This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The biggest mistake I ever made, was to move back to California from Boston in 1971. I did this after my mother told me my father had a very rare eye disease and was going blind – in weeks! As an artist, and a romantic, I thought it best my father see his only loyal creative son, before darkness descended upon him – forever!

In Boston, I had it made. I won my nine month case against the Mafia, had talked my black Christian-Muslim neighbors out of acquiring guns in order to fight for our building on Beacon Hill. I had several girlfriends. The Mayor of Boston shook my hand as he told me;

“It took guts to stand up to those people.”

I survived an attempt on my life. Hmmmm! Am I the real Dirty Hairy – Hippie?

Within weeks of being back in Oakland, I learned my stepmother, Dee-Dee, had knocked Vic’s eye out with a huge glass ashtray she hurled at his head. The eye disease – was a big lie! Were they drinking? Or, is mental illness to blame? Mental illness vs. shit-faced drunk! You decide! What does that look in Dee-Dee’s eye tell you?

Even though he is flat on his back in the hospital squinting out of his good eye, Victor has to tend to business. His deep velvet hypnotic voice was the most inportant aspect of his loan shark business. There were alway suckers on the line that the Captain was slowly reeling in, or, responding to the chum in the water. These folks had to be worked, made to feel like a member of the Captain’s family, a tactic he employed on his three young female workers that came to his home five days a week, where the Captain had a big pot of squid soup on the stove, this part of his ‘Perk System’. More about that later.

When I came back to Oakland, Vic and Dee-Dee took this hippie to lunch in San Francisco. I had a Christ-complex after cheating death.

Above is Rosemary on the lap of ‘Killer’ my father-in-law who Don Logan reminded me of in the movie ‘Sexy Beast’. Robby was always on edge. When his PTSD got bad, he went to a bar and picked a fight so he could kick the shit out of someone, knock them to the floor. He did this on a regular basis till he ran out of bars. I kept my visitations to my mother’s home in San Fernando Valley, to one visit a year, I always feeling like fresh meat when I walked into the door.

Twice that I know of, Robby jumped in a car with a his gun and went racing to confront Christine’s new boyfriend or husband, who did not have a clue how Robby fit in to ‘The Family’ he being six months younger then me. He – Rosemary’s Bodyguard – turned my mother into a pot-head. Where was Harry Callahan?

Peace -brother!

Sexy Beast was like a home movie. One never knew when the shit was going to hit the fan. This family was in the Art Business. That is a early Rosamond on the wall.
Eat your heart out Mrs. Eastwood. We never put on airs, or had to fake a scene like the one where you spy on your daughter, because nothing really happens at your house.

Jon Presco

Copyright 2012