posted September 27, 2005
When you were 20 years old in 1985 and had lived in New York City for two months, you finally got around to visiting Gee That's Swell!, that East Village vintage clothing shop run by the blue-haired gay guy with the painted-on blue monobrow. The shop had 1950s-style d�cor more exaggerated than that in the other East Village shops�a black-and-white checkerboard floor, turquoise walls with little gold-foil boomerangs, black-velvet paintings of crying waifs, photos of Pee-wee Herman plastered all over the shop's new dot-matrix printer.
You were standing in front of a full-length mirror, watching yourself model a pair of lime-green pedal pushers you thought were a little overpriced at $21. "Mmm, yeah, they fit perfectly," you heard someone say behind you. You turned toward that someone: Andi Warhole (n�e Dawn Crlenkovich), a 19-year-old artist who specialized in silkscreening copies of Andy Warhol's silkscreen paintings onto canvases but copying only the corners of pieces, or only the captions from the magazine reproductions she used, or sometimes not copying anything at all, just stapling the tiny clipped-out reproductions onto giant blank canvases, sometimes using just one staple. "They flatter your ass," she continued, referring to the pedal pushers. She turned to her companion. "Don't they flatter her ass?"
"Yeah," her companion said. "If they flattered it any more, its ego would burst out of this store and block the sidewalk. No room for anyone to take a piss." The companion was Julinda Packard, a 26-year-old artist who specialized in earth-toned Expressionist paintings of obscure animated TV cartoon characters from the 1960s, characters such as the Sparkle Twins, Whiz Kid Weasel, and G.I. Werewolf speaking in word balloons based upon the prevailing political thinking of the day: SUPPORT THE CONTRAS, GOD BLESS PRIVATIZATION, EMBRACE THE NEW TRADITIONALISM, et cetera.
You bought the pedal pushers. Then you invited the two women to watch your band, Free Government Cheese, perform that night at Feedback Loop, one of the East Village's oldest (founded 1984) and most nearly respected performance venues. "It's our first time there. We're the second opening band right before the main band, a big step up for us," you said.
"Wow, you're on your way to fame," Julinda said. "Soon you'll be shooting out TV screens, or�"
"Or shooting out peanut butter and banana sandwiches," Andi said.
"Please don't step on my lines, dear."
When you were 10 years old in 1975, your mother took you out to dinner at Captain Clipper's Family Restaurant, an East Coast chain that had just opened its newest location at Cornfield Acres, that sprawling new shopping center outside your suburban neighborhood. You'd never been to any Captain Clipper's. Its wallpaper, vintage black-and-white drawings of clipper ships surrounded by their names (the Flying Cloud, the Smyrna, the Andrew Jackson) in 1970s spiraling-serif font, looked like homework assignments to you. The dining room's six-foot-high plastic palm trees in genuine brass spittoons looked like the six-foot-high plastic palm trees (in wicker baskets) in your pediatrician's waiting room, a fact that perturbed you for a few seconds, considering that each checkup, he would jokingly say "Time to give you a shot in the butt with my Frankenstein needle," a line you'd repeated to your classmates a few months ago, causing your teacher, that old hag, to scold you in front of everyone for saying something naughty.
You had the Junior Clippers Burger 'n' Fries Plate, the Junior Clippers butterscotch sundae, a ginger ale, and two round hypno-swirl mints. Your mother had a scoop of tuna salad on a bed of half-frozen iceberg lettuce, a typical dish grown-up women ate back then. Your waiter laid the check upside-down on the table and left. Your mother picked up the check, looked at it, laid it back upside-down, opened her purse, took out her wallet, held her wallet in her hand, dropped the wallet back into her purse, and closed her purse. When your waiter walked past your table again, she said "Stop it!" in a loud voice.
He turned to look at her. "Excuse me?" he asked. He was in his early twenties and wore a red long-sleeved shirt, black ruffled sleeve garters, black jeans, a straw boater hat, and a front-pocket nametag reading AHOY�I'M SHELDON.
"I said stop it!" she shouted. "You should be ashamed of yourself! What am I, a piece of meat?!"
A middle-aged man walked toward your table, dressed like Sheldon but in an oversized bolo tie and no nametag. "I'm Mr. Hollis, the manager of this restaurant. Is there anything wrong, ma'am?"
"Yes, Mr. Hollis, there is. Your waiter keeps giving me peculiar looks."
"Peculiar looks?"
"You know, with big eyes. Big-eyed looks. Moving his eyes all over me. He keeps looking at me with intent beforehand." Your mother had heard the phrase "intent beforehand" on a TV cop show.
"She's lying, sir," Sheldon said.
"I saw him lick his lips at me, too�and in front of my ten-year-old daughter!"
"Lady, I never�"
"That's enough," Mr. Hollis said. "Go to my office, Sheldon."
"She's lying."
"Now, Sheldon." Sheldon left. "I apologize for any trouble you may have had during your eating experience tonight here, ma'am. You and your daughter's meals will be on the house, of course."
"Thank you, sir. One thing, though?"
"Yes?"
"Could you please not fire Sheldon for this? I have no complaints about him otherwise. He's just a kid, and he hasn't learned to control his powers of sight yet."
"I'll take that under consideration, ma'am."
"Please�promise he'll remain employed here."
"I promise."
"Thank you, Mr. Hollis."
You and your mother left the restaurant. On the drive home, you in the back seat, the radio playing current hit singles you'll buy on campy CD compilations 15 years later, she said "I showed great restraint in there, Thea. I could have had him fired, but I didn't." A long pause. "I could have said he was looking at you, but then he probably would have gone to jail, and I couldn't have lived with myself for that."
Don't despair. The hot lesbian sex starts soon....Fiction, Home.
� 2005 David V. Matthews