Tonight, as karmic justice for ripping the hell out of home parties, I was guilted into attending a Mary Kay party by the lovely Carissa, with whom I will be enjoying MulletRock with on Friday.
Mary Kay Parties: 2
The lady was extremely nice (her name is Kyle and she’d love to do a party for you, she wanted me to tell you, even if you’re a man. She’ll make your skin feel ‘like buttah’ and stuff.) and I liked her. There was no pressure, so of course I spent $30 on stuff. However, with my rosacea, I didn’t have to buy the whole ‘facial care’ bundle. I could purchase just the foundation and moisturizer. Thus, the special handicap treatment has already begun! Woooooo! Now, where’s my special parking sticker?
I also felt really bad when I told Penny that it looked like she’d been making out with Bozo the Clown.
I was driving out to Carissa’s house and the song ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel came on. That’s one of my favorite all time songs. Then I drove to volleyball (where we uncharacteristically got our fine tushes handed to us on a platter) and when I left, the song ‘Throwing It All Away’ by Genesis came on.
Bookended as it were by two of my favorite songs, I began to think of how each song was based on some enormous crush that I had and I think that hearing the songs brings back a little of that excited feeling of being in Crushville. Then I started to think about all the ‘Boy’ songs I have.
Sea of Love by the Honeydrippers– Picture little Weetabix in the 8th grade. Everything that was ADULT was coming into sharp focus for me. And then I got my very first serious boyfriend. Jeremiah’ what a hottie he was. He reminds me now of River Phoenix. We used to stand out on the coldest days, making out against a neighbor’s house or behind the nunnery at the local church. Then we’d get yelled at by the nuns. Jeremiah was Catholic, too, so I’d suppose this offered a little extra excitement for him. He still lives in that neighborhood, too, with his wife and two kids. During that several months when we were an ‘item’, the song ‘Sea of Love’ was playing constantly. Everytime I’d hear it, the phone would ring and it would be Jeremiah. I began to think that maybe it was fate or psychic or something. In actuality, I think the song was in heavy rotation on the radio station I listened to. His was the first erect penis I had ever seen. I wrote about it in my diary then and let my friend Erika read it. We both recited the line from the diary to each other at my party last month. ‘There it was’. Plain as day.’ I remember that it scared me. I wouldn’t look directly at a penis for several years. Thirteen is a little young to look at a penis. They’re not very pretty. Sorry, guys, but they’re not. Anyway, I got the chicken pox (for the second time) during our little ‘relationship’ and could not see him for two weeks. Two weeks is a lonnnnng time when you’re thirteen. Jeremiah got disillusioned and I didn’t have quite the draw that I had before (in other words, he wasn’t wrapped as tightly around my finger as I wanted him to be) and I broke up with him. I think I was seeking a little drama. Jeremiah claimed later that HE broke up with ME. In following years, Jeremiah would send me notes telling me to call him. In my sophomore yearbook, he signed it ‘Love, Jer’ and left his phone number but at that point I had moved on to older men.
Crazy for You by Madonna- When I was a freshman in junior high (we didn’t have those wussy Middle Schools back then! You sucked it up and went to high school as a sophmore.) I was the yearbook photographer. My friend Will was the editor. I had the hots for him something awful. He was clever, smart, rich, and very very adorable. He was the son of a local celebrity and maintained a healthy amount of chagrin for it. I was scheduled to cover the costume dance for the yearbook and Will was there. He saw me at the beginning of the dance and said ‘Hi Dollface!’ and then proceeded to call me that throughout the night. You can imagine how this would make the fat girl feel! Then, for the last dance of the night, we danced together to ‘Crazy for You’. I was so excited. That night, I called my best friend, Fern (the girl who moved to Seattle and is now pregnant) to share with her the earth-shattering news that I had danced with my crush. She wasn’t there– she was babysitting. I told her father instead, because I had to tell someone. I’m certain that Mr. Fern’s Dad shared my enthusiasm. I was so completely head-over-heels for Will. It was my first really deep crush. (Poor Jeremiah! I hope he’s not reading this! No wonder I broke up with him) Postscript: Will is now living in a relationship with a man. They’re very happy. I haven’t met his boyfriend, but I have this strange feeling that I’d have the urge to shout ‘Bitch!’ at him.
Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes ‘ When I was a counselor in training at Camp U-nah-li-ya, I got a big ‘camp crush’ on a junior counselor named Steve C. Steve C. was another blond geeky hottie boy. That year, the camp director Morty declared that if he found a Violent Femmes tape, he would smash it with a sledgehammer. What? Who was this band that could drive the normally docile and friendly Morty to wield a mighty sledgehammer? Steve C. liked the Femmes and one of my other C.I.T. peers had the contraband tape. We all hushed and listened to it constantly whenever our superiors were out of earshot. The surest way to make a 15-year-old do something is to tell them that they can’t do it, everyone knows that. He should have made a moratorium on getting up early, drinking all of your juice and picking up litter. Anyway, somewhere along the line, Steve C. was reciting some rules during a game or something and he got to rule 8 and I said slyly ‘8 8 I forget what 8 was for!’ and he got a big grin and said ‘Weetabix, please, I’m trying to explain this to the campers. This will go down on your permanent record.’ Which is of course another lyric from that song. My campers became very wide-eyed and quiet, afraid of the whole permanent record issue. We then proceeded to have this strange bond and he’d always smile broadly at me when we passed paths at camp. And that was it. No showing of his penis. Not even a kiss. At the end of camp, I gave Steve C. my favorite jelly bracelet and never saw him again. I also like this song because parts of it sound like it’s being sung by Long Duck Dong from ‘Sixteen Candles’.
Throwing it all away by Genesis – This is the song of my sophomore crush. Andy K. was a senior and he actually talked to little old me. We worked on the German club homecoming float committee together. Our idea was a little too high-brow for a high school homecoming parade, I now realize. We were going to have a very small-statured junior wearing Lederhosen and Viking horns (ok, we were a little confused about ethnicities here). He was going to be standing on a paper-mache mountain while strains of ‘The Flight of the Valkyries’ was piped over someone’s boom box. Our task: make a paper-mache mountain. It looked more like a meatloaf. We couldn’t find Lederhosen that would fit our Viking/Hessian boy. I think he wore brown track shorts instead. It was ridiculous. However, the building of it required Andy K. to chauffeur me to and from various committee meetings/float-building sessions. He loved Genesis and the Invisible Touch album had just come out and he’d always have it playing on the car stereo. I would wonder if possibly the lyrics to this song were some sort of clue ‘Need I say I love you, Need I say I care?’ but now I realize that teenage boys aren’t generally that subtle. He always wore a Gilligan white hat and blue Chuck Taylor’s. I actually purchased my own pair of Chuck Taylor’s, just hoping that Andy would notice. How pathetic I was. I’m certain if I had approached him and said ‘Hey Andy, let’s hook up’ he would have been overpowered by my cute looks, my perky personality and my ability to leave my enemies cowering in a pile of verbal slams. But alas, all my aggression was saved for my wit, as I was too afraid to profess my adoration of his geeky charm. He’s a professor now. I always wonder if he still wears the Gilligan hat?
In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel — This was my Chuck song. He was Lloyd Dobbler mixed with the kid from “Real Genius” (not Val Kilmer, the character he played). He was very sheepish and cute. I was a Junior, so I was running out of older men at school… he was only a year older than me.
Two out of Three Ain’t Bad by Meatloaf – When I was a senior, I had run out of older boys at my school so was forced to look elsewhere. I was involved with a twenty-eight year old man. I met him through community theatre and then he cast me in a horror movie he was producing. We used to sit in his apartment and kill brain cells regularly with recreational pharmaceuticals and listen to ‘Bat Out of Hell’. He used to tell me that the song ‘Two out of Three Ain’t Bad’ was a perfect analogy for our relationship, as he wanted me, he needed me but there was no way that he would fall in love with me, as I was much too young for him. And there was ‘only one girl who (he) would ever love and that was so many years ago’. Now that I’m as old as he was then, I now wonder what he was thinking. I mean, giving alcohol and drugs to a minor? Ironically, I broke connection with him when it turned out that he was bi and had a strange fling with Will, who I mentioned above. I cannot begin to describe what strangeness it was to be the girl whose two big crushes each separately confessed how it was to make out with the other one. It was very strange indeed. I’m surprised, actually, that I graduated high school at all.
Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) by Journey — When I began college, I was dating two different guys. Over the summer between my first and second freshman semesters, I met and started to date one guy here at home. Then I met and dated a townie where I went back to school in the fall. His name was Mike and he was twenty-five, blond, played in a band and drove a Mustang. The Home Guy went to school, lived with his parents, was my age (only 10 months older than me… what a scandal!), drove a very boring car, and was into computers. I was not exclusive with either guy and they both knew that I was dating the other one. It was a very hard schedule for me to keep, however, as I ended up staying up late during the week with Mike and then going home and staying up late on the weekend with Home Guy. It was getting to the point that I couldn’t keep up that pace anymore and I needed to make a decision. I was leaning toward going out with Mike, the hot guitar guy. Then I was listening to Journey one day and thinking about the lyrics to this song. ‘If he ever hurts you, true love won’t desert you, you know I still love you though we touched and went our separate ways.’ And I was thinking that the girl in the song was SO STUPID to be going with the other guy when Steve Perry would still be in love with her after she dumped him. Then one night, my car broke down about 30 miles west of my college town. I called Mike to come and pick me up as I was stranded in December in this little town at 9:30 at night and I was calling from a little gas station, which was closing in 10 minutes and I’d have to wait outside after that. He said ‘Ok, but I’m making macaroni & cheese right now and I’m going to wait until the noodles boil and I eat. Then I’ll come and get you.’ While I was waiting for Mike to come and pick me up, I called Home Guy and explained that I likely wouldn’t be able to come home that weekend as my car had died and I was stranded. He offered to come and pick me up, right there and then, and drive me back to school. This was over 120 miles away from him and then he would have had to drive back home. I told him that he didn’t have to come and Mike was coming to pick me up (albeit after he finished his very important macaroni and cheese). Ok, he said, but if you still want to come home this weekend, I can come up and get you. It was then that I realized that Home Guy would be the Steve Perry in my situation and Mike would be ‘the other guy’ and I would be the Stupid Girl if I went with Mike. I didn’t. And I still get a weak little pang when I hear that song and think about how Perry was so devoted to Stupid Girl.
Oh, need I tell you that Home Guy was Esteban? End of Story.
Edited to add: when I left for lunch today, the song on the radio after I turned off the CD player was “In Your Eyes”. The song finished and I turned the station and the next station I turned to was playing “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart”. How kooky is that?
