by Tom Shillue
Sometimes Dicky Barrett would show up to the Xaverian dances and bring his Boston swagger with him. Dicky was still a student at Norwood High, but he spent most of his weekend nights in the Boston clubs. He knew the whole punk scene. His older brother was a bit of a local celebrity, the lead singer for the Boston band Chain Link Fence, which was very big at the time. This is how Chuck Warner, who ran the garage-rock label Throbbing Lobster, described Chain Link Fence:
“Believe it or not these guys started off as an unbelievably earnest and sloppy popthrash band, but Billy had his heart set on being a crooner . . . Billy’s younger brother Dicky Barrett couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t sign his band, too. I told him every rhythm section should know how to play ska, but no one should be allowed to record it. Heh.”*
Of course, Dicky would go on to prove him wrong a decade later by hitting it big with his suddenly very mainstream “skacore” band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Skacore, a mix of the british ska and hardcore punk, was a genre he basically invented.
But in high school he was still the little brother to Billy, and Dicky liked to show up at Xaverian and expose us rubes to the kind of stuff that was going on in the Boston punk clubs. I remember one winter night the band at the dance was playing a cover of the B-52’s Strobe Light and Dicky started throwing himself into the crowd of suburban high school boys. The lighting guy in the gym set off the strobe light for about ten seconds, sending all the action on the floor into a sort of stop-motion movie. The strobe light continued to turn on and off, following Dicky around as he slammed into a bunch of guys, who reacted just the way a bunch of high school jocks would when some punk kid runs into them: they retaliated by knocking him into some other kids, who also pushed back. At one point, Dicky got thrown into me and I took a pretty sharp elbow to the chest. Eventually the whole dance floor was pushing one another and it looked like a riot was going to break out. This only encouraged Dicky, and he then started grabbing innocent bystanders and throwing them into the fray. A couple of security guys appeared from nowhere and, as the strobe light turned on, I watched Dicky get dragged, in stop motion, to the side door and thrown out into the freezing cold as he yelled, “Wake up! Don’t you fuckin’ losers know what slam dancing is!”
That was the kind of attitude I wanted to emulate, but I had to put my own twist on it. Dicky had gone from playground hooligan to punk rocker, but that wasn’t me. If Dicky was Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, I was more Fred Schneider of the B-52’s.
So I became an art room kid in high school. It was the best way to flex my alterna cred. We had a great art program, and all the artsy kids would hang out in that room all day, because this was the only outlet for the weird kids, since there was no theater program. Like most high school art rooms, ours featured a ragtag group of burnouts, weirdoes, hippies, and freaks, along with other countercultural types. I wasn’t any of these things, but I was restless and creative and wanted to be something. Something beyond the Boy Scout, the altar boy, the normal kid that I’d always been and wanted so desperately to put behind me. I wish I could go back and have a conversation with that kid and tell him not to try so hard. But he probably wouldn’t listen, as he would find me to be so very uncool.
But I was on a mission. Bob and I formed a band called Bat Patrol. I was the lead singer, dressed as Batman, with a cape and cowl and black Doc Marten boots. Bob played guitar and dressed as Robin, but with silver shorts and boots like Ziggy Stardust. We did mostly Ramones covers, because the songs were so easy to learn (three chords, man!). As with everything else, this was all done to impress girls. The idea was to be weird, extraordinary, and edgy.
When you craft yourself as alt, you can’t cast a very wide net when it comes to the ladies. There were basically only three girls who were buying what I was selling, and they were all art room girls. First, there was Jennifer, the Molly Ringwald of Norwood High. She had henna-dyed red hair that was teased out to the max and was always decked out in Cyndi Lauper attire. She walked the hallways in rhythm, like the Go-Go’s were constantly playing in her head. She was the living embodiment of the ’80s. Then there was Susan. If Jennifer was Molly Ringwald, then Susan was Ally Sheedy. A loner, quiet and cynical, she was an emotional fortress. She rolled her eyes at Jennifer and others like her, and she wouldn’t give me the time of day. So, of course, she kept my attention for that reason alone. The last was Catherine. She was very “normal,” and didn’t even seem like an art room girl on the surface. She was, but she was plain and friendly and never played any games or tried to hide her affection for me. Because she so clearly liked me, I held it against her. She was too normal for me. I wanted Ally Sheedy or Molly Ringwald.
The art room was not for layabouts. The program was run by the serious and charismatic Ms. Jackie Munroe, and she ran it like a conservatory. Students had to produce work; they couldn’t just phone it in and expect to pass. There were two daily classes, art and art studio, and for the small group of us who took them both, combined with a study hall which had an open period that we could use as we pleased, we spent three hours a day in the art room. Among the juniors and seniors there were about twenty of us who did this, and we called ourselves “the art majors.” My sister had been an art major, and gone on to art school at RISD. My friends Bob, Rob, and Greg were all art majors along with me. But we were all “artists” of different stripes and would use the art room for our own projects. Dicky Barrett basically used it as an extension of his music; he would spend all his time making flyers and drawing cartoons of dancing punks in plaid pants and work boots. He was obsessed with plaid. He’d cover pieces of scrap paper with an intricate tartan patterns and leave them taped to the walls around school. The swatch of plaid meant “Dicky was here.” Others, like my friend Grover, were fine artists. He wanted to open a studio by the sea, paint landscapes, and sell them in the galleries on Cape Cod. I did silkscreening and charcoal drawing, and photography, but I didn’t really have “my thing” yet.
Ms. Jackie invited an artist-in-residence to Norwood High to expose us to a professional. Fine art painter Harry always smelled like turpentine, was covered in paint speckles, and constantly dished out cynical advice. He drove an old beat-up Saab, and on the weekends, a group of us would pile into his car and drive to his studio in the Fort Point Channel warehouse district along Boston Harbor. The building was in a rough neighborhood and was filled with artists and craftsmen of all types. This was the real art world. It seemed so exciting, and even though he was always warning us about the economic risks of choosing art as a career, I remember thinking that this would be a great way to live. Who needs a lot of money when you can spend your life in a big, spacious building and do whatever kind of work you want?
His studio was filled with rack after rack of his huge paintings. They all had a similar look—incomprehensibly dark and abstract imagery made with very thick paint. They made absolutely no sense to me, but seemed cool. I remember one of his paintings vividly: black and green lines twisting upward and bursting into more darkness. It was titled The Forest Primeval. It seemed profound even though I wasn’t sure what primeval meant. Some of the paintings, which had been given gallery spots, had prices attached to the back wooden frame of the canvas—$800, $900, $1,200. I couldn’t believe those figures. He seemed to have a fortune’s worth of paintings stored in this loft that was locked with only a padlock. I wanted to know how much money he made on this artwork, but I didn’t want to ask in front of the others. When he was out in the hallway having a cigarette by the fire escape, I sneaked out to ask.
“Harry, how often do you sell one of them?”
“What? My paintings? Oh, I’ve never sold one.”
He said it offhandedly, as if he never expected to sell one. I couldn’t believe it. He’s a full-time painter and he sells nothing? Even my mother sold some of her work, and her studio was in our dining room. If I was going to be an artist, I would have to be able to sell my work. I wouldn’t enjoy it otherwise. What good is doing work that nobody wants?
> One day Harry announced he had a special trip planned. “This one’s for you, Tom,” he said.
Harry had taken an interest in me because I was always using my time in the art room to put on “shows.” I liked to explain what my work meant more than I liked creating it. Every critique session was an opportunity for me to get some laughs and perform a running monologue about life. I guess he figured I was more of a performer than an artist. When he asked if I had aspirations in that field, I answered, “I haven’t really thought about it.” But of course I had.
He took us on foot from his studio through the cobblestone streets of Boston to some other old, dilapidated building in the neighborhood. We took a freight elevator up to a loft space that was crowded with fabric and 3-D sculptures. We sat on the floor and the show began. Lights, music, and two young women “puppeteers” appeared who brought fabric sculptures to life. They sprung up from the floor and danced to the music. They looked like animals, or industrial machines, or insects. The show was avant-garde, or as Grover said, “wicked weahd.” It was art and performance together, and it opened up a world of possibilities in my mind.
I was always thinking about what I wanted to be at that time, whether I was going to be an artist or a musician. But that day I realized that maybe I could mix them together in some way, and do my own thing. I could forge my own path, even though I had no idea what that path was going to be.
I BEGAN MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL WITH AN APPROPRIATE amount of rebellious energy. Is there a single diary written by a kid that age that doesn’t include an entry in this vein?
August 17—Just because I came in late last night, my dad says “No more late nights. You’re not going to be out of this house again after midnight.” What a goon. All he had to say was “Don’t do it” and I wouldn’t do it. Instead he plays the fucking warden and lays down the law. My mother knew exactly what she was doing. She told me how scared she was all night, right in front of him, which would surely convince Dad to take over. He’s got no problem trying to control situations such as this. He just does what’s easiest, issues a rule that has to be followed. That gets me pissed off. My father doesn’t even know the best times I’ve had this summer are after 12.
I’m not sure I gave my father enough credit—of course he knew that the best times I’d had all summer were after midnight. That’s what he was trying to prevent—too much “best times.” The truth was, I wasn’t getting into much trouble. The only thing my friends and I were drunk on was self-absorption. We would stay out late and go up to the cemetery, where we’d lay on our backs on the grass, looking up at the stars and talking about the meaning of life and our place in it. We didn’t care about the future, only the present.
We make very unreasonable demands on high school seniors. This is the time when we expect kids to decide on college and begin planning their lives. Of course, there is no worse time for them to be doing this. For all of senior year, you’re living in the minute to minute, and the only voice you hear is your own. It’s as if you have headphones on and they’re blasting your own thoughts back at you at full volume. Your teachers sound like Charlie Brown’s did, and your parents are just background noise.
As I said, my parents gave me a lot of latitude as I experimented with my persona as a teen, but that last year of high school I would put their hands-off approach to the test by pushing my nights later and later.
The next chapter in my romantic life began almost by accident at the Women’s Community Committee Thrift Shop during one of their famous Brown Bag Sales. At these sales, you could take anything you could fit into a big brown paper sack for five dollars. That particular day I spotted a beautiful After Six tuxedo jacket, along with the matching pants, complete with the silk stripe down the side. I tried it on—and it was a 38 regular, just my size.
“That one is not part of the bag sale,” said the woman from the Women’s Community Committee. “That suit is eight dollars.”
That was at the upper end of my budget, but I had to have it. I filled two brown bags and with the tux spent eighteen dollars. That purchase gave me the motivation. Now that I had a tuxedo, I was going to have to take that After Six to some dances.
There were many kinds of dance social events throughout the school year. Of course there was the senior prom, and the junior prom, but there were also the class semiformals in the fall, and the band semiformal since the “bandies” had to have their own social event, too. So there were plenty of ways to put that old tux to work and I planned to do it.
The senior semiformal was coming up, so I started with the Ally Sheedy of the art room. My progress, or lack thereof, is all down in black and white in my diary:
I saw Susan Brady after the achievement tests. Talking to her always sparks some curiosity in my mind as to whether or not she likes me or not.
Either she doesn’t care at all, or she wants me to think that she doesn’t care.
And then the very next entry:
Susan didn’t care. After she told me she didn’t want to go out with me, she said she did not want to “dissolve our relationship completely.” I could accept that and continued calling her. But now I realize that her mind is closed. My present situation with Jennifer is very strange. I’ve known her for so long. But I haven’t been attracted to her until now. I’m not sure why.
I don’t know if I really lacked this much self-awareness or not. But I guess I didn’t want to admit I’d put Jennifer, my Molly Ringwald, firmly in second place, and she was going to be my rebound. But she was a shoo-in, as far as I was concerned. I asked her to the semiformal.
“Um, I’m actually going into Boston that night, to a club,” Jennifer said. “I’m going to see Dicky’s band. Did you know? I’m kind of going out with him now.”
I couldn’t believe it. I had waited too long and I lost out to Dicky Barrett. Meanwhile, Catherine looked at me like a Labrador every day. She was there for the taking. Catherine, the only one who really liked me, had waited so patiently for me to come around. But could I give her the satisfaction? Of course not. Ego bruised, I had to look elsewhere. Look at this next entry:
I asked Ann Pink to the senior semi-formal Friday. She’s making me wait until tomorrow for an answer. It’s really been on my mind this weekend.
Catherine asked me to the semi-formal and I said no. I don’t like turning people down, especially one I like, like her. She really bummed out over the rejection. But I can’t do much about it. I’m still her friend.
What a heel I was! But it’s nice to see that after I tossed her aside I was willing to unilaterally announce that I was still her friend. Let’s see what happened on Monday:
Today was a big day. It really blew my mind. Ann Pink said she wanted to go to the prom with me, but could not give me an immediate answer. I wondered why, but then I found out it was Mitiguy that was interfering in my affairs. I talked to him about it and he said “Don’t worry, Tom. If you asked her, you’re going with her. I’ll back off.” He immediately went to her and asked her. She said yes!
Mitiguy! My childhood chum had returned, unexpectedly, to stick a shiv into my social life. He always was a devious one.
So, I gave in and went to the senior semiformal with Catherine, and I was lucky she would still go with me after what I’d done to string her along. But I was still keeping her in the friend-zone, and decided to use the dance as an opportunity to solidify my reputation as an outsider. When I showed up at Catherine’s apartment I was wearing outrageous Goth makeup that made me look like Robert Smith from the Cure. I had my hair slicked back and was wearing black eyeliner and black lipstick. Of course I didn’t fix myself up like this at home—my dad would have locked the door and my mother would have begun praying the Rosary. I took my supplies with me to the parking lot of Building 19 on Route 1 and made myself up in the reflection of the rearview mirror of my mother’s 1979 Chevy Monza.
When she opened her door, Catherine was horrified but tried not to show it. Her father was more horrified
and had no trouble showing it. When he took our photo, his face was paler than mine.
I caused a stir at the semiformal. I was weird, and I got the attention I was looking for—posing for photos, dancing with myself to the song “Dancing With Myself.” I should have been ashamed of myself, and looking back now, I am. I’d made it all about me, but Catherine was forgiving. She’d had a crush on me in the art room for months, so I could do no wrong. She was just glad I’d finally said yes to her. She was as sweet a date as I’d ever had, just adoring and adorable.
After ruining her prom, I thought I owed her, so I took her out for an afternoon date at Liggett’s Drug Store. I thought this could be where we’d become “friends.” They had a lunch counter and we drank coffee out of cups and saucers and ate lemon meringue pie. Catherine made conversation with the old people at the counter. She was a little odd, it turned out. We laughed a lot. Before we left, Catherine promised the retirees we’d come back the next day, so we did, and spent another afternoon laughing at the lunch counter.
She snuck up on me. A few weeks later, this girl I kept in third place forever became my surprise girlfriend. We’d go on dates in the dead of winter and we’d kiss in my car with the engine running in front of her apartment building until thirty minutes after her curfew. We went to see the movie A Christmas Story at the Needham Cinema and held hands. Then we went out for ice cream sundaes and looked into each other’s eyes. I was in love with her before I knew it. I hadn’t even given myself permission.
The fact was I fell for Catherine so fast because she was outrageous. She was deep and moody and philosophical. We would take long walks and sit under weeping willow trees and talk about God, love, life, and death. She could change her mood in an instant. She’d be laughing and then, suddenly, would just burst into tears. She kept me off balance. It scared me, but it pulled me in. I loved the feelings but I was a little put off by them. They went against the image I had for myself, as a court jester, who glided through life and kept things light. I liked my lightness, but Catherine made things heavy.
