Sorry I Sucked a Donkey Dick!

     "Yeah, well —

     "Hi.

     "I'm Kevin Kavanaugh.

     "I smile a lot, and even at my mom, which tends to anger my dad — he knows I know I have a Legacy to Cornell, and just float B's to get by, and read on my own, sporadically and scattershot, while doing Outward Bound™ and ski trips, you know, row the canoe, that kinda thing.

     "Anyway.

     "So Deanna's big sister gets called 'square head' by Matt Owens — you know, he don't socialize much, ever since Racela got thrown out (funny, Chuck Evans doesn't either — I guess Jay really was a wheel-spoke hub, a "ringleader" like Mr. Martin who tells us "not to push the System" says, after all!!!), he just does it sporadically, he comes and goes, smokes pot or takes off, he's the third born, like a lot of kids with two older siblings, he's got a lot of attitude, he's got two precedents and a big wake in general and in sum to be in, one breaks the waves, you know, the second's like 'I am or am not like the first one,' you know, makes one or three kids seem like a good idea, you know, an odd number, there's always life outside the house, you know, community, it takes a village, etc. etc., so he don't know who she is, or that Snydes hooked up with her at a party, especially since she's one of Alison McLean's friends he feels guilty even though she don't, he takes her out to Crossgates[1] and they skip into a couple movies, you know, Everybody's All-American and another one, just to make out, you know, it's totally illegal but who's going to stop them?, they don't make a habit of it and everybody smokes pot anyway ... Yeah, so Owens called her 'Square Head' in study hall when everyone's sitting around bored, he doesn't know who she was, and it sort of sticks and Snydes sucks ass to this day because he can't get any, he's totally desperate and hurting for it, etc., etc."

[1] Mall built in '85-'86, about when I was in eighth/ninth grade, one of those weird correspondences, timing in my life.  I'm 4 1/2, I see the Pink Panther movie where Herbert Lom threatens the professor's daughter, he puts on a glove with all these razors on it, but then he just scratches on the blackboard because the noise is annoying — but the point on me is totally lost, because all the Hammer™ movie trappings and the castle with the torture devices is all that I see, atmosphere-wise.  Similarly, I'm 8 years old in 1980, the year Empire Strikes Back comes out and maybe similarly Oh, Heavenly Dog! the Benji movie and maybe The Muppet Movie, right, I watch the show religiously, so it's some other movie, already we've seen the Cheech & Chong Still Smokin' preview, I don't even know what it's about, I don't know what "smokin'" is supposed to mean in this context but I feel awkward watching it in front of my family, you know, it's a totally different experience when you're alone, and it says "This features rated 'R,'" or something, and already I feel like I shouldn't be there, just because it's broaching it in front of my family, you know, and then it's like "From Stanley Kubrick ... " and the elevator doors open and all this blood pours out, and that's all that happens, more blood pours out, like they're trying to put out a fire but with blood instead of water, but of course that's not it, it's one of the effective bad dreams ever concocted, that's what you'd think when you were worried or scared ... or something.  Anyway, Crossgates was built in all this marshland nobody was using for years, it took some time after Dawn of the Dead and, you know, "they return to what's familiar to them ... " for the Town Elders of Albany, NY, hopelessly out-of-touch and never New England or NYC, you know, to wake up from their slumber and build a mall there, and it was just in time for me to be of the age where I could get dropped off there, and picked up hours later, practice for real life, and I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Dream Team and Band of the Hand and Iron Eagle there with various kids, they had a movie theater inside right near the food court, they were the first to do so, just take the escalator.  I made Tammy Reichel go there, I kept calling her, we went to Stand by Me but the puking wasn't as bad as in the story, Stephen King's The Body, but that would have been unspeakable.  I held her hand until she got to the phone (after the movie, on a walk) but then later she told me to stop calling her back.  Okay.  I was at a new school anyway.  I doubt I would have tried it, before.  But that's how these things work out, timing-wise — for good or for ill, or for partial.  And Kim Gerard who saw me at the bus stop when we switched from our public school rides at the public school to get on another bus to each of our private schools (mine, Albany Academy — Girl's Academy was still called "A.A.G.," while we were just "A.A.," it's a Radcliffe/Barnard/Vassar kind-of thing, the co-edding TAKES a while, ha-HA!!! #rollEYES — and she went to Bishop Maginn, already co-ed, whatever), she had to wait until the end of The Serpent and the Rainbow to say, "Oh, I think I've got something in my eye ... " well, I'm not that stupid, to give me my first kiss until they started cleaning up and we had to leave.  (She: "You want to see a movie, or something ... ??" Me: "Yeah, The Serpent and the Rainbow is playing!!!" I read Twilight Zone magazine, and probably read Stephen King's Skeleton Crew and Clive Barker's Books of Blood that year ... #YEAH ).  So.  Anyway, you call it "Crossgates," like "I'm going to Crossgates!" and "See you at Crossgates!" which sounds like more evocative than it was, even with MTV and that Chris DeBurgh song referencing the river Styx, "Don't Pay the Ferryman!", before the stupid one everyone's mom liked ("Lady in Red"), his attempt to do Air Supply, lift himself out of being a one-hit wonder to a TWO-, count 'em, TWO- hit wonder.  And when you go there to buy Altoids™ to cover up your smoker's breath, which every smoker teen-age believes will cover up the smell, but the deal is you REEK because it's in your hair and your clothes and you REEK but nobody says anything, because of decorum (like the Beastie Boys say: "That / hyp-O-crite / smokes / TWO packs / a DAY!!!" #ADULTS #parentsjustdontUNDERSTAND ), and you're actually going to the record store with Jay Racela who you're in a band with, and he has an improbable gift-certificate for a whole FREE ALBUM!!!, came from somebody for a holiday or a birthday present, I forgot which, and we've got our Altoids™ (probably — although we had calmed down about buying them, by then ... ), which were the "curiously-strong Peppermint," and an ideal pre-cursor to the '90s, like The Far Side and Bloom County, in its self-awareness and whimsy, and you can't think of anything and finally he goes "Aw, man ... I'll just buy XTC'S Oranges and Lemons," and you're especially disappointed because you had XTC's Skylarking (with "Dead God" on it — natch.!!!), and Oranges and Lemons doesn't seem at all that good, with that "Mayor of Simpleton" song on it ... and even he leaves the store with it and you're outside by a few stores' walk down and all of a sudden it hits you (you didn't think of it while you were in there — what's with you??): "Aw man — you could have got Living COLOUR!!!" and it's true, "Cult of Personality" and now the "Open Letter (to a Landlord)" song that Pete [Baldes, who you're in a band with - ed.] makes fun of sometimes for being too "genuine" (effectively — my words, though - ed.), certainly for you Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies and Sonic YOUTH and JOY DIVISION fans to take seriously, though you still like it, well they're both all over MTV, and he looks at you and he's right, it's all your fault, your fucking idiot. It's all your fault — why didn't you think of it??  But he's right — you fucked up.  But he doesn't say anything.  Except, maybe, "shit!"  So you go smoke a cigarette.  At Crossgates, at Crossgates Mall, that's what it's called: "Crossgates."  Like, I'm just "goin' to Crossgates."  You fucking idiot.  What a waste!  Christ.  Wait 'till next year ... "Neh.  It's okay, man ... it's okay!" - ed.