No Regrets (3 page)

The transition occurred right around the time I went through puberty (doesn’t it always?). Through much of elementary school I’d been an indifferent but harmless student, a kid who preferred sports to studying. I was taller than most of my friends, lanky and reasonably athletic, so most games came easily to me. I played shortstop in baseball, was cocaptain of my school’s basketball team, and won a handful of medals in track and field. About the only game I didn’t like was football. I was skinny as a kid, without an ounce of extra flesh. Good for playing basketball (and not a bad look for a guitar player, I might add), but not so great for football. One of the local cops talked me and some buddies into joining the Police Athletic League football team one year, and I
can still remember the opening kickoff. The ball sailed right into my arms and I took off down the sideline, figuring I had the speed and moves to make a good return.

Wrong.

I never even saw the kid coming. He nailed me right in the chest and knocked the wind outta me! The ball went one way, my helmet went another. For several seconds I lay there gasping—I’d never had been hit like that, and I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. It was scary as hell; from that point on, I realized football wasn’t for me.

Truth is, much as I’d like to claim otherwise, I was not a particularly tough kid. That much was revealed not merely on the football field, but on the streets of the Bronx as well. I was a fun-loving kid who liked music and sports. I didn’t fit neatly into the laid-back, studious group; neither did I fit neatly into the gang scene. The tough guys were always testing other kids, pushing people around, seeing how far they could go before they’d trigger a response. I hated that feeling of apprehension, having to worry about walking to the candy store, or coming home from school, not knowing who might be waiting around the next corner smoking cigarettes, listening to doo-wop music, and waiting for an opportunity to kick the shit out of some little kid.

Basically, for these guys, it was target practice.

And on more than one occasion, I was the target.

Admittedly, there were times I invited the attention (although that wasn’t my intent). Like I said, I started early with girls, and when you were messing around with girls in my neighborhood it was wise to exercise some caution and common sense. Specifically, only an idiot would chase girls who were attached in one way or another to one of the local gangs.

Well, what the fuck? For a smart kid, I could be a real idiot. Stubborn, too. I’m a Taurus, after all.

Dominating the street scene in this part of the Bronx was the Ducky Gang, a collection of kids ranging in age from the early teens to the mid-twenties. Predominantly Irish, but with a sprinkling of Italian and German thrown in, the Duckies were a formidable group whose turf
centered around the Twin Lakes (the “duck pond”) section of the New York Botanical Garden. The Ducky Boys were born around the time I was in elementary school, and their rise paralleled my adolescence. Although they died out in the mid-1970s (only to be immortalized in the movie
The Wanderers
), they were the Kings of New York as far as I was concerned, and my fear of them was surpassed only by my desire to join their ranks. Not necessarily because I admired them or wanted to be part of a gang, but simply because I got tired of getting my ass kicked.

The moment of clarity came one afternoon while walking home from school, when I was about twelve or thirteen. I’d been hanging out with this pretty girl for a few weeks, chasing her on weekends, looking for her at parties, occasionally stealing a little make-out time. Well, I should have known better. The girl had already been claimed by one of the Ducky Boys, so protocol dictated that everyone else keep their distance.

She was, for all practical purposes, untouchable.

And I touched.

So there I was, strolling through the park, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this chick’s boyfriend pops out from behind a tree and steps in front of me. I wasn’t even sure how to react. The kid was a year or two older than me, a head taller, and probably twenty-five pounds heavier; a grown man, by comparison. I froze for a moment and tried to weigh my options.

Drop my schoolbooks and run like hell?

Exercise a little diplomacy? (I’d always been pretty nimble when it came to talking my way out of trouble.)

Down the road I’d learn the finer points of street fighting, the most important of which is this: always get off the first shot. But I was inexperienced and scared. Before I had a chance to react, the kid leaned forward and punched me in the face. I went down for the count.

I don’t know how long I was unconscious, probably only a few seconds. But when I came to, with my head aching and my vision blurred, the kid was standing over me.

“Stay away from my girl,” he said, “or I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

And then he went off, leaving me there alone, dizzy and disoriented, wondering whether any girl was worth so much trouble.

But, of course, they were. I’ve had a problem with females my entire life, and by that I mean, women have always gotten me into trouble. More accurately, I’ve gotten myself into trouble because of women. It’s been a recurring theme of self-destruction, right up there with drugs and alcohol; from the time I learned how to use it, I’ve too often led with my dick, and I’ve taken a lot of punishment as a result.

There was, however, no reasoning with my adolescent mind (to say nothing of my adolescent hormones). Another guy would have gone home and jerked off to a
Playboy
magazine until he found a girl more suitable to his position in life. Not me. I liked the wilder chicks for a very good reason: they put out. That left me and my blue balls with basically two choices.

1) Find another girl.

2) Join the Duckies.

I chose option number two.

The Ducky Gang didn’t accept just anyone. You had to
prove yourself worthy by being put through an initiation that lasted for several weeks. For me, that turned out to be a good thing. The lag between my first expression of interest and the point of no return (fullblown gang membership) was so vast that I had time to develop other, less risky interests—like playing the guitar. For a while, though, I really wanted to be part of a gang and felt the need to be accepted.

We were known, unofficially, as the Junior Duckies. I loved being part of the gang and enjoyed the security they offered, even if it included some of the same guys who had been making my life miserable a few years before. For the Junior Duckies, gang life was mostly about mischief and messing around with girls. Every weekend we’d get together at the
duck pond and drink beer, get all riled up, and go looking for trouble. That didn’t take much effort, as the Duckies weren’t the only gang in town. We’d wander down to the Bronx River Parkway, near the edge of Ducky turf, and if we found anyone venturing over the line we’d quickly engage in a rumble. These were less lethal in those days. While some of the older guys in the Ducky Gang carried knives and zip guns, we usually resorted to chains or baseball bats. For the Junior Duckies excitement came in the form of taking risks. We’d hitch rides on the backs of city buses and elevated trains, activities that usually caught the attention of the local cops and led to us being chased all over the neighborhood. Cheap thrills, I guess you’d say. When we weren’t fighting or partying with the local chicks, in the winter we’d sometimes throw snowballs at patrol cars just to get a reaction. They’d hit the lights and give chase, and we’d scatter in all directions. Stupid? Sure. But it was exciting and lots of fun. A couple of times I got busted and ended up down at the Fifty-Second Precinct, where my parents would have to come and pick me up. After a while my mom used to worry whenever I left the house.

“Please be careful out there tonight, Paul,” she’d say, wringing her hands.

But she never tried to stop me, and neither did my father. By the time I was fourteen, I was basically spinning out of control. I didn’t want to stay home or do my homework, or even go to school, for that matter. I just wanted to hang out with my friends and party. I wanted it so bad that I was willing to go through a Junior Ducky initiation. Fighting was part of it, obviously; if the Duckies got in a fight, you were expected to be there, and to stand up for your buddies. Maybe you’d be assigned a target—some poor kid at school who had pissed off one of the Duckies—and your job was to lay him out. I’d been on the receiving end of those encounters; now I was being asked to dole out the punishment. Cowards, in any form, were not welcome. Sometimes, to prove you had balls, you were asked to do something dangerous.

Or stupid.

Or, in my case, both.

“Come on, Paul, get your skinny ass out there!”

We were standing near an overpass above Webster Avenue on a Saturday night, and below, the weekend traffic was busy. Here was the moment of truth. If I wanted to be part of the gang I’d have to show a willingness to put my life at risk. This time I was on my own.

“This is fucking nuts,” I said.

And it was. They told me to crawl out on a catwalk under the bridge and then hang from a beam with my feet dangling over the highway. I guzzled a couple of beers to boost my confidence, but I was still scared. I took a deep breath and got down on my hands and knees. I was so nervous, I nearly pissed my pants, but my fear was outweighed by my need to be accepted. If I could just get through this insane ritual without killing myself, I’d finally be part of the toughest gang in my neighborhood. Then I’d have protection. No one would ever fuck with me again. For that, believe it or not, I was willing to risk my life.

A few moments later, I was hanging above the highway. I could hear my friends yelling and cheering, but I couldn’t make out a word they were saying with the noise from the traffic below. I forced my eyes open and looked back to the edge of the bridge. They were waving me back in. I pulled my legs into my chest and crawled back to safety, where I was greeted with open arms.

I was finally in!

In the Bronx they referred to it as “beer muscles”—a
phenomenon in which an otherwise low-key, fun-loving guy gets drunk and suddenly becomes willing to fight with anyone. That was me. If I had two or three beers I’d go up against anybody, because basically I had no fear. With each drink the inhibitions faded, and so did any concern over repercussions. Maybe that’s why people would back down from me (well, that and the fact that I had the Duckies on my side). I
was tall and skinny, and not really great with my fists, but when I drank I felt like a superhero. I’d fight anybody, with almost no provocation. I won a lot of fights just because I refused to back down. People tend to think you’re a little crazy when you’re that quick to fire, and who wants to fight a crazy guy?

Alcohol, mainly beer, made me a different person, and I kind of liked that person. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. Not only that, but he was smooth as silk when it came to dealing with girls. It all goes hand in hand. Women like guys who are confident, funny, cocky. A little bit dangerous. I was all of those things in a single package. And as my fascination with music intensified in the coming years, I discovered that while alcohol did not make me a better guitar player, it did make me a more outgoing performer. When I was younger, playing at school dances or church activities, I suffered from stage fright. But if I had a couple of drinks, the nervousness melted away. I was Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, all rolled into one. I owned the fucking room!

Drinking was always part of what we did in the Junior Duckies. Some of my friends were also into sniffing glue. It was readily available, the perfect cheap high for a kid. I did glue only a few times as a kid (and once as an adult—more on that later), and frankly found the trips to be either completely uneventful or nightmarish. The bad one happened behind a gas station near Frisch Field (named after the great ballplayer Frankie Frisch, a Bronx native, I’m proud to say). I huddled up with a couple buddies, both experienced huffers, and we snipped the cap off a tube of glue and went to work.

Some of the details escape me, but I do remember an overwhelming feeling of paranoia and fear. I became convinced that I had died and gone to hell; I was completely detached from reality. To this day it remains one of the most frightening experiences I’ve ever had with drugs—and that’s saying something.

For a while afterward I was thoroughly antidrug. I’d drink beer, of course, but that’s about it. In fact, a couple of years would pass before I’d even try smoking pot. By that time I’d begun hanging out with other
musicians, guys who weren’t part of my gang, or any other gang, for that matter. More like hippies. All of a sudden I started changing my hairstyle—out with the pompadour, in with the longer, shaggier look. I became fascinated with the British Invasion—the Beatles and the Stones especially—and then I started gravitating toward other musicians who played the music I liked to play. Those guys, for the most part, weren’t tough guys; they were peace-and-love guys and rockers.

And I had one foot in their world.