While we had our share of all-night skates and twenty-four-hour skate marathons, the Skateland doors typically closed at 10 p.m. That’s when my mother, brother, and I went to work, fishing bloody tampons out of shit-filled toilets, airing the lingering cannabis haze out of both bathrooms, scraping bacteria-loaded gum off the rink floor, cleaning the concession kitchen, and taking inventory. Just before midnight, we’d slog into the office, half-dead. Our Mother would tuck my brother and me beneath a blanket on the office sofa, our heads opposite one another, as the ceiling shook with the sound of bass-heavy funk.

Mom was still on the clock.

As soon as she stepped inside the bar, Trunnis had her working the door hustling downstairs like a booze mule to fetch cases of liquor from the basement.There was always some menial task to perform and she didn’t stop moving,while my father kept watch from his corner of the bar where he could take in the whole scene. In those days, Rick James, a Buffalo native and one of my father’sclosest friends, stopped by whenever he was in town, parking his Excalibur on the sidewalk out front. His car was a billboard that let the hood know a Super Freak was in the house. He wasn’t the only celebrity that came through. Oj Simpson was one of the NFL’s biggest stars, and he and his Buffalo Bills Teammates were regulars, as was Teddy Pendergrass and Sister Sledge. If youdon’t know the names, look them up.

Maybe if I had been older, or my father had been a good man, I might have hadsome pride in being part of a cultural moment like that, but young kids aren’tabout that life. It’s almost like, no matter who our parents are and what they do,we’re all born with a moral compass that’s properly tuned. When you’re six,seven, or eight years old, you know what feels right and what feels way the fuckoff. And when you are born into a cyclone of terror and pain, you know itdoesn’t have to be that way, and that truth nags at you like a splinter in yourjacked up mind. You can choose to ignore it, but the dull throbbing is always there as the days and nights bleed together into one blurred memory.

Some moments do stick out though, and one I’m thinking of right now still haunts me. That was the night my mom stepped into the bar before she was expected and found my dad sweet talking a woman about ten years her junior.Trunnis saw her watching and shrugged while my mother eyeballed him and slugged two shots of Johnnie Walker Red to calm her nerves. He noticed her reaction and didn’t like it one damn bit.

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