What was I thinking?
I’d flunked out of Times Square. I didn’t want to go back to some job-job. I didn’t have a job-job to go back to, or any job-job skills. Since high school I’d been a short order cook, waitress, karate school receptionist, file clerk, bar bimbo. Quit, fired, fired, fired. Fired.
I was sixteen when I got out of school. I’d secretly turned 18 behind the bar at the Mardi Gras. I felt like I was a hundred years old. I felt like I’d been slagging around for years.
I had five years left before I got killed, give or take and I’d be an idiot to move out, I had a pretty easy life here. The answers were too scary so my parents didn’t ask the questions. Three hots & a cot, that’s what Snake used to say about prison, why he didn’t mind it. Three hots & a cot…and laundry.
Community colleges have to take you no matter what. I hadn’t bothered with SATs or Regents exams. School wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t like doing things I’m not already good at, which narrows the field considerably.
My plan had been easy money in the bars. I fucked that up. My plan had been some factory job & a cold water walk up. I’d lasted one day in a factory making little spools of copper wire from giant spools of copper wire. Eight hours of winding wire bobbins. Spin, clip, spin, clip, spin, clip. My fingers were so swollen by clock out I couldn’t fold my hand to hitchhike or dial a payphone to call for a ride. I sat on the curb and cried. I have no idea how I got home. So, add that to the list. Factory: quit.
September
The theatre department of Nassau Community College is directly across the street from the Garden City Bowl. I don’t bowl, but I like that things get knocked down and then set right again. I’m hoping I can make that a metaphor for my life. My average is 27 so I don’t put too much hope in a bowling metaphor. Maybe hoping for someone to run in and set me “right” is too much. It’ll be enough if I can just figure out how to stop standing in the way of the ball. Either way, the cocktail lounge it just through that door and I can cocktail with the best of them.
October
My first time on the small stage at NCC is somewhat less glamorous than my Mardi Gras debut. I’d made my own costume, a green and yellow strapless maxi-dress, a chiffon tube held up by an elastic band running around the top, just above my breasts, just under my armpits. I make my entrance, step on my own hem, the dress slides down to my waist and once again I’m on stage, topless, sans lights, sans mirrored ball, but still, topless. With an audience, of mostly our parents. No metaphor. Just destiny. And you cannot fight destiny.
November
“If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her hang out with you, either,” my mother says not for the first time.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table. My mother, my father, me, and Rachel. Rachel and I had gone to high school together without actually being friends, now we’re in school together, again. Levittown is just small enough that bad behavior doesn’t go unnoticed, even by parents you’ve never actually met. I was on the other side of that invisible, but very definite, line that separates them from us, “high spirited” from out of control, the good girls from the bad. Rachel made a crack over dinner about how her mother didn’t approve of me, how she was afraid I’d be a bad influence, afraid just knowing me could screw up Rachel’s future. Rachel was a good girl, the kind every mother hopes for.
“If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her hang out with you either,” my mother agreed as she cleared the dishes from the table. Rachel helped.
I’m stuck in Limbo, two exits south of Purgatory off the Long Island Expressway. Levittown. The best thing about been stuck in the suburbs is catching a train back into the city.
dirtygirl wonders…
How would your life change, if you knew when it was going to end? Or more to the point, how would you change your life if…? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
| << 1976 : train wreck | 1976 : speedy >> |
Posted July 30, 2009 at 10:41 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, Levittown, the abyss. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
