Getting Over Jack Wagner (8 page)

“Any good stories?” Tracy asks, with hope in her voice.

I consider my options here: the herbal shop with Hannah, the almost-break-up with Karl, the sex-prompt phone message to Andrew, the now infamous ferreting story. For a minute, I consider the possibility that Tracy and Aileen the Travel Agents might actually be the ideal audience for this ferreting business; they will be appropriately grossed out by the gesture itself, but will not care what it reveals about my relationship patterns or whether the verb form of “ferret” exists or not.

In the end, I resort to a little in-house humor. “Oh, not much. Flew to Puerto Vallarta and back. Can't you tell?” I say, and hold out my forearm, pale as a raw crescent roll.

They laugh and fork up another bite of cake. They think I'm funny, even when I'm not being funny. I suspect they wouldn't be caught dead being funny.

“So anyway,” Aileen says, picking up where she left off. “Then he served this flounder, with a kind of béarnaise…”

I sugar and milk a cup of coffee 'til it's practically a Yoo-hoo, then wave to Tracy and Aileen and return to my desk. Between sips of caffeine, I float to a few music Web sites, check my E-mail (one reminder about Dreams's vacation policy which I delete, one chain letter from an old college friend that begins: “If you stop reading now, you will be unlucky in love for…” which I delete) and then, finally, open “Passion on Puerto Vallarta!” and pick up where I left off.

T
he first rock star I knew in real life was Z Tedesco. I'd gone to school with Z (then known as Zachary) since we were in Mrs. Blakey's kindergarten class. Back then, he was far from rock star material. He was a small, bony, oily kid who brought pastrami sandwiches for lunch in paper bags, a kid who scowled in every school picture, a kid no one envied because he had to learn the cursive “Z” while the rest of us were still plodding through “E”s and “F”s.

Z had no apparent musical inclination back in Glendale Elementary, though it's tough to detect that kind of raw talent while clapping along to “ta-ta-ti-ti-ta” or singing the PC-before-its-time holiday medley of dreidels, Santa Clauses, and Hispanic reindeer named Pablo. Z had no interest in girls, either (not that any eight-year-old boy really does) but I don't remember him ever even talking to a female, not once. Not even to borrow paste or bum a Tastykake in a kind of genderless camaraderie. He was a boy's boy: slick and Italian, with a lock of black hair that fell across his forehead like a mini-Fonz.

Though Z was intense as a kid, he hadn't yet channeled it into his future calling: rock music. In grades one through five the focus of his intensity was kickball. He was fiercely good at it and fiercely competitive about it, diving around the field and scurrying around the bases with his gold cross bouncing in the tan hollow of his throat. God help the weak kicker who took the plate when Z was playing. If you were on his team, he would groan and curse and kick up clouds of dust in a general show of support; if you were on the other team, he would yell something sensitive like “Easy out!” and wave his team in close. I prayed not to be on the same team as Z Tedesco, but not because I couldn't handle his disgust. If I was on the opposing team, I could at least concentrate on practicing cartwheels with my friends in the outfield without any undue pressure.

Fast forward to the beginning of tenth grade: September, a Saturday night, the York High School Talent Show. Me, Hannah-and-Eric-Sommes, Katie Brennan, and Jessica Walkins (she'd replaced Cecilia, had an in-ground pool and a doomed obsession with Milli Vanilli) are sitting side by side on a gym bleacher dressed in head-to-toe fluorescent (it was cool then, really). I am more or less recovered from the Jack Wagner blow of 1984 and have dedicated my love life to real musicians. Noncelebrities. Musicians I could evaluate myself, without the interference of
TV Guide
or
People
magazine. Musicians I could actually see and touch and talk to and hopefully start kissing—fast—since Hannah-and-Eric had already made the ominous leap from second base to third.

In the front of the gym, under the scoreboard, a stagelike surface had been erected where the talent show's “talent” would be performing. The setup was kind of like a younger, larger, and more sober version of The Blue Room. The show would consist of a variety of acts—song, dance, circus, and other—and a winner who was determined by the “applause meter” (i.e., Mr. Farley the gym teacher, who shouted things like “Is that the best you can do, Panthers?!” and terrified us into clapping harder).

The talent show lineup that year was typically lame: a trio of girls perched on the edge of the stage with guitars and prairie skirts, gazing off over our heads and singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” twenty years too late; a sophomore juggler whose balls started rolling around the stage, prompting the entire crowd to dissolve into hysterics; Billy Crow doing skateboard tricks; the blond, pigtailed Henry twins tapdancing to “I Get a Kick Out of You”; a surprise entry by Cecilia Kim, plunking out “My Bologna Has a First Name” and “You Deserve A Break Today” from
The Big Book of Commercial Jingles;
a chubby, earnest tuba player; and a frightened freshman wafting around on stilts.

Then, just when the crowd was starting to get restless, out came Z. Or, I should say, Z appeared. He seemed to simply materialize on the stage, a stoic Italian god behind a drum set, encircled in a single pool of blue electric light that beamed down from the ceiling of a gym that was suddenly sunk in darkness. Z's hair was still jet black, but longer, with a bandanna wound around his forehead. His look: loose jeans, a tie-dyed T-shirt ripped off at the sleeves, a hoop in his left ear, a rose tattoo on his right bicep, and the old gold cross still glinting in the core of his throat.

Z raised his drumsticks in the air. He tapped them four times slowly, paused, closed his eyes, then let loose on that drum set like an uncaged beast. The gym seemed to draw a collective breath as Z slammed on the cymbal, banged on the bass, jammed and slashed and sweated in the center of a mash of disorganized noise (he would later call it “free form”) with arms flying, hair flipping, feet bare on the pedals. He closed his eyes and bit his lower lip, tendons leaping from his arms.

Naturally, the crowd went wild. Mr. Farley started blowing maniacally on his gym whistle, but the clamor quickly swallowed him up. Within minutes the whole gym was on its feet, stomping, moshing, dancing, chicken fighting. An invisible tech guy started blinking the blue light on and off. A sprinkling of lighters appeared in the upper reaches of the risers.

Z was a rock star.

 

I'm starting to think that everyone must have had one person they dated, early on—probably in the impressionable mush of adolescence—who was critical in forming their “look.” Defining their “image.” Cementing their “type.” After I saw Z Tedesco bring the house down, I went home and banished all fluorescent from my closet. I boxed up all two-toned jeans, and hid any shoe that involved jellied plastic. The next day I pooled my babysitting money, went to the mall, and invested in a wardrobe of blacks and grays, a splash of tie-dye, dark eye makeup, and a tube of gel to make my hair go flat, flatter, as flat as possible—the beginnings of the new me.

I wasn't the only girl at York High who was profoundly affected by Z's performance. On Monday, you could spot us a mile away. We were all wearing new T-shirts: solid black (for the tentative), tie-dye (riskier, but still pretty safe) or the tie-dye/band name combo (only for the truly brave). To wear a T-shirt with a specific band's name on it was a major commitment at this early stage, and I spotted a few misfires in the hallways—nice, nervous girls looking panicked and lost in too-big T-shirts with knives and roses and Megadeths sprawled across their chests.

I opted for the basic tie-dye-T-shirt-with-blue-jeans ensemble. This is not because I was afraid to commit to a band—I had worn a giant decal of Jack Wagner's face, for God's sake, had carried around an Official Rock Star Fan Club membership card; I was not a kid afraid of band commitment—I just wanted to bide my time. I was feeling fairly confident about my chances with Z, and didn't want to announce too much too fast. I was pretty sure I didn't look as nervous and conspicuous as the other Z-converts.

“Eliza!” Hannah exclaimed at lunch, when she took in the new me.

I'd arrived at our usual table, located securely in the center of the soph section of the caf, between the soccer/cheerleader table and the choir/drama table. To our left, soccer players and cheerleaders flirted en masse, the girls giggling and whispering, the boys cracking jokes and slapping low fives. To our right, the drama kids frequently burst into song—“Memories” or “Too Darn Hot!”—like some wannabe
Fame.
Once, they had attempted a choreographed number that culminated in lunch aides pulling Henrietta Meara off their table shouting, “I want to live forever!” Fortunately, with that kind of commotion, my friends and I usually attracted little notice.

“You look…different,” Hannah said, as I dropped my orange tray. She had her usual healthy brown bag of homemade lunch and I my Philly-fried cheesesteak bought with the three dollars Mom had handed me that morning.

I shrugged, scraping back a chair.

“I don't mean bad,” she amended. “Just, different.” She picked up a celery stick and gnawed it like a toothpick.

Eric Sommes, who had been sitting beside her scrawling in a notebook full of sigmas and pis, raised his head and surveyed my new look. “Wow,” he said, but it was an innocuous “wow.” Not like
“wow,
she's hot” or like “wow, you're
nuts!”
I could tell nothing from Eric's bland, nasal “wow” and unfortunately, he was the only male opinion at my disposal.

“Thanks, Eric,” I said, unfoiling my sandwich.

Then Katie Brennan arrived on the scene, decked out in striped leg warmers and a shirt with a rainbow spilling across the chest and arms. She plunked down her daily soft pretzel and Diet Coke (did Katie turn out to be a travel agent?) then looked at me and squealed: “Oh. My. God!”

Unlike Eric, Katie was not too cryptic. She was plainly horrified by the new me, but this was to be expected. One could argue this was actually a point in my favor. Katie was a slave to '80s fashions, a girl born ready for '80s fashions, bold and loud and leg warmed to the core.

“What happened to you?” she said, and started laughing so determinedly that soda spurted out her nose. Katie could make even the gross come off as cute and pink. “Eliza, what did you
do?”

I shrugged again, the picture of nonchalance. “It was time for a change,” was all I said, and took a cool bite of my heat-lamped cheesesteak.

“I
guess!”
Katie said, glancing at the soccer players/cheerleaders beside us. It had long been obvious to Hannah and me that Katie was just sitting with us until our proximity to the soccer players enabled her to merge, unnoticed, into their table. In the meantime, she certainly didn't want any of us hurting her chances at getting there. “You look like Pat Benatar!” she laughed, loud enough for every soph in the caf to hear.

I felt my cheeks burn. Coming from Katie, being compared to Pat was the gravest of insults and everyone in earshot knew it. Thankfully, before she could say anything else, the choir/drama gang, probably resentful the spotlight wasn't on them, launched into a full-table rendition of
Phantom.

Katie tossed her blond ponytail in the general direction of the soccer players. Then, satisfied she'd saved her reputation from near disaster, she launched into an overly loud recap of her latest conquest: a senior on the swim team. “I know he's like three years older than me, but it's perfect because he's really immature…”

Left alone, I fumed with my sandwich. To be honest, I wasn't too concerned about my friends' opinions. Now that the heat was off, I didn't mind being compared to Pat Benatar; in fact, I was secretly pleased. I'd already begun to realize that I wasn't like my friends, or my sister, or my mother, or most of my classmates for that matter. I “danced to the beat of my own drummer,” as Nanny would say. There was only one person whose opinion I cared about, and I knew where to find him.

The Quad: a square, stark fish tank of a place comprised of ashtray/trashcans, picnic tables, pockmarked benches and scraggly, unmowed patches of grass. The Quad was the physical hub of the high school, visible via window from the caf, the main lobby, the math wing, and the music hall. I guess “Quad” originally derived from “quadrangle,” though over the years the two words had lost all association. “Quad” had taken on an identity all its own, connoting all kinds of ominous, mysterious, and possibly illegal things.

The Quad's distinguishing characteristic was this: it was the only place in school where kids were allowed to smoke. As a result, the four-walled space was filled with crushed cigarettes, tie-dyes, tattoos, and miles of denim brewed together in a haze of gray. If they'd only had beer out there, it would have passed for a keg party. There was even a speaker system (from back in the day when the Quad was for general socializing, not just smoking) that played music audible only from outside. When the door to the Quad opened, the entire caf caught a scary, trippy snatch of Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or one of the other bands the Quad would pick apart for their yearbook quotes.

The kids who hung out there were officially called the Quadders: revered, and slightly feared. The Quadders were cool, but not the cheerleading, class-officiating, paint-your-face-blue-at-football-games kind of cool. They were
truly
cool, the kind of cool that defied school spirit. It wasn't that they actively protested things like Pajama Day and Backward Day and all the other self-conscious “days” designed to psych us up for Homecoming Weekend. They never scoffed outright at the Christmas Dance or the soft pretzel drive. Quadders seemed genuinely oblivious to these things, gliding through the hallways sleek as panthers (as opposed to Panthers, which covered the rest of us). They walked with poise, cigarettes behind their ears. They never tripped. They hardly ate. They rarely carried backpacks. They always cut gym.

I didn't know many Quadders in specific. None, actually. A handful of them always appeared in the final pages of the yearbook under “Other Graduating Seniors,” as if even the fact of graduation had escaped their notice. But I knew, for sure, Z would be out there. From the safety of our table, I scanned the Quad and found him: one foot on a bench, one foot on the ground, hair in ponytail, cigarette in hand, girlfriend-free, and—God help me—actually drumming on his thigh with his left hand. He was probably mentally composing as he stood there. In that moment, the phrase “dancing to the beat of my own drummer” reached new heights of symbolism as I stared at the boy who I knew was, without a doubt, my soulmate.