I had never been on a plane until I was 18 years old, and leaving home for the first time. I couldn't get far enough away from upstate New York, and was on my way to California with only a couple of bags and a few hundred dollars. I was terrified of flying, and clutched my stuffed monkey, falling asleep after taking the drowsy kind of Dramamine. I didn't like the noises, the claustrophobic feeling, the knowledge that a machine was holding me thousands of feet in the air, and could drop me at any time.
I was happy to get off the plane, once we landed in San Diego. I was never happy to get back on one. During the five years I lived in California, I flew home to New York twice a year to visit my family. Every time, I had to complete a checklist beforehand:
-must book a window seat
-must be sitting away from the wing
-must have ample supply of drowsy Dramamine
-must have Monkey
-must have calming CDs with my discman (in the vein of Sigur Ros)
I didn't care that I was hugging a stuffed monkey in public at the age of 21...22...I needed something to keep me from having a claustrophobic panic attack or a we're-going-to-crash freak out.
When I flew home on my one way ticket, thinking that I was moving back to my hometown only as a jumping off point to a new life with the boy that made me feel that I would never love anyone else again, I welcomed the end of my twice a year aerial travel. But when my dream of a perfect love collapsed and imploded shortly after my return, I felt stuck. Life clunked. Home didn't feel like home anymore.
A new romance lightened the weight upon me. He was nothing like anyone I had ever been with. He was the exact opposite of my last love in every way, and I welcomed the change. As much as it was refreshing and new, it was different than what I was used to. It wasn't movie screen romantic. It wasn't spontaneous. Most of the time, we just watched TV on his couch. I wanted more. I wanted something to make me feel like I was alive again, and that my hometown hadn't smothered me to death.
It was Spring. I had the day off, and he drove to my apartment to pick me up. We sat in his car, parked up the street from my building, at a loss of what to do. I looked up at the trees lining the street, blocking out the sky. I remembered how every time I flew home and looked down on Albany as we were landing, I was surprised at how bushy it was. Like broccoli. Green and lush in an overcrowded way that was nothing like airy, spaced out Los Angeles.
That day, I felt like someone was holding a pillow over my face. Like I was being held down, forced into a corner. Like someone heavy was sitting on my chest. I was restless and antsy, moving around in the passenger seat, wanting to escape. I told him I wanted to get out of town, but it was getting late and dark would come soon. We couldn't drive out to Thatcher Park, I didn't want to go to the movies and screw the mall! There was nothing we could do, nothing we could think of.
We sat there for what seemed like hours. I became more and more agitated as time passed, and I wanted him to come up with something. I wanted an adventure. I wanted air and movement. I needed to get out, out of my skin. He started the car, rolled down the windows. He said that where we were going was a surprise. I was intrigued. I was curious. What was he cooking up in that head of his? I could never really read him, couldn't figure him out. I'm not sure if I smiled. I didn't know what to expect.
We pulled up to Stuyvesant Plaza, one the many (many) strip malls in our town, and parked the car in front of Starbucks. “Calm down, this isn't where we're going. We're getting coffee first.” He knew me so well. How did he know me so well? Could he see inside my head? We got coffee and he paid for mine, as usual. It was dark when we got back in the car.
The drive wasn't long, and when he turned down a familiar road, I realized where we were. I saw tiny lights in the sky, and heard the whoosh of the air and exhaust. Was this really where we were going? He parked in front of a chain link fence, facing the runway. The planes landed and took off in front of us, like they were putting on a play. “This was the closest thing I could think of to escaping,” he said, and my heart danced. It was something I had never even thought of.
That night, the airport was exciting. That night, the planes were beautiful. Not scary, not bad. The one thing I was terrified of was staring me in the face, but this time I embraced it. The red and green and blue lights swooping through the air breathed into me; my lungs opened and my restlessness disappeared. Sitting in his car, I was free.
He held my hand over the console-something he had never done before. It felt like love. Was it love? The Foo Fighters song “Aurora” drifted out of the speakers and into my ears for the first time, and became the song that made me think of him and that night, always. It became the song that made me think of flying. It was the song that made me love to fly.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Peaked Out
“It's the Simpson family tradition-bring your kids to the bar,” my brother Andy said, as he held a picture of our cousin Amelia in his hands. She had to be 8 or 9 years old in it, wearing a man's baseball hat too big for her head, sitting on a barstool with a beer stein in front of her, most likely filled with a shirley temple. It was one of the many pictures being passed around at Christmas, another Simpson family tradition. He followed his statement up by saying something along the lines of “no wonder we're all fucked up alcoholics.”
And he's right. My uncle Mark went to rehab numerous times and ended up in the hospital because his liver shut down. My mother used to drive me home from family picnics on the wrong side of the road because she was so drunk, she thought it was funny. Every kid in our family had sat on a barstool before the age of 10. Bridal showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, graduation parties...they all took place in bars.
In high school, I went out on a date to see a rockabilly band play at a bar. As I sat down and looked around, I realized that I had been there before, as a child, and remembered playing games with Amelia to pass the time as our parents got wasted.
The first time I got drunk, I was 14. My mom let me have wine with dinner, and after a few glasses, I was acting so ridiculous that I made my little brother Adam cry. The year after that, my older brother Andy got married. He was so drunk by the time the ceremony began, that the justice of the peace had to say “repeat after me” twice. My uncle Mark knocked the wedding champagne flutes off the table, smashing them to bits. My mom's best friend kept bringing us pitchers of beer at the “kid's” table, and my boyfriend got so drunk, he vomited in the parking lot.
Growing up, I experimented with alcohol and drugs but for some reason, it never seemed to get out of hand. I never felt like I needed it. I didn't drink alone, I never bought drugs, and I was even able to stop smoking cigarettes cold turkey. When I moved away form my family and lived in California on my own, I began to realize that not only had I put 3,000 miles between my family, I had also put 3,000 miles between myself and the addiction that had infiltrated everything I had grown up with. I started to see myself as separate from them, separate from the alcoholism that seemed to be part of our gene pool.
And years later, it came to me. After dealing with a slew of drug and alcohol addicted boyfriends, I came to the amazing conclusion that I had beat my destiny. I wasn't addicted to anything. I could go without alcohol for as long as I wanted, drugs were never more than a social event, and I was damn proud that not even nicotine could bring me down. I was unaddicted. I had an unaddictive personality. It was amazing how I had turned out to be such the opposite of the rest of my relatives. Was I missing a chromosome? Did something freaky happen to me in zygote form? Or did I just observe the negative aspect of addiction for so long, that it has become completely unattractive. One thing I was sure of, was the fact that I didn't want to end up like Uncle Mark, who had only begun his life at the age of 43. Or my mother, who drinks a bottle of wine by herself every single night before bed. I was conscious that I wanted to be the opposite of all that. And for so long, I thought I was.
“Who killed Laura Palmer?” was the question upon everyone's lips in the late 80's, when David Lynch's television show Twin Peaks debuted on ABC. At the time, I was far too young to watch the show, and was most likely in bed by the time it came on.
But in 2007, The Twin Peaks Gold Edition Boxed Set was released, to the delight of all David Lynch fans, culminating the shows cult status. I had never seen the show, but knew that I would like it, being a fan of Lynch's movies, and a lover of all things weird and offbeat.
When the DVDs arrived from amazon.com, I dove in head first, excited to experience what so many of my friends were obsessed with. After watching the 2 hour pilot, I was hooked. Because I was sick at the time, I was able to stay planted on the couch, watching as many episodes as I could before the sun came up and my eyelids fell against my will.
I became immersed in the characters, in the little Washington town where a young girl was murdered, and in the mystery surrounding her, and all the people who were part of her life. I couldn't stop. Each episode left so many questions unanswered. I absolutely had to watch the next and the next and the next.
I started talking about nothing but Twin Peaks. I spoke of the characters as if they were real people. I fell for Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) and imagined myself marrying him. I pictured myself being great friends with Shelley Johnson, the waitress at the Double R Diner. And I was drawn to The Log Lady, and her cryptic introductions to each episode.
But this wasn't the first time. The girls from Sex and the City became my best friends, and I dreamed of becoming just like Carrie Bradshaw when I got a little older. And the Fisher family of Six Feet Under became a second family to me. When I finally finished the series, I cried. Not only because the last episode was heartbreaking, but because they were leaving me. For months afterward, I missed them. I had spent so much time with the characters, they ended up being closer to me than my real friends.
Twin Peaks was slightly different. It was a mystery. It made you think. There were so many twists and turns, so many interpretations and so many pieces of a puzzle that the viewer had to put together. And David Lynch made sure that the puzzle never really fit together perfectly.
The characters in Twin Peaks became real to me. So real, that I had nightmares about the evil spirit called BOB. I pictured him at the foot of my bed, just like he was in Laura's bedroom. For 3 days, I stayed up until sunrise, because I was too afraid to go to sleep at night. I hadn't been that scared in as long as I could remember.
I finished the entire show in the span of a week and a half. 32 hours of Twin Peaks. It had encompassed my whole world. And when I was done, I was hungry for more. I ordered the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer (as seen by Jennifer Lynch, David's daughter) and anxiously searched the internet for other things I could buy. I spent hours on ebay, bidding on the Twin Peaks magazine, Wrapped in Plastic, and the Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper (another book, created by Lynch).
When Laura's diary arrived, I read it in one sitting, a matter of a few hours, devouring every entry, putting the pieces I was reading, together with the show. When I was finished, I spent days online scouring websites that explained the unexplained, from symbolism that followed the entire story, to the theories behind the bizarre events that occurred throughout the time viewers spent in Twin Peaks. As though I was starving, I clicked on link upon link, consuming all I could...a glutton for information. What was the White Lodge? Or the Black Lodge? Why was Laura able to keep BOB from possessing her, but Agent Cooper was not? Who was The Man From Another Place? Were the woods outside of Twin Peaks the origin of the evil and terrible things that befell the citizens of Twin Peaks?
After Fire Walk With Me arrived, and I watched it, I felt unsatisfied. I wanted more. I ordered another book, this one written by David Lynch, about the fictional town of Twin Peaks and my fourth, a collection of critical essays on the show.
But just as I felt sad letting go of the Fisher family, I felt even worse about the end of Twin Peaks. There were so many cliffhangers in the final episode, because a third season was being planned, but the show was canceled before any further episodes came to fruition. It was unsettling to think of Agent Cooper being completely inhabited by BOB. Was he going to kill? Why was Laura saved by a guardian angel, and led to the White Lodge in Fire Walk With Me? Did everyone die in the bank explosion? My first reaction to my anxiety and depression about completing the show, was to start over and watch the entire thing again.
But I had regained my health, and had to catch up on my school work. I couldn't watch hours of TV until the sun came up. I had to go back to the real world. I had escaped to Twin Peaks, and had lived there for 2 weeks, but I couldn't stay there, hiding in the Road House or The Great Northern Hotel.
One word started to echo in my brain. Escape. Escape. I came to a frightening realization. Laura Palmer was my bottle of wine. I was avoiding my life just as Uncle Mark had. I was getting drunk on Twin Peaks.
The Simpson family tradition had found me after all. It had snuck in the back door, incognito. And by the time its disguise had fallen away, it was too late. I may be saving face, saving money, and preserving my liver, but I had the gene I thought I had avoided. I wasn't an anomaly after all. And the distance between me and my family closed in, bringing me home.
And he's right. My uncle Mark went to rehab numerous times and ended up in the hospital because his liver shut down. My mother used to drive me home from family picnics on the wrong side of the road because she was so drunk, she thought it was funny. Every kid in our family had sat on a barstool before the age of 10. Bridal showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, graduation parties...they all took place in bars.
In high school, I went out on a date to see a rockabilly band play at a bar. As I sat down and looked around, I realized that I had been there before, as a child, and remembered playing games with Amelia to pass the time as our parents got wasted.
The first time I got drunk, I was 14. My mom let me have wine with dinner, and after a few glasses, I was acting so ridiculous that I made my little brother Adam cry. The year after that, my older brother Andy got married. He was so drunk by the time the ceremony began, that the justice of the peace had to say “repeat after me” twice. My uncle Mark knocked the wedding champagne flutes off the table, smashing them to bits. My mom's best friend kept bringing us pitchers of beer at the “kid's” table, and my boyfriend got so drunk, he vomited in the parking lot.
Growing up, I experimented with alcohol and drugs but for some reason, it never seemed to get out of hand. I never felt like I needed it. I didn't drink alone, I never bought drugs, and I was even able to stop smoking cigarettes cold turkey. When I moved away form my family and lived in California on my own, I began to realize that not only had I put 3,000 miles between my family, I had also put 3,000 miles between myself and the addiction that had infiltrated everything I had grown up with. I started to see myself as separate from them, separate from the alcoholism that seemed to be part of our gene pool.
And years later, it came to me. After dealing with a slew of drug and alcohol addicted boyfriends, I came to the amazing conclusion that I had beat my destiny. I wasn't addicted to anything. I could go without alcohol for as long as I wanted, drugs were never more than a social event, and I was damn proud that not even nicotine could bring me down. I was unaddicted. I had an unaddictive personality. It was amazing how I had turned out to be such the opposite of the rest of my relatives. Was I missing a chromosome? Did something freaky happen to me in zygote form? Or did I just observe the negative aspect of addiction for so long, that it has become completely unattractive. One thing I was sure of, was the fact that I didn't want to end up like Uncle Mark, who had only begun his life at the age of 43. Or my mother, who drinks a bottle of wine by herself every single night before bed. I was conscious that I wanted to be the opposite of all that. And for so long, I thought I was.
“Who killed Laura Palmer?” was the question upon everyone's lips in the late 80's, when David Lynch's television show Twin Peaks debuted on ABC. At the time, I was far too young to watch the show, and was most likely in bed by the time it came on.
But in 2007, The Twin Peaks Gold Edition Boxed Set was released, to the delight of all David Lynch fans, culminating the shows cult status. I had never seen the show, but knew that I would like it, being a fan of Lynch's movies, and a lover of all things weird and offbeat.
When the DVDs arrived from amazon.com, I dove in head first, excited to experience what so many of my friends were obsessed with. After watching the 2 hour pilot, I was hooked. Because I was sick at the time, I was able to stay planted on the couch, watching as many episodes as I could before the sun came up and my eyelids fell against my will.
I became immersed in the characters, in the little Washington town where a young girl was murdered, and in the mystery surrounding her, and all the people who were part of her life. I couldn't stop. Each episode left so many questions unanswered. I absolutely had to watch the next and the next and the next.
I started talking about nothing but Twin Peaks. I spoke of the characters as if they were real people. I fell for Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) and imagined myself marrying him. I pictured myself being great friends with Shelley Johnson, the waitress at the Double R Diner. And I was drawn to The Log Lady, and her cryptic introductions to each episode.
But this wasn't the first time. The girls from Sex and the City became my best friends, and I dreamed of becoming just like Carrie Bradshaw when I got a little older. And the Fisher family of Six Feet Under became a second family to me. When I finally finished the series, I cried. Not only because the last episode was heartbreaking, but because they were leaving me. For months afterward, I missed them. I had spent so much time with the characters, they ended up being closer to me than my real friends.
Twin Peaks was slightly different. It was a mystery. It made you think. There were so many twists and turns, so many interpretations and so many pieces of a puzzle that the viewer had to put together. And David Lynch made sure that the puzzle never really fit together perfectly.
The characters in Twin Peaks became real to me. So real, that I had nightmares about the evil spirit called BOB. I pictured him at the foot of my bed, just like he was in Laura's bedroom. For 3 days, I stayed up until sunrise, because I was too afraid to go to sleep at night. I hadn't been that scared in as long as I could remember.
I finished the entire show in the span of a week and a half. 32 hours of Twin Peaks. It had encompassed my whole world. And when I was done, I was hungry for more. I ordered the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer (as seen by Jennifer Lynch, David's daughter) and anxiously searched the internet for other things I could buy. I spent hours on ebay, bidding on the Twin Peaks magazine, Wrapped in Plastic, and the Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper (another book, created by Lynch).
When Laura's diary arrived, I read it in one sitting, a matter of a few hours, devouring every entry, putting the pieces I was reading, together with the show. When I was finished, I spent days online scouring websites that explained the unexplained, from symbolism that followed the entire story, to the theories behind the bizarre events that occurred throughout the time viewers spent in Twin Peaks. As though I was starving, I clicked on link upon link, consuming all I could...a glutton for information. What was the White Lodge? Or the Black Lodge? Why was Laura able to keep BOB from possessing her, but Agent Cooper was not? Who was The Man From Another Place? Were the woods outside of Twin Peaks the origin of the evil and terrible things that befell the citizens of Twin Peaks?
After Fire Walk With Me arrived, and I watched it, I felt unsatisfied. I wanted more. I ordered another book, this one written by David Lynch, about the fictional town of Twin Peaks and my fourth, a collection of critical essays on the show.
But just as I felt sad letting go of the Fisher family, I felt even worse about the end of Twin Peaks. There were so many cliffhangers in the final episode, because a third season was being planned, but the show was canceled before any further episodes came to fruition. It was unsettling to think of Agent Cooper being completely inhabited by BOB. Was he going to kill? Why was Laura saved by a guardian angel, and led to the White Lodge in Fire Walk With Me? Did everyone die in the bank explosion? My first reaction to my anxiety and depression about completing the show, was to start over and watch the entire thing again.
But I had regained my health, and had to catch up on my school work. I couldn't watch hours of TV until the sun came up. I had to go back to the real world. I had escaped to Twin Peaks, and had lived there for 2 weeks, but I couldn't stay there, hiding in the Road House or The Great Northern Hotel.
One word started to echo in my brain. Escape. Escape. I came to a frightening realization. Laura Palmer was my bottle of wine. I was avoiding my life just as Uncle Mark had. I was getting drunk on Twin Peaks.
The Simpson family tradition had found me after all. It had snuck in the back door, incognito. And by the time its disguise had fallen away, it was too late. I may be saving face, saving money, and preserving my liver, but I had the gene I thought I had avoided. I wasn't an anomaly after all. And the distance between me and my family closed in, bringing me home.
Altamont
It was nearing the end of summer in upstate New York. August was upon us, breezes signaling the slow emergence of fall, teasing, begging for one last adventure. I was spending the month in Albany at Rich’s, after giving up on looking for a summer job sometime in July when I had realized that they were all taken and I was shit out of luck. I spent most of my days on his couch watching TV and eating way too much, while he worked at the local tattoo shop downtown.
On his days off, we tried to escape the small town monotony of Albany and its surrounding suburbs to more exotic places, like Thatcher Park for picnics and Indian Ladder Trails or Lake George for Frankenstein Wax Museums and excellent omelets at small cafes. We had just returned from some day-long excursion, but instead of our usual settling down to watch a movie and snack until our bellies burst, we decided to see if we could make the last day of the Altamont Fair. This was a big deal in upstate New York. Rich had been many times but I never had, and always wanted to. The fair came through every year around the same time, giving hick parents a place to drag their screaming mullet-headed children, and love ridden “city” couples to share caramel apples while holding hands.
The sun was already close to setting as we drove up to Altamont, which was 40 minutes away. I got excited as we arrived under the huge FAIR awning, and drove into the giant parking lot, which was really just a big muddy field, smelling of livestock.
Not long after we had walked around the grounds a bit, I began to get disappointed. Everything was wet from the rain earlier that day, and many of the rides were aimed at little kids, not little kids in the bodies of adults. We stopped to watch part of the Demolition Derby, which was so white trash I could not believe it actually existed in real life. A bunch of fully grown men and a few women, grasping giant plastic cups of cheap beer, sitting on bleachers watching rusted out shells of cars crash into each other in a muddy ring. It was depressing. We stood there long enough to see a car catch on fire, a highlight to me, who had wondered if the three fire trucks parked along side the ring were actually necessary (apparently they were, although I think one would have sufficed).
On our way to the fair, Rich had told me of his previous experiences there, one of which consisted if him going at the Freak Show, getting to see The Smallest Woman In The World and Snake Girl. This interested me because I had never been to a Freak Show and spending quite a bit of time that year watching the TV series Carnivale, I had become curious. Where did the Freaks come from? Were they happy that they were Freaks?
Rich told me that Snake Girl was fake and that it was just a normal girl’s head poking through the floor of a tank with a snake body painted on it. When he had seen her the last time, she talked to him and his friends. Regardless, it sounded freaky to me. But The Smallest Girl In The World was real, and she had sat there in her little box, watching TV while people paid to look at her, him being one of them.
So when we passed the sign for The Smallest Girl In The World, Rich turned to me and asked “Do you want to see her?” and of course I said yes. Rich paid a sketchy looking man 4 dollars for each of us, and he let us pass without saying a word. We walked towards a small wooden box on a pillar, looking almost like a giant birdhouse from the back, and as we rounded the corner, I realized that she was sitting in it. The Smallest Girl In The World was a foot away from my face, staring at me and looking annoyed. She was a tiny black woman, smaller than any little person I had ever seen before, counting real life and TV, and she was dressed in blue and white ruffly doll clothes. She did not have a TV this time. She just stared at us.
Before entering the tent, I had the impression that we would be far away from the actual girl, and that it would be somewhat like a zoo-the attraction in some sort of tank, like Snake Girl, while people oogled her from a few feet away. This was not the case. This tiny person was as close to me as people are on the subway, and I could’ve reached out and touched her.
She looked at me with sad eyes. She looked like she felt pathetic, but at the same time, as though she thought we were as well. Her eyes seemed to say that she was human too, no better or worse than someone who pays to look at Freaks. This lasted only a second, and then it was gone.
My reaction was almost instantaneous. I was horrified by myself, paying 4 dollars to stare at a sad someone dressed in doll’s clothes, and I tried to hurry away, walking straight into Rich who was standing in front of me, almost knocking him over. He moved and I moved, and we got out of there as fast as our embarrassed legs would carry us. We didn’t speak. We didn’t talk about what had just happened, we just kept walking until we were far away from The Smallest Girl In The World. I grabbed his hand, and we walked by Snake Girl without even stopping to glance in her direction.
Rich tried to make the situation better (or just go away), by offering to get us some fried dough, which is my favorite fair pastime, and so I agreed. We split it, devouring the white sugar, as the wind tossed the loose powder everywhere. We couldn’t finish, our stomachs ached, and he pitched the remains in a nearby trash can.
The fair had lost some of its glamor then, not that it had much to begin with. Everyone seemed sad to me. Was this what was supposed to be enjoyable? Rickety rides? Bad food? Mud covered cars crashing into each other as drunk men cheered? Rudely staring at a Freak, as though it wasn’t insulting and humiliating?
It got dark and we walked toward the exit, when we realized there were rows of stables with all kinds of animals in them. I love animals, and dragged Rich through every single one, stopping to pet the sheep’s fluffy coat and touch the horse’s soft nose. I wanted to forget about The Smallest Girl In The World and the way she looked at me. Furry bunny rabbits and leopard spotted cats did the trick.
We left Altamont before the fair even closed, tired of walking around in mud and smelling manure. Jumping over the puddles in my newly dirtied canvas shoes, we found the car and followed the line of tail lights out of the fairgrounds.
I’m sure I forgot about The Smallest Girl In The World on the car ride home, and we probably watched a movie on Rich’s couch while eating ice cream and making out, once we got home. But her face never left me. I still wonder what she was thinking, perched in her wooden box, watching people pay 4 dollars to rudely gape at her. Was she embarrassed that she was dressed in doll’s clothes? Did her manager make her do that? What did she think of all the people who gave their money to look at her, merely inches away from her sad face? And what part of that money did she receive? Was it worth it?
I wish I could go back and bring her some fried dough, talk to her, make her feel like a human being. Because I’m sure no one else has.
There’s always next year.
On his days off, we tried to escape the small town monotony of Albany and its surrounding suburbs to more exotic places, like Thatcher Park for picnics and Indian Ladder Trails or Lake George for Frankenstein Wax Museums and excellent omelets at small cafes. We had just returned from some day-long excursion, but instead of our usual settling down to watch a movie and snack until our bellies burst, we decided to see if we could make the last day of the Altamont Fair. This was a big deal in upstate New York. Rich had been many times but I never had, and always wanted to. The fair came through every year around the same time, giving hick parents a place to drag their screaming mullet-headed children, and love ridden “city” couples to share caramel apples while holding hands.
The sun was already close to setting as we drove up to Altamont, which was 40 minutes away. I got excited as we arrived under the huge FAIR awning, and drove into the giant parking lot, which was really just a big muddy field, smelling of livestock.
Not long after we had walked around the grounds a bit, I began to get disappointed. Everything was wet from the rain earlier that day, and many of the rides were aimed at little kids, not little kids in the bodies of adults. We stopped to watch part of the Demolition Derby, which was so white trash I could not believe it actually existed in real life. A bunch of fully grown men and a few women, grasping giant plastic cups of cheap beer, sitting on bleachers watching rusted out shells of cars crash into each other in a muddy ring. It was depressing. We stood there long enough to see a car catch on fire, a highlight to me, who had wondered if the three fire trucks parked along side the ring were actually necessary (apparently they were, although I think one would have sufficed).
On our way to the fair, Rich had told me of his previous experiences there, one of which consisted if him going at the Freak Show, getting to see The Smallest Woman In The World and Snake Girl. This interested me because I had never been to a Freak Show and spending quite a bit of time that year watching the TV series Carnivale, I had become curious. Where did the Freaks come from? Were they happy that they were Freaks?
Rich told me that Snake Girl was fake and that it was just a normal girl’s head poking through the floor of a tank with a snake body painted on it. When he had seen her the last time, she talked to him and his friends. Regardless, it sounded freaky to me. But The Smallest Girl In The World was real, and she had sat there in her little box, watching TV while people paid to look at her, him being one of them.
So when we passed the sign for The Smallest Girl In The World, Rich turned to me and asked “Do you want to see her?” and of course I said yes. Rich paid a sketchy looking man 4 dollars for each of us, and he let us pass without saying a word. We walked towards a small wooden box on a pillar, looking almost like a giant birdhouse from the back, and as we rounded the corner, I realized that she was sitting in it. The Smallest Girl In The World was a foot away from my face, staring at me and looking annoyed. She was a tiny black woman, smaller than any little person I had ever seen before, counting real life and TV, and she was dressed in blue and white ruffly doll clothes. She did not have a TV this time. She just stared at us.
Before entering the tent, I had the impression that we would be far away from the actual girl, and that it would be somewhat like a zoo-the attraction in some sort of tank, like Snake Girl, while people oogled her from a few feet away. This was not the case. This tiny person was as close to me as people are on the subway, and I could’ve reached out and touched her.
She looked at me with sad eyes. She looked like she felt pathetic, but at the same time, as though she thought we were as well. Her eyes seemed to say that she was human too, no better or worse than someone who pays to look at Freaks. This lasted only a second, and then it was gone.
My reaction was almost instantaneous. I was horrified by myself, paying 4 dollars to stare at a sad someone dressed in doll’s clothes, and I tried to hurry away, walking straight into Rich who was standing in front of me, almost knocking him over. He moved and I moved, and we got out of there as fast as our embarrassed legs would carry us. We didn’t speak. We didn’t talk about what had just happened, we just kept walking until we were far away from The Smallest Girl In The World. I grabbed his hand, and we walked by Snake Girl without even stopping to glance in her direction.
Rich tried to make the situation better (or just go away), by offering to get us some fried dough, which is my favorite fair pastime, and so I agreed. We split it, devouring the white sugar, as the wind tossed the loose powder everywhere. We couldn’t finish, our stomachs ached, and he pitched the remains in a nearby trash can.
The fair had lost some of its glamor then, not that it had much to begin with. Everyone seemed sad to me. Was this what was supposed to be enjoyable? Rickety rides? Bad food? Mud covered cars crashing into each other as drunk men cheered? Rudely staring at a Freak, as though it wasn’t insulting and humiliating?
It got dark and we walked toward the exit, when we realized there were rows of stables with all kinds of animals in them. I love animals, and dragged Rich through every single one, stopping to pet the sheep’s fluffy coat and touch the horse’s soft nose. I wanted to forget about The Smallest Girl In The World and the way she looked at me. Furry bunny rabbits and leopard spotted cats did the trick.
We left Altamont before the fair even closed, tired of walking around in mud and smelling manure. Jumping over the puddles in my newly dirtied canvas shoes, we found the car and followed the line of tail lights out of the fairgrounds.
I’m sure I forgot about The Smallest Girl In The World on the car ride home, and we probably watched a movie on Rich’s couch while eating ice cream and making out, once we got home. But her face never left me. I still wonder what she was thinking, perched in her wooden box, watching people pay 4 dollars to rudely gape at her. Was she embarrassed that she was dressed in doll’s clothes? Did her manager make her do that? What did she think of all the people who gave their money to look at her, merely inches away from her sad face? And what part of that money did she receive? Was it worth it?
I wish I could go back and bring her some fried dough, talk to her, make her feel like a human being. Because I’m sure no one else has.
There’s always next year.
Lloyd Dobler Ruined Me For Life
I have always been a fan of The Grand Gesture. Someone being so in love that they can’t help but do something drastic to prove it. I don’t recall when I figured out what that was, but I’m sure it was after seeing the movie Say Anything. It was my older brother Andy’s favorite growing up, and I remember hearing him quote it, “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen,” before I even understood what significance that sentence held.
My mother was, and still is a hopeless romantic. Before I started kindergarten, I would sit on the floor with my box of toys and watch soap operas with her. It is obvious where I got that quality from, just as I inherited her bad knees and big brown eyes. Perhaps I was doomed from childhood, or maybe it was more like a cancer that started out small and grew larger and larger as time passed.
Ever since I saw Lloyd Dobler hold that boombox over his head in Diane Court’s driveway, I was convinced that was love. Peter Gabriel’s song In Your Eyes evokes an emotional response every time, and I've always longed to hear someone play it just for me. If I was her, I would’ve gotten out of bed and ran downstairs to meet him. I still want her to every time, and just as he is disappointed, I am too.
Recently I’ve realized that my ideals of love and The Grand Gesture come from movies, which isn’t a novel idea, except for the fact that my favorite romantic scenes aren’t what you would call “conventional.” Maybe not everyone would want some guy in a trench coat out in their driveway in the middle of the night, and maybe not everyone likes Peter Gabriel.
I might cry every time I see it, but I actually wouldn’t want Jerry Maguire in my living room, telling me I complete him. I want to be Caroline from Untamed Heart, and dance with Adam in a dark diner to James Brown’s Try Me. I want Jason Dean from Heathers to tell me “Our love is God, let’s go get a slushee.” I would’ve killed to be Sarah in Labyrinth, and instead of rescuing the baby brother and going back to the real world, I would’ve stayed with Jareth The Goblin King, and been his Queen forever.
I’m not one for red roses, I’d much rather have wildflowers and I don’t melt when doors are opened for me, but I do love handwritten letters, or surprise picnics. If you take a train in the middle of the night and show up at my door, I will love you forever. But what makes me perhaps, even weirder, is the fact that I love executing The Grand Gesture, just as much as I love receiving one.
I have been the girl who throws pebbles at windows to get you to come down. I have made valentines out of blocks of wood and sent them across the country. I have spent hours making mix CDs containing secret song messages with cut and pasted album covers. I have flown three thousand miles on a whim. I have taken hands and slow danced in parking lots. I have tried to make life a little more movie-like.
And what’s troublesome to me is, where are all the girls in these movies? They are always the ones receiving The Grand Gesture. Sebastian shows up at the airport to stop Annette from leaving in Cruel Intentions, and Noah is the one who writes Ally 365 letters when they are separated at the end of the summer, in The Notebook. Edward saves Vivian from life as a hooker in Pretty Woman, and Johnny tells Francis’ dad off with that famous line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” in Dirty Dancing. But where are the gutsy girls?
There are a few movies where I have seen some amazing Grand Gestures by women, and it gives me hope that I am not a totally dying breed. Claire makes Drew a road map, complete with coinciding mix CDs, only to show up in the middle of nowhere at a farmer’s market to kiss him, in Elizabethtown. Amelie creates an elaborate plan to make Nico fall in love with her, by sending him on a sort of scavenger hunt in Amelie, and Lee refuses to move from Mr. Gray’s desk chair until he admits he loves her, to the point where she pees herself in Secretary. Lindsay runs across an entire baseball field during a game to tell Ben that she loves him, and in turn gets arrested in Fever Pitch, and Sandy magically morphs into a rebel to prove her love to Danny in Grease. But honestly, those are the only instances that come to mind, and what’s even more disturbing is the fact that men seem to be afraid of women and their Grand Gestures.
There is an episode of Sex And The City, where Carrie shows up at Aidan’s apartment, and throws pebbles at his window to get him to come down, and she says, “When men attempt bold gestures, it’s generally considered romantic. When women do it, it’s often considered desperate or psycho.” And I want to scream and say, yes yes yes, why is this? I feel like I know deep down inside that men like feeling loved just as much as women do, but is it just a certain way that they feel it’s acceptable? I suppose it just depends on the person. Maybe some of those boys I bestowed Grand Gestures upon thought I was nuts, and perhaps that is why all of those relationships, (or maybe just some) are now defunct.
But the other problem is this; do people even own boomboxes anymore? Sometimes completing The Grand Gesture to evoke a smile on someone else’s face isn’t enough, and I long to hear In Your Eyes from outside my bedroom window some night. When this doesn’t happen, (and it never has), I feel disappointed. It just wouldn’t be the same if Lloyd Dobler stood outside Diane Court’s house with an Ipod equipped with Bose speakers, and if he had a CD player, I’m sure it would skip when he lifted it over his head. How is it possible to have faith in unconventional romance when letters have been replaced with text messages and slow dancing has been phased out by dance clubs?
I’m not saying that there have been no significant Grand Gestures in my life. I have been woken up in the morning by someone singing to me, I have been taken to watch planes take off when I was feeling restless, and I have had books made for me out of bindings and plastic and x-rays. I have had someone show up at my door when I least expected it, I have had a song written about me, and I once received an old typewriter as a gift for no reason. But it is never enough, I always want more, and I’m always imagining what could be.
The times I have plucked out, are the times my brain has latched onto, the ones that felt like movies, which are thrown up in front of my eyes and probably remembered as more romantic and significant than they really were. Our memories fail us, they make mountains out of molehills, and build upon each other to create a larger idea of what It’s Supposed To Be Like. But it’s not supposed to be like anything, because every love is different, and incomparable. Lloyd Dobler seems like the perfect man, but only because we see what Cameron Crowe wants us to see. He’d probably end up getting annoying after a while.
My mother was, and still is a hopeless romantic. Before I started kindergarten, I would sit on the floor with my box of toys and watch soap operas with her. It is obvious where I got that quality from, just as I inherited her bad knees and big brown eyes. Perhaps I was doomed from childhood, or maybe it was more like a cancer that started out small and grew larger and larger as time passed.
Ever since I saw Lloyd Dobler hold that boombox over his head in Diane Court’s driveway, I was convinced that was love. Peter Gabriel’s song In Your Eyes evokes an emotional response every time, and I've always longed to hear someone play it just for me. If I was her, I would’ve gotten out of bed and ran downstairs to meet him. I still want her to every time, and just as he is disappointed, I am too.
Recently I’ve realized that my ideals of love and The Grand Gesture come from movies, which isn’t a novel idea, except for the fact that my favorite romantic scenes aren’t what you would call “conventional.” Maybe not everyone would want some guy in a trench coat out in their driveway in the middle of the night, and maybe not everyone likes Peter Gabriel.
I might cry every time I see it, but I actually wouldn’t want Jerry Maguire in my living room, telling me I complete him. I want to be Caroline from Untamed Heart, and dance with Adam in a dark diner to James Brown’s Try Me. I want Jason Dean from Heathers to tell me “Our love is God, let’s go get a slushee.” I would’ve killed to be Sarah in Labyrinth, and instead of rescuing the baby brother and going back to the real world, I would’ve stayed with Jareth The Goblin King, and been his Queen forever.
I’m not one for red roses, I’d much rather have wildflowers and I don’t melt when doors are opened for me, but I do love handwritten letters, or surprise picnics. If you take a train in the middle of the night and show up at my door, I will love you forever. But what makes me perhaps, even weirder, is the fact that I love executing The Grand Gesture, just as much as I love receiving one.
I have been the girl who throws pebbles at windows to get you to come down. I have made valentines out of blocks of wood and sent them across the country. I have spent hours making mix CDs containing secret song messages with cut and pasted album covers. I have flown three thousand miles on a whim. I have taken hands and slow danced in parking lots. I have tried to make life a little more movie-like.
And what’s troublesome to me is, where are all the girls in these movies? They are always the ones receiving The Grand Gesture. Sebastian shows up at the airport to stop Annette from leaving in Cruel Intentions, and Noah is the one who writes Ally 365 letters when they are separated at the end of the summer, in The Notebook. Edward saves Vivian from life as a hooker in Pretty Woman, and Johnny tells Francis’ dad off with that famous line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” in Dirty Dancing. But where are the gutsy girls?
There are a few movies where I have seen some amazing Grand Gestures by women, and it gives me hope that I am not a totally dying breed. Claire makes Drew a road map, complete with coinciding mix CDs, only to show up in the middle of nowhere at a farmer’s market to kiss him, in Elizabethtown. Amelie creates an elaborate plan to make Nico fall in love with her, by sending him on a sort of scavenger hunt in Amelie, and Lee refuses to move from Mr. Gray’s desk chair until he admits he loves her, to the point where she pees herself in Secretary. Lindsay runs across an entire baseball field during a game to tell Ben that she loves him, and in turn gets arrested in Fever Pitch, and Sandy magically morphs into a rebel to prove her love to Danny in Grease. But honestly, those are the only instances that come to mind, and what’s even more disturbing is the fact that men seem to be afraid of women and their Grand Gestures.
There is an episode of Sex And The City, where Carrie shows up at Aidan’s apartment, and throws pebbles at his window to get him to come down, and she says, “When men attempt bold gestures, it’s generally considered romantic. When women do it, it’s often considered desperate or psycho.” And I want to scream and say, yes yes yes, why is this? I feel like I know deep down inside that men like feeling loved just as much as women do, but is it just a certain way that they feel it’s acceptable? I suppose it just depends on the person. Maybe some of those boys I bestowed Grand Gestures upon thought I was nuts, and perhaps that is why all of those relationships, (or maybe just some) are now defunct.
But the other problem is this; do people even own boomboxes anymore? Sometimes completing The Grand Gesture to evoke a smile on someone else’s face isn’t enough, and I long to hear In Your Eyes from outside my bedroom window some night. When this doesn’t happen, (and it never has), I feel disappointed. It just wouldn’t be the same if Lloyd Dobler stood outside Diane Court’s house with an Ipod equipped with Bose speakers, and if he had a CD player, I’m sure it would skip when he lifted it over his head. How is it possible to have faith in unconventional romance when letters have been replaced with text messages and slow dancing has been phased out by dance clubs?
I’m not saying that there have been no significant Grand Gestures in my life. I have been woken up in the morning by someone singing to me, I have been taken to watch planes take off when I was feeling restless, and I have had books made for me out of bindings and plastic and x-rays. I have had someone show up at my door when I least expected it, I have had a song written about me, and I once received an old typewriter as a gift for no reason. But it is never enough, I always want more, and I’m always imagining what could be.
The times I have plucked out, are the times my brain has latched onto, the ones that felt like movies, which are thrown up in front of my eyes and probably remembered as more romantic and significant than they really were. Our memories fail us, they make mountains out of molehills, and build upon each other to create a larger idea of what It’s Supposed To Be Like. But it’s not supposed to be like anything, because every love is different, and incomparable. Lloyd Dobler seems like the perfect man, but only because we see what Cameron Crowe wants us to see. He’d probably end up getting annoying after a while.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
