I once knew a guy who had notoriously bad breath. I mean, really notorious. Alfred Hitchcock notorious. One day, as a group of us were walking upstairs to our lockers after second period, the guy behind him, out of the blue, said, "Dude - what stinks? Did you just fart?" He was waving his hand in front of his nose, as if it would disperse whatever foulity was in the air. The notorious guy turned around and smiled. "That's not a fart, man, that's my breath." At that, we all "oohed" and almost fell on the stairs laughing because let's face it, he said what we all knew. And in high school, that kind of self-awareness was funny.
During my junior year, I ended up sitting next to this notorious guy in study hall. This was before the evil reign of our study hall monitor Mrs. Kingsbury, who, though a real peach of a woman outside of class, made my afterschool life a living hell with all the clapping erasers I had to do for whispering without permission during her class. Back in the day, though, we had a study hall monitor who was always on the edge of insanity because of her racist, Nyquil-addicted kids. (That's a story for another day.) She was the sort of who sat there, looking out at us, wringing her hands and smiling politely, as if she was afraid we were on the verge of mounting up and slitting her throat. So not a lot of work took place in her study hall. The notorious guy and I were the only two juniors in the whole room and we ended up sitting next to each other. I got to know him a little bit, beyond the breath. He introduced me to bands like the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, and Husker Du -- he even gave me the CDs to take home and listen to on my own. When I popped in the Sex Pistols' Nevermind the Bollocks for the first time, I almost had a heart attack. This was during my obsessed-with-the-Steve-Miller-Band phase, so I wasn't quite prepared for the slurry electric pop of God Save the Queen. I hated it. I thought it sucked bollocks. (It took a few more years for me to learn what "bollocks" were -- at the time, I thought it was the British form of barracks, you know, where soliders sleep.)
The notorious guy had great taste in music, years ahead of most of my Ace of Base listening classmates. He tried to get me to come along for the musical ride, but I resisted and instead, bought myself a Hootie and the Blowfish album and bought him tubes of Tic-Tacs. Like me, many of my classmates - at least the ones I've kept in touch with - do not remember a whole lot about this guy now, apart from his horrible breath. We still tell the fart-breath story, as well as the story when, attempting to get a few laughs and pledge his undying respect for our science teacher, he wore a weightlifting body suit and passed out during the lecture. But I'll always remember him as the guy who introduced me to the Sex Pistols.
I've been thinking about him lately mostly because I spend a lot of time watching high schoolers on Mtv while at the gym. A lot of the shows - My Super Sweet 16, Once Upon a Prom, Tiara Girls - center on high schoolers, usually ones behaving badly. Very badly, in fact. My Super Sweet 16 has to be one of the most wretched shows ever to cross the airwaves, a show where cameras follow spoiled wealthy kids who throw tantrums if they don't get Eminem AND Beyonce to perform at the sixteenth birthday party. They throw tantrums for any reason, really -- these kids are very imaginative that way. At least once or twice during the show, I have to turn to the empty stairstepper next to me and make a face of total disgust. Just to show God or the cool trainer working out behind me that though I'm watching, I'm also repulsed by what I'm seeing and hearing. But I keep watching it because I get interested in figuring out these pissy little brats.
When I was sixteen, I'm not sure anyone I knew had a sweet sixteen party and if they did, it was just at their house or at its most flamboyant, Luigi's Pizza. So it totally blows my mind to watch sixteen year olds, complicit with their enabling parents, drop $100,000 on a party, not including the Mercedes or BMW convertible that most of them inevitably get at the end of the evening. I'm incredulous when they design themes for their parties like EVERYTHING'S-PINK! and then spend $500 dying their two poodles pink or yell at the longsuffering dressmaker (making them a $900 dress or $1100 suit) for being an idiot and a clod. I feel embarassed for them when they gather their whole school to hand out 100 invitations and then, the people who weren't invited have to stand there, feeling humiliated -- granted, they know these people are totally lame, but it still hurts to be shown on camera as someone who didn't make the cool cut. I look at these shuffling teenagers, trying to shrug it off, and I see the notorious guy. I see the girl who fell three times during her dance routine at a pep rally, exposing her clumsiness and red bloomers to the whole school. I see the kooky guy who'd always say, "Up in this piece" and sing Hootie and the Blowfish until we'd all yell at him to shut up. I see N, the coolest girl in the class, with her two-toned bowling shoes and cat-eyed sunglasses and jar of bubbles. I'm sure I'm in there somewhere, too, curly blonde frizz and wearing the plaid pajama pants that I wore during gym class. Or that super cool County Seat sweater.
One of the recurrent themes I've noticed in my Super Sweet 16 viewing experience is this: "I want to throw the best party ever, so that everyone will always remember me and talk about me forever." Or to that effect. (One never knows how exactly to paraphrase teenagers.) These parties are not just for a good time or - imagine it! - to gather friends to celebrate an American coming of age a-la-Molly-Ringwald. Every single person on the shows I've seen has said they hope to throw a party that will be remembered. For-e-ver. They want everyone's memories of high school to be bound up in their killer bash. They, like so many before them, are looking for immortality and right now, it's appearing viable in the form of a very expensive birthday party. But that kind of notoriety is always a cosmic cream pie in the face. You don't have to read the horoscopes or listen to Bob Dylan to know that much.
I can very palpably imagine the attendees of these parties sitting around in ten years and raving about that party what's-her-name threw for her 16th birthday. Isn't she a broke hooker now? Or a chain smoking Mom of three? That part of the conversation will be quick and uninteresting, like ripping off a bandaid. But minutes, hours even, will be spent talking about when her heel broke, when he stuck a finger into the cake on a dare, when her friend finally found the nerve to ask that one guy to dance. But its host? A footnote...at best.
No one can force notoriety. I'm sure that the girl who fell three times in the pep rally wishes that all of us in the audience would forget her red bloomers forever. I'm sure the notorious guy hopes that we're not all still talking about the time he passed out in science class. I'm sorry to break it to them, but these are probably the moments I'll take to my grave. We all have those moments, I think, no matter how cool we were. I sometimes wonder if my eighth grade crush, Matt Nadelhoffer, tells people the story of the girl sitting next to him at an ice cream social who farted during the prayer. (Yes, I'm talking about me.) But those non-cool times, the moments when people fell apart, hit emotional iceburgs, were unabshedly their complicated, quirky selves -- that's what I'll remember. FOR-E-VER. Maybe I should tell the bratty kids that. And that you don't have to spend two grand to learn about the Sex Pistols.
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