by Jake Brown
Most people who know me today wouldn’t believe that, but I was very quiet as a kid. I was a nerd — a HOT nerd, but a nerd for sure. I played recorder and guitar in junior high, but I wanted to play drums because I loved the Go Go’s back then. Mainly, I liked Heavy Metal — it represented the dark side of things, which I was really attracted to. My first two concerts were Black Sabbath and Carcass, but Iron Maiden was hands-down my favorite band back then — Eddie was my icon. My mom thought it was weird, but didn’t see it as a hostile thing until I started hanging out with these longhaired guys. She never knew I went to rock shows, I had to sneak out. My dating life was even more pathetic at first, because my mom watched me like a hawk, and I really didn’t start seriously dating till I was 16, I was too concerned during those years in-between with sneaking out to go to concerts. My best friend in high school was a girl named Penny, and we were both disciples of metal. We had French together, and had met in a study group. She was GreekAmerican, very pretty with long black hair, and I knew she smoked pot, which intrigued me. One day after school she invited me to go home with her and I tried pot with her. We looked like twins, and both wore black, matching Bowler hats, which were the ‘in’ thing back then. We both loved metal competitively, and would go to see everyone together. We saw Carcass, Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Warlock, Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Cannibal Corpse, Megadeth and others. We would sneak off to the Garden, Irving Plaza, the Beacon Theatre, and CBGB where they had matinee shows. Because we spent so much of high school going out to rock and metal shows, our routine was: I would tell my mom I was at her house, and we’d sneak out instead. Looking back, it was typical teenage stuff to me. Naturally my mother would have seen it differently, as evinced by the MUCH harder time she gave where dating guys was concerned. Because of that, I definitely discovered guys well before I was publicly dating them. I loved metal heads from the get-go. I felt they were much better looking than any stupid pop star. I liked the music, the guitars; the harshness — everything there was to like about heavy metal. I dug the anger in the music, I thought it was awesome, and I related to it as well but who didn’t as a kid.The first guys I really flirted with dating at that age were the guys at the metal shows, even though I was still too shy to speak to anyone. I thought a lot of the guys who went to metal shows were cute, but I was also scared of them because many of them were fucked up. I would hang out in places like Hell’s Kitchen, later on in high school, but I was always at the shows — and believe it or not, always went straight home afterwards.
In terms of my shyness, it got better as I got later into my teens because I took a non-matriculated Public Speaking course independently at Columbia University while I was still in high school. That definitely helped me to learn to speak up for myself. I focused pretty heavily on languages in high school, and thought at one point about teaching. While I was still in high school, I had also taught in an after-school program called ‘Art Without Walls,’ which I really liked, and was a really great nonprofit organization. My best friend’s mother ran that whole program, so I taught French to under-privileged kids whose parents were in prison. At Friends School, you had to put in X amount of hours of community service for graduation, and it was a really good experience. I also went to the New School for Social Research, in another after-school capacity, to study accounting, and some other fucking Poindexter courses. That was distracting, but I really enjoyed the French, and had a way with languages. I spoke four languages — Portuguese, French, German, and Spanish — which I excelled at. Another thing I tried to excel at during this period was sneaking away to Washington Square Park, which wasn’t far from the New School, and to Sheep’s Meadow, which was the first place I ever had an acid trip. My friend Penny and I were off the rest of that day from school, and it was nice out, so I figured what the fuck? We were about 10 blocks away from my friend’s house, which was across from the 57th Street Playhouse. So I remember calling my mom to tell her I was going to sleep over at Penny’s and I was just flipping out. She wasn’t buying it, and by the time we got back to Penny’s house, my mom was already downstairs at the restaurant Penny’s mom owned and operated — which incidentally was across from her house — giving her mom reasons why I shouldn’t sleep over. It was like debating, and thankfully I was in the debate club, so we won her over and thank God I got to sleep it off at Penny’s house.
Then I dropped acid a second time a few weeks later, this time two hits of Clown-Face acid, and went to Laser Floyd, and then Laser Zeppelin shows both in the same day.The next day I had my driver’s test and I was still tripping, so needless to say I failed. At one point in the test, I thought a tree was moving while I was driving and in trying to drive around the tree, ended up running right into it. I think I eventually passed the second or third time I took the test. It hardly mattered in the end since growing up in New York with the subways, you hardly drove. Anyway, I didn’t do hard drugs in high school, just weed here and there, and of course the acid. Aside from the mind-altering, I was always into the mind-opening, and I had always been in a pretty open environment culturally growing up in New York, where I was encouraged to take everything around me in, but it had always been under my mom’s protective wing. So when I got a bit older, and I started growing physically into a woman, and wanted to continue with that same routine of exploring, my mom took on an entirely different attitude, and the tone changed completely between us on the subject. That changed my focus too because I was so baffled by some of the things my mother would say to me about going out. For instance, I wanted to walk around the Village one weekend with a friend of mine, and my mom took the attitude of ‘Well, you have to let me know where you’re going and I have to be there.’ It was just the way she would say it. When I entered my last couple years of high school, her tone changed radically toward me, because she made it seem like I wanted to go out in the street and do drugs and get laid, that’s the way she made it seem. But that wasn’t ever what I was trying to do, and because she’s an attorney, she was very good at arguing, so there was always an argument about something. Mind you this was in the daytime too, not at night. She used to check my answering machine when I wasn’t home to keep track of who I was talking to and get any dirt she could on me.
For as close as my mom and I were in my younger years, as I blossomed into a teenager, we couldn’t have found ourselves more far apart from one another. Take, for instance, the topic of Sex Ed. When it was time for my mom and I to have that talk, I didn’t hear about the birds and the bees from my mom’s mouth: instead it came from her therapist Judy Detrik! She never had any discussions with me about sex, or even a woman having her period — it was all done through a therapist, which I thought was weird to say the least. I don’t think it made her a bad mother, just green in a way. I had my first therapy session at 14. It inspired me out of my interest in going to a movie with a guy who was a year older than me. That must have set all sorts of wild fire alarms off in my mom’s head — sirens and all — because she rushed me right in to see this woman to have the whole sex talk. I think my mom’s hope was that the therapist would talk me out of the date, and men altogether? I still don’t have that one completely figured out to this day. Anyway, when we got there, my mother told the therapist she wanted to control me, and asked the therapist to instruct her on how to do so. She had told the therapist all of this before I’d gotten there, and by the look on her face when I walked in, she was clearly expecting someone who had tattoos all over her body, wearing some slut uniform, and I couldn’t have looked more demure. So after talking briefly with me, the therapist told my mother, ‘ Look, I can’t tell you how to control your child, because she’s not out of control in my opinion. She seems demure, quiet and sensible, like she can make her own judgment calls.’ We got nowhere because there was nothing going on! It was fucking ridiculous, so much so that she made me see a second therapist, Barry Frankowitz.That was even more pathetic, because he just sat there pumping me for information on whether I was doing drugs, and having wi
ld sex, and all this silly shit to be asking me given how shy I was, and for my age. I never did anything to deserve to sit there in an office for an hour on nice, spring day with these doctors denying that I was out ‘prostituting.’ That became my mother’s favorite word very early on. I remember how wild she reacted concerning the very first date I was ever going on, the one that landed me with the therapist to begin with. The boy was a year older than I. We were going to see the Talking Heads movie. She ended up calling up the boy’s parents, and just ranting on and on, ‘ Do you know your son is going to a movie with my daughter?’ And of course, his parents had no idea why she was reacting so wildly, and said YES, they did know we were going out. So my mom ended up chaperoning us to the movie, sat in a seat a few rows behind us, then trailed us to McDonald’s and sat at another booth while we ate. I didn’t understand what was so abnormal about that. What really freaked me out though was a few months later, when another boy asked me to my first high school dance, which is chaperoned by both parents and teachers, and my mom forbade me to attend that as well. She really ruled my life with an iron fist back then.
Then when I had just turned 16, my mom made me go with her back to Barry’s and that shit lasted for almost a full year. It’s hard enough as a teenager trying to fit in with your peers and develop any sort of confidence as a young woman when your mother is constantly trying to keep you 10 years old forever. On top of that, most of the children I attended school with got massive freedom in exchange for the type of grades I routinely brought home. But my reward was even more scrutiny. Occasionally, she’d buy me things to compensate for the freedom I wouldn’t get, like a diamond necklace from Cartier. Tell me what fifteen year old has diamonds. It was obvious a reflection of the extent of her guilt. Other times, my mom would take me to ride my scooter sometimes after school. She’d leave work early to take care of me, which I thought was important in spite of her overall nutty approach to raising and disciplining me.
One of my mom’s favorite surveillance tactics was to sit and listen in on my phone conversations, with boys or girls. As you can imagine it used to make me feel uncomfortable. Of course I knew she was on the other line, and it was very embarrassing. Among my mother’s more absurd episodes was sending me away to England for the weekend because she didn’t want me attending the Halloween Day Parade. Part of why I had so little experience dating, which led me to get involved with Dick ‘The Pelicanose’ later on because of that lack of confidence, was that even years earlier, she always did everything she could do break up any dating scenario I was ever in. In the New York private school system, it was hard enough to make friends because everyone is so cliquish, especially if you’re a metal head like I was, so you can imagine it was that much harder to meet guys. One of my first boyfriends, for example, dumped me because my mom never gave me the freedom to go out and spend any time with him. It was always an issue for her, and she always came between relationships. His name was Damien, and we dated when I was 15 1/2. He was Jewish, very quiet, had long, curly black hair, was really good looking, shared my love of Heavy Metal — Carcass and Suffocation specifically, and went to school with me. He was my first love as it were, and we shared some very special moments together, from our clandestine afternoons together after school to sharing the loss of virginity together — he was very special to me. My best friend at the time, Penny, had introduced me to Damien. At the time, he was attending a rehab center called Phoenix House, and I think was in recovery for marijuana. Anyway, he went to our school and I was — of course — too shy to speak to him, so my best friend Penny spoke to him for me. On Valentine’s Day I sent him a flower, and eventually we were introduced.
In this same time, I was a member of a French language institute called FIAT, on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, on 66th between Madison and Park Avenues. I went there every day after school; it just happened that FIAT was located in near Damien’s Apartment. I’d go there to watch movies in French or read French newspapers, so I used it as an excuse to go and spend time with him. Technically speaking too, I was doing what I said I would be doing, I just had Damien along with me when I was at FIAT. Eventually, we exchanged phone numbers and started talking on the phone, and of course, my mom got curious. I remember on one of our few dates, we went to see Platoon, and out for a burger at the Silver Square Diner afterward. I called my mom to tell her where we were heading, but even that wasn’t cool with her because I was raised a vegetarian, and if she’d caught me eating a burger that would have been another battle. What annoyed me about my mom always hawking on me with guys was her inconsistency: on the one hand, she’d always tell me, ‘If you want to stay out later, just call me.’ So then I’d do exactly what she asked, and get yelled at anyway. So it was really a no-win situation. So no matter the fact that I’d done what she’d asked, given her all the details of where I was going, she sill demanded that I ‘get home now!’ Well I’m sorry, but I wasn’t going to GET HOME NOW! I decided to take a stand for once, blew her off, and went to dinner anyway. Well, afterward, needless to say, I was rushing home from the East Side of Manhattan to the West, which for those of you unfamiliar with the island geographically, takes some time. So it was getting a little chilly. I’m running like an idiot and all of a sudden I stopped myself and thought. ‘Wait a minute, I get straight A’s; all my homework is already done for the weekend. We had a perfectly innocent time out, why am I in the wrong here?’ I got home by 6:30 or 7:00 on a Saturday night (Late, right?) and my mom is standing there on the stoop in her robe with arms crossed. She goes, ‘It’s dark out, only prostitutes are out this late. What are you doing out at 7 in the evening?’ Then she wanted every detail on this guy, and wanted his home phone number, which really freaked me out. Of course, she ended up calling his parents to tell them about our top-secret conspiracy to go out on a date, and they had the same reaction of every parent she called over the course of my high school years, ‘Yeah, we know; what’s the big deal?’ Honestly, when I use the term conspiracy, it’s not that far removed in context of how paranoid my mother was. You may think for a minute, ‘But Jasmin, try to see it from her side, she was just being a concerned parent, like any other.’ Let me shut that shit down for you right now and tell you about the time my mother went so overboard with her paranoia that she hired a PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR to follow me!
This story could almost be a scene out of a satirical movie, but it really happened. I was between the ages of 16 and 17 when she had the P.I. following me. On one occasion, after I’d found out about it, I saw a picture of myself hanging out with some Hell’s Angels, and one of them had come to my rescue one day when some nasty dude grabbed my ass on the street. I was out in the summer selling my friendship bracelets at my usual spot on 6th Avenue and 8th Street, and this biker came to my aid when this dude groped me. Another of my mom’s private little surveillance collage of me was at the beach hanging out with some friends from school, listening to a boom box. God forbid I go to the beach, right? Another time, she had a photo of me waiting at a bus stop to go to that same beach and she accused me of heading off to Atlantic City to prostitute. Her routine was to have me followed, then confront me with whatever her latest batch of evidence was in our weekly therapy session. It happened to have been the Queens Bus line that I was taking to the beach, so whenever our next session with Barry was, she whipped out her evidence, and his reaction was the same as mine: to tell her how out of control she was acting! I was heading to the Rockaways to go to the beach, so that’s why I was at the Queens Bus line stop, and the Hell’s Angels were local to the block where I sold my friendship bracelets. She thought they were my pimps! Only someone as paranoid of my mom could have put that into her own head. After that, I just got used to assuming that I was being followed by a Private Eye at any given time for a while, a very normal thing for your average teen to expect, no? My mother gave me no right of privacy whatsoever, be it her monitoring of my phone calls, checking my answering machine messages, etc.
I remember ano
ther time, I had WON tickets to see my favorite band, Iron Maiden, which she had ok’d and knew all week prior to the show that I was planning for it. Come the night of the concert, of course suddenly it became an issue, and she wouldn’t let me go. Well, for all her bullshit that I did put up with, I was 16, got straight As, and this was one thing I wasn’t going to miss, both because I’d earned the right to go, and because she’d already okayed it. So naturally, when she sent me to my room early, I climbed right out the window and went to the concert anyway. Well, sneaking out, no matter how normal a routine for most teenagers, is not as simple as slipping out a suburban bedroom window when you live in MANHATTAN. Our apartment was on the second floor, so when I got home from the concert to my building, I had to climb back into my window through the fire escape. Well, I made it up the first fire escape okay, but as I got to the second, the neighbors saw me and called the cops thinking I was a burglar. Well, while the police are busy rushing over to respond to Jasmin the burglar, I gave up trying to get in the second fire escape, knocked on my first floor neighbors’ window and told them I’d gotten locked out. That was fine, but by the time I got up to my own floor, I walked in my apartment to find two of New York’s Finest had already arrived, and were standing in the living room with my mom and grandmother. Needless to say, I was in trouble: my mom and grandmother weren’t happy at all that I’d snuck out and the cops weren’t pleased about being called over on what had turned out to be a waste of their time. Now I could see my mom having gotten pissed and grounded me, but she actually told the police that I was a runaway and had been out prostituting. Being an attorney, she fucking knew what the police procedure was for such a claim, and to no one’s surprise by mine and my grandmother’s, the cops wanted to haul me off to some juvenile detention center! My grandmother was horrified, she was crying, and trying to come to my defense, but my mom still persisted with her insane claim. What made it worse was when I first walked in, I saw my mom talking to the cops and filling out some paperwork, and thought naturally it was a Missing Persons Report. To my horrified surprise, it turned out she was filing some sort of arrest report telling them her child was out selling drugs and prostituting. It made me feel so awful about myself that she would ever think that, let alone try to have me arrested for it without any proof whatsoever.Thank GOD I had proof that I was at the concert in the form of concert tickets, so the NYPD saw I was scared shitless, and could tell I guess by my body language that I wasn’t lying. So they basically interrogated me for a bit about what I’d been doing at the concert, could tell I hadn’t been high or anything, they turned their attention from me to my mother — who didn’t want to let it drop. She was actually still persisting in trying to get them to file what would have amounted to a False Arrest Report. So once they explained that to her, and actually scolded her for the fact that she should know better being an attorney, then left. So then my mom yelled at me, and slapped me in my face, which was the first time I’d been hit in my life. That upset my grandmother, but things were so out of control at that point that they eventually fizzled out. I went to bed crying, as did my grandmother, and my mom probably went to conference call with my therapist Barry and her P.I. about what my next big conspiracy might be. Needless to say, after that, I never snuck out again.