Age ten and eleven I had to share a bed with my mom . We were living with another family . My sister got her own bed . I wasn 't allowed to sleep on the floor . I had to sleep with her . She didn 't molest me or anything ; she would just cuddle up next to me . I didn 't like it . I wanted my own bed . I wanted to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor . She would play the radio and sing when we were in bed . She would sing the songs that would come on . She made me go to bed at the same time as her . I would lie next to her and she would read and drink her wine sometimes rubbing my head . My dad was gone by that point and I guess she just wanted to have somebody next to her . We moved out to our own place and I had my own room . She would get drunk and sing sad country songs and call out my dads ' name . Sometimes when she was drunk she would come into my room and get in bed with me . Breathing her horrible wine breath in my face as she tried to make he hold her . I would push away and that would piss her off . " Fine then no one loves me I guess . " That room became my prison . I was not allowed out of my room unless I had to use the bathroom . All my meals were eaten in the room . I could go to school , but after school I had to back in my room . I would read and listen to music . They became my salvation . As I got older she got worse . She would walk into my room and tell me things like if I ever had a girlfriend I would be going to hell because it was a sin to touch girls . She told me she knew everything I did because she had microphones hidden around the house . I had to keep my door so I wouldn 't beat off like my father . After awhile the yelling and paranoia weren 't enough . She started hitting me . First it was just a slap then a wooden spoon , it moved on to fist and kicking . Hell , she even hit me with a blender once . She would tell me to get out , that she couldn 't afford to feed me anymore . I 'd leave and walk around and be picked up by the police after a few hours . She would call them and say that I had run away . The worst wasJames Robison I had been stationed in Alaska for three months before I met anybody to hang around with . It seems that an indie rock listening to idiot from California is not exactly prime friend material . I had met a few people , but they were the party boys of the dorm . I went to their parties a few times and hung around on base with them . But that 's it . They had no desire to leave the base . I didn 't have a car yet , so I was kind of stuck there . They were my friends for convince purposes more then anything . They tried to get me to dress differently , buy designer clothes , and listen to popular music . Still , we got along and I did have fun with them . When you don 't hunt or fish , there is not a hell of a lot to do in Alaska . W mostly sat around watching movies and drink beer . I still wanted more . I saved up and bought a used car . While walking through the halls one day I ran into a guy named Jon . I had a Nine Inch Nails cd in my hands . Jon saw it and asked if it was any good . I told him I hadn 't listened to it yet . We decided to go to his room and give it a listen . We threw the disc on and talked for the next hour or so about music . Jon asked why he hadn 't seen me around . I told him how I had just gotten there and had been hanging out the other guys . He suggested I tag a long to a party of base with him and some friends . Later that night Jon knocked on my door . With him were Ben , Mike and Blaine . I had the biggest car so we decided to take mine . We piled in and drove to Fairbanks . They were shocked that I had never been off base . Before the party they directed me around town , pointing out cool things I should go check out . I saw the Northern Lights for the first time . To me they looked like red glowing curtains blowing in the breeze . We went to the party and I met all of their friends . They were all very nice and accepting . We drank a lot of beer and talked till about two in the morning . We decided to call it a night . We started driving back to the base . I had to pee . Badly . We drove around looking for a place to stop . Posted by Larry and Debbie met at a place called The Tasmen Sea , a restaurant in San Pedro . Debbie was a maid or something . Larry was fresh out of the Air Force looking to get laid . They went on a few dates . Larry 's aunt tried to tell my mother that Larry was no good , he was a looser who would take all her money and split . Debbie didn 't care ; she was in love with him . Larry just liked getting laid . A few months into this , I come into the picture . What do we do ? Debbie asked . Get married said Larry . They drove to Vegas and got married . Debbie told her parents she got married and moved out . Larry brought Debbie to his parents ' house in the Ridgecrest . They lived with Larry 's parents till I was born . We lived in a few places before we had a place of our own . Larry and Debbie were still young and partied with their hippie friends all the time . There were always bottles of wine and beer lying around . I would pick them up and take sips . Everyone laughed . " Look at big Verne ! The little brother can party . " My uncle Ronnie would stay over on the couch , he would get drunk , pass out and piss himself on the couch . He always blamed me . For the year he was there , I would get in trouble for peeing on the couch . I had to sit in the corner and repeat the words " I will use the big boy potty " I once asked my mother why she had me . She said that she wanted something that would love her forever and never leave her side . She said she just wanted something to cuddle with her and think the world of her . I asked my father . He told me all of his friends were getting married and having kids so he thought he should too . So that 's why I 'm here . I 'm a product of peer pressure and my mothers need for love . They should have got a dog instead of a kid . I had to do a book report in Mrs . Perez 's English class . I was supposed to make a poster showing my interpretation of the story . I bought the poster board . That 's as far as I went . The night before it was due I drew a boy leaning against a palm tree on it . I drew clouds and rain . I wrote across the top " Billy at Sea . " I made up an author 's name . On the back we were supposed to write a summary of the story . I wrote . " Billy falls off a boat swims to an island . He makes it " I had to get up in front of the class and give a presentation to the class on my report . I made up the story as I went along . I told them how Billy was tossed overboard for being a stowaway . How he swam to shore avoiding sharks . He collected wood and made a shelter . How he lived off crab and coconuts . He was rescued by a French fishing boat that had stopped on the island to get water . Billy got back to California and wrote his story and became a hero . Everybody in the class loved it . They complimented my drawing . They told me that that book sounded awesome . I didn 't bother to tell anyone that I made the whole damn thing up . I got an A . I would make up stories about what I did on vacations and days off from school . I told people about places I had never been to , making up the details as I went along . Things I had done with friends from out of town or uncles I didn 't really have . I wasn 't close to these people so I didn 't really care if they believed me or not . But if they smiled or laughed at one of my stories , it egged me on and the tale would get bigger and bigger . I would make reports on these fake travels in English class . I always got good grades on them . I found out later that Mrs . Perez was friends with my mother . She asked her one day how she enjoyed going to Mexico . My mother told her that she had never been there . The jig was up . I was busted . My mother beat the crap out of me for lying to the teacher . My fantasy life was so much more entertaining then the real thing . To this day , nothing makes me feel as good as whPosted by When I was six I wanted a skateboard for Christmas . I got it . I didn 't know how to use it . I had never seen a skateboard in real life . I had seen people on TV ride them . I asked Hal what I should do . He said I think you run and jump on it and go . I set the board down in the middle of the driveway . I ran from the garage and jumped on . I missed the middle of the board and landed on the back end . It flipped up and smacked me in the face . A fat lip , two chipped teeth and my first broken nose . I ran in the house covered in blood . My mom said fuck now who hit you ? I told her I fell off the skateboard . All she said was that she knew I 'd hurt myself on it . She cleaned me up and took me to the Dr . He taped up my nose and sent me on my way . When we got home my dad was there . Ever the racially sensitive one , he looked at me and said " You got a nigger lip . " The skateboard went out in the garage . I never touched it again My dad and grandpa would take me fishing on boats out of San Pedro . They would get drunk . Once they got drunk and left for home while I was still on the boat . The crew gave me a hamburger and I waited with them till dad came and got me . I went to the nurse 's office one time . She put the thermometer in my mouth . I bit the thermometer and broke it . My mouth was filled with mercury and broken glass . The nurse came back in and I spit it out . She asked if I swallowed any of it . I told her no and she sent me back to class . My friend 's parents were always away . We would go to his house to play . We had a bunch of smoke bombs . We decided to light them in the house . The house filled up with blue smoke . We ran away and the fire department showed up . He got in trouble and told his mom and dad that me and our friend Bill did it . I started school a year late . I don 't know why . I was always a year older then everybody . They thought I had flunked a grade . I used to have to clean up the dog shit . The people behind us had a pool . They never invited us to swim so I would use the shovel and toss the dog shit over the fence into the pool . I don 't know how to swim and I have no intention of doing so . My uncle taught me how to cast my fishing line . We were standing on the riverbank , I cast the line . The hook caught my dad in the shoulder . He was down the hill from us so I didn 't see him . I felt the hook catch . My uncle started yelling " Reel it in Verne ! You caught a big one ! " I started yelling " daddy ! I caught a whale ! " My dad backed up the bank yelling for me to stop . I took a girl to a hockey game one . In between periods I told her I liked her . She asked if I wanted some popcorn and left to get some . In 4th , 5th and 6th grade I sat behind Shonna Hoback . Holy fuck , I loved her . She may be the only crush I really talked to . I would sit and stare at the back of her neck all day . To this day , whenever I remember how I felt whenever she turned and handed me a paper , smiled at me and said " Here you go Verne . " I melt every time . Richard Robinson threw my lock to the PE locker in the toilet . Mr . Moonie told me to get it out . I told him to get it out himself . I got detention because I didn 't stick my hand in a toilet . I went to a movie one night when I was 21 or 22 . I can 't remember what we saw . There was some girl that sat next to me after the lights went down . I have no idea what she looked like or who she was . We both fumbled our arms on the shared armrest . I took her hand and held it . She squeezed my hand . We watched the movie with our thumbs caressing each other 's hand . She put her head on my shoulder . The movie ended , I got up said goodbye and walked away . I was either 6 or 7 . I don 't really know . I remember we lived in San Pedro on 23rd street . The only places to play were the cemetery or a construction area across the street . We decided to go to the construction site . Earlier we had watched the workers throwing hunks of broken concrete into a dumpster . After they left for the day we thought we 'd help out and throw the rest away for them . We started throwing the pieces away , neither one of us paying any attention to whose chunk went where . Glass shattered , we stopped . My friend ran away . I started to , but someone grabbed me by my shirt collar . This hysterical woman was yelling at me , calling me murderer and shaking the hell out of me . She dragged me to her house , and into a bedroom . In the room was a crib . A baby of a couple months was in the crib with a giant chunk of concrete on top of it . The baby wasn 't moving . Blood was splattered around the baby . " You killed him you fucker ! " She kept shaking me . She took me to the living room and shoved me on a couch . I was crying , asking for my parents . " You 're not going anywhere but jail . " The police , fire department and an ambulance showed up . The police asked me who I was with . I told them my friend 's name . The officer asked if I knew my phone number . I gave it to him . He picked me up and took me to his car . He told me my mom and dad will meet me at the police station , and to stop crying , it will all be ok . My friend was at the police station when I got there . We went into different rooms and talked to different officers . They wanted to know how this happened . I told them . The police decided that there was no way of knowing whose piece of concrete went through the window . It was decided that we were too young to prosecute , and that it was just a terrible accident . The baby 's parents showed up . We both said we were sorry . The father seemed to accept the apology , but I have never before or after seen such intense hatred in someone 's eyes . The mom kneeled down in front of us , put one arm around each of Posted by The noise in my head will not stop . For 39 years this buzzing static has never ceased . I want it to end . It just keeps getting louder each day . I 've tried everything to stop it . Meds , alcohol , exercise , drugs and every other suggestion doctors or friends have given me . It will never go away . I woke up this morning and decided to stop the noise once and for all . I 've been here before . I can 't count the times I 've been here before , sitting and looking at a bottle of pills trying to figure out if I should take them or not . I know my kids are taken care of . Dawn and Rob are doing an awesome job of raising them . I 've pretty much become a guy they visit every other weekend . When they are here they never come out of their room unless I drag them out . We used to have fun , but they aren 't any more . The whole unemployment thing is really starting to get to me . I can 't find a job . I can 't expect people to take care of me , and I 'm tired of feeling like a sponge . I woke up determined that this ends today . I won 't do it . I can 't do it . Something keeps telling me to hold on , that it will get better someday . The only problem is , I am tired of waiting for that day . I don 't want a moment in the sun . I just want clarity . I want the noise to stop and the darkness to disappear . I 'll still be here tomorrow . I won 't do anything to hurt myself . I can 't give up . I will not give up . But please make the noise stop and let the light shine through . I have a band name tattooed on my arm . It wasn 't topical . I do not regret it . If I was in the chair I would get the same one . I 've touched upon my upbringing . It sucked . We can agree on that . It shaped the person I am today . I am not bitter about it . I just don 't care . In 1986 I heard a song on the radio . The station was 88 . 1 KUCR , a collage station out of Riverside . They would play punk and what is now considered indie rock . I heard a song called Broken Home Broken Heart by Husker Du . It was nothing like I had ever heard before . It 's like this song was written just for me . A two minute punk rock blast had had captured everything perfectly . I called the station and asked what album it was on . The next day I ditched school hopped on a bus to San Bernardino . I got off at the Mall . I can 't remember the name of the mall . I think it 's called the Carousel Mall now . I walked to Licorice Pizza across the street and bought it . Zen Arcade by Husker Du . The cover was bleak . A couple people standing in a junkyard . I looked at the names of the songs on the back cover . I couldn 't wait to get home . I went straight to my room and put the record on . I was completely blown away . The power , the urgency , everything was perfect . Every note rang true with me . I understood every word . Everything was about me . I didn 't feel alone anymore . Someone understood . Someone knew what was going on . I had Husker Du tattooed on my left arm . I never want to forget the pain and horror I went through . I never want to forget that no matter how hard things are , there is somebody going through the exact same thing you are . They will survive it and you will too . High School number two . After leaving Rialto I ended up in Perris Ca , which was a bigger shit hole then Rialto was . My father had moved us into a house with a lady named Lynn he met at a mental hospital . It was a big house up on a hill with an awesome view of the valley below . She had two kids who she never mentioned . Both were over 18 and just split . The floors were all brick . There was no heat in the place . I had my own room . Really I had the whole house to my self . Dad and Lynn were never there . Dad said as long as I go to school I could do whatever I wanted to do . I could smoke , drink , smoke pot , whatever , just as long as I went to school everyday . School was horrible . There were maybe 30 white kids in the whole place . I had knives pulled on me all the time . My Money stolen , my clothes disappeared from the gym locker . I had to wear my PE uniform all day . I got tired of having my money stolen so I started spend it on cassette tapes . I begged the front office for free lunch passes they gave out to the poor kids . Food was taken care of , but what about the knives and occasional gun jammed in my ribs ? Fuck it , I said if it 's my time to go then so be it . My math teacher brought in some guest speaker from the Nation of Islam . It was a full hour of I hate Whitey . Being the only white kid in class sucked . Every verbal attack on the white race was directed at me . After class I got the hell out of there . I didn 't want to be the victim of a beating . I met my first real girlfriend there . Her name was Kim . She was blonde and in the senior class . She gave me my first real kiss . I had to hide the boner I got during the kiss . She pretended not to notice . Kim was a trooper . We would make out every chance we got . She would call me up at night and ask me to come over and sleep with her . Being the oblivious ass I am , I never took her up . I thought she was trying to be funny . Kim got tired of trying and dumped me after a few months . Some one broke into Lynn 's house . They only touched her stuff . Mine was safe , which looked raJames Robison In kindergarten Mrs . Wallner would start each day asking if it was anyone 's birthday . At least once a week it would be some ones . They had elevated status for the day . Mrs . Wallner would have them sit up next to her and would sing Happy Birthday to them . At story time they would sit next to her again on a bench while the rest of us sat on the floor . They got to wear a crown made of yellow construction paper . Mrs . Wallner let them choose a cookie form the jar on her desk . I was born on December twenty first . It was after Christmas vacation started . I would not get my chance to be the birthday king . A few months after we went back to school , I decided I would have my turn . She asked if anyone was having a birthday today . I raised my hand up . She looked at me strangely , but asked me up to the front . Everyone clapped when Mrs . Wallner put the crown on my head and sang to me . I had my cookie . I got the story that was just for me . After class she asked me to stay and talk to her . She asked if it was actually my birthday and that if it wasn 't I should tell her the truth . I said it wasn 't my birthday and begged her not to tell my parents . She swore she wouldn 't . I got my first girlfriend in kindergarten . Her name was Noel . She used to show me her underwear on the playground . We would sit under the monkey bars and kiss when no one was looking . On my real birthday she came to my house and gave me a brown and white tank top . Living in San Pedro there wasn 't a lot of places to play . We played in an old cemetery and construction sites . It was the 70 's and there wasn 't a whole lot of security at the sites . Once the crew was done for the day , we would invade . We would run around the half built structures and play Hide and Seek . When I was five we had our choice of two sites to play on . The first one was on 24th street . Every kid in the neighborhood knew that was our site . No one else could play there but us . The other was on some street that intersected 23rd and 24th . We didn 't play there much , a bunch of teenagers hung out at that one . We decided we wanted to claim it as our own . We walked up to the teenagers and told them we were going to play there . " Fuck you babies " was the response . They said they will beat us up if we stayed . We turned and ran . WHAM ! Something smacked the back of my head . I fell face first in the street . " Shit man you hit him ! " " Let 's get the fuck out of here before he tells on us . " Hal and Joey picked me up . My back was all wet . I put my hand on the back of my head . I looked at my hand . It was covered in matted hair and blood . There was a broken beer bottle next to my feet . The bastard threw a beer bottle at a five year old kid . Hal yelled out to the teenagers that we are going to kill them . I started crying . Hal and Joey walked me home . My mom threw me in the back seat and we drove to the emergency room . The nurse shaved the back of my head and comforted me . The Dr . came in and cleaned the cut out . He kept squirting water into and spreading it open looking for glass . It hurt like hell . He stitched me up and I was on my way home . I got sit in the library for recess for the next couple days . First grade started . Noel was in my class again . We sat next to each other and held hands . It was raining one day and we couldn 't go out to play . Mrs . Kanouse played disco records in the class at recess time and told us to dance for some exorcise . I walked up to Noel so we can dance . She said she didn 't like me anymore and was in love with Joey . I sat back down at my desk while Noel and Joey danced . Mrs . Orrick hated me . I 'm not exaggerating here , she really hated me . She told my mother on Parent Teacher night that she thought I was a bad seed and would never amount to anything . When my mom got home she asked me if I did anything to Mrs . Orrick to make her hate me . I said no , she 's just mean . It was bad enough that I had to sit in her class an hour every day , but I was an office TA and had to go collect attendance cards from her class every morning . Her door was always locked . I had to wait for someone to open the door . I would have to stand next to her desk while she took roll and filled out the card . Years later I was told by a friend that I looked awkward and annoyed . I felt like the whole class was looking at me and silently laughing because every morning Verne has to stand up under the words " A Lot is two words " which she had printed on the chalkboard all year long . I tried not to make any eye contact with anyone in the room . I got the hell out of there as fast as I could . There was some girl that worked in the office with me . She would sit and stare at me . It felt good but at the same time it creeped me out a little . I felt bad for her . The secretaries would tell her to stop daydreaming about James right in front of me . I blushed every time . I could only imagine how she felt . I was given the office gig as sort of a punishment . The year before me and some friends forged a teachers name on a library pass . We had to go to the Vice Principals office . She took us in one by one . She told me that she knew I was a good kid and that she suspected that I might be having family problems at home . She said she was going to look out for me and make me work in the office the next year . I figured she was joking . First day of ninth grade my schedule says Office TA for first period . I walked in and she said " Told you so " I learned to like working there . All the ladies there loved me . They always told how cute I was . That started to bring me out of my shell . I guess all I needed was an ego boost . I had a girl Posted by I was in first grade with a kid named Bryan . When there was a fire drill he would cry . He used to take his pants off to pee at the urinal . He always backed away from the urinal to see how far he could go before he missed and wet the floor . He used to stand up and yell " I have to go number one ! " The teacher always let him go . In second grade I wet my pants . I sat there for an hour or so in pee pants because I was too embarrassed to say anything . Mrs . Lynn said no one goes to the bathroom unless it 's an emergency . The girl that sat next to me kept looking over at me making this scrunchy nosed face . She knew . The recess bell rang . I waited till everybody left before I got up . I told Mrs . Lynn what happened . She walked me to the office . I had to call my mom to bring me new clothes . I sat around for another half hour waiting for her to show up . When she did I was relieved that she didn 't yell at me . She just handed the nurse some clean underwear and a pair of pants . I changed and went back to class . I told everyone I slipped in the boy 's room and landed in a puddle of pee . I don 't think they bought it . In third grade , I did the exact same thing . In 4th grade , my mother got me a fake Cabbage Patch Kid . I didn 't want it . I didn 't want a doll . She made me take it to show and tell . I begged her not to . I wanted to take my new Space Shuttle picture . She said no , take the doll . I walked to the bus stop with the damn thing under my arm . The other kids were relentless . I was called fag and spit at . Someone said they were going to steal the doll . I sarcastically said " Oh no , please don 't do that . " No one stole it from me . I was stuck with my dolly . It was too big to fit in my desk . I had to keep it out in plain view of everyone . The teasing never let up . I got up for show and tell . I said " This is my doll . I hate it . " I threw it down and walked away . The teacher made me pick it up and go back to my desk . The rest of the school year I was greeted with taunts of " Verne plays with dolls . " None of the boys would play with me after that . The new school year started . The first thing I heard was " Hey Verne , where 's your baby doll ? " 5th grade was not off to a great start . I always felt like I was in competition with older popular kids growing up . I was fine till we moved to Rialto . Before that I already knew the better looking , better dressed kids were treated a little better than the rest of us . It wasn 't really the teachers , but the other kids . The good looking ones stuck together . The kids from the well - off families stuck together . The poor kids like me and my friends stuck together . We would be the ones whose money was stolen , our homework torn up on the way to school . It didn 't really bother me then . We moved to Fontana first , another travel trailer in a shitty trailer park on Valley Blvd . It was summer so I didn 't have to worry about school . My dad kept telling us our house wasn 't ready yet . He said we bought a house and it was still being finished . I had to go to the bathroom outside behind the trailer . We moved to Rialto into a house with another family from San Pedro . They had a son ; I shared a room with him . We would play with his Star Wars toys . I wore his clothes . I didn 't have any of my own . We left everything in San Pedro . He was a couple inches shorter and a little fatter than me . School started . I was the new kid who dressed funny . I was a target from the get go . I sat and played alone at recess . I ate my lunch alone . No one ever talked to me . Then I pissed my pants and that ruined it forever . We moved out of John 's house . We had our own house . I had my own room . There weren 't any wheels and a tow bar attached . It was a real fucking house . My bus stop was different . That 's where the popular kids let it be known that I was not accepted . One kid in particular really didn 't want me around . His name was Rich . He liked to punch me in the stomach and spit at me . The other kids laughed . I didn 't care . Fuck Rich and those assholes . I sat in the back and plotted my revenge . I never did anything , but the thoughts were there . During Show and Tell the kids would bring interesting toys from home and show all of us . This is when I started my storytelling . I made Posted by