posted November 15, 2005 (revised November 8, 2006)
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"Hi, Mom."
"You practicing?"
"Yes."
"How's your practice been going?"
"Fine."
"That's good. Keep it up, and you'll be the next Elvis Presley, the female version."
"Mm-hmm."
She stood there in your room.
"Uh, do you want anything?"
"Yes. Yes, I do." She stepped aside, and Stuart walked in, smiling. He wore tight jeans and a tight orange mesh T-shirt. She glanced at him. She glanced at him again.
"Well hello there, Thea," he said.
"Hi," you said.
"Acoustic guitar, huh? You been practicing?"
"Yes."
"Your mother told me you started playing at age 10. That's about the age I started playing guitar."
"Really."
"I used to play in a band in high school, me and a few buddies. We called ourselves Glitter City. I played lead guitar and wore gold glitter on my face. Glitter makeup. We all wore glitter makeup in the band, different types. Quite a memorable gimmick."
"Let me guess�you and Mom are dating," you said in a low voice.
"It's more than that, Thea. Much more."
"I'd like to speak to her alone for a few minutes," your mother said to him. "You know, mother-to-daughter."
"Sure, Jeanne," he said. "Call me when you've finished bonding with her." He ran his hand down your mother's back and walked out, closing the door as she glanced at him.
"How long has this been going on?" you asked.
"A few weeks," your mother answered.
"I thought you two hated each other."
"I thought so too, but I found myself growing more attracted to him the more I encountered him. No wonder I looked forward to our special repasts, heh heh." Your mother had dated Ted for seven months; each week during that time, you'd eaten dinner with them at Captain Clipper's, dinners she'd call "special repasts," sometimes "extra-special repasts." Stuart would serve your table with apparently genuine politeness, never failing to tip his hat hello and goodbye to her, sometimes lifting his hat several inches off his head, his feathered brown hair the consummate example of what the weekly top-eleven list ("THE ONLY TOP-TEN LIST THAT GOES TO 11!") in your favorite on-line news source will call "hat hair" twice in 1997, once in 1998, twice in 1999, thrice in 2000, twice in 2001, once in 2002, once in 2003, thrice in 2004, and once (as of this writing) in 2005.
"Yes, but Mom, isn't he a little young for you?"
"I wouldn't say that, Thea. Age is just a mental concept."
"Sure. Does Ted know about you two?"
"We've just come back from telling him. Stuart even quit his job, just to avoid conflict of interest, I guess that's what they call it in business jargon�.Thea Good Girl?" She still called you Thea Good Girl, as in Be a Good Girl. "Did you like Ted?"
"Yes. He was all right."
"I thought he was all right too, but it turned out I needed more than just all right. I needed�well, when you're a little older you'll understand."
When you were 20 years old in 1985, you woke up alone at eight the morning after your threeway. You still wore your stockings. You put on your kimono, a powder-blue rayon number with LANNIE '59 sewn in cursive above the right nipple, and inept drawings of battleships lining the hem. You walked through the apartment, expecting to find a note from Andi or Julinda or both but not finding anything. Natch. So you opened your refrigerator for some breakfast, the most important meal of the day, and found, under that last can of sauerkraut juice on the top shelf, a note written in black marker on a piece of paper towel: CALL ME TODAY, POSTHASTE, followed by a phone number. No name. You immediately dialed that number. It rang three times, then:
"Hello?" Julinda answered.
"Is this posthaste enough for you?"
"The posthastiest, heh heh."
"Great! I knew you'd left that note. Who else would use the word 'posthaste'?"
"Well, it pays to enrich your word power."
"Yes indeed. Did I wake you?"
"No, just sitting here wondering if you really do drink sauerkraut juice."
"I really do, since I was 10. One of my mom's old boyfriends, Ted, used to drink it. One day I got curious and asked for a sip. I sipped it and actually liked it, not as much as Ovaltine, but still�"
"The beverage gods salute you."
When you were 29 years old in 1994 and had returned to the East Village for closure (a word you would have dismissed as Oprahesque psychobabble a year earlier), you visited Gee That's Swell! for only the second time ever. The shop was still at the same address, same red-brick fa�ade, same pink vinyl awning: the name in 1950s-style elementary-school font, sans-serif, white, caps and lower-case, surrounded by tiny white silhouettes of atoms, rockets, poodles, and cat's-eye glasses.
You walked into the shop. Same d�cor, though the full-length mirror you'd modeled the pedal pushers in (if it was the same mirror) now had a frame, a white one covered with black line drawings of stars and crescent moons. No green clovers? you thought. Too bad�I loves me cereal.
You hadn't worn the pedal pushers since buying them. You felt like buying something else here you'd never wear. You looked around for a few minutes�.God, these prices. Only millionaires can dress as nerds did forty years ago. You didn't see anything that epitomized closure, anyway. As you walked past the counter, you did see two more changes: a new cash register, a Nineties one, plastered with photos of some dour-looking guy with huge buckteeth; and on the wall behind the counter, a framed eight-by-ten, full-color glossy of some teenage rock band, four boys�singer, lead guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer�performing onstage somewhere in wigs, jewelry, feather boas, shiny shirts, and lots of�glittery makeup. You looked at the photo more closely.
"Excuse me," you said to the cashier, a middle-aged man with thinning blue hair, a matching blue monobrow, and an argyle sweater vest. "About that photo on the wall?...My stepfather's in that photo. He used to play in that band."
"Wow, really? Which one is he?"
"The one in the purple tights?"
"Yeah, Stuart Breele, right? Glitter City?"
"How'd you know?"
"I used to play drums in that band. That's me there." He pointed to the last figure on the right, the lanky boy sitting at the drum kit and licking his lipsticked lips.
"Troy LaCroix? God, I didn't recognize you."
"Well, that picture's from 1972. I did look freaky back then. Well, freakier."
"I'm Thea Kirshenbaum." You offered your hand, and he shook it. "Can you talk for a minute?"
"Sure."
"So where was that photo taken?"
"At our farewell performance. Has Stuart told you about it?"
"A million and one times. Maybe a million and two."
"Typical Stuart. I haven't seen him since he left for college. What's the ol' scalawag been up to?" "Well, the ol' scalawag dropped out of college after a week."
"Heh, really? He lasted that long?"
"Yes. The academic world constricted him, at least that's what he told me. He bummed around the country for a few years, then married my mom in 1976 after seeing her for only a month. He was 22, she was 34."
"He always was a spur-of-the-moment guy, heh heh."
"Yes." You didn't feel like laughing. "They're still married, by the way. He's now a concert promoter who works the Seventies nostalgia circuit. You ever wonder who books those washed-up disco acts at racetracks and auto shows?"
"Uh, Newt Gingrich?"
You didn't feel like laughing here either.
"Well, as for me, after the band broke up I played in a few other bands that went nowhere, then I decided to change my career path. I decided the Bowery could use a style infusion, so in 1980 I opened up shop right here in this building. Didn't need a lot of money, either�this was before the East Village got gentrified, when rents were still cheap. Anyway, the business took off immediately. I'm a success 'cause I wallow in the past, like your stepfather. Nostalgia sells. Let that be a lesson to you."
"It shall."
"Good. Well, I have to get back to work now, so�"
"Did you have sex with Stuart?"
"Excuse me?"
Author's note: 11/15/05
This may be the last excerpt from "Gee That's Swell!" I'll post upon this site. (I'll wait 40 minutes for your grievous wailing to subside.) I might conclude the story in chapbook form sometime next year. If the deal falls through, I'll of course share the rest of this tale with you right here. You'll still love interracial lesbian threeways in '06, right?
I loosely based Thea's 1985 concert patter upon the Andy (not Andi) Kaufmanesque patter of a woman I'd seen address an installment of Jefferson Presents..., a Pittsburgh film series my friend Gordon helps run. I loosely based Captain Clipper's upon a Victorian-style funtime family restaurant my family would dine at when we'd visit Presque Isle on vacation during the 1970s.
Fiction, Home, the glammest platform shoes in recorded history.
� 2005-2006 David V. Matthews