Double Moon Afternoon

Amy and I were attached at the hip in high school.   We were outsiders in decidedly different ways.  She had too many boyfriends, I had none.   She taught me how to be a bit of a bad girl, and we always looked like the sweetest of the sweet.  We were high on life. Incidentally, we were also high.  Whenever we could manage it, anyway.  Snapshots: Amy and I passing obscene, absurd notes in English class, sneaking out of second period physics class to smoke Camel cigarettes in a suburban cul-de-sac, meandering around rural fields in the afternoon, eating at cheap Mexican restaurants, smoking a joint with the windows down and blasting Zeppelin songs.

Amy brought a great deal of deviance to my shy, straight-laced life.  She brought me out of my shell, as it were. I had a blast.

It was Amy’s idea to moon Cary Parkway, a busy four lane road that made a semi circle in town.  We couldn’t have been more than sixteen.  It was a perfect spring day on an afternoon after school.  We had hitched a ride to our friend Ashley’s house.   As usual we told our parents that we were studying.

Ashley lived in a neighborhood off of Cary Parkway with her mom, her working class step-dad and her half-brother and half-sister.

Ashley showed an unprecedented degree of good judgement by not participating in our prank.  If I was in Amy’s deviance 101 class, then Ashley was a remedial student.  Though she picked it up and ran with it in ways I would never have imagined. What was good old fun for me seemed to ruin Ashley’s life. Poor, stupid Ashley, what did we do to her?  She was a desperate oddball when Amy and I befriended her, but she turned into a pink, sparkly fiend.  Her insanity took a sharp turn off of high-strung, obsessive fan of boy bands to gobbling up any drug she could find and sleeping with thirty year old losers who listened to death metal and worked at the mall, running away from home.  But I digress.

I wasn’t going to moon Cary Parkway, either.  Amy had a little ass.  Mine was more like the moon.  Evidence of meteor impacts. No, I would encourage her to do it, but I would not depants.

Of course I did, though.  I could not believe I was doing it at the time.  But there was no other way for things to go in retrospect.  Hindsight is twenty-twenty? Get it?

We were book ending a sign for one of the many communities off of Cary Parkway.  Two full moons on view for the commuters going home.  People honked or whooped.

But what should have been the best part of these people’s day was not appreciated by at least one person.  We pulled up our pants and started back through the neighborhood when we saw a cop car.  Anyone could see they were looking for us. We walked, nervous, along a sidewalk which bordered a wooded greenway.  The trees would provide cover so we ducked in there.  Ashley left us to walk back toward her home.  Amy and I agreed that we would not follow Ashley home so that police would not end up there.  Her parents would find out.  Her step-dad was not kind.

But Amy and I disagreed on the speed at which we should leave the scene.  My parent’s where due to pick me up at Ashley’s house in the next fifteen minutes.  Amy wanted to walk.  Walking was normal. Innocents walked. I wanted to run.  Running implied guilt.  Running also implied that I wasn’t thinking straight.  But Amy, ever the good friend, ran with me.  We shot through the woods and onto another suburban street.  Without the trees I felt vulnerable, like the ghost of my moon was written on my backside.

And I’m still not sure why I did it, but I had us run into a stranger’s garage.   We closed the door, thrilled with our daring.  In this stranger’s garage were, most unhelpfully, a handful of preteens.  It is hard to say who was more shocked, us or them.  “Hey guys, what’s up?” I said.  “Uh, do you mind if we hang out for a few minutes?”  Amy, though the progenerater of our absurd activity, well, I think I even shocked her.  One kid said, “I’ve got to ask my parents.”  No no no, Amy and I replied.  We just want to stay a few minutes.  There’s no reason to ask your parents.  We will be gone really quickly.  Yeah.

We made awkward small talk, even for teenagers.  We left quickly, higher than we were before on our derring-do.  Back in the street we made our way toward Ashley’s home, but then there was that tricky cop again.  We were only a street away from Ashely’s house.  So close!  The cop saw us.  I grabbed Amy’s hand and we ran behind a car to hide.  We crouched behind it.  The officer didn’t even get out of his car.  He used his speaker system  and told us to leave our crouching position behind the car.  I walked teary eyed and terrified toward the car.  Amy was more brazen and indignant than ever.  She argued with him and I sobbed.  As we were getting a talking to, a neighbor stopped his car and asked the cop if he needed any help. What an asshole that guy was.

Unbeknownst to me, while we were hanging out with the startled middle school kids in their parent’s garage, my parents had arrived at Ashley’s house.  Ashley spilled the beans to my parents about our little trouble.  They drove around the neighborhood looking for me and Amy.

The officer sent us on our merry way, we were scot free, but as the officer drove off my parents drove up.   So much for avoiding parental retribution.  They were not impressed with our little prank.  There were some harsh words about our behavior and a tense drive back to Amy’s house, as they were annoyed enough not to wait for Amy’s parents to pick her up at our house later.  My mom’s biggest complaint was that we could have distracted drivers and caused an accident.  Imagine that, if we had the power to destroy with our posteriors.

It wasn’t until years and years later that I realized that the neighbor who stopped to ask the cop if he wanted help wasn’t giving us a hard time but was making fun of the cop.  Here this arm of the law had stopped two teenagers decked out in cutesy clothes and sparkly makeup, one of them blubbering.  Amy and I were at her boyfriend’s place drinking a few beers when I told her about my realization about the helpful neighbor.  She’d never thought about it before, but now she could see that the neighbor was mocking the cop too.  Hindsight really is twenty-twenty.

Tags: moon, mooning, pranks, teenagers

Catch of the Day and Where did you put it?

Sit down by the fire, child, and hear my tales of my lady tail.  Shush shush, dear one, they are innocent.  PG-13 at most.

Catch of the Day

I was eleven or twelve, or some dreadfully awkward age, and I was at Emerald Isle, on the North Carolina coast, with my cousin, aunt and uncle.  My cousin Elyce was phsyically a lot like me.  She was taller than me, and prettier, though I’m not exactly hard on the eyes either, at least now, or if not now, don’t burst my bubble, okay? And we were both portly, which is an amusing term for young girls because it seems to be used mostly for old men.  Preferably ones with brandy sniffers and velvet smoking coats.  Elyce and I had been romping in the waves, which is as far as I know the only worthwhile thing to do at the beach.  I was bold about the whole thing – waves, ha! I can take them – when one shoved my face into sand and shells and held me underwater for far longer than I’d ever like, when I had a brilliant idea.  Let’s not play in the waves anymore!  So we sat in the surf happy, babbling and tittering, playing with the sand, pretending that we were going to be pulled into the ocean.  Oh the drama.

Back in our hotel room, or was it a beach house? No matter.  Elyce and I changed out of our bathing suits in the bathroom because our surf-sitting had given us baggy-butted suits filled with sand, especially in the crotch of the suits.  We easily had a fistful of dense, wet sand sitting in the crotch of our one pieces.  But cradled there on  top of my pile of sand was one dead, beige fish.  Teach a man to fish, eh?  We all laughed, I laughed maddest of all, because mine was the laugh of unbridled embarrassment.  That sad little fish had been right on my…yeah, for who knows how long.  Was it alive or dead when it ended up in so intimate a location as that?  Did my…it…kill it?  My Uncle promised to save this little fish corpse, freeze it and present it to me years later.  I’m twenty seven now.  He sure is biding his time.

Where did you put it?

My mom had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes so we were all to lose weigh as well.  To my parent’s credit I was never an over weight kid, and the odds were stacked against us being both Americans and southerners.  But with puberty came weight gain, not to mention pocket money and freedom to buy terrible food and stuff my face with it.  It was with barely concealed glee that, when I had my first period, I was able to opt out of my mother’s prescribed exercise.  Malingering, it’s a hell of a drug.

Through my bathroom door my mom told me how to put a tampon in.  She told me I’d know I’d inserted the tampon far enough and could push the plastic applicator up when my fingers were just touching my vagina.  I didn’t know what was more unseemly, my mother’s advice or that I had to put my fingers into my vagina just a very little.  Little did I know that further exploration was quite entertaining, but I digress.

Inside the box of tampons was a pamphlet that warned about toxic shock syndrome.  A tampon can send you to the hospital!  A little bit of cotton up there and whammy, you’re dead, asshole.

Later in the day I sat on the toilet with the family phone in hand and called my mom.  You see, I’d been avoiding a bowel movement because, well, that whole area was suddenly new and mysterious and had deadly hygenic tools stuck in it.  Who knewwhat could happen?  I had questions.  I called her at work.  I asked if I had to change my tampon when I took a dump, though no doubt I put it more delicately at the time.  My mommy laughed at me and said, “What hole did you put it in?”

Tags: beach, coming of age, Family, Mother, north carolina, Sand, Tampon

Directions to Henry River Mill Ghost Town, North Carolina

Call me a woman of little faith, that wouldn’t be far off of the mark.  But yesterday, when we set out two hours late  from the piedmont to visit a ghost town in Western North Carolina with little more information that a guess at it’s general location, along the Henry River, I pictured us quizzing befuddled country gas station attendants before giving up and turning back home.  But hell, it was so easy to find, and will probably get a lot more traffic now that it’s a location for a movie.  Something called Hunger Games, a film adaptation of a tweeny, post-apocalyptic book.  As we set out without even a name for this ghost town, let alone a certain street, I must assume either a failure of my friend’s research or of information on the internet (how could you betray me, internet?), but either way, here is how you get there:  You’ll take I-40 to exit 119.  If you are coming from the east you’ll take a right off of the ramp onto Henry River Road, and the village is right there on the road, just a mile or two after the exit.  If you miss it you are driving with your eyes closed, you crazy person.  I believe it is in the town Hildebran, on the border of Burke and Catawba county.

It’s certainly worth a day trip. The land is lovely and lush.   Most of the structures are still standing; there are twenty or so clapboard houses for the workers and a brick general store.  Go into the buildings at your own peril, both physical and legal.  There is no paucity of No Trespassing signs.  We didn’t have any trouble, though.

To read about Henry River Mill’s history, I suggest you take a look here.

(I may have overestimated the likelihood of my directions being easily accessed.  My blog will probably not be high on the list of pages if you search for directions to this location.  Guess I am a glass-half-full woman of faith after all.)

Tags: abandoned town, day trips, directions, ghost town, Henry River mill town, Henry River mill village, History, Hunger Games, north carolina, old mill town, southern ghost town, United States, Western North Carolina

Kathleen and the Nectarines

We moved from Greensboro to Durham when I was two or three.  My father got a new job; my mom, at the time, stayed at home with me.  We lived in a gray townhouse on a street with other gray townhouses and a creek nearby which I loved to play in during the warm months, months which are not scarce in North Carolina.  My little friends and I would pretend that we lived by the creek and we’d wash discarded newspapers like they were our clothes.  We were pioneers, you understand, wild creek children, struggling to survive.

My mother was friends with Caroline, a single mom who lived across the street from us.  Thus I was friend’s with Caroline’s daughter, Kathleen.  We were the same age, both only children, both blonde, and our parents hung out, which at our age was what passed for friendship.

For what are inscrutable reasons to me, being that I couldn’t have been older than five at the time, Kathleen was allowed to get away with everything while I was scolded by my mom.  Imagine the confusion!  Kathleen and I would do the same thing and from her mom there was never a peep, but not so with my mommy.  It was wigging me out.  Oh the impotent rage of a child!  As I got older we still saw them, and after we parted I had so many questions for my parents.  Why am I picked on?  Explain yourselves.  Explain them.

My mom went back to work and we moved to Apex when I was eight.  We lived in a house in a cookie cutter suburb with lots of trees.  Kathleen and Caroline would still come to visit, or we’d drive to Durham.  It was our Friday ritual for years.

My mom bought some nectarines, which I recently decided I loved.  Kathleen came to visit and we ate a nectarine each sitting at my parent’s kitchen table.  I asked my mom for another one.  ”No, sweetie, one’s enough.”  I tried bargaining, but nothing would sway her.  Kathleen, a sociopathic gleam in her eight year old eyes, asked for one and greedily, lasciviously ate it.   Not satisfied with two, she asked for a third nectarine.  To my horror she got her third one while I sulked, aghast at the unfairness of it all.  Juice ran from her mouth, her fingers were fouled, she must have been full, but still she asked for another, and still she got it.  My mother was obviously a traitor and Kathleen was vindictive.  She ate one after another until she had eaten every nectarine in our house.  If I’d expressed interest in eating a dog turd I’m sure she would have hatefully woofed all of them down like a champion.

I don’t know why the friendship between my mom and Caroline diminished, but it did.  I thought about Kathleen a few days ago when, after a workout, I ate a nectarine.  I haven’t kept in touch with Kathleen, of course, but I wonder what she’s doing now, how deranged her personal relationships are.   I wonder if someone like her will be very successful, and depending on how you count success, I bet she really is.  What a world, what a world.

Tags: children, friends, friendship, nectarines, rivalry

A Moustache for Vesuvius

This February my friend and I went on vacation to that sparkly, southeast Asian jewel, Thailand.  I recently discovered that I love going to tropical climes, but my skin has something else to say about the whole matter.  My father is a redhead and I inherited the redhead complexion without inheriting the hair, which I believe to be patently unfair.  My cheeks (the ones not near my nether regions, silly) have always given me the halo of a fever or the look of a recent sunburn.  To hide my red face I believe I may have single handedly kept afloat the makeup industry.  There I would be, at work or at school, powdering and touching up with a dedication that bordered on mania.  I’ve lightened up since then.  In truth I’m out a coffee shop right now without a spot of makeup on.  What progress!  My crippling vanity aside, I also have to be very careful about sun exposure.  To avoid a burn which would require hospitalization, I have to use copious amounts of sunscreen when most people could forgo the whole thing.  To add insult to injury, I also sweat profusely, which washes off the much needed sunscreen.  A deluge of sweat combined with greasy sunscreen makes my skin viciously break out.  A day trip to the beach in my home state of North Carolina requires me to bring most of the contents of my medicine cabinet to manage my skin.  So as you can imagine, the state of my skin took up an inordinate amount of time in our conversations in Thailand, which I must assume led my scientifically minded friend to tell me that the reason we find even-toned skin attractive is because it denotes a healthy partner to father or mother one’s children.  My jaw did drop a little, not because I was unaware of such an idea, but that my friend obviously told me this with the intent to soothe my wounded vanity.

As a teenager I would get the odd pimple now and then, but it wasn’t until my twenties that nature saw fit to give me consistent break outs.  Now, I’d blush to complain about my skin flaws in front of many people because as unsightly as I find it, I sure know that it could be worse.  It’s just that when I tally up my physical flaws, I think I’ve reached the quota, and that white heads are just more than my fair share.  Though women have the benefit and burden of makeup, I do envy men their facial hair.  Now now, I am not saying I’d want to be a chick sporting a goatee in a world where that was unacceptable, but if all women had a five o’clock shadow and In Style, or whatever, showcased this season’s best female facial hair, I’d be all over that.  It would hide a few of my chins, not to mention the Vesuvius that crops up now and then on my chin and neck.

Besides, I once went to this party where the guests where supposed to draw facial hair on themselves.  One fellow was particularly taken with my goatee.  Would it explain his admiration if I mentioned that he was European?  Well, I’ve learned it’s wiser to accept a compliment and not fret about the source.

Tags: acne, facial hair, pimples, skin, skin problems, sunscreen