Graphic Story, archived by Trust Fund (EC site)
"Under The Influence" by Art Alexakis
When I was a kid living in the Mar Vista Gardens projects of Culver
City.California, I shared a room with my older brother George--whenever he
wasn't in jail or on the lam. that is. We slept inthe same big double bed. I
can still picture him sitting on the edge of our bed. sniffing a sock that
he had filled with glue. Once. George fell asleep stoned, with his cigarette
still lit. I woke up whenhe threw me out of bed--the mattress was on fire.
He got some water from the bathroom. pouredit on the flames, and went back
to sleep. The bed must have been smoldering, because an hour later I woke up
surrounded by flames. George threw me out of bed again. dragged the mattress
downstairs, and put out the fire in our front yard while all our neighbors
George was nine years older than me. so I basically worshiped him. After my
parents split. mydad was never around, so George was the man I looked up to.
When I got a bicycle for my birthday. George was the one who put it
together. A year later,George was the one who took off the training wheels.
Before he started using drugs, he was considered much better looking than
me: blond hair. soft blue eyes. He got voted Best Eyes and Best Teeth in his
He was very patient, very charming, very funny. When our dog Cleo had
puppies underneath the house. George was the only one she'd allow around
her. He went in there and cleaned off the puppies one by one.
George was always a compulsive liar--he would tell anyone anything in order
to be liked and accepted. He started hanging around with a stoner crowd in
1968. When he was fifteen and I was six. This meant that I didn't see him as
much. Disneyland was only a short drive away. so he would take me there
sometimes; that would keep me excited for weeks afterward. But often George
would get wrapped up in getting laid, scoring drugs. whatever--and forget
was too late to go. I spent a lot of my childhood waiting for my brother. My
birthday was April 12 and his was April 13. so we usually celebrated
together. When I was eleven. George was supposed to pick me up at noon and
take me to the Magic Kingdom. Hours went by with no sign of him. I was
smoking cigarettes. just hiding from everybody, because I felt let down and
abandoned. Eventually, George showed up stoned. My mom didn't want me to be
in the same car with him. but I insisted. We drove down to Disneyland. only
it was raining, so we ended up seeing a movie instead. That night. we slept
at Aphrodite Waterbeds. George was the manager of Aphrodite, which was
basically a head shop. My mom wanted me to have a man's influence--I was
living with her and two of my three sisters-- so George would pick me up on
Fridays and I'd spend the weekend at the water-bed store. I'd sit there
reading underground comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the R.
Crumb catalogue. which were really over my head.
"George. what does 'splooge' mean?"
"Well, he's splooging on her face." These comics were too raw for me at that
"Hey George. what does 'gash' mean?"
At night. the water-bed store would close and all these freaks would show
up. Couples would start screwing on the water beds in the showroom, and I'd
fall asleep. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there'd be
a couple in the same bed as me. making waves.
My brother was infamous for having these young hippie-chick girlfriends who
were closer to my age than his. When he was twenty. he was going out with
girls who were thirteen or fourteen. But I thought they were grown-ups: They
were hot. they wore halter tops, they had big tits. When I was eleven.
George took me out for the Fourth of July and got me wasted. This
fourteen-year-old girlfriend of his said. "I'II take care of you tonight,
little brother." She gave me a blow job in the backseat of George's station
wagon, but I was too stoned to come and probably too young. I became more
sexually active a year or two later. mostly with older girls. In Southern
California during the Led Zeppelin era, these fourteen-year-old girls were
giving blow jobs like porn queens.
The age gap between George and his girlfriends looked even greater than it
was, becauseGeorge had aged prematurely. When he wasn't in jail. he'd grow a
beard and long hair. The drugs made him look perpetually tired and beaten
down--you might think he was in his late thirties. And After he got shot (a
payback for some seam he never told me about). when he took off his shirt
you could see the wires that held his abdomen together.
But when he was younger and still whole. George played third base in Little
League; I used to watch his games all the time. He was really good, until he
hurt his knee. I loved the uniforms and the pageantry, and the sense of
belonging. I played for years myself, starting off in right field but
eventually holding down second base and first base. Every year in spring
training they'd let me pitch a game, and I'd always get hammered. I was
never big enough to excel, but I usually hit over .300. All the kids who
were really good were practicing with their dads in the yard. As time went
on, George became too wrapped up in drugs to play catch with me.
On a Saturday afternoon when I was twelve years old. I went to the local
batting cage. I was going to practice my swing. and I was also meeting my
girlfriend so we could make out. I hadn't been there long when our next-door
neighbor Dianne and her boy-friend pulled up to the field. They told me I
was needed at home right away. I didn't want to leave--I was still
insisted. On the way home. I peppered them with questions. which they
wouldn't answer. I sat in the backseat of their Mustang. just knowing
We pulled up to my house, and my sisters were running out the door all at
once, crying and screaming "George is dead!" I was just standing in the
backyard. absorbing the news. still wearing my cleats. Everyone in the
neighborhood was hanging on their clotheslines. watching my family fall apart.
When George died. he had been clean for six months. He had a real job in an
electronics factory, he had a fiancee: things he'd never bothered with
before. I don't know if he could have kept it together over the long term.
but we never had a chance to find out; he overdosed on heroin and cocaine
and was found in a flophouse. Foul play was suspected- George had called a
friend that night saying he was going to collect some money and might not
make it back--but. nothing was ever proven. I still think about hiring
detectives to find out what really happened.
My memories of the funeral are hazy. My family stayed behind a curtain so
that people couldn't see us. but that meant we couldn't see them either, so
I never knew who came to say goodbye to George. He was buried at Forest Lawn
in Los Angeles-- there were some really hokey singers at the service. and I
remember thinking that George would have hated it.
AFTER GEORGE DIED, MY MOM LATCHED ON to me and became really overprotective. It
backfired: She only made me want to rebel more. Before George's death, I
smoked weed. drank, popped some pills--but I never wanted to do anything
that would interfere with being a baseball player. Afterward. I didn't give
I hung out with these surfer hoods. but we were too poor to surf. So we
would rip off rich kids' Schwinns and turn them into motecross bikes. Then
we could ditch school. ride around. break into houses. steal money, and use
it to buy drugs instead of surfboards. Even before George died I'd felt
isolated, but afterward I was incredibly lonely. It was good to fit in
somewhere. I was so skinny that I could help the gang by going through
houses' dog doors. Once, I got into a house that way and found an envelope
with $700 in it. We played pinball for four days straight.
My mom got religious after George died. which helped keep her from going
insane. At first she made me go with her to the Assembly of God, which was
full of Holy Rollers: speaking in tongues. frothing in the aisle, and other
craziness. I told her I wanted to go to the church down the street. She'd
give me money for the collection plate. but I'd get somebody to buy me a beer
and a pack of cigarettes and just hang out at a girlfriend's house.
She did make me show up for the church's Youth Brigade. where we would wear
stupid uniforms and hang out. After meetings, they'd let us into a local
liquor store. The guy who owned the store was a member of the church. and
he'd let each of us pick out a dollar's worth of candy. They thought we were
these nice church boys. but I'd walk down the aisles sticking bottles of
booze Into my pants. Then about fourteen of us would cut school the next day
and go drinking by a local sewage canal.
Everyone was telling me that I was going to end up like George. I thought
that I was too smart to become a corpse. but I probably had an unconscious
death wish. I even used to bet people that I wouldn't live past my
twenty-first birthday. I ultimately paid one guy a hundred bucks.
I didn't have a lot to remember George by--an old photograph. a classical
guitar that he never really learned to play, a bandanna that he used to tie
off with when he shot up. But George did name me as the beneficiary on his
life insurance. Because it was a drug overdose. I got only $10.000. which I
received on my eighteenth birthday. My mom used part of it to help the
family. and I blew the rest on a black Toyota Corolla hatchback. Four years
later. that car got stolen. I collected insurance money for the Toyota. and
with that settlement I bought an ounce of cocaine. I shot it up, overdosed,
and almost died. George had left me a legacy after all.
That was my last time with a needle. I made myself get off drugs, and
unlike George. I stuck to it. Although you can run away from your family
history, it won't leave you. In 1987. thirteen years after George died, I
wasworking as a car messenger in Los Angeles. delivering packages. My life
was pretty unhappy and I was drinking too much. On a hot day in the middle
of June. I was drinking on the job and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was
in the Forest Lawn cemetery. lying on my big brother's grave.
