Coming of Age & Junk

I came of age in either the summer of ’95 or the summer of ’96. I don’t really remember. I wasn’t the best at writing things down. Also, after so many years, all of the 90s start to blur for me. Because old age. But there are bits and pieces that will always be fresh in my mind. Moments, if not dates, are always there.

The reason I pick one of those two summers is because those were the summers I spent with my aunt & her boyfriend & his family- daughter London and son Kevin- in Milwaukee. That summer was filled with nothing but swimming & racquetball at the Y, Summerfest at the lakefront, sneakily reading and watching smut and listening to a lot of college rock radio. So much. Partially because the radio we kept in the attic only really picked up two stations, and it was either college rock or NPR. Of course I didn’t mind.

Alternative rock was my thing. If I wasn’t in Milwaukee those summers, I’d be holed up in my room, getting yelled at by my mother for choosing to watch nothing but MTV instead of going outside to play with the neighborhood kids.

Milwaukee college kids seemed to favor Toad the Wet Sprocket and the Gin Blossoms, as every other song seemed to be one of theirs. THAT I remember very distinctly.

I also distinctly remember the feeling of being let in on some forbidden adult secret as we flipped through the well-worn pages of the Nancy Friday book “My Secret Garden” after hours. We found it behind a pile of junk in the attic, London saying that it might have belonged to her deceased mother.

I had just entered my middle school years, and was already familiar with the phenomenon that was Skinemax, so I had a topical understanding of sex. Although nothing could prepare you for the stories contained within this book. It went into great detail about scenes that I could never imagine seeing even on unscrambled Skinemax.

London, being a year older than me, would tell me stories about the things she would do with boys in the attic when her father was at work. We would watch the Playboy Channel during the day when the adults went out shopping. Clearly, sex wasn’t a big secret or mystery to us, but it was still taboo enough to sneak peeks at it whenever grown-ups weren’t looking.

At the Y, we would talk about the male patrons we found attractive. I would bite my tongue regarding the female patrons. We weren’t close enough for her to know all of my secrets.

We would do our hair in trendy 90s teen styles; we would wear belly shirts and Daisy Duke shorts. We painted our nails; we traded lip gloss. London was the older friend a lot of girls dream of having: worldly, sophisticated and a hit with the boys. Or maybe it just seemed that way because we only saw each other for a handful of weeks over the course of two summers.

Going back home, I had to get used to sex being taboo again, hanging out with friends that were my own age and dressing more conservatively, as per my Catholic grammar school rules.

The summer London got pregnant was the summer everything felt a little too real. Suddenly there were consequences behind innocent talk of sneaking boys to the attic and all of the stories we ready in the Nancy Friday book. London suddenly went from being the cool older girl who could do whatever she wanted to being the cautionary tale.

That was the summer my visits ended, although her pregnancy wasn’t the only factor. My aunt & London’s father were in an increasingly volatile relationship that had ultimately imploded. And between the breakup, his pregnant daughter and his always-in-trouble son, he just couldn’t let me stay for the summer. He had his hands full. And I understood.

But that first summer without London felt weird. I couldn’t talk about certain things with my friends, as they were more judgmental and likely to label you a “hootchie” for even daring to bring up sex. No one was 100% pure, but absolutely no one wanted that to be known. Labels tended to stick in our neighborhood.

I was back to being a year-round social outcast, the weirdo who holed up in her room watching MTV and reading “Goosebumps.”

And maybe it was for the best. I escaped my awkward teen years scandal-free and didn’t “become a woman” until my college years. Did London’s circumstance ultimately have an effect on my decisions? Perhaps. Or maybe that was alway going to be my outcome. Who knows.

Every time I read “My Secret Garden” or listen to Toad the Wet Sprocket I think back to those summers and all the fun we had and reflect on how sweet it was to see an unscrambled boob on a big screen tv. Going back to scrambled Skinemax on the 24 inch just wasn’t the same.