What Works
I’m just second hand news; did you ever hear that song? Well, Donny called me last night and played that song in the phone. He never said anything, just put the phone up to the speaker and let the whole song play. I know it was him. He does things like that sometimes. He found out about that guy, Rick, driving me to school a few times lately. He was like, I could drive you if you need a ride. But I don’t know. It’s too weird with Donny. If he started secretly driving me to school, then what? Because he is around and in the area and also is a regular part of my life. So it would be the alley thing. Where once you head in with someone, it is an alley that you can’t get out of without turning around and either leaving them alone and scared behind, or fighting them to get past and running for your life. That Rick guy, I mean, for one thing he lives in Garden City or something. It’s so far away, I don’t even know where it is, really. And plus, it’s not like I could really ever get serious with him. I mean, maybe, I do think about trying and all that, but no way, you know? He is ugly, for one. And also a loser, because what kind of guy would drive from Garden City before he goes to work just to drive an 7th grader to school and drop her off? Part me, of course, thinks that maybe, just maybe, he actually finds me special enough that there are real feelings and he is just really taken with me and drawn in. But then the realistic part of me kicks in and slaps me in the head and is embarrassed to be attached to such a stupid part of me. (My parts do not have a great deal of respect for each other.)
I don’t know. How can you ever know? If someone really does think you’re good, you know? I don’t know how a person can ever figure something like that out. And with me, I don’t think it will ever happen, anyway (yes I do! he’s out there somewhere!), so it is really just a waste of time trying to figure it out. I just sighed heavily, in case you want to get the picture of me right now. I am sitting in the front room of our stupid house, in this sort of wicker, but thicker, chair, with my legs over the arm of it on one side, pointing toward the front door. The phone is on the little table next to me, and next to that is the hutch, on top of which are the rats and the hermit crabs and the baby mice. The phone is beige and kind of more of an office phone than a house phone, I think. The dial of it is worn around on the numbers in a circle from all the fingers and pens and nail files that have stuck in there to dial, and the ear part is sort of grimy in a way that doesn’t come off. Or at least I don’t think it does; probably nobody has ever tried to wash it with a soap or something. To finish the picture for you, I am wearing pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt and my fuzzy purple robe and thick camping socks and fuzzy slippers. If this seems like a lot of clothes to you, that is probably because you’ve never been in our house, which is kept at just above freezing all winter to save money. Because my step dad is a fucking dick. Sorry for the F word, but if you knew him, you also would know that it has to be used. I am not kidding, either. I can make a puff (I just tested to make sure I’m not lying) of breath and see it. IN THE HOUSE. To be honest, it is colder out here in the front room than it is in the living room or the kitchen, but Nick is in the living room and my mom is in the kitchen. Not that being in a room with my mom is a problem by itself, but the living room is within hearing distance of the kitchen—especially Nicks end of the couch where he sits and greases down the fabric with his sweaty-ass back—and being in hearing distance of him and anywhere around my mom is major danger zone. I am not kidding; I am safer getting caught swearing to a friend on the phone than I am talking nice to my mom. He will find major evil in me, no matter what. I could prove it to you right now, but I don’t feel like getting psycho’d on, thank you very much.
And upstairs? In my bedroom? Give me a break. It’s so freezing up there that none of go to bed until the last possible second. You can totally see your breath in bed. It’s retarded that we have to go around the house bundled up like it’s outside. Half the time, my mom is wearing mittens when she makes breakfast for Nick. She cooks him breakfast every morning. He also sits at the end of the kitchen table, which means he is sticking right out into the kitchen and there is only like a few feet between his ugly back and the refrigerator. So why is that a problem, since I am not allowed in the refrigerator without asking, anyway? Well, because he will be sitting there when you need to go down to the basement to take a shower or something, and that is just another suck in your aura time of having to get that close in his aggravational field and besides being danger, Will Robinson, danger, it makes my skin freak out., My pores all start opening and closing and my hairs stand on end and my cells of my epidermis try really hard to commit suicide from the terror of it all. Not a pretty picture. Welcome to life as a kid who is an evil, open target at the hands of an all powerful evil stepfather. Hey, it wasn’t my choice for my life to turn into some warped fairytale. Nightmare version, though.
I am not going to call Donny back. He will call again. He is too mature to ever truly prank me. He is that way; very nice. My mom loves him. If I ever did make Donny my actual boyfriend, I could probably have unprecedented free reign with him. I wonder if Nick would just be glad I was gone, or if he would have to continue his obsessive ruining of me. Probably would depend on my level of disappearance. Who am I kidding, he will only be happy when I’m dead.
* * * * *
“Hold it in longer.” I am trying to learn to smoke cigarettes. It is New Year’s Eve and I am at Kelly Johnson’s sleepover party. I cannot believe I’m at Kelly Johnson’s party. I cannot believe I am in Kelly Johnson’s house. How did they ever pick me? I am really pulling something off. Pam Hurley is here, too, second in command from Kelly Johnson. And really, they are so nice. I didn’t know these guys could actually have a normal, goofy side. They are not being tough tonight. I have not had a moment of fear that my ass will be kicked tonight, which feels so good that I want to marry it, this moment. I want to be like them, so bad, so I will be one of them and belong.
But I choke on the smoke in my lungs and it tears itself back out to the air, ripping up my lungs and esophagus on it’s way. Chunky blocks of Newports smoke sputters back out for everybody to see, little clouds and smears, not the controlled line of exhale that is supposed to happen.
I feel like my lungs and throat are on gagging fire.
“Suck it deeper down, like into your stomach.” Kim McDonald. She is not even in our school any more. She is a 9th grader at high school. This is blowing my mind. But they all seem to like me right now, so suck again I do.
I can feel it this time, where the failure keeps happening in the keep-the-smoke-down system. My body feels like it is turning inside out, but I holding it in, anyway., Right down to my stomach, like Kim says. It’s working so good that I look at the popular-girl faces watching me and can’t help but smile. Which breaks that barrier that kept the killer cloud down in my stomach, and out it comes, this time in a coughing fit I can’t even pretend to play down. I am afraid pieces of bloody lung are going to come up and fly out to hit Dick Clark’s face on Kelly Johnson’s TV.
But they don’t give up, and by the time the ball drops in Times Square, I am s-m-o-k-i-n-g. Amber Bach, watch her go, smoking a fucking cigarette. And they quit watching me after the first two, so by the third, around 3:00 a.m. and right before we all go to sleep, I am just a regular old smoker, doing it without an audience and with coughing, just for the sheer pleasure of the feeling of badass it gives me. And oh, it does.
* * * * *
Jeff Ehrlich is coming over to Michelle Sommers’ party tonight. This is an odd turn of events for me, from a historical perspective. (Fuck that “an historical” shit; it sounds retarded.) Jeff was my boyfriend for most of grades three through six. When we got to junior high, I was afraid Jeff would hold me back in the popularity department. He looked like a little boy compared to all the 8th graders walking the halls, and even compared to some of the 7th graders from other elementary schools. There was no way I could stay involved with him once we got to middle school. So I didn’t. Toward the end, in the first parts of the 7th grade year, he wrote me some serious notes trying to get me to come around, to connect with him again like we always had. But I shut him out completely. I was embarrassed of him.
And by 8th grade, Jeff’s popularity had surpassed mine by about two hundred percent.
He went with both Michelle Sommers and Kelly Johnson. Also, Christa Jubelt. In 8th grade, there was probably most of the year that he was the most popular guy at school. And he was always nice to me, but he acted like we’d never had any former connection, really. The new Jeff was just another popular guy in the crowd I was infiltrating, and I had no more pull with him than any of the others.
Christa Jubelt had a hard time of it. Things got so bad for her at school that she had to leave our school altogether and go to a different one. Because everyone decided to hate her an call her a slut. Because it was rumored that she and Jeff had done it. But same with Michelle Sommers, and she never suffered Christa’s fate. Christa had it so bad, man. Worse than I ever did, probably. She couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without them constantly on her about her being a slut, or kicking her ass. She went from a brief but satisfying stint in the popular crowd and their powerful friendships, to zero friends. None. Not a one. She did have me, though, at least for a while. And Angie Cordone, who was not part of the popular crowd, but was so tough and smart that she sort of rose above it all.
Anyway, Christa is gone now, and Angie Cordone doesn’t come to these kind of parties. She probably could if she wanted, but she’s smart enough to know she really doesn’t fit in. She is too bulky and big or whatever. Mostly you have to be around the same size in this crowd.
I am afraid I’m going to just start bawling when Jeff gets here. He is going with Michelle again. They are “in love.” Nobody has ever loved me. Except Donny, and he doesn’t really count, and Jeff, back in the old days. But we never even made out, and him and Michelle go all the way. That’s something way out of the realm of the old Jeff and me from Franklin (our elementary school). Jeff used to break up with me in 6th grade because I wouldn’t kiss him. He really did like me back then, but it’s nothing compared to what him and Michelle have. They’re like grown-up love. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that.
Oh God, here he comes. He is so cute. I love his smile more than any other smile I’ve ever seen. I will until I’m old, too.
“Hey, Fudge.” I used to call him that back at Franklin.
“Hey Amy.” He smiled and really meant it, but then straight past me to Michelle and they hug and kiss and I am like a cardboard cutout of a girl. Why can’t I be real? To anybody. Except Donny.
I want to go home now. I called him Fudge and he doesn’t love me. It’s worse that he his so nice to me, because that means there really isn’t anything there. He just thinks of me as another person. I can’t hurt him. If you can’t hurt someone, you can never really be safe with them. You can never really have someone you can’t screw around. Jeff is out of my stratosphere.
And that leaves me such a fucking loser.
George Durst is looking at me. Oh my God. He is an 8th grader. Even better, he used to go with Michelle Sommers. It is my chance to even things up with Jeff; to be the same status, at least. I cannot stand feeling like I am sub par. I hate feeling like I am a charity case, or the nice girl that the cool people don’t mind having around. I want to be an equal.
My home life isn’t sufficiently shitty to qualify me. Hard to believe. But the case, I think. Pam’s mom is an alcoholic and just moved out last year and left Pam and her sister with their dad. The dad beats Pam up sometimes, I think. Kelly’s parents are still married though, so maybe there’s hope for me even without the required level of devastation. Michelle’s dad, I don’t know where he is. But her mom always has a boyfriend, and she is gone a lot, so it’s just Michelle and her little brother at home. Like, for whole weekends. You know, that’s what makes the cut: supervision. Things in Jeff’s life must have really taken a turn in 7th grade, and that’s how he shot to the top of the heap. His parents got divorced that year, I know.
Me, I can’t get out for shit. That is really a problem. A problem I have to fucking fix, because I can’t take life as a fucking loser like this.
“Need a beer?” It’s George Durst. Oh my god. Pam has noticed and just nudged Kelly.
“Fuckin’ A,” I say. I can’t believe I just said that. I swear to God, I totally pulled it off, too. Who am I on the outside right now, because it’s nobody I am on the inside, that’s for sure. Fuck, Shawn Coughlin is looking at me, and she can see the inside of me. She knows I’m a fucking loser. She hates me. She is one of the 8th graders. I have to just ignore her. I smiled at her, but it’s not working. She knows I know that she knows that I’m a fucking loser.
George just nodded and headed down the stairs. The beer is in the kitchen. Michelle’s mom is home this weekend, but she is with her boyfriend and doesn’t care if Michelle has people over as long as it’s in her room. Her room is the whole upstairs of the house, like one big room. Pam’s is the same way, across the street.
I am sort of an experiment here tonight. I don’t really have a primary buddy to hang out with, so I’m just leaning against this dresser thing against one wall and watching people and acting like it’s all a blast. Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” album is on. I don’t know the guy doing the music. I think it is Tony Formaz’s older brother. He is out of high school age. The music is really loud. Everybody smokes. Michelle is sitting on Jeff’s lap and looking very cute.
I feel like an elephant.
George is back. He hands me a can of Miller. I quickly set my mostly full warm can on the dresser behind me and slide it back. In 9th grade, Kim McDonald will teach me how to drink beer fast, but right now I don’t know how to get hardly any of it down. That’s where shots come it with young girls.
“Thanks.” Shit, he is staying over here by me. He is just standing here next to me. Now he is talking to Gary Collins, but he is still standing near me. He brought me a beer, and he is staying right here.
I can see this is a colossal opportunity for me, and so I will take it. But I wish that George were a little taller. And I damn sure wish he had different hair. His hair is like a stupid helmet. How did Michelle go out with him? They had sex too, I think. I guess it is the body. He has a very muscled, Mr. Universe body. He could for sure beat anyone to a pulp; taller guys would be no problem. And aren’t. The guys in this crowd have proven themselves. But I just don’t happen to personally find much cute about the stocky muscle guy. I go more for faces, and George Durst isn’t one that I would pick. Oh well. I still can’t believe he is staying here with me. I feel dizzy from it, and I know that people are noticing. Every now and then, George turns and smiles at me a little. I just smoke and smoke and smoke.
Here comes Pam.
“Dogness, how you doing?” We call each other dogness. She is the least tough of the crowd, but I have still seen her kick ass.
“Good, man.” I suddenly can’t lift words with my breath, and they fall to our feet on the shag carpet.
“Getting buzzed, man?”
“Ah, yeah,” I am, too. I don’t know what time it is, and I am not sure how many beers I’ve finished. Maybe two, if you add the half-cans together.
Pam looks so cute. She is wearing skin tight Sasson’s and a white and black 50/50 shirt with Led Zepplin on it. Her shirt is tucked in. Her hair is feathered really good and comes to the top of her shoulders. She has on blue eyeliner and has very long eyelashes. They are really thick, too. Everyone likes Pam because she is so cute. She is short and kind of small, and is really spunky. She is the one who ends up crying now and then from something, and everyone takes up arms to avenge her. She also has a good dose of tomboy, and I like hanging out with her. She glances back at Kelly Johnson and Cathy Miller, like she doesn’t want them to be looking over here—they aren’t—and leans in to me.
“You want to get high?”
I most certainly do not want to get high. There are fewer things I’d less like to do than get high. I have been high before, last year in sixth grade, with Theresa’s brothers, and also with the people she baby sits for. That is because when a grown up passes you a joint and is all smiles and clearly doing you a big huge favor by including you, you go along with it.
The people next door to Theresa get her high all the time. Since at least fifth grade, maybe way before. It is a married couple with a baby, and also at least one other guy who lives there or is at least always over there. Theresa has gotten to be kind of like them in the way that she tries to get me over there and then also finds it very funny to make sure I get high. She knows I don’t want to and she gets me to do it anyway, and then she cracks up at my paranoia. She is high a lot. I don’t know how she can stand it.
Last time I was over there, to the baby sitting neighbors, they got me high. I guess you might think why didn’t I just not smoke any pot if I didn’t want to be high, but you are just going to have to trust me of how it is. If you are not from this kind of situation, I don’t blame you for not getting it. But here is the scene, and maybe you can get more of a picture of it.
We are two hours into babysitting, me and Theresa, and the baby has been put to bed. We are sitting on the long couch in the living room, watching TV and just hanging out, and the husband and two other guys come in. But we are still technically babysitting, until Lisa, the mom, gets home from work around 11:00, so it is not even an issue for us to leave. But the guys, these large hippy men in jean jackets and army coats with afros and long hair, they are all, “Hey, you girls don’t mind if we listen to some music, do you?” So of course we don’t, because what else are we going to do, and they are acting like we are all equals, and they don’t mind that we are smoking cigarettes or anything. So they get some beers from the refrigerator, and turn up the stereo, and flop around the living room. It is only like 9:00 and Lisa doesn’t get home for a couple hours. Me, I am feeling almost invisibly self-conscious, but Theresa is digging the attention. She likes that they are hanging out with us. She has brothers their age almost, and her brothers beat the shit out of her. She steals the roaches of their joints out of the ashtrays in their bedrooms, and they beat her ass because they can tell when she’s been in their rooms. I hate it when she makes me go down into the basement where her brother’s rooms are. She always says, “It’s no big deal, they won’t know.” Or, “They don’t care.” her stories aren’t very consistent.
So back to last time I was over there with her, next door babysitting, the guys that lived there had this one friend with them who was sort of quiet and very, very nice. He seemed different. Like, the other two would sort of laugh about Theresa getting older and developing a ‘bod’ and tits and stuff, but he wouldn’t really join in on that. He would just sort of smile around at us and drink his beer. And he lit my cigarette, too. His name is Adam, and he has really soft, fuzzy hair that is kind of dark blonde. His eyes are very soft, especially for an older guy. He didn’t seem older in the way the other guys do.
The dad went in and woke the baby up after a while and brought him out to play with him. He gave him beer, and Theresa, the dad, and the other guy cracked up, but Adam didn’t. I liked him.
* * * * *
“Normal people do this stuff all the time,” Roger says. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It feels really good.”
He is holding up a card, the seven of spades, and on it is a photograph of a man and a woman, naked, and she is bent over with a stubbed-her-toe expression on her face, and his penis is sticking into her and she is squeezing her boobs and he has his thumb stuck inside her butt.
My body feels like it is being vaporized, floating into a trillion little vibrating pieces that aren’t quite attached to each other. I wish I would blow away. So bad.
It is 9:00 at night and I am at my aunt Sue’s, out in the middle of the country, and she is working the night shift. Roger is her husband, and I am eleven years old.
“You probably look more like a teenager than a kid to him, though,” my mom will say when she finds out about this night, “so at least we know isn’t a pedophile or anything. She also says, “We need to make sure Sue (her sister, my aunt, Roger’s wife) never finds out about this.”
Five years later when Roger gets his face smashed in by a brick from the husband of a lady at work who he’s been fucking, I will be so happy, and I will picture it over and over for years. In my mind, I see a big gray cinderblock brick, him on his back, and the brick just crashing, smashing down into his face, breaking all the bones in its path. Which it did, and he was in the hospital for months getting all kinds of surgeries. And while my mom and my aunts and the whole family spent months worry about poor Sue, and even poor Roger “the asshole,” I did not feel pity, but I did start doing mescaline fairly regularly.
I didn’t tell my mom about that night with Roger, but I did tell my aunt Maryellen. She is eleven years older than me, and was my main person to turn to and trust back then. When I told her, she said, “Oh, Roger does that kind of shit to me all the time when I spend the night. He’s just an idiot.” He does that kind of stuff to her all the time? And she continues to spend the night? She laughs it off? How can that be. I must not have explained it to her right.
“What kind of stuff does he do?” I ask her.
She tells me that she’ll wake up and he’ll be lying on top of her or something.
“Why do you keep going out there?”
“I don’t know. He’s just an idiot. I did say something to Sue about it and he’s been sort of better since then.”
My family is large and has always spent a lot of time together. I grew up with most of them in the house. When I was four, we moved in with my grandparents, and the household for the next four years consisted of me, my little sister, my mom, my grandpa, grandma, aunt Maryellen, aunt Cindy, uncle Davy, uncle Larry. We all lived together, and my grandpa had built the house when my mom was five years old. It didn’t take a formal holiday to have the whole family, twelve or more people, in the house together, and most things happened out in the open.
Roger gave “lickatards” for as long as I can remember back. I grew up with them since babyhood. He would do it to kids, or to Maryellen who was borderline, and sometimes to the older women, too. It was he would all of a sudden be right there in your face, and would lick your check, huge and wide. It was disgusting, and your cheek would be wet and cold and you’d have to wipe it off, and he’d crack up. Most other people would too, and also say things like, “Pig!” or “Roger, you’re disgusting!” But it was beware lickatards at your own risk.
* * * * *
When Adam passed a joint to me, I almost had the guts to shake my head no. But he looked right in my eyes, and it was like there was a connection there, and age didn’t matter or anything, and I was afraid to pop that bubble. So I took the joint, and I hit it, and I coughed like crazy like I always do. And everyone laughs but says how it makes you higher when you cough. I think that is an old wives’ tale just to make the cougher feel not so embarrassed, but then again, I do get way too high, no matter how small of a hit I try to take.
Then I had a beer in my hand, and then my mouth became constantly full of cotton and I had to drink about every few seconds, and then there was another beer in my hands, and then Lisa came home and turned out to be in a good mood and joined us in drinking and getting high and she didn’t even give me or Theresa an attitude.
I remember Theresa kissing one of the guys right in front of everybody, and I saw his hand touch her on the front of the shirt. I was still just crumpled in the corner of the couch with pillows on my lap, because pot makes me not be able to walk or talk. And then Adam was sitting next to me somehow. I just looked over at one point and there he was, and I tried to smile at him and look normal, but it was pretty hard to pull off and seemed to take a long time, and then he smiled really nice and put his arm around me. The air of the house was so thick and grey that I could only see in patches, and my mind would just shut off for periods of time. I remember being in a bedroom with Adam. I remember thinking he really, really liked me.
* * *
I hung out with Theresa constantly after that so me and Adam could see each other. I didn’t know if he knew how to get a hold of me. Maybe I had been too high and passed out on him and pissed him off or hurt his feelings.
Adam was leaving Darby’s as I was going in yesterday. I stopped, so did my heart, and my face spread beamingness down my whole body. He glanced at me. Maybe he doesn’t know how I feel now since I was so wasted that night.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, how you doin’?” he said, and kept walking. He did not even smile.
* * * *
So George Durst is seeming like the route to go. And I am less scared about getting high than I was in 6th grade, partly because I have learned how to fake a hit. I’ve come a long way since Adam. And since Jeff. You have to play what works.
I don’t know. How can you ever know? If someone really does think you’re good, you know? I don’t know how a person can ever figure something like that out. And with me, I don’t think it will ever happen, anyway (yes I do! he’s out there somewhere!), so it is really just a waste of time trying to figure it out. I just sighed heavily, in case you want to get the picture of me right now. I am sitting in the front room of our stupid house, in this sort of wicker, but thicker, chair, with my legs over the arm of it on one side, pointing toward the front door. The phone is on the little table next to me, and next to that is the hutch, on top of which are the rats and the hermit crabs and the baby mice. The phone is beige and kind of more of an office phone than a house phone, I think. The dial of it is worn around on the numbers in a circle from all the fingers and pens and nail files that have stuck in there to dial, and the ear part is sort of grimy in a way that doesn’t come off. Or at least I don’t think it does; probably nobody has ever tried to wash it with a soap or something. To finish the picture for you, I am wearing pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt and my fuzzy purple robe and thick camping socks and fuzzy slippers. If this seems like a lot of clothes to you, that is probably because you’ve never been in our house, which is kept at just above freezing all winter to save money. Because my step dad is a fucking dick. Sorry for the F word, but if you knew him, you also would know that it has to be used. I am not kidding, either. I can make a puff (I just tested to make sure I’m not lying) of breath and see it. IN THE HOUSE. To be honest, it is colder out here in the front room than it is in the living room or the kitchen, but Nick is in the living room and my mom is in the kitchen. Not that being in a room with my mom is a problem by itself, but the living room is within hearing distance of the kitchen—especially Nicks end of the couch where he sits and greases down the fabric with his sweaty-ass back—and being in hearing distance of him and anywhere around my mom is major danger zone. I am not kidding; I am safer getting caught swearing to a friend on the phone than I am talking nice to my mom. He will find major evil in me, no matter what. I could prove it to you right now, but I don’t feel like getting psycho’d on, thank you very much.
And upstairs? In my bedroom? Give me a break. It’s so freezing up there that none of go to bed until the last possible second. You can totally see your breath in bed. It’s retarded that we have to go around the house bundled up like it’s outside. Half the time, my mom is wearing mittens when she makes breakfast for Nick. She cooks him breakfast every morning. He also sits at the end of the kitchen table, which means he is sticking right out into the kitchen and there is only like a few feet between his ugly back and the refrigerator. So why is that a problem, since I am not allowed in the refrigerator without asking, anyway? Well, because he will be sitting there when you need to go down to the basement to take a shower or something, and that is just another suck in your aura time of having to get that close in his aggravational field and besides being danger, Will Robinson, danger, it makes my skin freak out., My pores all start opening and closing and my hairs stand on end and my cells of my epidermis try really hard to commit suicide from the terror of it all. Not a pretty picture. Welcome to life as a kid who is an evil, open target at the hands of an all powerful evil stepfather. Hey, it wasn’t my choice for my life to turn into some warped fairytale. Nightmare version, though.
I am not going to call Donny back. He will call again. He is too mature to ever truly prank me. He is that way; very nice. My mom loves him. If I ever did make Donny my actual boyfriend, I could probably have unprecedented free reign with him. I wonder if Nick would just be glad I was gone, or if he would have to continue his obsessive ruining of me. Probably would depend on my level of disappearance. Who am I kidding, he will only be happy when I’m dead.
* * * * *
“Hold it in longer.” I am trying to learn to smoke cigarettes. It is New Year’s Eve and I am at Kelly Johnson’s sleepover party. I cannot believe I’m at Kelly Johnson’s party. I cannot believe I am in Kelly Johnson’s house. How did they ever pick me? I am really pulling something off. Pam Hurley is here, too, second in command from Kelly Johnson. And really, they are so nice. I didn’t know these guys could actually have a normal, goofy side. They are not being tough tonight. I have not had a moment of fear that my ass will be kicked tonight, which feels so good that I want to marry it, this moment. I want to be like them, so bad, so I will be one of them and belong.
But I choke on the smoke in my lungs and it tears itself back out to the air, ripping up my lungs and esophagus on it’s way. Chunky blocks of Newports smoke sputters back out for everybody to see, little clouds and smears, not the controlled line of exhale that is supposed to happen.
I feel like my lungs and throat are on gagging fire.
“Suck it deeper down, like into your stomach.” Kim McDonald. She is not even in our school any more. She is a 9th grader at high school. This is blowing my mind. But they all seem to like me right now, so suck again I do.
I can feel it this time, where the failure keeps happening in the keep-the-smoke-down system. My body feels like it is turning inside out, but I holding it in, anyway., Right down to my stomach, like Kim says. It’s working so good that I look at the popular-girl faces watching me and can’t help but smile. Which breaks that barrier that kept the killer cloud down in my stomach, and out it comes, this time in a coughing fit I can’t even pretend to play down. I am afraid pieces of bloody lung are going to come up and fly out to hit Dick Clark’s face on Kelly Johnson’s TV.
But they don’t give up, and by the time the ball drops in Times Square, I am s-m-o-k-i-n-g. Amber Bach, watch her go, smoking a fucking cigarette. And they quit watching me after the first two, so by the third, around 3:00 a.m. and right before we all go to sleep, I am just a regular old smoker, doing it without an audience and with coughing, just for the sheer pleasure of the feeling of badass it gives me. And oh, it does.
* * * * *
Jeff Ehrlich is coming over to Michelle Sommers’ party tonight. This is an odd turn of events for me, from a historical perspective. (Fuck that “an historical” shit; it sounds retarded.) Jeff was my boyfriend for most of grades three through six. When we got to junior high, I was afraid Jeff would hold me back in the popularity department. He looked like a little boy compared to all the 8th graders walking the halls, and even compared to some of the 7th graders from other elementary schools. There was no way I could stay involved with him once we got to middle school. So I didn’t. Toward the end, in the first parts of the 7th grade year, he wrote me some serious notes trying to get me to come around, to connect with him again like we always had. But I shut him out completely. I was embarrassed of him.
And by 8th grade, Jeff’s popularity had surpassed mine by about two hundred percent.
He went with both Michelle Sommers and Kelly Johnson. Also, Christa Jubelt. In 8th grade, there was probably most of the year that he was the most popular guy at school. And he was always nice to me, but he acted like we’d never had any former connection, really. The new Jeff was just another popular guy in the crowd I was infiltrating, and I had no more pull with him than any of the others.
Christa Jubelt had a hard time of it. Things got so bad for her at school that she had to leave our school altogether and go to a different one. Because everyone decided to hate her an call her a slut. Because it was rumored that she and Jeff had done it. But same with Michelle Sommers, and she never suffered Christa’s fate. Christa had it so bad, man. Worse than I ever did, probably. She couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without them constantly on her about her being a slut, or kicking her ass. She went from a brief but satisfying stint in the popular crowd and their powerful friendships, to zero friends. None. Not a one. She did have me, though, at least for a while. And Angie Cordone, who was not part of the popular crowd, but was so tough and smart that she sort of rose above it all.
Anyway, Christa is gone now, and Angie Cordone doesn’t come to these kind of parties. She probably could if she wanted, but she’s smart enough to know she really doesn’t fit in. She is too bulky and big or whatever. Mostly you have to be around the same size in this crowd.
I am afraid I’m going to just start bawling when Jeff gets here. He is going with Michelle again. They are “in love.” Nobody has ever loved me. Except Donny, and he doesn’t really count, and Jeff, back in the old days. But we never even made out, and him and Michelle go all the way. That’s something way out of the realm of the old Jeff and me from Franklin (our elementary school). Jeff used to break up with me in 6th grade because I wouldn’t kiss him. He really did like me back then, but it’s nothing compared to what him and Michelle have. They’re like grown-up love. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that.
Oh God, here he comes. He is so cute. I love his smile more than any other smile I’ve ever seen. I will until I’m old, too.
“Hey, Fudge.” I used to call him that back at Franklin.
“Hey Amy.” He smiled and really meant it, but then straight past me to Michelle and they hug and kiss and I am like a cardboard cutout of a girl. Why can’t I be real? To anybody. Except Donny.
I want to go home now. I called him Fudge and he doesn’t love me. It’s worse that he his so nice to me, because that means there really isn’t anything there. He just thinks of me as another person. I can’t hurt him. If you can’t hurt someone, you can never really be safe with them. You can never really have someone you can’t screw around. Jeff is out of my stratosphere.
And that leaves me such a fucking loser.
George Durst is looking at me. Oh my God. He is an 8th grader. Even better, he used to go with Michelle Sommers. It is my chance to even things up with Jeff; to be the same status, at least. I cannot stand feeling like I am sub par. I hate feeling like I am a charity case, or the nice girl that the cool people don’t mind having around. I want to be an equal.
My home life isn’t sufficiently shitty to qualify me. Hard to believe. But the case, I think. Pam’s mom is an alcoholic and just moved out last year and left Pam and her sister with their dad. The dad beats Pam up sometimes, I think. Kelly’s parents are still married though, so maybe there’s hope for me even without the required level of devastation. Michelle’s dad, I don’t know where he is. But her mom always has a boyfriend, and she is gone a lot, so it’s just Michelle and her little brother at home. Like, for whole weekends. You know, that’s what makes the cut: supervision. Things in Jeff’s life must have really taken a turn in 7th grade, and that’s how he shot to the top of the heap. His parents got divorced that year, I know.
Me, I can’t get out for shit. That is really a problem. A problem I have to fucking fix, because I can’t take life as a fucking loser like this.
“Need a beer?” It’s George Durst. Oh my god. Pam has noticed and just nudged Kelly.
“Fuckin’ A,” I say. I can’t believe I just said that. I swear to God, I totally pulled it off, too. Who am I on the outside right now, because it’s nobody I am on the inside, that’s for sure. Fuck, Shawn Coughlin is looking at me, and she can see the inside of me. She knows I’m a fucking loser. She hates me. She is one of the 8th graders. I have to just ignore her. I smiled at her, but it’s not working. She knows I know that she knows that I’m a fucking loser.
George just nodded and headed down the stairs. The beer is in the kitchen. Michelle’s mom is home this weekend, but she is with her boyfriend and doesn’t care if Michelle has people over as long as it’s in her room. Her room is the whole upstairs of the house, like one big room. Pam’s is the same way, across the street.
I am sort of an experiment here tonight. I don’t really have a primary buddy to hang out with, so I’m just leaning against this dresser thing against one wall and watching people and acting like it’s all a blast. Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” album is on. I don’t know the guy doing the music. I think it is Tony Formaz’s older brother. He is out of high school age. The music is really loud. Everybody smokes. Michelle is sitting on Jeff’s lap and looking very cute.
I feel like an elephant.
George is back. He hands me a can of Miller. I quickly set my mostly full warm can on the dresser behind me and slide it back. In 9th grade, Kim McDonald will teach me how to drink beer fast, but right now I don’t know how to get hardly any of it down. That’s where shots come it with young girls.
“Thanks.” Shit, he is staying over here by me. He is just standing here next to me. Now he is talking to Gary Collins, but he is still standing near me. He brought me a beer, and he is staying right here.
I can see this is a colossal opportunity for me, and so I will take it. But I wish that George were a little taller. And I damn sure wish he had different hair. His hair is like a stupid helmet. How did Michelle go out with him? They had sex too, I think. I guess it is the body. He has a very muscled, Mr. Universe body. He could for sure beat anyone to a pulp; taller guys would be no problem. And aren’t. The guys in this crowd have proven themselves. But I just don’t happen to personally find much cute about the stocky muscle guy. I go more for faces, and George Durst isn’t one that I would pick. Oh well. I still can’t believe he is staying here with me. I feel dizzy from it, and I know that people are noticing. Every now and then, George turns and smiles at me a little. I just smoke and smoke and smoke.
Here comes Pam.
“Dogness, how you doing?” We call each other dogness. She is the least tough of the crowd, but I have still seen her kick ass.
“Good, man.” I suddenly can’t lift words with my breath, and they fall to our feet on the shag carpet.
“Getting buzzed, man?”
“Ah, yeah,” I am, too. I don’t know what time it is, and I am not sure how many beers I’ve finished. Maybe two, if you add the half-cans together.
Pam looks so cute. She is wearing skin tight Sasson’s and a white and black 50/50 shirt with Led Zepplin on it. Her shirt is tucked in. Her hair is feathered really good and comes to the top of her shoulders. She has on blue eyeliner and has very long eyelashes. They are really thick, too. Everyone likes Pam because she is so cute. She is short and kind of small, and is really spunky. She is the one who ends up crying now and then from something, and everyone takes up arms to avenge her. She also has a good dose of tomboy, and I like hanging out with her. She glances back at Kelly Johnson and Cathy Miller, like she doesn’t want them to be looking over here—they aren’t—and leans in to me.
“You want to get high?”
I most certainly do not want to get high. There are fewer things I’d less like to do than get high. I have been high before, last year in sixth grade, with Theresa’s brothers, and also with the people she baby sits for. That is because when a grown up passes you a joint and is all smiles and clearly doing you a big huge favor by including you, you go along with it.
The people next door to Theresa get her high all the time. Since at least fifth grade, maybe way before. It is a married couple with a baby, and also at least one other guy who lives there or is at least always over there. Theresa has gotten to be kind of like them in the way that she tries to get me over there and then also finds it very funny to make sure I get high. She knows I don’t want to and she gets me to do it anyway, and then she cracks up at my paranoia. She is high a lot. I don’t know how she can stand it.
Last time I was over there, to the baby sitting neighbors, they got me high. I guess you might think why didn’t I just not smoke any pot if I didn’t want to be high, but you are just going to have to trust me of how it is. If you are not from this kind of situation, I don’t blame you for not getting it. But here is the scene, and maybe you can get more of a picture of it.
We are two hours into babysitting, me and Theresa, and the baby has been put to bed. We are sitting on the long couch in the living room, watching TV and just hanging out, and the husband and two other guys come in. But we are still technically babysitting, until Lisa, the mom, gets home from work around 11:00, so it is not even an issue for us to leave. But the guys, these large hippy men in jean jackets and army coats with afros and long hair, they are all, “Hey, you girls don’t mind if we listen to some music, do you?” So of course we don’t, because what else are we going to do, and they are acting like we are all equals, and they don’t mind that we are smoking cigarettes or anything. So they get some beers from the refrigerator, and turn up the stereo, and flop around the living room. It is only like 9:00 and Lisa doesn’t get home for a couple hours. Me, I am feeling almost invisibly self-conscious, but Theresa is digging the attention. She likes that they are hanging out with us. She has brothers their age almost, and her brothers beat the shit out of her. She steals the roaches of their joints out of the ashtrays in their bedrooms, and they beat her ass because they can tell when she’s been in their rooms. I hate it when she makes me go down into the basement where her brother’s rooms are. She always says, “It’s no big deal, they won’t know.” Or, “They don’t care.” her stories aren’t very consistent.
So back to last time I was over there with her, next door babysitting, the guys that lived there had this one friend with them who was sort of quiet and very, very nice. He seemed different. Like, the other two would sort of laugh about Theresa getting older and developing a ‘bod’ and tits and stuff, but he wouldn’t really join in on that. He would just sort of smile around at us and drink his beer. And he lit my cigarette, too. His name is Adam, and he has really soft, fuzzy hair that is kind of dark blonde. His eyes are very soft, especially for an older guy. He didn’t seem older in the way the other guys do.
The dad went in and woke the baby up after a while and brought him out to play with him. He gave him beer, and Theresa, the dad, and the other guy cracked up, but Adam didn’t. I liked him.
* * * * *
“Normal people do this stuff all the time,” Roger says. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It feels really good.”
He is holding up a card, the seven of spades, and on it is a photograph of a man and a woman, naked, and she is bent over with a stubbed-her-toe expression on her face, and his penis is sticking into her and she is squeezing her boobs and he has his thumb stuck inside her butt.
My body feels like it is being vaporized, floating into a trillion little vibrating pieces that aren’t quite attached to each other. I wish I would blow away. So bad.
It is 9:00 at night and I am at my aunt Sue’s, out in the middle of the country, and she is working the night shift. Roger is her husband, and I am eleven years old.
“You probably look more like a teenager than a kid to him, though,” my mom will say when she finds out about this night, “so at least we know isn’t a pedophile or anything. She also says, “We need to make sure Sue (her sister, my aunt, Roger’s wife) never finds out about this.”
Five years later when Roger gets his face smashed in by a brick from the husband of a lady at work who he’s been fucking, I will be so happy, and I will picture it over and over for years. In my mind, I see a big gray cinderblock brick, him on his back, and the brick just crashing, smashing down into his face, breaking all the bones in its path. Which it did, and he was in the hospital for months getting all kinds of surgeries. And while my mom and my aunts and the whole family spent months worry about poor Sue, and even poor Roger “the asshole,” I did not feel pity, but I did start doing mescaline fairly regularly.
I didn’t tell my mom about that night with Roger, but I did tell my aunt Maryellen. She is eleven years older than me, and was my main person to turn to and trust back then. When I told her, she said, “Oh, Roger does that kind of shit to me all the time when I spend the night. He’s just an idiot.” He does that kind of stuff to her all the time? And she continues to spend the night? She laughs it off? How can that be. I must not have explained it to her right.
“What kind of stuff does he do?” I ask her.
She tells me that she’ll wake up and he’ll be lying on top of her or something.
“Why do you keep going out there?”
“I don’t know. He’s just an idiot. I did say something to Sue about it and he’s been sort of better since then.”
My family is large and has always spent a lot of time together. I grew up with most of them in the house. When I was four, we moved in with my grandparents, and the household for the next four years consisted of me, my little sister, my mom, my grandpa, grandma, aunt Maryellen, aunt Cindy, uncle Davy, uncle Larry. We all lived together, and my grandpa had built the house when my mom was five years old. It didn’t take a formal holiday to have the whole family, twelve or more people, in the house together, and most things happened out in the open.
Roger gave “lickatards” for as long as I can remember back. I grew up with them since babyhood. He would do it to kids, or to Maryellen who was borderline, and sometimes to the older women, too. It was he would all of a sudden be right there in your face, and would lick your check, huge and wide. It was disgusting, and your cheek would be wet and cold and you’d have to wipe it off, and he’d crack up. Most other people would too, and also say things like, “Pig!” or “Roger, you’re disgusting!” But it was beware lickatards at your own risk.
* * * * *
When Adam passed a joint to me, I almost had the guts to shake my head no. But he looked right in my eyes, and it was like there was a connection there, and age didn’t matter or anything, and I was afraid to pop that bubble. So I took the joint, and I hit it, and I coughed like crazy like I always do. And everyone laughs but says how it makes you higher when you cough. I think that is an old wives’ tale just to make the cougher feel not so embarrassed, but then again, I do get way too high, no matter how small of a hit I try to take.
Then I had a beer in my hand, and then my mouth became constantly full of cotton and I had to drink about every few seconds, and then there was another beer in my hands, and then Lisa came home and turned out to be in a good mood and joined us in drinking and getting high and she didn’t even give me or Theresa an attitude.
I remember Theresa kissing one of the guys right in front of everybody, and I saw his hand touch her on the front of the shirt. I was still just crumpled in the corner of the couch with pillows on my lap, because pot makes me not be able to walk or talk. And then Adam was sitting next to me somehow. I just looked over at one point and there he was, and I tried to smile at him and look normal, but it was pretty hard to pull off and seemed to take a long time, and then he smiled really nice and put his arm around me. The air of the house was so thick and grey that I could only see in patches, and my mind would just shut off for periods of time. I remember being in a bedroom with Adam. I remember thinking he really, really liked me.
* * *
I hung out with Theresa constantly after that so me and Adam could see each other. I didn’t know if he knew how to get a hold of me. Maybe I had been too high and passed out on him and pissed him off or hurt his feelings.
Adam was leaving Darby’s as I was going in yesterday. I stopped, so did my heart, and my face spread beamingness down my whole body. He glanced at me. Maybe he doesn’t know how I feel now since I was so wasted that night.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, how you doin’?” he said, and kept walking. He did not even smile.
* * * *
So George Durst is seeming like the route to go. And I am less scared about getting high than I was in 6th grade, partly because I have learned how to fake a hit. I’ve come a long way since Adam. And since Jeff. You have to play what works.
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