I Hate Nature - Part I

 Admissions

During my senior year at Santa Monica High School I was the epitome of cluelessness.  That fall, most of my friends were filling out college applications. I was barely eking through Algebra Two, falling only second to last with a handsome football player named D’John.  When Homecoming week was over and all the celebrations had run their course I figured that I ought to apply somewhere. 

“It’s too late” my best friend, Kim told me.  "You missed the deadline".

I was part of a She Pack of girls that was enthusiastic, well known and motivated. Our pack walked a line between wildness and adoration; engaged enough to pacify the adults at the school, we got away with things like dressing up as babies on Halloween and putting vodka and orange juice in the bottles.  We created the Mickey Mouse Club which we claimed promoted school spirit.  On Fridays, we wore mouse ears and Disney themed clothing.  We never discussed trivial matters like our future.  But most of the Mickey Mouse Club had gone through the college application process.  Many of them also had older siblings or parents who had herded them through.  Kim, being the straight a, honors, first chair orchestra, cheerleading self-proclaimed over achieving Asian that she was, had been accepted to UCLA.  She would live at home just like her four older brothers had done and make the drive in to Westwood from Malibu. Maria, the feisty Chilean had been accepted to USC as a potential dental student, if not hygienist.   Molly, whose mother was Nancy Reagan’s personal secretary, had remained in California her last two years of high school, while her mom lived near the White House.  She would be headed to Georgetown in September.  And Jen had been accepted to Humboldt State following in the footsteps of her brother, a Forestry Major.

And then there was me.  

At one time, after taking the one and only science class of my life, Human Physiology, I thought it would be fun to be a nurse.  Looking back, it makes sense because I was obsessed with a soap opera called General Hospital.  Nurses walked around, flirting with handsome doctors and solving the personal problems of patients, didn’t they? That sounded like a job perfectly suited for me.  During College Day in the gym I had picked up a brochure from San Francisco State that listed the requirements of a nursing degree.   I looked it over with my Dad and Judi and saw that I had a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming a nurse.  Too much math and science required.

Because my dad worked, on average 12 hours a day and traveled 2/3’s of every month he had next to zero interaction with anyone at Samohi, as our high school was affectionately called. I forged my own Sick Notes because he told me,

“They’ll recognize your signature better than mine”

To be fair, my dad had been to the High School once.  This was when I was in a Shakespeare play called Much Ado About Nothing.  Opening night, in the dressing room where I was made up as “the Fair Hero”, the stage manager came rushing in, moments before curtain to exclaim,

“There’s a guy out there with a decanter and he’s passing drinks to his friends!  There’s no alcohol allowed on school premises!”

Naturally, I knew this was my grandfather Woody, who was simply passing gin and tonics to Nana, Dad and Judi.  How else were they to endure 3 hours of High School Shakespeare?

I didn’t know what I wanted to "be" after high school so I blocked the whole college application problem out of my mind

And that’s when I started clubbing. 

Ok, there is no such verb as clubbing.  In proper English it means becoming a participant of the nightclub scene.  It was early 1980’s and disco was dead.  Although I still remained faithful to my beloved poet, Jim Morrison, I now listened to KROQ – the rock of the 80’s.  I loved The Clash, The Specials, The English Beat, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow.   I adored Duran Duran whose hit song “Girls on Film” the Mickey Mouse club had lovingly renamed, “Girls on Shrooms”.   I also loved hardcore punk too and blasted Agent Orange and the Dead Kennedys.  Driving up and down Wilshire Boulevard, blowing clove cigarette smoke out of the window of my Toyota Tercel, I sang along to the lyrics of anger and rebellion, dodging traffic.  Punk Rock helped channel the frustrations I had about life.  Powerlessness, hopelessness and the sadness of my unrealized dreams; dreams that I was too asleep to know that I even had.

By the Spring of Senior year I had shaved the side of my head and began wearing bondage pants and black leather boots to school.

“You look like a cancer patient”, dad told me.

I would stay out late dancing in Hollywood clubs.  At 3:00 am I’d be eating Oki Dogs on Fairfax Avenue with friends, in denial about the current day’s tests or quizzes. I went to see live bands and watching the Tubes perform was a regular scenario. One night, driving down the 405 I almost flipped my car with the entire Mickey Mouse club inside.  Oops.

I was a not-so-adorable train wreck.

Graduation was exciting but when High school was finally finished I was too obsessed with Martin, a drummer in the Mod band I followed to even care about college.  That summer was great.  After the shows we’d stay up watching Quadrophenia and getting drunk.  I lived in the moment and it was all a blast.

At some point, I had been cajoled over to Santa Monica City College to pick up an application.  But, it remained blank, unfilled, and buried in the shit pile that was my bedroom.

Mid summer, after a long day of combing through record stores and thrift shops on Melrose Avenue I came home and found my dad on the phone with his nemesis: my mother.

“I don’t know.  Dru, how do you get copies of high school transcript?” he queried.

“Hmmm…go down to Samohi, I guess”

“Well go now because your mother is filling out a college application for you.  You’re going to Humboldt”.

What?  I knew I didn’t have the grades to get into any school. At least that’s what I thought, what my friends had implied.  But my mother had been on the phone with the admission’s office at HSU.  (Had she begged, or tried to sell her soul?)  It turned out that they would consider a late application, and a person with a poxy 2.87 G.P.A. like me.

When the formal letter of acceptance arrived in late July I was secretly thrilled.  I didn’t know anything about Humboldt, where was it again?  Somewhere.  Oh, a forest.  I knew my friend Jen would be going there so I called her.   When I told her I was going too she said,

“Great.  You can drive us”. 

After much herding and prodding from Dad and Judi, I started to pack: miniskirts, vintage go-go boots, my 1960’s mod jewelry, and my black and white suede heels.  Jen came over and watching me hurl things into a large cardboard box remarked,

"Not sure you are gonna need any of that. You’d better get some ducks”.

“Ducks?  You mean those ugly waterproof boots?  No way.  I will never wear those.  They are fashion suicide:  hideous, preppy and gross”.  I lamented

“It rains a lot there.  You’re gonna want them”.

“No way!  Never!”  I said, tossing a vintage leather jacket into the pile.

End of Part I.