yes please(26)

Even though we had such different families, Keri and I were a good pair, both freckled and Irish with a strong belief in justice. We would go out for recess and spend the whole time walking and talking. This is something I still love to do today. I call it “walking the beat.” I often call my friends and tell them to meet me on a New York corner at a certain time. The physical act of walking combined with the opportunity to look out at the world while you are sharing your thoughts and feelings is very comforting to me. You are in charge of the route and the amount of eye contact. I guess those days with Keri were when this started. Anyway, Keri and I spent most of our fourth-grade recess time walking the beat and discussing the important issues of the day: the recent release of the Iranian hostages, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, the fact that Luke technically raped Laura on the dance floor when they first met but now they were the best couple on General Hospital.

One day a student named Jamie brought a pair of handcuffs to school. I don’t remember where he said he got them, but looking back now it was really odd. Where does a ten-year-old find a pair of handcuffs? This felt like an incident one would file under “having older brothers.” This was by far the most dangerous thing anyone had ever brought to school besides the honeycomb full of bees that the beekeeper brought for career day. It’s an indication of how truly safe and idyllic my childhood was that the handcuffs didn’t scare me. They didn’t remind me of one of my relatives being hauled away to jail or anything traumatic like that. They only reminded me of a terrific episode of Hill Street Blues. And they were a pair of handcuffs, not a gun, a homemade bomb, dynamite-infused bath salts, or whatever horrible shit kids have to deal with these days.

Keri and I immediately took them and then shared a look as we locked them on to our wrists. Keri discreetly dropped the key to the ground and then we pretended it was lost. We faked being upset while a small group of kids gathered around, excited about the idea of handcuffs and lost keys and people being stuck together. The general hubbub turned into real concern once we couldn’t actually find the key we had dropped. The recess bell rang and Keri and I walked back into the building to find a teacher. We were wrist to wrist; I could feel our pulses quickening. I was thrilled. The other kids crowded around us as we told the teacher what had happened. “They are stuck together!” they cried. “They will never get free!” Attempts were made to pull us free, but we would yell out in fake pain and the pulling would stop. We were brought over to the sink. Paints and brushes were moved aside and thick liquid soap was poured on our hands. Our tiny wrists looked like they could easily slide out, but they refused. Teachers became irritated at the thought of sending us home in handcuffs. I loved the attention. I loved acting cool and calm about being handcuffed to my friend. We became instant celebrities.

Eventually, Keri got nervous about getting in trouble. I spoke quietly and evenly to her about how everything was going to be okay. I made jokes about splitting up the week with each other’s families. It was the beginning of what I now think is my natural instinct to try to bring levity and calm to stressful situations. I am an excellent person to be around if you’re having a bad drug trip. You need a balance of humor and pathos mixed with some light massage and occasional distractions. I once helped a now very famous actor cross over while he was on ecstasy by speaking to him softly and then pretending to do magic tricks. I was also on ecstasy at the time. This may have helped my comedy, but it certainly didn’t help with my magic.

Keri and I sat in class for what seemed like hours while the teachers huddled to figure out what to do. There was talk of going to the police station! There was even talk of getting a big machine to cut us apart! Then we went back outside to look again and found the key. Keri was happy because she didn’t want her police officer dad to lecture her on handcuff etiquette, but I was so bummed. We rubbed our wrists and talked to everyone on the bus about how scared we had been. We dined out on the great handcuff incident for weeks. The school called us the Handcuff Girls, which will be my band’s name when I become a rock star in my midsixties. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me up to that point, and it was the perfect kind of scary story that only lasts a few hours and ends up well.

As we grew up, Keri’s house remained my comfortable danger zone. We would pile up pillows for Fright Nights on Fridays, when we would watch scary movies and make popcorn in a giant and expensive microwave. We would sit through Friday the 13th and The Thing and A Nightmare on Elm Street while we folded laundry. I have fond memories of cranking up the air-conditioning in Keri’s house and then lying under tons of blankets to watch those movies. Her scrappy sisters would snuggle together and her sweet mom, Ginny, would join us. I would mostly watch through the holes of an afghan, and Ginny would tap my shoulder just before each scary part. I vividly remember watching Carrie and tensing up at that last scene when Amy Irving lays flowers at the grave. Ginny gently sat tapping my shoulder and I prepared for the inevitable zombie hand bursting out of the dirt and the chorus of screams that followed.

Once middle school rolled around, Keri went to Catholic school while I stayed in our public school. She wore a uniform and became proficient with black eyeliner. Older kids meant more chaos, and my school suddenly had the energy and excitement I was looking for. It also started to teach me that there were kids who truly weren’t loved or happy. Even though most of us lived in the same detached homes with wall-to-wall carpet, inside those homes were drunk moms and mean dads. The danger I was looking for started to become a little more real. There was a fight in our school every day. Students rushed to the parking lot or the hallway when a fight was starting. Cops broke up parties and boys got drunk and started to smash their bodies into each other. Steroids were a big drug for a lot of the high school boys in my town, and this produced a weird collection of rage-filled football players who were just as bored as I was. The difference is when I was bored I would listen to my Walkman and pretend I was in a music video. When they were bored they would beat someone up. Years later a few of these football players would be arrested for picking up a prostitute near their college campus and raping her. It would be a landmark case of an admitted prostitute and drug addict winning a conviction against a bunch of white men. I watched it on Court TV and thought about all those boys and the parties they attended in my house.