There’s always something to do. I constantly experience the feeling that I’m
missing something. There are gigs and
readings and gallery openings and now closings too. Someone has organized an anniversary
celebration for something. There are
special screenings for films that seem to come and then disappear as though
they’ve been sealed up in a bad vault too long.
The phenomenon of social media works its magic on me. I see photographs of people doing things that
I feel like I forgot to do. I wasn’t there.
I never received the memo. Maybe the opportunity got lost in the pile of
unopened invitations in that invitation folder place I never look at. Or, sigh, maybe no one ever sent it to me. I
wonder if a subscription to Time Out would make things easier. But then I would have to read it.
In 1976 life was much simpler. I was thirteen going on fourteen. It was the year of the bicentennial. Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In the New Jersey suburbia where I lived, a
commuter city, there was still an air of 1950’s white picket fences. Kids rode their bicycles in the streets after
school. We all had curfews and
allowances. Dads bought cheap fireworks
for the bicentennial Fourth of July celebration. Wisps of innocence floated through the air,
and I had no idea how quickly one experience would change my life forever.
I’m not referring to my virginity. That was gone. Lost it young, in 1976, drunk on cheap, dark
rum on Brian Basil’s floor. Brian looked
like a teenage, bow-legged, Brian Jones.
He even had a poster of Brian Jones on his ceiling. I thought that was weird. I wasn’t sure if he
knew how much he resembled Brian Jones and that poster served as a door to an
alternate universe, or he just dug the dude.
Brian’s mother committed suicide.
She closed the garage door, attached the hose to her exhaust pipe placed
the other end into her car window. He
was left with an angry dad and a younger brother.
There was a record store on Main Street. It was my private after school retreat. I was in the 8th grade. I went
there to pour through the bins. Record bins
filled with Queen albums and all The Who albums I loved, the older hippie
records like Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, Jefferson Airplane that
I listened to and thought I might still be living. I could sing the shit out of “White
Rabbit.” Stacks of Rolling Stones
records released before 1976. I loved
Hot Rocks, but also Flowers, Between the Buttons, and of course Beggar’s
Banquet. Although those bins were filled
with unexplored gems, I could listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” ten times in a
row. I held long conversations with the
sales guy. He was tall, thin in his
early 20’s. I knew nothing about him except
that he seemed wise. I wasn’t exposed to
twenty year olds, except possibly my teachers who did not count. They seemed miserable and would never
understand how important reading an album cover from front to back was. Or that double albums meant you could roll a
good joint, the seeds getting all caught up in the seam. One afternoon Brian prowled in like a stray
cat.
After Brian made his initial appearance we formed a
gang. Every afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00
the three of us hung out in that record store.
Eventually Brian took my phone number and from 7:00- 9:00 we’d have marathon
conversations. Except for the hours in
school, my days revolved around Brian.
At the record store and on the phone he was vulnerable. He was a broken boy who needed to be fixed. And he was a bad boy. Once a bad boy enters a good girls life everything
spins out of orbit. My grades spun. The guidance counselor with the enormous Afro
was called into the picture. He kept my
secret, until he didn’t.
On some evenings I would be allowed to go out. I had a 10:00 curfew. I would make my way to South Hackensack. That was where all the bad boys lived. It was the Italian area of our district. In South Hackensack almost every boy had a
band. In 1976, South Hackensack was my
suburban version of CBGB’s. Brian would
take me to the corner park. We’d sit at
picnic tables watching for cops and smoking pot with his friends. I didn’t like them. They weren’t sweet, vulnerable boys. They were mean, spiteful, nasty things. Not teenage boys, but reptilian creatures
slithering around with joints in their mouths and bad grammar. I felt uncomfortable in my Candies and
high-waist bell-bottom jeans. If I stood
up I knew they would say something, maybe about my big ass, or thighs. Say something about what I wanted to
hide.
One afternoon on descending upon the record store, the
salesman announced it was his last day. Maybe
he had taken a better job, or was going to school, or both. I was thirteen and whatever the 20 year old
was off to do didn’t have anything to do with me and, therefore didn’t
matter. What mattered was that he was
leaving and I would never see him again.
Our little group was going to die.
His very last words to Brain and me were, “You two take care of each other.” A sixteen-year old high school dropout and a
thirteen-year old wearing a “Tommy” t-shirt taking care of each other is a
comical image. Whatever he saw, I cannot
imagine.
We stopped going to the record store. Instead we spent the afternoons, between 3:00
and 5:00, at Brian’s house. Unsupervised
fun. This afternoon was particularly out
of control. Many times we drank beer, we
always smoked pot, but we rarely drank hard liquor. I was set up.
Brian had the condom in his pocket.
It might have always been there.
There weren’t a lot of girls on that scene. The girls who did hang out were older, wrung
out and tired. No warning signals
sounded in my head.
The entire day was a recipe for disaster. I’d brought a friend along. The fact that her dad was a cop proved my
naivety. In a drunken stupor she opened the door, looking for me. He was directly on top of me. I was almost passed out. My head was spinning. It still hurt. She gasped and closed the door. We never spoke about it. The condom was red. He asked me if that, “Turned me on?” Moments later my head was over a toilet. I didn’t have sex again until I was sixteen.
Denise and I both returned home drunk. Her parents called my parents. The guidance counselor with the Afro got
involved. He finally told my parents
about the boy in South Hackensack. I was
told, “No more.” Either in an act of
unusual maturity, or revenge I used the payphone at school and told him, “No
more,” with strict instructions not to call me or come looking for me. I went on with my life. He didn’t seek me
out. Not until I was in high school and
no longer cared. The truth was, I no
longer cared once I hung up that payphone. A quick rebound, I was again connected with my
middle school friends. The group I’d
forsaken for the short time I’d disappeared into my record store refuge, and
spawned a secret life filled with reptiles and suicides. “Bohemian Rhapsody” still played in the
background.
“KISS Alive!” was issued in 1975. In 8th grade once we found that
record Craig and I erected an entire life around it. I found my way back to Craig, we’d gone
through such awkward years together.
Craig was my real middle-school boyfriend. He was as obsessed with KISS as I, and came
with fringe benefits, kindness and the patience to put up with my crap. In 1976
KISS were all that mattered. I didn’t
want to have a conversation if it didn’t involve Paul, Gene, Ace and Peter, in
that order (Craig put Gene first). For the next two years no separation existed
between that band and myself. I was a
certified member of the KISS Army and I had the t-shirt to prove it.
Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City! The date was announced, July 10th,
1976, and we had tickets. Me, Craig,
Robin and Robin’s older cousin, who was driving age, were going to be in that
stadium. This was the axis our lives
revolved round, and finally it was not going to be lived solely through the
record player and our imaginations. We
were going to see them, really, really see them! No passionate journey, actually it was
particularly rambunctious, this ride in Robin’s cousin’s green Camaro filled
with pot smoke. But, oh hell, we were
driving down hot, summer dusty roads to Roosevelt Stadium in a 1971 Camaro! I had no idea this was the band’s first
stadium show. I don’t think I knew what
a stadium was. As a matter of fact, I
had no idea where Jersey City was.
J. Geils Band opened.
I didn’t care. It was still
daylight. We got seats. Two rows back
from the masses standing in the pit. I could
take in the entire spectacle of the stage. Scaffolds, giant cats, and odd shapes that wouldn’t
reveal themselves until they were ready, a small sinful city encapsulating The
Summer of Satan Tour. And as the demonic
night descended, the Jersey air filled with electricity. Thousands of misfits,
just like us, waiting for the God of Thunder, we’d found our fellowship. A shift, a jolt, a lightening bolt; an
inexplicable sensation I’ve only felt in the community of rock & roll,
for a microsecond, cut through the tension, and then escalated it. In one orchestrated movement, the unwashed
masses stood on guard, “You wanted the
best. You got the best. The hottest band in the land, KISS!!!” Fire exploded. Platform boots, guitar strapped torsos
descended down two enormous staircases. The
first guitar chord pierced me. I swooned! The guy behind me puked. To this day, like a drug addict I seek the hit
of that first concert over and over and over again.
I came home with a KISS bicentennial poster. There was nothing else I could do in my
teenage years that could piss my father off more. I had gone through my rite of passage. It was 1976. It was on.
-Dedicated to Craig who's tongue wasn't as long as Gene Simmon's but his heart much bigger.
