1980 – 1981

MAY — and I am now 11 years old. I was watching Walter Cronkite the other night do a story on Tony Orlando & Dawn’s hit “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” in relation to the ongoing Iran Hostage crisis. I have to admit I thought it was Tony, Orlando & Dawn. Why does Tony Orlando get to use his first AND last name but not Dawn? What is that all about? Susan is reading a lot — she’s got those burn out friends but she’s a very advanced reader. She gave me her dog eared copy of Camus’ “The Stranger.” I gotta admit, I didn’t totally get it. My birthday was okay. I had a pool party. It’s just that I really don’t like it here. The kids at my school are mean to each other. I blame the heat.

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JUNE — Mom and Dad truly need to get a divorce. So they had this big blow out fight two days after Susan’s birthday and dad decided he was leaving. This was like 9 or 10 PM and was SO DRUNK but he was leaving. To go where? I have no idea. Anyhow, he got in his TR-7 convertible (a very cool car that I want) and was pulling away when my mom LEAPT onto the luggage rack . He drove down the street with her screaming her head off with all the neighbors pulling up lawn chairs to watch the show. It was crazy. My mom out there in her satin robe and gold lame bedroom slippers hanging onto the back of his car trying to… stop him from leaving? Why? Everyone’s parents are divorced now. What’s the big deal?

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JULY — We got in the car, mom’s car — dad only has room for one passenger in his car — all four of us. Dad decided he wanted to drive from Miami to Key West. We went all the way down there with him chain smoking Kools the whole time and not willing to stop for ANYTHING and when we got to Key West we turned around and drove home. Five hours. Went down and back. I have no idea what that was about. Was there something we were supposed to see? The southernmost part of the United States? It’s just a beach, so what?

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AUGUST — We got in the car, mom’s car and drove to Sea World. Dad was super pissed at Susan for “poking her lips out.” She has an attitude according to him and so his solution is to yell at her. For whatever reason my mom and sister don’t understand that you have to fake being happy around my dad or he will scream at you or hit you. I hide everything about myself from my dad. I’m the fakest, fake kid with zero problems, personality and opinions when I’m around him. But this what it’s like with an authoritarian patriarch. You have to learn to be invisible/agreeable. I never know if he’s going to be calm or explode in an alcoholic rage. He doesn’t travel as much as when I was a kid. Apparently he’s in trouble at work for something.

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SEPTEMBER — SIXTH GRADE. They built a new school over the summer and now I am in a brand new building. I like it a lot more than my old school which was super 50’s and weird. We even have an art room and a music room. There aren’t any unairconditioned portables like at my previous hell-hole of a school. Still the same, mean, bratty, hyper sexualized children but at least it’s physically better. We watched a film strip about Plato’s prisoners in the Cave narrated by Orson Wells (the Paul Masson guy). It was amazing. I was really into it and after it was over the other kids did not get it at all. I kept trying to explain that it’s better to know the truth than to live in a lie and they just didn’t get it.

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OCTOBER — My dad’s whole family died in a plane crash. My uncle James and aunt Jimmy along with their son were in a chartered plane in Wyoming and it hit a downdraft and crashed. My dad is in Oklahoma with my mom attending their funeral. Susan and I are with a friend of my mom’s for the week. It’s really weird. I remember hanging out with them one summer in an RV and now they’re all dead.

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NOVEMBER — Dad is staying in Oklahoma to take over my uncle’s oil company. He says we’re going to move to Oklahoma but mom is crying all the time and she says that we’re not moving to Oklahoma — rather dad is leaving us. WOW! I hope that’s true! That would be amazing. Fingers crossed! My mom though – she’s so upset about it and I guess I understand but she just got a get out of jail free card. As a bribe, dad got me and Susan our own phone lines so we can call him whenever we want. Ha ha! I don’t want to call him but sure, a fake 15 minute call twice a month is easy enough if I get a free phone out of it.

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DECEMBER — So dad came home for Christmas. yay. They were acting like nothing was different and we were supposed to pretend that we’re moving to Oklahoma sometime next year but I’m not an idiot. Mom’s still crying all the time plus he was here for like three days before they were scream fighting again. Dad felt bad about it all so he says we’re getting cable next month. He likes running my uncle’s oil company. We’ve been in Florida a year now and it still sucks.

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JANUARY 1981 — We watched the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in school today and as soon as he was sworn in the Iranians released the hostages. It was so weird. No one said anything about it. Like, why today? What was it? Did they do it because they’re afraid of Reagan? I’m so confused by the whole thing and none of my teachers could talk about it. My mom didn’t have any answers either but she’s just thrilled that the president is a Republican. Is that really the only thing that matters? The guy strikes me as kind of a dummy. Plus he gutted the school system in California when he was governor and I’m pretty sure he’s going to start WWIII. So why would someone vote for that?

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FEBRUARY — there was a huge scandal in my school. Our principal was busted for selling cocaine out of his office to the teachers. Holy smokes. I told my mom about it and she didn’t believe it. But the police were there and then a bunch of the teachers got in their cars and drove off and that was it. Like seriously, just got up and left. My former 5th grade teacher was one of the teachers who took off. Fortunately my current teacher isn’t a drug addict so she stuck around. She was really freaked out about the whole thing. DEA agents were all over the school and we had to stay locked in our classrooms while they went around searching for drugs. She put on Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” and taught us the Electric Slide until we were allowed to go home.

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MARCH — My principal was given a warning and allowed to come back to school. We’re not allowed to talk during lunch anymore. He yelled at us and told us that we’d be expelled if we talked during lunch or disrespected any of the teachers. Most of them came back except for a few who went to the Schick Center to deal with their cocaine addiction. I told my mom about this and she told me I was being dramatic. At least she’s not talking about how she wishes my dad would come home from Oklahoma. She’s going to quit her job as a nurse and get her real estate license. She said that a bunch of the gay nurses at her hospital have gotten cancer and that “something’s coming” She wants to get a new career and get out of health care because it’s too dangerous.

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APRIL — Remember how we had this new school building with no portables and an art room and a music room? Yeah, so they brought 50 portables onto the playground and doubled the number of students at our school in one day. Also art and music are cancelled. Apparently Ronald Reagan slashed funding for schools and so Florida is shutting down as many of them as they can and just doubling up on classroom size. We got a bunch of even meaner and more vicious kids from all the surrounding areas. Mostly older neighborhoods with more poor families. They live in those creepy 1950’s boxes with bars on every window. I’m thinking about changing my name to “Faggot” because that’s all anybody calls me now.