I was born one month late in Phoenix, Arizona on January 8th 1977, the
only child Christine Susan Laning. Note: I left out my father's name
because I never met the guy. All that I have to go on are two stories. He
could either be a white trash loser in Phoenix named Robert Burgess, or a
migrant worker in Mexico named Joseph Pimental. Either way I'm not sure,
and I don't feel the need to find out at this point in my life.
I spent a year living with my mother and her first husband, and then my
Grandmother sued for custody and won. My Mother didn't protest, and it
wasn't the last time. I have in my possession a copy of the court papers
that say that I had a bruised ass and legs. This was when I was about 18
months old. The court awarded custody to my Grandmother, and really, this
wasn't a good idea at all. It was almost directly after my Aunt Kathy
committed suicide with my Grandmother's rifle in my Grandmother's bedroom,
sending good old grandma into a nervous breakdown that she never quite
recovered from. I landed in her lap at the point in time when she had a
point to prove: that her daughter's suicide was not her fault and that she
could raise a child the right way.
I had to
deal with getting beat every once in a while, but Nana didn't leave many
superficial wounds. I thought that what I had to deal with at home was
normal. Somehow I was always optimistic, and knew that I was
right despite what my Grandmother told me growing up. Looking back I'm not
bitter. I know that she loved me, she just had a twisted kind of love. Not
to mention she was functionally insane. The way that she was able to deal
with the world was by choosing what she wanted to remember, and then truly
believing whatever memories she created. If, however, she had not left me everything when she died I wouldn't have been able to make it, so any harm she inflicted on me has been made up for.
My salvation has always been my imagination. My most vivid memories of my
early childhood are of dreams and day-dreams. When I was young my
Grandmother's friends thought I was a bit off because I would lay down on
our front lawn and stair up at the clouds for hours at a time. I remember
my favorite toys being this big pile of bricks out front that were at one
time intended to be made into a small wall around a plot that alternated between peppermint plants and cucumbers. I remember playing with those
bricks one day and seeing an ant the size of a small dog come up to me.
Although I am sure that it was a fantasy, a little bit of me believes
that it really happened. I remember a recurring nightmare about a mummy
that lived in my closet and only came out during the day. I remember
having a dream about a Technicolor Tasmanian Devil coming to kill me at
about the age of seven. I was sleeping in my room when I heard something that sounded like
concrete being torn like paper woke me up. I ran to the window in my aunt
Kathy's old room, looked out and saw it coming for me.
When I started school I found out how incredibly boring institutionalized
learning is, and how cruel people can be. I was the fat kid, and I stayed that
way until I stopped caring. My kindergarten teacher had assumed that
my lack of attention was due primarily to a lack of intelligence rather
than an abundance. It was in Kindergarten that I met my first "best
friend" Benny Hernandez. His Grandmother was the teacher's aid in our
class, and he lived down the street from me. We stayed friends until we
were 16.
I went to a catholic school for first and second grade. In first grade I
had a teacher named Brother Ricardo who I am now convinced was either a
pedophile or one of the greatest people I have ever known. He went
off to a monastery after that year and we wrote to each other for a while.
Second grade was hell. I had a teacher named Mrs. Frank that exhibited her
bitterness and general ill will by telling us stories about her son's
death, and by not letting us go to the bathroom except during recess or lunch.
As a result three or four times a month someone would piss their pants and
suffer the ridicule of the school. When my turn came I narrowly avoided
the shame by saying one of the first lies that I can remember. We wore navy blue
corduroy pants as part of our uniforms, so stains and liquid did not
show. I pissed my pants, and at the time the floor was
dirty, so it mingled and formed a brown pool somewhere behind me. After
about an hour my pants dried, but the puddle didn't, and Mrs. Frank saw
it, stood up and screamed "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" I said I thought it was
chocolate milk, and a guy who sat in the next aisle actually went down on
his knees and tasted it, then stood up and said "that isn't chocolate
milk!" That will always remain my fondest memory of that year.
Up until eight I was pure and innocent; faithful to God and country. Then
my mother and her second husband moved to Los Angeles, and she decided
that she wanted me back when they got on their feet again.
My mother took a greyhound bus to Phoenix and my Grandmother gave her the
truck that she owned and we made out for California. We moved to North Hollywood
and lived in a one bedroom apartment. I was a white boy living in the
ghetto and had to adapt quickly. We had a one bedroom apartment, and every
night I'd go to sleep in their room, and wakeup in the living room on our
day bed. As if things weren't bad enough my step-father was a racist.
It was okay if I played with "Mexican" kids... but I would be
grounded if he caught me playing with a black kid. One thing that I've
always been proud about is the fact that I never allowed his racism to be
infect me.
School was a lot of fun at this time. I got straight A's all throughout 3rd grade, and so
they had me tested and determined that I was "highly gifted". I really dug being
able to get out of class early to go play chess and read books with all of the other
"gifted" kids.
In fourth grade the fact that I was living in what amounted to a drug house began to fuck with me.
Living in a one bedroom apartment was even worse because I didn't have a
room to go to if I wanted to avoid the scum bags that ambled through all day to buy
weed from my parents. In effect I think that I started getting high when I
was 8 years old. To this day I'm pissed that I had to grow up in that kind
of environment. I won't deny the fact that I smoke pot, and believe that
there is nothing that is any worse about it than alcohol, but I hold
people that give their kids sips from their beer in the same contempt as those that
smoke in front of their children.
Anyway, this is about the time that I was molested by an older kid that lived in my
apartment complex. I don't go into detail about this because I'm not comfortable
enough to discuss it in detail with total strangers, and rarely even with my closest
friends. Suffice it to say that I don't harbor any sexual dysfunction, but if I ever
see that guy on the street, Tim, I'm going to castrate him and laugh as he bleeds to
death in front of me. Really though, I'm over it.
In the middle of the school year I moved again, this time to Sunland CA. I know that I'm
white, but this period in time has caused me to dislike most Caucasians. I went to school
with a bunch of upper-middle class white kids... and then a bunch of black kids that
were bussed in from South Central. The white kids for the most part shunned me, apparently
because I was just a little bit below their kin, being "white trash." My parents
were bikers and were fond of showing up to school events in full regalia. That didn't help.
I remember Mrs. Patch, my fifth grade teacher vividly... because she had the largest
breasts that I had ever seen until that point. They were fascinating, but her style
of teaching wasn't, so I usually found myself drifting off to sleep in her class, softly
being wafted away on large, comfortable pillows.
In the middle of sixth grade we moved again, this time to Tujunga, a neighboring town.
Even though I didn't have many friends at Sunland elementary, what was familiar was
much less threatening than a new school, so I opted to stay. A month later
I was kicked out because I wouldn't turn around a shirt that said "shit
happens" in one little corner. It was actually a "Guns and Roses" T-shirt,
and the offending "i" in "shit" was blocked by an hour-glass that Slash
was wearing on a necklace. I was off to Aperson Elementary for the last
part of sixth grade.
In seventh grade I ended up at Mt. Gleason Jr. High School. I think that seventh grade is the
point where all the different races generally stop "getting along." There are always exceptions,
but for the most part the rich kids start hanging out with other rich kids and riding their skateboards,
the people that are going to get in gangs get into them, and the white trash start to ditch school,
shoplift, and smoke pot. I was in the final category, and was in fact proud of the fact that I managed
to ditch my entire second semester. The major highlight of that year was
that since I was getting into so much trouble I was grounded a lot and had
nothing to do except read. I also had one of the best teachers of my
life, a Mr. Malley that retired before the second semester started. This
old guy knew that he only had one semester left, so he didn't give a fuck. Instead he gave life to the tired
texts that I'd been reading all my academic career and even read us some of his short stories.
After that I was tried and convicted of residential burglary and put on probation.
I moved back to AZ to live with Grandmother and never got into trouble with the youth authority again.
But, my grandma was as nutty as ever. No child should be subjected to the tyrannical rule of a
woman that is in the midst of menopause and is pissed about it. Let this
be recorded in Heaven's eternal and unchanging heart: Fuck Arizona and
everyone that lives in it, especially the children. May they all die
slowly and horribly and be stricken with locusts. Especially those who
attended Landmark Elementary and Apollo High School at the same times that I did.
I finished up my ninth grade at Verdugo Hills High in Sunland when I went to live with my mother again.
For one of the first times in my life I was happy to go to school. I had a great teacher, Mr. Orozco, who
inspired me to go after what is now my life's goal. I was getting a D in his honors English class when he
gave the class an assignment to write a short story. I wrote one, and gave it to him. When he gave it back
to me I saw that I got 100/100, and a B- in the class. He even had me read it in front of the class, and
made a point to discuss why it was so good and what grade I got on it. This was my major triumph of that year.
Two weeks after it was over I went to a foster home because my mother and her new boyfriend had been snorting
more speed than they had been selling.
For most of my 10th grade year, at Sylmar High in Sylmar, I smoked pot, read novels, and played role playing
games. It wasn't a bad year at all considering that the place I lived was hell. The two demons in charge of
the foster home were two of the dirtiest pieces of human filth who have ever had any power over me. The foster
mother had been thin and pretty in her youth, but within fifteen years had
put on over three hundred pounds of flesh because she ate so much. The
foster father was a born again Christian whose baptism had not been enough to
wash the asshole out of his soul. He was fond of either preaching or cussing, and did both at great length, fluidly. The
most vivid memory of this petty fool was when he burst into my room and stole my foster brother's television set
because we were watching a Red Hot Chili Peppers video. Fuck Jan and Gene Greathouse, I hope you both get exactly what you gave.
Then in 11th I joined a Christian fundamentalist cult, and stayed in until I was a freshman in college.
I have a whole web page dedicated to this period in my life, so check it out if you're curious.
My sophomore year of college left me friendless, girlfriendless, lonely, and alone. I turned to books, pot, and
cigarettes as a sort of relief from the miasma of bullshit that I had accumulated over my life. I fell in love,
fell out of love, made love, fucked, got straight A's in college one semester, dropped another semester, and
made for the first time in my life real friends.
All in all life is great now. I've either learned to avoid the mistakes that used to plague me, or I'm tough enough to
get through the inevitable shit that inevitably comes. I graduated from college, and now I'm trying to make it possible for
myself to do the things that I've always wanted to do. That's what this summer is all about. I regret nothing in life, because I've been able
to learn that everything has been an inevitable step to where I am now, and I wouldn't trade where I am for anything.