3:40 AM... phone rings... I am not sleeping near the phone which means... I expect no one and the kid is home (or he was when I went to bed at 1 am ish)

I stumble around the house looking for phone...

I am bleary eyed and figure it is one of my drunk and dial friends. It is not a drunk and dial nor Mr Insomnia... none of my usual late night call culprits

"Hello?" I murmur still half asleep

"Mom?" The hair on the back of my neck stands up and Im awake NOW!!! I check cell, yes its my son Jameson....

*thinking* ~but he was in his bed when I went to sleep~

"Yeeees" I say hoping the next few words do not involve the word POLICE!!!

"Don't get mad... I did something stupid"

I catch my breath and wait to hear...

"I tried to walk to Pudgys"

silent long pause

"Hello Mom... you there?"

silent long pause

I look at the clock... 3:40am

"Uh honey... Pudgy lives 14 miles away"

"Yea I know it was really stupid... but I'm really tired"

silent long pause

"I am at Dave and Busters, I am really tired and thirsty"... "

silent long pause while I try to picture where Dave and Busters is in my hazy mind

"You walked to Dave and Busters? That is like... 7 fucking miles?"

"I know it was stupid... I'm tired and thirsty"

silent long pause

"Hello Mom?... You there?"

Now I'm suddenly disappointed it wasn't a drunk and dial

"What do you want J?" (he hates when I call him J)

"Can you come pick us up?"

"Well I don't have much of a fucking choice now do I?"

So yes, that is how I ended up at Dave and Busters at 4am with the dog, a bottle of apple juice and 2 multi coloured hair teenagers this morning...

When the New York Dolls came together... it was 1971.

I was of course too young to know anything about them until about 1976 (I was about 12).

My life was a busy one in upper middle class, white Jewish America... Ballet, Violin, Flute, Guitar... my mother had visions of giving me everything she never had... enriching me with culture so that I could marry myself a nice Jewish doctor one day. That was about the sum of her dreams for me. We lived in a moderately upwardly mobile neighborhood on Long Island. The move was the beginning of the decline of my parents marriage (although it may have been bad all along, I was just too young to notice until then).

Born in Philadelphia in 1965, my parents moved me and my 2 much older sisters to Charleston WVa only 6 months after I came into this world. I do not recall this of course but apparently my house was a battlefield. My eldest sister always banging heads with my tyrannical father, my mother withdrawn and uncommunicative and my other sister, sweet, sensitive and easily hurt... tiptoed about trying avoid the negative wrath of the denizens within.

I was of course just a baby... and oblivious to the angst in the homestead. My father... the militaristic aviator ruler of the roost, my mother making snide remarks under her breath yet never standing up to his ridiculous dictatorship. When I was 3, both sisters flew the coop, the eldest... 15, took off to hitch hike across the US to CA to live on a commune known as Wheelers Ranch and one year later, also at 15, my other sister was accepted to an extremely experimental and progressive school called Franconia College and she moved to New Hampshire. In that same year, I had my first run in with my father. I got lost in some mall or flee market if I recall and when they found me he started berating me for wandering. Everyone was afraid of my Dad and no one had ever defied him in our home... but I did not know this.. I just knew what I knew! I informed him that it was a free world and if I wanted to wander off and get hit by a truck it was my prerogative...I was no more than 4 or 5... but that was the beginning of the decline of my relationship with my father.

So around 1974, when I was 9... my father took a job as Assistant Chief at Kennedy Airport and we moved to Long Island. My mom hated the neighborhood, she hated my neighbors, she could not stand my father... so in what I assume was an effort to avoid the stress, my father started working 2 more jobs... just to stay out of the house and most of the time it was just my Mom and I and my Mother was on a mission to "culture" me.

Well, the New York Dolls changed all that. Iggy Pop had a big hand in it, and a girl named Joanne Karlinski as well... I guess the Ramones were at fault, my friend Christopher Martin (I hope you are ok Chris) helped a great deal and perhaps the Sex Pistols pushed me over the edge but... my mothers dreams were dashed that's for sure.

In 76 I was already a KISS fan and living on Long Island, I had heard rumblings of Twisted Sister. I have no idea how I became turned on to the New York Dolls, it may have been a friend back then named John Sullivan (now known as Sully and drummer for the Creamsicles in NYC) but by 13 I became enamored with them. I read every article I could about them and had heard the place they hung out was at Max's Kansas City. I knew I had to find a way to get there...

We lived on Long Island but really the City was a 2 hour train ride away and I had only visited the city with my mother to shop at Bon Wit Teller... I had no conscious idea of where anything was and that fact was... the city was a darker rougher place back then not that I knew.

Well, I decided in September that the best way for my absence to not be noticed right away was to either sleep at a friends house or bail on Halloween. I do not recall how I ended up sitting on the train heading for NYC on Halloween of 1978(maybe 79) but there I was... all I had was a vague idea of where Max's was due to a newspaper article I had clutched in my hand and I had $50 in my pocket and that was that.

I landed at the doorstep of Max's Kansas City at about 11pm on Halloween 1978 (or 79) and saw that when I had gotten there... Iggy Pop was the headliner. I had never heard of him before, so I set out scouring the floor absolutely sure I would find one of the New York Dolls...

to be continued

I live in a world of amazing possibilities... it is a world I share with others although I know that many do not see all of the possibility I see. I have reveled in greatness and wallowed in the muddy trenches of misery. I have paraded in pride and withered and died in shame over and over again.

I am too much for many to handle... having traveled too far, experienced too much and offer an open non judgmental heart that so many just simply cannot understand.

I have cried for the sorrows of the world, feeling as if I were a direct part of them, yet knowing and understanding really how infinitesimal I am in this huge universe.

So yeah perhaps from the outside I have done a great deal of almost fantastic things... famous men with which I have shared a bed, amazing places in which I have had the opportunity to go, things I have learned, experienced and seen.. awesome people with which I have had the chance to meet... and I am now in a place in my life where everything about who I am is a resulting culmination of who I dreamed I may one day be... I am independent, happy, successful and strong and nothing really can shake me... for I have so much now and need so little.

But there is one thing that shakes my tree and ruins my day. One thing that makes my entire amazing world feel as if it could crumble and fall like a brittle fall leaf succumbing to the moist and fertile darkness of the forest earth... this thing that can throw me and rattle time itself is such a small and simple thing, but it is truly my one true adversary... it is sickness... and not any sickness, it is sickness when it strikes my kid.

I feel so small and helpless tonight after a grand Happy Hour party with friends... numerous wonderful men flirting my way, a beautiful meal with 2 women that are dear to my heart... I come home to my 16 year old love of my life... burning up and coughing, his ear raging with infection and I simply about crumble and die. I race to Walgreen's to purchase the best heating pad... the house is already awash in sea salt and menthol as I have had the house humidified in pagan herbs and homoeopathic aeration's all day...I stop at McDonald's to obtain a vanilla milk shake and French fries just to be sure something gets down into that almost one dimensional trunk of his.

I have been alone for so long dealing with Jameson... it is beyond second nature, it is just one entire part of who I am...I cry and worry for his illness but I also fear for myself in selfish denial of the fact that soon, this amazing being will not need me to tend to him or see to his illnesses. No longer will I need to run to the drugstore and nurture his needs. Soon it will be just me... once again back in that place that bares no resemblance of home.

I will always be there for him but yet I wonder... in time... who will be there for me?

The thought or act of mediocrity... festers in me great contempt. It is the bane of my existence as well as the crux of my angst...

I can just "BE"... it took me years to get to that place where just "BEing" is actually enough. Yet I cannot remain in this "BE" place forever... that ugly thorn of discontent stirs in me a need to create, to experience, to build and grow and fight the natural flow of the universe.

Wake up, eat, sleep, work... I see so many do it without thought or hesitation... worker bees stuck in an endless and pointless circle of repetitive and unimportant tasks.

I survive the mundane day to day, by broadening my scope and seeing the wonder in all things. Yet driven by passion with such overwhelming force I get lost in my need to explore and my need to quench my interminable desire

My life is undeniably entrenched by the need to be inspired as well as to inspire. I am grateful for the brilliant souls that fill my life daily with their love, challenges, talents, desires and dreams.

I revel in their triumphs as much as their mistakes and inhale their great essence of existence with little judgement and great acceptance.

I look around me and those closest to me in my life, are all similar beings to myself. Strange yet beautiful... every single one of them are driven by their passion first and everything else follows at a distant second.

Today my day to day routine seems mundane and even tragic. But I revel in its simple wonder and I thank the heavens for all of the gifts offered me on this very average day.

Feed the cats, walk the dog, eat...

Tomorrow I will change the world

Today I will just "BE"

many of these blogs are evolving excerpts from my book... Green Haired, Boot Wearing Monsters from Outer Space. Although a great deal of the information is autobiographical, this is a fictional tale and unless otherwise stated, all names or similarities to anyone or anything are purely fictional)

On a planet... far far away... green haired adolescents ruled.

In this group, there was of course... great diversity...

A multitude of colours graced the fur of these unusual beings and the one thing that truly defined them all as a group, was that they were obviously part of no other group.

They heralded from many places across the Earth, but this story focuses mostly on the far Western reaches of an exotic land called California... namely, San Francisco.

These feral young creatures came from a dying planet. Lost, confused, afraid and misunderstood, these aliens just did not appear to genetically fit into the planet wide state of being.

Refugees... from an assuredly ill fated world they were... brought into existence by those that had failed to have the foresight to make a point of fostering their growth appropriately. Their elders so dazed and confused, numbed and detached... these young and impressionable cubs ran about boundless and free with reckless abandon, left to fend for themselves, if not physically then at the very least intellectually.

The most unique part of the transcendence of these alien beings, was that at first, each individual member was not of a similar race. Many came from worlds dichotomous of the other... Some fled from violent, drug and alcohol infused families, where terror and misery reigned... but many (like myself) came from more innocuous and less obviously tragic situations, yet their over indulged, vacuous and boring lives without meaning were almost as serious an offense.

A similar breed to these young creatures first became noted in the dankest urban regions of the UK, namely London and Manchester.

Working class inhabitants birthed to a world of little prosperity and a society steeped in a sort of general malaise and despair. Not starving but hungry, not stupid but devoid of the most basic of knowledge. On the days that the sun actually burned bright through the smoky and polluted haze that encompassed the most urban regions of England, it (the sun) could not well enough penetrate the relentless smog and warm the needy faces of the wanting children below.

Unrest ran as rampant as the unemployment rate and the lack of future possibilities was palpable. Howls of "No Future" soared for the stars from the wild gangs of working class youth, living in urban sprawl alongside literal packs of wild dogs in England and they had good reason to be so disinclined.

It was easier for the American media to understand the disdain of British Youth. The repressed middle class of England was in notorious bad shape and as is the American way... it was always easier to point a finger over seas than right here at home.

Many of the North American born "miscreants" that dotted the land mass from coast to coast in big boots and flaming hair were denied their right to be angry. Many did NOT come from financially repressed areas or abusive backgrounds and even if they did, it was dwarfed in scope, if not by reality then by the media in comparison to the struggles of the Blue Collar UK.

The US was repeatedly denied the divine "right" to have such an angry youth... so wealthy, prosperous and over fed were they, that they could not possibly be so 'angry' about anything.

Coming from what was considered perpetual "comfort", compared to the centuries of class based repression in the UK, enforced the fact that it was this exact ignorance that was the crux of the problem. Education, money and opportunity to succeed in a society where not what fed the passions of the mind and soul of the artist... and that was what was so very missing...

The very expectations and goals of our elders made no sense to a creative souls and offered us no fulfillment. This was a time where even the upper middle class kids felt lied to, cheated and abused by the government, our teachers, our parents and even our music.

Over produced, cocaine snorting, drug and food bloated bands, sailing on a wave of over indulgence and a flatulent explosion of non industriousness, the fallout of disco on top of a future foreseeing a President whose sole credentials was that he had acted in Hollywood films with a monkey in his prime, were just a small part of what drove us all to angst.

Boredom from the suburbs and over medicated parents were excuse enough. Overcrowded schools, tired underpaid teachers, lack of family communication and ties were all defining parts of a very complicated and deep vein of anger, sorrow and a feeling of our own sort of "no future", or at least a future completely out of our hands.

With no one to speak for us with eloquence as had the Beatniks and Hippies, no Jack Kerouac's of our time, we wallowed in misery in silence... projecting our angst filled madness through our music, wild hair and obvious rejection of what was considered culturally acceptable norms.

We blamed those that in a better time should have been those for us to look up to and from which to learn and we had every right to blame them. So wrapped up in making more, buying more, having more and deadening the pain via LEGAL drugs and alcohol, left us standing in a sea of zombies... the walking dead in the massive suburbs of middle class America... we may not have acutely been aware of it, but we certainly knew something was wrong.

Everyone kept telling us this was how we were expected to be and live, but no one could tell us why. What was this obsession with conformity? Confusion, mistrust and sadness ran deep in our hearts.

Somehow, whatever elements had come together to bring us to this place at the edge of a continent was enough to alter us forever and make us somehow a new race of beings. It may have not lasted long and it had many tragic outcomes... perhaps our own version of "Lord of the Flies" at times... but there is no doubt, that we... for at least a minute... all felt like we were home...

No future... no future indeed... without the appropriate guidance, and with the disdain appointed to misfits such as we... we all lived hard and wild, but at least we were part of something... or maybe we just thought we were.

To pilfer a quote (thank you Chuck), "We all thought it was much more than it really was..." but then looking at the changes in the world today... perhaps this is not actually the case. Perhaps we were the tragic fodder, turned catalyst to a new world order. For certainly things have changed for the better.

The few of us who made it to adult hood, now have avenues to use our knowledge, our voices and our understanding to help head this Earth for change... and maybe with the right sort of nurturing of our kids... we will see that change in our lifetime.

todays excerpt is dedicated to my long lost friend Eldon (aka El Duce). I never liked El Duce, but Eldon was my dear friend... whose hard life exemplified much of what was wrong... more than he may have ever known... his life cut short by the wheels of a train...

I find your anemic, over indulgent diatribe of visceral nonsense, ranting and raving about this and that a bore.

Your need to show what you know and do absolutely nothing about anything EVER is infuriating.

Under researched over thought views based on insipid assumptions and minuscule amounts of fact.

Over verbalized, misplaced, impassioned ideas that vacillate contradictorily day after day after day after fucking DAY.

Who the Hell are you and what are you trying to prove with your overindulgent vocabulary and lack of basic understanding?

Vocabulary strung together by needless complex circles describing simple and completely non-revolutionary pseudo facts.

Holy CHRIST on and on you go blah blah blah... pretending to know everything and knowing nothing at all.

Yeah yeah.. I should tell you... I should be as unflinchingly brutal and honest as I am usually to everyone else but BUT...

Then I would have to engage you in conversation, I would have to CALL you and instigate yet another onslaught from your impotent mouth.

Lame ass, pathetic and obvious views, memorized from some obscure article on the net.

The worse thing about it is you are just so full of shite and you do not even KNOW you it.

Shut the fuck up and listen to someone who knows more than you for a change... and thats just about everyone!!!

**full names used with permission**

The night before...

The band was at my house for Thanksgiving spaghetti. The house was full of booze, hairspray, skateboards, drugs and chaos. Lost kids huddling together for warmth in a cold world that had alienated us... but of course we did not know what compelled us to this place of being, we were simply there.

I found Kris Kross in my bedroom forcing the powerful black horse into her neck and I stood there in horror as she smiled and plunged the warm, evil liquid into her ivory neck...as if nothing was wrong. To her, it was day to day life, for me it was the beginning of the end.

I did not know her well but I always liked her. She was a surly blonde Bull Dyke beauty that was born on a skate board and man she was tough... something I pretended to be, but she was the real shit!!!

"Wanna try?" she asked me... I can see it today as clearly as if it were yesterday... steely mad eyes full of way to much experience for her baby face...it was offered to me like sugar cookies to an innocent baby for the first time... The problem was... I thought about it for a second before I left to finish cooking dinner...

Batman was there, passed out on the couch... I think Nazi Nancy had gone home to LA for the holiday. My pet duck Tank... walked the halls with a limping gate.

I left the kitchen to see what was up and everyone was out of it... Jynx lay half comatose in my bed muttering something about "maintenance"

The rest is foggy... we ate, we drank cheap Gallo wine... I think Kamala had a gig at Mitchell Brothers and we discussed going to see her new show which involved snakes...

It was later that evening that I found Amy sprawled out on the bathroom floor... she was barely breathing. She was a curly headed, dirty blonde who had come from a Hell of a life. Abuse in her family was rampant and the hurt in her eyes ran deep and true.

Dave hated her... he'd sneer at me and speak of the evil things he could do to her under his breath whenever she entered the room(as was his way)

One night I came home from work and Amy was pale as a ghost sitting in the hall. Dave was in our room those dark eyes gleaming, smokin a dube and listening to the Ramones.

Apparently, she had come onto him while I was at work... he acted obliging until she was in his face and then whispered in her ear that if she came near him again he'd cut her tits off and yeah, that was my Dave... She stayed away from him from that point on!

Amy was supporting her drug habit by stripping at one of the nastiest bars in town. I think it was called the Starlight... on Market Street.

One day I had gone to pick Amy up from work and the stripper dancing was about 7 months pregnant and had blood trailing down her scab infested arm as she writhed like some sickly robotic serpent... most likely the best she could do with her blood full of smack and her tummy full of baby.

Well there was Amy, lips white, almost blue and in my favourite pair of pants... BITCH!

I called 911 for the 4th time that month and had one of the more lucid boys, carry her down the long flight of steps to the street level.

No one would stay with her... they were all too busy being high to care. So there I sat, half crocked on wine and vodka... waiting once again, for Mike and Vince (yes I knew the paramedics by name) to come scoop her up.

There was a knock on the door.

It was early.... well at least early for me back then... Hell, it could have been 3pm for all I know today.

It had been another miserably eventful night... the "horse" was rampant, galloping from room to room in my 5 bedroom, Victorian house on Haight and Ash. People were crashed everywhere in the huge old house.

Responding to the pounding on the door. I stumbled down the ridiculously curving and precarious stairway; my fire engine red hair standing on end from weeks of hair spray and a far from fitful nights sleep. Rubbing the haze from my eyes there they stood... the two paramedics that had been called to my house the night before. They leered at me with disdain and informed me that 911 calls to my house would no longer be answered.

I knew I had to leave California.

Daves father was going to prison for a long, long time and he had to fly back to Houston to be with him. Millie and I escorted him to the airport... I do not recall how we got there.

He vanished into the San Francisco airport bathroom... and returned with his cold black eyes pinned. He stared at me with those doe eyes in silence and then the only person I trusted on earth was gone.

It took me 8 days to sell everything, ship my books to the East Coast and tell all my bands to come get their shit I was leaving. I did not call any of my friends and I do not recall how I got to the airport. Before I left, I was already gone.

My faithful leather jacket, my stuffed Saint Bernard and a suitcase full of black clothes was about all that came with me.

Goodbye California, hello life.

He had a great job
He had a great house
A nice boat, a motorcycle (gathering dust), a jet ski and other sundry recreational vehicles
He had it all

His great house was always full
Great kids, wife, 2 great dogs
His kids were happy, his wife was happy, even the dogs seemed happy
Life was good

Work kept him busy
House kept him busy
For work he would often travel from town to town and even other countries
He hated hotels

They took great vacations
Only as far as Florida
He would carefully and strategically plan out their vacation plans filling every moment
He was successful

He was busy
Greatly busy
Any second he did not have anything pressing to fill the void, made him feel empty
He was important

In his great house
With his great family
Any moment left to chance, any second of open free time, he was compelled to fill with chores
He was responsible

In a full house
Full of chattering people
He sat silently on the couch waiting for the next busy day full of important things to do
He was alone

Its days like yesterday that I just do not know what to do with myself....
I drift through the house aimlessly and bounce off of the walls into the night
nothing is real and there is no where I am meant to be... so I rest... 2 cats on my chest, dog at my side

dishes in the sink, even remnants from the party outside, yet I cannot take the few necessary little steps needed to clean it up
the cold, bitter, winter air rescues me... allows me to pretend it was just too cold.
its is my mocking ally knowing full well it has nothing to do with anything

the cold kept me from going out, the warm kept me in
yet I flounder through this small house from room to room
needing some reason... to take flight
but to where do I fly now?

sometimes I think... with so little to tie me down... I may just float away
like a helium balloon escaping the grasp of a small child in the park
a lurch at the string and then I am off
flying high above the houses and the streets I used to know

climbing and gliding ahead in rapid smooth succession
finally surpassing the clouds, invisible from view
*pop*