1973

Trouble At Home- Reform School Or The Marines?

What is my destiny?

      I came into this world with such promise and hope.

      I came into the world after being carried by my mother for six and a half months, weighing in at a meager five pounds.

      After sixteen and some years of a chaotic bittersweet life; I began another important phase of my life.

      I was attempting to become independent and striving to become a man.

      However, this particular year started off proving to be a real pisser. I had run into more than a bit of trouble with my mother and stepfather. They had finally discovered I was flunking out of school.

      In retrospect and without trying to lay blame at anyone’s door (other than what I deserve to lay on myself and to simply tell the facts as they are); my family life since the time that my mother and biological father divorced, along with a constellation of other events in my life had set in motion my downfall.

      After my mother divorced my father, it is alleged that my father in great anger over being the spouse that was dropped, barred my mother from interacting with his half of the family.

      My mother claimed until the day she was unable to communicate from an affliction with Alzheimer’s that he made very real threats of violence towards her if she ever dared to disobey him in this matter.

      This instance of exile from our American-Italian familial tribe left us socially in isolation.

      My mother also claims that out of revenge my father rarely paid child support and only after she would at great emotional and financial stress retain the skills of a lawyer was she able to get what little she did from him.

      To be fair to all concerned, I never had an opportunity to see financial spreadsheets of either of my parents to know what transactions had passed between them… if any occurred at all.

      I do remember the many nights that my extra-sensitive ears picked up on various phone conversations that my mother often had with relatives or friends and sometimes even my dad. I remember how her voice would often break with frustration, anger and grief. She railed against the fact that he was trying to punish her by withholding support so that we would all suffer. She resented the fact that he was using us as tools to hurt her.

      I may not have seen financial spreadsheets, but I did pick up enough from listening to my mother’s one-sided conversations to know that somehow my dad was failing her.

      I also had other opportunities to hear many of the two-sided conversations that my mother had with friends, relatives and my father. In the early years of their divorce, anxious to eavesdrop on the other phone, my sister, brother and I had our worst fears confirmed.

      Our dad did not love us. He was indeed giving her one reason or another as to why he was unable and often times unwilling to pay child support or alimony.

      One of his common excuses was that he felt it was not right for him to pay his ex-wife money so that she could live the high life as she ran around with other men; an assertion that was of course ridiculous.

      Another favorite fallback argument of his was that if we (his kids) suffered, it was her fault and not his… because she divorced him. His mantra was, if we went hungry or without clothes or medical attention, it was her fault.

      It was these late night heartbreaking eavesdropping sessions that made my siblings and my life seem fearful and uncertain.

      It was also the many conversations, mixed messages, unspecified expectations from our father and ultimately his callous neglect that we experienced over the years that cemented what we feared as tykes.

      Time and again, we came to the depressing realization that our dad did not love us, or even value us as much as a pair of his Sunday shoes.

      Of course being kids, we felt that somehow the fault was ours. We felt guilt over the fact that our parents may have stayed together if it was not for us.

      My poor mother attempted to deal with this hardship by moving all of us closer to her relatives in the rural tobacco country of North Carolina. She reasoned that at least she would have some support system as she worked two full time jobs to support us.

      Unfortunately, my mother had only a handful of relatives still living and most of them were either dysfunctional or unwilling to help, or unable to help.

Her life was a hardscrabble existence to provide for us.

      She never failed to put food on the dinner table, but often times, my brother James and I felt that there was never enough food. I often left the table hungry.

      The years of experience without strong family roots left my siblings and I without adult supervision.

      The early years of constantly moving about also left us without any substantial social connections or interactions as well.

      By the time I reached my freshman year in high school, I had become a randomly formed human being. I was a man-child, physically mature and yet in many ways socially arrested; and perhaps even emotionally arrested as well.

      The combination of years of anxiety, depression, guilt, mixing with my teenage hyperactivity, and my newly acquired over-amped man-sized sex drive had me compulsively walking the halls, hanging out at the mall by day with my wayward friends. These were in fact the first friends I ever had.

      My time spent with them was a constant search for alcohol, a party and girls that would share drinks, good times and sex. For me it was not so much the alcohol as much as the sex that I craved.

      Most of my friends were also dysfunctional. Although the majority of them had fathers and mothers in their homes; I could see then, as I can certainly see now with the power of hindsight and retrospect that their family dynamics had much to be desired.

      A handful of friends, the ones that were high-functioning, rarely squandered their time with my core group of dysfunctional friends insofar as that they did not pursue the distractions of partying and truancy with the same dedication.

      This small group of friends came from loving and supportive families. Ironically, it was from observing these friends and their wonderful families that my pain from feeling abandoned and unloved by my father and his family - were amplified.

      I could not help but to compare their fathers with mine. These frequent comparisons made it impossible to find my father measuring up and this fact rankled bitterly in my heart.

      It was with my friends and not my family, I felt for the first time accepted; and our pursuits dulled the sharp edge of my anxiety, fear and guilt.

      My sexual pursuits brought me pleasure and release from my growing hungers and these desperate encounters helped to dull the edge of my unconscious need for intimacy.

      At any rate, all this coupled with the school administration at Upper Merion High School; whose Principal Dr. Jay C. Smith had installed an open campus policy that for me was a formula for academic disaster. (See: Echoes In The Darkness by Joseph Wambaugh) The school administration did send letters home of my absences and my lackluster performance.

      I circumnavigated their attempt to contact my parents by intercepting any correspondence sent to our address by mail.

      The cluster-fuck that had become my life caught up with me however and my parents finally was face-to-face that I was screwing up in a big way.

      My mother was upset of course.

      She blamed herself for my truancy and felt that somehow she has failed as a mother. She was hurt to her core, because I had not come to her with any of my problems.

      It’s not that I no longer loved or trusted her, but it is hard for a horny teenager to chat with his mother about distractions of the flesh. How does a teenage boy filled with guilt, fear, shame, and an over arching desire to become independent instead of remaining the burden he had always felt he was break this to his mother?

      How could I tell her about all this and my fears of the future and my doubts about being able to make it in the world?

      How does a boy break it to his mother that studying schoolwork had become impossible because all of my brain cells were preoccupied with sex and the procurement of sex?

      Aside from my personal distractions, the years spent as a latch key kid as my poor mother worked long hard hours made me feel as if most of the time I was a self-reliant adult.

      Even the years previous to my parents divorce… as early as kindergarten, my poor mother suffered from depression – no doubt about her predicament with being married to a man that was gone months at a time and emotionally inaccessible during his furloughs while home; that coupled with minor thyroid problems warped her circadian rhythm.

      From the first day of my imprisonment in Catholic school up until the divorce, she would stay up most of the night cleaning. During the day, while the three of us were at school, she shopped and ran errands. 

      She slept much of the time after our school day was finished; waking only, when it was time for her to make supper.

      My siblings and I sometimes took advantage of her chronic sombulistic condition.

Whenever we wanted to do something questionable, or something that she normally would not allow; we would hang around like vultures waiting for her to pass out, waiting to hear the welcome sound of her snoring.

      In the twilight of awareness, between wakefulness and death she would give us her consent to do whatever we wanted.

      We did not see much of our mother through middle school because she often worked two full-time jobs. And during the first half of her second marriage she worked two jobs while Jake spent a lot of time away from home as he tried to jumpstart his sales career. They both worked so hard. Our family’s economic survival depended on this.

      Even if I could have done the unthinkable, such as, telling my parents that I had become a sex junky; their work schedule did not allow for much opportunity to discuss any problems that we may be encountering.

      As unthinkable it was to go to my mother about my problems, going to Jake was not even worth consideration.

      At his core, Jake’s heart was in the right place, but the fact that my real father had been withholding support to make my mother suffer rankled him to the bone.

      Being a pragmatist, he vowed to one day become wealthy while he attended to the necessity of financially caring for the woman he loved and her three little ball and chains. He vowed that one day he would become so wealthy as to tell my dad to fuck off.

(And he did).

      Aside from his heart being in the right place, Jake was almost impossible to relate to; even during supper he felt kids should be eating and a free forum of talking was not allowed.

      Jake had been imprinted at an early age that only adults should talk during supper; kids should keep quiet unless they were spoken to.

      I must say, back then, he was very uptight guy.

It’s not that he purposely went out of his way to be emotionally unavailable to my siblings and I, it’s just that he was so mentally obsessed about his career and attaining wealth.

      Anyway, all those years of essentially living in my family’s house alone, made me separate and somewhat self-reliant, even if it was to a dysfunctional degree.

       It was not just my parents that I had problems going to; the thought of talking over my fears or concerns with any adult during my childhood would not have occurred to me.

      Once my parents recovered from the shock that I was flunking out of school, they decided that if I dropped out, I would have to pay room and board.

      I thought this was appropriate and even eager for the opportunity to pay my share. In my mind, I reasoned that since I was working full time, I had the right to come and go as I pleased.

      My parents, however, had other ideas of what I could and could not do. They let me know in no uncertain terms that I was still a minor and I had to follow their house rules.

      I raged against their terms and strongly asserted that since I was paying rent, I deserved the right as any adult tenant. My sister – the informer – blurted out a dirty secret that my parents were keeping from me.

      They were secretly putting aside the money I was paying them, for my future. God bless them. They had nothing but good intentions.

      However, instead of gratitude, I was outraged.

I felt that they weren't taking my need to be independent very seriously.

      My behavior and my refusal to follow their rules, none of which was really out of the ordinary; was due to my stubborn need to be a man.

      Out of frustration, they finally decided that I was either going to have to be sent reform school or the Marine Corp.