The Night Comes Down

First of all I'd like to thank everybody involved for bearing through with the last blog posting. We're going to keep the weird stuff to a minimum in this file, at least for a while. I would like to comment in it's being the fourth anniversary of Air America on April first. In these four years a lot has changed both in the American politic, and in my own political beliefs. Someone on a program today took a swipe at the "Determinism" of Albert Einstein today. My philosophy is when you grow a brain like Einstein's yourself, you can comment, otherwise keep your thoughts to yourself. The saying is true, "The dice of the Gods are loaded". We just need for it to unfold. Naturally, we need to retain "Plausible deniability". I hope you understand.

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It was a bleak, overcast day the first day of February of 1993. It was one of those days where it looked like it could rain any minute, but of course it didn't. On this day David Stanley decided to call up the pastor of his parent's former church, otherwise known as "The Asshole from El Paso" He had written him a letter a month and a half ago or so in which he referred to the pastor as a "finely honed tool of Satan". He just wanted to make sure he understood what he meant. Unfortunatly the Pastor was not at all talkative. He was brusk and gave David the bum's rush and the conversation couldn't have lasted longer than two minutes, if that. The next day, Saturday was by contrast bright and sunny all day. In this day Pete Richards, David Stanley, and a friend went to Disneyland for the day. One of the things that stands out was meeting two foxy girls in their early twenties or perhaps late teens, and David acertained from them that they were Rush Limbaugh fans. Unfortunately neither Pete Richards nor the other guy were inclined to want to expand the group to five. They were waiting in line in the dark to eat dinner at this place on Main Street, that David joked "reminded him of eating at the White House".

It was about the first of March when a cat David owned named Garfield gave birth to kittens which were kept in the crawl space below the apartments. David discouraged Garfield's bringing the kittens into the apartment because he was uncertain whether any cats were leagel now because there were so many letters in the mail saying the place was under new ownership, and there was a veritable revolving door of managers since Joe and Kathy left. David for the most part hadn't gotten into any "serious " relationships with women in the four & a half years that he lived there. With the notible exception of a four month affair with a married woman from November of 1989 to March of 1990. You'd just die to know why the affair was ended.

In mid March things were going swell. David however was unemployed but he'd gotten used to doing nothing all day long in the past year or so since he'd been out of ROP. There was a St. Patrick's Day special on 22 oz. Mickey's beer and David decided to avail himself. He adopted the habbit of going out every night for the beer and he kidded himself into saying "Well, I want to observe the position of the sun when it sets". On the radio over this period was the twentieth anniversary of the release of the Pink Floyd album "Dark Side of the Moon".

It was about April first when David wrote a poem song lyric to "A Touch of Gray" which he sent through snail mail. The tag line was "If you see red - don't end up dead". The lyrics to a degree revolved around a picture of planitary orbs on a Traffic compilation he'd just bought. There was a Star Trek episode where Data had to lie on pain of his life to his captain and distort evidence to conceil the encounter with a highly Xenophobic culture, who'd love an excuse to kill you. The message is "Don't go looking for evil, because you just might find it". It was around Easter of 1993 that David and Pete Richards were at this park that occupied the top of a hill where his parents now lived. There was a concrete path way around the park, and there was this teenage female roller skater who kept skating by them and overtaking them as they walked along. She must have gone by several times. David thought about that Bible passage of "As far as the east is from the west so far will your sin be removed from you" and how if you keep going west you'll only end up going around in circles and accomplish nothing.

Around April 20th. there was more trouble with the storage area down below. One of the boxes full of books in his area were just stolen. David went down to the hardware store and got a lock for the door. From now on- - problems would occur with increasing frequency.

It was the first weekend in May and David had just finished playing a cassette tape. One of the things on the tape was Rush Limbaugh's coverage of the Gulf War in February of 1991. The cat wanted food so David went out to buy it some. When he got back the cat wasn't there. David would never see the cat again. It had plum vanished. Later he found out from an attractive blonde female he in later years nick named "Nicole" because of her resemblence to Nicole Simpson. She had told David that she took the cat to the pound and found homes for all the kittens. Rather than get mad David acted like he didn't know. He says he "didn't want to jeopardize the relationship with her" by showing his real feelings about what she had done.

David had only been on SSI a little more than a year. He went down to the Social Security place, who were in a new, smaller building this year at the Bank of America. The wait was interminable but he didn't want to jeopardize his housing. He got hassled by the people there. When he got done he vowed never to repeat that experiance and bought some burbin and enbibed and he was rolling tape and the playback clearly reveals that he was intoxicated.

Now roomers came from his neighbor Ken that housing may be trying to kick them both out. David's fears were strengthened when he got a letter saying his first housing inspection wasn't good enough but now there was to be another. There was something about getting new carpet involved. Ken said it didn't matter if he was getting new carpet, his status was still in jeopardy. The new black cat Chaquille loved to roll around on the brand new carpet.

David also had problems with his neighbors. There was a motley crew of wierdos who had moved in. There was an old lady, her grand daughter and her little girl, and also her grandson and his wife and a nerdy looking daughter, and a rather gay looking boyfriend of the grandmother. The grandmother named Barbra began making increasingly strident complaints about loud music and with each complaint there was less basis to complain than the time before and now it was becomming irrational, as well as annoying.

It was about June 7th. or so- - it was a Friday in early June of 1993 that David got a letter from his church saying he was to be kicked out. David had been a member there for 29 years and the letter seemed at best screwey. After getting the run around from earlier calls, David decided to talk to the Pastor, Mr. Asshole from El Paso. The pastor was anything but civil or coherent. In fact his remarks were so "Out to lunch" David turned on the tape machine and decided to record the conversation because nobody would believe it. The conversation lasted 7:40 and the Pastor made numerous references to "We decided you should get psychotherapy". That's a whole other story for another time but David was furious getting off the phone and headed right for the beer, although it was not yet noon. It was perhaps six weeks later that David decided if the church didn't want him he'd send in whatever form they wanted him to send in saying he was no longer a member. There WAS no option on the form for "I wish to remain a Church member".

Sometimes you think things are getting better when they are really getting worse. Now that blonde teenage grandson named "Bernie" began stairing at David. At other times when David wasn't paying attention to him, Bernie would say "Look, there's the peeping Tom" to his chums and came up with all these fantasic stories about how David was a peeping Tom. Not only this but sine Stephany the little girl was the only one of the group who was friendly to David, David would sometimes talk to her. Now Bernie accused him of being a child molester. All day long you would see Bernie strutting around in those hot pink shorts that he wore. He would spend all day around the pool with the kids, Stephany a brunette who was four, and Justin, who was two. These were the two children of his sister, whose name I believe was Denise. David's case wasn't helped when one night coming out of the pool having drunk three 22 oz. Mickeys and having taken a Contac besides, stumbled when he headed up the stairs. The shades of the darkened room down stairs were open and occasionally there would be this flicker like a disco light or something and David stared at it a bit. It was Barbra watching a war movie on TV but now she said she had proof he was a peeping Tom. Later he came back down to the pool and she shouted more accusations out the window at him as Ken and the "parents" of Chiquille (the black cat) were at the other end of the pool and Ken asked, "David, what's going on".

The ironic thing was during this same month of July of 1993 David had met two women who were promising. One, a blonde, was named Gail, who had a red haired son. The other's name was Marie and she was an almost brunette and probably more attractive, but the best thing is she had daughters, Brittany 5 (?) and Chelsea (?) 3 who looked like their mother so that if they ever got together they would be believable as his kids. But the future of this relation was pretty much "baked into the cake" because she was a Christian and hated any form of drugs. But he didn't know that at least right away and by the time he found out it was probably too late. You see she would routinely greet him at the gate when he went out every night for Mickey's.

The keepers of Chaquille moved out in mid August. In a last dash "good bye" move the cat ran into his apartment like there was no tomorrow and didn't want to leave. David remembers that it was the time the Pope was visiting. David tried to pursue his relationship with Marie and they would often meet in the Jacuzzi. But in early September the Jacuzzi went cold, and so, for all practical purposes, did their relationship. He learned she want to Knott Avenue Christian Church and he started going there too, hoping to score points with her, but it didn't work.

David had gotten Joe and Kathy's new number from Ken and even called them a couple of times during the summer even entertaining thoughts of moving. Mitigating against this were that about August first Barbra and Bernie and that whole psycho gang left, in mass, and they never darkened his door again. Also Joe and Kathy's new place didn't accept housing. Another big mitigating factor was now Angie had moved in downstairs where Barbra used to live. She had a blond haired little boy about two & a half or three. He would see David and ask who it was and Angie said, "That's the sand man". The two commenced a sexual affair that lasted till late April of 1994. She made it clear that she was "between relationships" and not to expect anything permanent in the way of a relation. That was music to his ears. Though the sex was generally pretty good (she was kind of on the plump side) there were a couple of occasions where he was impotent and unable to perform due to too much drinking. This was a "sobering" experiance, pardon the pun. Strangely enough now, with no cats at all in the house, David would often feel like "evil forces" were after him when he was alone in the apartment. Also his house plants all picked up on this malaise and began dying one by one in September and October of 1993. Also at this time he began spending an increasing amount of time with Joe and Kathy and Nicholas at their apartment. He still felt protective tword Nicholas and was surprised to learn that at age five he was allowed to watch Beavus and Butthead. Then in late October David learned from Joe and Kathy that they were moving- and soon- - out of there into a house. He later formed the "oppinion" that the house was in Glendora, when Joe had only said "a number of miles east of Los Angeles". He had his reasons for the "Glendora" theory.

David liked to do these "Federation" album anthologies. One in September was titled "Good Old Fashioned Male Chovinist Pig". The only songs he remembers that were on it are "The Night Comes Down" by Queen, "Colored Rain" by Traffic, and some Bob Dylan song about "Call girls in the doorway" from an album outtake. In late October he put out another one in snail mail called "Weird Scenes From Inside the Old Mine" with Morrisonesque thoughts clearly on his mind.

David had no reason to be depressed but strangely he was. Something about the rapidity of events had taken something out of him. As October edged its way into November he was now drinking Carlo Rossi white whine regularly. And he was also aware that he'd be drinking the stuff like at one thirty in the afternoon when he never used to drink. Also he would have bouts of illness in late October and these "bouts" continued into the next several months through spring of 1994. He didn't know what could be wrong. Was it his drinking? He later found out it was probably Hepatitus B. which he tested positive for in 1999. At this time he decided to write his parents a letter expressing the years when they had let him down the most. The most recent of these dates was mid 1991, not long ago at all. His father didn't take the letter well at all and says "Look, I'm an old man, I'm 69 years old. What can I do?" David was rather insulted by his Dad's response. He felt more isolated than he was especially with Joe and Kathy now gone, which he regarded as a link to the "good old days" of 1988 through 1992, not so long ago. Relations with his Dad were strained at the Thanksgiving gathering. On the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner, from which they departed early, David and Pete Richards saw a UFO on the freeway above them apparently stationary in the sky about a thousand feet up, he'd guess. He thought maybe it was a balloon. He had some strange lettering on it that appeared to be in another alphabet.

We'll give you part two when we get good and ready.