Man, but this is a true story; this shit went down. The early 1980’s before everything went to shit and punk rock was dead–but still dangerous. Like “get cussed -at- and- confronted- by -Cro- Magnon -construction -worker -knuckledragger-meat-and-potatoes-Coors ® guzzling-roughnecks” dangerous. “Chased- and -sometimes -beaten -by -letterman- jacket -donning-muscle car -driving-future-frat- boy- jock -date -rapist” dangerous. “Bullied- by- musclebound- androgynous-glam band -tiger print-spandex-wearing- chicken –choking- fleshtight-clown-outfit-cuke smuggling-feathered- hair- and -multicolored-bandana-around-the-thigh” dangerous. “Jammed up, proned out, searched, cuffed and hassled by the Los Angeles Pig Department -for -no -fucking- reason other than -we -were-walking -down- the – suburban- family -values- façade- street” dangerous.
The year was 1985. I was 16 and bulletproof. My first gig. A rite of passage. Day dreamt about it during school all day the way most anticipate fingerbanging Mary Jane through her Purrty Pink Panties in daddy’s Chevrolet. Back then, punk was a tough racket. You’d get your ass flouted (if not kicked) before you were accepted. The worst thing was to be called a poseur (which I was) and the second worst was to never get accepted. I was going, with some OG’s which meant that I’d passed some preliminary screening on some nebulous gutter-level admissions panel.
I met Rene when I was a sophomore at San Gabriel High School. (I lasted exactly 9 years in Catholic School; the last of which was at LA SALLE HIGH SCHOOL, an all- male “Christian Brothers” operation–essentially, a 1980’s version of the Order of the High Sparrow. If they could have branded our foreheads and indoctrinated us to preach the word in robes, barefoot and willing to throw heathens into atavistic solitary confinement for heresy, they would have.) I remember the first time I saw him. He was sporting double Mohawks tinged red with his head neatly shaved on the sides, a pointy devil lock hanging down his forehead pointed between his eyes like an obsidian gelatinous spike. He was all of 4 foot nothing. Wore the requisite painted, studded leather jacket emblazoned with a perfectly stenciled and rendered screaming- into- the- mic- Wattie Buchan-silhouette. On the lapels and arms in neat, Government Issue script and adorned with studs and spikes:THE U.K. SUBS , SUB HUM ANS (sic), DISCHARGE, a few others. He was very friendly and much to my horror, got along with everyone. He was popular because he was different and being different didn’t necessarily always translate into a woolly FUCK YOU so much as it did a mutual curiosity and camaraderie. He drifted and joked with all the tribes that comprised high school. No matter what you wore or what kind of music you listened to (think: DISCO SUCKS) or what your habits and hangouts were, the endgame was a cruel pecking order–the teenage wasteland as old as the hills.
So, here’s some back-story about what led up to me and Rene and Anthony that night. Went like this: The intro track to CRASS’s “THE FEEDING OF THE 5,000”
volume jacked all the way up in Ernie “MAD MAX” Eastlund’s living room in Sweet Home Alhambra. “A S Y L U M” cranked way up with the basswoofers making all the furniture vibrate and the walls bristle. I was 15, had a head full of Olde English 800 and some Dexatrim diet pills churning around in my oversized belly. That music poured into a brain and body already confused by the onset of puberty and its attendant insecurities, depression and terror. The perfect storm impacting the already skewed developmental trajectory. I remember holding the decoupage phantasm of that album cover in my sweaty meat hooks like the holy grail of antithesis it was. Some experiences are indelible, incontrovertibly definitive. Like your first drunk, fuck or fight. Konrad Lorenz called it imprinting. I called it the first hit. Chasing the dragon. If my head and heart hadn’t been pre-programmed for apocalypse and retribution by Catholic school already, that day sealed my fate: We dyed our hair and trashed our clothes and wrote band names on our jeans and then showed up to SGHS as punkers that Fall. I mean, that was the only way to do it. I had this idea that, like my first CRASS ALBUM with all its images of an ass-backwards world whose institutions masqueraded as righteous and just, that social constructs and conventions were things to be mocked, turned inside out and subverted. So, when I saw this intense, goofy high energy dyed mohawk joker engaging everyone and getting fawned over by the cheerleaders and preppy girls alike, it was daunting. I mean, i was like fuck the cheerleaders–because I wasn’t going to. Fuck sports–that was forced on me by a part time “father” against my will and reeked of the date rapist macho jock tool energy I was preternaturally averse to. Fuck Disco. Fuck Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Fuck Boy George. Fuck Ronald Reagan. Fuck George Bush. Fuck MTV. Fuck religion. Fuck Gadaffi. Fuck the CIA. Fuck arming the contras. Fuck yuppies. Fuck fashion.
F T W.
Rene, though. He lived the life and didn’t just wear the clothes. When I got to know him and heard his story, I felt like more of a poseur. My rotund and well-nourished latchkey ass never lacked for anything; the way I saw it, he had a reason to be punk. Sure, my household was a constant war between male siblings who had no real male role model in the house and we ate eggs and weenies, fish grandpa caught and never went without a hunk of government cheese in the fridge—cheese grandpa stood in line for because no way in hell he was going to let his beloved stepdaughter do that. But Rene really was poor. Born poor across the border and lived in some ramshackle house with his mother and siblings, one check away from eviction and fighting over the last tortilla, shit like that. We were poor but Rene was like for real piss poor, true to being a Reagan Trickle- down Reganomics kind of destitute. We were weenies and eggs poor barely keeping the mortgage payment poor; he was rice and beans eviction goons knocking on the door with a court notice hijacking neighbor’s electricity from an outside outlet with a 120-foot electrical cord poor. He carried himself with a gratitude for the simpler tings. Had this artistic bent and passion for the music that paralleled none. He didn’t just wear the uniform, he marched to the beat, lived it, painted, drew and breathed it. That’s what it was like then: A religion. It came with rites of passage, indoctrination and a set of unwritten rules. Anarchy had an entrance exam and statutes. You were either in or you weren’t. There were rules but the rules were that you couldn’t know them unless you lived them. It was intrinsic. Born into this. Some real 1% hells angels type shit.
Pero Rene, puro pinche fucking speedy Gonzalez RENE FLORES was short, manicky and intense. Had this joker aura about him. His sidekick that night was this guy that scared the living shit out of my mom first time she laid eyes on him. Called him the walking dead: “HE LOOKS LIKE A ZOMBIE!” my mom would say. He was this towering cartoonic Apache lummox looking mother fucker: shaved head, beady eyes, and this deadpan, impassive scowl. ANT. Anton. Steve. SxAxTx. APACHE. ~y que~ PUTOS! OG.
This was my indoctrination into The Scene. Rene and Anthony would mentor me. Me: Spanky; Heathcliff; Fat Matt The Water Rat; MATTSO; MATT-RESS, the chubby awkward wannabe was going to the Grand Olympic Auditorium to bust his punk rock cherry. They picked me up from the crib near dusk. I likely lied to the Mom about going to “the movies.” Yeah. “Be home by 1000.” The old Olympic Auditorium OKEY DOKE. Anyways, we piled into Rene’s two-door blacksmoke belching, shredded upholstery having, bruised- blue and badly bondo’d tin can shit heap of a car. Really though–that fucking thing was a Cadillac limo. Pristine. Because back then, knowing someone with a car was almost as good as having one. It was a Friday night and we were bulletproof. Nirvana. 1,000 Virgins High on Heaven. We were going to a gig. We got juiced up on Mickey’s and some choice pharmaceuticals au naturelle. The world was an oyster splayed out ahead of us in that great grey expanse of smog and haze—the Los Angeles skyline.
To this day, I don’t know who we went to see; it doesn’t matter now and it most certainly didn’t then because no matter how many Shows I went to, I’d never be like Rene. Now the thing about going to the Olympic Auditorium was this: Not once when I went—ever—did anyone in the fucking car EVER agree on how to get there. Back then, you had your memory, maybe some navigational skills that hopefully weren’t deconstructed with what you shouldn’t have been smoking/snorting/quaffing or dropping while driving in the first place. Maybe the directions were written on a napkin or a piece of college ruled binder paper; maybe committed to memory. Maybe on the back of paper bag or in MARKS A LOT on a piece of cardboard. Regardless of the medium or who had the directions or had the paper map committed to permanent memory, what wound up happening regardless was that we were going to get lost. I mean we’re talking 10 miles tops from Alhambra, stem to stern. Or wind up on the 10 headed to Santa Monica. Or in Carson. Or near Dodger Stadium. Anywhere but the 10 West exit Main or Grand and BOOM, there you were. No, it was always a production. And no one ever knew where we were going. Such were the foreshadowing realities of adolescence. We were spawned of parents that were at best ill prepared to show us what was what or how to love or how to get our needs met and every weekend the first thing we wanted to do was go somewhere of which we could not agree, destination unknown, endgame a morass and spinning vortex of Knox Gelatin, hair spray, leather boots, bristles and brawls.
We went tear-assing off on the asphalt arterial snake, its gray neon speckled junky arms pockmarked and bleeding from embracing all sharp edges and punching holes into the night. And we would always pass the palm tree at the 101/Mission Ave. curve just as you entered downtown where my father said his stepfather Herb crashed into while shitfaced a generation prior. I always remember that palm tree, as it plays figuratively into my story as a child and then man. Every time we passed that tree, I would mention the reckless men who came before me. Within a matter of minutes and turns to who the fuck knows where, we were knee deep in one of the Great Circles of Inner City Inferno in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula: The Hood. The car died—out of gas. Pretty sure the needle on the gauge was busted, so Rene had this formula involving date of last fill up, number of times he drove to work/school and how many times he listened to a certain tape. But that algebra went out with the bong rips he was taking between the work, the tape and operating said vehicle. He probably made some fucking joke about how he used his Devil Lock as a divining rod and maybe it went limp like his cock after one too many Sudweisers. He was fucking silly like that. But, the jokes were wearing thin as it was dark, we were lost and needed gas. So, we got out and just started walking. In the Valley of Evil, mind you, with the carefully demarcated spray paint micturition mark of turf walls all hieroglyphics announcing that we were on RIFA TRECE VARRIO SNIPER ASSASSIN SILENT LOCO’s TURF and GOD HELP US AND CURSE THE DAY WE WERE BORN FOR STUMBLING ONTO THEIR TERRITORY. And then we saw proof of life and inhabitants: some shadows on a porch.
This was one for the history books. My life as teenager. The holy dive into AdoleScents. The indoctrination into “the scene.” The endgame cartoon of the night I was murdered: One short spiky haired Speedy Gonzalez, one chubby poser and The Fucking Lurch himself—in platform Creepers, no less. Shit out of luck. We approached the front yard of the proverbial hood house and there they were on the porch—moonwalking slow mo- and robotic, totally smacked back on dippers; super kools; sherms; wet ones. The northeast summer’s eve air was permeated with the distinctive and repulsively delicious aromas of Formaldehyde, RAID, ether and rubbing alcohol. If you’ve never smelled Super Kooly juice, you haven’t lived. It’s the Ben Gay of veteranos. Makes peyote and jimson weed seem like a cheap bottom of the bag shake sinsamilla high. Eau del varrio.
As we approached, I was keenly aware of two things: one was I was about to die and the second was (and this came haltingly, cautiously) was that the homies didn’t exactly know what to make of us. They were neither hostile nor afraid. They regarded us with neither aggressive posturing nor confrontational protective offense. To put a brush to the canvass, we came sauntering out of the shadows wearing Mohawks, shaved heads, torn, bleached jeans, painted leather jackets, trench coats, bandanas and chains (a la Skanking Dude, Circle Jerks, et. al. 1983) wrapped around black engineering boots. The idea, of course was to convey a wily piss and vinegar attitude born of drugs, hormones and apathy; a big FUCK YOU to the man. NO FUTURE. RISE ABOVE. ANOK. DO THE OWE US A LIVING? ‘COURSE THEY DO, ‘COURSE THEY DO! We embodied something of which they weren’t sure. Their alliances were about real estate and turf; ours was about the political machine and changing shit by spray painting on it and then burning it down. We wanted to eviscerate the machine; they wanted to drain the oil and smoke it to reach oblivion. The homeys were like midnight clowns glowing in pressed white shirts, drab grey Dickies shorts that hung down to their ankles with those two-color bar gym socks pulled up way past their kneecaps. They were in uniform. Dressed out and at attention at second roll call in el Varrio Sumshit y que rifa —somewhere in that drab, forlorn and dilapidated underbelly of one of the many ‘hoods in the confines of helL.A. Archangel shadow thugs, them; fledgling anarchist antiheroes us. They were on the porch, giggling and commiserating under the undulating and malevolent moonlight—I think it was Frogtown, could have been The Avenues, worst yet East Side Clover, or maybe the death sentence is we had crossed the White Fence—some circle of inner city hell where only the damned roamed with droopy eyelids, tattooed cheeks and knifescars worn on the flesh as proud as cops wore badges, bars and stars. This was only leg one of the journey and shit was listing sideways.
And this is where shit went from bad to surreal: One of the whitesocked cholos with slits for eyes was a neighbor of mine. Now mind you, I grew up in suburbia–Alhambra might as well have been a lightyear away from the inner city far as I was concerned. I mean this cat reeked of vato poserdom from stem to stern. He would ride his low-rider bike around the tree lined and manicured lawn environs in his baggy shorts, black Nikes, hair net, and black and grey striped XXXL polo shirts while mad dogging me. Now here’s the thing: Suburban Ese’s name was Donald. Not Refugio or Emelio or Juan or Nestor, mind you: No, his fucking name was DONALD. I couldn’t make this shit up if you held a 12 gauge to my balding pate and shoved a switchblade up my ass. And here we were: out of gas, out of our element looking like a bunch of pinche outer space putos asking for directions, gas (and most certainly soon) mercy. As we approached the porch my thoughts went something like, “and that’s the last thing I remember before Chato Fly pulled out a sawed off, pulled the trigger and erased my pathetic spiky head from my neck as Chubby and Rene got covered in brainspray and bloodgoo before Sneaky pointed his Mini 14 at them and transmogrified their heads into pulsating neckstumps.” Ah, to feel bulletproof but acutely aware that mayhem, death and chaos might was lurking at every corner…that any drunken fool ass move (like, say, wandering into The Barrio looking like an easter egg dyed chickens) was a form of suicide didn’t seem like it…until it was.
And then, as quickly as doom flashed before my bloodshot eyes, it disappeared. We landed on our feet falling down that spiral fracture staircase. To this day, I’ll tell you that it’s because Rene casually sauntered towards them yammering staccato Spanish mother tongue at them like he was one of their cousins asking one of them to get his ball out of a tree. But likely it was because there were too high to comprehend what was happening–or too immobilized from the homemade rocket fuel to lift a finger. Perhaps we were demonic hallucinations that abuelita warned about at church about running astray of el AMOR Y PAZ DE LA HAYZEUS. It was the only logical explanation for the three cactus haired putas from the Planet Pendejo wandering out of the shadows yammering en Espanol politely requesting gas and directions back to the freeway. Our exfiltration was a blur. I think crumpled bills exchanged hands and a cartoon sized can of leaded gas from the private reserves of Uncle Jaime’s gardening business appeared from the garage/PCP lab. This would become a pattern going to these gigs. Minor nuisances to be avoided on the pathway to oblivion. Sometimes they were in the form of parents, cops or faulty directions written on a paper bag; sometimes in the form of mechanical problems or busted gas gauges; sometimes all of the above and the wannabe psychopath Donald and his Marauding Maravilla Motherfuckers.
Rene was the savior that night. Dumb luck and the ancestral proximity of the mother tongue—instant street cred. In more educated circles, we call this “having high cognitive complexity.” People who intuit and understand the nuances of their immediate environment—street smarts. But Rene–all 4 foot nothin’ of him, with his speedy Gonzalez wit and deadpan seriousness which conveyed an intensity from within; it wasn’t a front, it’s who he was. I don’t remember who played that night. I cannot “Wow” you with some OG shit from the memory banks that ended with a stage dive off the Marshall stacks or trip to the county after kissing sheriff high and tight wifebeater do as I say not as I do former jock nightstick and asp. What I remember was being lost. Lost in the sights and smells of one of my first gigs. Lost in the receding waters of a blossoming addiction. Lost like everyone else, including those who were trying to teach, preach and proselytize what I was supposed to be and do.
Lost like I am now—writing this from the dark place, the abyss from which all of this was the answer, to which all of this was the response, to which all of this was the original outlet. The excavation and unearthing brought me here, so many moons later. Rene died a couple of years ago. The cancer got him. I found out because of the Internet; confirmed it with a text message. That’s the world we live in now. Where once we once relied on tangibles like gasoline and directions scribbled on a piece of paper or a binder Thomas Guide grid, now we rely on a glowscreen to tell us for whom the bell tolled. The devastation is no different, just somewhat cheapened by technology and the brisk pace with which information is vetted, transmitted and processed. In many ways, I’m grateful that there is no physical proof of what happened that night. Maybe having all those memories avails me to some new level of recall otherwise decimated in the wasteland of adolescence. Hard to say, but it doesn’t matter now. Maybe it all comes down to reliving that experience. Buy the ticket (with money you stole from your grandparents) take the ride (and get lost only to find yourself in the killing fields.) When you begged, borrowed and stole for the right to escape from your own brains. When you ran from the tornado and into the hurricane. A summer night, manufactured PCP, smog, the Northeast Night Air and the flowerbeds from abuelita’s carefully tended flores. When you were young and bulletproof. When everything made sense. When cancer wasn’t real. When raising a family was an eternity away. When mother’s milk was yesterday. When being who we were meant something. But now, “here” is a generation and three lifetimes later. We buried Rene. It’s 2016 and I’ve not committed those memories to the hard drive, the cloud, to the whole fucking world that still won’t hear it. Here, I wrote it down.
1985. The world before this one.
Day One.
The lineup of bands that night? Couldn’t tell you. But after quaffing rotgut hooch and low-grade herbal grade pharmaceuticals everything turned grey. What remains so many years later are these stark raving and lucidly painless memories, the voice of a generation, the cracked paint of a leather jacket once a trademark and now on display as a tombstone after the random god we call cancer robbed us of Rene. What remains are those blurry beta max taped scratchy arms -akimbo -foggy -scenes that can be mustered up from the vortex on a whim whenever someone from the salad days wants to relive a moment in time without working or bleeding for it. Here are the fucking words. Bleed with me.
[What this was: part of a larger work. Unedited. Copyright 2018 “Bad Days, Binges, Bullets, and Bureaucracy.” M.A.B.]
Difficult To Cure 
Leave a comment