1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

Julie Parmenter. Both of us uber-hippies, 1971, I was already a HS dropout so it was her Prom at Shawnee Mission East HS. I wore a comical Keystone Kops tuxedo w/ highwater pants, hair down to my waistline; her in Renaissance earth mother hippie dress and killer knee-high leather boots; both of us high on blotter acid. Nearly got killed by football players, but their dates were sort of hippie-sympathetic and talked them out of it. The cheap, weird, excessive decorations (a tunnel of red crepe paper, memorably) made it one of the best Trips EVER, culminating in her and I -- um, sorry, Julie, I still love ya, that part is just for us.

2. Who was your FIRST love and do you still talk with him/her? 

Ginger Brown (her real name), no contact after 5th grade, her dad was local HS principal and she was 1. beautiful and 2. happy in a happy home, so I was mad about her, but actually she was my first crush, so: Mary Jo Stricker, 8th grade, for two whole weeks; I tattoo'd her name (JO, still visible) on the boney knob of my left wrist -- but when she saw it she slooowly backed away and lost interest -- and in fact THAT was a crush, too, so:

Mirren Clabaugh, my first wife, my first true love; we lived on an impoverished bed island, artists in love, and I was ridiculous mad crazy in love with her for almost two years; we got my beloved first daughter, together, then Mirren's insanity accelerated and she spent most of her final 2 decades in state hospitals; I raised my daughter alone from 11 month til she was 7 years old and I fell in love For Real and True to Deborah my wife, my life.

Mirren died by her own hand  while out on a pass 6 years ago, so I only see her in odd moments, when I encounter a great artist with a doomed aspect.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Buckhorn beer, sips, from the can held by my 6'4" grandfather, sitting on his glider, surrounded by hummingbirds, while I held his giant paw. He listened to the old Kansas City Athletics on a newfangled transistor radio, with an earpiece, and smiled at me lot. I knew early on he was pretending to pay attention to everyone, and I loved him for this, his ability to escape us.

And other things. How his part of the conversation always decided things, and everyone relaxed afterwards. 

Just buy her a damn coat, he said one year, to the assembled protestant yentas -- my grandma and mom and aunts -- trying to force a rich cousin's hand-me-down on my weeping older sister. She took his crumpled 50 like it was platinum from a meteor, fresh in her palm. 

I think those sips, and the brusque shrugs that accompanied them, kept me from alcoholism. So what? was my grandfather's message.  It's just beer, it won't fix anything, his eyes said, gliding over the whole herd of us.

4. What was your FIRST job?

Delivering newspapers at 4 am in a townhouse/apartment complex in south St. Louis.

We moved from Overland Park, Kansas to Mehlville, Missouri at the start of my 6th grade. Never underestimate the power of real life to echo, to resonate in literary ways, in mere place names, our changes  in fortune.

5. What was your FIRST car?

A stolen corvette, 1968, for one night.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

Text?

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

Myself, specifically my left kidney. My poor aching, bleeding penis. Three emergency surgeries in 6 months, and another major surgery, related, has left me a man of parts, a shambles. My dis-joint INSISTS upon awakening. My next thoughts were of Deborah, and how my pain made me an irritable asshole last night, and how glad I am that she will sit in the garden with me today.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Mrs. Bailey. Kind, pudgy but compact, shrewd, and with her I won the first of endless art contests: I drew a cow with realistic spots.

9. When and where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

From Colorado to Kansas City with my first wife Mirren and my newborn Molly, to show her to my feuding, unappreciative family. I was terrified, had constipation and left the plane toilet smelling like a charnel house, just after takeoff; was convinced everyone on plane smelled it and hated me, the hippie that did it; I was probably right.

Flying back home 3 days later my alcoholic stepfather groped Mirren --who was holding the baby -- when I stepped a away for a moment; Mirren wouldn't speak to me the whole flight back, I only found out why later.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?

Stacey Butler, with whom I rough-housed and played 4-square, who was  inside and outside, all-around, and in all four squares good to be with --until one day we both noticed that we liked colliding our bare legs together way too much. We didn't know why but after one glorious day of doing it a lot we both got freaked out and it was never the same after.

Nope, no more contact. To Stacey: I know like I know water falls that you ended up Good and Happy.

11. Where was your FIRST sleepover?

Scott Tedford. His dad was a colonel in the army who adopted his older brother, in Germany, after the war.

Scott was overweight and asthmatic, but this brother John was a Beautiful Specimen and poor Scott suffered strange family dynamic issues. But the whole family was wonderful, really. His parents danced, at home, sipping Grasshoppers, that night, and let us pour some creme de menthe on our vanilla ice cream. We pretended to be drunk, after. It was so nice. 

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

My wife Deborah. We talked about my damn kidneys.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

My mom's re-marraige, to a full professor of psychology, who ran the campus counseling center, who nonetheless drank himself to death within 10 years. He was a medic under Patton and never got over it. I love him still.

The wedding was so full of foreshadowing to all this I cannot bear to describe it, and have deleted the whole thing just now. Sorry.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

After my creepy ablutions? Poured coffee, took pills, checked OS. he he.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

JIMI HENDRIX, 1968, MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM, KC!!!

Just turned 13 years old. And I wore my older brother's powder-blue Nehru jacket and my own brown elephant bells. It was fab beyond all description. Got stoned, saw God.

16. FIRST tattoo?

In 1968, at 13 (see above). "JO", done with a straight pin rubber-banded to a #2 pencil, with india ink, prison-style. With my fellow juvenile delinquent, Regan Drasko, who gave himself a flaming cross, same place. Lucky me, I think, every day since. Mine is blurry, enigmatic now.

In the 70's I used to tell everyone it stood for Jimmy Olsen, which amused no one but me, ever, not once, NO one, so I stopped. I reluctantly conclude, now, at last, today, that it just isn't funny. 

17. FIRST piercing?

Right ear lobe, 1969. I am weirdly vain about having a real 60's piercing. 

18. FIRST foreign country you've been to?

France (well, via Belgium); lived in Lyon with my 3-year old daughter Molly, enrolled her in school, sold pastels in the street market, tried/failed to get into Les Beaux Arts.

Came back to NYC to live 20 feet from the elevated "J" train in Woodhaven, Queens. After Montana and Lyon, it was Old New York and romantic, to me. Sort of. At time anyway, like some 30's movie about a Brooklyn boxer.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing in the theater?

Mary Poppins. Julie is still so luscious to me it's embarrassing.

20. FIRST Detention you had?

My adolescence was like an evil version of Dr. Seuss: On Beyond Badness. Went from advanced classes honor roll to failing in one fell swoop, between 7th and 8th grade, after my parents' divorce. Too many hookies, skips and similar mis-steps to count; started running away at 11 years; did so again and again until finally in jail at 14.

My stepfather (see above) and my mom saved me and my soul by getting me out of that Very Bad Place and putting me to work in summer stock theater.

Theater. Saved. My . Life.

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

Kansas, the most soulful, beautiful, majestic, lonely, bloodied place on Earth.

22. If you had three wishes, what would the FIRST one be?

1. All the money I will need for daughter's colleges and weddings.

23. What is the FIRST thing you would learn if you had the chance?

Formally, Ancient Greek, at university. As opposed to the happenstance, amateurish way i auto-didactically do so now.