quin withey. the "de-technocrat". luddite wing of ron braverman's "dataist" movement, that being, in withey's phrase, a 'late tulipomania manifestation of the skool of gunkee or an attempt at a half ass booth at burning man so you could look at girl's titties'.
born houston texas may twenty second 1958. two months before madonna. on the same day (but he's older) as ted kazinskee (or however it is spelt).
circa '60. daddy teaches in needville texas and drives the skoolbus. quin remembers not these years but here his brother carter is born and the family knows charles whitman and his folks.
'61 - '64. in austin. daddy studies at u.t. cuban crisis and the assasination quin remembers. cowboys are big on t.v. quin likes 'have gun will travel'. (if you give him money he will take off his clothes and nekkid sing that song for you accompanied by ukulele. or won't. whoever and howsoever they want it highest. quin has resigned himself to the inherently capitalist character of the ukulele.) sister anna born. momma works at st. david's episcopal church downtown where graham pulkingham is asst. rector. momma paints "goldwater" boxes. the first song quin remembers is the peter, paul, and mary 'frate trane' (that's a chicago tribune spelling allusion folks!). there's a pete seeger record quin remembers too. he sees dr. strangelove with his daddy at the drive-in.
'64 - '69. in nacogdoches texas. daddy teaches at stephen f. austin state. brother carl is born. reads 'tom sawyer' while afflicted with pox. granny (i think) gives him globe of the world which has nacogdoches on it! (and some really nifty cowboy reading lamps that hang on the wall.) one of quin's still tender memories (it is strange what remains tender. i'm still embarrased by the fact that i didn't lose my virginity - in the sense 'male' sense of achieving penetration - until i was eighteen. she was twenty two or something and french and had a thirty year old stalinist printer boyfriend back in paris... the various jailtimes and drunk-drving incidents sting not at all) is of defecating in his pants early in his second grade experience. also his teacher mrs. dover holds up his coloring to ridicule before the class. a couple of times quin told ball of twine girl that he 'never learned anything in school'. he was speaking thusly in disfavor of her career choice. he has examined that statement in the years since seeing her wherever she be and finds he would mostly stand by it where 'learning' has a beneficial connotation. it is true however that he does apparently get a whole lot more exposure to musical theory at anna raguet elementary than is customary through the world. mrs. rudisil (?) is his teacher. quin does not like "this land is your land" when it shows up in his songbook and his older self agrees with his younger self's judgement (howsoever he might mimic guthrie in other ways). "fucking stalinism..." he mutters.
back in austin charles whitman goes into the tower at the university of texas where daddy's english department was in those days and kills many people.
parents divorce in december 1968. momma has been working for child protective services so the judge knows her. quin will marry beth clayton in that same courthouse eighteen years later. (and plead guilty to a couple of public intoxications over the years in the little side building down and across the street.)
1969-1972. in houston. momma, in attendance at the university of houston, will be increasingly involved with graham pulkingham and the church of the redeemer which is undergoing 'charismatic renewal'. withey goes a year to james hogg junior high - a place of surreal nastiness - followed by a couple of years at ryan junior high where he is one of eighteen white kids in a school of eighteen hundred negroes... 'cept dey be black and proud now. mr. holland - a high yellow man who came to the school a coach a half century before and the scool board keeps trying to retire him but he reputedly has no birth certificate - he smokes cigars in his office and crackles over the intercom that he is gonna take away and hold any cake-cutters that come in and everybody sniggers 'cos they ain't called cake-cutters no more. dey called rakes. quin wishes he could use one but his hair falls long and slack. black girls like to touch it. quin wildly regrets his innocence in these years but knows it was absolutely a survival trait. if he had displayed the slightest clue he would've got his ass popped for sure. and i don't mean beating. beating was a constant in these years. some coach was always beating you. some kid was fucking with you. hell, most all these cracker shits and i mean every old motherfucker i knew, all the college teachers, all the priests, all of them spoke of beating on you as a sign of love and regard. it turns out that the ones who didn't want to beat me wanted to fuck me. i swear it is true. innocence was a fucking survival trait for sure.
julian schnaybel is at the university of houston in these years working on an m.f.a. with a kid i think named 'van' who lives behind us there our first year in the heights. his brother is named 'donald quin' and i place chess with him. i can't remember their last name. van has these pieces of urathane (?) that's a foamy plastic stuff newly used in sand casting. but i don't guess i met schnaybel. van and donald's daddy collects clocks and they chime all the time like it was oxford (england). van asks who drives the painted up volkswagon bug that gets parked at my house and i tell him cathleen gillis and he asks to meet her but it's penny rich he was looking for. it is to van i turn when my friend george leaves his daddy's shotgun over at my place which i don't want him to do so. george's brother and van and donald hung and george's brother is in vietnam.
from: the biography of quin where he doesn't mention vietnam for as long as he possibly can.
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