing at a place called the Flashpoint. A seedy little dive down in Southgate. It was all ages, so there was no drinking inside but outside, it was like a Grateful Dead parking lot. Acid, pot, whiskey, sex, and everybody looked so damned fine. We wrote the books on fashion.  I’ve never been to another “bar” where there were so many drugs and young women.

     There was a security guard there but she looked the other way. That other way was usually towards some of the young does prancing about in water-proof eye-liner on the inside of their eyes. High heel boots, fishnets, mini-skirts, man, life was beautiful. I almost became an acid guru with my knowledge of magick and alternate publications such as De Sade and Masoch, Leary, Huxley, Crowley, Regardie, etc… Because I was a runaway with a pad I could take my friends to private parties and have mad sex and acid discussions. I was on my way to becoming a new-romantic Manson. My roommates helped make the whole scene even better.

     You see, when I turned fifteen my dad got me a job digging ditches for the construction company he worked for. It was hard work, but I made good money. I saved enough to buy me a little Datsun to cruise around in. By the time the summer job ended I decided to run away with my friend Bane, a friend who had similar problems but lived in Pueblo. He was tall and lanky with short spiky blond hair. One cool motherfucker. When my Datsun didn’t work we rode in his VW Bug. He liked techno more than me, I was more into guitars. He was the perfect wingman for me. What women didn’t find in me they sure found in him. We were always with a girl. When we split we were given shelter by our new found friends Mary, Tom, Joe, and Cathy. We met them at night clubs where they were the d.j.s. We made a good impression on them even though we were much younger; they let us into their house. I let my mom knew where I was, but she knew I wasn’t going back to the house ruled by my father.

     Mary was a little overweight and half Japanese. She had spiky black hair and one eye for fashion. She had a great collection of Negal’s paintings and had a synth a guitar she used to play around with. She did the local midnight punk rock show on the public listening radio station. She knew her musick. Her shows were the best. I used to go into the station with her and help pick out albums to play. This was still in the day when there were twelve inch singles and records. There were no CD’s. I used to love going to the station with her. She was the best personality on the air. Mary had one sexy voice. Tom was a D.J. at some of the local clubs around. He was gay and introduced me to alot of his queen friends. I really admired them. What balls to stand up for the way you wished to present yourself. He used to be a football player at Western State University so he was a rather large fellow, but man could he do make up and hair. He taught me so much. One night we had a friend there who was tripping for the first time. It really hit Liza hard. I feel bad about this now because it was a mean trick, but I had Tom carry me down the stairs as if I had had an attack of some kind. Man she freaked out. She was trying to wake me up, and tried to make me conscience. I jumped up and scared the shit out of her. She jumped from the living room through the kitchen and into the backyard. Strangely enough she became somewhat straight edge and was against drugs after that. Man that was a mean trick, I still feel sorry about that.

          Of course there was going to be an eventual downfall to all this, I just didn’t know when or how. My drug dealing was paying for some of it, but my usage tapped into the funds. I was a sixteen-year runaway trying to find a job while my head was so screwed up. It was the car crash of life headed straight for me.

           I eventually locked my self up in a nut house. Amazingly some of my friends came and visited me. Thanx Liza and Mary. When I was admitted I was wearing my make-up, tie-dyed jeans, dashiki, earrings and other assorted garments. I was on about eight hits of some good, and I mean really good LSD. Admittance into a psych ward is just about as surreal as the drugs you’re on. They drag you into a room where the most fucking psychedelic paper they can come up with is and make you just sit there. I’m just trying to make sense to these assholes and they got gotta have all this southwestern art around which brings me back to my Indian heritage and so naturally that’s what I want to talk about. They keep probing me with their strange sterile instruments of psycho secretion.

      I tell them,” Hey, look I’m Tripping my fucking balls off and all this science shit ain’t gonna help me come down, just let me sit here a while with my headphones on and listen to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and I’ll be OK.” Of course, that was the first thing they took away from me, fucking bastards. The musick was the only thing keeping me sane at that time. They put me into a room where all the walls were melting, with doctors probing me with questions which I really didn’t feel like answering.

          So what can I tell you about Cedar Springs. It’s a place where rich parents and parents with good insurance can put their kids away when they can’t handle them. Yuppie parents who forgot all about the trial and tribulations that teenagers go through. Most of the baby boomers were raised by television so it’s no wonder they are inept at raising children, plus they’re too interested in their “perfect marriage, or their spotless image. They forgot how to love their children because in reality they don’t really even love themselves. So, they pay seven hundred dollars a day to have their children babysat by professional counselors and nurses.  You can never leave the memories behind. They are too ingrained. I can’t remember most of the names of those I was in there with, but I’ll never forget the stories. The place was like a eight week zoo where you talked out all your problems to someone who tried to forget them when they got home and put on the football game and cracked open a tall one. I’m not saying that the people that worked there didn’t care about us or our problems it’s just that it was a job for them. I believe that intent prescribes method. If my intent is to climb a mountain, I’m going to find the best footholds that I can. If my intent is to make money, Then I’m going to find a job. This was a job for them not their lives. I didn’t go home at the end of the day or receive a paycheck. There methods were always skewed by the bylaws of the hospital.  They had to follow rules. They couldn’t just act on instinct and do what might be the best course of action for the situation. Unfortunately, the mental health system of America is not an altruistic program.Psychologists and psychiatrists spend so much money going to college and then they do their internships before they get a private practice. They deserve the money they make but, in all reality, it is still just a job. They can’t let themselves get overly wrapped up in their patient’s problems that would be counterproductive. One must be their own therapist but how can one be completely objective. They can’t and that’s the crux of it. Especially for the young. They don’t even have enough life experience to handle some of life’s basic situations. I know one thing though, throwing your kids into a psychiatric institution is not the key. In fact it is so counterproductive it should be illegal. I was there twice eight weeks at a time. All it taught me was how to play mind games better.

     These kids didn’t have problems that demanded them being incarcerated. It gave them stigmas of insanity. Made them think they were crazy and got them addicted to their overly priced medications. They had me on sixteen hundred milligrams of Melliril a day. You wanna talk about one fucking zombie. Not only that but they had me on Seventy-five milligrams of Imipramine two milligrams of Cogentin. At sixteen I did not need to be that doped up to that degree. They wonder why I have an affinity for downers and booze. They were giving me this much medication before I even locked myself up. Try going to school on just four hundred milligrams of this major tranquilizer. That’s what it is, a major tranquilizer and anti-psychotic. This is the shit they give violent offenders in jail and criminal institutions. I wonder why my grades weren’t so good. My father punished me irrationally for low grades. He would punish me with nine weeks restrictions for low grades. When he would come home drunk, I would receive repeated beatings, which happened four or five nights a week. Now I want to make this clear, Her did not beat me every single night but he would sit me down at the table and just belittle me in front of my crying mother, who, when she could would try to defend me. My mom is so cool. Anyone who has ever met my mom has had their life enriched. You could just be yourself and if you weren’t, she’d know.

     I admit I was a very wild child. I would sneak out late at night and go smoking pot and tripping on acid or psychedelic mushrooms. I needed this release and the allegiance of my friends helped to deal with my drunken violent household. I wish there was some kind of program that would have helped me, but every time the cops were called to my house for domestic violence, they didn’t do shit. Neither did my mother. She was afraid of losing the house and all the financial support of my father. Men can just keep their family under their thumbs this way and there is no where for the kid to turn to without breaking up his family. There might be some programs now for kids, but back in Eighty-three in Fountain Colorado there was nothing. The police were always on my dad’s side because he was a good old boy and I was a long-haired punk who couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I was pissed. Boy he could really piss me off. My dad weighed around two-hundred and ten pounds and I weighed around a hundred and thirty pounds. My mom weighed one twenty dripping wet. When my dad would hit my mom it just sent her across the room. For many years there was nothing I could do except just sit in my room and hide. I went through years of that shit. Screaming and yelling, shit breaking, loud booming sounds coming from everywhere. I think my imagination was what made it so scary because I could only guess what would come next. I started fighting back when I turned around twelve or thirteen years old.

     I put myself in the institution twice because it was my sanctuary. I don’t think they helped me out psychologically, but they did give me a place to live instead of my drunken abusive household. I had been seeing both a psychologist and a psychiatrist for some years before I was institutionalized. Dr. Richtoffen was my psychologist and Dr. Homer was my psychiatrist. They gave me all the standard tests, the MMPI, the WISC-R, the Rorschach, and the Myers-Briggs personality type battery. They found me to be exceptionally intelligent and a little too creative, whatever that means. They decided to prescribe to me Melleril, Imiprimine and Cogentin. My parents, unknowingly what these drugs were, agreed to the prescription.

     Melleril is a major tranquilizer and anti-psychotic, and Imiprimine is a anti-depressant. This shit turned me into a zombie. I still had to go to school while dosed on the meds. The one thing they weren’t addressing was the fact that my father was an abusive son of a bitch. I could not keep my mind in an academic manner with all the hell going on at the house. I mean he would take the time when I should be working on school work and sit me down to yell and belittle me. This of course caused a major rebellion within me. I’d sneak out at night, go get high and just try and relax and talk to my friends. When I was in elementary school it was worse. I was in a Christian private school, so in the day I was in a church hearing the wonderful things about Jesus and then at night I would hide in my room listening to my father abuse my mother. I was serving out a childhood sentence in Heaven and Hell every fucking day.

     We got into two fights after I was released. The first one was pretty bad. He pulled me out of my basement bedroom by my hair and made me apologize to my mom for being such a bastard. He kept pulling at my hair while I was on my knees. I twisted around and punched him square in the balls.

     The next fight, the final of all fights started by him calling me a long-haired faggot S.O.B. then he hit me. I had my Dingo’s on and kicked him square in the jaw. I have never in my life seen someone get up so fast. Before I knew it, he had his hands around my throat and was slamming my head into the refrigerator in the kitchen. Slam! Slam! Slam! He was doing a number on me. One thing he forgot though was that he had sock feet on. Smash! Smash! Smash! I dropped him to the ground and started kicking him in the ribs. I hate to say it but that was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. He never touched my mother or me again.

     God, I thought I would never get along with my father, but as he’s aged, he has mellowed out and stopped drinking. I think he has alot of guilt issues. If it were me I would have divorced him and taken him for everything he had, but that’s my mother’s decision. They seem to get along really well now. I really am happy for them both.

     Well, I moved out of the house and got some of my old high school buddies to be roommates with me. We got a place in the Foxfire apartments up on Academy and Austin Bluffs. There was Kurt, who was kinda the leader of our group He was about my size and an avid AC\DC fan. He had long hair that was sometimes permed. He probably read every Star Trek book that was out at the time. Kurt and I had a bad habit of slamming a fifth of Jose` Cuervo and then go outside and beat the shit out of each other, just for fun of course, we were best friends. Bob, by far the biggest and sometimes the most opinionated of us he didn’t drink but maybe a beer on special occasions. Then there was Judy, how do I explain her? She was the youngest and the younger sister of Kurt’s ex-girlfriend. Her parents let us take care of her because she didn’t want to move out to Illinois with her family. They were the best goodhearted biker family I ever met. I really looked up to them. When I had problems at home I would go up and talk to their parents. We’d smoke a joint drink a beer and make me feel right at home. These people were not influencing children in the wrong way, they just figured it was better to have adult supervision around our partying. They trusted us with keeping an eye on their youngest daughter while they were out of state. No one ever made a move on her and we protected her like she was our own. I got a job with a movie theater that was just down the street. Ms.C was my boss and the first one to turn me on to Allen Ginsburg. She was a great boss. The job really got me into the pursuit of trying to make a career in the film industry. I got Judy a job there too. She really was ahead of her age group. She paid her part of the rent and never griped about working. Looking was probably the most mature of all of us. Kurt’s girl-friend was a goth rocker named Venus. She was the Vodka Princess I mentioned earlier in the story. Man was she a mess. She would get so loaded and then start fights with Kurt, slit her wrists and bleed all over the apartment. This made the neighbors upstairs think that we were killing girls downstairs. They were older and probably scared as hell of us. Looking back it’s fucking hilarious. But at the time I was always afraid Venus would get our asses thrown in jail. I was messing around with her best friend Kari. Man was she fine. She looked kinda like Columbia out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show but ten times better. I think I was her first. One night at a party in Briargate we got so loaded we wandered of onto a construction site and made love on the top of a scraper. Man, she was so cool. Years and years later when I was living in Eugene, Oregon, Venus and Kari hunted me down and spent the night with Mike and I. Mike is my oldest friend and was my roommate in Oregon. Though Kari and I slept in the same bed all we did was just lie there and talk about all the things that had occurred within our lives. There visit was such an excellent surprise. They didn’t even know our address or nothing. They wandered around to some of the local bars and sure as shit, they found us. Mike and I had played many of the bars in town in our various bands.

     Anyhow, we lived in the Foxfire apartments for nearly a year. We all had jobs that were pretty local. Kurt worked in a restaurant near the house and we’d party with some of his fellow employees. One of our friends Al started to get involved with this thief named Clayborn. We never trusted that motherfucker and good thing we didn’t. He and Al got involved in this mess where Clayborn killed his roommate and sold us some of the stuff he ripped off. We new nothing of the death, but when the cops started to get involved with the situation all of us were interrogated. There were guns stolen, clothes, and just a bunch of other junk. Al went to prison for the crime and we pretty much never heard from him again.

          The neighbor who lived across the hall, Rick, was one great guitar player and sold us his Takhamini acoustic guitar for sixty bucks. It had a condenser microphone in it so we could plug it in. What a great deal. He even gave Kurt and me lessons. I was never really into The Who, but that was his favorite band, so he’d sit us down and make us listen to Quadraphenia, Tommy, Who’s Next, etc, etc. I have become an avid Fan of the Who. I’ve seen them twice. Once in Boulder, and then years later I saw Quadraphenia done in its entirety in Portland Oregon. That was my favorite concert I’ve had the honor to see. Anyhow, he was the first one to really teach me some guitar.

          Kurt and Rick took a vacation to Mexico where they visited Billy The Kid’s gravesite. They brought back some mezcal too. That was a great drunk, except when I was trying to swim I went under and couldn’t find my way back up. This truly Scared the living shit out of me. I’m still a little afraid of the water.

          Kurt and Venus’ relationship didn’t last that long. They were a weird couple. He was all heavy metal and classic rock and she was glam/ goth. One good thing came out of it though. One night when Kurt and I were living in another place, we get a phone call from her. She had won tickets to go see Ozzy Osbourne in Denver and wanted to trade the tickets for a fifth of Jim Beam. We were on that in seconds. We call up a couple of our best buddies, Ace and Epstein, and they gave us a ride up to Denver for the concert. Great show. Coolest entrance I’ve ever seen. There was this giant curtain in on  the stage hanging there with Ozzy’s name on it. They shined a spotlight on it to make it look like there was the moon behind the clouds. The curtain dropped and up came this giant pillar of fire, and when it came down, there was the Prince of Darkness wearing a wizards robe and screaming, “Let’s fucking rock and roll!” It was great. Two tenth row seats for a fifth of Beam.

          Eventually Bob and I got an apartment together. It was two rooms in a Victorian house, a kitchen and a living room, no bedroom. We shared the room and actually didn’t drive each other insane because we had a  “no bitching” rule. It worked. We would wake up in the morning, exercise, meditate, drink tea, and played a game with a bean bag. We would throw the bean bag at each others face while sitting only four or five feet from each other. Ten points for the face and five for the chest. This made our reflexes really attuned.

          One night while over at a friend named Erick’s house, I ran into an ex-girlfriend named Anna who I was seeing when I was sixteen or seventeen. She had long hair now instead of the spiky little mop she used to have. Man, she was fine. She was half German and half Thai. A gothic princess in the sexiest attire you can imagine. She looked like Death out of The Sandman comic series. Well, as it goes, Erick was getting together with her best friend, this luscious red-head named Jenny. Anna and I was an old item, so sparks were not hard to re-kindle. Man, we hit it off good. We threw Erick out of his room and had just the meanest most passionate sex right there on his waterbed. We became inseprable. That made it a problem if I wanted to take Anna home because I had no bedroom in Bob and I’s house. So really soon a bunch of us friends got a place on Wahsatch. Bob, Kurt, Wendy, and I. Anna stayed with me in my room. The living arrangements worked for a little while. Jenny always came by to hang out with Anna and I. Eventually Jenny and Kurt got together, though that didn’t last long. I think they only went out because Kurt and I were best friends and it seemed like the thing to do.

    I wake up early at our house on Wasatch. Anna is curled up next to me. We had a little hangover from the last night. Constant partying went on in our house, whatever time of the day. These are demons I have dealt with all of my life. However, this seemed normal to me at this time. We both got up and downed five or six bong hits to settle the tequila stomach from the night before. Wake and bake. We lived in a small room upstairs that had an adjoining kid’s room. A very small window but it let the sun in. We were not fond of the sun. Both of us having ninety percent of our clothes in black. Our wake up musick was usually Current 93, Tones on Tail, or Bauhaus. Sometimes Leonard Cohen.

    I had to be at the Peak Theatre early to open. Our “manager” was a drunk. She claimed she fell out of her truck while on the clock so she could get workman’s comp. We all know she was loaded and probably had nothing to do with working. Dinah was the assistant manager, but she took off for a long, I mean long vacation because of some family issue. That left me with ten to twelve-hour shifts. I was going batty. Luckily, I was young and needed the money. Not too many jobs like this came to high school dropout ex-mental hospital patients. I, for once didn’t feel like an outcast and people really respected my opinions. It felt pretty good.      

    I could hear them downstairs, another fight. We weren’t the best pick for roommates but most of the time we made it work, most of the time. Bob was pissed at Kurt for god knows what. But it got loud. That’s just great, I needed some drama before work. Reminded me of my parents house sometimes.

    I got dressed which meant tie and work clothes. Ugh. And left the madness behind to walk the ten or fifteen blocks to work. When I got there, I had to open the four glass doors, the box office doors then my office. It was a beautiful place, old and very charming. I let the rest of the crew in and began my daily chores which consisted of threading film, getting concession and the box office they’re money. It was a dollar theatre so many of our customers were homeless and just used the auditorium to get needed sleep. I didn’t mind if they weren’t drunk and belligerent. I acted as the doorman quite often and security. So, the day went on. I think we were showing Predator or License to Kill. I don’t remember, so many movies. Day turned into night and the evening slowed down. I got my food from a restaurant named Mama’s Kitchen next door. Southern food with great helpings.

  All alone in the theatre office, it was a slow night for a dollar theatre. I loaded the films in the projection booth and now, waited for the ending of the films. They lasted about an hour and a half.

    It was the last film so I collected the box office receipts and had the concession close so I could count the money. This was my nightly duty as acting manager of The Peak Theatre. I go down to my office and count and add etc.

    Then Anna walks in, dressed in a long trench coat. I ask myself why she would wear such a heavy outfit, it’s summer for god’s sake. She locks the door behind her. There were only two people working and it was the last movie of the night. I had to call my numbers of the box office in after a bit. This is before we had computers. All I had was a Borrough’s adding machine and a phone. Then all becomes clear.

     She slowly takes off the coat and reveals my favorite piece of clothing from her lingerie collection. She asks, “Are you working hard?”

   I respond, “Not yet, I have to wait for the box office numbers and call them in”

    “Well, let’s make your work a little harder.” She proceeds to crawl upon the ground edging ever closer to my desk. She gets up a moment to lay the most passionate kiss upon me. This instantly turns my attention from work to her.

    This puts me in odd position, I have two people working, who at any minute might intrude. I’m guessing they got the hint and hell, I’m not going to stop.

    She proceeds to slink her way under the desk in the most seductive way, pushing my chair back and begins with my belt then unsnapping my Levi’s. I am stricken with awe. What in Hell’s name did I do to deserve this, but it must have been good. I must make calls to the main office in ten or so minutes but there is no stopping this.

    The thing I think that turned me on the most was her long hair gracing my inner thighs tickling me in just the right way. My mind was so divided though I knew it shouldn’t be. She was fantastic, never in my dreams had I thought of this happening.

    Then the phone rand. It was the main office looking for receipt numbers and concession sales. Luckily, I already did the math and answered their questions without altering my voice too much. Believe it or not that made the whole experience hotter than hell on a summer day. She became more aggressive now that the phone call was over and so did I. The whole savagery seemed like it lasted forever. I don’t think I was pleasured as much in my life in that moment. Like a lady she pulled herself together, put on the jacket and said to me, “See you at home.” Then she left. It was a struggle closing the theatre after that.

    Oh yeah, did I mention the place was haunted?

    It was built in the thirties and it used to be a bank. Then it was renovated into a theatre. A few people died here of various causes, but the rooms and architecture were still the same. Even the door to the projection room. Steel armored in case the Nitrate films went up in flames. Supposedly a projectionist died in the booth. I always felt a chill threading a movie in there. Someone or something was watching me. Especially when I did bong hits. No, I take that back, I felt more comfortable, like I was closer to his wave.

    There were sightings at the peak by many individuals. I being one of them. Whether they’re ghosts, echoes, beings from an alternative reality, I did not feel banishing them was the way to go. They were friendly and it added to the ambiance to the place. I felt comfortable with them. Except for one instance. Mick, Kurt and I were closing the back doors to the auditorium from out of nowhere the chairs just started moving up and down. I don’t mean like two or three I mean thirty. The squeakiness of the chairs made it all that more disturbing. We ran for the upstairs pale as, well ghosts. This was one of the times that my belief in the paranormal or magickal world was not called into question. I felt secure in my beliefs that we don’t understand the workings of the mind, time and space.

    The following week another incident happened. One of the questions  that still baffles me to this day is how a marquee letter got all the way up to the sign, wrapped in bailing wire. It was the letter “O”. All the other marquee letters had disappeared. For it to do that it had to go from the letter storage room in my office, which was locked. Up the stairs, through the box office doors which were also locked, out the front glass doors, locked as well and up twenty-five feet to the marquee. An old projectionist told me later that they used to use bailing wire to secure the letters on the marquee. That freaked me out, it sounded like someone from the past doing his job but for the life of me I couldn’t explain the locked doors. The theatre was half a block away from the Colorado Springs police station, in plain sight. No one with a ladder could have climbed that high with a ladder and not been noticed. Baffled to this day. The letter O has many meanings in the occult. It could also represent zero. If it’s the letter O then it could signify the devil card in the Tarot which is attributed to Ayin in Hebrew which is O in English. If it is zero then The Fool card immediately comes to mind. A journey, new beginnings. The element of air.

    We didn’t let it freak us out. We just figured they wanted their presence known. What a dramatic way of doing it.

Chapter 2

    Anna and I needed to move out of the Wasatch house and had already made a plan to move into some apartments located right next to Shook’s Run Park. We moved in the place which helped us study the occult arts without any prying eyes or disdain.

     It was a Wednesday night and with that a full moon. That meant getting together with the neo-pagan group Columbine, one of the oldest pagan groups in Colorado Springs. We’d get together for ceremonies, but it was not Wiccan or Gardnerian. It was just a lot of like-minded people performing the arts the way they understood them. Anna and I were very active as members.

    I had been initiated into the arts since I was thirteen. Bren had been my mentor; and did he ever teach me a lot. Kabbalah, Enochian, and some of the darker arts. Tarot and numerology too. I was a heavy practitioner. My mind always thought in terms of magick. I’m a Thelemite. That’s probably why the ghosts didn’t freak me completely out.

    Most of the group were Goddess-centric, where as I was more of an androgynous believer. That probably had to do with the fact from fifteen until nineteen you really couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl. Makeup, long hair and outfits that were neither male or female just exotic. I got A LOT of weird stares but I didn’t care. I’ve never put much stock in people’s view of normality. I looked somewhere between Siouxsie and Wayne Hussey. Whom I admire even to this day.

    Anna and I finally had the privacy we so needed. There weren’t any people getting involved in our relationship and all the weirdness that goes on with Tween aged roommates. My mom could see this was a serious move for me, moving in with a lady, so she bought us a bedroom suite. It was very nice and comfy. Big mirror above the dresser drawers, beautiful bed. It even had a bed post, which we put to use later. Finally, our own space! With exception to my brother and sister black cats. Stormbringer and Mournblade. Otherwise known as Stormy and Mourny.     

    With the added privacy we could really enjoy each other’s company. In bed, on the floor, couch, the shower, wherever. It was great and we took full advantage of it. Experimenting with each other’s desires and quirks. It became a very intimate part of us.

    At night we would make ourselves up to go out to The Annex, where other punks and goths of our kin resided. It was a 3.2 beer joint but that was fenced in so no minors could drink. But there were plenty of drugs and snuck in bottles consumed in the bathrooms. The musick was great. All of our favorites; Skinny Puppy, Depeche Mode, Christian death, Sisters of Mercy and on and on. 

    Dancing was big then and everybody looked so great, dark, and funeral-like. The place was painted black so it fit our look and feelings at the time. We were all just a bunch of nihilistic atheistic misanthropes who found a small group of people who became like family. Sort of the Addams’s family really.

    All this sounds good and grand but we definitely had our relationship problems. I was sometimes too drunk and she would go into depressions that could last for days, which I can explain later. But for the most part we were in love and being in love at that age is magickal. We were teaching and learning so much from each other that it was all enthralling.

     We had a great set of friends, some of who lived in the same apartment building as us. There was Matty who was one of my best friends. An all-around goth freak who studied the arcane arts with me and Charles who worked as well on the arcane business but was extremely well versed in the classic form of education. Brilliant people all around. There was Teri, Anna’s best friend who took a great interest in psychology. I really liked her. She was very grounded except when it came to her on again off again boyfriend Erick. He was a good friend of mine as well but he had a wandering eye.

    One night I was working with my fried Joey behind the bar. He was married to Liza, the DJ. A place had moved in next door that became a gangster hangout. Well we were about to close and for some reason I cannot remember Anna and I got into an arguing match. Joey said go ahead and leave, he’d take care of the rest.

    Anna and I were headed to the car which was parked in front of this gangster pool pocket. Some people were standing outside and probably heard us arguing. Next thing I know, I’m face down on the ground with the back of my head caved in and they’re kicking my face into the asphalt. Shit went off. A lot of the punks there were in the army and did not take well to the situation. I just crawled into the car and screamed for Anna to take me home. Even after that she was still just so pissed. I got home, Matty had heard what happened and came with me to the restroom with tweezers, iodine, and gauze. Anna left. Matty and I pulled rocks and pavement out of my face and did the best we could so it wouldn’t scar.

    Later that night, I had heard a girl got shot there and died. This seemed like the beginning of the end. How right I was.

    It was about six months until I received the worst of news. Anna split from the house with no explanation. I was so distraught. I could not figure out what I had done. Come to find out she was pregnant unbeknownst to me and went and had an abortion. I still have a feeling that her parents pressured her into it. They never liked me much and with me not having enough money they probably felt I was not going to be a good enough father for their grandchild. The drama that ensued from all of this took me down a deep rabbit hole. I began drinking heavily for a few years. Tried to start other relationships that failed miserably. In fact, I have never in thirty years been able to get back into a stable relationship. I think it broke me. Soon after she was healed from the surgery, I kept finding out that she was hooking up with all my friends and acquaintances. That just took me down further. I truly felt sorrow for what she was going through but when we began our relationship, we did not use birth control because she had informed me that her doctor had told her that she was sterile. Not sure what to make of that. I still struggle with all this to this day. I’ve never been married, not even close, and have no children. I’ll be fifty this year. Too late now.

Chapter 3

    We moved away from each other. Matty and I got a nice house. Though it was taken on the bottom floor, we had the top second and third floors.  Great bachelor pad. Though it did not help me forget my most recent dilemmas. I finally quit drinking for a short time. About a couple of months. During that time, I began seeing a girl by the name of Samantha. Blonde hair. Real beauty. She listened to all kinds of musick but was not punk. Which was odd for me. A normal beautiful girl. Who would have thought? We had a lot of fun but it did not last more than a month because I was still working out my past issues. We met at Poor Richards back in the days before it became a place for elitists. I couldn’t get over how this beautiful blonde just kept staring and smiling at me. Then she came up to me and we drank coffee. I didn’t know it but she was good friends of some girls I knew who eventually moved in with Matty and me. We didn’t mind. They didn’t pay rent but took care of the house better than any two bachelors could plus they were a constant source of entertainment. There was Gal, Faith, and Fiona. Matty started seeing Fiona while I got to know Samantha really well. It was a good time while it lasted. Actually, some of my fondest memories. Though I don’t hear from most of them too often, I still chat with Gal. She has become one of my best friends. She presides in a hippy town in Colorado. It so fits her. Hehe.

    Well we had the house for about six to eight months and then moved our separate ways though we all did see each other. I moved into a place called Bean World with many of my most extravagant friends.  The house was where a lot of art minded people lived. Of course, this included drugs and alcohol in extreme amounts. Bongo had the run of the house. It was one of his parents’ houses, I think. He was too cool. We’d sometimes just lay in his room and read the most off the wall comic books. Other times we would have big jamborees with everyone decked out in our costumed gear and just play musick and drink and smoke pot. The atmosphere was electric. A very safe atmosphere to be sure. I lived in the smallest room in the house. Perfect for me. About the size of a closet with cathedral ceilings. It was upstairs with my friends Morris, Ham and Joey. Now, we were all bat shit crazy. On my twenty second birthday we talked a skinhead into lending us his car to go do some laundry. We stole that car and drove from Colorado Springs to Denver and just partied our asses off. We went from bar to bar just picking up drinks off of tables and slamming them. For my birthday present from Ham, he said watch this and proceeded to walk over to the finest woman in the bar and started talking to her. All seemed normal until she slapped the shit out of him. He had the biggest shit eating grin on his face when he walked back. Well, the night went on like that until the bars closed down. We knew we were going to get shit from our skinhead friend but we were not afraid of him.

  When we got home, there were a few girls at the house. Unbeknownst to me, Wally and Joey had told this ultra-fine blonde car thief that it was my birthday and when I went to bed the door opened after me and this amazingly hot girl crawled into bed with me. That had to be one of the best endings to a birthday I ever had.

    Funny thing is Matty’s old girlfriend Fiona came over on my proper birthday that afternoon. She had jokingly said, “I want to have sex with you on your birthday.” I blew it off as a joke. Samantha and her were still close and in fact roommates just living a block down the street. She was not joking. We went to my little room with the cool ceilings and had what was mostly pent up sexual tension from the last year coming to a boil. Hot is too loose of a word for that day. We went our separate ways and never had a hang up one.

    Well I did, I was still hung up on Anna. No other woman has ever come close to being the kind of partner I felt so comfortable with. Sure, we were young and full of hysterics and mistakes but when it came down to it, I knew she had my back and I hers. I can’t say that about many people I was in love with. That really just scratches the surface. I wish there were words to describe how I felt/feel. Maybe someday I will find them.

To William, magick was not kind. Most of his twenties were spent drifting
from one system of magick to another. He went from one set of occultists to
another. For William Wicca, Cabala, Egyptian Magick, the whole spectrum had
left him more confused and asking more questions than before. Many of the
groups which he attended were just shams that people used to help
themselves get laid. His heart was in the right place but he let each of his
experiences become his reality, or at least the way he viewed it. Along the road
to understanding there were of course charlatans which preyed upon the
desperate and lonely and he allowed them to take advantage of that so that he
may just find some scrap of wisdom. William had always played the part of the
outcast. The conditioning had gotten so bad he would not even leave his
cigarettes in ashtrays lest someone use it as a magickal link to control or
influence him. He had chosen his appearance based on this paranoia as well. A
shaved head and eyebrows kept the chances of evil forces from getting a hold
of his hair to do unspeakable things.
Through the study of Gematria and numerology he had let himself become
consumed by meanings that were everywhere. licenses and addresses had
become interpreted meanings he let confuse him. Homeless he tried his best to
stay away from others. They’d either hurt him or infiltrate his psychic realms
which he knew would destroy him. His senses were betraying him and he
halfway knew it but did not have the skill to create a psychological shield to
prevent all the bad things.
The cops on the streets knew him all too well. He would let himself become
irate with complete strangers because he felt they were part of the plot against
him. You see, he caught glimpses of “The Big Picture” where he was a tortured
hero and William would eventually come out of his cocoon and save all the
blind people that surrounded him daily. He had a record of public intoxication,
misdemeanor fights and even theft at one time or another. Many had tried to
get him help, but he always wiggled his way out of it. He believed that the
institutions were just agents working on breaking his mind and soul. He had
been in them as a teenager when his parents could not, or would not deal with
him. They were well off and during some of his more lucid moments they
would help him out by getting him a small apartment or giving him enough

cash to get food and tobacco. He reluctantly accepted the help. He truly
believed they were part of the problem.
Celine was one of the few people he would let talk to him. She was a runaway
and lived on the streets as well as William. They did this by choice. She was
kind to William. She related to him about how parents just put their teenage
children into psychiatric facilities because they didn’t want to deal with the
situation anymore. Her kindness extended to helping him find a safe place at
night. She would also look after his health. William would sometimes go days
without eating. He believed fasting would eventually give him the clarity he so
desired. William had a court date coming up and she wanted to make sure he
attended it so that he would not become a fugitive. It was a minor charge of
disorderly conduct in public and along with it he may have to spend a few days
in jail. Celine new it would hurt him, being around so many people, but also
knew he needed medical help and three meals a day.
William of course wanted to fight the charge because in his mind he was just
doing what was necessary for someone on a righteous path. Hopefully they will
prescribe him the right medications and transfer him to a place where he might
can find peace, though we all know he will fight it all tooth and nail.