Home is Where the Heart Is

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Secret To Life.

It was 1981 and I had just called the bass player in our band to find out where he lived. I needed to deliver something to him like a piece of electronics, or a packet of illegal substance, or a book I'd borrowed, or a blimp mooring tower, I can't remember now. He lived in a huge old house that had been turned into a multi-family dwelling. He told me the address, and said to go up to the porch, through the second door from the right, up the stairs, and to knock on the second door on the left.

Being a bass player, he lived in a fairly rough neighborhood and though I was a little on guard, I did not want to show any apprehension. So following his instructions carefully I found the house, walked up to the porch with confidence, burst through the second door from the right and walked in briskly expecting to find stairs up which I would clamor.

What I found instead was a large Mexican family of around a dozen people, watching television in their living room. I froze in my tracks, they snapped their heads toward me and froze, and we all looked at each other with equal surprise for several seconds, searing an image in my brain that has not faded a single pixel even to this day. Portrait of the Ortega Family at Home, 1981, oil on canvas, 40'x60'.

Lurching back to consciousness, I backed out, mumbling something like "sorry, wrong door, sorry, sorry," and scrambled back off the porch.

Looking back at the house, I was a bit afraid to choose another door, there were four along the length of the porch. Who knows what might be behind door number two – a tiger? an illegal dogfighting ring? Richard Simmons slapping a bellhop around?

I crept back up to the house, knocked on another door and listened, heard nothing and gingerly tried the knob. It opened, and there was a stairway inside. I found my friend's apartment and told him what had happened with the family downstairs. He smirked and said, "you're lucky they didn't kill you. I think they're drug dealers."

Thus ended my exceptionally brief career as an unwitting DEA agent. I'm glad I wasn't killed in the line of a duty I had no idea I was performing. I don't think you get a pension for that.