The case for feeling different...

I just came across a book on our shelves titled " Be the Star That You Are - A book for kid's who feel different". When I was growing up there was no book like this. I just was different and that's the way it was. I was picked on, bullied, talked down to and generally disenfranchised as much as a kid can be. My days were fear filled and seemed strange to me. I never really got what was going on around me. I knew things that were not appropriate for someone my age to know. My family believed in ghosts and goblins and things that went bump in the night. Our coffee table always had the latest copy of Playboy and Cavalier on it. I was never discouraged from looking at or reading this stuff. Time and Life were also there but they didn't stack up very well against the porn. None of the kids I knew had this stuff available. I thought about sex a lot. I was extremely adept at getting the neighborhood girls to take off their clothes for me. We were unsupervised a lot of the time. It was different then. And I felt different. I knew about things.

As I grew up I was better able to handle this difference inside me. At age 9 I learned about codeine and liked it. It made me not care about feeling different. I learned to drink beer and liquor; eventually I learned about pot and Seconal and disoxin. Dexedrine and black beauties. I still felt different but I got to feeling better about it. At age 14 I was admitted to the county farm (nut house) and stayed there for 5 months. I left against medical advise, my therapist assured me that I would end up a revolving door mental patient for the rest of my life. Very nice. He was wrong. I was never in that situation again.

The summer I turned 15 I worked on rock festival crews, that winter I hung out in the city and crashed at the apartment of some very nice women. That winter I met all manner of people and in the spring took a trip to the Grand Canyon with a lot of the folks I had spent the winter meeting. I still felt different but the booze and dope at least made me feel more plugged in. The Summer I turned 16 I moved to the Washington DC area. Within the first month I met the drug connections that would keep me supplied for the next 10 years. Still feeling different.

I was bone skinny and had hair halfway down my back. Old patched bluejeans and denim shirt... Cowboy boots wide belt, big buckle, little mustache and round wire rim glasses. I was, to say the least, picturesque. I didn't know a soul and I had never lived in a sub-division before.

A very pretty girl who had once been my girlfriend decided to move out East with us. She wanted a change in perspective. My parents adored her. Mom had made welcome in our home, seemingly every young person in Wisconsin whose parents had thrown them out. It was the end of the nineteen sixties and a lot of families were having trouble adjusting to the shifting cultural paradigm. Drugs, hair, sex, war protests, rock music with a political message, an expanded awareness of the inequities of basic rights of women and black people. Wisconsin was a hotbed of protests and open mindedness in the college towns. It was somewhat different on the farms and in the smaller urban landscape. The young people were claiming a freer lifestyle while their parents were clinging to the comfort and core beliefs that were the legacy of the post depression and war