Greek Tragedyhi

birthday by the bushel and a peck

As a child from Long Island, NY a quick trip to the Jericho Cider Mill was never quick. On Route 106, it's one of those seasonal places with cars strung up against the shoulder, lines of patrons winding through a maze of apple butters, pumpkins, and baked loaves of sticky breads tucked away in clear plastic bags rigged with ribbons and tacked with scalloped stickers. Back then it seemed all its goods were showcased on its deep-sloping lawn like a woman outfitted in a new day dress with even newer bazooms. With nothing to hide, the Mill seemed to lay it all bare, exposing its many apples in their individual crates, each with its unique description*, distinguishing the tart from the sweet, a good eating apple (Macoun, Gala, and sorry, but Red Delicious are anything BUT) from an applesaucey tartlet (hello, Fuji), and an apple built mostly for its composure under heat (Idareds hold their shape; and no one can resist a Honeycrisp--no one). But what consumed me most was beyond the stacked confections, side by side, pie to pie.

Even more than their apple turnovers, I always looked forward to inching our way up to the checkout counter. Inside the storefront, pent up behind refrigerator doors, were gallons and half-gallons of their clouded liquigold--a murky brown juice, so tart and crisp, I salivated in the waiting. I liked to gulp it cold, until my stomach had no more room. One cup was never enough, and that first go at it couldn't be a taste. I had to finish it, right then. Without stopping. Even if some were to drip down my face. Even if the person behind me was impatient, leaning over me, extending a folded bill. I couldn't walk and drink. I had to stand still and deal with it--with the respect it deserved. It's the only way to do cider. Cold. Gulped. Tang at the top of your palette, a snap. And, damn, do I miss it.

Those days where the lawn seemed large, where the driveways seemed immense, where everything seemed bigger, and home always felt like socks warmed on a radiator. Not so young that peanut butter smeared on an apple passed as a fun snack, but young enough not to know what it's like to miss. Young enough where you don't know any differently, where life feels like it will always be lived in the walls of your house. When you think that room of yours will always be yours. Where home life consists of your mother dragging you through her errands, getting a lollipop from the man at the dry cleaners, a sticker from the lady at the bank. You hold your nose when your mother forces you to accompany her into the seafood store for a pound of flounder and some raw deveined shrimp. Your father clunks his way up the stairs in his heavy leather shoes, briefcase in hand, the one you always saw on his bed, with that yellow legal pad, a place for a pen, but the calculator was on his desk. You liked those golden little dials, the combination on the outside. Your favorite part was pushing those little chicklet buttons, watching the clasps fly open. It was the closest you came to a trap door. Those days were spent fighting your sister for your parents' attention after a day filled with school bells, hallways, cafeteria ladies, and bus stops.

There's so much strung up in such a simple memory of a quick stop at a mill with your mom. Thanks Mom and Dad for the 33 years you've given me. 

* As a side note: I can't help but also think of vanilla in this way: Madagascar Vanilla can arm wrestle all the rest, boasting brightly in ice creams, but paired with its brainy sister Indonesian Vanilla is better suited for baking since it can withstand high temperatures. I LOVE LEARNING THIS SHIT. It's always worth the trouble to me, even if I'm the only one who knows. For texture, I also blend cake and bread flours when I make chocolate chip cookies. Psycho? Just a wee bit.

mommy

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Thank you for going with me when he wouldn't.
For letting me be the over-the-top ham that I can be sometimes.
For driving me to drama class and sitting through every last swim practice.
For teaching me how to dress. Ahem.
For putting my hair in rag curls and playing beauty parlor with Lea and me.
For giving me a sister, even though, after the nightmare that was me, you didn't want any more babies.
For wrapping my presents with all-different loud wrapping papers, so each one looked as if it was sent by a different friend or elf.
For throwing birthday parties for me, lighting all the candles, and always encouraging me to sing.
For driving when the other mothers wouldn't, for helping me with all the school projects that involved food, especially when you taught me how to make fried spring rolls!
Thank you for letting me crawl into bed with you. Just hearing you breathe made me feel better.
Thank you for being mine. I love you Mommy.

Just before I read to my children I announce that it's story time and match the words up to the sign language. Now I can simply do the sign, and they dart to the book shelf and look up, waiting. "Are You My Mother?" is a small book I've been reading to them over and over lately. A baby bird is born, and his mother is off finding some food. The baby bird wants to find his mother. "Are you my mother?" he asks a kitten. I meow until Abigail meows back. I cluck like a hen, then moo like the "vaca." I say all the animals in both Spanish and English, following with the sounds the animals make. I've even learned to do an enviable elephant. I come to a page where the baby bird is convinced his mother is a scary "snort" (a bulldozer-like crane). Just as I'm about to snort, Lucas comes over and begins to snort, just like a little round pigglet. Abigail stares. He snorts again. I snort. Abigail giggles. Then she runs away. She races back for the very last page, scooting her way into my lap.

"I" I whisper to them both, "am YOUR mother."

stealing time

I'm never the first one asleep. I don't sleep on planes, or anywhere it would be convenient, and favorable for all, to shed a little bit of my anxiety. I realize people who nap are healthier, that they live longer, but I wasn't built with this ability. I suppose if I suddenly found myself in the armed forces, I'd find a way to sleep, to get it while I could. I hear that's how people can become good nappers: when they're completely deprived of sleep. It becomes a necessity. They become so deft that they can even sleep with their eyes open--something I don't entirely believe is possible. Doctors are great nappers. The Wasband could fall asleep anywhere, even in someone else's bed. Budumpbump. Even being that cheeky doesn't tucker me out. Alcohol might slow me down, but I've never passed out.

Some people have stories their parents still tell, stories about how, as a child, they fell asleep at the dinner table, their head, face first, into a bowl of spaghetti. I'm not one of these people. I always resisted sleep, thinking I was missing out on the big moments. I could hear the company downstairs, my father's laugh, and I could picture his whole head turning red. I hated the idea of missing a second of the living.

When I do fall asleep, it's always on my stomach, with one leg knocked out. I imagine beds of my past, trying to comfort myself, to leave all the things in my life now and return to a time when there was company downstairs and voices that carried. When I fell asleep in high school, I was boy crazy and dating, so at night, as I willed myself to sleep, if a car whizzed by the house, I always imagined it might be that boy, maybe after a fight we'd had over the phone, the one where I felt he was too quiet, where I asked if he really loved me and it took him too long to answer. I was impossible, and frankly, I still am. Still, I imagined that he couldn't resist driving to my house, to throw a pebble at my window, the way it's done in John Hughes films. I'd dart up, and peek through my blinds, hoping to see a car in our driveway. There never was. Then I'd switch sides--still on my stomach, but now the other leg kicked out--and wish my house was like Doogie Howser's, with an accessible roof and a window that swung open. Even if I had the window and the house, I remember thinking, it's not like anyone would use it. But by morning, I'd forget things like that and apply my blue eyeliner and tease my bangs, hopeful that today would be the day where my whole life changed.

Now when I'm trying to sleep, I think of my days and try to will the stress away, try to tell myself that I'll be loved no matter how my book does, that I'm okay just as I am, that everything that frightens me is really irrational, that I'll see in time. And none of this self talk helps. Then baby songs infiltrate, "let's all click our sticks today." I change positions again. And I know I'll never stop worrying if I've made the right decisions with my life, with my words, and with my choices, and I wonder if really I'm any different than the girl in her parents' house who keeps hoping someone will drive up and rescue her.

80s slang

I don't know why but my cousin Damien always used to shout "stem!" whenever I did something dumb. Or if I tripped, came in last place, or hit the tennis ball over the fence. I did a search for "80s slang" and nothing came up. Really, there aren't enough resources out there for good 80s slang. Terms pulled from Fresh Prince songs or something. It's all Bart Simpson stuff. But I don't remember the 80s in terms of not having a cow, man.

Frickin' A, is still a term I use, despite having no actual fondness for it. It's just managed to work its way in there. For some reason I keep thinking of this kid named Grimace from fat camp who used to "churn butter" every time "The Humpty Dance" played over the loud speaker.Though that happened in the early 90s, not the Max Headrom 80s. At flagpole lineups they'd play it, and he'd perform, kids clapping. He had the body of a clown, just naturally. He even walked as if he was wearing those ridiculous clown shoes. He kept a pick in his back pocket, despite being white and having a shorn head. I don't know that his given names was Grimace, but that's what kids called him. He didn't seem to mind. Actually, his real name was Tony. It just came to me. It's fun remembering.

But it's so odd there's no proper slang bin. Urbandictionary is dreck. I also believe a lot of it was regional. "Wicked bad" was something kids from Boston said, but not so much the kids in New York. Also when people say "the 80s" I think they forget that's an entire decade, filled with ten individual years. They took me from 867-5309 to "Girl you know it's true." From Garbage Pail kids and plastic charm bracelets and Lisa Frank stickers, to fluorescent tube socks and rubber bracelets. But the words, I wish I could get them all right. Do you remember any? It would be a help.

The stuff I remember:

Radical. Totally rad. And just plain "rad."
Go suck an egg.
Sit on it, and rotate (while flipping someone the bird)
No duh.
I'm going to totally rank her out.

hello twelve, hello thirteen, hello love

I was twelve when I drew this in my diary. I kinda hate that the vagina was the nastiest thing I could think to draw to represent a girl I both loved and hated. Though, to be fair, other pages are drawings of fat penises. Because that's what twelve year old girls do. We keep it simple, then make every simple thing our undoing. Oh, the drama.

We made conference calls but just had one girl listen in, then we provoked the other girl, trying to get her to say something mean about the girl listening in. Then we'd catch her. Double teaming. Moose is written from this place in my life. And I'm so thankful I've saved these diaries, reminders for when my own kids are going through puberty.Everything really is a big deal, and homework, phone calls, and friends become your whole life. I think it would have been helpful if my parents forced me out of me. If at that age they had us all volunteer as a family, working together at a homeless shelter, as I did once I was in high school, I think I might have been able to get some perspective. It's something I'll keep in mind when my kids slam their doors and refuse to go to school.

eldercation

As much of a wet-nap as my neighbor Janene was when playing Monkey In The Middle, beggars can't be choosers.  The older girls across the street didn't want to play with me.  When we'd first moved into our house, I was told there were girls my age who lived across the street. I didn't know their names, or that they were two years older, or that it would even matter that they were two years older, so I stood in our front yard and yelled in a sing-song voice, "New neighbors, new neighbors, come out and play!"  But they didn't.  It wasn't because my lungs were underdeveloped.  They'd heard me just fine.  In fact, they'd sometimes peep their heads out from behind their screen doors and repeat the chant back to me in an exaggerated whine.  "New neighbor, new neighbor...no."  Then the sound of their front doors slamming.

So we had each other, Janene and I, and in all of two days, we'd forgotten what had come to pass earlier in the week.  We were like middle-aged men that way.  I'd sometimes go to Janene's house, six houses down the block from mine, and we'd visit her neighbor, an elderly woman with breasts that hung like ferrets.  Her neighbor--who incidentally was also my neighbor, though to this day, I've never considered her so--had thick slices of glass for spectacles, and when she spoke, I'd sometimes be in a position to see through them, a warped disproportionate world.  I'd only ever been invited inside her kitchen, which smelled not of a restorative chicken broth, but of cat.  I didn't know if it was cat piss, or breath, or litter I smelled, but I knew, for certain, it was a cat house.  Or a guinea pig.  I couldn't be sure.  Still, no one but school-aged children borrowing from their kindergarten class had a guinea pig.  Maybe she had a caged rabbit somewhere.  I couldn't be sure. 

She served us Coca-Cola from a glass bottle and mixed it with whole milk.  I leaned my cheek against the cool plastic place mat as I watched the contents of my glass, the meeting of two sides. It was a cloudy mix of black and white mingling as if a wave had just crashed and the currents were sorting things out.  Who belonged where.   No, you, you there, you go up there.  That's it.  I imagined each bubble resisting the milky enzymes, rising to the top in struggle.  And she wanted me to drink this?  Milk?!  It even sounded thick.  It's why I called milk "blulka" as an infant. 

I remember wincing when the concoction was offered, telling Janene privately, "that's so grossatating" in a very hushed tone, fearing I'd hurt the old woman's feelings.  Just the same, I accepted the woman's offer with a smile, despite her need to pat at my head.  Why did Janene suggest coming here? I wondered. Couldn't we run now and go play Register at my house?  But I just sat there, at the kitchen table of an elderly neighbor, holding my cola gumbo, straining to get a glimpse of a cat she claimed not to have. 

"Do you like your drink, dears?"
I nodded as if I were auditioning for a Jell-O commercial.  Considering my tendency to be a bit of a ham, I suppose I even licked my lips. She seemed so pleased, as if she'd just hailed us the moon.  I couldn't imagine refusing her. It was bad enough that she didn't have any grass in her yard, which is not, incidentally, a euphemism. 

She called the front of her house, her "garden."  Which is just creepy when said by an old woman.  Mystical, perhaps, if there were a trellis and actual leaves.  Foliage.  A decorative bench, some bird feed, pansies, and shrubs.  Herbs, even.  Perhaps a gaudy statue with overbalanced testicles holding a watering can while flexing.  But it's downright creepy when your garden consists of cement. "Rock" and "Garden" really shouldn't be permitted to mingle.

And in the remembering, it now comes to mind that it was Janene's plan all along.  She liked to visit with this neighbor because she offered her cola and milk.  This was the lure for her.  It wasn't a necessary task, an insistence from her own mother to visit with the elderly as a good deed.  A chore that needed to be crossed off a list.  It was probably done in spite of her mother's insistence that she keep the hell away from the lady with the rocks in her head and yard. And it just goes to show, there's no accounting for taste, or the friends we choose to keep.

monkey in the middle

Only in second grade, I wasn't permitted to use adult scissors, so I improvised with a pair of safety scissors, the small sort with padded grips and a rounded wide tip stored beside my construction paper and rubber cement.  I gathered a tight handful of all her bangs and began to clip away.  I couldn't accomplish the task in one swift motion as I'd thought.  So I hacked away, standing on my tippy-toes, putting some elbow grease into it, a furled tongue and a stitched brow.  "There," I said quite pleased that I'd made it all the way through.  And we both stared at her reflection in the mirror, then back down at the wad of hair in the palm of my hand, each of us nodding silently.  Job well done.  This was Janene Jaeger, the neighbor whose bangs I cut off, so close to her skull that the remaining hair looked like a mustache for her forehead.

Earlier that week we were playing Monkey in The Middle with my mother.  I guess we didn't have a third child to join us at that age. The object of the game, everyone knew, was to keep whatever object you happened to have away from the clutches of the designated "monkey."  We were cliche and used a ball.  Who's really going to fight you for a ball?  A kickball at that.  And we wouldn't even be kicking it.  It would be an underhanded toss, the kind where you crouch down low, as if you're bowling with two hands, then use your upward momentum to fling it high into the air, watching it brush the leaves of an old Maple tree.  It was as if we were playing SPUD.

My mother and Janene tossed the ball using both hands outstretched above their heads.  After watching for a while, I lunged forward, stepping in front of Janene at the last moment, snatching the ball away.  "Your turn!" I cheered, happy I was no longer stuck in the middle. After several rounds of a breezy game of catch with my mother, Janene stormed off, taking large deliberate steps, huffing, her hands balled into fists.  My mother and I stood for a moment, wondering if that'd just happened.  Did she just leave? Who does that?

"What a sore loser," my mother said.  It was the first time I'd heard the term, and it didn't need further explanation.  I knew exactly what she meant.  Janene was a sore loser, which I later learned was synonymous with a spoilsport.  A word I loved to repeat while running around the house and crawling beneath the dining room table. 

"Stephanie, it's time for dinner," my mother would call out. 

"SPOILSPORT. SPOILSPORT. SPOILSPORT." 

"No, we're having shrimp."

"Don't be such a SORE LOSER!"  I'd shout, getting close to my mother's face, reenacting our afternoon.  "You big SPOILSPORT!"  I was delighted with my new words.  And I kind of like the fact that my mother felt completely at ease calling my friends names behind their backs.  It's kind of awesome in a "you're not setting a good example" way.  And those are my favorite memories, the ones where my mother was just being herself.  Where she didn't concern herself with following rules.  I love that I didn't have an uptight neurotic mother who did everything just so.  I'm totally going to do a handful of things "wrong," and I can't wait, even if it makes monkeys out of my kids once they reach middle school, or middle age.

fat bitch

“Because when you’re a fat kid like I was,” can take you just so far.  You can only grip onto that excuse for so long before it becomes trite.  Yes, poor you, poor over-privileged, over-fed, upper-middle everything girl.  It’s time to stop clinging to that shit as your identity.  It’s not who you are anymore.  God, there’s way worse out there.  Just get the fuck over yourself.  Then I took a step away from the mirror and politely responded, “Eat me.”   

Yes, there are people starving in Africa, people missing their limbs, dying of terminal cancers, and I have the nerve to complain about the cellulite on my pasty white ass.  Why don't you just get over yourself, stop being so shallow, and realize there are a lot more things in life to worry about than your weight?

Sound accurate enough?  The ones asking don't want to hear the answer. Are there people out there with harrowing childhood memories filled with abuse and unspeakable stories?  Absolutely.  I'm not one of them.  I had two parents who loved me, provided for me.  I've been extremely fortunate and lucky, but it doesn't make my struggle any less real.  It temporarily puts things into perspective, sure, but the emotional issues don't dissolve upon the intellectual acknowledgment that it can always be worse.

three

Jaimee is one of my most delicious friends.  We worked together at Juno (now United Online / NetZero) for a while.  We sat in adjacent cubicles for some time, broken cubicles, with missing slats, so there was a makeshift window between us.  And although we sat beside each other, we'd still IM as others approached us.  "Shut up, pig face," I'd type as Merrit spoke to her.  The custodial staff wanted to fix our cubes, but we decided we liked our window.  We'd laugh, and I am just not a big laugher.  Some people laugh all the time, at everything.  I'm not one of those, but around Jaimee, I can become giddy and silly and laughy (it should be a word). 

She has deep beautiful dimples and is one of those forever friends, even though she lives on Long Island with her husband and two children, and I'm here in Texas, so far from her.  One night, while we were busy getting drunk at a company function, a popular song came over the piped-in restaurant music, and in my drunken state, to the same tune, I began to sing the very different lyrics of a camp song from the summer after forth grade.  Jaimee, to my surprise, began signing these same lyrics with me.  We were in shock, realizing we'd attended the same camp when we were so much younger.  She remembered me as "the experienced girl." 

A few years later, I was newly single, no longer working at Juno, and Jaimee had the life I wanted.  The husband.  The baby.  The house.  I was busy dating and drinking.  She was busy feeding her family.  We didn't grow apart.  There was just less time.  She recounted her days at the park, meeting other mothers, and she mentioned to me that she ran into an old friend of mine, Lauren. I didn't know how it came to be said that we were once friends, but I was naturally inquisitive.  I wanted to know everything about Lauren's new life.  She married the man I introduced her to.  I always thought I'd have been at the wedding, even though we stopped speaking for way too much time to ever be there.  I introduced her to the father of her children. 

Lauren was a drift friend, the kind for no real reason, just left.  Plans became more sparse.  Both of us just stopped putting in as much effort.  My husband at the time didn't like her to-be husband as much as his friend James, who also had dated Lauren.  So when plans were being devised, Gabe always ducked out of couples night.  And we somehow ducked out of our friendship.

I ran into her on the street and there were no promises of pretend phone calls that would never be made.  But it was a long time ago, and I still think of her.  When Jaimee told me about Lauren, I told Jaimee that Lauren reminded me of her.  Jaimee didn't understand.  "We're nothing alike," she insisted.  "Well maybe it's your laugh," I said, struggling in my own mind with what common connection they had to me.  And I realize it now.  It's the absolute beauty I saw in each of them.  I fell in love with their ways, the way they told me stories, or sighed.  They're both simple girls who were, and continue to be, extraordinary to me.

one

Actually less pathetic than ex-boyfriends are ex-friends.  I have four.  One dating as far back as high school, who for her own reasons, decided to sever our friendship.  It wasn’t a subtle phase out, like outgrowing a bad hair-style.  It was a decision, like butchering off all your hair in a frustrated fit.   One day she just took our friendship away without consulting me.  So without explanation, I was left to draw my own.  I think it had to do with my consistently putting a mistake of a boy (a high school boyfriend with an unforgivable temper) before our friendship.  Yes, I was one of those.  Was.  I was seventeen; I was allowed.  I apologized, but it was too late.

It might have had to do with the fact that I told our school guidance counselor I was worried about her (and her pot consumption).  Yes, that’s right.  She ate pot.  Actually, I don’t think she was up to making cookies yet.  I really was worried about her, and it was a cool enough counselor, that I knew she wouldn't get "in trouble."  It wasn't telling for tellings sake.  See, it wasn't drugs alone, but the fact that her mother was slowly losing her battle against breast cancer.  I thought she was trying to run from her life, but maybe she was only being a teenager.  I'll never know.

I was at that age, where certain friends choose how to run, and she choose parties and cool over her goody-goody, I won’t even try it!, friend.  Somehow, high school makes it hard to have both, and I imagine I'd have made it hard too.  Plans would be made, and I ultimately wouldn't be included.  I was the president of the science club.  I didn't smoke or drink.  And I don't remember if I was fat or not, but everyone still saw me as Moose.  So I wasn't exactly the person with whom you wanted to go to a party.  The truth, though, might be entirely different.  I never learned why my best friend of seven years stopped speaking with me. 

I google her sometimes and have heard scraps about her through other high school friends.  She’s married now.  Happy, I'm told.  When I found out, I searched online for her wedding registry and found it at Bloomingdale's.  I toyed with the idea of sending her something.  I didn't.  I liked seeing what her taste was, clicking through her life in objects, wondering if we'd still be friends.  I still miss her so much.

I have all the letters we wrote, over summers, notes we passed in school, right here actually, in my office, next to me, even as I write this.  Her hands made these things, and it's all I have of her now.  I'd spent so much time with her growing up (from about 5th grade to our fallout our senior year) that come Sundays when her mother liked to go to Costco along with an enormous Waldbaum's, I'd be handed my own envelope of coupons and was directed to collect the items inside.  I loved being such a part of their family.  There was also a period in our friendship when we tickled each other, and in resisting, I must have clawed her hands because I still have the drawing she did of her hands, with scabs, declaring I’d ruin her wedding day pictures, one day when she’d get married.  I always thought, without any lick of a doubt, that I’d be there, by her side.  And it still saddens me today, not knowing her, given how well I know her past.  How I knew her mother so well, who lost her battle with cancer after my first year of college.  I remember my father calling me to say he read it in the obituaries.  I stopped what I was doing and got on the Long Island Rail Road, just like that.  I was on my way to work, and I just turned around and got on a different train.  I didn't know how she'd react.  I didn't care.  I was going to be there for her, whether she liked it or not.  She’d stopped speaking to me two years earlier, but I didn’t care.  I showed up.  She was still my best friend.

In the whole, "whether she liked it or not" scenario, the not bit won out.  She wasn't cold or warm.  She was hosting shiva at her house, her mother's house, and we can't judge grief, so who knows how she really felt about anything.  I could tell, though, she didn’t want me there.  She was polite and said she was surprised, but it didn’t seem to be in a good way.  She had other things to think about.  Her mother had just died, and my wanting to "just help" didn’t matter. I never heard from her again.

I saw her, just before I moved out of Manhattan.  It was a weekday, and I had just seen a movie, by myself, in Murray Hill, near Phil's old apartment.  I was so excited to see her, asking tons of questions, admitting I heard she got married.  Asked what she was doing with her life, did she like it?  She hadn't changed at all, and really, looked beautiful, grown and mature.  She didn't ask me anything, not about my life, or my family.  There was no exchange of number or information.  She was cold, or maybe taken off guard.  And as I walked back to Phil's apartment, I felt a weight that hadn't been there before.  I missed the friend I used to have, who wouldn't be now, not the same.  I dream about her sometimes, starting up a friendship again, but like relationships with men, sometimes going back is going backwards.  She was a wonderful childhood friend, and I suppose it's all we were meant to be, because now, talking over the phone could never be the same as the nights we spent cutting images out of magazines, calling boys, writing notes, counting calories, we can't get that back to the same.  I do, though, have hope that I will make other friendships, along my way now, that are just as rich.

teach your children well

“Writing Your Autobiography” is an SWS course I took with Katy Roberts once upon my time at Wheatley.  It was 1993, my senior year, and along with the stress of college applications and SATs, I was going through a break-up.  Except this time, instead of a broken heart over a boy, I was learning the pains of growing apart from a dear friend.  In a word: drama.  In two words: girl drama, which is way worse.  Each week we were assigned the task of handing in a chapter of our lives, painting a picture of our most defining moments.  I struggled with which stories to write.  I was seventeen years old.  What did I have worthy of telling?  Apparently, quite a lot (MOOSE, my second memoir is all about my life as an adolescent).

“Just be honest,” Katy told me when I approached her in a whine, fretting over what to include. That night I went home and wrote about the schism with my best friend.  It was the first time I realized the power writing had, especially writing honestly.  “Cathartic, wasn’t it?”  Katy asked when she handed me back my paper.  “I knew you’d write about that eventually,” she said.  She knew, before I did, how much the split bothered me, and she knew my writing about it would help.  In the following weeks, I handed in more chapters of my life, exploring my fears of becoming my mother, disappointing my father, and my own hopes for the future.

“I’m scared that I’ll end up like her—a wife with no real paying job, two daughters, and no money that she can call her very own, no independence.  She plays golf and tennis, and Lea and I are her first concern.  There isn’t anything wrong with the lifestyle she chose, nothing at all, right?  So why am I frightened I might turn out the same way?  It scares me to think it.  I don’t want to depend on anyone financially, and I want a career.  I want to do something that makes me feel good inside.  I want to make a difference.”  (Taken from the chapter IN THE MIRROR from my Autobiography, age 17) 

Katy made me realize that writing about yourself, and those close to you, can be a rewarding endeavor.   I’m now a popular blogger, memoirist, and television screenwriter, where I write honestly about my life daily.  And it all began with Katy Roberts, in her classroom, looking to her for guidance.  She was the someone who encouraged me, insisting it was okay to put my life on paper without apology.  Katy Roberts is someone who gave me the confidence to be fearless. 

Katy was a teacher with whom I always felt a connection.  I didn’t have to come to her confiding big secrets with teenage tears.  Just day-to-day, it helped being around her.  Whether she was painting sets for the musical or grading grammar papers, it always felt warm and comforting by her side.  And I think that’s what we look for in our teachers, not just their ability to educate but to inspire.

researching like

Dear Dirty Di,
I met a gorgeous guy named Andrew at the arcade.  He was smiling at me.  I gave him my number, and he called me three times today.  He is fifteen, and he dresses preppy.  He has a deep voice, and I'm going out on a date with him tomorrow.  We are meeting at the mall.  When I see him, I'm going to give him a kiss.  I'm not going to be shy.  I'm going to put my arms around him.  I'm going to be very forward.  I'll grab him by the collar and give him a kiss!  I can't wait!  I'm so excited.  I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.
P.S. We're meeting at the mall at noon, and then we are going to the movies at 2:00 to see Sea of Love, which happens to be a movie with a lot of sex.  I better get a hickey!  He is soooo cute.
*
Andrew came over today, literally.  No one was home.  We were in my room, and he was kissing me really hard.  Then we got to second and sloppy second.  Then I went farther than I ever went before.  I gave him a handjob, and he gave me one, too.  What I mean is, he fingered me.  That's not nearly the bad part!  Then he ate me out!  Then he wanted me to give him a blowjob.  I said no!  Then he tried to FUCK me!  I said, and I quote, "No fucking way."  Then while I was giving him a handjob, he came all over me!  My neck and my chest and my chin and my hair.  It was sooooo disgusting!!  It was getting flung across my body!  Ewww!  Anyway, then we went downstairs to the "new room."  We kissed some more.  I got a few more hickeys, and then I walked him to the bus!  When I got home, I was doing my homework, then the doorbell rang.  It was Andy.  Turns out the bus didn't accept bills, so he called for a cab.  While we were waiting, he was kissing me.  Then he undid my pants, fingered me again, was about to eat me out, when the doorbell rang.  It was the cab driver.  We kissed long and hard, and he grabbed a tit.  He said he loved me, and then he left.  It was so vile.  I called him up later and told him I'd never done that before and thought we were going too fast.  He agreed and said that he wanted to see me on Friday night.  We are going to Laces Roller Rink.  I can't wait!  I got Billy Joel tickets! 
Love always,
Stephanie (The Experienced)

--October 1989, Age 14

I'm writing my second book, MOOSE, which means I've been spending a lot of time digging through camp letters and diary entries.  It's fun combing through it all, wondering what I'll use, what this says about that time in my life.  People seem to be amazed that I've kept it all.  I only wish I still had all the letters I wrote and mailed to friends back then, from camp.  I only have their letters, written to me, in response to what I'd sent them.  It's why people shouldn't bother writing letters.  Someone else ends up with a record of your life.   

I realize the things I wanted then, at twelve years old (that's when the entries start), aren't that different from what I want now.  The basic needs are the same, wanting to be liked. 

someone's in the nursery with Bina

Mondays were tennis days for my mother.  When it turned cooler, she took to the indoor courts at Glen Cove, Long Island.  This was back when I was too young to be left home alone, when I would only eat the heart of things, when homework assignments didn’t stretch beyond handing in a single page in a single subject.  Mondays meant Bina.

Bina was the official nanny of the tennis center, keeping rule and lock over the toy chest, the pretzels, and the apple juice.  There were two playpens, a small circular table with small wooden chairs, a petite bookcase filled with Berenstain Bears books, and chests of plastic toys.  A wooden dog with colorful plastic features, skipped along on a rope.  I remember wondering at what age did children find this kind of toy amusing? 

Each week I was in search of a fresh page amongst the tattered coloring books.   I wanted to eat the gold crayon.  Even now, I know that smell, the insides of curled crayon wrappers, smooth and delicate, like eyelashes. I remember thinking there was something sexually blunt and ugly about the naked crayons, the ones who’d been slipped from their skins, poked into the built-in sharpening hole.  Without their identifying names, they laid there bare, discarded and useless.  I didn’t want to touch them. I hoarded the silver, copper, and gold, rolling one beneath my forearm, tucking it away so no one else could use it.

This room of Bina’s was located in the basement, near a vending machine.  I remember looking up at the rows of packaged products, each tucked behind a metal lip.  If I dreamt back then, I’m sure it was sometimes of this vending machine and sometimes of orange soda.   

Most of the other kids there were Monday regulars, although sometimes we’d get a new kid, and my sister and I would pretend we were British.
“Oh, the chauffer Jeeves is outside with the limousine.”
“Which limousine, dearest?”
“The one with the pink satin seatbelts.”  We were in a Pink Ladies Grease phase. 
“Well, let’s just finish watching the Brady Bunch, then we’ll adjourn.”   
Our mother used that word, or someone did, and we learned to say it with a British accent, as if we were saying, “AddYawn” very quickly.

Bina smelled like grandmother-apartment. Mothballs, matzo balls, and packages of nylon stockings.  Hat boxes—if they had a smell, they smelled like Bina’s nursery.  She always wanted to braid my hair.  That meant sitting on her lap, which I was too big to do, and I hated how she'd want to brush my hair first.  Even then I knew you didn’t brush curly hair, ever.  One was to separate sections with fingers only.  Instead, I offered to broom up the carpet with her rolling broom, which was the most amusing toy in the place.  Pretzel crumbs, pencils and crayon shavings, became mine beneath the power of the rolling broom.  Lea and I used to bicker over who got to use it.   Bina called it “The Magic Wand.”  She was a clever woman, considering all that wirey hair she pinned to the top of her head, in a pile that resembled the insides of torn cigarettes.

If by chance, I had too much apple juice, I’d hold it in, squirming and antsy, determined to continue work on my coloring project. Bina would say things like, “You have ants in your pants today, don’t you?”
I wouldn’t be accused of being uncleanly.  “I most certainly do not.”
Bina tried to hold my hand, off to the little ladies room.  Her hands were thick, dotted, and yellow.  I imagined they smelled damp, like a sponge. They were meaty.  I didn’t like her name.  I hated holding hands with anyone, even my parents, or sister.  Except when I was sick.  It's the only time I let people touch me and craved affection.  I think I'm still this way.  Lea said I didn't love her because I wouldn't hold her hand or pet her head.  She craves it still today and complains that I don't hold her hand back.  "Like a fish," she says.  "Hold it," she instructs, pushing the tips of my fingers around her hand.  It's work, to me, showing affection for anyone, aside from Linus, who can't talk back, and never criticizes.  Only bites.  But never me.

thriller

“I just pilfered through his computer.”
“Uh oh.”
“I went searching for something I wouldn’t like.  I found photos of his past.”
“That’s what we always search for first.”
“Half-naked pictures of women he’s slept with.  Of course it made me feel like shit.”
“At least they’re pictures from his past, not the present.”
“Very true.  I can’t imagine.  Still, what’s wrong with me that I’d go looking for something that would upset me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you; every woman does that.”  No they don’t.  Do they? 

In 1983, I was in second grade, at Lori Kalka's house for a sleepover party.  I remember staying up later than I ever had before.  We all had brought our own sleeping bags and were folded into her carpeted basement, with bags of chips and cans of cheese between us.  We were staying awake to watch Michael Jackson’s Thriller video on MTV.  Lori's older sister Robin was there.  Robin was adopted, Lori said, but I later learned that really Lori was adopted.  Lori had silky blond hair that looked as if it belonged on a doll.  Kimberly Fillion, another girl in our class, had blond hair too, but that night when we were trying to give one another electric shocks by rubbing our feet, covered in socks, against the carpet, we all swore it looked green under the basement lights.  Lori had a projector television; it was the first I’d ever seen like it.  I think she also had two poodles, the big kind that needed proper grooming and seemed stuck up.  Kimberly had a Yorkshire terrier named Juju who she cradled like a baby and encouraged up her tee shirt, insisting the dog wanted milk from her “boobies.”  This is what I remember of Michael Jackson’s video.  I don't remember it being scary, only that I wanted it to be.  I was terrified that night but not from the video.  I was afraid I'd wet the bed, as I was still apt to do, and would continue to do for many years.  I don't know how my parents allowed me to sleep at other kid's homes. Didn't they ever fear a phone call in the middle of the night?

I find it fascinating the way we like to scare ourselves.  We sit in the dark and encourage group tales of ghosts and murders and cars with teens parking and men with hook hands scraping at windows.  We sit in dark theaters and watch movies about rings and getting lost in woods.  We set ourselves up, frightened, our hearts racing… why?

“It’s like we want to make ourselves feel.  It's the drama, the pulling of excitement out of the calm of our lives, like warped magicians, yanking white from the black."
"I was just going to say that."
"On the one hand, we’re completely insecure for looking in the first place.  And if the stuff we find (emails, letters, photos, texts, IMs) bothers us at all, then we're even more insecure.  Because we shouldn’t care, or we should at least be secure enough to know that it doesn’t mean anything, but how can it not bother us?  When you get to the point where you confidently shrug your shoulders, don't you worry that you don't even really love them anymore, or don't love them like a lover? I want to be the kind of woman who doesn’t give a shit, but for me, that probably means actually not giving a shit.”
"Everyone wants to be like that."

We strap ourselves into rides with metal bars pulled into our laps, and then climb the ticks of a roller coaster, waiting for the plummet.  It’s a build and release the same way a thriller movie is.  But what about when we create these “thrills” in our own lives?  We create drama to feel more alive.  I certainly do.  It has been a while since my alter psycho has been unleashed.  I’m much more secure now (thank God), but not all that long ago, I was a thrill-seeker in the worst way.  Far worse than the moonwalk.

"It's easy to type it into a neat little paragraph about how strong we are, whipping up perfectly rational statements about 'in the past.'  Please.  Not every day is fitted in my starched security button-downs.  Sometimes, I get sloppy, and my life becomes untucked.  The next day, it's better.  Still, I can't believe he was with some of those women.  They were really beautiful, and it made me feel bad about myself... like, why is he with me? I know deep down it's because of who I am, that I don't see me how others do, that I'm unique, and he's connected to me because of that...  But why does he keep his past?  Why do any of us?  They remind us of where we’ve been, sure, but why do we need the reminder?  We’ve all been with someone hotter.  Everyone has those stories, about the ridiculously hot one we slept with, or dated.  We’ve all had hotter than we’re with.  We don’t choose on looks alone, none of us. But why do we go searching and then let ourselves feel like shit when we stumble upon anything that might be a something?" 

To feel alive.

 

weighty

I hate when situations feel weighty. They make me want to eat. And I hate that my husband puts on movies like "The Fly" before we fall asleep at night, because then I cannot sleep at all. I am going to be sick.

grinch

Fireworks do nothing for me.  Never have.  Neither has the circus. 

When I was little, but not so little that I allowed my parents to dress me, our family loaded into my father's Cadillac and headed into Manhattan to see the circus.  I don't recall if my light up yo-yo or neon bouncy headband were purchased on the street or inside Madison Square Garden.  What I do recall is being more excited about the things being purchased, the things I could hold or wear, than I was about the circus.  A twinkle flashlight that looked like a sparkling bouquet of flower stems.  A puffy bag of cotton candy, which I liked the idea of, but not the taste.  I remember watching people tear a smear of it and hold it above their upper lip, a mock mustache.  I liked to watch people do this, I think, but I still didn't want to eat it.  It's the only thing, aside from tuna fish, mushrooms, or eggs, that I can recall not wanting to eat.  I didn't mind holding the bag though.  I felt like I belonged, maybe.  Once we found our seats, and me and my overalls settled in, I remember looking up at my mother, who seemed delighted.  "Mom," I said tugging on her sleeve, "when can we leave?"  It wasn't that I thought clowns were frightening or the animals were treated cruelly.  I couldn't stand the smell. 
"We just got here, Stephanie."
"Yeah, I've seen enough.  It stinks." 

When I got older, much older--we're talking college years here--I remember a bright-eyed suitor eager to take me to the circus for a date.  Some people think it's cute when you try to revisit childhood favorites as adults, like sitting through the mistake that is the movie Cars (which I actually asked to see!  It was Doc Hollywood with a lube job.)  Now of course there's the zoo (which isn't really a place just for children, but we do tend to go a lot more as kids) for a date, but I've already gone there), which I would have agreed to, but the circus?  Not for me.  It's the kind of thing that sounds better than it is, like New Years or fireworks on the fourth of July, or, well, ever.   

pubic liberty

Brassiere.  It sounded like a fish, usually grilled whole, served with pressed olive oil and pink, coarsely ground, sea salt, or at the very least, a place that served stellar French onion soup. But when someone leaned in and explained it was actually a bra, I began to panic. I was eleven.  I’d have sooner eaten fish than have anything to do with puberty.  To this day, I despise this word.  Not brassiere, but puberty: a cross between pubic and liberty. At the time, though, there's nothing liberating about it.  Change rarely feels good, even the good kind.

Aside from my fat jeans becoming too small, it’s the only time in my life where I remember being embarrassed about growing.  When I’ve suffered, in emotional pain, too anxious to sleep or talk about anything else, I at least realized I was growing by getting through it.  We do our most growing when we’re in pain.  So while it felt embarrassing not to be liked, or to be rejected, I still knew I could learn from it.  I would grow and become, somehow, more because of it.  A bra didn’t feel like more, even if there were more of me.

milk skin

I grew up eating hot bowls of farina, or cream of wheat, if there’s any difference.  A smooth white grain that held the dent of my spoon, thick, pooling with drizzled honey.  My mother made it for us, as we got ready for school.  “It’s ready,” she’d yell up to us from the kitchen, still in her robe, onto fixing bagged lunches of turkey sandwiches.  I waited for it to cool as I loaded up my knapsack.  I like the milk seal layer that formed.  The skin.  It’s my favorite part.  On rice and chocolate pudding, instructions tell you to cover with plastic wrap, pressed against the pudding to avoid the skin formation.  Why would anyone do this?   

Poached eggs do it too, when the yolk is broken, and once it pools onto the plate.  If I drag a bit of my everything-bagel through the yellow gloss, the egg skin sticks, leaving behind a new brighter coat. The skin of things reminds me of growing up.  Scabs, new skin, childhood wounds.  I’m reminded of all of it, as I sit here, at Guy & Gallard, taking in a steamy frothy bit of skim chai tea. It tastes exactly like cream of wheat.  Maybe it’s the honey my mother stirred into ours.  It tastes like home, like the seven AM mornings in the house where I grew up, before I had to run to catch the bus on the corner.  It’s nice to remember, growing up in a suburb with mittens and a mother who made us breakfast and packed our lunches.  It makes me feel warmer.  I’m thankful for these things.

And since people keep asking, yes, I saw this article today while drinking my chai.  And if you'd like to come see me read while you drink (wine), join me THURSDAY, March 30, 8 PM at the New York JCC FREE Lit' Cafe event.  I'll be reading, I think, passages from my memoir, or bits and pieces of the blog. 

tree style

My favorite time of year was when the ornament box came up from the basement.  Our tree was old-school.  Soldiers.  Mice.  Wooden toys.  Sleds.  Very Nutcracker makes out with Santa’s workshop. My sister Lea and I each had our favorite ornaments, housed in their pockets, wrapped in fine white tissue paper.  We didn’t care for the shiny balls or stinging of the lights; we left those tasks to our mother.  We favored the more expressive ornaments.  Lea liked the small skiers reserved for the top of the tree, while I liked the typewriter ornament best.  It looked copper, and I loved to press on it each year and pretend I was typing.  When we pulled the crinkled paper from their neat cardboard homes, my mother instructed, “careful girls.” And it was one of the times, even though we were very excited, that we were also very gentle, like holding the class pet for the first time.  We forgot each year just how many decorations there were.  Ooooh, I forgot about these!  “These” were the smaller ornaments my mother instructed us belonged toward the top of the tree, where the branches didn’t need to be weighed down by heavier items.  Some were “filler,” reserved for the back of the tree where visitors wouldn’t see them as much.  The special ornaments belonged in the front.   

As we got older, my mother upgraded the tree to a more Victorian style with silk bows, fine crystal, and white twinkle lights.  The tree looked pink.  Sometimes she’d complain that it looked too “Linda Trevor.”  Linda was her “Miss Garden City” WASPY friend who prohibited her children from watching I Love Lucy and still had the house baby-proofed even though her girls were in fifth grade.  So my mother tried to liven it up by stringing cranberry beads ‘round the tree.  It didn’t help.  It still looked uptight.

When I grew up and out, I struggled with what theme to make my tree.  I thought of buying chandelier parts from the 23rd Street flea market and making a chic designer tree, laced with brand name ribbons and vintage bows.  Then I thought of doing a nautical theme with seashells, sailboats, and distressed wooden oars.  In New York?  Wouldn’t work.   I could do a candy tree, where I could make cookie ornaments and string Lifesaver candies around the tree, looping candy canes on heavy branches and leaving gumdrop ornaments and sugarplum fairies for the top of the tree.  Candy necklaces and enormous candy cocktail rings.  I don’t even have a sweet tooth.  Then I tried to really zero in on what my interests were, and I was convinced I wanted to do a kitchen-themed tree.  I could hang my copper cookie cutters and measuring spoons as ornaments, use bakery twine as tinsel, bundle some cinnamon sticks in kitchen twine, hang some hand-painted teacups, my wire Kitchenaid whisk.  What?  It could work.  But how festive is that?  I finally settled on a theme.  Something to do with felt animals dressed in Dior.  It's my nod to Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas.  I cannot wait to decorate a tree again.  This year, though, I’ll be in Florida with my mother, listening to her ask about five or six dozen times, “So, do you like the tree this year?  I mean really?  Is it too pink?”   

home

When I was still in feety pajamas, I’d use my parents’ bed as my hospice.  Whenever I was home sick, after waking quite early, I’d claw my way to the top of the stairs and crawl into the folds of their bed, the warm soft sheets smelled like Kerri lotion and my mother.  My father would get dressed and watch the traffic report.  My mother was already in the kitchen, coffee percolating, cupboards opening.  I imagined she was leaning down to the cabinet beneath the junk drawer, pulling out one brown paper bag instead of two.  I miss the sounds of that house, the sounds of family, up around me.  I wanted to keep them there, with me, in the bed.  I didn’t want them to have days without me.  I’d whine when they kissed me goodbye.

My mother would leave to play tennis but would return before noon with matzo ball soup, ginger ale, and Charms lollypops for my throat.  I’d stir the ginger ale flat with the lollypop as my spoon.  Then I’d search for hidden pictures in Highlights magazine and play with the Yes & No Invisible Ink book.  Mad Libs wasn’t fun without a friend to shock.  I could only play with Wooly Wally for so long (a magnetic game where you moved shaved bits of magnet to create hair, a beard, a pirate eye patch). If I was home sick for a few days, I’d learn the television schedule and actually look forward to my next day at home. I knew to play the Blockbuster Video, Little Darlings, when the soap operas began to air.  When it was over, it was usually time for Inspector Gadget, and then Lea would be home to keep me company and play with plastic dolls and their snap on clothing.  Before my father returned home from work, during Three’s Company, and after dinner was tented in aluminum foil waiting for his arrival, my mother would check in on me.
“Can I get you anything else, Stephanie?”
“No, just stay with me.  Stay here and hold my hand.” 
She’d twitch her nose and decide to stay.  “Just for a little while.”
“Hold my hand.” 
“Stephanie, that’s how germs spread, through the hands.”  She might have held it anyway.  I’m not sure.  I just remember that she stayed longer than she said she would.  She’d sit on the bed, propped up against her pillows, with her knees bent as she flipped through a magazine using one hand, starting from the back.  I was afraid to change the channel, worried she’d realize time and want to get out of bed to do the things that mothers do. 

My favorite days were weekends when my father was home sick with a cold.  He’d plug his nostrils with toilet paper and watch black and white movies from his bed.  I'd rub his bald head with a paper towel because it felt greasy to me.  He didn't mind.  I suppose that's how I felt about back scratches and hand holding when I was sick.  I never let anyone touch me, except when I was sick.  That's how my parents knew I wasn't faking it.  I was more open to affection when i was sick.  Spending time with my father meant so much to me; I’d even watch what he wanted, just to keep him near me.

It’s why now, when I’m in bed with you, I really don’t care what we watch.  Baseball.  Football.  Tennis.  I really don’t care; I just want you near me, holding my hand.  It feels like that’s all I need sometimes.  Okay, that and maybe some Anne of Green Gables.

stemmm

"You sound so much alike" was repeated throughout the night.  I hadn't seen my first cousin Damien in years, and as soon as we're together we wonder why that is.  He worked as a chef at many of New York's Best Of restaurants (and used to bring me many goodies) before following the Philadelphia trend.  Now he's back, the executive chef of Cassis on 14th Street.  Yeah, go ahead and twist my arm, getting me to a bistro with French wines, etched glass, and bowls of steamy mussels.  Damien and I are a year apart and grew up together, pausing the movie FAME where we thought we could spot a nipple. 

When we were young, he tricked me into eating a handful of really hot Chinese chili peppers.  I began to cry on the spot.  At first he laughed, but when he saw how much pain I was in, he began to cry, too.  When I reminded him of the story the other night, he sucked in a whistle like Papoo.  When I told him so, he laughed like his sister, who laughs like her mother.  We all sound the same.

When we're together, everything becomes more pronounced, accents and attitude.  We speak with our hands and laugh at our own jokes, touching you lightly on the arm.  I love being around family because of this; it reminds me that I have one, that I'm part of something, that there are people out there who tell a story the same way I do.  Who dance and drink and know how to fucking LIVE.  Life is a series of moments, and the ones I hold most dear are spent surrounded by those who know life is lived in these moments and meals. 

Damien laughs at me with his mouth open, but it doesn't really become a laugh until we both open our mouths, then it becomes safe, comfortable, and so real.  I feel alive and home.  I love how family does that, regresses us to a photograph in our minds, where we're wearing white leather Nike sneakers with navy blue swooshes, singing together, measuring our heights along the neck of a giraffe measuring stick hanging on my childhood room walls. 

I love that someone has known me that long, and in turn, that I know he has a sweet tooth, holds his breath now when he sees a dog, and the first time he made pesto, he didn't rinse the basil enough, so we basically ate sand over spaghetti.  He's the guy I played tennis with, and when he served, he'd slice the ball.  When I couldn't return it, he'd yell, "Stemmmm."  Then we'd order grape juice and mix it with seltzer, charging it to our parents' chits at the club.

His mother once told me she was glad we were friends because not a lot of people understand him.  I never understood how that was possible.  Being around Damien was never work or patience; it was home.

diving for bubbles

You learn to blow bubbles, putting your entire face in the water.  You learn to exhale from your nose, to tilt your head in the same direction each time to inhale with your mouth.  People who learn to do this will never hold their nose while jumping into water.  There’s no need. 

half-days

Roosevelt Field Mall was close, but by no means a walk.  We had to take the bus, and when you’re a tweenager on Long Island, you don’t know from buses, never mind finding a bus schedule.  My friends and I were accustomed to phone calls, drop-offs, and pick-ups by the mothers who juggled hair salon appointments with tennis court times.  We knew collect calls from, “Pick Us Up Now.”  Half-days of school were our half-days of freedom.  When our parents weren’t available as transportation, we took the bus to the mall so we could see movies and meet boys with long hair (ew) to make out with in the back of them.  Wet & Wild blue eyeliner, #44 lip gloss, bangs.  Walmart had a photograph booth with a seat that twisted for portraits.  We’d layer in, pushing to see, trying to quell our insecurities with laughter.  Dangly earrings and leather aviator jackets, splatter painted jeans, airbrushed t-shirts with rhinestone edges, Champion sweatshirts cut with scissors; we were mini-adults, dressed in college gear, before we even knew what to do with a tampon.  We linked arms after Sbarros pizza, speaking of science homework, ions, and band, yet we still felt like grownups in E.G. Smith bunchy socks and Keds.  Near the arcade, we scribbled our numbers on scraps of paper and gave them to boys with earrings and ripped jeans, older boys named Seth with mild acne and winged hair.  The freedom tasted like the garden’s first sugar-snap pea, innocent and sweet.

dirty di

"I was so different back then" isn't something you'll hear from me.  I wasn't that different.  Aside from the exclamation points, stonewash,  and hearts, my personality is obviously the same.  I found proof in my puffy purple diary from 1988.  It's so 80's right down to my writing, "I love Peter Cetera!"  Never mind the hearts, bubbly handwriting, and lipstick s.w.a.k.  I re-read some of it last night as research for Fat Camp. Beyond the obvious, knowing I wanted to be a writer at such a young age, I just love how random the entry below ends (click the thumbnail to make it larger).  "I don't want to marry a doctor."  Oh dear.  Then I went ahead and did it anyway, eleven years later. 

And this list says it ALL:

I love how a day sucked if I had to run in gym class.  Some other highlights include these "13 year old thoughts of my 29-year-old brain:"

The use of the words "boner" and "frenching"
Being excited about having a hickey
Describing sexual activity with bases (sloppy seconds)
I used exclamation points!  And I never do that!!!
"I wuz frenching Jon goodnight, but because I was a half hour late for curfew, I was punished.  The counselors made me act like a monkey and go through the patty wagon twice!!!"

 

chastity shmastity

I'm absurdly drunk right now. Now, I know, this might be hard to believe... anyone can feign soused via email or a post on a 'blog (I love the apostrophe). There's no slur, only misspellings and an absurd amount of digressions (I know myself; scholars would be proud).

When I was 14, and my father was at a NY Ranger's game with my younger sister, Lea, I got absurdly drunk with my best friend Nicole Klinsky. We had gone to the movies, prior to driving, and my mother had collected us (as though we were items at a flee market) from the mall movie theater... asking only, "is anyone hungry?" Nicole and I were the type of girls who never turned down a meal. So we headed to the diner.

Diner menus are absurd. Half lobster tails, surf and turf? Who the fcuk orders linguine with clam sauce from a diner? I'd really like to know (total tangent... but one of my favorite movies, aside from anything with Albert Brookes, is a movie called, "shite, I forget." No, that's not the name... I forget... this is my life? Something like that with the woman who does Marge Simpson's voice. Soooo good... and my favorite Joni Mitchel... strike that, Carly Simon... shite, they all sound the same... song is from that movie... "You're the love of my life"... God I love that song... because it's not about a guy... it's about your children. And yes, for now, I've got Linus... and I love him to kisses up the nose in my naked lap eternity... but I digress). The point is... wait Chris ordered TORTELLINI at the diner. He was drunk. I guess diners count on the drunken and the hungover to substantiate the need for choice at a diner. ANYWAY...

So I'm at the diner, and I could make a night out of reading a menu. I can never decide, and I derive nearly as much pleasure from food as I do from deciding what I'm in the mood for. It's so Ira & Barry from City Slickers... picking the best ice cream for the meal... I can pick the best food for my craving... but it takes a while of verbal decisions. So aloud, I play the, "Oooooh, a cheeseburger with well-done fries... or onion rings... ooooh, or a hot open turkey with stuffing. Yum." Then the waitress with a souffle of hair grabs our order... "You go. 'm still deciding," I order Nicole and my mother. So they order very decadent things. Fried. Carbs. Golden. Yellow. Deliciousness. Then it's my turn. And, I feel fat at that moment. So I order (close your eyes) a fruit cup. They can't believe what I've done. I sit with my hands in my lap smiling... it's was like fibbing to someone Kosher, telling them my stuffed mushrooms don't have sausage in them. "No, really, it's meat substitute." E-ville. If I'd had a mustache, I'd have twisted it. And I never understood, wringing hands,' but I would've done that too.

Then, my mother notices employees of my father are across the way, at a booth. They're scrolling pages of their personal jukebox (I miss those... Ipods so don't count. There's something special about what quarters can do for you these days.) Nicole lets out an absurd sound effect worthy burp, then rolls out with a peal of laughter. Mother closes her eyes for longer than one does in a blink. She's mortified, her temples in her hands. Nicole decides she wants a drink, just like that, as if deciding to wear open-toe shoes in summer. It was expected in her mind. We're talking DRINK, not shake. My mother barters because Nikki, at this point, is out of control. The Greek man in the white shirt with the belly is looking over, past the cashier and the bowl of stool-laden mints, his hand weaved through his dark ample hair. My mother shoots back, "you can have a drink at home if you quit it and behave." Nicole goes mute, as if Mother's words were a dull blade splitting her tongue horizontally.

Back at the range, my mother locks herself in her room upstairs. She's pissed that Nicole flicked a buger at my father's receptionist. Nikki whispers, "so, where is our drink?" And when I inquire with the mother ship, she responds through the locked door, "drink the whole damn bottle. I don't give a shite."

Cool.

Nicole and I were both older siblings, so we didn't know from 'I never,' 'chicken,' 'quarters,' 'whale's tales,' or 'thumper.' We knew 'once-twice-three-shoot.' Odds or even? We filled a 16oz. glass with warm vodka and a splash of Tropicana. Rubbing alcohol. So I poured a gulp out and topped it with Fresca soda. We held our noses as we drank (which doesn't work)... and before long, I was banging my arm against a wall saying, "cool. look. I don't feel a thing." Then I drunk dialed Barry Rosenberg and told him I loved him since the second grade, and when I heard Phil Collins songs, I thought only of him.

He didn't believe I was drunk. "It's too easy to fake," he said. Here I was declaring my love, asking if he reciprocated, and instead of answering with something solid, some groovy kind of love or against all odds answer, I got the wavy, "you're faking it." If he only knew, Stephanie Klein isn't one to fake anything.

So when Poppa returns home with an enormous orange thumb on his hand from the game, I ask him a question as I lean over the porcelain bowl. "Promise you won't be mad?"

"Tell me what it's about first."

"No. Promise." I was slurring.

"Okay, I promise."

"I'm dunk."

"Huh?"

"DRUNK." Then I laughed, which then lead to a gag which lead to another bout in the bowl.

"Get out of here." He doesn't believe me until he confirmed things with my mother, who opened the locked door for him.

I vomited for 3 days. Even the mention of "Orange Juice" or "Cocktail" made me sprint towards the bowl in a heave of bile. I never drank again until senior year of college. I had a serious case of alcohol poisoning for 3 days... solid... or liquid, as it were.

That entire experience made me get it together. Yet people still don't believe me. Actions speak louder than words, especially drunken words. But a drunken dial or drunken email is action... it's veritas, right?

The worst thing about being drunk at home alone is I can't even get off. It takes too long, and it's never satisfying. How sad for me. When will this life of mine change?  Actually, that's just seexual frustration talking.  I love my life, and the wine, and the drunk post.  I would lick it up if it didn't make me randy.

old mother cupboard

There's something magical about cupboards.  After school, I used to open them, unsure of what I wanted.  It was habit, really.  Surely there was an answer, or comfort, in the cupboard after a cold and often empty day.  Usually that's tea with actual biscuits and clotted cream.  Let's be honest, though, nothing about my mother's house was clotted.  Still, I'd search, my hands waiting on the small nobs of the wooden doors as my brain decided something.  Usually, I'd find solace behind another door: the fridge.  I'd have to get passed the condiments and salad dressings she stored in the actual shelves of the door (though on occasion, I'd find a nearly empty bag of chocolate chips from her latest baking stint).  Abatement  was usually laid to bare in the dairy drawer.  I can't believe our refrigerator actually had a drawer for dairy.  As a child I always thought it was wrong.  Gosh, it's not like the milk fits in there.  I didn't think about dairy as a solid, the way steam and ice don't really seam like water.  Still, the cupboard was the go-to move.  It was The Cosby Show, Alice in the kitchen making pork chops for Peter, and somehow Tinkerbell's glitter dust in a jar of paprika.  Cupboards are comforting.

Something magical happens behind closed doors.  Cupboards, wardrobes, and the doors of homes.  I love seeing what strangers have in their shopping carts (who the fcuk eats canned clams?  Oh, that type of guy who wears orange and has a mustache), toting items to their homes to find places for things behind more doors.

I love looking into windows, seeing bookshelves and chandeliers.  I like to imagine their lives behind their cashmere throws, seeing their imported teas beside their dented discount cans of string beans.  It's like trying to figure out a person based on the contents of her handbag or bedside table... or blog.

I guess we're all behind doors in a larger sense, but I'm not obsessed with larger sense... just the little things.

stage fright

“I’m young, dumb, and full of cum.” A breathy college student yelled her motto in the yellow light of the Richard Bey Show set as she squeezed her tits. She sported too much moose and not enough neutral tones; her big toes hung over her open-toed shoes. It wasn’t summer, but the freaks were out. And, I was one of them.

Free tickets to the show were passed under dorm room doors. My friend Christina, a lover of all the guys on the football team who would forever be just one of the guys, phoned me as the car was loaded. “Common. Just come.” That was really all I needed to climb into a car full of cute boys. I’d never been to the taping of a show; I’d also never heard of this Richard Bey character, but it was procrastination and better than the Butler Library.

When full-o-cum girl unleashed her motto, she was standing, looking for affirmation in the eyes of a young crowd. If someone were beside her, she’d have expected a high-ten. Oh wait, that was her boyfriend sitting beside her. While he was tall and more built than I would have anticipated, there was something small and sad about him. He had a right to feel insecure about their relationship, and he certainly had the right to leave. But he stayed, looking down as he kicked at his Timberland shoes. I imagine he went to sleep beside her that night, biting the inside of his lip, worried, less about her, and mostly about why he stayed. Then he’d shut the bedside lamp and swallow when she said she loved him. He’d soon be a nineteen-year-old boy with erectile difficulty, until his next encounter with a better-suited leading lady who he’d still never love as much.

Vertigo, a woman beside the moose-head couple, had one curler in her hair where I imagined bangs to be. Vertigo was jealous, worried her boyfriend Gazpacho was sleeping with her half-sister’s cousin’s manager at Wings and Things. So, Vertigo carried Gazpacho’s pager, cell, passwords, and scrotum in her purse. While I felt sorry for Summer-Teeth-Gazpacho for having such a controlling girlfriend—and because he was named after a cold appetizer—I felt worse for Vertigo… because I knew exactly how she felt.

I was surged with a pulse in my throat, ready to stand up and say my piece, to tell Ms. V her jealousy stems from insecurity, and she should pivot her focus toward herself. Jealousy will accompany you to any relationship, like your hands, teeth, and odor. It’s part of who you are until you work at it. I was ready to say just that when I was suddenly standing with a microphone and lights on my face. “Yes, this is directed to that girl with the roller. I forget your name.”

“Vertigo, yes?”

And as fast as that, everything stopped, the way you imagine it to in those time travel books. I froze under the iridescence, feeling like carnival food under a heat lamp. I stood in a spot of yellow silence; nothing moved, except my eyes as they darted, hoping to spot the thought that had just escaped like a convict. Surely there was a card some applause grip would be holding to help me out. But there was nothing for seconds, not a sound, just the inhale of the audience as they waited for me to get to the point. Instead of my comment, the air filled with a sound bite: SHUT. UP. The shut-up sound effect blasted me, buckling my knees into a seated position. I knew I was red, and I felt mortified. 

It was worse, even, than the time in Mexico, in my bikini, when I slid down an enormous slide into the ocean, and I got the worst wedgie of my life as my ass scraped the ocean floor.  When I came to my feet, my entire ass, save for the bathingsuit-stuffed crack, was exposed to the crowd of onlookers.  Thankfully then, I had something to say as I emptied a pocket of sand from my vagina, "That's a new one.  I don't just have a sand wedge; I've got a sandbox."  My boyfriend at the time repeated the story for months, even to his parents, but at least I was able to laugh at myself.  I punned with 'box," which, to me, was as funny as midgets. 

In the car ride home, we recounted the events, hitting one another with, “wait, how about…” No one mentioned my mute move. “I can’t believe I just stood there and didn’t say anything.” I finally said aloud. 

“Well what were you going to say?” Christina prompted as she eyed me through the rearview mirror.

Then I realized, it could have been worse. I could’ve been in one of those relationships with a wretched case of stage fright, just sitting there, unable to do anything.  

"It doesn’t matter. What’s up with the curler in the hair move?”

the beast

Mr. Phillips taught social studies, and when we'd answer a question particularly well, or ask a thoughtful question indicating actual engagement in the discussion, he'd stop pacing, return the chalk back to its ledge, and swivel on his feet to face us. 

"Now, you've got me all titillated."  I'd go home repeating that word in my head; it was right up there with Mississippi.

I loved impressing Mr. Phillips because it was hard to do.  He was a steely man who occasionally gave us a glimpse of his underbelly.  Sometimes, I could have sworn I saw his eyes water when he was impressed with us.   He was a father of a teacher.  Everything about him was gray, though... his suits, eyebrows, skin, and even his tears, I imagine.  He somehow sparkled with jazz.  The man had rhythm on the brain; you heard it in the beat of his thoughts and the meter of his gait.  He was extraordinary.

Unlike. The. Beast.

Have you ever just hated someone without a good reason?  The way they tell a story or try not to snort when they laugh leads you to roll your eyes.  I hate conservative smilers, polite and stoic, emotional spendthrifts whose closest relationships are with musty books and reptiles.  Their idea of a pet is fish, and weekends are reserved for collecting.  When they go to hell with themselves, complicated square-dancing is involved.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe had nothing on Mrs. Hockman in the way of fur. And I hated her, the way aggravated 13-year-old girls are apt to do without good reason.  She was my eighth grade English teacher in 1990, but she still lived (read: dressed) in 1960, as many teachers with tenure tend to do in the 'burbs. No imagined Bridge to Terabithia would help transport her into the present.  She had a past to settle, and we, her students, were her means to that end.

She was a mother to Sandy and Joanna, but she called Sandy, "Sandor," and always pronounced Joanna as if it had an "H" in it.  "Oh yes, my daughter Jo-Hanna loves that program."  It was bad enough she added a letter, but she also had a knack of referring to TV shows as "programs."  Mrs. Hockman was the type of women who wouldn't allow her children to watch I Love Lucy because she believed it was degrading to woman.  The woman definitely ate raisins for pleasure, and I imagine her now, on her side of the bed, twisting her mustache as she grades papers.

There were teachers I regarded with utmost respect; they were creative and engaging, intelligent and always one step ahead of us.  I have no doubt Mrs. Hockman was smart, but she was nervous, and self-conscious; you could see it in her haircut and nervous hands.  Her voice was mousy and trembled sometimes during lessons when she sensed boredom.  She worried about outbreaks and sometimes ate her hair.  The woman was kind like you learn to be to your enemies, like honey with flies.  Her smile was never genuine; it was a veil, used to conceal her insecurities.  Mrs. Hockman wanted to fit in and eat at the cool lunch table, even at 43-years-old, and as her 13-year-old students, we knew it.

I'm certain she spent many of her adult years trying to overcome her nerdy childhood--as we all do--but once she became a teacher, she believed she'd outgrown it.  She only became a taller nerd with a thicker mustache.

I hated her for her red pen, orthopedic shoes, and winged hair.  Her mouth looked like a tight grip when she tried to smile, and she never spoke with her hands.  She wasn't only boring; she was devoid of humor.  Some people just aren't born with a sense of it.  They think they're light, breezy, and easily stimulated.  They believe they've a handle on it, but they're not certain when to laugh, or when exactly to clap along with the audience, so they follow.  Mrs. Hockman was only genuinely inspired to laugh at a grammatical error that altered the meaning of a sentence. 

"She rubbed the floor with a Polish."

These people chuckle but don't know from laughing until the tears stream from corners and you can feel you actually have stomach muscles.  She wasn't exactly one of the Bacchae... not exactly a woman of wine or song, and she was certainly not a "liver."

The assignment she gave that jolted this memory involved a black marble notebook.  She advised us we'd each need to write journal entries into the blank pages of these books on her command.  She fanned the books out on her teacher desk--our names written on the covers in her penmanship--asking us each to pick up our book.  "Write for twenty-five minutes.  These are yours, but I will keep them for you.  What you write is just for you.  You won't be graded on what you write; it's for you."  She held onto the OOOO sound for emphasis. 

"Um, if they are just for our eyes, then why can't we keep them?"

She insisted someone would forget theirs, and instead, she'd keep them locked in a beige metal cabinet where teachers stored room supplies like markers and green agenda books. 

I spent my words on liberal descriptions of Mrs. Hockman, taking care to be precise with my penmanship, and when I'd write her name, I'd press harder, going over her name twice in all-caps.  MRS. HOCKMAN IS A HAIRY BEAST.  It was the first time I'd gone bold.

If she did read it, I knew she couldn't say anything about it without revealing her violation of my privacy.  It was eighth grade--too early for grades to find permanence on a transcript--and a time of puberty, hormones, and cattiness.  It makes sense that nothing about that year should be permanent.  I got one thing, though, and despite outgrowing it, it's as permanent as black indelible ink on my today: the nickname Moose. 

Serves me right, I suppose.  She'll always be THE BEAST, and I'll always be Moose... a real life Lion, witch, and 1960's wardrobe.