Monday, January 30, 2006

JERSEY SHORE (Part I)

Summer of '85 :
THE DIAMOND AND THE BONFIRE

Every summer, my family would spend at least a week at Surf City, down the Jersey Shore. My parents always allowed my brothers and me to bring friends along on our summer vacation. This particular year, Tommy brought along his friend Jet, and Jerry brought Freddie and Chico. Jet was an adorable 17-year old with luscious blonde curls who, like Tommy, excelled in baseball; Freddie was a lame guy who couldn't get a date to save his life, and Chico was the only one of my brothers' friends who acted civil towards me, the younger sister. I brought my super-cool twin friends from Pennsylvania, Sylv and Liza.

It was customary for my cousin CC and her family to go on vacation during the same week as my family. All four kids in her family were allowed to bring a friend along each year, as well, which meant, all tolled, there were roughly 4 adults and 15 teenagers running around amongst the two rented houses on 12th Street. It was a pretty exciting time in my life.

For some reason unbeknownst to me or anyone else, my parents allowed Tom, Jerry and their friends to drive all of us young'ns down the shore the night minus adults. My Uncle T would already be down there, but he was planning on going fishing with Uncle Jay, so he'd be no trouble for us at all.


We arrived down the shore at approximately 6 PM on Saturday night. Since there were no parents around, we did the only sensible thing: we communed on the beach. I played songs on my guitar while everyone sang and flirted and had the time of their lives. I imagined that this must have been what it felt like to be a character in the book The Outsiders. No parents, no rules; everyone for themselves.

Jerry and his friends went cruising in their hotrod cars while the rest of us decided that we were going to spend the entire night on the beach. I had my acoustic guitar and played Dylan, Zeppelin, and Stray Cat songs. Sylv, Liza, CC, and I were singing Stray Cat Strut while some of the guys went and gathered wood for a bon fire. I thought for sure that Beach Patrol were going to bust us for using the dune fence for kindling wood, not to mention the illegal bonfire and the hell that we were going to pay from our parents for sleeping on the beach.

It was a charged atmosphere as my friends flirted as never before. It seemed that all of the friendships between the males and females were entering a new era. Everyone was so flirtatious. It was great, innocent fun!

I sat there and played my guitar as Puff (one of my cousin's friends) tried to pull the bandana off that I had tied around my neck. He didn't manage to get the bandana, however, he did manage to pull off the new diamond studded necklace that my grandmother and grandfather had bought me for my Sweet Sixteen birthday earlier in the year. I was mortified--my new necklace! How am I going to explain this one to Grandma?!

Puff, CC, Sylv, Liza, and the rest of the crew starting digging for my necklace. Someone grabbed a piece of burning wood and used it as a torch to scope over the entire area where I had been sitting. By this time, I knew Puff had accidentally buried the diamond. It was gone. I thought my life was over. I had managed to lose the necklace the first time I wore it. I thought it would be smarter to actually wear it, than to just have it sit in the gold-leaf box it came in!

My parents wouldn't care that I slept on the beach with a bunch of teenagers while basking in the glow of a burgeoning bonfire: once they found out I lost the necklace, everything else would seem like child's play. The guilt could have crushed me, but somehow I managed to let it go. Perhaps it was the rhythm of the ocean that swept it away.


We spent the rest of the night sitting by the fire, just enjoying each other's company. I still remember the maroon kindling wood crackling in the fire; the red bandana that was tied around my neck, and my battered acoustic guitar with the image of Jim Morrison painted right there on the front. I recall how laboriously Puff tried to get everyone to sing Puff the Magic Dragon while he simultaneously shouted out the chords to me. I'll never forget how giddy I felt when Puff flirted with me by trying to grab my bandana. This was the first time I ever remember truly living in the moment. I knew this was a very special moment in time that I would remember forever. My friends and I were loving life while the moonlight shimmered on the ocean and waves crashed upon the shore. What more could any sixteen year old have asked for? Everything else became extremely trivial at that point in time. I was sure some lucky fool with a metal detector was going to score big in the next day or two when he happened upon my sweet sixteen gem while scoping out the beach.

I can't visit the Jershey Shore without thinking about that night with my friends. I often wonder if my necklace has ever been found.


To be continued...

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©2006 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

KISS, my arse!

During my twenties, I was a successful commercial photographer living in NYC. I was working with top of the line photographers as well as doing my own photo shoots for various international publications. Then, in 1997, a car hit me on 14th Street and Irving Place and my life was forever changed.

Since I had spent most of my years cultivating various talents and pursuing my artistic dreams, I gave little attention to my personal life. After I got back on my feet, I made a promise that I would try to live a more balanced life. I was thirty and trying to figure out how to throw myself into the dating game.

To pay the bills, I worked in computers for a while. While working in the Operations Department of a prestigious entertainment management company, I noticed that the other employees in my group spent most of their time conducting personal business on the computer. One person emailed his girlfriend all day, while another used the company computer to search for better employment. Then there was Roy. He was a pip. He spent most of his free time—which was most of the time—on a website called Edwina. This site was synonymous with Match.com, except it was for gay people.

Roy met a couple of nice people on Edwina, and kept prodding me to create an account and ‘search for love’ online. I didn’t like the idea at all; not only because I was taught to fear the unknown when I was a kid, but because I thought meeting someone online was rather artificial. It’s usually something unexplainable that attracts me to someone: maybe an interesting nose, beautiful hands, and a wonderful mind that I could sink my brain into. How could I possibly write a ‘personal ad’ and explain what I was looking for in a person when I didn’t even know what I was looking for myself?

One day, I threw caution to the wind and created an account. I don’t even remember what I wrote about myself. I probably mentioned the fact that I played guitar and that I love music, photography, reading, and writing. Within a day, I got a response. The woman’s name was Kate.

Kate said that she was in her late twenties. I must have mentioned my early childhood obsession with the rock group KISS, because the first email that I received from Kate outlined her obsession with KISS, too. She said, like me, that she had all of their albums when she was growing up. Unlike me, she was even a bonafide member of the KISS ARMY! I remember emailing her back and asking her who her favorite member of the band had been; mine was Ace. She wrote back that she liked ‘the guy who blew the fire and spit the blood.’ I thought it was endearing to have met someone who sounded really ‘with it’ and adorable, and who shared a common childhood passion.

We emailed each other for a couple of days, talking about what books we were currently reading, what movies we’d recently seen or would like to see, and what CD’s we’d most recently bought. I was in heaven—Kate loved everything that I loved! She was into everything that I was! She loved Frank Zappa, she said Albert Camus’s writing couldn’t be beat. Moreover, she was in the middle of reading The Brother’s Karamozov, just as I was!

She said she was ‘hip’. She explained that she had long brown, flowing hair. She said most people thought she looked like Veronica Hamel from Hill Street Blues fame. (I LOVED Veronica Hamel when I was a kid!)

Kate was perfect. There was just one more thing I had to find out: was she spiritual? I spent a lot of my time meditating and doing Tai’chi, not to mention that I played guitar at church on Sundays; I just wanted to know that this wouldn’t turn her off. “No!” she said, “I’m very spiritual!”

We decided to meet for a beer. I wanted to cut to the chase and ask her to meet me for dinner; however, Roy explained that it is better to go for drinks on a first date. That way, if you don’t ‘click’, you can excuse yourself after the first drink. Smart thinking on Roy’s part, but I had it in my mind that I would be calling a moving van after the first sip of beer!

I chose a bar in the East village for our rendezvous. At first glance, this bar looked like every other watering hole in the East Village, except it had an upstairs furnished with plush couches and chairs, and floor to ceiling windows. I went to the bar early and sat upstairs; gazing out the window to the sidewalk below, trying to guess which stranger was Kate.

Our date was to officially start at six o'clock. Six o'clock came and went. I walked downstairs whereupon I saw a stodgy woman in an army jacket sitting beneath the dartboard. She smiled at me as I walked by. I didn’t smile back. I was perturbed. I gave my empty glass to the bartender and walked towards the door. I turned around and looked back at the woman sitting beneath the dartboard. She smiled once more, and raised her glass. “Come here,” she said.

I put my hands in my pocket and walked over to her. She asked if I was Marcy. I nodded.

“I’m Kate. I’m sorry I was late.”

I pointed upstairs. “I was upstairs looking out the window. I guess I didn’t see you come in." I sat down at her table and stared at her for a while. There was no way she was in her late twenties. Her hair was long and brown, but it was also tangled and sprinkled with tons of gray. If this was her idea of ‘hip’, I would hate to see what her idea of out-of-date looked like. She ordered me another pint of Bass.

“So,” I said, trying to start some kind of conversation. “You’re Kate.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled as she scraped the beer label off the bottle.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked, looking around the bar.

She looked up at me and then back at her bottle. “No. I’ve never been to the East Village.”

I knitted my eyebrows. “But, I thought you said that you loved the Ramones, and that you used to hang out down here back in the day?”

“No…I’ve never been down here before.” She looked at me and smiled. “You have beautiful eyes. They’re like ice blue, or something.”

“Thank you.” I looked at the stripes of gray in her hair. I didn’t have an aversion to gray hear, it's just that she didn't mention it while describing her long brown, flowing hair. She didn't fit her description at all.

“I don’t really look like Veronica Hamel, do I?” she inquired of me.

“Well,” I said, trying to let her down easy. “Not really, I suppose. So,” I said, as I crossed my legs and leaned in closer to her, “How did you get into KISS? My cousin gave me a double cassette of KISS ALIVE II when I was about 11 years old.”

She blushed and fidgeted her hands a bit more. “Well, I never really liked KISS. My brother was in the KISS ARMY, not me. He used to play his stereo really loud, so I always heard their music.”

“What? But…you said-

“I know, I said that I liked KISS because I knew that you liked them. I wanted to have something I common with you, you know, so you’d want to meet me.” She smiled. I looked down and noticed the antiquated peace sign she had sown onto the pocket of her olive green Army jacket.

I sat there in silence, cursing on line dating. I should have listened to reason and never created an account on Edwina, I thought to myself.

“So,” I let out a long sigh, “Was anything that you told me true? I mean, do you even like Albert Camus or Frank Zappa—“

“I like to read, and I like music. I am planning to read The Brother’s Karamozov soon. I just haven’t had the time. It’s a big book.” She took a swig of her beer.

It’s not like me to be judgmental, or cruel. However, I sat there judging the hell out of Kate and decided to be, what I would consider, cruel. I took another sip of beer, got up, said goodbye to the one who showed up late and littered my brain with lies, and walked out the door.

During the entire walk home, I kept thinking to myself--"KISS, my arse! It was all a bunch of lies. All of it!"

I contemplated my next move in the fierce domain of dating.


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©2006 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Bathroom Humor (Literally Speaking!)

It was the summer of 1989. My parents were driving me to Pennsylvania to visit two of my best friends, Sylvia and Liza, who happen to be twins.

We made this trip to PA almost every summer since I was a little kid. I would usually spend a week or two at Slyv and Liza’s house, or they would spend a week or two at mine. Regardless of whether I was staying at their house or they were staying at my house, we always made the same road trip. You see, we had a ‘halfway meeting point’ called the Starlight Diner where our parents would make ‘the drop-off’.

I really hated the Starlight Diner. The food was sub par diner food, and the décor was dark and dingy; tufts of dust accented each painting hung crooked on the walls. While driving to Pennsylvania, I had a novel idea:

“Hey Dad, why don’t we try eating at a different place this time?”

“NO WAY!” he argued. “The Starlight is the exact halfway point between our house and Harrisburg!”

“Well,” I countered, “I’m not saying that we should abort our plans to make the drop-off at the Starlight, I just think that perhaps we could eat dinner at a different locale. After all, Kevin (Sylv and Liza’s father) said that they were going to eat before picking me up.”

My mom looked at my father as if my plan was the best thing she had heard in years. “Yeah, Archie, why don’t we find a new place to eat?”

My dad sulked, threw his hands up in the air and then flung them back onto the steering wheel of his ’87 Ford pickup truck. “The Starlight is the halfway point. We’ve been eating there for years. It’s always been good enough in the past!”

“Oh come on!” I protested. “I hate the Starlight! Give me a break! Their food tastes like crap!”

My mother was shaking her head. She knew that Archie and I were about to get into one of our heated debates.

“Could we PLEASE just go somewhere else so I don’t have to listen to you two argue for the next hour?” she demanded as she blew steam onto the passenger’s side window.

Alright! Where should we go?” my dad asked in a sarcastic manner.

“I don’t know,” I retorted.

“Well, then we’re going to the Starlight.”

“Look over there!” I pointed to a sign in the near distance. “That sign says: Ed’s Pub—Best Food in Town. Let’s go there,” I suggested.

My father cut some unsuspecting car off on his right, and then swerved to make it onto the off ramp just in time to get us to Ed’s Pub parking lot without a scratch. My mother had her hands over her eyes until we came to a complete stop.

“This better be good,” my father muttered under his breath.


The first thing I noticed when we got inside Ed’s Pub was that it was very small, and very clean. It had a lot of character, which I liked. The booths were made of a dark wood, and they were big enough so that all three of us could fit comfortably. No sooner had we sat down when a server came and read us the specials of the day. We ordered some drinks, and then I excused my self to use the restroom.

I thought the bathroom was rather large for such a small establishment. There were three stalls. The first stall wasn’t occupied, but I’ve had an aversion to being in the first stall ever since I saw a horror movie in the 70’s where a woman is strangled to death when a man reaches over the stall with a thin metal wire and chokes her. The door to the second stall was closed, so I crouched down to see if I there were any feet on the floor. Sure enough, someone was already in stall number 2, so I went into the empty handicap-accessible stall at the end.

I took my time and placed ribbons of toilet paper over the seat. I was never one for squatting; I’d much rather cover the seat with tons of paper and sit. After adorning the seat with the Charmin, I sat down and began to pee. Just then, I heard the door open, and my mother call out—“Everything going okay?” She is usually quite reserved in public, but I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was in a playful mood.

“Yeah, right on target mom. No complications to report.”

“Good,” she replied, and I heard her enter the first stall and lock the door.

There I am in a public restroom having a conversation with my mom while a stranger is doing her business in the stall between us. All of a sudden, the women in the middle stall lets out a loud, very moist sounding, long fart. This poor woman just bottomed out. My mother begins to laugh her ass off. Then, she says, “EEEWWWW! That’s just DISGUSTING!” and continues to laugh whole-heartedly, thinking all the while that it was I who released the gaseous explosion of monumental proportions.

At this point, I’m trying to choke back the tears and hide my laughter as I realize that my mom thinks I’m in the stall beside her. She had no idea there was anyone in the restroom besides the two of us. There was no way in hell I was going to tell her any different--this was just too much fun, so I flushed the toilet and went out to the sink and washed my hands, still laughing my ass off. I just couldn’t imagine how incredibly mortified the woman in the middle stall must have been not only when she farted, but also when my mom verbalized how disgusting she thought it was!

My mom was still laughing when she said, “Oh God, that smells. You had better check your ass, young lady!” I actually began to feel sorry for my mom at this point, because she had no idea how uncomfortable she must have been making the woman in the middle stall feel.

I was crouched down almost underneath the sink, dying with laughter, when I heard and saw the bathroom stalls begin to rumble. My mom was now SHAKING the bathroom stalls and play screaming, “I’M STUCK! I’M LOCKED IN HERE! SOMEONE HELP!” I could not believe my eyes. I fell all of the way to the floor. I looked under the door of the middle stall and noticed that the woman’s feet were on tiptoes, and I just imagined her trying to climb into the toilet to make a getaway.

“Uh, mom…” I whispered.

“HELP ME! I’M STUCK IN THIS STALL! I CAN’T GET OUT!” She began shaking the stalls even more violently.

She truly was stuck. I got up off the floor and peered over the door into her stall. “Help me! The door really won’t unlock!”

“Try kicking it with your foot,” I recommended, knowing that she was much too short and way too uncoordinated to be able to kick the lock. She hit the lock one more time with her closed fist with just enough pressure to release the lock.

She came out of her stall and approached the sink. I burst into tears as I pointed to the middle stall. She turned around and looked at the door to the middle stall, then she looked back at me, then she looked back at the door, and then slowly turned her head back to me, her mouth wide open in disbelief.

“I didn’t fart!” I whispered.

“I said it was disgusting!” she whispered back. “And I was shaking the stalls!”

She was mortified. She grabbed my arm as her face transformed itself into the most embarrassed look you could ever imagine. We both darted towards the door. We made our way back to our booth. Both of us were still trying to hold back our tears of laughter. We tried to hide behind our menus; we didn’t want the woman in stall number two to eye us as she left the bathroom. Turns out the woman was actually a very attractive woman in her late thirties/early forties. She had long blonde hair, and was dressed quite respectively. I’d never imagined that the woman who released that loud explosion between her legs would have looked so distinguished. Once I got a good look at her, I hid behind my menu for another twenty minutes, at least until the tears were dried and I could control my laughter.

My mother is now in her sixties and finds it very difficult to control her flatulence while out in public. Paybacks are a bitch.


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©2006 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

First Kiss: Motorbike Marcy


Back in 1979, Raleigh RAMPAR dirt bikes were all the rage. I asked Santa for a brand new, golden-yellow with red rims Rampar for Christmas, being the little dyko that I was. I woke up early on Christmas morning, expecting to find a huge box under the tree: no such luck. There were boxes of clothes, underwear, socks, a few albums, and some work boots (for my horse riding lessons), but no dirt bike. I was a bit sullen, to say the least.

After everyone finished opening his or her gifts, my dad went outside under the pretense of getting some more firewood out of the garage. He screamed—“O man! There’s another present out here for someone! Come on, everyone,” he yelled from the kitchen door, “Let’s see who it’s for!”

I envisioned my brand new bike, chrome shining in the sunlight. I pictured myself placing playing cards between the spokes to make a cool sound while I rode. I ran outside, and there it was-- my new bike! Both of my brothers were rather perturbed when they saw that their names were not on the tag. I ran over to the handlebars and read aloud: To Marcy, Love Santa. O, I was in my glory. I hopped on the bike and rode in circles on the driveway until it was time to go to Grandma Shirley’s for dinner.

Tommy stood on the front lawn in envy. He watched as I traced imaginary figure eights on the pavement. He knitted his eyebrows in anger when I began to pretend I was pumping the throttle on the handlebars and began making motorcycle noises with my voice.

“Motorbike Marcy,” he mumbled.

“What?” I smiled. “I didn’t hear you, Tommy Eddie.” I pulled up right beside him and raised my eyebrows in anticipation of learning what he had just mumbled.

“I said everyone in school is going to make fun of me because my little SISTER got a dirt bike before I did!”

“That’s not what you said! What’d you say?” We stood staring at each other with our eyebrows knitted.

“I said you look really good on that ugly thing, Motorbike Marcy!”

O SHIT! I thought. Another darn nickname to contend with—as if Lunchbox Head wasn’t bad enough!

Riding a dirt bike wasn’t the wisest thing to do in 5th grade. Not only were the boys losing interest in playing with me—because they were discovering the girlie girls—but many of my female acquaintances found my latest dirt bike transgression to be the final straw.

“It’s one thing to be obsessed with the Bionic Woman and to play with Stretch Armstrong and all, but ride a dirt bike? I don’t think so!” These words were etched into the girls faces as they watched me chain lock my bike to the rack on the first day back to school after Christmas break.

By the end of the day, my Lunchbox Head nickname was replaced with Motorbike Marcy. Tommy was in high heaven as he witnessed his friend Dwight looking at my bike while I unchained it after school.

“Motorbike Marcy…nice looking bike. What—they didn’t have any girl bikes left at the store?” He overconfidently smirked as he walked away and gave my brother a high five.

Not all of Tommy’s friends made fun of me. He did have one friend that thought it was rather neat that I had a golden yellow Rampar with red rims. His name was Billy, and he had a red Rampar with golden yellow rims. We had never conversed outside of the context of Little League, when, one day, Billy walked up to me in the hallway at school and asked if I would like to go dirt bike riding on the following Saturday.

I’m not sure if my jaw hit the ground before or after I replied, “Yes.” Was this a date? I wondered.

As planned, Billy picked me up around noon on Saturday. We rode all around town, and then finally made our way to the park behind my grandmother’s house. We rode up and down the hills; wove around the trees; and even jumped the little mound of grass that covered a large drainpipe.

At one point, all tuckered out, Billy and I rode our bikes up to the bank of the brook directly behind my grandmother’s house. We both watched the water rippling as we caught our breath. After some time, we looked into each other’s eyes, smiled, leaned in towards each other, and kissed: a little peck on the lips. It was beautiful.

Without saying a word, we put our feet to the peddles and began jumping moguls and seeing who could ride the fastest down the steepest hill in the park.


Soon after the 'first kiss incident', the Motorbike Marcy moniker was too much to bear and I sold the dirt bike to one of my older brother Jerry’s friends.

Things settled down after a few weeks: the boys began to allow me to play touch football with them again, and Tommy and his friends reverted to calling me Lunchbox Head. Never a dull moment in this bent life of mine.



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©2006 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Lunchbox Head

I’ve been called many things in my life. The one name that always stands out the most is ‘Lunchbox Head’. Yes, my loving brothers bestowed that moniker upon me when I was in my early teens. Lunchbox Head: need I explain? I suppose so.

Back in the early 1970’s, the ‘shag’ hairdo was all the rage. My mother used to drive me to her friend Pearl’s house to get my ‘shag’ haircut once every several months, without fail. I didn’t mind going to Pearl’s house. She had her very own beauty parlor in the basement of her house. I liked looking at the shiny mirrors—all illuminated with light pink bulbs. The swivel chairs were fun, too. They were a shiny red material. There were pictures of James Dean and Natalie Wood on the walls. At the time, I thought for sure that she had cut their hair. Now I think not! The place looked like a hair salon straight from the 1950’s.

One of my favorite things about going to Pearl’s house was seeing her daughter, Jodie. She was twice as old as I was, and she played the guitar. I thought she was the coolest thing since sliced bread—not only because she played the guitar, but also because she was obviously into the Bionic Woman. She had long, flowing brown hair, and wore flannel shirts. I can remember one time I just stood outside her door and peeked through the threshold just far enough to watch her sitting on the bed while she played some John Denver. I was mesmerized. That was the exact moment in my life when I decided that I wanted to be a guitarist, and not a drummer!

Getting back to my haircuts-- Pearl used to give me these wild looking shag haircuts. I remember sitting in the swivel chair after the cut and thinking, ‘Wow, this is awesome! How cool! I’m gonna be a star someday!” Looking back at these old pictures, I often wonder, “Jesus Christmas, did Pearl even have a license to cut hair, or was this a mere hobby?” My haircuts weren’t as ‘cool’ as they were ‘uneven’ and ‘messy’. Unfortunately, for me, I kept getting this ‘shag’ cut well into my early teens. That’s when my brothers decided to call me Lunchbox Head. I can’t really blame them. I do have a rather polygon-esque shaped head.

I remember the first time Tom and Jerry (my brothers) called me Lunchbox Head. We were on our annual vacation down the Jersey Shore. All of us (my cousins and friends that we brought with us) were at that age where we wanted to go out cruising for people of the opposite sex (well, with one exception!). I remember standing by the side of the beach house with a ¾ sleeve baseball shirt that said, “Rock-N-Roll” in big bold letters—right above a skull that had flames coming out of the eyes (I don’t know what I was thinking…I was gonna be a rock god, remember?). A bunch of us were standing next to my mom’s blue and white Chevy Blazer, when Tommy looked at me and said, “You’re head is shaped like a lunchbox.”

To which I said, “Shut up.”

He sardonically retorted, “What’d ya say, Lunchbox Head?!”

Thus my socially crippling moniker was born. Who would possibly want to date someone with a bean shaped like a lunch box? I didn’t take it lying down. Oh no. I went out and got myself a perm (remember those?).

That only proved to make matters worse.

My new nickname became “Frizzbean.”

It wasn't easy being me. Thank God for my guitar, or I probably would have ended up a child star gone bad, even though I was only a child star in my own mind.


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©2005 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.