The Year is 1986...

Picture me standing alone on a sidewalk in the old-town type area of Ybor City, Florida, watching a local band play thru the glass of a storefront coffee bar...the band has its back to the street, playing to a small audience of about 20 or so people inside...my hair is ratted, died blue-black, standing up and out...my eyes are ringed black as well, carefully drawn on the inside of my bottom eyelid...I am wearing polyester thrift store clothes, way too small for my 6 feet 4 inch body...the band I am watching has their look down, in matching suits ala late 60’s psych-pop...they play a sort of retro mix, not totally faithful to the "good old days", with a nice touch of 80’s atmosphere thrown in for good measure...it is a simple time, where singing about vague feelings of unease thru jumbled, cut-up sentences seemed to sum up the grey clouds of middle class doom that hung over our pretty heads...I can’t go in, because I am not yet 21, (no fake i.d., I’m 19) but even if I could, I cannot afford the cover charge because I have absolutely no money...I am living in a storefront just over the bay in St. Pete, where roaches casually climb over me while I sleep...I am just there, waiting, watching...I do not know what I am waiting for...the band plays on, they are right there in front of me, just 5 feet away...in that moment, they seem to have it all...a stage, an audience, a look, a sound...I for the life of me do not know how to close the distance between me and them...the glass might as well be a stone wall 400 feet high...

The rent on the storefront where I live in the summer of 1986 is 255$ a month, which means my share is approx. 86$ (Ron, the drummer, and Dale, the bass player, cover the rest)...as long as I can come up with that money, I have a place to live...getting food to eat is a whole other deal...I refuse to beg for spare change, so I patch together meals thru the grace of friends, their leftovers, and or once in a while having a few bucks left over money from playing a show at some dive...when desperate, I stand in the soup line with the down and out at the local mission...they usually serve macaroni and cheese, which I can deal with if I am really starving...the owner of the storefront doesn’t know I am living there in squalor...we have told him it is just our rehearsal space, and I often have to lie if he sees me coming out of there at 8am that I had just dropped by to pick something up...I try not to make too much noise and thereby give myself away (I play my boombox very low), and we only practice at night when the restaurant next door is closed...my "home" is on the main drag, next to an interstate that passes high overhead...because of its somewhat obscure location, and the cover it offers for rain, the overpass is also where the hookers line up around 9pm to work...when I am bored, I sit outside and talk to them as they stroll by...they ask me what I am doing, and I tell them I am just watching, hanging out...the rainstorms are beautiful, the traffic rolling by usually light, so it’s just me and the orange lightning and the trannies and their tragedies...we often engage in metaphysical discussions about the unfairness of life, how the dice don’t always roll the way you want them to...we share the bond of being lost, but somehow knowing we are exactly where we belong, doing what we are supposed to be doing...there is an air of resignation, and a kind hope that the storms will end just as quickly as they begin...cause the storms aren’t very good for business...every once in a while, I call collect up to Chicago to talk to my dad...he keeps the calls short because "it costs a lot of money"...I can’t give him a number because I don’t have one...I usually just call him from the gas station payphone...when I left Chicago to come down here, I left my old car behind...a ’75 camaro that was once the family car, but was given to me and I paid to have it fixed up so it is now "mine"...but in my family, "mine" usually still means "theirs"...I am desperate for cash, so I have asked my dad to sell the car...he tells me he has good news, that his friend Ray has bought the car for 250$...Ray is like a lot of my father’s "buddies", drug addicts who are constantly trying to stay once step ahead of something: the taxman, the dope man, the grim reaper, ex-wives, kids, girlfriends, the boss, whatever...my dad always is surrounded by these solo hustlers...luckily for me, it is a multi-cultural experience, so I grow up around blacks and latinos and native americans and white trash who stop by at all hours to talk with my father, which usually means whomever and my father going into a room and closing the door for a bit and, oh by the way, don’t come in without knocking, cause their busy...anyway, Ray has bought the car and my father is going to send me the money! Alright, I’m set for a little while...so I start borrowing from friends, saying that the money will be arriving in a week, and I will pay them back immediately...at this point, I have been down there long enough that my new friends trust me, and this being the first time I asked anyone for anything, they graciously front me 20 bucks here and 20 bucks there...a week passes, no money from dad...I call him, and he swears the money is on it’s way, in fact he just mailed it yesterday and not to worry...I remember going to the corner store and contemplating whether or not I should spend $1.86 on a bag of doughnuts, because this extravagance would eat into my final 5 dollars handily, and there was no one else to borrow from...I lied and told myself the money was gonna come, what was the big deal?...and those doughnuts were good! (the white powdered kind) finally, after a month of this charade, I call my father at wits end and plead with him for my money...he tells me he is sorry, that he had spent the money and there wasn’t gonna be any money coming...I asked him thru tears how he could have done that to me, and he said quite plainly "I spent it because I needed it more than you"...and that was that...

My real name is William Patrick Corgan, and I was born at Columbus Hospital (just across from beautiful Lincoln Park which straddles Lake Michigan) in Chicago at 5:41 pm on March 17, 1967...most know me as Billy Corgan, but "he" didn’t arrive until age 18...my father was Billy, and I was known to the family as "little" Bill...I am the architect of the "Billy Corgan" that you know and love, or hate, or don’t give 2 cares about...I created him, and at times have loved him, feared him, and despised him more than you could possibly dream up...it is the author of this being that wants to tell you this story...depending on how you look at it, it is the brutal truth or a sad sob story...a tale of glory and failure or the fictional scrapings of a madman and has-been...the author is ok with however you take it, because it happened TO ME...the closets are thrown open, and the sweet mist of a life blown by come spilling out...there are dead bodies and old pictures and pornographic gasps and ghosts so shy they are the ghosts of ghosts...but all the voices are here, and they want to talk to you...in fact, there is a fight as to who goes first! But it’s all the same, cause in my mind all is happening at all times...backwards and forwards, we can survey what has happened and what is yet to come, and have a laugh and a cry...but in the end, it is my wish that there will be no more secrets worth keeping, and no more fear worth running from...all that should remain is the clear heart and a vibrant joy, and of course, music...