by Cyndy Etler
There’s no Smith.
Instead of writing “fuck you” on the wall of the guidance waiting area, I do a bubble-letter ?. In the empty middle part of the ?, I write a poem-thing.
A tisket
A tasket
Smith College
or
A casket
Then I draw little question marks around the main one, like falling snow. Like a question storm.
21
JUNE 1989
TWO YEARS AND THREE MONTHS OUT
Shane hasn’t called me since I told him about my little sister, but that’s okay. It’s okay! It’s okay because of Prozac. The psychiatrist said I needed a double dosage, eighty milli-somethings a day. She said she’d never seen a teenager as depressed as I was. But was. Past tense. The psychiatrist said it can take a month for Prozac to kick in, but not for me! The first day I took my Prozac, I didn’t need to go to my room and cry for two hours when I got home from school. It was unbelievable.
And, and, and! Speaking of unbelievable, there’s another sober kid at Masuk now! I swear, sometimes I have to suffer awhile to prove something to God. Once I’ve proved it, He gives me everything I’ve ever wanted.
Ms. Grass really knows what she’s doing, ’cause here’s how she introduces us. She sends me a pass fifteen minutes into first period, when there’s nobody left in the hallways. That way I don’t have to walk by the cheerleaders in the popular zone. When I get to her office, she says to me, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Then she walks me down the silent, empty halls until we reach the one single person who’s not in class. It’s this girl, standing in front of an open locker.
I swear, it’s like the two halves of a couple meeting for their arranged marriage. Except in our case, we instantly fall in like, rather than love.
Her name’s Deanna Fazzini, and she thinks she went to rehab. I’d never tell her this, but she didn’t go to rehab. She went to preschool. First of all, she was only gone for six weeks. Which she thinks is a long time! Second, she had her own private bathroom. With a door. That locked. Third, she was allowed to read and go outside and be alone and choose her own food in a cafeteria. And nobody ever laid a hand on her. Like, the kids in her rehab went into frigging town on Saturday nights to see a movie!
The only rehabby thing about her program was that she wasn’t around her druggie friends. Well, and she went to AA meetings three times a day. Other than that, the place was actually nice to her. How’s that gonna help a lying, druggie scumbag kick her addiction? But somehow it seems to be working. At least, it’s working so far. She’s been out a month, and she hasn’t talked to any of her druggie friends, and she hasn’t picked up a drink or a drug. I’ve even seen her smile. One month out, and already she can smile. I’ve been out two years, and I still don’t think I’ve smiled yet.
Deanna came back to Masuk at the perfect time, because, man, did I need a friend. So here’s Deanna Fazzini. My first sober friend.
She’s five-foot-two, and she thinks she’s fat. Which is crazy. She wears a size six.
She’s got long, straight brown hair that she blow-dries. Her bangs are curled in roll, so there’s a huge bang-wave over her forehead. Her hair is really crispy because she uses a ton of hairspray. Aussie brand.
She has a cat face, like Paula Abdul, who’s her idol. She does her eyes the same way as Paula—lots of eyeliner, not a lot else. And she always, always, always has on lipstick.
She wears the same outfit every day, only with different clothes: acid-wash jeans rolled up tight at the ankles. A brown leather belt. And a tight cotton ballerina shirt, the kind you can pull down off your shoulders if you want, which Deanna does. Plus sneakers—clean white Keds. And a heart locket with no picture in it, and some big hoop earrings.
Sometimes she’ll trade the leotard shirt for a giant Reebok sweatshirt, the collar and wristbands removed, so the hem rolls a little to show the soft, nubbly inside. I think she wears that when she’s bloated. Sweatshirt days, she trades the Keds for Velcro high-top Reeboks, like Jane Fonda wears in her exercise videos.
Deanna’s “rehab” was in Minnesota, so she uses weird Minnesota slang. She calls soda “pop” and she cuts “come with me” down to “come with.” That’s how I knew we were immediate friends. After Ms. Glass introduced us and walked away, Deanna slammed her locker and said to me, “I’m going to the smoking pit. Wanna come with?”
Aside from finally, finally having a friend at Masuk—any sober friend, period!—the absolute best thing about Deanna is her home life. I’ve always known some kids live like her, but none of those kids ever liked me before. So being friends with Deanna is my first time actually getting to taste it, you know? Richness.
Listen to how she lives. First off, she has a mom and a dad. They’re so mom and dad that mom doesn’t have to work, and dad wears a tie every day. They’re so mom and dad they let me call them Mom and Dad Fazzini.
!!!
They have one of those perfect houses that’s all new and clean, with the same number of windows to the left and right side of the front door, and no missing shutters. They have TVs in the family room and in Mom and Dad Fazzini’s room and in Deanna’s brother’s room, and all of the TVs have remote controls and cable. You could live all day, every day, never having to think with that much cable TV.
And Deanna’s room! It’s Shangri-fucking-La. Listen to me.
• Bedroom set—heavy, square, dark, wooden. Dresser, bed, nightstands, dressing table.
• Stereo. Not boom box. Stereo. Radio, tape deck, record player. Four speakers, each three feet tall.
• Chinese lanterns. Purple, pink, and turquoise.
• Blinds and curtains, which match the bedspread.
• Pillows. A zillion of them. Tubes, circles, hearts, plus regular rectangular sleeping pillows.
• Department store perfumes. One with the puffer-on-a-cord-and-a-tassel thing. On a silver tray.
• Hamper. Her own individual hamper. Which Mom Fazzini cleans out for laundry day.
• Door with a lock. And key. Which Deanna gets to keep all for herself.
• Closet so packed with clothes from Express/Contempo Casuals/Wet Seal, the hangers won’t budge. And heels. Six pairs. Real spike heels. Not pumps.
This isn’t her dream; she lives here.
And when she leaves here—which why would she, but when she does—she leaves in her own Oldsmobile. Swear to fucking God. She has her own cush car with velvet seats that goes clickvroom like a lullaby when she turns the key. She can roll down the windows, tap in a Richard Marx tape, and drive, drive, drive, with me in the front seat next to her like a real live friend. She doesn’t even bat an eyelash.
She only listens to Richard Marx when I’m in the car, because other than Paula Abdul, he’s the only non-headbanger she likes. I can’t handle being trapped in a car with a blaring metal band, which is the music she really loves. You can kind of tell that she’d be into Slayer and Poison and Whitesnake by looking at her. It’s something about how she holds her mouth. She automatically looks a little mad if you don’t know her. But she’s not. She’s actually nice—obviously, if she switches to Richard Marx for me.
Okay, confession? The whole hair band thing is maybe a little embarrassing. I mean, I’m a Dead-shirt person. The people who I want to, like, respect me are the Deadheads. So how does it look when I’m leaning my head in to whisper with Deanna, the black-shirted hairspray chick? But rewind. Erase. I can’t believe I complained about my friend, now that I finally have one. God. I just wish she didn’t have to be so loud about making fun of dancing bears and patchouli when we’re in the smoking pit. You know?
Once we’re away from the Deadheads, though, it doesn’t matter. When it’s just Deanna and me, it feels like we’re the best friends in a Seventeen magazine fashion spread. The kind who talk with only their eyes, share clothes,
and go on midnight field trips to the swings at the elementary school. Except our magazine-life is even better because it’s the clean and sober version.
For example, a couple weeks ago, I saw this great picture of Madonna in Tiger Beat. She was lying on a bed in an undershirt and boxer undies. I loved it. I showed it to Deanna and she loved it too. So we pooled our money and went to Kmart and bought a three-pack of Fruit of the Loom boxers. We tried them on with some of her dad’s undershirts, and once we safety-pinned the fly shut, they made the cutest shorts. For the first time in my life, I looked in the mirror and saw a non-loser.
So I have been trying to get Deanna to try a Trumbull meeting—she doesn’t seem to like AA much; I don’t know why—and our matching outfits finally do the trick. The Friday night meeting is the perfect opportunity to wear them, even Dee can see that. Especially when I tell her some hot older guys show up at that meeting.
When I first got out of Straight and came to Trumbull meetings by myself, I would always share. I guess I had a lot to talk about back then. But Deanna doesn’t speak at Friday’s meeting, and neither do I. And then she wants to jet right after, to go to the diner. When we walk through the smoking crew on the way back to her car, I can feel some of my old AA people looking at me in the not-happy way. Like maybe they wish I weren’t wearing underwear out in public. Which makes me kind of sad. But not sad enough to not feel awesome when Deanna slides down the windows, cranks up “Fight For Your Right,” and burns rubber out of the church parking lot.
22
JULY 1989
TWO YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS OUT
I think Deanna likes…sex. I don’t know if she’s actually done it, but I think she might have. I know she knows stuff about it. One day, we’re actually hanging out at my house, and when we’re in the bathroom trying on makeup, she sees my birth control pill case.
“Oh, you’ve done it?” she says, all casual, no big. She makes that hard O you do with your lips when you’re putting on lipstick and looks at me in the mirror.
“No! No! Have you?!”
Instead of answering me, she runs her shoplifted Wet ‘n’ Wild Lip Tricks around the O. “So cool,” she says. “How does it go from green in the tube to red on your lips?” She hands it over to me. “You try.”
On me, it turns cotton candy pink. That’s the end of our sex talk that day. But the next night, we pick it up again.
I’m staying over her house, and it’s 2:00 a.m. We’ve got the family room TV on super-low, to not wake up her parents. When the video for that song “Luka,” the one about a kid who gets beaten, comes on, we both get silent. I cry a little, and I know Deanna does too, because she has to blow her nose. Then they play another tearjerker, “Fast Car.” So we’re flat-out bawling, which means some honesty is going to happen. Next thing you know, when “I Want Your Sex” comes on, we’re talking about our deepest fears. Or I guess I’m talking about my deepest fears, and Deanna’s telling me how to fix them.
Q: What if he wants to kiss you but you haven’t brushed your teeth since that morning?
A: Binaca. Keep it, always, in your back pocket.
Q: What if he tries to put your hand on his thing?
A: Over the jeans: make a fist and press gently up and down against it—but not on top of the zipper! Not, not, not! Under the jeans: same deal, just be careful because he’s gonna try to get it in your hand, then in other places.
Q: Do I want my hand on his thing?
A: Long look, short shrug, then words: “That’s something you’ve gotta figure out for yourself.”
Q: What does the thing feel like?
A: A bumpy, clammy hot dog.
To get away from that topic, I tell her about my boob sweat. She laughs, so I go into more detail. “Look! Look at these things! These are big! And they get all smashed together in this stupid underwire bra. Big plus smashed plus bouncing around all day? Sweat! And sweat equals stink! What if a boy is kissing me and my sweat stink rises up to his nose, like the smell of baking cookies? What if he tries to put his face down there? Gas mask!”
She’s literally crying from laughing now, and so am I. When we finally switch to eye wiping and wheezing, we hear this swip from the kitchen. We freeze. We listen. Nothing, nothing, swip.
I’m totally holding my breath. I look at her and she looks at me and we do that Seventeen-mag-best-friends trick: we talk with no words. I raise my brows and jerk my thumb at the kitchen. She frowns and nods twice for yup. I clench my teeth and peel my lips back like yiiiikes. Then I mouth, Dad? and she yup-nods again.
I crash my head down and knot my arms over it because oh my fucking GOD, her dad knows that my boobs stink, and why is he up reading the newspaper at 2:00 a.m., and why didn’t he tell us he was there? Between my bent knees, I can see that Deanna is shaking from trying to muzzle her laugh. I am mor-ti-fied. How can I ever call him “Dad” again?
But at the same time, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Because I think have a friend. Like, a best friend.
I know I do when she agrees to go to a sober dance. Like I said, Deanna’s not a fan of the AA scene. But we’re going to Club 12 tonight, basically because I want to. Like, wait. What?
Yeah. Really.
So remember how, in Desperately Seeking Susan, loser housewife Roberta transforms herself into mega-hot Susan by putting on Susan-style clothes? I swear I’m her as we go through Deanna’s closet and I try on her clothes. It’s stuff I would never ever, ever think to wear, because it’s all stretchy and tight.
We both end up looking like we’re on MTV. She’s Samantha Fox in a denim miniskirt and white ballerina top, with high-heel ankle boots and a giant cross necklace. She does her hair same as always, but she puts on extra makeup: dark-maroon blusher so her cheeks look all hollow, purple lipstick, and mascara, mascara, mascara.
I’m one of the “Addicted to Love” video chicks, minus the guitar and the oiled-back hair. I’m wearing Deanna’s favorite baby-sized spandex mini, which is even shorter on me than her, since I’m two inches taller. She makes me try it on with these super-skinny high-heeled sandals and a spaghetti-strap tank top, then she piles my hair on my head all messy. When I look in the mirror I gasp, sort of, because who is that person? That person’s not me. That person is—that person is, like, sexy.
But there’s no way I’m going out in public with my big boobs in spaghetti straps. So I wear my own long-sleeve black T-shirt. I do keep the heels on, though, and I let Deanna put makeup on me. And I look good. I look good.
When we’re at Club 12, I can’t imagine why anyone would need drugs ever, because with these outfits and this music and having an actual friend, I am higher than the birds, than the stars, than even God Himself. I am high on Club 12 and this night and “Mercedes Boy,” which is what the DJ plays the second we walk in the door. The song starts out with this drum and guitar sound that feels threatening, somehow. Dangerous. The drum lands right between your hips. I don’t even put my purse down. I don’t care if I’m pushing through people or if Deanna is coming with; I’m getting to the middle of that dance floor and moving the way the music tells me.
Right before the singing, when those heaven-voice tahhh-tah-tahhhs go high to low, the singer, Pebbles takes over my body. I’m doing the same moves she does in the video, spreading my fingers across my face and moving them to my chest and middle, looking down in shock like Cinderella realizing, “Oh my God, I’ve got this beautiful dress on!”
I’m gone. I’m someone else, somewhere else, where everything feels good and easy, and a gorgeous guy in a white T-shirt and leather jacket struts past brick buildings, dancing a little as he waits for me to pick him up in my convertible Mercedes. It doesn’t even matter that when he spins in his tux, he has a bald spot, because there’s the tang of that tin-can beat and I’m moving so smooth and perfect. The music is so intense it hurts, a beautiful hurt. I mouth the words along
with Pebbles, but I’m talking to the floor because I do want to do things to a boy, just like she says, but I don’t know what those things are.
It feels so good, so good to be here, and I want to do everything when the next song rolls in with the long horns blowing like the king is on his way. They hold out that last note and it’s Yeahhh in that gravel voice, like the ogre who lives under the bridge. The drums go tit-ta-tit-tit as they lead into “Just Got Paid,” and everybody’s feeling it. The whole club is in on it. The singer—he knows Club 12 feels just like the city in his video. In it, he hops out of his BMW and claps hands with the guys out front of the club. They’re all wearing their Ricky Ricardo suits and doing that clap-heel-spin that makes you feel like life, life, life and everybody in it is A-okay. I feel like I’m greased when the horns and drums yell back and every person in this place knows how to move, and we’re all one party—say ho! Ho!—and, fuck, do I feel good.
Then the “Hit-it!” and boom-chicka drums of “It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right” kick in. And everybody, including me, jumps up and claps because they’re psyched about this song.
But the quickness of the boom-chicka is actually pretty confusing. The only way to dance to it is to shake your butt and hips like a baby rattle, front and back, like the girl in the video. But that’s not for me. I don’t work that fast, and neither do any of the guys, because suddenly all of them, plus me, are walking off the dance floor. It’s just Deanna and a couple other girls baby-rattle dancing, while hundreds of everybody else stands on the sidelines watching them. It doesn’t feel like heaven anymore; it feels kind of embarrassing. Because we all thought we were so pumped for this song, but then we all got busted.