I won 3rd place in an international writing competition for this piece. – Updated June 26th, 2026

Alice Cooper

Chapter One

          It’s late October, 1973 in Lauderhill, FL at about 1:00 in the morning, and Alice Cooper is winding up a set on the Midnight Special. Wolfman Jack is singing their praises and the studio audience is going wild with adoration. There’s my mother, tanked as usual whooping and yelling at the TV. It was then that she began insisting that I start clapping to the TV set. I had just spent the last hour trying to wrap my 7-year-old brain around the concept of a man in heavy makeup and long hair named Alice, I wasn’t about to start clapping at a TV set that no one else was going to hear. That’s when she grabbed me by my shoulder length hair and started beating the crap out of me.

            I escaped her grasp and ran to my parent’s room where my father was sleeping. Running in and waking him up I started sobbing and screaming that I wasn’t going to clap at the TV set and he had to make her stop telling me I had to. He got up, put on his robe, and went into the living room. There he proceeded to pick her up, toss her five-foot nothing-inch 98-pound frame over his shoulder and take her into their bedroom. Then he put her down on the bed, turned her over, and began spanking her like a small child. I stood there in the bedroom doorway and watched her scream and yell and thrash about as he spanked her. 

It was what he did next that really surprised both my mother and me He packed a suitcase out of the drawers, grabbed a bunch of shirts on hangers and went out the front door.

            “See, you made him leave” she told me, after he left and of course my 7-year-old brain believed her. What else was I supposed to believe? And, that was the last that I saw of my father for a while.

            Things at home got worse immediately. With my father there, at least there was some sense of normalcy centered around when he would get home, there was dinner, there was some order around the house, at least some break in the chaos where she would at least try to put up a good front. Now all that was gone. Now, there were people over at the house constantly, people that weren’t necessarily very nice to me or to her. There were people in the pool, people everywhere, people in all of the bedrooms in the house, even in my room. There was a constant party going on with all the local teenagers hanging out and partying at the house around the clock. I would leave for school in the morning, and walk over people sleeping on the living room floor everywhere, cars lined up in the driveway and in the yard.  I wondered what the neighbors were thinking. And once at school I had to wonder what the teachers were thinking*. There I was, showing up unkempt, long hair, dirty clothes, no lunch or lunch money and no schoolwork done.

*I found out later that one neighbor was in contact with my father and was telling him what was going on. He had called the police many times with little effect.

Chapter Two

            On a Friday afternoon I came home from school and I could hear the bass line of Smoke on The Water coming through the front door and windows of the living room. The band was up and rocking, I could see all the people inside dancing and partying to the music through the front jalousieosy windows. Once again, the front door was locked and I couldn’t get in. No matter how hard I pounded on the door, no one was going to hear me, and if they did, I was sure they wouldn’t open the door anyway. I banged on the windows trying to get someone’s attention and no one would look at me. I dropped my book bag and sat down on the steps and cried. Why did my father leave me here? what did I do that made him leave me here with her? what could I do to make him come and get me?

            I got my bike out of the garage and decided that I would just leave, go as far as I could go and forget about the whole mess. Not too far from the house was a shopping center, and behind that was a cluster of homes. I realized that I wasn’t doing too good a job of riding as I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see and I decided to stop in the middle of a cul-de-sac and just sat on the curb and cried. Someone yelled “Hey.” At me and I looked up to see that there was a man in his front yard out watering his lawn and he was watching me. Great, he’ll probably call the cops on me or something I figured and got back on my bike and rode home.

            There are few things that a 7-year-old boy wants more than his mother, and there is not much that a 7-year-old kid won’t do to keep his mother, no matter how crazy she may be acting.  Who was I to believe? My father left me, and she was still there telling me it was because of me. I had no way of understanding the reality of the situation. It was four or five weeks before I saw him again, on a Saturday that he came to get me for the day. And I didn’t want to go with him; she made a big point of telling him that too. He had just bought a small Sunfish sailboat from Sears, and it was on top of the Camaro, we were going to go sailing for the day. I didn’t want to go sailing, I didn’t want to do anything, I wanted my father to come home and be my father. He kept saying no, that wasn’t going to happen. The more he said no the madder I got until I was a crying sobbing mess. He didn’t tell me at the time that he had tried to see me every weekend since he left and that she wouldn’t let him. He didn’t tell me that he was trying to figure out how to afford an attorney to fight what would certainly be a losing custody battle in Broward County Florida in 1974. He didn’t tell me any of that and the more that he didn’t tell me the madder I got.

Chapter Three

            The little hand is on the two and the big hand is on the ten on my Mickey Mouse watch, and the door is locked again. Her friends are in the living room again, the band is setup and I can hear House of the Rising Sun loud and clear outside the front door. I’m hungry, I didn’t eat lunch because mom didn’t pack me one and she didn’t give me any lunch money. Of course, the door is locked again. Today I decide to go around to the back patio door by the pool, it looks in on the dining room. I start pounding on the glass door with my fists and screaming “let me in, please”. A few of the kids look at me and look away like they never saw me. Then, Jimmy, who hangs around with my mother a lot comes up to the door and looks me straight in the eyes. He unlocks the door and opens it wide.

            “Hey Scott, you’re home from school already?”

            “Yeah. And I’m hungry”

            “Well, let’s see what we can find in the kitchen for you then.” he says and we go into the kitchen, right off the dining room. All we find is some bread with mold on it out on the counter and some cheese in the frig. We tear off the crusts where the mold is and make a sandwich.  I sit down to eat it. Jimmy sits with me at the kitchen table while I eat.

            “Didn’t you eat lunch?” he asks

            “Um, no, mom forgot to pack it for me today.” I lie; he has to know that there was nothing to pack at this point.

            “I see” he says. “She does that often?”

            “Hasn’t remembered ever since my dad left.”

            “And she forgot to give you lunch money too?

            “Yeah…”

            “So, take lunch money.” he says, “Just take it out of her purse when she isn’t looking.”

            Later that evening, while there was a bunch of the local kids were still at the house, and the band still playing in the living room. All the kids were dancing and having a good time, I noticed that they were passing around a paper plate that had a bunch of sugar cubes on it. When they set it down on the coffee table, I grabbed a couple and ate them. They were, just sugar cubes, but one of the kids looked at me real funny when she saw me sneak it. I’m not real sure what all happened after that. I remember that the music started to not only sound like music but look and feel like it too. I remember how I could feel all of the music flowing around me and inside me and through me. It didn’t feel good, it felt like I was being carried away, like I was swimming in the pool only there was no water in the room. All I wanted to do was go to bed and go to sleep, so I went in my room and laid down. Once I got in my room, I could still hear the music but it was muffled. When I looked at my walls there were moving images of people and things, and scenes that I’d never seen before, it was both really cool to watch and scary at the same time. I was afraid to tell anyone.

Chapter Four

            On Monday before I went to school, I took two bills out of my mom’s purse for lunch. When lunchtime came around, I marched proudly through the line and up to the lunch lady, handing her the bills.

            “Where did you get these?” she asked me accusingly.

            “From my mother.” I told her. Feeling like I’d done something wrong.

            “Wait here.” she said looking at me funny, as she disappeared from behind the desk. Then she came back with one of the teachers.

            “Your mother gave you these bills for lunch money?” asked the teacher.

            “Yes.”

            “Your mother gave you two-hundred-dollar bills for lunch?” asked the teacher.

            “Uh huh.” I hadn’t bothered to look at what they were, I just took them out of her purse.

            “Well, we can’t break these, so just bring in money tomorrow, ok?”

            “Ok”

            Of course, they called my mother to ask her why I came to school with hundred-dollar bills and she was pissed at me. She was sitting in the living room waiting for me when I got home, there was nobody there to protect me. She beat the crap out of me.

            After the phone call from the school, I started getting lunches packed again each day. Every day it was the same thing; she packed me a bagel with cream cheese and a thermos of coffee with milk and sugar. The bagel and cream cheese were because she was going through a Jewish phase where she decided we should eat Jewish.  The coffee would cool and make the screw top of the thermos really hard to get off, so one day I asked one of the teachers for help to open it up. She opened it and freaked out when she saw that it was coffee. “Your Mother packs you coffee in your lunch?” she asked me incredulously.

“Yeah, every day.” I told her.

 Well, that resulted in another call home to my mother, and another beating for asking for help to open the thermos.

The lunches stopped then.

After a week or so of no lunches, I hatched a scheme. I would steal her pills off of her dresser and sell them at school for lunch money. What could go wrong?

After about a week I was accosted by the principal and the counselor and found myself in the principal’s office. They made me empty my pockets. And there was the evidence. They threatened to call the police if I didn’t tell where I got them from. So, I did. The principal called my mother in front of me and filled her in. She said she’d be there in 10 minutes. I tried to tell them that I was only trying to get lunch money. They wouldn’t listen to me.

My mother showed up, and was very calm and pleasant, talking them out of calling the police. I realize that now that would have been a major incident and that the parenting would be in question. Of course, that’s the 70’s reality vs. this modern reality.

Needless to say, she beat the crap out of me when we got home and locked me in my room without a bucket.

Chapter Five

When my father built the house in Lauderhill he did a lot of cool things. There was a full-sized pool in a screened in patio. He designed and built a completely solar pool heating system. The pump was even solar powered. It was a free efficient system that otherwise would have run hundreds of dollars a month.

The other cool thing was the house sound system. He had ordered from Germany a Grundig console. It had AM/FM radio, phono and 8-track. But wait, there’s more. Built into the Grundig was a full juke box. I think that it held 100 45’s. There were speakers in all the rooms and the back patio and a selector knob to control the rooms. He did this in the early 70’s.

Chapter Six

            Between the drug fueled parties complete with garage bands in the living room, to the naked swim parties with a couple dozen or so teenagers in the pool having sex in and around the pool. When there weren’t teenagers around, she had her “gentleman” “friends” over.  I was confined to my bedroom then, and she gave me a bucket to use as toilet until I could come out. I had no choice as it was, the door locked from the outside, I couldn’t get out if I wanted to.

            On the rare night that it was just she and I, we would sit at the dining room table and drink. She typically had a pint bottle of MD 20/20 and I was given a bottle of Chianti, a cheap, sweet port like wine that came in a wicker basket. All the hippies would use the empties for candle holders, and we had a few.

            I had to drink until either my bottle was empty or she passed out, whichever came first. Only then I could escape and go to bed. I would try to get about half the bottle down and then excuse myself. Then I’d go to the bathroom, turn the faucets on high*, and throw up into the toilet. On more than one occasion I remember having a difficult time getting up from the table to make it to the bathroom. Then I’d clean myself up and go back out to the dining room. I’d start working on the second half of the bottle. Usually, by that time she wasn’t upright, so I’d go back in the bathroom and throw up whatever else I’d drunk and then go to bed. I always left her where she was, slumped over in her chair.  I would not do anything to clean up the mess from her knocking over the bottle when she passed out, nor would I clean her up when she was lying in a puddle of her own vomit. My father had a Polaroid camera, and I remember wondering if I should borrow it.

*  The first time that I went into the bathroom to throw up, she heard me. When I came    back out, she ranted at me that “Throwing up was cheating.” And that I wasn’t supposed to. After that I used the faucets for noise and tried to make as little noise as possible.

Chapter Seven

We didn’t have dinner anymore. Sometimes she’d make TV dinners for me, other times she’d be too busy.  In the evenings and at night she had her clients over. Off to my room.

There were many nights that Lin went out, she’d leave me with Jimmy at home. Those were good nights really; we would watch TV and eat TV dinners. Salisbury steak and turkey with gravy and vegetables. Jimmy was cool, he would play guitar and we would make up silly songs and laugh a lot. One night when Mom was gone Jimmy suggested, we go skinny dipping in the pool.

            “Um, I don’t know Jimmy” I told him

            “What? Why not? Your Mom won’t get mad; she and I do it all the time” he told me “There’s nothing to be scared of”.

            “But then you’ll see my pee-pee…”

            “So what? I’ve got one too, here, I’ll go first” Jimmy said as he got undressed, dropping his cutoff jeans down off his hips. He peeled his shirt off and said “Let’s go” and headed naked for the patio door to the pool. I stripped out of my Speed Racer PJ’s and followed him outside.

            “Can I touch it?” he asked.

            “Ok.”

            “Now you touch mine.”

            “Can I kiss it?”

            “Ok.”

            “Now you kiss mine.”

The next thing I knew, Jimmy was behind me, and pushing himself into me, the water was up to my knees on the pool steps and I was holding onto the metal stair railing.

            Something told me this was wrong, but it was Jimmy, and he was a grown up and he was always nice to me so how could he be wrong? It was Jimmy, who brought me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Somehow, it felt good and bad at the same time, I didn’t know what to feel or think about any of it.

            “I want to go to bed” I told him and wrested myself away from him and escaped out of the pool into the house through the patio door. Jimmy came in with me, and came into my room to tuck me in. “It’d be best if you kept what we did tonight between us you know” he told me.  I’d pretty much figured that out already and agreed.

Chapter Eight

            The next morning was Saturday, and I got up early to watch cartoons. I heard a yell come from my mother’s bedroom and ran in through the door. There was Jimmy on top of her and she was telling him not to stop. They both turned and looked at me at the same time and my mother yelled at me to get out.

            A few minutes later, there was a knock at the front door, a real hard knock, and I went to answer it. Standing there on the front stoop was a large bearded, angry man holding a shotgun. I tried to close the door, but he jammed his foot into the door and I had no chance.

            “I’m Jimmy’s Father.” He said. “Where the fuck is he?” he yelled as he barged in past me. He made a direct line towards the bedroom where Jimmy and my mom were. The next thing I heard was my mother screaming and Jimmy yelling at his dad, his dad was saying “If you ever even see my son again, I will fucking kill you, you whore!”. Then Jimmy, in his shorts and no shirt, walked past me to the door. As he walked past me, he didn’t even look at me, he just looked at his bare feet as he went past.  I never saw him again.

Chapter Nine

I wasn’t really all that sad about Jimmy not coming around anymore. It seemed like whenever he was around, I ended up with my underwear off and having those feelings about what was good and bad.

            After that Andrea started babysitting me at nights when Lin went out. She wasn’t as much fun as Jimmy; she mostly did homework and stuff after we ate TV dinners.

That was until the night that Andrea and her girlfriend invited one of the neighbor girls over for the evening. Andrea had a book called the Joy of Sex with pictures in it. She had me and the neighbor girl take off all our clothes and act out the pictures in the book. After about the third one, I’d had enough and I ran into my room and shut the door refusing to come out again.

Chapter Ten

            It was another few weeks before i saw my dad again. He came by on a Saturday morning again to pick me up to go sailing. Mom said I had to eat lunch first, before I could go and put an open can of peas on the table in front of me.

             “Eat.” she said, and I just looked at her.

            “No one is going to say that I don’t feed you.”  She said.

The peas were cold and, in the can, and I’d never seen them like that before. They were nasty.  They smelled nasty. They looked nasty. And I was supposed to eat them all. It took a long time to eat them all, and my father stood on the front doorstep the whole time waiting for me.

            When we left, he asked me how things were at my mom’s house and I tried to tell him they were fine but I couldn’t lie to him. I told him about the school, lunch money and the thermos of coffee. I told him about how we never ate dinner anymore because she was always out with her clients. I didn’t tell him about the episode with Jimmy or Andrea or Jimmy’s father coming to get him because I didn’t want to get in trouble for anything. We sailed around the lake and my father just kept saying “uh huh, uh huh” to me when I would answer his questions. I could tell that he wanted to ask me more, but was holding back a lot. I kept asking him again why I couldn’t come and live with him, and he just kept saying that the way the laws were I would have to live with my mother until everything went to court.

Chapter Eleven

            The next Monday the school called my mother again. I got home and walked in the door to a barrage of screams. Something about I hadn’t been doing my homework and hadn’t been paying attention in class, I don’t know. All I know is she was screaming at me and then came the table lamp flying at me, smashing against the front door behind me. That’s when she got up and came after me and I ran into my room. That’s where she caught up to me, in the doorway. She threw me backwards against my bed, my back hitting the frame so hard that I couldn’t breathe for what seemed like forever, so much so that I didn’t realize at first that she was kicking me as I lay there. Still screaming, though I have no idea about what. After what seemed like forever she left. That was when I decided that I was leaving. If I couldn’t go live with my Dad I would just leave and find somewhere else to live. I couldn’t go to the neighbors, she’d find out then, I’d have to just leave. I couldn’t stay there any longer. I hurt so bad I just curled up on the floor and cried. The next thing I knew she was standing over me saying “I have a client coming over in 15 minutes, stay in your room”, and she left again, locking the door. There was no bucket.

It was about an hour later that my mother came and got me. Come in my bedroom she said, and she was being nice, which scared me. I followed her into her room to see a man laying naked on her bed. She told me to take off my clothes and lay down next to him. “You are to do whatever John tells you to. Got it?” He reached over onto the nightstand and gave her a packet. She left.

It was unpleasant. I just kept staring at the wall hoping it would be over soon. That hadn’t been the first time that she had given me to one of her clients or the teenagers that hung around.

Chapter Twelve

            The next week was Thanksgiving. My Uncle Paul was coming to get me, and I decided then that I would never go back to my mother’s. He came and got me and I went to spend the holiday weekend at his house. He was always nice to me; his wife Linda and their daughters were too. No one was yelling or screaming, no one got hit for anything. We had a good Thanksgiving dinner and everyone had a good time over the weekend. Then Sunday came around, and it was time to go back to my mother’s house. By the time we got there I knew what I was going to do.

            We got to my mother’s house, and parked in the driveway. My Uncle Paul got out of the car and came over to my side and opened my door.

            “No” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not going”.

            “What do you mean you’re not going?” Paul asked.

            “I won’t go back inside the house with her, I won’t do it, I’m tired of getting hit, tired of being yelled and screamed at, I won’t do it, I won’t go back in there. I want my dad. Please uncle Paul, don’t make me go back inside there. Please.” I begged him.

            “Let me go talk to your mother” he said, and he walked up the sidewalk to the front door. I could see him there talking to her, could hear her screaming and yelling and then heard the front door slam in Paul’s face. He came back to the car.

            “Well, let’s go call your father” he sighed and said to me as we headed back on the road.

            Once we got to his house, he started calling my father, and soon he answered. He said that he’d be to Paul’s in driving time from Miami, which was an hour drive. Less than 50 minutes later, my father arrived at Paul’s house. He got there and his friend Seren was with him. Paul and my dad talked for a long while, and then we got in the Camaro and made the hour drive back to Miami.

            When we got to my dad’s house in Miami there were squad cars everywhere. It was dark and the whole bIock was illuminated by red and blue strobes. The driveway, in front of the house, everywhere. As soon as my father got out of the car, he was surrounded by cops with their guns drawn telling him to put his hands up and keep them there, they took him down right there on the hood of the Camaro and handcuffed him. Seren and I went inside the house as they were putting him into the back of a squad car. It was two days before I saw my dad again, Seren stayed with me and we waited there for him to come home.  We weren’t sure what all would happen with me, if or when I would have to go back to my mother’s house, but for now I knew that there was food in the fridge and no one was hitting me, screaming or yelling at me. As it was, I didn’t have to go see my mother for a long time after that.