"This is what I find most encouraging about the writing trades:
They allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their
stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They
also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: an Analysis * by Micheal Puljung
Chemical Attraction * by Liz
New Words I'm Trying to Learn * by Liz
The Cadillac of BB Guns: A True Story * by Liz
Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: an Analysis(Originally appeared in an issue of the 'zine Suburban Drool)
* by Michael PuljungWe’ve all heard the cliché before. The Holy Trinity of teen angst. The one phrase that surely separates our generation from our parent’s generation: “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.” It is the battle cry of the lowest common denominator. It’s major tenets include concepts both alien and frightening to our folks (kind of like Marilyn Manson, but don’t get me started on that guy). No one knows precisely who put this triumvirate together, but it is irreversibly interwoven through movies, television, and music into the collective youth psyche.
It’s clear that these three words have been associated with one another for quite some time. As far as I know, no one yet has split them apart to analyze the fragments by themselves and search for some modern meaning or application. Being the good scientist that I am, I have decided to undertake this momentous task by myself.
A quick glance over the phrase at the top of the page, and I can immediately see a problem. DRUGS! The word “drugs” is included in this phrase! How many years have I rallied with the youth under this unifying clause only to miss this nagging detail? Is it possible that all these years I was unwittingly singing the praises of mind-altering substances? Now, you may not know me all that well, but I have always been against drugs. Whether it’s alcohol or crystal meth, it’s just crap to me. I can’t tell anyone else how to live their lives, but I won’t go on advertising for something that I truly don’t believe in (unless it’s like sneakers or something and they’re paying me a lot of cabbage). So there you have it. I have to break up the old youth anthem. Paul left the Beatles, Bo and Luke left “The Dukes of Hazard,” and so Drugs must part from his brothers Sex and Rock and Roll.
Okay, I’ve got to stop and think now. “Sex and Rock and Roll!” It doesn’t have the zing or luster that it’s predecessor had, but at least I can sleep at night. Maybe I could put another word in it later like “peace” or “grammar” or something, but that’s the subject for another essay. Right now I must return to my analysis.
I guess I’ll tackle Sex next. On the surface, it looks pretty good. I suppose when one gets down to the “nitty gritty,” however, there are problems involved with this as well. First of all, I have to come right out against the practice of “casual sex.” This to me is using sex for a sort of “high,” just like a drug. It has nothing to do with love, and it sucks. But putting my personal beliefs aside, there are still dangers involved in sex, just like in drugs. It is fairly easy to contract all sorts of diseases through sexual contact. I shouldn’t need to tell you that you could get AIDS, hepatitis, and many other diseases by having sex. You’re smarter than that. Okay then. I can’t go on proclaiming a lifestyle that I don’t support. Dee Dee left the Ramones, Mayor McCheese left McDonaldland, and Sex must realize that it has no place with Rock and Roll and fall into obscurity.
That leaves us with Rock and Roll, a phrase cool enough to stand on it’s own. Yes sir! Good old Rock and Roll! Rock and Roll never caused any problems. Rock and roll never hurt anyone…well, except for those eleven people that got trampled to death at that Who concert. Of course, I can’t forget that guy who got knifed by a Hell’s Angel at that Stones concert at Altamont back in 1969. And then one time, my uncle’s friend, Red, saw some guy get stabbed at a T. Rex concert at the Aragon. And last week I hit myself over the head with a microphone, and that really hurt. And this kid I know rammed into another kid on a trampoline and started bleeding, and I’m pretty sure Rock and Roll was involved there.
So I guess when it comes right down to it, Rock and Roll can’t be trusted either. Forget that too then. It’s not worth it. Just stay home and read a book.
I was sitting in the Union waiting for Joel one afternoon and I started paging through an old notebook that I’d been carrying around since last year in high school. I came across my AP Chemistry review notes. All the equations were carefully highlighted in yellow and the chapters labeled in red pen. Realizing that I am finally free of the responsibility of knowing all those equations and formulas and terms and processes, words like exothermic and ionic compound suddenly sounded brilliant and poetic. Not unlike when I was 14 and I’d spread my Hawaii state map out on my floor reciting out loud “Lahina” and “Oahu” just because I liked the feeling of saying those words out loud, I sat there saying “coefficient” and “polyatomic” as if it were a romantic foreign language. I can attribute this in part to a sort of Pavlovian conditioning that went on in high school. My boyfriend’s bedroom was right off the dining room where his father tutored chemistry. Many an evening was spent making out to the tune of “hydrogen molecule” and “osmosis”. That wasn’t everything though. There was also something very calming and satisfying about those neatly highlighted formulas and equations. It was completely free of the ambiguity of philosophy or theology or romance or fiction. No need for words or feelings. Just a set of symbols that somehow explained existence and/or behavior of matter. It didn’t bother with what ifs or sometimes. Even though in reality, AP Chem was a thorn in my side, now without the threat of failure and pressure on memorization, chemistry was really quite beautiful. Full of beautiful words and questions that always had an exact answer. Something that lately my days were often lacking. ….Needless to say, Joel was a little startled and disturbed to find me giggling in delight over a list of logarithms.Written: spring 1999
(also appeared in the Fall '99 Marquette Journal)
New Words I'm Trying to Learn
- copious- lavish, abundant
- quintessential- purest representative
- bereft- deprived, robbed
- servile- behaving/befitting a slave or servant
- rhetoric- art of speaking or writing effectively
- complicity- the state of being an accomplice
- debauch- seduce, corrupt
- sagacity- having a keen mind, shrewdness
- proclivity- inherent inclination toward something objectionable
- jejune- dull, uninteresting, childish (also was a cool band)
“When I was your age, there was never a
problem with kids bringing guns to school. In fact, we kept our rifles
in our lockers for drill team. In our lockers! We never shot
each other. Well…” he dramatically rolls his eyes, forces a rehearsed
chuckle, and takes an I’m-about-to-launch-into-a-long-story swig of water.
“There was that one time.”
Dad is about to launch into the “Have
I ever told you about the time your Uncle Wally shot my friend Don in the
head with a BB gun?” story. He introduces it that way every time.
As if we’ve never heard it before. Mom and I have heard it every
Christmas for as long as we can remember plus a handful of other holidays
and family get-togethers, company picnics, and church functions.
“I was in the fifth or sixth grade.
So, Don and I were, oh, nine years old.”
“You were not nine in the sixth grade,
Dad,” I protest.
“Well,” he does the math on an invisible
chalkboard somewhere about a foot in front of his face, “This happened,
oh, back I’d say about 1964…1963? Back in the city. Anyway,
my friend Don and I were doing something we normally do in the house.
It was a bad day outside, so we were doing target practice with the BB
gun in the house.”
“Where was your mother, Fred?” Mrs. Schmidt
asks with surprise. She’s never heard the story. Having the
Schmidts over for Christmas dinner provides a fresh and captive audience,
and I can see Dad practically squirming in his chair, eager to tell his
tale. This rendition is bound to be the unedited version. I
start to squirm in my seat too.
“She was at work. We were latchkey
kids. Now,” Dad says, like a magician about to pull a rabbit out
of his hat, “we didn’t have a regular Daisy BB Gun, we had the Daisy Pump
Gun. This was the Cadillac of BB guns. It only held 50 BBs,
unlike the other ones, which held a hundred or more. But you could
actually shoot this thing down without the BBs fallin’ out of the barrel!
It was a real good BB gun. Real powerful too.
“Well, as it tuned out, Wally, my brother Wally
who was doing his homework from college. I think I was… he may have
been in high school yet, we were still in grammar school then. And
we were shootin’.” Dad’s latent Chicago accent comes out when he
talks about his youth. “Havin’ a little target practice. It
started after awhile, it started to annoy my brother—“
“Target practice in the house?” Now it’s
Mr. Schmidt’s turn to be incredulous.
“Sure. You know—cardboard box, fill it
up with paper, use an old phonebook. It’ll hold BBs. We’d lay
on the couch in the living room. This apartment had a real long hallway.
It was almost 50 feet to the kitchen. Which was pretty good distance.
So, it was pretty good exercise for marksmanship. 40 feet away or
so there’s where the target was. We’d lay on the end of the couch,”
he lines himself up with an imaginary target somewhere beyond the plates
of ham and cranberry Jell-O. “Rest the barrel over the end,” he squints
one eye tight, “and ‘pitchoo’!
“So it went until my brother got annoyed. We were distracting
him from doing his homework. And so what he did, he decided he was
gonna unload the BB gun so we couldn’t continue. He wanted us to
cease and desist,” declaring the words with mock authority.
“To do this, you grab the BB gun by the muzzle,
give it a couple turns, and this whole cartridge comes out—it’s actually
the barrel plus the BBs, all in one nice neat little package.” Dad
takes a moment to demonstrate via pantomime and nearly loses his track
altogether.
“We got it, Dad. Then what?”
“At this point, my brother proceeded to unload
the BBs out of this BB holder cartridge with the barrel. And out
came alllllll the BBs, so he thought,” Dad adds with very obvious shake
of the ‘ole eyebrows. “He emptied it, put it back together, and Don
and I did something else and Wally continued with his homework.
“Maybe an hour later or so—I think he was in
a better mood, he had finished his homework, gotten past the critical stage
and was back in the mood for a little levity. So, Don and I were
in the bedroom doing I don’t remember what, but at this point my brother
decided to…play a little. So he took up the BB gun (which he knowingly
emptied—he emptied it. He had it there. He emptied all the
BBs out of it). And he walks into the bedroom, cocks the BB gun (knowing
it was empty of course), points it right at Don’t left temple, and says,
‘Siwiak, I’m gonna shoot you.’ At which point, he pulled the trigger
(knowing all along the gun was empty—he emptied it—or so he thought).
“’POW! Ugh!’” Dad pauses for reaction.
This was the long-awaited climax. He looks excitedly around the table.
Did we get it? Did we see where this was going? Did we get
the part where Wally unloaded the gun? Maybe he should point that
out again, so we don’t misunderstand. The Schmidts are holding their
forks of stuffing in midair, waiting, waiting for the next words.
“Don was just shot in the temple! At point
blank range. And he was stunned. And I was stunned. And
Wally was stunned!” The Schmidts are stunned too. Mom and I
are only mildly amused.
“What happened?” Mrs. Schmidt asks.
“Well, little did Wally know, there’s a little
spring in there that holds the last BB. You can empty it, but there’s
always one last BB in there. The reason being, this little spring
holds it so you can shoot things on the ground without the BB falling out
of the barrel when you point it down—like rats in the alley, or what have
you. Anyway…
“What do we do now? Don is stunned.
He’s holding his head. Out comes a drop of blood. ‘Where’s
the BB?’ I say.
“‘It’s in my head!’” Dad mimics Don in a pubescent
yelp. “’I’m gonna die!’
“Right below the sideburns. What do we
do now? We don’t know. ‘Can’t let my mother find out!’ Don
says. ‘She’s gonna kill me. If this doesn’t kill me!’
Well, we really didn’t know what to do. Don’s got a BB in his head.
He was just shot! My brother is, ‘ahhh.’” Dad makes the gasping sound
of Uncle Wally’s mouth gaping open. “I dunno.”
We all pause for a fork full of Christmas dinner
and a swig of sparkling grape juice while Dad prepares to launch into part
two: The Surgery.
“Anyway, what seemed like an interminable period
of time passed, and we’re contemplating what we’re going to do. Finally,
on Don’s left cheek, there’s a long…purple…mark from the area where the
BB went in—just a tiny little hole—a long…wiggling…purple line going down,
all the way down halfway through his cheek, and there’s a little lump there.
“’Don?’ I say. ‘I know where the BB is.
It’s in your cheek.’ It’s between his skin, layers of skin.
It had settled down. What do we do now? I dunno. Well,”
Dad pats his face with his napkin and crosses his right leg over his left.
It seems to take forever.
“It was surgery time. Into the bathroom,
I think we got a razor blade and heat it up on the gas range—I think it
was a regular razor blade—to sterilize it. And,” he finally gives
in to an unrehearsed, natural chuckle, “slowly but surely, I pushed the
BB back up to where the hole was where it came in. I kinda worked
its way back up his cheek there, but it wouldn’t come out. It was
like a pimple. You know, like a big zit you want to squeeze, and
when you squeeze it you see this little, shiny, copper BB in there—or part
of it—but it wouldn’t pop out.”
Mr. Schmidt grunts and folds his napkin.
As usual, this is the part where the audience loses their appetite.
Dad really has a way with words.
“So finally I hadda take the razor blade, made
a little X there,” he crosses the air with a whick whick, ptuh, “and out
came the BB. Just in time, ‘cause it wasn’t long after that that
my mother came home.
“To this day,” Dad says in a prophetic voice,
like some kind of wizard. Or the Lorax. “Don has a little scar
there. Get’s a haircut, and if you look where his sideburns should
be, there’s this little tiny purple mark where that BB went in.”
He leans back in his chair, puts his hands behind his head, and we know
that the tale has been told.
Mrs. Schmidt asks, “Did your mom ever find out?”
“Nope. My brother did it again.”
Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt clap enthusiastically. I look around the table
for more Jell-O, refusing to admit after all these years how much this
stupid story still entertains me.
Written: fall 2001
(also appeared in the Winter '01 Marquette Journal)