MOTORCYCLE BABIES
by Mary Vettel
Chapter 1
Dear Diary,
So, yeah, still hating my life and nearly everyone in it. I don't know why I even bother to keep this stupid diary, no offense. Like I should be documenting my rollicking fun life to mull over in my decrepit posterity. As if. I’ll probably be dead by then anyways. Stuck in this shithole with nothing to do literally makes my internal organs cringe. New-frigging-Krumpsberg, for God’s sake. This wasn’t even a stop on the Underground Railroad - not even desperate slaves would want to stay here.
Sometimes some goofus looking for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown somehow gets off Route 80 and without GPS or a map finds himself in New Krumpsberg. It’s really disheartening to see the look of disbelief bordering on horror on his face. Worse if he’s got some Little Leaguer along for the ride. Their panic is nearly palpable. But the New Krumpsberg landscape does have that post-apocalyptic feel to it so I don’t hold it against them.
What else do you need to know about me? Well, there’s my father. A total waste of space. Seriously. He just sucks the life out of the room, drinking and yelling at the TV, 24/7. I wish he'd just die and leave us alone. Then me and Mom could enjoy ourselves for a change. She works two crappy jobs ‘cause he refuses to work. Maybe she does it to keep away from him. That's why I work after school and weekends at Aunt Pitty Pat’s--the only decent restaurant in town--just to be out of this mad haunted house. It's not haunted by ghosts--that might actually be kind of fun--it's haunted by him and his constant belching and farting. If the Olympics had a flatulent category, he’d be up there winning gold. I could tape a shitload of those pine tree air fresheners to him and he’d still reek like a dumpster.
Mom says the Waste of Space (she doesn't call him that, she calls him, ‘Your father,’ which sincerely makes me gag and my skin crawl) has ‘emotional problems’. She makes air quotes when she says it, ‘cause even she doesn’t buy it, but not when she says, ‘your father’. I said he's a lazy-ass nasty drunk who's made her into an old woman before her time. Of course I said it nicely but no matter how you say it, nobody wants to be on the receiving end of information like that. She’s been keeping her distance from me lately. I don’t know what’s up with her.
Now the deets about Murrow, my BFF. He’s gay and brilliant and funny and I love him to death. When we finish school we’ll get an apartment - it could be Paris, Milan, London, or Manhattan, anywhere but here - and go to sidewalk cafes, knocking back strong coffee and croissants. He’ll point out the famous people. I know a bunch but he knows, like, people’s stylists and hairdressers and stuff. Murrow will be the host of some entertainment show. He’s up on all the latest gossip and speaks well, very confident and non-stumbly.
Just realized I didn’t fill in the About Me segment of this lame-ass diary. Here goes: Barbara Wisnewski – Polish on both sides of the family – so trust me, I've heard every Polish joke there is – even made up a couple myself in relation to the Waste of Space. Good ones too.
Anyways, 16 and a high school junior at New Krumpsberg High School. (We looked it up, but couldn’t find an ‘Old’ Krumpsberg. Murrow and I think the town was named after some guy named Newt Krumpsberg who settled here in the 1800s but the sign maker left off the ‘t’ in Newt.) It’s a miserable, dead town; an ugly place with derelict warehouses and factories that are total eye-sores. We’ve got no claim to fame of any kind. Not even a juicy scandal or murder.
I've never gone on a family vacation. We did miniature golf once but the Waste of Space ruined it by losing his temper, seeing as he couldn't hit the ball into the hole – and the place is pretty much geared for toddlers, but he was wasted. He hurled his golf club and nearly clobbered some little kid. The kid’s father got all up in the Waste of Space's face – which is mad funny to watch but also very embarrassing. Luckily the kid was OK and we beat it out of there before the kid's father called the cops.
At this point I don't really know what I want to do with my life. That’s why I’m taking the beauty school course so I’ll have a trade to support myself while I figure out what I want to do. And I’ve got mad hostessing skills that I use at Aunt Pitty Pats.
So, like, big surprise, school sucks. I've been with most of these kids since kindergarten. Some of them are jerks and need to vanish from the planet; some are OK. My teachers are all morons though. Seriously. I can't believe they actually graduated from college. And if they did, why they’d want to live and teach here. I'm not learning anything. Even though I'm in the smarter classes, there are still some assholes who are always disrupting things. I don't know if it's ‘cause they have crappy parents who never bothered to teach them how to behave – I've got one of those but I know how to behave, or if their parents were smoking crack when they got pregnant with them, and their genes must definitely look mad scary magnified in a Petri dish.
So, yeah, Murrow. He’s my best friend in the world since kindergarten. He used to turn his eyelids inside out and eat paste to make me laugh. He’d come over my house after school when we were little and we’d play dolls. He’d squeeze my Barbie doll clothes onto his G.I. Joe and I think I figured from an early age that he was gay. Maybe I didn’t know, but totally accepted him. His parents divorced when he was little and his father moved to London. Murrow visits him most summers and always brings me back something British. An English phone booth piggy bank and the punk T-shirt of the Queen with a safety pin in her nose. The Mind the Gap sign is still up on my wall.
Murrow’s mother remarried a couple of years back. Another abusive alcoholic – not that Murrow’s real dad is an abusive alcoholic – but his stepfather is. Upstate New York certainly produces its fair share of drunks. His stepfather’s a total dick who’s always saying, ‘Make me proud!’ to Murrow no matter what the situation. Murrow says his stepfather even says it when Murrow enters the bathroom. That’s just gross.
Murrow and I made a pact to go to the prom together since we aren’t interested in anybody in our school or town to go with (and nobody’s interested in us). But we’re really not joiners. So maybe we’ll skip the whole thing entirely. Maybe we’ll be backpacking around Europe by then. We love watching movies and award shows. OMG! The Oscars are, like, the best thing in the world! We hunker down with our tomato pies and pop and watch the pre-Oscars red carpet shows too and do a running commentary on the stars’ hair, makeup, and attire, as well as their arm-candy. We’re not mean or anything. Well, sometimes, like when somebody’s had some hellacious plastic surgery. We certainly make allowances for our favorites who may have fallen under the spell of an evil stylist. We also love the Golden Globe Awards and the People’s Choice awards, and the Emmy’s. We steer clear of the kids’ award shows, ‘cause, frankly, they’re just too lame.
ZZ’s my best female friend. Her real name is Audrey Beardsley but Beardsley got morphed into ZZ for ZZ Top because of their beards – just a side note: their drummer’s last name is really Beard and he doesn’t have a beard. How random is that? She's got a fairly normal family – her dad's not a drunk – he works for the phone company in an office and her mom's a legal secretary. They're pretty cool and friendly to me and their house is nice and their furniture matches because they bought it from a real furniture store and not from the Salvation Army like the junk in my house. And they actually eat dinner together at the table and have good manners. And I've never once heard her father belch or fart or yell at the TV. And he wears subtle cologne and speaks to ZZ and her mom in a pleasant way. I've even heard them laughing in the kitchen getting dinner ready. How bizarre yet awesome is that?
They know my story and invite me to dinner and sleepovers pretty often. They do things together and even go away on family vacations. Nothing exotic or extravagant but still, they're vacations. ZZ's pretty and funny and has a good heart. She cries when she sees road kill, even if she's already seen it on the way to school and passes it again on the way home. A real softie. I love that about her and don't tease her because that would be gay.
She lent me this really nice black turtleneck sweater since most of my clothes are pretty ratty. We shop at Kmart but ZZ's mom takes her to the outlet shops at the mall nearly an hour away up in Utica. She shops in Banana epublic and even Ann Taylor. But ZZ never flaunts it. So she lent me this black turtleneck and when the Waste of Space saw me in it (in one of his semi-lucid moments) he freaked. Said it made my boobs look really big – which it didn't and I told him so and told him not to call them boobs. He's such a total creep. I wanted to wear it at work since we're supposed to dress in black at Aunt Pitty Pat's. Thank God we don’t have to wear those Scarlet O’Hara hoop skirts and bonnets! – just dress in black – and it was freezing cold outside. He told me to take it off and wear something that didn't make me look like I was dying for it. How crude! I could've killed him right then and there. One good whack with the wrought iron skillet and it would be over. I'd say it was self-defense, but I’m not risking spending the rest of my life in jail over him. I stormed out of the house wearing the sweater anyways. He was too drunk to run after me.
****
Dear Diary,
So, yeah, still hating my life and nearly everyone in it. I don't know why I even bother to keep this stupid diary, no offense. Like I should be documenting my rollicking fun life to mull over in my decrepit posterity. As if. I’ll probably be dead by then anyways. Stuck in this shithole with nothing to do literally makes my internal organs cringe. New-frigging-Krumpsberg, for God’s sake. This wasn’t even a stop on the Underground Railroad - not even desperate slaves would want to stay here.
Sometimes some goofus looking for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown somehow gets off Route 80 and without GPS or a map finds himself in New Krumpsberg. It’s really disheartening to see the look of disbelief bordering on horror on his face. Worse if he’s got some Little Leaguer along for the ride. Their panic is nearly palpable. But the New Krumpsberg landscape does have that post-apocalyptic feel to it so I don’t hold it against them.
What else do you need to know about me? Well, there’s my father. A total waste of space. Seriously. He just sucks the life out of the room, drinking and yelling at the TV, 24/7. I wish he'd just die and leave us alone. Then me and Mom could enjoy ourselves for a change. She works two crappy jobs ‘cause he refuses to work. Maybe she does it to keep away from him. That's why I work after school and weekends at Aunt Pitty Pat’s--the only decent restaurant in town--just to be out of this mad haunted house. It's not haunted by ghosts--that might actually be kind of fun--it's haunted by him and his constant belching and farting. If the Olympics had a flatulent category, he’d be up there winning gold. I could tape a shitload of those pine tree air fresheners to him and he’d still reek like a dumpster.
Mom says the Waste of Space (she doesn't call him that, she calls him, ‘Your father,’ which sincerely makes me gag and my skin crawl) has ‘emotional problems’. She makes air quotes when she says it, ‘cause even she doesn’t buy it, but not when she says, ‘your father’. I said he's a lazy-ass nasty drunk who's made her into an old woman before her time. Of course I said it nicely but no matter how you say it, nobody wants to be on the receiving end of information like that. She’s been keeping her distance from me lately. I don’t know what’s up with her.
Now the deets about Murrow, my BFF. He’s gay and brilliant and funny and I love him to death. When we finish school we’ll get an apartment - it could be Paris, Milan, London, or Manhattan, anywhere but here - and go to sidewalk cafes, knocking back strong coffee and croissants. He’ll point out the famous people. I know a bunch but he knows, like, people’s stylists and hairdressers and stuff. Murrow will be the host of some entertainment show. He’s up on all the latest gossip and speaks well, very confident and non-stumbly.
Just realized I didn’t fill in the About Me segment of this lame-ass diary. Here goes: Barbara Wisnewski – Polish on both sides of the family – so trust me, I've heard every Polish joke there is – even made up a couple myself in relation to the Waste of Space. Good ones too.
Anyways, 16 and a high school junior at New Krumpsberg High School. (We looked it up, but couldn’t find an ‘Old’ Krumpsberg. Murrow and I think the town was named after some guy named Newt Krumpsberg who settled here in the 1800s but the sign maker left off the ‘t’ in Newt.) It’s a miserable, dead town; an ugly place with derelict warehouses and factories that are total eye-sores. We’ve got no claim to fame of any kind. Not even a juicy scandal or murder.
I've never gone on a family vacation. We did miniature golf once but the Waste of Space ruined it by losing his temper, seeing as he couldn't hit the ball into the hole – and the place is pretty much geared for toddlers, but he was wasted. He hurled his golf club and nearly clobbered some little kid. The kid’s father got all up in the Waste of Space's face – which is mad funny to watch but also very embarrassing. Luckily the kid was OK and we beat it out of there before the kid's father called the cops.
At this point I don't really know what I want to do with my life. That’s why I’m taking the beauty school course so I’ll have a trade to support myself while I figure out what I want to do. And I’ve got mad hostessing skills that I use at Aunt Pitty Pats.
So, like, big surprise, school sucks. I've been with most of these kids since kindergarten. Some of them are jerks and need to vanish from the planet; some are OK. My teachers are all morons though. Seriously. I can't believe they actually graduated from college. And if they did, why they’d want to live and teach here. I'm not learning anything. Even though I'm in the smarter classes, there are still some assholes who are always disrupting things. I don't know if it's ‘cause they have crappy parents who never bothered to teach them how to behave – I've got one of those but I know how to behave, or if their parents were smoking crack when they got pregnant with them, and their genes must definitely look mad scary magnified in a Petri dish.
So, yeah, Murrow. He’s my best friend in the world since kindergarten. He used to turn his eyelids inside out and eat paste to make me laugh. He’d come over my house after school when we were little and we’d play dolls. He’d squeeze my Barbie doll clothes onto his G.I. Joe and I think I figured from an early age that he was gay. Maybe I didn’t know, but totally accepted him. His parents divorced when he was little and his father moved to London. Murrow visits him most summers and always brings me back something British. An English phone booth piggy bank and the punk T-shirt of the Queen with a safety pin in her nose. The Mind the Gap sign is still up on my wall.
Murrow’s mother remarried a couple of years back. Another abusive alcoholic – not that Murrow’s real dad is an abusive alcoholic – but his stepfather is. Upstate New York certainly produces its fair share of drunks. His stepfather’s a total dick who’s always saying, ‘Make me proud!’ to Murrow no matter what the situation. Murrow says his stepfather even says it when Murrow enters the bathroom. That’s just gross.
Murrow and I made a pact to go to the prom together since we aren’t interested in anybody in our school or town to go with (and nobody’s interested in us). But we’re really not joiners. So maybe we’ll skip the whole thing entirely. Maybe we’ll be backpacking around Europe by then. We love watching movies and award shows. OMG! The Oscars are, like, the best thing in the world! We hunker down with our tomato pies and pop and watch the pre-Oscars red carpet shows too and do a running commentary on the stars’ hair, makeup, and attire, as well as their arm-candy. We’re not mean or anything. Well, sometimes, like when somebody’s had some hellacious plastic surgery. We certainly make allowances for our favorites who may have fallen under the spell of an evil stylist. We also love the Golden Globe Awards and the People’s Choice awards, and the Emmy’s. We steer clear of the kids’ award shows, ‘cause, frankly, they’re just too lame.
ZZ’s my best female friend. Her real name is Audrey Beardsley but Beardsley got morphed into ZZ for ZZ Top because of their beards – just a side note: their drummer’s last name is really Beard and he doesn’t have a beard. How random is that? She's got a fairly normal family – her dad's not a drunk – he works for the phone company in an office and her mom's a legal secretary. They're pretty cool and friendly to me and their house is nice and their furniture matches because they bought it from a real furniture store and not from the Salvation Army like the junk in my house. And they actually eat dinner together at the table and have good manners. And I've never once heard her father belch or fart or yell at the TV. And he wears subtle cologne and speaks to ZZ and her mom in a pleasant way. I've even heard them laughing in the kitchen getting dinner ready. How bizarre yet awesome is that?
They know my story and invite me to dinner and sleepovers pretty often. They do things together and even go away on family vacations. Nothing exotic or extravagant but still, they're vacations. ZZ's pretty and funny and has a good heart. She cries when she sees road kill, even if she's already seen it on the way to school and passes it again on the way home. A real softie. I love that about her and don't tease her because that would be gay.
She lent me this really nice black turtleneck sweater since most of my clothes are pretty ratty. We shop at Kmart but ZZ's mom takes her to the outlet shops at the mall nearly an hour away up in Utica. She shops in Banana epublic and even Ann Taylor. But ZZ never flaunts it. So she lent me this black turtleneck and when the Waste of Space saw me in it (in one of his semi-lucid moments) he freaked. Said it made my boobs look really big – which it didn't and I told him so and told him not to call them boobs. He's such a total creep. I wanted to wear it at work since we're supposed to dress in black at Aunt Pitty Pat's. Thank God we don’t have to wear those Scarlet O’Hara hoop skirts and bonnets! – just dress in black – and it was freezing cold outside. He told me to take it off and wear something that didn't make me look like I was dying for it. How crude! I could've killed him right then and there. One good whack with the wrought iron skillet and it would be over. I'd say it was self-defense, but I’m not risking spending the rest of my life in jail over him. I stormed out of the house wearing the sweater anyways. He was too drunk to run after me.
****
