About the Author

I grew up in the '50s. I sat in my rocker, rocking to the Andrews Sisters. At six, we got our first TV. I grew up on Howdy Doody. He had freckles and so did I.

Life was secure then. My family watched TV together. Friday night was Your Hit Parade with Rosemary Clooney singing "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" Saturday night was Milton Berle, running around in a leopard skin, with a caveman club.

I grew up in the country. I ran through fields. I fished in the creek. I charged through the woods, thinking I was Daniel Boone or Hopalong Cassidy.

My father had a funeral car business. My mother started drinking. We moved back to the city. I went to school with poor kids. I was the rich kid. I got beat up.

I grew up with Monroe and Brando. At eleven, I saw The Wild One. We wore motorcycle jackets and black engineer boots. We called ourselves The Chain Gang. We had two 45s at our first real party. We danced to "Rock Around The Clock" over and over and over again.

It was Easter Sunday, '55. I wore a powder blue suit, with pegged pants and boxcar shoes. I wore my hair in a flat-top, cut like a brush, slicked back on the sides. I met Michelle at the movies. It was our first date. We went to see Guys and Dolls.

Joe Donadio came in. He sat down and put his arm around her. I was quiet for a long time, went home and cried in the basement. I promised God I'd become a priest, if he'd let me have Michelle back.

My mother snuck out to bars at night. My father had her followed. One night he beat her up. As she crawled up the stairs, she peed on the carpet.

I found her calling the cops in her bedroom. I panicked and yelled to my father. He got on the phone, told the cops she was drunk. I took the phone, hung it up. She started crying.

My mother went to a hospital for alcoholic women. My oldest brother joined the priesthood. My sister went to boarding school. My other brother joined the Army.

My grandmother came to live with us. She made tapioca pudding, sang me Irish songs. My father made breakfast on Sunday morning. We laughed at the comics together. I began to cut Mass and play the pinball machines in a little Italian grocery store.

I grew up on changing cars. The '56 T-Bird, the '57 Chevy, the '58 Buick — each year we looked for the new ones.

I grew up on Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. He was twelve and so were we. I grew up on Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. I watched American Bandstand.

I grew up on changing words. From kool kat to cool to sharp to smooth. Each year it was different. He's a kool kat. That's a sharp tie. She's a smooth dancer. That's a cool suit.

I grew up on Communist paranoia. I believed in the FBI. A show called I Led Three Lives convinced us all there were Commies living around the corner. Once a month we hid under our desks, ducking imagined missiles from Russia.

It was 1957. We hung out on Frankford Avenue. The El ran overhead. The white kids stayed on one side. The black kids stayed on the other. Nobody crossed Frankford Avenue.

We wore four-button suits with the waist worn high like the black kids. Our shirts were paisley print. Our shoes were pointed featherweights. They were used to kick each other when fights broke out at the dances.

We went to dances in the basement at Mater Dolorosa. We did a slow dance called The Grind. The Italian priest would pull us apart. We did The Strand, The Stroll, The Bristol Stomp. We did The Twist, and The Mashed Potatoes.

We sat at the dances with a group of girls. They wore flannel skirts, pleated and plaid. They wore bras we could see through their white cotton blouses. We switched from Kents to Marlboros. The anxiety of group-belonging glued us all together.

My sister came home from boarding school. My brother came home from the seminary. My mother came back from the hospital. Six months later, they sent her back.

Elvis was always out with us. He was country and we were city. Secretly, I always liked him. The first time I saw him shaking his hips, I started taking guitar lessons. It was Sunday night, The Ed Sullivan Show.

We spent summers at the Jersey shore. We swam in the ocean, skied on the bay, made out on the beach.

One year I came back to the city, no one would talk to me. They said I dressed like Elvis, ran when I came into the little Italian grocery store.

I changed my style, pursued their rejection for more than a year. Some new kids joined the gang. They liked me. Everyone decided to accept me at a wild New Year's Eve party.

By ninth grade, we were listening to jazz. It was 1958. We listened to Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk. The bookies on the corner bought us whiskey at the State Store. We imagined ourselves as nightclub denizens, with shiny suits and Cadillacs. There were 50 of us now. We were safe at the dances when a fight broke out.

My sister had nervous breakdowns. They sent her away for shock treatments. My mother came home from the hospital, quit drinking.

They sent me to a Jesuit prep school. I tried to flunk out, but my parents made threats. The priests drilled my brain with Latin, forced my mind to develop. I went out for football, basketball, crew. I began to hang out with a new crowd. Soon we were dating Saint Mary's girls.

It was 1962. I went off to Fordham in New York City. I wore tweeds and loafers and ascots. I went to see Broadway shows. I went to see avant-garde plays. We went to the Village to hear poets and folksingers.

There were warnings on the walls about the Bomb. JFK was assassinated. The Beatles arrived, tried to cheer us up.

I fell in love for the first time. We planned our engagement and marriage. It ended with a phone call over the summer. I sat on the edge of the bed, a kitchen knife at my belly.

I started doubting Catholicism. Writing replaced religion. My depression was existential. I was filled with death and brooding. I started reading Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus.

It was 1964. I met her at the shore. She was seventeen, a painter. We talked about art till the sun came up. We made love on the beach, watched the blood on her thigh.

She got pregnant. I decided to marry her. My father threw me out. My mother had a breakdown. We got married in North Carolina, sailed to Copenhagen.

She went to art school. I began a novel. She had a miscarriage. We stayed in Copenhagen till we were broke and crazy.

I came back on a plane. She came back on a ship. I picked her up in New York, told her we had to split.

For two years, I finished college in Philadelphia, tried to live with my parents. I got drunk at funky bars, hung out with intellectuals. I wrote poems, plays, short stories. I sold my first story in senior year. I left for San Francisco as soon as I finished college.

It was 1967.