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XII A Party
I had Richard to several parties at my house and attended several at his.
The first party I attended at Richard's was a lesson in psychodrama. Tony
was still there and, of course, that was back in the Aki days of 1979. It
must have been in the winter because I remember snow. A bunch of Aki's
relatives were there with children. I was still fascinated with the
newness of knowing Richard, and Judy was already a bit disgusted. Richard
held me on his lap in the kitchen--I weigh well over 200 pounds--and
bounced me like a baby. Richard went into Imperial mode at around ten,
and, for some reason, started getting mad at Aki's relatives. I think he
was on some experimental medication for his herpes. Anyway, he went out to
the barn with David Schreiber and started smashing a ping pong table they
had set up into splinters. Later he came into the house and got a .45 and
was threatening to shoot a hole in the floor. When Aki tried to stop him
by saying, "Richard, there are children sleeping upstairs," he said
flatly, "It's my floor and I'll shoot it if I want to." Finally, he was
talked out of it, the kids could sleep in peace, and Schreiber sneaked all
of the ammunition out of the house. Not a shot was fired in the house
(though as usual there was plenty of shooting of many different weapons
off of the back porch at things such as a television, a Japanese pinball
machine, a bath tub, etc. (I remember once when Richard DID shoot his gun
in the house. Dobro Dick and a friend had come in with the ol' squeeze box
and Richard had a large caliber rifle in his lap. Just to torture Dobro--which
he loved to do--he fired it at an angle into the floor. Needless to say,
it gave Dobro quite a charge. Also once Brad Donovan and Richard took a
very nice dining room chair left over from the Aki marriage and filled it
full of bullet holes. I had it in my garage for years calling it Montana
State University's Brautigan Chair. But it eventually fell into too many
pieces. The evening ended peacefully with Richard reading me his Carp Taxi
episode from Tokyo Montana Express out in his studio.
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