About Me | My Life

My mother was barely 19 years old when she gave birth to me. My father was a drug addict, a habitual criminal, and a psychopath. My mother left him when I was 3 years old. He had been beating her up in front of me, and he and his friends manufactured illegal drugs in our residence. She called her father to come pick us up, one day, when the fear had finally become too much. Starting that day, we would be living with my grandparents.

My life at my grandparent's house was a mixed bag. It was full of very happy times. My mother spoiled me with toys, games, and pretty much anything that I wanted. I also, however, endured very severe and horrific abuse during these years of living with my grandparents. My mother eventually moved us out, and she remarried when I was about 8 years old.

The mixed bag continued, but life was absolute hell for much of the time. My stepfather was an alcoholic and a very abusive man. I was terrified of him, and he terrorized us constantly. Sometimes, his fits of rage were so sudden and so extreme, that me, my mother, and my baby sister would run out of the house barefoot, get in my mother's car, and speed away to my grandparents house. We did this when my mother feared for our safety or for our lives.

This may sound like I had a bad life. Bad is inaccurate. Good is also inaccurate. Saying that I had a bad life or saying that I had a good life would connote consistency and order. You cannot make order out of chaos, and my early life was defined by chaos. The chaos included things that were very good and things that were very bad.

I endured abuse, yes, but I was also very spoiled. Enduring abuse and being spoiled are not mutually exclusive, which may be a suprise to people who grew up in healthier homes. I had games and toys and friends, and there were many good times.

My stepfather's work happened in spurts. When he got a job, he would be out of town for months at a time. The sound of the gravel grinding under the tires of his pickup truck, as he headed to the bottom of the road, was like that big ball that falls in Times Square on New Year's day. It signaled that it's time to party. My stepfather was a tyrant, but when it was just my mother in charge of the home, I did whatever the hell that I wanted to.

Then there were the other things that I had going for me. My life lacked privilege, in so many ways, yes, but for sure I had my blessings. It was apparent to others, from the time that I was a very young child, that I am uncommonly bright. There was a big deal made of this for my entire childhood and for most of my adulthood. It earned me credibility among my peers.

As the years progressed in school, I became one of the popular kids. I wasn't the most popular, but the many of the other kids looked up to me. It was a blessing to have friends and to have a chance at having something in life.

Then the teachers at my middle and high school were in my corner like on one else would ever be. It rips my heart out, to think of how I did nothing to pay them back. It was often quite the opposite. I made life hard for people who killed themselves trying to help me.

There were also all the nice clothes that I had. I was a poor kid. My family was poor. All of those games and toys that I had- they were made possible by my poor mother wearing ragged clothes and almost never doing anything for herself. The kind of clothes that I wanted to wear were just out of her budget. Poor kids like me just couldn't have those clothes, except maybe one item or two here and there.

That all changed, at age 12, when Dad popped up out of the woodwork and made me one of the rich kids. He mailed me a check for $600. It was totally unexpected. Soon after, I started seeing him on the weekends. He gave me a $50 weekly allowance, for doing absolutely nothing. He took me on shopping sprees and to game arcades. I was addicted to video games, and we'd pump a bucket of quarters into all of my favorites.

What I liked most of all, about all of the prize money I was getting, was that my wardrobe was completely transformed. I had a closet full of all of those nice clothes that my mother couldn't afford. The kids at school thought I was rich. I seemed to be very lucky, and I was.

Dad lived in an old wormy chestnut house with a lady in her late 70s, who he was "taking care of." The old lady's house was just down the road from my paternal grandfather's house. As of this time Dad was doing all of this, which was about 1992, my paternal grandfather and I had years before reconnected. My grandfather had taken me under his wing, to have a relationship with me and to teach me about life.

Things seemed like they were going so well, when Dad first came back onto the scene. I had the time with my grandfather. I also had a relationship with my father, that I had ached and cried for, for so long. On top of this, I was suddenly drenched in the nicest clothes that money could buy. I was drenched in video games. I even had a nice basketball goal. This was despite being a skinny, geeky kid, who couldn't play good at all and who almost never played. Being frivolous seemed permissible. Dad also paid my mother 3 year's backpay child support, all at once, at this same time.

It all, unfortunately, went downhill fairly early on. Dad began to act cruel and mean to me. He had a motive for buying me all of those things. He wanted me to come live with him and the old lady. She was where all of the money came from, and she completely adored me. She was obviously very lonely. Dad wasn't taking care of her nearly as much as he was taking care of himself. He was taking care of himself by frivolously spending every dollar she'd accumulated over her life. She had a lot of money, a wormy chestnut house, and a whole lot of real estate. Decades later, my aunt would tell me "Lenny went through it all."

Perhaps he could have "went through it all" faster, if I had joined their happy family. I tend to think that was his motive. My father had some problems, and it was often a mistake to take his actions at face value. He played people like they were chess pieces, and he was good at it.