by Amy Asbury
Mark and I had lockers on the bottom row. His was only a few down from mine. I remember getting my books out of my locker and smelling something like cinnamon. I sniffed harder. Was that...aftershave I smelled? I looked over at Mark and he appeared all shy suddenly. He was no longer acting like the class clown, or the social guy cracking jokes. He looked at me and said, in a deepened voice, “Hi.” It dawned on me at that point that he did like me. My first thought was Cool! And my second thought was Shit. What do I do!? I was mortified at the thought of dating him. What if he wanted to kiss me? I didn’t know how to kiss! How would we see each other? I would have to tell my parents in order to go anywhere with him.
I pictured myself in the backseat of our brown car, driving to his nice house over by the Country Club. My dad would act weird and embarrass me and my mom would get awkward. Screw that! It would be so embarrassing! I didn’t see any way it could work. I knew I would be too frightened to kiss him because I couldn’t even talk to him without stuttering. I also decided that it was too embarrassing to let my parents know I liked a boy in my class. I shut down out of fear and decided to ignore him completely. I was so glad summer vacation was only weeks away, because I wouldn’t have to see him all summer, and the whole thing could blow over by fall. So I tried waiting it out and pretended I didn’t get the signals.
On the last day of school, Mark came up to me, kind of defeated, and was like, “See you next year,” in his forced, low ‘man’ voice. He was looking me in the eyes. I wished I were not so chicken. I wished I would have gone for it. But I lost him, and moved on into the summer even more boy crazy. I daydreamed of him saying that line, over and over. It was like fuel, keeping me going, giving me something else to concentrate on besides my parents and the house of crazy. “Live to Tell” by Madonna was on MTV a lot around that time. I listened to it as if it was the deepest thing I had ever heard, like it was written by the Dalai Lama or something, while fantasizing about making out with Mark.
My sister Becky was two years younger than I was and did not talk about boys, so I was often drifting off into my own world. It saddened me that boys were taking over my brain, but it was not controllable. I pictured doing it with Mark, but I didn’t know what that really entailed. I just knew white stuff came out and I pictured it like the white chocolate pouring out of the pan in the Nestle commercial, in slow motion. I thought it would be at least a half-gallon of liquid.
That summer, Karen and I watched either a) The Roller Derby b) The Big Spin or c) this movie called Desert Bloom with Annabeth Gish. We watched and rewatched that damn movie over and over again, quoting the lines. I think I memorized that entire script. We ate Doritos, drank Diet Pepsi, and sometimes her dad got us Value Packs at McDonald’s. I always got Chicken McNuggets with barbecue sauce and she got a Filet-O-Fish. We then spied on the boys in her condo complex; all of whom were skaters.
At that time, skaters were guys who not only rode a skateboard, but wore very specific T-shirts featuring different surfboard companies, such as Town & Country, Local Motion and Maui and Sons. Skaters liked New Wave/Pop type of music; they were not into any sort of rock. They were more on the conservative side, with short hair and long bangs usually over one eye. They were tan, fit, and usually smoking hot. You never saw a fat skater.
Karen and I perked up if we heard skateboard wheels. We were such nerds though, that we couldn’t just say hi to boys. We would do something like throw rocks at them or start a fight with them somehow. We were really immature because we were deathly shy. She was even worse than I was. I wanted to see one guy in particular named Jim. He was drop dead gorgeous with bright blue eyes and dark hair. He was so good looking, it hurt. I thought my underwear would burst into flames. I remember watching a girl flirting with him. I was in awe of her for having the confidence to talk to him, unlike me who hid and sounded like Igor in a cave.
In any case, I had a little boost of confidence from Mark Poletti and his aftershave. I ventured out of my room and even out of the house a little bit. I tried flirting with boys on my own street. They didn’t shoot me down. I got a few smiles and some romantic tension with a boy named Chad. It was enough for me to feel happy. In between water balloon fights and crank calls, Karen, Becky and I watched video after video on MTV. Karen and I fell in love with a group called Bananarama and their remake of “Venus.” It was the first tape I bought. My sister got into Bon Jovi and David Lee Roth. We lived for music. It was the backdrop of everything exciting we felt inside: all of the possibilities with boys, all of the butterflies.
CHAPTER TWO
The Choice
Eighth grade was no joy, but it was better than seventh grade. I was full of angst. Just thinking about it makes me want to take some Valium. I was back to staying in my room with the door closed, and all I did was write in my diary and daydream about boys. I guess that is pretty typical. I read Wuthering Heights for a book report and got totally obsessed with it. I was suddenly writing in my diary as if I was on the moors with Heathcliff. I wanted romance; I wanted to be in love. I was writing things like, “If all else perished and he remained, I should continue to be!” I was completely boy crazy. The difference between my boy craziness and other girls my age was that they were boy crazy while talking to actual boys at The Galleria or Skateland. I was boy crazy behind the closed doors of my room, and I wanted to shout from rooftops and wear flowing gowns on mountainsides while being boy crazy.
For the first half of the school year, I was still pretty innocent as far as my thoughts and interests were concerned. I became really interested in old film stars, like Rita Hayworth, Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood. I hung up their black and white pictures and wished I could do my hair and makeup like theirs. They were so glamorous in sparkling gowns, shiny hair styled in waves, and long eyelashes.
My mom got me a big fat Warner Brothers Studios coffee table book for Valentine’s Day that year. She saw me fawning over it at a bookstore and decided to get it for me, along with a jar of peppermint candies. I loved the book and what it held in it. It was pictures of a different time. I felt homesick for it. I had recently watched Meet Me in St. Louis and Little Women and they made me long to be in another decade. I felt pain in my heart at the voices of the actors and actresses, their attire, the sets and the songs. Things like love and family seemed sweetly simple yet things like décor and manners were more formal. While watching those 1940’s movies, I felt more at home than I did in my own family. When times were bad, I used those old films and pictures to bring me security.
I really started piling on the makeup even more that year. I felt relief each time I applied another layer to my face. It was a literal mask I hid behind. I felt braver with it. When I took it off at home, I felt vulnerable. I started wearing tons of foundation in the wrong shade; tons of dark, loose powder from a pink plastic container (both hand-me-downs from my aunt Billie), along with loads of blue eyeliner that winged out at the sides. I reapplied it all after each class and sometimes during class. One of the more outspoken ninth graders looked at me one day and said, “Dude, you are going to drown yourself in foundation!” I always had tons of makeup on the collars of my shirts and jackets. I looked like a broken-down, teenage Joan Collins.
Like most teenagers, I was curious about sex and was too frightened to ask my parents how it worked. I wasn’t sure how my mother would react, but I knew I didn’t want to ask her. My dad wasn’t as pervy toward me that year, maybe it was because I was no longer twelve. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to rehash his feelings by asking him about the facts of life. That would be a stupid move. I didn’t have any friends to ask- Karen was still hanging up posters of kittens. So I took my cues from music and TV.
I liked a new group called the Beastie Boys; I thought Ad-Rock was cute. I didn’t know then that anyone looks cute next to Mike D. and MCA, but that is neither here nor there. I listened to my Licensed to Ill tape, rewinding it repeatedly to try to decipher the lyrics to get some sort of clue as to what pe
ople did behind closed doors. They were risqué and talked about having sex with girls, although I could barely decode what they were talking about between their thick Brooklyn accents and their slang. It didn’t make much sense to me. A wiffle ball bat? Forty Deuce? Turn tables? White Castle? I could not have picked worse teachers.
I started actively searching for meaning in other songs on the radio by groups like Def Leppard, Ratt, and, of course, Madonna. Most of the music I was listening to was from the viewpoint of a man, and what I learned from it all was that men desired women and wanted to do stuff with them. I just couldn’t figure out exact directions. I remember many Genesis songs, songs from Janet Jackson’s Control album and songs from Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet album. Despite the racy album name, Bon Jovi wasn’t too bad. They were kind of like long-haired Bruce Springsteens. They were from New Jersey and they sung about the prom, waitresses and steel workers being broke; blue collared, anthem-type of songs. I liked hearing the songs through the wall when my sister played them. She always found hip music before I did.
There was a new Glam Rock band out at that time called Poison, and they really caught my eye. They had a catchy song called “Talk Dirty to Me.” They always appeared to be in the dead center of a huge party. Their videos were a mess of electric green, hot pink, red, baby blue and leopard skin. They wore lipstick and had long hair, sprayed with what looked like tons of Aqua Net. They were always checking out chicks walking by, humping the microphone stand, gyrating, and flicking a tongue between two fingers. They were still guys. It was confusing, yet exciting: the beauty of women, yet the sexuality of men. A perfect combination if I ever saw one. I was intrigued.
I lost interest in Mark Poletti that year because I saw that there was some fresh meat in the grade below me. There was one boy in particular who I found super cute, named Zack. He was in my English class and kept turning around in his chair and checking me out. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked and pretended it wasn’t happening. He was a tall kid with dark blond hair that looked wet with gel; big wide-set blue eyes and some freckles. He tried getting my attention for a few weeks, and I just couldn’t bring myself to look back at him or show any interest even though I found him totally cute.
I fantasized about Zack and was flattered he liked me. I never dreamed another girl would swoop in and take him away. I became friends with popular Kelly Fiorella that year. She was a talkative, social girl who dated all of the boys and somehow remained a good girl. She found Zack attractive and she wanted to date him. It took all of two days for them to become a couple. She had another girl go up to him and ask what he thought of her (which apparently was the way to get someone to go out with you in junior high), and the word was out that she was interested. The next thing I knew, they were boyfriend/girlfriend. I was crushed. I wanted to cry tears of navy blue eyeliner. I couldn’t believe he went for it! He was no dummy; he was like, Where do I sign up?
I fantasized that he would tell her in a very dramatic Days of Our Lives tone, “No…my heart is with someone else,” but he never did. I was mean to Kelly and didn’t want to hear her lispy, lovesick ramblings. She asked me to sit with them at lunch. Both Zack and I were uncomfortable. I wondered though…what did they talk about? How did it go? How did one have a boyfriend at thirteen? We couldn’t drive…How was it done? Did you have to do more than kiss? I felt really behind. What if something embarrassing happened between the boy and me? It was such a small school. I would have to see the boy every day. What if he laughed in my face because I didn’t know what to do with him? Everyone would know about it. I just couldn’t do it.
I set my sights on another boy named Eric. He was a troublemaker who was always in the principal’s office. Now that I look back, he was not cute. He was sort of scrawny and had squinty eyes. Anyway, we were supposed to do some performance for the school and he chose me as a partner. We were supposed to represent the 1960’s and do the Twist. I made sure I was absent that day, because there was no way I was getting on the Middleton stage and doing some lame dance. But that was all insignificant as far as I was concerned because a real live boy had requested me as his partner!
Suddenly, I was in love. I wrote about Eric in my diary, filling it up with flowery prose. I think I filled two or three diaries with nothing but Eric, Eric, Eric (cuckoo clock noise). Then I started to become seriously psycho. I started crying over him in my room, listening to love songs and lighting candles. The Jets’ “You Got it All” would make me sprout tears and Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye” would make me do the ugly cry face and want to stab myself in the heart. I thought of nothing but squinty-eyed Eric. Every day I would put on my makeup and do my hair thinking of him, hoping to run into him. He never even spoke to me! I never even had a conversation with this boy! I just stared at him, trying to lock eyes with him. At first he looked back. Then he started to realize I was crazy and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He was probably thinking, I will never request a dance partner again for the rest of my life! My sister tried to comment on my obsession and I yelled, “You don’t know what love is!” through tears and snot as she looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I was a giant, heaving bowl of crazy with sprinkles on top.
I still liked the blond boy, Zack, and to my dismay, he became best friends with Eric. Once that happened, they both avoided me completely. They even started to make fun of me. I remember one day hearing them snicker after I walked by in my one-inch Payless pumps with socks, wearing my mom’s ill-fitting black and white checked shirt, a long white skirt, and my clown makeup. Another time I was walking up the stairs in front of them and the sole of my shoe fell off. I had to pick the sole up and put it in my book bag. I was so embarrassed.
***
There was a hole punched in the wall by my bedroom around that time. We found out that my mother had done it, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it. My parents were acting odd and secretive. A few days later, I was told I was to move out of my bedroom. It was the first room before a long hallway, separated from the rest of the bedrooms in our house. I was being moved to a room down by my parents’ room and sister’s room. While my room was in transition, a big cockroach fell from the ceiling and hit a book on my bed. I wondered if there was some sort of evil marking that room.
Things felt out of control in my home life, so I started to discipline myself very strictly in private. I studied French in my room. I tried to memorize Bible verses and lines of Shakespeare. I decided I needed to sing the National Anthem each day while doing a backbend. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but it was part of a ritual. In hindsight, I guess it made me feel like I could control something.
In addition to all of the other secretive weird bullshit going on in my family, there was another development taking place. I was breaking away and developing an identity of my own. Yes folks, I was a teenager and that is what teenagers do. My father had a hard time accepting it. As soon I started to develop interests and tastes that were completely different from his, he became insulted. He saw he was no longer my hero. I didn’t look up to him. I didn’t value what he valued. It hurt his feelings. Maybe that is what he used as justification to hurt me the way he did. I don’t know.
My father did not value typical American commercial success. He had more of an alternative view of things. He was a former hippie, first off. My mother and he had run off to live in the hippie communes in the early seventies, before I was born. They literally lived in a cave, naked. And it is worth noting for the sheer sensationalism of it that they ran into Charles Manson and company while they were hitchhiking around L.A.
So, as you can imagine, my dad thought corporate America was the devil. He didn’t own a suit. He didn’t see a need for higher education. It was not something he told us was of any importance. He didn’t trust the government, he didn’t like rules. And just like my mother, he avoided anyone with money. It made him very uncomfortable, and it was made clear to me that rich people were the bad guys. My dad loved the desert, the sand, and being outd
oors around nature. He loved playing the guitar and singing, having long philosophical talks with people around a fire, or playing chess. None of that was bad, it just wasn’t what his teenage daughter liked. I was not impressed with him, like so many others were.
I did value commercial success. I wanted refinement, glamour, and culture. I was interested in advertising, journalism, literature, filmmaking and all of the performing arts. I loved learning. I craved discipline. I was interested in traveling to other countries. I wanted to run a real business one day. I always had files, briefcases, business cards and drawn-up plans of my future houses and business ventures. The more my father saw who I wanted to be, the more he didn’t like what he saw. I wanted to live in a Victorian mansion with damask wallpaper and go to the ballet and shit. I wanted to run an empire by day and recline on an antique settee in the evenings, reading stacks of books from my library. I wanted to become something grand, which is the very type of person who threatened my parents. My dad made snide comments about my likes and taste quite often. He looked at my framed pictures of Natalie Wood and told me she was dead and full of worms. He taunted me about my wanting to live in London, saying that I wouldn’t make it there because they didn’t have my favorite breakfast cereal. I would have to eat what they had. Just little jabs like that. He picked on me.
One day I was watching some great 80's programming; a fine, highly acclaimed, culture-rich show that rivaled the Masterpiece Theatre: Diff’rent Strokes. Kimberly Drummond, the rich, wasp-y daughter, had this fabulous bikini figure and everyone was praising her. Then it was revealed that she had something called bulimia. She binged on food at night (I will never forget her scooping peanut butter from the jar with her fingers) and then proceeded to force herself to vomit in the toilet (as per the sound effects and the closed bathroom door). It made her look great, she got to eat like a pig and she had an official problem. She eventually got tons of attention and an intervention by her loving family, who were cursing themselves for not seeing the signs. That was it! I would get a “problem”! I would become bulimic. You are thinking, “Who is that stupid?” Well, me. I was that lame.
