The Volvo Wagon

I'm a huge fan of Kevin Smith. He and his movie making soulmate, Scott Mosier have a podcast called SModcast. In SModcast Episode 6, titled “Inverted Nipples”, they discussed their adolescent conquests in automobiles among other things. The discussion came around to a time when Kevin Smith was in his car going down on a girl with his finger up her butt, which was of course, previously uncharted territory for him. As the gods have a sense of humor about timing and whatnot, sure enough, the police came by and busted them for fooling around in the vehicle. Everyone was uncomfortable and embarrassed. Hey, it was his story and much funnier as he told it. But it brought me back to 19 years ago, when I was at the tender, wistful age of 18 years…

I like this story because a) its totally true, this can’t be made up, and b) I come off as a filthy dirt bag pig in it. I figured I’d have no choice but to share with all y’all.

With that, I give you The Volvo Wagon:

When I was a teenager, most kids couldn’t wait to drive. Perhaps that hasn’t changed in 21 years but I was not one of those kids. I didn’t much care about driving as I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunities to drive, my bicycle was usually a faster mode of transportation in my little town, and suffering the indignities of drivers training with an uptight physical education teacher and a carload of pimply-faced teens… forget it.

The general protocol for teenage driving starts with going to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) at 15 ½ years to get a learner’s permit which you must have to begin the aforementioned indignities of training. Then the first thing to do on your 16th birthday is attend the driving test at the DMV and walk away a legal driver... provided you pass. Fuck it. I learned to drive on my own when I was 18. Once you are 18 in California, you can saunter in, take all the necessary tests and walk out with a ticket to drive. So that’s exactly what I did.

I learned to drive on my mother’s beater 1979 Volvo station wagon that had a standard transmission without power steering or brakes and to start it you had to take a wrench to the manifold and give it a couple of whacks. Yup, tomboy.

At the time I was in L-O-V-E love with my first serious boyfriend. I was taking him home after band practice (he was the drummer in a punk band and that got me Chernobyl hot) one night and we decided to stop at a dark and lonely park in the posh neighborhood he lived in and do what teenagers with teeming hormones do. Since we had the Volvo wagon and there was a mattress in the back we laid down the back seat and had a little love nest. People complain about sex in cars, but the boxy Volvo has a lot of room and being blessed with long legs, the roof provided some traction that worked out well for me. So there we were, buck nekkid and both of us with our heads in the game, in “the zone” if you will, when a barrage of floodlights cascaded upon us. Boyfriend valiantly lay down upon me to cover my nakedness as he draped a piece of clothing across his pasty white rump. The sheriff asked us what we were doing. To which I replied that it should be pretty obvious and made comment that he can’t possibly be so naïve as to need to ask. Then the sheriff told us to get out of the car. Again I had to be the voice of reason and asked to be allowed to put our clothing back on. Princes that they were, they said that would be fine… uncomfortably, looking at them while they have the lights trained on us, finally I asked if they would divert their lights. I had no problem giving all the goods to Boyfriend, but inbred yay-hoo sheriffs… I think not.

Upon pulling ourselves together, we were subjected to the standard questions and produced the standard documentation… which is where things got sticky. I gave them my brand new license and Boyfriend gave them his learner’s permit. You see, Boyfriend was 15 years old. You could have tipped those sheriffs over with a feather. They said they don’t often see an older girl with a younger boy and they threatened to bring me up on statutory rape charges. I made sure that they took note that he was perfectly grown man size and acted like more of a man than most of the “certifiable” adults who were my age. Boyfriend explained that nothing we were doing was against his will and that he was under no circumstances being taken advantage of. I assured them that his momma knew damned well that we were rutting like animals and why the hell did they think we were here and not snugly tucked into one of our beds. No parent wants to hear their kid going at it! Somehow, that convinced them that we were on the up and up and they let us go but not before admonishing me for my perversion and telling me that if I was a boy, I’d be taken in. I think they gave Boyfriend a wink and a thumbs up when I turned away from them. I resisted calling them sexist pigs since I was smart enough to know when to resist poking a bear with a stick. Off we went to the next darker and lonelier spot and finished up the task at hand.

I’ve always had a thing for younger fellas. Or so it would seem from my dating history. Boyfriend was one of several boys who were deflowered in my loving arms. What can I say, I was a sexually adventurous girl. Most of the others were before him and there was one virginal takedown after Boyfriend was history. It seems that I might have had a thing for defiling tender innocence as well. But Boyfriend was the only one who I didn’t cast away right after the sweat dried.

I’M BACK!

Whitttchaaaahhh......

I received the following email from a hot-pot of sassafras who occasionally teaches me to shake my money-maker:

Subject: whipcrack

whitttchaaaahhh........write more blog dammit.
Your ever-lovin Kristie

I never realized that you could spell out the sound of the crack of a whip, but here it is in black and whiteish. If only that crack was solidly planted on my posterior I might do a better job of jumping to it. Sometimes a girl just needs a solid whup'un to get the ball rolling.

Truth be told, my head space is still precarious. I keep having ideas that I want to write, but the ideas haven't been turning to verbal inertia... yet. I'm ever encouraged since I've not been waking daily wishing for death to take me swiftly. That's a good sign if I ever heard of one. I'll not make promises of when I can get back to regularly regaling you with true tales of glory days peppered with hyperbole and lies (and occasionally ham-fisted alliteration and contradiction). I'll just do what I can as my mind cools the hell out.

SWAK, Babys!

Twisting on the Cape...

Be Right Back

I'm currently on vacation at "The Dark Place".

Mama always told me to "shut the hell up if you don't have anything worthwhile to say." And since at The Dark Place, all I hear in my head is this: I hate my life and my career and everything about both. The only good thing I have in my life is my family. And that consists of my sister and niece across the state and various aunts and uncles strewn about the country.

I'm going to take mom's advice and get back to y'all when I have something pleasant or at least entertaining to share.

Respectfully submitted from the gates of hell.

And Speaking of Misspent Youth...

I spent the whole weekend roped to my computer writing. Sadly, I wasn’t writing anything fun, but a report to submit to an environmental regulatory agency. By the time I put it in the hands of a reviewer, I was whipped down and spent. That meant only one thing… time had come to drink a whole bottle of wine… and straight from the bottle. Don’t need no stinkin’ glasses!

Fuck! What weekend?!

Whilst drinking said bottle of wine, I removed the technical jargon that was floating in my head after two days straight of writing, re-writing and tweaking text by watching the Lords of Dogtown. Which is a movie that is based on the story of Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary that Stacy Peralta made a few years ago. Both are fantastic so I recommend putting them on your Netflix queue or go to wherever you get your flicks and check them out.

Now, I grew up in Southern California, mind you, in the northernmost city in Southern California, but Southern California none the less. Santa Barbara is a surf/skate town and my crowd was the skate punk crowd. The aforementioned movies describe a time that was about 10 years before my era, but I looked up to those guys and had s-u-c-h huge crushes on boys of that ilk. They were tough and performed heroic tricks without any consideration of bumps, bruises, road rashes and broken bones. Perhaps stupid, but definitely dreamy. You see, they tended to have these incredible bodies… but I digress.

Anyhow, the point is these movies get the late 70’s in Southern California right, which is a rare bird. Most of what you see is a polished up Hollywood version of what it was like then and I’m sure in some circles it was like the Hollywood version. What is presented in these movies is the gritty underbelly of the disaffected youth that influenced so much of popular culture that spread across the whole country.

And when you are done with all that, rent Thirteen which is a movie that was directed and co-written by the director of the Lords of Dogtown and shudder in your boots if you are a parent to an adolescent girl in Southern California. Thirteen is not an uncommon story.

The Folly of Youth

Hee Haw... Pickin' and a Grinin'

In my wayward youth, I had this great friend, Lulu. Lulu was a nickname that her father’s rugby-playing buddies gave her when she was a pre-adolescent. There was a corny 1970’s variety sketch show that catered to the Grand Ole Opry crowd called Hee-Haw. Scrap (Lulu’s dad) and his buddies used to tease her and tell her that she looked like Lulu the Fat Lady from Hee Haw and it stuck.

As a point of clarification, Lulu was gorgeous. She had long corn silk blonde hair, deep blue eyes and was stacked like nobody’s business. She had the attitude of a gal being raised by her single, rugby playing father. In short, hanging around with Lulu was always a good time. At 17 years old, it was a dream come true to be able to hang around a bunch of big, sweaty rugby players who let us get away with drinking beer while we had moderately disturbing adolescent fantasies about them.

Often we would spend our weekends in Isla Vista, which is the town that houses the majority of the students and fraternities for the University of California Santa Barbara, drinking beer and mocking frat-boys. It was usually one big street party there on the weekends with crappy keg beer flowing freely. The agreement was always to meet up back at the car if we lost track of each other.

Even at a tender 17 years old, we were both cynical and twisted girls. We were quickly bored by the keg scene and the silly college boys vying for position with the ladies so we made up games to entertain ourselves. The most popular and fun game was “how far”. The challenge was to see which of us could get the furthest with a fella on any given night. (Fathers out there, beware: your daughters would do this, too) It was relatively innocent, because we were floozies, but we did have our limits.

Sure enough, Lulu and I became separated one evening. I started thinking that I was about to win the Hell out of the game. I had come across Rick Galvan and I had no idea where Lulu was, but Rick seemed quite smitten with yours truly so I gave him the time of day.. er.. night. We were fooling around and there was heavy petting aplenty. Things hadn’t been going quite so well for Lulu before I’d lost track of her so I thought I had this one in the bag. Eventually, I pulled the plug on poor Rick (now known as Blue Ball Rick). I could have gone so much further with the fella, but he committed the fatal act which was to push my head toward his nob and it was game over for Blue Ball Rick. I was tired and he had just become tedious. All that was left to do that evening was to wrangle up Lulu and get home before my father flipped out.

Upon arriving back at the car, I saw Lulu in the front seat. Victory was mine since she was alone. Fully prepared to gloat, I hollered her name at which point some random college boy’s head popped up from between her legs that were propped up on the dash board. Apparently, victory was not for me to taste on that night. However, random college boy had a nip at it.

Sunset at the Landfill

Pretty, no? About 10 feet beneath the snow methane gas and hydrogen sulfide are being generated by the decomposition of rubbish. Lets hear it for impermeable geotextile cap liners allowing landfills to be recycled for golf courses, playgrounds, and sports pitches with a pretty view!

A Breath of Fresh Air

I've been tethered to my desk at the office for the past two months straight. I just learned that I supremely screwed up some field work, so tomorrow I am being sent to New Hampshire to collect new data. Cold... sure. But I'll have a day of relief from my ass spreading across my chair.

P.S. Got a hot date tonight so perhaps I'll be getting more physical activity in the near future than running around a landfill in the snow tomorrow. Think dirty thoughts for me.

The Empress of the Blues

When I was growing up we didn't have a television. Dad thought they were lame. We'd spend our Saturday nights playing cards and listening to blues music shows on the radio. So from a tender period in my development, songs about liquor, cigarettes and sin were constant background music in my house. The blues taught me about falling in love and getting your heart kicked around and picking up the pieces in the aftermath. It's a hard world out there. Perhaps my perspective would be prettier if I'd spent the 80's learning life's lessons from Family Ties and Beverly Hills 90210. Perhaps not. But in the end, I can't resist a song that talks about a man fixing up my rusty bedsprings.

Empty Bed Blues

Bessie Smith sang songs that were gritty and provocative. She could pump out some seriously saucy metaphores. If you like this, you should check out Gimme a Pigfoot.

Empty Bed Blues

by Bessie Smith

I woke up this morning

With awful aching head

My new man had left me

Just a room and an empty bed

Bought me a coffee grinder,

Got the best one I could find

So he could grind my coffee

Cause he had a brand new grind

He's a deep-sea diver,

With a stroke that can't go wrong

He can touch the bottom,

And his wind holds out so long

He knows how to thrill me

And he thrills me night and day

He's got a new way of loving,

Almost takes my breath away

Oh, he's got that sweet something

And I told my girlfriend Lou

But the way she's ravin'

She must have gone and tried it too

When my bed get empty

Make me feel awful mean and blue

My springs are getting rusty

Sleepin' single like I do

Bought him a blanket

Pillow for his head at night

And I bought him a mattress

So he could lay just right

He came home one evening

With his spirit way up high

What he had to give me

Made me ring my hands and cry

He give me a lesson

That I never had before

When he got through teachin' me

From my elbow down was sore

He boiled my first cabbage

And he made it awful hot

When he put in the bacon

It overflowed the pot

When you get good lovin'

Never go and spread the news

I'll build up to cross you

And leave you with them empty bed blues