What I know of Angelo’s history and childhood, I got from him. From what he told me.
Angelo was one of the youngest kids from a large family… of mostly girls. His dad was a rancher, his mother was an alcoholic. His father knew his mother was an alcoholic and tried (unsuccessfully) to wean her off of it. But his mother actually had him go buy her rum for her. She would give him money to run to the store to buy her rum and he would do it. He said she had him doing that when he was 3, but it was probably older than that. Angelo’s mother died when he was six of alcoholism so he was raised by his sisters – one of whom was supposedly a beauty queen… but whatever.
Maybe the way his mom died is why Angelo never got into drinking or drugs. Or maybe it’s because he could never allow himself to be that much out of control.
He said he used to like to meet older men in the plaza for drinks, but he had to watch it because his sisters would ask him what he was doing having drinks with these older guys. He said that once, his brother caught him twirling around in his sister’s skirt… and beat him up. Things like that he would tell me and I’d feel so sorry for him. Poor little guy. I think he was teased for being a fag. Remember this was in South America where the “machismo” was really big.
Anyway, his family was really torn up when his brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. When Angelo was sixteen, somehow he got shipped off to art school in Canada. But the money didn’t come very quickly, so he found himself hurting for cash. Angelo told me stories about hooking up with guys where he’d find himself tied up and naked, or having to run for his life here and there. Other people told me he was hustling at that time. That kind of made sense since he didn’t have the cash. I could see that being an option for him. But his family supposedly had money because when his father died, he inherited some. I guess it was just a timing thing with the money not arriving.
But from Canada, he somehow got down into CA and started the acting thing. His big “claim to fame” was when he was in the musical, “Bye Bye Birdie.” In the review in the newspaper, evidently they just thought he was the bomb. He had all these people all crazed for him and his big “sexual energy” onstage. So, he’s in LA, meeting and networking with people there – and hooking up with tricks. He had some old polaroid camera that he used to take pictures of all the handsome young guys he was hooking up with (which are the shots I found when I was cleaning out his closet.) But that’s where it gets fuzzy for me… somehow he ended up in Florida. I’m not sure if he met Ceuta in LA or Florida actually… and somewhere in there he decided to be a hypnotherapist. Maybe that’s what he was in Florida for, going to hypnotherapy school. I don’t know. But he and Ceuta have a weird background. I’m not sure what it is… she supposedly got him to invest in a gold mine at some point and lost a lot of money. Who knows what really happened. Angelo went to Florida and got his hypnotherapy license and met the first members of the Buddha Field. He started up those acting classes – which coincidentally, the guy I was in a relationship with for two years was in his acting class. He was dating a girl at the time and very straight acting… he met Angelo at the gym and Angelo talked him into taking his class. He said they did that exercise where you rub butts to communicate and he got turned off and never went back. It’s pretty weird that I actually lived in Florida at the tail end when he was there (I was doing modeling there.) Verthlessa worked at a restaurant where I used to eat breakfast but I never saw her. But you know the story from that point. Angelo came to LA with the Buddha Field.
