Forever Nerdy Read online

  My grandparents were awesome, and I had a lot of them: five grandparents and a great grandmother. They were all incredibly cool and loving, with amazing personalities, and they’re all dead now.

  I don’t think they were irresponsible, but I did get thrown from a horse while I was two or three while I was with my dead dad’s parents in Sacramento. Mild concussion. I’ve had a couple of those over the years. But it must suck to be a grandma and have a horse try to murder your grandkid.

  Around that same time I was at my Nana’s house in Redwood City, and I fell into her apartment swimming pool while I was running around by myself at night like a dumb three-year-old in the seventies. Luckily my Nana’s neighbors had their patio door open and heard my stupid little body splash into the pool. The husband ran downstairs and jumped in and saved me. Thank Satan. I don’t really worship Satan—well, only on Christmas and Easter.

  Some of my earliest memories that I actually remember are of TV shows I saw and nightmares I had. The first TV shows were Batman and Sesame Street. That says a lot about me. Not sure what. Maybe that I still love Batman and look like a Muppet.

  I must’ve also seen the Universal horror classic Dracula, because the first bad dream I remember happened when I was around three. It was a Dracula dream. I think he was trying to kill me. You know, killing kids, just like Dracula, the famous kid killer. I guess I really was a dumb kid or my dreams were dumb. Or maybe someone shouldn’t have let a three-year-old see Dracula, Mom.

  When I was four I guess I had had enough of my mom and her Dracula shit, so I ran away. Really. At four. I grabbed my dog, Snoopy, and my tricycle and wagon and joined up with my friend Timmy, the kid from across the street, and we ran away. Sure, “Timmy” sounds like a bullshit name, but I know for a fact that was his name. And if your name is Timmy, yep, your name is bullshit. Anyway, we grabbed our stuff, Snoopy, and maybe some snacks, and we ran away.

  Of course, my mom freaked out—she was having a rough couple of years. My Nana Norma knew a cop and called him directly. I guess he owed her a favor—don’t ask. My Nana was single for the late sixties and early seventies and kind of a partier. I think she may have fucked Frank Sinatra. I hope she fucked Frank Sinatra. Anyway, the cop found us at the park. Of course, he did. We went to the park like a couple of four-year-old assholes. Where else were we going to go? Ice Cream and Puppy Land was closed, so we went to the park. I’m not sure how serious I was about running away, after all. That was my first run-in with the cops.

  I used to joke that I was raised by women. A whole village of them. It’s kinda true. When we lived in Redwood City I was around women almost exclusively. My mom had a couple of close friends who lived nearby and were always around, Sherry and Anne. They were both tall, of course. Anne was my first crush when I was a little bit older. Tall and thin with perfect porcelain complexion, and because it was the late sixties, she had impossibly long Rapunzel-length brown hair. More like Cher. I thought Anne was more beautiful than Marlo Thomas. That’s saying a lot: Marlo Thomas was pretty attractive when I was seven.

  My two Nanas and my Grandma Grace were around a lot. Grandma Grace was my Grandpa George’s new wife. I didn’t know that my Nana and Grandpa had a rough divorce; I just thought everybody had three grandmothers. I saw my Sacramento grandparents a couple of times a year; as I got older I would make longer and more frequent trips. I loved being around my Grandma Clara. She was a cool lady and a great listener.

  Until she died. Sorry to drop it like that. That’s some Stephen King shit, a trick I learned from reading Stephen King. He’s done it forever, and it can be devastating. He’ll describe characters or an action a character did, then in the next sentence say, “… and that was their last day on earth.” It’s true: she died. But not until a couple of chapters from now.

  I do remember my mom being sad pretty often. I recall telling her stories or jokes to make her laugh, and this is the first “really clever” one she remembers: I was four years old, and my mom had just briefly dated a man named Miles. Apparently, good old Miles had taken money from my mom. That was the thing: he was a scam artist. He grifted my mom for some cash and bailed.

  So my mom is relating this to Anne and a couple of her friends at breakfast at a little Redwood City diner. I’m sure it was an uncomfortable situation, and I think I sensed it, so when Anne asked about Miles, I said, with impeccable timing, I’m sure, “Miles is miles away by now.” Her friends all laughed and couldn’t believe that this weird little four-year-old had just said that. I’m glad my mom noted that in her memory bank as the beginning of me saying a lot of shitty, kinda mean things under the guise of wordplay.

  I was mostly a happy kid, considering I was dadless. I didn’t really know what I was missing. I didn’t have a lot of friends with dads at first. When I later lived in apartments, most of the other kids who lived there also had single parents. The few dads I knew were not great examples of dadness, and by the time I was in high school and college it was clear to me that a lot of my friends’ dads were dicks.

  Around age seven I was diagnosed as hyperactive. Before I was diagnosed, I was just a “spazzy” kid. And once I was around other kids on a daily basis, I was definitely disruptive. My mom once showed up at the daycare I went to and was told I was in a time-out in the closet. I had knocked over another kid’s brick castle. In my defense, it was an amateurish piece of shit.

  My mom freaked out when she found out I was alone in the jacket closet. I actually remember my frantic mom pulling me out of the closet darkness. Apparently that wasn’t the first time I had been reprimanded that way. I tell the story not to point out abuse in the preschool or daycare system of the late sixties and early seventies but really to paint the picture that I could be disruptive.

  I was exposed to death and sadness within my family at a young age, but I didn’t really react to it right away. Darkness, though, was a theme in my early life I picked up on later. I felt feelings in my teen years about some of the things I went through earlier, like—SPOILER—losing my dad and my mom’s boyfriend Bill and having a babysitter kill himself. Though, even at the time, I definitely missed having a dad, and seeing my great-grandfather in an open casket at age four was probably not the best move my mom could have made.

  I’ll try not to blame my mom for everything in this book, but I didn’t have a dad to blame, remember? So around the same time, at age four, I was exposed to real darkness. A sad event made even darker by a bully. The next-door neighbor kid had died, and my neighbor across the street, Timmy’s older brother, teased me about it. I was playing with Timmy, and his older brother—let’s call him “Tommy”—told us that “Gary, the boogeyman” was going to get us. Oh shit, “Gary, the boogeyman,”—he’s gonna get us?

  Wait, who is Gary the boogeyman? Boogeymen don’t usually have normal names. Well, Michael Myers. But anyway, my boogeyman was named Gary. The way my mother told me the story was that I was at my daytime babysitter’s house, this nice older couple my mom knew really well. I was playing with the old man and asked him if he wears his wife’s clothes. The old man said, “What now?” or “Wha-hah?” or “What in the devil?” or some other comedic response that fit the day when a child would ask surprising questions like I just had.

  I think now is where his wife got involved and asked what I was going on about. I said, “My other babysitter, Gary, wears my mommy’s clothes.” And presumably they both collectively said, “Holy shit” or “What the fuck?” or some other colorful response. I remember them as Italian Americans and the old man wearing a wife-beater and early-seventies-style plaid pants, so maybe he said something stereotypically Italian like, “Holy cannoli!” or “Ave Maria!” or “I’mma gonna wiin! It’sa me, Mario!”

  That night they talked to my mom, thinking my Uncle Gary was the creepy babysitter in this story. That is a tough conversation in 1970. My mom said, “No, my brother Gary is a lazy dipshit that lives in the Santa Cruz mountains banging this hot seventies chick named Linda.” Well, my
mom wouldn’t say that, but I would’ve. Nope, the Gary in this story was a teenage boy who lived next door to us and babysat me on a couple of occasions and at least once wore my mom’s clothes in front of me.

  My mom freaked out. All her friends heard. My nanas and my grandparents heard. I’m sure Uncle Gary heard he dodged a bullet. She eventually told the neighbors their son Gary was cross-dressing in front of me. He killed himself. Yep. There was no easy way to get to that part. His parents confronted him, and he took his teenage life. Should I have left this out of the book? Maybe. But honestly it had a lot to do with who I am. The story and my involvement has stuck with me.

  So Timmy’s brother, Tommy or whatever, was a real dick because this poor kid Gary had been driven to commit the ultimate shitty act and Timmy’s dumb-fuck brother was scaring other little kids with his death just a couple of months after he died. That’s my take-away from that story. Timmy’s brother was a giant dick. I often think of that poor fucking kid, Gary, and whatever feelings that led him to kill himself. So sad.

  Now I feel nothing but empathy for Gary, but when my mom first told me the whole story at age eleven or so, I reacted differently. I was confused and angry. When I was five, my mom threw a party for me, and no kids came other than good old Timmy. It was just me, Timmy, my mom, Nana Irene, and Nana Norma along with a bunch of party favors and ice cream cake sitting around an empty table.

  I am almost positive that the other kids my mom invited stayed away because the teenager next door had just killed himself and *whisper whisper* “Did you know Gary used to babysit for the Posehn widow?” *whisper whisper* “Do you think the Posehn widow or that weird little redhead had something to do with it?” *whisper whisper* “They must at least know what happened.” *whisper whisper* “She did stop coming to church.” *whisper whisper*

  That’s true. We did stop going to church around the time of Gary’s death. My mom left Catholicism that year, which makes sense, considering my dead dad and a couple of rough years. I’m guessing Gary’s death had something to do with it. I’m also guessing our duplex and the neighbor’s house were tough sells. “It’s two bedrooms and one bath, small kitchen, dogs allowed, the former tenant moved because the neighbor boy wore her dresses in front of her little son and then he hung himself right next door. Would you like to see the backyard?”

  TWO

  POSEHN AND NERDY, THE EARLY YEARS: PART DEUX

  In the summer of 1971 I turned five, and we moved about twenty-five minutes south of Redwood City to San Jose, California. We settled into a small apartment complex in a suburban neighborhood. Soon after moving to San Jose my mom met a new guy, a tall skinny, bespectacled fellow named Bill. And I’m sure you can see this coming, of course: they met at the Golden Gate Tip Toppers.

  I met short people too, but only when we would leave our tall village and go to normal-land. I liked Bill a lot. He took me to see the Harlem Globetrotters; that was the first big, live event I ever went to. More tall people. Bill brought me toys from his business trips. I remember Eskimo-related toys from Alaska and American Indian–themed paraphernalia from the Dakotas.

  I thought he was going to be my new tall dad and teach me “tall dad” things. Well, he died. He got in a car accident about eight months after my mom and Bill started dating. I found out because other tall people were crying at our apartment. My mom took me aside and told me about the accident. I was very sad. I liked Bill a lot. He liked me too.

  One of the shittiest things my mom ever said to me was, while I was still mourning him a couple of years later, that “Bill liked you more than he liked me anyway.” Shitty thing to say to a seven-year-old, sure, but maybe that was the way my mom dealt with her grief, or maybe she was just being a fucking bitch. I’m sure I’ll say some shitty things to my kid, and I will blame them on my mom too.

  Speaking of being fucked up, I met my first therapist in San Jose at around six years old. He was an older British gentleman named Leonard, and I would visit his office once a week. Not sure I understood why I went to his office; not sure I even knew it was an office. I just called Leonard my friend.

  Every kid has a friend who happens to be an old British guy you go see for an hour a week and you talk about life and your mom and whatever was going on that week, right? It was called “play therapy.” He would get on the floor with me and play while we talked. I went to Leonard because I acted out a lot at school and at home.

  I had two first-grade teachers—the first one couldn’t handle my bullshit. Not sure the second one fared any better. I actually was a bit of a bully to a couple of kids. One kid, William, always had stuff in his hair, pomade or something, and also had a dumb look on his face all the time, and I teased him for both the greasy hair and his dumb face.

  I also threw sand at girls and wouldn’t let kids take naps. I instead tried to disrupt naptime by playing “duck, duck, goose” with my sleepy “friends.” It worked, and by “worked,” I mean it got me transferred to another first-grade class. This is still before I was diagnosed as hyperactive, but that duck-duck-goose-naptime shit seems pretty fucking obvious to me. I was a hyper little dildo.

  My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Clark, put up with my squirrelly ass all year and didn’t sit on me. That’s a weird thing to write, why would a teacher sit on a kid? Oh, because my third-grade teacher fucking sat on me. Yep, my third-grade teacher actually sat on me to control me. Several times. I recall it making me more spazzy, struggling under her weight.

  One day I got out from under her and ran for it. All the way home to our apartment. It wasn’t far, like a block. I think my four-year-old turn as a runaway was further. The principal tracked me down at home and made me go back to school. Mom wasn’t happy about that.

  I saw that principal, Mr. Mason, quite a bit that year. He had me tested. My IQ was high, but I wasn’t excelling. No one could figure out why. It was the beginning of that problem. Meanwhile the bedwetting hadn’t stopped yet. Yep, I wet the bed too. I think someone was really hoping I’d be a serial killer. Nope, worse. Comedian. Sorry.

  Not sure when the bedwetting started. I don’t know if I ever mastered not sleeping in pee as a baby and then it came back as a young boy or if I just always peed the bed. It was only really an issue for my mom. I actually had a couple of accidents at camp and other boys’ houses and much later when I slept with girls. And almost everybody has been cool with it. It actually felt good. For a minute warm pee feels amazing, cold pee not as much. It was, however, a big deal for my mom. And, in turn, a big deal for me.

  I grew to hate peeing the bed and really stressed about it. Thank god all my friends were cool, because I was a neurotic mess about it. Early mornings on someone else’s carpet or camp bunk bed, panicking while cleaning up my pajamas, my sleeping bag, and whatever else I soaked, trying to get rid of the evidence. This happened into my twenties. Remind me to tell you about my Rasta friend, Chris. You won’t. So I’ll just tell you, we worked together at Tower Records. I got high and boozy in his apartment and I passed out on his couch. I woke up early in the morning soaking wet. So I took the soaked blanket, stripped the covers off his couch cushions and went and did laundry in his apartment complex. I came back from the laundry room and he was awake. I was totally embarrassed and he just said, “no worries, man.” We started that day with a wake and bake and he never told anybody about my accident.

  In the seventies there was a Michael Landon TV movie about a kid who peed the bed every day, so his mom would hang his sheets outside to embarrass him. He would run home from school to get the sheets down before his friends could see them. He later becomes an Olympic runner. We made fun of that in a Mr. Show sketch called “The Bob LaMonta Story.”

  My mom didn’t hang up my sheets, mainly because we didn’t have a yard, I think. Instead she just nagged me about it, making me feel like shit and fearing sleep and hydration. We tried everything—pills, not drinking after a certain hour, slip-on diapers, a pad we bought from Sears that was hooked to an electric tor
ture device that gave you a mild shock and woke you with the most annoying sound to ever come out of a small box. It was terrifying.

  This, of course, happened after you peed, not before. So it didn’t help you not pee; it just woke you right after or during your accident like a vindictive tattletale. Fucking useless. I eventually grew out of bedwetting. In my forties. Seriously. I just stopped peeing the bed in the last ten years. It can still happen if I’m super sleepy or drunk. My wife and my previous live-in girlfriend, both of whom you will meet later, were fucking amazingly cool for putting up with it.

  There were also good times at home: my mom often wrestled with me, and she actually would get very into it. It was one of my favorite things to do with her. She was a big lady, so she could throw me around. We had seen local wrestling on Bay Area cable, so when the two of us acted out our fight we took on some of their names. I was Pat Patterson or Moondog Mane, popular local superstars from our show. She was Greasy Spoon, a name I’m pretty sure she made up. Greasy and Moondog would have weekly matches on Saturday or Sunday morning.

  Even at age seven it was fairly obvious I needed a male influence, as I didn’t see my grandfathers really that often and dudes who slept with my mom kept dying. Two for two—pretty strong numbers. She was undefeated at having lovers die.

  For the first time in my life I just realized my mom was probably a virgin when she met my dad. I’ve actually never even thought about it before, and now that I have, I want to take a bleach shower. And then punch myself to death. Thanks for making me think of that. BLAARRGG!!

  Anyway, male influence was needed, so my mom signed me up with the Big Brothers organization. I had two Big Brothers. I don’t remember much about the first one; we only had one date or whatever you want to call it that is less creepy. I think he got a girlfriend and couldn’t see me anymore. There is no way to make that sound not weird.