Angie's Story - Appendix I
Bi-Sexuals have Twice the Chance of Getting a Date on Friday Night
Do you remember
Squiggy
from the TV show
Laverne & Shirley
? Well, I was born more than a decade after the show went off the air, but I saw reruns when I was a young tween. That's what my dad looked like. As I remember him, he looked like
Squiggy
. Except that the TV
Squiggy
was funny and wouldn't hurt a fly. The Squiggy I knew, at least as a kid, was mean and violent.
I was born in Portland, and to use the vernacular, we were white trash. We lived in a trailer, we never had enough to eat, and neither of my parents could keep a job for more than a few months. Of course, when you're five years old, it just seemed normal. I didn't know any different. The other kids in the trailer park didn't have it much better than me. But I do remember, more than once, my dad beating my mom with a belt and sometimes, even with his fists. I would run and hide under my bed, along with the family dog. And just wait until my dad either fell asleep or stormed from the house.
My mom and dad divorced when I was five. They tell me that the police had to come to the trailer and arrest my dad because he wouldn't leave, but I honestly don't remember that. Maybe I was hiding. Or maybe I just blocked it out. Either way, I'm glad I don't remember. What I do remember was that my mom and I immediately moved to Seattle, or at least the Seattle area. And for the next six years of my life, we moved often, usually back and forth between Seattle and Portland and never to a nice place. If it wasn't a broken-down trailer, it was a crappy rundown apartment.
Sometimes we would have money, and my mom would go to the store, and we'd have food for several weeks. Then there would be no money or food, and we'd have to move again. I don't really remember, but I doubt we ever stayed in one place for more than six months. And once I started school, it became very difficult for me to make or keep friends. I never really knew what my mom did for money. I think she usually worked as a maid or a Flagman for highway contractors. But they were all temporary, and for one reason or another, she was back at the unemployment office.
On the rare occasions that we had extra money, I think she probably earned it on her back. She was nice-looking, and the problem wasn't that she couldn't attract men; it was just that she always attracted the wrong kind of men. Men that just wanted a quick fuck, with no commitment or complications. In other words, they were probably all married. Or they just didn't want the baggage that came with my mom - me.
By the time I started middle school, we had moved to Los Angeles. Or, more specifically, the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. My mom had a sister there, and besides the weather being so much nicer, I think the ulterior motive was to be closer to relatives. In the northwest, we had no relatives at all. At least none that she could count on. But in San Fernando, at least she had her sister.
I think the other reason we moved south was that Mom could work in the porn industry. The San Fernando Valley is the home of the US adult movie business, and they are always looking for new talent. My mom wouldn't let me watch porn - or dirty movies, as she called them. But I know she did. Sometimes she'd have a boyfriend, or some stranger I'd never seen before, come to the trailer. She'd give me a dollar and tell me to go to the park for an hour. And not to come back early.
So, moving to Southern California seemed like a new chance to be normal. We moved in with Mom's sister, Aunt Rainey and Uncle Frank. Rainey's full name was Rainbow, with no middle name. And my Mom's birth name was Misty Dawn. However, she had always simply gone by Dawn. So, as you can imagine, their parents, my grandparents, were hippies. And pretty whacked-out ones at that. They still live in the Northwest, but Rainey and Mom were utterly estranged from them. In fact, I was about six years old the last time I saw them. I don't know what the issues between my grandparents and their daughters were, but it was enduring.
Rainey was sweet and loved having us. But Frank was a crusty old shithead. He worked as a diesel mechanic at the LA Metro Transportation maintenance facility. He had a long commute each way to work and back every day, and though Frank must have been a good mechanic, he hated his job, he hated the people he worked with, and he always came home in a bad mood. And to make it worse, they lived in a tiny, two-bedroom California bungalow. When we first moved in, Mom and I took the guest bedroom. Frank and Rainey didn't have any kids, which was probably a good thing, as Frank would have been an asshole of a father.
I honestly didn't know what Mom was doing for work. By then, I was in middle school, so I wasn't home during the day. But it appeared that Mom spent most of her day at home, doing little or nothing. Then she'd be gone all day, maybe two, and suddenly have money. I'm pretty sure she was working as a porn actress. She dressed sluttier, she wore makeup for the first time that I could remember, and she was always getting
private calls
.
I'm sure she was working for some porno filmmaker. And I'm sure Rainey and Frank knew, because one evening at dinner, Frank just blew up. I don't remember what the argument was over, as I ran from the room to hide in my bedroom. It was one of his regular rants and raves. But it was just too reminiscent of the fights my mom and dad used to have. Now, Frank never hit or assaulted my mom, but that was the last night we lived with them. I do remember Rainey trying to keep me. I guess I had become the daughter she never had. But Mom wouldn't have it. The next day, while I was in school, Mom moved us into another crappy apartment about two miles away.