Big Sex Little Death_ A Memoir Part 4

I was a swim team "score girl" before I was a Commie. I'm glad things ended up that way, because otherwise I never would've been able to touch the was a swim team "score girl" before I was a Commie. I'm glad things ended up that way, because otherwise I never would've been able to touch the Playboy Playboy Bunny, and carry on my sensual, if guilty, disposition. Bunny, and carry on my sensual, if guilty, disposition.

The high school swim team was my ticket to an almost-prom; to halcyon school days; to a bartended, dress-up affair. The Trotskyists, the yippies, the lavender pinkos - they came along later and gave me guns and a good deal to think about, but they provided nothing soft or fluffy.

I went to a school called University High - Uni - a white, mostly Jewish school filled with the children of UCLA staff and the diaspora of the Hollywood colony. Marilyn Monroe went there before she dropped out.

In the seventies, there was no truly integrated school in the L.A. district. A discreet number of black students from South Central L.A. (with neighborhood-school names like "Manual Arts") were bused into white schools from the time they were in kindergarten. It was not a two-way street. It was a cradle-to-cap affair. The neighborhood Chicano and j.a.panese American students at Uni were tracked, without exception, into blue- and pink-collar trades. They were all but banned from athletics.

Schools like Manual Arts beat Uni in every team sport. Only boys competed, and the girls were either cheerleaders or "score girls." When tenth-graders like me entered the school - and trailed the halls like lost lambs - a clever opportunist from the guidance office asked us if we'd like to "get involved." I was signed up to keep stats for the boys' lightest-weight basketball teams and for the swim team.

I was apprehensive about reentering the American public school system. Edmonton's cla.s.srooms had been a relief, because I didn't get bullied for being a bookish girl with gla.s.ses. My vocabulary was considered "normal." My wardrobe was as provincial as that of all the other girls. Everyone read books in Canada, even kids who were flunking out. There was no basketball team. You could swim outside maybe two months of the year. I never saw anyone take stats for the hockey coach - would that include how many teeth they knocked out per period?

But in 1974, living with my father for the first time in West Los Angeles, I was entering a new school that observed Jewish holidays and major film debuts.

I had been so sheltered from anything but the Irish Catholic fatalism of my mother that I didn't know a thing about Jewish stereotypes. My knowledge of bar mitzvahs came from reading All-of-a-Kind Family All-of-a-Kind Family storybooks. The kids around me at Uni would rail about "j.a.pS," and I would blush because I thought they were making anti-Asian slurs. I'd never heard of anyone getting a "nose job" - I thought they did so because they couldn't breathe properly. storybooks. The kids around me at Uni would rail about "j.a.pS," and I would blush because I thought they were making anti-Asian slurs. I'd never heard of anyone getting a "nose job" - I thought they did so because they couldn't breathe properly.

For my first score girl a.s.signment, I was given printed sheets with diagrams of the basketball court, or the swim lanes, and a clutch of pencils to write down times and errors. It was a job where I remained invisible, with not one person speaking to me during an entire game.

I eavesdropped on the basketball cheerleaders. I learned what a Jewish American Princess was, who the "fat Mexican s.l.u.ts" were (which I thought meant girls who had just deplaned from Mexico), and how Kelly Kitano got thrown out of school for her skirt being too short - she was not a nice quiet j.a.panese girl like the "others." The cheerleaders never talked about the game. Their erotic and racial fantasies ran like diarrhea.

From the boys, I learned that to be a young black man bused in from Watts and expected to play well on the University High "C" team was to be immersed in the depths of personal misery. Every boy on the "B" and "C" teams was called a "f.a.g" by the JV and varsity crowd.

None of the boys who played ever asked to see my stats, either. Coach Lundgrem took my sheaf of papers and slammed them into an ankle-level file drawer at the end of the week. Bang!

One time, he caught his fingers in the file drawer hinge and screamed, "You motherf.u.c.king c.u.n.t!" I stayed in the room with my mouth hanging open just long enough to make him even madder. I'd never heard anyone say that word before, and the sound of his rage made me shiver with envy. One day, I wanted to let loose with something like that.

I had a private left-wing conscience - private, because I hated being laughed at. I asked Lily Davidson, one of the other score girls, "Why would you call a girl a j.a.p if you're Jewish? Isn't that like turning something against yourself that you'd only expect an enemy to say?"

I had to sputter to get even that far. Lily just shook her head at me: "Because some girls are j.a.pS - what're you supposed to call 'em?"

I learned that my outrage about "wrong words" was something only older people talked about. Like, how could someone be "Mexican" if his family had been in California longer than a single white cowboy? My Spanish teacher, Mr. Gomez, liked to rant about such things. We had plenty of radical teachers; the instructors were on the brink of revolt. They wanted to teach women's history, black history, labor history; they wanted to come out with their gay lovers; they wanted the Equal Rights Amendment pa.s.sed. Even my typing teacher, who looked like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot Some Like It Hot, supported the ERA. But most of the students? Not there yet.

One thing I liked about being a score girl was that I got to see the whole city on away games. The night we went to play Crenshaw High, I climbed onto the school bus and there wasn't a single other score girl or cheerleader on board.

"Where is everybody?" I asked Darryl, one of the prominent "f.a.ggots."

He rolled his eyes. "Crenshaw's tough ... they're scared." "Tough" was a euphemism for "black;" I'd picked that up by then.

Wiley, another "C" team member sitting next to him, sang, "Their parents won't let them go." And he looked at me like, "What about yours?"

Crenshaw cheerleaders weren't scared of us; they were a wall of sound. Every girl was a baritone, and when they opened their mouths, they hit the first syllable, "CREN," like an anvil splitting open the sun - and then the "SHAW!" blasted what was left of you against the earth.

They did military cadence with their feet and their voices. Scary? It was exhilarating. My dad would be glad I was seeing and hearing every corner of the city.

So I took the bus to Crenshaw. Not only did no one beat me up, but I sat with the team for the first time. It was like getting a s.e.x change - the boys talked to me like I was ... there. It wasn't b.i.t.c.hy. I got a slice of pizza and a c.o.ke. I had the best time of my meager American high school social life.

Darryl turned to me and said: "Are you going to the swim team banquet at the end of the season?"

"What's that?"

"It's at the Playboy Playboy Club, in Century City. Dan and Jimmy need dates." He tipped his head back, nodding to them on the bench, like they needed socks. Club, in Century City. Dan and Jimmy need dates." He tipped his head back, nodding to them on the bench, like they needed socks.

"The Playboy Playboy Club? Don't you have to be twenty-one?" Club? Don't you have to be twenty-one?"

Plus, I was thinking, And a guy? And ... old?

"I guess they're desperate; my dad says they'll do banquets for anyone." He looked at me a little closer, like he was searching for something. "You know who Dan and Jimmy are, right?"

"I know Jimmy." Jimmy was fine; he wasn't rude. He was pa.s.sing as a "not-Mexican" because his mom's last name was Irish.

"Dan Margolis is his friend, right?" I asked, one eyebrow going up. That was how everyone said Dan's name, as if dubiousness was in order. Dan Margolis thought he was a player, but he looked like he was going to s.h.i.t in his pants most of the time.

Darryl laughed. "Yeah, Dan says he's going to nail a Bunny."

I cracked up, too. I was getting comfortable. "Does that mean that his date doesn't have to touch him?"

"Aw, c'mon, you gotta know someone. Everyone's gotta have a date."

"Did you ask Tracey?" I thought of her because she was a score girl like me - filling out stat forms no one read, very quiet. I had never heard her call anyone a bad name.

The next day, Tracey spotted me standing in the snack-counter line at recess. I thought she was going to walk up and say, "You hooked me up with Dan Margolis; now I'm going to kill you."

But instead, she handed me a flyer. A pet.i.tion, actually. It read: "We ... want to bring ... lesbians and birth control ... on campus. ... We demand the administration allow them on campus."

That wasn't exactly what it said, but that was the important part: lesbians and birth control! They sounded like a couple of armies that could take on Crenshaw. Of course I wanted them to come. I was bored out of my mind.

"This sounds cool," I said, signing it. "You're not going to believe this, but I was going to ask you if you wanna go to the swim team banquet."

"The Bunnies!" she said. That was the first time I heard her get loud.

"Yeah, if we're lucky, they'll be lesbians." I had to act smart now, because I realized she was so hip I could not, would not, sell her out to Dan Margolis.

"Dan's already asked me," she said. She started braiding her long silky hair behind her back, like it was nothing.

"Great! I mean, you'll be the only person there I know."

"It's not till June; you'll know everyone by then," she said, as if I were charm itself.

She slipped before me at the snack-line window and lowered her head so her voice could be heard through the wire screen. "Does the burrito have union lettuce in it?"

The lady back there in the hairnet glared back at us, like she'd like to cram union lettuce up our b.u.t.ts.

The Churning Mist

Tracey took me to my first Red Tide Red Tide meeting. meeting. The Red Tide The Red Tide was the organizing force behind the lettuce boycott/farmworker drive, the lesbians-/birth-control-ladies-are-coming plan, and a support caravan to the Wounded Knee occupation in South Dakota, which had already been stopped on the Nevada border by the state police. was the organizing force behind the lettuce boycott/farmworker drive, the lesbians-/birth-control-ladies-are-coming plan, and a support caravan to the Wounded Knee occupation in South Dakota, which had already been stopped on the Nevada border by the state police.

The Red Tide was the name of the newspaper that a couple dozen high school students, most of them at Uni, produced and published, much to the distress of the Boys' Dean and the princ.i.p.al. was the name of the newspaper that a couple dozen high school students, most of them at Uni, produced and published, much to the distress of the Boys' Dean and the princ.i.p.al.

The paper's masthead featured the following preamble: "It came - flooding the schools, crushing everything that stood in its way, leaving in its wake a trail of destruction, havoc, rebellion. It razed cla.s.srooms, flinging textbooks to the winds, screaming out of turn, leaving foul stains on the desks, ripping the flags from their poles. It caught scores of students, sweeping them onward in its headlong course, trapping them in the whirlpool of its frenzy. Administrators reeled, choking on its noxious reek as it tore their offices asunder. Cut slips, tardy slips, suspension notices, bad conduct notices, report cards - all were swept away in its churning mist. It was ... The Red Tide."

The first issue of the newspaper that I saw had something about the PLO on the cover, condemning Israel. The varsity team's star forward, David Berry, found me alone, reading it on Coach Lundgrem's desk before a Friday game. Why was David in there? He was part of the athletic elite; I never got within ten feet of people like him.

"DB" - that's what I heard his friends call him - was sweating. He'd come to find Coach, but instead found me, reading something that made him lose whatever fragile composure he'd come in with.

The headline set him off.

"Anyone who reads this c.r.a.p is a fascist and an anti-Semite!" he said, like he was quoting from the playbook.

"It's not fasc -" I started to say. "It says here that the people who wrote it are Jewish; they're socialists," I tried again. "How can it be anti-Semitic and fascist?"

I couldn't believe this was my first conversation with the most popular guy at school. He had wavy hair with a blond streak; he surfed when he wasn't playing ball.

"What are you, a f.u.c.king communist?" he asked, s.n.a.t.c.hing The Red Tide The Red Tide off Coach's desk in front of me and ripping it in half. "If I ever catch you reading this again, I'll kick your c.u.n.t in." off Coach's desk in front of me and ripping it in half. "If I ever catch you reading this again, I'll kick your c.u.n.t in."

I got out of my chair and realized I was taller than DB. I'm sure I was redder in the face. I grabbed the basketball stat reports for the past week and ripped them in half. Of course, they weren't Varsity stats. Now the floor was covered in paper. There was a torn photograph of a dead Vietcong person lying on top of the shreds of the "C" team's pathetic performance the previous night.

"Is that f.u.c.king communist enough for you?" I had never used either of those big words aloud. But DB had already slammed the door, and I was alone.

That was my last time in Coach Lundgrem's office. I couldn't explain what happened. I started to panic. There was only one thing I really cared about. I ran five blocks and called Tracey from the pay phone at the A&W stand. "Do you think I can still go to the swim team banquet at the Playboy Playboy Club? I've just eighty-sixed myself from the basketball team." Club? I've just eighty-sixed myself from the basketball team."

She cracked up. "I can't believe you're still thinking about that."

"I've never seen a Bunny; I really want to."

She rea.s.sured me, and on we went into March Madness. I did not tell anyone in The Red Tide The Red Tide, whose meetings I now attended weekly, that I was still a surrept.i.tious swim team score girl. I picketed liquor stores selling nonunion Gallo wine; I marched to impeach Nixon; I listened to every word the lesbians and the birth control women from Planned Parenthood had to say - and I talked to "Marilyn Monroe" in typing cla.s.s about why the ERA didn't go nearly far enough.

I read Marx's Wage Labour and Capital on a.s.signment to make a presentation to The Red Tide The Red Tide's Thursday-night study group - it was by far the most difficult "pamphlet" I'd ever read in my life. I had to read whole sentences more than once. Our high school cla.s.ses didn't teach this level of critique.

Midstruggle, I walked into my after-school job at McDonald's on Santa Monica Boulevard, and it hit me like a brick. Why did people put up with this exploitation? Why was everyone falling for it? Capitalism was a con job beyond anything P. T. Barnum had ever dreamed of. Why had people formulated revolution so long ago, yet nothing, nothing had changed?

That night I got off work and took the bus home. I smelled bad, and my feet were killing me. There was an old lady in the next seat playing her transistor radio, oblivious to my french fry stench. It was the news hour: And in the market today, U.S. productivity has dipped three percent since the first of the year. ... Productivity is how Americans work more efficiently, and when workers are more productive, their bosses are able to give them raises.

"HOW CAN THEY SAY THAT?" I pounded my seat like Khrushchev with a shoe. The radio lady darted her eyes at me. I had tears in my mine. "THEY'RE LYING, AND EVERYONE JUST KEEPS SLEEPING!"

I stood up, even though it wasn't my stop, and hailed the bus driver: "When was the last time you got a raise?"

He pointed at the red plastic sign dangling by his mirror: Favor De No Estar Chingando.

"Exactly my point," I said, and got off a mile early to walk the rest of the way. That was the day I became a devoted socialist.

I abandoned most of high school - other than protesting its petty nuisances, and attending swim meets. My life was The Red Tide The Red Tide - or hiking with my dad, driving everywhere with him on weekends from Mexico to Mojave to the Sierras. He told me about a gifted student he had named Carlos Castaneda, who was writing a dissertation he couldn't put down. - or hiking with my dad, driving everywhere with him on weekends from Mexico to Mojave to the Sierras. He told me about a gifted student he had named Carlos Castaneda, who was writing a dissertation he couldn't put down.

I told him everything that went on in my Red Tide meetings.

I asked Bill what he thought about "picking up the gun," and he told me how much his stint in the army had deepened his pacifism. He was like a rock about it.

"But what if someone was pointing a rifle right at you?" I asked, waving my arms as only a fifteen-year-old girl can do to emphasize her point.

"I would not shoot back," Bill said, implacable, bending down to look at some coyote scat on the mountain we'd been climbing.

"Okay, what if they were going to shoot me?" I spit back.

Bill stood up slowly and looked at me. His eyes filled up. "I would defend you," he said.

I felt like a murderer. I had to stop talking like this. Did the others in The Red Tide The Red Tide have these debates with their parents? How did anyone win at these questions? have these debates with their parents? How did anyone win at these questions?

My duties as the swim team score girl were a cool, dull relief. Everything just stopped except the splash splash rhythm of laps up and down the pool. And yet swimming was not as square as basketball. I was sure the swim coach, Dale Swensen, smoked pot - he was under thirty, a subst.i.tute teacher, and seemed to be doing something progressive at UCLA that he cared about more than high school sports. He was not an overt racist; that alone made him unique.

Plus, there were no cheerleaders in swimming. Those girls were harpies with pom-poms.

I also started having s.e.x. Not with anyone at school, but with the socialists, the ones with all the ideas in their heads. Some of them were married. Some of them were hookers. Some of them drank all the time. But lucky for me, some of them were really, really good in bed - and since everyone was down with women's liberation and nonmonogamy, that made things extra good for me.

I was in no one's debt; I was no one's property. What little I thought about school anymore involved feeling bad about how scared everyone was: scared of having s.e.x, scared of leaving their gilded cage, scared of dreaming about anything that hadn't been premeditated by their parents.

I decided to drop out of school in June and take one of those instant diploma tests that the state was starting to offer. I saw a preview of the exam that asked you to figure out the best deal on toothpaste in a given supermarket comparison. I could do that. I'd been doing all the shopping and cooking for both my parents for years.

Tracey, Jimmy, and Darryl found me sorting a box of flyers after we swam in an intercity conference Memorial Day weekend. I had to hurry; I was on my way to a labor solidarity picnic. My double life!

"We have to plan this Playboy Playboy thing," Jimmy said. He'd grown his curly brown hair all the way down his back and kept it tied in a navy bandana when he rode his Honda. Tracey looked like his sister - they were both in pin-striped overalls covered with patches. thing," Jimmy said. He'd grown his curly brown hair all the way down his back and kept it tied in a navy bandana when he rode his Honda. Tracey looked like his sister - they were both in pin-striped overalls covered with patches.

"What's to plan?" I asked. "I'm not wearing a dress."

Darryl explained: "Everyone wants 'ludes, but no one seems to be able to score."

"You should ask Coach," I said. "He's probably wrapping them up in 'Mr. Natural' cellophane at Royce Hall."

Tracey said we could call a dealer named Bruce, but that I had better connections with him, 'cause Bruce's old man was a burned-out Maoist. I, on the other hand, baby-sat for people in the canyons who paid me good money to clean a kilo for them after their kids were put to bed.

Tracey was in such a good mood, I had to ask her about Dan Margolis. Dan was now seen on campus in gold chains, shiny polyester shirts, and a cloud of cigarette smoke. He looked like p.o.r.nographer from Studio City. But now that I was actually f.u.c.king, I had the strangest feeling Dan was still a virgin.

"Oh Susie, it doesn't matter about Dan. I'm only seeing women," Tracey said. She had a little smile like a halo over her head.

So there really were going to be lesbians at the Playboy Playboy Club. Club.

Jimmy interrupted. "I promise you I'll keep Dan ten feet away. He'll be mesmerized, anyway, by the -"

"BUNNIES." We all said it.