Whatever it was, whatever we went there to get… we got it.

I had no idea what it was, I never found out and I didn’t care. We left that upper-middle-class-white-suburban home with the impeccably preened all-white showpiece “living room”, got into the shiny BMW of Fred’s new “some rich white kid from the suburbs somewhere” … “friend” (in other words, his current mark) and drove back into town.

Back to Fred, Maria and the boy’s two bedroom apartment above the one with the bloodstain on the living room floor. Maria and the kids were in bed. It wasn’t very late but my adult self can now see that she wanted nothing to do with whatever it was Fred was up to. Maria was already fed up with Fred by this time, but I wasn’t seeing that yet. I was getting skeptical about the possibility of the rock band thing but I still thought of Fred as a pretty cool guy.

After all, he had that important job as head of security at Brandeis Department Store. This “rich kid” he’d introduced me to didn’t impress me, but Fred obviously had something going that was working for him. From the way he talked, one would think Fred was doing very well indeed.

I wasn’t talking all that much. Actually, now that I think about it… I don’t have memory of my own talkativeness during most of this entire journey. Anyone who knows my adult self now, knows I’m a personable, talkative guy. In general. I love conversing and connecting with people through conversation. I remember my young self as pretty much like that too. During high school and all those cool party pad days after, I’d always been a sociable guy.

But once I found myself on this road, with these people. Those eight months (wow! it really was only eight months) between late July of 1978 and early April of 1979. During this entire journey, I have no memory of being my normal talkative young self. Sure I talked to people. Especially during those times I was feeling relatively free. But they were few and far between. My adult self remembers being in survival mode, pretty much the whole time. This head-on collision with life had smacked naive nineteen-year-old-farm-boy me in the face, and I was taking it pretty quietly.

Besides, Fred always did enough talking for everyone. Just like “The Amazing George Heaton” Fred talked about all kinds of stuff (shit) all the time. Perhaps that’s why they were such “good” salesmen. This night after successfully getting whatever it was he’d gone to his “friend’s” upper-middle-class home to get, Fred was on a roll. He was in total salesman mode.

Those two weren’t talking about whatever it was they’d just got, however. At all.  As I sat there on the couch and listened to them, I also noticed that Fred’s way of talking with this guy was much different than they way he spoke to me. On the way back from the home of Mr. “rich white kid in the suburbs somewhere” they’d seemed to me to be in a heated and animated conversation, but it wasn’t about anything I was interested in so I hadn’t been listening. It wasn’t about rock bands, interesting things to read or movies…

They were talking about fighting.

Ok, so yes they did mention a few movies. But that was only because they were talking about fighting. Martial arts to be more specific. Apparently, Mr. “some rich white kid in the suburbs somewhere” was into Taekwondo. He was going on and on about how effective it was. Blah blah blah… I didn’t care. I didn’t care for this guy at all so I certainly didn’t care about his take on some kind of fighting technique. I had no interest in fighting in general anyway so I really wasn’t paying attention.

In the car on the way back, it all sounded like blah blah blah to me so I hadn’t noticed that Fred wasn’t really talking that much. But once I was on the couch, with nothing better to do than listen to these two go on about Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, I saw that Fred was playing this guy. It wasn’t that I was conscious of HOW he was playing his mark, that’s my adult self realizing it here and in this now.

Back in early November of 1978, my naive nineteen-year-old self saw only how cool Fred was. This guy he was playing was doing all the animated talking. Fred was just speaking at key points to direct the conversation. He really was so very smart. My adult self is only now (as I write this) beginning to realize (and of course speculate on) the extent of Fred’s smarts.

I will have to get into this aspect of my story and more, as this story will again have to be…

To be continued…