Читать книгу The Punk and the Professor - Billy Lawrence - Страница 14

7

AS PAUL AND STEVEN got to know each other better, I ducked out for a while with a quieter friend named Judd Reed. He wore smart looking glasses and looked like the kind of kid that would go on to build rockets. He was the spelling bee champ, who aced his tests and always had an answer. I appreciated his intellect and the break from the wildness of the other kids, though I have no recollection of how we even became friends. Every week for about six months, I went over to Judd’s house where we played Transformers and talked about crazy space-age science fantasies. We also went to the movies on the weekend. It was good innocent kid fun.

Then something snapped in me one day at the end of fifth grade. Suddenly one day I didn’t go to his house like I usually did. I just didn’t feel like it. I strangely knew there was another road I had to take. In a sense, I knew Judd was going somewhere different too. It wasn’t that he was too good for me or me too good for him; I just knew we were changing.

It was always me going to his house. His mother probably didn’t trust my environment because he never came over. She must’ve known something. This one-sidedness helped me justify my abandonment of a best friend. I could tell Judd was hurt by my sudden estrangement. I couldn’t help it though. Maybe I was just one of those wild ones like everyone else.

Judd was so far ahead of his time and didn’t really belong in that rotten neighborhood. His parents knew it and pulled him out of public school after sixth grade. For the remainder of high school, Judd commuted on a train to the city to a special school for the gifted. At least two hours a day were spent on his commute with all those grown adults going to work in Manhattan. Two hours of childhood a day, gone. But at least he got out of our town.

Sixth grade for me would be a path Judd wouldn’t and couldn’t relate to. Nor would his mother appreciate it. I was coming out of my shell and trouble comes along with that.

My new spiked haircut was really a part of this second coming. I was sick of my moppy mess. I looked around and saw others gelling and spiking their hair back. So I went to the barber and for the first time I knew what I wanted.

“Give me a spiked haircut. You know, the Billy Idol Rebel Yell look,” I told the man.

“I know it well,” the man said.

I walked out of the shop a new kid. I went back to school the next day and kids starting talking to me instantly. It was shallow, but looks were important. A simple haircut gave me a chance to become someone new, someone confident after several years being an outsider.

$$$

In the first week of sixth grade, a nasty kid named Sean Norris said some rotten things to a pretty girl named Sue, whom all the boys pined over, myself included. I went over to his lunch table and demanded he go apologize to her. He said no, ignored me, and went back to eating his lunch. It wasn’t like me to erupt but that was it— I slammed his face right into his lunch tray. Sean got up crying with tater tots in his eyes, peas and rice in his nose, and ketchup smeared all over his face like blood. He ran out of the room, and I was dragged out to sign the “black book” in the principal’s office. When we got into trouble we were forced to sign the “black book” which was a journal book with a list of names that probably read back as far as the 50s of all the worst kids that ever passed through that town. Where were all those names now?

I don’t regret it though. This same kid would go on to sodomize a younger boy just a couple of years later. Sean went away somewhere upstate for that one and probably never came back down. I know I didn’t see him after that. Sean also just happened to be Crazy John’s only friend.

$$$

The popular fraternal twin brothers Jeff and Andy Kennedy with their spiky blond haircuts became my friends. Being friends with the Kennedy brothers was a big step. Paul was already friends with them, but it was a kind of final initiation into the cool club for me and Steven. We were becoming accepted by the other kids. We were mainstream. Let the good times roll.

It was Jeff who opened up the door for me to a whole new world. Jeff was the shorter, more outgoing of the two brothers. He and I took a walk one day. For some reason, he was allowed to go home for lunch, and I had been suspended from lunch for a week for the cafeteria incident and had to go home too. It was surprising the school let two little kids walk out the front doors and leave for lunch with no parent or ride, but they had.

“You like music?” he asked as we walked.

“I love music.”

“Hey, you want to come over and eat at my house? I have some records.”

We walked to his house, had lunch, and he showed me the beginnings of a wicked vinyl collection.

“These are my punk albums, real classics.”

He showed me a stack of albums. The Damned. The Misfits. T. Rex.

“Check out this newer one though.”

Jeff put on an album and started it somewhere at the end of side one. He gave me the cover to look at. At first glance it looked like four women on the cover, but then I realized they were men wearing makeup. I didn’t know what to make of it. A song called “Look What the Cat Dragged In” played and I was just as baffled by their sound. Mom had exposed me to some cool music. The Rolling Stones. Elton John. Billy Joel. Cat Stevens. But other than that older 70s music, I was really an 80s pop piano synth kind of listener. Duran Duran. Bruce Hornsby. Johnny Hates Jazz. Those were the first tapes I owned of current music. Poison’s album Look What the Cat Dragged In was different.

“You think this is crazy? You have to hear their newest album.”

He held up an album with a demon woman with a long tongue on the front cover. It was titled Open Up and Say Ahh.

“Have you seen any of their videos?” he asked.

“No, where?”

“MTV. Maybe next time we’ll watch the videos.”

I couldn’t wait though. When I went home I turned on the TV and found MTV, a station I hadn’t yet watched. My mother had warned me not to watch cable. Someone somewhere along the way, probably elsewhere on TV, had said that heavy metal music was the work of the devil. No one was around, so I turned on the channel and had a look for myself. After a few wild songs with long-haired men cranking guitars in the air, Poison came on with their makeup, fluorescent green lights, and fireworks. “Nothin’ but a Good Time” was an anthem for young party kids. If the devil was there I couldn’t see it.

We got to know each other more the rest of the week and listened to some other albums. The punk and glam rock was growing on me. After that week, Jeff introduced me to his brother Andy. He was cool and calm too. I instantly clicked with him and began hanging with him too.

$$$

As I grew more popular, my grades began to slip. My attention span struggled. It was as if I couldn’t handle having friends. But I had to change. I had to be crazy. There would always be a big one and a smart one and a dirtbag one, but there needed to be a crazy one with guts. My theatrical reciting of wrestling promos and lines from Scarface put me on the map.

“Oh, he’s so dramatic,” the hall monitors would say.

I took what I saw in movies, music, and professional wrestling and regurgitated it to be funny. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it got me into trouble. But it always got me attention.

The world was changing for Steven and me, and our group was expanding. The Kennedy’s also lived on Venice on the block right between us. We were filling in representation all the way down the street. Nothing could stop us.