We got more gigs after our appearance on "The Jimmy Harper Show." One of our first was playing a large party at a mansion on a lake in a rich part of town. It was a teenager's party, the first time I would be playing in front of people I didn't know. When we arrived to set up, we were greeted by the mother who showed us to the second story balcony overlooking the pool area. We would be separated from the party like animals in a cage, like circus freaks. We played our first set and took a break and walked down to get something to drink. I imagined that we would be welcomed by an enamored crowd of admirers. I was wrong. These were kids with servants and that is what we were to them. Suddenly I felt foolish in my crazy band costume among the smirking, beautiful people. I was glad when our parents showed up to take us home.
I was growing tired of band life, of Wayne and Steve. They were flying down a road I didn't even want to walk. Wayne was dating a girl who lived down the street from me, a girl in my class. She was not attractive, but when she started seeing Wayne, she began to dress in hippie clothing and acting cooler. Wayne and she were having sex. He would tell Steve and I about it. I still had not seen a naked woman, and suddenly I couldn't stop staring at Wayne's girlfriend. She could feel it, the staring, and surely she knew that Wayne had said something, but she liked the attention, I think. She had become a woman among girls, leaving behind the shabby, anonymous image of herself as she was in a drab and ghostly past. Wayne had gotten her to show Steve her breasts, they said. I was a jumble of emotions. Jesus Christ, I wished this hadn't happened. I wanted to see them, too.
Then an enormous thing occurred. I fell in love. Through a series of grapevines, I heard about a girl who liked me. Her name was Emily. When I met her, I thought I would faint. She was the cutest girl I had ever seen. Her hair was cut just like Marlo Thomas in the TV show "That Girl." She big brown eyes and a perfect smile. Why had I never seen her before? She was in my grade. She and her friend, Cindy, hung out together all the time, and I think that Emily was just beginning to come into her own. Cindy was still small and underdeveloped though she was the quicker, more aggressive of the two.
I met her after school one day to walk her home. Before we left school, though, she had to go into the bathroom and change. She walked into the bathroom in a cute, mid-thigh mini-dress like the Goldie Hawn wore on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," but she walked out in a conservative blue dress with a high collar. She stuffed the cute dress into her bag.
"My parents won't let me wear this to school," she said.
A rebel. I was hooked.
"Her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood."
James Joyce, "Araby"
Those years have sweet memories for me, too. Those first awkward romances - and the lust and imaginings before the first actual contact. ( And those insecurities!)
ReplyDeleteHey, Have a great New Year's Eve!!
ReplyDeleteThree new girls moved in across the street. They had been just "summer kids" for a couple of years since they built the house but in the great financial decline, their parents decided to downsize to just one large home. So they moved into our otherwise mostly summer resident neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteNow Hannah has friends at the bus stop for the first time in her life. Actually, she has a bus stop for the first time in her life. The bus has been picking her up in front of the house all these years.
So all the girls (ages 10-14) are over at my house last week. We're sitting around the table discussing fashion and mothers and making chocolate chip cookies (well they were). It slips out that I am the "coolest mother" --how'd I get that honor? I don't make Hannah wear ridiculous clothes or extra winter items like snow boots, hats, gloves, etc. She's allowed to dress in her own style. Who wouldda thought it was so easy to be "cool."
Then they start telling the stories about how the three new girls strip out of their awful "mother induced clothes" before they get down the long hill to the bus top and stuff their ridiculous clothes into their backpacks. Once, Hannah even helped them get rid of an awful green puffy winter jacket by hanging it on a tree in the woods.
They tell me they think about stuffing their stupid clothes in the summer people's mailboxes that they pass on their way to the bus stop -- who'd know? they say. I jokingly say "you should dig a hole and ..." and before I can finish they say "We talk about digging a hole and putting a box in the hole and storing our stupid, ridiculous, awful mother clothes in there until we get off the bus all the time!!!"
Some things never change I suppose -- the hearts of Young Girls and Young Boys being two I think.
I'm still Young which carries both joy and pain. I think you are too. Still Young.
I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can. ---- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye