Biography of a Reprobate, part one

My mom was born to rather humble circumstances.

At one time when she was growing up, the family had to live in an old Army tent that my grandfather had scrounged from a surplus store. As I understand it, the need for the tent came because of the arsonist tendencies of my dear sweet old grandma.

Well, the story goes that Grandma was sick and tired of the roof of the old shack catching fire. The only source of heat in the shack was a tatty old wood-burning stove that vented through the tarpaper ceiling. Construction techniques being what they were during the Great Depression, there were no fire codes to speak of. As a result, just about every time that a wood knot exploded in the stove, the sparks that it sent off would land on the roof and promptly catch the place on fire. This would necessitate sending Grams running outside in her nightgown to toss a bucket of water up on the flaming roof.

Well, one particularly cold winter night, Grandma had to put out the roof four times during the night. The next morning, she told my grandfather that he was going to build them a new house, and that they were moving into a tent until it was complete. She then proceeded to burn down the old shack, I guess so that there would be no room for argument on the subject.

That was Grams for you.

When she was a little girl, I guess you could say that my mom longed for a slightly more glamorous life.

My dad was also born to humble circumstances, although not quite so desperate as mom's. Dad was the second of three kids and as soon as his younger sister was born, his father promptly decided to leave the family. Last anyone had heard, he had left the life of a promising young lawyer to become a drunkard custodian at a small community college near Chicago.

Well, this unexpected turn of events left my grandmother with three young mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay. Although she had come from a fairly affluent family, she was a proud woman and she refused the help of her parents. Instead, she took a job in a factory and learned to make do with less.

Grandmother did her best, but working full time while raising three kids on your own is always a huge challenge. Dad grew up without a whole lot of supervision, and his natural mischievous streak sometimes got the best of him.

When the local pharmacist took in an orphaned girl from Central America, Dad decided to help her learn English. I guess it's understandable that Dad wasn't welcomed back into the pharmacy after the young girl started greeting the customers with the snappy phrase, "good morning, you dumb sonofabitch!"

Both Mom and Dad went about the daily tasks of living their lives, until one day their paths intersected and sparks flew. I think fists may have flown as well, but I'm not sure on this last point.

You see, both Mom and Dad were married at this point, and not to each other. When the two of them met they shared more than just a common interest in contemporary art. As a result, when I was born about nine months later, I had my dad's profile, my mom's eyes, and her husband's last name. Oops!

Funny thing is, I wasn't aware of this fact until I was about 10 years old. I guess that shortly after I was born, Dad went to visit the county recorder. After giving them a hefty bribe, my birth certificate was *revised* to reflect my dad's last name. The only thing was, Mom and Dad never threw the original copy away.

One day I was scrounging in the back room that we used for storage and I came across that old birth certificate. After reading it, I promptly burst into tears and ran to my parents to demand an explanation. I can remember running through the house bawling that I was a "bastard lovechild"!

I guess I've always had a flair for the dramatic.

Ahh, but I'm getting ahead of myself! Birth to 10 years old in a couple of paragraphs… What kind of biography is this, anyway?

Ok, so let's go back a bit… Heck, let's go back *all* the way!

So there was this little tadpole swimming around one day with a few million of his friends. They were all a little ansy, just jiggling and squiggling around this dark, warm pond, when our hero, let's call him Jack, bumps into this shapely little egg named Charlene. The rest, so they say, is history.

Well, almost. As that little fertilized egg went off to cook, something funny happened. Instead of being served up over-easy, I guess that little egg got a bit scrambled in the process. And I was the result.

So what the hell am I saying? Scrambled eggs? Huh?

As I mentioned back in the introduction, I'm a transsexual. Most contemporary researchers in the field of gender studies agree that at some point during gestation, a hormone imbalance in the womb can send a helpless little embryo into a fit of cartwheels. This happened to me. Sometimes this can lead to massive physical birth defects including hermaphrodism, ambiguous genital development, or brain/body dysphoria. I got saddled up with the last. As a result, I was born with the brain of a little girl but the bits of a little boy. Confusing, isn't it? Let me assure you, it's damn confusing!

Even as a very small child I knew I was different. Strangers would often think that I was a little girl, while my folks would refer to me as a boy. Inside, I felt like a girl but I knew my body wasn't quite right in that regard.

As I got older and started to socialize, the problems intensified. I didn't fit in with the boys. They always wanted to do things that I didn't want to do. They liked sports. I liked to read. They would bully one another and play those stupid dominance games, and I just wanted to get along.

I much preferred the company of the girls.

That said, not many of the girls wanted my company.

I quickly had been given the reputation as the weirdo of the neighborhood. So even if I did identify with the girls, they didn't want to get 'cooties' by being associated with me. It led to a rather lonely childhood.

Even as a young kid I learned to find activities to do by myself, because there weren’t that many others who wanted to hang out with me. I would make tents in my room by draping the blankets over a couple of chairs that I'd take from the kitchen. Once finished, I'd climb inside and spend the day reading comic books.

When I was about 8 years old, my folks bought a house on the river that flowed through our hometown. This house had a split-level design with an unusually flat roof for our region. Because of this odd design I could pretty easily climb up on the roof. That place became my special getaway where I could just disappear for a little while. I'd go up there at night and gaze out over the river or just look at the stars.

And I'd think.

By this time I pretty much understood how the world felt about people who were different. It's not all that kind to us. In the early 70's the world was still full of bigots and hate-mongers. But this negative treatment went far beyond the obvious assholes. It was a subtle fixture in everyday life. It was apparent in the jokes people told, the comedies that people watched, the books they read. It was even apparent in the places that they worshiped.

Now, understand, I hadn't told anyone else about me when I was a kid. No one else knew just how much I wanted to be a girl. But I didn't need to tell anyone else. *I* knew. And when I heard people making jokes and rude comments about others, I knew inside that they were also talking about me.

So, when you're a confused little kid, and everyone around you from your parents to your teachers to your friends, tells you that you're a weirdo, a freak, evil… well, you start to believe it.

Up on the roof looking out over the river I came to understand that I was pretty much worthless. I realized that I would never be good enough. I was never going to be normal. Or accepted. Or lovable. Or loved.

So what was there left for me to do?

Blow things up!

When I was a little kid growing up in Indiana, it was legal to buy these particularly vicious fireworks called M-80's. At the time it was rumored that an M-80 was equal to an 8th of a stick of dynamite. Now I don't know if this was true or not, but I do know that they made one hell of an explosion!

So, what I would do is this: I'd take a 4 foot length of steel pipe that was about 2 inches around and I'd bury it with the top half pointing out over the river at about a 45 degree angle. I'd then drop an M-80 down the pipe, and set a tennis ball on the opening at the top.

KAAA-BOOOM!

When that M-80 let loose, it would shoot that tennis ball clear across the river! I had built my own little cannon!

Well, tennis balls were only the beginning. I'd also drop a half dozen or so golf balls down the pipe. This would make a giant shotgun that hurled white balls of destruction out over the water. But the best of all was the humble tin can.

You see, when you'd drop an empty tin can over the top of a steel pipe filled with a lit M-80, two things would happen. First, the body of the can would fly up about 40 feet into the air, doing lazy little circles as it made it's arc out over the water. Second, and far more spectacularly, the bottom of the can would be violently ripped off of the body, and with an other worldly whistling screech, it would spin off across the river like a razor sharp flying saucer of death!

Being a little kid with limited financial resources, I had to resort to alternative methods for acquiring sufficient ammunition for my homemade firearm. Luckily for me, I lived just down the road from The Divot miniature golf course and driving range.

The Divot was a great place. It had a game room filled with video games and pinball machines, a batting cage for baseballs and softballs, and of course, the driving range and golf course. And being just down the street from the place, I knew as a matter of course the schedule that they followed to rake up the golf balls from the range.

And by Saturday night the field was chock full of balls!

So, one particular Saturday night, my brother Seth, my cousin Garry, a friend or two, and myself snuck out of my bedroom window and headed out through the woods to The Divot. We were prepared. Each of us carried our empty Boy Scout backpacks, just ready to fill with our spoils and booty.

One of the others wanted to bring a flashlight, but I vetoed that idea. I explained that there would be no way that anyone could see us out in the middle of that huge, dark field on a pitch-black night, unless of course one of us was stupid enough to turn on a friggin flashlight! I went on to tell them that our own eyes would adjust and we'd be able to spot the white golf balls easily, just by the light of the stars above.

The others were dubious, but they went along with my decision, mostly because I was the oldest of the bunch. Well, sure enough, I was right. We could see those golf balls just as easily as if they were diamonds sparkling on black velvet.

I guess I should clarify. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I was half right. While the golf balls were perfectly visible scattered out there on that dark field, so were the bunch of us. When the passing cop illuminated us with his searchlight, we looked like clay targets on a shooting range.

My cohorts and I nearly shit ourselves!

I guess we could have ended up in detention had we been anywhere else other than the driving range of The Divot that night. But we were on that range, and lady luck was smiling down on us.

If you'll recall a few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that we had chosen to pass through the woods to get to our target for that evening's nefarious deeds. Well, the group of us knew those woods like the back of our hands. The place was just littered with paths that scurried here and there over and area of a couple of square miles. And as soon as that cop's spotlight hit us, we were off like rabbits heading straight for that delightfully dark, wooded refuge!

We must have spent the better part of two hours making our way back home. It never would have taken that much time any other night, but with our blood fully saturated with adrenalin, we were jumping and hiding at every little snap of a twig or rustle of a leaf. But make it home we did. And although most of the others had dumped their packs at the first sign of trouble, both my brother and I had kept our heads about us. As a result, we were set with cannon ammunition for the rest of that summer!

So, you might wonder just how we got away with all this kind of crap when we were just little kids. That answer is pretty simple.

Booze.

Both of my parents were alcoholics. I will sincerely say that I never lacked for love as a kid, but I sure lacked a lot of supervision.

In a way, it was every kids dream. I was able to do just about anything and everything that I wanted to do, because the whole world was just outside of my bedroom window.

Now, it's not like my parents were drunk every night. But when they did start drinking, they didn't stop until the bottles were empty. It was really no difficult thing to get out of the house under those conditions, and considering the fact hat the two of them often fought when they got loaded, getting out of the house was a great idea regardless.

My folks never got violent with us kids, but they did get violent with each other. And it wasn't just my Dad. I tell you what, after seeing the two of them go at it, I sure as hell wouldn't want to get into a scuffle with my mom. She can be vicious!

But the drinking and the fighting wasn't the worst of it. I'll tell you what the worst of it was… when I would call the bar at midnight and ask them to come home. They always said that they were on their way, but they never came.

It really plays hell on your self worth to feel that booze is more important to your parents than you are. With my fucked-up sexuality, my self worth bank account was already significantly overdrawn. Add my folks drinking into this mix and you can begin to understand why I grew up feeling that I was pretty much less than a piece of shit.

Most of the time I still feel that way.

I need to take a little tangent for a moment. I'm sitting in my little local pub while I write this bit. It's kinda nice to be able to have a pint and sit in the middle of life while it moves around me, all while I'm putting down these thoughts. It helps me feel a little less alone. Plus, this nice bloke just tried to pull me… :)

All right, back to the story.

During this time, I spent many an evening lying in my bed praying that I would wake up as the girl I knew I was inside. Alternatively, I would pray that I could just be cured of the horrible curse that I had. Well, neither happened, and I was left in my fucked-up confusion.

Not that I really expected anything to happen. You see, I had not been raised in a religious home. My folks never spoke of God, or faith, or whatever. Even though I hadn't been taught to believe in a Creator, for some reason I just did. The only thing is, I didn't believe that They really gave a damn for any of us.

At that time in my life, I was smart enough to see that a trillion forms of life couldn't have evolved without some kind of master plan. But at the same time I was unable to see how a kind and merciful God could let war, pestilence, disease, hate, and violence totally ravage their creation. The only answer that I could come up with was that our Creator was more of a zany, mad scientist staring down on their immense petri dish of a universe, watching their experiment slowly evolve over the eons.

Ah, the naivety of youth…

So, in lieu of a Devine answer to my prayers, I decided to try and find my own answer. Now remember, I was only a little runt of about 11 years old at the time. Logic, intelligence, wisdom, and common sense are all very different things. And at that time, none of them were very well developed in this here head. So please consider the source when you read my proposed solution to the problem.

Lying there in my bed I decided that the only way that I was gonna cure myself of wanting to *be* a girl, was to have sex *with* a girl. Smart, huh?

I'm not sure, but I wonder if I was thinking that by having sex I just might kick myself into some kind of male overdrive. After all, isn't that what all of the guys talked about? Having sex? Well, whatever I was thinking, I now had a quest. I was bound and determined to screw just as soon as humanly possible!

Sounds like most men, eh? And I was only 11!

As you can probably guess, I didn't succeed at having sex when I was 11. I had to wait a whole nuther year til I was 12.

I had dated a bit as a real little youngun, but it never progressed much beyond kissing. The first girlfriend that I ever had was Mary. She played the cello in the school orchestra. She wouldn't even let me kiss her! I was only allowed to hold her hand. Well, I wasn't gonna turn into a man doing that!

Next, there was Laura. Well, to be honest, Laura was never really my girlfriend. I just *wanted* her to be my girlfriend… along with half the other boys in school. But because of Laura, I met her friend Tammy. And that's where things started to get interesting!

I lived just down the street from Judd's Drug Store. Judd's was the place for every 'tween to go for their daily sugar fix, and I was no exception. Well, one afternoon as I was leaving Judd's, Tammy and another couple from school were walking around toward the back of the building. I said 'hi' to them, but the other couple just ignored me. They seemed to have something on their mind.

Tammy said 'hi', and told me that her friends were going behind Judd's to make-out. She then said the magic words…

"Do you wanna come and make-out with me?"

WOOHOO! You bet I did! By this time in my life, my hormones were working overtime. In fact, I think I had a hard-on from the time I was about 10 until, well, umm… *blushes*

As Tammy and I headed around the back of Judd's, I had the most delightfully carnal thoughts running through my head. I was sure I was finally gonna get some! I was gonna finally get to be a man!

We nestled down among the bushes and trash behind the drug store and started kissing. At first it was just little pecks on the lips, but then Tammy opened her mouth a bit and ran her tongue over my lips. A frencher! This girl was a FRENCHER! I couldn't believe my luck!

Now, up to this point in my life I had never french-kissed a girl before. Well, there was that time with my sister, but she hit me when I did it so I guess it doesn't count. So, when Tammy started playing tonsil hockey with me, I really didn't know what to expect next. I wasn't sure of the protocol for following up a french-kiss. I decided that I'd just wing it. You know, go with my instincts.

So that's what I did.

As we were locked into a massive face-suck, I slowly lifted my hand. Up, up, it rose, steadily progressing to those large, lovely twin targets. Tammy was *quiet* developed for an 11 year-old! I paused for just a moment. Perhaps it was some kind of premonition that stayed my hand for that brief second. Perhaps it was my guardian angel grabbing at my wrist.

Premonition, angel, or otherwise, my little head down below decided that it was the proper time to take over all relevant bodily functions. And that's exactly what it did.

The next few seconds were somewhat of a blur. I'm pretty certain that my hand did touch Tammy's breast, even if only through her blouse. But before the sensation could complete the journey from my fingertips to my brain, Tammy had turned into the 11 year-old girl version of Muhamed Ali.

With her left hand, she pushed me back. Not too much, not too little. But just enough that my face was in the perfect position to meet her rapidly approaching right fist.

SMACK!

She cold-cocked me something fierce!

"I asked you if you wanted to make-out with me, not feel me up!", she shouted at me as she got up and gathered her things. "What do you think I am? Easy?"

No Tammy, I'll never make that mistake again. You are most definitely *not* easy!

Well, after my ever-so-brief affair with Tammy, I was back at it again. My next stop in my quest for sex and masculinity was the Holiday Roller Rink.

The Holiday would host the occasional all-night skate for the local kids in my town. The idea was that parents would drop their kids off at about 7:00 in the evening on a Saturday, and then pick them up again at about 7:00 Sunday morning. During that 12 hour period, the staff at the skating rink was suppose to keep us all locked it for the night, and hopefully out of trouble. They failed miserably on both parts.

It was during one of these all-nighters that I first met Cheryl, the girl who was later to become the mother of three of my children. I was sitting on the bench that surrounded the skating area, trying to get to second base with Cheryl's best friend, Jane.

Jane and I had only met a few minutes before, but she wanted to kiss. Who was I to argue? Well, after only about a minute of our amorous fumblings, Cheryl came over and sat beside me. She then asked if she could join in! I guess she and Jane were pretty close friends…

So I sat there kissing first one then the other, feeling like the king of the world. After a little while Jane got up and headed to the restroom, leaving me alone with Cheryl. I was fine with that, because Cheryl was actually a much more enthusiastic kisser. By the time that skate ended, she and I were going steady (or whatever that means to an 11 year-old).

Alas, my dream of love (and fornication) was to be short-lived. Cheryl and I only dated for about a month before we broke up. During that month, I didn't get much more than a few kisses anyway. I already tipped my hand about our three kids, so you know that Cheryl will be back in this story later. You're just gonna have to wait a little while for *those* details!

Well, this kinda thing went on a time or two again, and each time I was left empty handed. Or full handed, as the case may be…

That makes me wonder about the bloke who said that, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". What kinda bush was he putting his bird into?

As I was saying, I dated unsuccessfully in the carnal regard. That is until I finally met Melissa. She was 16. Even though I was only 12 by this time, I looked a lot older. Regardless, she didn't ask my age and I didn't tell. We just fell into the sack together.

My experiment at masculinity failed miserably. I found out that having sex with a girl doesn't make you a man. Sometimes, all it does is give you a nasty rash.

When I was a little kid, there was no information on the subject of transsexualism available. Well, at least not that I had access to. Heck, I didn't even know the word 'transsexual' at this time in my life! I just knew I wanted to be a girl! I did look for information, though. I searched in the school library. I searched in the public library. I found nothing. Those were about the only resources available to me at the time. Al Gore hadn't invented the internet by that time *grins*, so I really couldn't even go on-line.

Another thing I couldn't do was ask my parents. They were too busy drinking. Plus, the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was tell them something about me that would push them even farther from me. I already blamed myself for their drinking. I knew inside my heart that if I were a better kid they would want to stay home with me instead of going out all the time. So I was particularly terrified about what would happen if they knew *this* about me!

Well, I did end up finding one source for information, albeit a rather twisted source.

My dad kept a rather large stash of porn around the house. I never asked him about it, but something in the back of my head wonders if he did this as a way to compensate for not ever talking to me directly about sex. Back in the Sixties and Seventies there were a lot of wacked-out ideas about childrearing. Maybe he thought that this would help our developing sexualities.

It didn't.

In fact, it pretty much screwed me up even worse than I already was.

During this hormonally chaotic time in my life, I used to filch these magazines for my late-night reading pleasure. My single favorite magazine to steal was Penthouse Forum. For those of you not in the know, Penthouse Forum was filled with letters and stories sent in by my fellow degenerates from all over the country. These epistles would recount all of the writer's most outrageous sexual exploits, real or imagined.

Because I had no other source for knowledge about sexuality, I often would turn to Forum for answers to my questions. As a 'tween, I hadn't yet developed a healthy skepticism about things in print and, as such, I simply figured that being an adult magazine the stuff inside *had* to be true!

Wrong answer.

The long and short of all this was that I read about an awful lot of wacked-out, crazy things that people did with each other in the bedroom. Or in the car. Or on the beach. Or in the barn…

And I believed that it was all the stuff that normal people did.

It was in this environment that I formed a lot of my ideas about sexuality. Not good. Not good at all.

Now, I don't want you to think I've become some kind of prude against pornography. Au Contraire! To this day I still love porn! But it's one thing for a grown adult to enjoy this type of material. It's entirely a different thing for an impressionable child to consume it, hook, line, and sinker.

Ok, ok, I'll get offa my soapbox for now.

There was one dubiously good thing that Penthouse Forum did give me… They told me what I was.

By the time that I was twelve, I had been secretly dressing up in my mom's and my sister's clothes for a long, long time. I was absolutely convinced that I was the only person in the whole world that was like me. I was sure that I was crazy, or a pervert, or worse. I didn't think that I was gay, even though most of the kids at school did. Heck, I liked girls too much to be gay. But I wanted to be a girl! So, what did that make me???

Well, one magical evening while reading my favorite bedtime magazine, I came across a letter written by a man who wanted to become a woman! Here was someone just like me! And they referred to themselves as a transsexual. That evening, hidden between the stories of bondage and bestiality, I finally learned a name for what I was!!! I was a transsexual.

I am a transsexual.

It didn't help much that the transsexual that I had read about in the magazine also wanted to put on a halter-top and a leather miniskirt and go out and turn tricks on the street corner. But heck, at least I wasn't completely alone…

So now I had a something to work with. I had a label. Transsexual. It was time to go back to the library.

Personally, I think one definition of the word 'terror' should be being a 12 year-old kid trying to find books on transsexualism in the public library. I was sure that the librarian had some way of knowing what I was up to. I was positive that there was some kind of silent alarm that alerted her whenever a kid walked down *that* particular aisle.

Regardless of my fears, my need for information was greater.

First stop, the card catalog. Yes, I did say 'card catalog'. This was back in the days before library's had computerized indexes. Any smart-assed comments about my age and I'll sic my pet dinosaur on you!

Ok, flipping through the 'T' section… hmm… wait a second… did I spell it wrong? Nothing?!? Shit.

Back in the mid 70's, there wasn't much written on the subject. At least, not in the collection of my public library. It was many years before I was able to find any reasonable materials on the subject of transsexualism or even anything to do with transgendered people in general.

Oh well, back to my dad's Penthouses…

I should mention that although I wanted to be a girl, I was also attracted to girls as well. This should be apparent from the stories of my earlier exploits, but just in case I thought I should clarify this point. It wasn't just being attracted to girls. Another part of the whole equation was that fact that I really didn't much like guys or all of their macho bullshit. I don't know, but perhaps it has something to do with being picked on by all of those little putz dickheads when I was younger. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that women tend to be nurturers of the world while men are often it's destroyers. Regardless, there weren't a whole lot of men that I liked or respected. And I definitely didn't want to shag any of them!

That said, my little visit with Melissa had taught me that shagging girls was quite nice. So, even if having sex with women wasn't gonna cure me, a least it was a fun way to pass the time!

I had a new hobby.

About a year after we first met, Cheryl and I started dating once again. She lived clear on the other side of town from me and she went to a different school. This fact seriously cut in to our ability to see one another. Ahh, but I was a resourceful and precocious child. I found ways…

My portal to freedom, my bedroom window, was ready and willing to assist. Cheryl also had a receptive and agreeable bedroom window.

It takes about 45 minutes for a motivated 13 year-old to ride a five-speed bike 8 miles across town. It would usually take about twice as long to ride back at 4:00 in the morning, and that still left a couple of hours to sleep before school.

Oh yeah, school… There was that.

I had been a fairly good student as a young thing. When you have a limited number of friends, and an unlimited number of tormentors, it can be nice to get lost in your studies. But once I found sex, all of that changed.

Remember, I had a pretty crappy self-esteem at the time. But I knew that I had found a way to get the one thing that all of the rest of the guys only talked about. I was getting laid, while they were only wanking off. I finally had a something for my little teenaged self-image to be proud of, and there was no way in hell I was gonna let a silly little thing like school get in the way of it.

I would ride my bike to and from Cheryl's house anything from 2 to 4 times a week. Let me tell you, that kind of schedule can sure develop your leg muscles!

Cheryl and I dated (and screwed) on and off until we were about 17, at which time our entire lives turned upside-down. During our off times, I would find my way into anyone else's bed that was willing to take me. Now, please don't get the idea that I was indiscriminate in my choice of partners. Not in the least! I had an absolute requirement that I would only have sex with human females. See? I wasn't such a complete sleaze…

During one of those times that Cheryl and I were not seeing one another, I did a bit more research at the Penthouse Institute of Sexuality. If you'll recall, I mentioned that the pages of this little wonder were filled with all kinds of wacked-out and diverse activities for consenting adults to participate in. Forum told stories of bondage and S&M. Fetishes and kinky sex. It had the whole nine yards. It was kind of like having a menu of exotic things to try. Plus, in the process of accepting everything else, it was accepting of people like me!

I'm going to spend just a second talking about acceptance. For a person who grew up as an outsider to everyone, it was really wonderful to finally find a place where people accepted me. When I think about all of the stories of Jesus hanging out with the hookers and the thieves, it really makes you wonder just who is listening to his message. Is it the kinky people who welcome you in with open arms, or the so-called Christians who want to see you burn in hell? Personally, I can't recall Christ telling anyone that they were gonna fry for being less than perfect.

Now, I'm not suggesting that any type of behavior is or should be acceptable. But, at the time I had had no moral or ethical education to speak of, and being accepted had a huge appeal. Additionally, I would say even today that if I were to qualify things, I'd personally be more accepting of people who wanted to play consensual kinky games together than I would of prudish skags who want to condemn anyone who doesn't believe 'their' particular version of religion. I kinda think JC would tend to agree with me…

As a result of this unique atmosphere of acceptance, I decided that this was a crowd of people that I wanted to get to know. I had a new quest: Meet kinky people! But, alas, my quest for perversion had to wait. I had crimes to commit first.

At about this time, Mom and Dad were having a lot of problems in their marriage. All of the booze and the fighting acted like a cancer and their relationship was starting to decay at an alarming rate. The net result of all of this was that I had even less supervision than before. I was able to come and go as I pleased and I pretty much stayed out all hours of the day and night. As a young teen-ager, this was an ideal recipe for disaster.

I lived just down the street from my middle school. During one of my midnight forays I discovered that the teachers often left the top floor windows unlocked after they left for the day. It was of little effort to climb up on the roof, scurry over an eve, and let myself into the school. Once inside, there was no end to the entertainment to be had!

One of my favorite activities was to go into the gym, turn on all of the lights, and play basketball. I'd do this by myself or with my brother, cousin, or one of my few friends. I particularly enjoyed doing this.

You see, during school I would never get asked to play any of the sports with the other kids. This was because I pretty much sucked at organized sports. Regardless, it was another area that I felt left out and rejected. So when I had the gym to myself, I could play as long as I wanted, and I always got the ball! When I invited others to join me, I was guaranteed to be included myself, even if only because I was the only one who knew how to get inside.

Well, late one evening a couple of friends and I were walking to the school when we came across three other kids from our grade. Now, these kids were part of the rougher crowd, and not our usual companions. But that evening we were all joined by the fact that none of us were up to any good.

They asked where we were going. I guess we wanted to sound cool to these fellow junior delinquents, so we told them that we were going to break into the school. Of course, they asked to come along.

At this time in my life I would have welcomed the willing companionship of a rabid hound dog, so when these kids asked to join us I was overjoyed to accept their company.

The six of us headed to the school.

By the end of the night, we had done a little more than played basketball in the gym. Within about five minutes of executing our illegal entry, one of the new guys had broken into the coach's office and had managed to steal a stopwatch and some petty cash. That set off an avalanche of antisocial behavior that ended up with us breaking into two other schools that night and stealing about two thousand dollars of miscellaneous crap.

A couple of days later, one of my less-bright accomplices, lets call him Einstein, attempted to sell some of the stolen goods in the very school where we had taken them from days earlier. Hmm. Smart, eh?

Well, the fact of the matter is that I actually owe Einstein a huge debt of gratitude.

At that point I was at a kind of crux in my life. I'm pretty sure that if my genius cohort hadn't had gotten us all busted by his ill-conceived commercial venture, I would have probably continued down that particular delinquent path, and to no good end.

Busted we were. That night found the bunch of us 15 year-old punks stuck in the police station getting our fingerprints taken. The next day the lot of us were in court where the judge correctly decided to scare the shit out of us criminal masterminds. I ended up being sentenced to two 48-hour stints in the local pokey, plus a bunch of community service work. Now, I know that two weekends in the Stonewall Bed & Breakfast might not seem like a big deal, but it was more than enough for me! From that day on I made a vow to never go to jail again. Later in life I broke that vow on a couple of occasions, but those stories are coming a little later.

There is one kinda funny story associated with our little string of larcenies. While roaming around the cafeteria kitchen in my middle school, I came across a couple of decks of cards in the employee's break room. For some stupid reason, I took out all of the aces and laid them in a pattern on the floor. I then took a squirt bottle of mustard and proceeded to write the words, "The Eight Aces" on the concrete floor.

There were only six of us vandals working that particular night.

To this day, the police in Elkhart, Indiana are convinced that there are two unrepentant and unpunished vandals roaming the streets of their fine community.

As I was growing up, I had a job almost continuously from the time I was about 11 years-old. My first job was as a busboy at Pritchet's Steakhouse, the same restaurant and bar that my folks most often hung out in. Although I was only 11 at the time and as a result too young to work legally, they still let me put in about a dozen hours on the weekends. They paid me in cash, and I wasn't too worried about the IRS coming after me at the time.

That early influx of greenbacks gave me even more independence than I already had through my bedroom window. And as I grew, so did my income potential. So by the time I was about 16, I was making about $150 every paycheck. This was fat cash for a teenager back in the late 70's and early 80's!

One of my pretty regular expenditures was movie tickets. Now, not just any movie tickets. But tickets to the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show! Now Rocky, as it was called by those in the know, was a cultural extravaganza of the bizarre and unusual. Anyone with any kind of alternative bent would show up to the local cinema on a Friday or Saturday night to see the show. And you could always tell the folks that were there to see Rocky from the mix of 'nilla's there to see that week's adventure/sci-fi/horror blockbuster.

The Rocky crowd were the folks wearing the fishnet stockings and the elaborate make-up. And those were just the guys. The girls were in corsets and garterbelts, with high heels that went up to their kneecaps.

How I loved that place!

Once inside the theatre, the mayhem would begin in earnest. Each of us brought bags full of supplies for the show. From decks of cards and pieces of toast to squirt bottles and rolls of toilet paper, we came prepared. During one scene, an actor would call for a toast. That was our cue to throw our toast at one another. During the rain scene, we would pull out our squirt bottles and shower the entire venue. There were also song and dance bits that everyone would run up front and participate it. In a nutshell, it was great fun!

Rocky Horror was always filled with other strange, diverse, and wonderful people. I felt right at home. It was the first place where I ever went out in drag, and to be quite frank, I was one of the most tame people there!

Now, often, a Rocky Horror night was an all-night affair. Friends and I would show up at about 11:30 in order to hang out with the other pervs before the show. We'd usually start drinking at about that time, because a number of us had easy access to booze. Afterwards, we would usually go out to a 24 hour diner, get breakfast, and continue drinking until about 4:00 or so in the morning. Finally, we'd catch an hour or two of sleep in the car before we took off to the Saturday morning speech meet.

Yes, I said "speech meet".

There were a number of us alternative nutcases who seemed to shun sports and the other more conventional after-school activities. But the Speech team was just our speed. It was an activity that many of us without grace, good looks, or natural athletic ability could excel at. Plus, it was fun to get all gussied up in our competition suits and nice dresses when we all knew that just hours earlier we had been drunk and in fishnets! Heck, I sometimes left the fishnets on under my suit…

Speech team was a lot of fun, but it also was the source of one of my saddest memories from high school.

Brad, Scott, and I competed in the discussion event. Discussion is similar to debate, but with more people and less overt conflict. Well, the three of us pretty much dominated the event, and we would regularly take first, second, and third place ribbons for our school. The only thing was, Scott and Brad always took the first and second place ribbons. I was always in third place.

That was until the Penn High competition.

I was so friggin proud when I walked up on stage during the awards ceremony to accept my first ever blue ribbon! Brad took the second and Scott the third. I think that I was walking on air the whole time I was up there!

After awards, we all packed up and headed for the bus that would take us back to school and our cars. Penn High was about a 45-minute drive away from our school, and the time was usually spent listening to music, telling jokes, or just vegging out.

A few minutes after the bus took off, our speech coach came back to where I was sitting and plopped down next to me.

"Josh", he said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but there was a mistake in the scoring…". It ended up that Scott had once again taken first and I had gotten third place.

I gave the blue ribbon back to the coach, and he handed me the white one that signified third place.

Much of my school career was marked by similar mediocrity. I just didn't much care about the studies. I had a great deal of natural ability in a lot of areas and I wasn't really challenged by school. I would often score a 100% on tests while failing the class for not doing my homework. It's odd, but I was particularly good at geometry, while being absolutely lousy at algebra.

I'm somewhat dyslexic, and when I do have a problem learning something, it is a serious problem! I actually had to take algebra five times before getting a passing grade! It took me three tries to pass trig. I won't even mention calculus!

I only focus on the math classes because for some odd reason there has always been a strong connection between math ability and computer skills. As a person who has excelled in IT for the last 25 years, I can tell you that no such connection exists. In all of my years in IT I have never used algebra once. I would have had better use of shop class back in high school!

Another class that I could have strongly benefited from would have been family planning.

As I said previously, Cheryl and I had an on-again, off-again relationship. Our on-times were regularly punctuated by my climbing through her bedroom window to engage in our favorite activity. Unprotected sex.

On one particular evening, 'unprotected' might have also meant that I didn't have a gun with me.

One night after I had made one of my early morning forays through her bedroom window, we were lying naked, side-by-side in her bed. It was about 3:00am, and the house was quiet.

That's when the telephone rang.

Now, at Cheryl's house the phone didn't ring during the day let alone at 3:00am! We both had a sick feeling in our stomachs as we heard Cheryl's father get up and answer the phone in the other room.

Quickly, she hid my clothes under the covers of her bed, and I jumped naked behind her dresser, which conveniently sat at a 45° angle in the corner of her room. No sooner had I shimmied down out of sight when her father burst into her room and turned on the light.

He was holding his shotgun.

"Is Josh here?!?!? That was his mother. Her car is missing and Josh isn't at home! Has he been here???", he shouted.

I was about ready to crap myself over in the corner.

"No", she said as she feigned a yawn. "He's not been here all night."

"Well, if he does show up, you better tell him that the police had better find him before I do!" He stormed back out of the room, flipping the light switch on his way out.

Cheryl took that opportunity to open the window, toss my clothes outside into the snow, and move out of the way as I made a mad, headfirst dive through the opening. No sooner did she shut the window when the light came on once again.

I couldn't hear what he was saying to her over the thumping of my heart and I was too afraid to start running just in case he saw me through the window. Instead, I hunkered down naked in the snow beside the house and waited for the light to go off again. I later learned that her father was looking around in her closets, under her bed, and behind that dresser, all while I lay shivering just outside the window.

As soon as the light went out I threw on my clothes and took off like a scared rabbit.

The next problem was the police.

By this time I had graduated from riding my bike across town to stealing my mom's car for my nocturnal journeys. The fact that I didn't have a driver's license at the time caused me little concern. The fact that the police were supposedly looking for both the car and I caused me no end of concern! How was I going to get home without getting busted yet again?

I had parked the car about a quarter mile away, out near the train tracks. There was an old dirt road that bordered the tracks. By making my way down that dirt road, and then another, and another, I was able to make it most of the way back to my house just using the less patrolled country roads. The last bit required me to drive a short way through town, but I made it home without further incident. That little drive in the country took about an hour and a half. The trip usually took about 15 minutes.

Mom was waiting for me, and of course I was grounded for a time for stealing her car. When asked, I told her that I had just gone for a drive in the country. I didn't want to lie to my mom, now did I?

As I said previously, Cheryl and I enjoyed our little romps in the sack. On my 17th birthday, we had such a romp. We were in my bed for a change! She had been visiting the house and we went into my room "to listen to music". I threw the lock on my door, and she proceeded to give me my birthday present.

That particular little romp led to another present about nine months later. My first child, Rebecca, was born just two days before Christmas.

Cheryl and I were both 17 years old.



(to be continued...)