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A Taste of the ’80s

My sister and I spent summer weekdays with a dozen other kids at a woman’s house in Upstate New York until the moment I witnessed the woman’s husband launch a rat snake into the sky with his homemade catapult — the shiny black serpent’s white belly glinting in the sunlight as it soared higher and higher before disappearing into the branches of a tree — and murmured “Fuck me,” a little too loudly. 

We were henceforth shuttled to the home of my Taekwondo instructor and his wife where no one seemed to mind nine year olds speaking like two-bit Staten Island mobsters. The couple had a son Jimmy a grade above me and a daughter Celeste a grade below my sister. While my Taekwondo instructor spent his days as a Correctional Officer at a local prison, his wife spent hers with a couple of friends on a floral-patterned velvet couch in a smoky, dark living room. 

None of us children were permitted in the house during the day except for one bathroom visit apiece. To escape the sun, we hung out in an old, windowless cabin on the property. No matter how much we swept that floor, Celeste’s bare feet always seemed to find splinters and errant slivers of glass. Since the girl refused to wear footwear and her big brother was punished when any harm befell her, Jimmy and I performed small, secret medical procedures on the regular. I always volunteered to fetch the first aid supplies because that was the most dangerous part of the operation, and I needed Jimmy to know I was tough.

“Hey, kid .” Once my eyes adjusted to the dim room, I could see that Janice was alone on the couch. Although we didn’t agree on much, Jimmy and I concurred that one of his mom’s friends looked and sounded just like Janice, the lead guitarist of The Electric Mayhem on The Muppets. We called her Janice, and she was our favorite.

“Hi,” I said and quickly blurted an excuse for why I was exceeding my daily house allowance. “I have to take a shit.” 

She threw back her head, laughing heartily and at length. I continued on to the bathroom where I gathered the components of our tried-and-true, pocket-sized medical kit: a pair of tweezers, bacitracin ointment and a bandaid. I didn’t have to defecate, so I snooped through the medicine cabinet for the amount of time I felt was appropriate to achieve a bowel movement. 

“Hey, kid, did you take a shit?” Janice was still there.

“You’re goddamned right I did.” She fell back on the couch and kicked her legs in the air, shrieking. She was the first person to find me funny.

I described the encounter to Jimmy while we tended to Celeste’s wound. It was just a matter of time, I told him, before Janice would invite me to sit on the couch like Johnny Carson did with his favorite comedians. Jimmy’s face flushed with jealousy. First of all, he informed me, I wasn’t actually funny. And, furthermore, he said I could just forget about getting any couch time because his mom and her friends were doing cocaine on it all day.

“Cocaine is medicine you stick up your nose,” he boysplained to me.

“I know what cocaine is,” I snapped. “I’m not a baby.”

But his definition planted a seed. I’d been plagued by a chronic ear infection that summer, which my parents attempted to combat with antibiotics. I hated swallowing those large pills and so that night at the dinner table, I covered both my mouth and nose with my hand and managed to stuff the erythromycin capsule up a nostril. I excused myself to the bathroom where I promptly blew the vile pellet out of my nose and into the toilet, then flushed.

This system worked for a couple of days until a pill got stuck up my nose. I tried to coax it out with tweezers but ended up pushing it further up my nasal cavity where it began to melt. By the time I confessed and pleaded for help, it was too late. I’d simply have to wait for the pill to dissolve.

It felt like my nose, throat and eyes were on fire. I howled in agony between bouts of vomiting so that my parents could fully realize what they had driven me to do with these horse pill antibiotics. And I knew right then and there that I’d never do cocaine, not even if Janice herself invited me to do so on the couch. My nose would remain exit only for the rest of my life.

Two decades later, while in line at a deluxe Las Vegas buffet, I eavesdropped on the chic pair behind me as they sniffed from ornate coke vial necklaces. I held my breath when I heard the man ask his companion to describe the most self-indulgent thing she’d ever put in her mouth. 

“A loaded Colt Python,” she responded without hesitation.

I turned my head slowly to sneak a peek at the duo and found the woman staring straight at me with gleaming black eyes — her dilated pupils so large and reflective, I watched myself reaching for more crab legs in them. 

“I’m talking about a revolver, honey,” she said, not once blinking.

“Oh,” I said nonchalantly, though of course I was impressed.

“How about you?” The man asked me.

I, too, knew the taste of cold metal. After my stunt with the pills, my parents switched me to liquid amoxicillin. If you were sick and a child in the ‘80s, you’ll likely remember that delicious, bright pink, bubble-gum-flavored elixir. We kept it in the refrigerator, and I liked to chill my spoon in the freezer before imbibing.

My parents left me home alone one afternoon, so I grabbed an icy spoon and a bottle of the cold pink stuff and put on my VHS copy of Labyrinth. I just wanted a taste. But the next thing I knew, David Bowie was seductively fondling his crystal balls before using them to cast a sexual spell on a 16-year-old Jennifer Connelly and a 9-year-old me, and the bottle of liquid magic was empty. To my surprise, it tasted even better coming up in tandem with the pint of vanilla ice cream I’d also consumed —  a decadent, frothy Bubblicious milkshake.

“A deep-fried Twinkie,” I lied. There’s just no competing with a loaded gun, so why even bother?

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Eat Me, Trollop

When I was a high school freshman, someone called my house’s landline at 2am on a Saturday morning. The ringing in my parents’ room woke me, and my stomach instantly dropped. I thought my grandmother was dead.

I could hear my mother moving quickly down the hall to my bedroom. She knocked curtly before entering and savagely flipping on the light. Clutching the cordless phone to her chest, she whisper-shouted: “There’s a young woman asking for you! I think she’s in trouble!” 

At one of her NOW meetings, my mother had underwent past-life regression therapy and learned she’d once been a shero of epic proportions. She knew this because during her session she saw herself dressed in queenly furs, leading a large group of women and children across a Siberian tundra to shelter. 

Might it now be my turn to lead? She passed me the phone with raised eyebrows, clearly stunned and a little thrilled that someone had chosen to call upon her mopey 14-year-old in their hour of need. Were her efforts to raise a wise, compassionate, feminist daughter already receiving recognition in the local adolescent community? 

She lingered at my bedside waiting to escort my charge and me to an ER for a rape kit, a 24-hour drugstore for a pregnancy test or, at the very least, a Denny’s where I could console and advise this desperate soul over a Grand Slam. She nodded at me encouragingly.

“Hello?” I said.

“I hear you’ve been talking to my man,” said a girl obviously attempting to disguise her voice by lowering her pitch.

“Huh?” I kept my voice neutral, but I could already feel my face getting hot. My mother began gesturing frantically, so I motioned for her to leave. She threw her hands up in mock surrender and backed out of my room, gently closing the door behind her.

“You better stay away from my man,” the girl continued.

“Who is this?” I asked, though I already knew who it was, and she was no friend of mine.

“You better know who this is.” I could hear muffled giggling in the background, and it all made sense. A slumber party had reached its bold climax, and this girl had been dared to crank call her worst enemy… me.

“Who’s your man?” I humored her.

“You better know who my man is.” She and her coven of pubescent witches erupted into unbridled cackling.

I licked my lips, inspiration taking hold. I had, by far, the foulest mouth of all my friends and foes. Once again, I’d been summoned to dive into my deep catalog of derogatory terms for women. And I planned to deliver.

“You whore.” I began with a classic before forging ahead with every heinous slur I could conjure. It took some time as there were so many words to denote a promiscuous, subhuman female — possibly even more words than Eskimos had for snow.  

Indeed, attaining my level of expertise was no easy feat. This was pre-Internet, so I had to earn my extravagant vocabulary the old-fashioned way. I religiously read profane library books, snuck into R-rated movies, listened to CDs with “Parental Advisory” labels at Tower Records listening stations, and kept a fine-tuned ear to the streets.

My opponent managed to land a feeble “bitch” here and there but was woefully outmatched. When I finally realized I was wasting my talent on this half-witted hussy, I concluded my impromptu address with my signature “Eat me, trollop” and hung up.

I triumphantly flung open my bedroom door to return the phone to its cradle and found my stricken mother standing there in the dark. 

“Who was that?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, some dumb skank.” 

“So that’s how you speak to women?”

I shrugged.

“Disgusting.” She snatched the phone from me and disappeared down the hall. 

A few hours later at breakfast, my mother continued to berate me for my despicable language while also presenting a litany of excuses for my harasser’s behavior.

Maybe this girl actually needed help and didn’t know how to ask for it, she suggested. Maybe she wanted to be my friend. Or maybe she even had a schoolgirl crush on me. 

I quickly tired of this dizzy broad carrying on as if that rank ho contained multitudes. “No, Mom,” I rolled my eyes at her naïveté. “She’s just a plain ol’ bitch.”

My mother sighed. Maybe so, she conceded. But what had possessed me to speak so deplorably? 

I knew there was only one way to end this: I told her I’d gotten angry and blacked out, the temporary insanity defense. She seemed satisfied. I wasn’t a misogynist, just a hothead.

Sunday morning, as a peace offering, my mother said she was taking me to my favorite breakfast buffet. But, instead, she shepherded me to an anger management workshop filled with red-faced, middle-aged men likely in attendance under court order. 

It wasn’t too terrible, we mostly just worked on breathing techniques. And it was there, while closing my eyes and holding my breath, that I was able to regress into the past. I saw my mother! It was just as she’d said: She was in her stately furs leading us across that frigid tundra. But it was not to safety. This treacherous wench was leading us all to the Gulag.

A teen wolf in sheep’s clothing.

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Midwestern Discomfort

One hot, humid and downright disgusting week into my first semester of college, and I was already hobbled by injury. I sat outside the Forum (student union) with my leg propped up, icing my knee.

“Jesus, your knee! It’s so swollen,” a Southern voice drawled. 

I looked up from nursing my pre-patella bursitis and watched a barefoot girl in a sundress slide into the patio chair next to mine. She set her Big Cookie — a Forum Grill speciality — on her lap and snapped open a peach iced tea.

 “What happened to it?”

I told her I’d hurt it playing soccer.

“Playing soccer?!”  She exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock. “I haven’t played soccer since I was five years old!”  She tilted her head, eyeing me. “How old are you, 18?”

“Yeah,” I said defensively. 

“Me, too,” she sighed, unhappily. She looked all of twelve picking up that giant chocolate chip cookie, a dusting of freckles crossing her chubby cheeks and button nose. She broke off a generous chunk and passed it to me before breaking off her own piece.

“Thanks.”  I decided to like her. “I can’t believe how hot it is here.”

She shrugged. “Well, I’m from Alabama, so.” She settled back in her chair, sipping her iced tea. I could easily picture her on the veranda of an antebellum mansion, languidly swaying on a porch swing.

I returned to sliding an ice cube over my inflamed flesh.  She watched with interest, my knee’s tumescence seeming to stir something within her.

“The boys around here just don’t know how to fuck,” she said.

I immediately abandoned my ministrations and gave her my full attention. The way she said “fuck” was a revelation, drawn-out and rich, emanating from someplace deep within her throat.  Until that moment, I’d only experienced “fuck” as short and hollow, mud slung against a wall. 

“Now, Southern boys… they know how to fuck.”  Fuuuuuccckkk. Like sliding into a warm, soft mud bath. She gazed into the distance with a faint smile.

As I awaited the sumptuous details, I envisioned this teenaged Blanche Devereaux rolling around in cotton fields with thick-necked farm boys, quivering under their callused, expert touch. Then I imagined her enduring the furtive fumblings of soft-handed nebbishes in the cornfields of Iowa. How many had she evaluated in the week since the semester began to have arrived at her appraisal? And where did she find the time? 

For me, there was already too much to do — never-ending lectures, reading and paper-writing, science labs and soccer practices, territorial disputes with my three roommates in the smallest quad on campus, (Read Second, room 5213, which has since been declared a triple, damn you, Grinnell). And it was my hot, throbbing knee that kept me awake at night, not a raging, unsated libido.

But this woman, for she was clearly a woman while I was merely a soccer-playing child, appeared unencumbered by academia. With no book bag nor busted knee to weigh her down, she was free to pursue countless dalliances. And she had chosen me to confide in! Perhaps this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

But “I’m just sick of being horny” was all she had left to say to me. And with that, she stood and sauntered off toward North Campus where all the jocks lived. Maybe she’d try her luck with a second-string quarterback — a grateful type eager to learn and desperate to please.  I’d never know, though, because I’d never see her again.

A week later, a town doctor drained my knee with a large needle. Skin that had been stretched taut hung flaccid from my kneecap. As my discomfort faded, my thoughts turned to the Southerner. Had she, too, found relief? Possibly on a campus better suited to her tastes?

I could only imagine that shortly after our encounter, a relative had been dispatched to restore her to her rightful side of the Mason-Dixon line, her transfer application already en route to Bama and perchance Ole Miss. Surely, she’d spent her last moments at Grinnell standing in the middle of Mac Field, shaking a fist at the dawn’s early light and hollering: “If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be horny again!”