I thought E.T. was a squid. I was riding my bike in my tuxedo and saw E.T. down there in that creek and I said to myself fuck that squid is fucking dead. People don’t know this very much but we get squid in the San Fernando Valley. Not so much anymore, but in 1982 we got them. All the time we got them. Swear to God. Squid would make their way into our waterways and they’d hit rocks and other impassable objects for squids like sometimes shopping carts and they would get stuck and die. Happened all the time. When I saw E.T. all fucked up I thought damn that’s the biggest squid yet, but really it wasn’t a weird thing to see overall. But I promise you that’s why Mike found him before anyone else. It’s because everyone else thought E.T. was a squid too. So I just left him there. I’ve been telling this story for 40-odd years now and it’s the same thing every time. People want to know if I ever met E.T. I didn’t meet E.T. but I knew Mike a little. Mike knew about the squids too. Mike might’ve even thought E.T. was a squid like I did. Mike might’ve thought E.T. was the biggest squid yet and was just checking it out to be like hey that’s the biggest squid yet, but instead he accidentally found E.T. who is who he was looking for all along. After E.T. went home Mike got into some stuff. Not like robbing or prostituting or anything crazy like that. But what Mike got into was dog fighting. Oh, forgot that what I wanted to say was when I saw E.T. I was on my way back from a Halloween party because remember this was Halloween season. We were doing coke all night, if you know what I mean. Cocaine. We were doing cocaine all night. I was 14 and doing coke in the San Fernando Valley in 1982 at Halloween parties. That’s what my upbringing was. To give you some idea. Also to give you some idea of why I left E.T. in the creek. Anyway what could I have done? First of all my tuxedo was my dad’s and he didn’t know I took it so I’m not messing around down in a creek. But mainly first of all nobody knew about E.T. until after, so I didn’t know it was him. Word got out later since there was the government shutdown of the neighborhood, but at this point I didn’t even know E.T. was E.T. But if I found E.T. knowing he was E.T. I probably would’ve anyway killed him since he seemed to be needing to be put out of his misery. That’s how I’ve always been about seeing dying things and suffering things. That’s my upbringing. You drop a rock on their heads. It’s the best way unless you have a gun. I didn’t have a gun right at that point so I would’ve done rock-on-head to E.T. But since I thought E.T. was an already-dead squid there was no need. That’s why I left him there. So it’s impossible that I could’ve done anything to save E.T. because by the very nature of my upbringing I would have killed him with a rock. I’m surprised Mike didn’t do this if I’m honest here. The Mike I knew and the Mike from after E.T. went home would’ve rocked E.T. since that thing was in bad shape, we all know now he was in bad shape. Anyway what I wanted to say is how I fell in love with a girl named Lila, and how Lila fell in love with a girl named Trish, and how Trish’s family elected to disown her for loving Lila back, which led to Trish stealing then driving her cousin’s VW Golf into the desert and overdosing on pills and Lila didn’t find out until Trish had been missing for two weeks, and how I spent hours and hours consoling a heartbroken Lila with the full understanding that she and I would never be, but I loved her all the same anyway because of my upbringing, I loved her no matter what, and Lila I met at that Halloween party where I said I was doing so much coke (cocaine) that’s how this connects, I met her for the first time there, she was dressed as Pat Benatar and I was dressed as Remington Steele, she was drinking punch and I was snorting lines, and with a rolled up $1 bill in my nose and with my head turned sideways atop that glass coffee table I saw her and she saw me, and we talked for 456 seconds, we talked for forever, we talked from the beginning of time until now, we are right now still talking at that Halloween party when at that very same moment Extra-Terrestrial the Extra-Terrestrial was all fucked up, color fading from his sickly wrong-shaped body, losing all his faculties, and falling and rolling and bouncing into that cold and alien creek, where he would not get carried eventually into the sea but rather get mistaken for a squid, for something else entirely. Which, for reasons, didn’t make one ounce of difference for anyone involved.
