Taylor Negron - California Gothic

 

 

I was born in Los Angeles in a house, in a canyon that was in a nest of palm trees that casted these thin, unmoving shadows like prison bars. It was very California Gothic. [audience laughter] I am very California Gothic. I am the child of those people that you used to see in the ads for cigarettes in the back of Life magazine. Those handsome people that were always wearing terry cloth robes, and penny loafers smoking cigarettes, looking like they just heard the funniest joke of their life. [audience laughter] The Marlboro man met the Virginia Slims woman and had me. [audience laughter] 

 

It's very California Gothic to have your best friends’ mother, who is a movie star, keep her cracked Oscar in the kitchen next to the salt and the cumin and the cardamom. [audience laughter] It's very California Gothic to see Joan Didion crying at the wheel of her green jaguar on Moorpark below Ventura. It's very California Gothic to have a cousin who is a rock star. My cousin is Chuck Negron, the lead singer for the group Three Dog Night. And he bore a startling resemblance to Charles Manson. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, when you were a kid like me in 1970, growing up in Los Angeles, you knew that you shared the city with Charles Manson and his family, because that grisly, murderous night of mayhem and helter-skelter was all anybody could talk about. And for those of you who are too young to know what helter-skelter is, it's twerking but with blood. [audience laughter] It was really scary. Really horrifying. 

 

My parents, they were always going out on the town. They were always getting dressed up and leaving, like in Mad Men. They just left me alone. They just went out. One night, my father came in and he said, “I want you to close all these doors and windows. I don't want these hippies to come in here and de gut you.” [audience laughter] You heard him. [audience laughter] That was an option in my childhood, to be de gutted. [audience laughter] And it left a tremendous psychic scar on my life that has stayed with me forever. I'm still very disturbed by hippies, and long hairs, [audience laughter] and headbands, and large candles, and beads, and bandanas. I just don't like any of it. [audience laughter] 

 

But I was only 12 years old. I was a tween. I was a changeling. I was changing into a man. But childhood is a place where your fears are disproportionate. They're huge. But then, so are your goals. That's where the magic can happen in these goals. And my goal when I was a child was to own a gorilla, [audience laughter] or a monkey, or an ape, anything from the monkey, ape, gorilla family. I just wanted someone to be able to play hide and go seek with, [audience laughter] swim, shoot dice, light ironing. [audience laughter] 

 

And my parents were these really emphatic ghetto people from New York City, who didn't like animals at all, and my mother said, “Look, you will never ever see a monkey walk through that door." [audience laughter] But something very magical happened, [audience laughter] Christmas of 1970. You see, my uncle Ishmael-- That was his real name, Ishmael. He was a trucker. [audience laughter] He had his own flatbed truck, which meant that he could follow other people around who had flatbed trucks and pick up what fell off of theirs. [audience laughter] 

 

And one day, he was closing down this raggedy-ass circus, Vargas, in the Hollywood bowl parking lot on Highland, and he came across a monkey that somebody was throwing out. [audience laughter] A live monkey named Carroll. [audience laughter] Two Rs, two Ls. We knew it was called Carroll, because it had its own cage with its name on it. And that is what changed the deal with my parents, because they are emphatic New Yorkers. So, they said, “Well, if it's free, [audience laughter] and it comes with a cage, what harm can it do?” [audience laughter] 

 

Well, Carroll came to the house. I was so excited. Carroll arrived on that flatbed truck on a pile of grapefruits in his cage. When I went out there, and greeted him, and I looked into those big round eyes, I knew that I would understand everything that monkey had to say to me, and that I would experience unconditional love. Well, the monkey promptly squatted, shat into its hand, [audience laughter] and then threw it into my eye under paw. [audience laughter] And from the shadow, I heard the ice clink in my mom's drink, [audience laughter] and she said, “That's your monkey.” [audience laughter] I love my monkey so much. I see I stuck with my monkey while everybody turned against my monkey. [audience laughter] 

 

Sometimes they even put a sheet over its cage. I stuck with my monkey when my monkey willfully and intentionally fucked my grandmother's mink hat [audience laughter] and I took the blame. [audience laughter] Carroll was my most cherished early Christmas present, but Carroll was not the only unexpected visitor that season. One Christmas night, the Santa Ana winds blew too hard against the glass in cold, frightening Los Angeles. I had fallen asleep into a deep Christmas sleep. I looked out the window, and I saw a van pull up in front of the house, turn off and just stop. Nothing happened for 30 minutes. Nothing happened. And I thought to myself, this is it. This is my nightmare. It's going to come true. And I thought to myself, well, at least I made it to 12. [audience laughter] 

 

Then I looked out and the door opened up. And then finally this plume of smoke rolled out, and these hippies came out on wobbly feet, and started slinking up to the front of the house. As the cast of Woodstock approached, [audience laughter] I felt vulnerable in my Charlie Brown sleeping T-shirt. [audience laughter] I waited for the physical and emotional attack to begin. There was a knock on the door, and I heard my mother's voice, muffled. I knew she was dead, throats cut. I had read the papers. 

 

But then, I heard her say, “Grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone.” Why was my mother giving protein to a serial killer? And then, there was a blast as my father came into my room, and he said, “Your cousin Chuck is here. Come down.” I timidly followed my father down the stairs to see in the living room what appeared to be Mama Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, and assorted long hairs devouring Christmas cookies. My cousin stood shyly holding a Three Dog Night album at the stereo, and he told us he was going to play a song for us that no one had ever heard before. Side one song A

 

[sings] Jeremiah was a bullfrog Was a good friend of mine I never understood a single word he said But I helped him a-drink his wine. And on that cold windy night, everyone stood up and started to dance. My father grabbed my mother and they started to dance. I looked over-- And Jim Morrison, the Jim Morrison was dancing the jitterbug with my grandmother on the coffee table. [audience laughter] It was so extraordinary, it was so magnificent. The hippies and the long hairs were all singing along to choruses of Joy to the World. All the boys and girls now. And then, the song was over and someone picked up the needle and put it back at the beginning, and the song continued and the dancing continued. 

 

There's something emblematic about certain California Christmas memories. Here is one that is transcendent, rock and roll. And this is what made my monkey legendary. [audience laughter] He came down [audience laughter] huddling down the stairs, and went right up to the stereo, and started dancing. [audience laughter] Had we forgotten Carroll was a circus monkey? [audience laughter] And this was her cue. 

 

[sings] You know I love the ladies. His arms outstretched like rubber bands. He started picking off the ornaments from the Christmas tree. Love to have my fun. [audience laughter] The monkey started to juggle. [audience laughter] I'm a high night rider and a rainbow flyer A straight shooting Son of a gun [audience laughter] I said a straight shooting. I wish you were all there to have seen the expression on those stoned-- [audience laughter] On it, we found out later LSD. [audience laughter] Hippies and my grandmother as Carroll my monkey rightfully claimed the spotlight. [audience laughter] 

 

Glee is a very good word to use, because that's what it was, pure happiness and glee because I was 12 years old and I was alive, [audience laughter] and I had escaped Manson's knife, [audience laughter] and I had a monkey with talent. [audience laughter] As everybody danced and as everybody laughed and as everybody ate cookies, I looked at my family. I looked at these people and all of their crimes, past, present, and future seemed to just spill out and dissolve into the contours of the blue shag rug. As Carroll balanced an ashtray on his nose, it was as though I was looking into my future, because I realized all the glorious things that could happen with music and with joy. 

 

And that Christmas, the last one that I was ever a child, I learned a very important lesson that I'd like to pass on to you all tonight. And that's that no matter how horrible your day is and no matter how scary your night is, everything can turn on a dime and with a knock the door. Thank you.