The heavy blanket of depression was thrown over my life in the summer of 1986, shortly after I was kicked out of the United World College of South East Asia. It had been a six month British boarding school experience from the sanitized tropical hell known as Singapore and I was relieved to be expelled, even if the reasons were dubious ("partying with sailors"...but that's another days post).
My mother was furious and confused, and even then I understood why. Only a fortnight into my schooling there my name had been put on the "cannabis" list and I was part of a school wide pogrom that saw many of the coolest Top Form students - borders and day bugs alike - chucked out before the dreaded Singapore police could get their hands on us. Mom had fought the Headmaster during my two week house suspension on Yang Ming Shan - where she and dad were living, a hilly enclave above the smokey pollution of Taipei city. While she worked and dad sulked behind locked doors as usual, I scurried through the "home work" mom would give me (
Write a report on the recent People Power movement in the Philippines before I come home from work) and then would hurry down the mountain, over to Shih Lin, to the noodle stands across the street from Taipei American School.
That's where I got to know Pat, to this day my dearest friend, who was often alone in a stairwell, toking Marlboro's or Long Life's and happy to share them with me. We were happy to bond over the forbidden cancer sticks, happier still to find out that in a few short months both of our families were being transferred to Hong Kong....we would have one another at the new school there.
But before that glorious chapter of my life unfolded, that embarrassing sliver of time between expulsion and relocation, Mom took another deep breath and packed our bags for our summer R&R; Oahu, Louisville, Washington, DC.
We arrived in Hawaii on a sunny July 4Th morning. Our time share apartment wasn't vacated yet, so the concierge put us in the model suite, where everything looked magazine cover worthy but beneath the plushy duvet there was only a stained mattress and in the bathroom the faucets didn't work. It was the longest of days, after an 18 hour flight, and on the television we were treated to hours of big three network coverage of the Statue of Liberty's Centennial Celebration. Bubble headed bleach blond announcers perkily proclaiming: "
Happy Birthday Lady Liberty...." interspersed with Max Headroom for Pepsi commercials. It was all so bizarre, so stimulating, I stayed up the entire day, into the night, past
Friday Night Videos and
Night Flight....
Mom was up early that next morning, slathering on suntan lotion and packing Crystal Light into our picnic basket, ready to hit our favorite spot on Waikiki's flesh crammed shores. It was the first time I had ever felt apathetic about going to the beach. The sun hurt my eyes, my body hurt, I lay in the familiar sand and instead of exhaling into it's warmth like I always did I felt myself longing to be buried there.
Later that afternoon I was able to obtain a packet of Marlboro lights from the cigarette machine in the lobby while my mother rested. Fire was more difficult to procure, fortunately a group of kids joined me poolside and gave me a pack of matches they'd taken from the Jolly Rogers restaurant across the street. We talked until it was obvious only cigarettes could bond us, and then they left.
I must have smoked over half of that pack, sitting by that pool, watching my legs turn to dark molasses, wiping away tears and sweat. That was the first day of my life that childlike wonder did not rise up and sing it's swell song. Something in me was diminishing, I knew it that day I tell you, I felt it and sat there and cried for it to not come for me. Cried and smoked until I was hoarse and the sun began to wane. Then I hid the smokes and the matches behind the soda machine in the stairwell, walked back into the apartment and got into a world of trouble for smelling like cigarettes and
you expect me to believe you were at the pool and your towel isn't wet?
