Bio - 1 in My Bio

In 2002, I finally decided to write my autobiography, drawing on the memories and journals I’ve been keeping since 1987. I worked on it on and off throughout the years.

I was, and still am, the black sheep of my family, but that’s okay—I don’t mind. I used to mind as a child, but as an adult, it doesn’t bother me. I was a lonely child, surrounded by self-absorbed, controlling adults. I found their predictability rather boring, while they never knew what to expect from me, even though they liked to think they did.

I grew up in western Massachusetts. My family consisted of my mother, father, brother, and sister. They weren’t exactly what I’d call stupid, but they had a limited range of skills. They were very pessimistic about themselves, others, and life in general. They rarely approached the unknown with an open mind and were easily unsettled or even spooked by anything foreign to them.

Although my parents, Arthur (Art) and Dureen (Doe), were considered as different as night and day by most people’s standards—my father being much calmer—they were still very much alike. They liked the same music, movies, foods, and activities, and they shared the same beliefs and opinions.

My domineering mother made much of my childhood difficult. It was often said that she treated her dogs better than anyone else, and this was true. Her dogs came first, then her friends, then her husband, and lastly, her children.

She was her own person; no one told Dureen what to do.

My parents weren’t the worst in the world. They weren’t drunks or perverts, and they were reliable enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. So no, I couldn’t exactly award them the title of worst parents of the century.

But things were bad enough. Our material and physical needs were met, but not our emotional ones. My mother was often negative, impatient, insensitive, hypocritical, and very controlling. My sister Tammy was much like her, except she had one character trait my mother lacked: she was a hypochondriac.

My mother was unusually persuasive, as if she could demand respect just by thinking about it. I sometimes believe she could have convinced anyone to jump off a bridge if she wanted to, no matter how strong-willed they were. Despite this, she was also very emotionally weak and couldn’t handle dealing with other people’s problems, especially personal ones.

She seemed to enjoy controlling people in any way she could, even over the most trivial matters.

My father and brother Larry were much easier to get along with. They were more passive and had a sense of humor that my mom and sister lacked. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have my problems with them—because I did—and by the time I was thirty-two, I had completely cut them all out of my life, later regretting reconnecting with some of them.

My maternal grandparents, Jack and Shirley, lived next door until we moved across town when I was twelve. They were similar to my parents: he was mellow, while she was difficult. One of my meanest memories of Nana was when she told me I’d one day be so big that I wouldn’t be able to fit through doorways. Meanwhile, she was over 200 pounds herself, while I was barely over 100 pounds. I had my pudgy spells as a kid and even as an adult, but for the most part, I was pretty scrawny.

I never knew my paternal grandfather; he died in his fifties of a heart attack. I was named after him.

My paternal grandmother, Bella, wasn’t in my life much until I was around eleven or twelve, and then she died when I was seventeen.

My father was born in 1931, and my mother in 1932. They married in 1951 when they were just nineteen and twenty years old—still just kids, and way too young for even the most mature people to marry, in my opinion. They started in an apartment in Springfield while my father was in the Navy. A year later, they had another apartment, then built a house in 1953.

My brother was born in 1954, and my sister in 1957.