Mighty Bitch

Moving back to New York was big enough to shake loose my Colorado boyfriend, just like moving out west shook up my New York ex. Me and my dog Ted didn't have easy escapes like my men, so we did what every woman with a family does: we made do. To help Teddy adapt to Brooklyn, I enrolled us into a basic obedience class to make our walks through Prospect Park (and around the neighborhood) safer. He never got used to the big inflatable rat union workers put up in protest on street corners, or the way subway grating vibrates above ground, whenever a train passes by underneath.

My main concern was his safety. After our first lesson, the dog trainer confirmed for me what I already knew. Open runs in Prospect Park are full of the biggest urban danger for every dog walker: bad owners and their pets. I'd seen a guy wrapped in padded clothing teach his German Shepherd to attack him every morning in the park during off-leash hours, which meant we had a serious timeline in place for the most challenging human environment on earth. It was what my new dog-training friend told me, too: if we walked our dogs every morning and evening in the park, it was only a matter of time before our pets would need stitches after an attack.

Fuck that! Ted had survived an e-coli/ebola infection from swimming in a lake in Denver's public park, and that was after he fully recovered from a car accident. It was enough to get me to commit to the classes, even though I was still interviewing in the city for work, rapidly losing weight after my ex left me with the high rent to pay. Mama always comes last. When my friend saw Ted snapping at treats with wolf-like gusto, she was delighted. Oh, so he "responds" to food! That's good! Some animals don't :( Ted was her first Malamute.

We quickly got bored with the easy exercises, which did not go unnoticed in class. The trainer realized Teddy was deciding which orders he would obey, based on his moods and the amount of cooked chicken with brown rice left in my pocket. It totally waylaid her. He was picking and choosing which commands to follow! On purpose!! Right. Welcome to snow dogs. After that, Ted would run through her little obstacle courses, standing by the side of the cones to razz his competition. Every time another dog tried to weave through the cones, he'd smile and "Woo!Woo!" loudly, laughing at them nervously shying away from him. 

She kicked us out of the class for disturbing the other animals, which Ted took as a sign, pulling me towards the cold outside and the school doors. One animal was so badly inbred that the instructor had a special corner of the gym coned off just for the doddering old couple who diapered it and picked it up for staircases, because it didn't "do stairs". She said to me that she told them to put the animal down, but they'd already "bonded" with it. Oy vey...

A rather colorful gay couple had chosen the name "Noodles" for their surrogate child (this was before legalized gay marriage), which made the calling-out exercises a lesson in restraint for the entire class, as the masculine-looking female yelled at the top of her lungs in a sing-song voice (for an unnecessary "park-like" simulation): "NOOOOOODLESSSS! COOOOOME!" The short butch woman proudly recounted her training sessions in the park for us during class because she told us, "we're gonna win first prize!" There're fucking prizes?! After that, her and her long-haired femme made no secret that they saw me and Ted as their top competition in the small class. I was just trying to stay alive through the slow starvation of poverty while blocking Ted from swallowing my arm up to the elbow.

By coincidence, my father and stepmother were visiting during our last class. The teacher played graduation music for our walk down the saftey-cone aisle one more time, as I wisely skipped the cap and gown pictures that would only be Ted fodder turned to diarrhea later on. Because of our, uh, lack of commitment to the process, we got second place without even trying. Honestly, I'd never seen two happier lesbians in all my life, smiling proudly as they took the #1 blue ribbon home. It was for kinda hard for us to be angry at them. After all, the biggest bitch in class won.

Ba-Ba-Buoy!

Yesterday, a good friend of mine asked me (again, because he's elderly) about marriage and children, which are admittedly much easier questions for me than you might think, but here it goes, one more time: I was married (in a outdoor ceremony by a female Methodist minister, which makes it "null and void" in our Catholic tradition) to a friend of mine from the SUNY school we attended that he failed out of, and because he's a manic/depressive alcoholic, we didn't have any children. I did "know" he had problems without really knowing it, because I don't share his disorders, but I wanted him to make it as my friend and a fellow native.

I was "down" with him as a squaw, which meant it was more than just between us; we were fighting to survive in this world, and I understood that about our lives. Plus, he was really handsome and a carpenter, which meant that he gave me enough space to create without actually being a gifted artist, and that was serious: he just didn't have the intellect I needed. But, he was a nice boy and he could be very charming, so I helped him with counseling ONCE by holding his hand for the first visit, and then he never really addressed healthcare again. Oh, well. If his family didn't support our vows like they promised at our wedding, then there wasn't a real marriage between us, like my father said to me over the phone. It was time to go. And that was that. He got re-married and divorced again, to come looking for me again, too.

"Well, what about kids?" Oh, uh...what about children? They love me, and I've been taking care of people my whole life, so....you know? It isn't some desperate thing for me to be a caring person. He said he'd noticed me around town with a tall handsome man, and I laughed. Yup! That totally sounds like me. Experience is a hard master to learn from, especially if you don't have that much, which is why I've always enjoyed talking with older people. They really connect with what I'm saying on a deeper level. Besides, I've always been a natural parent, and it's about stuff that matters, too, like this time at the beach with my niece.

Her mom was riding the corporate pony like a seriously programmed drone, which meant me and my brother were free to go to the bay without her tense dramatics and canned marketing copy following us there. Fine by me! Let's go. It was a beautiful summer day, so I took the train (actually, several) from Brooklyn to Grand Central to Connecticut, so we could go swimming in the sound near their hometown. My niece wasn't getting along with her brother, so me and my bro split up: he took the boy, and me and my girl went swimming. The bay is a lot calmer than the roughness of the ocean, so we felt easy in the water. She confided to me that she always wanted to swim out far enough to touch the big red buoy floating in the bay, and she was feeling confident with me by her side, so we decided to do it.

The sun was warm and the water felt great, but like any big swim, halfway through it, you feel the distance spread out before you. It got choppier, too, and I could see the apprehension in her eyes, so I let her know she could put her arms around my neck and I'd swim us back to shore, anytime she wanted to. Nope. She wanted to do it. That's my girl! I talked about other swim strategies to combat swim fatigue, like floating on your back to catch a rest, and we tried it a couple of times together. It was a lot farther out than she thought, but that was the challenge of it for her. I think she was 10, at the time. I asked her how come she hadn't done this swim with her mom, and even though I knew the answer, I wanted her to keep talking to lessen her fears.

She said her mom told her she was "burnt out" from swimming because of her swim team days at school (she's a compulsive runner, too), so now she was just "bored" with it. Oh, how fucked up and selfish, I thought to myself. But, that's who she is, and my brother married her anyway. And that's why, on that day, I easily took on the role of a mother to fill in the gap that her sick mom leaves behind, with the grace of a native New York girl who's been swimming her whole life. I could do it, so I did it; not to take away, but to give.

We finally made it to the buoy, and it was a lot bigger than we expected. She got scared as we clung to it bobbing on the waves, and then she was done with it. "Okay, let's go back. Like, now", and then she started swimming without me. Smart. She was a little breathless, so she wanted to have enough energy for the swim back to shore. I gave her some space to enjoy the experience on her own, following her in the water from a safe distance. We were tired when we made it back to the beach, but we knew we'd just had one of the best days ever, because my little Jane had passed one of her first real tests of bravery. Well done, Métis. See you in the ocean again, soon.

Howling (In The Name Of)

Having a real Alaskan Malamute like Teddy was both a privilege and an honor, and one of the most difficult jobs I've ever had in my life, as one that's so often been filled with brutally hard work. He was absolutely astonishing to look at: a stunning, spectacularly beautiful animal of an uncommonly large size that marks the Giant M'Loot tribe of Mals, with their distinctive bandit face-mask of lush black and white fur. He was a lot like me, too, of a spiritual kind that's way deeper than mere pet ownership.

He was my puppy soul-mate: a "totem", a link to my ancient indigenous past like the first canines his pack still resembles so closely today. His temperament was as excellent as his looks. He was gentle yet powerful, strong and kind, intelligent while also being playful and fun. In short, he was perfect, and sometimes I was scared of the awesome responsibility that comes with taking care of such an extraordinary animal. Because of his rare genetics, he was also extremely high maintenance after human exportation to the "lower 48" states; not a lot of moose meat or seal chunks to go around the mainland U.S. As a result, he suffered from terrible diarrhea because of the filler food sold at commercial pet stores, which made me stick to him in a "mommy" way even more, that did not go unnoticed or unappreciated by him.

But our true joy with Ted was in the snow-filled mountains of the cold rocky west. There, he ruled supreme, just as he was designed to do. He was a King among animals, and as the strong wind blew back his thick mane to reveal his sharp eyes, his majestic lineage was clear for anyone to see, as his careful gaze swept cross the freezing landscape with each measured turn of his massive head. He was brilliant, he was my "baby bear cub", and he was a stone-cold killer in the deep-freeze chiller of the northern United States, which meant we loved him with all of our hearts. He was ours to protect and nourish, just as he would easily lay down his life to protect us in the wilderness, if it was necessary. He was way more than just some dog. He was part of our family. He was a part of my tribe. He was mine.

One of the most beautiful sights in the entire animal kingdom is a Malamute running through the woods in deep snow with their incredible snow-shoe paws, through one of the most difficult terrains on earth, with all the grace and elegance of a champion figure skater. He was our Olympic sport. Mals are powerfully-built athletes made for humans who can both respect that and keep up with it. Within a month or two of Ted's adoption into our human family, Kent and I easily lost our "courtship weight" that we'd gained while dating, because the "call of the wild" was too strong for all of us to resist, now a tight-knit family of three.

Our trips to the Coloradan backwoods now had a more acute focus than our nature walks of the past. Ted was a like Tasmanian Devil of unchained energy. He needed lots of fast-paced exercise to burn off his growing puppy stuff, or our apartment and any of our most precious belongings immediately paid the price for any laxity in his routine. He was "hardcore military": up at the break of dawn daily, disciplined in his habits, and voracious in his appetite for life. I was glad that Kent was former Coast Guard, and that hiking with my ex-Navy Dad meant that my pack had been carefully packed (and sitting by the front door) the night before, with a 5 a.m. wake-up that either had my father switching our bedroom lights on-and-off quickly in a jarring strobe light effect, or snapping up the window shades of our bedrooms with a loud "RAP!" (daylight permitting), because "the early bird catches the worm." Aye aye, captain...ugh...so sleepy. "Do you want to go hiking? We're leaving in five minutes."

And so it was with Ted, except that as soon as the cold mountain air blew into his snoofer stuck out the truck's window, his werewolf eyes went "something-something" that meant the crazy would start as soon as snow was quickly huffed up his nostrils. It was an altered state of reality. I've never seen anything like it, in any other types of animals, and I watch a lot of nature programming. It was unique to my snow-beast, and it was done with an urgency that had to be addressed properly. In the summertime, we had him iced down in air-conditioning and wet t-shirts that put him into a glorious bear-like hibernation state, making him sleepier and easier to manage. It was with this genius parental thought in mind (haha) that found us happily driving into the foothills at 7 a.m., greatly looking forward to a walk in the woods.

Because it was summer and hotter than we liked, we parked at a more easily accessible roadside spot than we normally would, what with wintertime skiers posing a serious threat to an off-leash Ted that frightened us once on a trail, never to happen again. Kent knew of a spot with running water, so off we went on a light walking trail. We let the fur beast loose to allow the magic to happen, feeling fairly confident of a smooth hike on a beginner's path. He lopped off to disappear down the top of a small dirt rise, which didn't concern me much. There was a lot of visibility on a trail like this. Kent and I relaxed and chatted, confident that we'd catch him around the bend. Famous last words. No sooner had we established a groove, than we heard a high-pitched shriek and a man's yell. Fuck...so much for our pleasant little Sunday stroll. Now what?

Kent chuckled as he said "let's speed up and see what that moose is up to", so we did. We ran down the path like two concerned pre-school parents to greet two very white and very scared suburbanite kids without any real hiking gear cowering in their tracks. Aw, poor Ted! He stood there at the top of the little hill a little freaked out with his head tilted cutely, pink tongue out and bushy tail slightly wagging. Wha'd I do? Oh, nothing, beast-man, and I harnessed him back to me. He was perfectly lovely. The idiots on parade were much less charming. The guy (about college age) had picked up a fucking tree branch, and he was slightly hysterical. "WHAT IS THAT?!" he yelled out to us.

He and his girlfriend thought Ted was a wolf, and they visibly relaxed when we explained he was our dog, though keeping their distance by walking off the path and around us on the small trail. Whew! As a big man, Kent knew the stigma. He'd been bullied before for being a big lad. And so, he couldn't resist tweaking out the wealthy "Trustafarian" college kids from out-of-state just a wee bit more. As we passed by them, he laughed. "Yeah, hey, just so you know, my Malamute would have chomped through that branch like a toothpick snapped in half because of the massive size of his jaws. Like a pit-bull!"

With that, they grew pale and wide-eyed again, hurrying off down the trail to warn any other hikers they met about the friendly "werewolf" walking with his family in a beautiful sun-dappled forest. It was the only real scare we had that day with our precious little beast, and "Amen" to that. We breathed easier knowing he was with us, so I didn't let him off-leash for the rest of the hike. Oh, well. So much for my easy summer day. It was a parent thing, you know? A werewolf like Ted just wouldn't have understood. But, you do. Right? Yep. You do. I can tell.

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

Esprit de Corps

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirant_lo_Blanch#

The literal translation for "esprit de corps"* is the spirit as it is expressed through the body, though its older usage described morale in the military. In truth, it was the best description I had for a Pinterest board I made about movement that covered art, dance, athleticism, martial arts, motion, movement, and the joy of being alive as it relates to the use of our bodies. Certainly, anyone who's ever been in mortal danger has their muscle memories to thank for the continued use of their body as it relates to other activities in a more peaceful future.

Sometimes, when I talk to my mom about my dreams or her MS, she tells me she has recurring dreams about running through a field of grass when, in truth, she was never athletic or even inclined to be active, preferring instead to sit and talk on the phone for hours, or dunk cookies in her tea (annoyingly, when also on the phone), or watch t.v. as she flips through magazines. She'll say it's because of her illness or her allergies (that she also sometimes forgets she has) but, really, it's because her personality prefers sedentary creature comforts. How odd, then, that her brain conjures up vigorous movement to express freedom and joy; feelings she was much more apt to attribute to cars rather than herself when she was younger and slightly more mobile, as part of her innate preferences for machines and artificial experiences over the real and the human.

When I studied ballet, I loved flying through the air the same way I liked swinging through the trees in our backyard, or spinning in a tire swing. Children excel at movement, in part because of their lower centers of gravity, something my less physically gifted parents would often quote at us, as further excuses for their inertia, cleverly designed to hide their laziness through pseudo-scientific phrasing. In contrast, we were made to work all the time, and when we did feel sick or take breaks, our parents hated that, too. "Get up! Do something!" It felt like they used us as charms to stave off their diseases, when they actually nursed our afflictions to budding stages.

There was a ferocity to our play-fighting as kids that transcended the typical city dwellers experience. My mom described us as "savages" or "wild monkeys hopped up on sugar" to her friends and family who are also round and cynical about it.  What were we?! She described the differences between us "soooo strange", like we were bound to be discovered as an ancient pygmy tribe from the bush any day. Me and my brother could fight for hours, scaling the narrow walls of our house's hallway like contestants on the game show "American Ninja Warrior", and it totally freaked her out. She'd never seen stuff like that before, especially among her squat hobbit clan.

I saw a native boy compete on the show last season, without any targeted training or benefit of a special obstacle course built just for appearing on the show, because he rightly assumed that his competitive sport of mountain climbing would do the trick for him, and it did. He grabbed a rope, released it in midair while spinning around to backwards-grab a moving obstacle that he then leapt from, landing perfectly on a mat with both feet. "Whoa! WHAT WAS THAT?!!", one of the announcers yelled out to the roaring crowd. That was an Indian, bro. His bright black eyes flashed with the same gleeful intensity as his big beautiful smile, pressing the red button that signalled his succesful finish. Welcome to the fight. We've missed you.


* https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/esprit%20de%20corps

Exile

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia# 

Acadians from Nova Scotia have a saying about their people who live in different areas: that we've been "away" for awhile. Certainly, with a small settlement of houses still in Doucetteville, it has always felt that way to me. I tried to describe it as a feeling to a work-related acquaintance from years past over a few drinks (with his own engaging immigrant story about emigrating from China through Cuba), but instead of sounding poetic, I found that my words didn't quite match the concept, sounding trite and hollow to my ears instead. Unlike, say, a communist country, Acadians do not consider each other "foreigners" because, by necessity and social engineering, we were forced out of our homeland centuries ago.

It's a strange thing to be considered a "stranger" in your own land, especially in a huge city like New York, a place with actual foreigners. If you think Rockland County is hard to explain to native New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike, try explaining "Acadia" to someone with a more recent grasp of the English language. It just doesn't fit into their pop cultural constructs about America, derived mostly from years of fine fictional programming and Crash!Bang! movies with subtitles. There's something about me that defies their new idea(l)s, like maybe they fit in here a lot less than they fucking thought, based on a false picture that they made in their heads, greatly assisted as they were in their delusions by so many advertisers. Fantasies will do that to people.

You try introducing the idea that they stand on your soil, as land ripped (or bartered) away to Europeans, with real estate being the game that it is in the city. People have died for less. Still, I wanted to tell this designing pop culture "guru" about my travels out west, and what it means to have a far-away view of the world, because just like any other Mac-drooling hipster deeply indebted to the latest fad(s), he will never know what it's like to be outside of his very small circle. Over drinks and the time of our reacquainting, he finally confirmed for me his truth: that his Adult ADD/ADHD and sexual dysfunctions (mother-obsessed) keeps his reach just within his easy grasp, and so I knew that, too.

Like that <snap>, his former status as "the" hot book designer in our industry vaporized, so powerfully does he monitor adherence to his cult of personality. It's a daunting life to live. Still, he feeds off the newer fresher energies of the younger talents dependent on him, and even though he viciously guards "promoting" anyone he feels he can't pull into "his" scene, I used him as my industry earpiece for awhile, knowing that I can exert a stronger influence than him when I need to, not that I particularly wanted to. He occasionally professes to have a deeper spiritual side. I wanted to preserve that for him and encourage it.

So, I told him about it: how I could feel the touch of the brick walls lining my subway commute seated within the car, as a material I knew in a visceral sense, passing under my hand like the passing born of many times. I knew the stones of the area, and the plants, the trees, the birds, and the animals. He squirmed a little in his small bistro seat at the tiny table, and then casually dismissed it, for its discomfort to him ("Yeah...I get it..."), as the son of Chinese laundry workers who'd played the oppressed minority card "to the hilt" in exchange for tuition, jobs, industry contacts, or a design strategy in company meetings...so easily did he feel pressed against a wall he didn't make, nor did his ancestors.

Still, he had to go on singing the song that paid for all those after-hours "business" dinners he could comp with the creative accountant he wanted me to use, so he could get free services with each referral. Over one of the loudest dins I'd ever heard in a restaurant in my life, his small voice popped in-and-out of focus to me, bustling as the trendy Korean chicken joint was, during the time of our talks. "You know, Marie..." Ugh. He talked to me like I was a Midwestern ingenue right off the bus working my very first "major league" design job, and I had never been that. "You should 'take advantage' of living in the city now!" Uh, what the fuck did you say to me? I'm a native, yo! Not some out-of-towner. What an ass.

He persisted, like the pushy grad from a slick school he is. "I mean, you should, like, go to more design shows and openings and museums and stuff!" Right...so I can kiss your ass to get cover design work out of you, work that he always failed to give to me out of a misplaced loyalty to his precious alumni network of self-feeding cannibals stuck in the same loop. Yeah, native here? Remember? He pressed on. "You know, to 'make it' here you really have to work all the venues, Marie." Sure. Like a coke-sniffing Art Director with lots of fancy awards from his network coupled with a serious case of manic depression? That way, I can stay up all night to roll into work like a diva at noon. Sounds great! Sign me up! When had I ever been that vulnerable?! 

In my thirties, it was hard-to-excruciating for me to pretend a fake naivety that had never really existed. Now, with someone that mentally disordered, I just leave the room or hang up the phone. No point. Not enough brain matter. But back then, I thought I still needed someone like him to talk to, as an excuse to find out why the fuck "show ponies" hated me so much. It didn't take long for me to find out. I tried again. "Yeah, Henry, but here's the thing." He looked up at me unhappily, finally pulled away from his all-engrossing food and drink. Wha...? Talking to me? What an act! It was insufferable to me, so I just pulled the safety, loaded the gun, and fired away, speak loudly and clearly the words that would ever deflate him, just when the club music cut out.

"I already made it!" Oops, that came out louder than I thought. In the uneasy lull that followed the awkward cutting of their annoying house music, I adjusted for volume and continued. "Henry", and this I spoke gentler to him, "I knew I 'made it' when I got into RISD. That's how I know. I've already done it." He shoulders sagged. And that was his biggest fear: failure. Of being all talk and no action, of being a slick hack who couldn't really deliver without better artists and designers to pillage from. What could we do? Sue him? He had all the money and power. Right? Wrong! You, my dear readers, are the proof of my greater success, because show ponies tend to forget who actually sits at the top, and it's not them. It's me. The publisher. So, you tell me: who's on who's turf now? Yeah. That's what I thought back then, too. Like the trendy eatery we were in, it was finally silent. And static-free.

Pretty Boy

Out of all of the kids in our family, my middle brother Bernie perhaps suffered the most from bullying because of his sensitivity, his misunderstandings, and his innate emotional difficulties that he's struggled with since birth. We were always marked as "different" from our unique status as genuine ethnic minorities, whether or not we dressed the part, like some insane white lady from the Midwest looking to indulge her bipolar bisexual jungle fever by "passing" (lying) as another ethnic group, or an obvious jungle tribal reference overdone with faux primitive costumes and lots of weirdo makeup from some overly expensive gay Broadway musical. Reality is a much better, subtler artist than that.

We didn't fit in all the usual ways, and it wasn't something that the other children around us or their parents (or even our teachers), would be able to discern readily, because like the Dodo bird (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo), we are a very small tribe. We just didn't expect to meet anyone like us, ever, so it didn't really seem like that big a deal to us when we didn't meet them out in the world. So. <shrug> It was just like at home, with my mom's loud Italian/Irish family who'd dominate any gathering anyway with their hysterical shrieks, unless one of our native werewolves got drunk and smashed his car while re-parking it in our very own driveway, which naturally would take center stage as the primary household drama of the day.

But, for Bernard, it was different. He responded with an intensity that frightened us, like his nighttime roaming that'd find him downstairs rummaging through the closet in the spare bedroom, or opening the door to the garage, or, even weirder, just standing in a corner facing the wall, like some horror movie vision with ghosts and ghouls. His anger was scary-bad, and we had no idea where it came from, other than he was born to it, and that's just the way it was. My oldest brother played the all-knowing diplomat who'd work a room like a seasoned politician using his special blend of phony charm, my youngest brother played the spoiled brat for all it was worth, I simply stood up and fought back, while Bernie continued to struggle with a response to it, like the schoolwork that so often evaded him.

We'd have impromptu boxing sessions in the backyard, so we'd develop the confidence to fight back if we were attacked, but given our father's background, his sparring sessions were dubious at best. He told us he "studied" at the famous Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, a well-known boxing studio in the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason%27s_Gym), but just like our most troubled brother, he could turn on you, too, by taking pleasure in besting us as children, that he defended while laughing. "Well, I might not be able to 'beat' you for much longer", which is an odd thing to say to a young girl and her smaller brothers, when he was fully grown at 6 ft. He liked to lord it over us by looming angrily above our heads and breathing heavily like a bull ready to charge. It was that bizarre.

If we dared to ask them how they problem-solved bad situations as children, they would give us showbiz answers like "Oh, I was so funny I just joked my way out of it", which, if you've ever met my mother, you'd immediately know is total bullshit. It was the same with my dad. He'd lie just like my mom: because it was raining, or sunny, or the sun came up. No good reason for it. Ever. And so, just like every other facet of our lives, we had to think our own way out of it, because if we had the audacity to speak up, we'd be punished for it by my dad, who made a scene at school with a teacher who was much smaller than him, with violent curses and threats. After he pulled that trick at elementary school with Bernard's teacher (who just happened to have a French-Canadian last name, and be several feet shorter), parents were forbidden from our lives, which is what they wanted anyway.

We were just as stressed out at school as my middle brother, but because my father favored him above us —he wanted to flatter himself into feeling like they were the same type of person, which my brother chafed at all the time, because he knows my dad, and any comparisons are not favorable to him—we were left to figure it out on our own successfully, which we did, with some of us better at it than others (ahem, that's me). Whereas their name-calling became our playground opportunity to throw a few good curse words around, Bernie would crumble under it. "Pretty boy! Pretty boy!" He was taunted by the less attractive boys for his blue eyes, long eyelashes, golden brown curls, and olive skin that tanned with just a hint of sun, making him a stand-out target for the uglier kids in his classes. 

I was a "nerd" who couldn't compete with the pampered Jewish girls and their expensive Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in the coveted dark wash that meant they were brand new from the mall and unworn by any other siblings in the house, while my mom might put out my brothers old Toughskin jeans from Sears and then shrug it off. "What?" She'd act offended. "You're 'lucky' to have any clothes at all! Jeans are jeans!" This, from a woman whose favorite color in the 70s was a "shit brown" made into long polyester skirts worn with clunky orthopedic shoes that made her resemble a nun, or a lesbian, or a lesbian nun. Take your pick. She'd blow it off as part of her "genius cred" that went with science, which meant she could be completely stupid about anything that wasn't under a microscope or in a Petri* dish.

Bernie, in comparison to us, always felt insecure. I could read, spell, write, speak, and draw brilliantly, while my oldest brother aced his grades and played sports. But Bernie just didn't fit into any niches at all. He had learning disabilities that made school torture for him, and the rather generic team sports at our American schools were lame. He'd try them and then abandon them all, like he was trying on clothes. After my father left home, we'd talk about applying to the colleges he was deathly afraid of, because he couldn't take the tests.  We talked about the Army, but during the height of Reagan's "Cold War" years, we were afraid he'd be drafted into some bullshit war with the Soviet Union, when, in truth, they starved behind their walls and killed each other off way quicker than we ever could, but that information came to us only after the Berlin Wall fell.

After a year in the freezing north of New York that can shake loose the heartiest of souls, he came home for good, to live at home with my mother while attending school, and that was the trick of it for him. He gave up on the skills he couldn't master to focus on the numbers that spoke to him in the only language he really understands, which allowed him to attend my father's Alma mater. Because of my father's identity/personality disorders, he's hell when you cross-over into whatever he feels is his area(s) of "expertise", though like any other life situation in our lives, I'm happy to report that my brother aced him with his experience, not that my father didn't try and best him by ruining it in comparison to his life experiences, which is always made to seem much harder than anyone around him, as part of the con job.

Not only did my brother graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting, he received an MBA in the same four years, something my father couldn't top as an accomplishment. And just like so much in our lives, the style of fighting we felt in our blood as children became the sport that you watch today in the UFC. How's that for winning? He's the most belted martial artist in our family, the strongest male sibling, and he can also count like a muthafucka. The universe cares about us, man. Really. Like, way more than our biological parents, yo! But not more than this here Acadian Métis mama. No. Not more than me. I love you more. I love you more than all of them.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_dish
 

Camp Out

The suggestion of any overnight venture with a bunch of insane (and gay) Girl Scouts was stomach-churning to me in the extreme, but me and my mom had already committed to being there, so we wanted to see it through. I was at the end of my rope with this clique, in the same way I practically decided overnight (to my rather detached and then suddenly overly-aggressive parents) that I would not pursue anorexia nervosa with a bitchy all-girl ballet troupe for a living, like, after the very first lesson, but they needed years to work out their overreaction to kids in tutus, which I understood, to a point. I'm really cute! This felt like that: I knew what was going on, but they needed "time to process it", which was our family's go-to phrase for mental disabilities and serious learning impairments.

Such is the way of life for the healthy children of sick parents, and, besides visits from my grandparents, I didn't know any other types of experiences at home, because all of my classmates and friends growing up had similar stories (or worse) to add as fuel to our group's fire. We hated our home lives, but children can only do so much, not that it stopped our parents from using us however they saw fit, which was poorly and often. My mom's neighbors in her current senior neighborhood are the exact same way: crazy angry city parents suffering from serious disorders who back up one another over, say, the health of any other type of human being on the planet, give or take a few acceptable life forms like their plants, because in "DivaLand", they must always come first, or abuse will surely follow.

"Yeah, Diane!" Ruth calls out to me working for my mother, like I always do. "That's what children are for!" And that's how they see it: they're sick (and now old, too) and we're not, so they will tap us until we crack, if we stick around, in between hours of free labor. Then, you co-dependently cycle through your circle to bleed other people dry, which doesn't work, because they're sick, too. So, it's back to me? NO! I'm so shocked! It's like a really bad play that's repeated over and over again, and any events or activities attached to them as a generation played out more or less the same, which made us tired of parenting them as children, which, as far as I can tell, is unique to Generation X. Nonetheless, they we were: at a horrible overnight with a fucked-up troop of gay Girl Scouts and their crazy butch "leader".

It was to be borne with as little drama as possible, but with manic depression flowing as freely as the soda that sustained these raging bitches, we were kinda doomed from the beginning. Not that I needed anymore confirmation about these types of things. Sigh...parenting is really hard in childhood, you know? I felt like I needed coffee with my mom and the other parents just to get through the night, and I don't need caffeine to remain aware mentally, which means I'm forced to undergo rigorous feats of endurance, yet again, that I did not need to repeat. My ethnic background and my home tribe of Acadian boys had pretty much set me up for country life, anyway. I didn't need these fucking chicks, and they hated that, too. Becoming overly attached is a sign of involvement in the "Mental Patient" world, and we knew how that play ended, too: badly. For you.

With this mindset of gritted teeth backed by true grit, it was simply a situation made to be borne out by me, however it happened, and I just hoped none of the country queers (and their pampered city parents) died or tried to kill each other throughout the madness that would surely ensue, because that's what madness does to people and their children, gay or not. The mothers were set up in a cabin, and my mom had already bitched about that to the Nth degree with her own act that spanned three curtain calls, because before she had MS as a convenient excuse to freak out, she used a hypothetical "bad back" and "pre-arthritic condition" that was possibly osteoarthritis (so interesting!) that she could deliver expertly when it was needed for her comfort, like sleeping on the wood floor of an old tent in a sleeping bag, like I did with the other children in the troop. But, not her. Oh, no.

She explained in great detail how she had several unique conditions that required special treatment, like a pad to sleep on and her own bed, which she got, while I wondered who would try to kill a girl first in the big tent at the camp. It wasn't long before I found out. There was movement along one side of the tent that sent the already-hysterical girls screaming like it was their big scene in a "Jason" movie, except it wasn't. It was probably a snake attracted to the lights they insisted in shining after "lights out", because of their night terrors, also a greatly understood part of the their tribal culture that was easily assimilated by their types of brains. Yes! Had to be it! I sighed, took a look, decided (what I already knew) that they weren't worth talking to, and then went to find my mom at her continued coffee klatch that was "hardship" in Diane-speak.

She decided that it was worth checking out, after she had abandoned me to sleep there on my own with those crazy bitches because the floor was "too hard", even though she had a stiff wood board installed beneath her mattress for firmness at home, with a gay little step-stool on her side of the bed, so she could get into her prized "antique" bed. I knew about it from every angle, because all of my young life I was forced to help her with everything, included flipping her orthopedic mattress, adjusting the wood slats under the bed, changing the sheets (of course), and adjusting the wood board. She had to have light-proof shades, the birds were also too noisy by her window, and she had a bevy of water-bottles, cold compresses, pills, special pillows, and other accoutrements attached to her bed-rest days that included hoarding piles of papers on my father's side of the bed that she would then dump onto the floor at night, until he finally forced her to go through it.

I didn't expect much courage from her, is what I mean to write to y'all. And she didn't disappoint me, as she played the "city mouse" frightened by the woods at night to a hilt. We talked it over as a group (sort of), and after my mom was also similarly reassured that they were bat-shit and overreacting to normal nighttime stimuli (like noises and movement) as a means of entertainment, she left after finally suggesting that maybe the boys from an overnighting Boy Scout troop were pranking them by pulling on the tent flaps, and that was it. Boys?! NOOO!!! "My mother specifically said I was not to interact with boys!" It sent a shiver of terror through the group that was way worse than a snake sighting, but I was psyched. I could use my flashlight to signal for help! Heck, it was better than having to go through the torture of picking an "outhouse buddy" with some chick in a full-on house bathrobe, metal mouth retainer, and bunny slippers. Fuck, man...where's my badge for that? None was forthcoming.

But, I'd made my point with Diane, and the next morning's pancake breakfast cinched the deal for me, forever. We were done, and my mom had a tale of torture and abuse that included severe back pain with lots of <insert her brand of medicine here>, and a total lack of sleep because the mattress was "lumpy". I got closure, and an end to enforced gay girl groups for me, for the rest of my childhood. It was quiet, I cried a lot in my room from the sheer loneliness and isolation of it, but at least I could read, and since that was considered an "educational pursuit" by my upwardly-mobile parents, they couldn't be seen as ripping that away from me, under my grandparents watch. All I had to do now was make it into college. And wait. There was always a lot of that to spare. Just hunker down, and wait it out.

Talent Show

By now, you should know as my frequent readers that my parents hit "The Village" and Broadway in the city for many years before me and my brothers were even born, so if you think you can top them in "art fag", don't. Don't even try it with them, or with me, for that matter. They were wayyy gayer with it, first. Trust, on that. I should know, because they bought the soundtrack albums with overly histrionic solos more fit for bad vocal stylings on pop culture "talent" shows than real singers with authentic chops. We've been over this before: it's that aggressive up-and-down warbling that goes "ohahoohhhoonnnannndohhhahhhon" long after it should have ended, popping "pop tart" vocal chords to give us instant headaches, but my parents are suckers for it, just like y'all with poorer musical tastes than me.

I should know, because I took serious music classes in college that developed my innately good interest in real sound by authentic musicians, and then I worked in a professional setting with it, which meant I took my act on the road and then walked it around town for many years. I know "good" from "bad" on an expert level, and that's that. I also know totally bullshit "diva" attitudes, because my version of the manic-depressive bulimic bipolar bisexual cheerleader stereotype was my ballet teacher in New City growing up, and she never failed to remind us to diet as children until it hurt, so we could have the dubious privilege of spending our formative years training among other gay kids with body image issues who wanted purely homocentric bitchiness in their social circles for many years, ones that self-patrolled one another by over-scrutinizing their bodies for overtly heterosexual body traits (like fully-developed breast tissue brought about by years of healthy eating combined with a great attitude), which meant, just like with the gay girl scouts, that I was utterly excluded from it as a peer group. Forever.

And just like I wrote before, I was totally fucking fine with that. Not my scene. And so, when those trite bitches in the gay troop decided that our horrible camp out should include gay skits, I knew it would suck, because none of them had the actual chops to go with artistry that mark the master's mindset from the amateur, even in childhood. Like the rest of my time with them, I knew beforehand that each and every thing they would do would suck badly, combined with my lack of control as a child with the brain of a ferociously bright werewolf who just knows exactly what will happen beforehand, and then it does, and I have to watch you do it. And then it happens. 

This skit bullshit with the gay troop was like that. I was so horrified by the idea, that I had to walk around crying in the dark for awhile before I could even contemplate telling my mom what I already knew: these bitches are crazy. It was, again, one of the worst experiences of my life and my childhood. As I walked around dark woods that are native to me, I had never felt so out of my skin among nature in my entire life, and I knew that could only mean one thing: a really bad ending. Not for me, but for all of you, and I was powerless to stop it. I knew it was motivated by their bad taste, and I knew it was just another way to exclude me from it. I finally worked up the nerve to interrupt my mom having a bitchy coffee klatch with the other moms over-nighting at the campsite, and just like I predicted, she sucked, too.

She pushed me away, telling me that I had to do it for some stupid fucking badge I didn't need for me and my life, and that I had to seek out a group, ask if I could join them, and then do their stupid fucking skit poorly. If you're not a master artist, it's hard to explain how bad hiding your skills hurt, because you can physically feel it in your body, forced to imitate other brains that are much worse than yours, like pretending to be dumb, deaf, sick, and blind. I was, quite simply, stuck on a sinking ship, and I was the only one aware of what was actually happening. I took my time walking around the campsite again, to put off talking to some crazy fucking butch who would either die early or kill herself, and every nerve-ending in my body was attuned to it.

Finally, after lurking around the edges of one group, letting them gossip about me and my presence at the edges of their exclusionary circle, I made an approach upon a group of girls I'd spent some time observing from a safe distance. It hurt all over, but I'm forced into abusive situations all the time, and for me, it wasn't even the first few times, nor the last. I went up to a nasty-tempered, chubby, moon-faced girl with short hair, and made a move at her, by way of making conversation. They were already in stupid stage outfits, and she'd pushed a pillow and a pan under her flannel shirt, giving herself freckles and blacked-out teeth, presumably to play a male redneck role in some skit that both degraded the country and herself, while we were in the wilderness showcasing our outdoors skills. It was bafflingly bad.

"Hey!" I mustered up as much false confidence as I could muster, by pushing my way through the group to join their conversation made into a tight circle. "What's this?" I knocked on her padded stomach area to hear the hollow sound of a cooking pan, and she immediately bristled by jumping down my throat too quickly, which gave away her hand to the rest of the group gathered around. "G-d, Marie!" She whined, way too loudly. "How would you like someone coming up to you and punching you in the stomach?" Uh, good point, toothless queer kid. I guess I wouldn't like it, so fair enough. Anyway, I told them I was being forced by the parents to join their skit by reason of insanity, and it won enough support among them as a group that I was allowed to join, by the other girls. But I'd made my point, and for that reason alone, the rest of the night passed in a blur that I could now tolerate. 

It sent them a very clear and distinct message in "healthy hetero female", which is my primary language: mess with me, queer kid, and I can hit harder than any girl you've never met before, gay, straight, or otherwise. In my culture, we are that brave and strong as a tribe, and the very first people to hit me were my own adult parents, and in the "right" mood that was way wrong, they may or may not pull their punches directed at me, even as a child. After them? My bigger, stronger brothers hurt me next. Around the fire, as I sat on a log watching the other kids perform, I distinctly remember flashing white teeth all around the fire, because in my heart, I knew I just won the biggest bravery award we have as a tribe, bitch or no butch. It didn't matter. I won. The rest of the night passed by smoothly for me, and I went to sleep in a group tent without further incident, because those bitches chose another target to prank during their manic night, fueled on sugar snacks they hid away in their camping gear. But, not me. No, not me. I actually slept a rather decent night's sleep, in comparison. Smoke that, c#nt.

http://nativequotesandbrilliance.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-test-of-bravery

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

Pancake Breakfast

In addition to the pain of being the token "hetero" at any gay girl scout meeting (as well as many design groups in the city, as an adult), I also hated everything they did as an activity, because I had pretty much learned it already on my own, or with my brothers and my dad's boy scout troop, and it was all the cool stuff like making fires, swamping out canoes, basic CPR, hiking, and making fires. Done. Why did I have to do it again with these chicks? They were horrible. My mom was also invited along for girl scouting, and she took the opportunity to join this gay movement with a gusto that frightened me in its bitchiness. As the only straight kid, it meant that almost every conversation excluded me, plus I didn't have the right hair length (too long, curly, and feminine) to make it plausible, even as afterschool banter with these queer kids.

It was excruciating, but because my mom had felt excluded from our boy scouting excursions that we loved as a family, she clung to the all-gay girl group like a pit bull biting down on its prey with its jaws locked. Finally, as a mom, this was her métier: a bunch of short-haired, gender-challenged bitches who worked on becoming better fucking bitches like it was the only badge in the book. It was pure hell for me, and it went on for far too long. Because my mom thrilled with this same-sex "be-in" like we were beret-wearing hipsters listening to jazz music at a smoky club in the Village (except that would have been infinitely better for me as an experience), I was also forced to go to their gay day camp (run by another large butch female), and overnight trips that made me cry bitterly. 

The idea of it was so repulsive to me, because I knew what waited for me there: more hazing and brutal abuse, with the continued betrayal of a mother who liked gay kids way better than her own straight daughter, at times. I went on one camping trip with them, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life, in cruel contrast to the great outdoor experiences I had with my brothers and their friends, led by my dad in our childhood, and then on our own. We had barely made it through the night, when my mom (finally) and I decided it was enough. We conferred via a brief tête-à-tête by the morning campfire, sullenly cooking breakfast with wet wood that blew thick smoke in every direction. "Yeah", my mom finally agreed, "there's something really wrong with Chris (the troop leader). We should quit. Never again." Yes! Finally! Sanity had returned to my usually savvy New Yawk mutha. You're back on the right team!

Because of this joyous news, I moved closer to my mama as we tried to salvage pancakes over a poorly made fire that would flavor anything we made with charred wet wood, not anything like the gourmet "smoking" techniques you see on t.v. cooking shows. "This sucks", my mom declared, and I was overjoyed. Never again. I'd never have to see these fucking cruel bitches again on my free time, outside of the nasty jeering they performed for each other as they passed us by in the hallway. We were finally out of this hellish scene! They were so fucking crazy that everything we did sucked, which only pissed off their butch leader even more, as she saw her troop spinning out of control with lowered attendance for each passing weekly meeting, because of her incompetence.

I leaned against my once-again pretty mama as we whispered back and forth over the campfire. Sensing a disturbance in the wicked dark forces, the angry butch had, just moments before, pulled back a tent flap in anguish, as her little spies reported back to her about my breakfast badge that went up in flames with the poorly made fire and soggy pancakes. Sabotage, like ballet, is a big part of the bitchy gay world, and each passing second confirmed what I had pretty much known since birth: I do not belong here, and in case I ever forgot that fact—with momentary lapse of politeness and genuine conversation that's "normal" for Rockland County—they snapped back at me way harder than was necessary, because that's what being a bipolar gay scout troop is all about, like cheerleading and reality t.v. shows.

"Mom", I said to her quietly, "can you flip these pancakes for me? I have smoke in my eyes," at the exact same time as one big looming butch stood over us aggressively, who had also passed the night poorly, like we all had. And it was true. The smoke stung my eyes so badly that they watered and reddened badly. It really fucking hurt. But, seeing this tender scene between an actual mother and her biological daughter was more than this bitch could take. She snapped out, screaming and yelling at us, with her eyes bulging and her hands balled into fists. "THERE ARE NO 'MOTHERS' IN THE WILDERNESS!!" She jeered down at us hunched over the fire. My mom, not to be bested in "bitch-speak" by anyone (she's from the Bronx, and they made it famous), said back to her, "That's not true, Chris. We saw a mother bear with her cub, like, yesterday, right near this campsite." And that was true, too. 

She hated us even more for having the right facts. "That's not what 'scouting' is all about! You have to 'pretend' she's not your mother to earn this badge!" Yeah, fuck you, lady. I'm, like, ten years old and scared. Anyway, I choose my mom and my family, you fucking freak. And that was it. "I don't care!" Fuck this, bitch. I threw down the spatula, and walked away from the campsite to pack up my gear. Lady— or whatever the fuck you think you are—you can take your fucking gay girl scout troop and shove it, and just like that, I was done. So was my mom. The spell over her was finally broken, and I had my real mom back. That was the best thing out of all of it. I got my family back. Shove that, butch! No badge in the world can cover "loyalty", when it comes to blood bonds. We'll always win.

Scouts Honor

My dad was the Scoutmaster for my bro's Boy Scout troop growing up, and it was awesome. We did really fun things like canoeing, wilderness hiking, and history tours that became treasure hunts to find the most building markers in Philadelphia at nighttime, which kind of felt like that t.v. show "Sleepy Hollow". I learned about camping (always pack extra white socks for makeshift bandages, and triple-wrap matchbooks in foil and plastic for waterproofing), orienteering (moss almost always grows on the north side of a tree, but always carry a working compass anyway), reading trails and the landscape, but I mostly knew that anyway. I was the best scout my dad ever had, until I joined "The Brownies" and then "The Girl Scouts".

Then, the pace slowed to a crawl, and there were no boys around. At all. There were absolutely no menfolk or boys around anymore; just a really "butch" troop leader who'd adopted two kids with "her" "husband", which was jarring to me outside of a girls-only softball practice that I did not attend outside of school hours. Ya dig? Country queers were deeply closeted back in the day, but we knew who was who anyway because we knew "gay", even as very young children. For instance, at Chestnut Grove elementary school in New City, his name was Patrick, and he was (is) a very nice, quiet, devoutly Catholic Irish-American boy with a blue pen type of birthmark. In junior high, his name was "Bryon", and he did funny things like foil bullies from pulling on his pants for wedgies and compose sonnets on the fly while pursuing an acting career in the city that he continued for years.

In high school, "the gay kid" was Pete and he's an awesome painter, albeit with a lifelong appreciation of goth music and/or the lifestyle, but I digress. We're talking about lesbians. In our school, her name was Gina, and she was famously found in bed with her "best friend"—a petite, highly-freckled Irish-American girl one grade behind her—by her mom the summer before we all left for college. Unlike the average suburban "sports dyke" though, Gina was (and is) the real deal: an all-star athlete who attended college on a basketball scholarship, not that it ended there. She played almost every sport that we had a team for, like volleyball, track and field, baseball, swimming, etc. So, we knew "gay" and we knew the real deal, too, not just the awkward "closet case" lurking around doing vaguely "faggy" stuff. We were "out" with each other about who were were, because we were all we had back then as a generation.

Still, the crazy dykes in my troop surpassed even my sophisticated New York understanding of gay culture. They were fucking horrible. They were cliquish to the extreme and insane, and instead of feeling ashamed about it, they reveled in their loud queerness like the assholes they were. My mom loved it. Unlike, say, dancing or art, she could excel in this. My mom remains one of the bitchiest gossips I have ever met in my life, and she's also kind of an "art fag", too. She loved the little cliques she could giggle with like a kid, over weird shit like different colored strings that were made into bad crafts no one really likes. That's a fucking badge for chicks in this troop?! The good sportsmanship of my father and my brothers had wrecked me on this gay girl experience, and nothing less as a scout would do.

I made it through Brownies easily because I really liked the illustrations that came with the handbook for me to read, plus my friends were part of that troop, but once the local "closet case" took over, she upped up the manic energy a few gay cheerleader notches, and I couldn't take it anymore. My mom immediately bonded and then sided with the gay girls and their dykey troop leader with the crew cut, to laugh about me behind my back and make fun of me, which is what she did at home with her sisters anyway, so why did I need to earn a badge in it? I really didn't. Plus, did I mention there were no boys? Like, no men at all, and that's hell for a straight girl, man-ladies. Turns out that hell for a totally heterosexual woman is a bunch of bitchy, bipolar, deeply closeted queers in a homocentric Girl Scout troop in the 'burbs, with no room for escape. Buckle up, boys. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

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