1976 : train wreck

I stared at the ceiling from my childhood bed, warm under the growing pile of dirty clothes, trying to figure out what was next. I’d spent the weeks since I’d been fired popping the occasional Seconal or Tuinal, whatever I could find in the lint and loose tobacco of my pockets; leaving my room for food and the occasional need to pee. That job had required no skills, nothing but the parts I was born with and I’d fucked it up. Fucked up cash money and an bottomless bottle because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

I looked at the framed sign over my bed–– a birthday gift from my father — “Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth”, took another hit off the joint I was holding and rolled over. My mother stared at me from the doorway.

“You’re going to get a job, go to college or you’re going to find somewhere else to live. You’re not laying around here getting stoned all day.” She was shaking, her face white, tense, on the verge of something. There were never a lot of rules at home. I mean, there were crazy rules, like how you had to put books back in the exact place you’d taken them from on the bookshelf or how we had to take turns making pleasant dinner conversation, but I could drag home all kinds of strays, addicts, street hustlers. They’d rather I brought trouble home than keep it secret. Even so, I never told them about the Mardi Gras, about dancing or what it was like to feel pretty. I didn’t tell them anything I thought they couldn’t handle, especially her. She was terrified I’d turn into one of the strays if I didn’t have a home to come to.

I rolled over, curled around my pillow. I was tired.
She went downstairs. I think she cried. If she did, my father’d punish me later, for upsetting “his wife”.

I’d never planned on college, never thought there was much point. I’d be dead by 23. I knew it. She knew it too.

I’d been having the dream every night since I was 15, since they kicked Snake out of the house; it never varied. Four days after my 23^rd birthday the big clock at the train station says it’s 4:04. Leaning over to watch the train rushing in, suddenly someone pushes me. I hit the tracks and just before the train crushes me, before it cuts me into a thousand soft bloody pieces, I see him. Snake. My best friend’s uncle. One of my strays. The boyfriend I’d met the day he came home from prison. He asked me to marry him that first day. I said yes and moved him into my parents house. Snake wore long sleeves to hide his track marks and taught me about the morning drink.

I’d had that dream every night since my father threw him out of the house. Three hundred and sixty five nights a year. This was a leap year, lucky me, I get one extra nightmare.

What was the point of wasting time in college? Where did she even come up with that option?

I hugged the bar in neighborhood biker joints and corner dives. I passed joints back and forth to strangers in the park, hid out in dark rooms, dank bars, discos with lighted floors and called it self-exploration.

I considered joining the army and learning a trade, like demolition. I could be a gun moll or a mob hit man. I considered joining the circus. I thought about being a madam, but figured I’d need some hooker experience first.

Truthfully, I didn’t really want to get a job.

What I really wanted was to be a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I enrolled in Nassau Community College, aiming for a degree in acting.

I couldn’t memorize lines. I can’t memorize a haiku, can’t get past “There once was a man from Nantucket” in a limerick. I barely remembered our phone number. I’d lived in the same house my whole life and still didn’t know the name of the street behind us.

What was I thinking?

dirtygirl asks: How did you figure out what you wanted to be? Did you have a mentor, a plan, a clue of any kind, help of any kind? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.

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Posted July 27, 2009 at 11:10 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, death, dirty boys, Levittown. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.