Seventeen In ’88 – A story of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
First Ghost of the Year
New Year’s Eve. 12/31/1987. I had just turned seventeen. I can remember the thrill of expectation, knowing that plans had been made and some kind of big event or series of events involving friends, music and general craziness was set to take place.
But my friends and I were never terribly good at making plans, so we spent most of the night bandying about the question “So what are we going to do?” to the point that it became almost rhetorical; asked with a sigh and a shrug, without any real chance that it would be answered. Still, even given the indecision and listlessness, a sense of anticipation hung in the air, buzzing quietly, like a threat.
As always, we drove. Winding through the loops, up the hills, and into the dark back roads. Going nowhere in particular. We drove by the house of the once-and-future boyfriend of the girl I was hopelessly in love with. “There’s where Rob used to have sex with Maggie regularly,” Elliot pointed out helpfully. Thanks, Elliot. Twenty-four years later that comment still makes me laugh and also still kind of stings. Elliot was good for that kind of thing.
We went to a party where none of us knew anybody. We felt awkward and out of place. Not so different than usual. We left early.
We ended up, as we so often did, at Max’s house. It was a very big house, old and roomy with high ceilings and hardwood floors. And for some reason, on this night, it was a strangely scary house. It was always creaky and full of shadows, but Max’s family had already begun the process of moving to a new house, so there were now boxes strewn everywhere and empty spaces where belongings used to be, creating an unnerving sense of disquiet.
The year was beginning with an ending, and a bittersweet one; after using Max’s house as the home base for all of the high times of 1987, maybe the idea that this would probably be the last night we’d spend there was weighing on us.
Or maybe the house was actually haunted. As we sat on the floor in Max’s room, listening to records and talking, as we always did, Elliot became increasingly agitated, convinced that someone (or something!) was there in the house with us. He stood in the bedroom doorway, peering out into the dark netherworld that the living room had become, exclaiming in a hoarse half-whisper “Guys, I swear there is somebody out there. I just saw something move.” Elliot had a way of being funny even in serious situations, so even if his paranoia darkened the mood, it was also decidedly comic. Body tense, fists clenching and unclenching, “I know I heard something! There! There it is again! Did you guys hear that? Somebody is in this house with us.”
It seemed plausible enough, actually. The house was hardly ever locked so anyone could have walked in anytime. And if a ghost could have chosen an ideal home base, it might have been this drafty, dark old house.
So for a few minutes we were filled with a strange mixture of creepiness and excitement. Something was happening! Maybe. Kind of.
Or maybe not. It was deep into the morning and we were getting sleepy, so rather than indulge the idea of an intruder, spectral or otherwise, we eventually laughed it off as Elliot being paranoid. Rude jokes were hurled into the living room, insults directed at our probably non-existent visitor.
Maybe we should have been more willing to believe. Maybe there was some strange, shadowy presence in the house with us - the first in what would be a year filled with mysterious, inexplicable visitations.
There was no way of knowing that at the time. We just wanted to sleep.
But we shut and locked the bedroom door, just in case.
Early the next morning I had breakfast with my family. Having only slept for a couple of hours I kept dozing off at the table and my mother gave me dirty looks. Later, I made a tape with The Pogues’ Rum Sodomy and The Lash on one side and 10,000 Maniacs’ The Wishing Chair on the other. This would be the tape that would get me through January and February. (There is a certain type of person, I think, who needs something to get him or her self through January and February. You know who you are.) The cassette was one of those distinctly Eighties tapes with garish pink and yellow pseudo-“New Wave” graphics imprinted on the clear plastic shell. I loved that at the time. Hell, I love it now.
The Pogues album has gone on to become an acknowledged classic, and its rough and rowdy songs about booze and fighting and dancing and puking would serve me well through the dark winter months, providing a much needed escape from the otherwise drab and morose January/February school days.
The 10,000 Maniacs album on the other hand has been more or less forgotten, overshadowed by the huge success of the band’s later releases and the subsequent solo career of lead singer Natalie Merchant. Maybe that’s justifiable, The Wishing Chair has many of the earmarks of a band in its awkward youth – earnestness, an overall sameness of sound. But for me, that first album is more appealing in its own way than any of what came later; modest, low-key, with a purity and lightness wound into the tangle of folk-rock guitars and Merchant’s poetically sophisticated lyrics.
During the winter of ’88 The Wishing Chair was the bright, gentle yin to The Pogues’ dank, rough-hewn yang. Seventeen is tough, so I needed both of those extremes. The winter of ’88 was long, with much personal drama, and it was comforting after a typical school day full of insecurity, paranoia, and barely suppressed rage to come home and listen to Shane MacGowan singing about being “spat on and shat on and raped and abused.” Flip the tape over and there was Natalie Merchant singing sweetly about sailing far off to the back o’ the moon. Whatever that meant.
So that tape served as the soundtrack for the transition from ’87 to ’88. I’m not sure what was on my mind as far as looking towards the year ahead, but whatever it was I’m sure I didn’t feel prepared for it. Music was the only thing I felt I could rely on and I leaned on it like a crutch during this time. And whenever I think about or listen to those albums now I remember New Year’s Eve and the ghost in the living room and the weight of unknowable expectations.
