Royal Flush Magazine
May


Royal Flush
Issue: 5
Published: 2008
Featured:
Patton Oswalt
Chip Kidd
Slash
Danzig
Henry Rollins
Mindless Self Indulgence
This magazine is by far one of the best magazines I’ve read sine the early days of Flipside. Where else will you find an interview with Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Glenn Danzig, and Chuck Dukowski – and Slash all in one magazine? I bought this in summer of 2008, and it’s still the most recent issue. The only downside is that it’s pricey, $9.99 per issue. It’s either expensive or I’m cheap?
If you get the chance to get a copy of this, go get it.
Rating: *** three out of three stars
On to the story . . .
Back in 1984, I was hanging out with a girl whose name I won’t mention, because this story is a bit too specific, and a bit strange.
Anyway, we were sort of going out for about three months (my maximum back then). One day after school we shoot up to Tower Records on Ventura and Van Nuys. Look around a bit, I think I pick up some old Bowie records, and we leave. Once we get to the parking lot she freezes up, turns out there is some guy sitting in a corvette waving her over. He tells her the usual stuff “it’s been a long time, what’ve you been up to?” I just listen, trying to figure out what this guy is all about.
So, “she” drops me off back home, and leaves. About eight o’clock that night the “guy” is knocking on my door. I answer, immediately I’m pissed. I don’t like people bringing drama to the house where my Mom lives. You want to fight me in the streets, cool, but never around family. I quickly jump onto the porch and growl at him “what are you doing here?” He backs up and says, “Easy, I just want to talk to you.”
He pulls out a huge engagement ring, and says, “see this?” I nod. He continues: “she threw this at me and said the engagement is off.” I look at this guy like he was stark raving mad.
So, he explains, they were scheduled to be married the summer after graduation, they’ve been together since she was fifteen, etc. I tell him that she invited me to the prom that afternoon. He flips, he invited her a month or two ago. I tell him it’s going to be awkward, the three of us.
Now is where I always have problems with guys . . . the fuckin’ threats. He starts telling me to back off now! Her family is deeply tied to the Hell’s Angels, and he’s Italian and has intense MOB ties. So, I tell him that I could whip his ass so bad he wouldn’t be able to call these “ties.” And if he ever threatened to send anyone to my Mom’s house, no telling what twisted things I’d do to his girl.
Then he back-peddled. He apologized. Then said if I left her he would make it worth my while. I asked him what that meant? He said he’d be back tomorrow at six. I told him if he tried anything he’d eat a Louisville Slugger.
The next day I forged a note from the office to summons the girl out of class. I told her I had a girlfriend, and I’m sorry but I couldn’t go the prom with her. She was pissed (even though she had a boyfriend). By the end of that school day she had sent three big black guys, one by one to beat me up. All of them my friends. I left school uninjured.
Six o’clock on the dot the guys pulls into my driveway, I was waiting for him at the side gate with a baseball bat, just in case. So, when he got to the door I came up behind him. I spooked him, I yelled what do you want? He said, I told you I’d make it worth your while. I said yeah. He said she called me today and asked me to the prom. I said cool, you got what you wanted, now go. He reached into his pocket. I cocked back with the bat. And he hands me $400.00. I ask, what the hell is this? He says I’m making it worth your while. Then walks away saying now I could go to the prom with anyone I wanted to, and he’d see you next week.
Back in those days I was working at a McDonald’s in Reseda, worked there for about a year and a half, from 1983 until late 1984. Just like the guy said, a week later he pops up at my job and hands me $250.00, in front of some of my co-workers. This only adds to my image. I had bleached blonde hair, a reputation for fighting, and now accepting large sums of money from strangers. I refuse the money, it seems weird, but he insists, and leaves.
Now that I have this money I ask a girl from work to go to the prom with me, she accepts. And a week later, he shows up one more time and hands me $200.00, again at McDonald’s. I think he knew I couldn’t pull a baseball bat on him at work. This time, as he walks away he says “see you at prom.”
No woman is worth buying back.
Anyway, for the next six months every time the “girl” would get drunk she’d call me and try to get back with me. Then the guy would call me, and asked if she called, I’d say yeah. He said he knew it, they were now living together, and whenever they’d fight she’d go in the other room and call me. I just laughed, and said are you going to pay me off to stop answering my phone?
I never heard from either of them again.
Then one night in 1986, I was hanging out with a friend of mine, who used to be the drummer for the metal band Harlot, and he wanted to go to Castle Golf in Sherman Oaks. I was never an arcade guy, but I said sure. And we’re wandering around and sure as hell the money guy is there with a sixteen-year-old chick on his arm. I ask him where the “girl” is. And he plays it off, oh my ex; I haven’t talked to her in years. I just laugh, and walk away.
The whole money thing, I never told anyone about until almost a decade later. I paid for tuxes, flowers, limo, and the whole thing. I was going to go to breakfast with friends after the prom at Page’s in Encino, and my Mom wanted to give me money to eat, I kept telling her I’m good, I have a job, but she insisted, she gave me twenty bucks. I slipped it back into her purse a week or two later.
That year I got nominated for prom king, crazy. I didn’t win but it was funny to stand up there. This June it will be twenty-eight years since my class graduated.
I’m curious where this dysfunctional couple ended up.

LAST ONE TO DIE is officially out. Order at: https://www.createspace.com/3669330.













