WUTR: Utica/Rome

Me and my best friend had way more than altitude to adjust to, deep in the remote mountains of upstate New York. Before the Internet and cell phones, we had a pay phone on the first floor that we shared with an entire dorm and a television in the common room, also on the first floor. We'd already broken a lot of rules in the dorm and around campus, the least of which was having a hot plate in our room for heating up cans of soup or making box mac and cheese, in direct violation of the dorm's fire code. There were no microwave dinners, no cable TVs, no personal computers, and no anxious "helicopter parents" circling overhead. We were free.

Our relative isolation from the rest of the world created a bubble for young minds to thrive, especially in exploration of the past through our art history and history textbooks. It didn't really matter what day or time it was, because we lived through our studies, anyway. The allure of being out of touch in a cool way has trapped many a hippie perpetually in college towns, like the demon from the movie 'Krampus' captures souls stuck in so many snow globes sitting on its shelf. There was something eerily dead about going to the same bar forever, dating the same tie-dyed wearing sophomore over and over again.

We'd shudder in the frigid evenings over the possibility of a similar fate, which propelled us past incredible odds to our respective educational careers: Karen from urban-based Yonkers, and me from the projects in Queens. Sometimes we wondered like 'The Talking Heads', "....how did we get here?", only to be brutally reminded of our commitment to our ideals by a six-hour bus ride through the frozen tundra of a nearly deserted landscape. In the overheated dorm rooms of our engaged minds, we always left a window open to catch the coldness of the crisp, clear mountain air.

After a night of Old Milwaukee and weak pot, we slunk down to the first floor to watch TV on the sly, with our reputations preceding us. It was late, so we'd escaped the voracious Long Island crowd that were more supported in their daily habits by their similarly enabled parents. Used to the abuse that comes with shared family spaces, we sank into the old, sunken couch with a sigh of relief, in a mostly dark room that was empty of other kids. Finally! We had the TV to ourselves, without the petty power plays or bitchy stand-offs that happened among the factions of hardcore viewers in the dorm with time and madness on their sides. Kids would plot TV "takeovers" in the cafeteria with their dorm-mates by shouting down anyone who objected to their "Must See TV" during coveted time slots.

But, like two weary, single moms at the end of yet another tough day, we just wanted to put up our feet and relax without making a highly charged political statement about how spoiled and compulsive we weren't. We'd had enough of that growing up. So, one late night found us turning the dial on the TV unmolested by cries of outrage, to catch Letterman or maybe a "Honeymooners" rerun. Didn't really matter. New York City channels usually showed black-and-white classics or freaky monster movies for the overnight crowd working the night shift at the precinct or in the ER; great, working-class stuff.

We'd gotten to the right point of mellow before bedtime when catastrophe struck. We'd lost the signal! Some old movie started playing, then cut out to a screen full of static. What the...? We were left to spend the rest of the night in wondering paranoia. Had the Russians attacked? Was it nuclear war? A media blackout based on alien invasion? What? WHAT? WHAT?! What the fuck just happened? We'd adjusted the rabbit ears, unplugged and replugged the set, banged on the side of it until horizontal lines shimmied across the tube; no such luck. Our electronic babysitter was dead. It was humbling to our superior senses of self, as well-adjusted freshmen.

The next morning in the cafeteria, we immediately told our friends the bad news. Someone had to approach the Residence Hall Director with the creepy molester 'stache about buying a new TV ("dude, we should totally draw straws to see who does it"), because the old one had just cut out. Huh? What are you guys talking about? Our friend from Buffalo was a blue collar girl used to working the early morning shift at the local convenient store, so she'd already been up to catch "her programs" at six a.m., and the set was working just fine. What'd you two do?

Nothing! We protested. We did absolutely nothing but turn the thing on and sit down. Must've been a signal drop, because we were watching some old movie and then the fuzz came on. Wait a minute...our friend from Syracuse asked us around what time. Oh, we didn't know. It was late. Letterman had been on, then some war movie started with this big flag flying and the National Anthem playing...no, wait, dude! Probably a baseball movie, hence the music....yeah, that was it. Totally.

Our upstate friends erupted into hysterical shrieks of laughter, crying at the cafeteria table, clutching themselves and each other. Me and Karen just looked at each other. Now what? <shoulder shrugs> We were called "Abbott and Costello" behind our backs by some of the kids, because she's a big girl and I was a beanpole. Sometimes, we were funny without even trying. Okay...mind letting us in on the joke? Finally, good ole Tracey told us the truth, and it was so much weirder than The Cold War or the end of the world. "No, you guys." Hahaahaa! "Lemme tell 'em!" What? WHAT?

"That wasn't a movie. That was the station signing off for the night." Crickets. I looked at my friend again and shook my head. I had nothing. We turned back to them. What do you mean? They, in turn, looked just as baffled. A sign-off! The station "signed off" for the night! What are you talking about?! Finally, Lisa from Rome kicked in, "Guys! GUYS! That means no more TV!" No. More. TV. What is this strange Bizarro universe? "That's it! The TV goes off the air until morning." Holy....what frigid level of hell is this?! We struggled to assimilate a place with no late night take-out, or Ralph Kramden banter with Alice. 

Suddenly, two hip girls from the 'burbs realized how far from home they were, and then our real education began. "Humbled" wasn't exactly the word for how we felt. We were almost completely cut off from the outside world, and we were alone in it. After that, we had a new nickname around campus. 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' had officially arrived, and it was massive in its scope. Like, totally, dude. And dudettes! It was the start of a whole new era.

Telenovela

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

My grandfather practiced his Spanish by watching Univision (our Spanish-language channel here in New York) telenovelas, with his drugstore black-rimmed glasses and a small Spanish-to-English dictionary in hand for quick translations, sitting way too close to the t.v. with the sound blasting. It was great fun for us to see him watching his daily shows, too, because he could be such a tough Mick from the city at times, tempered as it was by his consideration for others and his innate sweetness. He wasn't just learning for the heck of it, either, though with his cool old-time vaudeville impersonations and great accents, his flair for language and communication was proof enough that he'd kissed "The Blarney Stone" probably more than once.

No, he did it because his older brother, my Uncle Jack, married a Colombian woman after his divorce, my Aunt Yolanda; a tall woman with a naturally majestic presence indicative of a native high-born to a good family from the mountains outside of Bogota. And it didn't stop there. My grandparents took a few trips to see them after they relocated to Colombia, once my uncle retired from his successful business that found him financially independent. They had two beautiful little boys I remember holding and changing at our house, as a little girl: Juan y Francis, with their classic mestizo coloring of olive skin, light eyes, and lush brown curls. Irish paired well with Colombian!

It was important to my grandfather that his brother's family feel comfortable in his home, and it was important to me, too. As guests, they could curse telling stories and smoke in my mother's house (my dad had to go outside or in the garage to smoke), while I refilled their glasses and emptied out the big glass ashtray we used for parties and holidays. Francis had fallen asleep, so me and my aunt took him into my parent's bedroom for a nap, using their pillows to make a barrier on either side of him so he wouldn't roll off the bed. I was so nervous about the baby that I kept going in to check on him, with their laughter following me down the hallway. "Is he still there?"

He was, and they were charmed by my youthful inexperience with newborns. "Oh, he'll sleep for hours not moving, Marie. He's fine!" Uh, you don't know that! My own parents weren't exactly careful with kids, and my uncle drank a lot more than I was used to with my more even-keeled grandfather. Still, they were raucous and fun, and we loved having a South American branch to our family tree that we'd describe as one big carnival tent for times when were we feeling less generous. Before they arrived at my parent's house, we went over simple phrases and basic sayings so we could greet them from the top of the stairs as they came through the front door. 

"I want to be able to greet my brother's family properly when I see them", my grandfather nervously explained to me again while we practiced. My grandparents always felt insecure about their lack of a formal education, because they had to leave school to earn money for their families as children. I could relate. I wanted to make a good impression, too, because in our households, family always came first. You did great, grandpa. You really did. It was just perfect.

para mi tía Yolanda

Slackers

All of my early life, I was told that I was sloppy, lazy, careless, and a pig, without actually being any of those things. The name-calling was used by my parents to hide their real agenda: using children as a workforce to make their lives easier. It was simple to them. Why else were we born? I was talking to my friend Katy today (while getting a haircut from her) about wild American politics, because the Russia she's from is so very different from our world here. But, times do change. We no longer allow children to get work permits from their elementary school principals for a paper route like they did when I was a kid, nor do we ask children to bear adult economic burdens by letting them leave school, like my grandparents had to do during The Great Depression.

But, my parents didn't have that to deal with. My mom had one (ONE!) part-time job during school wrapping Christmas presents at a department store (and that was only seasonal) because she complained bitterly about the homemade food my grandparents served her, so they told her to go out and get a job and go buy her own food. They were great cooks, by the way. My dad always complained about his terrible childhood and crippling poverty...with my nursing assistant grandmother and medallion-owning grandfather with his own taxi. 

It never added up to their self-described portraits of severe deprivation that they continually tried to sell us as a reason for their abuses against us, especially since I grew up with my maternal grandparents a mere 5-minute drive away. Sometimes the truth could be had for a 30 second phone conversation with them, too. Into this toxic cocktail came the Baby Boomer hangover about "free" everything without any work required (just like life!) that lasted for a couple of years in the 60s when they were teenage drop-outs, followed by my parents Silent Generation of rabid consumer fantasies fueled by massive t.v. consumption, where anything can be bought for a price including happiness, again, just like real life!

Any GenX'er wanting to make it had to give lip service to a bunch of half-baked stoner ideas from the late 60s, or subliminally gay "buddy" Western movies from the repressed and deeply closeted 50s, with neither being the culturally correct stance to have. People were totally full of shit all around us, every single day, parroting lines from t.v. commercials for dish soap like a long lost savior had just given them the winning golden ticket to a better life. It was fucking insane. No one told the truth anymore, because you couldn't make money that way.

Just like fashion magazines pushed the same vapid blond as their falsely generic ideal about "American" beauty so, too, did movies "toe the line" creatively by flattering fragile Baby Boomer egos with their hugely overblown senses of self (derived mostly commercially and economically), by rehashing the old media term "slacker" as a deliberate mischaracterization of GenerationX, the same way marijuana was demonized for being dark and mad. It had absolutely no resemblance to the blue collar roots that me and my friends had coming up from the city, with some of us from the projects, while working 3 part-time jobs just to get to school.

Of course, that's the plan behind any kind of serious bullying: make up a falsehood passed off as the truth, spread it around, and then sit back to enjoy the show. While some Ritalin-dosed muthafucka easily got funding and industry backing in the early 90s to make a really bad movie about arty assholes in Austin*, the rest  of us did what every real working artist does: we got a good night's sleep so we could wake up and go to work again, day after day after day. Not the exactly same picture as Hollywood's version, is it? It's not mine, either.


* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_(film)

Angel Fire

One of the best meals I've ever had in my life wasn't at a fancy "eatery" (please excuse the hipster term) in a trendy New York neighborhood full of outsiders looking to make it big in my hometown. It was at a modest cabin nestled quaintly in the gorgeous Sangre de Cristo valley of New Mexico. I'm not an avid skier, coming from a childhood home of much humbler and inexpensive past times, but during my active teenage years, me and my brothers (with a cousin or boyfriend/girlfriend or two, thrown into the mix) would fly out to spend our college breaks with my father and his wife at a lovely small-town resort they found in New Mexico that's within driving distance of their West Texas home.

Since it wasn't some pricey tourist dive*, our trips meant (as they always did growing up) that we had to socialize with the local provincials, with their very limited experiences that they had no trouble abusing children over, so that we could have maybe a day's worth of fun during our grueling college years to satisfy our parents arrangements. It was also weather and/or our pocketbook(s) permitting, or my father pulled his purse-strings to call the shots that favored him best. We were lucky to have a good time at all, is what I'm saying to you, and as my faithful working class readers, I know you understand the drill.

It's like a Florida vacation washed out by monsoon season with your ADD grand kid who freaks out during horrible airplane turbulence that lasts for hours and you spent $8000 for it (and you couldn't even afford that), which is why credit cards were invented: so you could try and escape the soul-crushing reality of your 9-5 office hell with the promise of a heavenly vacation that was never real like they are on t.v., except now you're in debt, in addition to having a really bad time. Oh, and there's all those work emails in varying tones of recrimination and panic to go through before Monday morning, too. You lucky asshole. Isn't it grand? Our family trips were like also that: a terrible guessing game of who will get drunk and be a complete piece of shit first, because every family vacation is like that. Every. Single. One.

The revelation of an uncomplicated good time at a family restaurant that served us at a long table with mismatched bowls we simply passed around to each other, without worry of this one's Epi-pen peanut-dust allergy or her Celiac Disease that's easily manageable with basic human speech skills that are devoid of the typical (and repetitive!) brain-dysfunctional Off-Broadway show, was utterly miraculous. A husband and wife team cooked the food they served to us in the cabin they lived in, as their only guests in attendance, away from the maddening tourist crowds. They served the best mashed potatoes I've ever had in my life, followed by the best peach cobbler I've ever had for dessert, too.

As we stood on their wood-plank porch watching the Milky Way stars emerge above the rural New Mexican mountains, free of sky-obscuring light pollution, after a spectacular pink and purple sunset we knew was divinely inspired, not even my dad's annoying toothpick habit that included repeatedly sucking his teeth loudly could spoil our mood. For an evening, just one evening, we'd been in heaven, and it was worth the price of the ticket. Believe you me. And you should. Some memories are so good, they withstand the test of time, like a love that's everlasting. Amen to you, on this holy All Saints Day in 2016. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Fire,_New_Mexico

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Fire_Resort

Moondance

I knew that my relationship with a certain young Mr. Mulvihill wouldn't last for very long because he was too proud of being inbred and ignorant as fuck, in addition to his poor diet, lack of appropriate sleep habits, and near-daily drinking habit to the point of intoxication, not to mention his utter lack of a well-rounded education. Irish-American boys had become my comfort food, best dated between long-term romances like, say, during a summertime spent mostly at the beach, to be dropped once the party turned violent, and in their battered homes, it always did. Someone else always started swinging first.

But, for a time, it was easy enough for me to see someone who lived a half an hour's drive away from me (with no traffic), so I could pursue my work life in the city. He didn't like the patterns of our weekend romance, but I honestly didn't have much more to offer someone who, while financially successful, remained a high school dropout. He was lost without his "homies", even as he hated being stuck in a co-dependent drunkfest with the old gang at Gerritsen Beach. He was a mechanically-inclined millionaire with a depressingly unfinished house in an insular pocket of Brooklyn, with horrible social skills and a peculiarly small worldview.

There wasn't anything I could do for him unless he did it himself, and with the fistfuls of cash he always had on hand, he seemed to think that he called all the shots with me, a world-class art director. It was delusional and arrogant, but money will do that to ya. He could run his yard and his demented crew, and that was about it. I'd never had a life that small, and the tension of our ill-fitted pairing showed early and quick. I broke up with him often, and the stress of being stalked and pursued yet again in my late 30s, after all my life experiences, made me angrier than ever.

I didn't want the whole juvenile "push-and-pull" dating thing; I never had. I wanted a hot love affair that lasts forever. I was the "queen of clean breaks" who bore her former suitors no ill will, but John had inroads with my family that made me worth pursuing in his mind, which also made me incredibly dangerous to someone as small-time as him. I could wreck him and his family forever with a call to the cops because of his past, and he knew it. Ultimately, after one night's big showdown, that was it. He knew better than to push his way into my life and my home, because he begged me afterward not to press charges.

His "ex" wife (not officially divorced though legally separated, as I later found out that he lied to me) had pursued domestic violence charges with a vengeance designed to chain him even tighter to her, and I was more than fine with that. I didn't need their brutal mind games in my life. Besides, the whole weird love triangle between him, his best friend, and his best friend's wife totally freaked me out, as did the strange semi-incestuous attachment his half-sister had to him. It was creepy and weird, and it felt like I was living someone else's life besides mine. I wanted out, and I got it by fighting for it.

That isn't to say we didn't ever get long. Obviously, a handsome Mick with a good job rolls off me the way water does a duck's back. It wasn't exactly unflattering, and cute New York boys have tons of confidence and charm, especially on a Friday night with their pockets full of pay for boozy food-and-drink extravagances. But, I was no ingenue. More than one girl has sat back and watched a parade of savvy boys try to play me like a fiddle. It takes a lot of finesse. Suffice to say, we had enough cultural commonalities that being with him could be as fun as getting drunk at a football game with a tailgate party full of cheeseburgers. You don't do it often, but once in awhile is fine, you know? I just didn't need season tickets to the show.

One of our last dates was one of our best, though with his crew's challenged perceptions about time, it went on for far too long. They tried to squeeze a good time out of me the way show-biz parents overbearingly set up their kids for child molestation: maybe they didn't mean to hurt me at first, but after their tenth beer or ninth hour, I could feel the suppressed rage of their intolerance towards me chafe like an ugly wool sweater that itched a red rash all over you. It was oppressive. The concert we went to see at Jones Beach* was like that.

They were a little too happy about seeing a show by a notoriously temperamental artist who'd walk off the stage in a huff if he felt the "vibe" from the audience wasn't right. I had that to look forward to, as well as the long car ride (with his sister and best friends, again) who still thought drinking and driving was fun, like being trapped in a time machine from the 70s or 80s. It was a bad feeling, especially with their young girl in the car, too. We got there way too early, which meant more boring hours in a parking lot trying to drink and have fun with people who don't know how to talk.

Finally, it was time to see the show. John was huffy with me in the seats because he hated one of my more mild college stories that I told to pass the time. His best friend defended me by saying that John had an experience like that, too, and he was more subdued after being caught in another lie. And then, just like that, the magic happened. Van Morrison sang one of his most famous songs about the moon in October skies just as a pair of swans entwined neck-in-neck swam by the stage in the surrounding Long Island Sound, sparkling moonlight and twinkling pianos and all. I wished that could have been our good summertime ending, but it was not. Still, I have one more memory to go along with one heck of a talented Irishman, diva or no. It was much appreciated, lad. Ta!




* http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/66660.html

The Tank

Being poor as a teenager in an aspiring, upwardly-mobile "bedroom community" meant that country kids had to bum rides from their friends in the rural Rockland County of the 70s and 80s. People still hitchhiked their way across the USA, though me and my friends never had much luck with it. Cabs were slow to arrive from neighboring towns, and our unmarked country lanes were even harder to find, if the car even bothered to show up at all. We had one county minibus that went to the mall every couple of hours during the daytime, and that was it.

When my dad told us there wasn't any money for college after his divorce (after years of telling us that we had to go to school to get a job), a luxury like a used car was so far out of my reach that I knew better than to inquire about it to any of the adults around me. I should be grateful for food! I was "lucky" to be alive! It was always the same answer from our disordered parents, anyway: if we wanted something bad enough, we had to earn it for ourselves (unlike them), and if I couldn't get a job that paid me well enough to buy a used car, oh well. Them's the breaks, I guess. Tough luck, kid. Maybe get another job?

This, from pampered city folk who always upgraded their own cars, while we walked several miles to make up for the differences in their finances that they couldn't earn, to properly provide for children living far away from an easily accessible school or town. It was always our fault and our burden to bear alone, because well-meaning people who asked after our well-being or expressed their concerns about us were harassed or shut out of our lives, forever. Our parents knew how to maintain a tightly controlled circle of abuse and fear around us, to keep away the good (while telling us it was to protect us) so they could get ahead at our expense, because they saw children as disposable and/or replaceable items in their commercially-fueled halcyon fantasies about "suburban living" from 50s-era t.v. shows. 

Because we had to, we figured out often insanely difficult transporation situations, as one of the most mobile and independent generations of children to be raised in America since The Great Depression. By senior year of high school, my best friend Steve drove me to school almost every morning and back home. If he was having car troubles and/or "crazy mama" problems, my other best friend Karen would pick me up and drop me off at home, though that was much less frequent. She worked a lot of hours. Both of them worked in the town of New City that they lived close to. Karen worked at a drug store (both before and after college) and Steve ws a check-out clerk at the grocery store. 

We all came from rough homes, so there wasn't anything leftover to go around in our crowd. Karen's parents were chain-smoking drunks, and Steve hadn't seen his dad for many years. I don't know if he even remembered his father, because he took off one day to leave them boys alone with one seriously crazy Jewish mother struggling to pay a big mortgage and hold onto her remaining sanity. But, we got by, and we all got into college despite the abuse. Because we had it more or less the same at home, it made hardship conversations easy for us to have. Needing a ride might be the least of our problems, on any given afternoon.

In between the struggle to survive, we managed to have some really good times, albeit simply country pleasures like riding around the surrounding hillsides with the windows open and our hands out of the car to feel the cool passing breezes, something that had been taboo for us during our childhoods. We had Clarkstown South H.S. gatherings in the parking lot of Rockland Lake, and after a few beers, Karen might let me ride on the hood of her car in another test of courage that had us in a game of chicken: more speed or hang on for dear life? 

We'd skip school to go sailing on the hood of her car in circles around the parking lot, splashing through puddles of rain that'd collected during school hours, now glowing like liquid gold in the fading light of another autumn day. That dang thing was as ugly as sin and covered almost entirely in a dull flat primer for whenever she saved enough money for a new paint job, but, until then, it just didn't matter what it looked like. That car got us to school and back, and really, at the time, what more could we ask for? Though "The Grey Beast" has surely been in Car Heaven for quite some time now, I can't help but feel grateful for it, especially during these days filled with schoolkids walking home from school amid the slanting rays of a beautiful October sun. Thanks, mate.

http://www.nynjtc.org/park/rockland-lake-state-park

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

Rock Ptarmigan

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

Hippies living in Oneonta were largely comprised of two parts: the arrogantly rich "Trustafarian" from Long Island (kids with trust funds who "slummed it" just for college), and the meeker "peace-punk" of upstate New York. Neither camp liked me very much, as someone who could not be brainwashed by exposure and near-constant repetition of "The Grateful Dead", but I could care less. They liked to have fun more than anything, and in my quest for the perfect good time, they came closest to the concept I had in mind.

Their group centered around a wealthy hippie named "Bobby" from Long Island, whose mom sent him Italian-American food by the frozen trayful every few weeks or so. Because my college boyfriend was housemates with him one year, I was obliged to attend a few of his "Monoke-ass" events: a party game made out of smoking pot, playing the board game Monopoly, and eating his mama's cooking. As much as I loved lasagna, I had an Italian-American mother (and grandmother) of my very own, and she had no big problems with making food, outside of her willingness to do so.

I always felt like an interloper around them, and judging by the nasty looks they threw my way, I could tell they knew I didn't belong to their group, either. Cults are sensitive like that. Even slight deviations from their strict set of "norms" would find you greeted with a chilly reception, standing outside of their group looking at them from a more comfortable distance, which was fine for an Acadian girl like me. They were, uh, much less receptive to the werewolf cold that I withstood wearing my brother's old flannel shirts. I was also wayyyy too beautiful for them to handle gracefully, and I knew that, too.

That's where the more mellow upstaters came into play. They tempered the aggressive ethnicity of the downstate hippies with their more laid-back country vibe, since this was their "neck of the woods". They were more familiar with concepts like "Canada" and "Nova Scotia", making it slightly easier for me to attend their events without the rigorous hazing that went with the Jewish and Italian girls from L.I. looking to play sexy in rich hippie garb. I didn't even know there was a competition going on. Me and Karen just didn't want to die. Like I wrote before, no one gave two fucks about ethnic working-class girls like us. We were on our own, and no group would have us, which suited our independence well. Sink or swim. That was our home shore we always washed up on.

But I understood their need to belong. They wouldn't have made it, otherwise, and perhaps that's why their envy was directed at me whenever I was around. Anyway, I've never been a diva or an "attention whore", so staying in the background was fine by me. I really didn't need another spotlight to perform under. My class crits gave me more than enough time to hone my voice. I certainly didn't need the phony pressures of a pseudo-friendly social scene to boost my ego. I wanted to survive. And so, when the upstate group joined forces with the downstaters, we all benefited from their creative merger, in the form of a groovy rock band that played tunes anyone could enjoy and dance to.

It was the last ingredient we needed for our perfect party cocktail, catapulting our parties to instant fame, like all of our other antics. We now had a really good house band that would play for beer and pot. Done and done. Bobby played the drums, and they found a guy named "Tony" to be their lead singer. He wasn't particularly good-looking or charismatic, but it didn't matter. We always had girls at our party for him to flirt with and/or hookup with. They were kinda skanky to my crowd, what with the herpes that spread through their group like wildfire (in the guise of their "sexual freedom"), so we were fine at not being included in their events as party planners.

We could drink and dance as much as we wanted to, without having to clean up afterward. Me and Karen grew up emptying other people's ashtrays and rinsing out sour-smelling beer cans. Uh, not invited to their "private" practice sessions, too? High five! It ain't easy bein' a single teenage parent, so any night off we had to simply enjoy listening to music was always a good time to us, and with my bouncer boyfriend, no cover charge was even sweeter. Over time, their parties and our groups blended together anyway, as we jokingly changed the band's original "peace dove" hippie-bird name to the more fun and familiar choice of cool New York kids everywhere: Rock "Parmigiana". And we did. We rocked good music and good food like the authentic lifestyle to us that it is. Join us.

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.

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.