Jeffrey Alan Payne - Doczine

perform. The combined qualities of being a smart student, having creative leanings andingratiating myself with most of my teachers guaranteed that I got my ass kicked bybullies regularly. They’d catch me on the way home, chirpily carrying a stack of bookson one hip and my clarinet case in the other hand.I gave up the clarinet by high school. No girls ever say, “I want to go home with theclarinet player.” It was always, lead singer or guitarist first, then the bass player ordrummer. The clarinetist was the bottom of the musician groupie sexual food chain.On the other hand, my parents loved it. They’d march me out like a chimpanzee with ahula hoop whenever guests were over so that I could play Tijuana Taxi by Herb Albert orsome other song I had foraged off the radio. That was yet another reason to forgo theinstrument, when I entered my high school adolescent rebellion stage.We lived three miles north of the legendarily terrifying Eight Mile, a street immortalized inthe Eminem film. I lost my virginity to a prostitute at Eight Mile and Grand River, acorner noted for such activity, as soon as I was old enough to own a car in which to havesex in. I could never get legitimate girlfriends of my own in high school, partly becausemy parents forced me to wear my hair like a member of “The Archies”, when everyoneelse was walking around looking like Robert Plant.It was the tail end of the age of free love, rampant casual drug use, and bonding withpeople of all shapes and colors. You weren’t going to make yourself any more popularwith the neighbors if they heard you peppering conversations with racial slurs. I wouldhave never dared to use the “N” word out loud. It was considered the mostreprehensible word in the English language.Our household operated under a doctrine that kids had better behave in an exemplarymanner. My parents regarded children as potential suicide bombers, loaded with acache of “embarrassment bombs” at their disposal. These social munitions deviceswere capable of exploding into parental mortification at any time, during familygatherings or in the middle of a shopping mall. Such outbursts would surely attract “tsktsk” looks of condemnation from other adults. “They obviously aren’t capable of raisingtheir child correctly.”They were diligent, poised and ready, like sentries on the perimeter of a Kandaharmilitary compound, ready to make a pre-emptive strike. Like sharpshooters, theycarefully scanned the room for dubious body language, expertly alert to any movementthat might lead to reputational decimation.I even got into trouble for things other kids did. A temper tantrum in public from ademographic peer would instigate subtle jerks on my arm, with a quiet but forcefuldirective, “You better never act like that.”In the seventies, unlike today, parents were essentially authorized to employ whateverbehavioral modification method they saw fit to instill within their child a respectful fear ofparental retribution.Because of this, I walked a pretty tight and narrow line through my childhood andteenage years. In retrospect it was a good thing. I grew up to be a fairly decent person,3