We're All Mad Down Here

25 Years

2011-03-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

25 years. That's fucking insane. I haven't had a 25th anniversary of anything. How weird that the first thing I've ever had a 25th anniversary of is my father's death?

Been feeling somber and distant. Fuzzy. Clouded. Sometimes I try to remember the specifics and I can't. I can hear his voice, I can see his goofy faces, but I can't remember what he's saying. I can't remember where we were.

I do remember our trip to Chicago in the fall of 1985. That special father/daughter trip that I felt so lucky to be a part of. Dad, Lisa, Katie and I drove to Chicago so Lisa could look at potential colleges. I think she was really only going so she could see her old boyfriend, the weird one who always wore those novelty versions of the hard plastic batting helmets instead of just a regular ball cap like every other guy. What was his name? Carl? Anyway, I think that's what Lisa was doing. She must've stayed in the hotel with us, but I don't remember her ever being there. It may just be because she's so quiet and moody and when she's brooding it's best to just ignore her or risk getting one of her patented muscle-splitter punches.

But more likely, it's because Katie and I spent the entire weekend in the lobby of the Sheraton playing Dig Dug and badgering each other about whose turn it was to go slink back to the room and grift some more quarters out of Dad. Darting eyes avoiding eye contact while we made up an excuse for the money ... Dig Dug junkies through and through. I still get the sound effects from blowing up the bad guys stuck in my head sometimes. Flashbacks from my brief but serious habit.

That trip was also the first time I ever had any Chinese food that wasn't fried rice or crab rangoon. I turned my nose up at it and only ate the water chestnuts that I painstakingly picked out with my fingers. I have two really odd memories from that dinner. The first is that I dropped my fork on the floor under our table and when I climbed down to retrieve it, Dad barked at me under his breath to sit down and "quit crawling around on the floor." I guess the place was kind of fancy, an experience entirely new to a 9 year old who was one of seven kids.

My previous restaurant etiquette was limited to the playgrounds at McDonald's along the road to Destin, Florida, a birthday party or two at local pizza places, and the ultra special occasion - dinner for my or my siblings' First Holy Communion at Noah's Ark - the bible themed restaurant based on the story of the same name and shaped like, you guessed it, an Ark. The Shirley Temples at Noah's Ark had animal swizzle sticks - clear plastic giraffe shaped orange swizzle sticks. We Catholics celebrated everything with a drink, especially an important ceremony like First Communion, and Noah's Ark had a legendary cocktail lounge.

The only other restaurants I'd been to were Shoney's or Steak n Shake with Grandpa, and there were certainly no rules there about staying in your seat and behaving. And besides, I was a really quiet, mostly well behaved kid anyway. I was just trying to get my fork.

The other thing I remember about that dinner was that I needed to pee and Dad and my sisters made fun of me for always needing to pee. He said he thought I just liked to check on the bathrooms and inspect things, compare and contrast. He may have been right. I still always have to pee and I definitely notice details in restaurant restrooms. What are their sinks like? Soap? Paper towels or blow driers? Scratchy toilet paper? These things are very important.

It was also during that Chicago trip that I first really understood in any true way that my dad was a little wild and completely hilarious. We were in Chicago - enemy territory when you're a Cardinals fan - and the Cards were in the playoffs. Our eyes were glued to the TV in our room, watching the game. When our boys won, Dad leaped off his bed opened the door of our hotel room and screamed as loud as he could down the hotel hallway, "LOS CARDINALES!" Katie and I jumped up and down on our bed cheering while Dad went nuts in a victory dance, singing one of his Mike Harleman classic songs.

I wish I could remember more details about that trip. I remember some sad things. I remember it was the first and only time my Dad ever took us anywhere without mom and he was so excited, but I got a little scared and anxious at first. I was always such a worrier.

Of course everything ended up just fine. I found DIg Dug to keep me out of my head and forgot all about hte worrying. We must have done other things in Chicago, but I only remember the Chinese food and video games.

So today, 25 years since Dad died, so much as changed while so much is still exactly the same. I know how to behave in a fancy restaurant now. I would keep myself quietly contained and never go rooting around on the floor for a lost utensil. And Lisa, Katie, and I are adults with very different lives, very far away from each other. We haven't traveled together in a long time, but if we did, I'd probably still check out the bathrooms and only remember the Chinese food and video games.

-------

I still miss you like crazy, Dad. I love you. I carry you with me everywhere I go. I'm glad I'm turning out to be someone you'd be proud of. I miss your smile and your hugs. I want to tell you more and I want to see your gentle eyes smiling as you listen.

Late nights in an empty house

2010-09-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Got my soundtrack back. Not a moment without music. Old. New. Forgotten tunes. Melodies burned into my brain. It's all here.

Relearning all the same old lessons. I remember who I used to be. I wish I had the words to describe what all the songs make me feel. The memories flooding back like it's all happening again right now.

It's incredible how slowly life can build a trap around you and even more incredible how fucking fast you can run when you find an opening in that trap. Nothing could make me slow down. Nothing could make me check back over my shoulder.

I just started laughing when I wrote that thinking about the times Molly McD and I thought kidnappers were following us home from school. "Don't run," we'd whisper sharply as we both picked up our pace. "Don't look behind you," as our eyes darted over our shoulders...

We never got kidnapped. And I never really got trapped. Just turned the soundtrack down too quiet and I couldn't hear it over all the noise.

It's so nice to sit here just listening to the songs and the occasional sigh of my dog from the other side of the room.

The Beginning

2008-06-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

Moving day was my birthday, the last Sunday in June. Parker Street was fragrant with blooming jasmine, and hymns from the church on the corner drifted in through the open windows of the apartment I shared with my best friend, Jesse Jane. The sun was relentless. It dared me to forsake my moving to lay around in the shade of an ancient tree with sunglasses strapped to my face, sipping lemonade and reading short stories instead. Jesse and I dragged ourselves out of bed, donned the scummiest cutoffs and muscle shirts we could find, and stumbled out into the withering heat to set to the task of moving our lives 4.6 miles southeast.

Our destination was 3052 Broadway, Oakland - a vast 4 bedroom flat perched atop a bar, smack-dab in the middle of the flapping flags and oversized balloons of the car dealerships on Auto Row. The dark, narrow stairway of the new apartment closed in on us as we lugged our haphazardly packed boxes full of Polaroids and flea market treasures, musty, dog-eared paperbacks and half-scribbled journals inside the belly of the Victorian beast. Jesse and I groaned and mumbled with our heavy crates of records, smearing trails of dirt across our foreheads when we wiped the sweat away with the backs of our hands. Truckload after truckload, our possessions slowly changed zip codes.

The last item to move was our antique couch, made of iron anvils and steel girders cleverly disguised as cherry wood and cushy, green upholstery. Jesse and I managed to get the thing loaded by ourselves, but by the time the truck rolled to a stop at the new apartment, our muscles were on strike and refused to help us get it up the stairs. We had to call in a scab. I enlisted the help of my boyfriend by playing the "It's My Birthday, You Have To Be Extra Nice To Me" card. He was reluctant, but defenseless against the birthday argument. The couch, however, stood strong. It took all three of us yelling every single cuss word and insult we knew and using every cell in our bodies to get that thing to budge. We took out chunks of the wall and left scrapes and bruises on our bodies that would have put the most brutal prizefighter to shame before we finally made it to the living room. Huffing and puffing, the three of us collapsed on the floor.

We were sweaty, exhausted and filthy. Jesse and I couldn't say a word. We just lay there on our backs staring at the ceiling, sharing the last cigarette between the two of us. We didn't unpack any boxes or put our bed frames together that day. We didn't take a shower and clean up for any kind of birthday celebration. There wasn't any cake or ice cream. No presents. No streamers or noisemakers or surprises. Instead, we plugged in a boombox and turned on too-quiet music, cleared a spot on the floor for our mattresses, and folded ourselves on top of them with nothing but thin sheets and flat pillows to lead us into dreams. But we were too tired and too out of place in our new home to actually sleep. We stayed down until the sun crept up through our bare windows and pushed us out of bed and into that unfamiliar world.

I hated the change. I hated the traffic noises, and the close-out grocery store in the next block with its bargains on canned meat, test-market breakfast cereal, and Rodney Dangerfield red wine. The litter in the street and the guys with shopping carts who came by nightly to dig through it for cans depressed me. The noisy daytime workers next door and the neon signs at night kept me in a state of perpetual irritation. The house itself seemed to be lashing out at me, trying to drive me away. The floors slanted. The ceiling bubbled. Lightbulbs flickered and sizzled out like candles. Some uninvited guest was almost always coming in through a window or materializing through a wall and disappearing just before I came rushing out of my room to catch him. The oven leaked gas and had to be shut off. The windows were so drafty we could fly kites in the living room. My routines got thrown off. It took me a full hour to get to work on the bus. It took me weeks to sleep.

But soon, three more roommates moved in, and it started to look more like a home. Movie posters from the theater release of "The Big Lebowski" and our amateur black and white photographs covered the chipped paint and water stains on the walls. We filled our living room with broken-in, comfy thrift store furniture. Wind-up toys and action figures perched on ledges over doorways and windows. We played cards and planned parties. I found an outlet from the noise and the filth of the neighborhood on our rooftop porch in the back of the house, stuck between an empty warehouse and an auto upholstery shop. From here, I could see trees that lined the secret creek a few blocks below us. I sat out there for hours, smoking cigarettes, watching Oakland slowly turn from white to pink to grey to black.

Obsessed with Fetch

2008-04-20T23:14:00.001-07:00

Seven Playing Fetch
Originally uploaded by Harlemania

My favorite little spaz.

Family

2008-04-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

My younger brother just visited me for 5 days. It was great. We kept ourselves so busy that we came home every night and pretty much passed out. We went to baseball games, the beach in Marin, ate tons of crappy food, went shopping, and watched so much ESPN I think I have permanently lost part of my brain to sports television. We laughed and laughed and never had a single argument.

It occurs to me how lucky I am that my siblings are also some of my best friends. I don't think everyone can say that.

It's always hard when I have a good time with my family and then have to readjust to life our here, 2000 miles away from them. I wouldn't trade my life here for the world, but sometimes I wish that my time with my siblings wasn't just brief moments spread out over years.

Los Angeles for 8 hours

2008-01-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

Cab from the airport to downtown.

The freeways have walls on either side. The only thing you can see above those walls are palm trees, clearly planned out, evenly spaced, perfect markers. Smog. Hills, lightly dusted with snow caps in the distance. Hollywood, with its own downtown of record label skyscrapers and even bigger palm trees looms below the horizon like a mirage, never seeming to come any closer no matter how fast we travel.

Exit the freeway to the real downtown. Cart pushers with face paint, warriors of the urban landscape, mumbling to themselves. Immigrants waiting for the bus, listening to FM radio headphones. Addicts huddling together, darting eyes over shoulders. Sunday afternoon and everything is shuttered, locked, shut down. Empty.

The marketplace is the other side. Fake tans and ugg boots. Girls with toy dogs who match the purses they carry them in. Squealing. Squawking. Terrible retro 80s music from a terrible retro DJ in the lobby. I do my orders. I listen to the drivel. I dodge self obsession and eating disorders. I am opinionated and cranky. I am faster than all the other buyers.

The rep I like the best, we don't do any work, just talk about being aging punks with ambition and roll our eyes at the pushy ladies who come squawking through the showroom. I sign my name on countless papers, promising trades: my thousands of dollars for their thousands of threads.

I finish fast and catch an early flight home.

I love my job. I love my store.

But I fucking hate this industry.

Goosebumps and Big Smiles

2008-01-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

I found this video of a super secret Pinhead Gunpowder show from 2001 at the Starry Plough in Berkeley.

I can see the back of my old boyfriend's head the whole time. I can see him bopping up and down and dancing so so happy. I got the biggest rush watching this, and the memories came flooding back. I remember that day. I remember I lived on 61st street and I walked to work, and took a detour past the venue on my way home to scope it out and make sure we would be able to get in. I remember how every fucking kid I ever knew in Berkeley and Oakland was there, and they were all ridiculously happy. We were overheated and crowded and covered in beer and sweat and we fucking loved every second of it. We danced and we smiled bigger than we'd ever smiled before. Halfway through the show, people started lining up outside because they had heard there was a secret Green Day show. They couldn't get in and we knew they didn't deserve to. It wasn't Green Day. It was Pinhead Gunpowder - and they were still ours.

After watching the video, I went back and found the PG "Jump Salty" cd and a bunch of old 7"s and I've been playing it super loud and singing along all night. "Jump Salty" was the soundtrack of my entire 18th year of life. It sounds like my bedroom and my Ford Taurus. It smells like Camel lights and marijuana smoked out of a metal pipe. It feels humid and hot and bone chillingly like autumn. It is late nights. It is rushed lunch breaks during senior year. It is driving across the country with my mom, moving to California, scared to death. It is my first five years here. It is rain soaked. It is grubby hands and skinned knees after midnight basketball at Gilman Street. It is patching our lives back together after our house burned down. It is triumph. It is sadness.

It is perfect.

Happy Birthday, Jesus

2007-12-25T23:07:00.000-08:00

This year's Christmas has really been something.

I spent so much time with so many great people. I got one of the coolest gifts I have ever gotten from a friend who is so important to me that it made the gift all that much cooler. I ate tons of good food. I laughed. I told stories. I met new people. I did not have a moment of time that was not filled with love and friends.

And now it's 11 and I'm finally home. I get to snuggle up with my dog and fall asleep happy and cozy and comfortable.

I spent a few minutes outside with the dog when I got home and it's just starting to drizzle a little. It's warmer out than it has been lately, still chilly, but not bone-chilly. I stood and breathed deep and just stayed silent, smiling to myself at how lucky I am to have this life.

When You Get Out of the Hospital...

2007-12-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

You know when celebs go on a bender and get all fucked up and have to get hospitalized and they say it's for "exhaustion?" That's me today -- minus the bender and the celebrity. Oh... and minus the hospital.

So fucking tired I can't move. So tired I cannot possibly fall asleep. So tired my shoulders are hunched over and hurt like hell. So tired I couldn't even put pants on until like 4 pm and even then it was just pajamas.

I got out of bed to put pajamas on.

Dreaming of a dimly lit hospital room with an IV drip of valium. People will only talk in whispers and the only thing I have to do is rest. It will be quiet everywhere and soft.

Luckily, I know I'm actually ok.

So I'll do my best to get what I need. Hot cup of sleepy time tea and extra pillows. Deep breaths. Quiet songs. White noise. Earplugs.

Thanksgiving and other Crazy Ideas

2007-11-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving and I'm sitting at my kitchen table listening to a playlist I made this morning while drinking my coffee. I'm not sure what got into me, but a lot of dramatic angsty tunes from my teenage years got in there. I have it turned up waaaayyyy too loud and I'm loving it. Jawbreaker. The Vindictives. The Descendents. And I'm home alone in the apartment I keep. Alone.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, about my history of solitude and how much music has always played a part in that. About how I rarely went anywhere without some music plugged into my ears, blaring from some speakers, or just running running running through my head. I never thought about myself as much of a loner, but the older I get and the more healthy I get, the more I realize that even though I was rarely ever really alone, I have always been dug down deep inside my head. Sunk into a world where the people around me are nothing more than blobs with muffled, distorted voices like the adults on Charlie Brown.

And how I used to love it. I used to thrive on it. Getting stoned in my car alone with my music up too loud rattling around inside my bones thinking for me. Pining. Contemplating. Whining. Rebelling. Hurting. Celebrating. Those kids, and they were absolutely kids too, got it just right. I used to think I wanted to run away and find that community I imagined in my head - this strange punk rock utopia where the kids all supported each other and loved each other and we didn't need homes or families or jobs. And we would be safe and we would be understood, alone together, away from those blobs with the weird voices who made us want to dig deeper down. I thought I wanted that, but, again, I realize what I wanted was the idea of it that lived inside my head. Because the inside was so comforting and familiar, even if it was sad and painful and full of fear.

Something broke in me at some point and I couldn't do it anymore. Maybe it was the fear finally grew bigger than the comfort of familiarity. I finished high school. The drugs and the booze I found comfort in, the things that helped me stay dug down started to beat me. I was stagnant and it wasn't safe anymore. So this scared kid with absolutely no survival skills swallowed hard, faced the fear, and left. I moved to California, and my mom drove out here with me. I think that's so funny now. I couldn't even run away without my mommy. Our first night stopped in a motel in Shamrock, Texas, I had a panic attack and told her I couldn't do it. I said we had to turn around, that I needed to go home. And my mom told me that she knew I wanted to do this and she wasn't going to let me talk myself out of it. She told me she knew it was time for me to go. That may have been the first time that I heard anything she said.

That was over 10 years ago. It was far from smooth sailing from there on out, and although I ventured out of my skull a little, I still stayed inside the safety of my brain for a long time. But today it's different. I still spend a lot of physical time alone, but reality is something I fully participate in now. Those days where I do slip inside again, it's not comfortable anymore. I don't feel safe withdrawn. I don't feel better in full flight from reality. I get to be alone today. I don't have to be. I have almost found that utopia of people who lean on each other and take care of each other, only it looks very different from how it looked in my head as a kid. We're not all punks. And we have jobs and homes. We are part of the world and the world doesn't hurt us anymore. Some of us have families, and we all have each other.

So on this Thanksgiving, just weeks after I spent time with my biological family, I am choosing to take it slow, take my time, play with my dog, make mashed potatoes and let myself be alone until later when I will go spend time with these other people, this new family, listening to their stories, sharing their happiness and sadness, and finding comfort in knowing that we don't have to be lonely anymore.

History and Such

2007-11-18T22:51:00.000-08:00

The trip to St Louis has been over almost a full week and I haven't been able to write much more about it. All my nieces and nephews are hysterically cute and at times it is overwhelming to stand back and look at all these beautiful, smart little people my brothers and sisters have made. I'm so proud of them all for being such loving parents, and I honestly don't know how they do it. The trip wasn't all roses, of course, there were some bumps, but nothing I feel the need to air here and nothing that will matter in the long run I hope.

The connections I felt with my siblings and their kids was peppered with an overwhelming sense of disconnect to the town of Kirkwood, the city of St Louis, and the state of Missouri in general. My last day there, I spent some time driving around my hometown, taking it all in, trying to dig up some emotion, some memory, some sense of feeling connected to the place where I spent the first 21 years of my life. It just didn't work. I felt nothing. .... I felt like I was immaculately conceived, spontaneously created right here in Oakland as the person I am today. I felt no sense of "home," felt no tugging heartstrings. Kirkwood was just this weird place that seemed familiar for some reason - something I couldn't put my finger on exactly.

I was interested in the changes in the landscape, the built environment, the culture of Kirkwood, but not as it applied to me, more like a student is interested in her research subject. As I posted in the previous entry, there was a new battle being waged in my former hometown. There are little red plastic signs all over front yards that say "Protect Historic Kirkwood" and official city street signs in neighborhoods that say "Jefferson-Argonne Historic District" and things like that. I asked my mom about it and she explained that recently a very old, but very small house a block or two away from hers had been razed and a brand new, much bigger house was being built on the same lot in its place. Not such a big deal at face value, but this is not the first time this has happened, and apparently it has been happening at rapid speed in a quiet little city-suburb which was founded in 1853. There are new loft condos and townhouses on the main big street "downtown" (a downtown that is only about 15 square blocks). In a city with a population less than 30,000 and a rich history, these new growths of modern buildings stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. The onslaught of huge additions and vinyl siding to existing old buildings were bad enough, but the new edifices built with no attention to keeping to the architectural integrity of the neighborhood are nothing short of horrifying. The vinyl siding and the silly additions slid in under the radar slowly but the bulldozing and the leveling were too much for even the champions of the "look the other way" mentality to handle.

Frankly, I'm proud of Kirkwood right now. I'm proud that there is outrage. I'm proud that there is SOME sense of the value of history. Or maybe it just makes me feel a little safer that they can't change everything, that maybe the tiniest bit of connection I feel to my childhood home will remain.

Slam Dunking Jesus

2007-11-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

I flew back to St Louis today to spend a week with my family and take a side trip up to Chicago. I've been here less than 12 hours and already it's amazing what I've seen.

Traveling within the United States, especially on a discount airline like Southwest, always promises big fun in the form of exposure to a cross section of the American population that I don't regularly get to see in the safe little bubble of my world.

Before I even got out of town, I saw my first awesome travel bonus: a sticker of a silhouette of Jesus slam dunking with the phrase "HE IS RISEN!" beneath the picture on the guitar case of a guy next to me in line for the plane, which I assume is actually serious and thereby indicates the guy is into Christian rock. Slam dunking Jesus.

First thing I noticed about the STL airport - they finally got toilet seat covers in the bathrooms! I dont' remember the last time I actually flew to STL, so maybe they've had these for a long time, but it definitely took them awhile. Not 10 minutes after I land in St Louis, I notice a couple standing in front of me at the baggage carousel. The guy has on a tshirt (actually - a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off - layered over a different long sleeve shirt) featuring a rebel flag and these words: "White Biker Association: Equal Rights for Whites." God bless us. (Crappy cell phone picture again... I was afraid I would get beat up by a biker bitch, as my brother perfectly put it, if I were to be caught photographing the redneck)

Off to the rental car agency, and I am the only person in the shuttle that isn't a middle aged white man and an "elite" member of the rental company. I use the self service kiosk which tells me to go outside and pick any "compact" car I want, only to find an empty parking lot where the compacts should be, a few cadillacs, one hybrid honda sedan, a shit load of minivans, and one SUV. Immediately I think of the scene in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" where Steve Martin has to hike through a huge parking lot, down a snowy embankment and back into the airport to explain to the rental agent that she gave him "The fucking keys to a fucking car that wasn't fucking there." Funnily enough, that scene takes place at none other than Lambert St Louis International Airport. No hiking, no screaming for me...instead a free upgrade to the last SUV on the lot.

I drive to my mom's, carefully because I have declined the outrageously expensive rental insurance, and as I turn onto her street I observe a new sign: "Jefferson-Argonne Historical District." Hoity toity! Fancy schmance!! There is a whole story that goes along with the sign, as my parents explain, and it's actually kind of cool, but I don't feel like getting into it right now because it's late and I'm freezing and it deserves me googling an article about it so I can wax intellectual and put my Berkeley education to use. But really it's because it's nearly fucking impossible to type for too long on this computer because my parents don't understand the internet and ad blockers and I get ads popping up every 2 minutes and it's making me crazy.

So my little nephew Max was just finishing his bath when I arrived. After he got his jammies on, he jumped up and down on the bed and shot me with a toy gun for 10 minutes until he got in trouble for throwing the gun across the room and my sister put him to bed. My brother Eddie came over and I talked him into cooking me a hamburger. He and my mom and I sat and talked in the kitchen for a couple hours until they had to go to sleep. Really looking forward to seeing everyone else. Picking Katie and her boys up from the airport tomorrow and I'm excited! I haven't felt this optimistic about being here in a long time.

Berkeley

2007-08-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

It has been hot out lately, California hot - scorching sun bleached days and cool nights. I just dropped a friend off at her apartment, blocks away from my first place on Parker Street. The smell of the night blooming jasmine and other unidentifiable Berkeley summer flowers brought it all back.

I can't believe it's the same life sometimes. I'm so far away from those days of working a shitty job at a photo mat earning just enough money to scrape rent together and buy a 12-pack of Meister Brau. Sometimes I miss the all night wandering, the insane punk shows, and the constant companionship of friends with beer; the idealism, the sense of adventure, and the true and honest belief that we could live forever.

I can't explain it right now. I don't know if I ever can.

Lesson #2: Friendship

2007-07-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

One Saturday evening in suburban St. Louis County, I invited Molly McD. over to spend the night. She lived a block away, and we were Best Friends - a relationship that was absolutely 100% official. We had been sworn in with crossed hearts and hopes of dying in a secret ceremony conducted by our older sisters, who also happened to be Best Friends. Everyone at school knew we were Best Friends. Our parents knew we were Best Friends. Even the guy at the ice cream shop halfway home from school knew we were Best Friends. Molly and I knew all of each other's most delicious secrets. I knew she was in love with Ben, and she promised never to tell anyone that I liked Matt. Every weekend brought a strict routine for sleepovers: Friday's at Molly's. Saturdays at Julie's. It was on one of those Saturdays that proved our Best Friend-ness beyond a shadow of a doubt.

This was around 1983 or 1984, possibly as late as 1985, right in the midst of the advent of the VCR and pre-dating the Great Microwave Popcorn Revolution of the Late Twentieth Century. We were lucky enough to have one of those new video rental stores just up the street. My mom and our yellow Labrador, Hazel, accompanied us on the three block walk to get a movie. Molly and I were overwhelmed by the brightly colored boxes and flashy posters that greeted us. We ran to the New Releases section to peruse for PG's and dropped to our knees in thanks when we discovered a brand spanking new copy of "Ghostbusters" waiting for us on the shelf.

Molly and I got home with our movie, laid claim to the couch, and decided to make some popcorn, the hard way. One good thing about the 80's was that safety was NOT first. Our parents never gave a shit if we wanted to do dangerous things like pour a bunch of vegetable oil into a pan and use the stove to get it nice and hot. So, without bothering to ask my mom, we got to making our popcorn. It couldn't be that hard. We'd seen it done at least a million times. Molly led the way, and I didn't see the need to question her technique. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Mrs. McD made the best popcorn in the entire universe. I figured the generous inch and a half of oil and the thin layer of popcorn kernels were the family secret. We stood on chairs to hover over the stove and shake our popcorn pot to prevent burning. The shrieking of the oil and the startling explosions of the kernels thrilled us.

When the popcorn was done, we went into the TV room, plopped on opposite ends of the couch and dug in. Sure, it was a little oily, a little heavy - especially after the half cup of melted butter we poured over the top of it, but we made it ourselves and it was DAMN GOOD! Molly and I added salt and washed the soggy, oily snack down with fizzing, ice-cold Sprite. The dog scavenged for stray pieces and licked our fingers when we were done. About 30 minutes into the movie, Molly sat up and just puked. Projectile vomited all over the coffee table. I screamed. Molly cried. The dog climbed up on the table and started eating the whole disgusting mess. I went upstairs to fetch my parents.

"Molly's sick," I told them from the doorway. "And I don't feel good either."

I barely got the words out before I was running to the bathroom to expel the popcorn poison. My dad followed closely behind to help me, while my mom ran downstairs to take care of Molly. Normally, when you get sick and throw up and your friend's house, your parents get called, and you have to shuffle out to their car in your pajamas to go home in the middle of the night. Then you're too embarrassed to ever come over again. It happened to me at Katie Reinlein's house once, and I couldn't so much as look her in the eye anymore. But Molly never even thought to call home.

My mom cleaned up the mess and we finished watching "Ghostbusters," each with our own puke-bucket at our designated ends of the couch. Molly and I started giggling and looked over at each other.

"Best friends forever, right?"

"Best friends forever."

A Lesson In Guilt

2007-07-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, girly things like playing house or dress-ups held no appeal for me. I'd much rather have been building tree houses or racing bikes. The only interaction I had with Barbies was when I tore the arms and legs off and gave mohawks to my sisters' collection. But no matter how hard I tried to maintain constant tough-looking bruises, no matter how many of my brother's old Kawasaki T-shirts I collected, there were always pink barrettes or little skirts or tea sets showing up at birthdays. They came wrapped in Star Wars paper in an effort to fool me into liking them, but it rarely ever worked. The closest I came to owning a doll was my stuffed Snoopy. I never owned a Barbie or Strawberry Shortcake or any junior homemaker toy that purported to be "just like mom's."

One year, for Christmas, my grandmother gave my sister and me each a new doll. I was five years old. Katie was eight, and she got a beautiful shining, teenager doll named Mandy with hip clothes and an awesome hairdo. Mandy could be posed and she fit perfectly on the Tonka trucks in the yard. My doll, on the other hand, was a fat infant named Baby Beth. She had a pink crocheted sweater and matching hat. She could do nothing but lay around, drinking from a bottle that made it look like she was really eating. She dind't have any hair to cut or any action-packed accessories. I never played with her. Ever.

My grandma was a sweet, recoursceful woman who loved to bestow us with handmade gifts. She spent hours making clothes for our dolls, which she delivered to our house. Mandy had jeans and t-shirts and cool dresses. Baby Beth had sweaters. Lots and lots of knitted sweaters. I seethed with jealousy, and started to hate Baby Beth outright. Katie guarded Mandy with her life. Under no circumstance was I to touch that doll. My jealousy made me insane. To make matters worse, my oldest sister made up an awful, mean song about how gross and stupid Baby Beth was. It was a slow, bass-driven jam sung in a voice that a 13 year old thought a fat person might have. "Ba-ba-ba-bay-ay-bee Beth." It was accompanied by an interpretive dance designed to mimic the movements of an obese infant. The song was put into heavy rotation in our house, forever killing any chance Baby Beth might have had to see some action.

It was the anthem of my misery. I ran to Mom in tears every time I heard it, but she wasn't very sympathetic.

"You don't appreciate that doll anyway, young lady, I don't know why you're crying about it. Your grandmother put a lot of thought and hard work into that present, and you don't even care. Did you even thank her?"

Thank her? Was she kidding? The way I saw it, Grandma put lots of work and ZERO though into it. I hated dolls. Everyone knew that. If she had just given me a Millennium Falcon, we wouldn't have had a problem. I wouldn't be jealous. I wouldn't be ungrateful. There would be no song but Darth Vadar's trepidation-inspiring theme.

I gave up the cause and turned my energies toward teaching the dog to bark at my sisters on command, an effort that went pretty much nowhere. Eventually, Baby Beth was forgotten by everyone. Her song was knocked off the charts by the feel-good hit of the summer, "Ronnie Round Head," a little ditty about the boy next door who happened to have a rather large cranium.

One glorious summer afternoon, my best friend Molly and I discovered the fascinating fun of making mud in a giant bucket. We made it even more interesting by dunking things in the mud, drying them in the sun, and re-dunking them over and over until they were unrecognizable. We started our muddy experiment with little sticks and rocks, and gradually moved to hand trowels and flower pots. As if the idea came from one of God's own angels, it suddenly dawned on me.

This was the divine opportunity to get the ol' Baby Beth out.

I practically flew up the stairs to my room, dug through the closet for the unappreciated doll, and headed back out to the patio.

Molly held her breath and covered her eyes, peering through her fingers to watch as I lowered Baby Beth by the ankles into the bucket. The mud squished and gurgled as I pushed her further down. "Ba-ba-ba-bay-ay-bee Beth." I caught myself singing it. We covered Baby Beth in mud until she looked like an alien fetus. I was so proud of myself for finally finding a use for Baby Beth that I ran inside the house to tell my mom.

"Mom! Mom! Come outside and see what I did with Baby Beth!!"

Bad, bad idea.

The revealing of the muddied doll to Mom was met by a gasp of shock and horror.

"JULIA CLARA!"

Uh-oh. I swallowed hard. The full name. I knew I was in trouble. Molly was sent home immediately. Mom sent me to my room, and told me to think about what I had done. She had tears in her eyes as she said something I will never forget.

"Grandma was so excited about that doll. She still asks me if you like it, and I always tell her how much you LOVE it. How do you think she'd feel if she saw this?"

My triumph over Baby Beth suddenly seemed very small. I had a burning sensation in my stomach that I never felt before. I pictured the smile on Grandma's face the day I unwrapped Baby Beth, and I felt sick.

Grandma would never understand the mud.

The Last Zoo-rah

2007-07-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, I was living back in St Louis for a few months and helping out with my 4 year old nephew. My ex and I took him to the St Louis zoo one day, a particularly hot, scorching weekend day. As you may or may not know, the STL zoo is a really big, really fancy zoo and it's FREE. As I'm certain you're aware of, Missouruh is right smack dab in the middle of Redneck Heaven and what do rednecks like to do for vacation? FREE SHIT! So the place is crawling with sunburned rednecks on vacation from the not-so-far reaches of backwoods Missouri and Northern Arkansas and my boyf and I kind of forget that we're looking at the animals because we're so enthralled by the North American Vacationing Trailer Trash in his natural habitat. (And because it's far less fucking depressing to gasp at the creative uses for american flag printed fabric (doo-rags, bikini tops, Oakley sunglasses holders, etc) than it is to see sad chimpanzees and overheated polar bears). We take my nephew over to the new billion dollar wild African Savannah exhibit to look at the elephants, and we stop at the hyena pen. I let my nephew out of the stroller and hoist him up to the railing to have a look at the miserable, pacing hyenas. The poor creatures just paced back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and had been doing this for so long that they had worn a ditch into the dirt of their pen. I'm already about to break into tears, when the KING of all shitty Larry-the-Cable-Guy fans, the perfect cliche of white trash American - moustache, mullet, stonewashed jean shorts, reeboks, classic rock radio station T-shirt cut into a side-vent tank top - moseys on up next to us at the railing. (See picture for example)

He is, of course, smoking without using his hands, while leaning over the railing. He takes his cigarette out for a moment, spits into the hyena pen, and questions the animals loudly, "WHO'S LAFFIN NOW, HYENA?" And then punctuates the question with the most offensive white trash chortle I have ever heard. "HYUH HYUH HYUH!"

Seriously. Who's laffin now, hyena? Because, yeah, hyenas in the wild have been LAUGHING at humans for centuries, right? But we got 'em now! Fuggin faggot ass hyenas! FUCK YOU!

That was the last possible bit of depressing animals in cages versus white trash drama I could stand. I grabbed my nephew's stroller, and told him we had to leave immediately. Under protest of tears, he talked me into letting him take a quick look at the elephants and we left. I have never been back to a zoo since.