“GREASE”
It’s hard to remember when I first saw her. Mostly likely at summer camp, during a thunderstorm, corralled into a cement basement in front of a television set on crooked wheels, far away from the cited threat of being struck to death by this thunderstorm’s lightening. But I can’t be sure there wasn’t a time before then. Knowing the film’s pervasiveness now, there was likely an earlier encounter. Maybe a birthday party. Maybe in my own home. But with things like this, things you can’t remember the origin of, their importance becomes apparent only when you need them to be. She was like that, in this way: already always there.
At this all-girls summer camp in the Poconos of the Pennsylvanian mountains, I was the only camper who had a buzz cut. I wore cargo shorts and a too-large t-shirt in a sea of girls sporting jean skorts and spaghetti straps. I spent the majority of my days in the pool, where no one bothered me, and no one asked me whether or not I was actually, secretly a boy. Myself included.
That the counselors were obsessed with our getting struck and electrocuted by a rogue bolt during what I would now consider mild to moderate summer rain showers seems caring, overly-maternal maybe, but I remember feeling an intense desire to be lit on fire by an uncontrollable sky-something. Staying inside was only safe, they said, but I wanted desperately to be out there in the rain, my little water-logged body welcoming the opportunity to be sliced open and lit up on display by a random surge of electricity. Instead, I listened, sat down, and watched the rain-day movie play.
When you’re a kid who is desperately following the rules, there are few opportunities for you to figure out who you are. I mean, who you really are, beyond the instruction abiding, the stay in line, wait your turn. When you’re obsessed with not getting in trouble, you avoid all the places you’d potentially trouble your understanding of yourself.
Fortunately, for well-behaved children like myself, there are still private offerings. Unlikely extensions from other unknown atmospheres. Calls to a future through sense-making symbols who strut around in purple shirts with popped collars, reminding you that even if the neighborhood thinks you’re no-good, it doesn’t matter. You know you don’t steal. You know you don’t lie. You can still feel, and you can still cry. And if being you’s the worst thing you do, fuck the neighborhood, light a cigarette, and wink at whoever you think is cute. Why throw your life away on someone else’s dream?