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.