I get stupid, I mean outrageous.

I heard Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two" today.

"Right about now... you're about to be possessed... 

Remember this one?

...by the sounds of MC Rob Base and DJ... EZ... Rock...  

and I wept.

Hit it!"

I wept for my high school cafeteria where had my first braces-clad kiss on some Friday night just inches away from the same spot where I ate Fiesta Sticks in flourescent lunchtime lighting every Thursday between '89 and '92.
I wept for the teenage brain that I can never get back.  The one that was the Secretary of Student Counsel and President of the V-Club.  The one that was totally happy believing that sushi was gross and America was great.
Of course, I weep for my teenage waist, too, but I am not strong enough to face that tonight...  "Bartender...?"

I miss my ignorance so much.  ( I mean I love my current ignorance, but it's just not the same.)
I miss Vanilla Ice, and Whitesnake, and the days when carbohydrates were part of a healthy diet.
I mourn for the stupid idiotic things I did to get the attention of a boy or a clique or my parents.
I mourn for the books I skimmed instead of read.
I miss that time Bill Clinton f*cked up and how the French didn't understand why his infidelity mattered.
I miss French Class.
I mourn for the family dinners through which I rushed, and the million questions I evaded with the word "fine."
I mourn for the sciences.  The sciences!  WHERE WAS I?  I would pay $500 a session to hear Mr. Telerski explain Biology if I could afford it.  All I have to show for it are some random terms like "lipids" and "Golgi apparatus." 
And oh, the drama!  Not a day went by that my mind didn't spin with some disaster or other.  Sometimes it was a friend's, sometimes it was mine.  I rolled in it like a pig in shit either way.  I dove deep and got to the center of it.  I carried it with me through the halls, during Algebra class, History, Religion.  I carried it home and smeared it on the walls of my bedroom.  Talked on the phone, hung up, waited for my parents to go to bed and then talked on the phone some more.  There is nothing in my life today to which I dedicate so much chat.

"B'cuz I get stupid, I mean outrageous.   Stay away from me, if y' contagious."

I want to shop at The Limited and come out having spent just $30, but feeling like a million bucks.

I want to splurge and buy the good kind of Revlon lipstick.

I want to ride the bus downtown with my little sister and buy her a treat and be so cool in her eyes.

Remember when "Step Aerobics" was New School?

And drinking wine was Old School?

Remember when Rosie O'Donnel was the host of Stand-up Spotlight?  And how she shined those flashlights all over the place... except her sexuality?  And that she stayed in the closet for a few more years (2002?!?)  

Remember when "Reality TV" was an oxymoron?

Remember when "violence in our schools" meant there was a fist fight, not a gun-wound?

I want to have some of those Saturdays on which I slept 'till 11:30 and then ate ten pancakes.  Ten.  When you are fifteen you eat ten pancakes because that's how hungry I am.  When you are thirty-eight, you eat ten pancakes because that's how hopeless I am.

Yes, I waste the majority The Present with one middle finger pointed upwards and directed at every self-helper and therapist and well-meaning loved-one who has warmly encouraged me to "live in the moment" because, while I do appreciate being of legal drinking age, the rest of adulthood is pretty taupe in comparison to the fuchsia of my 90's youth.  (PS I totally had to look up the spelling of "fuchsia," which if you knew me between 1989 and 2003, is shocking and ironic... in an Alanis-Morisette-kinda-way.)

"It takes two to make a thing go right.  It takes two to make it outta sight."

I realize that the rest of the world grows up and accepts their grown-up responsibilities far better than I.  I know.  But I'm going to go ahead and say it out loud on the off-chance that some of you are thinking it, yet have a lifestyle in which it would be inappropriate to state:

Did you ever find out retrospectively that someone was in love with you?  Ain't that a bitch?  That's how I feel about my youth.  How did I piss that away so gloriously?

And you know what?  All I could think about as a teen was how much I wanted to be an adult.  Please don't advise therapy.  I am uninsured.  I'll get to it when I can...

'Cause I'm Rob Base, the one who knows ... About things that make ya get weary.  Don't cheer me, just hear me ... Out 'cause I got the clout--shout (Ho!) ... Before I turn the party out..."

 

These photos were taken on an afternoon on Sullivan Street.  I cannot imagine how devastating this must have been for the loved-ones.  Since I haven't had time to go out for wine or coffee, this is the v & the b you get.  No matter how lacking in complexity that wine may have been, this is a senseless act of violence.

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