Several days ago I had this burst of a memory thread pop into my head. I am not sure how I got drawn into that thread of memory, I just know I was suddenly thinking about Brother and Sister Mann and their two very ugly children.
For those of you not raised in fundamentalist christianity, you need to know that grown ups never have first names. They are either Brother or Sister so and so. And you address them accordingly. My mother was Sister McDonald. If someone from church saw me in the store alone, they would generally ask after my mother. No one would ever say "How is your mom?" No, they would say "How's is Sister McDonald?" Get it?
Anyway, Brother and Sister Mann were severely unattractive people. There was nothing in the least bit attractive about either of them. Their two daughters were equally endowed with ugliness. The sad part about the Mann family is, they were also stupid. It's one thing to be homely and smart and quite another to be butt ugly and dumb as a rock.
My train of thought however did not dwell long on Brother and Sister Mann and their two daughters. No, it veered off in to memories of Sister Mann's father. Now Sister Mann's father was this old crotchety bugger (with a slight twinge of Alzheimer's) who had been given the title of Deacon in the church (mostly I think so that he would have some sense of worth and usefulness in his old age). For the life of me I can't remember his name, Brother Somethingorother I am sure. The reason I can't remember his real name is because us kids bestowed upon him a nickname that stuck forever with us.
The way he came upon this nickname went something like this:
I was studying human anatomy in art (on my own volition I might add, there was no class like that in my high school) and I had this really cool text book that had a whole section with Michaelangelo and Da Vinci's human body sketches. I loved that section, it was my favorite. There was this one whole page devoted just to Da Vinci's study in grotesque faces. In fact it was entitled "Grotesque Faces" in Da Vinci's own hand writing (only in Italian of course). The first time I saw that page I looked at this one face and exclaimed to myself "OMG! It's Brother Somethingorother!"
Well, of course I had to take that to church to show Patty Pipkin, my best friend and Pam Whittinghill my other best friend (but not nearly as best as Patty).
I showed them Grotesque Faces and said "Does that not look like Brother Somethingorother?" They of course screeched "YES!!!!!!" and proceed to fall over laughing their asses off. From that point on he became simply known as Grotesque Faces.
OMG! You are not going to believe this! I had to go pee just now and as I was sitting on the throne it came to me, his name was Brother Ellis.
At any rate, all us kids hated Brother Ellis. Brother Ellis's important job at church was to make sure all the doors were shut properly (and locked after church of course) and the a/c or heater was set at the right setting for services. He was also in charge of making sure we juvenile delinquents were not fucking around outside the church building during services.
When we were still in junior high school, he used to be able to catch us being in the wrong, or not being in the right place, depending on where we should have been at the moment. We despised him. He was not kind to us and came close, often, to grabbing our ears and taking us to our parents (he did grab male children by the ear btw, I watched him do it to Steve Herrman one day while Steve was blazing on acid).
By high school we had wised up. No one ever checked the alley behind and down several houses from the church, nor did they ever bother to check Aqueduct Street just a short block down Rayen from Haskell where the church was (and still is) located. We found we could smoke Marbies (better known as "Cows") to our hearts content without being busted. (in typical teen age code, a pack of 20 Marlboros was referred to as a "herd of cows". We would "burn cows" while keeping watch for Grotesque Faces).
Brother Ellis never found us at either location. Once though, one of our parents found us in the alley. Thank god we weren't burning cows at that particular moment.
While I was having this "flash back" about Brother "Grotesque Faces" Ellis I was thinking to myself that if I don't get this memory written down, it might just actually fade into the recesses of my memory again forever.
These were not particularly happy days in my life (who's teen years are ever truly "happy"?). But the memories I have of Patty Pipkin, Pam and Diane Whittinghill, Lura Bennett and Sue and Debbie Winchester are always golden in my mind.
We all had so much fun together, that gang of ours. The 7 of us were hell to pay when we were all together. We laughed so hard at things and pulled so many fucked up funny pranks on other people and even ourselves. It's probably the only thing, other than my youthful strength and health, that I actually miss from my misspent youth.
I miss Patty the most. The last time I saw her we were around 26 years old. Right after Debbie (Winchester) and I got together, her mother (the ever lovely Sister Carol Pipkin) refused to let me know how to get in touch with Patty siting my relationship with Debbie as a valid reason. Even my own mother to this day won't give me information on how to get in touch with Patty. I haven't tried asking Carol in 15 years, it hurt too much the last time.
See, Patty was my first real love. Now I had had several "crushes" on other girls, but Patty became my world, my life, my everything at age 16. We were "best friends". We spent every moment we could spare with each other. And when we weren't together, we were busy writing witty notes to each other all week long which we saved up and put in small amusingly decorated paper bags and gave to each other at Friday night church services. We then spend that entire service reading the notes we had written all week long to each other.
I loved Patty, probably because she was one of the only people who ever actually "got" my droll sense of humor. We got to the point in our relationship where we didn't have to even talk anymore. Someone would walk by us and we would take one minor glance at one another and bust a gut laughing. Simply because we knew what the other one was thinking about what had just walked by us.
Patty was witty, clever, extremely talented and had an incalculable IQ. She became the Valedictorian of her senior class and graduated at 16 having skipped a grade or two. Patty was actually 6 months younger than I was and still graduated a year ahead of me. Patty was actually off having a lovely time at Pepperdine when I graduated 300 and something out of my class of 700 and something. I never understood why she was my friend. I actually couldn't understand what it was she saw in me.
So I asked her one day, "what was it she saw in me that made her want to be my friend"? She just looked at me and said "Because you make me laugh". At 16, I didn't understand the importance of laughter in a relationship. Now I do, but back then it was beyond me. The funny thing was, aside from her other outstanding qualities, the real reason I loved Patty was because she laughed at my jokes.
Patty also attributed me with greater talent than her, but that simply was not true. I could sing better than her, but then I could sing better than almost anyone when I was young. Patty on the other could do something that very few people can do. She could listen to a musical piece and recreate it verbatim on almost any musical instrument without benefit of a score in front of her.
It had been requested of me to sing Morning Has Broken (the Cat Steven's version) for my high school graduation. It had just been released maybe 2 weeks before my graduation and there was no sheet music available for it yet. There wasn't even a record (yes they still only had records back then boys and girls) out yet. They were just playing it on the radio at that point in time.
So I recorded it off the radio on my nifty little Sony cassette recorder and high tailed it over to Patty's house (a mere 25 miles away) and we sat down and listened to it together while sitting at her piano.
Patty listened to it one time and then began to play. It was amazing to watch her effortlessly pick those notes off without a mistake. I was simply dumbstruck. Now I had watched Patty transpose from one key to another many times before, but I had never witnessed anything like this before in my life (and frankly I never have again and I have been around some pretty awesome musicians in my day). I was absolutely in total awe of her ability.
She then sat there and corded the song out for me for guitar. When we discovered I couldn't play in the key CatSteven's had recorded the song in, she simply transposed it into a key I knew well enough to play in and then taught me how to kaypo up at the key change on the last verse (I was a piss poor instrumentalist and musician to be sure, I still am).
Patty simply amazed me period. She spoke French and then eventually, after a year or so in college, German, fluently. She was (and I am sure still is) brilliant. Patty had her Ph.D. by the time she was 24. At 24 I was still struggling to get an AA degree. But then school wasn't my life. At that time sex, drugs and rock n roll were my life.
I miss her.
I miss laughing like that with someone.
I miss having someone who understands me inside and out.
I miss being so innocent and uncomplicated that someone else can understand me inside and out.
I miss having brilliant esoteric conversations with late into the night with her.
I miss Pam and Diane. I miss Lura.
And I miss Debbie and Sue, both of them dead, both of them important parts of my life for many years long after we were all grown ups.
I miss Debbie because there was a spirit to our relationship that I don't think I will ever experience again with another person. We were a team, we worked well together, hand in hand we built an empire that I believe would have known no end had she not gotten sick.
I miss Sue because despite her insanity, she was often the voice of reason and sanity when everyone else around her couldn't see the forest for the trees.
I miss pure unfettered joy and laughter so hard that you cry from you sides aching so hard. I miss having lungs that allow you to laugh like that.
I miss my little brother who became an asshole when he decided he was a grown up "man". I miss the love and friendship we once shared.
I miss you Phil Carmen, where are you?
I miss Suzanne Rush and Gina Nicoletti. I miss the truly innocent beings we really were, despite what we thought we were. We really weren't the bad asses we pretended to be my friends.
I miss themall, even as I miss innocent joy and laughter. And love, real love, unconditional love. The kind of love only a real friend can give you.
Don't get me wrong, I am not lonely, or even melancholy, I just miss the friends of my youth sometimes. I especially miss Patty and wish with all my being that we could reconnect someday.
And Brother Grotesque Faces? He is long dead. Gone to dust. Just like the models of Da Vinci's original Grotesque Faces. They, captured for immortality by Da Vinci's hand. Brother Ellis, etched into my brain until the day it stops functioning. There as a reminder of my youth. Grotesque Faces.
I'm still looking for you Patty. I haven't given up. Maybe one day our ancient, fearfilled mothers will decide to let the secret go as to our where abouts with one another and we can at least tell one another what a great time we had being best friends when we were still kids.
I can tell you what a dear and tender memory our friendship is to me still. And thank you for laughing at Grotesque Faces. You will never know how many times your laughter validated me in a day and age where I had very little of that from outside or within. Thank you for having been my very best friend.
Thank you for being Patty Potpie Nikpip. I understand that Brother and Sister Hguanavac are dead now too <grin>.
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