Heaven on Earth?

I decided I had enough of San Francisco so I remember trying to decide where I would go next. I was on a quest to find something but just what I wanted to find I really didn’t know but I felt when I found it, I would know. I remember opening an atlas of the US and closing my eyes and pointing to a spot in the open atlas. My finger pointed close to Las Vegas, Nevada so that is where I decided to go. I had grown up a gambler and loved playing poker, betting on sports, playing pool and shooting craps. I figured why not go where the real action is.

I teamed up with a kindly, old gent named Willie who I met at the horse track just south of San Francisco. He occasionally went to Vegas and he said he would accompany me there. I only had enough money to make it to Bakersfield by bus so we hitchhiked the rest of the way. I will never forget the feeling of seeing Las Vegas for the first time. I thought I had died and went to heaven! I had fallen asleep in the back seat of someone’s car who had picked us up. When I awoke, I was so amazed I just couldn’t believe it! This is what I had been looking for all of my life! LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!!!  I was so thrilled to be in the gambling capital of the world and I was thoroughly convinced I was gonna hit it big there. Willie had some money so we got a motel roon and had to share a queen size bed. He tried molesting me the next morning. I pushed him away and told him to knock it off. He went and took a shower and I took his wallet with $60.00 in it and left him there. I still feel bad about that to this day but I guess I felt he deserved it for trying that stuff with me. I hope the old guy made it home okay. Willie, your probably dead by now but if you by some crazy chance you are reading this, please forgive me for taking your wallet and leaving you without any money to get home. I forgive you for what you tried to do to me.

I was only 18 years old at the time so I couldn’t work in the casinos, so I worked a number of odd jobs for awhile. I ended up visiting my old home back in Stamford, CT a couple of times in between but I always wound up going back to Las Vegas to pursue my “dream”. As soon as I turned 21 years old, I went back to Las Vegas to stay forever, or so I thought at the time. I wanted so bad to be a dealer in the casinos. I ended up dealing for about 5 years or so. Made pretty good money doing it as in those days the tips were pretty good. It is a hard, boring job though as you get tired of dealing with demanding tourists, overbearing pit bosses, the eye-in-the-sky watching you, deadbeat local degenerate gamblers and so on. It surely is not as glamourous a profession as it might seem.

One night I was out gambling in downtown Las Vegas and I decided to stop in the Lady Luck Hotel wher I used to work. I said hello to a few people I knew and then I walked past a Blackjack table and saw the cutest little China doll I had ever seen in my life! She actually was Taiwanese and was born and raised in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her name was Liu. It was love at first sight, for me at least, and I asked her to go out with me after work but she declined. I kept coming back to the casino and bugging her by playing at her table until finally she agree to go out with me. I was totally head-over-heels in love and proposed to her within a week. Amazingly she accepted my proposal and 3 weeks later we were married in a little white wedding chapel on the Strip. The minister was the only other person at our wedding.

Her parents, who were back in Taiwan, and her sister were shocked to say the least. They demanded that we get an annulment but I wasn’t about to get it annulled, as they desired. Thus started a long battle with her family as they had high expectations for Liu and I had just throughly destroyed them all.

Neither Liu nor I knew what each other was really like and we were soon in for a big shock. She didn’t know how much of a degenerate gambler I was and I didn’t know how tough she could be. I thought I was marrying this cute, sweet, little submissive gal who wouldn’t harm a fly. Little did I know she would turn out to be a real tiger inside who I never could fully tame. Perhaps she should have caught on when I borrowed money from her to get married? I think she first realized what she had done when I came back to our apartment and confessed I had gambled away the money that was to pay for our wedding pictures. She had a real hard time with that and the reality of who I was and who she had just promised to be married to for the rest of her life set in. We had some real bad ups and downs for awhile but some how we survived those first two years in Vegas.

I wanted to start a family thinking that perhaps if we had kids, things would get better. I realized that casinos and Las Vegas were not a good environment for us to raise kids in so I made the decision to go back to school and I earned a degree in Computer Programmer from one of those Technical Colleges. I dealt Craps at night and went to school during the day. It was tough but Liu helped me make it through.

I graduated from the program and I was soon offered a job in San Diego, CA at a Japanese Semiconductor package manufacturer. I moved up pretty quickly in the company as I was working real hard and kissing up big time to the Japanese bosses. I started as a Computer Operator and took care of back up and maintenance of the computer system. In those days a 100 mb hard drive was the size of a small washing machine! We had three of them when I started there and that was what the whole multi-million dollar company ran on. I made a pretty decent salary at that time but I wanted more.

Liu soon became pregnant with our first child. It would turn out to be a boy. We named him Gregory. Gregory was my mom’s maiden name. We were hoping a child would help with all of our problems I suppose. Now I felt more pressure than ever before. I wanted a nice home and nice things for my new son and wife. I needed more income so I started selling Residential Real Estate on the side. I was fortunate enough to have sold 8 houses in my first 8 weeks! Now I was getting somewhere I thought! I soon quit my programming job and went into full-time Real Estate Sales. Every year I attained my goals and I was moving up the ladder of success! Or so I thought.

All this money I was making wasn’t really helping us at all. We were able to buy a nice home and I paid $25,000.00 cash for a top of the line, brand new Dodge Caravan. We bought a small boat but I was learning that these things didn’t really satisfy me the way I thought they would. They were fun for a short time, but I soon was restless again. Liu became pregnant again and this time we had the girl we had wanted. We named her Heather and she was a real joy to us! We were happy at times, and we both adored our children but we always struggled to get along with each other. There always seemed to be something that would cause a fight between us.

The Beginning of the Journey ….

I was the third born of six children born in Stamford, CT. Stamford was a medium sized town of about 100,000 people which seemed pretty average to me. The city has since become much more upscale and expensive, but while growing up it seemed pretty boring to me and had not much going on in it as far as I was concerned. It seemed like all the exciting things were in New York or somewhere else. Nothing much happened in Stamford. My parents were pretty normal I guess. Looking back, I think they did their best to raise all of us right. They had a lot of arguments, and my dad had a pretty hot temper, but they seemed pretty good parents to me. That was until my dad died when I was 13 and left my mom with 4 kids to raise alone. That was the hardest thing I ever faced, losing my dad like that and I am sure it was harder for my mom. Just one night, he felt pain, went to the hospital and never came back home. I remember not being able to show remorse at his funeral. I was afraid to see my friends. I didn’t know how to act and I just shoved the pain deep down inside. It just hurt too much.

Losing my dad threw me into a tailspin and coupled with the fact that now I was attending Jr. High School and meeting older kids whom influenced me in a bad way. The future didn’t look very bright. I was not stupid, and I was told my score on the IQ test was pretty high. I started off Junior High in some of the highest classes, but when my dad died, my whole world was turned upside down. My older brother was in Vietnam and I really had no one to keep me in line, as I wouldn’t listen to my mother. This was the real start of my rebellion and my rejection of the world, as I knew it.

I only attended high school, Rippowam High, for a short time. I had flunked 9th grade after crashing my motorcycle and ending up in the hospital for 69 days. I missed so much school I just couldn’t catch up so they allowed me to go on to High School, but I had to take some 9th grade classes also to try to catch up. It was no use. I was now fully into smoking pot and doing LSD and speed so I just ended up quitting school and just dropping out of society. Most of my friends continued on in school and would make fun of me saying I would be a bum with no job, etc. I didn’t end up graduating High School until 1983, by taking the GED test. I never studied for it had never really taken any High School classes past 9th grade and yet I still passed it easily. I think I was in the top 5% in the state or something like that. Shows you how hard those tests were.

I soon got very into the big three components of rebellion. Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. I call these the big three because they are the top three favorite forms of rebellion of teen’s back then and probably still are today. I was very angry inside that my dad had died and I hated authority of any kind. I just wanted to rebel against society in general and do whatever I pleased. I started hanging out with some guys that really pulled me down. One of these guys was particularly bad. He was not just bad, he was evil. He became the supplier of drugs for our group and we all went gradually downhill from there. We ended up going to many rock concerts and parties and getting totally blitzed week after week. Some died. Some are still messing with drugs today 35 years later!

I decided when I was 17 that I had to get away from Stamford and get a fresh start. I decided to leave home and went to San Francisco, CA. I did not know much about the place, but I was intrigued by the glowing reports of nice weather, beautiful girls, nice beaches, and a “free” lifestyle. I was a little shocked to find out was San Francisco was really like, but it was new and exciting for awhile and I was “free” to do as I wanted. I used to take the Greyhound bus daily to the Horse Races to try and make a living gambling. It didn’t work very well. Another decision I made was to take $50.00 and to get myself a tattoo of a Grim Reaper on my arm. I was into death metal music and I was convinced I would not live to 30 years of age. I had a preoccupation with death and just thought it would be coming soon. I was scared of it though.

I didn’t know that San Francisco was the runaway capital of the country and that there were many young kids with backpacks who arrived daily from all over the US to seek a new life. Because of that fact, there were also many perverts and molesters who came to feast on the young pray. This is what made it scary. When you run out of money, and you’re a kid, with no one to turn to, you either have to work, steal or sell your body to survive. Getting work is not easy especially if you don’t have an apartment with a phone and a track history etc. Stealing is not too appealing because of the consequences of what happens to you when you get caught and you have no one to bail you out. Selling your body sure isn’t to appealing either for obvious reasons but it is the one many young kids choose because it is in high demand. It is a fast way to get money and they just learn to block out the memories of what happens so they can go on with life. 

I got a wonderful job collecting money for a supposed Polish Community Center that was to be built. I went door to door asking for donations. This went over real big. I went hungry many days. I remember walking by those big, juicy smoked hams and roast beefs in the window of this meat shop and just drooling and feeling severe hunger pains for the first time in my life. I was free now, but I soon learned there is a price to pay for freedom. I learned to spot the bad guys, but I remember one person who I thought looked pretty safe, who almost got me. He came around downtown looking for young, runaway boys and he wore a black reverend suit with a white collar. He seemed pretty nice and gave me his card and told me to call if I needed help. I almost did. He was didn’t give me the high-pressure routine and I was fooled by his kind voice and pleasant smile. Another man came up to me and warned me that he saw many boys go with that man but they never returned and that I should be very careful. That was enough for me as I was trying to be careful, as I knew this was a dangerous place to be in. I lived in the worst part of town known as the “Tenderloin”. I was skinny and still could run pretty fast so I let some of the fat perverts take me to dinner and then as soon as finished eating I was out the door and down the street as I knew they couldn’t catch me. It was a way to survive at least without risking going to jail.