mercuryfern

Perlite Dusted Eyes

hey, those moments we were having, I’m treasuring em now.  If someone  hasn’t said this to you yet, they will.

The writer of the above sentences meant well, I know.  He had no way of imagining how bizarre my adolescence was, how completely devoid of even the most comforting of clichés.  The lack of a first boyfriend, I miss this more than not graduating, more than not even attending high school.  What I did instead, was, of course, more interesting, makes for better stories in the end: living in real live communes, attending an unschooling cooperative, becoming, through only my own efforts,  financially self sufficient at 16. 

I had a crush on Mark in fifth grade, when we vied for smartest science nerd status.  He was obsessed with Jacque Cousteau, I with dinosaurs.  He had a crush on me in 7th grade, when I radiated manic charisma, a punk rock goddess; he jockeying for position at the periphery of the circle over which I held court.  Kicked out of school twice, sold down the river by my parents, in ninth grade I ended up at his house, watching Clockwork Orange, desperate.  I’ll admit, I thought I was slumming it, I thought he was safe.  I whispered all my grandiose plans for escape, he got me the job that made them possible.

Our employer was a large retail greenhouse. It was filthy sweaty work, moving heavy things, fixing broken old equipment, watering plants. He was in excellent shape; so was I.  My strength was not hidden from him as  some girls are wont to attempt; I met or topped his ability at every physical or intellectual feat.  He was not afraid of me.  A brave girl reflected in his eyes and I aspired to deserve such infatuation. It didn't take us long to tumble to the floor, hands and mouths discovering pleasure clumsily.

Shortly after we arrived each day, our boss usually went home. He gave us a list of tasks we were to complete; we put lines through each as they were accomplished. At some point we began to think it very funny to add our own chores, crossed off, when we returned the cheet: cunnilingus, nipple suckling, ass grasping.  Then a note left on the time clock,

If you ever again do what I saw you doing behind house eleven, your employment here is over.

We considered leaving a reply:

Your note was unclear about what you saw and deemed unacceptable. Many things happened behind house eleven yesterday. Please be specific about which activities will result in termination.

I needed that job, though, needed the independence the money gave me. We resolved to be more discrete.

Another teenager was hired shortly after. The resulting lack of privacy put  a damper on our affair, though not stopping it entirely. The three of us had fun causing other mischief, having pretentious heated debates about the meaning of life. I was the smart bad girl, one of the guys, enamored of this sweet clever boy I had discovered.  Sometime during this period I invited him to my parents house when they were out of town. We had not yet gotten around to actual coitus; I was anxious to get it out of the way. In retrospect, I should have been suspicious when he declined.

I was carrying a flat full of plants into the greenhouse while he described the blowjob he had received the night before from his girlfriend.  He saw me and didn’t skip a beat, acted like he believed the lie we told everyone so I could keep the job that saved me from my father’s angry control: that nothing passed between us.  She wasn't even a new girlfriend at that point; somehow I was the only person who didn't know. Twelve clay pots of cyclamen shattered violently to the floor, the only failure of my attempt to seal every natural response in.  Not one tear escaped then or ever in his presence, they furrowed deep inside my gut where they lay gnawing for years.

My world crumbled for other reasons then, too.  The tribe that nurtured me through years of parental abuse left me, or I left it.  Where once we found truth and union with the universe through art, where once was the cleansing fire of youthful rage at the hypocrisy of the straight world, was now a hedonistic fashion scene.  My best friend slipped from my grasp, extinguishing her own fire with cocaine and in utero coat hangers, her furious addiction spewing bizarre accusations.  All of our mutual friends believed what she said about me and left me to my own devices.  The unschooling cooperative promised salvation: intellectual passion, community, honesty, but delivered sloth and apathy.  My parents, as always, were oblivious at their finest.  When meals became weekly events, when a bottle of pills failed to end it but took all power of speech and locomotion from me the next day, they did not notice, though my father often found reason to tell me I was ugly, a bitch, an embarrassment.

Through all of this, Mark and I saw each other for 18 hours very week, much of it alone, more time than either of us spent with anyone else.  It seemed important to be on good terms, such was my wounded love for him.  I listened to him prattle on about his insipid wholesome girlfriends, his eyes glazed over when I deigned to broach the topic of my anguishes.  He mocked me often.

This might have been fine, two years of failing at friendship, a long ugly end to a month of sweetness; except that he took to calling the girl of the broken cyclamen fellatio his first girlfriend.  Having touched me was not just disgusting, but insignificant. 

There were other boyfriends, eventually.  Girlfriends, too.  Now, even a husband.  It’s not that I haven’t been loved.  These days, straight facts usually vanquish the years long fear that I am unable to inspire affection or passion.  There is something about the first, though; it digs grooves everything subsequent pulls towards.  I suppose we all have disappointment tangled up in our teenage relationships, but at least most people were loved in the beginning, whatever pain followed.  There were no open skies at the start of my romantic life, no coflowering of souls to recall fondly over late season meals of other fruit.  Everything was frost killed on sprouting.

Call

“Simon! The phone is for you!!!” One hand grasped the bannister while she yelled this, her body swinging lazily at a forty five degree angle to the floor as she pushed the words up two flights of stairs. A pause. “Emmanuel Goldstien! From the magazine!!” After a second pause which evidently contained reassurances that the caller had or would soon be attended to, she walked over to the waiting phone and, after briefly putting it to her ear, replaced it on the receiver.

“Does that guy call here a lot?” The boy who asked was sitting at the kitchen table, watching the girl mess with the large unlabled jars of oils, grains, and spices which seemed to line every horizontal surface in the place. These, plus some scraggly plants she’d pulled from the small garden in the back, would be transformed into something better than edible by processes that were mysterious and sometimes vaguely threatening to him. They were both eighteen.

“I think so. I’m not here during the day, though. Simon is working on an action over this jailed hacker kid. That guy is helping, I guess.”

“What’s the name of the magazine?” He leaned forward, looking slightly amazed.

“Ah...” She took her hands out of the dough, put them on her hips and stepped back from the counter, gaze on the floor. “Shit. I forgot. It’s a number.” The kneading resumed, without eye contact.

“2600?”

“Sounds right, why?”

“You’re seriously asking me why?”

“Is he famous or something?”

“Um. Yeah. He’s been writing this ah... computer... magazine which I’ve been reading since I was like, twelve. Taught me how to break into my middle school’s records.”

“Really?” She looked up, her eyebrows jovially askew. “Weird. Small world, huh?”

“Yeah.” Such amusement was contagious. Biting his smile, the boy tousled his own hair and looked away.

“Honestly, the whole premise of a hacker march is a bit ridiculous. They are more paranoid about controlling access to their precious identities than your average anarcho-polyamourist urban homesteader. Simon’s not getting many takers on the sign holding/ chanting idea. Poor guy, he’s really busting his ass.”

They laughed again, both heads shaking.

Not because I don't have anything to say, but because I don't have time to say it: something from the archives.

Danny Welch was a drug dealer. High up, it turned out. From the city even. Apparently he dropped my name later to a kid at my public high school who fancied himself tough. Hey, Danny Welch? You were in lockup with him? He says hi. The resulting credibility among thugs was not without its benefits. For instance, the nonconsentual groping stopped. It gives me some satisfaction to imagine that sadist feeling a little afraid when he heard my name linked with Danny's. His assumptions and everyone else's, though, were wrong. I could have, sure, if we weren't both flight risks, if it wasn't run like a prison.

They used the padded room frequently, though it wasn't sufficiently soundproofed. My first night there, I woke up who knows how late to the sound of them hauling the short haired girl down the hallway, terrified and swearing, some furniture or something breaking and the scuffling scuffling scuffling towards my room and then past it, finally a heavy door closing. It was only seconds before the terrifying silence was polluted by a sound just at the edge of my hearing. After a few minutes it seemed I was drowning in it. A faint little noise, barely recognizable as human. I couldn't make out the words, but her fear was clear enough. The next morning I found out they even put her in a straight jacket.

Danny and I; we were pissed. No one deserved to be treated like that. We exacted our revenge on behalf of the less brave patients. We discussed breakout plans loudly within earshot of nurses, left maps and lists lying about so they would ask us about them, angry and worried. It was a laughing triumph, to upset them so needlessly. The two of us could get the other kids to work together seamlessly. All the patients would be in on these elaborate pranks and inside jokes, finely crafted to mock and humiliate the poor grad students who thought they were helping us. He was brilliant.

They were very strict about our media consumption. Basically, we were only allowed to watch Disney movies. The Lion King, in particular, was favored by the staff. I remember having a discussion with some authority figure: Don't you think we need art that speaks to our real emotional turmoil, to help us make sense of our lives and hearts? something like that. No. We are afraid of you was implied. So, we adopted the Lion King as our mascot, would memorize weird lines from it, reenact little skits at inopportune times. It made them so very very angry. We were on the floor laughing everytime. Not just Danny and me, all the patients. We made that insipid movie our own.

And of course, we sang the Tiny Toons theme song incessantly, the whole fifteen of us, from different parts of the hall sometimes. It was the juvenile psych ward, you see. Again, universally hilarious to the patients, annoying to the staff. Perfect. We injected some joy into that place despite them.

In the end, the adults had all the power. Danny and I weren't allowed to see anyone, not even our parents, for weeks at a time. They took our shoes; strange how degrading that was. Everyone else went on walks, went outside, but we never saw the light of day. The other kids brought us stolen cigarettes, some kind of pat on the back to our rock star selves. I liked to imagine we gave them courage.

You would think, with all that time stuck inside- but no, I never got any psych ward lovin. It is a fine tradition, two of my dearest friends lost their virginity that way. He was fifteen, it seems we would have been able to find, what, five minutes away from nurses? No, no. They were on to us. It was obvious, the chemistry we had.

It takes so much away, to be restrained like that. They will deprive you of control, of privacy, of your dignity. The worst thing, though, is that they take might take all intimacy away, romantic and otherwise. My tribe of girls were not allowed to contact me while I was there, of course I couldn't make any calls or write any letters. For six weeks my friends didn't know where I was. I think of Danny sometimes, of the small adolescent flirting we had, of the joyful rebellions we started together. Just now, though, I am thinking of all the memories and connections they kept us from making.

Early: Up All Night

c: So are you going to the coffee thing or the sweatshop thing tomorrow?

m: I don't know, I guess the sweatshop thing. It all seems so dumb all of a sudden. I guess that's asinine with how much organizing we’ve been doing to get people to come, plus driving from Barrington and everything.

c: No, I hear you. We’re so isolated here. I mean, dude, I already drink fair-trade coffee, why do I need to go to a workshop on why I should drink fair trade coffee?

m: I know right? I hate these people. It’s a clique, a posturing thing. Everybody's whoring their socially conscious lifestyle choices. We are all just trying to impress each other with how goddamn pure we are. Nothing is going to change because of what happens here.

c: Fuck this ineffectual pretentious bullshit..

m: Ok, so what about tonight?

c: Let’s go to New Jersey.

m: What?

c: Yeah, I just thought of that now. Let’s go skinny-dipping in the ocean. I bet we’re only three or four hours away. Its September- the air is only gonna get colder. If we’re gonna get naked in a large body of water, we’d better do it now.

m: You, sir, are pure evil. Becca and Weasel are down no doubt, we’d better find ‘'em.

----------------

m: Dude, wasn’t your birthday over the summer?

c: Yeah.

m: So we’re both eighteen. We’re real people instead of chattel now, how cool is that? I bet Becca and Weasel are jealous of our sophistication and maturity.

c: And our legal access to porn. Look, it only took them four hours to fall asleep. Lazy fuckers.

m: Slacking in the pursuit of adventure, bad form. Don’t forget our legal right to coat our lungs in tar.

c: Thinks of all the new perfectly legal opportunities to get permanent etching in our skin.

m: And to change the course of civilization with our ever so effectual voting rights.

c: Oh, of course. Plus we can get married.

m: True. But we’ve been able to do that in the Deep South for a few years.

c: How much like Las Vegas is Atlantic City?

m: I don't know, I've never been. I always picture it as kind of a mini Las Vegas, only seedier.

c: Seedy enough to have twenty-four hour Elvis wedding chapels?

m: God I hope so. Can the world ever have enough twenty-four hour Elvis wedding chapels?

c: Will you marry me?

m: Not if you ask me like that. C’mon now, you’ve got to get down on your knees and really grovel. Plus I want a ring.

c: Woman, we have to get married. It will be hilarious.

m: You realize we must both be in drag.

c: Of course. Becca and Weasel, as our best man and woman, must both wear tutus and fairy wings.

m: Hmmm, that's pretty good, except we don't have any tutus or fairy wings. I vote for them in drag as well.

c: Well, I bet we can buy some similarly campy shit in ac.

m: Hey, look, you got nothin' until I get a rock.

c: Anything for you, my sweet. Let’s see what they've got here.

m: A gas station vending machine ring? I just love it when you get all ironic like that. Oh you really are getting on your knees, mother of god, you are the craziest person I have ever known..

c: Fern Mercury, light of my life, fire of my loins, will you do me the honor of becoming my lawfully wedding wife, tonight, in Atlantic City, in front of our friends and allot of very drunk gambling addicts?

m: You know it baby. This will be the best piece of performance art ever. A fag and a quasidyke, sticking it to the man, showing the institution for the ridiculous joke that it is. Hah! Atlantic City won’t know what hit it!

------------

c: Oh, hey, look, a building that kind of looks like a fake French Quarter.

m: And some sort of pyramid thing. Doesn't Donald Trump own that or something?

c: Yeah, I think so. Um, I‘m becoming concerned about the dearth of wedding chapels, though.

m: Let’s go into one of the casinos and ask. They'll know where everything is.

c: Oh right, we’re allowed to gamble now, too, huh?

m: Almost forgot about that one, didn’t you?

c: God, this is kind of depressing.

m: And the carpet is really ugly.

c: Not in a gloriously tacky way, either. In a boring airport terminal way.

m: Seriously, they’ve failed to embrace their seediness here. You are Atlantic City, you can only fail at achieving class, why try?

c: And look at how empty this place is. Are they even open?

m: Well, we got in. Besides, why bother gambling if it isn’t four am. Excuse me, ma’am? Where are the Elvis wedding chapels?

lady: The what?

m: Well, we want to get married, you know, on a whim, and we can’t find the wedding chapels.

lady: You want to get married on a whim? Do you think that's a good idea?

m: Oh, no, we think it’s a very bad idea. That's why we want to do it. Preferably with Elvis. Y’know, gambling, heavy drug use, an ill-advised marriage. Doesn't it sound romantic?

lady: We don't allow drugs here.

m: Oh that's good, because actually we’re in love.

c: -and we need to get married tonight. We can’t stand to wait another second.  We drove all the way from New Haven, that’s how in love we are.

lady: We don’t do that business here.

c: I thought you were like Las Vegas only smaller.

m: Nah, dude, Las Vegas is like Atlantic City only bigger, where’s your East Coast pride?

lady: Look, if you kids want to get married in New Jersey, you have to go to the justice of the peace and get a marriage license under a New Jersey address. The office opens in three hours, but since I'm guessing neither of you is a New Jersey resident, you probably can’t do it anyway. Better just get married in your home state.

m: Um, thanks.

c: That sucks.

m: I feel like such a dumbass. Do I even have a home state?

c: Not one with 24-hour instawedding Elvis chapels. It was worth a try. Wanna play the slots?

m: Not remotely. It looks tedious. Let’s go to the beach, watch the sunrise or something. We’ll have to make pretty good time coming back. I’ve got class in six hours.

------------------

Weasel: *yawn* where are we?

c: I95 north.

Becca: North?  argh.  Whadwe miss?

m: You nearly missed the adventure of the century, but the universe is giving you a chance to make it up to us. When we get back to school, we need to start working on fairy wings and tutus for both of you.

c: And the four of us are driving to Las Vegas over winter break. Have you met my fiancé?