Flirting With Disaster
October 7, 2003
Tomorrow is my birthday, and I had a little birthday dinner at my parents' house in New Jersey last night. My mother wasn't too excited about my new haircut. "Oh. It's— different ." But my fourteen-year-old niece says it's cool, so that's enough for me.
I unintentionally gave my mother a guilt trip by asking her what time of day I was born. My mother couldn't remember and started digging through a pile of old baby stuff. She had extensive documentation on my older brother and my younger sister: birth certificates, baptism papers, hospital receipts, photos, letters, et cetera. For me, she had nothing but a few drawings I'd done when I was three. The curse of being a middle kid, I guess. She got embarrassed and kept apologizing, trying to explain why.
"Don't worry about it, ma," I tried to tell her, "I don't need proof to know I'm alive. I think, therefore I am.” Besides, the drawings were cool. She asked if I wanted to have them. "Yeah, I do," I said. "Someday."
But my mother and father are getting ready to move, so I really should take whatever I want before they do.
"You should look and see if there's anything else you want,” my mother said.
There were three piles on the back porch: One pile of things to keep, another for things to throw away, and a third for things to sort through. I perused them for a few minutes. Rusty toy guns, a deflated basketball, nondescript boxes of junk. I picked up my old skateboard by its molded plastic deck, brushed away the spider web, and tried to spin a wheel, but the rusty bearings wouldn’t budge. I threw it back on the heap and went inside. "You can just throw it all away."
October 9, 2003
My friend, Jerry, emailed me today with a birthday present. It's the only present I got. No, wait, that's not true. There was a check in the card my parents gave me. "Here's a little mad money," my mother said, "It's mad money because you're gonna be mad when you see how much it is."
Anyway, the reason I asked my mother what time of day I was born is that Jerry's present is an astrology reading. He told me the other day that he was going to buy it for me, but he needed to know what time of day I was born. Sure enough, I got an email this morning confirming the reading. Jerry is a guy I've known since the day I was born, but he was just a baby then, too, so his memory concerning the precise time was fuzzier than anyone’s. We lived across the hall from each other in a small suburban New Jersey apartment building. When my parents moved one town over, Jerry and his family followed a year or so later. As kids, we were inseparable. We don't talk too often these days, but when we do, we talk for hours. "Remember when we were like 10 years old, going down to the Quick Chek mini mart and buying Genesis magazine? I can't believe they sold it to us." "Do they still make Genesis magazine?"
Sometimes we'd find an older guy in the store to buy it for us, but since it took as much guts to ask, we'd usually just take it to the counter ourselves. And though we were denied on occasion, the times we scored, we'd rush out of the store all hot with adrenaline, get on our bikes, and pedal as fast as we could to a safe location. The woodshed in Jerry's backyard was a good hiding place. And it was big enough for us to cram in there and flip through the pages. One time, we invited a kid from the neighborhood named Ricky to show off our stash. Ricky was a cool older kid. He wore puka beads and spat all the time. He asked me once what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I think I said, "A doctor." He said, "I'm gonna be a playboy." I had no idea what a playboy was. I'm still not so sure. Anyway, we thought he was fucking cool and we wanted to show off how cool we were too, so we showed him the magazines. The next day, they were gone.
Don’t ask why, out of literally thousands of childhood memories with Jerry, that’s the one I chose to share.
October 11, 2003
Denver hasn’t always been a lesbian. Judging from the stories she’s told me about her teenage years spent among the cow pastures of upstate New York, she used to be an accomplished heterosexual. But things change, and for the past two years, she's been hot and heavy with her sexy Brazilian girlfriend.
"So how's the whole lesbian thing working out for you?"
She laughed and told me that her girlfriend was coming to visit for the Holidays. The two of them have somehow managed to make their long-distance thing work. Denver was in Rio for the summer, and now it's her girlfriend's turn. Wait a second. How did I get on this tangent? Oh yeah, Denver called me this morning to let me know she was going to be in the city. "Do you want to meet for lunch? I'll take you out for your birthday."
She had to pick up some art supplies, so I met her in front of the store. She was parked in a metered spot with an hour limit, so we had to eat fast. "It's okay if we're a little late, I won't get a ticket."
"Yes, you will."
"Whatever. I'm willing to risk it."
We ran up to the Rodeo Bar. Denver had never been there before and kept marveling at how incongruous it was. A Tex-Mex country-style bar in the middle of Manhattan. "This place belongs upstate," she said, "I have to remember to take my mom here next time I'm in town with her. She'll love it."
As we sat and ate and listened to Southern Rock classics, she suddenly stopped what she was doing and slipped through a wormhole. I watched her flutter in and out of the present. "What's wrong, Denver?
"Oh my god," she said and hesitated for a moment, "I lost my virginity to this song."
It was Molly Hatchet's Flirting With Disaster and considering how her life has progressed, it seemed appropriate. It's amazing how much of our lives get marked by songs that way. That's why it sucks when a special song gets used in advertising. "Fuck! My virginity is a car commercial!" (Though with a song like Flirting With Disaster, I doubt Denver has to worry about that too much.)
I couldn't remember what song was on when I lost my virginity, though I do remember what was playing the first time I ever kissed a girl. A girl I liked, that is. Spin-the-bottle has you kissing all sorts of girls you might otherwise avoid. And the songs that were playing when I kissed them just floated past and settled in the dusty corners. But when I spun the bottle on the carpet of Chris McNamara's rec-room and it pointed to Janice, Al Stewart's Year of the Cat thumped into my pubescent mind with such verocity that it still reverberates in there somewhere. To this day, that song wrings out my stomach like a soggy sponge anytime I hear it.
Despite Denver and me rushing back to the car, we were too late. According to the time written on the ticket, we missed the cop by five minutes. 55-fucking-dollars for a couple of trips down memory lane.
