My grandpa was a "self-made man." He is that American story of the entrepreneur who works hard and is tough and handsome and determined and strong. He owned a construction company of his own making, he was a golden gloves boxer, but most importantly, and what he will always be remembered for, was his horses. My grandpa was a sulky racer for a time, and when he stopped doing that, he raised horses. I bet they would still know his name at Pocono Downs (although he probably spent more time at the Monticello Raceway, now that I think about it). He had a great love for horses and everything to do with them, and with racing.

The Pocono Downs Racetrack is where I was first licensed as a horse groom. My grandfather hooked that up. You see, for a time, when I was about 16 and had rejected/failed at the system of high school and that typical path, my family (mother) was wondering what to do with me, how I was going to hook into things, make a living, you know. Engage the system. I had quit high school, had already moved out of the house, and was pretty wild out there. My mother wanted to see me get ahold of something. (I wonder how many other children of Flower Children have experienced this irony....they raise us distrusting and rejecting so much of mainstream society...and then get older and despair that we took the lessons to heart!)

Grandpa and the Horse Dream was one avenue we tried. For years that was the buzz in my family. "[Nez] is so small, he should be a jockey!" I wish I had the pictures here of me dressing up in my Grandpa's colors. They were a tan and red if I remember correctly. Maybe tan and maroon. There's a number of pictures of me with hair past my shoulders and his huge racer's suit on me. Helmet, lash in my hand (I dont know what it's called).

Being a Jockey was a dream that I entertained for a little while. It justified what felt like my freakish smallness (if you don't know this part of my story, the doctors urged my mother to put me on Growth Hormone at one point, but I have since grown to be unremarkably normal at 5'6"), the idea promised a life of excitement and daring and money and fame! Or at least the potential. I am lithe, I am tiny, my grandfather is a well-known horseman. It was all set up. I got my license, I started hanging around the farm in hopes of learning the trade from the bottom. My grandpa assigned me work. As a horse groom.

Well, this killed the Dream pretty quickly. Horses are ginormous and scary-ass creatures. It may have even been Tropical Sunrise that did it. Trying to chew off my hand as I walked him. All the stories about the teeth grinding and the bite and how to calm them and the sight of the frothy mouth and the eyes flaring and the musculature rippling as this heavy, heavy, fast animal towers over you. It didn't really match up with those visions of being hunched over and victorious at the finish line, a blur of colors with a number to be celebrated at the Winner's Circle.

No, I'm too damn imaginative for that job. I love the smell of Murphy's Oil Soap to this day, I loved the leather and metal bridles, I don't even mind cleaning up after horses. But I don't think I had that "love" for them that you need. Or at least not enough to overcome the fright they put into my head. I ended up writing songs that brought my visions of these horses to life years later. But I opted out of the Horse Jockey Dream. My small frame would have to be justified otherwise.

I don't know that anyone in my family knew that I felt really bad about deciding against it. But I did. As if I were wasting the perfect opportunity. And I wouldn't get to be the Jockey Star of the family, either. Nor make my Grandpa happy with my ongoing career and wins and all the other things I had thought might be in the future of the Horse Dream.

Grandpa, as I said, was not very sympathetic to my mother's 1970s, oddball, hippie, zen macrobiotic, eastern-guru ways. Not a bit. He was a red meat-eating, Republican voting, Greatest Generation type of cat. He actually reminds me of that Reagan aura a bit (at least the Rough Cowboy with the Disarming Twinkle in the Eye part, not the running guns on the sly part). My Grandpa didn't care for the long, long hair my mother grew on me, and he would sneak me into a haircut and then put a hamburger in front of me quicker than my mother could pull out of the driveway. It's sort of funny. This is why he and my younger brother eventually grew a closer relationship in adult life than my Grandpa and I would ever have. I sort of followed my mother's path of alterna-culture and rejecting mainstream routes and authority and philosophically embracing utter leftness etc, and my younger brother got into suits and short hair and the stockmarket for a while. He was sort of like a Lil' G'pa, and they were buddies. I envied it in a distant sort of way, in a cool way. Not in any way that felt too active or actually "jealous." Distantly because I did not want to be like them, or rather, anything but a radical, rebellious naysayer to the system that they enjoyed. We were all family, anyway. You know how family is.

Sometimes I joke that its my Grandpa and Jane's fault, along with my mother, for the fact that I'm a showoff/performer kind of person. Of course that's not true, it's always been who I am. And other people stuck me on little (metaphorical) stages along the way to my adult life, anyway. I can't blame them! (I'll never forget when I was asked by my aunt at about five or six or seven, what I wanted to "be when I grew up" and I said "an actor." She replied, "Well...what if that doesn't work out?" I was just baffled by that statement.)

It was through my Grandpa's wife, whom we all know as "Jane," that I did my first modeling. I used to do the catwalk thing (seen here strangely bordered by plantlife) and show off the new line/season of clothes for boys my size, as you can see to the right. As you can also see, I've not even been the kind of person who minds standing up and alone in front of people. (Although I was much prettier as a child.) I still remember my main concern with those shows. It was making sure I got to keep the clothes. I was very emotionally tied to that outcome. They always made sure I got to keep the clothes.

But for years after this, there was no real relationship or connection with the man who had been a very big presence in my early years. The worst part is that I hardly remember those years. Every once in a while, a piece will float up to me...a bright moment out on the grass...a glimpse of memory I had forgotten. And there are, of course, the memories that are well-worn. The ones that are embedded in your family's history.

Such as the night he took my (biological) father, my papi, into the garage with a shotgun, or pulled a shotgun on him in the garage. This was an incentive to get my father to marry my mother. It worked. But then, as I said, my Grandpa was someone who took things by the hand and Made Things Happen. Of course, not even a shotgun can seal a marriage for good. But while I flinch at the thought of living through what my father did on that night, I sort of grin that my Grandpa was such a crazy fucker.

For most of my life (the parts I remember), my Grandpa was an opinionated, argumentative, conservative man. I didn't feel a whole lot of identification or empathy with his demeanor or his politics as I knew him to be. But I always loved him. And I felt terrible each time he went into the hospital for another bypass surgery or heart attack or broken hip. It scared me. To watch such a solid pillar of my early family be broken down by time and...life.

I remember all the pills he took with meals. A mass of them! Since I was young. Jane laid them out like a side meal. I think of my Grandpa even these days, and every time la novia hands me my vitamins and other crap whatever is in those big pills she gives me.

So he was a hard man, and probably not one I'd get along with for most of his life. And when he got older, and age began to soften and blur his faculties, he lost that edge. He became nicer, and simpler. Forgetful, yes. Eventually he suffered dementia. Forgot people. Forgot himself. Life wore away every hard edge he had. But at the end, he was a smiling, sweet, and kind man, just as I would like to remember him. At his best.

SALUD, my grandfather. Goodbye. I love you, and will remember you well. I will think of you when I take my vitamins, when I see horses flying over the finish line, when I drink good scotch. Thank you for all you have made possible in my life. I am here, in no small part, because of you. Ride free, run fast, be with the great spirit on that open stretch of cosmic raceway. May you awaken to eternity and the sweet thunder of all her blazing dawn hooves.