If It Feels Good Do It

In the first two years of high school I wasn’t workin with much. In the second two, I worked with Repo Man.

Some people had a lot of friends. I had few. Some guys were in a band. They were cool. Or they could skateboard good. I couldn’t skateboard good. I could just skateboard. Or they were in a band. Oh wait, I already said that. I wasn’t in a band. I knew how to play the piano and the saxophone, but not well. I also knew how to play the flute but I didn’t tell anyone that. Other guys were churchgoing with a supportive family structure of unified fronts and positive reinforcement. I had a Chinese step-dad and an eccentric father who lived on the other side of town. Some guys had cool jobs delivering pizza, or upgrading automotive upholstery. I worked under the table as a dishwasher. The guy who showed me the ropes was a high school dropout who said nigger. The guy who showed me the ropes smoked pot after work in his primer Chevy Nova. Then the guy who showed me the ropes drove away in that Chevy Nova. I had a Honda Spree 50 cc scooter. I would drive away in that. I couldn’t afford insurance. I couldn’t afford a license. I could only afford the gas that brought me to my bedroom where my relatives disregarded PC was at. I dreamed of owning a 486. I was 16. People who used PCs were dorks.

That’s where I was in the summer of 1994.

Then my mother, step-dad, and sister headed away on vacation for a few weeks. And I wasn’t going. I didn’t like going anywhere with them. I made excuses to avoid it. This time I told them I had to work. So, my mother proposed I stay with my dad.

Holy shit. The idea was almost as bad as vacationing with my mother, step-dad and sister. But only almost. So, I packed up my backpack and rode my over to my Dad’s place. My Dad had a bedroom for me there.

On the third night I was reading in bed. My Dad had already gone to sleep. But then I heard him get up and use the bathroom. Then I heard him knock on the door. He had seen my light on.

“Hi Dad,” I said.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Reading,” I said.

“Why don’t you go to sleep?”

“I can’t sleep. So, I’m reading.”

“You can’t sleep? Try harder.”

“How?”

“Turn off the light, lie down and close your eyes.”

“That doesn’t work.”

The fear of my father was mixed with outrage. I considered reading in bed a basic human right.

“Does your mother let you stay up and read at night after she goes to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“How close to your bedroom is hers?”

“Down the hall.”

“How far away down the hall?”

“Um. About 25 feet.”

Actually I didn’t really know how far away her bedroom was. But I knew better than to say that.

“25 feet?” he asked.

“Yep.”

I lay there and stared at him. I wasn’t going to put down my book. No way.

“OK. You can read Ian. But you better not keep me up.”

“OK.”

I read two library books during that week. One was about how to be a private investigator. Wire taps. Impersonations. Surveillance. Low speed pursuits. I was way into it. The other book was Approaching Zero, a true crime retelling of the exploits of various hackers and phreakers. I was even more into that, though I had read much of the same material in a slightly better book called CYBERPUNK. My favorite stories were of badboy renegades who smoked hash and stole from banks. And they did that a fraction of a penny at a time. And they did that from a cheap motel room. How could I be like them?

Reading or watching television were two of a very small list of things to do at my Dad’s place when he was gone. But my Dad spent quite a bit of time with me when he was home from teaching and painting. And he was home often.

We watched a lot of movies. One night my Dad said that he wanted to watch a certain movie. I don’t remember what movie. My memory is good but not that good. So, I went to the video store to pick up whatever movie it was but they didn’t have it.

Then I saw on the shelves a movie my Dad had shown me when I was eight years old, right after he and my mother were divorced. In fact, watching that movie with him formed one of my earliest post-divorce memories. I remembered liking the rock song at the beginning of the movie. So I rented the movie. The name of the movie was Repo Man.

My father was grumpy because I didn’t bring home the title he had asked for.

“That’s too bad they didn’t have the movie I asked for,” he said. “Really too bad.”

But he remembered watching Repo Man with me.

“I remember there was a great rock song at the beginning of Repo Man though,” I said.

“Yeah, I remember that too.”

I put the VHS in and pressed play.

“Yep,” my Dad said. “There’s that rock song you were talking about. Good memory.”

We watched the movie and my father liked the rest of it. Well, he still liked the rest of it. And for me watching that movie a second time blew my mind.

Then my Junior year of high school began. Then I started watching that movie every day. Then I changed.

Repo Man gave me pick up lines. Repo Man gave me something to be. Repo Man gave me an attitude.

I used to not know what to say to girls. Now I just walked right up and started talking. “I go into a bar or somebody’s place of work, they shit scared. Think I’m coming to kill ‘em. And I would, too. I kill anybody who crosses me.”

“Uh, what’s that?” they’d say. “What are you doing?”

“That’s Repo Man, the best movie ever made.”

“Oh.”

“Cool, huh?” I’d say, just like a Repo man.

“Uh I guess,” they’d say, smiling maybe.

Before that I was a nice guy who listed to Classic Rock and smoked weed sometimes. Now I said fuck you to everyone. Now after school I got drunk and rode around town on my scooter with headphones, listening to Dead Kennedys. Now I did some other not so good ideas like that. Now people were afraid of me. Well not everyone, but anyone with some sort of intelligence. And good. Fuck them.

I tried showing the movie to my mother, but she thought it was stupid.

“This movie is stupid,” she said.

“Why is it stupid?” I asked.

“This stupid movie doesn’t make any sense!”

“I know! Exactly! Cool, huh?”

My life did not make sense. Punk did not make sense. The Talking Heads did not make sense. Fuck making sense. I did not make sense.

But my dad understood. We would joke about Repo Man often. In those days the default hard drive was C:. In those days our default joke was Repo Man.

“Hey Dad, this is some Repo Spaghetti.”

“Ha! This is a Repo Fork!”

I thought my dad was cool again.

A few months later he called me. “There’s this great movie I just saw, Ian. Since you like Repo Man, you’ll have to check it out. It’s called Pulp Fiction.” My father liked Repo Man, and now he thought Pulp Fiction was great. Then my dad was even more cool. Maybe too cool.

Then through all the bad behavior, and all the good behavior, there was still Repo Man.

When a short time later I worked at the video store, I let my dad rent Repo Man for free.

He sent me a Repo Man VHS once when I was still at UC Davis. DVDs were out by then, but somehow VHS seemed the most appropriate.

Then a few months ago I sent him a Repo Man poster for his birthday. He put up the poster in his kitchen.

Then after moving down here I realized that a bunch of Repo Man filming locations were nearby. I asked my dad if he wanted to go check them out, and sure enough he did.

We visited the locations and took a bunch of pictures.

It was great.

I’ll upload the photos next time.

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