we smoked and noshed, and although none of us young, sensitive types would stand for drunk driving, we climbed into Adam’s ’71 Vega, a deathtrap with a hood that loved to fly open at inopportune times (with obstructions as jarring as road paint being a possible catalyst), and started for the L.A. in a haze.
Two blocks later, Adam pulled over.“ Every light’s green, yellow, and red,” he told us, although I’d been seeing different colours altogether.“ I’m afraid the rest of the way’s on foot.” We spilled out, making it as far as the Saint Vincent House Hotel before common sense took over. Neither road nor sidewalk would have been a safe place by that time.
The Vince was our normal hangout, anyway — a two-hundred-seat bar within walking distance of the house that featured floor shows of every description (some appalling and some, we thought at the time, groundbreaking); on weekend nights it burst at the seams with drunken students ready to cheer for, holler at, or, when the evening grew sufficiently old, projectile vomit at, said entertainment.
We’d arrived early enough to grab a table at the front (the place didn’t get really zoo-like till at least eleven o’clock) and were immediately subjected to an opening act. The house lights faded and the stage lights snapped on as a pair of performance artists, your typical male/female team of pseudo-thespians hailing from the nearby school of art, burst onto the stage — and when I say typical, I mean they were shaved bald, stringy-muscled, and the colour of dough, as if they’d spent time in the anti-gym, paying special attention to the reverse tanning bed. They spread industrial-sized lengths of clinging plastic wrap on the floor, stripped naked, and began rolling around on the sheets as the William Tell Overture blared over the PA system and they bellowed “LUNCHEON MEAT, LUNCHEON MEAT” in a monotone dirge.
And so they rolled, until the woman somehow became entangled in a non-art school way, and her buttocks, now truly bundled like a gigantic ham, hovered in front of our table. Beside her, the man finally lay still, stretched out on his back and wrapped up in an orderly fashion, like ... like luncheon meat, if we were to get the drift of their artistic statement (which I’m sure Audrey did, despite her comment of “that ain’t no Schneiders he’s got there”); but the woman continued to struggle mightily, inadvertently waggling her mound of shining, packaged flesh at the crowd. Katie, now hooting loud enough to rival the sound system, pointed at it with tears running down her cheeks. In rebuttal, the woman on stage glared back over her ass at our table.
At last two enormous men, clad in leather aprons smeared with red paint, bound into view from the wings (undoubtedly early, to save the woman further humiliation), each clutching a meat cleaver in one balled fist; in unison they stooped, and, with their free hands, scooped up the artists/pimento loaves and threw them over their shoulders in dramatic fashion. As they exited stage left, chanting,“ Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to market we go,” the woman looked up and, casting a scathing look at Katie, mouthed the word asshole.
Perhaps Katie found the irony of the utterance the ultimate punchline, considering what the luncheon meat lady had exposed us to for the past minute, or maybe it was just the drugs talking, but her laughing jag continued as Television’s “Venus” started pumping through the speakers. Then a waiter drifted by, and we ordered our beer as a sound crew scurried out and began setting up onstage.
We talked now, raising our voices over the occasional “testing, testing” coming through the mic and the odd guitar riff jumping out of the speakers, until the beer arrived — four pitchers, sweaty and cold — not enough to cut the mushrooms, but a start, at least. As we poured ourselves glasses, Adam let us in on some household news.
“Oh, by the way. We’re getting a new tenant tomorrow,” he said.
We’d been one person short for a while. Cindy Crawford (not the supermodel) had left on a month-long trip to Greece some time back, and we’d just recently received a postcard, cryptic in nature but to the point. It read: Having fun, guys, and making money. Won’t be coming back, so rent my room.
“Man or woman?” Katie asked.
“You know the rule,” Adam replied, telling us her name. “She’s a friend of Cindy’s.”
“Good-looking or butt-ugly?” Audrey asked.
Adam gave her a why-do-you-even-ask look in response.
“Doesn’t matter,” Katie said.“ You won’t be getting into her pedal-pushers, either.”
Audrey let out a whoop and stuck her hand in the air for the big high five; Katie swiped, missing by a half a foot. The two corn-fed gals looked at each other for a beat, eyes wide with astonishment, then collapsed together in a laughdrenched hug. The mushrooms, the Thai stick, or the combination thereof had done absolutely nothing for their coordination, but the contraband had certainly cranked up their sense of humour .
I couldn’t help but laugh, too. There I sat, high on life, as brown and hard as a nut, with an ice-cold pitcher of beer in front of me. Sure, I had to work the next morning, but I existed in that brief window of time — long enough after high school to have rinsed its foul taste from my mouth, but not so long after that reality had forced itself upon me yet. I lived where no task too difficult, no weight too heavy, no thought too profound could get the better of me. Moronic man-child that I was, whatever flaws I owned I could easily ignore.
Then the band jumped on stage, a group I’d never heard of before — REM — and they broke into an extended version of “Stumble.” As a cultural moment, this may not have been CBGB’ s, 1976, with the Talking Heads on stage, or Woodstock ’69 with Hendrix setting his guitar on fire, but it felt good; I felt all right. I lit a smoke, dragged deeply, then tilted my glass to my lips. A jolt of electricity ran through me and wouldn’t stop; I eagerly awaited the arrival of the beautiful ... now, what had Adam said her name was again? That’s it. The beautiful Madeleine Moffatt.
I know Maddy does it, too (the giveaway for her is the distinct I’m-not-really-here look in her eyes), but sometimes when I’m sitting in the overstuffed chair wedged into the southwest corner of the living room, the chair set right by the cold-air return, I’ll place my newspaper or book in my lap, turn off the CD player, and furrow my brow in concentration. When I do that, I can’t help but overhear all conversation coming from the rec room in the basement: the boasts, the taunts, and the beautiful notions, too, that twelve- and thirteen-year-old children share amongst themselves.
I don’t think of it as deceitful; as a parent, you take what you can get without pressing your ear to a milk glass placed against a wall or hovering, breathless and statue-like, just outside a closed bedroom door for minutes at a time. If it’s in the air, it’s public domain.
Still, what am I hoping for when I sit there with my head cocked, with every fibre trained toward them, and try to intercept their unguarded thoughts? A whiff of their secret lives, drifting upward like a wisp of smoke? The secret lives that I’m sure exist but I’ve never been made party to, accidentally or otherwise?
Absolutely not. I have enough trouble handling my face-to-face interactions with Rachel and Eric and coping with the small, nagging doubts those moments leave — simple doubts like Geez, could that casual comment have been misconstrued as some kind of scarring put-down? and Should I step in with some advice now, or is this the time to stand back?
And when I compare my life at age twelve or thirteen to what Eric and Rachel are experiencing now, when I search for any kind of reference point to help in the intricate task of parenting, I just complicate matters. I’m peering back through a window frame that’s cracked and warped with the passage of time, and the pane of glass it holds is flawed, caked with dirt; I’m imposing values that were applicable to a different generation — or, worse still, I’m imposing values that I never bothered with myself. I find the thought of either of them putting a cigarette to their lips unfathomable.
Of course I’m a hypocrite, employing reverse what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander ideology at every turn. Maddy’s far better at being fair, at articulating the voice of reason, of just knowing what’s right, for Christ’s sake. When our term is up and Eric and Rachel have blossomed