Yes Please (14 page)

the russians are coming

M
Y PARENTS STILL LIVE IN THE HOUSE WE MOVED INTO WHEN I WAS FIVE
.
In my old bedroom are the dried flowers from my prom and a street sign I stole when I hung out with some bad kids for a few months. I loved school. I loved new shoes and lunch boxes and sharp pencils. I would hold dance contests in tiny finished basements with my friends. I roller-skated in my driveway and walked home from the bus stop on my own. We never locked our door. I had a younger brother whom I loved and also liked. I thought my mother was the most beautiful mother in the world and my father was a superhero who would always protect me. I wish this feeling for every child on earth.

Because of this safe foundation, I had to create my own drama. I’m aware many children were not afforded that luxury. Some had houses filled with chaos and abuse, and they learned to keep their mouths shut and stay out of trouble. I was dealt two loving parents, and they encouraged me to be curious. This safety net combined with the small drumbeat inside of me meant I did a lot of silly things to try to make life seem exciting. Our little town of Burlington, Massachusetts, was quiet and homogenous, an endless series of small ranch houses on tree-lined streets littered with pine needles. The only thing we feared was the dreaded gypsy moth. Burlington was sleepy, and to a restless young girl like me it often felt like a ghost town. I yearned for adventure and spent a lot of my youth in my own head, creating elaborate fantasies that felt grown-up and life threatening.

The streets and woods around my house were a perfect setting for fake mischief. I would spend all afternoon pretending I had run away and had to live on my own. I would bring Toll House cookies and a sweatshirt and try to make a fire. I would sneak outside of our house at dusk with a pair of binoculars and search the streets for murderers. I created scenarios in my head that I always managed to escape from: kidnap fantasies where I would wriggle free from the ropes, fire fantasies where I would save my whole family and jump from my window into a snowbank, drugstore-robbery daydreams where I would find a way to connect with the troubled teen and get him to drop the gun. After school, I would eat ravenously and then hop on my pink Huffy bike. The bike read
CACTUS FLOWER
on the side, and as I coasted down the street, I would pretend I was being chased. Riding fast and helmetless, I would look over my shoulder and pick a random car and decide it was filled with Russians. I would pedal furiously up to the edge of the woods and jump off my bike, stashing it in the bushes. I would pile leaves on top of me and lie very still, imagining how ridiculous those bad guys would feel when they realized they had walked right past me. This was during the Gorbachev/Reagan years, and our enemies had thick-tongued accents and fur hats. “Do you see the girl?” the small and scary boss would say. “
Nyet,
” the big and dumb one would answer. I would pretend to wait until they were gone and then jump out of the leaves to get to the business of delivering the microchip into the hands of Pat Benatar.

On long car trips, I would make my little brother, Greg, pretend he was deaf while we sat in the backseat. We would communicate in made-up sign language as we sped down the highway, in the hope that a passing car would see us and feel pity for the beautiful family with two deaf children. When you have a comfortable and loving middle-class family, sometimes you yearn for a dance on the edge. This can lead to an overactive imagination, but it is also the reason why kids in Montana do meth.

My best friend, Keri Downey, lived a block away. Her house was a much livelier version of mine. Keri and I met the first day of kindergarten. I was dressed in a cowgirl outfit, which says more about my mother’s wonderful acceptance of my weirdness and less about my fashion choices at that time. Remember, this was still the 1970s, a time when my teachers wore leotards and corduroys and kissed their boyfriends in front of us. My mother was at home, but Keri’s mom, Ginny, worked. Keri was a typical latchkey kid, and her house had that exciting
Lord of the Flies
feeling of being run by children. Keri had a list of chores and suffered consequences if she didn’t do them. I came from a home where my mother would gently suggest that maybe I could pick up my room if I had the chance. Keri had a police officer dad who slept during the day and was not happy if we woke him up. I had a dad who would snore on the couch as we all stood around him and teased him loudly. Keri had fierce sisters who punched. I had a brother whom I occasionally argued with. The Downey sisters were a tiny gang. They fascinated me. They would fight hard, wrestling around and pulling hair. They would even challenge me to fight, occasionally pushing me into the scrum. One time Keri’s sister threw a set of toenail clippers at her eye and it drew blood. Blood! So exciting! They would torture each other with big emotional threats, and then they would cry and make up and eat a sandwich. They had each other’s backs even when they were talking behind them. Keri would come to my house and luxuriate in the calm and the junk food, and I would head over to her house to watch her sisters in action. I would come back from Keri’s house riled up, like I had witnessed some kind of dogfight. I would talk back to my mom and mess up Greg’s baseball cards and act like I was a real tough piece of business. My parents would send me to my room and I would stomp up the stairs, excited to be such a troublemaker. I would knock over some books. I would kick the wall. I would put on my Jane Fonda workout and really feel the burn this time!

Even though we had such different families, Keri and I were a good pair, both freckled and Irish with a strong belief in justice. We would go out for recess and spend the whole time walking and talking. This is something I still love to do today. I call it “walking the beat.” I often call my friends and tell them to meet me on a New York corner at a certain time. The physical act of walking combined with the opportunity to look out at the world while you are sharing your thoughts and feelings is very comforting to me. You are in charge of the route and the amount of eye contact. I guess those days with Keri were when this started. Anyway, Keri and I spent most of our fourth-grade recess time walking the beat and discussing the important issues of the day: the recent release of the Iranian hostages, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, the fact that Luke technically raped Laura on the dance floor when they first met but now they were the best couple on
General Hospital
.

One day a student named Jamie brought a pair of handcuffs to school. I don’t remember where he said he got them, but looking back now it was really odd. Where does a ten-year-old find a pair of handcuffs? This felt like an incident one would file under “having older brothers.” This was by far the most dangerous thing anyone had ever brought to school besides the honeycomb full of bees that the beekeeper brought for career day. It’s an indication of how truly safe and idyllic my childhood was that the handcuffs didn’t scare me. They didn’t remind me of one of my relatives being hauled away to jail or anything traumatic like that. They only reminded me of a terrific episode of
Hill Street Blues
. And they were a pair of handcuffs, not a gun, a homemade bomb, dynamite-infused bath salts, or whatever horrible shit kids have to deal with these days.

Keri and I immediately took them and then shared a look as we locked them on to our wrists. Keri discreetly dropped the key to the ground and then we pretended it was lost. We faked being upset while a small group of kids gathered around, excited about the idea of handcuffs and lost keys and people being stuck together. The general hubbub turned into real concern once we couldn’t actually find the key we had dropped. The recess bell rang and Keri and I walked back into the building to find a teacher. We were wrist to wrist; I could feel our pulses quickening. I was thrilled. The other kids crowded around us as we told the teacher what had happened. “They are stuck together!” they cried. “They will never get free!” Attempts were made to pull us free, but we would yell out in fake pain and the pulling would stop. We were brought over to the sink. Paints and brushes were moved aside and thick liquid soap was poured on our hands. Our tiny wrists looked like they could easily slide out, but they refused. Teachers became irritated at the thought of sending us home in handcuffs. I loved the attention. I loved acting cool and calm about being handcuffed to my friend. We became instant celebrities.

Eventually, Keri got nervous about getting in trouble. I spoke quietly and evenly to her about how everything was going to be okay. I made jokes about splitting up the week with each other’s families. It was the beginning of what I now think is my natural instinct to try to bring levity and calm to stressful situations. I am an excellent person to be around if you’re having a bad drug trip. You need a balance of humor and pathos mixed with some light massage and occasional distractions. I once helped a now very famous actor cross over while he was on ecstasy by speaking to him softly and then pretending to do magic tricks. I was also on ecstasy at the time. This may have helped my comedy, but it certainly didn’t help with my magic.

Keri and I sat in class for what seemed like hours while the teachers huddled to figure out what to do. There was talk of going to the police station! There was even talk of getting a big machine to cut us apart! Then we went back outside to look again and found the key. Keri was happy because she didn’t want her police officer dad to lecture her on handcuff etiquette, but I was so bummed. We rubbed our wrists and talked to everyone on the bus about how scared we had been. We dined out on the great handcuff incident for weeks. The school called us the Handcuff Girls, which will be my band’s name when I become a rock star in my midsixties. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me up to that point, and it was the perfect kind of scary story that only lasts a few hours and ends up well.

As we grew up, Keri’s house remained my comfortable danger zone. We would pile up pillows for Fright Nights on Fridays, when we would watch scary movies and make popcorn in a giant and expensive microwave. We would sit through
Friday the 13th
and
The Thing
and
A Nightmare on Elm Street
while we folded laundry. I have fond memories of cranking up the air-conditioning in Keri’s house and then lying under tons of blankets to watch those movies. Her scrappy sisters would snuggle together and her sweet mom, Ginny, would join us. I would mostly watch through the holes of an afghan, and Ginny would tap my shoulder just before each scary part. I vividly remember watching
Carrie
and tensing up at that last scene when Amy Irving lays flowers at the grave. Ginny gently sat tapping my shoulder and I prepared for the inevitable zombie hand bursting out of the dirt and the chorus of screams that followed.

Once middle school rolled around, Keri went to Catholic school while I stayed in our public school. She wore a uniform and became proficient with black eyeliner. Older kids meant more chaos, and my school suddenly had the energy and excitement I was looking for. It also started to teach me that there were kids who truly weren’t loved or happy. Even though most of us lived in the same detached homes with wall-to-wall carpet, inside those homes were drunk moms and mean dads. The danger I was looking for started to become a little more real. There was a fight in our school every day. Students rushed to the parking lot or the hallway when a fight was starting. Cops broke up parties and boys got drunk and started to smash their bodies into each other. Steroids were a big drug for a lot of the high school boys in my town, and this produced a weird collection of rage-filled football players who were just as bored as I was. The difference is when I was bored I would listen to my Walkman and pretend I was in a music video. When they were bored they would beat someone up. Years later a few of these football players would be arrested for picking up a prostitute near their college campus and raping her. It would be a landmark case of an admitted prostitute and drug addict winning a conviction against a bunch of white men. I watched it on Court TV and thought about all those boys and the parties they attended in my house.

The girls were a tough bunch as well. I was pushed into a locker and punched by a cheerleader. One girl pulled my hair at lunch because she thought I was “stuck up.” It was bad to be “stuck up.” It was also bad to be a “slut” or a “prude” or a “dexter” or a “fag.” There were no openly gay kids in my high school. My school had a quiet hum of racism and homophobia that kept all of that disclosure far away. Every year the girls would have a football game called the Powder Puff. The girls would play tackle football on a cold high school field while the boys dressed as cheerleaders and shouted misogynist things at everybody. It was as wonderful as it sounds. I played safety and tried to talk my way out of getting beat up. I saw a girl hike the ball and then just go over and punch someone in the nose. There was so much hate and hair spray flying. Black eyes were common. I started to learn that as much as I chased adventure, I had little interest in the physical pain that came with it. I also realized I didn’t like to be scared or out of control.