I am Jack’s smirking revenge

Growing up  with three older brothers, as much as I wanted to dance and twirl in the prettiest frock I could find while flirting and batting eyelashes at boys, I also wanted to have bruises, give bruises, push, shove and go full out as fast as I could no matter what I was doing.  When it came to sports, I never played Rugby or Field Hockey due to the fact that those teams didn’t exist in Oswego so I was a year round soccer player and 6 day a week dance class girl.  In NYC I got a lot of the rough and tumble action on the subway and just walking down the street and then the rest with my dance squad for LAByrinth Theater Company.

I moved to Rochester on December 31st.  I joined the Roc City Roller Derby team on January 20th.  I went to my first practice February 4th.  I solidified my name on February 19th.  The Sinister Serb Natasha Musquashya #718 (I represent Queens).  The first few weeks of practice I learned how to fall.  Single leg falls, rockstars, supermans.  I started to make some friends and found an apartment/house with a backyard through my teammate Tippi Heathen who would later become my derby wife.

Let me back up here, I went to my first adult open skate at Horizons on February 3rd.  The only thing I can say about it was that it was absolutely fantastic.  I went by myself as I do most things now as you know, when you move to a new city and don’t have that many friends, you like, go out, by yourself.  A lot.  Ok, so I get there and it was everything I could ever hope for from an adult open skate.  It was like being in Central Park in front of the bandshell on the first really nice day, when all the skaters come out to show their wares.  There were the older guys, grey haired men who had sweet old cases for their skates.  Their skates had bells on the laces, they wore light colored polo shirts tucked into bell bottom khakis.  They danced like Gene Kelly in Xanadu.  There were young boys with wet looking gelled hair, gold chains and nylon track suits who wore rollerblades and did jumping tricks in front of the girls.  Then there were the dancers.  They made it for me.  They could do moves on skates that most people can’t do on solid non moving feet.  And then the derby girls arrived.

You can tell them for a few reasons.  A) they all have clothes and stickers that say RCRD on everything.  B) they all actually wear elbow and knee pads and wrist guards and C) they are all badass looking.

I had already skated around a bunch and found I could skate by the time the derby girls got there, and when I saw them with all the protective gear on, I thought to myself hmmm, I’m a massage therapist now, I should maybe go put my wrist guards on so I don’t break my wrists or hands.  So I put them on, got back out on the rink and Coach Awesome skates up to me and says, “hey, so, do you like to wear your wrist guards like that?”  I had never put on a wrist guard, I had never worn any protective sports gear besides shin guards and spanky pants.  Apparently I had them on backwards.

I went over to the side and Coach Awesome and his girlfriend who started the entire Roc City Roller Derby league Resident Eva came over and showed me how to adjust my skates so I could be faster and how to wear my gear appropriately.  I was so happy the whole way home I couldn’t stop grinning.  Did I mention that the music at an open skate is every song you ever wanted to hear?  Freakazoid, Let me clear my throat, The choice is yours, Push it…

So at practices, I was often in newby end, learning how to fall, do crossovers, whip and hit.  Soon I started to join the beginning drills before Connect Four and Scrimmaging started.  After a few weeks of opening drills, Coach Awesome was running a non hitting scrimmage drill and I was watching on the side to learn more and Lightin Lainey looks over at me, smiles and says “HEY!  NATASHA!!  It’s time girl.”  And in I went.

I didn’t like derby from that point forward, I frickity frackity LOVED it.  Like, more than any other sport I’d ever tried.  More than running, biking, cheerleading, dancing, volleyball.  Like anything.  I loved it more than making out and I totally love making out.  I loved the hitting, I loved the strategy, I loved the speed.  I adjusted my skates every practice so I could go faster.  I tried every position; Pivot, Back blocker, Outside blocker, Inside blocker and eventually Jammer.  I talked about derby as much as anyone would let me.  I trained on my days off to strengthen my legs so I could get faster.  Lightin Lainey told me to do squats when I did the dishes and brushed my teeth.  I did.  Coach Awesome pulled me, Asa Clubs and Jessikaboom aside one night and told us that he thought we were excelling fast and that the biggest thing we had to be aware of was the possibility of injury.  He suggested more strength training and strategy planning.  On all the websites about derby I had read, every single one of them had said the same thing, it’s not about whether or not you’re going to get hurt, it’s about when.

I put that to the back of my brain and played smart and played hard and got better and better every time.  Our first intraleague bout was coming up and I was picked for Hater Tot’s team.  I told her I was willing to Jam in the bout.  I emailed all my friends and told them to buy their tickets.  They started talking about making signs and tee shirts with 718 on them.  I know you can tell where this is going.  The practice before the meet and greet, 2 weeks before the bout, the last scrimmage of the night I jumped in again to jam.

That entire practice girls were falling and dropping like flies around an electric buzzer thingy on a hot august night.  During one jam every girl but 2 fell.  At one point I watched Harriet Beecher Ass hurdle over Bomb Voyage and VenJence VonSlay who had both fallen right in front of her.  The floor was slippery that night and I had just loosened my trucks and wheels, again.

So, last jam, me and Synthetic Delusion are jamming, whistle blows the pack leaves, double whistle we take off.  I sprint hard and get low and look for pockets.  I make it through, am lead jammer and take off in a dead sprint again to get to that pack again.  I am flying faster than I think I’ve ever gone and I am headed straight into the pack, I get pushed to the outside and I straighten up and miss a hit.  We are coming around a curve and I see the straight away of the rink and I am sure I can skate fast enough to get ahead of the pack.  Eva sees me and gets right next to me and starts pushing me out of bounds.  Then something happened.  I’m not sure what, but she went down and I think maybe I jumped over her and I definitely went straight into a concrete wall.

As the wall got close I said in my head “DON’T USE YOUR HANDS!”  My body simply did not listen, up my hands went and I heard the crunch and saw my pinky and ring finger get bent in 2 different directions.  I was on the ground cursing a blue truckdriver worthy streak.  I knew what I had done.  I had just screwed the pooch.  I had shat the bed.  I had just broken my money maker when I had finally gotten to the point where I was making money.  In the short time I had started my private practice as a Massage Therapist here in Rochester I was halfway to a full client list.  I was entering the pay off school section and in one stupid move I was back to zero.

One of the refs came over and asked if I thought I broke my hand, I think it was Iron Ref but it could have been Vas Reference I don’t remember at that point.  My response was thrusting my already swelling and completely mangled hand in his face and barking “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK???”  I was mad.  Resident Eva and Asa Clubs said they were going to the hospital with me, Muffy Stepheles said I could reschedule my appointmentf for the next morning I had with her.  Steel Candi took off my skates.  Coach Wheelie and Coach Awesome took off my gear.  Someone kept asking me who they should call in case of emergency.  I didn’t have anyone really, except my oldest brother, and he lives in Oswego about an hour and a half away.  They asked what about my husband, nope.  What about your boyfriend, nuh uh.  Just me.  And why is that so important?  Will it unbreak my hand if I’m betrothed to someone?  Stop asking me that!  When Coach Awesome took off my wrist guard and accidentally bumped my broken fingers, without thinking I immediately hauled off and punched him in the kidney with my left hand.  Yeah, I was angry.

Tippi Heathen drove me as fast as she could while being safe to the ER, we got in and I was dipping pretty deeply into shock.  Laughing and sounding pretty drunk I staggered up to the front desk and said I needed a doctor.  Tippi and I both started snapping photos with our phones.  I made a call to my friend George to see if he could come get me after this was all over, or if he knew where our friend Kurt was, he lived closer.  George told me I sounded like I’d been boozing it up hard, I was slurring my words and taking a lot of time to answer simple questions.  I wasn’t feeling any pain, I was shivering and I felt drunk.  Asa and Eva showed up and all the security guards and front desk guys could no longer conceal smiles or questions.

“So, ladies, may we ask, why you are all dressed like that?” I think Asa, Eva and Tippi explained I got called to the back.  Hours passed and every 15 minutes someone came in and asked me who they should call to come get me.  ”Where’s your husband?  Then your boyfriend?  You don’t have any family here?  No one?”  Kurt called me back when I was giving more info to a very patient nurse who was asking me to please describe my pain scale.  It had been only about a 5 or 6, then while on the phone shock left me and pain showed up totally ready to party and I escalated to an 8 and then to a fantasmigastic 9.  I started sweating and kind of choking it hurt so bad, told Kurt I’d call him when I was done and gripped a chair.

Eva, Tippi and Asa rotated so I was never alone, they kept me talking and told me about breaks and soft tissue damage they had experienced thus far.  For some reason the pain subsided and first round of x-rays I was all smiles and jokes, telling everyone about derby.  Then everyone left and I was alone in the xray room.   That’s when it hit me again, what I had just done, and tears spurted out of my eyes.  The xray tech came back in the room and I wiped my eyes and she said, “honey, you’re gonna be fine and there’s no use crying now, it’s already happened.”  Well, she was right.

Over the next couple of hours, they shot my hand full of lidocaine and straightened out my broken and dislocated digits and re-xrayed them, re-xrayed them again after that and splinted them.  While the doctor was splinting my hand, someone came in and asked if my husband was coming to pick me up.  Again, no, I’m not married, your boyfriend then?  ”It’s ok, I have a friend who’s coming.”  The doctor looked at me, looked at the other derby girls who had not left my side, winked and said,” you don’t need a man do you? ”   I laughed and said nothing.  I was pretty surprised that the fact that I was a massage therapist with a broken hand was nothing to these people compared to the utter despair they felt over the fact that I was 35 and single.

My friend Kurt picked me up and already had the seat warmers on high in his car.   We giggled and looked at all the gnarly pictures I got of my busted up hand.  We started to drive and I shivered as he brought me to the 24 hour CVS on Monroe to get my script for painkillers and that’s when I lost it for the 3rd time.  Total waterworks.  He asked me to tell him all the reasons I was crying.

1)I just broke my hand

2)I just moved here to be massage therapist

3)I wouldn’t be able to play in the first home bout

4) and apparently the fact that I’m single in this city is really upsetting a lot of people

We got to the CVS and we placed my script order for Vicadin and I started to realize I hadn’t eaten since about noon and it was now 1a.m.  We scanned the snack aisle and I fought back more tears, I could no longer make decisions.  He asked me what I wanted I said I don’t care.  I said the last decision I made broke my hand, I’m off decisions, you decide what I should eat, you know what I like, we go out to eat at least once a week.  ”NOT IN AISLE 9 AT THE CVS!” was his response.  To which we both promptly started laughing hysterically.  He chose some stuff for me and we went to pay the kindly Transgender cashier Desiree at the front.  She said, “oh honey, is it broke bad?”  I said, “I’m not sure, but I bet I heal fast.”  She said, “well, I hope that heals up before summer, cuz baby, casts do NOT match with a bikini, OK?”

When we walked away Kurt asked if  I thought Desiree was at one point a man, I looked at him and said “did you see the size of that 6′5″ woman’s adam’s apple?  Yeah I’m pretty sure. Yeah.”  Again, we giggled.

Kurt drove me home, got me in the house and we started making a list of things that are impossible with one hand, I wasn’t even sure I could brush my teeth at that point.  Did I mention it was my dominant hand I broke?  Yeah.  So after going into the bathroom to see if I could get undressed, bra and all, I came out bathrobed and asked him to put up my hair so I could shower.  In the mean time, Kurt had made me a list.

When you break your fingers, three things are true:

1) It is a pain in the ass!

2) it is 100% workable!

3)IT IS TEMPORARY

And, as an added bonus:  when you are as cool as Alexis Croucher,

4) Your friends totally help you out!!

I cried a little more after I read his list and he hugged me and left and I stood in the middle of my tiny house thinking what in good god’s name was I going to do?  So I took a shower.

The next day, after telling my mother, ahem, telling my brothers, ahem ahem, telling my bosses, ahem, hem, uhhhh  ahem, ahem, telling my friends, ahhh, huh, hem, ahem, hack, hehehe, and telling the bank teller, I found that even when you up and order a huge plate of pooh for dinner, Rochester gives you a lovely aperitif, a dessert tray, a cheese plate even.

I was in the bank and the teller had asked me what happened, I was telling her and from behind me comes this very excited voice.  ”Do you know Millhouse of Pain?”  I turn and see a short man, sitting on a railing by a desk, I say yes, I just bought my elbow pads from her, I’m Natasha, Natasha Musquashya.  ”Yeah” he says, “she’s a physical therapist with us, whadjya do?  I mean, I can see you broke your hand but what’s going on with it?” ” Well,” I say, “I got the pictures of the xrays right here, do you want to see them?”  And I show this man the x-rays of my broken hand without knowing who he is or what he does and he takes one look and says, “Yeah, you’re gonna need surgery.”  NO NO NO, I’ll be fine, I’ll be out of the splint in a week and I’ll be playing in the fist bout.  He looks again and sees my crushed bones and says “Trust me, it’s what I do, you’re gonna need wires, Belsy procedure, surgery Natasha.”

I didn’t want to believe him.  At all.  But he was so smiley and so confident and I did need to make a follow up with an orthopedic surgeon so, I took his card.  His office manager and secretary were with him, they booked me an appointment at that moment, in the lobby of the bank, they confirmed that they accepted my insurance and as he was about to walk out he looked back and said, “listen Natasha, Carl Jung said ‘Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are casually unrelated occurring in a meaningful manner’ or something like that, basically there’s no such thing as coincidence, I’ll see you next week.”

I stood there for a minute smiling to myself in the lobby of the bank on Park Ave., and I looked around for someone to share the moment with.  The bank teller was watching and she smiled at me.  I picked up my broken paw and waved at her and said “I love this city!”

“I have been to the edge and god knows if I have looked down”

Ok, when I was like 12, I was starting to play soccer more seriously.  I had been put on a summer league and I was playing for the Jr. High team at BC and I was starting at center half back.  My coaches all said I needed to be able to run…a lot.  Well, my dad, he ran.  Still does.  Three times a week.  He goes out and pounds the pavement.  Back then he did too.  And he said, why don’t you start running with me if you have to get into shape.  Ok, I thought.  He did about three miles a pop.  At the time it seemed like more mileage than any one person should ever attempt.  Little did I know that about 16 years later I would be sidling up to a full marathon.  Anywho, 12 years old, running three miles, three times a week with my dad, on top of soccer practice five times a week which was pretty much sprints, suicides, uphill sprints, relays and laps.   Ok, in 1985 no one really knew about stretching.  I mean my dad did.  After we went running we had to stand and lean against the NiMo pipes in front of our house and do quad and calf (gastrocnemius and soleus) stretches.  But like, no one knew about this magical muscle that I have come to discover for the 4th time in my life, the Psoas.  

I first learned about it roughly 4 weeks into my first junior high soccer season when one day after a run with my dad I started to notice a really bad cramp.  But not like a stitch in my side, like a really bad muscle cramp, dare I say spasm but like deep, not in my belly, behind that.  And it started slow and and I kept bending over and saying “Dad, this really hurts.”  Now I was a well known drama queen but my dad would never be one to say buck up to me, he was always there to hold my hand, carry me home and do what needed to be done.  Well he was trying to get me to walk it off back to the house and I made it to about the front lawn when the muscle cramp turned into a full blown spasm and whether I wanted to or not my head was going to get really well aquainted with my knees and fast.  I buckled to put it lightly.  Pretty much crumpled to the ground.  I don’t think I cried so much as wailed.  I had never in all of my 12 years felt such a pain.  I’m sure my dad thought it was a menstrual cramp as who the heck had heard of a psoas muscle and who had ever heard of a healthy young girl collapsing on the front lawn after a run.  

Well, after it subsided about twenty minutes later my father did what we often did when something ailed us in our family.  He took me to the Chiropractor.  Doc got me on the adjusting table and began to palpate my abdomen.  He kept telling me to breath and I saw flashes of white light from the pain as his hand sank deeper and deeper into my abdomen.  He stopped and had me bend my knee and straighten it a few times.  He did that for what seemed like an eternity while tears streamed down my face and I clenched my fists.  He then had me lay on my stomach, adjusted me and then showed me a very simple stretch where, while laying on my stomach, I put my hands under my shoulders and lifted up my shoulders off the ground.  He said that when we do a lot of running and sprinting or anything that lifts our knees up it tightens the psoas muscle and if we don’t stretch it out, it will do that spasm thingy that it did.  He told me to do that stretch every day.  I did.  I do.  Every day.

The second time I have encountered the psoas muscle was later in life and in a much more intimate circumstance.  It was during the act of coitus.  And the spasm was the same.  I handled it a little bit better, I didn’t drop to the ground and wail but I did have to cease and desist all activity, politely excuse myself, retire to the bathroom, while in the dark hallway stopping to lean against the wall and bite my lip, sweat profusely and once again wait it out.  I was never sure when this was going to come up, but it did.  Occasionally.  I checked in with the gals, some had never experienced it others were in full solidarity with me on that and yeah it sucked but it passed and when I checked with my Ob/Gyn he said, “yeah, that sounds like a tight psoas muscle, make sure you do your upward facing dog stretch.”  Yeah Doc, got it.  Every day.  This year, when we started studying the pelvis I learned that only 40% of humans (or rather of those autopsied and recorded) have a Psoas Minor, in one book it basically says that all it does is assist in the posterior pelvic tilt, aka, the forward thrust, aka schtupping.  It’s the schtupping muscle.  In the picture below on the left, you can see Psoas Major (what we all have) and the elusive Psoas minor. 

Ok, third time I encounter Psoas.  I’m in Kinesiology class.  My teacher is giving a 40 minute lecture on Psoas.  She is explaining why it’s on her top ten list of all time favorite muscles.  She explains that it is not only one of the only muscles to attach directly to the spinal cord.  It is the only muscle that connects our vertebrae with our femur (big bone in thigh).  It shares a connection through the fascia (the connective tissue of our bodies) to our feet.  It shares a connection with our Diaphragm up through the Pericardiam (the sack around our heart) up to the Duramater (a surrounding layer of our brain and spinal cord) and it has a direct connection to our Pleural (lung) cavity.  It creates a shelf that our lower intestine and our reproductive organs sit on.  The nerves that travel next to it give us feeling in our external gentilia, our thighs, hips and buttocks.  And to me, biggest of all, it is the “Survival Instinct muscle.”  It does this in both the preliminary of “fight or flight” as it is a major hip flexor which means when you lift your leg to haul ass, your psoas is the muscle instigating the movement and then even bigger, say you are Nicole and you run into a bear in the woods and you decide to play dead, it also is the muscle that instigates the movement of pulling your head to your knees.  

I pretty much immediately did all the psychoanalysis of of times one and two so you can too now………..And ok time number four goes a little something like this:

Today, in class, I got to do what the chiropractor did to me all those years ago.  But my client didn’t cry.  She buzzed.  I moved really slowly and moved with her breath and after a few minutes I felt like I was touching her back rips but sure enough it was her Psoas and I saw her face buzz when I did it.  I swear to freaking that which is true in your heart I made contact with the deepest muscle I have made contact with yet, I looked up to see how that was affecting my client and her face was buzzing.  She said she felt it in her head.  Uh, YEAH!  After an hour’s worth of work we did some feedback and she said it felt amazing.  I felt like I was meant to do that.  Like I felt really connected to the work.  

Later, when Nicole and LIz and I were talking about how much we loved the steak at this one restaurant.  I was thinking how it was tender, like Filet Mignon.  And then I remembered that one of our teachers told us that Filet Mignon was the Psoas.  So I guess I’ve had more than four encounters.  Below are some pictures.

untitled to be continued

It could have been The Electric Company that did it. I mean it certainly began there. When I was a wee one my mom allowed a few television viewing experiences for me that remain with me to this day. There was coming down from Canada “Mr. Dress Up” who had Lady Elaine and I was sure that she was named after my mother. There was the Magic Garden with the awesome Mona Lisa hair twins who swung on swings, played guitar (see ya! see ya! hope you have a good good morning to ya!) and got corny jokes from the chuckle patch. Of course, there was Sesame Street, which is where I began my long term life goal love affair with brown stone outer borough living. And then there was the ultimate show of shows, The Electric Company. If I didn’t hear the opening, my mother would do her best Rita Moreno impersonation out the back door, up the stairs, whatever, she knew I had to see it. So I’m pretty sure that’s where the narrations started.

See, like ever since I can remember, I have this running narration in my head of my life, like a voice over, and ever since ever it’s been Morgan Freeman. “Alexis had no idea the impact that decision by the pool would make on her life for years to come.” It sounds really poignant when you imagine Morgan Freeman saying it while looking at an image of me all like awkward and 12 choosing the bad boy over the nice boy with the popsicle. It has continued my entire life thus far. I remember hearing him when I hiked Mt. Washington. He was totally there during the marathon when Lars started keeping pace with me. He was on a rampage during the time I decided to go back to school. And he was of course the first words I heard when I first started to fall in love. So like in this weird way I wanted Morgan Freeman to be my dad and Florida from Good Times to be my mom. She had that awesomely big bosom I could cry myself to sleep in. And I wanted Maria from Sesame Street to be my sister.

Mostly I just wanted a sister. Like any sister, but Maria would have been the total gold medal of sisters. So when she came to see a staged reading I was in like 3 years ago and came up after and told me she liked my work I of course burst into tears. Because I am very suave around childhood idols.

full moon fever

So last week, it was Saturday night to be exact, and I know it wasn’t a full moon at that point, a few days past, I was walking my dog Dharma.   We walk up Main Street to Elm Street to Pease Street. We take a right on Pease.   It’s this great street where there aren’t a lot of street lights and a few really nice houses and no cars go down it, like ever.   It’s also really close to farm land. One of the things about Trumansburg is as soon as you get off Main Street you enter the country.   Like Tburg is such a populate hub right?   Ok, it’s all relative. So we’re walking, Dharma and I and we hear it; a coyote howl.  This coyote howled for a solid minute and a half and I shit you not every hair on my body stood at attention (and p.s I know the muscles that pull that hair to attention – arrector pili – there’s one for every hair on your body).  As soon as the howl was done the barking began. I swear it was every dog in a 50 mile radius just woofing it up.   Dharma just stood at attention, ears up, tail up. I looked up to see the moon and instead I saw the Milky Way.  That coyote continued to howl the rest of the night.   Dogs barked all night long, eventually Dharma slept but she stayed by the window a lot.  I have walked down some of the sketchiest streets in all 5 boros over the years.  Rarely have I ever felt what I felt that night.

And I never lost one minute of sleepin, worryin bout the way things might have been

Yesterday I held the sphenoid bone in my hand.

It is the bone that you can feel on either side of your head, where your temples are.  It forms the back of the orbit of your eye and has 2 sliver holes on either side where your optical nerves pass through.  It is the bone that your brain sits on.  Like a shelf.  This is why if you get it knocked hard it can either be fatal or at least a knockout.  It articulates with every other bone in the skull.  every single one.  It looks like a bird to me.  My teacher likens it to a butterfly, Thalia in my class said it was a bat.  It was the prettiest thing i’d seen in a while and I searched for pictures of it but couldn’t find any worthy of what I had seen so I’m posting an anatomy drawing.  If you ever get an opportunity to look at a skull that has been separated into it’s many bones check out the SPHENOID BONE.  It’s seriously gorgeous.  

Oh and in inspirational news:

On sunday, I went to oswego to visit my family.  I went up to see my gram, she had a stroke last year.  So I brought up my massage cream and was just giving her some simple hand, arm and shoulder work.  Like ten minutes each arm.  I finished and she held up her left hand and looked at me all wide eyed and started touching her fingers together and said “huh….hey babe, that’s the first time i can feel my fingers since the stroke last year.”  So I asked her to pick up my ring off the table and she could.  So I worked on her hands specifically for 5 more minutes and we had her pick up a toothpick!  Normally she has to sweep her pills into her hand because she hasn’t had any digital dexterity in a year.  Can you imagine such a small amount of effort helping someone improve their quality of life?  

cool stuff eh?

“it’s really human of you to listen to all my bullshit.”

Ok, so, I was riding my bike to school the other day and somewhere around mile, like, 5.2 out of 9.4 I totally remembered this story.  I was also amused at realizing that skunks way out number raccoons, opossum, deer, squirrels and porcupines for road kill on Rte. 96.  Like by an easy four to one.  So anyway, so, when I was finishing up 6th grade and about to enter Bishop Cunningham Jr/Sr High School my mom thought I might like a summer program.  Or rather my dance school didn’t hold classes in the summer, I was in a summer soccer program but it only ran like one or two nights a week for like 6 weeks and she was and is of the mindset that “you’re not just gonna sit around all summer.”  So the Oswego Public High School drama and music department was going to start putting on a summer musical and the rehearsals would run during summer school hours.  This meant I was going to be occupied and supervised from 8am-12pm every day.  Perfect.  This also meant I had to ride a school bus for the first time in my life.  

I’m sorry what?  A bus?  With all the public school kids?  Minqiua! To put it lightly, I was absolutely freaking terrified.  St. Paul’s was in walking distance.  I had only been on a school bus for fun and educational school trips with my fellow classmates and friends.  Add this to going to a catholic school for the first six years had me convinced of one thing for sure:  Anyone who got to go to a school where there was no dress code was surely much cooler than I could ever hope to be.  And so after many hours of trials, tears and final decisions on my first day of public school summer session musical theater workshop outfit, I waited outside on the corner of 7th and Hamilton for the big yellow bus.  My legs were shaking like a chihuahua on meth and my cheeks were flushed to a lovely subtle bright crimson hue.  How would I possibly ever find a seat and who would I talk to for the 25 minutes it was going to take for the bus to cross the Utica Street Bridge?  I was sure they could all tell that I was a catholic school girl even though I was wearing tan shorts and something pastel on top.  I’m pretty sure I made my mom take me to JCPenney to find something to wear as all I had was plaid skirts and white or blue shirts.

Ok, so not only was the bus full of public high school kids who did not know me and not only did I stumble on to it like some wounded gazelle by the only watering hole surrounded by a hungry pack of cackling hyenas but it was full of kids that were failing their courses and therefore had to go to summer school.  And as I was informed of this morning, I am a huge nerd.  No matter how much I try to cool myself up with tattoos, name drops and big city living it is apparently obvious to all that I am president of the geek squad and treasurer of the nerd team.  So I sat down in the front of the bus which I believe was mistake number 5 at this point (1-4 being tripping on the stairs on the way up, saying thank you to the bus driver, sitting in the seat closest to the bus driver and then turning around and looking at all the truly cool kids sitting on the back of the bus when one of them yelled out “HEY!”).  I’m pretty sure it was silent for a solid 10 seconds and then I got hit in the back of the head with something.  I’m not sure but it was probably a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  

Needless to say that I walked home from the high school that day and stopped off at the hospital on the way to tell my mother I would not be riding the bus ever again and that we better come up with plan B pretty quickly.  Plan B was my brother Ed’s old Schwinn 10 speed.  Fine, no problem.  I mean it was not the pink huffy 10 speed that so many an Oswegonian girl was seen tooling around town on but it was wheels and it was gonna get me to my public high school summer session musical theater program without having to ride the bus.  As the heroin of our generation said “I loathe the bus.”

Ok, so I start riding my bike in the mornings and the whole what to wear thing is still really hard for me, all the options or lack there of rather is really getting to me.  There were two really cool girls, sisters even, in the show with me.  The Shanley girls and they befriended me and I wanted to be liked by them because they seemed really nice and popular and they had a pool and well, everyone wanted to be friends with them.  So I was.  And they had great clothes.  Like lots of name brand items.  A few years back I was in a play by Megan Mostyn-Brown and she had this great line about “if it’s so important to you I’ll sew an upside down triangle on the ass of your pants and write Guess in pen…….Mom, it’s not the point.”  I swear that could have been a direct quote from a conversation between me and my mom.  

Anyway this is not about the Shanley girls or my clothes obsessions, this is about my travels and I swore this would have been a short story.  So, one morning, I’m on my bike and I’m wearing a sweater vest (yeah you read that right) that my cousin gave me and she had mad style so this was actually really cute and I always got lots of compliments on it and I was gonna be able to wear it in the fall to Jr. High as we had a dress code but not uniforms and it was pastels and kind of slouchy and totally perfect and I just knew that everyone in my show was gonna like it.  And I had matching earrings and my hair was kind of working that day (P.S. curly hair is a wicked bitch to deal with when you’re 12 and chock full of hormones).  Ok so I go down Hamilton to Syracuse Ave., and over to Utica and I’m headed down Utica and I get to the light at East 1st Street and it’s green and I am going over the bridge and I’m riding in the street because that’s what my father told me was the legal way to ride a bike and all of a sudden…bump.  Except it felt more like BUMP!!!! And I go ass over tea kettle off my bike and on to the sidewalk and land face down or rather chin down on the pavement and when I open my eyes they are flush with the barriers of the bridge and I’m looking down at the river below.  

So I kind of like hop up.  Except my legs don’t really want to work so I sort of stumble around on the bridge and I’m not really sure what just happened but I think I got hit by a car but no one is stopping and I kind of can’t feel anything and can feel all my skin at the same time.  So my vision sort of widens because up until that point all I could see was what was directly in front of me and I see my brother’s bike up on the sidewalk, kind of twisted and the chain off and shit and so I pick it up and do what my instincts tell me to do.  I stand at the edge of the side walk and stick out my thumb.  At this point I’m still not crying and I have no idea what, if anything, is wrong with me other than I just fell off my bike.  

I know that my mom is working that morning so I can just go to the hospital but I know my legs won’t walk that far and that I can’t get back on the bike.  Pretty instantly a pick up truck stops.  A guy in his 20’s gets out and says “I saw that car hit you.  I think I can identify it.  Here I’ll take you to the hospital.”  I wasn’t thinking stranger danger.  I was thinking total Blanche Dubois “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”  So I told him my mother worked at the hospital if he could just drive me the few blocks there and I let him grab my bike and throw it in the back of his truck.  I let him open the door for me and hand me a flannel shirt from under the seat.  He said “Here, hold this under your face.”  He got in the truck and I started to pull down the visor and he stopped me and said, “maybe wait till we get to the hospital.”  At that point I looked down at my pretty pastel sweater vest and saw the red blanket that had seeped onto me.

He pulled up to the hospital, got out, got my bike out, opened the door and asked me if I wanted him to walk me in.  I said, no, I’m ok and started walking towards the 5th Street entrance.  The 5th Street entrance is not the emergency entrance.  The 5th Street entrance is for, like, outpatients and people happily leaving the hospital with their bundles of joy.  And in walks me in my near shock state covered in blood.  I do what I know to do, I’m on total cruise control.  I go to the second elevator bank and hit the button and wait.  I get on and hit the floor for the labor/deliver and nursery.  I step off the elevator and walk to the door of the nursery where I see my mom in the back with a newborn.  I do what I always do when I want her attention I say “Elaine….”  She looks up at me and smiles and then I see her face change and I know it’s bad and finally I truly do what I know how to do best, I burst into tears.  She brings me back into a bathroom to clean me up and see what the real damage is as there’s just a lot of blood and by the way, I’m still holding this stranger’s flannel shirt to my face.  

After some inspection she decides Steri Strips are not gonna cut it and so we go down to the Emergency room where my brother Eric’s high school girlfriend is now working as a nurse.  This is good because my mom has to go back up to deliver a baby and I’m pretty scared and have seen the gash in my face and am pretty sure there’s no fixing it.  I get put on the table, the nice doctor comes in and the nicer nurse holds my hand while he sews up my chin w/ 8 stitches.  He then tells me I have to keep it covered and dry.  So not only do I have 8 big ugly black stitches on my face (yeah no plastic surgeon like stitches here) but I have to wear like some sort of gauze or band-aid over it and then, then, then he tells me I can’t get it wet for whatever, 3 weeks or something stupid like that.  It was the beginning of summer!  All I did on my free time was swim at my gram’s pool, swim at the Nicholson’s pool or swim at the Lake.  And did I mention that the Shanley’s had already invited me to their annual awesome, big pool party and Jason Guido was going to be there and I thought he was for sure the coolest thing in Umbro’s.  Frankly, I’m amazed I made it through with any social dignity left.  But I did.  Or at least that’s what I tell myself.  Oh, and my mom, she totally got all the blood out of the sweater and I wore it first day of 7th grade and everyone loved it.  P.S., I have no idea who the nice hitchhiker picker upper was but thanks man.

you gonna take me home tonight

Last night I was at work at my new job at The Rongo while I go to school here in Ithaca and the song Bicycle Race by Queen came on.  That song and Fat Bottom Girls (which my brothers all told me was “my song”….nice) is like the soundtrack to growing up at 234 East 7th Street.  I mean, that and Led Zeppelin and The Police and Pink Floyd and The Kinks and you get the idea.   But I was thinking when I heard it about how I would ask my brother Ed to play Bicycle Race over and over again because I loved the chorus of “I want to ride my biCYCLE, I want to ride my bike, I want to ride my biCYCLE, I want to ride it where I like.”  I thought it was surely written for me.  Like as my anthem because I wanted nothing more than to be able to go where I wanted, when I wanted and with whomever I wanted.  As it stands being the youngest and being the only girl means everyone, like EVERYONE, gets to tell you what to do.  And no matter how many times I said “you’re not the boss of me!” I still had to obey.  

It’s funny to me now as an adult that as bossy as I get, which is pretty friggin bossy, I can’t wait for someone to tell me what to do.  I think it’s one of the reasons I loved acting so much.  I had a writer, director and producer who could at any point come in and say “lexi, during this moment can you do this?”  Sure, no problem.  Do you need me to change the channel on the tv or get you a drink while I’m at it?  Before there was a clicker, yours truly was the remote control at the Croucher house.  It’s no wonder I worked in the restaurant industry for so long.  I was so used to getting up and getting whatever it was that was needed for years before I moved to NYC.  I remember my brother Eric especially liked this trick.  He asked me to get everything for him.  Like everything and anything you can imagine.  Lex, change it to channel 10, lex go get me a glass of water, lex get me a tissue, lex hand me a pillow, lex go get my backpack, lex go get me a brownie, lex go get me….  And this made my brother Mark furious.  I think he just wanted to be furious at Eric but either way there was a lot of conflict that ended with Eric laughing and saying “LEX…go get me a glass of water…Peabrain! do it!”  and Mark would be rearing his arm back over him ready to split in two pieces spitting out the words “Alexis do NOT go get that!  You are not his slave!  You do NOT have to do whatever he tells you!!!!”  And there was me standing in the threshold of the living room and kitchen weeping with indecision and fear that this time, one of them actually would kill the other….more to come

time i spent some time alone

I just got home.  Astoria home.  I was upstate this weekend.  I spent some time in Oswego, my old hometown and in Trumansburg, my soon to be stomping ground and Rochester, what could be my future home.  Christopher and I did a whirlwind driving tour of all things upstate in about 60 hours.  The thing about a road trip with Christopher, or so I found out, is that the radio is not utilized.  We don’t listen to music.  This is fine, as we gab.  I rarely have trouble finding something to flap my gums about and Christopher and I, are a good pair for that.  He’s one of my better audiences as he finds me massively hilarious and he is one of the smarter people I’ve ever met so he keeps me informed, up to date and educated and I keep him laughing so hard he actually squirms in his seat.  We drove through my home town and I pointed out all the places I went to school, made out in, had sex at, worked at, skipped rocks at, hung out at and watched skateboarders, you know, the usual.  We drove to a beautifully romantic and genuine wedding.  We drove to a proper Memorial Day Bar-B-Que.  We drove up and down Rte 104, a few times.  We drove to Ontario Orchards.  We drove to my parents’ house twice.  We drove to Harriet Tubman’s house.  We drove to Romulus and I introduced him to my high school boyfriend Anthony.  We drove to Trumansburg to see where I’m going to be living.  It was closed.  Trumansburg.  Like, for real.  Just the coffee shop was open.  So we drove to Taughannock Falls.  We drove to Ithaca and then we drove to the Delaware Water Gap.  We drove to Jersey and then we crossed the George Washington Bridge.  We had been quiet for a while at this point.  It was dark, we had been in the car for over 9 hours.  I turned on the radio as soon as we got up to the EZ Pass and the traffic started to move again.  REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it” came on almost at the beginning.  Anyone who knows me knows I fucking hate REM but I gotta say that on one of the last 2 drives back to what I will know as MY HOME in Astoria hearing that song and having the traffic be all fast and crazy and me yelling out the known quotables “OFFER ME SOLUTIONS OFFER ME ALTERNATIVES AND I DECLINE” and Christopher not knowing them and laughing at me was pretty perfect.  Pretty perfect indeed.

trifolium repens

I have one memory of my Uncle Billy.  At least I think it’s a memory or it could be a dream that I remember, I’m not sure.  See, my Uncle Billy, he was one of the two youngest boys in my mom’s family.  He was a for sure wild child, a hell raiser, a dare devil.  Personally, I remember him as a total golden child.  He had long blond hair and big eyes and was all chiseled from being so intense and from working so much construction.  The picture many of my aunts and uncles have that I remember is a black and white shot.  Uncle Billy is looking straight into the camera and he’s smiling casually, he has on a hard hat and a big bushy beard, long hair and you can hear he’s saying ”heyyyyy man, what’s up.”

My specific, personal memory of him is one of the times he came back to Oswego for a visit.  It would have been the last time I saw him.  It would have been right before he died.  This is before I even turned 7 years old.  Uncle Billy had moved out to Colorado from the time I was a very young girl.  He followed The Dead.  He drove a motorcycle.  I heard a story once about how he was the guy that stood up on his bike with his arms outstretched going over 60 miles an hour.  But my memory of him is in the park.  For the life of me I can’t remember if we were in Hamilton Street Park across the street from my house, the house my Mom and my Uncle Billy grew up in, or if we were up the street in Oak Hill Park (the far superior park as it had a water playground) or if we were in the mecca of all parks in Oswego…Breitbeck.  I just remember my cousin Aimee and I were sitting in the grass and our Uncle Billy was home and he was mysterious and an angel because we didn’t really know him.  He was new to us so we were sitting near him just happy to be around him.  It didn’t matter if he had a kickball or a jump rope or a frisbee or anything, he was the cool uncle and we just wanted to bask in his inner light and glory.  The memory is that he was talking to us, he was telling us a story or telling us a joke or something and he all of a sudden just leaned over and said “huh, look, a four leaf clover, hey Lex, have you ever seen one of these before?  This is a four leaf clover, this is really good luck, there’s like a rhyme or something about this, but this is really lucky….cool.  Here, it’s for you.”

I was an afterschool special Part I edited and Part II electric boogaloo

So I had this really great high school boyfriend. Anthony Arena.   I mean as far as high school boyfriends go, Anthony was pretty great.  He made me laugh all the time, it’s pretty much all we did, besides make out and do it.  He was the guy that for my birthday gave me a Bad Brains tape and a really pretty pair of earrings.  He was good that way.  He opened doors for me, put his hand on my back in crowds, he was respectful to women, loved his mom, had good friends, my parents thought the world of him, my brothers liked him a lot, he liked to hold my hand, look into my eyes and whenever he would say my name he put his hand on his package which just cracked me up.  He didn’t realize he did that but he did.  If we fought, I don’t remember, I mean, I remember at my prom we fought, I think because I spent the whole night gabbing with my friend Dave James who went to Pub High but was at our party.  I remember Anthony got pissed and called me a butana which him being all Italian all the time was like the ultimate insult.  But anyway, this isn’t about our prom.  

Ok, this is about how Anthony and I started dating in my Junior year, he was a Sophomore (I am recently realizing I have always dug on the younger gentlemen) and I guess he had been after me for a while.  Wait, I don’t guess it I know it.  And it was pretty awesome, that dude chased me for like a year.  He showed up, saw me and told me “you’re gonna be my girlfriend Alexis Croucher.”  And honestly, at first, I  didn’t believe him.  He was persistent though, and massively charming for a 16 year old and he won me over, he made me laugh a lot.  What can I say? I’m a sucker for a funny guy.  Ok, so, he went away to Italy for the summer and then got back and then we fell all crazy in love and then we did it on his bed with Empire Strikes Back sheets for the first time.  I mean, it wasn’t either of our “first time” but it was our first time together and we were nuts about each other and there was Han Solo and Ben Kenobi giving us their approval so it was pretty awesome.  After that we did it a lot.  Like every chance we could.  In the car, in his basement, at the drive in, his house, my house, in a field, on the golf course, he came, I came and then winter came and then winter break came and then Christmas came and funny thing, when was my last period?  Uhhh, it hadn’t come.  Yeah, the last time it came, it was well before Thanksgiving.  Like closer to Halloween.  When I hit 34 days and no period I started praying.  Rana started praying.  Anthony started praying.  Anthony’s friend Geoff started praying.  Personally, I was doing the rosary nightly.  I was stopping in church pretty much every day.  I remember Rana got her period like 2 times during the time that I had not got it and she would hug me and say “my uterus is strong and it’s gonna make yours bleed.”  It didn’t.  I mean, I was a teenager, I was in dance class 6 days a week it wasn’t totally weird for me to be late but that usually meant like 2 days late.  I was into 8 days and my birthday was coming and I had no idea how to say “Hey Mom remember when you gave birth to me?  Cool huh?  I’m preggers.”

I didn’t have to do it that way, because my mom, she’s a nurse and she’s a woman and so one day during said Christmas break, after Christmas before New Year’s and before my birthday I was helping my mom gather laundry and she said, “Hey, when was the last time you had your period?  Do you need to go to your brother’s today and get an adjustment?”  And I said, “Uhhh, I’m thinking mom, maybe I don’t need a chiropractor so much.”  Ok then!  My mom, she went all business.  She might as well have busted out her old timey nursing hat because she went full on RN on me.  She started in with the questions.  When was the last time you had sex?  Uhhhh, yesterday.  And what are you using?  Using?  Yes what kind of contraception are you using?  I know you’ve been educated in it, and I know you’re not stupid so what kind of contraception are you using?  Oh, condoms, every time (which was true, even though we were dumb teenagers).  What else?  Uhhhh, what else?  Yes, What else? What other contraceptive are you using?  Uhhhh, nothing?  She pursed her lips.  She brusquely handed me the laundry basket, said “Sort this” and got in her car.  She came back about 20 minutes later and said “Let’s go upstairs Alexis…….NOW.”  Upstairs to the bathroom we went, my dad was lifting weights down in the basement and she said “here, pee on this” and I said “but I already peed this morning” and she said “That doesn’t matter, pee on this now.”  So I dropped trough and peed.  

After ten luxurious, carefree minutes sitting on the edge of the tub with my mom desperately trying to think of anything to say and actually coming up with nothing for the only time in my life a very pink plus sign came up.  Very pink.  Very plus.  I immediately did what I do best.  I started crying.  My father had finished his workout and was coming up the stairs, heard me and rapped on the door.  Dad:  ”What’s wrong with my baby girl?”  Mom:  ”Your baby girl is just a little bit pregnant.”  Dad:  ”………………oh.”  

Now, Anthony was actually on his way over to my house, his mom was dropping him off.  He was 16 years old and I was 17 about to turn 18 in like 3 days.  He had no fucking idea the shit storm he was about to walk into.   My mom told me to stop crying and wash my face, she told me to calm myself down so I could tell Anthony.  Perfect right?  Calm yourself down so you can hyperventilate and throw up on your boyfriend’s shoes when you tell him his life is over.  I remember my father told me he loved me and that it would be ok.  In my head all I heard was:  No it wouldn’t!  No it wouldn’t! No it wouldn’t! I was supposed to go to France that summer, I was starting college in the fall.  I had a really big dance show in 5 months.  I was a freaking teenager!  I have no idea what my mom and dad did but I guess it was something along the lines of a very serious hushed tones conversation in the bedroom where I was probably referred to as “your daughter” by both of them.  Anthony showed up, said good bye to his ma, (thank gawd Rafaella didn’t stop in to say hello that day because you cannot lie to that woman, I don’t care who you are, Bill Clinton could not lie to that woman) came upstairs and found me sitting there all smiles and hugs and kisses and hey you should sit down for a sec, hey, babe, I wicked love you, like more than anything in the world and umm I’m pregnant.

And that’s when the tears came.  This time not mine.  I crushed that guys whole life in 2.4 seconds.  He looked at me and said “but I’m just a kid.”  Sweet jeebus how were we gonna get through this day let alone the next 9 months to a lifetime?  We started by him calling his brother out in New Mexico who talked him down and told him NOT to tell his mother.  Do NOT call mom.  Repeat:  Do NOT CALL MOM.  Not yet.  He would come up with a way to do it but in the meantime do NOT tell her.  If you want to live another day you will not tell Ma.  So we went downstairs to face my parents who I really can’t say enough were handling this way cooler than I would have ever thought.  So we get downstairs, my mom was on the phone and she hung up looked at us both and said “I’m calling the hospital, we’re getting you an appointment today, I want you take the hospital test….You better hope your Italian Stallion boyfriend is shooting blanks.”

My mom gets on the phone and in some sort of code doublespeak she makes an emergency appointment for me in like 15 minutes.  So I get in the car with my mom and leave my poor 16 year old boyfriend alone in the house with my father.  I guess he took our dog Chi out immediately for a very long walk.  My father got on the horn with my brothers and told them what was up and I guess 2 of them immediately went to church and prayed for me and the other thought good thoughts for me.  

My mom and I got to the hospital and went up to the third floor that I knew so well.  I had gone to visit her in the nursery many times.  Like, easily 3-4 times a week my entire life.  I knew all the nurses and doctors and always stopped and chatted with them all.  This time, huh, yeah, not so much with the chatting.  We get on the third floor and my mom breezes us past the front desk with all of the nurses looking at me with a very concerned look on their faces.  My cheeks were burning red hot and I was sweating through my shirt.  She pushed open a door I had never gone through and it opened onto a hallway that of course looked to me like the basement in Jacob’s Ladder and I was waiting for the experiments to begin.  And they did.  

I was seated in a waiting room with 4 very pregnant women.  Most of them weren’t much older then me and a few were but it didn’t matter, I was sure they all knew why I was there and I was very sure that they were judging me.  It was like when I passed the nurses, I know now they weren’t but I was so ashamed I was sure everyone was casting a very harsh judgement on  me.  I wanted to stand up in the waiting room and scream “THAT’S RIGHT!  I SCREWED MY BOYFRIEND AND EVEN THOUGH WE ALWAYS USED A CONDOM I SOMEHOW ENDED UP HERE!  SO WHAT’S IT TO YOU HUH?  YOU WANT TO GO?  YOU WANT A PIECE OF THIS?”  Alexis Croucher?  The doctor will see you now.  Oh, ok, I look at my mom through my tear filled eyes and she says, well, go on.  I get up and go in and the nurse hands me a cup and says here honey, go pee into this.  I say but I already did that this morning.  She says that’s ok, this test is never wrong.  And I say but I mean we already took a test and I’ve peed a bunch already today.  And she says, really honey, that’s ok, this is the HOSPITAL test.  Ok, so I go and pee and then I go and get on the table for the first time.  You always have to wait, I know that now, but at 17, I had no idea just how long 10 minutes could feel like laying mostly naked with a paper napkin covering you and your legs in stirrups.  

The very nice doctor gives me an exam and then says you can get dressed and wait outside.  I go back outside with my mom and we’re in the waiting room and the doctor, he goes into the office and then I hear Alexis Croucher, could you come here please?  I go up to the office, my mother’s lips are still pursed.  And the nice nurse is smiling at me and the doctor is standing behind her and he is smiling and she says “the test is negative honey.”  And I say “yeah I know!”  In my head, negative is bad and bad is pregnant.  And she laughs and says “No honey, negative, you’re not pregnant.”  And I say “MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!”  So she comes in and we turn into the ending of a Simpson’s episode where they have run out of script.  We just stand around the desk and laugh.  The doctor is saying something about stress and that I’ll probably get it in 24 hours and my mother is saying yes, she gets very stressed out.  And then there’s talk about me going on The Pill and my mother is in total agreement with that and I am kind of like uhhh, sure yeah ok.  I knew many girls who were on The Pill, but they all had these really great moral excuses like, they had bad cramps or bad skin.  I was the first girl I knew to be like, well, I’m on The Pill because I screw my boyfriend and we don’t want to get pregnant.  It was a pretty big statement in that town.

So we get back to good old 7th Street and I leap out of the car and run into the house and there’s no Anthony!   Dad, where’s Anth?  My dad, he’s already out the door saying get in the car, we’ll go find him, he left with Chi about an hour ago.  We drive down the street and find him in front of our high school with the dog.  I leap out and my dad drives on.  I give back this 16 year old boy his life and we go back to my house to have one of the more surreal days ever with my family.  After Anthony went home that night my mom says I think it’s a good idea for you to go on The Pill and I say ok but you know mom we’re never gonna have sex again.  Like, we are never EVER gonna do that again because we don’t want to EVER go through that again.  And then my mom, she lays down one of those truths that she is known for.  She looks me square in the eye and says “Alexis, sex is like chocolate cake, you can tell yourself all you want that you are never gonna have any again but the fact of the matter is, chocolate cake is delicious and you are gonna have it again the first chance you get.”

So yeah, the next night was New Year’s Eve and Anthony and I had dinner plans and we went to Canale’s for dinner and then we were making out in the car and yeah, we waited.  Like 10 minutes.  And about 45 minutes after that, as soon as we got back to my house, I got my period.  That night, as we sat in my parents living room watching the ball drop in NYC my father, he came in and gave us both a glass of wine and toasted us.  He toasted US!  He said he was proud to know kids who were as honest and good as us.  My mother stopped pursing her lips and laughed.