OMG! I’ve been putting off the brain-treat of writing
about requited love all summer! Time to set a timer and start.
The day after I graduated, I moved away from my suburban
town to go live with Beach Aunt at the shore. She was renting me a room for
some insanely cheap price: I think it was 170$ a month. I gave a way lots of my
thrift store clothes and most of my high school (sometimes Jane’s Addiction
related) art. I kept a lot of the ridiculous tchotchkes I’d looted from a
friend’s Thrifty Shopper job: Lots of sincere-looking animal figurines in Seventies
colors. It might be my overly poetic memory, but I think I carried a (Little)
birdhouse (In My Soul) on my lap in Beach Aunt’s overstuffed-with-everything-I-owned
compact car.
I left behind Bucky Fellini, the rabbit I’d purchased
at the State Fair the summer before and named after a Dead Milkmen album. Don’t
worry, we will eventually be reunited! And I think the Dead Milkmen are still
together!
I had 300$ in graduation money, a dozen white roses
from my mom, and a new set of oil paints I would (spoiler alert) never be
unlazy enough to learn how to use properly. I had a tape from the coolest girl
in the school: Mary’s Danish on one side, mix after the album ran out on the
other. Push th’ Little Daisies by Ween. Sensitive Artist by King
Missile. Nineties AF. I had candles and incense that had been too stinky to
burn in mom’s house. I had a floral vintage suitcase filled with thrift store
lingerie. I was ready for nothing.
The strongest emotion of living in Beach Aunt’s house
was the feeling of WAITING FOR LETTERS TO COME. Come to think of it, that
defined part of my California time too, and even now, a little bit.
There was a bus that carried workers from Beach Aunt’s
town to Great Adventure, so she helped me to get a job there. Not ambitious
enough to wait for a spot to open up in the old-time photo studio or something
else nominally creative, I took the easiest job to get: Maintenance. They gave
me Smurf-blue shorts, a bright yellow shirt, and a visor. Not exactly a look to
look for love in.
(Serendipity side-note: The Mayor of Kittentown worked
there that summer too! We never met, but I think I probably flirted with him on
the ride he operated, which, after several enjoyable minutes of Googling, I’ve
deduced was just prosaically called the Giant Drop. Love a big drop ride!)
Aside from some one-night concert friends I’d made at
a Dead Milkmen show when I first got to the beach (“If you don’t have Ween,
then we’re gonna raise a scene!” the band sang, paraphrasing an
important plot point of Punk Rock Girl.) I was essentially friendless for the
first month of the summer. On days off, I would either float on my own in the
pretty blue waves or take the bus to the park to rise the roller coasters for
free. It never got old!
During one particularly tedious shift clearing tables
and sweeping up cigarette butts in the 1950’s-themed area of the park (They
only had about 10 songs in rotation. One can only take so much “Leader of the
Pack.”) I met My First Bitchy Gay Guy, my literal partner -in-crime for the
rest of the summer. He would be the one to introduce me to the very most
Nineties-dreamy guy in the universe, who would be my first sex-with-love around
midnight between our two early-September birthdays. Oh swoon swoon swoon.
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