Dignity

At first I didn’t understand about my friend’s mother.  My high school friend, a shy, petite red-head invited me over to the house one afternoon.  I had nowhere better to be and I knew I could smoke cigarettes.  Halleluiah a parent who let the kids smoke!  I didn’t know about the boys.  Every day they were there.  Boys who no longer went to school.  They were mystery boys. They worked on construction sites, if they worked. They all had some type of hustle, legal or illegal.  No one talked much about the 9-5 grind.  The girls went to school.  The mother stayed home.  The boys came over. We waited for them as they sauntered through the screen door one by one.  I remember they were different, they spoke their own language, and they were a little bit dirty.  An exotic breed. It was a house for wayward kids, and lost boys. 

It took me weeks to realize that eventually the mother would disappear and so would Pedro.  I was fifteen and completely self-absorbed.  At fifteen I didn’t possess a finally honed social radar.  It wasn’t bad, but then again, there were so many boys it was distracting. I was absorbed with Mike, therefore, not the entire picture just one piece of it.  Pedro was the leader of the pack.  Mike was second in command.  In my book the rule is if you can’t have the lead singer go for the guitar player.    

My radar was good enough to know I made the mom uncomfortable.  I was a fifteen year old stunner.  Shit, I caused a fender bender just walking to the 7-11.  Cut-off denim shorts, halter top, 5”platform sandals, long, dark, curly hair, and curves shaped by my partial Jamaican heritage.  BOOM!  Those dudes couldn’t look away.  Whatever, I had a pack of Marlboro’s to buy.  Yeah, the mom spotted competition the moment her daughter invited me into the den.  She got revenge, she plucked my eyebrows to the point where they never grew back, not to this day. 

Every evening as dusk settled the commotion began.  Get them out before the husband comes home.  Someone kept look-out.  It might have been the daughter.  She had her own boy.  He was a boy.  Not one of the almost-men.  Smaller, cleaner, much less dangerous, she wasn’t looking for adventure. She was following her mom’s lead, but in a smaller way, the way her tiny frame dictated.  The husband was a cop.  His occupation made the whole business even more corrupt.  Being busted by a cop!  Visions of unspeakable violence danced through my head.  The scary truth, my perception of the situation was nothing compared to reality. It took me too long to figure out what was there all along. I was so naive.

I’d met the cop. He was nice.  Gentle even.  A hard working man.  Seemed to me he was doing his best.  Although, sometimes best is never enough.  Okay, yes, they were the archetypal blue collar family. I had the sense to know I didn’t belong there. In the unspoken caste system of suburbia I was middle class. But, that’s exactly why I was there.  Face it, I was a lot like her, the dangerous type.  It comes at a cost.  Mine wasn’t as high. What was the mom looking for?  What did her husband do to deserve the daily locked door with a teenage lover behind it?  I sensed something vengeful in her actions. She emanated an aura of “fuck you” whenever the husband came home.  I knew her daughter was embarrassed by whole bit, but we never spoke of it.  Funny how when things are terribly wrong teenagers lose their voices. 

Later on I realized that everyone knew.  Maybe not the whole of the thing, but some sordid detail of it. I mean the entire make-up of our section of suburbia, blue collar, middle class and upper class, knew something of the tale.  When almost every family knows something, eventually even mine, her husband had to know.  I was fifteen.  Denial was not in my vocabulary.

For a while, even after I found out, I continued to make out with Mike.  I let him touch me in places.  Eventually, we went beyond the couch and moved outside to his red van where no one could see him put his hands down my jeans.  That’s as far as it went.  Hands here and there.  Blue balls.  Fantasies.  A red van.  The stench of stale beer. He had no real home.  Never told me the story.  I offered solutions and full pouty lips.  Mother Mary in tight jeans and a halter.  Eventually I got bored.  Truth told, I got disgusted. I couldn’t wipe away the image of what he did, what they did. And as long as I allowed his hands on me I was guilty too. I needed to get back to where I was safe, the high school boys who lived at home, went to class and made out with me after school in the parking lot.  In the daylight. They would never hurt me.  They would never do that thing he took part in.  Never.

The mom, one night, drove those boys, all of them, an estimate of twelve or ten, too many, to the parking lot of the high school.  She drove the family car. An old beat up 70’s station wagon.  Something you might see on The Brady Bunch. I think she knew what was going to happen, but what does a fifteen year old know?  Was this an unspoken assignation?  She knew the things they were capable of, and she was well schooled on the libido of an almost-man, an eighteen year old.  But some say she didn’t.  Back door opened wide.  Pants and panties pulled off.  Legs opened wide.  I imagine her arms spread too, and nailed down.  Sacrificial.  Crucified.  Maybe he started it, or maybe he stood aside, master of ceremonies, master of puppets.  One by one they penetrated.  They pulled out and came on her belly, on her tits, on her face.  What was her expression?  Some say she played with their cum.  Rubbed it in like body lotion.  Anointed herself.  Saving them.  Saving herself. They approached her with flies unzipped.  What was her expression? Shock? Fear? Detachment?  Delight?  Some say she loved it, couldn’t get enough of it.  She’s thin, she’s deep, she’s birthed babies; she could take it.  Take it.  Take it.  Take it.  Did they say that?  Take it bitch.  Take it whore.  You know you want it.  You love it slut.  Shut up and take it.  Or were they silent?  Cowards.  All of them.  Did she cry out for help?  Or did she look at Pedro for approval?  Is that all she wanted?  His approval?  An affirmation from him that she was worth something?  Or did she want an act of final and complete revenge on her husband?  Did it have nothing to do with them?  Did she want to do it? 

What happened after?  Was there blood?  Was she hurt?  Did she cry?  Did she feel victory?  Did she prove something?  To those boys? To herself?  She was just like them.  Yeah, she could fuck too.  She could fuck so hard she could out fuck them.  Did it give her dignity?  Was that what her husband couldn’t give her? Dignity?  Was that what life as a blue collar house wife stripped her of?  Dignity? In the dark, in the back of a station wagon, in a high school parking lot did she find it? Dignity? A gang bang. Is that what a woman with broken dreams needs to do to find it? Dignity.

 

 

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Podcasts, Lawsuits and Lydia Lunch

I’m addicted to this, “What’s up what the fuckers?  What the fuckettes?  What the fucknots?  What the fuck your word here, Mark Maron wants to call me. I have probably listened to about 20 "WTF" podcasts back to back.  Podcast addict, always an addict, this is a healthy one.  My WTF habit was instigated by my friend Brian. First he pie-eyed me and then screamed across The Soho House, “YOU don’t listen to Mark Maron?" Since, I’ve heard Brain interviewed on "WTF" and Mark Maron interviewed on Brain's podcast, "The Moment" and realized a) he was right I’m a moron and b) he’s got a man-crush on Mark.  I have a crush on Mark Maron.  I want to hold hands with him until my palm becomes so sweaty I only let go to wipe it on my jeans. “I think you should do a podcast,” came later in the conversation.  The advice was to construct the thing with one of my best friends, because we’ve been a notorious duo for decades, but alas, he’s not interested.  I let the idea radiate and eventually fade away.

Months passed, as did this suck of an east coast winter and suddenly I got bored with NPR.  I know, I know, I’m in my 50’s and I listen to NPR, shoot me now or put me out to pasture, or shut up and don’t judge.  At some point I can only take so much of Middle East politics. The black girls on Orange is the New Black who imitate NPR have become my visualization of NPR.  Wait, I can get "TED Talks" and "The Moth" as podcasts? What the fuck, NPR, I only listen to you now when I forget to hook my iPhone up to my car speakers so I can lose myself in a podcast like when I was fourteen gorging on KISS albums. 

I wanted to put Maron’s head through a wall when Chrissie Hynde mentioned MOR and he asked her what that was.  It was the moment I realized my friend is right and I should create a podcast.  I don’t know how to, but I’ll figure it out.  I didn’t know how to do A&R when I was hired to do that job either. In my head I will be the female Mark Maron.  I relish in the dream. I roll around in it like my dogs do in something foul smelling. Failure has become something I’ve grown comfortable with.  That’s the difference between me at 27 and me today. However, should the podcast living in my head, fail, I will cry, stay in bed and binge watch something on Netflix for two weeks.

Lately, there have been a few reoccurring themes in my life, other then podcasts.  One of them is painful.  I keep being forced to spend a lot of money on unforeseen stuff.  This is another difference between me at 35 and me of today.  At 35 all my money went to Marc Jacobs.  Lately, my money has gone to lawyers’ fees.  Fees paid to defend myself in a petty matter that I can’t write about now (no social media clause), but I will later.  It has to do with the education part of my life. Take my word. It’s so stupid I grade high school essays that make more sense.  And no, I didn’t do anything harmful to a student.  Not in my repertoire.  I just pissed someone off, which is in my repertoire.  And vet bills.  Generally, the pups are fine, but they keep hurting themselves and have to wear cone heads.  Pups, lawyers, mean school administrators; listen up, teachers do not make money! I will starve this summer and have no money to start my podcast.

The other is writing.  I’ve been told, and I have read, put aside time every day to write.  That’s the only way you will become a real writer.  I hate being a fake writer.  My conundrum, or excuse, is morning is the best time for me to write.  I already get up at 5:30 for work.  I have a day job (for now).  What the fuck, I’ll have to get up at 4:00 a.m.? Why can’t I write after work?  These are not excuses, just the facts ma’am.  Our charter contracts teachers from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  I have to do things for my mental and physical well being every evening or bad things will happen.  Take my word on this.  In between I have errands or I’m taking one of the pups to the vet.  I will try it and let you know how it works out.  If the bags under my eyes look like a Birkin, I’ll know precisely who to blame.  If the writing gets better, I’ll thank them, while stashing my keys and wallet under my eye sockets.

Finally, a bit of shameless self-promotion, I am doing my first reading in public.  I did a workshop with Lydia Lunch.  Yes, the Lydia Lunch of the 80’s No Wave movement, Queen of Slam, Stinkfist, Paradoxia the book (one of them). Lydia Lunch, a woman who has inspired fear, lust, and shock in many of us. My friend M. Raffaele who writes the blog “Miss Anthrope’s House of High Drama,” a must read, put two very limited, to be exact ten women each, workshops together this week and we are doing a collective reading on Thursday April 23^rd at The Treehouse on the second floor of 2A in Manhattan.  Lydia named it Badass Babes on a Bender. Please come. 

Honestly, my piece isn’t great, no really it isn’t.  When I start waking up at 4:00 a.m. and writing everyday, when I work through The Artist’s Way, that’s another thing that keeps coming up, things keep coming up, like those ugly locusts digging their way up through the dirt every summer, it will improve.  But, I’m doing it because I’ll hate myself if I don’t.  However, there are woman performing at Badass Babes on a Bender who will bring you to your knees with tears or laughter or a hit of serious, “whoa, I’m thinking a deep thought.”  So come.  I will not be on a bender, I’m just reading.  And hey, thanks for reading this.  I’m back.  It’s cool.