Purple Daze Read online

  No kids for me though. Why

  put them through this shit?

  My wallet’s got fake IDs,

  girls’ phone numbers,

  rubbers.

  I’m set for anything!

  Aren’t you proud?

  Nancy

  Mickey and Ziggy stagger out of her

  parents’ bedroom. She’s in cotton undies,

  he’s in skivvies. They’re drunk as skunks.

  He’s holding her by the ankles,

  36-D cups tied around his head,

  a bra bandit.

  She’s upside down,

  walking on her hands,

  laughing like crazy.

  I’ve seen them do this before

  when the rubber breaks.

  God knows why?

  Bet she couldn’t get pregnant

  if she tried.

  Ziggy

  Feet in the air,

  underpants up my crack,

  boobs bouncing,

  fat-tub-of-lard-upside-down.

  If I got pregnant,

  I wouldn’t care

  what anyone said.

  If I got pregnant, Mickey and I

  would spend the rest of our lives

  loving our baby.

  If...

  Phil

  Mick has no class,

  treats Ziggy like trash.

  I don’t know why she

  puts (out) up with it (him).

  Suggestion Box Room 206

  Can you open your room during lunch period, so we have a decent place to sit? (Not enough tables and chairs in the cafeteria.) I’d make sure no one put stinky food in your wastebasket or otherwise messed up the opportunity.

  (Thanks for not making us sign our name)

  Your outfits are quite hep for an English teacher. But, Ms. Hawes, I think you should try nude lipstick instead of pink. I also suggest a different eye shadow. Turquoise?

  Your Fan

  Who do you think you’re kidding with this suggestion box crap? Teachers don’t care what we think!

  No Dummy

  I wish you’d put the Hall Pass in a discreet spot so we don’t have to raise our hand when we need to use the restroom.

  Embarrassed

  I like it that you read to us even though we’re in high school. Okay so that’s not a suggestion, but I thought you should know.

  The Listener

  I’d like to suggest that next semester you don’t seat us by alphabetical order. I’m tired of the same “D” looking over my shoulder.

  Serious Student

  I’d like to petition that the bells ring closer together. Either that or blow up this dump.

  Bored-to-Death

  Sometimes a person is retarded due to circumstantial happenings beyond their control influence, such as missing the bus and having to pedestrian in shoes that crush obstruct their toes. If you have to mark us down (is it a school rule dictorium?) I’d appreciate the occasion to make up points. I don’t dismiss book reports if you permiss us elucidation of comics.

  Always Late

  Cheryl

  Ziggy can’t surprise me, not

  since second grade when she

  beat up Michael Alan for calling

  her Porky Pig.

  The next day she let him touch her

  scabby knee, and he shared graham

  crackers and milk with her.

  Selective Service System Order To Report For Induction

  IF YOU HAVE HAD PREVIOUS MILITARY SERVICE, OR ARE NOW A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL GUARD OR A RESERVE COMPONENT OF THE ARMED FORCES, BRING EVIDENCE WITH YOU. IF YOU WEAR GLASSES, BRING THEM. IF MARRIED, BRING PROOF OF YOUR MARRIAGE. IF YOU HAVE ANY PHYSICAL OR MENTAL CONDITION WHICH, IN YOUR OPINION, MAY DISQUALIFY YOU FOR SERVICE IN THE ARMED FORCES, BRING A PHYSICIAN’S CERTIFICATE DESCRIBING THAT CONDITION, IF NOT ALREADY FURNISHED TO YOUR LOCAL BOARD.

  Nancy

  Phil got his draft notice.

  I haven’t told anyone.

  MARINES

  I tried to read it slowly,

  but the words came all at once:

  You are hereby ordered for induction into the

  Armed Forces of the United States, and to report...

  He took me to House of Pancakes.

  I couldn’t eat my Dutch Baby,

  sobbing into his Union 76 shirt,

  PHIL stitched over the pocket.

  He smoked, drank black coffee

  while I filled out a job application.

  Phil

  Man, those sneaky VC

  fight dirty in Nam,

  making a mockery

  of U.S. democracy.

  I’ll be a proud to be among the few,

  no better friend, no worse enemy,

  first to fight, a gung-ho grunt

  in the Marine Corps.

  Cheryl

  A Bekins van backs up next door as

  I drag the sprinkler to a brown spot.

  I’m guessing my mom told the creep’s wife

  what happened—and she booted the sex pervert.

  I’m hoping she told him he’ll never see his daughters

  again, when

  two mattresses are loaded into the van.

  Twin headboards. Boxes, taped shut.

  Barbie Doll suitcases, black, zippers open.

  A pair of perfect faces peer out, plastic grins.

  The hard-packed dirt beneath the brittle

  grass sucks up water, trying to breathe.

  Nancy

  News time.

  Walter Cronkite

  reels a five-minute clip:

  “Godless communism is why

  we launch lethal weapons.”

  Boom. Boom.

  National Liberation Front

  For centuries peasants in South Vietnam accepted living in poverty because they believed it a punishment for crimes committed by their ancestors.

  The National Liberation Front (NLF) seek to educate them in economics by explaining that 50% of the farmland is owned by less than 3% of the population. The NLF gains additional support by following strict directives:Never damage the land and crops or spoil the houses and belongings of the people; never insist on buying or borrowing what the people are not willing to sell or lend; never speak to them in a way that is likely to make them feel they are held in contempt; assist them with daily work, such as harvesting, gathering firewood, fetching water, etc.

  The NLF begins confiscating property of large landowners and distributing it among the poor. In exchange, the peasants feed and hide soldiers and often take up arms to help liberate other villages.

  If the U.S. Marines or Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) gains control of a village, they are told their land will be confiscated. Consequently, peasants think of the NLF as their friends and U.S. military and ARVN as enemies.

  These beliefs are reinforced as explained by U.S. Marine William Ehrhart, “They’d (peasants) be beaten pretty badly, maybe tortured. Or they might be hauled off to jail, and God knows what happened to them. At the end of the day, the villagers would be turned loose. Their homes had been wrecked, their chickens killed, their rice confiscated—and if they weren’t pro-Vietcong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left.”

  Cheryl

  Some girls put wadded up

  toilet paper in their bras.

  Mine has socks.

  I mailed in the Free Trial coupon

  in Silver Screen magazine under

  a photograph of Jayne Mansfield.

  BE A BUSTY BOMBSHELL IN JUST TWELVE WEEKS

  When the package arrives there’s

  a tube of cream and a photograph

  of a man’s hand.

  Mickey

  Me and Ziggy swap spit at the drive-in,

  an old flick called Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  Don is in the backseat with Cheryl, moaning

  like a sick animal, so I grab my squirt gun

  to cool him off.
He swears, totally pissed.

  Cheryl just busts up.

  Brick and Maggie sound like Mom and Dad

  before Mom took off with that guy who sells

  fake-leather encyclopedias.

  I aim the gun in my mouth, all quiet like Brick.

  “Nothing’s gonna ruin my liquor.”

  Cheryl

  Don tickles my tonsils with

  Juicy Fruit and I wonder why

  I can’t be more like Ziggy

  and less like me,

  letting him go all the way,

  then Mickey blasts us with a

  Screwdriver-filled squirt gun.

  What a kick in the glass!

  Don

  Less than ten minutes

  until the world blows its top.

  I’m still a *_ _ _ _* virgin.

  Prayer For Peace

  “On this Memorial Day, May 30, we will pay homage to our honored dead who gave their lives that this county might live in peace and freedom. Their numbers are legion, their deeds valorous, their memories hallowed.

  “They fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania, in the trenches at Verdun, and in the foxholes at Guadalcanal. Now America’s sons are again making the highest sacrifice to protect for this and future generations the liberty won in past struggles.

  “Man possesses now the capacity to end war and preserve peace. We are able to eliminate poverty and share abundance, to overcome disease and illiteracy, and to bring to all our fellow citizens the fulfillment of their dream of a better life. We have the means to achieve these victories....

  “Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Memorial Day, Sunday, May 30, 1965, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I call upon the people of the Nation to pray for a lasting peace in which all mankind may reap the fruits of His blessing...”

  —Lyndon B. Johnson, Memorial Day, 1965

  FBI’s Golden Record Club

  The White House and Justice Department are aware that the FBI is conducting an “intelligence investigation” not a “criminal investigation” in an all-out war to discredit civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wiretaps in phones, in homes, and microphones hidden in hotel rooms to “obtain information” about “private activities of King and his advisors” to “completely discredit” them in a “personal attack without evidentiary support.”

  An FBI agent is dispatched to the Vatican to warn about the “likely embarrassment that may result if the Pope should grant Dr. King an audience.”

  The FBI responds to Dr. King’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize by attempting to undermine his reception by foreign heads of state and American ambassadors in several countries he plans to visit.

  The FBI prepares to promote someone “to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited.”

  Ziggy

  Today we saw the movie PT 109 in

  Social Studies class. Cliff Robertson

  played John F. Kennedy in the Navy,

  World War II.

  I fell asleep and dreamed I was in the

  White House, classy as Jackie before

  Lee Harvey Oswald,

  looking cool in silk taffeta.

  Mickey

  In kindergarten I had these plastic army men.

  I’d march them into the fireplace,

  watching them melt into mutilated

  green globs.

  Dad laughed like crazy when he

  saw them. “That’s my boy!”

  Think I’ll drop out and enlist.

  It’d be a blast to blow up stuff.

  Ziggy

  I picked up the extension when my

  step-dad was on the phone, telling

  my real dad horrible things about

  me.

  “Daddy never interrupted him.

  Not once. Guess the whole world

  is full of adults you can’t

  trust.

  Rock ’n’ Roll

  Raggy rock and rollers whang electric guitars,

  a sledgehammer rhythm on radios, rooftops,

  stages, alleyways.

  A raucous beat heaving patent leather feet

  into discotheques from sea to shining sea:

  Whisky A-Go-Go, California

  Frisky A-Go-Go, Texas

  Bin-Note A-Go-Go, New York

  Parents barely survived

  Pat Boone’s white bucks

  and Johnnie Ray’s histrionics

  when four Liverpool blokes took Ed Sullivan’s stage

  last year in high-heeled boots, shrinking suits,

  and sufficient hair to stuff an easy chair.

  “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

  To distinguish themselves from the Fab Four,

  the butch bluesy Rolling Stones are the band

  “parents love to hate.”

  Mick’s thick lips suggest how his nights are spent.

  “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

  Teens rarely touch one another while dancing,

  nor do they gaze into each other’s eyes.

  Yet psychiatrists and sociologists view

  the orgiastic gyrations with horrification.

  “Sick sex turned into a spectator sport.”

  A Senate subcommittee is formed to investigate

  the link between rock ’n’ roll and juvenile delinquency.

  Cheryl

  Six of us sway shoulder to shoulder

  on a blanket a mile from the stage:

  Don, Ziggy & Mick, Nancy & Phil.

  A new band from San Francisco is playing,

  Jefferson Airplane. Hazy pot smoke clouds

  the park, but we’re sipping cherry Cokes.

  Ziggy dances in a stretchy halter top,

  ankle bells keeping time to “Tobacco Road.”

  Mickey picks out rhythm on his guitar,

  his strings solo singers.

  Don and Nancy pay a visit to porta-potties

  and Phil takes my hand, pulling me up.

  “Wanna dance?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  His smooth moves are easy to follow

  unlike the boxy steps I remember

  from fifth grade cotillion class.

  “When did you learn this?”

  We’re palm to palm, a slow turn.

  “My aunt teaches at Arthur Murray.”

  Another spin, I trip on the hem of my

  fringed jeans, trying to laugh, except I’m

  crying and can’t stop.

  “I don’t want you to die.”

  He soaks up Signe Anderson, jazzy

  in black leg-hugging leather boots.

  “She sings like an angel.”

  I shout over her mournful voice,

  “Tell them you’re a pacifist.

  Or flat-footed and a homosexual.

  They don’t take homos.

  Oregon, Washington, Canada.

  A thousand miles maybe?

  You could make it in a day.”

  He kisses the tip of my sunburned nose.

  “Sorry, honey. I’m not a traitorous wussy.”

  Nancy

  Don bums a smoke from a guy with a

  Pocahontas headband in a porta-potty line

  that snakes like psychedelic dominoes under

  a smoky green haze.

  One flick and we all fall down, spreading

  a runny egg of Communism:

  South Vietnam and Southeast Asia,

  before splashing across the Pacific until

  America’s democratic beaches turn red,