Hypnotized by the wholesomeness of what had come before, I couldn’t relate to being cool. The group threw a party at my house— the larger one, on Harrison Avenue in Glenside. The lines were clearly drawn— it was my house, but it was their party. The night of the party, I felt misplaced. I was in, but in such a way that I was supposed to know the special coordinates of just how I was in, and also the coordinates of what I’d failed to achieve yet. If I was in all the way, which I was not, it would’ve been my party too. All these divisions and precisions, amidst ten and eleven-year-olds, left me with a feeling of weariness. I didn’t understand why a group like this had to be so structured, so sculpted, or why competition and backbiting had to be so fierce. Mythology bothered to attach itself to Harrison Avenue— one of the top kids, an ultimate arbiter of coolness, locked himself in the den bathroom, pissed at a flirtation which was developing. I stayed on the crest of the wave, playacting like everyone else. The drama coalesced in a series of heated confrontations, in both den spaces. I was there to register who was messing with who. Yet it wasn’t right. It was all hammed up nonsense about consolidating a pecking order, who had authority to say what to whom. A natural libertarian, I chafed against the Victorian constraints of social discipline and propriety being imposed. It was no way for an eleven-year-old who was free-spirited, punkish, not tethered to any masts, and unimpressed by tethered-to-the-mast lifestyles, to live. A comb disappeared permanently from the upstairs den bathroom. Another arbiter kid put on some of my father’s boxing equipment, and cracked a poster’s glass case. The dour portion of the Township, and the attendant School District, would soon find out a disappointing truth— I had no allegiance to staying in this particular ring. I would just as soon fly free, and not worry about the Machiavellian manipulations of a bunch of pre-adolescents, pumped full of illusions and primed by fanged parents. The sense that this party would or could be the highlight of my young life was pure tosh. The drifting away, here, Roberta notwithstanding, would be sweeter than the living through. Fare thee well. So: I saw through what I saw through, I couldn’t articulate it but I tried, and because I tried they called me a fool. I was a fool for caring and wanting to share and thinking that everything should be spoken out loud: real. I was a fool for being awkward when I should’ve been confident and confident when I should’ve been awkward. I kept trying to keep up for a while, I wore Benetton and Ton-Sur-Ton, I wore a blue and pink Swatch, I had more parties, but still it was all wrong, wrong for me, wrong to have my mouth forced shut by cool protocol, or any protocol at all. I was an artist, before I was an artist.
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