Five Vignettes Into Suburban Teenage Angst
ONE - There was an old railroad track down the street from my mom’s house. After the line stopped running, the road that ran perpendicular to it was paved over and it made a short steep hill. More of a ramp, really. In high school, we used to pile into my friend Patrice’s Geo Prism and drive it really fast over that hill. Pretty sweet air.
TWO - There was this really shitty girl at my high school name Jamie Kenya-Lloyd. She hung out with all the popular kids, but none of their sheen seemed to attached to her. She was just loud and rude, without any of the sleek cool factor. One night, we took a bunch of phone books from the 24-hour Walmart, ripped out all of the pages and covered her lawn and car. She came to work the next day and in the quad in front of everyone, said, “Someone PHONEBOOKED my house last night.” It was partially the shitty way she said it, and partially the way she said “phonebooked” like it was a verb people were aware of. I don’t think she ever found out. Hey, fuck you, Jamie!
THREE - At a house party, after graduation, I watched a girl lose her virginity by the air conditioning unit behind her house.
FOUR - I sat in my first boyfriend’s Toyota Rav 4 for 30 minutes without saying anything, trying to work up the courage to tell him that I loved him.
FIVE - I worked in a small deli the summer before I started college. I made the fries and as a fundamentally lazy person, I hated that there wasn’t really anywhere for me to hide and goof off. I used to stand in the walk-in freezer and wonder if my life was over. My boss would always come looking for me and I’d get in trouble. I had a big, weird rash on my arm that should have kept me far away from food service, but no one seemed to mind. I lasted five weeks.
Quick and useless Avengers Review
The last few months, staying up past 10 PM or so has been harder and harder to do. It’s weird, because I’ve always identified myself a night person. But now? Bed by 10, up at 7. It’s disgusting.
Last night, I went to see The Avengers movie at midnight with some friends, the ringleader being my good, good buddy Tim; who is a huge fucking comic book nerd. On the scale of one to Tim, I’m whatever number would think that The Avengers was going to be an Uma Thurman reboot. In fact, the only pre-Avenger movie I saw was Iron Man 2 and it stunk. So without further ado, here is my review of a franchise that I am not knowledgable on and couldn’t care less about.
Before the movie started, I had three cups of coffee and a 16 oz. Red Bull. Caffeine no longer works on me and I’m quite terrified about what that means for my body. It just a lot of coffee poops- nevermind. Not important. The point is that I was there at 11:45, sleepy as hell. I looked around and was unimpressed by the group of people congregating outside. There was like, one guy in a Thor costume. Everybody else just seemed regular. Like, they just happened to want to see a movie at midnight and oh hey, Avengers. Which I guess was exactly what I was doing. I like to imagine that whole crowd looking at our lackluster enthusiasm and opting to meet tomorrow at a more reasonable time. Maybe after lunch. Like a dry turkey sandwich or something.
But we didn’t we all went in, everybody yelled at the new Batman movie, although I think it was only because they felt like they had to. Anne Hathaway is lame, there’s just no getting around it. Then we were off! Samuel Jackson is in a hurry, a mean elf named Loki shows up and shoots blue light at people. Then Jeremy Renner is this Hawkeye character that shoots arrows and makes me feel deep, deep sexual feelings. They start rounding up all the other Avengers, Mark Rufallo and who ever plays Captain America and Scarlett Johansson’s perfect ass and breasts. And then there’s some talk about the blue thing that the elf came out of and then I fell asleep.
Now, falling asleep in public is a tricky thing, because it’s embarrassing and you’re not in a rational place. Like, you’re tired and you shouldn’t be ashamed of that, but you are because you’re tired and vulnerable. I fell into an immediately graphic sex dream with Hawkeye and it was awesome.
I woke up maybe 10 minutes to 5 years later, and some people were fighting about some stuff. Thor was there. It’s such an odd group, you know? Thor is an alien, fine. But his hammer is lame and why are the two coolest people, Hawkeye and Widow so peripheral? They’re awesome. More stuff about them, I say. Captain America makes a great joke about not getting references and then I fell asleep again. That kind of sleep where you hope you can just fall back into fucking Jeremy Renner but you can’t. So you wake up again and Thor is punching a robot lizard in the face.
The thing about all of those comic book dork movies is that they can’t live up to the hype. Especially this multi-movie story line, and nerd king Joss Whedon so heavily involved. So to make sure you keep the rage to a minimum, you just have a lot of awesome fight scenes and Scarlett Johansson’s fucking AMAZING tits and make that go on for an insufferably long time. The Avengers ended at least three times, wrapped up, closing credits could have come on, but each time I would start to wipe the sleep from my eyes, someone would be getting on a fucking motorcycle or whatever. And then there’s some SECRET at the end, if you wait past the credits, you’ll get a teaser that we won’t be able to escape in 6 month’s time.
We walked back to our cars, with no real discussion of the movie other than how UNBELIEVABLE all the minor characters looked in leather. And I realized that now that Harry Potter is done and Indiana Jones broke my heart, I’ll probably never go to another midnight movie. And that is so totally fine. There is something about it that almost makes me feel duped, even though The Avengers was something I had zero excitement or anticipation for. I drove home, and planned my Jeremy Renner shower scenario.
Retaliation
In 2005, I was freshman in college, driving a 1994 Ford Escort Station wagon and working in a hardware store for $6.50 an hour. It was also the year that Dane Cook’s two-disc album, “Retaliation” came out. I’m not going to stand in front of you people and pretend like I didn’t love Dane Cook, because I did. I loved him so much in fact, that my friend Elyse and I drove an hour and a half from Riverside to get our albums signed by Dane at the now-closed Tower Records. That is such a specific era: Dane Cook signing a CD at a chain record store.
We get there, and there’s no parking in Tower’s lot, or the lot next to it. Completely full with Dane Cook fans. So we go up a side street and Elyse looks at the sign street sign and says, “Yeah, this is okay.” This is very, very important. She said, “Yeah, this is okay.” As in, “We can park your Ford Escort station wagon here, and it won’t have been towed by the time we come out.”
It’s important to note that in any story where something bad happened to me between the ages of 16-22, my friend Elyse was involved. On one hand because we spent all of our time together, and on the other, we were mutually bad influences.
Where was I? Oh yeah, parking. Parking in West Hollywood at night, without a permit. I may as well have have tearfully waved goodbye to my car with a lavender-scented handkerchief, because it was going to be a good long while before I would see it again. We looked over the four parking signs on the street, and again I was assured it was fine, and we walked down the street to meet one of our heroes.
The line for Dane Cook’s album signing was about what you’d think it would be in 2005. It looped around the parking lot twice. And everyone was normal (read: normal to me). Just late teens/early twenties kids in sensible shoes who were feeling out this whole comedy thing. Dane Cook doesn’t get enough credit for that.
We were at the end of the line, and a guy came around several times to let us know we probably wouldn’t get in. But we waited. Because waiting in line for hours when you’re twenty is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The line scooted closer and closer to Dane Cook’s blacked-out Escalade, which was parked in Tower’s lot. It was running, and the driver was inside of it, along with a beautiful and bored lady in the backseat. I thought that was the perfect level of famous: where you could make a model wait in a parked SUV for a couple of hours. That was the peak of unreasonable behavior I would be comfortable with being.
Dane Cook stayed until he had signed every single fan’s album, which was amazing of him, really. By the time we got to him he was sweaty and twitchy which maybe is a normal response to signing 500 albums, I don’t know. We walked out of Tower Records, clutching our new prized possessions tight, beaming. We walked back to where my car should have been, only to find an empty space. This would be my first - but certainly not my last - time getting my car towed in West Hollywood. There’s a sort of sweet innocence to it now. Like this bewilderment that something I’d left in a specific place was no longer there. How could that possibly be?
I started crying, like any reasonable middle class white girl from the suburbs on one of her first trips to a city would do. Shh, that’s what we do, trust me. A couple walked up to Elyse and me, and asked what had happened. We explained and the guy nodded and added with gem that I will never forget:
“Hey, at least it was just your car. That’s only gonna cost you a hundred bucks or so. Imagine if you were pregnant? An abortion can run upwards of a thousand.”
There were a few problems with this statement.
1. Why couldn’t I be both?
2. What are you getting, luxury abortions?
3. (confused noises)
I didn’t respond with anything, because it’s pretty easy to offend a girl who is suffering through a MAJOR CRISIS. I just walked away, angry and indignant. It’s a super weird thing to say to someone, right? I don’t feel like I was wrong.
Then I called my dad. Because that’s the only reasonable thing to do ever. It was probably around 11 when I called. He picked up, still sleepy from his 9PM bedtime.
“…hello?” from the other end.
And my response can really only be felt if you’ve either made this call or received it. That “I fucked up and you’re going to have to come bail me out” phone call.
(Long, tearful inhale) “D-dad?”
He drove an hour and a half to come rescue us. Found the tow yard. Fixed a seemingly impossible situation, that I now know I could have easily done myself. Elyse was silent the whole ride home. She never apologized for her part in it or the many other pickles we had found ourselves in over the years. Or split the $300 tow charge and ticket. Or gas. Or thanked me for driving.
It was a growing experience for me in so many ways. I learned about having a friend that I loved who was bad for me. I learned that people will make weird abortion jokes. I learned never to leave my car in West Hollywood. And I learned to have an irrational and unwarranted resentment of Dane Cook.
My immediate reaction to Corinne Backrub’s acceptance speech in a dream I just had
We are all humans, except for those of us who are half-human half-sleep nightmare or maybe some kind of monster or talking cloud. And Corinne Backrub is no different.
As a woman of distinct talents that I can’t remember and a grace that was sort of already implied, we all expected her to not only win a high honor at last night’s Ceremony for Something, but to accept the award with gusto.
I was lucky enough to be in attendance. Wearing a bathrobe I no longer own and a front row seat, I couldn’t believe my great fortune. I was anticipating a night that I hoped I would never forget, and in a way, I suppose I got it.
I’m not entirely sure what last night’s Ceremony for Something was actually for. Honestly, I’m fairly certain no one knew. But the tone and feeling of most of the people and anthropomorphic animals in the audience let me know that it was important.
When Corinne Backrub’s name was finally called, after anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 seconds into the night, we as a crowd were ecstatic for her. She looked so beautiful in her dress made of bright blue steam and she floated on stage in a way that legless dream people always seem to do so perfectly.
She took the statue in her hand so lovingly, so carefully, in a way you could tell they belonged together and always had. That’s why it struck me as odd when she threw it directly at ME, a person she had never meet before, and yelled, “Did you do your homework?” She then stormed offstage, without even waiting for my answer.
And so, I would like to take this opportunity to give my immediate reaction to Corinne Backrub’s acceptance speech in a dream I just had:
Corinne, as much as I may have enjoyed your work in last night’s dream (up until the aggressive and unnecessary shift) I’m having a hard time understanding your motivation. While I, and most of the dream-having population deal with stress and deadlines on a daily basis, it has been a great deal of time since I have done homework. Your attack seemed general, and in a dream I bothered to conjure I would appreciate specific insecurities addressed. So no, I did not do my homework, because I do not have homework to do.
I don’t remember if your award statue hit me or not, but if it did, I certainly don’t appreciate that, either. It seems cruel to both me as a mere audience member looking on, and to the entire community who puts on the Ceremony for Something as well as the fans of your work. I’m not sure you will be able to recover from this. Why, I haven’t suffered such cruelty in a dream since a giant talking bird told me I wasn’t good at math. Which I am not, mind you, but it is still a hurtful thing to say to someone while they’re sleeping.
In conclusion, I forgive you for your outburst. It is neither the time nor the place for grudges and Lord knows I’m not going to talk about our little tiff to coworkers or friends, because there would be a flourish of hand gestures and explanations of implied relationships that I can’t quiet explain in a way that would be boring enough. I wish you all the best. And maybe next time, you can just be a horse that I pet.
Top 5 Potential Quarter-Life Crises
1. Move to an artists’ loft in San Francisco. Share a space with five other late 20-somethings, all with adverbs for names. Write one-act anthropomorphic tragedies about a family of rabbits. Blatantly steal from Shakespeare’s later work. “Anthony and Cadbury” will be met with mixed reviews at Berkeley’s community theater.
2. Open a vegan bakery. Name it something vaguely sexual, “Sugar Bits.” Or abstract, “Dreams from the Robot Next Door.” Get full sleeve tattoo and argue politics with customers.
3. Have an affair with a foreign diplomat. Name our illegitimate children after each of the Marx brothers.
4. Become a roadie for an 80’s cover band. Tour the Midwest. Learn all the words to Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings.”
5. Go to law school.
1.
