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party, it would look just like this.
    “JJ come on.  Dad’s waiting.”  Larkin grabs my hand and pulls me towards the fish and chips shop.  I let myself be pulled.  I squint slightly out of focus and over my shoulder I watch the wonderful fairy sea.
    We eat fish and chips served in newspaper.  Dad is tired.  He works as the night manager at a Best Western motor lodge.  He dates a stripper named Kay.  She has a son that Dad would like me to meet.  Luckily that never happens. 
    The two brothers and two sisters stand on Haight Street and eat fish and chips.  This is the summer of love.  This is the year I am ten.  My father stands beside me, his pants are always streaked with color.  He rubs his hands on them when he paints. 
    My father is an artist. 
     
    I am 14, I am told I was conceived on the Mexican side of the border, in the front seat of a Morris Minor.  Try and absorb that.
    My parents and the two older siblings had lived in an artist colony outside of Ensenada.  They were headed for th e State s .  They were broke.  They were always broke.
    My father tells me that Mexican prostitutes will lift their skirts to fuck you, but refused to take off their dresses to be painted.  The dichotomy makes him laugh. 
     
    I am 30 and in therapy when I realize two things about these tales.  One, my father knew prostitutes when he was with my mother.  And two, if they know exactly where I was conceived, they weren’t having sex very often.
     
    I am 10, in San Francisco, in 1968.  I have no idea of any of this.  My parents have been divorced over a year.  My father is still trying to be in our life.  He hasn’t left for L.A. yet.
     
    I am 10 and for a moment the world is full of color and joy. 
     
    Things I learned from my father, malt vinegar on fish and chips, never tartar sauce or ketchup.  Crab is best eaten on the rocks down by the bay with plenty of sourdough bread.  Art is meaningful.  Art is all of ours to share.  Art is what you make of it.  Art is process.  Art is an act.
     
    I am 10 and I’m painting.  I have no fine motor control.  My brother and sisters can draw.  I can’t.  My father loves my broad wild stroke.  Art is a process.  Art is an act.
     
    In Golden Gate Park Janis Joplin is playing with Big Brother and the Holding Company. My father is sitting on the grass, he has wrapped Shaun in his Levi jacket, she is sleeping on his lap.  The rich smell of his tobacco wafts over me.  His thumb and forefinger are stained brown.  My big brother and sister are out among the dancing crowd.
    And I am standing still.  Taking it all in.               
    A big round earth momma lifts me up into her arms.  She is a symphony o f India n print.  She is a gypsy goddess.  She clutches me to her chest, swaying to the music.  My head rests on her round soft bosom.  I am home. 
    She smells of rosemary.  She smells of vanilla.  She smells of fresh baked cookies and sweat.  I am safe.
    It is the summer of love and for a moment my world is soft and safe.
    It is 1968 and I am 10.

LIVE WITH IT
     
    From:               LARKIN STALLINGS
    Subject:               Re: some new shite
    Date:               March 23, 7:31:54 PM PDT
    To:Josh Stallings
    Read the first 28 pages of All The Wild Children in one sitting. Tough.  Hard to read and remember. 
    I've wondered but never asked about the  end of Mom and Dad up close.  It was weird enough through Gma Smiths jaundiced eyes. Tough.  Hard to read and remember. 
    I am pretty sure that Lilly went to Jordan and I went to 5th grade at  Escondido, though fuck it, the story is better the way you wrote it.  I remember it vaguely anyway.  I didn't go to detention, cause I knew how to stuff and play the game.  I held it all in till it all blew up and I beat some big mouth as close to death as a 10 year-old could, with my James Bond 007 lunch pail.  Sean Conery, loved that