Things I'm Not Particularly Proud Of, v. 1

Not much good has come out of Levittown, NY, unless you count Billy Joel, which in my weaker moments, I do. It's something I'm not particularly proud of either, but that's not the purpose of this post. Otherwise, there has been a cartoonist, another pop star, an American Idol contestant, and Bill O'Reilly. That's pretty bleak, when you think about it. The only really good thing is a rather entertaining documentary about the city, Wonderland, by a guy from my graduating class in college. You should watch it, if you can get your hands on a copy.

When I was about seventeen, I was perusing LPs, because that's the generation I'm from, at a small record store in downtown Portland. I was alone in the store with the clerk, until two rather long-haired gentlemen with ragged east coast accents entered the place. I wish I could recall what music I was looking at - it could have been Talking Heads, REM, Run DMC, or even Whitney Houston. Go ahead, yuck it up, but I was only a gangly teenager who had just recently sprung anything remotely resembling hips, and one who did wonder, "How will I know if he REALLY loves me?" Furthermore, I was in deep denial over my genuine love of old Van Halen, the way the popular athlete can't admit he has a crush on the bookish and shy girl. Except I was the bookish and shy girl.

I could have been buying Bon Jovi for all I know, though my defensive ego would like me to point out that I was the first kid at my school to listen to the Beastie Boys. But what does it really matter, I was not cool. A socially awkward girl, seriously underschooled in the ways of boys and dating, and at the same time, it seems I was always curiously attractive to older males. It was confusing and strange, to say the least.

Anyway, the considerably older duo were obviously leering. One of them wore sunglasses on his head and gave me cursory glances, while his wingman thumbed through albums, which he occasionally pulled out as a prop to say, "Hey, Eddie, remember when you recorded this one?" Then they would both look at me, as if I was supposed to overcome my dumbfounded starstruckness and run over for an autograph, a cocktail at his hotel, and some fellatio. After listening overlong to the lame antics, I sighed and walked out the door to the bus mall, where I caught the #33 home, and tried to avoid resting my weary head against the oily curl relaxer glued to the windowpane. It was a peril of the late eighties, much like the talent that escaped Levittown, NY.

And that's the first of maybe three times an embarrasing famous man has hit on me. Five if you count Laverne, but I don't like to talk about that.



(I feel three apologies are in order here: First, I'm sorry to my dear friend whose grandfather designed that infernal city. It's neither of our faults the project was such a failure, so can't we just laugh about it? Secondly, Grant Miller, I realize I have bastardized, nay, plagiarized a format of your posts. I hope you'll take it as a sincere, if inferior, mode of flattery. Finally, for all you strict grammarians in the house, I don't like ending sentences, much less titles, with prepositions, but sometimes it seems impossible not to.)