Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The Spanking
I ran away from home the first time when I was four years old. My family lived in a small town in the middle of Missouri, the Heart of America. It was 1960. My older sister Lucy got to go to school during the day. Dad went to work. I wanted to be able to go somewhere, too, but I didn't know where. One warm September day I took off for the school to see what my sister was doing. It was just a few blocks away but it seemed like miles to me. When I got there someone found me wandering around the halls and took me to Lucy. She told me to turn around and get home before I got a spanking. Instead of going home I walked about five more blocks to the small downtown square. I went into the drugstore and looked at their children's books. I asked the man behind the counter if I could have the Pinnochio book. He said No, I'd have to buy it. Instead he gave me a little notepad. I left the store and was standing outside on the sidewalk when my father's secretary came driving up. She jumped out of the car and ran up to me. There you are! Do you realize the whole town is looking for you?
She drove me home and my mother called my father to tell him I was okay. When he came home from work that night he pulled down my pants, pulled off his belt, and whipped me with it on my butt. He spanked me in front of Lucy, our little brother Jerry, and little sister Nina so we would all know not to ever run away again. I didn't even realize I'd run away. As far as I was concerned, I'd gone out for a walk.
My family moved around a lot.When I was in grade school we never stayed in the same house for longer than two years. No matter where we lived, I always managed to find a place to get away from my parents, sisters, and brother. I loved to walk along the railroad tracks or in nearby woods. I took my little black half-dachshund Sneezy on hikes as my constant companion. I found places where no one could see me, where I could be alone to explore and daydream.
The next time I ran away from home was ten years later. I was fourteen and a freshman in high school. My dad had been promoted to the district manager of the public utilities company. We moved from a small Missouri college town into a modern ranch-style home in the last subdivision of the farthest suburb east of Kansas City. We were half an hour's drive to the middle of the city and ten minutes from rolling farm land covered with wheat, corn, and grazing cattle. Dad became very active with the Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis Club. He did a lot of work towards bettering our community, and soon became well respected. His picture was in the weekly newspaper a lot. Adults were always telling me how lucky I was to have him for a father.
In the summer I went barefoot as much as possible. I prided myself in having tough leathery skin on the bottoms of my feet. When Dad was around he wouldn't let me go barefoot. He said as hard as he worked, he didn't want people to think he couldn't afford shoes for his kids.
I was mad at my parents because they made me go to bed at 9:30 p.m. when my friend Steve Holley could stay out all night if he wanted to. Most of my friends got to stay up until at least 11:00. Summertime was the hardest because Jerry, Nina, and I had to be in bed before the sun had gone completely down. It was still light out and we could hear the other neighborhood kids playing. If we weren't in bed on time we were in big trouble.
My little brother Jerry and I shared a bedroom. Even though we slept next to each other in identical Early American-style twin beds, we hardly spoke. Our beds were like islands, miles apart. Late at night I would tune my transistor radio to a Little Rock station that only came in at night. There was a show called "Bleecker Street" that played underground music like David Bowie, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, and Joni Mitchell. I heard "Take A Walk On The Wild Side" by Lou Reed for the first time on that station and was sure he was singing to me. I also had a lamp above my bed and would read until Mom or Dad came by our closed door and yelled for me to turn the light off.
I hated my Dad most of the time. I hated him with more than just an adolescent's hatred of his parents. He treated his kids like we were slaves, using all of us as work horses. He used my sisters for sex as well. We had to constantly be working around the house or out in our enormous back yard. When he wasn't home Mom would lighten up on the workload, but we all knew there were certain jobs that had to be done by the time Dad got back, or else.
Dad used to search through my room when I wasn't around. I had a pen-pal that I met on a weekend church retreat. She lived in St. Louis. I kept her letters in a shoebox next to my bed. One afternoon I noticed that the box had been moved and the letters were out of order. I realized that Dad had gone through and read them. He knew my personal secrets with my pen-pal. That scared me.
I used to sneak into Mom and Dad's room and steal Playboy and Penthouse magazines from a stack on the top shelf of Dad's closet. I'd hide them under my mattress and late at night would scour every page looking for dirty stories and, hopefully if I was lucky, pictures of naked men. The magazines would obviously be missing but no one ever said anything to me about it. After I'd jacked-off enough and was tired of them I would creep into my parents' room when the coast was clear and put them back.
Sometimes, when Dad was taking a nap, I'd sneak up to his bedroom door just to look at him. He always kept the door open about six inches unless he'd called one of my sisters in there. Then he was sure to keep the door shut. I had to be sure the rest of the family was either preoccupied or out of the house when I did this. As soon as I heard him snoring and was certain he was sound asleep, I would tip-toe down the hardwood floor hallway. I knew which boards squeaked and was careful not to step on them. The bathroom was right next to my parents' room, so if anyone did come by I could act like I was going in there. I lurked near the bedroom door and leaned forward just barely enough to peek in. My heart beat fast. I was ready to run like a deer at the drop of a hat but I stood there frozen, looking at his body for as long as I could. In his wedding picture I always thought Dad looked like a cross between Elvis and Rock Hudson. Mom looked like Lauren Bacall. Now he looked like fat Elvis minus the sideburns. I stared, mesmerized at his body. He slept in his underwear and was big and hairy. I was terrified of him catching me, but deep down inside part of me hoped that he would. I wanted Dad to call me into his room and have me shut the door the way he did with my sisters. I wanted him to do to me what he did with them. I don't think I would have minded it as much as they did.
Many nights after dinner Dad made Lucy or my little sister Nina sit on his lap while the family watched TV. He would do this right in front of me like I wasn't even there. He'd whisper in their ears and rub their thighs and was always trying to feel them up. They'd push his hand away and say "Daddy!" and try to be cheery because if they were mad about it he'd turn mean. We had to walk on egg shells around him. We always had to be in a good mood.
Dad was in love with my older sister Lucy. I don't even know what all that was about. So much of it happened for years behind closed doors. Once I heard him tell her, "If I could marry you, I would." I don't know how far he got with her. I can only assume all the way. He rarely let Lucy go out with her friends. But then he would take her everywhere. To movies, for drives, out to eat in restaurants. I think Mom started to get jealous. Lucy was mad at Mom. I could never figure out how Lucy could be mad at her. Dad was the maniac. Now, I think she was angry because Mom wouldn't stop Dad. At the time I didn't think Mom was doing anything wrong. I thought she had it worse than anyone because all this shit was happening to her and her kids and she had no way to stop it.
For fun I used to shoplift things that I knew my parents would never buy me: dirty books, candy, and especially cans of Pam, the non-stick vegetable coating spray. You could get high from inhaling Pam and I did. I hid the cans in a box in my bedroom closet. Late at night when Jerry was asleep I'd get it out and spray it in a paper bag and inhale it over and over until I was completely stoned out of my mind. It had a warm metallic smell. All around my mouth would get covered with a humid slime of vegetable coating. I could "hear" a flashing brown dot up to the right of my head, just behind me a little and out of sight. I had tried sniffing model car glue before, but it didn't work as well. Sometimes I thought I'd hear someone outside my bedroom door, or maybe see shadows of feet. I could never tell if I was being paranoid or if there really was someone out there. I'm surprised my parents didn't hear the paper bag rattling as I inhaled in and out, in and out. In his searches through my room Dad must have found the cans. But no one ever came in to see what I was doing. At least when I was sniffing Pam I didn't have to hear the bed springs squeaking through my sisters' bedroom wall from one of Dad's visits.
When Lucy was a senior, one evening a month or so before graduating from high school, she went to a shopping mall with some friends. Dad came home early from work and was extremely pissed at Mom for letting her go. Lucy was seventeen years old. He stomped back and forth, cursing, swearing, looking at his watch. He was accusing Mom of letting Lucy go shopping like it was such a big crime. Lucy got home around 8:30 or 9:00. Dad was so angry that he took her into his room and pulled down her pants, put her over his lap, and started spanking her.
I flipped out. It was so fucking humiliating. I was in my bedroom. I think I'd been told to go there. But I heard everything. When I heard the slaps against her butt and her squeal I lost it completely. I started screaming, "STOP IT! STOP IT! YOU'RE CRAZY!! STOP IT!!" Dad rushed in to my room to see what was going on with me. I was sitting up on my bed screaming at him, out of my mind. I was fourteen. He was a two-hundred-twenty-pound forty-five-year-old ex-army sergeant. He came at me from around my brother's bed and slapped me across the side of the face so hard that my head went up in the air and then down on my bed. I blacked out for a moment. Lucy yelped at the impact. I saw her standing in the doorway wide-eyed with a hand over her mouth. Her hair that usually flipped perfectly at her shoulders was all messed-up. I got back up and started at him. I hit him in the chest which made him laugh. I swung again. He grabbed me by the wrists and held onto me while I was struggling to get at him. He was too strong. I kept screaming "YOU'RE CRAZY! YOU'RE CRAZY!" and he said for me to "Shut up, you barefoot boy." He kept calling me "Barefoot Boy" over and over and laughing at me. He smelled like cigars and Old Spice after shave lotion. Finally he left and went out in the hall or the living room or his bedroom. I just lay on my bed sobbing. Jerry started to cry, too. He usually didn't seem to notice anything, but this time he couldn't help it.
Mom came in a little while later and stood by my bed. She rubbed my back as I shook all over and said, "Now, Joey, your father is NOT crazy. He is not crazy." Like she was trying to convince herself. I muttered angrily, "He is too!" She couldn't console me.
The next morning I didn't have to go to school because there was a big red hand print on the side of my face. When Dad came home from work for lunch he was in a perky mood and tried to cheer me up. The following day I went back to school and Karen Porter was shocked when she asked me what happened to my face and I told her Dad slapped me. She couldn't believe anyone's father would slap them that hard.
I had seen made-for-TV movies about runaways so I knew there were crash pads in cities where teenagers could go if they left home. Two movies, Maybe I'll Come Home In The Spring starring Sally Field, and Go Ask Alice were my inspiration. Sally Field ran away from her upper middle class suburban home and fell in love with a hippy guy. She realized her mistake and returned home but her boyfriend followed her. She was torn between her life on the street and her parents' love for her. She sadly decided to stay home and sent him away. Go Ask Alice was about a fifteen-year-old girl who ran away to San Francisco and got a job in a clothing boutique. She got mixed up with drugs and turned into a strung-out mess. These movies were supposed to scare kids from leaving home but to me they were signs that if I left I would be okay. The movies told me there was a better life out there somewhere. I wasn't alone.
After Lucy's spanking I decided it was time for me to go. It was the middle of May. School was almost out. I was finishing 9th grade. After dinner, I went to the pool hall in our small downtown to look for Steve Holley. He would know where I could stay. He wasn't there. I walked all the away across town, through strange subdivisions filled with split-level homes and over dirt fields that were soon to be more subdivisions, to Pappy's Pizza Parlour. He wasn't there either. I only had a jean jacket on to keep me warm and it was getting chilly out. I shivered, half from the cold and half from nerves. My friend Jerry McDaniels drove me back to the pool hall to see if Steve had shown up. He hadn't and I didn't know what to do next. I was sitting in the back watching some guys shoot a game of pool when I saw my Dad drive by in the family station wagon. Lucy was with him. They slowed down as Dad searched the pool hall for me with angry eyes. He spotted me. We had eye contact. In the time it took them to find a parking place I ran out the back door and down a couple of side streets into an old residential neighborhood. I hid in some bushes until I was sure it was safe. My friend Sherry lived nearby so I went to her house. She said I couldn't stay there but maybe I could stay with her friend Jacquie Smithson. Jacquie lived three blocks from my parents. We went over there and she said I couldn't stay with her either but she'd ask her next door neighbor David who was a grade ahead of us. We used to play kickball together in the bowling alley parking lot. He asked his Mom if it was okay and she said yes.
I was scared. I wanted to walk up the street to 50-Highway and stick out my thumb and catch a ride into Kansas City to get as far away as I could. But I had no idea where I would go once I got there. Plus, I was afraid my Dad would drive by again. I decided to wait until the morning before going into the city. I slept in David's room in his family's refinished basement lined with light brown wood paneling. That night I had a dream where a voice, loud and clear, told me to go back home. It was my mother. When I woke up I felt sick to my stomach and didn't want to get out of bed. The song "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" was playing on the radio in the kitchen. It was about hitch-hiking. It was about being free. It was my call. Only there was no "you" or no "Boo." Just me. I thought about Sally Fields and drugged-out Alice. I went back home. I was grounded for a month which meant I couldn't go anywhere, not even leave our yard, unless I was with my parents. I wasn't allowed to see my friends. I was under house arrest.
Excerpted from Tramps Like Us by JOE WESTMORELAND. Copyright © 2001 by Joe Westmoreland. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Mr. Bluebird
By Gerry Gomez Pearlberg
Painted Leaf Press
Copyright © 2001 Gerry Gomez Pearlberg. All rights reserved.
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