Houston Has A Problem

Houston has a Problem!

The Shock ing R ealLife Story of a Se x ua lly A bused Child

Saint Andrews

Ch a p ter 1

GROWING UP TEXAS STYLE I was born in the mid-sixties during the Chinese year of the snake. Like most of us raised in Western culture, I naturally presumed the snake represented the devil in the garden of Eden. You know the story. The fallen angel took on the form of a snake to deceive poor clueless Eve, who, of course, talked Adam into defying God Almighty. I don’t know about you, but if I had the relationship with God that Adam had, I would have just left that apple alone. I mean, why blow a good thing for an apple?

It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the snake was actually a globally revered sacred animal and even worshipped by many cultures.

Many eastern religions believe snakes are the embodiment of wisdom and 1

Saint Andrews

knowledge. I like that about the snake’s symbol, as I’ve always had a high sense of curiosity. I like knowing why something works a certain way or why people do the things they do. I guess you might say I’ve been looking for answers all my life.

When my spirit left eternity and decided to enter this world, my father filled out the birth information, proudly naming me Houston, Jr. Believe it or not, I hated my name for a long time. I wanted to be called Michael.

Like Michael Jackson. I remember being quite angry at my father when my mother first told me the story of my christening.

They were quite a couple, my mother and father. They were childhood sweethearts, which to me seemed very romantic and even magical. My mother was 13 when they met, and my father was two years older. They met in the cotton fields of glorious Lubbock, Texas, the home of the Texas Tech Red Raiders, The County Line BBQ restaurant, and Buddy Holly.

My mom kept the house very peaceful and quiet, and no matter where we lived, Mom always made it feel like home. I don’t know how she kept everything together. Somehow, we always had more than enough food on the table every night. She cooked, she cleaned, she took care of us, she took us to church every Sunday, and she still found time to work 5-6 days a week at the Navy Exchange.

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Houston has a Problem!

I’ve always been the proudest of my mom. She was a beautiful black woman.

She was elegant with a genuinely pleasant nature and regal demeanor that people noticed immediately. I remember wanting to be my mom, with her sexy halter tops and big hoop earrings, platform open toe heels and polyester pants. She was simply beautiful inside and out.

My dad was a proud sailor in the United States Navy. Unfortunately, that meant he was out to sea eighty percent of the time while I was growing up.

But when he was home, it was party central at our house, that’s for sure.

My parents always found a good reason to celebrate. In the early days, there were always parties and music wherever we lived.

Music was always playing in the Andrews’ residence and still is to this day.

My parents were both big fans of all sorts of great soul music like Diana Ross, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, The Jackson Five, and my father’s favorite, Marvin Gaye. My dad always played music, either in the house on his LP player or in the car on his 8-track player. Looking back now, I can see my father most influenced my passion for music that would later come full throttle into my life.

My dad didn’t really know his mother, and his father wasn’t around much either. He and his four brothers were raised in foster homes, but they all went to the same high school. Back in my dad’s high school days, his nickname was “Red” because he had light skin and the devil’s smile. He was the way-too-cool-for-school type of guy. He was just under six feet tall 3

Saint Andrews

and a real looker, the ladies would always say about him. He was “a lover, not a fighter,” and he was always the life of any party.

I’ve been told many times I look like my father. The funny thing is, I didn’t find my father very attractive as a child. After all, he wasn’t white, and I had learned to equate white with attractive and sexy. Regardless of my opinion at the time, my father had a special quality. He had that X-factor everybody loved. Actually, both of my parents were very special people, and they were a perfect match.

Then there was my big sister, who is a year older than me. She was loyal to a fault; maybe even a little too giving and controlling at times. I like to believe it was my sister who got me through some of my worst years as we were growing up. It was also my sister who gave me my childhood nickname, “Bubba.” Apparently, at that age, my sister couldn’t say “brother.” She tried and tried, but what came out of her mouth always sounded like Bubba.

After a while, everyone thought the name was cute, and that was that.

In the early 1960s, Lubbock, TX was as racist as one could get in America.

Negroes, as we were called back then, lived on the east side, and the white folks lived on the west side, and none of the two met unless one was a maid like my grandmother. She sometimes cooked, and she cleaned white people’s homes. She often told me to “never trust a white person because in the end, you are just another nigger to the white man.” Maybe it was the

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Houston has a Problem!

way they treated her that made her bitter, or maybe she was just jealous, I don’t know.

I remember going to the white people’s house to pick up my grandma one day. When we knocked on the front door of the big house, the white lady who answered the door told us we weren’t allowed to use the front door.

We needed to go around the back and wait in the back yard until my grandmother came outside.

I couldn’t blame my grandmother for being bitter or even jealous of the white people she served. Everything was better on the west side. The stores were newer and filled with things we poor black folks could only dream about. And the grass was definitely greener there. They actually had grass, whereas the lawns on the east side were mostly covered with dirt, rocks, and weeds. The streets were bigger, too, and paved. One never saw a pack of stray dogs roaming the streets at night down the white people’s neighborhoods like on the east side where one could get rabies from the backs of dogs and wild cats.

But most of all, I remember the people on the west side. They just looked happier than folks on the east side. They were dressed nicely and appeared more confident than the people on the east side.

The white people’s homes on the west side were like Hollywood mansions compared to the small single and double shotgun homes on the east side.

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Of course, there were a handful of Negroes on the east side who had lovely homes. These would be your black lawyers, doctors, pastors, congressmen, funeral directors, and the lucky few that worked for the state.

However, what the east side lacked in opulent homes, it made up for in cars. Lubbock’s east side had more Cadillacs and Lincoln town cars than the west side of town… Crazy, right?

Anyway… Life was simple back then. Everything boiled down to either black or white. In the 1960s America, you knew your place no matter what side of the tracks you lived on. People rarely considered stepping outside of that box, well, at least in the great state of Texas, one sure as hell didn’t dare cross certain lines.

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