Part 3

Introductions, Sweet confections, Howie Goldman and The way of the roach.
Howie Goldman was my best friend during my adolescent years. During those years the
line-up of my friends looked like the theater marque for a borscht belt comedy jam.
There was Jacob Adelman, Jeremy Finkelman, Philip Klien, Jeffrey Katz and a host of others.
Soon those names would be replaced in highschool by Zulema Kanti, Rasheeda Blaloche, Tieffa Waldon, Clay Cauley, Jarmaine Gillis and more. The "Borscht Belt Years" were full of juvenile exploration, sex education, pyromania...ation and sweet confection. Howie had childhood diabetes. He was my best buddy and at times my greatest concern. I could fill a book
about our experiences together. Just to name a few for colorful illustration: The time we turned his entire house in to one giant fort made of furniture and blankets, the time we opened a casino in his basement, the time we set his room on fire, the time we bugged his parents room with tiny microphones, the time we dressed up as ninjas and beat eachother with real weapons, the time we formed a gang, the time we became blood brothers, the time I poured orange juice down his throat because he was in serious diabetic shock. A special one was the time we hunted cockroaches at night using battery powered water pistol uzi's filled with a mixture of water and bug poison; we taped flashlights to our guns, wore all black and carried water balloons for extra safety... these suckers were huge, think prehistoric times. We hunted for survival, not sport. Those were my favorite times.
Howie's diabetes required him to have lots and lots of sugary snacks in stock at all times, everywhere! His house was my playboy mansion. I didn't even know how to eat junk food. I would eat until I was sick, pass out, then do it again. The guilt wore off fast. I was in a new world now, the power, the glory... na, I just loved chocolate cupcakes. I remember going to Jeremy finkelman's not too long after and using the blender as a means of making a pastry power shake. It consisted of everything cake-like that could fit in to the blender. After one of those I had to be cut off. Sugar wasn't the only new concept in my life. Howie could cook a mean hot dog. Salted artificial meats was just the beginning, who would of thought potato chips came on the side! I was used to a slice of soy cardboard with watered down applebutter to dampen it... and that came on the side of something like dandelion weed soup. Just the smell of the hotdogs sizzling in the pan made me feel like me and Howie were cook'n up meth in a lab.
Eventually I hit burn-out and had to learn moderation. I had had enough of shoving 4 packs of gum in my mouth in a 4 minute period of time. My family life was suffering. Dinner was a joke. Vegetables were still my omnipresent
arch enemy... and would be for still some years to come.