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.
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