When I was a kid living in the Mar Vista Gardens projects of Culver City.California, I shared a room with my older brother George--whenever he wasn't in jail or on the lam. that is. We slept inthe same big double bed. I can still picture him sitting on the edge of our bed. sniffing a sock that he had filled with glue. Once. George fell asleep stoned, with his cigarette still lit. I woke up whenhe threw me out of bed--the mattress was on fire. He got some water from the bathroom. pouredit on the flames, and went back to sleep. The bed must have been smoldering, because an hour later I woke up surrounded by flames. George threw me out of bed again. dragged the mattress downstairs, and put out the fire in our front yard while all our neighbors gawked.
George was nine years older than me. so I basically worshiped him. After my parents split. mydad was never around, so George was the man I looked up to. When I got a bicycle for my birthday. George was the one who put it together. A year later,George was the one who took off the training wheels. Before he started using drugs, he was considered much better looking than me: blond hair. soft blue eyes. He got voted Best Eyes and Best Teeth in his junior high school. He was very patient, very charming, very funny. When our dog Cleo had puppies underneath the house. George was the only one she'd allow around her. He went in there and cleaned off the puppies one by one.
George was always a compulsive liar--he would tell anyone anything in order to be liked and accepted. He started hanging around with a stoner crowd in 1968. When he was fifteen and I was six. This meant that I didn't see him as much. Disneyland was only a short drive away. so he would take me there sometimes; that would keep me excited for weeks afterward. But often George would get wrapped up in getting laid, scoring drugs. whatever--and forget about me till it was too late to go. I spent a lot of my childhood waiting for my brother. My birthday was April 12 and his was April 13. so we usually celebrated together. When I was eleven. George was supposed to pick me up at noon and take me to the Magic Kingdom. Hours went by with no sign of him. I was smoking cigarettes. just hiding from everybody, because I felt let down and abandoned. Eventually, George showed up stoned. My mom didn't want me to be in the same car with him. but I insisted. We drove down to Disneyland. only it was raining, so we ended up seeing a movie instead. That night. we slept at Aphrodite Waterbeds. George was the manager of Aphrodite, which was basically a head shop. My mom wanted me to have a man's influence--I was living with her and two of my three sisters-- so George would pick me up on Fridays and I'd spend the weekend at the water-bed store. I'd sit there reading underground comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the R. Crumb catalogue. which were really over my head. "George. what does 'splooge' mean?" "Why do you ask!" "Well, he's splooging on her face." These comics were too raw for me at that age. "Hey George. what does 'gash' mean?"
At night. the water-bed store would close and all these freaks would show up. Couples would start screwing on the water beds in the showroom, and I'd fall asleep. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there'd be a couple in the same bed as me. making waves.
My brother was infamous for having these young hippie-chick girlfriends who were closer to my age than his. When he was twenty. he was going out with girls who were thirteen or fourteen. But I thought they were grown-ups: They were hot. they wore halter tops, they had big tits. When I was eleven. George took me out for the Fourth of July and got me wasted. This fourteen-year-old girlfriend of his said. "I'II take care of you tonight, little brother." She gave me a blow job in the backseat of George's station wagon, but I was too stoned to come and probably too young. I became more sexually active a year or two later. mostly with older girls. In Southern California during the Led Zeppelin era, these fourteen-year-old girls were giving blow jobs like porn queens.
The age gap between George and his girlfriends looked even greater than it was, becauseGeorge had aged prematurely. When he wasn't in jail. he'd grow a beard and long hair. The drugs made him look perpetually tired and beaten down--you might think he was in his late thirties. And After he got shot (a payback for some seam he never told me about). when he took off his shirt you could see the wires that held his abdomen together.
But when he was younger and still whole. George played third base in Little League; I used to watch his games all the time. He was really good, until he hurt his knee. I loved the uniforms and the pageantry, and the sense of belonging. I played for years myself, starting off in right field but eventually holding down second base and first base. Every year in spring training they'd let me pitch a game, and I'd always get hammered. I was never big enough to excel, but I usually hit over .300. All the kids who were really good were practicing with their dads in the yard. As time went on, George became too wrapped up in drugs to play catch with me.
On a Saturday afternoon when I was twelve years old. I went to the local batting cage. I was going to practice my swing. and I was also meeting my girlfriend so we could make out. I hadn't been there long when our next-door neighbor Dianne and her boy-friend pulled up to the field. They told me I was needed at home right away. I didn't want to leave--I was still batting--but they insisted. On the way home. I peppered them with questions. which they wouldn't answer. I sat in the backseat of their Mustang. just knowing something was wrong.
We pulled up to my house, and my sisters were running out the door all at once, crying and screaming "George is dead!" I was just standing in the backyard. absorbing the news. still wearing my cleats. Everyone in the neighborhood was hanging on their clotheslines. watching my family fall apart.
When George died. he had been clean for six months. He had a real job in an electronics factory, he had a fiancee: things he'd never bothered with before. I don't know if he could have kept it together over the long term. but we never had a chance to find out; he overdosed on heroin and cocaine and was found in a flophouse. Foul play was suspected- George had called a friend that night saying he was going to collect some money and might not make it back--but. nothing was ever proven. I still think about hiring detectives to find out what really happened.
My memories of the funeral are hazy. My family stayed behind a curtain so that people couldn't see us. but that meant we couldn't see them either, so I never knew who came to say goodbye to George. He was buried at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles-- there were some really hokey singers at the service. and I remember thinking that George would have hated it.
AFTER GEORGE DIED, MY MOM LATCHED ON to me and became really overprotective. It backfired: She only made me want to rebel more. Before George's death, I smoked weed. drank, popped some pills--but I never wanted to do anything that would interfere with being a baseball player. Afterward. I didn't give a damn.
I hung out with these surfer hoods. but we were too poor to surf. So we would rip off rich kids' Schwinns and turn them into motecross bikes. Then we could ditch school. ride around. break into houses. steal money, and use it to buy drugs instead of surfboards. Even before George died I'd felt isolated, but afterward I was incredibly lonely. It was good to fit in somewhere. I was so skinny that I could help the gang by going through houses' dog doors. Once, I got into a house that way and found an envelope with $700 in it. We played pinball for four days straight.
My mom got religious after George died. which helped keep her from going insane. At first she made me go with her to the Assembly of God, which was full of Holy Rollers: speaking in tongues. frothing in the aisle, and other craziness. I told her I wanted to go to the church down the street. She'd give me money for the collection plate. but I'd get somebody to buy me a beer and a pack of cigarettes and just hang out at a girlfriend's house.
She did make me show up for the church's Youth Brigade. where we would wear stupid uniforms and hang out. After meetings, they'd let us into a local liquor store. The guy who owned the store was a member of the church. and he'd let each of us pick out a dollar's worth of candy. They thought we were these nice church boys. but I'd walk down the aisles sticking bottles of booze Into my pants. Then about fourteen of us would cut school the next day and go drinking by a local sewage canal.
Everyone was telling me that I was going to end up like George. I thought that I was too smart to become a corpse. but I probably had an unconscious death wish. I even used to bet people that I wouldn't live past my twenty-first birthday. I ultimately paid one guy a hundred bucks.
I didn't have a lot to remember George by--an old photograph. a classical guitar that he never really learned to play, a bandanna that he used to tie off with when he shot up. But George did name me as the beneficiary on his life insurance. Because it was a drug overdose. I got only $10.000. which I received on my eighteenth birthday. My mom used part of it to help the family. and I blew the rest on a black Toyota Corolla hatchback. Four years later. that car got stolen. I collected insurance money for the Toyota. and with that settlement I bought an ounce of cocaine. I shot it up, overdosed, and almost died. George had left me a legacy after all.
That was my last time with a needle. I made myself get off drugs, and unlike George. I stuck to it. Although you can run away from your family history, it won't leave you. In 1987. thirteen years after George died, I wasworking as a car messenger in Los Angeles. delivering packages. My life was pretty unhappy and I was drinking too much. On a hot day in the middle of June. I was drinking on the job and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the Forest Lawn cemetery, lying on my big brother's grave.
