#year: 1983

[asktheaftonfamily]

Heyo how are you all doing??

Good!!

[motownfiction]

scallop

There are moments when Daniel wonders what the hell he’s been doing. Like tonight, as he lies in Gina Lumetta’s bed, all alone while she takes a very long shower. He tries not to think of that as an insult. Have sex with Daniel DeLuca, the quietest boy in the Class of ‘85, just to shower him off yourself and pretend like you didn’t. Come back for more in a week, a month, give or take how much attention you get from boys with letterman jackets. That’s how it’s gone from the very first night with the very first girl. And really, Daniel should be more used to it by now. The pendulum of desire and rejection. It surprises him every time it smacks him in the ass and lands him smack in the middle of an unfamiliar mattress or backseat.

Gina even went out of her way to assure him that it wasn’t because she was, like, ashamed to hook up with him or anything.

Really, she said as she rolled out of the bed without a second look at the boy by her side. If I wasn’t interested, do you think I would have put on “Up Where We Belong?”

Daniel snorts, still thinking about that line. If only Gina knew. In the past year, he’s hooked up six times to “Up Where We Belong.” It’s one of the most popular choices for popular girls, beating out even the likes of “Sexual Healing” and Yazoo’s “Only You.” As a matter of fact, Gina should know. Just last month, she played “Up Where We Belong” for him in the backseat of her LeBaron. He snorts again. Maybe she thinks it’s their song.

It’s all that assurance that makes Daniel want to get up and leave. He knows Gina won’t miss him, that she’ll just call up a friend and talk about what happened, that she’ll ask if someone more popular and less available (less willing) might be more interested in her now that it looks like she has her eye on other guys. That’s what they all do. Daniel is a stepping stone, in all senses of the metaphor.

But then, he spots her light blue nightgown on the floor, the one with the scallop edges on the very bottom. It looks just like a puddle, waiting for her to step back into it. And Daniel remembers how it felt to get her out of it … to pull both straps down one by one, to go slowly when she just wanted him to get it over with. It was a routine, to be sure, but it’s a routine Daniel is good at. It might even be the only thing he’s good at anymore.

It’s a reminder that for a second, someone wanted him enough to be vulnerable in front of him. It’s a reminder that maybe, one of these days, he’ll be vulnerable in front of one of them, too.

Is that not what it already is?

He hears the stream of Gina’s shower suddenly turn off, followed by the loud rushing of the rings on her shower curtain. For a split second, he thinks about getting ready to leave, but he can’t. It wouldn’t be right to leave her like she left him.

She appears in a stark white towel with a confused look on her face.

“Hey,” she says, “I thought you’d have somewhere else to be.”

Daniel’s heart drops a little into his gut.

“No,” he says. “I try not to, uh, do that.”

Gina smiles a little and crawls back into the bed.

“Good,” she says. “Because I was wondering if – like, if you’re really not busy – if we could maybe …”

She says a few things, but in all honesty, Daniel’s not listening. What does it matter?

Whatever it is Gina is asking for, he’s pretty sure he’s going to give it to her. Not because she means much to him. Not because he could see himself loving her.

But because he’s really not busy.

(part of @nosebleedclub june challenge -- day 5!)

[max-e-doodle]

Al Pacino.

Scarface 1983.

[gatespage]

Gates McFadden - The Edge of Night (1982)

Gates’ Scenes (x)

[kidsincdaily]

#1830 - "Gloria" (1983)

[eurovisionsongaday]

And at last, here’s our winner! Please all rise for this terrific number!

[thisdayinbaseballhistory-bl-blog]

January 31, 1983

Future Hall of Famer Tony Perez signs a one-year contract with the Phillies. The veteran first baseman will hit .241 appearing in 91 games in his only season with Philadelphia

source: nationalpasttime.com

[motownfiction]

vivisection

When he was little, Sam heard a lot of stories about teenagers in high school dissecting frogs in their science classes. His babysitter (the one he was in love with, or at least as much in love as a little kid can be) told him about how when she had to dissect a frog in school, she got a lady frog. Sam wasn’t sure why that mattered until she told him that she and her lab partner, a surprisingly squeamish football player, had to scrape out all the eggs by themselves. The visual never left Sam’s head. For a couple years, he was picturing scrambled eggs inside a frog. When he found out they really looked more like caviar, he almost lost his mind.

Somehow, though, no one remembered to tell him that you dissect dead frogs. Until the day he and his lab partner, a quiet girl with Coke bottle glasses, found themselves face-to-face with their frog, he was pretty sure he’d have to do a whole vivisection. For a second, he’s relieved. And then he sees the frog on the sterile plate in front of him. Cold. Lying there. Dead. All dead. No. Not even Brian May could fix this one.

Sam is pretty sure nothing should ever have to be dead. Nothing and no one. He’s not sure he sees the point. He can’t say that in a Catholic school, of course, where he’s supposed to look forward to death – so long as it’s natural, so long as you don’t steal God’s thunder (another phrase he’s probably not supposed to use – too Greek, too pagan). But what’s the point of being dead? What can you enjoy? What can enjoy you? He looks at that frog, and he knows. If that’s what life means, why would anyone give it?

He agrees to slice open the frog.

About a million eggs spill out of her guts.

(part of @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge -- day 9! i know how late that is, but please see my last text post for explanations, apologies, insecurities, etc.)

[cotillardcaps-blog]

[motownfiction]

swan

Steph and her mother don’t go on a lot of vacations. When Susie decided to send her only daughter to a Catholic school so she’d grow up in small classes surrounded by kids who probably wouldn’t be mean to her, she pretty much ruled out any hope of traveling. But once per summer, ever since Steph was five, they’ve gone for a day trip on Lake Erie. For Steph, it’s the best day of the summer.

And she knows Lake Erie isn’t much. It’s probably the ugliest and filthiest of all the Great Lakes. But when you live by one of the Great Lakes, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Even the shittiest one has its upsides. That’s how Steph feels today, sitting on the beach in her brand-new white bikini (the one she saved up for with Christmas money and part-time shifts as a hostess), listening to music on the Walkman her grandmother got her for her birthday last year. Life is good. Life is better than good.

She really needed this day trip. This summer more than any summer. Most days, she’s looking for an excuse to avoid Daniel just as much as she’s looking for an excuse to meet up with him. Today, though, she doesn’t have to think about that. She doesn’t have to think about the butterflies in her stomach when Daniel softly says hey. She doesn’t have to think about Sam’s big, beautiful, ignorant eyes. She’s hurting both of them.

But she’s not thinking about it.

She lies back on her scratchy old beach towel and lets the music fill her ears. It’s T. Rex, “Ride a White Swan,” a song that couldn’t possibly remind her of Daniel or Sam.

Except for the fact that Sam introduced her to Marc Bolan.

Except for the fact that Sam infuses every part of her day, even when he’s not around, even when she’s with Daniel.

But not now.

Ride it on out like a bird in the sky ways.

That’s how you do it.

(part of @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge -- day 4!)

[motownfiction]

as good as you'll get

Sadie feels insecure when she looks in the mirror, too.

She almost feels like she can’t talk about it. No, she definitely feels like she can’t talk about it. Lucy spends so much vulnerable time talking about all the things she doesn’t like about her body (not tall enough for massive boobs, not born to be willowy, teeth that stick out just a tad too far in her mouth). Sadie never gets to say any of the same things.

Because none of the same things apply. Sadie is five-foot-ten, tall enough to be a model in some circles. Lucy thinks that makes her beautiful, enviable, all these pretty words that Sadie wishes she was worthy of. It’s nice, sometimes, to be five-foot-ten. But it also means she’s taller than Daniel – noticeably taller than Daniel – and she’s never been sure of what to do with that.

And she is willowy. She was born that way. Naturally thin and spindly, a little like a flower, or so she tells herself when she wants to feel pretty. But it doesn’t matter. Because she’ll never have the curves that Lucy has, the look of a Marilyn, the thing that makes timeless pin-ups what they are. She’ll just be a ruler, blowing in the wind, not even in a cool, folksy, Dylan way.

Her teeth are straight, too. She never had braces. Just born with a perfect bite. All the Doyle kids were. They get it from their mother, who has never believed she’s anything but beautiful. Not a day in her life. But boys always compliment Lucy on her smile when she’s brave enough to really share it. They like her overbite. It makes her surprisingly cute for a bitch. At least, that’s what Nick Crosby said once, when Sadie wasn’t supposed to hear. Never mind that he was Sadie’s first kiss two years ago. Never mind that at all.

It doesn’t matter if Sadie’s looks are enviable to Lucy. It doesn’t matter if people call her beautiful, too. Sadie is sixteen years old, and when she sees herself, she sees nothing but a mistake. If only she’d inherited her mother’s unearned confidence. Then maybe she wouldn’t spend all morning in front of a mirror, picking herself apart like a bad poem.

This morning, she shakes her head at herself. She has a few hairs on top of her head that simply will not lay flat. Mom calls them baby hairs. Sadie thinks she’d rather die than have baby hairs at the age of sixteen. Is that who she is? Is she a baby forever? She sighs. She doesn’t have time for all these questions.

“This is as good as you’ll get,” she whispers to herself.

It’s the cry of a million girls all at once, usually so low and so sinister that only they can hear it … and only when they’re alone.

Sadie knows that. But for now – just now – this one is about her.

(part of @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge -- day 1! i know i'm once again starting off behind, but i hope to keep up kind of well again)

[motownfiction]

survivors of lust

Daniel feels Steph’s leg brush up against him in the backseat of his car. It’s not usually where they meet up, but today, it was all they had. Both of their mothers are home, and they have no intention of leaving. So, Daniel’s stuck in the car, like some kid who has to worry about getting caught, about anyone caring what he does. And sure, his mom always would have cared. She would have cared if she’d known about Melissa Kaminski, or Kim Campbell, or Vicky St. John, or anyone. But she didn’t have the time. Daniel’s not really interested in a retrospective lecture. He’ll take the car. An uncomfortable gear shift in all the wrong places is better than his mother’s judgment … anywhere.

Maybe it’s not his mother’s judgment he’s running from. Daniel doesn’t even want to think about the person who would judge him the most. More than that. Sam’s heart would break. He wouldn’t even say anything. Wouldn’t make a sound. He’d just walk away and forget he ever knew Daniel … forget they were ever best friends, if they were ever best friends. Daniel has always worried he’s second to Will. He shakes his head. Now is not the time to feel sorry for himself … not the time to blame Sam’s preferences for Daniel’s damn-near adultery.

Is it still adultery if you’re all sixteen and unmarried? Daniel doesn’t know. All these words he used to think only applied to women … he feels them now, harder than he ever thought possible. When he’s not with Steph (or another girl, though there haven’t been any of those all summer), Daniel spends most of his time thinking about himself as bad. Bad for staying out all night, bad for waking up in different girls’ beds all the time, bad for sneaking out of the house and back in when he has school the next morning.

He looks over at Steph, whose eyes are glassy, likely with the same guilt and regret. Daniel exhales. The two of them are survivors of lust, and they know they should stop. They never should have started, and Daniel is bad for having gone after her. But she was in his head, and she would not come out. Now … she still won’t leave. They know they should stop.

It’s just that they haven’t yet.

Steph’s leg brushes up against Daniel’s again, and he has all the same thoughts in a different order.

(part of @nosebleedclub february challenge -- day 21!)

[motownfiction]

maraschino cherries

Lucy is stellar with words. She can spell them without seeing them, she can rattle off etymologies like song lyrics, and she always has the right adjective for a situation. Back in fifth grade, the popular kids called her The Thesaurus, and even though it was supposed to be an insult, Lucy wore it with pride. Damn right she’s The Thesaurus. She has a word for everything.

Except for the way she feels when she looks at Will.

She figured out – nay, admitted to herself – she had romantic feelings for him last year, in ninth grade, shortly before her fifteenth birthday. But it was different then. It was about wishing she could peck his lips before and after school, about wanting to dance with him to whatever shitty pop songs they play at school dances, about having someone to call my boyfriend and watching while other people got jealous. She wanted to go to the movies or out to dinner with Will and just Will, not all the Pisces, and she wanted it to mean something. Last year, it was all about the romance. If her feelings had been food, they’d have been heart-shaped cookies with pink sanding sugar. It all made sense.

It’s been sixteen days since Lucy’s sixteenth birthday, and that’s just not how she feels anymore. It’s not that she’s over Will. Far from it, actually. She’s thinking about him even more. When Will turned sixteen two days ago, it was like she couldn’t stop looking at him. Like he looked like a man to her. Like she just wanted to grab him by the collar, lead him down into that basement bedroom of his, and explain how she’s been feeling. It’s not cute anymore. It’s like agony. She can only describe it in similes and metaphor. It’s fire. It’s hunger. It’s being too full and being too cold. It’s every extreme depending on the day, and it is a parasite. If she could get rid of it, she would. Whatever this feeling is, it’s distracting. Last week, when Lucy was up in her bedroom trying to study for a French test the next day, she had to shut the book because she couldn’t stop thinking about when Will wore that black t-shirt to her birthday dinner. So what if it was the end of February, and it was cold? It was like he knew it made him look good. Like he knew it would haunt Lucy for weeks to come. She got a 95% on that test, but she knew she should have earned a perfect score. She probably would have, too, if she hadn’t thought about Will in his black t-shirt right in the middle of the exam. She foolishly circled the wrong letter in the multiple choice section, and she foolishly turned in her test before she could double check her answers. Thinking about Will seemed more important than conjugating savoir.

Right now, she’s sitting across from Will at the diner. She’s drinking a cherry Coke and biting her straw with incredible force. All she can do to fight it off. Will and Sam are singing “I Can See for Miles” in the most annoying voices possible, but Lucy does not care. That feeling is back, and this time, it feels like a stick of dynamite where it should never be. The rest of the world seems to spin on, but how could it? How could it when this girl is a bomb, and this boy is the detonator? And why won’t anyone else notice?

All Lucy can do is stab at the maraschino cherries at the bottom of her glass and make them explode.

(part of @nosebleedclub february challenge -- day 10!)

[motownfiction]

the good twin

Sam knows he’s not the good twin.

He doesn’t get good grades, he doesn’t wake up early on the weekends, he doesn’t do chores without being asked, and he isn’t thinking about college. Mom was so proud when Sadie announced she was thinking about college in the sixth grade. Something about preparing for her future and not putting her eggs in one basket. She even gave Sam a look when she said that. Four years later, he still doesn’t really understand what Mom meant. What basket did she think Sam was banking on? It’s not like he has dreams other than being alive and loving it that way. Maybe she should look at Charlie. He’s the one who wants to be a concert pianist, and he’s never even met another one to give him an in.

He’s sure this isn’t much of a secret, but sometimes, Sam confesses it to himself, anyway.

He likes that he’s the bad twin.

When you’re the good twin, you have to look over your shoulder. Let Mom know when you’re starting your homework (and when you’re finished with it). Let Dad know you’re interested in joining his business, in some way or another, if he’ll have you. Always having something appropriate to say at dinner. Never avoiding serious conversations with jokes and silly songs. When you’re the good twin, everything is serious. Everything can be used against you.

Not when you’re the bad twin.

When you’re the bad twin, no one looks. No one listens. You can turn your music up as loud as it can go, and no one will ever ask you to turn it down. Not even when your perfect brother, made of gold, is trying to finish the term paper he procrastinated (again). Sam can have the “Immigrant Song” blaring from his speakers in the basement while Charlie tries to study upstairs, and it’s like their mother can’t hear him. When it’s about Charlie, then it’s about Charlie. Nothing else will ever exist.

Sam lies on the couch in the basement, listening to Wish You Were Here. He turns up the title track so loud, it makes the whole house shake.

No one says a word.

We’re just two lost souls swimmin’ in a fishbowl year after year …

No one but David Gilmour.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 6!)

[motownfiction]

creak

Daniel spends a lot of time thinking about how he’s going to sneak into the house.

It’s a Tuesday night, technically a Wednesday morning, and Daniel has been up to no good. This afternoon, as he was grabbing his backpack to leave school, Vicky St. John approached him and said that Nick Crosby was out of town at a funeral, so if Daniel wanted to come over to her place, he could.

Daniel didn’t really hesitate. He’s not in love with Vicky or anything. She’s pretty, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. But last time they were together, it was good. Good enough to make Daniel forget about everything else in his ridiculous life. He followed her out to her car, and he’s been with her ever since. Not really talking. Not at all. But it was better than helping Lola with her pre-algebra homework and cleaning up the kitchen for his mother, who’s always too tired to clean up anything after a long day at work.

It’s not his mother’s fault, of course. Dad left her, and when he left, so did most of the DeLucas’ money. Daniel picks up a lot of the slack around the house. It’s the least he can do. But sometimes … he just wants to forget about it. Just wants a night to be a teenager, like all of his friends are allowed to be.

Like tonight.

He sits on the porch, half past midnight, and wonders what he’s going to say to his mother. She’d probably believe that he was hanging out with Sam and Will all night. They used to do shit like that all the time, before Daniel started having sex (and then Sam started having sex, and Will didn’t), so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Daniel could say he and the guys were out at Abby’s Diner all night, loading the jukebox up with endless plays of “T.B. Sheets,” like Sam loves to do when people piss him off. Mom would definitely believe that.

Daniel takes a deep breath and unlocks the door. The floorboards creak under his shoes as he makes his way to his bedroom, expecting his mother to stop him at any second.

But she doesn’t.

At first, he’s worried. His heart in his throat as he opens the door, his imagination suddenly more vivid than it’s ever been.

But there she is. Tucked in bed. Fast asleep. Snoring, even.

Daniel bows his head and closes the door. He backs up into his room, kicks off his shoes, and stands in the middle of the floor. Just breathing.

He thinks he would have liked it better if she interrogated him.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 3!)

[motownfiction]

shed

Any and all trips to Uncle Jim’s house are terrible. It’s a simple fact of life. Blair Warner is beautiful, Jo Polniaczek is athletic, and Uncle Jim’s house sucks. He doesn’t let his kids drink Coke, he never plays any good music, and the TV is always playing football games, even when football is out of season. Sam can barely stand going over there. It’s not like going to hang out with Uncle Roy, who plays music even Sam has never heard and always lets them eat ice cream.

But one thing Sam does like at Uncle Jim’s house is the shed.

No one ever goes out there, especially not in January when it’s so cold, you can watch yourself make consonants and vowels on the wind. Uncle Jim sometimes goes out for a shovel, but Sam always makes sure he’s done with it before he walks inside. There’s nothing really special about it. Just that it’s there, and it’s quiet.

No one would suspect it, but Sam likes the quiet. Craves it, even, sometimes. He doesn’t need it all the time, and he prefers a room with music in it. That’s another thing wrong with Uncle Jim’s main house (and his car). He never plays any music. Aunt Laura sometimes has the radio on when she drives, but she never flips to a different station. Very different than driving around with Sam or his mother, who change the station in the middle of songs they like. Scared they’re going to miss something.

Sam is fifteen, and his life is one loud rush.

But not in the shed. In the shed, everything is quiet. And all that hurrying, all that panic, all that feeling like he’s running to catch up with time … it disappears. He can hear himself think. A novel thing.

And he thinks about colors. Angry red polka dots become calm blue waves. He has to laugh at the cliché, but he knows clichés hold up for a reason, like the bite in his self-deprecating jokes – the kind he usually makes around Christmas time, when he feels lonely for a reason he can never describe.

He visits the shed early in the new year, in the midst of a grand jeté toward the precipice of his sixteenth birthday. Everything is loud around sixteen. The sound of rumbling engines.

Sam hears none of that in the shed, where no one is looking for him, because no one knows where he is.

He inhales the freezing air, and he is good.

(part of @nosebleedclub december challenge -- day 26! i would have had this up sooner, but i got super sick for a day)