the dignity of risk

“I can’t get enough of de Kooning.” It was my first thought when I opened my eyes.

In the summer of 1977 I was sleeping on a floor in my friend’s cottage in Venice Beach, a block off the ocean. I was 28 years old. I was crazy for de Kooning, saw myself one day as a great abstract expressionist. Otherwise I didn’t care about much else. In three hours I had to open up Zeppy’s Pizza on the walkway. I had the key.

At quarter past ten Gabe and I were sitting on stools at the counter in Mary Lou’s, a greasy spoon off Pacific Ave and about 500 yards from Zeppy’s. We’d worked together in a runaway house on the grounds of a crazy hospital back in Massachusetts. First Gabe moved out to California and I followed a year later. By then he had a good job and roomates, which was why I was sleeping on the floor of his bedroom. But we’d decided to get a place together, and had filled out applications for a second-floor apartment just off Ocean Park in Santa Monica.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Gabe was saying, stuffing the last third of a cigarette in a glass ashtray. “My boss. His name’s Doug, I think you two will get along. He’s slightly twisted.” Gabe gave me a corner-of-the-eye look. “Know what I mean?”

That Gabe, a laugh a minute. But it turns out he was right on both counts — Doug was slightly twisted; big time and in the flesh. And we for sure got along just fine. We stuck together like glue.

Doug.