I started drifting over to Hollywood in 1962. Whenever I got the chance I would go. I'd ride the bus over there from Glendale or if I got lucky hitched a ride with someone. It didn't matter how I got there, just as long as I got there. The place, in my mind, was the ultimate turn on. It was where all the magic happened. People who actually got paid to do stuff I'd do for free. I couldn't imagine how people like that lived, so I wanted to find out. I just wanted to get the chance to meet someone like that and talk to them about how they got there and what it was like to live there. Everything I did and thought was geared to ending up in that town. I belonged there, I thought, and nothing was going to keep me from being there. Looking back on it now I can see how the power of ones thinking can actually make things happen, whether in the long run, it's any good for them or not. To this day, I'm not sure I had any other choices but the ones I made in the matter. It was more than a desire with me, it was my obsession. Maybe if my life had been better and our family wasn't so screwed up things would have gone in a different direction for me. But the way it was, was the way it was, and I was just using the only thing I had at the time to solve my problem. I believed that I had the power and ability to end up where I saw myself in my own mind. I had a picture so clear in my head that nothing else could penetrate. No threat of any kind could sway me from my path once it got started. I had seen where I was going back in Arizona and new then what my path was to be. Time passed and here I was, standing on Hollywood Blvd., in total awe of my surroundings. I can also see looking back now, how naive I was about the town, which I know through my own experience, can be a snake pit. I guess when you're trying to blot out bad memories from earlier times anything looks better to you than the past, so it can fool you into thinking it's ok, and safe. There was nothing safe about what I was doing at the time and I always had the feeling that if my mother knew where I was she'd be angry, and try to stop me. I was 17 and roaming around the streets alone. I was a sucker for a complement and my judgement about people was piss poor. You could have sold me a bill of goods about anything.
Back in Glendale, I'd go to school and pretend I was like everybody else, but inside I knew I was different. I think most of the kids knew I was different too. Even though I'd become pretty popular, it was all a show to hide where I'd come from. I still had that feeling of being damaged goods from the past and it drove me to over compensate in everything I did. It was like, if I could just keep moving no one would ever see who I really was. The guy with the mentally ill brother and the mother who couldn't stay married, which in my mind meant, I was screwed up too. I was always on. Like a performance every single minute of my life. Dancing and weaving trying to keep you off guard so you wouldn't get a good look at me. It was exhausting and sooner or later I'd crash and become deeply depressed and combative. It was those episodes that separated me from others more than anything else. Whereas something that might have been a joke when I was in a good mood, was now seen by me, as a reason to go to war with someone. In that mood, I was not afraid of anything and because of it I nurtured that part of myself for that very reason. I didn't like being afraid, and when I was, I was humiliated inside and wanted to escape. So that feeling of not being afraid, that came from depression and anger, was in my mind, a friend I could depend on.
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