OLD DAN TUCKER

Three years is a long time to have a crush on someone. Especially if the first year goes by and you’ve never even touched them. Just lots of staring and fantasies.

Marty played the guitar. He’d sit on the lawn at the Park with some of the other guys and play hit songs from his favorite bands. I’d sit there mesmerized watching his long fingers flick the strings of the guitar and absorbing every note. I wondered how long it took him to learn to play ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ Everybody played that song. You had to. It was an anthem. But it never sounded as beautiful as when it came from Marty’s guitar. Jimmy Page could’ve been standing right next to me, wailing through one of those long version guitar solos and I wouldn’t have noticed. All that existed was Marty slumped over his guitar, blond hair hanging in his face and his all-consuming look of concentration. There was no doubt about it, Marty loved music.

So, I figured that was my way in with him, through the music. I had saved some money from my job as a salesgirl at Capwell’s Department Store. I kept it hidden inside my teddy bear. He had come with a music box inside and the little winding knob was on his back. I had surgically removed the music box in an emergency operation one boring day and carefully stitched up the wound leaving about a half an inch hole. The absence of the music box caused a hollow indentation in his back and in an attempt to fill it back up, I stuffed my extra cash inside him. Why it was necessary to hide my money in the first place I don’t remember, but I was at that age where I felt I had to hide everything and my mother was at that age that she felt she had to snoop through everything. I think all mothers snoop when their child starts having secrets and acting in ways they can’t explain. But money wasn’t really something I needed to hide. Not like drugs, or diaries, or the birth control pills my friend Sandy kept hidden. I remember the day she came to school in dark sunglasses and we all teased her as she approached. She didn’t laugh or speak, she just kept walking toward three giggling girls and when she reached us, she pulled off her glasses and revealed a huge black eye. We, of course, stopped laughing and went into concerned friend mode. We pummeled her with questions and she began to cry. All she could get out was that her mom found her birth control pills.

So anyway, I hopped on the 72 bus and got off at El Cerrito Plaza, walked up to the shopping Center and bee-lined straight to the music store with the pretty wooden guitars hanging in the window. I let the man show me a few and I hugged their polished wood bodies as if I knew what I was doing. I strummed the nylon strings. I knocked on the wood, cause I think I heard somewhere you’re supposed to do that. Then I bought the cheapest. I paid my thirty-five dollars and left with my guitar and songbook, ready to conquer this instrument and win Marty’s love.

My parents thought the guitar was just a whim. They didn’t believe I would stick with anything longer than a week, or at least that’s what they always used to say. I had first asked for a piano when I was seven. They said “No” despite the fact that I spent every chance I got pounding out songs on pianos wherever we’d go and teaching myself to play “Exodus.” Even then they didn’t think I was serious about wanting a piano. “You’ll play it for a week, then you’ll lose interest in it,” they said. “Then we’ll be stuck with a piano.” They didn’t see I wasn’t the kind of child who’s lost interest in anything quickly. They didn’t see I never let go.

I sat in my room day after summer day, plucking at nylon strings and flipping through pages of folk tunes. The man in the store said I should put off learning Led Zeppelin for a while and start with some simple tunes. I focused on one. My fantasy was that I’d go to the park and all the guys would be sitting around on the lawn. Marty would be there with his guitar and I’d sit next to him and when he got tired of playing and laid it down on the grass, I’d pick it up and start playing my perfectly rehearsed version of “Old Dan Tucker.” The guys would all be impressed with my dexterity and nimble chord changes. Marty would have a reason to be in love with me and we’d live happily ever after.

But Marty and the guys stopped bringing their guitars to the Park before I mastered Old Dan Tucker. My guitar sat in the corner and gathered dust. Every time my mother walked by my room she’d say it was a waste of money. So I hid it in the closet. But it wasn’t a waste of money. I hadn’t gotten tired of it.

I still wanted the guitar.

I still wanted a piano.

And I still wanted Marty Koutz.

NADINE WASHINGTON

Everything about Nadine Washington was big. She was the tallest person in our fifth grade class. She was the tallest person in all of St. Columba's Elementary school. Her voice was the loudest in the schoolyard and her arms, her legs, her hands and her hair were massive. Even with your eyes closed, you could sense when Nadine was around. Her presence was overpowering. And if she was walking toward you, it was like a herd of buffalo heading your way. You'd feel the rumbling under your feet and in a panic, you'd run to avoid the stampede.

Everyone made fun of Nadine, except me. She was the only person the class bully, Earl Atkins, would stop teasing me to go after. I liked her for that. And I felt sorry for Nadine and her bigness, and the anger she felt about the unfairness of it all.

Aside from her weight, her height and her large limbs, Nadine was the darkest person at school. I think she was the darkest person I had ever seen, with skin tones at St. Columba's ranging from vanilla to caramel, caramel to mocha, mocha to chocolate, and chocolate to… Nadine. It was a time when it wasn't so wonderful to be dark.

St. Columba's schoolyard was a large, gray cement rectangle, caged in by a Cyclone fence. At lunch, different cliques of girls sat on green wooden benches that lined the perimeter, gossiping about boys and trading lunches. I didn't belong to any one clique. Actually, I didn't belong to any clique. But this one time, for the first time, I was sitting with the popular girls. See, I had been sitting alone and they came over and told me to move, so I wasn't really with them, but… if you drove by in a car and looked into the yard, you might think I was.

In a grand gesture of sucking up, I offered them my lunch to pillage. I had made it myself and it had all my favorites: a tuna sandwich, with separately wrapped lettuce and tomato, so the bread wouldn't get soggy; Laura Scudder's barbeque potato chips, which I was about to smash up into delicious crumbly pieces and sprinkle onto my tuna; and two pink Hostess Snowballs, which I routinely ate in ritualistic fashion starting with the creamy white center, then peeling off the pink marshmallowy coconut layer, and finishing up with the chocolate cakey middle. They grabbed my bag and tossed me back some mystery meat sandwich which I ate, taking tiny bites and pretending to enjoy it while trying to control the gagging.

I sat there and listened to the popular girls talk. I laughed at their jokes, acknowledging their comments with interjections of approval. Then, the ground began to vibrate. Everyone looked up and saw Nadine bounding toward us from across the yard. Nadine's large legs were equally thick at the knee, calf and ankle, making them look more like tree trunks than human limbs. As she approached, one of the girls joked, "Look at Nadine's fat legs." We all laughed and in my eagerness to belong I added, "Yeah, black just like her face!" The laughter stopped. What the hell was I saying? In an attempt to cover, I faked a coughing fit then mumbled something about a food allergy. But it didn't work. Everyone was staring at me, then at Nadine. When I saw her face I knew she had heard what I said. In one second, everything about her seemed to shrink. Her big, wide-toothed grin disappeared, her full lips sucked inwardly like pulled by some great implosive force. Her whole face shriveled up into a pained, dried-apple doll expression. She spun around like a tornado and whirled back across the yard and into the school, crying… loudly. "That wasn't very nice, Bernadette," one of the popular girls said. "You made fun of her too," I answered. "That's different," she said as she shoved the rest of my pink Snowball into her mouth.

Sister Mary Catherine let Nadine go home early that day, then she took me aside for a talk. She was solemn. She sat in her heavy oak principal's chair, swaddled up in black and white nun clothes. Her fingers fidgeted with the wooden beads of a long, black rosary that was attached to her side. She stared at me and spoke slowly, careful to enunciate each word as if doing so would drive the words deeper into my brain. Her white face was flushed and became redder as she spoke. She began. "Bernadette, Nadine is sensitive about her color. You should never call someone black." As bad as I felt about the whole thing, I didn't want to be in trouble. I immediately went on the defensive explaining that Nadine's legs were black, and what I said wasn't really an insult as much as an honest observation. She wasn't buying it. We were still Negroes then. I was a Negro too but I was a 'good' color of brown and Nadine wasn't. Black wasn't beautiful yet. Black was an insult.

Nadine skipped school the next day too. That made me feel worse. Everyone in my class was mad at me for what I said to her. Sure, it was okay for them to call her a cow, or King Kong or joke about her every day of her life, but I had crossed that invisible color line.

When Nadine finally came back to school, she didn't talk to me anymore. Everyone was nice to her for a while. I was happy that at least some good had come from it. Then, all the kids fell back into old patterns and Nadine became the butt of jokes again.

At the end of an unforgiving year, we had our class picnic. I sat in the bleachers watching my classmates play baseball. Nadine was up. She picked up the largest wooden bat and took a few practice swings. I clenched my teeth together to prevent any spontaneous remark from slipping out. There was no way I was going to be responsible for another black on black crime. Earl Atkins pitched the ball. It sped by Nadine a little on the inside, just below her waist. It was a bad pitch. I saw that, but Nadine didn't. Her hands tightened around the bat and her face tensed up. Her whole body twisted with all its mighty force and spun around swinging the bat, slicing through the air. The ball whizzed by. Nadine caught up in the velocity of the spin continued around in a circle, clouds of dust rose up from her feet and then… she let go of the bat.

It flew, slow motion, in lopsided circles across the field, across the bleachers, right toward me. I went through the process of seeing the bat, registering the picture, thinking about the implied danger and concluding the need to take action. As my brain screamed at my muscles to move, I learned that the velocity of a thrown bat was far greater than the speed of my mental processes. The thick side of the spinning bat made full contact with the side of my head and I dropped, out of the conscious world to blackness.

When I woke up I was lying down on the bleachers, looking up at nuns and the entire fifth grade class. Someone was yelling for ice. I was embarrassed and quickly tried to sit up. My head hurt but I lied and said I was okay. Disappointed, everyone dispersed, except for the nuns and Nadine Washington. She was holding my hand and crying huge, wet tears that splashed onto my arm. Nadine said she was sorry. I started crying too and said I was sorry.

I was sorry I had called her black.

I was sorry being black was bad.

I was sorry I had sat in an unprotected section of the bleachers.

And I was sorry that I had to learn the hard way, that the hurt you give out... always comes back to you.

I'll always remember that.

You don't have to hit me in the head with a baseball bat.

THE BRA

The summer between the seventh and eighth grades, all the girls in my class developed breasts. Except me. I noticed it and all the boys in the eighth grade noticed it… the absence of a bra through my thin white Catholic school uniform blouse. They could all see the outline of an undershirt against my brown skin and my flat-as-a-board chest which was a testament to a summer spent without a visit from the puberty fairy. I had grown two inches taller and now, even more resembled a stick figure.

Every day that first week of school, the boys teased me unmercifully, asking what happened to my tits. It took me by such surprise that I didn’t know how to respond. I had never really thought much about getting breasts except the dread of experiencing that obligatory trip to Hink’s department store and standing in a dressing room, naked above the waist, while being measured for a bra by a wrinkled old saleswoman with cold hands. I had gone with my mother when she took my sister. The whole idea was paralyzing. I wasn’t comfortable with my body. I came from a family that wasn’t comfortable with their bodies. No one ever got naked in front of anyone else. My sister and I shared a room since birth and we had never seen each other naked. How was I supposed to let a stranger look at and touch my just-beginning-to-bud breasts?

I went home and cried. I didn’t belong. I wasn’t like the other girls. I was a freak and everyone knew it. The thought of returning to school filled me with dread and there was no one to share this with. I couldn’t possibly tell my mother. She wasn’t the kind of mother you talked to. I had tried once. It was in the sixth grade when she proved to me that she wasn’t good at handling sexual-type things. They had just installed a Kotex machine in the girl’s bathroom. Laura Gardner and I were the only girls in our class who didn’t know what a Kotex was. We spent the whole day speculating about it before concluding that it must have something to do with breasts.

I went home that night, seeking out my mother for some answers. She quickly became nervous and evasive. As I pushed, she became more distressed until my father finally took me into their bedroom, reached up on the high shelf in the closet, pulled out a white cotton sanitary napkin and showed it to me. This was a Kotex. He didn’t tell me what it was for. I didn’t ask. I had seen a Kotex and that was all I cared about. The other girls had nothing on me.

So, it was up to me to solve my bra problem myself. I came up with a plan. My sister, who was three years older, had a few bras but wore them in a regular rotation so it would be impossible for me to take one without her noticing. But she was also already wearing stockings and owned several garter belts to hold them up. She only wore those when she dressed up or on Sundays for church. The next morning, I went into my sister's drawer and took one of her garter belts. It had a wide white band of cotton with four rubber and metal buckles that hung down to attach to the stockings. I hooked the two opposite buckles together fashioning a type of shoulder strap, turned the garter belt upside down and slipped my arms through the straps. Hooking it closed around me, I had created a “bra.” My very first bra. Although the place where the buckles were joined was a bulky knot at the top of my shoulders and a little uncomfortable, it looked like a bra to me and would hopefully to the eighth grade class too. I put on my white uniform shirt and looked at myself in the mirror. I could see the haltered outline of my “bra” through the sheer fabric. My heart raced. This would work. I covered up with my uniform sweater and went to school.

I was anxious the whole morning but waited for the perfect moment to reveal myself. Usually everyone kept their sweaters on in the morning. I sat nervously hoping no one would notice the extra bumpy something on the tip of my shoulders. As we settled down to work and the temperature of the room rose, one by one people started taking off their sweaters. This was it… Show time! I slowly slipped off my sweater, placed it on the back of my chair and leaned forward in my desk.

The first whispers came from Earl Adler who sat behind me. He had made torturing me his career at St. Columba’s dating back to the first grade when he gave me some contraband gum and once I was chewing it, forced me to swallow it by threatening to tell the nuns. Maybe not a big deal to some, but I had never swallowed gum before and had been warned against it repeatedly by my mother who swore it would stick inside me, clog up my stomach and kill me dead. Everything always killed you dead.

Hearing Earl’s all too familiar laugh, I turned around and saw that everyone was looking at me. I turned back and sat up proudly sticking out my tit-less chest.

At lunchtime, the guys teased me again. “Bernadette’s wearing a bra!” “Yes!” This is the same way they had teased the other girls. I felt giddy and weightless and the most supreme joy and pride. I was just like the other girls. I had a bra too.

I continued to sneak my sister’s garter belt for the next two weeks until the boys’ interest in female under-apparel waned. Then I went back again to wearing my sleeveless ‘Lollipop’ undershirts with the little cloth bow in the front. I was unafraid to take off my sweater because I now had complete “bra confidence.” I knew, and they all knew, I had a bra, whether I chose to wear it or not.

I REMEMBER GRASS

A loud lawnmower noisily chops up the grass in its path as a white dog barks.
He doesn’t like it either.
The mailbox clatters as it vibrates.
The earth rumbles and my brain quivers.
Everything is shaking when the Mexican gardener comes.
See?
Si si!
I hear him Espanol-ing to his fence.
“The noisier I work, the faster I work. Then I’m off to someone else’s yard

to make their white dog bark.”

I miss the scraping of the rake.
Its slow repetitive metallic lullaby that meant daddy was outside working and I was safe.
Today’s child rock-a-byes to Pepe’s diesel blower and dreams of
Staccato jungle gyms and native roots.
There’s no safety in the smell of gasoline.

A lawn is such a beautiful plaything.
It is fun’s potential amplified and alive.
It was my job to water it.
Underground sprinkling systems had not yet taken over our home’s petty cash.
I earned my green from the green that grew.
I filled glass jars with its bugs
And I never
Ever
Guessed
It would be replaced

with

Gravel.

THE JOSHUA TREE

I am an old home.
I am a new home.
Run to me and hide.
I will let you crawl beneath my skin until you die.
I will watch with pride as you give birth to your young.
I will feed you and protect you from the rain.
I will gather love from the heaven and the earth for you.
I will be here forever.
Changing,
Yet remaining the same.
Rest in me!

UNCLE PAUL

“YELLOW MATTER CUSTARD… DRIPPING FROM A DEAD DOG’S EYE”

I love that.

It’s the most vivid and disgusting musical lyric.

I love the Beatles. My Uncle Paul bought me my first Beatles’ album. He’s my mother’s only brother, her baby brother. She and her sisters doted on him. They believed he was going to be someone special. I was six years old and I believed so too.

Uncle Paul lived with my grandmother in a small apartment in Berkeley. My mother took my sister and me to visit every weekend. Their apartment was always warm. If it was warm outside, it was warmer inside because the heater was on. My grandmother liked it that way and if you didn’t like it you could leave.

The whole place smelled, but not in a bad way. It was a combination of last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast. It smelled homey, and told me that there’d always be food.

The rooms were dark and full of stacks of clutter; newspapers, clothes, boxes. All too important to throw away and not important enough to keep dusted.

In the front of the apartment was a sun porch; all windows with white lace curtains. It was the only bright room and where my sister and I played. It was also Uncle Paul’s studio. He was going to be a famous artist and sell his paintings for thousands of dollars.

The sun porch smelled like oil paint. In the corner was a large easel with his latest masterpiece-in-progress. I thought it was beautiful. It was an ocean scene. He had painted yellow sand and bluish-gray waves breaking on the beach. He hadn’t painted the sky yet and the white canvas was a shocking contrast to the serenity of the rest of the picture.

My grandmother yelled out from the kitchen; warned us not to touch our uncle’s painting. We yelled back that we wouldn’t. Immediately I reached up and touched a wave. It was wet and left a blue spot on my finger. I rubbed some of it off with my thumb and smeared the rest on a pile of nearby Berkeley Gazettes. I put on my innocent face and walked away, as far as possible from the scene of my crime.

Next time we visited the painting sat on its easel just where it had before. The sky was still undone and the white canvas was starting to yellow. Dust had settled on the sand and ocean. My grandmother left the room and I put my finger on the wave again. This time it was hard and sharp and left no trace of paint.

Uncle Paul came home and I asked him when he was going to finish the painting. He smiled at me and said, “Soon… soon.” We both stared at the blank sky.

A few weeks later the paints, the easel and the painting were gone. I snooped around and found the painting stuffed behind a pile of old clothes. I pulled it out. The sky was still empty yellow canvas. I took it to the kitchen where my grandmother stood at the stove stirring something in a pot. I asked her why Uncle Paul hadn’t finished the picture. She grabbed the painting from me and yelled, “You shouldn’t be snooping through other people’s things.” I followed her into the other room and she put it back behind the pile of clothes. I told her I would finish painting it. But she didn’t answer. She just went back to her stirring.

When Uncle Paul came home, he was carrying a black leather bag. He told us he decided he was going to be a doctor and make thousands of dollars. He was excited about his new career so I forgot about the painting and got excited too. He opened the black bag, pulled out a stethoscope and listened to our hearts. I was sure he was going to make a great doctor because as he listened, he looked at his watch then told us how many times per minute our hearts were beating. It was going to be fun to have a doctor in the family.

A month later, Uncle Paul decided he was going into the construction business. He bought himself a beige leather tool belt and a whole box of tools. He was going to build apartments and get rich from all the rent. I thought that was a good idea but wondered why he had decided not to become a doctor. Later, I found his black bag hidden under the most recent mountain of clutter. My grandmother wouldn’t let me have that either.

Shortly after the dust began to settle on the beige leather tool belt, Uncle Paul disappeared. No one knew where he was. My mother and her sisters would talk about him in disappointed whispers. When he finally showed up he said he had found religion. He was attending a church in San Francisco with a charismatic minister who was speaking God’s word in a new and special way. He seemed happy, like he’d finally found peace. But then he dropped out of the church a month before the Reverend Jim Jones moved them all to Guyana.

The last time I saw Uncle Paul, he was devising a system that was going to help him win the lottery. It was a chart full of numbers in vertical columns, intersecting numbers in horizontal rows. There were arrows and dates and stars, red ink and black ink. He began explaining the chart to me. I didn’t understand but pretended to anyway. I got swept up in his enthusiasm, how his eyes twinkled as he grinned with pride. He was certain his calculations were going to pick the winning numbers. I wished him luck and hugged him goodbye.

Five years later my Uncle Paul won $80,000 in the California State Lottery.

Six months earlier he had thrown away his chart.

He won on a Quick Pick.

MISSISSIPPI

I’ve always loved swimming pools. I love the clear blue water that fills them and reflects kaleidoscopic beams of sunlight in its ripples. When I was little, my ultimate fantasy was having a swimming pool. Throughout my childhood I had the same recurring dream about them. A swimming pool would magically appear in our front yard, on the strip of grass that grew between the sidewalk and the street. I would run to its edge and dive in, but I was never able to penetrate the surface of the water. I’d lie there on top and struggle to go deeper, into the water, but with no success. I’d wake up tired and frustrated.

The summer I was seven years old, my parents packed up our yellow Chevrolet Bel Air and drove us across country to visit relatives in Mississippi. Both my mother and father grew up in Canton; a small town out in the country, near Jackson, the state capital. They had escaped in the forties and moved to Berkeley. And for that alone, I will forever be grateful.

Cars didn’t have air conditioning in those days. If it was hot, you opened the windows. Speeding down the highway in the South, we’d get all varieties of strange insects whizzing through the open windows past our faces and smacking into the inside back window. My sister and I would scream, become hysterical and hustle to crawl into the front seat. Agitated by all the commotion, my father would stop the car and Mommy would pull that ever-present tissue out of her bra, get in the backseat and squish the buggy guts out of the stunned whatever it was. That was the routine.

We’d drive for hours at a time in the thick Mississippi heat. My sister and I would sit in the back seat playing cards, singing songs, and fighting. It was the typical sibling battle over space, which usually ended after my parents started yelling and the invisible boundary line dividing the seat was drawn. But no child can resist the temptation of a forbidden zone. Tiny toes teased and trespassed that line, causing more hysterics and even more yelling from the front seat.

As the sun set, the long day of driving would start to wear on my father. He’d squirm in his seat and rub at his neck. My mother watched carefully and provided emotional driving support by engaging him in meaningless conversation and offering things to drink. Then she suggested we stop at a motel. That word ‘motel’ was all I needed to hear. I jumped into action and began scanning the landscape for the perfect motel for us to stop at. That meant, swimming pool! I didn’t care about phones, TV’s, or how much it cost. I just wanted a motel that had a big cement hole with lots of pretty blue chlorinated water.

We came upon a motel with a flashing vacancy sign, beneath it were those words “swimming pool.” My father pulled off the road and into their driveway. I was eager to run and see the pool, but my mother held me back and said we needed to wait. My father got out and stretched, a big man stretch. The back of his shirt was all wet with perspiration. I could tell he was also going to be a lot happier once he got into that swimming pool too.

I turned away, anxious, straining to see behind the white fence that separated me from my pool. I imagined I’d be splashing in that water very soon. I’d dive in, like I’d learned in swimming class, swim underwater for a while looking for treasure on the bottom, come back up for air and go back down again. The car door opened. My father got in and started the engine. He gave my mother a somber look then turned to us, “They’ve got no vacancies,” he said. Then he added with a smile, “They forgot to turn their sign off.” We pulled out onto the empty Mississippi highway and continued down the road. I looked back at the motel and saw that the sign still flashed “vacancy.” Those silly people, I thought, they still had forgotten to turn it off.

We stopped at a few more motels with no luck. My sister and I searched even harder now for neon motel signs with the words ‘vacancy’ and ‘swimming pool’. When we’d spot one, we’d scream, “Daddy, there’s one! There’s a motel with a swimming pool!” He’d slow down a bit, then just keep driving and say, “Oops, you didn’t tell me in time.”

We stared out into the darkness toward the sides of the road; me watching the right side, my sister watching the left. I pressed my face against the cool glass, fogging it with my breath, drawing smiles, then wiping them off with my hand. We’d see those magic words again and shout, “Daddy, over there! There’s a motel with a swimming pool!” But now he didn’t even slow down. He’d just repeat, “Oh! You didn’t tell me in time. You’ve got to tell me earlier.” The sky got blacker and my sister and I tired of looking for motels and not being fast enough to tell my father. .

As we drove further into the night, Daddy suddenly became enthusiastic. He turned to us and told us he had a great idea. We were going to camp out. My mother agreed it would be fun. My sister asked if we’d sleep in a tent and make a campfire, but he said no. We were going to do a different kind of camping. He pulled the car over onto the graveled shoulder of the road and stopped.

This is where we were going to camp, here, in the car. It seemed strange but I was too tired to question it. My mother rummaged through the brown paper bag at her feet that she filled at every grocery stop and pulled out small cans of Vienna sausages. She opened them, placed one of the pale stunted pieces of meat onto a saltine cracker and handed it to me. I hated Vienna sausages, they smelled awful and the texture was suspiciously un-meaty. But we were camping, this was camping food, so I ate it. We laughed and ate our Vienna sausage camping dinner and when we were finished, they didn’t even make us brush our teeth.

I laid down next to my sister in the back seat. The imaginary boundary line was for the moment forgotten. My mother covered us with my father’s green wool army blanket and I stared at the stars through the back seat window. “Can we stay at a motel with a swimming pool tomorrow?” I asked. My father answered yes, as long as we’d tell him in time to stop. I believed him. I promised myself to try harder to see a motel in time.

As my mother and father whispered in the front seat, I began to drift off. I gazed up once more and saw a shooting star. Star light, star bright… I made a wish. Stars were magic. So I knew for sure that we’d be staying somewhere with a swimming pool really soon.

But, we never did stay in a motel with a swimming pool.
It was Mississippi, in the 1950’s, and we were Black.
No one would let us stay in their motel.
And all the hurt, rage and frustration my parents felt, they kept inside.
They had grown up in this world and wanted their children to know something better.
They shielded us from the prejudice by making a game and an adventure out of it.
They allowed us to believe there was hope, when there was none.
They protected our spirit.
And for that, I will always love them.

WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER

Bebe really liked The Doors. More than I did. I had bought their single “Light My Fire,” but hadn’t everybody. It was only the number one song for weeks and they played it on the radio at least three times every hour. So, taking Bebe to their concert for her birthday was a perfect present. After all, she was my best friend, and it wouldn’t hurt to get her a present that I could enjoy too.

It was going to be my first paid concert. Growing up in Berkeley I was a bit spoiled. There were bands giving free concerts every weekend at every park. The idea of actually paying to see a band play was a new one. But I cracked open the piggy bank and bought us tickets for the afternoon show. I figured that would be best, and as 15 year olds, we’d get the least amount of hassle from our parents. My mother lived in constant fear of something bad happening. And she truly believed that bad things only happened at night. As a result, our family lived a sort of reverse vampire existence; only venturing out in the light of day, and always returning to the locked-in safety of home before night. “Be home before dark,” was my mother’s mantra. She believed that perverts never did their nasty deeds in the joyful luminescence of the sun.

We took the city bus to the Berkeley Community Theater. It was attached to the dreaded Berkeley High School, a school that at fourteen, I had feared having to attend worse than the thought of a hundred eternities in hell. Having gone through eight years of Catholic school, I had been thoroughly brainwashed by the nuns who insisted that only very bad kids went to public schools. I was sure attending public school meant certain death. I couldn’t even imagine the doubly horrendous atrocities that would’ve occurred if I were to ever find myself in a public school after dark. I remember crying all night long after taking my high school admittance exams, fearing failure and worrying about my tortuous existence among the evil delinquents that lurked in the shadowy hallways of Berkeley High. But my tears were misdirected. I was accepted into the safe and saintly bosom of Presentation High, a Catholic all-girls school, where I spent the next four years in a different kind of hell, trudging through the slush of female nastiness, peer group pressure, scholastic evisceration and social debilitation.

We walked toward the theater. A long line of people snaked down the street, around the building and up the stairs that led to the theater’s entrance. We stood at the end of the line. There was a buzz, an excitement, an enthusiasm that seemed to grow the closer we got to the entrance. “What was the big deal?” I thought. We were just going to see some band. I’d seen plenty of bands before. How was this any different? A petite girl with flowers intertwined in her long black hair stood in front of us sobbing uncontrollably. I asked if she was okay. She looked at me as if I was from another planet. “I’m going to see Jiiiimm!” she cried. “Oh,” I replied sheepishly, then exchanged mocking looks and giggles with Bebe. I mean, I liked music too, but it didn’t make sense that someone would get so emotional over some singer in a band.

Once inside, we made our way to our seats, right smack dab to the left of center stage toward the front. I was surprised how good they were. I hadn’t gotten them particularly early or paid extra for them. But Bebe thought I had, so I let her think it. The theater was packed and vibrating with an electric energy. I found myself becoming excited. The lights dimmed, and everyone settled down.

I don’t remember if there was an opening act.
It doesn’t matter.
After Jim Morrison stepped onto the stage, nothing else existed, on the planet.

He was unlike any performer I had ever seen.
I’d seen cute guys in bands but, Jim Morrison was… beautiful.
And it wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the way he was. He just stood there. Not trying to rouse us up or entertain us. Just being.
His hair hung softly around his face.
His loose, white, buttonless shirt made him seem safe.
His black leather pants made him seem dangerous.
He took my breath away.

Jim sang, eyes closed, slowly. His raspy voice vibrating someplace deep inside of me. At times, he’d look out, acknowledging us, then as if gently taking our hand, he’d lead us back with him into some other-worldly place of poetry, sensuality and exotic melodies. He leaned sleepily on the microphone stand as he sang, whispering lyrics softly through perfect lips, then… growling, leaping around the stage as if possessed. It was the most hypnotic thing I had ever seen in my life. At fifteen, I knew nothing of sex, but seeing Jim Morrison was sexuality’s first awakening. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold onto him and never let go. His whole being had grabbed onto my soul. I was completely under his spell.

He walked off the stage as the band finished playing their last song. The lights came up and the auditorium shook as people stomped the floor, screamed and clapped for an encore. A frenzied mass of hysterical girls ran to the stage. Near the front, I saw the girl with the long black hair. She was screaming too, holding her hands to her head and shaking as the flowers fell from her hair. She wasn’t odd now.
I understood.
I wanted to cry too, weep uncontrollably because of some all-consuming longing I was feeling yet didn’t understand. The lights dimmed again and the band returned to the stage.
Then Jim.
He stood. Motionless. Silent. The band began to play what would become my soul’s sacred anthem. “When The Music’s Over.” I desperately wanted to be in front of the stage like those other girls, close to Jim, letting him see me, drinking him in. But I couldn’t move. “We want the world and we want it… now? Now! NOoow!” I left my body. The world could’ve ended right then. It wouldn’t have mattered.

The song ended and Jim left the stage. Everyone screamed for more, another encore, but none came. Girls tried to climb onto the stage, girls had fallen limply into lumps of sobbing flesh. Then there was me. I sat in my seat paralyzed. Frozen. Staring. It wasn’t over, it couldn’t be over. I wasn’t finished. My world had cracked open and it all was new now. I needed more.

Bebe nudged me. “Let’s go,” she said. What?! Was she crazy? Was she immune to the spell that had been cast over us all? She wanted to leave? How could we go home now after what we had just witnessed? I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

The lights came up and people slowly started to file out of the room. I felt awful. It couldn’t be over. How could I just hop back on the 72M bus, back to my parents’ house, back to acting like everything was the same?

Outside, the scattered sun assaulted me, trying to snap me out of my reverie, bring me back to what used to serve as reality. This is the end? I refused to accept it. It couldn’t end like this. I had to have more. I grabbed Bebe’s arm and dragged her along as I ran to the side of the theater, to the back door. A large, no-nonsense-looking security guard stood there. A group of concert-goers had gathered in front of him. We all stood wishful, just waiting for something to happen.

Bebe started to complain. She had no idea why we were standing there. I looked at her incredulously. We weren’t on the same wavelength anymore. I moved toward the others who knew. We waited.

The stage door opened and a thin man in suit talked to the security guard. He pointed to the group of people I was standing near. The guard waved his hand and the group proceeded to enter the theater. I followed. Once inside, I turned to look back and caught a glimpse of a confused Bebe standing outside as the door slammed shut. I hesitated for a second, thinking I should go back to retrieve her, then turned away.

I crossed the threshold and gloriously stepped into the backstage world. Survival mechanism took over. I bee-lined over to the people I had entered with and joined in as they talked about the show. I looked around. No one was coming after me. No one knew I didn’t belong there. Only then did I notice that standing among us was the Doors organ player, Ray Manzarek. My new group were friends of his. I stood with the ‘friends of Manzarek’ all the while continuing to scan the room. Then I saw Him.

Jim Morrison was standing off to the side. All alone.
He was leaning against the side a doorway. He looked melancholy and detached.

Without a word, I abandoned my new friends and moved toward Jim as if pulled by some invisible force. I stood right in front of him and he smiled. Part of me left my body again and hovered somewhere overhead. I had no idea what to say. I just stood there in my teenaged gawkiness, then blurted out, “Can I shake your hand?” A pretty lame request, but at fifteen, it was all I knew to do. He smiled and said yes, straightening himself up to free his right hand. He took my hand in his and we shook. He laughed. His hand was warm and soft. What now, I thought?
“Uh, can I have your autograph?”
“Sure,” he said.
I fumbled through my purse and pulled out a pen and my homework notepad. I flipped through the notepad looking for an empty page. I looked up at him again. He smiled and seemed amused by my awkwardness. I found a blank page and handed it to him. As he took it, he asked my name. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know my name. It confused me. I had never asked anyone for an autograph before. “Bernadette,” I said. He wrote my name on the paper, and then over it, he wrote Jim. No best wishes, no thanks, no insincere greeting. Just our names touching, his on mine, connected forever in my homework notepad.

“Are you coming to the show tonight?” Jim asked. What show? I didn’t remember there was another show that evening. I was confused by his question, his tone, and confused by what I was feeling. I didn’t know what to say to him. My mother’s voice played in my head, “Be home before dark.” I blurted out “No,” and instantly regretted it. Why did I say that? Was he inviting me? “Was Jim Morrison asking me out?” What about Bebe waiting outside for me? It was too much. I couldn’t handle any more. I told Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, that I had to go. He said bye and I backed away from him. I’d gone as far as I could with him. I was ready to go home.

When I got outside Bebe was still standing there looking lost. She battered me with a million questions about what had happened but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t talk. I wanted to hold it all inside and savor every detail. The entire bus ride home, she complained about me leaving her outside. I could hear her faintly in the distance but my head was still filled with the music, the sound of his voice, my hand was still warm from his touch. I held it to my face. Jim Morrison had touched me and there was no forgetting that.

For months after the Doors concert, I spent my nights sitting in the living room next to my mother’s stereo console, listening to “The Doors,” burning incense, staring into strobe candles and thinking about Jim. I spent my days in school alternately staring at the autograph, then out the window while I replayed my Jim Morrison encounter. I fantasized about what might’ve happened if I’d stayed for the night concert.

It was in Mrs. Sherrill’s fifth period French class where for the first time, I allowed the autograph to be passed around. All the girls were impressed that I actually met him, talked to him and touched him. Mrs. Sherrill was unaware of the Morrison mania going on behind her as she scribbled French phrases on the blackboard. I stared at the autograph again. His name was written on top of mine. It had to mean something. It was sexual. I stared out the window and imagined kissing him. Why didn’t I kiss Jim Morrison instead of just shaking his hand? I had never kissed any boy but he could’ve been the first. I sighed with longing for lost opportunity.

When I came back from my daydream, I looked down at the autograph and shrieked. With the pen in my hand, I had unconsciously doodled all over Jim’s autograph. How could I do such a stupid thing! Now, there was my name, his name over it, and a bunch of loopy squiggles all over the paper.

My first time in Paris, I went to Pere LaChaise cemetery to see Jim Morrison’s grave. It was raining, but still the gravesite was surrounded by distraught youths. They had never met him, never touched him, they weren’t even alive when that concert at Berkeley Community Theater took place. I approached his grave and the magic and sadness welled up in me. I knelt down near his tombstone. The memories rushed in; how he had smiled at me, how he’d asked my name, the autograph. Then, with that same hand that he shook, that had felt warm for days afterwards, I reached down and touched his grave.

“The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We'll meet again, we'll meet again”

THE OL’ SWIMMIN’ HOLE

I like swimming on a hot day. In a cold pool. So cold I’m afraid to jump in at first. Then when I do, there’s that few seconds before I hit the water. That I hang in mid air and anticipate the cold and the shock it will send through my body. You could live a lifetime in that moment before you hit the water.

Small spineless worms, carrying tear stained messages of fear in their mouths, wriggle up and down my back. Their vestigial legs flapping lifeless by their sides. Hot worm slime burns my skin and I long for the chill of liquid that will soothe it, slap me in the face and make me appreciate being alive.

My fingertips touch water and it sucks me down into its belly. I can breathe here because of the cord. My feet spasm and I kick. I didn’t mean to, but somehow I’m supposed to. You have to kick my mind tells me, or you’ll never get out. There’s an old man in my mind. He’s sitting in a tiny rocking chair that creaks and he constantly tells me what to do. I don’t think he belongs there and when I evict him, I’ll plant red flowers in the window box and get rid of the fluorescent lights. And I like carpeting on the floor, so I’ll put that in too. It’ll be bright and cheery in there. Right now, it’s all dingy and yellow and smells like urine and stale cigars. My foot kicks again. Yes, I’ve got to put someone else in control.

Pieces of what will be me float by. Round flat thingies and snake-like twisties. My eyes open but remain closed. With transparent eyelids, my vision is undeveloped, but still I see too much.

The little people with button eyes and wrinkly skin live in this part of the pool. I think I know them but they never talk to me. They just look at me with big sad eyes and turn away exposing the holes that have been poked in their heads. Once one of them tried to talk to me. She seemed kind and came close, reaching out a shriveled hand in a gesture of friendship. But the others grabbed her away and took her back to the corner. Sometimes I hope I’ll see her again, but the waters pretty cloudy where they live.

Sound can be seen now. It looks ragged and sharp with stinging metal tips. I can hear it too. This is new for me. First I thought I was dying again but it seems all this is normal even though there’s not much to hear at this depth. Once in a while I hear an angry voice. But mostly, words are unsaid and they come from lipless ghosts that dwell nowhere. They stand shivering besides their graves draped in white veils that blow in the wind. They found their death at the bottom of the pool and await resurrection...

just as I do now.

CHAMPAGNE & TESTICLES

Paris, France - 1999
Some Internet Computer Center

I had finished this whole letter and the damn computer disconnected me. I screamed out loud, frightening all but a few people sitting on the other side of the room. I thought everything was lost. This trip has been a nightmare of computer horrors. More than once I have written long, detailed, elaborate letters only to lose them because of some demon in the works. But once I convinced the highly sensitive, computer-wise genius who works here that I wasn’t dangerous, and coaxed him out from under his desk, he came over and somehow retrieved my letter.
So, here it is...


Well, looks like my magical knack of getting upgraded to first class treatment is still going strong. Got upgraded at the beautiful Hotel Lutetia, from a regular room to a junior suite. And, they sent me a complimentary bottle of champagne and a whole tray of little cakes and cookies. Never underestimate the power of flirting with the desk clerk. They hold the power!!

My suite has… two rooms, two bathrooms, two TVs, two balconies and of course... a bidet, only one. For as loudly smelling as the French can be, God bless them, their butts must be clean. I took a picture of the bidet to add to my growing photo collection of the bidets I have seen in my travels. Maybe one day I will exhibit my work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Perhaps I will put out a book, "THE BIDETS OF EUROPE." Then I could option the rights to some major movie studio to make as a light comedy starring Julia Roberts. Julia could star as a poor yet proud hotel maid whose talent for cleaning bidets catches the eye of Richard Gere who then hires her to be his escort. Catchy, huh?

Today I'm going to Pere LaChaise. I went last time I was in Paris but figured I'd go see Jim Morrison at his final resting-place before they move him to his final, final resting-place. The owners of the cemetery it seems, are tired of distraught youths, who weren't even alive when Jim was prancing drugged and naked onstage, tromping over Edith Piaf and Simone Signoret to get to their fallen idol. I remember standing at Jim’s graffiti-ed grave watching a young girl sitting in the dirt next to his headstone, crying her eyes out. I was saddened by her deep despair. Was all this for Jim? Nah, couldn’t be. Maybe she just broke up with her boyfriend.

Last night I had an experience that makes one alone in a foreign-speaking country feel very stupid. I went to this cafe that was listed in my travel book as being a favorite spot of Hemingway’s. It's famous for French/German food. That sounded interesting. I was up for trying something new since I'd eaten duck for the past five nights. I’m one of those people who finds something they like and sticks with it. I love duck. Although the last duck dish, I’m almost convinced, was steak. Anyway, after hearing the thick-accented waiter try to explain the entrees in half French-half English, I ordered a sausage and potato dish. It sounded pretty plain but knowing German cuisine, figured it could be tasty in a spicy, mustard-covered way.

After debating whether to have an ice-cold German beer or a glass of full bodied French burgundy wine, I settled for a glass of champagne. Hey, why not? I’m in Paris, in a café where Hemingway sat and perhaps was inspired with the idea for his next novel. Viva la France!

They allow dogs in restaurants here. I sat contentedly; sipping my champagne and watching a beautiful, silvery-gray, sleek-looking dog lick his incredibly huge balls. Ever try drinking champagne while a big dog licks his balls? The French love dogs. I met a guy, while waiting in line at a perfume store, who was severely reprimanded by a French person for making a sarcastic remark about a dog. Not even a mean comment, a sarcastic one.

If the French love dogs and the French love Jerry Lewis, imagine how much the French would love Jerry Lewis’ dog. I don’t even know if Jerry Lewis has a dog.

I was hungry and happy to see the waiter heading my way. But obviously the food he carried wasn’t for me. It looked unlike anything I had ordered. It was disgusting. He got closer. “Keep going, keep going.” I prayed. He stopped and sat the plate down in front of me. I smiled politely, “Merci.” What I thought I had ordered from the waiter was sausage and potatoes. What I had actually ordered was… two fat, pale-looking veiny sausages that closely resembled that big dog’s balls. Next to them was a large boiled pig's ankle on a bed of sauerkraut. Yummy yum yum! I find eating a meal that too closely resembles the body part it came from totally barbaric. If you want me to eat a pig ankle, slice it up, grill it and throw some sauce on it. Then tell me afterwards what you killed to feed me. ("You mean that was..?! I'll be damned! Now, that's good eatin'.") Don’t just shove it in my face looking the way it did on the animal, conjuring up images of poor three-legged ‘Babe’ limping pitifully around Farmer Hoggett’s yard.

I examined the victim closely. Obviously, this had been a very large pig. My gastronomical desire waned while my scientific interest rose. Rather than eat it, I would dissect it. It was like I was back in physiology lab at SF State, cutting into cadavers, rabbits, rats, frogs, fetal pigs… shall I go on? I made vertical incisions, lateral incisions, sliced and jabbed. As in college, I learned nothing from the experience.

I saw the waiter, huddled with the other waiters, watching me and babbling in French. I had to do something. Unfortunately the silvery-gray dog had left and there was no other sacred pooch resting nearby that I could feed the porcine joint. I ate a few bites of sauerkraut, faked eating some ankle and… scattered pig parts around the plate. Maybe the waiter would be fooled into thinking I ate some. Who was I kidding? Out of extreme embarrassment and a deep sense of Catholic guilt, (There are starving children in…) I snuck out when the waiter wasn’t looking, leaving a larger than necessary tip.

Tonight I’m going to a restaurant my tour book says is where James Joyce and Orson Welles used to hang out. I don’t care what they ate. I’ll have the duck.

HAROLD B.



I went to an all-girls Catholic high school for four years. Puberty hit hard and without an appropriate target to aim it at. The only male I saw all day was the guy who filled the vending machines. Every girl had a crush on him. We would stand by the machines watching him and vying for his attention. I fantasized about my future as Mrs. Vending Machine Man. That was as good as it got. After graduation, all I thought about, cared about, and wanted, were boys boys boys. I was consumed by the idea of them.

My parents offered to buy me a car if I’d attend the same university as my sister. I rejected their bribery and opted for the local junior college where I knew a lot of cool guys from the nearby public school were going. My academic interest was zero. I was socially retarded and put my every effort into educating myself about the opposite sex.

The atmosphere at the junior college was relaxed and experimental. I took art classes with real naked male models and a teacher who urged us to “free ourselves.” I didn’t understand what “freeing myself” meant. You must first discover that you aren’t free. You see, it wasn’t a very deep time for me. I cut classes, hung out on the lawn and smoked pot, not because I wanted to, but because that’s what everyone else was doing. That’s what every boy I liked was doing.

One of my classes was Psych 110, a group therapy course. It was part of the new wave of self-analysis and opening oneself up. What we were supposed to do once we opened up, no one quite knew. But we were all willing to try and besides there was no homework. We sat in a circle for an hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday under the supervision of Mr. A, the psychology teacher. We were supposed to bare our souls and help solve each other’s problems. Our grades would be given on some strange criterion like our willingness to speak, or our ability to express compassion. All we really did was bitch. A bunch of eighteen year olds, nattering about parents: “They don’t understand me.” Boyfriends and girlfriends: “I think he/she wants to break up with me.” Or whining about not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. Occasionally, a girl would cry. That was always good. We’d try to be sympathetic. Nothing ever got too heavy and the time passed quickly.

Harold B. was in my Psych 110 class. I knew him casually. He wasn’t the kind of guy I had a crush on. He was too goofy looking; tall, with thick, greasy dark hair, black rimmed glasses and he dressed like a lumberjack. Harold never talked in class. The rest of us would babble endlessly and agree how unfair life was, but Harold always just sat and listened.

One Friday, after the usual round of complaining, Harold spoke for the first time. It was a refreshing change and everyone paid attention because we were all completely bored with each others’ stories and his was a new voice.

He began quietly and somberly. He told us that the first time he had sex… was with his sister. Wow! His sister had then become pregnant, was sent away, and the baby was given up for adoption. What?! We all sat in silent shock. What was he saying? None of us had ever heard anything like that before. These were the pre-Sally, pre-Jerry, pre-Donaghue, pre-baring your innermost secrets on national TV days.

Then before anyone, even our teacher, uttered a response, the bell rang. Everyone jumped up, grabbed their books and headed off to their next class. A few of us passed Harold, patted him on the back and stammered ill-fitting words of sympathy. I mean, what do you say to a guy who in this little group of students, has bought into the mock trust, opened his heart and bled for us? “I’m sorry you fucked your sister. Have a nice weekend?” Jesus!

When we returned to Psych 110 the following Monday, Mr. A gave us the news. Harold B. was dead. He had hung himself over the weekend. Shit! I imagine Harold went home and the reality hit him. He had shared his deepest, darkest secret with a bunch of shallow, idiotic teenagers.

It was a good class that day. We talked about death and a lot of people cried. Not about Harold, but about parents or grandparents or pets that had died.

Mr. A’s mishandling of the whole Harold B. situation resulted in him getting fired. He became an alcoholic, his wife cheated on him, and his dog ran away. At least that’s what I like to think happened. The truth is, his Psych 110 class became more popular than ever. I guess people wanted to take it on the chance that they might see someone else freak out.

Sometimes I wonder if I could’ve done anything to make Harold feel better that Friday afternoon. Maybe, but I didn’t even try. I was in too much of a hurry to run off and stand in the hallway so I could flirt with (Fill-in-the-blank) as he walked by. I was only interested in cute boys. Sad to think that if Harold B. had been cute, maybe I would’ve made an effort.
---------------------------
This is my original Diary entry for that day in Junior College:

Saw Steve Simpkins – no reaction. He acts like he doesn’t like me.

There was a rally at noon. I sat next to Jim from volleyball. We walked down to the swimming pool and back together. He’s such a fox!

Harold B. in my psychology class killed himself. That’s sad. Harold had so many problems.

I really like Tim Jeffries. I like so many boys. I wish Steve S. would ask me out.
---------------------------

Geez. I’m sorry, Harold.

POEM

In my early twenties I wrote a lot of depression poetry. It was wonderfully sad and dramatic and full of self-pity. This one got published in a poetry anthology.


WET DREAM

I'm swimming in melancholy,
Stroking up despair.
Paddling my way to apathy,
Gasping "I don't care."

The water doesn't burn my eyes
It's all made up of tears.
One last cry tries for a save,
Too late for no one hears.

I didn't think it'd be this way.
That death would be so wet.
There's a certain kind of peace I feel
As I close my eyes, and forget.

LET'S GET NAKED - PT 1

This is a blend of excerpted stories from a fictionalized autobiography I wrote about my teenaged years called "Mira Vista Park." I ended up turning it into a screenplay instead. Thought it'd be fun to post some of the stories.

LET’S GET NAKED

I fell in love with Marty Koutz a year before I ever saw him.

My senior year at Presentation High, I always heard girls in my class talking about the guys who hung around at Mira Vista Park in Richmond. They were all ‘foxes’ and had tattooed the park’s initials, MVP, on their arms. They sounded exciting and so very cool. They were bad boys. And all the girls wanted them.

The guy they talked about the most was Marty Koutz. They talked about how good-looking he was, so tall, so sexy. It wasn’t even the things the girls said that interested me in Marty, it was the enthusiasm with which they said it - the tone of their voice, those pregnant pauses after they’d say his name. He was the most desirable guy on the planet. He was bigger than life. I wanted him too.

I started going by Mira Vista Park right after my high school graduation. During those warm lazy days, Marty and the other guys would always be sitting on the lawn, lounging in the summer sun, listening to music or talking. Occasionally everyone would look up to watch a car drive by. There was a sense of ownership of the street that ran in front of the park. It was their street. And if you drove by you were subject to the scrutiny of the Park members, judged and categorized as friend or enemy, local resident, curiosity seeker, wannabe, or possible NARC.

The park itself was a deceptively small-looking expanse of green lawn, right in the middle of a residential area, which stretched back into wild dense woods with a creek running through it. This was where the unobservable took place, where everyone, one at a time - so as not to attract attention, would casually rise and wander back to when someone had scored some pot or alcohol, or to hide from the cops who came by every evening at sunset to kick them out.

After sundown, there was always a party. Word would spread and carloads of rowdy teens would descend onto the party scene, whooping it up and yelling, “Let’s get naked.” The guys were always yelling, “Let’s get naked!” It was their mantra, their war cry and their hope that one day some free spirited or overly intoxicated girl would comply.

Alcohol was a necessity at Park parties and it was easy for us to get. All you had to do was drive up to Heights Liquors on the hill, pick out your beverage and pay. No I.D., no questions. The standard taste in alcohol ran from cheap to cheaper. The objective was quantity, not quality. Most of us girls preferred the sweeter wines; Fruity-flavored Ripple or Muscatel. Others preferred beer, and of course there was always plenty of Red Mountain. Red Mountain was the cheapest wine you could buy in the biggest, screw-top, gallon bottle. Actually nowhere on the bottle were even printed the words ‘wine.’ But none of us had a palate educated enough to notice the difference. It was close enough and we drank it. Red Mountain was sour and nasty tasting and even nastier vomited out, which was pretty likely to happen if you consumed more than a few glasses. Red Mountain was a party staple. So was vomiting.

Rhonda called that afternoon. She had heard there was going to be a big Mira Vista Park party that night. She was sure her parents would let her go if she said she was going with me. I’d known Rhonda since I was twelve and she was my best friend. Her parents liked me. The fact that I’d attended Catholic school made them think I was safe. She said she’d come by to get me at seven. I hung up the phone and went to ask my mother if I could go. It was always easier to approach my mother with these things. If I’d ask my father, he’d just try to turn it into some kind of philosophical discussion about “Did I really need to go to a party?” and top that off with some vague and inappropriate metaphor about “Not going out in the rain without an umbrella.” And after all that, I’d still have to get approval from my mother anyway, so it just made sense to ask her first.

She was downstairs, sitting in her chair. My parents had matching leather recliners on opposite ends of a couch facing the TV. My father always sat fully reclined in his chair and usually fell asleep, but my mother never relaxed in hers. She sat erect, as if the chair was made of steel and had a straight uncomfortable back. She worried about posture a lot; hers, my sister’s, mine. And she reminded us all at least twenty times a day to sit up straight. It was this pressure that led to my recurring teenaged ‘posture’ nightmares, in which I suffered tragic consequences as a result of slouching.

I put my shoulders back, stood up straight, rehearsed my speech and approached her. I told her about the ‘birthday’ party I had been invited to. I figured it sounded more friendly and innocent with the word birthday tacked on. I was careful to mention Rhonda’s name several times and that her parents had approved. See, my parents knew that Rhonda’s parents were strict, so putting their name in the mix made getting permission easier. But this time, she decided to be difficult. She got into this whole conversation with my father about why someone would be having a party on a week night. My father responded with trite phrases that had nothing to do with the subject like, “Birds of a feather flock together” and “What goes around, comes around.” Neither of them understood the Mira Vista Park mentality: You partied whenever and wherever you could. No one had a job. What did we care if it was a week night or not? But I nodded my head and agreed a party on a weeknight was strange. They said I could go.

I spent the next few hours picking out my clothes. I knew Marty Koutz would be at the party so I wanted to look my best. I decided on a witchy-looking black satin blouse that I had made from the skirt of an old formal bought at a thrift store. It had long bell sleeves and a deep V-neck, which would’ve been sexy if at the time, I’d had any breasts to speak of. I decided to wear the new furry black coat my mother had bought me too. I knew it’d make her happy because I never liked anything she bought. But this coat, I liked the way I looked in it. As my mother passed my room, she reminded me that I’d look a whole lot better if I stood up straight.

While I waited for Rhonda to show up, I sat on my bed and fantasized about the party and twenty hopeful scenarios with me and Marty. In all of them, he was overcome by my beauty and how cool I was, and spent the evening by my side, laughing and talking with his friends, until he could no longer share me with others. Then he’d lead me off to some quiet spot where we could be alone. I saw it all so clearly in my mind that I was convinced this was how the evening would turn out. Tonight would be the night that would bring Marty and I together.

When Rhonda arrived, she was polite to my parents and told them we would be going to the party with our friend Dana, and that Dana’s mother, who was a nurse, was driving us there. My father said we should tell Dana’s mother “To drive like she owns the car, not the road.” Rhonda laughed like she really thought that was funny, while I rolled my eyes in embarrassment.

We left the house and Rhonda started walking in the opposite direction of the Park. I asked her where we were going and she snapped at me to just “Come on.” We walked up the street a few houses, and I noticed a beat up old gray Chevy parked at the top of the hill. In the driver’s seat was Robert, the guy Rhonda had been dating behind her parents’ back. Robert smiled and waved as Rhonda picked up her pace and headed toward the car. She hadn’t said anything about Robert going to the party with us. That bothered me because it changed the dynamic of our evening. Instead of two girlfriends hanging out together, flirting with guys, dancing, then checking in with each other from time to time to exchange gossip, it was going to be me and a couple. Rhonda was no fun when she was with Robert. They were madly in love and constantly clinging and groping each other. When I’d talk to her, they’d both stand there, arms around each other like Siamese twins and react to me as one. It wasn’t fun. But then I thought about my plan. I was going after Marty tonight anyway, so it really didn’t matter if Robert was there or not.

Rhonda jumped into Robert’s car and slid across the seat, into his mouth and down his throat. I got in, closed the door, locked it, rolled down the window, straightened my clothes so as not to wrinkle my satin blouse and waited five minutes for Rhonda and Robert to finish kissing. When they separated, Robert leaned forward to say hi to me. His mouth was smeared with Rhonda’s plum lip gloss, which made him look like some sort of crazed clown when he smiled. Rhonda was already reapplying a fresh layer of shine. She turned to me and said that she and Robert weren’t going to the party. I didn’t understand. When was this decision made? Was there some kind of silent message passed from mouth to mouth that was given, received, and agreed upon all in the course of a few slobbery minutes? I got upset and reminded her that she and I had talked about going to the party all day and that I had counted on it. She didn’t like the fact that I was making a fuss about it and she gave Robert a look. A look that said a million disparaging things about me in one quick second. I hated that look. And it wasn’t fair because I had no way to respond to it. I couldn’t give Robert a look that would tell him my side of the story and how unfair to me it was. Rhonda sighed and told me not to worry. She and Robert would drop me off at the party. I’d just have to find my own ride home. Robert started the engine and took off up the hill, leaving a trail of white smoke behind us.

I sat there evaluating Rhonda’s plan. I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel confident walking into a Mira Vista Park party by myself. I would look awkward and desperate. I pleaded with them to go to the party just for a little while, but it was no use and Rhonda became annoyed. They were doing me a favor by even driving me there. I felt guilty, like I was acting like an ungrateful child. Then I thought about how Rhonda had used me. How she had told her parents she was going out with me, when she knew all along she was going to be with Robert. I wondered why she didn’t tell me the plan. I wondered what happened to our friendship, to the girls who used to swap Barbie clothes, who laughed and ran down the street after throwing onions in the mailbox, who sang and did dance routines to the songs in “Bye, Bye Birdie.” I wondered what had happened to that Rhonda?

We rode to the party in awkward silence. Rhonda and Robert huddled together breathing in unison while I hugged the door and tried to figure out how to get the courage to walk into the party by myself. The wind felt good on my face but I leaned away from the open window. My hair had been wrapped in pink sponge rollers for half the day and I’d forgotten my comb. At that moment, I thought the wind was my biggest problem.

LET'S GET NAKED - PT 2

Rhonda hadn’t told me it was an outdoor party. It was in Tilden Park, a huge 2,000 acre wooded recreational area at the top of the Berkeley Hills. I wasn’t dressed for an outdoor party and didn’t much like them. They were always wilder than the regular Mira Vista Park parties. Combine that with smoky fires, dirt, bugs and squatting in the bushes to pee, it didn’t make for the most comfortable time. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I was determined not to let an opportunity to be with Marty pass.

Robert drove around Tilden’s winding roads at a speed that sent us all leaning into each other at every turn. Rhonda kept telling him to slow down but he’d only laugh and go faster. I thought about trying the trick a nun at school had taught us to get a boy to slow down. Sister Mary Austen said that when a boy was driving too fast, we should not react or act scared because that’s what they wanted. We should tell them that there’s something up ahead we wanted to see, and ask if they could slow down so we could get a better look. Then we should pretend to be looking for something. But in Tilden Park, I couldn't think of anything to say besides, “Hey, Robert, can you slow down so I can look at that tree up ahead, that green tree?” Yeah, I’m sure he would’ve slowed down for that.

About a mile into the park, he came to a screeching halt on the side of the road. In the bushes, a few feet away, was the beginning of a dirt road that disappeared off into the woods. Rhonda pointed to it and said, “The party’s right down that road.” I looked at her, hoping she would change her mind and talk Robert into going to the party with me. But her face was cold and unsympathetic. Her eyes looked fierce. They were outlined in thick black liner which was starting to gather in the corners. Her overly tweezed brows were dotted with faint stubble where the hair was growing back. For the first time, I noticed how thin and cruel-looking her lips were. The right side of her mouth turned up just a little bit. This was all the cheer she could muster for me. Rhonda couldn’t even fake being a good friend. Her hair was dark and greasy. She wore it parted down the middle, hanging straight like Cher. Rhonda liked it when people told her she looked like Cher. More than once I had even said she did. I was her friend, we were supposed to feed each other’s fantasies. At that moment I was amazed how ugly she looked to me now.

I got out, and walked around the car to the road. Robert lit a cigarette, threw the match out the window and it landed near my feet. He said, “Have a good time,” and drove off, leaving me in a cloud of white smoke and dust. I held my breath until the smoke cleared then checked my clothes for dust. The sun had set a short while before and it was beginning to get dark. Usually I liked this time of day, when everything was silhouetted against the sky, but that was when I was inside looking out, and safe from nature. I wasn’t an outdoorsy girl. I was afraid of spiders, and beetles, and moths, most of all moths. My sister and I were both afraid of moths. Once we had even made our parents come home early from a night on the town just because there was a moth in the kitchen. Moths are fluttery and unsettling and when I was six, a boy down the street told me that if the powder from their wings got in your eyes you’d go blind. I believed him. The same boy also told me that dragonflies sucked your blood. I was afraid of those too.

I stood there alone in nature, in the encroaching blackness, at the beginning of the path that led to Marty Koutz. I was scared and wanted to go home but I forced myself to move, cautiously, one foot at a time. I froze once I heard what sounded like an owl hooting somewhere in the treetops nearby. I wondered if owls ever attacked humans. Fortunately the boy down the street had never said anything to me about blinding or bloodsucking owls. I kept moving. The gravel in the dirt crunched under my feet. I varied my pace to change the sound. It became a game that distracted me from the 2,000 acres worth of fears just waiting to pop up and terrorize my mind. As I walked further in I could hear music in the distance, conga drums being played in a furious rhythm, and sporadic laughter. I was relieved. Then fear rose again. What if it wasn’t the Park people? What if this was some rowdy group of people I didn’t know? What if it was the Hell’s Angels, or worse? There was nothing worse. I had read stories about the Hell’s Angels and everybody was afraid of them. Every weekend my junior year, I had peered out a bus window at their headquarters in Oakland, as I rode to do volunteer work at a home for the aged. I’d seen all their Harley motorcycles parked in front. I knew that if you even thought of touching one of those bikes, they’d torture and kill you. How was I going to survive at a party full of Hell’s Angels? Instantly my heart eased as I heard someone scream out, “Let’s get naked!” All was good. I was in the right place.

I reached a clearing and saw smoke rising from a big bonfire in the distance. The atmosphere was lively. About fifty people were scattered around. Some of the guys had their shirts off and were dancing with abandon around the fire. I looked at the faces of every dancer, over to groups gathered in conversation, and then to every couple sitting quietly off to the side. I scanned every face illuminated by the yellow flames of the fire until I spotted Marty. I finally breathed for what seemed like the first time in minutes and exhaled a wide smile. Finally, this whole messed up start to the evening was worth it.

Anxious to catch up with everyone and get into party mode, I raced to a gallon jug of Red Mountain wine, raised it to my mouth and drank, no, gulped down half the bottle. I knew by drinking my nervousness and trepidation would soon be gone. I’d be relaxed. I’d say all the right things. I’d have fun. I’d belong. All I had to do was let the wine do its work, knock out the brain cells that made me uptight, put a big smile on my face and get me loose enough to be attractive, but not loose enough to do anything I’d regret. I sat down on a log next to the fire and waited for Red Mountain to do its magic. A rush of warmth ran through my body. I laughed. “Woo hoo!” I yelled. It was going to be a good night.

Everything was okay now. I had made my entrance into the party without any embarrassment, had blended in with the rest of the crowd. I was now sitting less than ten feet away from Marty Koutz. I looked at him and smiled. God, he was beautiful. I think I could’ve been happy sitting on that piece of dirty lumber for the rest of my life just staring at Marty Koutz. He noticed me looking at him. We made eye contact for one short second and everything I felt about him came pouring out of me and into that look; all the longing, the desire, the fantasies, the dreams, the hopes, my complete obsession traveled an invisible highway from brown eye to blue. He turned his head away, but I took that as a good sign. Everything he did I translated into something positive. After all, the fact that he had even looked at me in the first place had to mean something good.

It was a chilly night but I was hot. It could’ve been the wine, or the fire, or Marty but I started to sweat. I took off my furry black coat, placed it on the log next to me and patted its soft faux fur. I thought about when my mother had given it to me, how surprised she was that I finally liked something she had bought me. There was a bit of sadness in her smile though, as if she was disappointed. Like somehow I had robbed her of her daily dose of feeling unappreciated.

The wind shifted and smoke from the fire blew into my face. My burning eyes gave me the perfect excuse to move out of its path and closer to Marty. I smiled at him again but I could tell I made him uncomfortable. This time, there was no way I could put a positive spin on the look on his face. It wasn’t love, or even like. It was more like panic. Marty jumped up and dashed over to a nearby open shed where people were dancing to music coming from a tape player inside an old truck parked nearby. I watched the dancers move aside and let him pass through, closing in behind him until he disappeared into the gyrating crowd. I chugged more Red Mountain wine and followed.

My feet felt heavy. I aimed my body toward the shed, but it suddenly became two sheds spinning in circles around each other. I stopped and held out my hands to regain my balance. Now everything was spinning. The Red Mountain train had taken me a few stops past sociable and delivered me at sloppy drunk. I felt my body lunge forward and I went with the momentum, zigzagging my way toward the shed. Someone in the distance yelled, “Let’s get naked!” People howled. I howled too. They were having fun and I wanted to have fun too. My head propelled me forward, chasing the revolving shed somewhere in front of me while the rest of my body stumbled after it. But before I could reach it, I tripped and fell, bending at the waist into a large, rusty trashcan.

Everything went black, except for a pencil thin ray of light that leaked in through a hole in the can. Loud laughter echoed from outside. I knew they were laughing at me. I didn’t move. I decided to stay inside the trashcan, hide my head and pretend that none of this had happened. But a hand reached down and pulled me up straight. It was Rat. Rat was one of the older guys who hung out at the Park. He was tall and wiry, always nice to the girls who hung out there, and pulling me out of the trashcan for him was just an instinctive act of chivalry. He asked if I was okay. I could only squint and strain to see past him to where Marty had gone. All was a blur.

Someone ran over to the shed and yelled, “The cops are coming!” Everything became chaos. People scattered in all directions. Rat grabbed my arm and began to run with me, a valiant knight rescuing a drunken maiden in distress, pulling me through the darkness like a rag doll, jerking me through wet grass and over rocks. I tripped again and fell into a puddle in the dirt. Rat pulled at my arm, “Get up or you’re going to get busted!” But I didn’t want to run anymore. I didn’t want to move anymore. Nothing was going the way I had hoped it would. I wasn’t supposed to be this drunk. Rhonda and I were supposed to watch out for each other. I was supposed to be with Marty. I felt sick. I was tired. I just wanted to lie in that soft puddle-bed, go to sleep and forget everything.

I looked up at Rat and could see his face clearly in the glow of the fire. He was handsome. His brown hair looked soft and wild. His eyes were kind but they were small and his nose was pointy. He really did kind of look like a rat. And in that panicked moment of survival, Rat let go of my arm and said, “Sorry, babe. You’re on your own.” Rat ran off into the darkness and I lowered my head into my soft muddy pillow, closed my eyes, and let go of it all.

LET'S GET NAKED - PT 3

When I opened my eyes I found myself slumped in an orange plastic chair in a bright neon lit office. On the white wall in front of me was a four-foot poster of Smokey the Bear warning that only I could prevent forest fires. Underneath Smokey, behind a huge wooden desk, sat a man in a green uniform. On his desk was an engraved wooden plaque with the words Tilden Park Ranger Station.

The man was black, maybe in his thirties, or forties. I was seventeen, to me he was just old. He was talking on the phone. I could tell it was about me by the way his eyes traveled back and forth; sizing me up then glancing away to look at his fingernail, or his watch, or a number two yellow pencil with chewed up eraser that was lying on the desk. He began giving directions on how to get to the Ranger Station to the person on the other end of the phone. He was patient and kept repeating the directions. Who ever he was talking to was confused. I was confused. He looked up at me again, then told the person I was fine. He listened, made reassuring grunts, said goodbye and then hung up.

My stomach began to rebel. The Red Mountain wanted out. The nausea was overwhelming, a sickness in my gut so deep and as sad as my night had been. I could feel the Red Mountain river rising up in volcanic spasms. “Where’s your bathroom?” I blurted out. The man pointed to a side door. I started to cough, then dry heave. My hand flew up to cover my mouth as I ran into the bathroom and closed the door. I knelt down over the toilet and allowed the retching to carry up red oceans of sour wine. It spilled out of my mouth and nose and flowed into the white porcelain toilet. Spasm followed spasm as my stomach emptied. I kept flushing the toilet with one hand and braced myself on the toilet rim with the other. With every flush I could pretend this wasn’t really happening. The man knocked on the door and asked if I was okay. I shouted back, “I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it so why bother to tell the truth.

The vomiting stopped. I washed my face in the mini-sized sink with a worn heart-shaped piece of soap that smelled like roses. I rinsed out my mouth. There was a hand mirror hanging over the sink but I was afraid to look in it. I knew it wouldn’t be good. I grabbed a fistful of paper towels, wet them and went back to the toilet to clean it up. I was drunk but I was a courteous drunk. I couldn’t possibly leave the toilet a mess so I wiped it down, erasing every trace of wine soaked bile and the pork chop dinner I had eaten a million hours earlier.

I went back to the basin and washed my hands again with the little soap that was quickly melting away, looking more like a mis-shapened kidney than a heart. I felt much better. I felt brave. I looked into the hand mirror on the wall. It was turned to the magnifying side and I saw my face at an alarming closeness. My brown cow eyes smudged with smeared black eyeliner gave me a zombie look. I combed through my uncontrollable hair with my fingers until it reached some semblance of style, took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom.

The man was still behind his desk. He sat up in his chair and took his number two pencil out of his mouth. I sat back in the orange chair in front of him, the Park ranger whose name was Gene. He asked if I was cold. It was only then that I noticed I was shivering, and didn’t have my black furry coat. I felt disconnected from my body, like I was somewhere deep inside watching what was going on around me from some vast inner distance. Gene put his heavy green park ranger jacket around me, gave me his gloves and sat back down. His chair squeaked as he swiveled from side to side, watching me, almost staring. It made me uncomfortable. Then he leaned back and asked, “Do you think you might get pregnant because of tonight?” From that faraway place inside I heard his words echo. I was outraged that he had assumed so much. He didn’t know anything about me. He was the uninvited stranger who had picked me up out of the mud and held me captive. “Hey, I’m still a virgin!” I answered defiantly. I wasn’t quite sure he heard it the way I had meant it to come out. My voice sounded drunken and slurred so I repeated myself making an effort to enunciate. “I’m. Still. A. Virgin.” Gene didn’t say anything. He just swiveled back and forth in his chair some more, chewed on his pencil and stared.

The phone rang. An hour had gone by and in that time my father had been driving around the curving maze of roads in Tilden Park trying to find us. He was lost. Gene told him not to worry. He would drive me home.

I sat shotgun in the official Tilden Park Ranger car and directed Gene how to get to my house. He confessed, “The only reason I’m doing this is because you’re black. Anyone else and I would’ve handed them over to the cops.” I wasn’t used to thinking about things in a racial black-white way, but I was happy that Gene had a reason that was keeping me from going to jail. I thought about Rat who had tried to save me. It was good that he ran. The nausea began again and Gene pulled the car over. I puked the rest of my guts out onto a recently pruned rose bush in front of a white Victorian house on Gilman Street.

When we arrived at my house, all the lights were on. It was three in the morning and my mother and father came out in the cold to meet us. I got out of the car and tried my hardest to be sober, to walk a straight line from the car to the house, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I weaved my way toward the front door. My mother grabbed my arm midway and began pulling and yelling at me. I was unfazed. This was nothing new to me. It was her usual routine whenever I came home late. “You smell like smoke. You smell like alcohol.” My father held her back. She started to cry, “Where’s your coat?”

Once inside the house, I gave Gene his Ranger jacket back and handed him a glove. I had lost the other one somewhere between puking in the Ranger Station and puking in the rosebush. He told me not to worry about it. My mother continued her histrionics, badgering me with a million questions all at once. “I’m going to bed,” I mumbled and stumbled off to my room.

Once inside, I closed the door. I could hear Ranger Gene talking with my parents in the other room. I reached down to pull off my black satin blouse but stopped and stared at it. It was on backwards. I didn’t even remember taking it off. There was a long, dried bloody scratch down my right arm. What from? I had no clue. What else happened that I didn’t remember? I climbed into my bed, dirty; smelling of smoke, mud, wine and vomit and fell fast asleep.

I always liked the day after a party. Certainly not the way you felt, you always were a little hung-over, but the recap was exciting; talking to people who were there, comparing notes, and reliving the whole night detail by detail, nuance by nuance. This time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what happened but I knew I had to. I had to get to the Park to fill in the blanks. But there was no way in hell my mother was going to let me leave the house that morning. I told her I needed to go retrieve my black furry coat. She relented.

I walked to Mira Vista Park and was happy to see a group of girls who had been at the Tilden Park party sitting on the lawn. They had my coat. Rat had picked it up, put it in his truck and brought it by the Park. It was a bit dusty but intact. I started to feel better about everything. No real harm had been done.

We sat there on the green grass, just taking in the sun. It felt good on my face and burned away the terrible feeling from the night before. But I had to ask. “Anyone know what happened to me last night at the party?” They all exchanged knowing giggles but hesitated sharing with me. Then Diane spoke up. She was sort of the mother figure at the park. Her on again-off again boyfriend was one of the original Park members and they had a baby together. She was strong and fierce and nurturing. Diane had no problem telling you the truth, bluntly, and a tad sadistically. She told me how someone had yelled, “Let’s get naked” then I pulled my blouse off and Shelly Roman had helped to quickly put it back on. She described how I was dancing sloppily and fell into a trash can, scratching my arm on its jagged edge when Rat pulled me out. I was relieved. That didn’t seem so bad. But there was more. Her kind motherly hand went up to pat me on the shoulder. “You chased Marty Koutz around the whole party,” she continued, “You were shouting, “I love you, Marty! I love you, Marty!” I closed my eyes. My heart sank. I wanted to shrivel up in a little ball and disappear from the face of the planet. Not only did Marty know how I felt about him now, everyone did. I laughed it off, then made excuses and left.

I walked home feeling naked, clutching my black furry security blanket. I had committed social suicide. It was okay for a guy to get drunk and sloppy. All they did was knock things over or start to fight. But my O.D. on alcohol had released an infinite chasm of teenage longing and desire; loudly, vocally, and in hot pursuit of its victim.

My optimistic survival mechanism kicked in. I rationalized that it probably wasn’t that big of a deal. It’d all be forgotten in a couple of days, or until the next party when someone else got wasted and did something stupid. For all I knew, the guys had forgotten it by now anyway.

A car cruised down the street towards me. I barely saw Marty sitting in the back seat laughing, before the other Park guys stuck their heads out of the window and mockingly chanted at me, “BernielovesYOU! BernielovesYOU!” They continued up the street and out of sight yelling, “BernielovesYOU!” It was worse than I thought. On my walk home I threw the furry black coat into a trash can, as if the whole mess was its fault. I just couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.

From that day on, every time the Mira Vista Park guys saw me, they would taunt me with, “BernielovesYOU!” I hated it. But there was no way to stop them. I wanted to talk to Marty and explain things, deny it all, or do something to make it right. But whenever he saw me, he would literally run in the opposite direction. I had embarrassed him and he hated me for it.

But deep inside I remained optimistic. I’d just bide my time. I’d keep showing up. I’d ignore him and pretend like I didn’t care.
And then maybe, one day… things would change.
And Marty Koutz would again look my way.