10 posts tagged “nostalgia”

    Who was the first person to give you info -- correct or not -- on how to "make babies"?
    Submitted by Manon-It-All.

When I was in the fourth grade the word 'blowjob' was introduced into my vocabulary as I had begun to overhear this mysterious word seemingly everywhere within earshot at school: in the cafeteria, the halls, near the bathrooms, by the water fountains. The 5th and 6th grade boys were the primary culprits.  Using this word in tandem with a girls name would set them off in a surreptitious fit of laughter.  I knew this word was taboo.  I knew it was bad and that I would get in trouble for saying it.  I knew there was something "sexy" about it but I had NO idea what it meant or how to come by this information. In a tizzy to finally quash the query, I turned to my sweet catholic ESL mother for guidance. 

After school one day I went into the kitchen as my mother was making preparations for dinner and sat down at the table.  Without introduction I blurted out "Mom, what's a blowjob?".  She barely flinched as she looked over her shoulder at me and paused for a second.  Calmly, she walked toward the drawer where we kept our collection of clear vegetable bags from the produce section of the grocery store and extracted one.  She then sat across from me and stared me dead in the face.  I was starting to get a little scared.  She looked so serious, as if I had asked about raising the dead, as if she were sending me to my doom.   "What have i gotten myself into?"  I thought.   "How bad could this blow job thing really be?"

Without diverting her gaze in the slightest, she slid her hand over the flimsy & limp clear plastic resting her grip around the top.  She brought it to her lips, and proceeded to inflate the bag.  To, well, blow.  Air began to fill the space and I noted how cylindrical those little bags really are.  Once the bag was fully inflated and quite firm she pulled it away from her mouth holding it tight in her left hand so as not to let any air out and said "That" her right hand slamming and popping the plastic bag, the sound jolting me in my seat, "was a blow job."  And without any further explanation she got up from her seat and went back to chopping vegetables.

Over the course of the next year, knowing that my parents were no help and too embarrassed to talk to anyone else, I became obsessed with the things I had no answers to.  Everything was changing in me and on me and around me there were signs everywhere that people knew the things I didn't: that there was a whole lexicon of things sexual and physical that i wasn't privy to, that people were doing things scantily clad in dimly lit rooms and casually making grown-up asides about the events after the fact while smoking a cigarette or sipping on brandy or some other bullshit adult charade.  I would see the allusions in movies.  I could see the answers on the screen but, as if these were in written in Sanskrit, I couldn't decipher their meanings.  Actors knew.  Teachers knew.  All adults knew but didn't want kids to.  Kids thought they knew or would pretend to know but really just wanted to know more. 

All these assholes knew the secret, meanwhile, I was waking up with strange things happening to me.  I swear I just woke up with pubes one day.  I have no gradual memory of this.  One day there was nothing and the next there was and it scared the fuck out of me. I was frustrated, pissed off, confused.   "What is sex and why is it hijacking my body?"   Fed up one weekend, I biked to the library.  I wandered the isles and rows until I found what I was looking for:  SEX, PUBERTY, MORE ABOUT SEX.  I pulled about fifteen books that seemed to reveal the 'mysteries' I had for so long been in the dark about, checked out, and rode home.

In a haste, I took the camping gear out of the closet, ran to the back yard, and erected a tent under the avocado tree.  Only later would I recognize the pun implicit in this little self-discovery camping story.  My parents asked what I was up to:  "Homework" the catch-all reply.  I devoured the information on the pages.    Gonads. Hormones. Sexual Maturation.  Nocturnal emissions.  Menses. Ovulation.  Heavy petting.  Intercourse.  Clitoris.  Orgasm.  Ejaculation. Sperm.  Uterus. Enlightenment.  Food was brought to me so I stayed for two days reading, only coming out to use the bathroom, which, overnight, had been transformed into a magic chamber for me to observe these new findings about my body.  Now I knew.  I was reaching 'sexual maturation'.   Babies wanted to get made in me.  Men wanted to spend time in me.  I was a hot commodity.  If Whitney Houston was right and the children were the future then I had the future in me.  My body was sacred.  Fifteen books worth and all of a sudden I had all the power in the world in my teeny body. 

I have my tunes on shuffle and this song comes on.  It catches me off guard.  I catch my breath.  I am instantly transported.  I am a scrawny mosquito-bite-chested girl.  I am laying in my bed, eyes puffy, and surrounded by crumpled Kleenex.  I am hurt like I never knew the hurt could hurt.  I am listening to this same song. 

I experienced my first stab of betrayal, I mean real, genuine, stomach-emptying, vitriol-producing, bad poetry-inspiring, tear-jerking, tissue-box-emptying betrayal, when I was 14.  This song was my recovery song, on repeat like a band-aid mantra until I nursed myself back to functionality.  The heinous feelings bubble up from the past and reach the surface and, as I'm in a maudlin state today, they take the shape of a tear that rises and spills from its duct like a tilted forty to the homies who long ago bruised my heart.  Thanks for the memories.

(Continued from Parts 1 & 2)

"...Everything was vivid, as if it were in Technicolor, as if it were a dream."

Part Three:  A Beacon

    The dream turned fast into a nightmare when near the tail end of 1993 I found myself living in a suburb of Buenos Aires and attending an uptight all-girl Catholic school.  I was fucking miserable.  My Spanish was passable but my vocabulary extended only to that which I’d learned from my parents; in other words, I could describe in colloquialisms about 15 years out-dated what I wanted for dinner.  I had never learned how to tell a joke, or even express an abstraction in Spanish.  The girls in my school flat out ignored me until word got out that I was from the States at which point I became something of a novelty item.  Talking to boys was useless.  The personality that, I felt, had always been my biggest asset came off as flat when mapped onto this other culture.  It wasn’t just my words that got lost in translation.  I did.  All of me:  gone.  
    In the States I had been a ‘foreigner’ but I never truly felt like one the way I did in my own country.  I understood for the first time what it is to be an immigrant; I was a citizen of nowhere, a stranger in all the places that should’ve been home.  So, like most 15 year olds do, I retreated into a kind of shell.  I spoke when spoken to, smiled when it was expected of me, and pretended, for my parents’ sake, that I was perfectly happy.        
    I lived about 5 blocks from a small record store owned by a 36 year-old man-boy with an affinity for younger girls, my-age girls to be exact.  Eager for a friend, I was blind to his advances.  I would go into the shop and we would talk for hours.  He made me a mix tape and I accepted it with gratitude and when he told me we should ‘go out’ I was flat out shocked.  Perhaps this is my selective memory kicking in but, though I listened to that tape on repeat for months, I don’t really remember too much of the music on it.   That wasn’t even the point, I guess. Before leaving Miami my friend, Joe, told me not to worry; that I would find like-minded people anywhere I went.  If anything, this tape emblematized Joe’s words for me, it was a beacon, of sorts, that gave me hope.
    It was a couple of months before I started riding the train into downtown Buenos Aires alone on the weekends to scope out the record shops & bookstores.  Listening to my walkman, head resting on the window, seated across from the toothless breast-feeding aboriginal woman and next to the grey man in his suit, I let go of the anger I felt at being in this foreign place and found comfort at the sides of my fellow passengers, all of us anonymous, strange, and equally out of context next to the other.

Part 4 coming soon...

If I lived in your town I’d pick you up and we’d go for a drive. We'd stop at a liquor store for a bottle of cheap champagne.  We'd drive in search of the perfect bill board on a back road, one with busted lights and a view of the train tracks or a distant road. Once we found our quarry we'd climb its stairs with a couple of blankets and leave the car running below, the faint sounds of our favorite songs drifting up toward us in the cold night air.  We would sit mostly in silence, exchanging the occasional observation or thought, and pass the bottle between us.  After a couple of hours the cold will have gotten the better of us.  We’ll get back in the car, crank the heat, and drive as though the head-lights of the car were deciding our way back to town.   

    It's just past noon on a bright & warm fall Sunday in LA.  I'm still groggy from having woken up late.  This is the time of year when my sleep becomes irregular.  In other words, I don't do it much and when I do it's like an exaggeration, as if to spite myself. 
    I have always loved the way that Sundays sound.  When I was younger, my mother and I would go to the french bakery & deli to pick up all sorts of croissants, breads, cured meats, & cheeses.  Sundays were an all day grazing with no actual meals.  We would make orange juice from the from the fruit of the tree in our yard.  We would open up all the windows so the house became a breeze way.  My father would play his music, mostly world music, the Lambada was really big for a while in our home; the gypsy kings were a staple.  We would pass eachother doing nothing; reading in the yard , taking a nap in the living room, reaching for the same slice of prosciutto.  Our neighboors would BBQ, they had a toddler, the man of the house was the obstetrician who delivered my kid brother.  We could hear their goings on from over the tall wooden fence covered in vines and Bougainvillea.
    When I lived in Texas, it was in a house that was surrounded on three sides by a used car lot.  It was the only house on the block and Sundays were the only days that I didn't wake up to the sound of "Bob, you have a call on line one.  Bob.  Line one;" but instead the soft murmurs of elevator music.  In Tucson, it was near the artists lofts downtown that I lived on 6th & Stone, by the train tracks.  Sundays in the desert were quiet, but for the slow passing of the train and the crunch of dirt giving way to your foot fall.
    Now I live in a four plex in a yourngish neighborhood in LA.  My upstairs neighbors are two adorable gay boys in their mid-twenties who tend to wake me up (if I have managed to fall asleep) when they come home from the bars at 3 and 4 am.  Next to them, an engaged actor couple that we have befriended over the last two years.  And next to us is, Terry, a gifted pianist in his fifties who keeps mostly to himself as he quietly collects the tidbits & scraps of neighborhood gossip. 
    Today, Sunday, we are all home.  It is the day that the sounds of your life & home are amplified and spill outdoors to mingle with the sounds of your neighbors lives & homes.  You're listening to your music, your neighbor's baby crying, the other watching football and cursing occasionally, a sad song on the piano, the sound of dog tags clinking as their owners take a stroll.  Somehow, in a city of about 4 million people, this is soothing to me.  A helicopter roars over my home and the medley is broken.  Next Sunday, a new tune.

Part Two:  Moving back

As early as November of my freshman year, my middle school friends and I drifted apart like cloud formations on a windy day, fast and without remorse.  Something had broken between us.  Soon I met Shannon, a sophomore, and we quickly became inseparable.  We were an unexpected pair.  I had just come out of my middle school cheerleading uniform; she liked photography and pissing off her parents.  Our friendship worked though;  her best friend had just moved to Virginia and I had recently ‘outgrown’ mine.  Her parents were super strict Christians and she would ‘run away’ nearly every weekend to seek refuge in the home of my lenient and liberal parents.   

Together we joined the water polo team and befriended a handful of seniors & upper classman.   A junior by the name of Melissa Mcgonagle made a mixtape.  A copy landed in Shannon’s hands and, from her, a copy came to me.  The mix was called “Classic Rock” it was an absolute musical hodge-podge and something of a misnomer, as on it was everything from Blondie & John Lennon to Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth & The Ramones.  Shortly after my first listen of this mix my life changed when my parents informed me we would be moving back to Argentina at the end of the school year. 

With what I believed was nothing to lose I took to skipping school, walk-man in tote, blasting this tape on my way to the beach or wherever.   After this everything was different.  I was different.  This tape marked a rebirth.  First steps were replaced by first loves.  I went to my first rave, surfed my first wave, first joint; all of it.  I started sporting all-stars instead of Keds, scouring thrift stores racks instead of visiting the Wet Seal at the mall.  Everything was new.  Everything was vivid, as if it were in Technicolor, as if it were a dream.

Part 3 coming soon....

Part one:  Goodbye, Girlhood

During the summer before my freshman year of high school my group of friends consisted largely of about ten girls who’s names, whether given or ascribed, all ended in “i” or “y”.  They were a giddy bunch, highly neurotic, that proudly referred to themselves as J.A.P.S (Jewish American princesses).  This kid, Carlos, came over one day when Kelli, Mindy, and I were hanging out by the pool at Kelli’s house.  Carlos had made a mixtape for a girl he’d been hopelessly & madly in love with from a nearby private school.  She was ‘out of his league.’ I think that was part of the appeal to him.  He played it for us that balmy afternoon.  The tape told a story of unrequited love and within a week every girl in my group was singing along to the mix titled “How Deep is Your Love?” aptly named for the opening track by the Beegees.  It was chocked full of swooning music; grandiose love songs that plucked amorously at every pubescent string in our barely 14 year-old hearts.  Air supply’s hopeful cooing of “Making Love Out of Nothing At All”, the desperate pleas of “All Out of Love”, and “Here I am”, Bonnie Tyler’s enigmatic “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the songs, even then, were outdated & a little embarrassing, but they made up the soundtrack of my last summer of girlhood.  When I hear those songs now the nostalgia is nearly unbearable. I feel it all over again; the awkwardness, the desire to be grown up; the sense of loss and disillusionment.

Part 2 coming soon...

How did you meet your best friend(s)?

I have 7 Best girl friends.  They make me very happy.

My Grandmother,  Evelina.   1978. 
I met her shortly after coming out of my Mother’s womb.  We totally clicked.  I was like “WAH” and she was like “I hear that!”…seriously though, she taught  me all  of  my favorite proverbs  and most of my better  traits.  People start to like me better once they've  met my grandmother.

Aura .  1990. 
I was in 7th grade.  She was the cool new kid; a transplant from San Diego. Miami Beach had never seen anything quite like her. With her red bandana and punk- rock-hard-core Aura soon became a Nautilus (our middle school) legend and a dear friend with a very handy Driver's permit. She was, and remains, the kind of girl who could strike up conversation with anyone (or anything), and make it interesting. Aura has enough love & loyalty in her heart to care for all the worlds orphans. No application submissions, please.  Aura turns 30 next week and we're meeting up to celebrate in our old stomping ground: Miami Beach.

Ema.  1994.
In 1994, I was new to yet another high school. It was lunch time on my first day and I had said maybe three words all day (teenagers don't always give the warmest welcomes.)  I was wandering aimlessly when Ema came up to me and invited me to lunch with her.  We talked about things important to 16 year old girls, and we became instant friends, largely because she was the only other girl I had ever known with my same clothing AND shoe size.  It's really not everyday you meet a girl that's only 5'6 and wears a size ten shoe.  She still lives in Argentina and I wish I saw her more than once a year.

Jenny.  1992.
My freshman year of highschool I joined the water polo team at Beach High.  Here I met Jenny, she is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (we think). During her senior year, she was the drummer to the first ever school sponsored Rock & Roll band and it landed her a place in music history (if we have our information straight). That's when I met her. Needless to say, as a 14 year old girl new to the high school scene, Jenny was my hero. The surprising thing is that we became friends. When you think about it, not much has changed, she's still the loud-mouthed, confident & opiniated girl of her youth, and I'm still continuously awed by her. These days, she spends her free time on a trapeze, and soon I will joining her there.

Kym.  2002.
A.K.A the Whirling Dervish. When I think of Kym, I am taken right back to a warm Joshua Tree night. We were on a night hike when, summoned by her lovely singing, we were surrounded by howling coyotes. My instinct was to hit the ground, hers was to bolt, maybe she had the better idea!  We met in SF at the famed Redwood Room.  When we weren't drink slingin' for the yuppies, we were taking day trips to tahoe, learning to snow board, or tubing down the Yuba river. It's not easy trying to keep up with Kym. You feel like you're burning calories just standing next to her.
Los Angeleno's, Kym, too, has made the move south so keep your eyes & ears open for news of her new act, The Cinderella Motel, a rare breed of Fairy-Tale Rock Cabaret.

Roz. 1992.
I also met Roz on the waterpolo team (thanks to Shannon Sauls for convincing me to try out).   When I got my first  apartment out of High school I had a nasty string of low paying odd jobs. The one I shared with Roz  involved making HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of a phone calls a day promoting this hot night club, or that amazing DJ. "Call Girls", I'd say jokingly, when people would ask what we did. Most of this time, was spent on the floor of the office with markers and colored pencils strewn about in a frenzy of creativity. Another time Roz and I endeavored to HAND-DRAW forty or so invites to my 20th birthday party! In short, she's my creative team and possesses the best laugh I have ever heard.  Roz left LA & moved back to Miami last year and I'm still fucking     bummed about it.

Sarah.  2002 (via 1992).
Sarah, Jenny, & Roz met when they were in middle school, Jenny & Roz continued on to Beach High and Sarah moved away.  They were still  Best friends when I entered the picture a few years later, and then I moved out of the country.  In "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce, he defines Friendship as "A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul." This has never been the case for Sarah, whom I've known all this time via the stories of my friends. She has consistently proven to be THERE, when her friends have called upon her. And I have been fortunate enough to find myself in this category to her: Friend.  We live two blocks away from each other, we are the only two married ones in our group of friends, and since I can't have pets in my apartment, I get my fix with her dog, Baloo.

All of these girls were by my side at my wedding recently, some more happily than others, wearing the olive green dresses I chose for them as my bridesmaids.  Except my Eve (granny), who was sitting comfortably about 10 ft. from me looking as beautiful & elegant as ever.  That was a good day!

(I'll be posting the wedding pics as soon as I get them.)

What movie can you quote by heart?
Submitted by clamhead.

Lloyd Dobler...my teen dream....ah....

"The rain on my car is a baptism. The new me. Iceman, power Lloyd. My assault on the world begins now."

Say Anything