spew :: stay tuned

Ode to Sedge Parker.

AKA: Sej.
AKA: Sam Parker.

I have never admired a person so much in my life as I have Sej. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out why. He was the quintessential candidate for, as Neil Young put it: "It's better to burn out, than to rust..." (or was it to fade away? Either way, this kid lived his life in such his own terms that for someone like myself, who had had the lines to stay within drawn for him for so long, Sej exemplified the way I wanted to live and act and to behave...I had the mind and the stomach, but I lacked the balls. Why was this enigmatic figure such an influence on me?

It was my first night back in Tucson after Christmas break. In the past few months, I had pushed any limits that my parents had though rigid, and was, for a while, on very thin ice. But here I was, back at school, now with my phat blazer, my girlfriends, Jessie, Noel & Kathryn had a fancy house and a dog on Linden...and we were the only ones to have such luxuries in our second semester. We all must have had this address before we left for our breaks because I don't recall too much planning as to how we all were to meet up once we all got back into town. I distinctly remember showing up. Taking "my" parking spot right in front of the front gate of the front wall (which concealed most of what was to go on there in the next 9 months) and I felt good...Alive? I had my white Smiths jacket on, sweat pants, glasses...comfortable. Upon my entry, after the barrage of hugs, kisses and interest as to how good a month I had just had, I remember a character in the corner...sitting on the couch...kinda keeping to himself. "My God! This is a spitting image of my cousin Dave!" Only this guy had a thick, paunchy build accented by what was at the time an amazing tattoo on his bicep. Although the idea seems somewhat jaded now, the concept of a rose amongst barbed wire that circled the entire upper arm was radical. He was introduced as Sej, and I remember questioning it..."Sej? Ya mean like 'Sledge?,' as in 'Sledge-Hammer" and from that point on, it was history as they say. He laughed at everything and said shit that made everybody laugh. And, despite his intensely young looking face, he had the air of someone who had seen and done much more than we ever would. Yet, his attitude and demeanor was that of one that looked up to most of us around him. Especially Fortin, his childhood crony. He was, in fact, a few years younger than us, which at that age was quite significant. He had, form that first night, a closeness with Fortin that I wasn't to see repeated until I studied Johnny and Fortin later that infamous semester.

I can't think of a better way for a stranger to bond with a foreign tribe than for him to be shown that tribes outer dimensions. In one night, Sej was introduced to me, Jessie, Noel, Kathryn, Josh, Andrew, Kline, Jason Maine, Paul Mark, Erin Waddington, John Porttnoy, and god knows who else, all the while keeping up under the influence of the Blue Unicorn. It was this night that I attribute my attraction to Sej. Although I have had far more humorous experiences when I have visited these areas of my psyche, I can't recall a personality that made a potentially dark or at least gray trip bright with spontaneous humor. And it was to be this very personality that drew me to him. I had a fairly powerful dose that night considering what I had been through that month. Josh and I had the next door to Andrew and Fortin (where Sej was crashing), so I drove a fraction of these cats home to Sun Terrace. "Who's ride is this?," He said admiring the blazer. This night was a kick-off. it was after this night that I accredit my college life to have begun. This was the first night of a semester that was to go down to my grandchildren.

There is no way for me to place all my memories of Sej in order chronologically. Not only were there too many, but they involve so many other personalities of that semester under varying distances from sobriety that they all seem to bleed into one another.

There was Southern Comfort. My good friend, Jarrod, and I had concocted a drink in Park City Utah that we uniquely dubbed Park City's: Gatorade and SoCo. Now, Sej was a veteran before I ever knew how it applied to my kind. Although he was a hard-core fan of SoCo, he enjoyed, as simple as it was, this mix of drinks that it became a Thursday night tradition over at Linden. Remember, Linden was where we ALL spent 80-90% of our good times...reefer to my photo album for the ultimate picture of the living room. I considered myself to be very adept a drinking. Oddy and I would each down a 12-pack up at BeerGooRoo Cul-de-sac and then drive to a party...no problem. Yet, I had not yet busted out with hard alcohol. But SoCo tasted so good that it was like drinking candy...just watch out for when it bites back. Before long, Josh and Fortin fell out of this "Park City Club" and the Gatorade could only follow. Without any formal training, Sej taught me how to drink. Not only how to get past the punch, but how psychological drinking-sickness was. How to talk yourself straight enough to keep drinking. In the few times that this club met, Sej and I would polish of a 1/5 of SoCo, then raid Noels Budweiser. Reeling, arm in arm, I had a new, powerful, knowledgeable friend that was as new to the group as I was to myself.

Was it the Rock by then or was it still MudBugs? Either way, we were spending a great deal of time across the street from sun Terrace at a complex whose name eludes me. It was the same room that Jessie, Noel and Kathryn occupied the semester before, but now Kline, Margo, Heather, and someone from Texas lived there... (Emily..1/96) which was great for we didn't have to lose the routine of crawling out the window to access the world outside. Sej had, by this time, proven to all that he was on a completely different level. We had all observed him, on a number of occasions, fully compose himself with a full head of mescaline, Jack, herb and X...and this night was no different. Something big was going down at the Rock, and all we had to do was stumble there. Sej, always the purveyor of smiles and feeling good, had, in his system, an M/X missile, and, on his face, a full get-up of make-up. Picture this, if you can: Sej, at 5'7"(?), visibly built, wearing combat-boots, jeans, black leather biker jacket, black dyed hair that naturally stood up in a twisted Morrissey hang, lit joint in hand, with a full job of blush, mascara and lipstick compliments of Jessie and Noel...and he was on fire because of this. A complete contradiction of terms. We all lost it at first, but that was lost as we were drawn into an enhanced trip because he was doing this and it was working. It got to the point where it became unconscious...and we weren't even at the bar yet...just on our way there. On the corner we had to turn on our walk (we were maybe 7 or 8), we came across a fight. That "pussy, too scared to engage, pushing back and forth with 2 friends on each side eyeballing the others" Kind of fight. As if timing were actually perfect, these two lock up right as we walk up, thus setting an X-ing Sej off the handle. With the roach securely fastened in the teeth, he grabbed just one of these kids, yanked him off of the other (without aiding the other, mind you...he simply broke it up violently), and screamed at the top of his lungs: "FUCKING KNOCK IT OFF!!! JUST SMOKE A FUCKING JOINT INSTEAD YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!" And with this, he held out his had with the joint for either one of them to take. all right, the imagery gets better. These two have taken Sej's actions as a blinding act of aggression and they and their friends have turned their panting stares at him. Still with out stretched offering of peace, but still with him X-ing hard and grinning at them like that...with make-up on...there was dead silence. We were no help; either hiding behind the nearest car, rolling on the ground laughing, or attempting to get his attention by breaking the silence with a "hey Sej...let's go?" I can't remember if they took the joint or not, but the fight was broken up, and these two clans had stories for their pledge classes.

Without going into too much detail of how little I know of Sej and his past in the middle of this country, he was working with a clean slate with me in Tucson. What Fortin and Jake and all his KC buddies did for him unconsciously, I chose not to care what kind of a record Sej had accumulated in his then 20 years. Although I could not yet understand it, I somehow realized that souls such as he are pushed thru this Earth by an engine that can sometimes get away from the good logic of the driver...no matter how much he try to aim straight. But from what I could gather, Sej must not have come from the economic background that some of his close friends may have enjoyed for he was soon drawn to subtle yet specific things about our circle o friends. Jason Maine, Paul Mark and Erin Waddington placed themselves in what was, at the time, Euclid Terrace. And from this apartment, these, for the lack of a better word, rich-kids would throw stunningly blurry festivities stocked with all the best party favors. These guys liked this life-style, wanted to enhance it rather than experiment with it, and had the funding to go nuts...all they lacked was the engine. Sej, drawn first to the festive, began his carreer as a promoter here. What began as a couch to rest his head mutated into a fourth roommate. "Oh...don't worry about the rent, man." I remember a party in Spring where in addition to the 5 foot-tall amplifiers blasting the Cult until the cops came, but when they did, the 1/2 full keg going out the window and onto Euclid...this same window that was perfect for pitching pool-balls at parked cars. It was parties like these that Sej made better like a spice. He brought much to the table. He provided so much, in fact, that when these kids' money was fronted, Sej, much to his displeasure I would guess, gave them more then they had the balls to imagine. I feel lucky in a way to not have all the details, but that apartments' inhabitants spread themselves thin enough to be very paranoid...and all this for a drug that, among other pleasures, made you paranoid. So, into this, throw Fippin. This character acted like a catalyst for Sej. I don't have one solid recolection of this kid other than when he was stumble-drunk enough to pick a fight with a rave bouncer...from the outside of the rave that he got ejected from. So drunk that he had only one piss-soaked Cole-Haan loafer on his foot...the other, as Scott Egizii would later find out, had fallen off somewhere. It is Fippin with whom I credit Sej's last stand in Tucson. The ride was over when Fippen...I'm sure of this...planted the seed in Sej's head that it was possible to betray your friends for their money...and somehow look yourself in the mirror...we'll come back to that mirror later. Bad checks. Guns drawn. 1 parole-violator in custody. Fippen tackelled and subdued by one of Tucson's finest lady-cops. The streak hath ended...for now. I did, however, get a chance to hear him speak his mind right before he left Tucson, and fighting back tears, Sej didn't apologize...he couldn't...not yet. He did something that left a chilling scar with me to this day: The kid, sitting on my couch at Sun Terrace, became, in my eyes, a man. Because he spilt for me his proverbial guts...who he wanted to be, who he was. It didn't have to make sense...he had just committed a felony against the woman I think he may have even loved. He simply gave his best shot at a definition of who he was right then. It has been said that you are never strongest as you are when you are at your lowest. But I saw Sej prepare himself to take on the world...whatever it had in store for him. We both knew one definite future that was right around the corner for him. But he would explain that it was a finite future...that it was, by all means, going to be a healthy one. Sitting here now, I was wrong to think that there was something special about what it was that I may have been saying to him in light of what he had done...what he was doing. I think he realized, in me, that I was not only an ear in which to vent, but so that these thought may become real. He must have had a tremendous amout of crap in his head that night...all jockeying for position until he can spill them out...release his thoughts, his ideas so that others might know that what his actions said and what his mind & heart were saying sometimes were polar-opposites. Sej was giving me something there. Sej was purely Sej that dusk. Somehow, months later, he got a picture out to Noel of just the shirt on his back. The letters read "BUILT TO LAST."

I was to meet up with Sej on a number of occasions upon completing his tour of duty somewhere in the mid-west. If you could bottle the addrenelyn one experiences during homecomings of that magnitude, you'd be elsewhere. By this time, it was already Spring of the following year. Fortin, Jesse and Noel were living in a house on Waverly, not far from the OG house on Linden...and I was a pledge in a fraternity...that never-ending- expanding circle of friends that I am still building, right? Thrown into this mix were Jake and Johnny, Storm and Cassiddy. Just 4 more characters that brought spice and pure ingredients to the table. Johnny was living there kinda-sorta, Jake was at USC, Storm was in trouble or in the hospital, and Cassidy was with me so that she wouldn't suffer the same fate as her brother Zodiak to the paws of Storm. Not much needed to be said about his return. Hatchets had miraculously been burried, and we all were very excited to see him. Yet, that isn't to say that there weren't going to be some leashes kept on him when eyes couldn't This wasn't for a lack of trust as much as it was an effort of love. This kid was NOT a bad seed, he just needed some time to get the rubber side down so that he could get up to speed. We all knew that Sej possessed something. We couldn't explain it to any of each other for so few of us understood it then. I recall vivid seconds of pulling up in a white VW with John Portnoy behind me in his grey VW. I'm in the process of getting up and out of the car and hustle towards the door. I know he's there...Noels blazer is back from the airport. It is night. I hear him from within as he exits the screen door and I see Sej for the first time in roughly a year. As I'm slapping his back..."Holy shit this kid is huge."

Sitting here months after I wrote these last passages and even closer to a painful anniversary, I feel an eerie guilt that I may not have touched upon some key point with the kid. First of all, there is the fact that I had lived in this city for close to a year and never looked him up. I knew full well how close he would be...how little effort it would take to have a crazy-sweet reunion with the punk. Couple that with the harboured guilt of the fact that I would first have to re-establish contact with the clan in Tucson to get his information. See, in my life, I have one major criticism: I always wait tooo long to say hello. Completely viod of negative vibes, it eats me alive how long it's been since I made contact with those I love. The cliches could go on and on, but the fact still remains that I subconsciously isolate myself from the outside world and devote myself to chasing the almighty Dollar and it's making me fucking sick. I do play...it's not all work. But there is also something o be said about making that phon-call to your roots and saying: "Whaasup?" When I traveled to Tucson for the UA Homecoming '95, The pleasure I got from seeing and hugging and catching up with old friends was so healthy! It all reminds me of when I say Jason Maine over Christmas '95...he said to me that it was so hard for us to hook up whenever we could be in the same town together. He really meant it. I said that it was quite easy to hook up...what was really hard was for us to catch up. From across the bar at the TT Roadhouse in Phoenix, AZ, he shook my had again and wished me a Merry Christmas and good luck with everything I did. And it was at times like this that I realized that while true pals may grow appart, their soul-connection will never sever. No matter how much significance you put on the "water under the br