“No. I’ll take a bus. It’s all right.”
They rounded the corner onto Broadway Street, passing on their right that big maroon building with FREE CLINIC painted on the side.
“There’s the flea market over there!”
The initial examination took the most time of all. Blood pressure. More urine and blood samples. Flashlights in the eyes. It gave her plenty of time to get more scared. She wanted to scream, Just get it over with!
There were many other girls around, most of them with the same embarrassed look on their faces. Filling out forms. Taking samples. Why didn’t men have to go through this?
Finally she was led to another room—the operating room—and seated on a steel table. Minutes passed. Another nurse came in and told her to wait just five more minutes.
Ten minutes later, the doctor entered the room. He by-passed courtesy greetings. He by-passed conversation completely.
“If you’d like to change your mind, please say so now,” he stated.
“No, thank you.”
The nurse reentered the room. They did not speak to each other. The doctor turned his back and opened a metal cabinet. He selected from it a tube filled with an emerald-colored chemical, then took from the nurse a sealed packet. He ripped the packet open and withdrew the biggest syringe Stacy had ever seen.
She started to panic.
“Will I be able to have a child after this?”
“You should,” said the doctor.
“Is this going to hurt?”
“Have you been taking the pills we gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . . those should help a lot. They’ll reduce swelling and bleeding.”
“But does it hurt a lot?”
“This is your first time, right?”
She nodded.
“Well,” said the doctor, “you’ve felt pain before. It’s over very quickly . . . is your boyfriend out there?”
“Yes,” said Stacy. Out there somewhere, she thought.
The doctor watched as the nurse strapped Stacy’s legs into stirrups. He inserted the syringe into her vagina.
“Squeeze me when you feel pain,” said the nurse.
Stacy shivered as the cold rush of anesthetic swept through her lower torso. “I feel all cold,” she said.
“It’s normal.”
The nurse inserted two metal tubes leading into a large glass jar that had been placed between her legs.
“I’ll be with you after this is over,” said the nurse. Then the suction noise began.
Stacy started to panic again. “Aren’t you going to knock me out?”
“Oh, not for this,” said the doctor. It was as if she was in the dentist’s chair, and he was filling a quick cavity.
“I thought you were going to knock me out . . .”
“It will be over in a moment,” said the doctor. “You’re a good patient.” The words seemed to hold no particular meaning for him.
A huge cramp pulled Stacy’s stomach into a tight knot. Then she felt daggers of pain shooting into her solar plexus. She squeezed the nurse’s hand until it was white.
“It’ll be over in a moment. You’re a good patient.”
In one minute the jar had filled to the top with a purplish bloody membrane. She had most wanted to be knocked out so she wouldn’t have to see . . . it. But it was not even an embryo. It was just a glob.
“Send that to the lab,” the doctor directed. The tubes were withdrawn.
“Is it over?”
“Not yet. We have to do a little scraping.”
“The papers didn’t say anything about . . .”
“Just relax,” the doctor said.
They had inserted two metal scraping devices. The doctor started probing and scratching her deep inside. She was bleeding heavily, all over her white gown.
“This hurts even worse than it looks.”
“It’ll be over in a second. You’re a good patient.”
“I wish men could experience this,” Stacy said.
Her abortion had taken a total of ten minutes. The doctor patted her behind the neck. “You were a good patient,” he said. “Is there anything you need while you’re resting in the next room?”
“A box of tissues.”
The nurse left the room to get the tissues, leaving only Stacy and the doctor.
“I have one question,” said Stacy. “Does it hurt more to have a baby?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But you mind it less.”
She emerged from the resting room, her eyes a teary red, and sat down to complete the last of their forms. As she did, a girl and her boyfriend entered the same reception area. This girl was on her way in. Her boyfriend picked up a magazine and leafed through it.
The girl looked at Stacy. For a moment the two caught each other’s eyes and locked in. What passed between them Stacy was not sure about, but she knew she would remember this a long, long time. The tubes. The jar. The doctor. And she would remember the look in that girl’s eyes. They were like a deer’s eyes, caught in headlights.
It was March twenty-first, and she would always remember the date, too, because it was her mother’s birthday. Stacy Hamilton felt a lot older today.
“Nurse,” she said, “I’m going to wait for my boyfriend downstairs.”
The Tribute
Mrs. Paula Benson, the forty-two-year-old cafeteria manager of Ridgemont High School, had come to the end of the line with her job. It was her ninth year with the school, and still the administration hadn’t favored her with a policy change. A decade ago, then Vice-Principal William Gray had decided that the cafeteria was the best training spot for retarded and handicapped students hoping to make an entrance into the mainstream. The idea caught on. For nine years Mrs. Benson had been helping the handicapped help themselves help her.
A next-door neighbor had planted a terrible thought in Mrs. Benson’s head: “Paula, you are the same age now that Elvis Presley was when he died. You take care of yourself.” Mrs. Benson looked in the mirror and saw a woman much older than her years. She decided to quit Ridgemont.
As she explained to Ray Connors on the Friday before Easter vacation, it was not that she minded working with the disabled. She was just tired of all the students, and it was about time that she “started keeping her own house clean.”
Ray Connors took a look at this woman, this quiet soul who had summoned all her courage to make this decision, and rewarded her, typically, with a promotion to area manager. It was a job that involved her traveling to all the local schools and working with all the handicapped students in all the cafeterias. With the promise of a small raise to go along with the new title, a tired and wan Paula Benson reported to her last day at Ridgemont High School.
She had heard the loud screeching noises from as far away as the parking lot. As she drew closer, she realized with no small terror that all the racket was coming from—my God—the cafeteria.
She entered through the side door. It was an incredible sight—there had to be thirty young men in Afro hairdos or wigs, all carrying amplified guitars. Wearing scarves. They looked to her with hope.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“We answered the ad,” said one boy. A red scarf was tied around his thigh. “For the tribute.”
“What ad?”
“Oh, man. You mean you don’t know about it either?”
“I’m the cafeteria manager. I’m afraid I don’t know about any of this. Who let you in here?”
Another boy produced a scrap of paper from the local Reader. “Look at this!”
It read: THIS MONDAY MORNING, 7:00 A.M., all-day auditions begin for HENDRIX, an Off-Broadway tribute to the greatest guitarist of all time. Big money commitment. Performances across the country. Must be able to look and perform like the great Jimi Hendrix. Report to cafeteria at Ridgemont High School. Be early!
“But there ain’t nothing around here got to do with Hendrix,” complained the kid.
; Three more Hendrix lookalikes appeared at the doorway holding amplifiers. “This where the tribute is?”
Then it dawned on Mrs. Benson. The last time someone pulled a prank like this was about three years ago . . . to the day. April first.
“Gentlemen,” said Mrs. Benson, “I think this is someone’s idea of an April Fool’s Day joke.”
“Motherfu . . .”
“Hey,” said another kid. “Jimi would have wanted us to play all day!”
“Let’s get a P.A. in here!”
The Jimi Hendrix imitators set up camp in the cafeteria. More kept arriving all morning. They had jammed for an hour and a half before Lt. Flowers pulled the electricity switch. During lunch time he visited the various troublemakers of the school and grilled them as they bit into their sandwiches.
“Do you know who is responsible for this action in the cafeteria?”
“I don’t know, Lt. Flowers. I heard it was Steven Miko.”
That Little Prick
After the operation, Stacy took the bus to Linda Barrett’s house. The two girls disappeared into Linda’s room to discuss the experience. When Linda heard about Damone’s standing her up a second time, about his leaving Stacy to find her own ride downtown, she did something uncharacteristic of her normally regal manner. She slammed her fist into the wall.
“That prick!” she said.
“I know. You told me about high school boys.”
“Forget that,” said Linda. “He’s a LITTLE PRICK!”
“Calm down,” said Stacy. “Your parents are in the living room.”
Her mother knocked at the door. “Are you all right, Linda?”
“I’m okay!”
“We’re all right, Mrs. Barrett.”
“THAT LITTLE PRICK,” shrieked Linda.
Stacy had gone home and gone to sleep. Linda went out later that night and found Mike Damone’s smart new Toyota. Using a key, she had scratched three words along the driver’s side: PRICK PRICK PRICK.
There had been only a brief confrontation between Damone and Stacy, and it happened in Public Speaking. On Expert Day. Mrs. J. had a Personal Growth Counselor from nearby City College come in and lecture on such consciousness-raising methods as Awareness Therapy. The counselor had selected Damone as a centerpiece. He asked several students around the room to comment on Damone’s personality.
It was soon Stacy’s turn.
Three weeks after the abortion, she was still disoriented at times. She still experienced the symptoms of pregnancy. Slowly her body adjusted to its loss. But the resentment deepened.
She still saw Mike on lunch court, in the hallways and in Speech class. His mood was mostly one of relief at having averted a near-disaster. He had even become jovial, wisecracking with her. She had come to feel like a notch on his Lynyrd Skynyrd belt buckle.
“I think Mike is always covering up,” said Stacy. “Every time you see him he’s got this façade. I just wonder what he’s really like, what he was like back in Philadelphia.”
Silence.
“Well, now that was insightful, wasn’t it Mike,” the counselor had said. “That young lady has given you a perspective on yourself that could have only come out of Awareness Therapy. There are other kinds of therapy . . .”
“What are you talking about?” added Damone. “You don’t know me! You may think you know me, but you don’t know me!”
“I know that you’ve got an act.”
“You’re just saying that,” raged Damone, “because you wanted to be my girlfriend, and I didn’t feel like having a girlfriend.”
“Bullshit!”
“Bullshit!”
“Okay you two,” said Mrs. George. “I think we’ve had enough Personal Growth for one day.”
And of course there was the matter of rumors. Between Damone’s PRICK PRICK PRICK Toyota, and the few friends he’d told about the abortion, and Linda and Laurie, it soon seemed that the only ones who hadn’t heard the story were The Rat and Brad Hamilton. Was it really true that Stacy Hamilton had a . . . ?
No one dared question Stacy. She was never around anymore. She had done the American thing about putting some distance between herself and the traumatic memory of March twenty-first. She had thrown herself into her work. There were new managers now at the Town Center Mall Swenson’s, and they had given her some tough weekend hours to hostess. She worked them without a complaint, and the new managers made a big deal about it. They made her Employee of the Month. Some of the back kitchen girls even began to worry about their jobs.
Then came a further twist. Some of Damone’s friends began to work at the Town Center Mall Swenson’s. Damone, tired of his own janitorial job, resigned, and one day turned up on a job interview with the new managers of the mall Swenson’s. Stacy did nothing to block his being hired as a busboy. A few weeks later, it was announced that Stacy Hamilton was new Weekend Nighttime Manager. This meant only a few hours, two days a week, but the title alone was awesome for a girl who was still fifteen years old and a sophomore at Ridgemont High School.
One weekend in early May, Swenson’s was filled. Stacy was rushing here, rushing there, exercising her new authority.
“Damone,” she said. “You want to clean off table 19? Or do I have to do it myself!”
And out of the back bustled Mike Damone—Mr. Attitude—in a peppermint shirt and a bow tie.
“Gimme a break! I’m coming! I’m coming!”
Danny
“Some people,” said Mrs. George, “come to this school to learn.”
She was red-eyed and shaking as she faced her morning speech class. Today was meant to be Debate Day, a period in which students like Damone and The Rat took the podium and argued such subjects as “The fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed Limit: Boon or Bust,” but it was obvious there would be no speeches and no debates on this morning. This morning Mrs. George had been awakened with the news that one of her students had hanged himself.
His name was Danny Boyd, and to many students he had been a joke figure, another campus character. Danny Boyd had been a senior for two years, taking a couple of courses at a time, trying to improve his grades to get into a state college. He wasn’t around school that much, but he always carried a big black briefcase with a double combination lock. Sometimes he stood around the parking lot, near Mrs. George’s brown Monarch, talking with other members of the “briefcase preppy set.” Like the surfers, they too had been pushed out onto the parking lot by the fast-food militia, but not even the briefcase set could really find room for Danny Boyd.
“Danny came to me two months ago,” said Mrs. George, “and told me that nobody here would talk to him.” She was a teacher of great enthusiasm, and nobody had quite heard such disgust in her voice before. “He felt that just because he studied more than the rest of you for College Boards, he made people feel uncomfortable. All of you knew he had to work harder, and still not one of you reached out to him. You were all too busy with yourselves.” She sighed, examining her hand.
“Well. He was turned down again last week by every college he applied to. And it appeared to him he didn’t have a single friend to help him through his disappointment. You were all too busy . . .”
In the nervous silence of the room, only the electric buzz of the clock was heard. Mrs. George looked up again.
“Sometimes I sit back there and listen to you talk amongst yourselves,” said Mrs. George. “And it is absolutely amazing to me. You talk about your working hours, your adult lives and your adult emotions, yet you are all such children, really. You’d do yourselves well to remind yourselves of that from time to time.”
And even though Mrs. George had not been particularly close to Danny Boyd, she made a point of admonishing each of her classes for their insensitivity toward the student. There was a special article on Danny ordered for the school paper, the yearbook staff made an announcement that they would keep him in with the senior class photos. Danny Boyd became a special cause for about two weeks, before the onrushing pace of h
igh school events swept his memory into the past.
Fish and Chips
Brad’s new job location was way down on Ridgemont Drive, in a green building between two office-supply stores. There was a huge off-purple drawing of a lobster out front. The sign read: Captain Kidd Fish and Chips. Brad himself couldn’t really tell you how good the fish was. He didn’t like fish.
But that wasn’t the real problem. He could even deal with his new assistant manager, Harold, a guy Brad thought looked like that TV ventriloquist who worked the bitchy puppet named Madame. Harold was always asking Brad to run errands for him, and he expected Brad to love doing them. Harold was big on company pride.
Brad didn’t even mind that so much. He was the new guy at Captain Kidd, so he went along with it.
The real problem, as Brad saw it, was the uniforms. Captain Kidd Fish and Chips demanded that all employees wear blue-and-white-striped buccaneer outfits. The uniforms came with hot, baggy pants and phony black plastic swords that an employee couldn’t remove—“Where’s your sword, Hamilton? You’ve got to wear the sword!”—and worst of all, a big floppy Ponce de León swashbuckler hat. Like a bunch of pirates. Behind the fryer, Brad felt, this got to be a bit much.
At least no one from Ridgemont High came into the place.
One day Brad was at the fryer, tossing some frozen cod into the oil. It was pretty amazing, Brad was thinking. Here was Redondo Beach, a warm-water port, and they still flew in this frozen fish from Alaska. It didn’t make sense. But he didn’t eat fish anyway, so he just cooked it up and didn’t worry about it. Anyone who would come into a place with a big purple lobster on the sign out front, Brad figured, would probably love the stuff.
His thoughts were interrupted by the breathless appearance of Harold, the assistant manager. “Hamilton,” he said, “I need you to run an order for me. I’ll take over the fryer. Those boys over at IBM are really socked in, and I told them you would personally deliver their order within the hour. Can you just run it over in your car? I’ll reimburse you for gas.”
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Page 19