Supermoon 1.7 (1989-1990) Cherry Hill, NJ

                                  

                                   

    

    Over the Summer, I go on a few dates with a friendly Filipino soon-to-be junior named Rich Sanidad.  I had met his at a party where we danced to Somebody by Erasure, which is hands down, the most romantic song in the entire world.  I think it is a lot more serious than it really is, and am devastated when he tells me that he does not want me to be his girlfriend.  However, we continue on good terms, and I am absorbed into his little group of  friends.  By now, a few of the guys are driving, and we have great fun driving from one friend's house to another, or just around the mall parking lot.  Our favorite thing to do is to fill the car with as many of us as possible, so we are all sitting on each other's laps, slowly pull up behind some unsuspecting shopper outside of John Wannamakers or Strawbridge and Clothier, and yell "Ahhhh!!!!" in unison like we are out of control of the car. The shopper almost jumps out of their skin, and we drive off laughing so hard, our bellies hurt.  Rich's best friend is a fellow named Ed Hillman.  He proudly tells me he is going to be the punter on the football team, and I barely hear what he is saying because I am lost in his green eyes and long black lashes. 

My canine tooth is anchored way up high in my gums by baby teeth that refuse to dislodge, so I look like Dracula. It is the Summer before my sophomore year, and Mom takes me to the dentist who leverages himself with a foot on my patient chair and yanks out the baby teeth leaving a yawning hole in my grill. When I smile in the rear view mirror on the drive home, I tell my mother that I look like a homeless person. “You are not homeless,” she assures me.  "Homeless people do not get braces." A few weeks later, an orthodontist clads my teeth in thick metal bands and tightens the wire running through them with a pair of pliers. The tension is painful, and he loops them with rainbow colored rubber bands.  The braces will be on for at least two years.  When I smile at myself in the mirror on the way home, I can see barely any whiteness - just metal and the appalling colored rubber. 

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    It's Friday night, and we sit in Mom's room watching TV, like we have been doing for years.  It's different now, because it's Fred's room too now. We are glad Mom is married, but Fred seems like an oversized interloper - oddly out of place on the far side of the bed. We sit on the floor, so all we see of him are his big mottled feet jutting out from the sheets.  George Bush comes on screen in his first televised speech to the nation to declare his War on Drugs, and casually produces a bag full of "crack".  We know about alcohol because of my dad, and drugs because of Nancy Reagan, who was always going on and on about how you have to "Dare to say no", but we know nothing about crack and Fred's feet explain to us that it "a very bad thing", just like pot and booze.  

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Mom and Fred are taking us to his cabin in the Poconos.  We spend the day packing and I go out at night to a party at Rich Sanidad's house.  By now, he and I are ancient history, but 

    I am in study hall in the cafeteria. I sit at a table with a nice girl named Sharlene, who is a headbanger, and Darlene, who also happens to be a headbanger. They also choose to take a study hall instead of lunch. I do not know much about headbangers aside from their musical taste which includes Motley Crew, Black Sabbath, and Metallica.  Thick black eye liner and goopy mascara circles their eyes and their lips are bright and pasty. They wear tattered black metal-studded jeans with concert tees falling off their shoulders.  Although I am slightly intimidated at first, they have friendly personalities, and are also big fans of breaking the rules. We all identify as loaners, except I am a loaner by myself and they are loaners together. Since its hard to tell where Sharlene ends, and Darlene begins, I decide that this makes sense.  In study hall, we are not supposed to talk or eat, but we secretly share food squirreled deep in our book bags and and pass hilarious notes between us making fun of the study hall proctor whose only job is to shush us when we laugh.

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        It seems that many of Mom Mom Marge's friends are dying.  When we arrive on Saturday, which we do each week due to dad's weekend custody, she covers us with an extra soupy round of face kisses and lists off this week's round of names of the newly deceased.  "Doris, Estelle, Estelle's ex-husband...", she exclaims dramatically.  We never know what to say and stand there looking forlorn, but she soon resumes her cleaning and cooking and doting on my Pop Pop who sits on the porch catonically staring at the treetops.  Dad watches football and drinks, so we are often left to our own devices.  Everything in the house seems old.  We entertain ourselves by going through Mom Mom and Pop Pop's medicine cabinet where we find stale-smelling lipsticks, creams, salves, and to our consternation, condoms that expired over ten years ago in wrappers that have become brittle with age. The refrigerator contains collections of condiment packages and overly ripe fruit which Mom Mom adds to her and Pop Pop's oatmeal.  She has a sewing room full of yellowing rolls of taffeta, crinoline, and lace that she uses to make her square-dancing costumes.  On the shelves, there are all kinds of wigs on styrofoam dummy heads adorned with fake birds - an aviary frozen in time.  When we ask her about the fake birds, she tells us it was once the style to wear them in your hair, and pins one to her own coif and smiles demurely as if this is the most attractive thing in the world. There are rows and rows of romance novels with long haired men pinning down fair maidens who pretend to get away.  I regularly sneak up to her bedroom where there is a dresser laden with dazzling costume jewelry.  It is nothing short of a treasure chest as far as I am concerned, and I open up the drawers one by one marveling at the glittering baubles and the occasional piece of racy lingerie which makes me wince. In the sunny living room, furniture is covered in plastic which only comes off when Mom mom and Pop Pop have one of their many parties - these are like a Far Side parade; seniors showing up from every corner of the east coast to gamble, drink, and tell dirty jokes.  On the mantle, there is an oversized goblet the size of a volleyball that holds little pieces of paper. When we ask her what the goblet holds, she explains that these are the obituaries of her dead friends, and we assume our forlorn expressions and weightily consider the contents of the glass vessel which stands beside a plastic Hula girl dashboard doll.  The smiling dancer wobbles mechanically when I nudge it with my finger. 

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    There is a new girl in my class, and her name is Amelia.  I meet her for the first time in study hall where she is assigned to my table with the Darlene and Sharlene, the headbangers.   She has pale blue eyes, blackish hair composed in an ice cream swirl on the side of her head, and gaps between her teeth.  She is hands down, the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life, and I am flattered when she attaches herself to me for the next few weeks.   Her family has just moved from California, and she doesn't know a single soul at the school. Since she has no ideas of her own about what to do for fun, she willingly accompanies me on my own exploits which involves roaming the abandoned train tracks a few yards passed the football fields which are the outer limits of the school property.  It doesn't take long, however, before Amelia is absorbed into the highest social echelon, formerly composed of only two members, Ashley Greenfield and Heather Purtuit because they are that exclusive.  Amelia becomes their third official member, and from that point on is always flanked by one or both, but still sits with me and the headbangers at study hall.

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    I have started visiting Anna Gregor's house a few times a week. However, I usually go before Anna gets home from her assorted extracurricular activities, because I go to spend time with her father, an accomplished Czechoslovakian oil painter.  We struck up a friendship when he discovered my interest in drawing, and offered to teach me how to paint with oils. Today, we work from a photograph of my mom, who is wearing a floral nightgown and has her chin resting on her hand beside a bouquet of flowers. Mr. Gregor teaches me to mix Prussian Blue with Burnt Sienna, and to create the underpainting with a wash of these colors and turpentine. This stage of the painting is exciting, as something comes from nothing, like magic. He teaches me how to mix flesh tone from different colors and how to build the painting from skinny to fat, which is when you gradually use more linseed oil and less turpentine.  This way, the painting will be developed in translucent layers which will create depth, and also be structurally resistant to cracking.  Mr. Gregor's wife is home, but we are left alone for hours at a time which pass like minutes as we get lost in the work. He paints effortlessly and silently and I stop my work occasionally to observe.  The walls of his studio are covered in landscapes, portraits, and several nudes.  There is one nude that sits just above the studio door which holds my attention.  She is painted in the same painterly strokes as Mr. Gregor's other paintings, but she has a distinguishing plastic look about her - maybe it is her pose which seems stiff, as she presents her body as if it is there for the taking and she stares out of the painting with a disconcerting seriousness.  I ask Mr. Gregor about the girl in the painting, and he says it is just one of his models. By now, I have learned about Picasso and his models, and have decided that the forbidden thing that goes on between an artist and his model is something that I find of great interest. Then I look at Mr. Gregor with his kind deeply creased face and wonder what he was like as a much younger man.

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     I have a new friend.  Her name is Regina Breaux and she is an underwear model.  She is very tall and thin, and has an enormous nose, which is why she only models underwear.   I met her in our remedial algebra class.  At first, I am annoyed by her interest in passing notes, because I am sure that if I can figure out how to focus, I can be in a regular math class.  However, she wins me over when she falls all over herself when she sees my graffiti lettering.  I have not learned yet about flatterers and am easily won over and unfortunately suggestible. One day, after eating at McDonalds, she shows me how to make myself throw up, and we purge ourselves of our respective lunches. 

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    We wake up one morning to the sound of Mom screaming.  We go running into her bedroom and Fred is passed out on the bed while Mom frantically dials 911.  Fred has diabetes, along with an assortment of other health problems, and has gone into shock - his long body taught and retching . We watch in our own state of shock as an ambulance pulls into the driveway and several big men roll a gurney through the front door and down the hallway, and into the bedroom.  They take Fred away, but when he comes back later in the day, he is all smiles and far as he and Mom are concerned, it is like nothing at all happened. 

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     I hate the way I look with the braces, and my clothing sits weird on my wide hips, and my face is always full of zits. I spend lots of time in front of the mirror staring at myself and wondering what it will be like some day when the braces are off, the fat is gone, and the acne has cleared up.  I make myself puke so much that I get nose bleeds. I lean over the toilet and let the blood fall out of my nose and watch the toilet water turn red.

Supermoon 1988-1989

   

     It is the Summer before Freshman year and I have been collecting discarded picture frames. They have been rescued from the bowels of our garage and various local middens. They are empty and beat up and I hang them from the drop ceiling in my new bedroom in the basement, suspending empty cans of Coke in their middles with fishing string I found in the garage.  A magazine called Adbusters referred to soft drinks as “mouth-coating syrupy sludge” - a statement which fueled the installation along with my disdain for waste, and deep suspicion of the advertising machine with its glorification of products with names like “Comet” and “Dawn”.  A few days later, I come down to my room to find them all removed. Mom has taken them down and thrown them away. “Frames do not belong on the ceiling.” she says.

  Mom has brought me to Wannamakers for school clothing.  The Guess and Esprit I choose are not on sale, and Mom hems and haws when she looks at the price tags and makes hurumphing noises as she pays.   Since I have worn only uniforms for the last 8 years, I am both excited and confused by the prospect of personal presentation.  The latest fashions are not flattering to my shape, as is nothing, as far as I am concerned.  Mom concedes to the sticker shock in an effort to appease my resentment over having short legs and wide hips. When we arrive home, I sequester myself down in my bedroom, trying on the two outfits in front of a full-length mirror. The way they hang on me looks nothing like the way they do on the emaciated mannequins at Wannamaker's. In a fit of desperation, I alter them in a way that involves scissors. It is not long before Mom discovers my handiwork, and she flies into an uncontrollable rage. The damage is done and all I can do is let her exasperation fizzle out into soundless red-faced hateful fuming.

Christina Martucci, my only friend from St. Peter Celestine, invites me out with some public school girls from her neighborhood. This is my tryout with the “in” crowd. I do not know it is a tryout until Christina tells me on the first day of class that I did not get in, which was when she took her place beside the wealthy elite. I do not know it yet, but she has an eating disorder, and will go on to sleep with most of the wrestling and football teams.

I am in my homeroom class at Cherry Hill West.  When I sit down at my desk, the other kids talk to each other while I work on the shading the graffiti letters on my textbook, mainly because I do not know anyone.  Someone passes me a note, and it says, “if you fuck me, I will be your boyfriend”.  It is from Mike Levitz, and when I look at him, he laughs and the other boys laugh with him.  I put the note inside my book and pretend nothing happened.  I do not know it yet, but he will create a video that pairs "On the Turning Away" by Pink Floyd to slow-motion footage of children playing, couples in love, and old people playing cards. It is stunningly lovely and it will make me wonder how ugly people can make beautiful things.

I am in Earth Sciences class with Heather Gallagher, my former best friend by default from Saint Peter Celestine. I notice one of the other kids put a piece of gum on her chair before she sits down.  I tell her to wait before sitting, and I remove the gum and say flatly to the girl who put it there, to leave her alone.  Heather falls all over herself thanking me and I tell her it's no big deal, and I feel triumphant and powerful for taking a stand on her behalf.    

It's Saturday and my mom is driving to the hardware store. She is playing Easy 101, and I ask her why she always listens to the same music. “Because I like it” she says. “But they are all love songs.” I say. “Well, I like love songs.” she says. At the hardware store, she gets advice from the friendly salesmen about plumbing, because the toilet in the basement has been backing up. I can tell that she really enjoys these visits to the hardware store. My brother, sister, and I entertain ourselves with machetes and plungers a few aisles over.

I have, very much to my utter consternation, made it onto the cheerleading squad. This makes no kind of sense due to my lack of physical coordination and antipathy regarding sports. I actually hate football but am tight lipped about this as I am introduced to Tiffany D'Amico, the captain. She congratulates me, and gives me a uniform to wear every Tuesday and Thursday. I adopt the latest hair style which is to hair spray your bangs high and stiff into the air, like cliffs. I am determined to be full of pep, like the Eagles cheerleaders on TV. I apply myself with great zeal, and learn the chants, one by one.  Go! Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!!

I have registered for an art class. The teacher's name is Thelma Beer. She speaks in half-finished sentences that trail off in mumbles. She regards my cheerleading persona and hyperactive energy level with unhidden dismay.  There are three juniors in my class. Two of them are just like Allie Sheedie and Emelio Estvez in Breakfast club and I think they are the coolest people I have ever met in real life. The third junior’s name is Eric Shellac and he is quiet, brooding, with dark circles under his eyes. He sits alone in the back of the room. He is chagrined when I plant myself next to him and stare, bewitched, at his pencil drawing of a skillfully foreshortened ogre sleeping in a cave. He does not hide his irritation, but I am not dissuaded, and remain his neighbor.

     My brother and his three best friends always travel home in a pack, trailed by our little sister who is kind of like a little feather that drifts along in our direction. The three friends often come back to our  house, which has no meddlesome parents around and we are free to entertain ourselves in any sort of way.  We are in the garage and see that a brand new ladder has appeared on the wall, probably one of Fred's things which have started appearing all over the house.  After considering the ladder's possibilities, there is a joint decision to climb up to the roof. I go up first, then Patrick Pryor, then my brother, who for some reason has carried with him a dozen eggs, my sister who fumbles blindly up the ladder because her glasses have fallen off somewhere, and finally Andrew Svekla and Chris Rossini.  When we are all up admiring the view of the neighboring roofs, the well-manicured lawns, and the whisper quiet serenity of John's road, Chris Rossini fishes out and entire six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon from his back pack, and pops one open, and empties it down his throat. I scoff at him over my shoulder, and we then commence to throwing eggs down to the street, making a competition of who can throw the farthest.  I think I have won when my egg sails past John McNulty's driveway, but Chris Rossini steals my thunder as his egg careens all the way to Lonnie The Invalid's front doorstep. We see a curtain move in her window, but before we can get down the ladder to clean up the random egg puddles, a police car whips around the corner and into our driveway, and to our utter horror, two uniformed officers amble over to the foot of the ladder.  

    "Hello kids," one of them says. 

     We weakly wave. "Hello officer" we say, as we have been taught.

     "Do you know why we are here?"

    "Because we are on the roof?" 

    "Yes. what else?"  

    We think that if we say nothing about the eggs that it will be overlooked.  What else? They ask again.  

    "Because we are drinking beer? Patrick offers.  

    We are made to get down from the roof and clean up the eggs, and the policemen tell us that we should be good kids and spend our time after school doing homework instead of throwing eggs at the neighbors’ houses. 

Mom has joined Matchmakers International.  She goes on one date which leaves her discouraged, so when the second man calls, she hides in her room while I try to put him off.  He draws me into conversation about photography and I convince her to go out to dinner with him.

I have won a Summer Art Scholarship to Tyler College of Art in Philadelphia.  I am lucky, because one of the other mothers agreed to drive me both ways, every Saturday throughout the Summer.  Class takes place just a short distance from the Philadelphia Art Museum, and we always draw outside by Eakins Oval, which is studded with an  impressive monument of Thomas Eakins. There is life everywhere. The Rodin Museum is halfway along the grand promenade to the museum entrance, and we stop to admire the The Burghers of Calais (1884–95), and our teacher tells us about Camille Claudel, Rodin’s assistant and mistress, who worked on the hands and feet of the unfortunate Burghers.  Rodin is fascinating, but I cannot wait to get to the arms and armor wing of the Philadelphia Art Museum, where I sit on the museum floor for hours drawing the mechanical reptilian forms and lustery patinas of the medieval armor.  

My brother and his friends have found a mannequin, and they bring it down to the blueroom as a gift for me. I delight in making plans for the mannequin, but before I can bedeckle it in any sort of way, my mom removes it from the blueroom. “Mannequins do not belong in bedrooms,” my mom tells me.

Megan McCloskey gives me a picture of herself from high school when I run into her at the mall.  She is now a tall beauty.  Her wispy dishwater-color hair is now white gold ringlets that spill down her back, and she is has filled out just enough to be womanly.  She tells me that she smokes pot now, which is confusing to me because I thought all the bad kids went to public school, and she goes to Catholic High School.  We go our separate ways for good.

    Mom and Fred have gone on two dates. He shows up one day with a gift for me. It is a Pentax 1000 camera, due to our first conversation on the phone. I set the camera up on a tripod and take pictures of myself nude, as I have been unsuccessful in getting my sister to pose nude for me.  I shoot a whole roll of film, but when I get the pictures back, they are fuzzy and lack detail, so I throw them away. A few days later, a neighborhood dog gets into our trash, and there are pictures of my nude body all over the sidewalk. My mom finds them and becomes...unglued.

     I am smitten by Philadelphia. I cut school and take the high-speed line to Center Station and walk to the museum. I stop on the way to talk to homeless people. Because I live in the suburbs, they are new to me, and I find their stories fascinating. I walk along the promenade and stop by the Bergers and think about Camile Claudel and working on their big hands and feet, before making my way to the shining armor inside the museum.

     I am in art class sitting next to Eric Shellac, whose level of distain for me has spiked, due to the cheerleading outfit. When I open my sketchbook and he sees my drawings of armor, shields, and swords, he warms to me and tells me about his interest in Dungeons and Dragons, which is where he gets the ogres that fill his own sketchbook. 

    Even though Mom and Fred have only been going out for 5 months, Fred proposes and she accepts.  They get married at St Peter Celestine Church and she is wearing a gold and lace dress with  matching veil.  The officiant opens his sermon by invoking the song, What's Love Got to Do with It, by Tina Turner.  He asks, “What does Love have to do with it?” After the wedding, we are all giddy with joy, and we all have the Little Princess feeling, because mom has found great love and we have never seen her so happy.  

Fred’s family is over for dinner.  They are all plump and unkempt and Fred’s daughter changes her baby’s diaper on the living room floor, leaving the dirty diapers there for us to deal with. My mom fumes about this later on and tells us this is “totally unacceptable”.  Everything about their marriage seems forced and we squirm under the weight of it.

     Eric Shellac from my art class, offers gives me a ride home from school because its raining.  The thrashing windshield wipers match his angst as he stares past the steering wheel. He is brooding more than usual and when I press him gently, he cries out that he is gay.  “Gay! I’m GAY!!” Twunk… thwunk….thwunk. I am speechless because I have never met a gay person before.   He is full of torment as he searches me for answers that I do not have.