Indian summer had just hit south eastern Pennsylvania on the day that I found myself in the back of Tommy P’s lipstick red Volkswagen Jetta, squished between Nick Lee and Carolanne. Jordan was in the front seat, and they were listening to some hardcore band that I hadn’t heard of before, but I’d nervously nod my head like they were totally my favorite, or something. I wasn’t sure where we were going, and I don’t think they were either, at first, anyway.
We were driving through the backwoods of the Lehigh Valley, somewhere around Bethlehem, I think. It was reaching 10:00 p.m., my curfew already, but I didn’t dare speak up. These kids didn’t have curfews, and I wasn’t about to interject in their heated conversation about gender roles in their underground basement punk scene so I could ask to go home. They had such a way of making something kind of ridiculous sound so important.
“It really bothers me what a sausage party punk has turned into,” Carolanne said. “I mean, seriously, the last time Fire Down Below was in town, I tried to get up front and fucking Brody pushed me back and said ‘No clit in the pit.’ Can you believe that shit?”
Jordan scoffed. “Turned into? Not that I condone it or anything, but when was punk not like that?”
“Uh, 1994!” Carolanne crossed her arms, confidently.
Jordan laughed and turned in the passenger seat to look back at her. “You were nine-years-old!”
There was another car-full of kids behind us, too. We were going somewhere, anywhere, and that sure beat sitting in my basement listening to tapes by myself all night.
I listened in on their conversation while I looked out the window past Nick Lee, admiring the fall foliage. I came from a place where there’s nothing but palm trees and evergreens, and so the reds, oranges, and yellows that I’d only seen on TV were charming to me.
Jordan and Carolanne debated back and forth. Jordan sounded so smart, so radical, so collegiate, and I think it was at that moment that I realized I had never met another boy like him in my life. He was just starting his first semester at Penn State at the time and was probably three years older than me. He knew so much about things that I never knew anyone else cared about, like feminism and dystopian literature, and it really seemed like he cared about the world. If having an opinion on something means you care about it, man, these people cared about everything.
“Carolanne, I’m not saying that what you’re saying isn’t valid, at all. I just think that enforcing some sort of PC code of ethics isn’t going to prevent misogyny. It will only make it worse.”
Carolanne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess you’re right. Maybe I’ll just do a ‘zine or something.”
Eventually, we all pulled into a dark parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and everyone emerged out of the two cars. There were probably nine of us in all, most of the faces I didn’t even recognize.
Tommy P. got out of his car and stretched his arms in the air.
“It’s a good night for a swim, dontcha think?”
Carolanne got out before me.
“It’s fucking gorgeous out!” Carolanne said as she grabbed at my hand and pulled me out of the car behind her. She was a really over-the-top kind of girl, like a modern incarnation of a teenage Punky Brewster. Her hair was dyed plum and she wore a bright kelly-green polo shirt and her white high-top Chuck Taylors were Sharpie-d into a rainbow.
I’ll admit. It was pretty gorgeous out. It was a comfortable 80 or so degrees out and the wind was at a stand still. I could hear the flow of water nearby.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Carolanne kept a firm grasp on my hand as we walked into the thick forestry.
“The river,” she replied. She pulled me close. “Gonna go for a lil’ swim.”
I held onto Carolanne’s slim, bony hand as she led me through a patch of woods. The ground was incredibly soft from some rain we had gotten the night before. After a minute or so, we got to a steep incline, but we couldn’t see it because it was so dark out. We were miles outside of the city and the trees were so thick, so there was nothing to illuminate anything. My legs stumbled over each other, as I barely kept my balance before I got to the end. The incline led into the shore of the river, traced in large boulders, ideal for sitting on. The lights from a far off bridge reflected off of the river, illuminating everything just enough so that you could see it, but it still had that air of mystery like in the movies. A few kids were already out there. Some were even in the water by then.
Carolanne led me to the largest boulder, furthest out and to the left. I took a seat, and she crossed her arms in front of her to remove her top. To my right, Nick Lee stood looking out to the river, scratching his mangy mop top. Oh, and uh, I guess I should mention that he was completely naked. I kept my eyes glued to my shoes and I tugged at my rainbow laces. In my peripheral vision, I could see Nick Lee preparing to jump, and a splash soon followed, water penetrating the bubble I hoped had formed around me.
It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with nudity or anything. Okay, actually, I guess I was pretty uncomfortable with it. I was 15-years-old – I’d never seen a dude naked, ever...well at least in person (but that’s another story altogether), and then there was Tommy P., all of ten feet away from me, hands placed on the small of his back, stretching, penis completely exposed. I couldn’t look at him at all, because I knew if I did, I couldn’t look away, which might cause the situation to become even more embarassing than it already was. By now, Carolanne was in the water, clothes off, talking to this girl named Becca, casually, frankly, as if nothing was weird about this scenario. I guess there probably, actually, wasn’t anything weird about it, right? Kids do this stuff all the time. Definitely. This was as normal as it gets.
I kept my clothes on and watched on as best I could. Luckily, it was pretty dark, so my cheeks, red and burning, weren’t obvious. I hardly knew these people. I had just met them a few hours earlier at a show. It was a punk show, in Jordan and Nick Lee’s basement that Carolanne had invited me to. Carolanne and I had been kind of forging a friendship for the past week or so after she noticed the Bikini Kill patch on my backpack.
“Kathleen Hanna is a fucking goddess, is she not?” were the first words she spoke to me.
It took me a minute to realize what the hell she was talking about.
She pointed her gaze in the direction of my bag, and then almost secretly pointed her finger towards it.
“Oh,” I said and then turned toward my bag, clutching it. “Oh! Yeah, Kathleen Hanna is really great. She’s just great.”
But more importantly, there I was immersed in some kind of John Hughes-esque wild teenage scenario. After a moment or so, everyone started to settle into the water. Then the worst thing that could have possibly happened, happened. Jordan swam up besides my boulder and floated next to me.
“Getting in?” he asked, before he splashed water on his face and through his blond locks. His thick, black framed glasses were dripping and fogged up a bit.
I shrugged. He balanced himself on the rock and pulled himself up to sit next to me. He was wearing boxers. Thank God.
He scooted next to me and took off his glasses. He tried to wipe them off on his shorts before handing them to me.
“Would you mind wiping those down?” he asked, his eyes squinted. “I really can’t see anything without them. At all.”
I took the glasses and held them up, analyzing the thickness of the lens. “Yeah, that’s pretty bad,” I said. I wiped them off on my argyle socks. I handed them back, and he put them back on, securing his hair behind his ears.
“Much better,” he said. His feet dangled off the side. “You should get in.”
I sighed and dug my thumb into the boulder, feeling itty, bitty rocks digging into my skin.
“I’m not very good at swimming,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, at least. I couldn’t doggy paddle to save my life, but truthfully, it wasn’t really what I was most concerned about. In fact, the possibility of drowning was the only comforting aspect of getting in.
“It’s only like four feet deep,” he said.
I brushed my bangs behind my ear, nervously, wondering how long I could keep this up. “Oh, really,” I said, trying my best to sound relieved.
“So, how you liking it here so far?” he asked, as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s gotta be hella boring here compared to Cali.” Only people who weren’t from California ever referred to it as “Cali,” and it usually bothered the hell out of me when people would call it that, but not so much this time. I chuckled.
“It’s okay, I guess,” I responded as I brought one knee up to hug against my chest. “There’s a lot of cool stuff to do here.”
He scoffed in amazement. “Here? Are you serious?”
He pushed up his glasses and gawked at me.
I laughed and looked down into the water. “Yes, here. I mean, L.A. isn’t as cool as people think all the time, and I didn’t even live in L.A. proper or anything. Like, I lived in Valley, and there wasn’t anything except malls, really. Nothing cool.”
“Except you, right?” he smiled and leaned over closer, poking me at my side.
I rolled my eyes and grinned probably the most ridiculously toothy grin in the world. It was one of those smiles that you just can’t help, that you try to fight off, but just make your cheeks ache.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, and pushed his hand away.
Jordan placed his hand on my knee and shook it, creepily enough, like my dad or something. “Well, Miss Cali, I’ll meet you down there,” he said, before propelling himself back into the water.
I feigned a smile the best I could. “Yeah,” I replied, even though he was long gone.
There was no getting out of this.
I pulled down my hair-tie and ran my fingers through my hair. I looked out in the water and at Jordan. I felt like a fraud. These kids embodied everything I always thought was cool. At least back at home, I was somewhat original. Manic Panic, safety pins, and my Minor Threat CDs were all I needed to sort of forge my own identity in a sea of kids who were quite literally from the OC. But these kids were so different. They didn’t even dress like punk rockers. They read books by people like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Wolfe, listened to vinyl records that their own friends put out and they really, really think they actually sound better that way, and were changing the world in dank, shit-filled basements. My whole life I thought I was onto something original, but it turned out I was always on the fringe of something bigger and better. I was just waiting for all of them to figure me out.
Jordan waved at me to get in. I let my hair down completely and kicked off my Chucks, before slipping off my socks. My feet pressed against the wet rock, and chills went up my spine. I placed my hand at the bottom of my shirt and curled it up a bit.
I looked around. Carolanne was out of the water now, hugging her long legs against her as she sat on a boulder further away from me. Her shape was like something from a magazine or a movie. The moonlight was shining off of the water on her unblemished skin, except for a few freckles. My mom always called those beauty marks. I rubbed a finger over my belly, under my shirt, against the deep, red, stretch marks. Her body was perfectly proportioned. Her legs were long, not stubby like mine. Her curves weren’t harsh, but subtle, and she was a really pretty girl. Really pretty. All of these girls were pretty.
My fingers gripped the bottom rim of my shirt hard. I got up to my feet and lifted the shirt over my head, I took off my denim skirt, and I hurried into the water, still wearing my underwear.
All I could think about was my mother. All I could think about was how pissed she was going to get at me for not only staying out past my curfew, but for diving into a river whose shore was lined with beer cans. If my mother saw me, she’d swear that Hepatitis would surely seep through my pores.
I guess it seems kind of weird and maybe even grossly Freudian to be thinking about my mother during this time of teenage recklessness, but my family life wasn’t exactly normal, to say the least. One of the biggest questions I was getting from the new people I’ve met in Pennsylvania was “Why the hell did you move away from California?” I usually would respond with something vague about my step-dad’s job, which I guess is only a half-lie. See, my step-dad had a really good job, and we were doing really good, great even, and then something happened. He kind of snapped, and verbally assaulted his boss over the phone. Then he ripped said phone out of the wall and drove it up into the San Bernardino mountains (a good two hour drive) where he proceeded to find a nice, quiet spot where he smashed the phone to bits. He was shortly thereafter diagnosed with type-2 bipolar for a little while, and our family has kind of never been the same. On top of all of this, my younger brother is autistic, and I guess I’m the only thing normal in my mom’s life anymore. She always tells me I’m her anchor, that I’m the only thing that keeps her from going crazy herself. I just don’t want to disappoint her, because I guess I’m always afraid that the next wrong step will end up driving her over the edge.
I immersed myself in the warm river. Each inch of water covering my body was like freedom to me and a step closer to temporarily ending my humiliation. Looking back, I’m sure no one was actually looking at me anyway since the majority of them were enthralled in a game of Marco Polo, but I couldn’t help but feel like during those few moments of PG-13 nudity, the sun came out and shined a cruel spotlight that reflected giant shadows off of my cellulite and rolls that exceeded average curvaciousness or healthy voluptuosity. The bottom of the river was more than uncomfortable to stand on, and the rocks felt as though they were actually cutting my feet. Where there wasn’t sharp surface, there was the disgusting mush of something like seaweed, but felt more like fresh dog shit spreading between my toes.
Deeper in the shallow river, everyone was engaged in the game. Becca was it, and from what I gathered, she was sort of an airhead. All the girls were, actually. They could talk about the beauty myth and third-wave feminism, but the second a boy’s attention was focused on them, they were all giggles and hair twirls. Or maybe my perception is skewed because of my blinding jealousy that they seemed totally unfazed by anything.
Either way, Becca wasn’t really getting far with her turn, and slowly, people started to lose interest. I was able to stealthily keep under everyone’s radar, at first. Then Jordan wadded in my direction, towards my spot by the boulder. I was a wallflower even in water.
“Not so bad, right?” he said through a smile planted on his baby face.
I kept my arms tightly crossed around my chest, even though I was crouching on my knees to keep myself underwater anyway.
“Yeah, it’s nice, I guess,” I replied. At this point I was convinced that I’d lost all ability to hold a conversation.
He leaned against the rock, to my right.
“You don’t look like you’re having much fun,” he said. Smart, cute, and observant.
I crinkled my toes, like I always do when I’m uncomfortable.
“No, I am,” I lied. “Really.”
He laughed and leaned in closer. He sniffled. Either he had an a keen sense of scent and could smell the pheromones seeping out of me like skunk stink, or he had water lodged in his sinuses. I was terrified it was the former.
“If you’re not doing anything tomorrow, you should stop by Double Decker,” he said.
I opened my mouth, before completely formulating a response. I didn’t know what Double Decker was, but it sounded like I should.
“It’s a record store,” he said. “Two stories high, packed with lots of vinyl.”
I smiled, simultaneously relieved and terrified.
“I’d like that,” I said. I would have. I would have liked that so much. And somehow, like a light bulb flickered on in my head, I was re-blessed with the gift of speech. He and I talked, over obnoxious squeals from the alpha-females, past splashes from Tommy P. and Nick Lee’s aqua renditions of King Kong Bundy and Sgt. Slaughter, and it was good. We talked about music, politics, even dating, and even though I was sorely unknowledgeable in all three areas, he didn’t make me feel dumb. In fact, he made me feel brilliant.
“So, did you have to leave a boyfriend back at home?” he asked. I didn’t respond. “A girlfriend, maybe?” He laughed.
I shrugged, “Nah, I’ve never really had a boyfriend. Or girlfriend.”
He leaned against the rock and rested his head on his curled up fist. “No boyfriend, ever?”
“Nope. Well, actually, I had one in eight grade, but he ended up being gay, so...doesn’t count.”
Jordan nodded. “I don’t know much about California, but if their dudes are anything like how they are on TV, they’re airheads anyway. Their loss.”
I smiled, and my face probably turned to a rich shade of fuchsia as I shifted my gaze back to the water.
The stars moved through the sky quicker than I would have hoped. I could tell that it was getting later and later, and my punishment was getting steeper and steeper, but I didn’t really care anymore.
Our amazing, totally mind-blowing convo was suddenly interrupted by a commotion of laughter. Everyone started to run out of the water and gather their clothes. “Oh fuck,” seemed to be the phrase coming from everyone. I looked past Jordan, and over his shoulder, all I could see was a blaring light coming towards us off a speed boat. Jordan looked back and spotted it too.
“Pigs!” he laughed, and he lifted himself onto the boulder. I immediately attempted to follow, but I was never very good at climbing on anything, especially when I was drenched in water with slippery hands. Jordan held out a hand to me. I couldn’t help but pause. The immediacy of everything seemed secondary to scanning this entire scene and memorizing the expression on his face, the way his glasses were fogged and crooked, and how a tiny fish swam past my knees at that very second.
I took a hold of his hand, and he helped pull me up. I gathered everything as well as I could, and I didn’t bother even putting anything back on. He grabbed my hand again, and we ran into the patch of woods, barefoot.
The concrete of the parking lot felt especially harsh against my heels once we emerged from the woods. We hurried into Tommy P.’s car and quickly sped off.
We all couldn’t help but laugh for the next five minutes or so. We all exchanged stories of skinned knees and splinters in our feet, and my teeth chattered in response to the 45 mile-per-hour wind that hit me through Tommy P.’s window. I felt my skin pop out goosebumps. Jordan grabbed his Husker Dü hoodie from near my feet and wrapped it over my shoulder. I smiled even though my wet skin felt gross against the velour seat and even though Tommy P’s cassette deck read that it was a quarter after two.
After a short drive, we ended up in the long driveway of the house my family was renting in Catasauqua. No one in the car really said goodbye. They were too busy carrying on their adrenaline fueled conversation about outrunning the “pigs.” Except Jordan, of course.
“If they allow you one phone call before they lock you up, give me a call,” he said before giving me a kiss on the cheek.
My face flushed, and I hoped he didn’t notice. Or I guess maybe, I kind of hoped he did. I opened the door and got out. They backed out, and I watched them and waved as they went.
I walked up the steps to my house. I dug through my wet jean skirt that was balled up under my arm and pulled out my keys. My only hope was that they went to bed before my curfew and didn’t even notice I was out so late. I fumbled my eyes around and paused. I walked in, and unfortunately, I had no such luck.
My mother sat at the dining room table, cigarette in hand. She looked at me with little expression.
I stood across from her, dripping wet, in nothing but my underwear.
She took a long drag from her Virginia Slims 100, before she put it out in the ashtray in front of her. She puffed out the smoke as she stood up and walked up stairs, without saying a word.
