The most destructive and illegal thing I ever did was ca. 1988 when I assisted my then “boyfriend” (the quotation marks are a really long story because it was and wasn’t a boyfriend relationship) at the time- I’ll call him Eliot- in briefly exorcising some of his demons while taking revenge on a boss. Eliot was already in near poverty when he was fired on a bullshit offense by a gestapo like boss; the real reason was because the boss (who had been my boss too- a tyrannical asshole who not only beat his wife and his [a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e] teenaged stepson but joked about it at work]) had learned Eliot was gay (due to something that was admittedly stupid on Eliot’s part) and so he used the first excuse he could to fire him.
Eliot had an extremely debauched past before coming to Alabama, and in fact the wildness of their kids with drugs/sex/rocknroll was one of the many reasons his parents move here from metro Detroit. One of his brothers had already OD’d back in Michigan, another was heading that way, a sister was becoming a total bimbo, and the racial climate (they were the only white family on their block in a working-class neighborhood plagued with black and other non-white street gangs and their lives had been threatened) and his parents both having health problems all led to his parents return to Alabama (where his dad was born and had inherited his parents’ small farm about 50 miles from Mgy but where his kids had only been on short vacations to see their grandparents). Eliot was about 23 or so but joined them after a few months, though he lived in Montgomery as it was at least somewhat bearable while the nearest town to his parents was a place of about 500 people.
Anyway, Eliot was debauched. He had done= in profusion= all of the drugs and sordid sex and youthful “beyond indiscretions” and other disspations that I had never done, never had the opportunity to do or the guts to have done if I had, was from a place with a huge gay community and couldn’t believe how closeted Alabama was, and while he was a self-destructive asshole and very negative influence in many ways I was totally in love with him (he was also hysterically funny and brilliant and the best read whitetrash Michiganian ex-junkie ex-delinquent ex-reform school ex-kept-boy of an elderly WW2 general ex-'pre-Don’tAskDon’tTell-army-dischargee" etc. you’d ever want to meet and he loved me in his own fucked up way and being with him was kind of like being able to say “I’m with the band” and entering a Hieronymous Bosch painting.
Sorry, long story medium- Eliot (the first person I ever said “I’m gay” too) was also, not surprisingly, HIV+, which in and of itself was cause for extreme depression. In addition, he adored his parents and wanted so terribly to atone for his previous “wicked wicked ways” and they both had serious health problems and that was a huge worry [both outlived him- both were still alive as of last year in fact]). Eliot had always been on the verge of poverty/eviction because he had a shitty job to begin with and [though he’d quit hard stuff] spent half his money on pot and booze, and now he’d lost said shitty job. In addition he was horribly homesick for Waterford MI [to each his own, I suppose] and the friends and former homies he love-hated back there and he hate-hated Montgomery by comparison. He was miserable, morbidly depressed, and went from a usual near mania to just near unresponsive melancholy and I was so worried he was either going to kill himself or just waste away. The only spark in his eyes at all was when he said “Man, five years ago back when I was alive I’d have messed up that @#(@#'s house like you wouldn’t believe… I’d fuck his whole snobby snotty ass Pleasant Valley Fucking Sunday Stepford Wife neighborhood up…” regarding his ex-boss. “But now I’m just a pathetic fag who’s going to die of a disease he can’t tell anybody he has and…” then re-entered depression.
Driving him to get something to eat in my Yugo, he asked me to turn around and take him home because “I’m not hungry, I don’t want anything except to not be…or fuck up that asswipe’s house. And that’s not gone happen. So please just take me home.”
I’ll wrap it up by saying that you’d be amazed at how much damage two fags in a Yugo going faster than any yet clocked in a residential neighborhood of Mgy AL can do in about a 10 minute time period. It was pretty damned impressive. Especially at one house. I should state that there was no SERIOUS or PERMANENT damage done exc… well, I’ll leave it there, and add that no people or animals were hurt in any way, but as an antidepressant it worked faster and better than Zoloft and though Eliot was not a neo-Nazi (though he was a major WW2 enthusiast*) there are probably still people in Montgomery who remember the site of a red Yugo driving down the Eastern Blvd with a young man (who they have no way of knowing was near suicidally depressed moments before) standing up through a sunroof giving a Nazi salute and screaming “I JUST CONQUERED FRANCE YOU DICKLESS APPEASING MOTHERFUCKERS!!”“”“”“”“”“”“”“” and hooping and hollering.
Stupidest thing I ever did, only thing I ever did that could have gotten me in really serious legal trouble and at a time when I would have been put under the jail because I damned sure couldn’t have afforded independent counsel or pulled any strings, and though nothing REALLY bad was done- no arson or structural damage or any people or animals harmed or any of that- but this being the brokest time of my life and coming just after a several year cycle not just of economic want but of knowing how shittily the Bible beating Kountry Klub Krowd treats you at such times, and having just pulled a quick Attila on their lawns and mailboxes and trashcans and the like (especially one)- I totally understand things like the St. Petersburg riots better. With every mailbox bashing or hurled “object” and the like, I can totally see how peasants get out of hand when that first bag of grain is ripped open.
*One of the 9 million infuriating inconsistencies and illogistics of Eliot: he was terrified of being homeless, which was a real threat for he was often too broke to eat due to his drinking and living above his means, and he was even contemplating suicide a couple of times due to the money problems and other problems, BUT- the same guy, when leaving the employ of said WW2 general, had liberally sacked the loot the general had liberally sacked from Nazis; though he swore and was probably telling the truth that “Oh fuck, Conrad” [not the general’s real name] “probably never noticed these little trinkets were missing- he’s got a room full of this shit in his house and a warehouse full and the best stuff he keeps in a safe deposit box”, but among things in Eliot’s pilfered haul of pilferings were autographed postcards of Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, and various German film stars, SS daggers, ladies gold earrings with onyx swastikas/white enamel/ruby chips, a silver bust of Hitler, an SS car flag, swastika silverware, etc.- this was a big box full of stuff, some of it pretty rare and or valuable. I suggested that this would be a good time to sell this stuff to a “no questions asked” buyer and there were no shortage of them where WW2 memorabilia was concerned, and for that matter his primo-condition Beatles Butcher Album (I don’t remember if it was sealed) that even then was appraised at around $3,000 and which he had come by legally (sexual favors to a rich collector/dealer who had a spare) might should go on the auction block. Nope, nothing doing, “I’d rather die” he said. I’m hoping that if he maintained that position til he did die, his parents sold hell out of it when he did expire.
