In the fall of 1964, at the age of 14, soon to be 15, and after a good scrubbing in red lipstick by senior classmen, the acceptable rite of initiation, I had arrived in the 10th grade a "scrub", a bona fide member of the one student body of Englewood High School. The school grounds covered an area comprising more than four city blocks, and the school building proper was huge, or so it seemed to me then. The Englewood High Pirates, our champions. When I think about how the transition to high school affected me, the word that comes most to mind is "dazed"; but, according to those who know me well, I was in this condition most of the time anyway.

A withdrawal had begun to take place then, in my own mind, one that I tended to project onto my teachers and classmates and that ultimately served only to isolate me further from them. I was a daydreamer, distracted in class, constantly preoccupied with my own thoughts. I had a distorted notion of personal responsiblity and questioned the point of my education. I wandered wherever I went, rarely any ambition or purpose to my step. I had begun testing the limits of authority as I never had before, my rogue nature and all of its wayward proclivities being my first and preferred tool. I was growing increasingly restless, impatient for release - to what, I don't know, as I was directionless in life, without skills or training of any sort, and had only the vaguest consciousness of what being responsible for myself entailed. A very awkward prelude to young adulthood, retreating all the while.

We had a dress code then: a boy's hair couldn’t touch the back of his shirt collar and no collarless shirts were allowed, shirt tails had to be tucked in and belts were required if the pants had loops for them, no shorts, no tattered or torn clothing, socks and shoes were required (tennis shoes were okay), and no pocket knives with blades that exceeded two inches in length - no switch blades - and no brass knuckles or other fist fighting paraphernalia. Girls had to wear dresses or skirts - no pants, no shorts - and the hemline couldn’t be more than two inches above the knee, jewelry and make-up had to be kept to a minimum. The rules were broken constantly, of course, just like in adult society, and especially when the mini-skirts came out - what a wonder to behold!

I loved math, learned to type 45 wpm sans errors, could dissect a frog in Biology class and a compound sentence in English class, but in Phys. Ed. I was defeated. I wasn’t always the last one picked when choosing teams, but that‘s how it felt to me; it was that close. I have never liked physically competitive situations, and I hated Phys. Ed. more than any other class. I never measured up. I couldn’t catch the ball no matter what shape or size it was. Today, someone tosses me a cigarette lighter, inevitably I miss the catch and it hits the wall or goes sliding across the floor, and amid my disgrace and embarrassment in recovering it, I will likely drop it. I can’t flip a coin and catch it. I feel some measure of competence given a mental exercise; if not, at least I know what to do about it, but a test of my physical prowess leaves me wanting every time.

It was during or around this time that I first experimented with alternate lifestyles. In so doing, I was never persuaded of anything but my original preferences. I think of these brief but forbidden liaisons as having more to do with my own inferiority complex and its attendant need for praise than with any latent tendencies I may have had, but I don’t really know this, as I have no training in the psychology of human behavior, other than having watched and lived it for as long as I have. Today, my sexuality is not an issue with me. To my shame, I’m sure, I take delight in those with whom it is, probably because it is what little freedom I have attained from and enjoy for myself, and I like having a little fun with it.

About the middle of my junior year, I just quit going to school. A lot of us would gather at the “little store” before school started, for coffee and donuts and enough candy and chips to last us until lunch. I had met a couple of guys named Mike and Richard, both coming from unhappy home lives (Richard I don’t think even had one, and mine, if I remember correctly, was on the decline as well). Mike’s parents worked all day, and the three of us got into the habit of leaving the store, and rather than turning in the direction of the school, we would head towards Mike’s house for a day of playing cards and watching television. It started out just once or twice a week and from there went to three or four times a week until I wasn’t going to school at all anymore. After several truancy warnings, I was expelled.

I was sent off to live with my Uncle "Jeep" in Lubbock, Texas, who was then working on his Doctorate in Math at Texas Tech, and I finished my junior year at Lubbock High School. I did well and I liked it there. We lived in a rural area, and I was lonely and bored a good deal of the time, but the circumstances were otherwise ideal. I was granted every reasonable privilege and freedom, my obligations were minimal, and it was peaceful there. Good natured people, easily humored and attentive to one another's wishes. I virtually idolized my Uncle, and I loved my Aunt Lanita.

Nevertheless, I was often moody and discontent, and somewhere inside me was an unhappiness that followed me everywhere I went. I took it for granted after awhile, as it wasn't something I was consciously aware of in the moment, but a nagging sadness was always there, close by. Then, in my senior year, I fell into old habits. There was a little cafe across the street from the school, and they served the best coffee, and it seems I never could make my first hour Chemistry class. When it came time to graduate, it was no surprise to me that I had straight F’s in Chemistry.

I begged my Chemistry teacher to pass me, that my mother was pregnant (she wasn't) and would lose her baby if I didn’t graduate, and on and on. Finally, he gave me a crossword puzzle to work and said if I got 97% of it correct, he would pass me. I had spent three days on it and had only found 1/3 of the answers, if that many, using the Texas Tech. library, when I met this guy in class who had worked it once for extra credit. His dad was a doctor and had helped him with it, and he helped me finish it. I got exactly 97% of it correct. Now it's 1967, I'm 17 almost 18 years old, and having reached the very pinnacle of mental and emotional maturity, as ably demonstrated by having cunningly outwitted my Chemistry teacher, I graduate high school.

I have always thought of my junior high school days as among my most forgettable, but now that I recall them I see that I had some pretty good times then. Schoolwork was never a burden for me and I was easily in the upper 1/3 of my class scholastically, even as lazy as I was. I didn‘t attend many school functions or join clubs. I didn’t like or participate in sports. I wasn’t in the popular crowd and never held an office. I had a couple of friends, no serious enemies. I felt a marked increase in peer pressure, as so many more kids were there.

I had so much energy then. I had a Denver Post newspaper route and would ride my bike everywhere for as long as I could. I was sailing down the sidewalk once (which was a no-no, but we all did it anyway), having just bought myself pockets full of M-80’s and Black Cats and Cherry Bombs (also no-no‘s), and all sorts and kinds of fireworks, when a lady turned into her driveway and ran me over. She was hysterical, and all I could think of was my bike. When I finally snapped to, I realized that I might be able to squeeze something out of this lady, considering her condition seemed to be much worse than mine. And I was right. She took me to Pete’s Bike Shop, where I had all kinds of modifications done to my bike, at her expense, and then she bought me a chocolate ice cream cone and took me home. Nice lady.

In the three years I attended Sinclair Junior High School, only two of the teachers I had there made enough of an impression on me that I remember them now, and they were my Biology teacher, Mr. Milsom and my Science teacher, Mr. Winger. I remember them not because of any personal attention they showed me, but because they cared about their subject and their students, and whether or not their students were comprehending the subject matter, and they weren‘t taken in by the lame excuses so good-naturedly proffered by the slackers, as even these characters knew, like everyone else did, that these teachers cared; there were no excuses.

Sheryl Yonkers was the most beguiling creature I had ever seen. She wore one of those dainty gold ankle bracelets that make me so hot, and she had a bobbed haircut and the darkest brown eyes, and she possessed me, mind, soul and body. After school one day, Sheryl asked me if I wanted to have a Coke with her at Freddy’s, the after-school hang out. I was so paralyzed that she had spoken to me, so utterly terrified of her standing there, in the flesh, that close to me, actually talking to me, that the very best I could do in spite of all of my fantasies about her, was to stutter out the words “IIII‘m bbbbusy“.

She stood there looking at me for a moment, waiting, I imagine, for me to come to my senses, and when it was painfully obvious that nothing was forthcoming but the dumbstruck look on my face, she quietly said, “What?”. What indeed. What I wanted to say, I couldn't, and what I didn't want to say was said before I could get it back. She turned and walked off with her giggling friends. But Sheryl, to her credit, understood and wasn't offended. We were friends, but I was never able to overcome how lovely she was and how inadequate I felt in her presence to take it any further. Her unassailable confidence was beyond me, and so was she.

Junior high is where I first encountered bullies. Most of them either liked me or left me alone. Whether this was because of Sheryl or because I helped them with their homework, I don't know, but one of them, Jim Kinghorn (who was too ugly to care what Sheryl thought and too stupid to care if he flunked), would slug me in the arm every time we were within striking distance of one another. His locker was right next to mine, naturally. Coward that I was, I would never slug him back. I've always been inordinately afraid of getting hit in the face, so much so that I’ve never been in a genuine fist fight in my life, which is amazing to most people, even me. I should have had a few, at least.

Junior high is also where I started smoking cigarettes and got drunk for the first time (on blackberry wine...it was disgusting). After making a scene at an all night cafe, we were arrested and thrown in jail. My parents were called and my mother showed up crying her eyes out. Bill slung me over his shoulder (I couldn’t stand up) and threw me in the car and when we got home took me by one arm and one leg and tossed me downstairs, where my bedroom was. Then he told my mom to stop with her blabbering, I was just drunk. I was exhilarated.

I will speak of this only once, as it is my Achilles heal.

My doctor has informed me that one of the medications I am taking for my epilepsy is damaging my liver and eating away the marrow in my bones; that taken over any protracted period of time, this is what it does to the human body. Many years ago, when it registered with me as nothing more than another meaningless pronouncement of doom from yet another doctor, I was advised that I would eventually lose all of my teeth, which at the time sounded absurd to me as my teeth were in perfect shape, but I lost them, just as I was told would be the case. This because of the other med that I am taking. Then there is the unavoidable mental confusion referred to in the teeny-tiny print of the three-page disclaimer that comes with it. I'm having a hard time deciding who has benefited the most in all this.

The seizures themselves are roughly akin to shock treatment, a short-circuit in the wiring of the brain that may or may not leave you with some awareness of your situation, but never any control over it; they are not always the same and not always of the same intensity, some are mildly uncomfortable, others strong and sometimes violent; all of them are demoralizing. And taking the meds regularly is no guarantee against seizure activity, as they often seem sensitive to an inner stress or turmoil that I cannot reach.

I have about 10 to 15 seconds warning. My perception takes on a surreal-like quality and becomes imprecise; everything is vaguely off somehow, out of balance, not right. I feel an almost silent humming. I become increasingly anxious because I am about to lose total control and there is nothing I can do about it. I am powerless and feel angry. Then its like touching the exposed ends of live wires to each side of my head. If the current is mild, the involuntary movements are hardly noticeable; if stronger, they become convulsive. There is no pain. I feel drained afterwards.

It is tiring to an individual. And it’s not just the mental and emotional toll that it takes on my dwindling resources; it’s having to constantly expend the energy to hide something that is so much a part of me, and yet so much not a part of others, something that is ugly to watch and humiliating to experience, even when alone. To be open about it is to be singled out, separated from the crowd, treated differently than everyone else. And I hate it. Those closest to me prefer to think that it does not exist, that I am like them and not different. But maybe that’s not fair to them. Maybe I simply see in them what I don't want to see in myself. I hate it more than I can say.

In my case, it is not a genetic condition. No one on either side of my family has ever had epilepsy. None of my children have it. When it was discovered in me, I had taken no hard blows to the head or anything else that is known to sometimes bring about convulsions and cause epilepsy; all of which leaves me little to explain it. For some time now, I’ve thought of my epilepsy as the result of an early conspiracy of mind and body, one having unforeseen and irreversible consequences; confronting a threat to survival and circumstances that had become no longer tenable, a solution to the problem was formed. I can think of no other explanation, nor can I prove this one.

Some might say this theory is born more out of self-centeredness than any reality, and I would give them that, blaming myself for things beyond my control. But I would also note that I certainly wasn’t lacking for attention anymore. In school, I had to sit with the teacher at recess instead of playing with my classmates. I was excused from class early to take a nap everyday. I could get away with things that the others couldn’t. Unfortunately, I did too good of a job on myself, and what I may have then needed as temporary relief, now is a lifetime disability.

End of rant.

It is not my intention to depress anyone with a maudlin or meandering account of my life, nor am I trying to please anyone with it. My goal, as it took shape in my mind, was to present my life story in as objective and dispassionate a manner as I could, recognizing the need at the same time to be as honest and undramatic about it as possible. I haven’t been able to do this perfectly, as I found that to omit all drama and forbid even the smallest measure of license makes for a very boring read; I wouldn't even read it myself. Be that as it may, the truth of me is here, and if my story should be a cause for hope in someone, or if someone should see themselves in me and just not feel as alone as they once did, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. This is not to say that my motives are altruistic, by any means. I derive far more benefit from this exercise than I expect any one else ever will. It is strictly selfish on my part; some may say indulgent, but that‘s of no consequence to me.

Denver was a new place, a new start. I was happy when we moved there. I was enrolled into Mr. Riggs sixth grade class at Charles Hay Elementary School in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.

Mr. Riggs was always smiling. He wore a starched white shirt and a tie everyday, spit-shined shoes and crisply creased slacks, and always Old Spice cologne. He had a round, rosy colored face, as if he had tied his tie too tightly around his neck that morning, but it never seemed to bother him. I remember him very clearly. Mr. Riggs told us war stories from his days in the military during WWII. Quite a few war stories. I don't remember many of his lessons, but he could tell a war story that would spellbind the entire class. He had a paddle he kept in one of his desk drawers and he wasn't shy about using it, either. He would never make anyone cry with it - that would've been too humiliating and he never would have done that to us. The whole class feared the paddle, and we all loved Mr. Riggs.

In Mr. Riggs's class: I first heard Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt, beginning my love of music; I got my first and last burr haircut (the sadistic man I had for a barber talked me into this) and was so embarrassed by it, grimacing every time I looked at myself in the mirror, that I wouldn't go to school without wearing a cap on my head; and, for the first time in my life, I was smitten by the opposite sex, the fair and lovely Erlene Bolton, and the stunning Roxanne Shipley. They were so beautiful. Goddesses. In my mind, they still are.

On my way home from school once, I waved at a little girl who was standing behind the screen door of her house with her pet collie, and the dog burst through the door and bit me on the ass. Then the little girl's mother drags me inside their house and yanks down my pants to inspect the wound. I was mortified. And the underwear I was wearing that day was an old pair in which the entire rear end was worn away. All I could do was mumble something like, "that's okay, lady, I'm fine, I'll just go home now if you don't mind". Attacked by the dog, accosted by the mother, injured, hurting, humiliated and degraded - right there in front of the little girl, no less - then turned out the door and sent along my way. Not even a cookie. Thank God Erlene and Roxanne lived in the other direction. Needless to say, I didn't walk on that side of the street anymore, and I didn't wave to the stupid little girl anymore, either. Thus began my phobia of dogs.

I experienced the beginnings of peer pressure in the sixth grade. Some of my friends lived in real nice homes and had all kinds of toys and gadgets that my parents couldn't afford, and after visiting them I would feel ashamed for them to see the small house in which I lived. I once asked the parents of one friend to drop me off on the corner, so they wouldn't see my house so I wouldn't feel ashamed by it. Before, my grandfather had bought us a nice home in Odessa (in fact he had bought us several nice homes, and cars as well), as George didn't work much, but Bill fixed up our house and painted it and put a nice redwood fence around the front yard and the back yard, and he planted trees and new grass and he took good care of it, so this sensitive phase didn't last too long.

I believe it was also at this time that I got into the Boy Scouts. I met Dale there, who was to be my best friend for the next 30 years. He died of a heroin overdose in his bathtub about ten years ago. Our troop (the Bobwhites) would go camping up in the mountains and I thought I was going to freeze to death sometimes, and we did the deviant things boys that age tend to do sometimes, and we got to wear uniforms and feel like we were something special, and I liked it. I was going places, doing things, making friends, having fantasies about girls and dreams of what I was going to be in life, and a lot of other things. It felt good to be a part of life, not some victim of misfortune, some unwilling witness.

For the next seven years, I was to experience something approaching normalcy in my life. I was far too warped by then to appreciate it, but it was a welcome respite all the same. The year was 1960 and I had just finished the fifth grade (in five different schools), and my mother had met and married her third husband. After their honeymoon, we moved to Denver, Colorado, which is where I was to live for the most part of the next 20 years.

Bill was born and raised in Oklahoma. He was a big man, heavyset but not fat, and never wore a shirt unless he was in a public place or at work. He had blonde hair all over his chest and stomach and wore his pants (always Levi's) a little too low (before it was popular), and he had the meanest expression on his face all the time, and a scar above his right eyebrow. He worked hard for a living, even when he was ill. I don't remember him ever calling into work sick. He took care of us as best he could, which was good enough, and I liked him.

Bill was younger than my mother and had never been married while my mother had been married twice and already had five children. By the time he and my mother were divorced he was supporting seven children in all, and he was barely 30 years old. He named his oldest son Sam - not Samuel, just Sam - and the younger one Joel (my mother's doing, or it would have been just Joe). I have to admire that kind of simplicity. Oddly enough, a Sam that's just a Sam or a Joe that's just a Joe is fairly uncommon.

The one and only time he spanked us kids (and Lord knows we deserved it more than that), he sat out on the front porch afterwards and cried. When I later heard about this, it shocked me - not that he had cried, but that he cared. From then on we started calling him "dad", as that he was. I later learned from my mother that his own father used to beat him with barbed wire, and that he had left home at the age of 13 and been on his own ever since. I can see why.

Bill died of a heart attack when he was 45. I can count on one hand the number of times in my adult life that I've cried, and one of them was when Bill died. As irrational as it is, I was mad at him for dying. Ordinarily my reasoning process would have circumvented the pain I was feeling, channeled it into a different energy, but this time the numb spot I've always maintained firmly in place when it comes to personal loss was breached enough to hurt.

Tom was my mother's fourth husband. Tom was a young man, tall and powerfully built, and his face would turn as red as an apple when he got angry. He was probably a good ten years younger than my mother when they married. I didn't know much about Tom, but I knew that he was physically abusive to my mother. My younger brother, who was still living at home then, hated him intensely.

I met him only once, and that was during a time in my life when I had started thinking, a little more than usual, that something was wrong with me. People who have nothing wrong them don't ask themselves "what's wrong with me" all day long. So I went to see my mother and to get her advice. I may have been crazy but I was at least going to be pragmatic about it. I told her I was thinking of committing myself to Fort Logan Mental Health Center; let the doctors figure it out.

The objectivity I was hoping for was all but lost when I mentioned Fort Logan, as this upset her a great deal and she started crying. She told Tom what I had said, and from the look on his face and the color that had suddenly flashed into it, I knew at once that it was time for me to leave. I apologized to them for causing any trouble and then left before things degenerated into what I then suspected would have been an unpleasant scene involving the local police. It occurred to me that I wasn't the only nut in that house.

Three months later, Tom put the barrel of a .22 caliber pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. After severing one of his optic nerves and boring a hole in his brain that extended to the rear of his cranial cavity, the bullet stopped. Incredulously, it didn't kill him. It would have been better for him if it had. One side of his head is caved in (or scooped out) and he is completely blind and confined to a wheel chair, a vegetable, cared for by his aging parents. My brother, for reasons of his own, and which I understood, kept the bullet.

George, my mother's fifth husband, is an educated, well-traveled man, duty-bound, level-headed and stable in every sense, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude, for many things, and to whom my mother remains married to this day. According to them, this is simply because they are both too old now to go out partying and raising hell like they did when they were younger. They are both in their 70's.

I have no memory of my father, no personal knowledge of the events surrounding his death. I’ve always had to rely on the memory of these events as they exist in the minds of those who know something about them. And finding that my own memory tends to enhance or altogether re-invent history, conforming it to my own image of what it should have been, often times re-casting myself in a more favorable light, I remind myself, that indeed this could be as much a fairy tale as ever there was one. So, bearing these things in mind, I now set down the following details regarding my father's death, which is euphemistically referred to in my family as a hunting accident.

The story goes that my father, Sanford, and two of his brothers, Bill and George, packed their gear and their guns and drove up into the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona to find a hunting camp, and having accomplished this, went into town for a few beers. After drinking awhile, an argument erupted between Bill and George over a woman, whose name is Lillian. Evidently they were still engaged in this argument when they left the bar and headed back to their campsite. Nothing was resolved on the drive back, and the fighting over Lillian continued and just got worse.

Sometime after arriving back at their camp, George, provoked by his own unchecked passion and the debilitating effect of alcohol on his self-control, picked up his hunting rifle and aimed it at his brother Bill and threatened to kill him. My father, whose obligatory role in the situation up to this point had been that of peacekeeper, now allegedly tries to wrest the loaded rifle from his angry younger brother's hands, and in the ensuing struggle, the gun discharges into his stomach.

A very stupid thing to do. Too stupid, I have always thought. My father had had no part in the argument, had been in the military, was trained in armed combat, had grown up around guns and had used them all of his life; he knew all of the dos and don'ts of handling firearms. And yet, suddenly, when confronted with a man who is pointing a hunting rifle at one of his own brothers, about to commit familial murder, he is so bereft of all knowledge, training, experience and expertise, that he grabs the barrel of the gun and jerks it toward his own gut in an attempt to disarm the man.

And perhaps it is true. Perhaps my father went temporarily insane, much like George had. Or maybe he acted on a whim and decided to commit suicide that day. While I've never been happy with this explanation of events, no one has ever felt comfortable talking about it with me, and whenever people get uncomfortable I never feel comfortable pressing them. So I don't press them and I don't have any answers. What's the difference, I ask myself? I suppose I could look up Uncle Bill before one of us dies, or order transcripts of the trial; I dont know if I'm prepared for that, though. Perhaps, in the end, the fiction is easier to live with. Perhaps my relatives have acted rightly in being so evasive.

The death certificate shows the cause of death was loss of blood due to a gunshot wound in the abdomen; in other words, he bled to death. One of my relatives felt compelled to tell me that my father might have lived had the ambulance not lost its way trying to find the hunting camp, delaying the medical attention he needed if he was to survive. I had to ask. He was buried in Casa Grande, Arizona, my birthplace. He was 25 years old.

I visited my father's grave once, when I was in my late teens. In the ground was a small, rectangular plaque with his name inscribed on it, along with the date of his birth and that of his death. I felt nothing stir inside me. I thought I should at least feel something, but I didn’t. And then I thought I should at least feel something about not feeling something, but I didn’t, really. I've never been back.

George never fully recovered from the incident. The trial was an especially brutal one. I think, too, that his marriage to my mother only aggravated things for him, given the continual presence of my younger sister and I. One night, in Odessa, Texas, which is where we were living then, he suffered from a mental collapse. He had suddenly started accusing my mother of paying people to drive up and down the street just to keep him awake. A few days after that, I asked my mother what had happened to him, as I still hadn't been told anything. She started crying and told me that he was gone and wouldn't be coming home anymore. I was 10 years old. Mostly one institution or another took care of George for the rest of his life. He died several years ago.

Bill married Lillian. They are still married and live in California. They have two grown sons. Bill is probably the only person alive who knows what really happened the day my father was killed. He may have told his older brother Willard, but Willard was on Corrigidor in WWII, where he was in hand-to-hand combat for over 30 days armed only with a bayonet. He might tell me anything. Lillian came home from work one day and found him perched, stark naked, over the kitchen sink, wherein he had defecated. He was smiling at her. Lillian has never allowed him back in their house. On Willard's better days, Bill visits him in his sparsely furnished apartment and they drink beer together. I could swear, when I visited them, that Uncle Bill was never happier than when he was drinking beer with Uncle Willard.