No Regrets Read online

  Basically, for these guys, it was target practice.

  And on more than one occasion, I was the target.

  Admittedly, there were times I invited the attention (although that wasn’t my intent). Like I said, I started early with girls, and when you were messing around with girls in my neighborhood it was wise to exercise some caution and common sense. Specifically, only an idiot would chase girls who were attached in one way or another to one of the local gangs.

  Well, what the fuck? For a smart kid, I could be a real idiot. Stubborn, too. I’m a Taurus, after all.

  Dominating the street scene in this part of the Bronx was the Ducky Gang, a collection of kids ranging in age from the early teens to the mid-twenties. Predominantly Irish, but with a sprinkling of Italian and German thrown in, the Duckies were a formidable group whose turf centered around the Twin Lakes (the “duck pond”) section of the New York Botanical Garden. The Ducky Boys were born around the time I was in elementary school, and their rise paralleled my adolescence. Although they died out in the mid-1970s (only to be immortalized in the movie The Wanderers), they were the Kings of New York as far as I was concerned, and my fear of them was surpassed only by my desire to join their ranks. Not necessarily because I admired them or wanted to be part of a gang, but simply because I got tired of getting my ass kicked.

  The moment of clarity came one afternoon while walking home from school, when I was about twelve or thirteen. I’d been hanging out with this pretty girl for a few weeks, chasing her on weekends, looking for her at parties, occasionally stealing a little make-out time. Well, I should have known better. The girl had already been claimed by one of the Ducky Boys, so protocol dictated that everyone else keep their distance.

  She was, for all practical purposes, untouchable.

  And I touched.

  So there I was, strolling through the park, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this chick’s boyfriend pops out from behind a tree and steps in front of me. I wasn’t even sure how to react. The kid was a year or two older than me, a head taller, and probably twenty-five pounds heavier; a grown man, by comparison. I froze for a moment and tried to weigh my options.

  Drop my schoolbooks and run like hell?

  Exercise a little diplomacy? (I’d always been pretty nimble when it came to talking my way out of trouble.)

  Down the road I’d learn the finer points of street fighting, the most important of which is this: always get off the first shot. But I was inexperienced and scared. Before I had a chance to react, the kid leaned forward and punched me in the face. I went down for the count.

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious, probably only a few seconds. But when I came to, with my head aching and my vision blurred, the kid was standing over me.

  “Stay away from my girl,” he said, “or I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

  And then he went off, leaving me there alone, dizzy and disoriented, wondering whether any girl was worth so much trouble.

  But, of course, they were. I’ve had a problem with females my entire life, and by that I mean, women have always gotten me into trouble. More accurately, I’ve gotten myself into trouble because of women. It’s been a recurring theme of self-destruction, right up there with drugs and alcohol; from the time I learned how to use it, I’ve too often led with my dick, and I’ve taken a lot of punishment as a result.

  There was, however, no reasoning with my adolescent mind (to say nothing of my adolescent hormones). Another guy would have gone home and jerked off to a Playboy magazine until he found a girl more suitable to his position in life. Not me. I liked the wilder chicks for a very good reason: they put out. That left me and my blue balls with basically two choices.

  1) Find another girl.

  2) Join the Duckies.

  I chose option number two.

  The Ducky Gang didn’t accept just anyone. You had to prove yourself worthy by being put through an initiation that lasted for several weeks. For me, that turned out to be a good thing. The lag between my first expression of interest and the point of no return (fullblown gang membership) was so vast that I had time to develop other, less risky interests—like playing the guitar. For a while, though, I really wanted to be part of a gang and felt the need to be accepted.

  We were known, unofficially, as the Junior Duckies. I loved being part of the gang and enjoyed the security they offered, even if it included some of the same guys who had been making my life miserable a few years before. For the Junior Duckies, gang life was mostly about mischief and messing around with girls. Every weekend we’d get together at the duck pond and drink beer, get all riled up, and go looking for trouble. That didn’t take much effort, as the Duckies weren’t the only gang in town. We’d wander down to the Bronx River Parkway, near the edge of Ducky turf, and if we found anyone venturing over the line we’d quickly engage in a rumble. These were less lethal in those days. While some of the older guys in the Ducky Gang carried knives and zip guns, we usually resorted to chains or baseball bats. For the Junior Duckies excitement came in the form of taking risks. We’d hitch rides on the backs of city buses and elevated trains, activities that usually caught the attention of the local cops and led to us being chased all over the neighborhood. Cheap thrills, I guess you’d say. When we weren’t fighting or partying with the local chicks, in the winter we’d sometimes throw snowballs at patrol cars just to get a reaction. They’d hit the lights and give chase, and we’d scatter in all directions. Stupid? Sure. But it was exciting and lots of fun. A couple of times I got busted and ended up down at the Fifty-Second Precinct, where my parents would have to come and pick me up. After a while my mom used to worry whenever I left the house.

  “Please be careful out there tonight, Paul,” she’d say, wringing her hands.

  But she never tried to stop me, and neither did my father. By the time I was fourteen, I was basically spinning out of control. I didn’t want to stay home or do my homework, or even go to school, for that matter. I just wanted to hang out with my friends and party. I wanted it so bad that I was willing to go through a Junior Ducky initiation. Fighting was part of it, obviously; if the Duckies got in a fight, you were expected to be there, and to stand up for your buddies. Maybe you’d be assigned a target—some poor kid at school who had pissed off one of the Duckies—and your job was to lay him out. I’d been on the receiving end of those encounters; now I was being asked to dole out the punishment. Cowards, in any form, were not welcome. Sometimes, to prove you had balls, you were asked to do something dangerous.

  Or stupid.

  Or, in my case, both.

  “Come on, Paul, get your skinny ass out there!”

  We were standing near an overpass above Webster Avenue on a Saturday night, and below, the weekend traffic was busy. Here was the moment of truth. If I wanted to be part of the gang I’d have to show a willingness to put my life at risk. This time I was on my own.

  “This is fucking nuts,” I said.

  And it was. They told me to crawl out on a catwalk under the bridge and then hang from a beam with my feet dangling over the highway. I guzzled a couple of beers to boost my confidence, but I was still scared. I took a deep breath and got down on my hands and knees. I was so nervous, I nearly pissed my pants, but my fear was outweighed by my need to be accepted. If I could just get through this insane ritual without killing myself, I’d finally be part of the toughest gang in my neighborhood. Then I’d have protection. No one would ever fuck with me again. For that, believe it or not, I was willing to risk my life.

  A few moments later, I was hanging above the highway. I could hear my friends yelling and cheering, but I couldn’t make out a word they were saying with the noise from the traffic below. I forced my eyes open and looked back to the edge of the bridge. They were waving me back in. I pulled my legs into my chest and crawled back to safety, where I was greeted with open arms.

  I was finally in!

  In the Bronx they referred to it as “beer muscles”—a phenomenon in
which an otherwise low-key, fun-loving guy gets drunk and suddenly becomes willing to fight with anyone. That was me. If I had two or three beers I’d go up against anybody, because basically I had no fear. With each drink the inhibitions faded, and so did any concern over repercussions. Maybe that’s why people would back down from me (well, that and the fact that I had the Duckies on my side). I was tall and skinny, and not really great with my fists, but when I drank I felt like a superhero. I’d fight anybody, with almost no provocation. I won a lot of fights just because I refused to back down. People tend to think you’re a little crazy when you’re that quick to fire, and who wants to fight a crazy guy?

  Alcohol, mainly beer, made me a different person, and I kind of liked that person. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. Not only that, but he was smooth as silk when it came to dealing with girls. It all goes hand in hand. Women like guys who are confident, funny, cocky. A little bit dangerous. I was all of those things in a single package. And as my fascination with music intensified in the coming years, I discovered that while alcohol did not make me a better guitar player, it did make me a more outgoing performer. When I was younger, playing at school dances or church activities, I suffered from stage fright. But if I had a couple of drinks, the nervousness melted away. I was Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, all rolled into one. I owned the fucking room!

  Drinking was always part of what we did in the Junior Duckies. Some of my friends were also into sniffing glue. It was readily available, the perfect cheap high for a kid. I did glue only a few times as a kid (and once as an adult—more on that later), and frankly found the trips to be either completely uneventful or nightmarish. The bad one happened behind a gas station near Frisch Field (named after the great ballplayer Frankie Frisch, a Bronx native, I’m proud to say). I huddled up with a couple buddies, both experienced huffers, and we snipped the cap off a tube of glue and went to work.

  Some of the details escape me, but I do remember an overwhelming feeling of paranoia and fear. I became convinced that I had died and gone to hell; I was completely detached from reality. To this day it remains one of the most frightening experiences I’ve ever had with drugs—and that’s saying something.

  For a while afterward I was thoroughly antidrug. I’d drink beer, of course, but that’s about it. In fact, a couple of years would pass before I’d even try smoking pot. By that time I’d begun hanging out with other musicians, guys who weren’t part of my gang, or any other gang, for that matter. More like hippies. All of a sudden I started changing my hairstyle—out with the pompadour, in with the longer, shaggier look. I became fascinated with the British Invasion—the Beatles and the Stones especially—and then I started gravitating toward other musicians who played the music I liked to play. Those guys, for the most part, weren’t tough guys; they were peace-and-love guys and rockers.

  And I had one foot in their world.

  If not for music I’m sure I would have become a full-fledged gang member and ended up either dead or in jail. But music pulled me away from that. It literally saved my life. I started playing on weekends, rehearsing at night, and eventually the guys in the Ducky Gang turned their backs on me. Can’t blame them, really. How much rejection can you take?

  “Hey, Paul, come on. We’re gonna break into a warehouse tonight.”

  “Sorry, man. Can’t make it. Got a gig.”

  It was a natural progression, with me going in one direction, and them going in another. I started playing more, even making money from some of my shows, while they became involved in more serious shit and taking heavier drugs. Not that I didn’t want to run with those guys, as well, but… hey, there’s only so many hours in a day. Eventually you have to make a choice.

  I chose the guitar.

  Or maybe the guitar chose me.

  At the age of sixteen I was playing in some decent bands and getting progressively better gigs. At some point along the line I decided that I didn’t want to go to jail. I’d been around enough police stations and holding cells, and I’d met enough guys who had done serious time to know that I probably wouldn’t have done real well in prison. I wasn’t cut out for it. I wanted to play music; I wanted to be a rock star. So when the activities of the Ducky Boys escalated, I pulled back. The early stuff had been fairly benign. I mean, we were hot-wiring cars and going on joyrides, but it wasn’t like we were taking them to chop shops. I was lucky, too. I never got caught at anything that serious as a kid. I remember one day waking up with a hangover and realizing that I’d dodged a proverbial bullet the night before. I’d stolen a car and driven all over the Bronx before ditching it by the side of the road.

  That one would have been costly: drunk driving, grand larceny, speeding, and whatever else they wanted to throw at me.

  Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I wasn’t stupid. I started to see that some of my friends were taking ridiculous chances with their lives. Probably because they didn’t give a shit. They didn’t see anything better down the road. Some of them didn’t care if they lived or died. My friend Walter, for example, went away to juvenile hall when we were in our mid-teens. Shortly after he got out, he stabbed some guy in a bar fight. Did five years for that one in a state penitentiary. One of my closest friends, Tommy McCalden, hung himself at Rikers Island jail when he was eighteen years old. Tommy’s dad had been superintendent of my building when I was growing up, and we were in the Junior Duckies together. We’d drifted apart by the time he died, but I still remember being shaken by the news.

  I didn’t want to go down that road. I wanted more out of life.

  I expected more.

  MUSIC IN THE FIFTTH DIMENSION

  When it came to school, I was always a bit of a square peg, forever trying (or not trying) to fit in where I knew I didn’t belong. I just couldn’t seem to work up much enthusiasm over academic pursuits. I probably didn’t even belong in a traditional classroom setting. I would have been better off at a school that catered to kids with more creative interests, like art and music. During my school days, there were only a few interesting teachers that got my creative juices flowing, so I spent a lot of time figuring out creative ways to avoid going to school in the first place. As a result, I went to three high schools in four years. Got bounced from the first two, dropped out of the third.

  I started out at Our Saviour Lutheran, the next natural stop in the education chain for kids who went to Grace Lutheran Elementary School. But I hated it from the beginning. Within a few weeks I was cutting classes; then I began cutting entire days. Got away with it for a while, too. The trick was that you had to show up for school in the morning, and then you could sneak out. One day, though, I deliberately missed the bus and went off to hang out with some of my buddies. Unfortunately, I had neglected to tell my brother, Charlie, what I had planned. Charlie was a straight arrow, driven to do well in school, and, like a lot of older siblings, prone to worrying about his little brother. So when he got to lunch that day and couldn’t find me, he became really nervous. It wasn’t like he was trying to get me in trouble; he was legitimately concerned that something bad had happened to me. So he went to the principal’s office and told them that I wasn’t sick, and asked them to find me.

  Which they did.

  By the end of the day I was sitting in the principal’s office with my mother, enduring a verbal reprimand.

  “You know, Paul,” the principal said, “you have to take your high school years more seriously if you want to make something of your life.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He gave me a stern look.

  “If this sort of behavior continues, we’ll have to let you go.”

  Let you go…

  It sounded less like a threat than a reward.

  Needless to say, it did continue, and they did let me go.

  I didn’t care. I hated Our Saviour Lutheran. I had to take two different buses to get there, couldn’t stand the uniforms, and found myself drowning in discipline the moment I arrived each morning. By the time I was
a freshman in high school I’d had my fill of parochial education. For some reason I had this idea that if I could just transfer to the public high school in my neighborhood, DeWitt Clinton, everything would be better. So that’s what I did.

  The culture shock was immediate and overwhelming. I had no clue as to how public schools worked. For nine years I’d attended nothing but parochial schools, and while I found them to be generally stifling and unsupportive, there was a certain level of comfort that comes with familiarity. Both Grace Lutheran School and Our Saviour Lutheran High School were small and intimate; you couldn’t help but know almost everyone in your grade, as well as most of the faculty.

  DeWitt Clinton?

  This place was like a fucking metropolis by comparison. With a student body of more than four thousand, including every high school stereotype you can imagine, it was a monument to Darwinism. You figured out a way to fit in and survive, or you were chewed up and spit out. Fortunately, I already had a few friends at Clinton, which helped ease the transition. Clinton was also where I started hanging out more with musicians than with gang members. But I split time between the two factions for a while. Sometimes I think I would have made a good diplomat; I’ve always been pretty good at finessing situations, of playing the role of peacemaker rather than instigator (this was true even many years later, in KISS). I could handle myself in a fight, but I rarely went looking for a confrontation. I preferred the path of least resistance.