Me, Hookers, and Gravehill: Part 1

This my friends, is the debut post in what will hopefully be the first in a series of blog entries detailing the wild, wild world of Gravehill. So when did I join this group of collective heads of knuckle? Three whole years ago in September of 2008. Yep! This month is my 3rd anniversary but it feels soooo much longer than that.

But before we delve into all that hub-bub, let's go back to my origin story. Please note, as I have mentioned in other posts (I think), my mind is quite fuzzy and has been decimated by lots of drugs and alcohol. It's a bit hard at times for me to decipher what is real and what is fantasy. I'm hoping most of these memories are real.

A lot of people think I was a blond boy who pranced around
in wigs and dresses. The truth is, I was Steve Martin. I
grew out of it though.

I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family, singin' and dancin' down in Mississippi... Wait, wrong origin story. I was actually born in the swamps of Florida. You know Florida, right? It's the state that fucked everything up back in 2000 and they've been on a roll ever since. I wish I could say that I had a bad childhood and that I grew up on the streets to give me a little street cred. The truth of the matter is, I was raised by a single mom in a nice neighborhood tucked away and bordered by woods, swamps, canals, and lakes. Growing up there consisted of building forts, riding dirt bikes, sports, lots of voyeurism, poking dead things with sticks (cats, dogs, birds, dismembered body parts, etc...), and rummaging through the local jiffy store trash bins for discarded Penthouse Magazines caked with dried semen, stained with urine, and smelling of rotting garbage.

YES! A vintage Hustler 1979!

My dad was a musician and could play the shit out of a guitar. He was into the Eagles, Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and he tried to show me a few scales but I think I was too impatient or he was. Either way, he said, "Here, kid. Just take the fucking guitar and try to do something with it." It was an imitation Les Paul. Cherry red. A real beauty! It sat in the corner of my bedroom gathering dust for a long time. It wasn't until I met up with my friend Gary that I started to really get interested in playing. He was new to the neighborhood and with his long hair and denim vest with patches all over it, I knew we would be like Amos and Andy! Of course I was sporting a killer mullet at the time which all the ladies loved. "You look like MacGyver!!" was something I commonly heard. What can I say? The mullet pulled some tail! Anyway, he showed me riffs and I in turn would practice the shit out of them in my hot-as-swamp-ass garage in the middle of a humid Florida summer. Soon I was jamming to nothing but my Slayer, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and King Diamond cassette tapes and we would often challenge each other to learn songs so we could duel guitar attack them. Gary wasn't in the neighborhood long as his family moved about a year or so later. But I still credit him with inspiring me to play guitar.

Holy shit! Fuckin' MacGyver!

Here's where we fast forward. Several years passed, shit happened, I cut my hair and joined the Army. I won't dwell on my Army days. I just wanted a brief origin story because every superhero has one so why can't I?

Coming up next on Me, Hookers, and Gravehill: Part 2-

The move to California, Mexican hookers, and the Gravehill ladies.