The Day the Eighties Died

Our friendship ended with a Nagel print that had been hung on the wall of our apartment, encased haphazardly in a tacky Wal-Mart poster frame. It was about as eighties as a friendship might end, aside from some sort of fluorescent misunderstanding, or argument over Madonna’s fake mole.

Patrick Nagel was a popular artist back then, having been recently featured on Duran Duran’s Rio album, as well as in the desperate dwellings of bachelors everywhere. Keith Haring was a close second with his bright, graffiti-inspired works. Swatch watches were all the rage, and when George Michael go-go danced in his “Choose Life” T-shirt, nobody assumed it had anything to do with the legality of abortion. We foolish girls also thought we might have a chance with him, should we ever meet. They were simpler times.

My first college roommate was a fellow with whom I’d gone to high school. He wanted to be a photographer and asked to use me for his portfolio, launching a creative union that would enable us to get to know each other better.

He was a sensitive soul, with a love of music and the artsy side of life. In the small town world of jock adulation and macho hero-guy worship, this combination will not win a fellow any popularity contests.

An outcast and oddity to my peers, voted Most Revolutionary (and Best Dancer, confusingly enough) at the end of my high school career, I bonded with him easily. After graduation, we got our first apartment together, in the nearby town where we attended college.

We saw movies together and he liked my voice, often having me sing for him, recording tapes in those shopping mall karaoke places that were popular then. We shopped for clothes and made goofy videos in public places that I still giggle over. I had scored a great roommate for my first year away from home.

Soon, I had a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks( as usual), and he hung with an unmotivated bunch of smoking drunks. They would be nothing today, small change in a societal pocket of hundred dollar thugs, but for a guy from a small town who thought Madonna was a good actress, I’d imagine they were a bit intimidating.

My roommate would sniff disdainfully and roll his eyes a lot when my boyfriend’s pals were discussed. I couldn’t and didn’t disagree with his opinion. However, like many an idiot before me, I thought my boyfriend was different from the crowd he hung out with and was somehow above the people with whom he willingly associated. It was years later before I learned that one can, more often than not, truly judge a person by the company they keep.

The Nagel print had fallen off the wall before. It had fallen a few times already. When I found it this way, I would pick it up and put it back. It was hung in one of those metal frames that clips or slides onto the sides of the cardboard backing in four separate pieces. I don’t even think it should be allowed to be called a frame. Scrap, maybe if you are a junkyard enthusiast, or found materials, if you are an artist… but not a frame.

I’d had the boyfriend and his loser cronies over for a night of beer drinking. It was uneventful, and not particularly rowdy. Just sitting, drinking, talking, smoking, and watching television. One of those mellow nights of my youth, back when alcohol was still novel and MTV played videos.

I woke in the morning to find the cheap Nagel print on the ground in front of the door to my room, with a nasty note from my roommate. It rudely berated me and my friends for breaking the frame.

It made me feel very angry.

First of all, the damned thing fell off the wall all of the time. I always just picked it up and hung it back. Done. Big deal.

Secondly- it was hung by a fucking push pin, in a $3.99 excuse of a frame, like a fourteen-year-old boy’s Corvette-with-a-slut-on-top bedroom poster. Stop acting like the goddamn Mona Lisa is lying on the floor.

Thirdly- how do you “break” a frame that is four pieces of metal to be shoved on the edges of your grand masterpiece, creating a framing effect, but not an actual solid frame?

Fourthly- where was all the hostility coming from? The hateful tone of his note took it from zero to sixty before I even knew we were racing. It really hurt my feelings. We were supposed to be friends.

And then it got even more childish, if you can believe it. I wrote him a note back, telling him that I didn’t break his stupid Nagel print or the oh-so-classy frame. He wrote back that I was lying. I wrote back that I wouldn’t lie, I’d just tell him I knocked it off or whatever and replace the stupid thing, but that we didn’t… break… it. He wrote back that I was still lying. Then it got personal.

It turned into a horrible, petty, mean little Note War that had started because I guess he couldn’t wait to see me in person to start yelling at me for what he thought I’d done. It remains one of the weirdest arguments and communication exchanges I’ve ever had with a human, and I still don’t quite understand what happened.

No longer speaking, we moved out of the apartment within the month’s end, and he kept my half of the deposit when he got it back from the landlady, just to fuck me over.

Years later, now playing in my first all-girl band, I went into his graphic arts studio to get his help creating some band promotional materials. I congratulated him on realizing his creative dreams, he congratulated me on the musical ones. We acted friendly and didn’t discuss what had happened years before, elevating the whole experience to a Huh? on the WhatTheFuck? scale.

And yes, even though he kept my security deposit years before, I paid him for his graphic arts work. I really thought he should have given me a better deal, though. Maybe I should write a letter?

Just kidding.

The Hitchhiker

The first time I hitchhiked was also the last.

 

I was fifteen years old. I had spent the night in an eighties teen club in Phoenix, dancing with my best friend Lisa.

 

Underage beer was flowing in the parking lot, loud music and hormones were flowing inside. Black clothing? Check. Teen angst? Check. All right, come on in.

 

Lisa’s single mother was out of town, and I hadn’t bothered to share this detail with my parents, so we could stay out all night if we wanted to.

 

Rebellious and bored… we wanted to.

 

When the club closed, we emerged dance-tired and victorious. We had boys we deemed “cute” with whom to leave. Cute to Lisa meant anyone resembling John Waite. I required a hair color that could not possibly occur in nature. If he accessorized with a skateboard, I was putty in his fumbling hands.

 

We said our goodbyes and promised to meet back at her house in the morning.

 

Kevin and I got a ride with people to a hotel where his father worked. Kevin had access to empty room keys, thanks to some keen detective work on a “Take Your Son to Work” day. He also knew where the wine room was located.

 

Dawn began to break. People left, and soon Kevin and I, too drunk to notice before, realized that neither of us had a ride home.

 

I stashed a bottle of wine in my purse, and we hit the streets. No one to call but parents who would ground us if they witnessed our walk of shame, we extended thumbs and prayed for mercy.

 

Instead, we got a car with three people who spent their teenage years doing exactly what we’d done all night, the difference being that they were now in their late twenties and still doing it.

 

Kevin and I squeezed into the back. There was a man driving, a woman in the front seat, and a guy next to me. I was dismayed to realize that the guy next to me had pot in his teeth. He stunk of body odor, and was leering at me like I was the biggest brownie he’d ever seen.

 

They were insistent that Kevin be dropped off first. Warning bells went off in my head.

 

Kevin got out, with an uneasy goodbye, and then we were driving to the middle of the desert. I mentioned this was the wrong way; they ignored me. I pictured the front page of the newspaper: “Teenager Found Buried in Desert, Parents Blame Hair Dye” and tried to think. How would I handle this?

 

The driver pulled the car into a secluded area with no houses, cars or places to hide in the barren terrain. I decided that to remain in control, I would stay calm and show no fear. Fear would give them power.

 

The quietly filthy woman in the front seat pulled out marijuana and began smoking, then passed it to the driver. I wanted to relax, hoping the middle-of-nowhere stop was to avoid police suspicion. Warning bells were still clanging, however, even louder than the hangover beginning to throb in my temples.

 

When my seatmate passed the joint with one of his colorful grins, I pretended to smoke, holding it in my mouth and coughing after my big “exhale” for emphasis. I wanted them to think that I was harmlessly stoned, while having my wits about me to fend off whatever was coming.

 

If all had gone as planned, that would have been the driver.

 

He unzipped his pants and began to fondle himself. He turned around and began to implore me to “Touch it.” I refused, and he kept going.

 

I was horrified on the inside, but managed to not scream. I put on my most annoyed face and said indignantly, “I just wanted a ride home.”

 

I continued firmly refusing to participate. He continued firmly masturbating. We had reached a uniquely obscene impasse. I wondered why the woman in the front seat was sitting there doing nothing. Did he do this all the time? I pretended I was angry rather than scared shitless.

 

After a few minutes, the Big Bad Wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he zipped up his pants. I felt like the Little Pig who had recently sold the straw house and purchased that cute little brick number down the street.

 

He started the car and headed back toward city limits. The conversation became forced-friendly. It felt like they weren’t ready to murder me, so they wanted to befriend me, lest I chat with the cops.

 

I jumped into the drug buddy vibe and acted like nothing disgusting had happened fifteen minutes ago. We talked about a river rafting trip and I gave them a fake number. They dropped me off a few blocks from Lisa’s house, because I lied.

 

In the photo Lisa took of me that morning, I’m lying on her couch, with make-up running down my relieved-to-be-alive face. The bottle of stolen wine has been triumphantly placed on the coffee table in the foreground, like an alcohol-filled award for the World’s Luckiest Idiot.

 

 

Find a Penny, Kick It Up

Whenever I see a tails-side-up penny on the sidewalk, in a parking lot, I think of her. 

Whenever she would spot one, she would kick it as hard as she could.

Everybody knows that only a heads-up penny is good luck, so she kicked the tails-up pennies.

I found this to be ingenious and terribly endearing. It was like she was kicking out at the Fates, kicking the bad luck away. Take that, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

Or perhaps by kicking the penny into the heads-up position, she selflessly passed on potential good luck to an unsuspecting stranger.

Numismatic altruism.

Whenever I see a penny on the ground now, I think about her.

I think about what a talented songwriter and musician she was.

I think about my ruined credit from using credit cards to pay for our band van repairs, gasoline and groceries. Trying to survive in a rock band full of rich girls was not easy for a poor kid with no parental parachute.

I remember them coming into the Subway where I worked to see me, alcohol buzzed midday and having fun. They had no idea how badly I wanted to be a carefree twenty-something on a day drunk too, but nobody was paying my way. Sandwich Artists had masterpieces to create.

I think about all of the work I put into our band, how I quit college one semester away from a degree to go on tour- only to be kicked out by her after we finally signed a major label record deal.

I think about the time she and I got into such a horrible, drunken fight that we threw full beer cans at each other. 

I think about the next day when she asked me how my mirror got broken and I sarcastically laughed, until I realized she really didn’t remember throwing the beer can at my head and missing. I ducked. Seven years bad luck. (And alcohol abuse. It’s just wrong to waste perfectly good beer like that.)  

I think about her annoying rich-kid-with-nothing-real-to-think-about, pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

“What is the Absolute Truth?” she would constantly, pretentiously wonder aloud, to the annoyance of people in the room who didn’t need to ponder such things.

“What are we doing here on the planet?” she would randomly toss out into a group conversation.

Some of us were tired from working a job all day on the planet and just wanted to relax. “Yes, we get it, kid- you’re very deep- blah, blah, blah. Don’t you have a philosophy class to study for or something?”

She had no job and her parents paid for everything- her college, her apartment, her brand new car. She could spare the brain space, as she had nothing better to do but think about such things. Money can make you crazy that way.

It was irritating to be around, to be constantly slapped in the face with someone else’s existential angst. Struggling with unanswerable questions is not how I choose to live my life. That’s why I’m not religious. I don’t care who put us here, why we’re here or where we go when we die. I’ve got bills to pay.

Sometimes, on a similar train of thought, I also think about her cat, because she named it Abby, short for Absolute Truth. She later abandoned it when she moved to an apartment that wouldn’t allow animals. I wonder what the Absolute Truth was for that poor creature. I’m sure that all of the after-life answers her owner was seeking soon became apparent to Abby the cat.

I wonder if she’s doing drugs all of the time, and if she still thinks that when she trips on acid, she is “getting in touch with her Native American heritage,” as if her great, great, great, great, great-grandmother being Cherokee makes her drug-induced hallucinations ”visions” instead of drug-induced hallucinations.

I think about her insane rages whenever she would attempt to drink anything stronger than beer- when she’d become violent, uncontrollable and even piss herself, after shots of whiskey.

I wonder if she’s still ruining the lives of the people around her.

Whenever I see a penny on the ground now, I think about her.

And I kick it.

Disposable Childhood

I was watching television the other day, and a commercial came on, advertising Dixie paper plates.

 

 

Heartwarming images of women playing with their children and preparing meals in a convenient, disposable manner flashed before my eyes.

 

 

The actresses playing these mothers said things to me, the sorts of things that mothers who care about their children might say to a camera inexplicably filming their daily routines.

 

 

“I will no longer be defined by the number of dishes I wash,” declared the first actress, chasing playfully after the child actor portraying her son.

 

 

Because as you all know, we mothers tend to define ourselves by the dinnerware we’ve cleaned in a day. You can whine to your therapist about your daddy issues and read your self-help books, but it’s all about the dishes in the end. My self-esteem is completely dish-based, of this you can be certain, my friends.

 

 

“I’m trading in my apron for something a little more glamorous,” announced the next actress-mother, as she painted her nails with her fake daughter.

 

 

The little girl then held up her hand, flashing her nails for the camera. All I could think as I burned my apron was, “Wow. Nothing says glamour like blue nail polish. I’ve got to get some of that.”

 

 

“I deserve a paper plate that’s as strong as I am,” proclaimed a woman displaying her enormous reserves of strength by carrying her own bag of groceries.

 

 

“Right on,” I thought. “I hold my fist in the air with you, my strong sister! I, too, deserve an equally strong paper plate!”

 

 

And speaking of equal, somehow the pain of not making the same money as men for the same work and being sexually harassed by managers at every job I’ve ever had is instantly washed away now that I have paper plates that are as strong as me. It’s amazing. Dixie, how can I ever thank you for this joyous trifecta of emotional healing, sexual equality and disposable dishes?  

 

 

The commercial continued, and mesmerized, I watched.

 

 

“My children come first, it’s as simple as that,” said the last pretend mom, after cutely tickling the young actress playing her daughter.

 

 

Suddenly it all became very clear to me.

 

 

I am a horrible mother.

 

 

I thought I was doing okay, but I have now realized the error of my ways, thanks to this message from Dixie paper plates.

 

 

You see, I mistakenly thought I was taking good care of my children by taking good care of their other mother- Mother Earth- and washing reusable dishes, rather than using paper plates once and throwing them away to languish forever in the strata of a landfill.

 

 

I foolishly thought that by leaving my children a better planet, I was actually giving them a better future, rather than neglecting them presently, to load the dishwasher for thirty seconds.

 

 

Now I know better.

 

 

Thank you, Dixie, for setting me straight.