Can I Have a Peek?

Several many years ago some friends and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do on a bored Friday night.  No shows to go to, no parties, no good movies playing.... just nothing happening.  I don't remember which one of us, me, R, BFF or Butthole got the idea to go to Niagra Falls, but we were all in.  So we packed up a few things got in a car and went.  Those were the days when you could just go to Niagra Falls, you didn't need a passport, just your birth certificate, maybe.  No one ever seemed to check.  It kind of blows that you can't do that anymore.

I think this is the only Falls pic taken that weekend

My memory of the trip itself is kind of hazy.   I know the four of us shared a room at the lovely Marco Polo Inn.  I think we stayed Friday and Saturday night and went home Sunday.  And I know we had the best of times.  R and I were doing that interested in each other dance, BFF and Butthole were officially a couple at the time.  Two beds, two couples... do the math.  Nothing major is going to happen though, not with another couple in the room.  But R was a bit frisky and said something to me while we were cuddled in bed that unfortunately and hilariously for all, Butthole overheard.  "Can I have a peek?"

Butthole didn't get that nickname by accident.  He heard what R said and he ran with it!  It was the running joke of the whole weekend and I'm sure beyond.  It's hard to say when he actually gave up the joke.  If ever.  It didn't matter though.  It was fucking funny.

R and me at Niagra Falls - 1987

We did the touristy stuff... wax museums, Falls, etc.  Drank I'm sure.  Because truly, when weren't we drinking?  And just having tons of laughs.  I've only been back once.  BFF has been back countless times with her family.   Butthole... RIP, I don't know, nor do I know if R ever went again.  But the memory, or what I have of it anyway, of that weekend definitely lives on.

Answer the Phone Neil

23 years had gone by.  23 years since I had seen TM.  It's hard to believe really.  How could I be old enough to have known someone long enough to have not seen them in 23 years?  Getting old fucking blows.  Anyway, TM was a really good friend who I'd had a falling out with.  It doesn't matter why.  We were young and stupid and it's in the past.  But all those years had gone by and I never forgot him.  I still told TM and (his friend) JJ stories.  I never stopped laughing at the antics of the crazy punk rock kids that we were.  I never really stopped missing him.

We met at a church carnival.  Seriously.  It was probably the summer of 1985.  Everyone went to that carnival for whatever reason.  Thinking about it now, I can't really fathom why although I do remember winning an Adam Ant baseball hat and then walking around and filling said hat up with all the disgustingly fried deliciousness that is carnival food. It was there that my BFF and I met TM and JJ.  It was the beginning of a wild ride and I'm not talking about the Tilt-o-Whirl.  I remember thinking then that they were so much younger than BFF and I.  But the reality is, they weren't.  They were in fact only 2 years younger than us.  We went to the same high school but we didn't know each other from there.  In 1985, BFF and I were out for a year and TM and JJ were just about to enter their senior year.  We all hit it off immediately and started hanging out together a lot.  We went to concerts, movies... many of which we got kicked out of because were such damn nuisances and always causing trouble.  We had TV parties and watched rented movies like Repo Man and Rude Boy and Suburbia and watched The Young Ones over and over and over.  And damn did we have fun.  SO much fun.

JJ was a big goofy oaf who annoyed the shit out of all of us, all the time.  Which is not to say he wasn't our friend, he was just an annoying friend.  It was different with TM.  Like me and BFF, he had a rather strained relationship with his parents, his father in particular and spent most of his time living with this grandparents.  It was a bond the three of us had, but I'm not really sure how aware we were of that back then.  JJ was more concerned with himself than he was with cultivating a bond of friendship.  But with TM I felt all at the same time like a mother, a friend, a big sister, a confidant.  We probably rarely spoke of seriously issues, family related or otherwise, but with some people you just have a bond.  And I like to think I was there for him when he needed it most and I know whether he knew it or not, he was there for me.  So when we parted ways, it hurt.   A lot.

In all those years, even though neither of us left the area, we never ran into each other.  Not once.  I still can't grasp that.  We were in the same scene, hung out at the same places and not once did we run into each other.  So weird.  It took this crazy thing called Facebook to get us back in touch after all those years.  I had been trying to find him off and on before we found each other on FB, but it always ended up in a dead end.  I worried that he may not want to be back in touch with me even if I did find him.  You really just never know.  So much time had passed.  Would there still be animosity?  Would he even remember me?  FB to the rescue.  Friend requests were sent and accepted and we fell right back into that easy friendship we always had.  It was amazing.  Our falling out came up briefly and was forgotten.  It didn't matter anymore.  We have both been through times, good and bad.  We've grown and matured (somewhat, kind of).

And then it happened.  We made plans to see each other.  I was nervous and self conscious, of course, about all the weight I had put on since he had last seen me.  I'm a girl, what can I say!  We worry about that shit.  But most of all I was excited.  So excited to see TM after all this time.  He arrived at my house and he looked as adorable as he did 23 years ago.  And all that time vanished.  It was gone.  We talked for hours, caught up on each others lives and what we had been doing all those years.  And memories... oh yes the memories came flooding back of the crazy times and the crazy things we did.  Lots of crazy things.  From driving down a winding dark parkway without my headlights on to see if I could do it without crashing (I could), to getting kicked out of movies, concerts, malls, restaurants, you name it!   We probably got kicked out of every kind of venue possible.  Sometimes there was a valid reason, other times there wasn't.  Back in those days, if you looked a little bit different (and we looked a lot bit different) life wasn't too easy for you.  We didn't care though.  We were who we were and liked it that way.  And we're still who we are.  That was the amazing thing.  We were different but the same.  

People come and go in our lives, for good reasons and sometimes not so good reasons.  It's just the way things are.  There are people you want to remain in your life and you do everything to keep them there.  And there are people you lose along the way.  Some you forgot, some you want to forget and some you can't forget.  TM was one of those I could never forget. One that I thought about from time to time, wondered about, wished things could have been different and hoped to see again.  I was about to say that we wasted too much time.  But we didn't.  It wasn't time wasted.  It was just time that went on and now, we're here.  Again.  I think this is the re-beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Horror of Prom Night

It's prom season and I can't help but think back to my own prom when I see all those dresses in the stores.  I almost didn't go.  I wasn't the most popular girl in school.  In fact, being one of the few punk rockers in my high school was kind of alienating at times.  I had a circle of friends sure, but other than that, most of the time I think people just didn't get it.  So no one asked me.  Part of me was sad, part of me was glad, part of me was annoyed because my mom had been planning my going to the prom for the past several years.   Seriously.   I'll never forget when I got a boyfriend when I was in 10th grade my mom said, "You'll have a date for the prom!"  Um, mom, it's two years away.  And of course, that relationship ended when he went to college and I was still in high school. 

I did most of my male mingling very early in my high school career and by the time I was in 10th grade I was too weird for most of the guys.  I was in love with Adam Ant and wore my homemade I heart ADAM (with a backwards D of course) button on my school uniform every day.  I was going to Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Billy Idol concerts while most everyone else was going to see The Michael Stanley Band and Bruce Springsteen.  All my punk friends were chicks.  So no dates.  I don't really remember caring either.  We were having too much fun.

But I did end up going to prom.  My BFF  had a guy in school, J, who was so in love with her.  He pursued and pursued her to no avail.  She just wasn't interested in him as anything more than a friend.  He was brotherly and she couldn't get past it.  But he asked her to the prom and she accepted on the condition that he get his friend B to take me.  I knew both J and B quite well.  Along with their friend G, they were probably the funniest guys in school.  B already had a contingency plan in place with another girl.  You know, that promise you make that goes "if you don't have a girlfriend and I don't have a boyfriend when we're seniors, we'll go to prom together."  B, always wanting to please J, blew off the other girl and agreed to take me.  Wow, it really sounds pretty pathetic now that I'm putting it in print!  The poor guy practically had to be blackmailed into going to the prom with me.

In probably one of the most ill advised moves ever, I bought a pale lavender full length dress with white trim.  Ugh!  I have always hated pastels.  The dress was so precious and totally not me at all.  I got my hair and make up done that day.  Not me again.  I suspect the mom influence in all these things.  Yes, that makes sense.  Give mom this one last time of seeing me look how she liked me to look because the day I graduated it all changed.  Everything.  Going to a Catholic high school in the 80's, we weren't allowed to dye our hair.  I'm not sure why I waited until graduation to cut it, or to get contacts, but I did.   So mom had prom and graduation and that was the end of long hair and big honkin ugly glasses.  I had to do it.  My sister totally screwed mom over when she went to prom.  Sis graduated in 1975 and bought a black wrap around dress with full black lace back (meaning she couldn't wear a bra with it).  Mom absolutely refused to let her wear it and went out and bought her another dress, this hideous floral number.  Well when sis's date arrived (in his blue crushed velvet suit jacket no less) and they left sis grabbed the sleeve of the horrible dress and tore it right off.  She came back in the house and told mom there was no way she was going to prom in a torn dress, so she had to wear the black one.   Sneaky!

J and B picked up BFF and then came and picked me up.  BFF was also in a lavender dress and both guys wore white tuxes with lavender accents.  I could almost puke thinking back on it.  If we didn't already know of J's love for BFF, he presented her with, what was called back then, a huge nosegay.  Basically a large hand held bouquet of flowers, like a bride would carry.  It must have set him back a bundle.  The thing was enormous.  B got me a lovely wrist corsage.  My mom fell instantly in love with him.  She probably started planning our wedding after we left for prom.  In her defense, what mother wouldn't love B?   He was sweet and cute and he was planning, at the time, on being a priest so she probably figured I was safe from the threat of sex.  Everyone knows priests aren't interested in sex!  

I don't really remember too much about the night other than it seemed like it took us forever to get there.   It was being held at a party center that was not exactly near where me and BFF lived and the drive was long.  No hotels for Catholic school proms!  That sends a bad message you know.  Newsflash, just about everyone was having sex back then.  Everyone but me, everyone but BFF, probably a few others.  So having the prom at a hotel wouldn't have mattered.  Hell we all got rooms at a hotel for after anyway!  And we did go, but it was a party not an orgy.  The girl B ditched was there, having not found another date.  Awkward!

I remember getting home around 3 or 4 am, and B just saying goodnight to me.  No kiss, nothing.  So I grabbed him and gave him a hug.  Sheesh dude, I know we went as friends and you were a few weeks from the seminary but live a little!   I was pretty cute back then.   

I guess if I didn't go I'd probably feel like I missed out on something.  But having gone, I don't think it was a big deal at all.  In fact, it was kind of lame.  The people you would expect to win king and queen were.  The music was absolute crap.  The theme was embarrassing ("Almost Paradise" you know, that horrid Ann Wilson and that dude from Loverboy duet).  But how many people do you know can say they went to prom with a priest?