Idol Worship

The differences between kids from upstate versus the ones from downstate can be pronounced, as we were to find out during college. Much like the rest of the country takes the social distortions of Hollywood to be synonomous with being Californian so, too, do upstaters sometimes feel mischaracterized by ethnic stereotypes from the tri-state area. Whereas southern New York is almost tropically warm during the spring, summer, and fall (made more acute with global warming), winter for many New Yorkers is the same as Canada: long, brutal, and cold.

In Oneonta, we had a saying: the sun set in September and came back in June, giving us nine full months of cloudcast winter. You had to bring the jolly with you, is what I mean, rather than being overly dependent on nature's cues about weather and personality. Suffice to say, me and my friends were more accustomed to a colder climate than the city kids warmed by so much heat-retained pavement, and the Gulf Stream that blows through coastal New York. Rockland County is at least 5 degrees cooler than the coastline, sometimes as much as 10-20 degrees, especially at night. It fools you into thinking that those city miles to the country are no big deal, but the Hudson River's massive size takes umbrage at that bold claim.

Suffice to say, it shows up in our varied taste, styles, and cultures, often worse for the wear. Like rednecks everywhere, hard-to-reach mountain terrain can breed some strange bedfellows, like those of our dorm-mate Tracey from Buffalo, and our "crazy Injun" friend Dave from Schnectady. We met Tracey from down the hall through her roommate on the soccer team, Lisa, who rocked a softball mini-mullet like the 80s would never die. Their uncanny retro qualities, channeled while living in the present, signalled to us of their rural clans proud identity as stallers of change and slowness to adapt. A lot of folks "head to the hills" seeking escape from the pressures of conforming to everyday societal norms, and they're proud of it.

Into this reactionary niche fit punk rock star turned pop culture MTV videomaker, Billy Idol. He'd gained fame as a young musician for the band "Generation X", to churn out hit after hit and video after video in the 80s. It was catchy at first, but then, almost instantly, his overplayed songs became dated, just like our upstate friend's 10-12 year lag behind our more sophisticated urban values.  Songs like "Rebel Yell" reflected their stubborn insistence at pushing away trends and new things the way vampires hate the sign of the cross. It spoke to their view that the rest of the world sucked, in rejection of their almost non-status as upstaters who felt shunted by the downward cast of Albany to the more populated areas we came from.

The first time me and Karen knocked on Tracey's door, we were greeted with her credo drawn onto the dorm door's message board that read "Idol Worship Lives!" in the logo type of his album covers. Oh...okay. They chafed similarly at my cool drawing posted on our door, done in a surreal "Alice in Wonderland" illustration style that was later ripped off, but not before the Lawnguyland girls wrote on it to let us know they disapproved of us as so-called "hippies", what with Karen's turtlenecks worn under her sports sweatshirts and big silver cross, paired with my cooler rocker-chic flair. Those girls smoke pot and attract boys=bad. We'd made our mark on them that quickly.

But, worshipping a dyed-blond skinny dude in leather pants? Uh, not exactly our style. He was too cheesy for us, and he always looked like he was on heroin, with his dark undereye circles. What was there to love? His videos were even worse; tacky over-produced "art tableaus" for people with poor taste, rife with pseudo-religious imagery he'd ripped off from Catholicism to seem commerically counter-culture. Wanker. British pop stars were "a dime a dozen" for us back then. We didn't need them to become cults of personality for us.

Sure enough, "Pretty Boy" Dave and Tracey from down the hall hooked up early on during the first semester, because he was drunk and she was smitten with his looks. It was great fun for us, because we got to hear in detail how Dave was too drunk to "do the deed", passed out on her twin-sized dorm room bed. She was cool about it, too, laughing it off the next time we were all together, because homeboy hadn't remembered their encounter, like whether or not he had sex. He didn't. It became our party circuit's favorite target for awhile, expressed through the punk rock song "Too Drunk To Fuck"* as Dave's theme.

Tracey "heehawed" at his attention-getting antics right along with us, brushing off Dave's puppy lust like the solid blond girl she was. No big deal. "That kid's got a lot to learn, and not by me. He's so cute, though!" Yeah, we all liked Dave. Then, she went back to smoking her cigarette, drinking her coffee, and putting on her makeup on a face that was underneath some of the hardest sprayed hair on the whole campus, and that was hard to beat. She just rolled with it, like the fun country girl she is. You, rocker. Rock on! Those were the days of our early lives, and nothing could beat it. Seriously. She was 23 and had already been to a community college. We were just geting started.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Drunk_to_Fuck

The U-Haul Mauler

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Haul 

Going back to school for Oneonta students felt like a Christmas Eve party on the same day as your birthday, and you just got a puppy that looks like Snoopy from your parents before you and your crew hit the town. It was that great. Of course, by junior year, we were all feeling the numbness that comes with so many good times, which meant we were growing up. But, we still wanted to summon up that fresh feeling before every semester, and junior year was no different.

Imagine a place where all your best friends hung out and came back to every year, knowing they'd show up ready for a good time. We hit the ground running, docked for the summer at our stupid low-paying jobs, in places that seemed like they were stuck in the mud, time-wise. You know that excruciating summer blues when its all heat and and dust and nothing's moving, especially the air? That's what we came from; stranded from the only people we'd found so far who got us on a few levels, even if some of the crucial parts were still missing. It wasn't nostalgia, either. It's a really beautiful town in upstate New York with a really good state school, framed by a perfect small-town Main Street filled with pubs. Done.

After two years on campus, we were finally allowed to live off-campus, and for my crowd, that was a good thing, too. We'd come close to getting kicked out of our dorms for having louder better times than other people, and the strain of that for two years running started to show. Now, we had house parties to look forward to. Because we were active kids (we didn't call ourselves "athletes" back then unless we attended school on a sports scholarship), we rented a house for $200 a semester split four ways at the bottom of a hill that lead directly to campus, if you could climb a steep mountain hill covered in ice and snow in tan construction books (the only kind that works), all weather permitting. We could be exceptionally healthy like that.

My best friend was JV and Varsity volleyball in high school as the team captain, breaking every finger on both hands, sometimes more than once. Her good friend at Oneonta was on a soccer scholarship, and one of our housemates ate tofu and taught aerobics classes for Continuing Ed. at the school, and at suburban joints over the summer as the prototypical "hot blond" cheerleader type, but with soul. We took all that to mean we should play hackey-sack wasted whenever the sun was out. Ah, youth. Our friend Meg was a real former cheerleader and so was her bestie from home, "Crackhead Jen".

Before my boyfriend switched majors, he wanted to be a sports therapist, being the former high school quarterback he was at the posh Jesuit school Xavier's, while he worked double-time as a bouncer during semesters and a doorman on the West Side during summers throughout our college career. He and I also opted for the actual physical labors of a "Body Conditioning" class (still have the textbook with fun 80s photos on my shelf), while our friends either bowled (and smoked pot) or took camping class...and smoked pot. With beers, too, of course. Not one of us hadn't been camping or to a bowling alley before. My friend Dave (who I would later marry) was also the star quarterback at his high school, and his crew was deep into skateboarding, biking, hiking, surfing, swimming and boating, depending on locale and budget.

So, that's what we showed up with: a bundle of fun under the clear night sky. I drove up to school with a crew of my own, navigating town and driving by our friends houses to see if they were up, yet. Low and behold, there was my man "A-Roll" in his biker wraparound shades driving some busted rental van from the 'hood with graffiti all over it. Ah, Brooklyn boys. I shouted "Hey!" out the window as we passed, just as he turned his head to look but not before we saw him rear-end a car parallel-parked on the street. Haha! What a dick. Keep driving!

We had arrived. For the entire first half of the year, Ariel tried to shake me down for cash as a participant in his smash-up with a townie's car (because I called out his name and waved to him from a passing car), and they hated ethnic city kids with a passion, especially his dark gothic hipster ass in all-black with a slicked-back ponytail. Every time we were at a party, he said I should give him some money for my part in his accident, because he was being sued by the townie with the dent in his car, after he abandoned the moving van on the street. Yeah, right. He sulked for months about losing his deposit on the vehicle. 

He might have just wanted beer and pot money. You never knew with a hungry thirsty Dominican street kid like him. What we did do is almost instantly craft a new nickname for him that we greeted him with every time he showed up for a party. "The U-Haul Mauler" was a smash hit, and we went on to design a punk rock album cover art in his name. We dominated town and campus gossip our first day back in town (like usual), and the semester had just begun. Anything could happen in a magical mountain town nestled in the hills of beautiful upstate New York. Anything. Anything was possible. See you there, kids.

Arael - variation of Uriel; prince over the people.

Live it Up!

One of the most basic lessons me and my best friend taught the kids at Oneonta during our first semester was an essential skill called "partying", or as we say avec saveur, "laissez les bon temps rouler"*. Having a really good time seems like an easy scene from some trite sitcom t.v. show until you actively try to partake in it. Then, you have to overcome your essential weakness as a near-constant consumer of hardily fermented beverages mixing poorly in one's small, starving teenage stomach. 

We've all succumbed to it at one time or another—in some of the worst hangovers on the planet—that can take you down for the count and out of the game over a crucial party weekend, leaving you sidelined on a cheap cot next to a plastic bucket, while epic-ness awaited your presence. Then, you have to hear about someone's infamous hookup with that cool kid you really fucking liked (oh, the timing! SO cruel), watching the kick-ass band you've always dreamed of seeing play, live and in person. It hurt(s) badly, at a time when it's part of the life lessons you're there to learn. Oneonta State throws some of the best parties the world's ever seen. You just have to see it to know what a good time really is. 

We had: 70s parties in full period dress, Halloween costume parties serving drinks in pumpkin punch bowls—laced with something else than straight-up booze—and funky brownies on the side with two friends circulating the joint dressed as Jesus, hurricane parties with outdoor bands that stopped in tribute to each passing gust of wind that had us hoisting our plastic cups in unison, mad "mosh pits" with proudly sported party injuries, heaven-and-hell levels that played on the dorms layout of alternating "girl" and "boy" floors in freshmen year to the sophomore suites of girls and boys living on the same floor that got us ready for real life that's the mixed living experience of any combo off-campus during junior and senior years, "round the world" parties with each dorm room serving up a different cocktail, with or without the bong hits that suddenly put you over the top and in a swirling overheated room full of strangers and you're too fucked up to know there the bathroom is, which suddenly flips the party very quickly from a good time to one of the worst times ever.

It mirrored the often violently tumultuous homes we came from, in some of the roughest neighborhoods this world has to offer. Then, when your party game flipped on you, your head would hurt so bad that your teeth ached, too, as the room spun out of control in stomach-turning episodes we called "the bed spins" back in the day. This wan't no fantasy from some "tidy whitey" shopping catalog or a canned commercially-driven episode off the t.v. with an artificial laugh track, yo. We openly called each other out for being "lightweights". Your outfit had to be tight at night when it counted and your game on point, with your conversation skills being key. That's how you "bag" the best lady in the room, fellas. Learn it, bro-friends. Then, represent your home town by proudly sportin' it around. Get to it, son!

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laissez_les_bons_temps_rouler