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283 THE BIG BAD WORLD 6 Mom, July 31, 1966 Dearest Mother and Father: Four weeks have passed—and it’s still July. I’ll be glad to be rid of this month. 1966 is more than half over and has not turned out to be the year we expected it to be. The long struggle is over (for both Roger and me). And my problems have been reduced to two—one an old one, one new. The new one is to learn to live on much less money; selling this wonderful old house will help with that. The old one is the harder—to raise to manhood six boys whose lives have been full of violence, uncertainty, hate and neglect. It won’t be easy. Being twelve years old in Rochester, Minnesota, in the summer of ’66 was a good thing. There had been family trauma for nearly ten years, yeah, but nobody’d died. Well, not counting my dad, but the point is we were all alive, the seven of us—the ten actually, if you count Pagan and my hamsters. On one level, it was kind of cool having a dead dad. At school, I was able to strike some seriously sad poses for Debbie Laney, leaning against the bike rack with a look that said, “Yep. My dad died. Pretty sad. Me? Nahhh, I’ll be all right. Maybe I’ll see ya ’round then.” I’d walk away (in slow motion, of course) employing the Lonely-Guy-on-Cold-Street walk. Lonely Guys aren’t supposed to turn around to see if they’re being watched, but if they were, I would’ve walked backward for blocks yelling back to Debbie, “STILL DEAD, MY DAD IS. YEP. FEELIN’ PRETTY SAD!” The Beatles’ new album Revolver was number one on the charts and all the films of my fantasy life were now scored with Harrison’s “Taxman.” Paul McCartney’s joyful numbahs “one-two-three-FAH!” had matured into George’s deadlier count-off, intoned like a mortician and followed by THE BIG BAD WORLD 284 a guitar riff a Lonely Guy could nicely time his steps to as he walked down the hallways of Central Junior High School. I turned to smoking cigarettes full-time and posing for effect at every opportunity . For my birthday, Mom bought me my first bike, a Sting-Ray with Banana Seat and Ram’s Horn Handlebars. I would ride this fantastic machine to the YMCA downtown and Lonely-Guy my way around the edges of seventh-grade mixers hoping to be noticed. If only Debbie Laney had read the script I’d written for her. “Hey, Sue, look, it’s Lonely Guy. Walking alone down the street, threadbare collar turned up to the cold November wind. Suddenly I feel so shallow.” My fantasies were becoming self-conscious and were harder to sustain. Still, I never had the courage to just talk to Debbie Laney—until the day I was beat up. On that day, I was riding my bike to the YMCA across a footbridge on a golf course where three “hoods” blocked my way. When I asked them to move, they blocked the footbridge completely. I said, “Don’t be such pricks.” “Lonely Guy” Beats Up Three Hoods With one slow-motion roundhouse kick, I ruin the lives of three . . . POW! Right after I said “pricks,” one of the hoods hit me hard in the face; I fell off my bike and began to bleed. The hoods rode off laughing and I lay there measuring my options. Since I couldn’t go into the Y with blood all over my face and shirt, there was clearly only one alternative—let the blood dry on my face and then pedal to Debbie Laney’s house. When I got there, I would park my cool Sting Ray bike with Banana Seat and Ram’s Horn handlebars, ring the doorbell, and give ’er an eyeful of the rough-and-tumble life we Lonely Guys lead. I wouldn’t even mention the injury unless she brought it up. “There’s what? Blood, you say?” Twenty minutes later, the look in Mrs. Laney’s eyes when she opened her door suggested my fantasy wasn’t playing out as scripted and the soundtrack of “Taxman” came to a scratching halt. Debbie wasn’t home and never saw Lonely Bloody Guy. Mrs. Laney did, but just cleaned me up and sent me home. As I...

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