I woke up this morning at my mom’s house where I’ve been taking refuge away from life in the city. Ok, I live Downtown and she lives in “almost Summerlin”, but the point is, I’ve run home to Mommy for some R&R. In the last 21 plus years of my life, I’ve often run home to Mommy.
Sometimes it was because I “had” to. I am what might have been called in another era, incorrigible. No, promiscuous, oh wait, I meant precocious.
Really.
I swear.
I’ve always managed to escape my father’s level headedness and calm manner and instead, gone full steam into my mom’s go live life to the fullest and if it knocks you down, put on some Motown and “Keep On Truckin’”.
After all, around very corner, there’s something.
Always.
Sometimes good. Sometimes, not so good.
But.
There’s always mom’s when you need to retreat.
A lot of people get rather tiresome with the melancholia of their birthday. There is nothing so loathsome as one who looks at a birthday as a reason to cry over chances lost. Opportunities blown. People not fucked, oh, sorry, I meant not met.
Balderdash!
Of course, even I had a moment when I woke up at my mom’s house and went into the garage to take a look at my favorite painting. It’s of me and my mom. She is in one of her custom made evening gowns with dyed to match shoes and I’m in a red velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with my favorite white turtleneck like Tony Curtis used to wear.
My ex, Juan painted it as gift to my mom on Christmas many years ago.
I miss him. I’ve been looking for him ever since we broke up. So far, I’ve only found 2D examples in a 3D world.
So.
There I was looking at all the stuff in the garage. Everything boxed up and cellophane. Untouched since the day my mom moved in here. All this stuff used to be displayed proudly all over my mom’s dream house in Desert Shores. After Dad started having strokes and had to move away before he died, health care costs ate up everything they had worked for, mom lost the house and all the dreams ended up in the garage.
Along with my Grandmother. Seems mom has her urn in there somewhere.
Ok, sidenote: When I was a little kid, my grandmother, Lois Dickens, was supposed to babysit me. You know, read me books, draw stuff, all that crap that white people did in the sixties.
WELL.
Mom would go off to work and my uncle Bobby Jr (just a few years older and like my brother even now) would go to school. My grandmother would place me in front of the TV while she started to get ready. After awhile, she would come out looking way too good for “Mornings with the cutest child ever to have been born”.
You know.
Me.
She would spend a few minutes spreading rumors with her girlfriend Gloria on the phone and at twelve noon sharp the world came to a stop. We sat everyday and watched “All My Children”. One day a dark haired girl in a miniskirt and the best knees I’ve ever seen came on.
Erica Kane!
I don’t know how many of those of you who practice “the love that dare not speak it’s name” actually have ever thought about this, but, we have all had a moment when we started on our path to a full membership into the FFA.
Future Fags of America.
Erica Kane was mine.
Back to my grandmother.
At one o’clock on the dot we made our way towards our coats, both of us fussing about the comings and goings of Pine Valley. Me trying not to be too enthusiastic about Erica’s long brown hair or the cool way she slanted her Tam over to one side so that it just grazed her eyebrow.
Watch how I wear a hat to this day. It’s always “Erica Kane” style.
Of course at this point you’re thinking that the two of us had a bucolic day of the zoo and a quick trip through the A&P.
You aint never met Lois Dickens.
We would saddle up the street and into “Jack’s Back Door Lounge” where the elite went to greet. Somebody would hand me a fistful of change and off to the jukebox I would go.
“I said SHOT GUUUUUUNNNNNN! SHOOT HIM ‘FORE HE RUN NOW!”
Yup, put on your high heel sneakers and your wig hat ‘cause Lois and Derek is in the club!
I knew about a rum and coke before I knew how to read. I could tell you the latest Smokey & The Miracles record the day it came out because I used to watch the man come in and change the records in the jukebox on Thursdays.
“JIMMY, JIMMY, OH JIMMY MACK, WHEN ARE COMING BACK?”
Anyway, the day would wrap up in time for us to go to the A&P and get home in time for my grandmother to start dinner before Bobby Jr would get home and she could start fussing at him about everything. Before my grandfather would get home smelling of the old junk he loved to go collecting and the “good smelling stuff” he lathered himself in (I do the same to this day). And before my mom came in looking like Cindy Birdsong from the Supremes to take me upstairs where we waited for my dad, both of us wanting to reach him first to smother him. Of course, neither of us ever mentioned to my mom what we did all day and as long as I was still alive and hadn’t fucked up my clothes she brought me back from London or Paris, she was cool.
Fuck.
Where was I?
Oh.
Yeah.
So, I’m in the garage and I can’t find ANYTHING when I realize that my entire life is wrapped up and in boxes in my mom’s garage. I never did find the painting. BUT, I did find a box of my old 45’s from when I was a teen in the early 80’s and it was quite chic to carry old lunchboxes and record carriers out to clubs like “The Odyssey”.
“BEATNIK BEACH, YEAH YEAH, BEATNIK BEACH, OH YEAH!”
Cool.
Anyways.
It got me to thinking that I was actually cool with not being able to touch most of my life because in the last few months, my entire life has shown up again on Facebook.
There’s Jaime Teagle, my first friend in California. Unbeknownst to her, she was a raging Fag Hag. Way before I knew who I was, she was my friend and she dated Craig Curtis!
Prenicia Parnell, who always sat in the latest designer duds with Diana and that other girl Lucretia something or other. Listen, when you watch “Mean Girls”, these three Bitches made those girls look like amateurs.
I wanted them to like me SO bad!
Leonard Applebaum is just as goofy and fun loving as he was when he was the hairiest kid to ever attend Edgewood High School.
Linda Littman who actually runs a wedding chapel right around the corner from from my house and has been married to the same guy since the beginning of time.
Julie Steadman is just as insane as the day they let her out of Lanterman State Hospital on a day pass that turned into a lifetime.
And a million others.
Most importantly, Facebook reconnected me with Mike McElroy.
Ever have a friend that you went through everything with? We taught each other how to be cool. Mike was never afraid to try anything. When everyone else around us was cruising the Ed Taco parking lot, Mike and I were trying out our learner’s permits going to the Whisky A Go Go and cruising Hollywood Blvd daring Jim Hedges to get it on with a hooker. Mike never let his health issues get him down. Got a syringe for your diabetes? Well, now you have a nifty way to make an orange a vodka filled spill free cocktail! I sat through many church services as Mike cruised the pews for the latest Nazarene hussy soon to be making me sit in the back seat. Mike and I threw the kind of parties that can only be described as EPIC. Nerds and Jocks, “Soches” and ASB, they all came and got WASTED when Mike’s parents went out of town! If we were especially lucky, Edgewoods’ own Uncle Albert, Craig Curtis, would do a spot on impersonation of our own, trying way too hard to be popular, Ruth McHugh.
Ruth was a 45 yr old trapped in a 15 yr olds body. Always inventing new dances that no one cared to learn and seeming way more at home in an apron than her Bonjour jeans. Craig, to this day can do her as a combination of “Vita Meata Vegamin” and Sue Ann Nivens on a vodka bender.
Well, There’s Mike. Not wrapped up in my mom’s garage, but, right there on my laptop.
Hmm.
Turns out my life is right there on Facebook.
And I’m cool with that.
So tonite, I’m going off with my new BFF’s, my fellow Democrats who make everyday exciting as we go forth trying to change the world (or, our little part of it) to enjoy just being around friends and being really happy about having another birthday. No big party, just a big ass Cheese Pizza from the best pizza joint in Vegas, Boston Pizza.
If I’m lucky, truly lucky, someone will stop at a grocery store and buy fresh basil because Boston Pizza never has any and I LOVE BASIL ON MY CHEESE PIZZA!
Hint.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! KEEP ON TRUCKIN' Y'ALL!
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