One time when my father had been at sea for quite a while he came home and found the house locked and me sitting on the front porch, freezing cold and hungry. She was out some-where. She didn’t know he was coming. He was drunk. He broke the door down and took me inside and cooked me some food. She finally came home, drunk, and he cussed her out. We went to bed. I had a little crib in the corner, and my dad wanted to get into bed with me. He didn’t want to sleep with her. She kept pulling on him, but he pushed her away and called her names. He started beating her up. He broke her nose. He broke a couple of ribs. Blood poured all over the floor. I remember the next day I was scrubbing up blood, trying to get the blood up for ages.
They’d go to a party and take me and put me in a room where I could hear them. Everybody would be drinking, and it always ended up in a fight. I remember one party we went to. They had put me upstairs to sleep until they were ready to leave. It was cloudy out, and by the time we got there it was night. I looked out the window and became very frightened, and I remember sneaking downstairs because I was afraid to be alone. They were all drinking, and this one guy, Wes—evidently he’d had an argument with his wife. She went into a bathroom that was off the kitchen and she wouldn’t come out; there was a glass door on this bathroom, so he broke it with his fist. He cut his arm, and the thing ended up in a big brawl.
My parents always fought. He broke her nose several times. They realized they couldn’t have me there. My father’s mother was living in Nuevo, near Perris, California, on a little ranch, one of those old farms. They took me out there. I was five. And that was the end of my living with my parents and the beginning of my career with my grandmother. I saw my grandmother, and I saw that there was no warmth, no affection. I was terrified and completely alone. And at that time I realized that no one wanted me. There was no love and I wished I could die.
Nuevo was a country hamlet. Children should enjoy places like that, but I was so preoccupied with the city and with people, with wanting to be loved and trying to find out why other people were loved and I wasn’t, that I couldn’t stand the country because there was nothing to see. I couldn’t find out anything there. Still, to this day, when I’m in the country I feel this loneliness. You come face to face with a reality that’s so terrible. This was a little farm out in the wilderness. There was my grandmother and this old guy, her second husband, I think. I don’t even remember him he was so inconsequential. And there was the wind blowing.
It was a duty for my grandmother. My father told her he would pay her so much for taking care of me; she would never have to worry—he always worked and she knew he would keep his word. I think she was afraid of him, too, for what she had done to him. For what she had allowed to be done to him when he was a child.
My grandmother was a dumpy woman, strong, unintelligent. She knew no answers to any problems I might have or anything to do with academic type things. She was one of those old-stock peasant women. I never saw her in anything but long cotton stockings and long dresses with layers of underclothing. I never saw her any way but totally clothed. When she went to the bathroom she locked the door with a key. Anything having to do with the body, bodily functions, was nasty and dirty and you had to hide away. I don’t know what her feelings were. She never showed them. She had a cat that she gave affection to but none to me. I grew to hate the cat. My grand-mother was—she was just nothing. There was no communication. Whenever I tried to share anything at all with her she would say, “Oh, Junior, don’t be silly!” Or, “Don’t be a baby!” I had a few clothes and a bed, a bed away from her, a bed alone in a room I was scared to death in. I was afraid of the dark.
I was afraid of everything. Clouds scared me: it was as if they were living things that were going to harm me. Lightning and thunder frightened me beyond words. But when it was beautiful and sunny out my feelings were even more horrible because there was nothing in it for me. At least when it was thundering or when there were black clouds I had something I could put my fears and loneliness to and think that I was afraid because of the clouds.
We moved from Nuevo to Los Angeles and then to San Pedro, and during the time of the move to L.A. the old guy disappeared. I guess he died. My parents separated and they came to see me on rare occasions. My mother came when she was drunk. My father always brought money, and every now and then he’d spend the night. When he came I’d want to reach him, try to say something to him to get some affection, but he was so closed off there was no way to get through. I admired him, and I thought of him as being a real man’s man. And I really loved him.
My father was trim, real trim. He had a slender, swimmer’s body. He had blue eyes, blonde hair. He had a cleft in his chin. He had a halting, faltering voice, but pleasant sounding, and a way about him that commanded respect. He’d been a union organizer and a strike leader on the waterfront, and he had a bearing. People listened to him. I nicknamed him “Moses” because I felt he had that stature, that strength, and soon everybody in the family was calling him that.
My father was tall, he was strong, and I felt he thought I was a sissy or something. I abhorred violence, but in order to try to win his love I’d go to school and purposely start fights. I fought like a madman so I could tell him about it and show him if I had a black eye or a cut lip, so he would like me. And when I got a cut or a scrape in these fights I would continue to press it and break it open so that on whatever day he came it would still be bad. But it seemed like the things he wanted me to do I just couldn’t do. Sometimes he’d come when I was eating. My grandmother cooked a lot of vegetables, things I couldn’t stand—spinach, cauliflower, beets, parsnips. And he’d come and sit across from me in this little wooden breakfast nook, and my grandmother would tell me to eat this stuff, and I wouldn’t eat it, couldn’t eat it. He’d say, “Eat it!” My grandmother would say, “Don’t be a baby!” He’d say, “Eat it! You gotta eat it to grow up and be strong!” That made me feel like a real weak-ling, so I’d put it in my mouth and then gag at the table and vomit into my plate. And my dad was able, in one motion, to unbuckle his belt and pull it out of the rungs, and he’d hit me across the table with the belt. It got to the point where I couldn’t eat anything at all like that without gagging, and he’d just keep hitting at me and hitting the wooden wall behind me.
My mother was going with some guy named Sandy; he played guitar, one of those cowboy drunkards that runs around and fights. I was going to grammar school and I remember once she came when I was eating lunch in the school yard. She went to the other side of the fence and called me. She was wearing a coat with a fur collar. I was scared because my father had told me, “Don’t have anything to do with her! She didn’t want you to be born! She tried to kill you! She doesn’t love you! I love you! I take care of you!” But he didn’t act like he loved me. I left the yard, and she took me in a car. I said, “I can’t go with you.” But she took me anyway. She smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and perfume and this fur collar, and she was hugging me and smothering me and crying. She took me to a house and everybody was drunk. I tried to get away, but they wouldn’t let me leave. She kept me there all night.
When I was nine or ten my dad took me to a movie in San Pedro: The Mark of the Vampire. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. It was fascinating. There was a woman vampire, all in white, flowing white robes, a beautiful gown, and she walked through the night. It was foggy, and it reminded me of the clouds. In the movie, whoever was the victim would be in-side a house. The camera looked out a window and there was the vampire: there she would be walking toward the window.
I had a bedroom at the back of my grandmother’s house, and my window looked out on the backyard. There was an alley and an empty lot. After this movie, whenever I got ready for bed, I could feel the presence of someone coming to my window. I would envision this woman walking toward me. I started having nightmares. She had a perfect face, but she was so beautiful she was terrifying—white, white skin, and her eyes were black, and she had long, flowing, black hair. She wore a white, nightgownish, wispy thing. Her lips were red and she had two long fangs. Her fingers were long and beautiful, and she held them out in front of her, and she had long nails. Blood dripped from her nails and from her mouth and from the two long fangs. It seemed she sought me out from everyone else. There was no way I could escape her gaze. I’d scream and