don't hang up when I say goodbye

[fredxmertz]

My parents were famous for Halloween parties. My brother would somehow gather all his most eccentric and artistically challenged friends for the inevitable Halloween bash. These parties were what started me towards the path of being an evil partier.

But this one is not about those parties, it is about Richie. The kid around the corner. He came from Canada, and his neighbor in Canada was our classmate, Chris Forrest, the Scottish guy from Canada. I guess Chris's dad played guitar and Richie's dad (named Wee Willy) played mandolin together.

Richie was not invited to this Halloween party. he was not invited to ANY of my parties. Let's say this was seventh grade? So Richie tried to crash, but no one would let him in. he smelled bad. He returned shortly and threw an egg at my front porch, while we sat on bails of hay at the Halloween party.

Tim Sullivan (good Irish lad) managed to catch the egg in his hand without breaking it in his hand and he threw it back at Richie. And he nailed him. Richie swore he would be back with a live grenade.

My stepdad had a strange respect for Richie. Bcause he saw him as salesperson. Richie had to sell himself to you, but I never bought in. he was always that smelly kid who got in fights and fought dirty (in at least one case, he used his cast on his broken arm to beat on a kid.)

Richie threatened another neighbor, Susan Long, that he would beat up her brother if she didn't fuck him. He smelled bad, who could blame her. He also had a big nose and messed up teeth.

In a drug stupor one Friday Me and Bert Vandenberg cast a spell on Richie from the NECRONOMICON but it appeared, at least at that time, to have backfired. We saw him a driving a shiny datsun z Convertible the next day with a buxom blonde in the passenger seat. He yelled at us "Fuck you, losers!" We were all crumpled and burnt out from dosing and poofing laced ganja.

He became a roadie for guns and roses, who I despised passionately. Even RATT were better than GnR.

I left my Ibanez Iceman at Kevin Corson's house after a party. Richie got the guitar and took it with him on tour with when he was roadie on a nationwide tour for Guns n Roses. When they were in Florida, he paid Izzy's brother to break Izzy�s hand, so that he could go on stage with GnR. He said he wore a wig and played my Iceman on stage. True or false, I don't really know....

I know he stole some guitars from Jack from Whitesnake. I met Jack at one of Kevin Corson's parties, he seemed pretty cool for a hair-band false-metal freak.

I know Richie was the one who spray painted "FREE VINCE NEAL FROM JAYLE" on a bus stop on Torrance Boulevard. If Richie saw a police car, he would run out in the street and lie down in front of it. Sometimes, in a wasted mess, he would look a LITTLE bit like Jimi Hendrix, but with a huge nose (broken oh so many times) and messed up teeth.

Richie was killed by being shot in the back on a crowded Hollywood street sometime around 1995. Kevin Corson said it was some Australian gangsters that Richie had been working for, or owed money to.

'he loved to spend money on the ladies' Kevin told me. "well, he HAD to," I said, "none of them would tolerate him otherwise."


Mertz has a one day weekend.




From childhoods hour

"From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone."

-Edgar Allen Poe "Alone"