Après l'école.

In 1984, I lived in San Ramon, California. My parents were about to get divorced, my sister had run away from home at 15, and I was in the fourth grade. My best friends were a group of three brothers from a strict Christian household: Joe, James and John. Their parents were named Joseph and Mary.

Joseph had an enormous beard and worked for Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas' company. He had art boards propped up around the house that would be used in Return of the Jedi-- big boards with intricate paintings of the interior of the Death Star.

I would go to the brothers' house to play Atari, hang out in their backyard fort, climb trees and do other Christian-friendly stuff. For seamier times, I'd hang out with my other friend, Brad. Brad was a latchkey kid like me. He'd steal money from his mom's purse and buy us candy and sodas. Then we'd leaf through his dad's porn collection.

But Brad and the brothers were weekend friends. The interminable weekday afternoons-- between getting out of school and my mother coming home from work-- I spent alone. I would while away the hours after school by dumpster diving for Amway samples or shoplifting from the Safeway by the video arcade. And I figured out that if I worked a metal nail file in and out of the quarter slot of the newspaper machines that the quarters would spill out, Vegas-style. Then, it was off to play Ms. Pac-Man.

What I mostly shoplifted was candy bars-- five or six at a time, all different kinds. When I got home I'd unwrap them all and arrange them on a plate. I also had figured out that a certain combination of button presses on the cable box would tune in the pay channels. And so, each day after school, with my plate of candy bars, I would kick my feet up in front of Escapade, the precursor to The Playboy Channel. All by myself on Interlochen Drive.