Tape 7, Side B
[Begin Tape 7, Side B]
So they inspected your room….
Yeah, so this was embarrassing and maybe even a little dangerous you know because there was always a possibility that I could be taken away and made a ward of the state or something like that. You know they found all this stuff. They didn’t like what they saw and they kind of got on my case a little bit more thereafter. And the worst thing was that it was very disappointing to them, and I think Gene’s message was basically: You’ve gotta be cooler. It wasn’t…
There’s that conformist thing….
It was yeah, you’ve gotta watch out; you just have to be a little more careful. You don’t have to knuckle under and be like that. There’s a difference between packaging and reality, so you have to make the authorities think everything’s okay.
Did they make you keep your room in such a way that, in case anyone showed up…?
Yes, I think that was the message. I don’t know that it was ever that clear, but after that I made my bed and hid all my smoking paraphernalia, and again I remember saying to Gene: Well now she’s found out my little secret that I smoke out there. And he said: Aw, don’t worry about that [laughter]. So he didn’t care about that.
Did those authority people care though, ‘cause tobacco technically was illegal for…?
Probably. Yeah, this wasn’t like in the Clayton school where the juniors and seniors had a special smoking area [laughs], but again it was pretty…
That’s considered pretty benign though, tobacco was always…
Yeah except you know the kids, the kids aren’t supposed to smoke, and it was just evidence that--you know Gene and Tanya didn’t want to get into trouble either--evidence that they weren’t taking care, that they weren’t doing their work as guardians very well. That was the only time though that I got into trouble for how I was living. The rest of the time was pretty hands-off, and it was a swell time. He was doing his best to teach me stuff, just simple things like how to relate to other people, how to use a camera, how to drive….
So now, about driving… [laughter] He rolled his eyes, to give you the pictorial part of our pictmission. [laughter] Were you settling into driving or…?
Well no, it was just another thing that was part of the plan. See I took driver’s ed in my senior year.
Got a C!
Got a C. I mean I knew the rules of the road. I just didn’t like it that much.
And even in California where it was part of the…?
It was nice, you know, I liked riding. I certainly liked riding, and driving was okay but it was… There were just too many sequences, especially stick-shifting, too many sequences you had to pay attention to all the time, and that’s what I didn’t like about it ‘cause I knew that if I stopped paying attention disastrous results would follow; plus the pace of it wasn’t too appealing either: I didn’t like going fast. I liked going slow. I liked walking or bicycling; well I liked going fast on the bicycle, you know. Ten-speeds were coming in around then, and so I could ride somebody else’s ten; I didn’t have one but….
Was Manhattan Beach and the other beach towns, I know that later on they had bike paths and you could ride for miles and miles along there, but did they at that time?
I don’t think so, not at that time, you know, it was a couple years away. But you know there were plenty of car-less streets. In Manhattan Beach, particularly in this one area, they had the streets that you could drive your car on were all, where there were residential areas, were all back streets. In other words, when you went out your front door you weren’t on a street, you were on a sidewalk and right across the sidewalk were another row of houses, facing you. So there were rows of houses facing one another; they each had little front lawns with ice plant in them and down the middle was a corridor and then steps leading down to the beach.
And those were all walkways, in the front.
Those were all walkways, and everybody drove in the back. So the addresses were like 325 6th Street, but the next street over was like 6th Alley or 6th Avenue, or 6 ½ Street or something like that. But there were plenty of car-less places where you could ride a bike. Did I have a bike then? I don’t remember. I remember riding other people’s. The other thing about that time, like I say, I didn’t have too many friends, but I didn’t want any, but I did become friends with the Japanese exchange student who lived with a family a few blocks away from where I was. He was interesting: Tabayuki Morishta. I still remember his name. He was interesting because he was into… he was very smart—oh I did have a bicycle!—because he could do something that nobody else could. Like I say, there was a big hill that you had to go up or down to get to high school from where we were way down on the beach up this huge hill, across Sepulveda, Pacific Ocean Highway, and go on, but this was a huge steep hill. He could ride a regulation bicycle, with no speeds, you know, he could ride it up this hill: he had massive thighs! you know from his Japanese upbringing. He was very, very powerful.
From training?
Yeah. I don’t know, I think it was just regular, but he was interested in sumo wrestling, so… He wasn’t a monstrous guy, he was just regular kid. Yeah, we were all walking our bikes up. He did have all these sumo wrestling magazines. But he was real smart and he was just interesting to talk to and be around because he was so, you know, ‘foreign’ [laughs].
Did you share any of your interest in eastern religions?
No. I probably didn’t equate the two things. I didn’t really realize…
…that this guy might know something.
Yeah. Again, all this stuff I was reading was really no more… everything I was reading was the same, comic books too, you know, it was all in this realm; it was just stuff I was taking in; none of it was more important that any other of it; it was just what was nearby.
So if that guy hadn’t happened to have left his stuff in the room next to you, you might not have…? Sooner or later would you have…?
I suppose. Yeah, it seems like it because I think I would have to have stumbled on it in one way or the other, and I suppose… sure, I would have to, because it was in the air, you know, eventually; it was in the air everywhere. The Beat stuff, the Beat Zen stuff, wasn’t in the air exactly, but it was still there. It became an air with, jeez, Maharishi* I suppose, that’s when it really hit big-time, so even if you were under a rock you would pick something like that up. [Liverpool accent] What’s going on with the Maharishi? You’d have to say: What’s this Maharishi? [Jon Wayne accent] No go diggi die!
[laughter] No country I know.
That’s right…. So I wasn’t meditating yet, but that came along too.
The martial arts though you went ahead and practiced the thing just by what you were reading, but you didn’t try meditation until…?
No, not until I was, not until just, well, pretty soon thereafter. Around this time, so here I am, it was like sixty-two, sixty-three, and somewhere in there you were asking about the Cuban Missile Crisis; I guess that was when I was in Mira Costa High School, Manhattan Beach. I sort of remember that everybody was, things had just sort of come to a stop and there was a sense that this could be the end of the world; it could start happening. I think they were broadcasting, I have this impression that they were broadcasting news on the school PA system. There were no classes. People were just milling about. The stuff was just coming out of the PA speakers. That’s what I remember. I don’t know if it’s true.
Did they have drills?
I don’t remember anything like that.
Do you remember, was there a moment of realization?: This could be it.
Well it was sort of, as I recall it, it was sort of in the air. The TV was on all the time. We were watching the TV all the time at night and so on. It was in the newspapers, but it all had to do with the missiles, you know, the missiles could fly at any minute, and we knew what that meant if that really happened, but nobody was running around screaming: The end of the world is... I guess we shared the same conclusions. But that’s what it felt like: This really could happen; this really could be it. And I think everybody realized there was nothing you could do. The conventional wisdom was: If you see the flash, it’s probably already too late [laughter]. Kiss your ass goodbye. Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
Was there actually that sentiment out there among…? ‘cause here’s where the difference in our ages is maybe significant because I was nine, I think, so for me there was nothing… I was not at an age where you would joke about that, I mean where you would say something like that: Kiss your ass goodbye, ‘cause it’s all over, forget it; but maybe at your age, at sixteen you might have been more inclined to.
No, I don’t think there was much joking about it, it was just foreboding, and you know it seemed like it was pretty serious, and everybody was aware. I think they probably talked about it in various classes, you know, maybe the different teachers would ask people to talk about it. I don’t recollect any of that. The picture I have was sort of everybody milling about outside listening to the stuff that was coming over the loudspeakers.
So they suspended classes?
This could have been during a break or something. I don’t think they suspended classes, but you know that day or the days that it was going on you got up and went to school, just as normal, and then you went home. But I think we knew that there was little that could be done if the missiles started flying, so there was a sense of foreboding and the realistic possibility that this was the end of the world, but also, like kids, it didn’t really, really sink in, I mean it couldn’t really be the end of the world [laughs]. But it was darn serious. You know, it’ll work itself out.
Imagining not existing is pretty difficult for a kid.
No country I know. So here we go. I get fired from my job ‘cause—this is sort of towards the end of my senior year.
Do you remember what you stole?
No, and they were never very overt about it; they just said: You go now. This is your last… You go now. Why? You know why.
It wasn’t: We caught you blah blah? It was just…?
Right. It was: You know why. And the guy, he was steaming because, Don Guild was the guy, the son of the pioneer founder of Guild Drugstore, because he trusted me and I let him down, and I never told my brother this either. Oh well I’m not working there anymore because whatever, some reason. But then you know this whole world fell apart too because I guess, you know I never picked up on it before, but my brother and his wife were having problems, and my brother moved out, so I was there, still living there, and he was living in some apartment down in Hermosa Beach, in fact right around in the area of The Lighthouse.
It just blew up? Was there much warning? Do you remember?
No, not as far as I know there wasn’t. They were all lovey-dovey and always smoochin’ and havin’ fun, and you know it was a real happy household as far as I knew, you know, full of wit and repartee and that sort of stuff.
Did it alter your relationship with Tanya?
No, well in a way, you know there were a couple of occasions where she was afraid and we had to lock all the doors.
Because of Gene?
Yeah, because he might come back and be violent or something like that. And I had no preparation for anything like that, but, you know, I was ready. So I mean I was living there and I was gonna do whatever I could [laughs]. It never came to that though. So we locked all the doors and we were ready. That was one incident I remember.
Did it make you feel closer to her in a way: We’re in this together and…?
I suppose. I suppose you could say that. But that was a fleeting thing that happened.
The loss of your job; you didn’t tell Gene you said.
I told him I had no job. I don’t think I told him that I got canned, no. But somehow I still had some money. I don’t know exactly how this happened, but right about that time—and I don’t know why it happened or anything--but I moved out [laughs]. I went to live in this crazy rundown hotel also in the same area where Gene was but a little further on the other side of where The Lighthouse was, and I had a hotel room.
And you had enough money to pay?
Evidently. I have no idea exactly the mechanics of this. Maybe I was still working at the drugstore. Maybe I still had an income. That’s probably what it was. And then I lost my job. How stupid!
So what happened?
Well there I was, you know, just like two months from high school graduation, on my own, living in a hotel room.
Do you remember how you felt about it?
I felt great! Somehow I got… And then my brother Gene, he lived right around the corner. He was living it up then, ‘cause he was on his own.
He must have had a pretty good salary, if he was in advertising.
I think he was doin’ okay, but he had a new car. He wouldn’t give me any money though, you know, he was teaching me a lesson.
He was living it up in the sense that he was living the single life?
He was out all the time, swingin’, and I knew he was smokin’ dope.
Oh really, at that point you became aware that he was…?
‘Cause they were smokin’ dope in there when I would come over, listening to Lord Buckley all the time. That never came into it before, you know, and then I think some more hard jazz… I mean yeah, he was wailin’. [Lord Buckley voice] He was whippin’ and wailin’ and suckin’ up all that fine juice and pattin’ each other on the back and tellin’ each other who the hippest cat in the world is.
Did it change your relationship with him? Were you more sort of hangin’ with him?
Inasmuch as I could.
Were you smokin’ dope?
No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t smokin’ cigarettes or dope or nothin’; maybe I was smokin’ a pipe. I wasn’t drinkin’. I never did drink, till later, till yesterday [laughter]. No, I never liked that; I never liked gettin’ drunk. But yeah, I sort of thought I was on his level. I wasn’t of course, but I remember he let me borrow his conga drum. He had this great big conga drum, and by then we were getting our graduation stuff together [laughs]. I don’t know if this is embarrassing or cool or what: I used to dress up in my graduation gown and take this big conga drum and go out on the beach. I was hangin’ out with the…
With your mortar board and everything?
I didn’t have the mortar board, just the gown, and I just thought it was really cool. I don’t know if I was trying to impress other people or just myself, but I think just myself because I thought it was funny, you know, funny and cool and everything.
You were about seventeen then?
Well I was ah… When I turned seventeen, I turned seventeen and then two days later graduated from high school. So I was still younger than everybody else.
You were a year ahead, right?
Yeah. So I was basically sixteen, sixteen coming on seventeen. It was great. I mean I was living in this hotel room when I graduated from high school. Sure I could go over to his place every now and then and he’d let me in. I think they had some pot growing outside somewhere, so they were growing their own. I say them because his friend Jack McCoy was involved too; I don’t know if he was living there too, and maybe he was another recently divorced swingin’ bachelor too; I don’t know, but they went everywhere together. Oh the other big thing that happened at that time was Time magazine came out with a picture of Thelonious Monk on the cover. Oh that just blew everybody’s mind [laughs]. So that was something that we certainly had in common, I mean I was getting hip to the music, and by then I think a nice FM jazz station had come along, KBCA: they had black disk jockeys and they were playing some harder music and longer, longer cuts than they could play on the AM station, the whole things, the whole fifteen minute long versions of ‘My Favorite Things’, something like that. Then I graduated from high school, and I remember I had no money but somehow I was able to get some cool new boots.
You remember those huh?
I remember those boots, like real pointy toes and…
Do you remember how you kept your apartment? Where’d you get the money?
It was just a room with a bathroom down the hall; it was just a bed. No I don’t remember anything about that; I don’t remember what I took with me or anything, anything like that.
So you didn’t go hungry or anything like that? You had some…?
This time, no, I didn’t go hungry, and here’s what happened: my brother Bob and his wife, who at that time was his boss, they were both working for… I think, I think this is the way. But he was out there and he had a house out there in Van Nuys, California. And he came to my graduation ceremony and came and he dropped me off at the hotel room and he did not like what he saw.
He didn’t like your room?
No, he just didn’t like my life, you know. I had no job. I was living in a hotel.
You were a hippie before hippies.
I was Beat maybe, you know [laughs]. I was just a nothin’, and I had no prospects for getting any money. I didn’t know what to do. I had my high school diploma though. And he expressed his disapproval and disappointment in no uncertain terms and he came up with a deal for me. He said: You come live with me in Van Nuys; we’ll get you into college; we’ll put you through college. You can just relax and concentrate on that. Sure, I said, sure, let’s go. You know, I’m going through all the open doors, whatever. He could have said I want you to be a mortician, sure. So that was that. I packed up.
Now Van Nuys is…?
San Fernando Valley.
So this would have been what, how many miles from Manhattan Beach?
I guess it’s fifty; something like that. The valley’s a whole different country.
I know you went with the flow, but did you have any regrets about anything?
Not then. Later I did. You know I thought the deal was I wasn’t gonna have to do anything; I’d just go to school; he’d put me through school, and I could lay around the rest of the time [laughter]. Well it turns out that wasn’t quite the way he saw it. He thought I should go out and get a job, so he didn’t want me just lying around the house. I think he was starting to have kids by then, you know, he has his life and his wife and the big house and he has a family and he has a great big car. He’s still cool: he has this great big old black fifty-six Cadillac, but he’s got other things on his mind. They were makin’ money, but he’s responsible; he’s a solid citizen; not like Gene; Gene’s not a solid citizen. By then I think Bob and Gene, they were not on good terms.
Because of Gene’s change in lifestyle?
Yeah, plus they would make judgments; they would call each other out on their life. They would start… Gene would rag on Bob for being a solid citizen, and Bob would tell Gene he was just nothing, he was a worthless bum. You’re just playing around: one of ‘em’s serious, one of ‘em’s playing around.
Did you take sides?
No, in fact I didn’t want to have anything to do with either of them really at that point, on that level, you know I didn’t want to get involved in their little, their squabbles, and I didn’t see how—you know I faulted Gene more than anybody—I didn’t see how he could be so judgmental: Let that cat goof off any way he wants to, and if he’s got bad things to say about you, well…
You didn’t see how Gene could be?
Right. I thought Gene could be more relaxed about it, but I guess he didn’t like being…
…pegged or…
I think he felt betrayed in some way. This is all very, very superficial stuff that I’m saying because I have no idea how it really was, but here was his little brother, you know, and they were cool and they were groovin’ together and then suddenly he turns into this straight guy [laughs].
Do you remember where Bob was working? or where his wife was working?
Somewhere on the Miracle Mile I think because I remember going there once or twice when I was out looking for work. It was a little accounting firm. They were accountants, CPAs. So there was a little rift there, and who knows how far back it went. And also I think maybe Bob was friends with Tanya and maybe he got a different picture of how bad Gene was. So, I don’t know, but I didn’t want any part of that; I just liked the cool happy fun-loving funny Gene. He was extremely funny. Well Bob was funny too. They always had the quips, the jokes. I remember there was a whole… some little…[laughs] some little girls came to his house on Halloween, you know, for trick or treat….
This is Bob’s?
This is Gene’s, Gene’s down in Manhattan Beach. Little girls come, a bunch of little girls. Was it Halloween? It was probably Halloween. And they knock on the door and Gene opens the door and he looks around and says: Lolita? [laughter] So he was always, he always had the quips. What was the other one? Oh this friend Jack, we were driving along and Jack was sitting there--we were talking about lesbians—and Jack says: Well a lesbian is a woman who just doesn’t get it. And Gene says: Uh uh, a lesbian has it all figured out. So those are some of the cool things that he was doing. Are we getting to the end?
Right at the end.
Is it time to go? So we’ll pick up again: That summer that I spent in… That year that I spent in Van Nuys one summer.
Every three months is a lifetime for you [laughs].
Yeah!
[End Tape 7, Side B]
So they inspected your room….
Yeah, so this was embarrassing and maybe even a little dangerous you know because there was always a possibility that I could be taken away and made a ward of the state or something like that. You know they found all this stuff. They didn’t like what they saw and they kind of got on my case a little bit more thereafter. And the worst thing was that it was very disappointing to them, and I think Gene’s message was basically: You’ve gotta be cooler. It wasn’t…
There’s that conformist thing….
It was yeah, you’ve gotta watch out; you just have to be a little more careful. You don’t have to knuckle under and be like that. There’s a difference between packaging and reality, so you have to make the authorities think everything’s okay.
Did they make you keep your room in such a way that, in case anyone showed up…?
Yes, I think that was the message. I don’t know that it was ever that clear, but after that I made my bed and hid all my smoking paraphernalia, and again I remember saying to Gene: Well now she’s found out my little secret that I smoke out there. And he said: Aw, don’t worry about that [laughter]. So he didn’t care about that.
Did those authority people care though, ‘cause tobacco technically was illegal for…?
Probably. Yeah, this wasn’t like in the Clayton school where the juniors and seniors had a special smoking area [laughs], but again it was pretty…
That’s considered pretty benign though, tobacco was always…
Yeah except you know the kids, the kids aren’t supposed to smoke, and it was just evidence that--you know Gene and Tanya didn’t want to get into trouble either--evidence that they weren’t taking care, that they weren’t doing their work as guardians very well. That was the only time though that I got into trouble for how I was living. The rest of the time was pretty hands-off, and it was a swell time. He was doing his best to teach me stuff, just simple things like how to relate to other people, how to use a camera, how to drive….
So now, about driving… [laughter] He rolled his eyes, to give you the pictorial part of our pictmission. [laughter] Were you settling into driving or…?
Well no, it was just another thing that was part of the plan. See I took driver’s ed in my senior year.
Got a C!
Got a C. I mean I knew the rules of the road. I just didn’t like it that much.
And even in California where it was part of the…?
It was nice, you know, I liked riding. I certainly liked riding, and driving was okay but it was… There were just too many sequences, especially stick-shifting, too many sequences you had to pay attention to all the time, and that’s what I didn’t like about it ‘cause I knew that if I stopped paying attention disastrous results would follow; plus the pace of it wasn’t too appealing either: I didn’t like going fast. I liked going slow. I liked walking or bicycling; well I liked going fast on the bicycle, you know. Ten-speeds were coming in around then, and so I could ride somebody else’s ten; I didn’t have one but….
Was Manhattan Beach and the other beach towns, I know that later on they had bike paths and you could ride for miles and miles along there, but did they at that time?
I don’t think so, not at that time, you know, it was a couple years away. But you know there were plenty of car-less streets. In Manhattan Beach, particularly in this one area, they had the streets that you could drive your car on were all, where there were residential areas, were all back streets. In other words, when you went out your front door you weren’t on a street, you were on a sidewalk and right across the sidewalk were another row of houses, facing you. So there were rows of houses facing one another; they each had little front lawns with ice plant in them and down the middle was a corridor and then steps leading down to the beach.
And those were all walkways, in the front.
Those were all walkways, and everybody drove in the back. So the addresses were like 325 6th Street, but the next street over was like 6th Alley or 6th Avenue, or 6 ½ Street or something like that. But there were plenty of car-less places where you could ride a bike. Did I have a bike then? I don’t remember. I remember riding other people’s. The other thing about that time, like I say, I didn’t have too many friends, but I didn’t want any, but I did become friends with the Japanese exchange student who lived with a family a few blocks away from where I was. He was interesting: Tabayuki Morishta. I still remember his name. He was interesting because he was into… he was very smart—oh I did have a bicycle!—because he could do something that nobody else could. Like I say, there was a big hill that you had to go up or down to get to high school from where we were way down on the beach up this huge hill, across Sepulveda, Pacific Ocean Highway, and go on, but this was a huge steep hill. He could ride a regulation bicycle, with no speeds, you know, he could ride it up this hill: he had massive thighs! you know from his Japanese upbringing. He was very, very powerful.
From training?
Yeah. I don’t know, I think it was just regular, but he was interested in sumo wrestling, so… He wasn’t a monstrous guy, he was just regular kid. Yeah, we were all walking our bikes up. He did have all these sumo wrestling magazines. But he was real smart and he was just interesting to talk to and be around because he was so, you know, ‘foreign’ [laughs].
Did you share any of your interest in eastern religions?
No. I probably didn’t equate the two things. I didn’t really realize…
…that this guy might know something.
Yeah. Again, all this stuff I was reading was really no more… everything I was reading was the same, comic books too, you know, it was all in this realm; it was just stuff I was taking in; none of it was more important that any other of it; it was just what was nearby.
So if that guy hadn’t happened to have left his stuff in the room next to you, you might not have…? Sooner or later would you have…?
I suppose. Yeah, it seems like it because I think I would have to have stumbled on it in one way or the other, and I suppose… sure, I would have to, because it was in the air, you know, eventually; it was in the air everywhere. The Beat stuff, the Beat Zen stuff, wasn’t in the air exactly, but it was still there. It became an air with, jeez, Maharishi* I suppose, that’s when it really hit big-time, so even if you were under a rock you would pick something like that up. [Liverpool accent] What’s going on with the Maharishi? You’d have to say: What’s this Maharishi? [Jon Wayne accent] No go diggi die!
[laughter] No country I know.
That’s right…. So I wasn’t meditating yet, but that came along too.
The martial arts though you went ahead and practiced the thing just by what you were reading, but you didn’t try meditation until…?
No, not until I was, not until just, well, pretty soon thereafter. Around this time, so here I am, it was like sixty-two, sixty-three, and somewhere in there you were asking about the Cuban Missile Crisis; I guess that was when I was in Mira Costa High School, Manhattan Beach. I sort of remember that everybody was, things had just sort of come to a stop and there was a sense that this could be the end of the world; it could start happening. I think they were broadcasting, I have this impression that they were broadcasting news on the school PA system. There were no classes. People were just milling about. The stuff was just coming out of the PA speakers. That’s what I remember. I don’t know if it’s true.
Did they have drills?
I don’t remember anything like that.
Do you remember, was there a moment of realization?: This could be it.
Well it was sort of, as I recall it, it was sort of in the air. The TV was on all the time. We were watching the TV all the time at night and so on. It was in the newspapers, but it all had to do with the missiles, you know, the missiles could fly at any minute, and we knew what that meant if that really happened, but nobody was running around screaming: The end of the world is... I guess we shared the same conclusions. But that’s what it felt like: This really could happen; this really could be it. And I think everybody realized there was nothing you could do. The conventional wisdom was: If you see the flash, it’s probably already too late [laughter]. Kiss your ass goodbye. Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
Was there actually that sentiment out there among…? ‘cause here’s where the difference in our ages is maybe significant because I was nine, I think, so for me there was nothing… I was not at an age where you would joke about that, I mean where you would say something like that: Kiss your ass goodbye, ‘cause it’s all over, forget it; but maybe at your age, at sixteen you might have been more inclined to.
No, I don’t think there was much joking about it, it was just foreboding, and you know it seemed like it was pretty serious, and everybody was aware. I think they probably talked about it in various classes, you know, maybe the different teachers would ask people to talk about it. I don’t recollect any of that. The picture I have was sort of everybody milling about outside listening to the stuff that was coming over the loudspeakers.
So they suspended classes?
This could have been during a break or something. I don’t think they suspended classes, but you know that day or the days that it was going on you got up and went to school, just as normal, and then you went home. But I think we knew that there was little that could be done if the missiles started flying, so there was a sense of foreboding and the realistic possibility that this was the end of the world, but also, like kids, it didn’t really, really sink in, I mean it couldn’t really be the end of the world [laughs]. But it was darn serious. You know, it’ll work itself out.
Imagining not existing is pretty difficult for a kid.
No country I know. So here we go. I get fired from my job ‘cause—this is sort of towards the end of my senior year.
Do you remember what you stole?
No, and they were never very overt about it; they just said: You go now. This is your last… You go now. Why? You know why.
It wasn’t: We caught you blah blah? It was just…?
Right. It was: You know why. And the guy, he was steaming because, Don Guild was the guy, the son of the pioneer founder of Guild Drugstore, because he trusted me and I let him down, and I never told my brother this either. Oh well I’m not working there anymore because whatever, some reason. But then you know this whole world fell apart too because I guess, you know I never picked up on it before, but my brother and his wife were having problems, and my brother moved out, so I was there, still living there, and he was living in some apartment down in Hermosa Beach, in fact right around in the area of The Lighthouse.
It just blew up? Was there much warning? Do you remember?
No, not as far as I know there wasn’t. They were all lovey-dovey and always smoochin’ and havin’ fun, and you know it was a real happy household as far as I knew, you know, full of wit and repartee and that sort of stuff.
Did it alter your relationship with Tanya?
No, well in a way, you know there were a couple of occasions where she was afraid and we had to lock all the doors.
Because of Gene?
Yeah, because he might come back and be violent or something like that. And I had no preparation for anything like that, but, you know, I was ready. So I mean I was living there and I was gonna do whatever I could [laughs]. It never came to that though. So we locked all the doors and we were ready. That was one incident I remember.
Did it make you feel closer to her in a way: We’re in this together and…?
I suppose. I suppose you could say that. But that was a fleeting thing that happened.
The loss of your job; you didn’t tell Gene you said.
I told him I had no job. I don’t think I told him that I got canned, no. But somehow I still had some money. I don’t know exactly how this happened, but right about that time—and I don’t know why it happened or anything--but I moved out [laughs]. I went to live in this crazy rundown hotel also in the same area where Gene was but a little further on the other side of where The Lighthouse was, and I had a hotel room.
And you had enough money to pay?
Evidently. I have no idea exactly the mechanics of this. Maybe I was still working at the drugstore. Maybe I still had an income. That’s probably what it was. And then I lost my job. How stupid!
So what happened?
Well there I was, you know, just like two months from high school graduation, on my own, living in a hotel room.
Do you remember how you felt about it?
I felt great! Somehow I got… And then my brother Gene, he lived right around the corner. He was living it up then, ‘cause he was on his own.
He must have had a pretty good salary, if he was in advertising.
I think he was doin’ okay, but he had a new car. He wouldn’t give me any money though, you know, he was teaching me a lesson.
He was living it up in the sense that he was living the single life?
He was out all the time, swingin’, and I knew he was smokin’ dope.
Oh really, at that point you became aware that he was…?
‘Cause they were smokin’ dope in there when I would come over, listening to Lord Buckley all the time. That never came into it before, you know, and then I think some more hard jazz… I mean yeah, he was wailin’. [Lord Buckley voice] He was whippin’ and wailin’ and suckin’ up all that fine juice and pattin’ each other on the back and tellin’ each other who the hippest cat in the world is.
Did it change your relationship with him? Were you more sort of hangin’ with him?
Inasmuch as I could.
Were you smokin’ dope?
No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t smokin’ cigarettes or dope or nothin’; maybe I was smokin’ a pipe. I wasn’t drinkin’. I never did drink, till later, till yesterday [laughter]. No, I never liked that; I never liked gettin’ drunk. But yeah, I sort of thought I was on his level. I wasn’t of course, but I remember he let me borrow his conga drum. He had this great big conga drum, and by then we were getting our graduation stuff together [laughs]. I don’t know if this is embarrassing or cool or what: I used to dress up in my graduation gown and take this big conga drum and go out on the beach. I was hangin’ out with the…
With your mortar board and everything?
I didn’t have the mortar board, just the gown, and I just thought it was really cool. I don’t know if I was trying to impress other people or just myself, but I think just myself because I thought it was funny, you know, funny and cool and everything.
You were about seventeen then?
Well I was ah… When I turned seventeen, I turned seventeen and then two days later graduated from high school. So I was still younger than everybody else.
You were a year ahead, right?
Yeah. So I was basically sixteen, sixteen coming on seventeen. It was great. I mean I was living in this hotel room when I graduated from high school. Sure I could go over to his place every now and then and he’d let me in. I think they had some pot growing outside somewhere, so they were growing their own. I say them because his friend Jack McCoy was involved too; I don’t know if he was living there too, and maybe he was another recently divorced swingin’ bachelor too; I don’t know, but they went everywhere together. Oh the other big thing that happened at that time was Time magazine came out with a picture of Thelonious Monk on the cover. Oh that just blew everybody’s mind [laughs]. So that was something that we certainly had in common, I mean I was getting hip to the music, and by then I think a nice FM jazz station had come along, KBCA: they had black disk jockeys and they were playing some harder music and longer, longer cuts than they could play on the AM station, the whole things, the whole fifteen minute long versions of ‘My Favorite Things’, something like that. Then I graduated from high school, and I remember I had no money but somehow I was able to get some cool new boots.
You remember those huh?
I remember those boots, like real pointy toes and…
Do you remember how you kept your apartment? Where’d you get the money?
It was just a room with a bathroom down the hall; it was just a bed. No I don’t remember anything about that; I don’t remember what I took with me or anything, anything like that.
So you didn’t go hungry or anything like that? You had some…?
This time, no, I didn’t go hungry, and here’s what happened: my brother Bob and his wife, who at that time was his boss, they were both working for… I think, I think this is the way. But he was out there and he had a house out there in Van Nuys, California. And he came to my graduation ceremony and came and he dropped me off at the hotel room and he did not like what he saw.
He didn’t like your room?
No, he just didn’t like my life, you know. I had no job. I was living in a hotel.
You were a hippie before hippies.
I was Beat maybe, you know [laughs]. I was just a nothin’, and I had no prospects for getting any money. I didn’t know what to do. I had my high school diploma though. And he expressed his disapproval and disappointment in no uncertain terms and he came up with a deal for me. He said: You come live with me in Van Nuys; we’ll get you into college; we’ll put you through college. You can just relax and concentrate on that. Sure, I said, sure, let’s go. You know, I’m going through all the open doors, whatever. He could have said I want you to be a mortician, sure. So that was that. I packed up.
Now Van Nuys is…?
San Fernando Valley.
So this would have been what, how many miles from Manhattan Beach?
I guess it’s fifty; something like that. The valley’s a whole different country.
I know you went with the flow, but did you have any regrets about anything?
Not then. Later I did. You know I thought the deal was I wasn’t gonna have to do anything; I’d just go to school; he’d put me through school, and I could lay around the rest of the time [laughter]. Well it turns out that wasn’t quite the way he saw it. He thought I should go out and get a job, so he didn’t want me just lying around the house. I think he was starting to have kids by then, you know, he has his life and his wife and the big house and he has a family and he has a great big car. He’s still cool: he has this great big old black fifty-six Cadillac, but he’s got other things on his mind. They were makin’ money, but he’s responsible; he’s a solid citizen; not like Gene; Gene’s not a solid citizen. By then I think Bob and Gene, they were not on good terms.
Because of Gene’s change in lifestyle?
Yeah, plus they would make judgments; they would call each other out on their life. They would start… Gene would rag on Bob for being a solid citizen, and Bob would tell Gene he was just nothing, he was a worthless bum. You’re just playing around: one of ‘em’s serious, one of ‘em’s playing around.
Did you take sides?
No, in fact I didn’t want to have anything to do with either of them really at that point, on that level, you know I didn’t want to get involved in their little, their squabbles, and I didn’t see how—you know I faulted Gene more than anybody—I didn’t see how he could be so judgmental: Let that cat goof off any way he wants to, and if he’s got bad things to say about you, well…
You didn’t see how Gene could be?
Right. I thought Gene could be more relaxed about it, but I guess he didn’t like being…
…pegged or…
I think he felt betrayed in some way. This is all very, very superficial stuff that I’m saying because I have no idea how it really was, but here was his little brother, you know, and they were cool and they were groovin’ together and then suddenly he turns into this straight guy [laughs].
Do you remember where Bob was working? or where his wife was working?
Somewhere on the Miracle Mile I think because I remember going there once or twice when I was out looking for work. It was a little accounting firm. They were accountants, CPAs. So there was a little rift there, and who knows how far back it went. And also I think maybe Bob was friends with Tanya and maybe he got a different picture of how bad Gene was. So, I don’t know, but I didn’t want any part of that; I just liked the cool happy fun-loving funny Gene. He was extremely funny. Well Bob was funny too. They always had the quips, the jokes. I remember there was a whole… some little…[laughs] some little girls came to his house on Halloween, you know, for trick or treat….
This is Bob’s?
This is Gene’s, Gene’s down in Manhattan Beach. Little girls come, a bunch of little girls. Was it Halloween? It was probably Halloween. And they knock on the door and Gene opens the door and he looks around and says: Lolita? [laughter] So he was always, he always had the quips. What was the other one? Oh this friend Jack, we were driving along and Jack was sitting there--we were talking about lesbians—and Jack says: Well a lesbian is a woman who just doesn’t get it. And Gene says: Uh uh, a lesbian has it all figured out. So those are some of the cool things that he was doing. Are we getting to the end?
Right at the end.
Is it time to go? So we’ll pick up again: That summer that I spent in… That year that I spent in Van Nuys one summer.
Every three months is a lifetime for you [laughs].
Yeah!
[End Tape 7, Side B]
posted by epikles at 4:29 PM
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