An example of an insufferable narcissistic though crime. Mandatory jail time, in my opinion
1. People who piss on toilet seats (I think we’re all in agreement on this one)
2. People who say “no pun intended” when you know damn well they intended it, they just don’t want to cop to it. 3. People who stand in doorways and aisles blocking your way, and when you try to get by them they look surprised, like it’s just occurring to them for the first time that these public spaces were specifically designed for people to walk freely through them. 4. When you’ve been waiting in line at a store for 20 minutes and the person on line in front of you finally gets to the cashier, but it’s only at that point that it occurs to them to start looking for their money, as they fumble through their pockets, their purse, their wallet, looking looking looking. 5. People that use the toilet stalls in public restrooms and put the paper toilet seat covers down on the toilet seat, but when they leave they leave the seat cover on the toilet so you’re the one that has to take it off. 6. People who say “In other words you find me attractive!” 7. People who post inane lists on the internet.
Whenever a Peter Frampton song happens to pop up on the radio or the internet, it’s like I have an acid flashback to 1976. I was 19 and driving cross-country from New Jersey to California to be a hippie (that was the plan). I had this bomb of a ’69 Chevy that spewed a thick black cloud of exhaust for 3,000 miles. And an AM-FM radio that played all the hits of the day. And Peter Frampton was one of the guys who’s songs regularly popped up on my radio (the other songs I remember was “Dream On” by Aerosmith, “Dream Weaver” by Gary Wright, and the hated “Take It to the Limits” by the Eagles).
When I got to San Francisco, Peter Frampton was on the cover of ROLLING STONE that month. He was like the mega-star of the moment. And his live album was selling zillions of copies and setting records. So it was like Peter Frampton was “it” in 1976 (though not for long).
Anyways one of my big dreams at the time was to become an underground cartoonist. So I rented out this little room in this flophouse, the Empress Hotel (I think the rent was $15 a week) deep in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. And there was a little desk and a chair and I had my art tablet and my pens and pencils. And I worked on various comic strips that I hoped would bring me fame and fortune.
And one of the comics I was working on was this parody character FramptonMan — Peter Frampton as this do-gooder, crime-fightin’ superhero (I was hoping to cash in on the latest trends — pretty smart, huh?). And FramptonMan’s arch-enemy was the Stones Gang. Mick and Keith and the rest of the Rolling Stones as this underworld crime gang. In the first episode of my FramptonMan comic, Donny and Marie Osmond are doing their TV show and the Stones Gang bursts onto the stage with their electric guitars and executes Donny and Marie with heavy metal power chords on live TV. And that’s as far as I got with my FramptonMan cartoon. Thank God.
So anyways one night I’m heading back to my room on the 3rd floor of the Empress Hotel. And as I’m walking down the hallway I passed these black guys who had been loitering around in the hallway. . And suddenly they all turned and run after. So I put it in high gear and went sprinting down the hallway towards my hotel room as fast as I could. I rushed into my room, and slammed the door shut. Only one of the guys managed to stick his foot in the doorway and wedge it in there before I could get the damn door shut. So now I’m pushing on the door to try and shut it. And they’re pushing on the door to try and open it. Like this crazy tug-of-war.
Finally they managed to over-power me and flood into my room. So now I’m suddenly dealing with that.
One of the guys stationed himself by the window as a look-out. One of the guys stationed himself by the door. And one of the guys grabbed my knife that was lying on my desk and puts it up to my throat (it was obvious they had done this sort of thing many times before because they were well rehearsed). The knife, by the way, was razor-sharp. I used it to sharp my pencils. And now it was pressed up against my adam’s apple.
The guy with the knife had a crazed, wide-eyed expression on his face and he’s sweating like crazy and he keeps ranting about how “MY GIRLFRIEND HAD JUST BEEN KILLED BY A MOTHERFUCKING WHITE GUY!!” I think that was his justification for killing me. So I was realizing that I could be killed at any moment.
The weird thing was — I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation like that but — I wasn’t feeling any fear. It wasn’t that I was so brave. But that the scene was so bizarre and sudden and unexpected that my brain couldn’t even process what was happening. Like being in a state of shock. Meanwhile the other guys are rifling through my meager possessions for anything they could steal. While the other guy is contemplating whether or not he should slice my fool head off (and I could tell that part of him very much wanted to do that).
I remember at one point I actually had an out-of-body experience. It was like I rose to the ceiling of my room and I was looking down, dispassionately, at the whole crazy scene from that perspective. And then, for lack of anything better to do, I said to the guy with the knife: “Listen, can I show you something?”
“WHAT??” he said.
I pointed to my desk. “That.” I said. I cautiously walked over to my desk and picked up the piece of paper with the cartoon I was working on at the time. The FramptonMan cartoon. And I picked it up and held it in front of me sort of like a shield and said: “I just want to draw cartoons.” I guess it was my way of trying to appeal to our common humanity. He looked at the Frampton Man cartoon with anger and perplexion. And so we were all frozen in time and space for several moments like that. Until one of the other guys said:
“We got the stuff. Let’s go.”
The guy with the knife paused for a beat, like he was still debating the merits of to kill or not to kill. And then they all went rushing out the door and down the hall. And I breathed the biggest sigh of relief I had ever breathed, like, WHOOSH!!!
The weird thing is, of the stuff of mine they stole — a couple of bucks, my knife, a cheap radio — the only real thing of value I had was this really nice $100 down sleeping bag. And they didn’t bother to steal that.
And the other take-away was, from then on I NEVER used a knife to sharpen my pencils. I always used a little pencil-sharpener after that. And whenever I happen to hear a Frampton song on the radio or the internet I’ll remember that whole scene in the back of my mind.
Be it ever so humble there’s no place like hangout spots.
Human beings are a territorial creature by nature. And homeless street people are no exception. The problem is that street people don’t have any personal territory to call their own. They live in the public spaces after all. You indoor people have the walls of your houses and the fences around your yards to clearly delineate your personal territory. But no such line exists for street people. So it’s a source of constant problems.
But there is a certain protocol that most street people respect. For example if some guy has been sleeping in a particular doorway every night, most (but alas not all) of the street people on the scene will respect that that’s his personal campsite. And not camp there. And a similar protocol governs hangout spots. If somebody hangs out at the same spot on the sidewalk every day, that’s generally accepted as their spot. Though it can get a little hazy. Somebody might consider a favorite panhandling spot to be their personal spot. But someone else might consider it first-come-first -served and they got there first so now it’s their spot. So like I said the lines are not clearly drawn. But these conflicts are usually resolved in a calm and reasonable manner; i.e. the one who is bigger and stronger and more vicious and capable of beating the other person’s ass usually prevails.
*
Which brings me to my latest conflict. There’s a homeless street person who’s been hanging out on the Berkeley campus for the last 20 years. And he’s got his own personal hangout spot (and I respect his space). And I’ve got my own personal hangout spot (and he respects my space). And we’ve coexisted all these years with no problems. Until recently.
Now I have a favorite hangout spot on the campus that I’ve been using for years. I usually only use it in the evening when that area is mostly deserted. And it’s a great spot. It’s secluded. It has an awning to protect me from the rain. And best of all it has an outlet where I can charge my cellphone. But that was also the source of this recent conflict.
It turns out about 6 months ago this guy got a laptop. So now he’s been eyeballing my hangout spot — and that outlet — with serious intent, as a spot where he can plug in his laptop. And whaddaya’ know, I show up one night and there he is flopped out at my hangout spot with his laptop plugged into the outlet. I figure it’s probably just a one-night thing. So I just let it slide and go off and find another hangout spot.
But whaddaya’ know? The next night there he is AGAIN at my hangout spot. So I go up to him and explain to him, in a very reasonable voice, that I’ve been using this hangout spot for many years, and it’s a very valuable spot to me, and there’s simply no room for two bums at this spot. He nods his head in agreement and seems to understand.
But whaddaya’ know? The third night there he is AGAIN hanging out at my hangout spot.
So now I’m realizing this guy is planning to make this HIS permanent hangout spot. And this guy is like the classic ne’er-do-well layabout. Once he attaches himself to a hangout spot he’s there ALL the time. He’s basically spent the last 20 years doing nothing but laying around, taking up space. Which is fine — everyone in this life is on the level that they’re on. But the problem is, now he is taking up MY space.
So the next night I’m ready for him. I’m sort of hiding around the corner. And when I hear him coming I rush over to the spot right before he gets there, and say to him: “This is MY hangout spot. And there’s not room for TWO! Now GO away and STAY away!!”
He turns on his heels and leaves. And apparently he got the message. Because for the next 6 months peace and harmony reigned in the world of Ace Backwords.
Until the other night. When I showed up at my hangout spot. And whaddaya’ know? There he is again flopped out at my hangout spot. He’s lying on his back on his matting with his leg crossed, and all of his stuff dumped out around him, and his laptop plugged into the outlet. And he’s like some guy leisurely enjoying a swell evening in the comfort of his personal living room.
I look down at him, glaring at him, not saying anything. He looks up at me and says cheerfully “How are ya’ doin’?”
“How are YOU doing!” I said with a sharp edge in my voice.
“I’m doin’ just fine,” he said. “How are you doin’?”
I didn’t say anything for a couple of beats. Just continued to glare at him. And then I turned and stomped off. And I hoped he got the message and it refreshed his memory about our previous confrontation 6 months ago.
But then the next night? Whaddaya’ know? There he is AGAIN.
So now I’m realizing I have no choice. I either take action. Or else my favorite hangout spot is now his favorite hangout spot.
So I said to him: “Dude, this is MY hangout spot.”
“I realize that,” he said.
“Well if you realize that then why are you here hanging out here at my hangout spot??”
“Well let me explain,” he said.
“No. Let me explain first and you can explain second,” I said. “The next time I catch you at my hangout spot, I am going to go to your hangout spot when you’re not there. And I am going to dump all your stuff into the creek. Do you understand me?”
“I hear you,” he said.
And I turned on my heels and stomped out of there.
And I hope he DID understand me. Because I WILL do it.
Had an odd scene at my campsite last night. Got up there around midnight and my feral cats were eagerly waiting for me. So I dumped out a can of cat food into the cat food dish.
But before my cats were able to eat much of it, a goddamn raccoon showed up. Now I can barely afford to feed my cats. I can’t afford to feed the goddamn raccoons, too. But the raccoon doesn’t care about that, the theivin’ bastard. The raccoon reached out with his front paws and started pulling the cat food dish towards him. So I grabbed the dish and pulled it back to the cats. And the raccoon grabbed the dish again and pulled it towards him. And I grabbed the dish and pulled it back. So we’re locked in this weird tug-of-war over the cat food dish, pulling back and forth. Me and the raccoon. I’m whispering under my breath “Would you get OUT of here, you!” I can’t really shout at the raccoon and scare him away. Because that would just scare my cats away, too. And then the raccoon would just come back as soon as I got into my sleeping bag, and make off with the cat food anyways. So I was stuck in this bind.
And I felt strangely ridiculous. That I was stuck in this jam. And I couldn’t out-smart this dumb beast, the raccoon. I’m the human being after all, and on top of the food chain, supposedly. But the fact is, when you live in the deep, dark woods, you’re on THEIR turf. And all the wild critters in the woods have a distinct advantage over me. For example, they all have much better night vision than me. And they’re also much more agile when it comes to traversing the hilly terrain (and I have the black-and-blue marks on my body to prove it). And considering how much alcohol I’ve usually drunk by this point, they’re often more clever than me, too. So it’s their world, and i just live in it.
So finally I just conceded defeat and poured half the cat food in one dish, and the other half in another dish. And set up separate dining facilities for the cats and the raccoon. And they all commenced to eat in peace. The End.
Boy I must be a little more spaced-out than usual this afternoon. Because I just did something really stupid that could have gotten me in a lot of trouble.
I had to go to the bathroom, so I went into this building on the Berkeley campus and I walked around in the halls for awhile until I spotted a restroom. So I darted in there and I darted into the stall. And I’m sitting there like I had done thousands of times before. When I noticed this little garbage bin on the floor of the stall. That struck me as odd because in all these years I had never seen a garbage bin on the floor of a restroom stall before. But I didn’t think much more about. Though that was my first inkling that perhaps all was not right in the world of Backwords.
But the more I sat there, and the more I looked at that little bin, the odder it seemed. So on a hunch I opened up the door of the stall and took a quick look around the restroom. And the first thing I noticed was that there were no urinals in the restroom. Using my razor-sharp powers of deductive reasoning I instantly concluded that I was most definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So I pulled my pants on and got my ass (literally) out of there as fast as I could. And fortunately there was nobody loitering around in the hallway as I made my grand exit. Because that could have been big trouble for yours truly. I would have had some explaining to do.
On the other hand if the UC cops had busted me for being a pervert I could have claimed I was a transgender and sued the University for sexual discrimination and mental duress, and maybe I would have even won a big cash settlement. Though I probably would have had to walk around for several months wearing a dress and lipstick if I really wanted to make my case.
This photo of the Naked Guy popped up on the internet the other day. Probably around 1993. And it gives you some idea of what the Naked Guy’s life was like back then . For several years (before he got crunched by the authorities) he went around naked just about everywhere he went — to his college classes, to the store, to the park, whatever.
It was a surreal sight to see the Naked Guy suddenly go walking by the streets of Berkeley. And you can bet he inspired a wide range of reactions: shock, disbelief, laughter, outrage, as well as sexual attraction (for he was a really good-looking guy and his body was regularly compared to a Greek statue). And later, after he had garnered large amounts of media attention (including the TV talk shows and PLAYBOY magazine) he got the “celebrity” reaction (“Look Ethel, it’s the famous Naked Guy!!”).
But the beaming smiles on the two women’s faces in this photo shows how most of Berkeley reacted to the Naked Guy. Like the whole thing was an outrageous joke. But a GOOD joke. And we were mostly laughing WITH the Naked Guy, not AT him. Berkeley always prided itself on it’s hip streak of rebelliousness, thumbing our noses at conventional mores and values. Berkeley was ahead of the curve on many things — we had black mayors, decriminalized pot, supported gay rights, etc., long before things like that were accepted by mainstream America. And maybe the Naked Guy’s crusade to liberate the American penis was another one of those things.
But mostly we enjoyed the Naked Guy for the sheer zaniness and wackiness of the whole thing. It was hysterically funny.
It was only later in retrospect that we realized it wasn’t funny to the Naked Guy. In fact he was dead serious about the whole thing. It was a righteous crusade to him. And in his head he had this whole crazy manifesto where the naked thing was just a part of this life-or-death struggle to overthrow the “fascist racist patriarchal Judeo-Christian system” that led all the way to violent revolution and overthrow of the American government. He was THAT serious.
I don’t think hardly any of us were aware of that aspect of the Naked Guy as we were enjoying his shtick. And we mostly watched with sadness and surprise as his life played out to its grim conclusion.
I’ve been like this for the last 10 years. Where mostly I just want to sit alone by myself and think.
People regularly send me letters or messages: “Ace, I’m gonna be in town next week. Let’s get together. I’ll buy you a beer. Take you out to dinner.”
I’m flattered and honored that people would want to be with me. But I turn them all down. I’m not sure why. I guess I just feel more comfortable when there’s no one around.
When I was younger I had friends. Best friends. Casual friends. Social friends. Friendly friends. Sometimes I was in the middle of these big scenes, a part of these different social circles. Knew and related to people from all different walks of life and all the different strata of society. Nowadays I mostly just hang out in the woods with just my feral cats for company.
I’m not complaining. It’s just how it turned out. And how it was meant to be.
On this day in 2017 this big tree on the Berkeley campus collapsed and died. It was a casualty of the brutal rainstorms of the winter of 2017. We ended up getting 38 inches of rain that year — about 15 more than usual. The tree got water-logged and rotted out and died.
And it was symbolic to me. Because a week earlier Hate Man had collapsed and died, too. Another water-logged victim of the winter of 2017. A mighty tree and the mighty Hate Man. Gone gone gone.
Then they buzz-sawed the tree into a big pile of sawdust and left it sitting there. And whenever I looked at it I felt this weird synchronicity. Because Hate Man too had been reduced to a pile of cremated ashes.
Writing my ACID HEROES book was a fairly painful experience. It took me 7 years to write the damn thing. 2002 to 2009. And I wrote like 7 different drafts. But the weird thing was, every draft improved it in some ways, but made it worse in other ways. Which was maddening.
I had never gone through anything like this before. With all my other projects, the more I worked on them, the better they got. It was like carving out a sculpture. I’d slowly but surely cut out the parts I didn’t want. And the image I was trying to create would get clearer and clearer. Until I was finally done.
But with the ACID HEROES book, the more I worked on it, the worse it got. It was like I was going around in circles. Flailing away blindly.
Part of the problem was that the subject matter didn’t play to my strengths as a writer. Generally I like to take a small thing, and extrapolate that into a bigger thing. Like with my previous book — SURVIVING ON THE STREETS. I’d write about a little thing, like the best kind of boots to wear when you’re on the streets. And extrapolate that into a larger meaning about life on the streets.
But with the ACID HEROES book I was coming from the opposite direction. I was taking this big thing — 50 years of my life, and 50 years of the cultural history of America — and trying to boil it down to this little thing, this concise little book. It was like making a documentary where you got 50 years worth of footage, and you got to edit it down to a 2 hour movie. So it required some pretty precise editing. Which didn’t play to my strengths as a writer, which tends to prefer a more meandering approach.
Adding to the problems, when I finally got down to working on the final draft I was homeless and living on the streets. Try writing, editing, and self-publishing a 300 page book while living out of a sleeping bag in the middle of the rainy season. No easy task.
And by that point I had already written and re-written every sentence 7 times. And I had gotten lost within it. I could no longer tell which was the best take.
On top of that I was going through an extremely stressful period in my personal life. I was in the middle of on-going wars with 4 different street people — lunatics all — and the kind of feuds that involved physical violence and dealing with the police. So that distracted my attention. On top of that I was dealing with my best friend who was in the process of dying a hideously painful death. On top of that I was working full time at my job as a street vendor, which was another source of stress. On top of that I was diagnosed with glaucoma and the docs were telling me I could blind at any moment. So it was like, what the fuck?? A complete over-load on my senses. Meanwhile I’m still striving to create immortal literature.
So it was hard to distinguish the forest from the trees. I was so immersed in the details of trying to get every sentence exactly right that I lost sight of the bigger picture. The actual concept of the book. And the pacing and the structure of the things. And I made several crucial mistakes on the final draft that irk me to this day.
Oh and one more problem. I was trying to write about the psychedelic experience and hallucinations. Which any writer will tell you is difficult to capture in words.
When I finally managed to get the damn thing published — almost exactly 10 years ago from this day — I was so stressed out that I contracted this disease, Shingles. Which is largely caused by stress. Half of my face was covered with these incredibly painful festering sores and scabs. I still have the scars from it to this day.
In a way I never really recovered from the experience of writing that book. I had spent the previous 35 years doing one artistic project after another after another. But after ACID HEROES there would be no more projects. I was fried.
People often say to me: Ace you should publish another book. Or put out another CD. Or do another calendar. Or publish another zine. And I’m like: “No. I don’t think so.”
And then there’s the other odd thought that sometimes crosses my mind. If old Jim hadn’t happened to have met Nanna on a whim around a 100 years ago, I wouldn’t even be here right now typing away on my goshdarned website and none of this would even exist and you wouldn’t be reading this at this exact moment, you’d be off somewhere else doing something different and maybe your life would turn out completely different because of that.
This is my mother’s father. And I can see my resemblance. We both have the slightly gawky long arms and legs. And the crazy leer in the corner of our eyes.
He was half Injun, half Canadian French. His name was Clyde Gearwar, but everyone called him “Jim” because apparently “Clyde” wasn’t enough Indian-sounding. Go figure.
His father was a full-blooded Iroquois Injun who used to go loco on the booze and beat up the whole family and terrorize them his shotgun. One day when Jim was 16 his father was threatening to kill his mother. So Jim shot him in self-defense, seriously wounding him. Jim’s sister helped to smuggle him out of the country to Canada because they knew their father would kill him when he got out of the hospital.
Later Jim returned to New Hampshire and married my mother’s mother (good old Nanna — what a miserable old coot she was) and they had 3 kids. Jim continued the Gearwar tradition of going nuts on the booze and terrorizing the family with his shotgun. Often Nanna would have to lock herself and the kids in one of the bedrooms while Jim was on one of his drunken rampages. Not daring to unlock the door until Jim finally passed out.
The Clyde “Jim” Gearwar story finally came to a spectacular conclusion in 1946 when an irate husband caught him screwing his wife. And shot him dead outside a local bar. The End.
Clyde “Jim” Gearwar (1894-1946) still resting in peace.
This photo of the Naked Guy popped up on the internet the other day. Probably around 1993. And it gives you some idea of what the Naked Guy’s life was like back then . For several years (before he got crunched by the authorities) he went around naked just about everywhere he went — to his college classes, to the store, to the park, whatever.
Acid Heroes 