was as real to me as you are, sitting in front of me now. In my opinion, psychic intuitions are not so different from psychotic breaks, but you don’t see palm-readers getting rounded up and pumped full of lithium. Hah. Anyway, I would have made a clean break of it if I hadn’t stopped by Patrick’s house to nab the rain jacket I’d lent him. Braw was in to all kinds of psychedelics, and on top of that he called himself a poet (and you know a lot of poets are just con-artists with egos), so he essentially had no right to judge me for anything, but he asked, and I gave him the skinny; I was biking to Santa Barbara to stop an earthquake from killing Nana and Heather. If I didn’t go immediately, Quackenbush the plague doctor would remove his mask and split the earth in a catastrophic Quacken-quake, and creepy crawlers from below would wiggle out of the seams and drag my family down to the underworld. So yeah, I needed my raincoat lickety-split. I didn’t get the feeling he really gave a shit when I told him, but I guess he must of because basically an hour later, Lotion’s car pulled up in front of me and Nana tackled me straight to the ground. I’d already shralped about thirty miles up the PCH, which might surprise you because I’m so skinny now, but remember back then I was practically a professional skater, getting featured in Thrasher and all that. Even so, Nana walloped me right off the bike and dragged me in to the backseat, and then they stuck me in the hospital while Quackenbush squatted at the bus stop out front and cackled through his beak. It was pretty preposterous. Long story short, they got their diagnosis. I got a prescription and a parade of rinky-dink shrinks. And now everybody gets to continue drinking and smoking and tearing apart their bathrobes and marriages and none of that matters because apparently, I out-did them all. Hah. So, what’s your mom’s version of that story?
48 • Spring 2020