LEAP When I was about nine I moved to Brussels and Belgium rained a lot and so it was very boring and that was a lot of the problem I was having - I was getting very bored so I had to find things to do that were bad. The times I wasn't bored though, I was doing arts and crafts projects and going down to the bookstore and reading TinTin and Asterix and James and the Giant Peach, so I did some decent reading during the time that I was a tyrant. I learned the metric system. I was as good a shoplifter as I was at the metric system. I was really into candy. I ate like a junior serial killer. To buy good quality candy means you had to have it weighed out. I wanted good quality candy so I had to know the metric system. My Dad's Porsche blew up one day in Belgium.
ZANNE Why did it blow up?
LEAP Nobody said. It just blew up.
ZANNE Did it have a bomb in it?
LEAP something. He won't admit to anything. He just never bought a car after that. My mother had a square-back and he took the train. He never owned a car after that Porsche. He works with the military, computers.
ZANNE Were you into the car blowing up?
LEAP No, no, - oh, was I INTO it? I thought you said was I IN ON it. I was like, No, no, no, I gotta rephrase that, I did not blow that car up. I was INTO the car blowing up though, it was ACTION. I liked the fire, the fire was nice. It was a very pretty fire. I was very excited that it blew up, actually. As I recall, I was very excited about the car blowing up. It made my day.
I did vandalize a Jaguar. I scratched FUCK YOU with a rock in a Jaguar and I got busted, some kids turned me in and I peed on these people's carpet, I peed down my leg, I was so scared I peed my pants. My parents had to pay for it.
I was also arrested in Belgium by the gendarmes. See, I missed the bus to school and I was afraid that my family wasn't gonna under stand so I decided that I would just go hang out in the woods until school was over. So I went to the woods, and then the gendarmes caught me in the woods, and they took me to the police station and they asked me my name and I wouldn't tell them and I was there for hours and hours and then they tried to give me candy, cookies, they got my name because they gave me candy but it took them FIVE hours. I was like, "I'm not telling you who I am. I'm not going to tell you." [laughing] I guess they played good cop, right.
That does remind me though, before we moved to Italy, I remember running away from home to go to the candy store and I met a bunch of hippies on Harleys and they hung out in the park with me a bought me candy and brought me back to my house on a Harley. My mother just couldn't handle it!
EVERYONE [lots of laughter.]
I started a smoking club with my friend Karen Watson and at the time I had no idea that she was a midget. I was made fun of years later by my family that "You hung out with a family of midgets." I had started a smoking club with her. I just thought she was small. I thought the mother was kind of short. I thought they were the cutest family though. I wanted to be in their family.
I remember doing a portrait of my friend Karen and she didn't like the portrait because I put every freckle that was on her face, every flaw that I don't consider flaws, like if she was missing a tooth like you're missing a tooth, I would draw it in and she was very upset. [laughing] She had dark circles under her eyes and of course I drew those in because I LIKED them, you know, they were one of her good traits! They fed me a lot of southern food. I had a large crush on her, actually. I liked her!
M I BET you did!
LEAP I DID. I used to spend the night at her house ALL the time. She must've liked me too, right? She spent three, four days a week with me, bringing me over to her house to sleep over at her house. She liked me, huh? I had a lot of friends like that and then they would always dump me and tell me they can't be my friend and we'd always be crying. We'd be like breaking up. It was the bizarrest thing in the world, it happened until seventh or eighth grade.
ZANNE What reason would they give you that they had to break up?
LEAP That they couldn't hang out with me any more, they couldn't be my friend any more. They'd take me to their house and break the news to me that way.
ZANNE Do you think your parents had anything to do with it?
LEAP Oh, because I was so BAD?
ZANNE Um-hm. [laughter all around]
LEAP It could've been something like that, yeah, because the BAD kids never told me they didn't want to hang out with me and in fact they did whatever they wanted.
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