January 6, 2003
Holly recently moved out of my parents' house. She now lives in the same town, five minutes away. Why she needed to leave a place where she could come and go as she pleased, had someone else to cook, clean, and do laundry for her, and didn't have to pay a dime in rent is beyond me, but she did, thereby making my mother quite cranky as a result. Mom does not like it when her chicks leave the nest; she still hasn't forgiven me for moving to "that Godforsaken place" as she so fondly calls Philadelphia.
The upside of Holly's moving out is that now when I come to visit, I don't have to stay in my brother's old bedroom, which, in reality, is little more than a walk-in closet. Frank now lives in the garage. Well, it was the garage at one time, but my parents had it converted and now it is Frank's Lair. The kid just moved my mom's old recliner in there, plopped it right in front of the TV that is solely used to play endless hours of Playstation; I swear eventually he's just going to have my mother hook him up to an IV and hire a hospice worker to give him a sponge bath once a week and never leave that room again. But before Frank got to move into Playstation Central, he had the smallest room in the house: big enough for a bed and a dresser and him. Maybe a stuffed animal or two, but two might have pushing the maximum occupancy of that room.
Not that any of the rooms in my childhood home are that big. You could refer to the house as "cozy". If you were mentally ill. In this case, "cozy" translates into small rooms, no storage, and one bathroom for five people (six when my grandmother was alive). It was even smaller when my parents bought it thirty years ago. It was a Cape Cod built after WWII for returning GIs, which meant a living room, two bedrooms, kitchen and a bathroom on the ground floor, a basement, and an attic. When I was nine, my parents dormed out the second floor to make bedrooms for everyone. However, mom and dad have about as much skill in choosing contractors as they have in selecting general practitioners and dentists, so they hired this jackass who separated the second floor into two small rooms, one infinitismal one, and a whole lot of wasted space in the hallway.
Once the attic was dormed out, we all moved upstairs. Holly and I shared a room and Frank got the closet room. Later, for my 8th grade graduation, my mother wallpapered our old downstairs playroom (which had originally been the bedroom that Holly and I first shared when we moved into the house) with lavender polkadot wallpaper and laid down some mauve carpet and I moved back downstairs, Holly kept our upstairs room, and everyone in the family had his or her own room. (I suspect my parents allowed me to move downstairs because by 8th grade, I was more like a trapped, snarling animal than a human girl and no one was particularly anxious to be in the same room with me. I returned to my normal human state at the approximate age of 17. We don't speak much of those years in between.)
After I moved out of my parents' home, my old room was converted into a second family room, Frank moved into his lair, and Holly annexed his tiny old room and literally turned it into a closet. But there was also a twin bed in there so whenever I came to visit, I had to sleep in there with all of Holly's sweaters and shoes (and this is a girl that Kenneth Cole should make an honorary stock holder). God forbid Holden came with me; that meant one of us in the closet and one of us on the couch. But now that Holly is out, I can sleep in her old bedroom.
It's strange because once upon a time, this room was mine as well. I'm sitting in here in typing this entry and I can still picture how it looked even though Holly has redecorated several dozen times since I moved my things down into that new lavender room. I can close my eyes and imagine the exact shade of yellow that the walls were painted and I can feel the rough texture of the green curtains that hung on the windows (Holly and I didn't want a pink room, so we chose yellow walls and green accessories. With the brown trim and carpet, it was like living in a sunflower.) I can lie here in the double bed that now takes up the space where Holly's old twin bed stood and then half again and I can see where my bed stood parallel to her's and I remember how I could sit up in bed and open my closet and pick out my clothes for school without ever really getting up. My stereo stood on a TV table against the far wall, perfectly equidistant from the feet of both our beds; but I was the one who used it more. I used to lock myself in here and play Huey Lewis and the News' first album over and over and over (no, it wasn't Sports, although I did like that one too) and listen to the Duran Duran 45s I bought with my friends from the Record Mill on Washington Avenue.
But mostly, I look at the bare walls, stripped of Holly's photographs and paraphanalia, and I remember my posters. Poor Holly didn't get much of a say in the decoration of our room. She was two years younger and not yet at the stage where the desire to plaster your living space with the cute faces you find in Tiger Beat overwhelms your very being. So most everything that went on the walls went on them because of me.
Right next to my bed, in the place of honor, was the Tom Selleck poster that my dad gave me one Valentine's Day. Magnum P.I. himself grinning under his mustache and standing in front of a waterfall in his tiny beige shorts and Hawaiian shirt, open enough to reveal his hairy chest. To this day, Tom Selleck is the only hairy man I have ever found attractive. I've always gone more for the type who looks like he has to shave maybe once a week if he's lucky.
Above the stereo was Jameson Parker, straight-laced A.J. Simon from Simon & Simon (a spin-off of Magnum. Coincidence? I think not), and much more in the shaves-once-a-week category. For those of you not familiar with Simon and Simon or can't remember which one was Rick or which one was A.J., or are just not as old as I am and therefore did not have the opportunity to partake of CBS' fine private-detective programming, here are some pictures: Jameson is the blond. In my poster, Jameson's wardrobe was more conservative than Tom Selleck's microscopic shorts: jeans, a pink Izod shirt, and a steel blue Member's Only jacket (classy!). He was blonder than blond and his eyes were this impossible blue and his teeth were very white and he gave Holly nightmares. She once dreamt that he was really an android (and really, if you saw that poster, it wasn't that farfetched a concept) and after that she had this paranoia that while we slept, his poster came alive and watched us. Of course, like any older sister worth her salt, I refused to take him down.
(A little tangential information: Apparently Simon and Simon has a HUGE fanfiction movement. Who knew? I found all these sites when I was searching for a picture to show you what Jameson Parker looked like and now, like a witness to a train wreck, I cannot turn away.)
Next to Jameson was my most prized poster: A giant, glossy group shot of Huey Lewis & the News that I bought from Collector's World. It would have gone where Tom was but Huey and the Boys were too wide for that piece of wall. I can still see the lineup: Johnny Colla (sax and guitar), Chris Hayes (lead guitar), Huey (well, duh), Sean Hopper (keyboards), Billy Gibson (drums) and Mario Cippolina (bass), standing in a row against a blue backdrop and trying to muster some rock and roll attitude. They were young then and it was before their cross over into the scary nether regions of Adult Contemporary and I thought they were the coolest. I even did my eighth grade research project on them. I wrote a biographical chapter on each band member and then chapters on how they formed the group and their rise to fame and their future plans. I was so proud of that paper. And the poster.
Chris Hayes, the lead guitarist, was my absolute favorite. Although, I did like Huey and Johnny (he was Holly's favorite) and Sean too. (Billy was too geeky and Mario was too weird -- he was the one with the snakes and the leather). But slight, short, baby-faced Chris was the man of my dreams for years (Gee, can you see the start of a trend there?) In my beloved poster, he was wearing the best black leather jacket with red trim. (He's actually wearing it in this picture from Rolling Stone.) I begged my mother to buy me one just like it. I wheedled and pleaded for months and daydreamed about how cute I would look in such a jacket. My mother finally relented and agreed to buy me a jacket for my 12th birthday, but, like most childhood dreams, the reality didn't quite live up to the fantasy. Most of the red and black leather jackets were more along the lines of Michael Jackson than clean cut Bay-area rock and roll musician and my mother got frustrated and pressured me into a plain black leather jacket with these oddly poofy, feminine sleeves and an elastic waistband. I think I wore it twice. But I did get a whole lot of lectures about how I never wore it, so it was good practice for my mother's current Master's Tournament of Lecturing. And my mother did get a little closer to the mark a decade later when I decided I needed a fringed suede jacket like Radney Foster's.
(Some more tangential information: Apparently Chris has left the band. He's the second original member to go. Mario went a long time ago. Chris' depature made me a wee bit sad. But hey, he probably had to go because things were getting crowded since it now seems there are about twenty members of Huey Lewis and the News. Thank God I'm not doing any research reports on them now. Oh, well, I suppose it's back to the drawing board for my Ph.D. thesis. Shucks.)
In the little border around my closet were magazine pictures of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (I begged my mother for a fedora just like Indy's -- I got one more on par with Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. I wore it twice. Another trend.) and The A-Team because I thought Dirk Benedict was cute, but I didn't like the picture too much because that dopey girl Amy was in it with them. There were also pictures of the cast of The Outsiders and Kevin Bacon. Later the Kevin Bacon pictures would be brought to Roy W. Brown middle school to adorn the interior of my locker, where they would be destroyed in a terrible massacre when Simon Davis and Larry Jensick broke into my locker and drew mustaches all over the Kevins' faces and wrote captions like "Kevin Bacon and Eggs" and finally impaled one large color shot of him on the jacket hook.
On the wall behind the door to our bedroom was Rick Springfield. He was wearing a pink suit (I think of the 80s and I think of Rick Springfield's pink suit) and playing a black and white guitar. The first concert I saw was Rick Springfield's Tao of Love tour with Til Tuesday. My eighth grade best friend Wendy and I went to Brendan Byrne Arena and screamed and sang until we lost our voices. Holly and I waited breathlessly for his movie Hard to Hold to be released and then we went to see it in the movie theater on the Avenue with ten of our friends and we all screamed when they showed Rick's (gasp!) naked behind. I used to have all of his albums on cassette, but I think Holly stole them.
On the back of the door was Holly's only poster. A life-sized John Stamos in a blue and white striped sweater. John Stamos never did anything for me so I pretty much ignored him. Except when I was alone in the room and dancing and singing to my records. Then he bugged me. I didn't mind that Tom Selleck and Jameson Parker and Harrison Ford and the A-Team and Kevin Bacon and Huey and the guys (even my beloved Chris Hayes) could "see" me acting like a fool, but I hated feeling like John Stamos was watching me. I used to tape pieces of looseleaf paper over his face so he couldn't watch me. Once, I left one stuck over John's right eye and Holly found it. I had a hard time explaining that away.
Then there was the infamous Culture Club poster that Holly and I pooled our money to buy (again from Collector's World - the coolest store on earth for two early adolescent girls: full of posters and decaled t-shirts and buttons with pictures of your favorite bands that you could pin to your jacket or purse). The minute we saw the humungous portrait of Boy George and the band with the American Flag, we knew we had to have it. We took it home and put in on the outside of our bedroom door -- it was going to mark the entrance to our room. And it did, for about two hours, until my dad got home from work and saw it.
Now my dad didn't have a problem with most of our music. He used to tell people that we liked Huey Lewis because Huey looked like him (“In your dreams, dad!”, we'd yell.) He'd get a hold of an issue of Rolling Stone and hold up a picture of Huey next to his face and bug people to see if they could see a resemblance. He enjoyed Men at Work, even though we weren't all that into them (I think it was because the lead singer wore a kilt on the American Music Awards). But Boy George was just too much for him. "He dresses like a GIRL, but he calls himself BOY. He needs his head examined. Or a swift kick in the ass." Dad took one look at Boy and the rest of the Club smiling across the landing at him and he told us to remove it to somewhere he wouldn't have to look upon it or risk having it torn down. Holly and I shifted Jameson and Huey and the boys over a little and Culture Club came to occupy the space next to the door, across from Rick.
When I moved downstairs, the posters got rolled up and carefully placed in my closet. I moved onto foil portraits of harlequins and unicorns. I hung stuffed pastel moons and satin stars from my ceiling. A few years later, I bought vintage movie posters, Gone with the Wind and Casablanca. Although, I seem to remember an REO Speedwagon poster sneaking it's way into the decorating scheme for a few months. Why, I'm not entirely sure, particularly because even though I thought "Take it on the Run" was a work of pure rock and roll genius, even I (a girl who has always been known for her quirky taste in men) recognized that none of the members of REO was even remotely attractive. Let's face it, they were lucky they made a name for themselves BEFORE the video revolution.
When I got to college, I switched back to posters. That time around there was Kevin Costner in Bull Durham and The Commitments and Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, and Elvis Costello. They clashed nicely with my freshman year freak of a roommate's black light Metallica objets d'arte and her paintings of giant green fingernails poking into even more gigantic eyeballs.
Now I've got Shag prints and Vargas pinups and photos of New York City in 1942. Much more sophisticated than old Tom and Jameson and Huey. But sitting here in my old room, I can look at each point on the wall -- the points that they used to occupy -- and I can see them there. And I miss my old friends.
7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions
Pride:
Envy:
Wrath:
Sloth:
Avarice:
Gluttony:
Lust:
Book:
I used to have you in a photograph.
Task at Hand:
Quest for Publication:
Even though I'm a little nostalgic for my old posters, I am proud that my taste in interior decoration has progressed past them.
My 7th grade friend, Lisa, who got the pink and grey leather jacket she coveted for her 12th birthday.
After we got that stupid black leather jacked home, I realized that I absolutely loathed it.
I need to stop being so transfixed by the insanity that is Simon and Simon fanfiction and do something productive. Like find a job.
Can you be greedy for sleep?
Dinner was Ramen Noodles, a tuna sandwich, and chocolate.
From Chris Hayes to Billy Boyd. Haven't I come far?
Return of the King. As I read, I trip over these little things that also appear in the Harry Potter series: names like "Bagshot", the fact that trolls are giant creatures (I always thought they were small and lived under bridges), the concept that very few people are brave enough to call the villain by name (In Tolkien, most everyone refers to Sauron as The Enemy and Faramir even goes so far as to say that he will not speak his name). I think it's neat that J.K. seems to be paying tribute to Tolkien in her use of little constructs and details like these.
Tune:
Huey Lewis and the News, "Do You Believe in Love?":
But now I've got you and it's gonna last.
Getting a frame for the SHAG print I got for Solstice.
Total Submissions: 22
Rejections: 13
Acceptances: 1
Withdrawals: 7