Diary Friday

Through the haze of illness, I have pulled out the following journal entry, as the next installment of Diary Friday.

It is one of those entries which makes me glad I keep a journal. For the most part, my journal is filled with sadness, depression, what worries me, what hurts me … It’s where I work out stuff. But occasaionally, I will jot something down, a happy goofy memory … something I probably would NOT remember otherwise … and it’s a little blessing to re-visit it.

This is an entry from my senior year in college. It describes a night out bowling with a bunch of good friends, all of whom were in the theatre department.

Dec. 29, 1988

Susan had a party. At first I didn’t want to go. Haven’t been feeling very rowdy or social lately. But I went. All the way up to Pawtucket. I think it was so nice of her to ask me. I like her a lot. She has the cutest place. Fell totally in love. It was Mitchell, Jackie, David W., David S., Tony, a guy named Russell, Susan and me.

Cheeses galore, veggies, crackers, bread, Brie, wine.

Great music. Looked at Edwin Drood slides.

Then – on a whim – we all bundled up and went bowling. And had THE BEST TIME. We went to this Bowlarama in scary Pawtucket. Someone was murdered in Pawtucket this very morning. It’s a tough place.

Let me paint the picture for you. I cannot believe that we were not mugged.

It was League night. There were also a lot of tough teenagers, being sullen and hostile. There’s nothing more hostile than a teenager from Pawtucket. Then, the 8 of us arrive. Theatre geeks. Loud. Flamboyant. And INTO bowling, no matter how much we sucked.

Susan – in a bright red dress with little black dogs over it, and shiny black spandex tights. She got gutter ball after gutter ball after gutter ball. It was extremely funny.

We are not normal people. We don’t just bowl. We don’t just do anything. We throw our hearts into it. After every spin, there would be a production number of some kind. Screams. Hugs. Sobs. (Jackie cried, once.) Susan kept standing up there, stock still, for at least a minute, after her 10th straight gutter ball. She was struck dumb. Immovable. Susan finally got a spare, and the resulting celebration – she had a FIT. David W. raced up there to whirl her around.

Jackie – wearing silky grey pants, and a sweater. Glamorous as always. Offhandedly tossing the ball into the lane. Her pattern? Her first try – gutter. Second try – she would knock down about 8. And her last try? Gutter. She had no set up, no carry thru. She just stood up there and whipped the ball down wildly. And she would get really sullen after gutter balls. Didn’t want to talk about it, or discuss it. She also cried for real when she got a spare.

Me – I had my hair pulled back. I had on huge hoop earrings, a silky white shirt, tight jeans. My setup would be – I would shake my ass in everyone’s face and then I would very very seductively toss the ball down the lane. Such a jackass. And after all that, I would basically seductively toss the ball straight into the gutter. It took me 2 strings to warm up. I, too, got frustrated after gutters and would stomp back to my seat. Quite bratty. I also flirted madly with the guy in charge. He loved me and came over to keep score for me and Jackie. I strolled around like I owned the place.

Mitchell – totally in black, with Joan Crawford-like jacket with shoulder pads bigger than mine. He is so handsome. It kills me. Especially with his hair short. His face is fantastic. It makes me laugh. He is also a FUNNY bowler. I now want to go bowling with him every day. Cigarette hanging out of his mouth, seriously tallying up the scores, barking funny comments out of the side of his mouth. He is a serious bowler too. He would do many wild Carlton Fisk-like gesticulations to try to change the direction of the ball. Then, he’d invariably realize how ridiculous he looked, glance around to see if anyone had noticed. And of course we ALL had noticed, because we were all looking at him. We laughed explosively. “I was trying to make it turn,” Mitchell would say … like he really had to explain.

David S – Pretty normal. (Looking, anyway.)
Russell – also pretty normal as a bowler. These two seemed tame to me.

And then – there was –

Tony. Tony. Tony. Okay. Tony had on a white tuxedo shirt, black tuxedo pants with a black satin stripe down the side, matching purple and blue paisley cummerbund and bowtie, and then – a shimmering purple velvety velour smoking jacket with black satin lapels. And bowling shoes. I didn’t even realize how hilarious he looked until halfway thru our time there. They had a bar and Tony went up and ordered us all beers, and he came back with a loaded-down tray, and in the blazer, and tuxedo pants, he looked like a bizarre Bowlarama waiter.

God, I love my friends. “We might be laughing a bit too loud … but that never hurt no one…”

Tony was a wild bowler. Sometimes right on the money, and sometimes he would whip it, with total conviction, right into the gutter. He took none of it seriously. He would laugh after every gutter ball. Hysterically. Something about gutter balls (other people’s gutter balls) are extremely funny. So there we all were, holding our beers, and pointing at Tony, laughing uproariously.

Then – David W. What a creature. What a piece of work. He is the most riotous person I know. First of all, he looked like a guido from hell – gold chains, flashy open shirt, pleated pants … I just cannot laugh hard enough to satisfy how funny he is. He would walk up there ultra-confident and arrogant, with that funny deadpan TOTALLY serious look on his face, picking up a ball jauntily as though he were Mr. Pro, doing this magnificent sweeping setup, sliding to his knees as he let the ball go, and then the ball would careen right into the gutter. It happened to him so many times. And his face! It was all Mr. Macho – Yeah, I meant to do that … big deal … When he would get a strike or a spare, he would do a mad Solid Gold dancer dance routine, or he would whirl around to face us, leaping and bounding, like it was the World Series. He busted up Susan mercilessly about her gutter balls, making fun of her, and then he would go up there and immediately get one … Every time the two of us would end up up there together, he would come onto me like a madman, distracting me. “Hey baby … what are you doin’ later? How you doin’, baby? Come here often??”

He is out of control. And it is all totally sincere.

We were two very noisy lanes, and the League kept giving us dirty looks. We had become their enemies.

The punks next to us were 15-year-old tough guys … and they just did not know what to do with David W. They could not take their eyes off of him. They could not believe what they were seeing. They were dumbfounded.

David was dressed like a Cranston guido, with the pinkie rings, and the open shirt, but he was behaving like a MANIAC. He was DISCO dancing at the end of his lane.

So these kids were gaping at him, literally slack-jawed, and they kept muttering to each other, “Faggot. That guy is such a faggot. Look at that guy. What a fag.” It was all “fag fag fag fag”.

The funniest thing is that David is the most viciously heterosexual guy in our group – he just happened to be out of control – so they called HIM a fag – Meanwhile, there is Tony strolling around in purple velour and paisley, and Mitchell strolling around in shoulder pads and penny loafers. And Tony and Mitchell really are “fags”! But no – the teenagers latched onto DAVID as a “fag”.

After they left, I told Mitchell and David what had gone on, how they had kept calling David a “fag”. Mitchell automatically assumed (poor thing) that the dudes had been harassing him. For some reason, he has been harassed constantly this year. It makes me see red. But I said, reassuringly, “No! They were calling David a fag!”

And the three of us exploded. David just LOVED it. “Me?? I love it!”

It was just so ironic – Tony sashays by in velour, and the kids don’t say a word.

Tonight there was a roaring wind, and shaggy clouds in the night sky, with bright crystal-clear starry sky, in all the rifts between the clouds – a moon that seems to half-fade into darkness. I loved the sky tonight. All of us going outside to pile into cars to go bowling … we had to stop, and stare up at the sky. It demanded our attention. Susan was so cute, and Parisian, in her black coat, red scarf, and black beret, gasping up at the sky in admiration and awe. It was shiveringly cold. Because of the amazingly strong wind, and all of those clouds – it’s a very uncanny sight to see white clouds at night. It was a spectacle. And the clouds seemed low to me – torn apart, and hurrying by – and behind them, actually overwhelming them, was the vast brilliant wintry cosmos.

We all were struck quite dumb by it, there on the freezing scary Pawtucket sidewalk.

This entry was posted in Diary Friday. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Diary Friday

  1. Betsy says:

    are you still frightened by the streets of Pawtucket?

  2. jackie says:

    oh my god!

Comments are closed.