BLOOD TIES CHAP 1
#2 of BLOOD TIES
1
LA isn't really like they describe it in movies. It's not all green palms and sports cars. It's brown half the time, dirty and HOT! Especially in late August! "Fuck it's HOT!" I grumbled out loud, startling the woman next to me as I exited the bus. I was so perturbed on so many levels that I had to take the 'Hound' as opposed to flying but my Dad wouldn't spring for the extra cash.
"You want to move to LA? Then you travel my way since you can't seem to get the money together to move out on your own!" That was the night he blew up when he found out that I wasn't going to finish my sophomore year in college last May. I had announced that I'd already lined up a job with a theater production company. He already was 'mad pissed' that I had went into films for my potential degree instead of following him in the hardware business. I just didn't relish spending the rest of my life in the UP (Upper Peninsula, Michigan, that is, to you unenlightened). I hadn't had to worry about my college being paid for because my trust fund, from my Grandfather, had paid for it.
My Dad had money. He just didn't like letting go of it; unlike my Grandfather. He was a philanthropist as my Great-Grandfather before. My Dad, in some sick twist of genetic fate, turned into the family tightwad and 'Scrooge'. I kept telling him that someday the ghosts of relatives past would visit him. My trust fund basically said, "Pay for college or wait till you're twenty-five before you see one thin dime," which meant, that at 21, I have five years to make my own way! I liked those odds!
Don't get me wrong, I am NOT lazy! I have no problem with hard work and helped out on my friend's farm and my Dad's line of shops but I wasn't going to spend my life in the hardware business looking forward to the day when the words "and Son" got painted above the front door. FUCK THAT!
When I went into theater back in high school, my Dad shit bricks! My Mom was 100% behind it and so was my little brother. Dad then tried to drill him into the business but Dave was much worse than I in rebelling against that and forced his way into competitive sports (baseball, football and wrestling) thus spared himself most days (with the exception of every other Saturday when we both switched out dealing with my Dad at the store). I got away with running track. I think I did it because I felt I could 'run away' from all the bullshit even though I went nowhere. Dave later got a part time job at a local fast food place and that pretty much ended my Dad busting his chops over working at the store.
I sucked it up and dealt with Dad and his bullshit. He never once came to any of the productions I was in in high school. Dave and Mom did and both of them supported me. I liked acting but I liked the back production part better. Graduating meant I could go to college in Ann Arbor and not have to hear my Dad bitch about the "Waste of good sperm." I spent the first couple of years taking the shell courses and working on a few things but didn't feel comfortable. It wasn't because I was gay and in the closet. Hell, I'd come out to my parents back when I was 15. That had been a 'wonderful' event. As I figured, Mom knew, Dave didn't care ("more chicks for me") but Dad was even further PO'd that his oldest liked 'cock' as he'd so eloquently put it. It was about a month before he would actually articulate much more than "Um hmmm" or "Fine" to me.
Granddad had called him a prick after I'd went over to his place to let him and Gran know. "Where the hell did I go wrong in raising that boy?" he yelled at the top of his lungs. I thought the old man was going to hop in his car and rush over and go postal on my Dad. It took me, Gran and Dave better than an hour to calm him down.
I dated here and there from high school through college and had my first real 'experience' with a guy who was in his first year of community college when I was a high school senior and eighteen. He was nineteen and we'd hit it off. Six months later it was over when he found more 'suitable' men to date, IE: He was looking and found a 'Sugar Daddy'. After that, well, sex was not something that I pushed for in dating. I was mostly going out for fun and companionship.
Well, here I was in LA, newly 21, and little did I know that in the next 48 hours my life would change again; in ways I never could imagine.