Werewolves of London

Me and my best friend from school were genuine in our desire to get a good education at a great price, but it was most definitely not reflected back at us. The spoiled upstate kids of our generation saw it as practically a free ride that was easily dismissed, so good were the deals of the SUNY school system back then. The application was a simple two-sided form you could write in your sleep to apply to ten schools at once, which made college acceptances rather anti-climatic. I think I applied to five schools at once, as a fail-safe.

Just like my passion for narrative was derided by supposed industry professionals in publishing who just happened to "land" a job in the field, my friend Karen was looked at as an oddity for knowing she wanted to be a teacher and then going to a teacher's college in New York for her NYS certification. I know; too straight a line between points, right? One of our favorite sayings is the basic "clarity is key" phrase, often seen as a threatening balm to the rather scattered psychoses we would encounter throughout our lives, starting in our fucked-up family homes.

We became adept at explaining concepts to disordered minds over and over again, wearing down even the most brutal game of repetition to brass tacks, as a necessary part of any real educator's toolkit. Before our generation would take to "Special Needs" and "Special Education" like the obscuring terms for mental illness and retardation that they are, we had levels at school: Above Average (that's me), Average (occasionally me, especially if I didn't care for the material), and Below Average, or those BOCES kids who will fix your car for an exorbitant price after graduation from high school as a petty revenge for your hard work and natural aptitudes.

At Oneonta, we had a lot of financially successful "white-bread" kids from upstate New York riding the first wave of affluence from their orthodontist/lawyer dads, like the rich Jewish kids of New City. Irish, Italians, and Hispanics were still coming up through unions and the police force when we were kids, commuting to a loud ethnic city with stronger ties to the motherlands "across the pond". For upstaters, America was a generic Rachel Ray type of "EEVEEOHOH!" accent, spoken in an annoying "doncha-know" MidWestern twang. If they were Micks or guineas, they sure as fuck didn't show it as much, up there in north country.

Fiona was like that for us. She'd been born in Ireland, but with her softball mullet that somewhat expressed "butch lite" and her yuppie turtlenecks with the alligator icon on them, we had no idea she even was a Mick 'til we invited her over for a pre-party beer on St. Pat's Day. She's "Dark Irish", like Colin Farell: someone with dark eyes and hair that's linked to the Roman occupation of Ireland, leaving behind their genetics with their legal system and paved roads. That's a harder thing for a lot of Americans to understand with their weaker grasp of world history, but with a History Major roommate/best friend and boyfriend, I didn't have much of a case for pleading ignorance.

Just like Latin folk are pegged as Italian-looking for merely having dark eyes, dark hair, and olive-toned skin (see the show "Jersey Shore"), so did many Irish in America "pass" for other ethnicities, simply by not being the fair-skinned, freckle-faced "ginger" stereotypes portrayed on t.v. True to form, Fiona came from a hard-drinking family rife with tensions, which made her the right fit for our crowd and most of our occasions, but she just as often blew a good party by taking risks that were connected to her deeper ties to addiction than the ones I manifested in school. At first, we thought it was a lark: a Catholic schoolgirl away from home "stretching her wings" sort of thing.

But then she took a bunch of serious nose-dives that me and Karen stayed far away from, like taking full hits of blotter acid with her on-again-off-again boyfriend from high school that she cheated with while he dated another girl, introducing this blond girl from back home as his "girlfriend" at our parties, when he'd been talking our friend Fiona "down from the ledge" just the night before in our suite. We'd find her next door in the boy's suite, sitting with him in a corner on a beanbag while he petted her hair and read her a children's book in a creepy dad voice. What the...?

Back at our homes, we were the adults who handled stress well, not the other way around. This...this crazy shit that they did? It was everything we were afraid of becoming: a bunch of brain-dead drones with loose morals cuddling each other in the light of dawn, rocking back-and-forth like retards. We wanted to experiment and have a good time, within reason. Who attends a teacher's school just to soothe their fucked-up dark-haired mistress? Not us, man. We'd just as soon cut stuff into halves, think about it, and then divide it again into quarters. We wanted to run things, not sit it on the sidelines of life like the deranged people around us.

My final break with Fiona happened gently junior year, while I was the sole inhabitant of the ground floor (barring any party crashers on the two couches) of the big old house we shared off-campus, while she and the two Karens were on the second floor. I had volunteered to take the one bedroom on the first floor because of my big boyfriend who frequently stayed over (or vice versa), since it was a bit of a hazard not to have the front door locked 24/7. Nothing bad actually happened, besides some of our wilder parties that were starting to get a little bit out of hand and scary, as the addicts busily sorted themselves from recreational party-goers like myself.

Fun became besides the point, with so much freely-floating booze and drugs around. Despite Fiona's brush with a nervous breakdown sophomore year, she decided to trip out at one of our parties again, probably in retaliation for a visit by Steve's girlfriend, or something like that. That's the "alchie" way of problem-solving: become an even bigger problem, forcing someone else to sort it all out. By the time the band was unpacking their gear and setting up amps in the huge basement of the house, Fiona was already getting into vicious fights with my punk rock crew who wanted better music than the same old hippie song for trick-or-treating kids on Halloween being played over and over again, to calm her down while the first rush of blotter acid kicked in.

Once again, there was a square-looking Steve by her side, who studied meteorology so he could do the t.v. news of upstate New York in a strait-laced suit and tie, talking his mistress out of stabbing someone with a kitchen knife in his weird "dad" voice of calm authority that was as fake as Fiona's whole "white girl" routine. I may have partied like a rock star with other rock stars in my day, but this down-home girl knows that when the lights come on, everyone goes home. Now. Party's over. I gotta go to work tomorrow, ya dig? This shit, though? Some things were way too kinky to handle well, even for a hardcore city kid like me. This was one of those things. "Aah-ooo!"


I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks
For to get a big dish of beef chow mein

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo, huh

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Junior walking with the Queen, uh!
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect, na!

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Heh, draw blood
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks
For to get a big dish of beef chow mein

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo, huh

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Junior walking with the Queen, uh!
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect, na!

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Heh, draw blood
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London

Hurricane!

Just like the same news hype that returns every year, so, too, does the change of seasons pose serious intellectual problems for psychologically-impaired people. Every year, my mom and her wacky sisters get vicarious thrills from the earth's rotation around the sun that causes dry conditions out west and big rainstorms in the east, in the exact same way that a UFO fan gets off on strange ideas about alien abductions and well-wished-for anal probes. <Gasp!> Did you see the news today?!

First, it was really hot outside (TOO WARM!) and now it's freezing cold (TOO COLD!), because the "in-between" seasons like spring and fall often have weather patterns like that, which isn't fun unless you pretend you're watching a really scary movie with them, and they don't like horror movies. Uh, okay...sure. Let's go with that. Or, alternately, you could just look out the window, or feel the windowpane to gauge the temperature, or (and this is even weirder) you could actually go outside. Tons of options here.

WHAT?!! GO OUTSIDE?!! "What are you, nuts? I have severe hay-fever allergies! Do you want me to die?!" Or, they never had allergies to begin with and you're a bad person for making that up. Besides, why would you remember something so odd like that anyway? "So strange to me..." Unlike, say, paranoid schizophrenia, I actually enjoy each season for what it offers us. It's necessary to all life on this planet, and it's also a welcome change. Humans like adaptation and growth. "BOO!" Hobbits don't. So, like most of my life, my immediate family briefly passes by me while I live the best life ever, pretending that my challenges are the same "up-and-downs" as their manic-depression. It isn't, but they don't have anything else to compare it to, do they?

Just like their "parties" are some of the most dreadful affairs on G-d's green earth, so, too, did they easily confuse anti-social lurking in corners at large family reunions with "fun", the way alcoholism is nothing like having a great time at a kick-ass party. Drinking = instant asshole. Right? Of course, they know better, but my family likes to pretend that it doesn't hurt as much if they keep a vigilant boot on the heel of my good time. It's a lie, but they've already downgraded their sins against me to a cutesy widdle "white lie" (like the kind that naughty children do), while I sin real bad!

It was the same deliberate untruths they told each other about my body, my sexuality, my fertility, my health, my looks, my partying; anything that could be put down in the "Clan of the Cave Troll" to control the reversal of their intentionally misspoken words that would delay the inevitable good fortune that is my destiny. "Get your shots in while you can", my dad used to say, "because you won't be able to beat her forever." It was as tacit a reason to abuse me as they abused everyone and everything around them in their delusional sickness. How to hurt and get my help at the same time?

Like a crook who wastes $2,000 worth of time planning a $23 rip-off from a $43 bar tab, the pettiness of it was astounding in its depths, like the hapless Moriarty plays to a Sherlock Holmes, without the homosexuality and opium addiction. I don't have those facets. But, you do. I get it. And so, much like anything else that was epic in my life, my family couldn't participate. They could watch from a dark corner of the room, but they couldn't "boogie down" like me and my crew. I told them about our 70s parties with as much detail as they would let me, but when they finally opened the door to one of Bobby's rockin' shindigs, it was "Animal House: The Real" for a group of people who needed a much safer distance from the action.

They looked so uncomfortable. Bobby was swinging in a big Afro wig from a light fixture that gave way inch-by-inch as it was slowly pulled from the ceiling in a dramatic CRASH! to the floor. Just like the movies! Everyone was dancing in 70s-era costumes to "Play That Funky Music", and from the dropped jaws of my brother, his girlfriend (now wife), and his best friend, I could tell they were in shock that such things actually existed out in the world. They stood frozen in the foyer before the huge living room to the big old house we all rent(ed), with intact period details at a fraction of their costs, making the best party they ever attended into a spectator sport. I felt bad for them as I took their coats and got them beers. It'll be okay! I laughed to help them relax a little bit more.

Just like the weather that so frightened them into complacency, I also took my ability to have a good time in stride, too. I knew I was having the best time ever and so did my friends, but to actually see the astonishment on their faces brought it back home for me. Oh. You don't do that. I do. Like every good parent, I wanted them to join in the fun, even if it was just a little while before their drinking habits became alcoholism, and their study sessions with Vivarin became serious prescription pill-popping addictions. My life pulled me away from them, and I could see it on their faces that they knew it, too. We might never meet at this point again.

Eventually, my family stopped asking me if they could come by, by inviting themselves into my life to see if it was real. It was, and it still is. No tricks up my sleeves. Therefore, it seemed fitting to me that one of the last Oneonta parties I went to was held in the great outdoors, in the autumn season of September, still warm in the day and freezing at night, in classic upstate New York style. We raised our now-iconic plastic red cups to a seasonal storm named after a woman by male newscasters, in a cruel joke about our supposed tempermental moods brought on by our hormone-ravaged bodies. We toasted every fierce gust of wind that shook treetops so large, we made them more famous by putting them up in New York City as our Christmas trees.

Big fat raindrops started to fall on us at the same time the wooden makeshift stage Rock Ptarmigan played on started giving way, as all of their friends danced and sang with them onstage. Tony laughed as it tilted first towards the left where they gathered around the empty mic, then slowly gave way as he lightly hopped off the stage before the final lurch that saw it fall completely to the ground. We laughed, too. Show's over! We gave one last cheer to the heavens before the skies opened up, to pour down the rain that we knew would come but cheered for anyway, safely nestled as we were in our loving little city of the hills. It was the best party, yet. Wish you were there.

Around the World

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

Parties at Oneonta became our go-to creative outlet for lifting our spirits and casting off the sometimes extreme pressures we were under, as working class kids from New York. When I mentioned to my father recently that I can write "lowbrow" at times in a colloquial dialect that is unique to this area, and to also mean that I can be at every level of work, he reddened and barked a sudden harsh laugh at me, baring his top row of dentures. "Hah! Yeah, you're 'lowbrow'!", as if I had suddenly forgotten who I am and where I was, which I hadn't. I have plenty of reminders. 

I don't have the luxury of checking out from my life, no matter how bad it can sometimes be, because such is the nature of living. Suffice to say, unlike the hangers-on to our hip scene, I really wanted to learn, and anything that jeopardized that went out the window. I couldn't afford to not be present during my own education, happily deferring it to the hands of others, like so many other spoiled suburban kids. I was born in the projects of Queens to an Acadian Metis and an Italian-Irish American, some of the lowliest ethnicities on the planet for this country. Of course, in your country of origin, it could be the complete opposite, because such is the perversity behind prejudices and hate: to blind you to your true worth for the false ones of a commercial world.

We had discussions about our parties, too, appropriate to each setting. For freshman year, kids often joined together to have a party on the entire floor, or sometimes the whole dorm threw one large shindig. The most popular kind was the "'Round the world" party, with every dorm room offering a different type of booze. Those were completely fucking dangerous. Kids did crazy shit like soak a whole watermelon in grain alcohol, in a garbage can or a bathtub that they were proud to show off during the week. "One bite of this should do the trick!", as we took turns slapping the melon. We wanted a quicker entertainment we could afford, because every penny counted in our fractured homes, where scarcity was often used as a weapon.

A girl from "Lawnguyland" had a set of test tubes in a wooden carrier filled with a noxious-looking neon-green substance, while another carried around a tray of red jello shots (made with vodka) that had been neatly set in those small paper condiment containers from the cafeteria. It was like "Martha Stewart: Unplugged", which is an MTV reference, kids. Look it up! I left after a few dorm rooms, because our run-ins with campus security and two-day hangovers had learned me to steer clear of liquids that were uncertain-looking. I wanted to have fun, not throw up in the bathroom down the hall for hours and hours.

As sophomores, we expanded our view of partying to include multi-levels, in mixed gender dorms that reflected our more mature mentalities. Random wild hookups were a thing of the past, with most of us either in relationships or busy with school and jobs. There was always work. Boys and girls now lived in suites right next to each other, without incident. Anyway, the Long Island boys next door to us were a tight "Jew Crew" of frat brothers and a couple of very white upstaters. No problems, there. Still, with Halloween right around the corner, epicness awaited us in the form of grander and more complex parties.

On our list was the oft-touted "Heaven and Hell" party. It was a fantasy scene suited to three levels: the top level was Heaven (of course), the middle layer was Purgatory, and then there would be a "Dante's Inferno": a hell of our own creation. We decorated each floor in our minds with smoke machines and cotton ball clouds, or flickering fiery flames like those lamps from "Spencer's Gifts" (another 80s reference*) with plastic strips powered by a mini-fan to simulate fire. We'd use tinfoil-coated walls to bounce light around the rooms, or paint one room a heavenly light-blue color at the beginning of the semester, decorated with sparkly stars and even more mood lighting. 

Mood lamps....eh. What can I say? It was a thing**. Anyway, every year around this time, I still think about cool crisp autumns, fall decorations, the fun of Halloween, my outfits and costumes, and how much I still want to spread that great feeling around. The joy we felt at just being free enough to talk out loud about whatever we wanted to, whenever we could, without being abused or pushed aside, felt like "manna from the skies" to us; a gift so valuable, we knew we couldn't live without it. That's what freedom and a good time can do. It can set your soul free. Soar!

*    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Gifts
**  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_lamp

Kegger

The road to Oneonta is long, winding, and dangerous in the snowy seasons, but held such fascinations for us as young adults (and a few teenagers, ahem) that we were always psyched to make that last turn around that last bend before town. Because it was so grueling to get to, we had check points at every spot along the way, especially if you had to take the bus because you couldn't afford a car...ahem, that was also me. The Phoeniciaville stop had a redneck bar with a huge wooden eagle above it that matched the tourist bear statues for sale in the gravel parking lot that was their bus stop, for wealthy "urbanites" to buy for their country home's porch. You know the one: roughly made with a chain saw? That's it!

One of the hill-folk closer to town made a fun artpiece on the side of an old barn made from the hubcaps that came off around that last hairpin curve before town, and as soon as we saw it, we knew we were close enough to catch the radio signal from our college radio station. It always seemed to be manned by the voice of Jenny-O, the first real "celeb" most of us ever knew, because everybody we knew knew her, too. As soon as we heard her voice, we knew we were home for the semester, listening to the New Wave sounds of the 80s, where freshness lived.

We were used to pockets of cool civilizations nestled in the rural hills and mountains of our beloved upstate New York, but even for us, New Delhi was whack. It was a wide spot on the road, a small two-year school carved out of the hillside. My friend Meg from Mamaroneck knew a kid going to school there, so she asked me to go with her one weekend. "If you think we party hard, you should see how they drink!" Uh, oh. We were ferocious. "There's nothing to do and nowhere to go. There's not even a town near there! They get drunk in their dorms built around a square, and the only space on campus is that!" Holy fuck...I loved party challenges, but even this one had me apprehensive. I wasn't looking to die or lose my mind. I just wanted a good time.

They did all the party tricks we did at O-town, like keg stands and beer funnels, but there seemed to be a lack of joy to their partying, like we were just going through the motions. There's only so drunk you can get, until there's sickness and hangovers. Who needs that? As soon as those kids got really fuckin' drunk, shit got weird. It was nighttime in the quad, and they lost it. Garbage cans were lit on fire in the square, while students lurched across it, going from room to room. Their dorm rooms sucked, too. No flair at all, compared to ours. Just beat up and covered with marks on walls that hadn't been painted in years. And then some idiot took out fireworks, and started shooting them off the balcony at people in the quad below, while other kids simply looked on nonchalantly, smoking indifferently.

Hey, man. Count me out. I wanted out of that hellhole, like yesterday. We talked about Meg being too drunk to drive, and then getting a cab back to town. We were supposed to sleep over on some kid's dirty floor, but I'd had enough. There's partying, and then there's just plain batshit crazy. This was nuts. No one was having fun. You could see it in their blank eyes, not that kids at an easy two-year school had a lot of brains to begin with. They seemed completely gone, lost in the smoke that wreathed through the square, waiting for the police to arrive. The campus seemed abandoned to them.

"Yeah, they kind of just leave 'em alone to do their thing," Meg said to me, when I noticed the difference between their lackluster mayhem, and the quick censures on our campus. It was striking. "I think they're afraid of them here, because they're mostly from the city." No shit. Me, too. It was a good lesson in the differences between mountain towns and SUNY schools, which can be markedly so. I wanted out. We left that campus for good, and the next day I felt more fondness for our mountain home. That place was not our town. Oneonta was.
The city of the hills.

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.

Eat The Worm

Despite our crowd's consistent demonstrations of hearty appetites backed by impressive quaffing, we were not immune to bad party fouls, like any other high-aiming social group. We were the kind of kids who'd try and make the worst combinations of lunchroom leftovers we could think of, daring kids to eat it for, like, a quarter or fifty cents, which immediately knocked out the rich Jewish kids with orthopedist/dentist dads. They didn't need the change as badly as we did. White milk in a carton was $.15, and my mom didn't give anyone anything extra. Ever. If we wanted some chips to go with our bologna sandwiches or maybe a carton of chocolate milk for $.30/.35 (both junk food items in my household), we had to earn it, which we did by creating insane concoctions we giggled profusely over.

Drinks were fodder, too, because you could make gross-out combos in the obligatory thermos that came with every lunchbox back then. Do people even use those anymore? I'm not sure, but like our clothes and sneakers, a new lunchbox that wasn't a knock-off or a hand-me-down from your less-than-cool older sibling was fresh gear to sport around, and that meant something to us. Like a weird Midwestern religious cult that forbids gifts, presents, and celebrations like the booze that will surely cause them to snap out and kill someone, we were strictly limited in our options, which forced us to get creative, so we did.

Peas mixed with mashed potatoes and something sweet was a solid combo, but over the years, as our stomachs grew stronger, so did the thrills and angst accompanying cafeteria dares. After awhile, like, say, in junior high school, we had jobs for fast food and extra things like a novelty eraser that had meant so much to us in grade school. So, too, did our appetites grow in high school and college. "Mixology" was considered an unspoken minor alongside rolling joints and tobacco in rolling papers, which is kind of like baking with really thin puff pastry in cooking school for the first time: one tear and you're out of the game, unless you become adept at fixing the hole that could render a joint unsmokeable—or a pastry edible—making you the target of jeers for the rest of what could be a very long night.

Certain drink categories quickly became defined to us as a group as utterly non-potable and undesirable for long-term partying, meaning the wrong combo could take you out of the scene and into the bathroom for the entire night, missing out on the kind of crucial action that always takes place at a great party with slammin' music and beautiful people. It hurt, you know? As working class kids, we didn't have a lot of time for recreation, and for us to blow a rare opportunity for fun to remain behind closed doors while recovering from one of the worst hangovers of your life meant you fucked up somewhere, so you'd better fix it for the next time. We had the added bonus of hearing all of our friends make fun of us in the very next room, or prank us hard while we were down for the count, and these were kids from rough homes: they could turn vicious and mean with too much booze and pot. 

You didn't want to be "down for the count", like a prizefighter in the last round of a title fight who needs just a few precious seconds to make it to the end of a fight, in order to earn out from the bout, for all that hard work and dedication. It meant that much to us at school, and we really couldn't afford to blow it. There were no magical "Plan B" pills for us to take, back then. Every fuck-up we made could hurt us badly and take us "out of the running" for life, forever, like "Crackhead Jen" who got busted by "Pubic Safety" (public safety): a ragtag bunch of fat locals who hated us/needed us for a living. She got caught by them for over-drinking between dorms, and then was sent back to Ireland by her parents for awhile, to cool her heels. I finally got Karen back to our room, after they'd been pounding cheap fruit punch powder mix with grain alcohol that our friends bought for us in Pennsylvania.

As part of the prized "heavyweight" class of drinker from solid German/Irish/Italian working class New York roots, Karen could pull it in for adults and parents like I could, but Meg and her roommate Jen were from the quieter town of Mamaroneck in Westchester that left them lacking in their party-training, though Meg proved heartier than little Jen, who'd completely lose her shit after a few drinks. It was weird, because they're both solid Micks, but, with her cheerleader crew, Meg had sampled the darker world of blotter acid trips gone bad in the 'burbs, which actually left her primed and ready for a serious party experience like O-town. This shit wan't no joke to play with, yo. Kids snapped out and went down all the time around us, sometimes waiting it out at a local community college while living back at home with their parents for what could be a few crucial years in our development. We didn't have time for interruptions like that, esses. 

And so, like grain alcohol with powdered fruit drink mix, Tequilla (or "Ta-Kill-Ya", as we renamed it back then) was "loco" to us, man, as were the rest of the mescal group of drinks from south of the border. We'd drank the bottles to the bottom to eat the worm in front of each other, and that's exactly where it went all wrong for us: at the bottom of a bottle of seriously strong booze. We became the kind of crowd who could smoke and drink all night to exhaustion, braced for the deathly-cold walk home by a strict one-shot rule of whiskey at the end of the night, pounded to the same "Smiths" song that signaled it was closing time at the bar to us, cranked to an ear-splitting level. It was time to go home, and no matter how hard the booze hit you in the warmth of a cozy pub, the freezing bitch-slap of our mountain air always (ALWAYS) sobered us up enough to make it home problem-free. It pays to know just who the fuck you are at the end of a night out, especially around a bunch of roughneck New York kids. Take care with it.

 
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everclear_(alcohol)

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

Contents Under Pressure

Unlike the addicts and "headcases" lurking around us, me and my working class friends always knew we smoked, drank, and experimented to escape the daily hell(s) we came from. We always knew that if/when we ran things, it would be better, and now it is. But, that didn't help us out much as kids, except in the same dully repetitive way, which was the point behind our terrible homes: we had to do what our insane parents wanted us to, or needed and/or forced us to do, or we'd become homeless children susceptible to crazy-ass hookers and the drugged-out zombies on crack serving them up as their pimps on the then-wild streets of 70s-80s New York City.

We'd see the bombed-out buildings and wandering packs of wild dogs lope through our old neighborhoods like hounds escaped from hell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfen_(film), and wherever we went, there'd be art in our wake to tell our "peeps" about the bad news, too, though in a really fun and entertaining way. That's how you have to do it with the insane, or they could "snap out" on you, in a suddenly violent way. We'd been at the bad end of a father's fist or a mother's belt borrowed from him, and what they couldn't beat out of us, they starved us into doing, by withholding money and time and parenting.

My grandparents were "hip" to the whole scene; they'd also been forced onto our mean city streets before they were ready, by sick households that just gave up, to have family that then joined together to force them out of school (where they belonged) into rotten jobs that were humiliating and demeaning to the brilliant kids with potential that they were, and remained for the rest of their lives. Their mad families made their prowess—in comparison to their ineptitude(s)—their punishment for "out-living" them. I asked them about it, in between abusive bouts in our sick households, as I leaned in over summertime glasses of excellently-made iced tea or fresh lemonade, drinking in their good health like the succulent blend they had made it for; just for me and my ears alone.

My grandmother wanted to be a nurse or a teacher, and so in response to the brutal pushing of her parents, older brothers, and older sisters (who lived in their own fantasy worlds of delusional thinking and absenteeism), our Great Lord gave them, in His Infinite Wisdom, me to teach, and I drank it in like I was ready for it. I needed it, their succoring. Lord knows I was hungry for it, banished and isolated as I was in a home full of untreated sick people that they also knew all too well from their own lives and upbringings. Well, what did you do after your brother pretended he was "trying out" for the Yankees (cough<bullshit>cough), by wasting his time playing stick-ball in the streets? I asked her, and she told me the truth. Oh, she told me, I won the decision-making process in my household, by becoming a factory manager by the time I was 19 or 20-years old. 

Yeah! That cheered me up. And she did. Through her superior ability to earn, she ruled the roost, which pulled her out of an abusive relationship that was to be her arranged marriage with a boy back from "The Old Country" in the Abruzzi region of Bari, most likely a cousin too closely related for a good healthy match anyway. He put his hands on her, and she fought back by standing up to him, which earned her her father's approval and respect. In the meantime, she met and fell in love with my French Swiss/Irish-American grandfather while canoeing, because they both loved the beach and the outdoors. Ha! Of course, you do. Me, too! But, like, why did they do what they did to you?

"Oh, I don't know..." She'd trail off, in recollection. "After refrigeration put him out of the ice business, he just stopped working." Huh? I never heard of such a thing in my extremely strict household, where child labor was considered a natural right by my sick parents, just like theirs. Why? "I don't know!" she responded to me. "I think they were scared and tired of trying to 'make it' in America. They just refused to learn English." Ah...Yeah, I knew that one, too. Just give up and cave into it. "And my brothers were favored for being older by Italians, so they got away with doing nothing all day." Ha! Yeah! Right! I have that, too! She nodded, and then continued talking to me in private, where no one else could hear her but me, and maybe my silent grandfather.

"Yes, but you have to understand something, Marie..." My ears perked up like the puppy I was, in the presence of greatness, because even I knew from my earliest years that my grandmother ran shit like the strong-armed, Bronx-born female she was. "The work that they refused to do made me much stronger than them." Uh huh. Preach it. Better than school on a Sunday. "After I took the economic lead in my household, I had 'the say' then. Not my parents. Sure, my father loved me and stood up to the neighborhood after my fiancee 'put his hands' on me, but I also had to wait almost four years before I could marry your grandfather, because they were prejudiced against Irish people", and here she made the drink symbol with her hand to her mouth, like you're tippin' back all the way in one big swallow from yo' glass.

Yeah, word. I got that. It meant I'd have to wait for what might be a very long time, even after I succeeded from all my hard work, to get what I wanted, maybe much longer than necessary, because it would take that much time for my family to catch up to my reality in any time, either the past, present, and/or future. And after that, we'd pause in our short conversations that were blessedly free from the static of the mentally ill around us—either swirling about in tense motion, or sitting around us in fretful waiting—in these short exchanges that were like breathing in fresh air after working underground all day in the explosive sewers of the city, like my grandfather did for most of his life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Edison). 

They'd take a long steadying pull from their cool sodas or glasses of beer, as I followed along with my baby soda or lemonade. It became a ritual that me, my friends, and our classmates would re-enact at about the same time, wherever we were, that'd bring us together in an almost magical synergy we knew it was; a deeply spiritual destiny that we were fated to meet, like the aligning of the planets under a thick blanket of stars in the crisp clear air of upstate New York, protected as we were in our hard-to-reach mountain stronghold of Oneonta, re-creating sacred rituals of renewal and refreshment as young teenage "parents" who'd been made to run things way before our time(s): "It's 'smoke 'em if you got 'em' time!" 

And then we would. We'd pull out cigarettes to take long drags from, in a steadying way that meant the next fight was near, followed by a long drink from an ice-cold beer that'd been cooled from the snow we'd just reach outside our dorm rooms or old houses to grab for our coolers. It wasn't alcoholism, or addiction, or the "touchy-feely" language of some fake pseudo-science made just  for t.v., like the bad pop psychology that's become the business of rehabilitation, rather than the cure. We wanted more for them and for you; now, then, and always. We want(ed) a cure; not for us, but for you. All of you. You get me? Yeah, I bet you do. Now you do. From me, you do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_psychology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clubhouse_Model_of_Psychosocial_Rehabilitation