1982 (7 page)

SNL

Joan Jett

As you can see, this short list demonstrates that our idea of cool can change. But not Wendy. I knew Wendy would always be cool.

Wendy went to my high school, Thornlea SS. She was an older woman. She was already in Grade 11. She was totally New Wave. Or punk. I was still fourteen and in the midst of a rapid transition from acoustic-guitar-wielding folkie—and ethnically inappropriate “Ebony and Ivory” duet singer—to aspiring New Romantic. I had been gradually building my black wardrobe for months to accomplish this mission. My skinny legs looked even skinnier in black pants. I had started dyeing and gelling my hair. Actually, I had started dyeing and
gelling and then blow-drying and gelling (again) my hair. The colour of my hair would change every few weeks. It was alternately jet black or highlighted with blond streaks or, in one ill-fated stint, rusty orange. I had not yet discovered crimping. That was a year or two away.

Of course, I did all this hair business without the blessing of my very professional Iranian father.

“Why you are wearing your hair like thees? You are wanting your hair to be orange like thees?”

My dad’s thick Iranian accent would get a bit thicker when he was upset. His tactic was to ask questions to demonstrate his displeasure.

“You are thinking it ees looking good, thees orange hair?” “That’s the way cool people do it now, Dad. They colour their hair and use gel.” My replies had an appropriate teenage tone of exhaustion.

“Why you don’t want to wear new clothes?”

My father would always continue to the next question if he didn’t get a good answer to the first. He was usually exasperated with the whole thing before we even started talking. Sometimes, he would deeply exhale when he saw me with a new hair colour. That’s when I knew he was going to ask a question to demonstrate his displeasure. I was exasperated, too. We were man and boy pre-emptively tired of the same conversation.

“Vintage clothing is cool, Dad. Everyone knows that.” “You are wanting to look like beggar?”

It went on like that.

My dad would ask these kinds of questions because he really didn’t understand. For example, it was obvious he didn’t
understand the haircuts or sartorial splendour of the Human League and Kajagoogoo. Well, okay, most people probably never understood the band Kajagoogoo. Or why they used that name. But that included my dad. He didn’t understand that being New Romantic often meant dressing in exaggerated counter-sexual or androgynous clothing. And he definitely didn’t understand my growing affinity for second-hand stores. He didn’t come to North America for his son to dress in used clothing.

My mother, on the other hand, would not ask any questions. She just made statements. She would state facts.

“Oh, you’ve decided to put the black pointy boots on again. Those are the ones you got from the second-hand market at the Palais Royale last month. You’ve decided to wear those boots a lot.”

See? That’s an example of three very factual sentences. My mother had devised a cunning way of expressing her negative opinions by simply stating facts. I would later learn that this is called passive-aggressive. But at the time I had no idea anyone else had this ability. I just knew that my mother would calmly say these things like she was reading out the details of a court case. She would speak them slowly to allow the stenographer to keep up.

Sometimes my mother would helpfully point out facts about others, too. She did this to draw a comparison for the sake of underscoring an idea.

“You know, that Chris from across the street doesn’t dye his hair. He has a very nice haircut. He looks like Mark Hamill.”

This was my mother’s way of expressing disapproval of me. She wanted me to wear more normal shoes and be more like
That Chris, who was around my age and lived across the street. My mother figured if I were more like That Chris, I would somehow fit in and not get teased or something. She seemed to overlook the minor detail that my name was Jian and I was the only ethnic kid on the street, other than the Olsons. And the Olsons were black. And black wasn’t really ethnic.

My mother never expressed her disapproval directly. She was generally very polite. And, ultimately, she may have known her efforts would be futile. Even if I’d wanted to, I could never actually be Chris. That Chris. He was physically bigger than me and had straight blond hair. It was like Wendy’s hair. Except That Chris didn’t look like Bowie. But That Chris did mow the lawn.

“Oh, look, that Chris is mowing the lawn again.”

This was another statement of fact from my mother. She would say this as if That Chris deserved a medal or an extra cup of Laura Secord chocolate pudding. And, yes, That Chris was mowing the lawn. Actually, he seemed to be in a perpetual state of mowing the lawn. That is, when he wasn’t watering the lawn. I became convinced That Chris took such meticulous care of his family’s lawn with the sole intention of reminding my parents that they had a son with pointy shoes who was less attentive to the yard. Chris would go on to own a profitable landscaping business after high school. That Chris had a nice haircut. Just like Mark Hamill.

I looked nothing like Mark Hamill or any of the
Star Wars
leads. My style was a combination of New Wave aspiration and early ’80s obligation. Sometimes the clothing and the hair required accessories to accompany the outfit. In my desire to keep up with the trends, the summer before high school I used
the money I’d saved by working in the backroom at SAVCO Pet Food and Supplies to buy myself a coveted Adidas gym bag. This was no ordinary bag. If you were a young denizen of suburbia in Canada in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the fake-leather Adidas gym bag was all the rage. It was my prized possession going into Grade 9. It was the kind with the stripes and handles and the shape of a small hockey-gear bag. It had a really simple design featuring one zipper and no pockets in any form. It also had a small area to put your name with the Adidas logo on the side. I had written my name on the label in authoritative upper-case black marker: THIS BAG BELONGS TO JIAN GHOMESHI. THORNHILL, ONTARIO.

Now, to be clear, the Adidas gym bag wasn’t really New Wave. In some ways it was quite the opposite. The bag had a universal appeal and was embraced by various cliques. But then, there was no consistent aesthetic to my style at the time. And my Adidas bag was the envy of a lot of kids in my class. Everyone who was anyone had an Adidas bag. I began to carry mine with me everywhere. My friend Toke had gotten an Adidas bag of his own in the summer before Grade 9. His was brown with white handles. Mine was red. Actually, mine was red with blue stripes and handles.

Here is a short list of the colour combinations that were available in the Adidas gym bag in the early ’80s:

red/blue

blue/dark blue

yellow/blue

brown/white

green/blue

Sometimes, when Toke and I walked down to the Mac’s Milk corner store on Henderson Avenue on a lazy summer afternoon, we would bring our Adidas bags. There was nothing practical about this exercise. We usually had no reason to carry our bags, but we liked the idea of being seen with them. Even when high school started, I rarely had enough books or papers or gel or lunch to merit bringing the Adidas bag. But that didn’t matter. I would still carry it along. Everywhere. The following school year, when faced with having to purchase a new bag, I would opt to accessorize with a black briefcase. It was more in line with my New Romantic style. But for now, I had my red-and-blue Adidas bag. My dyed gelled hair, my tight black pants, my pointy shoes, and my red-and-blue Adidas bag.