“Have you heard what they do, Mike?”
“What?”
“I’m serious. Have you heard?”
“What?”
“The bodies are dissected, Mike, and Mr. Vargas pulls out parts of the dead body and holds them up. Okay?”
“You mean he reaches in and pulls this stuff out?”
“Yes.”
“Like a heart?”
“Like a heart.”
Mike beamed. “Bitchin’.”
Mr. Vargas arrived in the classroom, a diminutive man with an inscribed coffee mug in hand. He looked nothing like his ghoulish reputation.
“Good day,” said Mr. Vargas in sprightly tones. “I just switched to Sanka. I’m running a little slow today.” He pulled on a smock. “So have a little heart.”
Mike turned and faced the students behind him, eyes wide with mock terror, as Mr. Vargas began passing out his own purple mimeographed assignment sheets.
So this was high school, Stacy thought. Weird, exotic teachers and a lot of purple mimeographed sheets. It was enough to make her long for Swenson’s Ice Cream Parlor.
A School Night
When Stacy Hamilton arrived home from school, her brother, Brad, was in the driveway washing his LTD sedan. He called the car his Cruising Vessel. Some went for a sporty domestic like a Camaro, others went straight for a Datsun or Toyota. Brad liked to drive to work at Carl’s in a nice big clean American machine, even if the car ate up most of his fast-food money. It was a small price to pay for style, as far as he was concerned.
“So how do you like high school?” asked Brad.
“Some pretty strange teachers,” said Stacy.
“You’ll get used to it.”
Stacy stood there for a moment, watching Brad lovingly polishing the windows of his car.
“Brad,” said Stacy, “how come I never see you with Lisa anymore?”
“Jesus,” said Brad. He threw a chamois rag onto his windshield. “Everybody wants to know about Lisa. Everybody is such big friends with Lisa . . .”
“Sorry I asked.”
“You got some flowers,” said Brad. “They’re right inside the door.”
Stacy went inside. There, sitting on the living room coffee table, their fragrance cascading throughout the Hamilton home, was a summer floral arrangement. Stacy read the attached note, marked “personal”: Memories of You, Ron Johnson.
Stacy’s heart quickened. This was a perilous situation, one that set off all her inner alarms. This involved her mother, the notorious Evelyn. For Mrs. H., the word strict was weak. First she had refused Stacy a bra, then, two years later, she wouldn’t let Stacy out of the house without one. She banned any mention of alcohol or drugs in the house. Allowing rock music in the Hamilton home was enough of a battle. Once Evelyn threw away a copy of AC/DC’s If You Want Blood album because there was blood gushing from the lead guitarist’s mouth and chest on the cover. She wouldn’t even consider discussing the subject of dating until Stacy had reached the age of sixteen.
Evelyn also had a nose like a foxhound. Once, when Stacy had come home from her first concert (a major fight), her mother even sniffed her clothes.
“I smell marijuana smoke! I smell it all over you!”
“No you don’t, mother. You’re crazy.”
“Don’t call me crazy, young lady! And don’t you ever come home smelling like a marijuana factory again. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, mother. But there was no marijuana smoke around me. You’re wrong this time.”
But, of course, Evelyn was right. Marijuana had been all around her, all night long. Stacy did not relish the act of lying to her mother, that much she knew. In fact, she had made a private pact with her conscience that called for a moratorium after her sixteenth birthday on white lies and sneaking out. Until then, however, it was a matter of survival.
Stacy gathered up the floral arrangement and headed back outside to her brother. She fanned the door a few times. “Brad! Have Mom or Dad seen this?”
Brad was concentrating on his chrome job. “Not home yet.”
“Brad,” said Stacy, “what would you say if I asked you to just put these flowers in the trunk of the LTD and get rid of them at work?”
“I’d say,” responded Brad, “who the hell is Ron Johnson?”
Stacy had expected her brother to give her a lot more trouble about their both attending the same high school. But Brad had been supportive, almost helpful. Brad, his little sister had decided, was in the “I’m an adult” phase.
Growing up, they had argued a lot. Almost every fight had been over The Phone. When Brad wanted to use The Phone, he wanted to use The Phone. He would make Stacy give up the line by the crudest of methods—by listening in on her conversation. Stacy would yell, threaten to go to Mom and Dad. Then Brad would sing into the extension, hum, laugh, anything to destroy the conversation entirely. When Stacy ran to complain to their parents, Brad would simply use the phone, just like he wanted to, while everyone else fought.
Evelyn and Frank Hamilton were easy on Brad, the oldest child. It had been their philosophy that the male should be fully prepared to go out into the world and provide for a family. How this had translated into the family chores, Stacy was not sure. Brad “the provider” didn’t have to do the dishes. Or his own sewing. Or clean the floors. No, all her parents had asked Brad to do was “the man’s chore,” Taking out the trash.
“You’re a wimp,” Stacy would tell her brother. “How come when you were fifteen, Mom and Dad never even cared what you did on a school night?”
“ ’Cause I’m not going to get raped,” Brad would respond.
“You can say that again.”
Once Brad had started working at Carl’s Jr. Stacy noticed an immediate change in her brother. He started with bad weekend hours, a busboy making $2.90-an-hour wages. But even Stacy could see he loved the whole idea of going to work, clocking in, getting paid, and rolling home still wearing his Carl’s name tag with a few bucks in his pocket.
Not long after that Stacy spotted Brad with a bus station paperback called Power with Class. She noticed he had made graphs of his hours and wages and taped them to his closet door. Someone taught Brad how to work the fryer at Carl’s, and there was no looking back. It was the classic example, as she wrote Linda in a note last year, “of a guy finding his niche.”
They hadn’t squabbled much about The Phone lately. Stacy had taken to asking Brad first, before she even picked up the receiver.
“Do you need to make a call, Brad?”
“No,” said Brad. “I use the phone at work.”
There was a muffled knock at Stacy’s bedroom door late that night.
“Who is it?”
“Brad.”
“Come on in.” He looked tired from a night at Carl’s. “What’s going on?”
“I got rid of those flowers for you.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” said Stacy. “That was pretty embarrassing.”
“What did you do? Die?”
Stacy looked at the rug. “It’s just some guy from Swenson’s. You don’t know him.”
“Does he go to our school?”
“No. You don’t know him.”
“I don’t care if you tell me or not,” sighed Brad. “I’ve got something else on my mind.”
“Is everything okay at work?”
“Oh yeah,” said Brad. “Oh yeah. Work is fine.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Lisa,” said Brad. “That’s what’s wrong.”
“Are you going to break up with Lisa again?”
Brad got up and started to pace. Lisa had been his girlfriend for the past year and a half. They’d met in typing class. She was pretty. She was friendly. Too friendly, Brad was always saying. He had no idea how popular she was until scores of Lisa’s girlfriends starting coming up to him every day, passing notes, telling him, “Lisa likes you.” They went out once; they started going together. They’d been together ever since. Brad had gotten
her the intercom job at Carl’s, and now her hours were almost as good as his. She was even an excellent student. All in all, as Brad once told Stacy, Lisa was the kind of girl who “makes friends with your parents.”
“I’ve been with her almost two years,” said Brad. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. It’s a new school year. My last high school year. I think I want my freedom.”
“Why? Because she won’t sleep with you?”
Brad glared at his younger sister. After all, it was he who had the sticker on his car that said Sex Instructor.
“Where did you hear that?”
“I’m just guessing.”
Brad shrugged. “It’s true.”
“What do you mean?”
Stacy felt Brad study her face. Everything about him said this is serious. He continued in a tone of voice that was meant to cut across the years of brother-sister squabbles.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “We’ve gotten close, but she always says that she ‘can’t go any farther.’ She has this thing about sex. She doesn’t think it will feel good or something. We make out for a while, and then she always goes, ‘I don’t want to have to use sex as a tool.’ She says that all the time. You know, and I say, ‘Tool for what? We’ve been going together almost two years!’ Then she says she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, because that ruins everything, and she’s out of the mood, anyway. It kills me! I go to school and everyone goes, ‘HEY HEY HEY, how’s Lisa? She’s such a fox!’ ” Brad shook his head. “And I’m thinking, ‘Tool for WHAT?’ ”
“Maybe you just need to give her some time. She’s so nice, Brad. That girl really loves you.”
“Everyone loves Lisa. Everyone loves Lisa. But everyone doesn’t have to be her boyfriend.”
Brad and Stacy talked for several hours that night. It was one of their first meetings on equal turf. They knew that it wasn’t usually wise to entrust a family member with information that could later be used against them, but on this night Stacy and Brad broke the rules. Stacy had waited for the perfect time, and then she popped the big question.
“Hey Brad,” she said, “are you still a virgin?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just curious.”
Brad grinned. “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“You’re not a virgin!”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But your face did!”
They laughed.
“Are you still a virgin?” Brad asked his sister.
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“Don’t give me that shit! I know you’re still a virgin!”
Stacy kept smiling, and changed the subject back to Lisa. “What are you going to do, Brad?”
“I’ve made up my mind,” said Brad. “I’ve got to break up with her. I’ve got to do it once and for all. There’s a world of girls out there. When you’re young you have to play the field.” Sometimes Brad stayed up and watched late-night “Love American Style” reruns. Stacy had noticed the dialogue cropping up in his speech. “I’m a single, successful guy, and I’ve got to be fair to myself.”
“Just do it in person,” said Stacy. “That’s the right thing to do. Lisa is so nice.” She caught herself. “This is weird. I’m supposed to have an older brother telling me stuff. Here I am giving you all the good advice.”
“Give me a break,” said Brad. “It’s not like I’m asking you the meaning of life.”
There was a parental rap at Stacy’s door.
“Whatever the meaning of life is, it can wait.” It was Mr. Hamilton, turning out the houselights. “Do you kids realize it’s past eleven on a school night?”
“Okay, Dad.”
Brad smiled at his sister and padded down the hall to his room. Stacy thought about their talk as she turned off the lights and listened to her clock radio in the dark. In the maturity sweepstakes of life, she felt as if she had begun to overtake her brother.
The Attitude
It was one of the cruel inevitabilities of high school, right up there with grades and corn dogs. After thirteen, girls tended to mature at a rate of two- to three-times faster than boys. This led to a common predicament around Ridgemont High. Two kids were in the same grade. The girl was discovering sex and men. The boy, having just given up his paper route, was awakening to the wonders of gothic-style romance. High school could be murder on a guy like Mark “The Rat” Ratner, sixteen.
He was not blessed with the personal success or the looks of a Brad Hamilton. To junior Mark Ratner, high school girls were mystical, unattainable apparitions. So close and yet so far away.
“I am in love,” said Mark Ratner. He clutched his heart, spun in a circle, and landed on his buddy Mike Damone’s bed. It was after school, three weeks into the school year. “In looooove.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” said Ratner. “This girl is my exact type. It’s her. It’s definitely her.”
“It’s definitely your mama,” said Damone distractedly. He was in the middle of his after-school ritual. Every day, Mike Damone came home, set his books down, mixed himself a tall Tia Maria and cream, and blasted Lou Reed’s live Rock and Roll Animal album on the family stereo.
“Damone, you gotta listen to me.” Ratner turned serious very quickly. In high school everyone had a coach. For Ratner this was Mike Damone, and Damone wasn’t even paying attention. “Come on, Damone.”
They were both juniors, and both lived in Ridgemont Hills, but Ratner and Damone were nothing alike. Mark “The Rat” Ratner, a pale kid with dark hair that tilted to one side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, had lived in Ridgemont all his life. He had grown up in the same house and gone to all the same neighborhood schools, of which Ridgemont High was one. Ratner was even born in University Hospital, just across the street from his house.
Mike Damone was darker, with longish black hair parted down the middle and a wide, knowing smile. He was a transfer from Philadelphia, “where women are fast and life is cheap.” Damone and The Rat had a perfect relationship. Damone talked, and The Rat listened.
“All right,” said Damone. “All right.” He straddled a chair in his room facing The Rat. “Tell me all about it.”
“Okay,” said The Rat. “It started out just a typical day. I had to go to the A.S.B. office to get my student I.D. I was thinking about other things, you know, and then I saw her. She was incredible! She was so beautiful! She’s a cross between Cindy Carr . . . and Cheryl Ladd! And she works right in the A.S.B. office!” The Rat shook his head in awe. “This is going to be such a great year!”
Damone sat listening to the story, waiting for more. There was no more.
“Is that it?” said Damone. “You didn’t get her name or anything?”
“No. It’s too soon.”
“It’s never too soon,” said Damone. “Girls decide how far to let you go in the first five minutes. Didn’t you know that?”
“What do you want me to do? Go up to this strange girl and say, ‘Hello! I’d like you to take your clothes off and jump on me!’ ”
Damone shook his head. “I would, yeah.”
“Fuck you.”
“I can see it all now,” said Damone. “This is going to be just like the girl you fell in love with at Fotomat. All you did was go buy fuckin’ film; you didn’t even talk to her.”
“What do you do, Mike? Tell me. You’re in a public place, and you see a girl that you really like. Do you just stand there and give her the eye? Or do you go up to her and make a joke or something? I mean you’re a good-looking guy, you know these things.”
“Okay. Okay.” Damone sighed, but he loved it. “Here’s what I do.” He got up and began pacing his room, an orderly little cubicle with one huge speaker, a large poster of Pat Benatar, and a newspaper photo of a mortician’s utensils. “Usually I don’t talk to the girl. I put out a vibe. I let her know. I use my face. I use my body. I use everything. It’s all in the twitch of an eye. You just send the vibe out to them. And I
have personally found that girls do respond. Something happens.”
“Yeah, Damone, but you put the vibe out to thirty million girls. You know something’s gonna happen.”
“That’s the idea,” said Mike Damone. “That’s The Attitude.”
You hear about it under a multitude of names. The Knack. The Ability. The Moves. The Attitude. In any language it is the same special talent for attracting the opposite sex, and Mike Damone appeared to have it.
They met at Marine World, the famous marine amusement park outside of Orange County. Ratner had gone in, applied for a job, and they had given him Dining Area Duty, an auspicious-sounding responsibility that consisted of scraping the birdshit off the plastic outdoor tables. He didn’t think it was that bad, though. It was fun for Ratner at Marine World, and there was a real spirit among the young workers. All the employees got together for functions like beer-keg parties and softball games, and everything would be just fine until someone asked The Rat what his department was.
“Hi. I’m Leslie from the Killer Whale Pavilion. Who are you?”
“I’m Mark from Dining Area Duty.”
“Oh.” And the same look would inevitably come over the other Marine World employee’s face, a look that said, so you’re the guy they got. “Well, Mark, uh, I’ll see you over there sometime. Bye!”
The Rat always had trouble recovering after that. Making new friends, it seemed, was not his particular forté. Girls had been out of the question most of his life.
It seemed to The Rat a matter of fate when Marine World personnel dropped Mike Damone into Dining Area Duty as his new partner. On the first day, The Rat didn’t speak to Damone and Damone didn’t speak to him. On the second day, The Rat broke the ice.
“Hot day today.”
Damone looked up from the table he was scrubbing and smiled. “Sure is.”
Then his eyes glazed over. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. Damone turned pale and fell over backward, landing on a lawn area. He appeared to go into shock, beating his head on the grass and making tongueless noises with his mouth. Several customers gathered around.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Page 5
