Friday, November 10, 2017
I need to get this off my chest.
Florida has always seemed to be a fucked up place to me starting the moment we pulled up to our house at 5640 SW 37th street. As for as I remember, my grandfather promised my dad this "big 3 bedroom house with a huge yard in a nice neighborhood". My dad took the bait and we moved from California to Florida in the spring of 1969. When we found the location of the neighborhood and pulled up to the house, we found ruins that was a house. The doors, window frames, plumbing, and fixtures were all removed. Great! We traveled across country just to be homeless. Great! Swell! Good one!! Squatters moved in and destroyed the place when they were asked to leave.
While we were looking for a place to live, one of our neighbors who were snowbirds let us stay in their house until they came back in the fall, then we stayed at our grandfather's house until ours was finished. His house was just rebuilt after it mysteriously caught on fire. After staying in that stinky smoky smelling house for a month, we were ready to move into the house in Hollywood.
That August I started the first grade at Watkins Elementary and felt nervous since I'm from California where things are so different and we had our own lingo and now I'm in this strange new place where certain people talked funny. You would talk to one of those weird kids that has a crewcut and the first thing that came out of his mouth was "you're a faggot 'cause you talk weird" then you got in a fight. One of the other kids referred to the crewcut kids as "rednecks" since they would look for trouble and didn't get along with anyone other than their own kind. I made quite a few friends in first grade including one that I regret.
There was one kid in the class named Dennis who seemed OK, he asked me "if I wanted to come over to his house and play" so naive me said "sure" so I went to Dennis' house to play and watch TV since ours was a ancient POS that didn't have UHF so I thought we could play Hot Wheels and watch channel 23, nope! What happened next was a life changing experience.
Soon as I went to Dennis' house (in the row homes on 56th ave.) he took me into the den in the back of the house, then his druggy looking brothers and sister came in and locked the door. Then his sister took off my pants and fondled me, then they started doing strange things to me. After that the brothers were taking turns on me while Dennis yelled "fatso, fatso" from the corner of the room. when it all ended I was told "if you tell one word of this to anybody, we will kill you. We know where you live". I went home terrified, I'm surprised I didn't get attacked by the DeVoronicas or the pack of dogs they kept in their yard while I walked past their house. All of us had to deal with their bullshit when you passed their house with getting attacked by their dogs, or have them all run out at once and attack you.
There I see my dad watering the lawn, glass of Cutty Sark in one hand and hose in the other looking shitfaced, I told my dad "I got beat up by a gang of teenagers" being afraid to tell what really happened, or him beating me for what happened. His answer still resonates in my mind to this day "IF YOU BEAT THEM UP, I'LL BUY YOU A GALLON OF ICE CREAM" while stumbling across the yard watering the patches of dirt expecting grass to emerge forth. Anybody else's father would be out for blood, not mine. Your kid just got sodomised by a bunch of stoners and is scared shitless of being killed, and to boot is scared of telling you what happened and you could truly give two shits about it. Keep drinking buddy, you have plenty of brain cells to burn up.
I begged for my mom to walk me home from school since I was scared, and when she did, Dennis' siblings were all standing by the telephone pole on the sidewalk looking sheepish like "did he tell them or not". This went on for a week or so. She would come by and they would stand there looking nervous, then they stopped coming by. For years I used to see them standing by the pole. Then sometime in the spring, Dennis and his family moved.
We had lots of transients in our neighborhood, either because of the law or the taxman, people would come and go in matters of months. There were some winners who lived next door to us, some for six months to evade the taxman, or someone who's out on bail and skipped town. On the next street down, we had a group of bikers who moved away quietly because their pit bull attacked and maimed our mail lady, and they came in from another area where they also got in trouble.
For weeks I wouldn't wipe myself in fear of being attacked again which drove my brother crazy. In the process I drove the guidance counselor at Watkins nuts to where she was saying "here he is again" so I quit bothering her. I begged my parents to move back to California which I was told "to shut up". Some nights I would cry because I wanted to tell someone what happened but was too scared and ashamed to, all I would hear is "he's just starving for attention". After that I learned to suck it in and put it in the back of my mind.
After that...
My grades started slipping since I had trouble concentrating, I have a fear of crowds, creeps and rednecks, generally feeling awkward around people, developed a strange sense of humor and like to keep to myself, play records and read books in my room where I feel safe. I can put on a good front with all the jokes and jovial front, inside this 54 year old man is a 7 year boy who's still confused and crying.
