out
of
it
p a g e t e n
copyright1999-2001, Christine Hamm
Summer of '81
That was the summer I started stripping. I was fourteen and I had the body of Pamela Anderson, but inside it was the sullen heart of a six year-old.
That May Cindy and I met Brian. We were at the 7-11 on University Place -- after we snuck out to get high on the Stanford golf course. We were giggling and throwing popcorn, our eyes swollen with pot. The manager was getting really pissed, but his yelling was like a pleasant background hum. Brian was very pale and had a foot high mohawk. He had a chain attaching his nostril to his earlobe. He was 18 and had a car. Cindy and I were instantly in love. With a sneer of complete erotic indifference, he offered to take us up to San Francisco to a club. That night was the first time I saw Black Flag.
Eventually I saw Fear and got to throw beer cans at them when they called SF "Frisco." I learned how to slam dance, and bruised my tits until they were blue and purple. Once I met John Doe.
Everyone was really nice, all the time. They were all surrounded by a drunken, friendly halo-like glow. It seemed like I already knew them, even before we met. Once I woke up in some stranger's apartment and I couldn't remember from about nine the night before. But I wasn't worried, because there was a whole pile of us, smelly and snoring, strewn all over the couch and carpet, and my pants were still on. My mom really screamed at me for that one.
I associate that summer with the smell of cut grass, coconut oil, Dippity Do, patcholi, piss, vomit and that acidic burning taste/smell of cocaine dripping down the back of my throat. I shaved half my head and dyed the other half pink. I filled notebooks with torn pictures of Soixe Souix, Robert Smith, David Bowie and the Violent Femmes. I put red glossy heart stickers all over my poster of X. Five times I saw a movie about a tragic 13 year old heroin addict who lived in East Berlin. I saw "The Clockwork Orange" until I memorized most of the dialogue. I sung "Der Kommissar" and "Autobahn" to myself all the time. My best friend gave me a black leather jacket with an anarchy symbol painted on the back for my birthday. My parents were not happy.
After regular school let out, it got harder and harder to get up. I felt just like dog shit that had been run over by a steam roller and heated up in the microwave.
Every morning turned into a screamfest with my mother. She continually tried to get me out of bed and unto the bus for summer school. Eventually she stopped trying to get me to shower and have breakfast and just ripped the covers off me and cranked my music up. She stood there and stared at me until I got dressed. She didn’t even say anything when I called her a fucking bitch and started crying, but her eyes got really big and scary so I stopped.
It was about that time that I puked into my Cheerios in front of my parents. My dad just said, “look at yourself” and left the table. My mom got really red and started shaking. “If you ever sneak out of the house again, Rebecca, I’m changing the locks.” I just stared at her. I hated every minute I spent in that house.
My parents stopped talking to me, which was just as well, because their whining made my head hurt. Just once I tried to sit on Dad’s lap while he read the newspaper, like I used to. He pretended I wasn’t there. That pissed me off a little.
I hated my parents, but I loved my friends, and I loved Robert Smith, and I loved to dance. Like most teenage girls, I was obsessed with my own cuteness, my friend’s frailties, and suicide, in just about that order.
My nightlife became everything to me. I loved the way the air seemed to shatter and regroup with the screeching distortion of an electric bass, and I loved the dim rooms painted black, bright with mohawks bobbing to the beat. The guitars and singers screaming through the blown out speakers seemed to vibrate through my whole body, until my heart was matching the beat, until I was sure my ears would bleed. My body could do things then I didn’t think possible. I suppose it was dancing. It was a sort of movement that sent me far away. It was a sort of bliss.
The first time I did it I was at the Fourth of July Party. The apartment was dark and enormous -- it seemed to take up a whole floor. Or it could have just been that the party was wandering blindly between two apartments, out into the hallway and back. In the dark I kept tripping over girls' legs. Clumps of teenagers were slumped down with their backs against the wall, as if they had slid down slowly. Although the windows were open, there was no breeze -- everyone smelled of pungent, funky sweat and stale beer. Like at every party, there was a girl crying in the corner, people making out on every flat surface, and someone shooting up in the bathroom.
My Dead Kennedys shirt stuck to my back, and I could feel sweat dripping down between my breasts and running into the waistband of my jeans. My bra felt like it was made of lead. Cindy and I kept trying to dance, swinging each other and smacking into people who were too hot or stoned to care.
Someone said the fireworks had started, and a few people drifted to the windows. There was a pause as somebody changed the record. I heard booming. Then the Ramones came on: "Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours a day." And I started dancing, shaking everything up and down like a pogo stick. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with the heel of my hand. It was too hot. I took off my t-shirt, wiped my face with it, and threw it in a corner.
There was a tiny break in the wet air. The music vibrated differently. Everyone was quiet, just for a minute, and stopped yelling and smoking and drinking. Their eyes got very bright. Nobody was watching the fireworks. It was the most intense few seconds of my narcissistic, stoned little life. That was the first time I took off my shirt in public.
That was the summer my mom gave up on me. And that was the summer that Ricky showed me how to shoot up under my fingernails, so the tracks wouldn’t show.