[September, 1995] Senior Year Snapshot

9/27/95

It’s David Dolan’s birthday today. I got his gift on Friday but don’t know when I’ll be able to give it to him. I’ve been keeping in touch with the mad boy for about a month and a half. He’s so cool and sweet, one of those people I’d hate to lose as a bud.

I realize I haven’t even talked about my classes. Photo is a blast. Very complicated but I’m liking it lots. Lit is ok. Want to read Kerouac already. Calculus sucks flat out. Volleyball brings out the spaz in me. Sociology at the college is fine. My project at Childers-Craine is nice. It’s mostly reading manuscripts (or parts of ‘em) and evaluating them.

Once a bookworm, always a bookworm.

I know, I know. There are so many things wrong with those two paragraphs. I’ll overlook the affectations and poor language choices if you will.

David Dolan was my neighbor in the freak hallway my junior year and graduated the year before. An actor who had bit parts on a couple of major movies in the 90’s and a starring role in a cable show, he was unpretentious and goofy and prone to getting in trouble. We were never super-close, but I always had fun with him and he was one of the few male friends I had who I managed not to have a crush on. Sure, there was probably part of me that was a bit dazzled by his cultish celeb status, but I don’t think I ever talked to him about what it was like making movies or television shows. I remember bumming around the east village with him and meeting his girlfriend, who went on to have a small but recurring role in what is now one of my favorite shows of all time and is still actin today. I don’t remember what I got him for his birthday but I do remember that he introduced me to the Armistead Maupin Tales of the City books, which I adored.

ICY projects were internships that we got class credit for. Since I was planning to be an English/Writing major in college, I wanted to give my time to a publisher or literary agent. I was offered a position with Bantam and also Childers-Craine Literary Agency (which was really one woman). Even though Bantam, a division of Random House, may have looked better on my resume and helped me find work more easily in the future, I was more interested in reading manuscripts than doing menial admin/gofer work, which the publishing houses mostly used interns for (and which I ended up doing plenty of when I worked in publishing years later, anyway).

It was rather remarkable how much responsibility I was given at the agency, taking a first pass at most of the work that was sent in. That’s right, folks, a teenager was rejecting dozens of queries from aspiring writers every week. Years later, when I went on to write my own novel and submit it to agents, I have no doubt that plenty of interns were responsible for the rejection letters I received.

As for the rest of it, Calculus would torture me for months to come, but the rest of my curriculum more than made up for it. As much as I grumble about how terrible life at Hunter sometimes was, my senior year was off to a mostly great start.

(Oh, and I did finally try reading Kerouac’s On the Road earlier this year, but couldn’t get more than 100 pages into it and couldn’t get more than 15 minutes past the film adaptation. I respect the nonconformist, hedonistic spirit of the Beat Generation, but something about Kerouac’s style and storytelling simultaneously grates on me and leaves me thoroughly bored. Oh well, there’s always Ginsberg’s “Howl.”) 

 

[June, 1995] Out on a Limb

[When you read through this entire post, and then see how it relates to the title, you may find it corny or even a bit offensive. I am both sorry and not sorry. I certainly don’t mean any insensitivity, but I also couldn’t resist, even if it’s a terrible joke.] 

[It may not have been as architecturally striking as Hunter, but it did have more windows]

6/3/95

It’s late and I want to read, but I also wanted to talk about going to Murrow, Anita’s school. I really liked it (Anita said more than I should’ve). Maybe it was because it wasn’t Hunter and it was bigger. I don’t know (okay, yes I do, I’ll talk about it in a minute). Darby spent D-band (they’re periods are bands) with me and we went out to the courtyard for a little while, it looked like a deserted lot (well, except for the students in it).

Then during another band, which Anita had opta (or free, as we Hunterites would say) this guy Jonah hung out w/us.  He’s really cool. Anita was right, he does look sort of like Trent Reznor’s younger, cuter brother. Likes NIN, too (very into Nirvana though, not that that’s a bad thing). Is in a band, Silkweed (writes, plays guitar, sings—though badly, he says). We played poker, but mostly talked (the three of us).

All in all Jonah was a very cool guy, and I don’t like passing up opportunities to get to know cool people. So I’m creating one. Yes randomness will strike again, but this time if it doesn’t work out I won’t ever have to face him. “Nothing to win and nothing else to lose.”

Further proof of what a nerdy weirdo I was (“Was?” people who know me today may be asking): In addition to cutting class occasionally in my later high school years to sneak off to haunt the record and bookstores of the Village, Anita and I also skipped out on class to visit each others’ schools. We only did it a few times, but I guess there was a novelty in peeking at a different high school life.

It also made me wonder how my adolescence would have played out if I didn’t spend the bulk of it in the academically-rigorous brick prison that was Hunter College High School. Edward R. Murrow High School was a short subway ride away from where I lived (instead of the hour-plus trek I made to the Upper East Side), full of thousands of students (instead of the same ~200 I was stuck with from 7th-12th grade) and boasted Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys as one of its impressive alums (instead of Young MC as one of Hunter’s, which was far less bragworthy).   

In deciphering my journal code, I’m guessing “randomness” stood for “getting a crush on a boy and doing something nutty-and-bold-but-passive-like-writing-him-a-note about it.”

[For those not familiar with Joel-Peter Witkin, this is one of his tamer photos]

I’m surprised that I left out the most unusual detail about Jonah, which was that he was missing either all or part of a leg, and had a metal prosthetic in its place.

I might have neglected to mention this in my journal because I didn’t want it to seem like it was a big deal or something I found distrurbing. While I certainly didn’t have any problem with Jonah’s missing limb, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t something I found fascinating and was deeply curious about. Not to any sort of extreme degree like those people who worship amputees and end up chopping off their own limbs, but there was a certain amount of intrigue there for sure (maybe looking at all those Joel-Peter Witkin photographs had something to do with it). If anything, it made Jonah more unusual and memorable to me. I’ve had crushes on lots of boys in my lifetime, but he was the only one-legged boy.

Alas, there is no further mention of Jonah in any subsequent journal entries, and if I remember correctly, the next time I visited Murrow, he wasn’t in school, so if I did try to spark some kind of correspondence, it never panned out.

[May 1995] Stealing Punk

[Preface: I debated leaving this diary entry out, because there’s a chance that the person it’s about will read it. And while I’ve written about my friendship with Claudia and my disdain at her punk evolution, I don’t think I’ve ever properly delved into just how much fun we had, too.

Claudia was a big reason I actually started enjoying my later years at high school. We went to concerts and parties. We had boozy adventures. We went trick-or-treating on the Upper West Side (I was a gypsy, she was zombie Marilyn Monroe). We talked about music and boys and bonded over the fact that we both felt like oddballs in a sea of conformists. But more than that, having grown up with some pretty overprotective parents, Claudia gave me the freedom to finally start enjoying being a teenager living in New York City. She was always generous with letting me stay over her house, even when I lied to my parents about where I was going that night.

So when she became progressively more immersed in punk,  it was frustrating to see her becoming destructive and what I perceived as disingenuous, and also hurtful to see our friendship beginning to wane. But instead of talking things through with her, I channeled a lot of those feelings into anger and overwrought writing. Case in point:]  

I can’t accept Barbie as a punk, either.

5/4/95

out of faux-cus. locks of primary colors minus the sunshine. don’t become. she does anyway. shoplifting sweetness, but it doesn’t make her genuine. a pathetic echo, a the acid princess emerges and is swatted away, the playfriends tired of this game. she really tries to mean it when she’s bad, full of angst, doing wrong. now they’ve seen her fake passport and won’t let her past the gates. by rejecting stability for a wilder ride she flies in careless circles. she is hated for not being. the silence will pull her back into her skin.

So yeah, more annoyance at Claudia. She listened to Green Day and Hole and got her hair dyed blue in expensive salons. She lived in a gorgeous house in Manhattan and I never saw her parents be anything other than loving to her. She got busted for shoplifting candy with $40 on her (which is likely what prompted this entry).

I don’t know what drove the need to try to pass herself off as a punk and, looking back on it, it shouldn’t matter, but at the time it came off as so phony to me. It felt like she was trying too hard and not being herself, whereas hanging out in the freak hallway freed me up to be more myself. But who knows, at the time, Claudia might have felt the same way about her heavy-handed foray into the punk scene. And truth be told, there was probably a part of me that was jealous at her ability to be a “badass” because I never had the guts to subvert authority like that. Lying to my parents about what I was really doing when I slept over her house was as subversive as I got (at least in high school).

[April, 1995] Marilyn Manson and Fading Friendships

Gotta miss those Parental Advisory stickers…

4/30/95

I got Marilyn Manson’s CD, which is great (listened to it twice in two days). The music isn’t half as scary as they are visually. In fact the song lyrics are very interesting. A sample:

“You want me to save the world
I’m just a little girl
pseudo-morals work real well
on the talk shows for the weak
but your selective judgements
and good guy badges
don’t mean a f$%# to me.”

That one is from “Get Your Gunn,” one of the best songs on Portrait of An American Family.

Right now I’m listening to the Cure (Head on the Door).

I have some random lines for poetry. Might as well put them down here… my thoughts collide with tomorrow, wait, I had more. It’s not as inspiring writing on ordinary paper. Plus I have the Cure blasting in my ear so that doesn’t help much.

Hey, today is Neil’s birthday. He turns the big 14. Haven’t been hanging out with Claudia that much lately. I don’t know if we’ve been actively ignoring each other or what. Oh well, I’m not all that upset, people drift away and sometimes it’s a good and natural thing (Geez, I sound like a shrink. What is my problem?).

I remember seeing Marilyn Manson open up for Nine Inch Nails to a hostile/indifferent crowd. Before the lead singer became the pseudo-subversive spokesman for disillusioned alterna-goth youth, he was still in Trent Reznor’s shadow, being booed at by teenagers waiting for the main event. In light of that, I felt like I was supporting an underdog when buying Portrait of an American Family. The shock value was obvious but some of the songs were catchy to me (and yes, I was a sucker for some of those lyrics; hey, I was the target audience to a degree). When I went to college and the second Marilyn Manson album was released, the band became huge, and I lost interest, casting them out of my musical canon. By that point, I was cultivating more obscure musical (let’s say, “organically goth”) interests and was quick to disdain a celebrity that was so obviously pandering to a certain type of demographic. 

But since, at the time of this entry, I was still part of that demographic, let’s take a moment to cringe at the “random lines of poetry” bit. Just… oy. The “ordinary paper” refers to the fact that I used to draft a lot of poetry on top of photos in magazines; but yeah, let’s blame the “ordinary paper” and loud Cure music for not being able to craft a better line of poetry.  

As for Claudia and Neil, I was pretty much over my inappropriate crush on the latter, and continuously uncomfortable with the former. Aside from my irritation at her becoming what I perceived as a phony punk, Claudia was getting more involved with drugs, which was a bigger problem for me. I realize a lot of teenagers experiment with drugs, but in high school, apart from alcohol, I was pretty much a goodie goodie. And it wasn’t just the fact that she was smoking weed more; I witnessed her becoming a different person as a result of it. She made foolish choices, her school work declined, and she behaved more like a spacey degenerate. The sharp, funny girl that I initially became friends with was evolving into someone I couldn’t relate to anymore and didn’t have an interest in knowing.

But who knows, maybe Claudia saw me as a square, evolving into a “spooky” girl who wrote cheesy poetry. Maybe she would view my buying that Marilyn Manson album as a foolish choice.

[April, 1995] A Place for Freaks and Misfits

Congregation, Afghan Whigs (I no longer own the jewel case, but I do still have the CD and inserts)

4/30/95

Right now I’m listening to Afghan Whigs’ Congregation, which I finally got (on CD). So far, better than Up In It but not as good as Gentlemen (which is expected. Gentlemen is great).

I’ve been looking at colleges for a while now and have decided that Emerson is the best school for me. If I can’t (well refuse to) go to school in New York, the next best thing is Boston. BU is okay, but Emerson seems just fabulous. It’s a school for communications and not at all a stick-up-the-butt school. Though it’s pretty small (just under 2,000 people) it seems like the place for me. Emerson offers writing scholarships and is full of misfits and freaks (in other words, people I would most likely want to hang out with).

Here’s a cool Whigs quote:
“hey, baby there’s a vampire moon
scaling the sky shine in your room
your eyes are open you got nothing to do
come outside and play with me tonight “
— Afghan Whigs “Tonight

I saw that [giant arrow drawn in journal pointing up] on an address label once. There’s a hidden track on Congregation it’s coming up now. Actually, it’s really good, better than most of the songs on this. Anita told me that a hidden track is the entire CD played backwards. I love hidden tracks and linear notes (well, the lyrics). This one has both.

Hidden tracks and album packaging have been a sad loss as music has undergone a digital revolution. I’m sure somewhere (I’m looking at you, Buzzfeed) there’s list about “Things You Miss If You Came of Age in the ’90s” or “Stuff People Who Bought Cassettes & CDs Are Really Bummed About” that mentions these things. For those who can’t relate, it’s a shame you will never experience the triumphant rush of joy of purchasing physical music and finding the printed lyrics to the songs included in the liner notes, to say nothing of the obsessiveness required to decipher lyrics of when they weren’t included (the most insane one I ever tried to transcribe, from the cassette version, was R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”).

Then there was the special thrill of discovering a hidden track. In some cases (like Nine Inch Nails’ Broken EP) I didn’t even know of the hidden tracks for months and stumbled upon them rather than look for them. This was much more satisfying than being told about the hidden track (music spoiler alert!). Nowadays, it’s rare for me to buy a full album or listen to one all the way through. I download most of my music and I barely glance at the packaging of the handful of CDs I do still acquire annually. It makes me sad; music used to occupy such a predominant role in my life and now it’s little more than a background soundtrack when I’m writing or working out.

…

As for college, if I wasn’t local, NYU would have probably been my dream school. It had a robust liberal arts program and was in the greatest city in the world. But I was determined to leave New York and have college be my reward for enduring six academically rigorous years at Hunter. While my classmates were fond of asking, “What Ivy’s did you apply to?” I wasn’t much interested in those “stick-up-the-butt” schools. Brown was vaguely enticing but Providence, Rhode Island was not, and neither was attending yet another school full of competitive braniacs. I wanted a big city with a good writing program.

It was actually Anita who mentioned Boston as the perfect place to attend college. It was far away from home but not too far, a big enough city, but not too big, and was filled with plenty of matriculation options. So I got a Princeton Review guide and started browsing colleges. As soon as I read that Emerson was known as a school “for freaks and misfits”, where many students had crazy hair, piercings, tattoos, etc., I knew I found my future four-year academic home. Before I even visited the campus or did more in-depth research, I just knew it had to be Emerson. And so it would be, but it would be a bumpy road getting there… 

[April, 1995] Goth-in-Training

Yes and yes.

4/29/95

I did not go to sleep last night. Finished my Nabakov paper at 4:00, read until 5:30. Had two cups of coffee this morning, will have a couple more with lunch.

Back home, everything is so messy but comfortable.

Anita and I are just itching to go to the Village soon. Must get old Cure, Cocteau Twins! I always forget about the Cocteau Twins. Have to (want to) make a tape for Tim. Anita ate in a Denny’s 20 or 30 miles from Clarion*, the rednecks scared her lots.

I want this year to be over. And next year too. My procrastination problem is not good for Junior year.

If I can’t get the year to be over, I’ll settle for this class to be over. I never stayed up all night. Almost felt reborn, which was pretty cool/strange. Things started wavering in front of me though which wasn’t too great.

I’m hooked on Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, it’s fun to read about havoc being wreaked.

I’ll be honest, some of my later teen journal entries could probably be paraphrased as “blah blah music blah blah boys blah blah pretentious stuff blah blah.” Between the various literary and music references and comparing staying up all night to being “reborn,” I was one turtleneck and Fellini dissertation away from getting the gold in Competitive Pretentiousness. I’d like to say that future entries won’t be like this, but that would be a lie. As my thoughts get “deeper” and my tastes get darker and more (sometimes-) obscure, the pretentious factor is sure to rise. Remember, these are the musings of someone on the verge of becoming a goth: consider yourself duly warned.

Not all, or even half, but at least a small part of these gothic inklings could be credited to Tim (previously mentioned here and here, a pen pal (who I found through a friendship book) living in a small, narrow-minded town in Pennsylvania. He was depressed, angry, cute and had great music taste: a combination that would prove emotionally lethal for many years to come. He included his phone number in an early letter and, after calling him on a whim and talking for nearly two hours (documented in a journal entry dated a week prior to this one; trust me, you’re not missing anything), my crush was cemented.  

…for what ails you

The Cure and Cocteau Twins were two of Tim’s favorite bands, which he included in a mix tape for me (this is where I could go on and on about the wonder and sad departure of the mix tape, but I’ll spare you… this time). I was already familiar with some Cure, but not their colossally depressing earlier work (soon, fledgling goth, soon). Between the haunting music and the source of the mix tape from which it originated, it was no wonder I was keen to get more of their albums. Sure, it was partly to have more in common with my crush, but he did help me develop my love for these two bands. (To be fair, he also liked other bands, like Sugar, that never did it for me, so it wasn’t purely about impressing him. Only partly.)

Tim often complained of Clarion* being a hick town, where he was mocked and bullied and accused of being gay because of the way he dressed (lots of black) and wore his hair (longer than what was acceptable in those parts). I was lucky that my own days of being bullied were behind me and to be in New York City where my freak flag could fly more freely. I would be unfurling and waving that flag around quite a bit in the coming years.

* Not the actual town name.

[March, 1995] Kissing in the Kitchen, Sleeping on the Floor

This is what happens when you look for images of a “90s party”. For the record, no party I attended in the ’90s, or really ever, looked like this.

3/26/95

Ceecee had a party last night and it was probably the best one (or one of the best) I ever attended. When I look back on it, it almost seems like a movie, a really interesting, cool movie. Though I’d like to, I’m not going to go into detail. I’ll write a couple of more things about it though.

Spent a lot of the time hanging out with/talking to Jamie (and we were so not used to it, having emailed each other for so long). Met this girl Mary, an NIN fan who does a ‘zine (needless to say we bonded instantly). 

Crashed on Ceecee’s living room floor and it was fun. Slept three hours tops but didn’t mind one bit.

Can’t concentrate on doing work. I’m terrible.

Had a nice chat with Eduardo. Don’t feel like doing work. I’m really going to try now. 

The reason I didn’t go into detail was that I was still paranoid about my father reading my diary (having that happen once already). Kind of ironic that I want to go into detail now, with the full intention of having others read it.

Let’s just clear up some of the hyperbole above right now. While I only have vague recollections of the party aside from the details to come, it was certainly not something out of a “really cool, interesting” movie unless it was an understated coming-of-age indie about a kooky Russian alterna-girl growing up in the 1990’s. Because in the years following this diary entry I will have attended some truly cool parties that could have been featured in a movie (featuring everything from tinfoil on walls to cage dancers to Jello shots in plastic syringes; held in crazy lofts, Victorian mansions, giant backyards with laser light shows… and that doesn’t even cover the Halloween weekend spent in New Orleans).

So let’s get to the real reason I had such a blast at this party.

Ceecee was a year ahead of me and in a creative writing class with Jamie and me. It was initially daunting being invited to a party where nearly everyone was older and a stranger to me. So it was great to meet a fellow Nine Inch Nails fan and ‘zine writer (oh, memories). And it was also nice to bond with Jamie, who was a funny and irreverant breath of fresh air in our hypercompetitive magnet school and one of those people I always thought I could be better friends with (how weird is it that we emailed each other, even though we saw each other in class all the time?). But the real reason this party stood out for me was Eduardo.

All I remember about Eduardo was that he was a cute soccer player from Bolivia, about my height with thick, dark floppy hair. When I wasn’t chatting with one of the girls, he and I did plenty of flirting.

I didn’t have bangs at the time, but you get the idea.

At one point, I went to the kitchen to get some ice and for whatever reason, I didn’t turn on the light. He followed me in and we talked/flirted some more and then ended up kissing. 

Ceecee had gone out with Eduardo in the past, but she saw we were clicking and gave me her blessing. Truth be told, I don’t remember if that was before or after I already made out with him (we were in the kitchen for quite a while).

I ended up sleeping on Ceecee’s living room floor about a foot away from Eduardo. There was probably some more smooching during the night. At some point later on, when everyone had left or passed out, I had my eyes closed but was still awake and heard Ceecee in the kitchen talking to a male friend. Talking about Eduardo and me hooking up. Essentially, she said that she wasn’t envious, because what they had was in the past, but at the same time she kind of was.

The thing about Ceecee: she was very pretty in that exotic, multi-ethnic way and probably had no trouble getting male attention. Whereas I was just coming out of the awkward phase of my adolescence and male attention was something newer to me. So instead of feeling guilty that I may have hurt her feelings, I felt kind of flattered that someone who looked like me actually stirred up envy in someone who looked like her. I was used to being insecure and feeling like I didn’t measure up, so it was strange to hear that sort of sentiment expressed towards me. And it did a lot to bolster my self-esteem. 

I ended up having one semi-awkward coffee date with Eduardo before he went back to Bolivia. We didn’t stay in touch.

[March, 1995] Little Fonzies No More

3/20/95

I don’t really feel like dealing with anyone today. I’m not in a bad mood or anything, just the opposite, actually but I just want the day to flow.

Right now I really wish I was a senior so I could join the walkout these next two periods.

I want to write a poem about poseurs, it will definitely have “pseudo” in it somewhere. Poseurs are so annoying, sometimes they even fool everyone into thinking they are actually cool. How sad. I’d rather be uncool than pretend to be something I’m not (as horribly clichéd as that sounds). Being yourself is truly cool, however non-trendy or interesting or boring that is.

…

My friendship with Claudia was getting strained, at least on my end. While I had an open fascination with alternative lifestyles and cultures, as cool as I thought punks were, I knew that I wasn’t one and didn’t try to be one. There were certain associations with it that turned me off entirely, like the vandalism and drugs. And while I liked the aesthetic, I didn’t love the music, and I didn’t have enough of a sneering nihilism to be a proper punk.

Neither did Claudia, but she still tried. Her favorite band was Green Day, which might have been punk for five minutes back in their early pre-Dookie days, but whose commercialism and accessibility quickly became its antithesis. Claudia also loved Hole, which was apt, because I always found Courtney Love calculating and phony in her efforts to co-opt angry youth—and the “alternative” pop culture movement in general—for her own gains. And while Claudia did seem interested in discovering the more authentic musical side of punk, there was something I found disingenuous about her efforts to be punk. From where I stood, she had nothing to rebel against. She came from privilege but with the freedom to do as she pleased. She was an Upper West Side kid pretending to be from the gutter and trying too hard. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how she was a poseur, it was just a feeling that her efforts weren’t sincere and weren’t really her. 

Claudia and I often referred to ourselves as “little Fonzies” and I did write a poem about how we were evolving in different directions, which I oh-so-poignantly entitled “Little Fonzies No More.” She wasn’t in my creative writing class, so she never saw it, but here’s how it ended:

you’ve moved beyond me now
going faster
doing cooler things
evolving into a pseudo-you
ignoring (or not seeing) my disgusted smiles.

so what’s wrong here?
everything is too polite and strained…

i guess you’re just too cool for me.

In retrospect, I may have been too harsh in my judgment of her, because by the end of the year I’d be all-goth-all-the-time, which comes with its own special set of pretensions. At the same time, I resisted the goth trappings as much as I could because I didn’t want to be perceived the way I did Claudia (though for all I know, I still was). But who is to say I was being true to myself and she wasn’t? My arrogant/insecure teenage self felt justified making such claims, but she may not have been the most reliable narrator…

[March, 1995] You Look Like Such a Freak

(This is the exact phone model I had around the time… when I went goth later on, I painted it black using nailpolish.)

3/8/95

I got the strangest phone call today.

The phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Hi, can I speak to Damiella?”

“Speaking, who’s this?”

“This is Neil’s girlfriend.”

Then the girl goes off on this thing how she’s seen me hanging out with him and to back off, etc.

I responded with “Who the f@#$ are you?”

The girl told me to stop wearing glitter on my face because I looked like such a freak. Tempting as it was to tell her “thank you” I didn’t and then she hung up.

I called Claudia and left a message about how this was not funny, but I figured it probably wasn’t her. Then I called Didi and got Neil’s number from her (she has the master list from when she worked at the library).

It turns out he does not have a girlfriend. I bet anything it was some 8^th grade bitch and I even have my suspicions as to who it was specifically.

This was so strange…

Neil was surprised I hadn’t gotten more calls like that before…

While that call rattled me slightly, more than anything it was flattering. To be deserving of such attention was something I took as a compliment, as affirmation of my place outside the norm. For her to pose as Neil’s girlfriend was an additional, deliciously odd, twist. Let’s be honest, it was just the sort of harmless teen drama I was thrilled to have a taste of. I had been on both ends of prank phone calls before (those who are too young to know anything but caller ID missed out on some fine mischief) but this was taking it to the next level. It was personal, specific, vaguely ominous but ultimately harmless and entertaining to me. And let’s not forget that it gave me a perfectly reasonable excuse to hunt down Neil’s phone number and call him.

I don’t remember who it was I suspected of making the call, but I remember feeling empowered by it, like I reached a heightened state of freakishness. And for Neil to say he expected me to be used to such things signaled that he saw me as a fellow outcast. He didn’t even seem particularly surprised that I called, even though I never had before. Could it be that we were actually becoming friends? 

Then of course, there was the confirmation of Neil’s single status. Not that that changed the fact that he was too young for me or probably not interested in me romantically. But still…

[March, 1995] My Best Day at Hunter

(I only wish we had these rainbow lockers in high school)

3/4/95

Yesterday was probably the best day I ever had at Hunter.

Claudia and I finally broke out of our awful locker hallway. We moved to the third floor art hall, where David and Neil are after being banned from the other hallway for threatening to shave some girl’s head.

There’s so much to say but I have no way of being vague about it. All set for next year. I never actually thought that… wow. On to other things.

Dandelion were great. I felt so bad because so few people were into it. There were more people for Po’ Boy Swing (who were eh).

I’m not 100% sure what I meant by “all set for next year” but I’m guessing this locker hallway had something to do with it.

To give some context, every grade was assigned its own locker hallway and then there were a few additional, more sparsely-populated hallways. One of these was dubbed the “freak” hallway. As the name would suggest, it was where many of the weirdos hung out, those generally (dis)regarded as being outsiders, either for their physical differences (being abnormally tall or otherwise unusual-looking), their interests (listening to heavy metal, playing Dungeons and Dragons) or anything else that might set apart an individual from the culture of homogeneity high school typically encourages. There were even rumors of a polyamorous relationship among several of the hallways members, which was regarded as particularly scandalous and distasteful.

In my earlier years at Hunter, I was put off by that hallway. There was all the PDA among the less-than-conventionally attractive students. There was also the greater fear that I was ever in their ranks, it would put me in an ever lower social caste, and for a while I held on to my Sweet-Valley-High-esque delusions that popularity at school was important and attainable.

Once I started wearing oddball outfits and dyed my hair purple (and developed an inappropriate crush on Neil, the too-young punk a few grades below me) fitting in was no longer desirable and I sought out other fellow weirdos at school.

David was another fellow oddball and put the rest of us to shame with his outlandishness. He was notorious at our school for having a starring role on a cable show (I won’t say which one, but it was something of a cult hit in the 1990’s) as well as a minor part in a an immensely popular family film and its sequel. His style was akin to homeless indie bike messenger and he was always pissing off the Hunter administration one way or another, like this latest incident. I even added one of his shenanigans to his IMDB page (I think I write about it in a later journal entry, so I won’t spoil it here). Being in the company of such misfits as David and Neil felt like being admitted into a club that I realized I wanted to belong to more even more than the popular crowd. These were my people.

I don’t remember exactly how Claudia and I ended up in the “freak” hallway but I do remember the excitement I felt and the relief at packing up my things and leaving the locker hallway designated for our junior class. This other hallway was sunnier, quieter, and all-around more inviting. There were not too many moments during my tenure at Hunter where I felt truly at ease and welcome, but this was one of those moments.  

[Oh, and for anyone wondering, Dandelion was a band that I most likely didn’t tell my parents I was out seeing one night when sleeping over a friend’s house. The usual.]

[February, 1995] Damn Those 3-4 Years

My hair wasn’t nearly this bright, but it’s about how I imagined myself looking on the inside. [photo by Softness on Flickr]

2/6/95

Lots and lots and lots to write. How vague to be remains a dilemma.

I dyed my hair purple. The top is VERY bright and noticeable, the bottom is darker but looks violet in the sun. Combined with bluish-purple lipstick, blue mascara (& nail polish), turquoise eyeliner and glitter (silver) below my eyebrows. I looked like such a freak and loved it. The strange stares, the hushed conversations as I walked by, the halted comments (“that’s an…interesting look you have there”), it was wonderful. I felt this great power and release. I finally spelled it out (Anita gets confused every time I use that phrase).

…

A month of stalking the hallway and nothing but brief glimpses. Ooh, I need a code name. Claudia got a great one: Mercer. Perfect.

So we were walking through the hallway and as I’m walking I’m staring at him (I’m switching tenses now). This time he’s looking at me too (with a look of—as Claudia described it—interest). I said hi to Didi and looked back down at him (again looking at me). Claudia and I started walking and I knew he asked who I was because I heard Didi say my name.

Saw Mercer later in the day too. Damn those 3-4 years.

This marked a turning point for me in high school, so I remember it quite well. I even remember what I wore that day: a purple tie-died t-shirt, cut-off shorts, and two pairs of tights (torn-up black nylons over fuchsia ones). It was hardly scandalous, but the combined look was drastically different from the generic fashion of my classmates and marked a dramatic departure from my days of trying to blend in and look like them. It should be noted that I started wearing the glitter make-up before it became fashionable, when it was only sold in alternative and specialty stores that catered to club kids and drag queens. In fact, I bought my crazy make-up at House of Field (the shop she owned years before Patricia Field went on to do wardrobe for shows like Sex and The City and Ugly Betty) from a stunning effeminate blonde man who would go on to be the transsexual cult figure Amanda Lepore (pictured below). Kind of fitting, looking back on it.

Amanda Lepore

I don’t know what there was to spell out. I felt apart, different, freakish even, and wanted my outward appearance to finally reflect that. It was the physical manifestation of my I-am-not-like-you-and-nobody-understands-me teen frustration. The feeling of release came from no longer caring about conforming to my high school’s standards of appearance and asserting my individuality. At 17, it felt pretty powerful. I was teased and bullied from 13-14 for the way I looked (not something I chronicled in my diary, because it was too awful to recount), but I no longer worried about being made fun of because I was owning my freakishness. I walked those halls with a confidence I hadn’t felt in years. And my self-empowerment must have shown, because I was never bullied at school again.

“Mercer” was the code name for Neil, who I referenced before, but not directly until now. Neil was not just a punk, but the only punk in our entire school. He wore dirty clothes riddled with tears and safety pins, had green and orange hair, and a baby face that was often masked with a look of disdain. Unfortunately, he was considerably younger than me (a few years in high school matter more when the age difference is more than a year or two), so I felt immensely guilty having a crush on him. But the crush was born out of intrigue more than anything else. There were so few kids at Hunter who so blatantly defied convention in their outward appearance that Neil provided the same relief from the homogeneity. And sure, I thought he was super-cute, but more than anything I just wanted to know him.

And now that I was coming into my own and not afraid to stand apart from the masses, I also caught his attention. And maybe, just maybe, he wanted to know me, too.

[January, 1995] Like The Breakfast Club

…

[The following journal entries are sponsored by great big globs of disdain.]

1/13/95

“This is the first day of my last days” – NIN

Roller coaster is beginning its slow descent. At least I might be able to write something decent again. The writing activity helped a little. Actual interesting ideas would help more. Maybe one brilliant line that just sparks an entire story. The first day of Creative Writing we just wrote anything that came into my head and the first thing I put on the paper (which turned out to be a quote) ended up being the opening sentence for Raphaela. 

Here I am in Physiology watching a ridiculous film on muscle. I can barely see this as I’m writing.

Had a dream with Wonderfully Random, don’t care. There was a round candle lit and I was looking through a couple of CD’s (that were Anita’s friends’ or something) one of which was an old Lemonheads, one of which was an old Killing Joke CD. On the way back to WR’s house we mentioned the amazing way in which the radio switched on.

The mood I’m in now would have been the perfect time to write a letter to Tim, but I already mailed it.

H.S. is so much like “The Breakfast Club” it makes me sick.

Keeping this log is not helping me at all. I hope Ms. Donaldson reads this. 

MS. DONALDSON:

THIS LOG IS NOT HELPING ME AT ALL!!!

[note from Ms. Donaldson in green pen: “This is pretty hard to miss. Perhaps you need to alter your expectations of what you should get out of writing a journal.”]

I stopped keeping a diary for a reason, I hardly ever wrote about nice things. For the most part, it was a depressing read. There are some things I’m glad I wrote about, like events that I want to remember.

Right now I’m listening to “Just Like Heaven,” I never realized that the Cure could in any way be uplifting. Just ordered Disintegration from Columbia House (nasty scam artists). This will have to be my last entry now, seeing that I’m sitting outside of Creative Writing.

…

“’I wanna be just like you. I figure all I need is a lobotomy and some tights.’” – The Breakfast Club

Writer’s block is the worst. You can try to discipline yourself as best as you can as a writer (never something I did effectively) but if the ideas aren’t there you just can’t force it. When inspiration struck, I could spend hours lost in putting words to paper/word processor (it would be a few years before I got another computer). When it wasn’t there, I endured a limbo fraught with frustration and insecurity that I wasn’t cut out to be a “real” writer. I still get that way today.

Social divisions in school were getting to me, which meant I probably had a crush on a popular boy. Again. The fact that I can’t remember who it was today could only mean he wasn’t that special or worth all the agonizing I did over him, but really, how many unrequited crushes really are? My depressed penpal Tim was another crush, even though I knew he was too gloomy for me.

As I mentioned before, the headline for my high school experience was John Hughes Lied to Me. While the films accurately portrayed high school to an extent — especially the cliques represented in The Breakfast Club — I was growing more dubious that an 80’s magical makeover and/or happy ending was in store for me. I had given up on popularity and tried to take ownership of my misfit-but-not-quite status and develop my own identity. Which would have been easier if I was able to channel continuously channel all that teen discontent into creative outlets, but I was being failed on that front. I had nothing new to articulate, and the journal we had to keep for Creative Writing wasn’t providing any comfort or catharsis.

Ms. Donaldson had a good point. My expectations for the journal were unrealistic, much like my expectations for lots of other things (love and life, to name two). I thought the log would be some magical source of insta-inspiration, but it often became a chore to fill those lined pages. Much like writing of any form can feel like a chore. It didn’t dawn on me just how much discipline — and even tedium — was involved in being a good writer. It’s something I still struggle with.

Luckily, I was still expanding my pool of musical muses, with the Cure, patron saints to angsty teens everywhere, entering into the rotation. Nine Inch Nails was my gateway drug into goth/alternative music, but the Cure was another catalyst. Robert Smith provided a musical prism of bipolar despair and a catalog a less agressive than Trent Reznor’s, but more nuanced in its emotion. It was still taking me some time to adopt the classics, but slow and steady I was getting there.

And a film on muscle? 17 years later and that still sounds ridiculous to me.

[October, 1994] Raphaela Smashes

Nastassja Kinsi in Faraway, So Close!

[“Raphaela Smashes” was the first short story I wrote for my creative writing class. It was about a teenage girl who hates high school except for an art class where all she does is sculpt clay angels. A few angsty excerpts:

I used to be so much more tolerant of this place—no, that’s wrong.  It was never the place, always the people.  I can’t see how I’ll be able to conform to their blueprint of an average, non-interfering girl anymore.  Molding myself into their empty smiles has taken its toll and my tolerance of them has gone dry, leaving me raw and bracing myself for their sharp neglect.  I wonder if maybe I was better off sugar-coated.

* * * * *

I haven’t decided which version of me to be this year.  I think I have outgrown all of my old masks, the nice, pretty ones.  The silent, claustrophobic ones.  Maybe I can dig a new one out of the gutter.

* * * * *

I’m alone up here.  I don’t cry, it just makes the hole deeper (and it’s already becoming hard to crawl out of).  I practice breathing, doing it normally has been giving me trouble lately.  I’ve been feeling like something invisible is trying to strangle me, some thought or emotion lodged in my trachea.]

10/4/94

“You didn’t hurt me

Nothing can hurt me

You didn’t hurt me

Nothing can stop me now” – nine inch nails

We discussed Raphaela Smashes in class today and I was incredibly happy with how much people liked it.  I don’t think cut adrift… is going to be as well received.  I haven’t decided how I feel about it yet.  I’ve read it over a lot, but I don’t know what I’d change about it.

Oh well, I should focus more on my next story.  I really want to call it My Empire of Dirt and am almost ready to construct an entire story on that title.  I want it to be about little girls.  Around 9 years old.

I was really touched (and a little surprised) with how many people identified with my first story.  It was really nice, felt good.

“And in our world a heart of darkness

A firezone

Where poets speak their hearts then bleed for it.” – U2

 

So much for holding back my feelings.  My fiction was rife with them, brimming with enough teen anguish for a dozen Angela Chases and Brian Krakows.

This short story was published in a literary journal at the end of the year, which was a point of pride for me, because I was approached to submit a piece by someone who had shared the writing class with me.

Funny that I couldn’t believe that my classmates were able to identify with the alienation I portrayed in this story (a theme that would appear over and over and over in my writing).  It’s hard to imagine others feeling that sort of isolation, especially in a school full of bright, accomplished kids.  And yet so many of had our own personal cocktails of misery brewing within us, blind to the fact that we were all going through variations of the same thing.

It terms of inspiration, I wore my influences on my sleeve. Raphaela was the main character in Faraway, So Close! the sequel to Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. I suppose I was going through a bit of of an obsession with arty movies about angels (who hasn’t, right?… right?…). I knew I’d never top Wenders’ interpretation of celestial beings, but I tried to work in some kind of homage anyway.

Music continued to be the biggest inspiration, though. “Cut adrift” was short for “cut adrift but still floating” (a U2 lyric) but I decided to change “my empire of dirt” (a nine inch nails lyric) to  “Happiness in Slavery” (a nine inch nails song title). Nowadays, whenever I see a book or movie title based on a song, my first temptation is to get irked at the lack of originality, but then I have to remind myself I used to do the same thing, and it was more about paying tribute than anything else.

One upside to having a journal where I didn’t gush about my feelings as much was having fewer entries devoted to boys.  Mind you, the crushes were undoubtedly still there, but putting my passion into music and writing seemed like a better outlet than unrequited love, and more fun to reminisce about years later.

[October, 1992] The Survivor Crowd

Friday, October 3, 1992

Dear Journal,

Hozumi said something today that really stayed with me. You see Joyce has had a crush on this guy Rodrigo since seventh grade. He is sort of “popular.” Hozumi calls that the “survivor crowd.” They are not really “popular” because then we would all like them. But we don’t. Anyway she said that it really sucks liking someone from the survivor crowd because they can never go out with you because you are not a survivor.

(but sometimes you do)

That is exactly the way it is with me, except Joyce is thin, pretty and talented (although she is really down on herself, which pisses me off!) and I’m just Blah!

Reed (on the bus, sometimes) is a “meatal-head.” His father died a while ago. Hozumi is also a “meatal-head” (It’s not an insult or anything). Her father is an alcoholic (she admitted it in Art). I think that this whole thing (the music, the clothes…) aside from they might like it, I think it’s an escape. From reality I suppose. They are kind of lucky, though because they have this sort of façade and everybody leaves them alone. Nobody knows what they are really thinking or anything. It’s not that they don’t have friends, they have their own group, but mostly their life is kept secret unless they want to reveal something. It’s the same with everybody else but at the same time it’s different.

I am pretty unhappy right now. I feel lazy and apathetic. I don’t really think it’s just a phase, either. I am just feeling really hopeless right now. The only time I don’t feel that way is when I’m distracted somehow, or I’m laughing. Putting my feelings in writing helps though. If I had no mode of expression I (God forbid) might do something rash. I wish things were different. I better go to sleep now. I always feel better in the morning.

Despite my inability to spell always spell “metalhead” correctly, I was fascinated with this small subculture at Hunter (who, for the record, listened to hardcore, punk, and other genres besides metal). They were outcasts, but at the same time they had their own microcosm to exist in, even their own hallway at school. I wasn’t freak enough for the freak hallway, but felt out of place among the rest of my peers and dissatisfied at the idea of being ordinary. While I had a handful of friends at school, I still felt unpopular and uncomfortable in my skin. I think many of us felt that way. Joyce certainly did, though I couldn’t understand why. I guess it wasn’t my place to understand her.

“Survivors” was a term referred to the core group of kids left over from Hunter Elementary School who attended the high school (and didn’t have to test to get in). They were usually wealthy and attractive kids and formed the root of the “popular” crowd. It was easy to feel diminished by their elitism, but when you don’t like yourself, it’s easy to feel diminished by anything and anyone. The truth is, I never really knew the “survivors” and could only imagine that they were more fortunate, their lives somehow better. In actuality, we all had aspects of our lives that were kept secret, we all had our battle scars. And maybe some were blessed with more looks, money, talent, or brains, but we were all trying to survive a challenging academic environment and the trials of adolescence.

I wish I could go back and tell my fourteen-year-old self that things would be immeasurably better in later years, but at the time, it didn’t feel that way. And besides, new struggles have a way of replacing the old ones and I had to learn coping mechanisms somehow. Difficulty and depression come and go; the best we can hope for is a strong spirit and plenty of endurance.

In a sense, we were all part of the survivor crowd back then. And we all still are today.