1983

24 years old. Hayward days.

With plenty of time on my hands, I start writing another version of my novelization of my adventures at the Chase Park Plaza, called "Passkey To The Plaza".

Working at JCPenney was really boring, though I learned a bit more about 4-color printing production and some interesting darkroom tricks on the stat camera. Helen Chin, a young Chinese girl with a perpetually out-of-town boyfriend hung with me a little bit, and occasionally I would take the BART into the city to hang out with my friends Dan Wool and Mike Wineke from the band the Strikers who had moved out to San Francisco to try to make the big time.

But the main person I met in Hayward was an older woman whom I fell quite in love with. She was 15 years older than me, but very beautiful and sweet, and being with her was the best thing that had ever happened to my self-esteem. She treated me with respect and love. After being treated like a boy my whole life, it was a real revelation to be loved.

I moved into a little mother-in-law cottage behind a house not far from the JCPenney offices and settled down into a solitary existence writing my books and drawing increasingly ambitious but incoherent comic strips.

On a visit back to St. Louis, a Clayton kid named Jimmy Gettinger asked me if I wanted to go spend 3 months living in London with him starting in January and I said yes immediately. I wanted to see as much of the world as I could, and Jimmy had friends who could help us get set up. I saved up my money and quit my dead-end job at JCPenney at Christmas.

In the U City Loop