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
