THE UNDESIRABLES

 

 

Time is a throat punch. 

It starts off slow enough—minor shifts, almost unnoticeable adjustments. Then, out of nowhere, a jarring fist to your windpipe and you realize everything has changed.

 Things are different now and they will never be like they were before. 

And, more than that, you’re different. You’re not the same person you were yesterday and you’re certainly not the same person you were three years ago. Your shaggy bowl cut is gone, sheared within an inch of its life. Your eyes are no longer bright and innocent—they’re bloodshot with bags underneath. You’ve learned lessons, but you’ve picked up habits 

You can’t pinpoint exactly when it was that you changed—maybe it was the first black eye or the first pill; could have been when you lost your virginity. Or when Gerry told you to “go fuck yourself”. Maybe it was the last time you talked to Jane. 

Whenever it was, you were too self-involved to even notice the moment. It only hits you later—in the middle of a mosh pit, surrounded by people who are not your friends. You’re all sweaty, wired from the uppers, with blood trickling down your temple. You’re raising your fist, shouting out the wrong words to the song. It’s loud and it’s hot and it’s complicated and then it hits you. 

This doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Throat punch.

 

The impact is sharp, cuts off your airflow, leaves you choking on nothing. Hands shove at you as you stumble around the pit. No one is really bothered, they think you’re just wasted—and, honestly, you are a little. No one here cares about you. It’s so cool not to care.

Suddenly, you need out.

You thrash through the crowd until you reach the exit, bile rising in your throat, and you make it through the door just in time.

When you’re through spilling your guts onto the pavement, you straighten up, swallowing lungfuls of air. Los Angeles is spread out before you, twinkling—oblivious to your fucking epiphany. You can’t believe you let it get this far.

To figure out when everything changed, you can’t help but remember how it all began. It was 1977.

 

Rewind the tape, man.

 

 

 

side one

 

 

October 1977: Van Nuys High School Cafeteria, Los Angeles

 

SMACK.

The green bean casserole hit right on target, covering the side of my acne-filled face in a huge glob of creamy, gooey, green mush. The impact knocked my face sideways, causing me to grunt and spit out bits of egg salad sandwich. There was a slight ringing in my ears, which gave me a few seconds to realize that the whole cafeteria had erupted in laughter. I sat, frozen in panic, as goblin high schoolers stood on their seats to get a good look at the lowly freshman who had just gotten pegged with casserole.

“Don’t touch it, Phil,” muttered my friend Leonard under his breath. “Don’t even act like you’ve noticed.”

He went right on slurping his pudding, flecks of my egg salad in his bright, red hair.

It was easy for Leonard; he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. As long as he was able to watch Quark every week, nothing much bothered him. I wished I could be the same, but I was painfully aware that every eye in the cafeteria was pointed right at me. Humiliation slid through me like the soggy casserole dripping over the side of my face.

It had started innocently enough—just a few shoves in the hallways, some choice insults under their breath—but it had escalated. If I had to guess, the football team was behind it; they loathed me. This was just a taste of what I could expect for the next four years.

I stood so abruptly that a gasp rippled through the room. Everyone waited in anticipation for me to do something—throw a punch, throw my sandwich—anything. Robotically, I lifted my half-empty tray and walked towards the trash cans, very aware of the hush that had fallen over the room. I reached out to dump the contents of my tray and missed entirely. Egg salad and chocolate milk spilled over my back-to-school shoes. Holding in a grimace, I set my tray on top of the trash can and walked, stiff as a corpse, toward the exit. The whole school bellowed in laughter at my departure. It echoed as I walked down the hallway, chocolate milk footprints marking my retreat.

 

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“How was school today?” my mother asked, ladling green bean casserole onto my plate.

I glared at the offensive mush. “Fine.”

“You made some friends?” she guessed with a hopeful smile.

“Not really,” I answered, shoving a spoonful of casserole in my mouth to avoid elaborating.

“Are you enjoying your classes? Which one’s your favorite?”

 “I guess I like English,” I said. “We’re reading Great Expectations.”

My dad looked up from where he was reading Vonnegut at the end of the table. “Dickens? Why doesn’t your teacher choose something a bit more modern?”

 “He likes the classics,” I said. “He said, ‘they’re classic for a reason’.”

“That’s a rather dated approach to teaching,” my father replied, returning to his book. “You’d think they’d be pushing some current literature, some new ideas.”

“Well, now, Curt,” my mother interjected. “There is only progress when we take the time to consider the past.”

I sighed with relief as my parents busied themselves with literary debate. If they weren’t focused on me, I could slip through the cracks, unnoticed.

 

My parents were nice people and I’d always felt lucky. Some of my friends’ folks were really religious or strict. Mine weren’t like that; they were the intellectual type. Back then, my dad was a professor at Los Angeles Valley College and my mother was a librarian. They were a quiet pair—thoughtful and perceptive—non-confrontational, always asking questions about our behavior. 

“Do you feel that your actions have benefitted you?” my dad would ask my older brother after he hit me.

My brother would hang his head and shake it—“No.”

Once, my mother had looked at my poor grades on my report card and simply nodded. “This seems about right,” she said. “For the amount of work I’ve watched you put in this quarter. Do you agree?” She wasn’t angry, just quizzical. “Are you satisfied with these marks?”

I wasn’t satisfied and I vowed to her I’d try harder, though she had not pressed me for promises.

They were good people and it made no sense that I turned out the way that I did. How could two of the nicest people raise two of the most rebellious boys? We had never had anything to rebel against. To this day, I don’t quite understand why me and Rob went off the rails like we did.

 

I wore pinstriped pajamas to bed, always had. Because I had grown so much over the summer, they were a little too short at the ankles and sleeves. It didn’t matter much to me; no one at school could see me when I was at home in my bed, radio pressed to my ear.

I didn’t know much about music. When I was a kid, I thought it was something everybody loved, something that brought people together. I can remember lying on the rug in the living room as my parents listened to Fleetwood Mac and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. I used to think it was called “Rapsidian Blue,” the name of a beautiful gemstone or a species of dinosaur.

I thought that maybe every family listened to music like mine. It was only as I got older that I realized music didn’t always pull people together. For some, it was what drove them apart. 

So, I played it safe, listening to Hall & Oates and K.C. and the Sunshine Band in my too-small, pinstriped pajamas at home, while my kitten, Kong, tromped across my chest.

Yeah, safe, that’s what it was. 

 

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