Posts from — April 2010

Just went to see the Runaways movie
And man did it bring back memories

To me as a young teen in 1970’s Jersey, the Runaways were everything I wanted to be like them; Bad ass, runaway wild girls, who gave the finger to the world and had lots of sex, much of it with each other!

I was so in love with Joan Jett that when I found out a local bartender at Toad Hall in Red Bank New Jersey looked like her, I started hanging out there just to drool on the service bar. Yeah not sanitary I know.

I liked Cherrie Curie too, especially when she starred in Little Foxes with Jodie Foster, but Cherrie left the band and mucho drugs and booze and one album later, the band left the band.

But man, I sure would have loved to see them when they toured with the Ramones, surely a match made in Punk Rock heaven!

Alas, I was only 14 when the band broke up, far too young to even be allowed to Manhattan on my own, granted I moved out two years later, a runaway at last!

I moved out on my own and so did Joan Jett and when I heard her powerful raspy vocals sing out, “Crimson and Clover, ova and ova!” honey I was mad in love.

Many years later I was at a rather wild party and saw a tiny woman with a shaved head who couldn’t have been more then 110 pounds. “That’s Joan Jett” someone said.

What?? All those years of picturing her five foot 10 with her jet black hair blowing in the breeze and this little shaved head girl is her?! But hey, still love the babe..

The move by the way rocked! Great job by Kristen Stewart who has some huge lesbian energy going and honey let’s be honest, she does in those vampire movies too. Dakota Fanning, not as good, but then playing Cherrie Curie..well those are big go go boots to fill.

I loved reading the where are they now, feature in People Mag… finding out the Lita Ford is still rocking only with her kids now and mostly finding out that Cherrie Curie is now a chainsaw sculptor..GO girl!

“Hello Daddy….Hello Mom…..I’m your ch, ch, ch, ch CHERRY BOMB!”

Runaways rock forever!

I felt such sadness, such outrage as I sat in my living room reading the New York Times story about Phoebe Prince. The thought of a pretty 15 year old girl hanging herself in her home in South Holly Massachusetts because of no longer being able to tolerate the bullying she was being victimized by in high school just tore my heart open. Her family had come to America in search of a better life, not the end of their oldest daughter’s life. Phoebe was so terrorized by this gang of high school “mean girls” not to mention a few boys, that 6 of the students were charged with felonies.

The hazing of Phoebe brought to mind the movie “Carrie” not to mention just about every movie that starred Morgan Fairchild in the 80’s. Then I got to thinking about my own friends and family. One close friend’s daughter is so miserable in school that she has been caught writing “ I want to die” on her notebook. Another close friend’s daughter has said that death is better then the 7th grade.

But mostly, the death of Phoebe Prince reminded me of my own childhood.

Growing up on the Jersey Shore, I was blessed with being one the largest kids in my class. Oh sure being what they then called “Husky” wasn’t exactly sexy, but when you outweighed the other kids in your class by a good 30 pounds it helped in the not being bullied department. In Bradley Beach public school up to the age of 10 I hung out with a gang of tough boys and even once, beat up a little boy named Stephen for no reason other than the fact that the gang I hung out with didn’t like him.

I recall a bully in the 3rd grade, we called Louis Scar Face tried to beat me up and so I knocked him down and sat on his face until I nearly suffocated him.

Noticing that their middle daughter was turning into a juvenile delinquent and my younger brother and older sister were on their way to becoming even more white trash then we already were, which was a lot when you considered that all our table linens were made out of plastic,my parents picked us up when I was in the 4th grade, my brother the 3rd and my sister the 5th and deposited us in the Hillel School, a private Jewish yeshiva at which most of the kids were Syrian, most wealthy, all spoke Hebrew and all had been going to school together since 1st grade. We fit in so badly that after about a year, the principal called my mother into the office and said that if she cared about us, she would take us away. I thanked god I would never have to sit next do a 10 year old who ate pita and olive sandwiches for lunch again. I mean this was jersey in the 70’s what the hell was a pita?

A year later, we were dropped back in Bradley beach, but the school looked different, the halls bigger, darker, the kids rougher. It took me awhile to realize that what had changed was me. I didn’t’ fit in anymore. A year of private school had taken away my edge. I watched as the same gang of boys, that once seemed cool and who now seemed cruel and un-interesting to me, beat up Stephen after school, I walked over to help him up and hand him his bag. He looked at me with a steely wet eyed stare and said, “You used to be just like them, just like them!” and then stomped away. Those words sting to this day.

After only a few months back in Bradley, my parents moved us to posh, super snobby Rumson, a town in Jersey that might as well be in the Hamptons. The kids wore Ivy League preppy clothing and frowned upon difference so much so that they, at first appeared to be wearing a school uniform; kacky pants, alligator shirts, docksider loafers. We showed up in our Kmart back to school clothes and honey, forgetaboutit. We were like blueberries in an apple farm!

But when a mean girl named Karen tried to pick on me in my 5th grade class I took her outside and put her in a neck hold with all of my classmates looking on. That lessened the picker-on-ers quite a bit after that. Let me tell you honey!

Oh there was still a big fat bully who looked like a bulldog; lets just call him bulldog. He used to throw pennies on the floor in front of me and yell “pick them up dirty Jew!” But for the most part my size and sense of humor sailed me thru the 6th grade.

I remember laughing so much at my lunch table I fell off my chair.Oh man, how often in life do you get to laugh that deeply?
Wonderful!

At the tale end of the 6th grade my nose was broken by an older kid going back for the ball in extracurricular volleyball. It wasn’t the broken nose that really messed me up it was the reaction I had to the penicillin a local doctor put me on. I wound up in bed for 3 months and nearly died.

Now let me describe a perfect storm for you.

Picture me coming back to school in time for the 7th grade, weak from a long illness, I think I’d dropped about 22 pounds, feeling out of sorts and confused by having been near death for the last few weeks of that illness, then simultaneously the mini breasts, I’d been able to hide ballooned into two horrendous cantaloupes maybe sexy to a 20-something, but completely unsightly for a 13 year old and combine that with the fact that every single friend I had was put in another lunch time. I was rendered physically and emotionally defenseless.

Honey nothing smells more potent to kids, then the smell of defenselessness.

Enter A, let’s just call her that, she knows who she is, not a poplar girl but something worse, a shall we say C level girl who wanted to be popular and would pick on anyone she deemed weaker then herself, to try and get there. Climbers make far worse bullies than popular girls do, trust me on that one.

During lunch I sat at a table of half friends, girls who I did not socialize with outside of school but were friendly enough to sit with, then A turned the table against me. She used the agonizing half hour lunch period to taunt me so terribly that no one at the table was wiling to defend me, less she turn her sights on them. I would learn later then A too, had been bullied, when we bumped into each other at my 25 year high school reunion, she confessed her own victim-hood and cried when I reminded her how cruel she’d been during this rough year of my childhood. Life is funny isn’t it? But this was then and at 13 with all my strength gone, I simply sat there and let her torture me. Ultimately it became contagious and other C level social climbers realizing I was an easy target started to join in. I have often wished I could go back in time and find myself at this age and scream, “FIGHT BACK!” but I can’t. All I can do is tell you what happened.

I wound up eating lunch for the 2nd half of the 7th grade in the bathroom. Id put the seat down on the toilet and sit on top and try to eat my sandwich quietly, so no one would know.

In the 8th grade things started to change, a friend I’d known distantly, a New York City girl named Lauren who was head strong and marched loudly to her own drum became my good friend and taught me every bad thing, my parents never wanted me to do. Thank the lord!

In the summer after I graduated from Forrestdale Elementary School I went to Miami, put a bathing suit on and learned for the first time that to many, many young men and a few older ones,I was beautiful.

I exploded out of my shell like you can’t imagine. The quiet stooped over girl who hung her bangs over her eyes so no one could see her crying, bounced into Rumson Fairhaven High school in 1978 with a Janis Joplin hairdo, ripped jeans, a tight black t-shirt cut off at the sleeves, a pack of Marlboro lights in the t-shirt pocket and a whole lot of attitude.

The new kids I met in high school either loved me, feared me or bummed cigarettes from me, the kids I’d gone to grammar school with had a hard time adjusting to the fact that I was the same person. This level of change was not a normal thing anywhere but in don’t-step-out-of-the-preppy-line Rumson it was downright shocking. FYI this was 1978 folks, since then the ferry running from Manhattan to nearby Atlantic Highlands has turned Rumson into a NYC expatriate town. Even Bruce Springstreen sent his kids to public school there. I’m told things have gotten a whole lot hipper since my school days, but I digress.

I surrounded myself with an army of rockers, druggies, burn-outs, punkers and one wondrous cool not so preppy gal named Jen who introduced me to the Barn Theatre in Rumson. Theatre (and more importantly theatre folks) was a life changing new social scene. At the Barn I learned that race, religion, sexuality or whether or not your hair was pink, really didn’t matter. All that mattered was that you could dance to the B52′s!

In retrospect Rumson Fairhaven High was one long slice of revenge for what I’d endured in the 7th and 8th grade. But I never used my new found power or friendships or moments in the sun to tease anyone less fortunate and to this day, I take on bullies the moment they rear their insecure heads.

Perhaps my crowning moment of high school glory came in sociology class. A large older boy named Jerard had been shooting spitballs at me for two weeks. Somehow the sex pistols t-shirt and safety pin jewelry hadn’t clued him in to the fact that I wasn’t’ the same weak kid he’d once known. After I couldn’t take it anymore I stood up, picked up the large 4 foot tall garbage pail from the back of class and dumped it on top of him so that the only part of Jerard visible were his legs. Then I kicked and punched the sides of the pail while I screamed,” Jerard you fat pig, rot in hell!” Then stormed out of class.

(okay I yelled a few other things too, but I’m being polite here)

I was sure I was going to be suspended but my teacher had seen what Jerard was doing. He hated bullies as much as I did and the next day in class he just slapped me on the back and said,”I’ve been waiting for someone to stand up to him!’

I think I’m a kinder more compassionate adult today these decades later because of the pain I endured in a pivotal year and a half of my child-hood. Oh there are still reminders, I still hate to eat alone in public, I still hate pennies, I still hate “Mean Girls” but now I know that like a giant puff of smoke they can be just blown away with one big gust of wind.

Phoooosh! Beat it bitches!

If I could go back in time, I guess maybe I would tell myself this, “I know it feels like death would be better then this hell but I promise you in the end you will be stronger, kinder and more loving because of the lessons you are learning today. You will fly high above these tortured months and look back on this like its something that happened a million years ago. You will be loved. You are loved right now, it’s just waiting, just beyond the hill for you to reach for it.

So here’s what I do know.

In all my years living in bad neighborhoods, meeting some good people and some criminals, facing daunting challenges and easy ones. I’ve never seen cruelty like that of teenagers.

I also never saw a teacher stand up and give a speech against bullying. I never saw an aid walk over and put an end to the taunting of kids. Unless physical abuse was happening I never saw anyone on the payroll of my grammar school or high school make a stand against bullying and that’s wrong.

I hope, with the tragic death of Phoebe Prince that will change.

There is sex-ed in schools, they also teach first aid. Why then not have a mandatory class on how to be human. They can call it Phoebe’s Class.

The bullies of childhood can grow up to be the wife and child abusers of tomorrow. The bullie’s victims can go into schools with guns and start shooting. This we know.

I was lucky, I got to live an unusual childhood during which I was a bully, then a victim, then something of self proclaimed righter of wrongs and while I still feel the sting of sitting on the toilet trying to eat a tuna fish sandwich, while muffling my tears, I feel a deeper sting remembering the innocent little boy Stephen I beat up for no reason. I see his eyes now pleading with me. I think I will always see him and I know I will always be sorry.

In time,we all reap what we sow.