FIGHTING FOR CONTROL
My decision to drop out of cheerleading pretty much cut me off from the jock crowd. So I spent most of my time looking for a new crowd.
That's why every Thursday night I'd go to a pizza pub that had dancing. That was where I met Trish, Alex, Ben, and a whole bunch of kids from neighboring Arlington High School. Friday nights I'd go with the Arlington crowd to a ski resort where there was a bar and a live band. Saturday night I'd go wherever the action was, such as a party at somebody's house. And on Sundays I'd just drive around and drink.
Almost all the kids in my new crowd were at least a year older than I. Some had lots of money and the things it could buy — nice clothes and fast cars. Being only sixteen, with not much money, I had to earn my membership in the group in other ways. Like drinking more and laughing louder than anyone else.
I'd just gotten my license, so I usually volunteered to drive. Somehow I always got everyone home safely, even though I was drinking a six-pack or more almost every night we went out.
As many as three or four nights a week I would arrange to stay at a friend's — someone whose parents wouldn't be up to smell the beer on me. But my own parents knew I was drinking — and drinking a lot. The times I would go home I would be so late and in such bad shape my parents didn't know what to do with me.
The fragile truce Mom and I had forged when Dad came home from the hospital was broken by June. She lectured, yelled, and cried, but nothing she did changed anything — except maybe Dad's blood pressure. The worst battles took place between Mom and me. But Dad still knew about them.
The first time my mom threatened to have me committed to the local juvenile detention center, I just laughed. "For what?"
"For being incorrigible," she said.
I saw she was serious, but I laughed again. "Just try it!"
She said she would, but as many times as she threatened that summer, she didn't. I never really worried about the possibility.
On several occasions, usually in the middle of a disagreement, she'd insist that I would at least have to go for some counseling. "As soon as we can get an appointment."
I would scream, argue, and refuse to even consider it. "I'm not the one with the problems. You are!"
As I walked to the door one muggy summer evening, my mom stopped me. she wanted to know where I was going and when I'd be back. "I don't know," I retorted. "And I wouldn't tell you if I did."
"You'd better be back before midnight," she warned.
I couldn't let those words go unchallenged. "I will if I feel like it," I snapped, and the conversation went rapidly downhill from there.
She said I had better do as she said. I told her she couldn't make me. And as we began shouting back and forth, weeks and months of pent-up frustration poured out of my mother. As her anger climbed to a level I had never seen before, she accused me of disgracing the family and threatening my father with another stroke. She said if I wanted to stay under their roof, I had better start abiding by their rules. "If you don't," she concluded, "you can get out!"
"Fine!" I told her. "I'll leave!" I stomped off to my room, pulled a suitcase out of my closet, and started filling it with clothes.
Moments later Mom charged into the room. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm leaving. You gave me a choice. And I choose to leave!"
"You're not leaving this house!"
"Just watch me!" I folded another pair of jeans and put them into my suitcase.
"You're not going anywhere!" She grabbed the pants and threw them on the floor. I picked them up and very deliberately put them back. Then she grabbed a whole stack of clothes from my suitcase and flung them across the room as she screamed again that I wasn't going anywhere.
I screamed right back. "I hate you and can't stop me." The whole time we were screaming at each other I was trying to understand the irony of it all: My mom tells me to shape up or ship out, and then she won't let me leave! The obvious irrationality only fueled my feelings that I was a victim of injustice.
Half the clothes I owned were strewn around the room by the time my father came rushing in to see what all the ruckus was about. Outnumbered, and still stinging from mom's accusations about my effect on Dad, I quit the fight and let my father put my suitcase away.
But later, when my parents went to their own room. I quickly packed and left. For three days I stayed at my friend Penny's house until my parents finally found me and begged me to come home.
I agreed to give it another try. It was only a matter of days before we were at each other again. And again. And again. Several times that summer I packed a bag or a suitcase and slipped out my bedroom window during the night and went to Penny's. Her mom would always make me call home the next morning to let my parents know where I was. But I wanted to scare them and to let them know I would make my own decisions.
The atmosphere at Penny's house was such a contrast to my home that it sometimes added to my frustration. Her parents seemed so warm and friendly. Their family went out to eat together and took special vacation trips. I remember one time when Penny plopped down on her dad's lap and gave him a big hug and he held her for a while like a little girl as they laughed and talked. I thought, I don't ever remember my dad holding me on his lap like that. And I wished he would. I wished we could somehow be a happy family, but wishing didn't make it so.
By the time August rolled around and another school year approached, we all were weary of the constant confrontations. I knew I wasn't going to give in, and I didn't expect my parents to make any drastic changes in their attitudes either. So I started thinking about some way out.
The idea that came to me seemed the only viable alternative. I decided to check out the feasibility of graduating from high school a year early.
When I suggested the option to my mom, I was a little surprised at her willingness to consider the idea. I think we both felt we couldn't go on living as we were for two more years of high school — one year, maybe. At least we'd have an end in sight; I could head off for college in another twelve months.
From my perspective, there was less and less reason to stay in high school. I wasn't going to be in cheerleading, and I was spending most of my time with senior friends anyway. All in all, high school was turning out to be a real drag. So why not get it over with as soon as possible?
Mom and I sat together across the desk from the guidance counselor, waiting as the women leafed through my file. The verdict came down positive. "If we drop Becky's elective and her study hall, it looks like we can keep her grades up, she should be able to graduate next spring."
The very next week I walked into Central High School to start my senior year. But what a year.
The wild pattern of summer hardly slowed down. Where other years I had always been careful not to jeopardize my cheerleading role, this year partying had replaced popularity as the driving force in my school life.
Now I went to the Friday night football games only to drink and see who was with whom. Sometimes as the cheerleaders worked through a familiar routine I'd remember what it was like to stand in the lights and try to stir up the crowd. Then I'd tell myself, I could be down there if I wanted to be. But I don't. I'm doing what I want and the rest of them can't hassle me anymore.
But as the first weeks of school passed, I realized I did miss the camaraderie and the excitement of cheerleading. So shen the announcement came out saying it was time for wrestling cheerleader tryouts, I swallowed my pride and tried out. Wrestling cheerleading wasn't that prestigious — only parents and girlfriends even attended the matches. But the positive side of that was that the cheerleading coach required very little of the squad; she hardly ever went to a match and only occasionally attended the practices. We'd be pretty much on our own, so we could have all the fun we wanted with none of the hassles.
I almost walked out and scrapped my whole plan when I found out the varsity cheerleader in charge of the tryouts was someone who'd given me a real hard time the year before. I almost walked out again when she pulled me aside and told me I wouldn't even be considered for the cheerleading squad if I was going to create the same kind of problems I had the year before. It was an obvious threat, an attempt on her part to let me know she had some say-so over me. I stifled the urge to tell her what I thought of her and promised to be a model cheerleader if selected — partly because I wanted to do it, but mostly because I wasn't going to give this girl the satisfaction of seeing me quit.
Eight seniors made the squad. Four of us already hung around together on a regular basis. So my plan had worked. We were going to have a blast! We weren't as prestigious as the football/basketball cheerleaders, so we were in it just to have fun.
And we did.
The wrestling coach, Mr. Rioni, had some responsibility for the cheerleaders. He was a fairly funny teacher. For example, I had a new boyfriend, another wrestler named Kent. Once, on the bus heading to a match at another school, I climbed onto Kent's lap, planted a long passionate kiss on his lips, and then gave him a big hickey on his neck. Everybody laughed about it, including Mr. Rioni.
En route to another match, we stopped to eat at a McDonald's. Afterward I carried my half-finished Coke onto the bus and laced it with gin from a fifth I'd stashed away earlier. I had heard that you couldn't smell gin on a person's breath. No one ever said anything about my being loaded that day, although I almost lost it during one of the cheers and I thought for sure I was in trouble.
I did get in trouble at one match — an afternoon affair in the high school gym of a neighboring suburb. I stood in front of the mirror in the girl's bathroom, adjusting my cheerleading sweater and taking the last couple of drags on a cigarette when a stern-looking, middle-aged woman walked in. She stopped just inside the door, sniffed the air, looked at the cigarette in my hand, and with an air of authority marched right up to me. I didn't know she was the dean.
"Come with me," she ordered. Taking my arm, she led me out of the bathroom and down the hall to the gym. The wrestling teams were doing warm-ups as she directed me over to Mr. Rioni and announced: "I found this cheerleader smoking in the rest room." The tone of her voice was saying, What are you going to do about that?
I could see the color rising in Mr. Rioni's neck. I'd embarrassed him in front of an administrator of another school and he was ticked. He clamped his big meaty hand on the back of my neck and said, "You're in big trouble, young lady. And if you don't straighten out fast, you're gonna be in bigger trouble."
I happened to have Mr. Rioni for government class, so when I walked into his room the next day, he called me to the front of the class. "Let me have your purse, Becky."
"What for?" I wanted to know.
"Just hand it here."
"Why?"
He didn't answer. He snatched it out of my grip and dumped the contents on his desk. Then he picked out my nearly full pack of menthol cigarettes, ripped them open, and ceremoniously dropped them into the trash can as everyone else in the room looked on, laughing.
Now I was mad. But instead of showing it, I just laughed, stuffed everything back into my purse, and walked to my seat. The next time I went to class he did the same thing. And the time after that. I began tossing my cigarettes in my locker every day just before government. When I forgot, he'd grin victoriously and destroy my cigarettes. Checking my purse became a daily ritual that entertained my classmates and spawned something of a love/hate relationship between Mr. Rioni and me.
Yet somehow, I always seemed to avoid any serious trouble.
Like the night Trish, Alex, and Ben picked me up after a home wrestling match. As we all piled into Ben's Camaro after the match, I saw the case of Coors stashed on the floor of the backseat and knew we had everything we needed.
We cruised around for a while until Trish got giggly high and said, "I have to go to the john."
So Ben laughed and pulled off the side of the road and onto the grass of the local cemetery. Trish opened the door, ran twenty or thirty yards into the cemetery, and stepped behind a tree as we all laughed at her.
Just as she came running back and jumped into the car, a spotlight his us. A police car pulled up from behind and the officer got out. It was too late to ditch the beer; we were caught red-handed.
Then he shone his flashlight around the inside of the car, the officer recognized our driver. "What are you doing out here, Ben?"
"Just heading home from a wrestling match over at Central," Ben told him.
"You've got two problems here," the policemen told him. "You've got open beer in the back and you've got minors out after curfew. I think you'd better take these girls home and go home yourself, or you may get into trouble."
"Okay, I'll do that," Ben responded. "Thanks for the warning."
As we pulled back out onto the highway, I let out a big sigh of relief and we all burst into laughter. It pays to ride with the son of Arlington's mayor.
Instead of going directly home, we drove across the town line into the adjoining town, where Ben pulled into a dark alley behind a grocery store and stopped the car. We were drinking and making out when another spotlight swept over the car. One of the town's finest policemen climbed out of his car to check us out. He also knew the mayor's son so he simply told us to get along home. We promised we would, and we headed back into Arlington to find another place to park.
No sooner had we found a dark corner of a shopping center parking lot than another police car pulled up. It was the same officer who'd run us out of the cemetery, and when he saw who we were, he chewed us out and told us he was going to follow us home.
So our evening ended earlier than we'd planned. But we all went home with a hilarious tale to tell our friends the next day, about how we got caught drinking by the cops three times in one night and were still able to get away with it.
Although I avoided serious trouble with authorities that year, my partying pattern didn't come without a price. It cost me several relationships. Especially with my junior friends. They never did understand my decision to graduate a year early. I still had a couple of classes with them, but I was taking senior courses, too. We just didn't share as much of our lives as we had before.
A contributing factor was that my new Arlington friends, being a year older, could get into bars. A couple of them were eighteen and legal. So I manufactured a fake ID card. It wasn't hard. I turned seventeen in December anyway. So all I had to do was get a good copy of my birth certificate, white out the last digit of my birth year, type in a three instead of a four, and make one final copy that looked perfectly legitimate.
I found a lot more action — dancing and guys — in the bars than you could find just cruising around. So as time passed, I found fewer nights to spend with my old friends.
Then came a night when I canceled my plans with some of my old friends at the last minute, claiming I didn't feel well. The real reason was that Trish and I had decided to check out a new bar. When my old friends found out the truth a couple days later, I endured a week's worth of dirty looks and sullen silences. We made up later, but our relationships were never the same after that.
I felt bad about the rift between us. We'd all been good friends for a long time and I still wanted to be friends, but other things were crowding out our friendships. Our relationships dwindled rapidly.
I had some similar misunderstandings with Kent. He was a little younger than I was, too. He didn't want to take the risk of going to bars, and he didn't like me going without him. We continued to date into the winter; we'd go out pretty regularly and have a good time. But we kept having fights about my nights out with the girls. I'd have to say ours was an of-and-off, hot-and-cold relationship.
He could be so sweet. On Valentine's Day evening he picked me up. We drove only a couple of blocks from my house before he pulled into a parking lot, stopped the car, reached into the backseat, and presented me with a dozen long-stemmed red roses. A warm romantic sensation filled me and I thought, "So this is what it feels like to be loved — to be in love."
The next night when I wanted to go to a dance bar with Trish and another Arlington girl, Kent and I had a big fight and broke up again. It was like that the rest of my senior year. We'd go out for a couple of weeks, then we'd fight and break up for a week. I liked Kent a lot, but I wasn't going to let him keep me away from my partying.
Going to bars had exposed me to a wide range of hard liquor. I could get higher faster than I ever had drinking beer. I still drank beer, but even when I went out cruising with friends, I'd usually take something stronger. I drank a lot of what we called Mad-Dog — MD 20:20, a potent Mogen-David wine with more than a 20 percent alcohol content. A pint of that a night hit me like a six-pack high without the bloated feeling. The only drawback, and it seemed pretty insignificant, was that there were more and more mornings when I couldn't recall everything that had happened the night before.
I also did a lot of pot. Its more mellow high gave me warm feelings of closeness to my friends. I hardly ever bought any. Yet I always seemed to be able to get dope whenever I wanted it.
But lots of high schoolers experimented with more than just beer and pot. Word always spread about those who did hard drugs or had "loose" reputations. So I still had reservations about those things. My reasons weren't particularly moral ones: The drugs scared me, and sex was something I felt needed to wait until I discovered my true love. In a way, my abstinence in both areas was a way of proving to myself that I was still in control of my life.
And control was becoming increasingly important to me. Maybe because so many things about my senior year weren't turning out like they always had in my dreams.