(Dad) Arnold and I

Arnold and I had a lot to offer each other.

He was better at wall-ball and shooting pool. I could beat him at ping-pong and was better at talking filthy. I had just turned 12, and was discovering the joys of conspicuous spitting and of scratching my newly-dominant--in fact overwhelmingly dictatorial--testicles in public. All this I had to offer.

We also shared family bonds; my mother thought Arnold was a bad influence and wanted me to have nothing to do with him; Arnold's mother thought I was a bad influence and wanted him to have nothing to do with me.{Arnold's father became my father confessor. It was to him I turned when I needed to talk to an adult).

Having an intellectual big brother, I could offer Arnold advanced views on atheism, communism, free-love, big business, and the omnipresent degenerate influences of American bourgeois consumerism.

I fear Arnold's mother was right. I helped him become the person of principle he is today, while I succumbed to the joys of happy bourgeois materialism. This I think is the essential Earl unique style.. It did not vary much the past 65 years .