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Scooby-Don’t: The Second Paw
Last week, I was so excited to wear make-up to school on my 11th birthday I could barely sleep. Will I wear the purple eyeshadow to school the next day? Or will I chicken out? And why the hell is this blog called Scooby-Don’t? As promised, all of your questions are answered here!
(Part 2 of 2)
When I don’t sleep, I get really gnarly bags under my eyes. It was no different when I was eleven.
This was my goal.
I piled the shadow onto the little foam applicator to make sure I had enough and spread it thickly across my eyelid. The awesome thing about eyeshadow, especially 99 cent eyeshadow, is that if you go overboard, tons of powder falls down under the eyes. Even better, when you go to wipe it off, it simply smears all over right where your massive eye bags live.
Let me remind you that the color was “plum.”
An hour later and brimming with denial, I entered the classroom with my new amazing eleven-year-old make-up face. I knew I was going to get attention. I just didn’t foresee what kind of attention I’d be getting.
This was my reality. Make that a double.
The laughter started immediately. Shit. Marie asked me in all earnestness if I’d fallen on my face.
I literally looked like I had 2 black eyes. I thought I looked hot. In all reality, I looked injured.
I quickly realized that ditching the high heels was a damned good idea. At least I could walk. Although wearing heels would’ve at least explained my deep eye bruises.
The teasing was unrelentless. This day couldn’t get worse.
At least it was kickball day.
Kickball was the only sport I was actually good at. It always came down to me and Marie and the fat kids to get picked, but at least I knew I was contributing to whichever team I ended up on. I was an asset to a team. But only at kickball.
At least I’d get a chance at retribution and to rule with my 2 black eyes. It was on. After all, it was my birthday. My luck had to turn around.
Waiting to kick, I noticed the random, huge, straggly, sheep-looking dog that lived across the street strolling around the school grounds. I knew that dog, he always barked furiously at me when I walked by his house. Obviously he’d gotten out somehow.
Time for me to kick. I had a mean kick, I’m not gonna lie about it. The ball rolled toward my feet perfectly. I mustered all my right leg strength and KICKED THE SHIT out of that dark red rubber ball. It was the farthest and raddest I’d ever kicked that ball. Victory was bliss.
I ran toward first base, knowing I’d make a homerun for sure. I was hauling balls. High-tailin’ it. Jammin’.
That is, until that damned dog ran after me and tackled me to the ground before I could even make it to first base. I went down hard, leaving far too many layers of my skin behind. I hit the crunchy dirt with the side of my face, scraping off some plum eyeshadow for sure.
I was traumatized. Mr. Lohman came to my rescue and sent me off to the nurse’s office to get bandaged up. I was sobbing. It really hurt. That dog was really fucking big.
After getting all cleaned up and anti-bacterialized, I returned to my classroom. At least I’d get some sympathy votes. I mean, I was literally attacked by a monster in front of my whole class. And I had the wounds to prove it. I was the victim here.
I opened the door.
The peals of laughter confused me greatly. Then I overheard words like “dog-fucker” and “Scooby’s new girlfriend.” Somehow the dog attack turned into a live sex act to rival the donkey show. Ends up what I considered an attack was actually a romantic encounter. As I lay on the ground bleeding, that fucker was humping me. He threw me down to the ground to HUMP ME.
I never wore plum eyeshadow again.
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Scooby-Don’t: The First Paw
I’m beautiful. I know it!
(Part 1 of a 2 part series)
I was totally ready to kill myself, but then there was a glimmer of hope. Halloween was coming up and Marie and I had a plan to turn our losing streak around. We’d been planning for weeks, (months, years) – we were going to go to school dressed up as Madonna. Marie and I were nerds, yes, but we had rockin’ bods and were both quite striking. The world just hadn’t had a chance to notice yet.
Dana was ugly and fat and would always be ugly and fat. She would only get uglier and fatter with time. She would torment me for two more years and then I would transfer to the farthest away high school and never, ever have to see her again.
I, on the other hand, would always be beautiful.
I knew I would grow into a total hottie someday. I just wanted everyone else to know so they would start treating me appropriately.
Marie and I wore a black mini-skirts, lace halter tops and a grazillion rubber bracelets. I added a huge crucifix back from when we lived in Mexico. I was determined to wear only a black bra under my lace top, but my mom didn’t have the same vision.
Jerk.
The 2 Madonna’s on the left = badass. The blonde idiot on the right = doomed to eternal lameness.
I had to wear a tank top under it. If I had it my way I would’ve dressed like a whore everyday.
But Mom did do my make-up like Madonna and I totally looked like someone else. I was someone else. I felt only the invincibility the beautiful know.
I rocked it. None of my bullies messed with me as Madonna. My confidence grew exponentially. I figured out the key to survival; dress like a total hooker. I just had to break down my mother and the world would be my bitch.
Where it all began.
The subject came up at Maytan Music Center. I bought some new rosin and sheet music after my weekly violin lesson. The girl working the register was wearing high heels and glittery blue and purple eye shadow all the way up to her eyebrows. I was in awe. I wanted to look just like her.
And I told Mom all about it outside Maytan Music Center that very day. She thought the girl looked like a “slut and was wearing too much make-up.” I vehemently disagreed.
I was on a mission now. Break. Down. Mom.
And the fight was on. Through my masterful use of guilt and manipulation, I beat her down to my upcoming eleventh birthday (November 9) as the-day-I-could-wear-make-up-and-heels-to-school day.
Watch out Christy Brinkley, Courtney was coming to town.
It was time to shop. I walked the six blocks to Shop-Ko with my birthday money I asked for in advance crumpled up in my pocket.
Heels were first, but they were all really high and hard to walk in. I realized that no other girls wore heels to school and I felt like a total lameass trying to walk in them. Badass was the goal, no lameass heels were going to foil my ruse.
I wouldn’t wuss out on make-up though. I knew all that my big, round face needed was some Wet n’ Wild to instantly turn me from nerd to supermodel. Everyone would see how awesome and gorgeous I really was. Make-up was the magical thing that would bring out my inner beauty.
There were so many colors, but my choice was easy. Purple. Just like the Maytan Music Center girl. The name of the color I chose was “plum.” I only bought eyeshadow. Why? I’ll never know. No lip gloss, no mascara. Just eyeshadow.
The next morning was my eleventh birthday. I was so excited to wear my new make-up, I could barely sleep the night before.
Did Courtney wear the purple eyeshadow to school the next day? Or did she chicken out? And why the hell is this blog called Scooby-Don’t?
These answers AND MORE will be revealed in the final part of Scooby-Don’t next week!
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Thug Life – My Second Teardrop Tattoo
This is Part 2 of a 2 Part series. For Part 1, go here: Thug Life – My First Teardrop Tattoo.
The Hoff was a member.
The obvious choice was right in front of me – a knife. I wouldn’t need monster truck strength and I could easily walk down the street with one hidden up my fake Members Only jacket sleeve without the fuzz getting suspicious.
Yes, you did just read, “fake Members Only jacket.” Soak that reality in. You’re welcome.
I just had to select a knife and be done with it.
I loved and feared our meat cleaver. It was serious. I always thought I would just accidentally kill my parents with it in the middle of the night. Kind of like an uncontrollable reflex that would be inspired by the sheer awesomeness of the knife. I couldn’t take that risk.
Just your plain old run-of-the-mill kitchen knife was the winner. Now that I had that out of the way, I just had to figure out how to do it without getting my ass kicked or looking stupid or getting caught. Damn this murder business was advanced. Criminals on TV always seemed so dumb. I had a newfound respect for my fellow thugs. Maybe I would make up my own gang sign?
I lay in bed strategizing. It had to be at night. All bad things must happen at night. Less birds chirping I suppose. More sinister. Dark. Yeah. It couldn’t be at my house, so I’d have to kill her in her house. But I couldn’t be sleeping over because then, duh, her parents would totally know it was me. That is, unless I framed CHB.
Brilliant. I painted the scenario. I’m already at her house. I wait until she starts snoring – come on, of course she snores, she’s a disgusting beast of a girl – and then I stab her repeatedly in the chest, then put the knife in CHB’s bed and put her blood all over his hands. Genius!
Just one problem with this plan – tweekers don’t sleep. I totally forgot. CHB stayed up all night playing video games in an orange beanbag in the living room. Foiled.
Okay, so that was out. The only option left was that I needed to sneak in, kill her, and get out, without any noise. Easy. Dana’s bedroom window didn’t have a screen, as the entire house had a whopping total of three, so I just had to go over to her house after school and crack her window just enough for her not to notice right before I left. Then I would go home and wait the wait that only we hardened criminals know.
Just like this, only blonde.
At midnight, I’d sneak out of the house with the knife, walk the eight blocks to her house, quietly open her still unlocked window, enter said window, stab her repeatedly, exit said window, walk the eight blocks back home, wash knife, return knife, and then have sweet, sweet dreams knowing that the most evil person in my life was finally dead.
It was the perfect plan.
Well, it was… until I started thinking of all the things that could go wrong.
She could wake up from me opening the window. Then what would I say? “Oh hey Dana, what’s up?” all casual like. Yeah right. Or what if the first stab didn’t go through, like it hit her ribcage, and now that I was thinking of it, how do you stab someone through the heart with all that bone in the way? I’d probably have to stab her in her fat stomach and hope she bleeds to death. But then what if she cried out for help?
And then there was CHB. So true to life, he would end up ruining everything. They were like the Corsican Brothers. He would feel her pain and run into her room. And there I would be, crazy killing eyes, hovering over her blood soaked bed – busted.
“Mom! Dad! Dana’s stupid friend stabbed her in her stomach!”
I’d run, but the cops would come to my house and wake up my parents. It would be so embarrassing. Then I’d have to go to prison forever and stupid Dana and CHB would probably visit me and torment me as much as possible for the rest of my life.
I just couldn’t win. My confidence was shattered. I was a sucky killer. Unless it could be perfect, I couldn’t do it.
And then I realized that I couldn’t stab someone, not even her. I was no badass. I was no thug.
I was a failure.
Since I couldn’t kill Dana, I’d have to kill myself.
Did Courtney kill herself? What weapon did she use? How is she possibly writing this sentence right now since she’s most likely totally dead? Tune in Thursday for more rad answers.
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Thug Life – My First Teardrop Tattoo
This is Part 1 of a 2 Part series.
By sixth grade, Tammy called herself my “best friend.” Befriending my lead bully seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, it ended up being the pre-Facebook way to guarantee that I’d be bullied not only at school, but in my own home. Who needs technology when you have stupidity?
Tammy’s after school visits were horrifying on many fronts, but the most painful part was when she brought her little brother over – who I will refer to as Crack Head Bob, (CHB).
CHB had what doctors referred to as Hyperactive Disorder, but as far as I could tell he was just an asshole. Dana was in charge of him basically all of the time, since her parents worked swing and he couldn’t be left alone due to the constant flood of Ritalin in his bloodstream. He was essentially my first experience with a tweeker.
Even when I was a tweeker, I couldn’t stand tweekers.
Dana adored her brother. Why? I will never know. I’m no doctor, but I think Quaaludes would’ve faired much better with young Bob than Ritalin. He would do precious things like chew on my parent’s furniture so we had to play outside whenever they came over, lest CHB eat my parent’s entire house.
Relegated to the front porch, I endured gladiator-esque battles of Whack-a-Courtney. Dana vacillated between terrorizing me, hitting me, and being scary sweet to me, while out of nowhere, CHB would just straight-up sucker punch me. While Dana kicking my ass was embarrassing, having a 10-year-old beat me up brought a whole new level of humiliation to my plight. It didn’t help that Dana laughed her fat ass off whenever he slugged me.
This went on and on. I felt like I was trapped in one of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell – the bully Circle. If I told her she couldn’t come over after school, she would force me to go to her house, where there wasn’t even the safety of any parents nearby. I felt stuck in an eternal hell of bullying. I had to take action. Drastic action.
Yes, someone had to die.
That someone was either going to be Dana or me. I quickly decided the death would be hers.
So I did what any amateur murderer does, I hatched a plan.
First, I needed a murder weapon. I waited until the witching hour of 8:15pm, at which point both of my parents were fast asleep, then scoured the house for instruments of bully destruction.
Mom’s art studio was the first stop. Paintbrushes? Maybe the really skinny ones could work as a knife, but then why not just use an actual knife? Now I had two weapon ideas! There was a stack of firewood by her wood-burning stove. I could bash her head in with a log. Now I was up to three and hadn’t even cleared one room – I was turning out to be a fine murderer indeed.
In the back room, there stood Mom’s band saw. I knew how to turn it on and everything, but it would require me to:
- Get Dana in the back room.
- Find a reason to turn it on.
- Murder her with it.
Number three was the issue. The blade only allowed about a foot of murdering possibility, and then what would I do? Cut off her hand? That would only make her stronger and angrier. In my mind, she had horror movie monster powers. I couldn’t just stab the shark; I had to blow it up.
The only other viable option in the studio was a matte knife, which is basically a razor with a handle. Now a razor could fuck a bitch up, but it felt like too much work. I wanted to get in and get out and be done with it.
I knew the answer was in the kitchen, after all, Mom would notice right away if her matte knife or paintbrush went missing, but a frying pan? She wouldn’t notice for weeks.
I needed a weapon that would lead to immediate death. While I was enjoying the notion of beating her head in with a frying pan, I had teeny tiny beetle arms. Did I have enough power to kill in one stroke with toothpick arms? Not a risk I was willing to take.
This also ruled out our 800,000 pound marble rolling pin. If circumstances warranted, I could kill the hell outta someone with that thing. That is, if I could actually pick it up and get it over my head and then not fall all the way over backwards.
Another grim reality sunk in – clean-up duty would be all mine. It’s not like I could ask Mom to grab a mop. If I murdered Dana in my house, I’d have to clean it up and get rid of her ugly fat body, which would prove very difficult.
Damn, this killing business wasn’t easy.
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White Lines – The Eight Ball
Then the door opened. It was Debbie. And the candy! I was so relieved to see them – I mean, her.
“Is he out there?” I asked, hoping she knew.
“Are you gonna order?” the guy behind the register asked Debbie now, already knowing my answer. I already knew her answer. We had to explain or get out.
The interesting thing was not that we actually told him that some scary child rapist was chasing us, but his complete lack of reaction. Like this was an everyday occurrence at Taco Hut or something.
“We’re closing in thirty minutes,” was all he said as he started to mop.
We hid in a hard cold booth of the take-out restaurant variety, not the comfy rad variety like that of Denny’s, probably because they want you to actually TAKE-OUT not stay for five hours chain smoking for the price of one cup of coffee and making art towers out of empty creamer containers.
After a five-minute play-by-play recap, the realization hit us. It was Friday night and we hadn’t TOUCHED a piece of candy yet. This realization was not spoken; it was addict-mind-trick spoken through brain waves. Where any two or more people deep in addiction are together jonesing, this is the norm. We can speak the unspeakable with our minds.
Side note: Ritual is an integral part of drug usage. For most addicts, the ritual of using is multi-faceted: scoring, holding, preparing, and using. If any of these components are compromised, the high can suffer. I like to call this “super-addict-stition.”
Whoever establishes the ritual is as follows:
- Whoever’s holding.
- The Elder who brings the newbie under his or her wing.
- People who party together may merge rituals or form new variations of each ritual, as long it’s copacetic.
There was no hierarchy in our underground network of transplants, but there was a strict class structure when it came to getting high. The bottom line was devout respect for the other user’s ritual because the ultimate party foul was fucking up another person’s high.
Yet again, I did some math:
- Debbie was holding = Debbie’s in charge of score.
- She was the Elder = Debbie’s in charge of score.
- We merged rituals somewhat with the subtraction of banana and the doubling of funds, but the location of scoring, the act of piling, and horror movie watching were all ritual B.C. = Debbie’s in charge of score.
One of our Friday night faves.
We sat across the table from each other mind melding. My mouth started to water. Candy filled my senses. I ached for sugar. I knew she did too.
“Let’s go,” she said as she rose, without even checking outside for eagle decaled cars.
I knew better. We should wait longer. He could just be out there lurking in the old bushes waiting for our young bushes to come bounding out of Taco Hut’s door all innocent and candy-eyed. I considered bartering with her to stay another 15 minutes and eat some candy there, but I knew it would fuck up both of our highs and perhaps our friendship.
My thirst for sugar became stronger than my thirst for survival. We booked it the half block more to her house and made it back safe. Who knew what happened to GP and who cared. We were onto the next thing.
Immediately, and with not one word, we devoured ten bucks worth of sugar to the sound of naked chicks getting slaughtered. Candy fixed everything. We went into sugar comas and woke up with unrelenting hangovers. We did this every Friday night for the next two years.
The Grody Pedophile incident was only the third time I used with Debbie and it didn’t stop me one bit. The Slippery Slope Theory is just a speculation, but from less than a year after moving to Sparks I’d already gone from smoking to porn to sugar. And this was only the beginning.
. . .
Thanks for reading, gorgeous! Stay tuned – next Monday will be another new vlog. If you missed my last vlog, click here.
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White Lines – The Teener
This is part three of a four part totally awesome blog. Fell behind? No problem. Just go here: White Lines, The First Line and The Second Line.
The next Friday night something was off. Neither of us would admit it, but there was just something in the air, something foreboding. But when you’re an addict, the carrot is too bright and shiny to pay attention to portent. After all, we wanted what we wanted when we wanted it. We had a vision.
All went fine at the Sev. Mathematics worked out. No banana. All was well. It was time to race home.
We normally walked on the Park Lane Mall side of the street, but on this night we were on the Shopper’s Square side. I noticed a black Trans Am replete with a large eagle decal on the hood up ahead. These cars, along with El Camino’s, were pretty common in Reno, (and still are in Sparks), but the passenger side door was open. And there was a man inside.
Walk fast. Look down. Stay focused on candy.
The eagle decal grew larger and larger and we got closer and closer. Then, there it was. Up close full-on eagle.
“Hi girls,” a calm male voice said, who I will now refer to as GP, (Grody Pedophile).
Thank God I was now a porn-cinefile, so I immediately recognized male masturbation.
Debbie immediately jaywalked across all six lanes of the street to the other side. She didn’t even look.
I did.
“You want to help me out?” GP actually said. Grody.
I booked it. Fast. Unfortunately, so did GP. He hopped in his bitchin’ not-a-Camero-but-so-very-close-to-one, revved up all eight of his horses, and proceeded to CHASE US.
Debbie decided to run down a dark backstreet, for what reason I will never know. Places with people are safe. Places with light are safe. Dark backstreets where no one would hear our prepubescent screams were most definitely not safe.
But Debbie had the candy. And she was going down that dark street. 1 + 1 = I was not going to let my candy go that easily.
We were about halfway down the block, still a block-and-a-half from Debbie’s house, when the street was illuminated by the lights of GP’s grody car. He was heading straight for us.
I had to think fast. It came to me. Tacos. So obvious.
There was a Taco Hut one block away. I was so scared I’d never run so fast in my life. Debbie wasn’t as fast, but her leg-span was about three of mine, so we were running at about the same child-running-from-grody-pedophile clip.
“Taco! Hut!” I yelled, interspersed with panting.
“No! Home is closer!” She argued.
“There are people at Taco Hut! HE CAN’T RAPE US WITH PEOPLE WATCHING!” I screamed with all my might.
“You’re wrong!” She lamely disagreed.
I made the executive decision right then and there. It was better to let Debbie get raped and the candy get stolen than for both of us to succumb to the same horrible fate.
“I’M GOING TO THE TACO HUT!” I hollered as I ran toward the neon taco shining like freedom.
I ran into the Taco Hut full of patrons, panting and generally freaking the fuck out, and now looking like a complete weirdo. Which I am, but I don’t like other people thinking so without my approval. I pictured Jolly Ranchers, naked Debbie, Tootsie Rolls, and GP bodily fluid all over some dark scary lawn. I had no idea where she was and what was happening to her, or our candy.
I had not a cent to my name as it had all been spent on sugar crack, so my awkward moment became even more awkward when the guy at the counter asked me for my order. How long could I hide out here until they kicked me out? Where was GP? Was he lurking somewhere in the enchilada sauce?
Come on by on Thursday to get answers to all these questions and more when the conclusion to White Lines is unveiled.
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White Lines, The Second Line
The first time I went over to Debbie’s house, it was obvious why she ate. Her mom and dad were both really big and her house was really small. It was rented, not owned, and on a street that was one lane away from having “interstate” in front of it. The sound of cars whizzing by at German engineering speeds competed with the deafening cry of airplanes landing and taking off at the airport that was mere blocks away.
She wasn’t even zoned for Agnes Risley, but her parents let her switch because she was having huge problems with the bullies in the school for which she was originally zoned. I changed my mind about her parents right away. They cared about Debbie; they were just so poor that they had to move wherever job opportunities presented themselves.
Her dad was a janitor at the school she left. I guess the only thing worse than being a mid-school-year transplant and six-feet-tall was having your dad be the custodian. My empathy grew for Debbie almost as quickly as my pant sizes were about to.
Her parents made me dinner every time I came over. I had liver and onions for the first time there. I actually didn’t know it was liver because I always thought it would be all jello-y wiggly like in the store. I didn’t realize that when it’s cooked it, well, cooks. It was alright, just not good enough to freak out over so much that I’d go so far as do something dramatic like actually eat it again. And I had a layer of grease stuck on the roof of my mouth for about a week.
My first sleep over was on a Friday night that, luckily for me, was allowance night for Debbie. Her dad handed her a crisp five-dollar bill and we were off and running.
“I’m going to show you what I do on Friday night,” Debbie said, mischief beaming out of her dark brown eyes.
I followed her out the front door and onto the practically-a-freeway street. My belly welled up with butterflies. Where was this strange Michegonian taking me? Would guns be involved? Should I have worn two pairs of underwear?
“Where are we goooooooooooiiiiiing?” was muffled by the cars whizzing by coupled with the foot-shorter-I-was-than Debbie. Instead of grabbing a bullhorn and attempting a repeat performance, I hurried my little legs up because that girl hoofed it good. Especially when she was on a mission.
The alarming chirp-chirp accompanied by the heavy glass doors heaving open, Debbie introduced me to my soon-to-be-favorite-place in the world, the Sev. At least that’s what we tweens-trying-way-too-hard-to-be-cool called it long before the word tween was even a glimmer in the American vernacular’s eye.
My love of the Sev was so serious that every single dream I had for an entire year featured a 7-11. Besides simply being a sweet-ass convenience store, the Sev contained a world of consumeristic possibilities from cigarettes to tampons to No-Doz to Slurpees.
She sprinted to the candy aisle and practically lay down on the shiny fluorescent-lit floor.
“Pick out five dollars worth of anything on this bottom shelf. I like everything so I’ll let you pick.”
Everything I learned in math class came into play. On the bottom shelf were all of the penny candies, which really cost anywhere from a nickel to a dime, but nickel candy sounds about as lame as a dime bag, and are all about as extinct as beepers. Jolly Ranchers were three for five cents. Tootsie Rolls were five cents apiece. Ring pops, Laffy Taffy, Sweet Tarts, Jawbreakers, and these weird skeleton candies in an actual little coffin were all a dime apiece. Anything with banana was out because I hated banana-flavored things. Banana is about as subtle as rape. It takes over any other fantastic taste with its “hi-I’m-banana-I-suck-because-I-taste-like-ass” taste.
Little beads of sweat formed on my brow. I could tell this could be a pivotal moment in our friendship and I didn’t want to lose a friend. I did the math and tossed candies onto Debbie’s stretched out sweatshirt which she, once full, folded in half to transform into a remarkably crafty go-go-gadget candy pouch. When finished, she strongly resembled a crack kangaroo. She hopped up to the counter and dumped our booty out. We waited in frothing anticipation for the clerk to count out every-single-candy that, of course, equaled exactly five dollars. Yay, awesome math student extraordinaire!
This was the Friday night ritual:
- Race back home, giddy with anticipation. No candy eaten in transit, even though we both really wanted to.
- Arrive and dump out all the candy onto coffee table.
- Put ultra gory horror movie in VCR (yup, they too had a VCR – how was it that only my poor friends had VCR’s?)
- Devour all the candy during the movie. One at a time.
- Go into full sugar coma.
- Rinse. Repeat.
The next morning ill from a gnarly sugar hangover, I devised a way to double our sugar intake for next week. Mom picked me up that afternoon.
“Mom, Debbie gets an allowance of five dollars a week,” I said, batting my eyelashes.
And with that, we doubled our prize money.
The next Friday double sugar coma was so intense I was unsure we would ever recover. Our stomach’s ached. Our head’s ached. We felt death approaching.
We couldn’t wait until next Friday so we could do it again.
Not for a moment did either of us ever consider doing anything different with our 10 dollars. We could’ve gone to the movies, which I’d only been to about two at this time. We could’ve gone to Park Lane Mall and bought fifty pairs of earrings at Claire’s. Each. Or we could’ve bought twenty-five pairs and gone to Sparro for pizza and Cokes.
But no, we were addicts. We saw only candy.
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White Lines – The First Line
The Slippery Slope Theory postulates that an unassuming action or event inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating into some significant impact, particularly one of the shitty kind. It’s a lot like this Laurel & Hardy movie I saw where this little pebble got loose at the top of a mountain and turned into a monster rock avalanche almost destroying everything in its path on its way to the bottom.
This is the story of how I tripped and fell right into a huge pile of white powder.
“Debbie is… big,” Mom replied after I enthusiastically asked her what she thought of my new friend.
That’s not exactly what I meant by thought when I asked. I was hoping for “smart,” or “sweet,” or perhaps “nifty,” but most definitely not “big.” “Big” is how one describes a sofa or perhaps a T-Rex, but not a human. At least, that is, if you’re me.
I liked Debbie. We met in Mr. Loman’s sixth grade class. She had pimples and boobs and was approximately six-feet-tall. Yes, she probably could’ve been a linebacker, but I saw in her less football player and more puppy who hadn’t grown into her feet yet. She was like a Chihuahua trapped in a St. Bernard’s body. Puberty was not kind to poor Debbie.
So, of course, I liked her immediately.
I added her to my awkward friend collection the second her huge frame appeared in the sixth grade doorframe, shadowing most of the classroom like Godzilla. Mr. Loman lifted the needle off the class record player, (which is how we hit pause in the 80’s), as we’d been listening to his favorite Beatles song, “Revolution 9.”
“This must be Debbie, our new student who just moved here from Michigan. The painted turtle is Michigan’s state reptile,” and with that, he went right back into “Revolution 9,” as he believed it to have all of the answers to all of the questions of all of the worlds. Every time the number nine came up in conversation, he would repeat, “number nine, number nine, number nine,” about 25 times. Some would consider this annoying; I, on the other hand, believed him to be possibly the coolest human ever. Let’s just say I had an affinity for eclectic types.
Mr. Loman also wouldn’t put up with bullying the classroom so even though most of my bullies were in class with me this year, I was safe during classroom hours. It was actually hilarious to see Tammy get so busted bullying me that she never even looked at me during class for the rest of the year.
Debbie arranged herself into the empty desk kitty-corner from me. She unpacked the contents of her tattered gray backpack into her new desk. She seemed nervous. It was right in the middle of the school year, so I assumed her parents were probably given the same parenting handbook mine were. I think these handbooks were most likely given out wherever alcoholic beverages were being served.
Marie and I shared a secret eyeball moment to confirm Debbie’s acceptance for membership to our underground network of transplants. Our underground was so underground that we didn’t even know we had an underground.
Here’s the new kid chronology since the fourth grade:
- Marie = new kid. Weirdo. All alone. Boo.
- Marie + Courtney = two. Better. Two is better than one.
- Courtney + Marie + Debbie = three. The triumvirate of cool, so cool there must be laser beams and stuff.
It was entirely apropos that The Beatles were playing as she entered, because this, my friends, was destiny.
Note: There was no hierarchy in our movement. Actually, the new kid was the most important because the new kid brought power. Power in numbers. The more of us, the less we’d get bullied. At least in theory. I would later name this the “Bullshit Theory” or “Courtney’s a Delusional Freak Theory,” although the latter is much more fact than theory, but please don’t pull me aside and tell me so because I will vehemently oppose said fact as merely speculation and words may be exchanged. Consider yourself warned.
Nothing spells awkward more than getting stuck in a group of humans who’ve shared history that was B.C. (before Courtney). How many times can one retort, “oh yeah, I’m sure that was really funny, especially if I was actually there?” This later led to my obsession with never missing any event ever, lest something totally awesome happened that I missed that would be recalled at a later time.
My fellow members of the network had also experienced the Waldo-Von-Duchenheimer feeling of getting stuck in a circle jerk of kids sharing memories from when Billy farted in first grade or the memorable second grade field trip to the planetarium. We knew what it was to be uprooted. To have no history. To these kids, we were nothing more than evaporated vapor from Billy’s long lost fart before we appeared on their rearview.
We all ran to something to quell the pain of being outcasts. We sought solace together masked as “hanging out.” Marie and I had Duran Duran. Eve and I had porn and Kools.
And Debbie and I had sugar.
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Schoolhouse Porn! Vlog
I was so inspired by Channel 3 and my memories of MTV in the early-80’s, that I made a mix tape. You should follow it and listen to it while rereading all parts of Schoolhouse Porn! But who am I to tell you what to do? I’m from Reno.
I listened to the mix tape 398 times, but it wasn’t enough. So I spent $4.99 on the iMovie app, put on a ton of make-up and made a music video all on my iPhone. Voila!
PS. I’m really sorry about the singing part…
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Schoolhouse Porn! The Last Channel.
If you’re behind, click here for Schoolhouse Porn! Channel 1, click here for Schoolhouse Porn! Channel 2 and click here for Schoolhouse Porn! Channel 3. Or not. This is the part with actual porn.
There was a bed with an ugly flowered comforter, the kind sewn with fishing line instead of thread, facing a dresser with a huge mirror on it. We sat on the bed and I noticed that we were staring at ourselves, which led immediately to bouncing. We bounced for about ten minutes, making funny faces in the mirror all the while. What a cool idea to have a mirror in front of your bed! Why hadn’t I ever thought of that before?
Panting, we collapsed onto the bed. Perfect time to smoke! Eve pulled a Kool out of what looked like a wallet made especially just for cigarettes with a special pocket just for the lighter and then handed it to me. I decided if I ever take up smoking full-time I was going to get me one of those. We lit up. She put a big gold ashtray with a heavily patterned beanbag on the bottom of it for stability between us. We smoked and panted for a bit.
Then, as if a treasure trove, Eve showed me an entire wall of VHS tapes.
“Do you want to pick or me?” She was grinning like a mysterious motherfucker.
“You pick,” I said, not realizing that it didn’t really matter which of these fine films we watched, because they were all ended exactly the same.
She slid the black tape into the black VCR, turned the TV to Channel three, and then bounced back on the bed, spraying ashes and butts everywhere. She was really excited to share.
The movie opened in a diner, where some truck drivers started telling the owner a mysterious story about a door. Uh, okay. Lame. How can a movie about a door be exciting? Then it flashed back to this pretty woman with brown hair being put on a stage and then being kissed and touched by a whole bunch of other women. Ummmm girls didn’t do that to each other on The Love Boat! I was intrigued and embarrassed, but Eve seemed like this was totally normal, so I pretended like it was something I watched all the time.
The girls had huge hair pies. Even far-too-young-to-be-watching-porn-me was fully aware that a razor or ten would be in order. Then the music got all crazy, kind of like the Schoolhouse Rock! music, only funkier, when this black guy came in. He took off his clothes and OH MY GOD! Conjunction junction, so that’s your function!
So there it was, in-and-out, upside down and all around – we were watching porn. And not just porn, the best porn ever made. Eve and I smoked Kools and watched Deep Throat, Debbie Does Dallas, and The Devil in Miss Jones, to name a few. They were fascinating. I loved the stories and the sex scenes. I was fully aware I was doing something wrong, which made me want to do it even more.
When Eve’s mom and mom’s boyfriend worked swing shift, I went home after school with her. On the non-Eve days, I went to Marie’s house with similar intention. I saw little difference between watching Duran Duran and porn, after all they made me feel the same downstairs.
The only difference was I didn’t get to smoke at Marie’s house.
. . .
I made a Spotify playlist for Schoolhouse Porn! I can’t stop listening to it! Come over and have a listen.
