5 posts tagged “story telling”
"...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.
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...
Wednesday, September 20th at 10pm the news came on the flat screen TV behind the bar at Canter's Deli's Kibitz Room. The top story was of a man on a motorcycle being pursued by the LAPD. After about 20 minutes or so the broadcast began to attract the attention of the bar patrons due to the fact every couple minutes or so this 'rider in the night' would throw up his left arm, fist clenched, in a gesture of triumph.... or at least that's how we began to read it. After a while the bar patrons began to join the nightrider in his revelry. Together we too raised our fists in the air, crying "Fuck Yeah!" or just hooting and flicking the bird. It was as though this guy, averaging speeds of only 35 MPH but stringing the cops along for hours, became a champion of freedom, a renegade, and we cheered him for fleeing as we had another round in his name. Chances are he was just some crazy dude, a screwball, but Wednesday night he was my hero.
In the morning, I tried to find information about the outcome of the chase. I wanted to know the story. I searched the web and turned up nothing. He was gone.
