Entries Tagged 'Once Upon a Time...' ↓

-Tretorns (I desperately wanted blue plaid ones.)

-Keds (We could only afford the generic version. To my 12-year-old self that tiny blue label on the back was as much a status symbol as any Bentley or diamond ring. I got a pair of hand-me-down Keds from my cousin. They were completely trashed, brown with a big, huge hole in the toe. I wore them proudly anyway, making sure to mention how badly I needed to replace my Keds to anyone who gave my worn old shoes the hairy eyeball.)

-navy blue sweatpants (Gym in 7th grade required a uniform. A public school-issued shorts and t-shirt set worn by some other pubescent kid last year. Or you could just wear the provided shirt and wear navy blue sweatpants brought from home. We couldn’t get the sweatpants. I was one of two girls in my entire grade who did not wear sweatpants to gym. And I was one of one girls in my entire grade who was not allowed to shave their legs. That experience left me a scarred, wounded woman.)

-Eastlands (Specifically the soft brown shoes basically made of three panels of leather that tied with brown and yellow laces. It was trendy in my junior high to loop the shoelace around on itself like little curls on each side, leaving them a bit loose and untied. I got the generic version of that shoe, which was made of brown plastic and held together by glue.)

-I.O.U. sweatshirt (This highlights my redneck past brilliantly. Anybody but me remember those hideous things? Gaudy $45 sweatshirts best paired with mis-matched socks, a turtleneck underneath and a banana clip. Again, I got the generic version, which was I.O.V. or some shit.)

-balloon barrettes (I’m not even sure you could buy these in stores, but all the most popular girls in my school had them. Dozens of unblown-up balloons glued to a clip. ALL the coolest girls had them, and I wanted one too. I bought a pack of balloons and found a broke old clip and grabbed up some Elmer’s and went to town. The balloon barrette I made was big and beautiful, and my hair had finally grown long enough to get a little chipmunk ponytail in back, so I wore my balloon barrette proudly to school. And died over and over again all day long as balloons fell off one by one leaving me with a sad balding balloon barrette.)

-Duck Head shorts (These went especially well with the balloon barrettes.)

-Debbie Gibson Electric Youth perfume (I actually finally got this! For Christmas! And it wasn’t too already out of style. But when your first bottle of perfume is hot pink and smells like bubblegum floor wax, someone ought to tell you how to wear it. Light spritz at the nape or wrist. Rarely both. I, however, wanted everyone to know I was wearing Debbie Gibson’s Electic Youth perfume so I woke up every morning and swum in it.)

The first time I visited New York City was in October, 2001, just one and a half months after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Someone got me tickets to see Bjork at Radio City Music Hall and, while I considered it, I decided NOTHING was keeping me from seeing that show. I flew into Long Island and took the train to Grand Central Station, watching the Manhattan skyline grow from an unimpressive, distant outline from far away, into this mostrous, unimaginable beast.

Emerging from the underground bustle and chaos that is Grand Central onto the loudest street I’d ever been on was indescribable. I could hear the hum of this big, intricate machine in the sounds that consumed me. There were people and cars and buildings everywhere.

“My God, the streets are empty.” So spoke my companion, who’d been to New York countless times before, as we walked and looked for available taxis. We were able to find one fairly quickly. Once in the back seat I found, along with the rules and a list of commitements to the rider by the city-approved cab service, a poster with a smiling man’s face on it.

“I MISS MY DADDY,” it read. “Last seen on Fl. #56 of WTC Tower 2.” Another photo with his smiling, petite wife. His address and phone number and his name was listed. Now, three years later I’ve forgotten his name.

Times Square, which we visited that first night, was draped in white. Many of the ads associated with Times Square were covered or missing. All the lights seemed dim. Though the people seemed abundant, they looked nothing but lost. And not that touristy heel-spinning, I mean they looked like they had no idea where they were going or how they were going to get there. They all moved just from habit. I couldn’t get a sense of anyone while I was there. Restaurants sat empty, chairs all tucked neatly under tables, the wild-haired owners or chefs with clean hands would be on the stoops offering half-off for two entrees. It looked like everyone was staying home. That, or they were dead.

The Bjork show was a phenomenal event that I’ll be forever grateful for having the oppurtunity to see. I was in a desperately volatile place that month–that year–and was moved to tears and sobs at the sound of her voice. The symphany, the Icelandic choir, her being completely MAGIC and shit was too much. I broke down like a Yugo. It was a little ugly. But not as ugly as the brutal girl-fight that happened while we were in line outside.

That entire trip was surreal. I was there so soon after the place had been devestated, doing what I was told might help, seeing plays and eating out and spending money to try to fix some of these fresh wounds, even just the tiniest little bit. But it all felt wrong. I felt like I was partying at a big-ass funeral. Having cocktails during the wake.

I’ve been back to New York since that trip, later spending time in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. I was happy to find New York had gotten her the groove I’d heard so much about back. But when I was there the first time, in October, 2001 I visited a ghost town. They all say you’ll never forget the first time you visit New York City. They are right. I will always remember New York as the biggest, shiniest, saddest place I’ve ever been.

(I am planning a short series of posts about the various roommates I’ve had since moving out of my parents’ home, in succession, starting with my very first one. This is that.)

Michelle - My freshman year of college was spent at Austin Peay State University. Even though that school was just 30 miles from where I grew up, I desperately wanted to live in a dorm. Anything to get out of Ashland City. So I paid the extra 1,000 or so bucks to live on-campus even though I could have easily driven, so that I could experience college life as I knew it at 17 years old. I filled out my dorm application by marking big, overachieving checkmarks next to “Likes the Quiet” and “Studies Often.” I was thrilled to learn that I got a room in the semi-private wing of the Honor’s Hall, which was a bit bigger than everyone else’s because it was on the corner of the building. My roommate was Michelle, a junior who was transferring from Virginia.

She was a shy, overweight education major whom I took no interest in getting to know. Beyond the fact that I had a poster on our wall of an eye with a globe for the eyeball crying a tear, and the coincidence that she had a tattoo just like it, we had very little in common. Oh, she was always borrowing my Sarah McLachlan, and I was always stealing her Les Miserables soundtrack.

It was 1995 and I was participating in a community theatre production of Anything Goes! in Franklin over 60 minutes away. (My only line was, “Sure!”) When I wasn’t in class or sleeping, I was in Franklin rehearsing (I did do most of the singing and dancing). That is until the musical ended, at which time the lead of the play asked me to participate in his television sitcom produced at MTSU. Which was more than an hour and a half of driving time. Since I had a crush on the guy, and because I was a big fat, total dork, I agreed to take over a graduating actress’ role in the show. It was during the taping of this horribly unfunny, unoriginal, overacted piece of shit show that I met my next roommate. He played the role of the cranky old grandmother on the show. In drag. See? I told you it was a piece of shit show.

So I barely got to know Michelle, except that we both liked Olive Garden and would order overpriced take-out pasta from them all the time. And one time I stole a dollar from her for gas money, but only because she wasn’t around for me to ask. And one time she gathered her things and headed for the door without saying a word, so I asked where she was going. She turned and screamed, “LIKE IT MATTERS! DOES IT REALLY EVEN MATTER?!,” and turned and slammed the door. I remember crying, bawling, thinking I’d been annoyingly asking her whereabouts all this time—even though I didn’t think I had—and I was so hurt and so afraid of being a nuisance that I took off for a couple of days. Writing this now it’s apparent her outburst had nothing at all to do with me.

Right before the semester ended when finals were approaching and I had to be there, Michelle and I finally bonded. Drunk on too little sleep and an overload of information, our sanity buckled and we lost our damn minds up on the third floor of dorm. We threw open our windows and sang Les Miserables, screaming into the night, “And all I see is him and me forever and forever.” We danced around the room and laughed until our throats were raw. That night we played together like children; like we weren’t 18 and 21.

During Christmas vacation I learned I lost my scholarship due to simple ignorance. My university choir class met three times a week. When I signed up for courses with a councilor it was assumed that the choir class was considered three hours like the rest of the 3-day-a-week classes. We assumed wrong–it was worth just one hour of credit. I had actually only been going part-time and without any warning they jerked my scholarship. I had to move home.

I wrote Michelle a note after all my things were packed into the truck. She hadn’t made it back from Virginia yet, and I didn’t know how to get in touch with her. I explained everything in my letter to her and cried and cried and cried. My mom had to almost carry me to the car.

I only saw her a couple of times the next semester since I was not in class very much, but was instead all up in my boyfriend’s ass.

I bet Michelle is a badass teacher.

When I was a little kid I would write my sister notes in red crayon, my bubble letters oozing drops of Crayola blood, and place them on her pillow. They would say things like, “Don’t go to sleep tonight. You don’t want to know what will happen to you if you do.” Or maybe, “I’ll kill you in your sleep if you dare open your eyes.”

I had no idea how much this actually terrified my little sister. She tells me that she would stay awake as long as she could, her eyes fixed, not blinking, on the door.

Before you get all sentimental and feeling sorry for her, please know that she used to beat me up regularly and once clocked me upside the head with a rotary phone.

In fifth grade I was woefully shy, with a slapdash haircut and a crush on Robert from the class next door. I was going through some traumatic shit at home and was struggling to make even average grades. I can’t remember whole, long stretches of that time in my life, but there are certain days, certain instances that blaze in my head.

Thanks to a totally insane, 100% certifiably abusive and psycho stepfather, I spent a lot of my youth sheltered. I wasn’t allowed to say “gosh” in case it sounded sorta like taking the Lord’s name in vein. I was forbidden from drinking Cheerwine, no matter how hard I begged, because–you guessed it–it had the word wine in it. Well, my stepfather didn’t count on Marty Gross.

I sat next to Marty Gross all year long. Assigned seats. Marty was short and impish with big, round freckles all over the tops of his cheeks. He was a Very Bad Kid. Marty rode the bus with me, and he got off at the shabbiest, rundown shack in all of Ashland City. And that is saying something. There were always way too skinny dogs in his yard, along with an old couch and shoes and trash and cigarette butts. So, Marty had it pretty bad at home, we can all agree.

To say that Marty acted out due to his desperate situation would be a preposterous understatement. That kid was always getting paddled or sent to in school suspension. He would curse as much as he said any other words, and he was always hitting kids who’d never tell on him.

One day Marty was passing a folder around class that was causing quite a stir in the cramped aisleways of the classroom. Our teacher was frequently gone for just a minute, probably taking smoke breaks or something; it was then the folder would begin to float in and out of the hands in the room. I was the resident Ass Licker Kid, who was an obnoxious goody two-shoes, always willing to rat out my dearest classmate for my teacher’s affection or approval. Telling on Marty was something I knew I had to do, I just had to figure out what was in that folder. I managed to sneak a look at what was inside to discover, utterly horrified, that it was a Playboy magazine. A naked, squatting woman with red painted lips and slick breasts leering into the camera.

I was frozen with terror. This was my first ever experience with pornography and I was wholely unprepared for what I saw. I didn’t tell on Marty that day–and he never got caught–because I couldn’t find it in me to speak of what my scarred eyes had witnessed.

I didn’t have to tell on Marty the last day I ever saw him.
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I used to live just a few blocks from where he worked. I would go there sometimes for Get Back Juice* and a little people watching. Occasionally lunch. Once when I was about to order this guy with fantastic blue eyes asked if I was Brittney. Startled, I looked behind me for the candid camera. Once I was sure no one was there I agreed that I was. “You’re a good writer,” he replied, and all the sudden I felt really confused.

He informed me he read my weblog from time to time. That was the first–and last–time anyone had recognized me from my site. I already sort of liked the way he smiled at me, so after that day I stole a few extra glances.

A few weeks later I came in for a salad when he plopped down across the table from me. Finally. After afternoons of us sitting at tables apart, he on his break, me having an espresso. We began conversation easily. It was all about his job and my job and newspapers and MTSU and music, I think a little bit. We also talked about movies. We talked about how we both love to see independents, which you have to drive the 30 miles to Nashville in order to see. And then it was time for me to go to work.

I changed clothes at work, told a couple of people I might have a crush on the coffee shop dude, then left after a meager 6 hours. I left at around 10 p.m. but noticed halfway home that I left my shoes and a piece of cheesecake at work. I could have lived without the shoes, but the cheescake I had to have so I went back. I parked my car in the front lot, which I never did, and ran in for my forgotten things. When I came back out I was balancing all my shit when I heard a loud, “Hey!”

It was the coffee shop dude. He came over to my car and I kind of don’t remember at all what he actually said, or what I actually said, but that somehow after some noises came out of our respective mouths we’d agreed to a date. In Nashville, to see some good documentary or foreign film.

And I was excited.

But this story gets way better after I learned about the VCB’s personal circumstances that evening. Turns he was kicking himself for not asking me to a movie while we were talking earlier at the coffee shop. He thought about it as he worked all night, helping move a frozen keg that his boss had stupidly stuck in the freezer. Long story short, the VCB ended up with beer-soaked hair. Which, it turns out, did not stop him from taking a trip by Outback where I used to work, to see if I might be there. He said he was just curious, and that he’s made a bet with himself. That if for some reason when he drove by, I was out there, he’d stop and ask me out. Which, he says, was his way of making sure it wouldn’t happen. Because, seriously, what are the odds?

Which makes the part about me making a second trip back to the restaurant to pick up shoes and cheesecake quite the coincidence. Had I not gone back I’d have missed him, especially since I never use the entrance where he was parked.

A week or so later came the first date. Three hours and a bottle of wine at the Indian place made us miss Spellbound, which I still haven’t seen. We saw the very commercial 28 Days Later instead.

Otherwise, it was a fucking perfect night.

*Coffee

I was 11, maybe 12. I liked Tetris and Madeline L’Engle books. And riding my bike. My mother and my sister and I all lived in a teen-insy 2-bedroom apartment in Ashland City, and even though it was right by the highway, I rode my bike up and down and up and down Gloria Circle thousands of times. Sometimes I’d just ride in circles on the porch.

We’d only been in that aparment a little while. We girls made what can only be characterized as an escape from our previous residence. My mother married a really insane individual who was abusive in just about every way, and if you have to leave the house running and stay at your uncle’s place for a few days before you move, that is sorta kinda escaping. So yeah, things were volatile. Part of the abuse that occured was my stepfather hording money, thereby leaving my mother nearly penniless on her own. His way, of course, of insuring she’d never leave. But with immense courage that, to this day, blows my mind, my mother did leave him, and she made a new home for us out of virtually nothing.

Times were tough. We ate a lot of eggs, because eggs are cheap. My stepfather was still stalking my mother, and following my sister and I on our walks home from school with the promise of doughnuts. Amy and I would run the rest of the way to the church, where my mother was secretary.
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I get headaches all the time because I can’t see for shit. One day the VCB asked me to read a sign to him just across the road and I could not. He was astonished that I couldn’t see 100 yards. It was then I realized my persistent headaches were from poor vision.

I haven’t had my eyes checked since first grade. I read a lot, and sit for many hours at a computer, so it’s highly probable that my eyes have suffered some damage in 20 years. (I had to squint just now to read part of that sentence.) I have been saving up to get some decent frames and will be getting some glasses really, really soon, but I thought you might like to know why I haven’t done so until so many years later.

Back in first grade I was in private school and in a split class. Some of us were 1st graders, the other of us second graders. Janeane was in 2nd grade. She sat all the way across the class from me, always wearing the cutest turned-down socks with ruffles and these brown t-strap mary janes I totally adored. She had brown hair and was allergic to peanut butter and had the best handwriting in the class. You should have seen her capital Js. And Janeane wore glasses.

And so when I found myself at the optomitrist a little while later I cheated a bit on my eye exam. I fudged. I mean, I lied about how well I could see the items in the test. The doctor assured my mother I needed glasses and so we set to choosing frames and getting everything taken care of.

I proudly wore my new glasses into school that next day but found myself sick with nausea and dizzy by lunchtime. Naturally, the prescription was warping my prefectly fine vision and creating for me a humungous headache. Those glasses found their way onto my head, my backpack, my pocket and that is where they stayed. Until I accidentally broke them by sitting on them one afternoon. I’d taken them off and tucked them into my jeans. I heard them crack and started to cry. I hid the perfectly equal pieces, snapped right across the bridge.

It was only a day or two before Mom asked where they were. I fessed up to breaking them. I don’t remember if she was angry, but I do know I never got another pair of glasses. I figured my mother knew I was lying and didn’t bother with getting me new ones. Which was fine by me, I was embarassed by the entire ordeal.

When I was 21 or so I confessed to my mother that I’d faked my way through the eye exam to be like Jelly Only Janeane, and that the glasses hurt my head and that I was glad when they broke. Her face dropped and she looked sort of sad. She told me she’d felt guilty for years becuse she could barely afford the first pair of glasses and that she just couldn’t manage to buy me another pair. I thought she knew, when in fact she never suspected, instead guilt-ridden because she couldn’t buy me another pair.

I think I never considered that my eyes might be fucked up because of that whole ordeal. It is sort of a punishment for myself. I still feel like shit about it. But man, it will be nice to finally be able to see and everything. And not hurt all the time.

And I think I look good in specs.

Pictures, hopefully, forthcoming.

Let me tell you about this one time at an Outback Christmas party. The Christmas party that happened about three days before I quit.

My first year working at Outback, when I was a wee 20 years old, the Christmas party was this extravagent dress-up affair. It was held at the Vanderbilt Stadium Club and there was free liquor and beer until it ran out. Everyone got fancy cocktail dresses and smoked and drank and ate and danced and were generally extraordinarily shitfaced. Real fun.

Fast forward to six, long years later, to a party in a single room, crammed with about 100 people. At a local bar. The All-American Sports Bar. Drinks were $5 each and built for you by a seriously pissed off bartender. Who was plainly an idiot. This chick was selling drinks hand over fist to a room full of SERVERS AND BARTENDERS and was being a first class cunt rag. Servers also know full well how not to tip.

Anyway, my manager gave out raffle tickets to employees who brought in Toys for Tots donations. The more toys you brought the more tickets you accumulated. Six big winners were selected after DVDs and ghetto blasters were given away to the people who brought in the most toys in efforts to score mad goods. (It worked.) The big-ass grand prize, for which six lucky people would compete, was hyped by my manager as the most awesome, mindblowing prize one could ever receive. I actually got a little excited when my name was called. I waited in a huddle with the other lucky winners, $5 vodka gimlet in my hand, when he led us all to another room. After a brief countdown he opened the doors and the lucky winners began running in and screaming. I was sort of last in line and not so much screaming.

Once inside, I saw that there was cash. Not much left of it, mind you, but a couple of fives and twenty or so one dollar bills littered the pool table and the chairs and the floor. I scooped up a few bills while holding firmly onto my drink. I got $4 or so when I looked up to see my manager laughing and jumping up and down. For him, this was what Chirstmas parties were all about. Watching his employees crawl on the ground shrieking and groping wildly for a few measley bucks.

I went back to my chair feeling ashamed. What had just happened? Had my manager really just broken down $100 into small bills and strewn them about for his $2.13/hr. underlings to snatch maniacally? My $4 grand prize was certainly appreciated–hell that is 4/5ths of a cocktail–but the way in which I had to acquire it suprised and embarrassed me.

My manager could not stop bragging in the following days about how much fun the grand prize game was. He’d loved it. He couldn’t wait to do it bigger and better next year. Luckily, I didn’t stick around to see if maybe I could scrounge around on my hands and knees for $5 next Christmas.

When I was a kid I wanted to be Shirley Temple. Or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Blair from the “Facts of Life.” I wanted to be a gymnast or a skater or a dancer or a singer or an actress or twirl batons or something like that. I wanted to be Margaux Kramer. To a 7-year-old me it was no conincidence that the prettiest, most stuck-up, popular chipette Brittany and I shared a name.

I was a totally prissy, princess attention junkie. In a tutu. Dancing for you for as long as you can stand to watch, busting my freshly choreographed moves on you whilst falsettoing Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush” into a banana clip.

In my after school care I would write plays, cast them, myself always in the lead, then direct and perform the show. In day care. In first grade I did a revisionist version of Cinderella that had Cinderella (performed flawlessly by me, naturally) doing 80s dance moves such as the Roger Rabbit. I think there was some sub-plot about Cinderella rebelling against the stepmother who made her drink powdered milk. They made us drink powdered milk at day care and I hated it so much, so much. Barf, just thinking of it now makes me stomach wince.

I convinced my mom to let me be a cheerleader for a city league kids’ football team. The Ashland City Cowboys. How janky is that? They had navy and blue uniforms with stars on them and I got some bloomers that had my name embroidered right across the ass. (I fucking loved those bloomers. I would sometimes wear them under my clothes to school. Just because.) We did a dance to freaking Alabama’s “Mountain Music.” You know, like Grandma and Grandpa used to play. Is that not the single most redneck thing you have ever heard?
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