Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 10 No. 4 | Winter 1988-89 (Twin Cities/Minneapolis-St. Paul) /// Issue 4 of 7 /// Master# 45 of 73

ONE DAY ME AND DEENA WERE SITTING up ON THE PORCH WAITING FOR OUR REQVEST TO BE PLAYED ON"KOLORFUL KOL.CH.95 ", WHEN WE SAW ALL THE BOYS WALKING IN A LINE THIS CERTAIN WAY-r IT WAS PIMP WALKING AND YOU HAD TO ] PRACTICE AT IT TO BE ANY GOOD. EVERY 8oY PRACTICED IT ALL SUMMER ESPECIALLY IF THEY MADE A GOOD PLAY IN KICK BALL, IF YOU DID A GOOD ANYTHING HOW you SHOWED IT WAS 8Y A PIMP WALK. IF A GIRL DID IT TH0V6H, THE BEST PIMP WALKER OF ALL WAS GARY KINOHARA WHICH MADE EVERYgODYMAD THEY SAID IT DON'T LooKRifiHT HAVING A JAPANESE PIMPING, BUT EVERYONE KNEW HE WAS BEST BECAUSE H/HEN HE STARTED DOING IT WE A L L WOULD JUST NATURALLY SHUT up IN AWE OF HiM. BUT NOBODY WOULD ALLOW HIM TO LEAD THE UNE-YOU COULDN'T WA tK IND NO JAPA/UESE-TX^ WHERE THE BOYS WERE HEAPED WAS up To THE SCHOOL AND WHEN THEY GOT ONTO THE PLAY FIELD THEY SAW ANDREA AND HER BAD SISTER CAROL AND SO THEY REALLY STARTED P IP ING HARD AND THEY SAID A TERRI BLE CHANT ABOUT ANDREA. . OOH -AM. Z JAI 0 OOF ANDREA . WHAT AR.e\ THEY TALKIN' AS'*71 ’ i WHY ONTCHA COMPERE SO iiCOOH-AW OOH-AU ‘Mulh1 > I KiN Kick YOUR BUTTS, smelled and you had to crawl, so it was the perfect place to look at dirty pictures. One of the most exciting things that almost everyone had at their house was the Tijuana Brass album called “Whipped Cream and Other Delights.” The lady on the cover KILLED me. She made my pants itch. So what if I was a girl? Girls can like naked ladies. The ladies who we liked most were Marilyn Monroe, Annette Funicello, Edie Adams, The Starkist Tunafish Mermaid, Paula Prentiss, Agent 99, Bridgitte Bardot, Barbie, Bewitched, The Noxzema Girl, Ingrid Stevens, Betty and Veronica, Elke Sommer, I Dream of Jeannie, Diana Rigg, Raquel Welch, Catwoman, Honey West and the lady who had dreams in her Maidenform bra. In our library at school they had the National Geographic. A lot of pages were ripped out already but sometimes you would find a good one, usually of Africa Ladies, and some spaz would write a balloon coming out of her mouth saying something like “Feel my titties every boy in the world.” A lot of times you would have books with people with weiners drawn on them like they were peeing or tits on the ladies, especially in history books and spelling books. Like in mine was George Washington standing on a boat with his arm up and someone put on a dinger and lines coming from it like he was peeing on the heads of his men. In the sixth grade the girls saw a film called “Your Special Day.” Our ugly teacher, Miss Burnside, who thought she was the Queen of Everything because she wore a fall and a mini skirt and played “Where have all the flowers gone” on the guitar while sitting on a stool so you could see up to where she stopped shaving her legs which gave me nightmares, passed out these little booklets to put in our underwear drawers at home. The main rule before the film started was, anyone who laughed would be sent to the office. As far as I could tell from the movie, one day I would wake up and find a red flower in my underpants and that’s when I would be a woman. By seventh grade in home ec we had been hearing that our bodies were going through a lot of fascinating changes. Hardly anyone I knew could tell and everyone was thinking that there was something wrong with them and this pretty much set the tone of the next six years. Everyone thought they were ugly. Everyone thought they were too fat. Everyone had one tit different from the other. Our home ec teacher would terrify us with information like how the dentist could tell when you were on your period, and by taking our bust measurements and writing it down. She told us she was exactly like we were when she was our age and that made some of us feel sort of like crying. Our home ec class looked out onto the boy’s playfield and everyone wanted the sewing machines on that side of the room so we could watch the guys and think about them wearing Jock Straps. We got Bras and they got Jock Straps. Like everything was suddenly going out of control and your mom had to buy you something to stop it. Nearly everybody got stuck with a nickname and your only hope was it wasn’t somethig like “Lardo” or “The Smell.” There was this one girl who got named “Kleenex” because she actually did stuff her bra. Now, a lot of girls did it at home just to see how it would look, but only Earlene would try to fake people out with it at school. She packed them in and they stuck way out and aimed right at you. The goal of her life was to be on TV with Dean Martin as a Golddigger. She wore a fall that wasn’t even the right color and practically everything she said was a lie. It was weird. You could tell she was wearing her mom’s shoes. What kind of mom would let her daughter go around like that? Her nail polish was always caked up on the sides. She wore tons of toilet .water. How come nobody stopped her? How come nobody said, “Hey, Earlene, cut it out, you’re being a spaz”? Not even the teachers did anything. For the talent show she did a tap dance in a big ugly bathing suit covered with fringe. We couldn’t even hardly look. The music was “Gold- finger.” Pretty soon she started going with this guy from Fort Lewis. A guy with a car and she was only a ninth grader. I think she was originally from North Dakota where they are different. By then we all knew we were naked ladies. We knew it and the boys knew it and some of the girls started being called sluts and some of the girls started being called prudes. Around then you had to be very careful about looking at Playboys because you might be a lesbo by accident. It was like when you sit by a high window you’re scared you might just throw yourself out. If you looked at them it was alone or if it was with your girlfiend you had to say “ I’m sure” a lot and make fun of the girls, how stupid they were, then throw the stupid magazine down, make your eyes into slits and blow air between your teeth hatefully. And under NO circumstances would you look at them with boys. Ever. The main reason I felt nervous about those magazines was that when I looked at them I could tell that I was really weird looking and was probably going to be forever. By high school you were already in the habit of automatically hating the really pretty girls and automatically giving up on all the cute guys. The pretty girls were really a pain. The ones the guys thought were so stacked. I remember this one girl, this cheerleader, we all hated her. Just the way the guys would say her name and look at each other was enough to make you sick. Scummy guys. Creeps. Guys she would never touch in a million years would sit there staring at her and drooling all over their braces at the games. Big Deal is all I have to say about her. Lots of stuff got passed around. First people said she was a prude. That she wouldn’t even let a guy french. Then they said she was a tease and a self-centered bitch and a snob. Then someone said she was an easy lay, real horny and hard-up. Someone else said they saw rubbers in her purse. Someone said she kept FDS in her locker. The main thing was that all the girls hated her guts. Just because you are stacked doesn’t mean you can control the world. Some girls were already getting stretch marks. You could see it in P.E. Some girls were still flat and they had been flat for too long and they were going to stay flat. A couple of girls looked like they were getting a moustache. Some girls started taking The Pill and got fat. Some girls got fat without doing anything. Some girls with big ones were already hanging way down. It seemed like nearly everyone was deformed without ever even having a chance to be normal. Every girl developed a way to stand naked in front of the mirror so that she looked the most perfect. Like if you had a big stomach you sucked it in. If you had little tits you could squeeze them in with your upper arms and make cleavage. You could stand on your toes and have long legs. Tilt your head, sway your back, hold your breath, clasp your hands behind your head and smile. If you have ugly teeth, keep your mouth shut. Bat your eyes. Hope no one walks in on you. By then the girls in Playboy were clearly the enemy. They were going to get all the guys and we’d never get any guys, not even the creeps, and even if we ever did get a yuy, they could take him away from us just like that. Because every man in the world would always want them way more than they would ever want us because they were beautiful and we were ugly. It put us in a bad mood for the next 10 years. This piece is part of a performance Lynda Barry gave for the CSQ at the Guthrie Theater last spring. Lynda has just published a novel The Good Times Are Killing Me, and is presently working on a play. The illustrations are from Fun House and part of the text is out of Naked Ladies, Naked Ladies. Designer Gail Swanlund is a regular contributor to the CSQ. Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1988-89 19

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