The popular fraternal twin brothers Jeff and Andy Kennedy with their spiky blond haircuts became my friends. Being friends with the Kennedy brothers was a big step. Paul was already friends with them, but it was a kind of final initiation into the cool club for me and Steven. We were becoming accepted by the other kids. We were mainstream. Let the good times roll.
It was Jeff who opened up the door for me to a whole new world. Jeff was the shorter, more outgoing of the two brothers. He and I took a walk one day. For some reason, he was allowed to go home for lunch, and I had been suspended from lunch for a week for the cafeteria incident and had to go home too. It was surprising the school let two little kids walk out the front doors and leave for lunch with no parent or ride, but they had.
“You like music?” he asked as we walked.
“I love music.”
“Hey, you want to come over and eat at my house? I have some records.”
We walked to his house, had lunch, and he showed me the beginnings of a wicked vinyl collection.
“These are my punk albums, real classics.”
He showed me a stack of albums. The Damned. The Misfits. T. Rex.
“Check out this newer one though.”
Jeff put on an album and started it somewhere at the end of side one. He gave me the cover to look at. At first glance it looked like four women on the cover, but then I realized they were men wearing makeup. I didn’t know what to make of it. A song called “Look What the Cat Dragged In” played and I was just as baffled by their sound. Mom had exposed me to some cool music. The Rolling Stones. Elton John. Billy Joel. Cat Stevens. But other than that older 70s music, I was really an 80s pop piano synth kind of listener. Duran Duran. Bruce Hornsby. Johnny Hates Jazz. Those were the first tapes I owned of current music. Poison’s album Look What the Cat Dragged In was different.
“You think this is crazy? You have to hear their newest album.”
He held up an album with a demon woman with a long tongue on the front cover. It was titled Open Up and Say Ahh.
“Have you seen any of their videos?” he asked.
“No, where?”
“MTV. Maybe next time we’ll watch the videos.”
I couldn’t wait though. When I went home I turned on the TV and found MTV, a station I hadn’t yet watched. My mother had warned me not to watch cable. Someone somewhere along the way, probably elsewhere on TV, had said that heavy metal music was the work of the devil. No one was around, so I turned on the channel and had a look for myself. After a few wild songs with long-haired men cranking guitars in the air, Poison came on with their makeup, fluorescent green lights, and fireworks. “Nothin’ but a Good Time” was an anthem for young party kids. If the devil was there I couldn’t see it.
We got to know each other more the rest of the week and listened to some other albums. The punk and glam rock was growing on me. After that week, Jeff introduced me to his brother Andy. He was cool and calm too. I instantly clicked with him and began hanging with him too.
$$$
As I grew more popular, my grades began to slip. My attention span struggled. It was as if I couldn’t handle having friends. But I had to change. I had to be crazy. There would always be a big one and a smart one and a dirtbag one, but there needed to be a crazy one with guts. My theatrical reciting of wrestling promos and lines from Scarface put me on the map.
“Oh, he’s so dramatic,” the hall monitors would say.
I took what I saw in movies, music, and professional wrestling and regurgitated it to be funny. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it got me into trouble. But it always got me attention.
The world was changing for Steven and me, and our group was expanding. The Kennedy’s also lived on Venice on the block right between us. We were filling in representation all the way down the street. Nothing could stop us.
8
WE PULLED UP into the long circular driveway. The lawn, where a full sized tennis court once stood in the middle, was now bright green sod. A goldfish pond was on the far side of the property and large hedges shielded the house from the street and from the neighbors on both sides. We parked in front of the giant white house, what seemed to us like a mansion— two floors, five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a sun room, a family room, an office, and a giant living room with a grand piano and a bay window overlooking the Great South Bay. In the summer their sailboat and speedboat were right outside in the canal on their personal docks. Two expensive cars were parked in the driveway out front. We walked into a kitchen and dining room overflowing with food and drink. Abundance to the brim.
The family was small, but full and loud— four great aunts, three great uncles, a few cousins, second cousins, and third cousins. The aunts were the loudest, especially when they drank. The men were quiet and reserved.
Christmas was grand like a Roman festival. The giant tree stood in the living room next to the piano. Upon arriving, all the kids would run right to the mound of gifts to seek out packages with their name on it. There was tons of food too. All my great aunts, and my grandmother, were doing quite well at this point. Aunt Judy was doing the best. By this point, she had four homes. Judy would get out of her Jaguar and enter the house with a long fur coat, a dead animal on her head too, and big diamond rings and necklaces. All the ladies had jewelry. This was show time. The experience of being around all their flashy possessions gave me perspective. I also usually got twenty dollar bills, which wasn’t a lot coming from people who flaunted their goods, but I guess I was lucky to get anything at all. My mother had years where she had to borrow money just to get a tree, and yet we were in the same room with millionaires.
Our family dynamic forced people who otherwise wouldn’t associate with one another to be in the same room on holidays. This was good and bad. Good for them to see a lower class person as a fellow human being and family member, past the surface problems. Good because I got to see how other people lived and enjoyed the fruits of life, and also because I learned that money doesn’t make anyone fulfilled. Bad because people thrown into a mix just don’t relate, and no matter what, you can’t get them to understand why your problems exist especially if you don’t understand the origins yourself.
My younger cousin Courtney enjoyed piano and violin lessons and weekends on her boat. She lived with her grandmother Judy in a Bridgehampton mansion. Here I was down and out and this girl had the nerve to come crying to me at a family get together about how hard life was.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“I want to be a fashion designer.”
“So? Be one.”
“How? I might have to go to Miami or Beverly Hills.”
“I’m sure there are designers in the Hamptons.”
“Did I tell you about my dad’s newest wife?”
Sure, Courtney’s biological mother was a resident at the state sanitarium, and her father was a slouch who barely had a job his entire life as he waited to cash in on his mother’s fortune, but Judy gave Courtney the world. I guess making the best of it is too easy.
“Listen, I don’t have a pot to piss in. So I don’t know what to tell you.”
And she walked away.
$$$
The family didn’t like Don early on. To fit in with in-laws is always a difficult task— especially if they are well off. There was a dichotomy between my poor mother and her mother and this had only increased through the years. My grandmother and her third husband Andre had hit the jackpot with his plumbing pipe invention and they shot up in status with vacations, cars, and summer homes. This success must have egged on her sons-in-law and provoked the competition. Don had his detailing and had a good thing going, compared to my uncle Russell