A Striptease: For Jack Wild On The Wall (Part One)
Dec 14 | Written By American Baroness
When I was a kid, in the 1970s, I loved reading my horoscope. The first one I ever saw was in Teen Beat magazine. They had everything in there, even centerfolds of male heartthrobs, shirts unbuttoned down to their bellies, belted bellbottoms ragged at the hem. I remember tearing out the flimsy insert poster of Jack Wild, and double-sided taping it up on my bedroom wall. Jack Wild was the cockney Artful Dodger in the 1968 film adaptation of “Oliver!”, and then, a year later, the star of American Saturday morning TV’s “H.R. Pufnstuf”—the show didn’t last long, but Jack stayed in the public eye, for a few years anyway. He was scrappy and British, and he made me feel something I’d never felt before, some nebulous provocation, an unquenchable need to be near him.
Where I grew up, in suburban Boston, I had my own bedroom for a short while, about a year. We were six at home—two parents, two boys, two girls—in four small bedrooms. So, at any one time, two of us kids—the girls—had to share. But for that spate—I was maybe 9 or 10—I had solo space. In my own room, I memorized the B side of Abbey Road, wrote every day in my 5-year diary, read “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” and, covertly, “The Story of O”, a book that had beckoned to me from the messy half-open drawer of my mother’s nightstand.
Most nights that winter, safe in my own room, and after dutifully washing my face and brushing my teeth, I performed a striptease for Jack Wild on-the-wall. Without music, in chilly-upstairs New England, I’d undress, inexpertly, using my ballet-jazz-tap dance moves to entice the Teen Beat boy. Once naked, knee socks atop a clump of discarded day clothes, I’d quickly cross my arms over a flat chest, shimmy a flannel nightgown over my head, and snuggle under the covers. I liked knowing Jack Wild was there, watching over me, smiling all the while I slept.
I wore glasses from a young age, and in keeping with my bookish look, I was a compulsive reader. In fact, I read so much and so quickly that I had a special waiver at our public library allowing me to take out as many books as I could carry home. The librarians—three slender, prim, bespectacled women—were always kind to me. They would gently quiz me about the content of what I was returning, checking my comprehension, offering me a forum to gush or critique.
In addition to books, I also read Seventeen magazine, cover to cover, and I was crazy for Town and Country—that elitist editorial catalog of all things upper-class—having been exposed to it through my mother’s identical twin sister, Loretta. Now, when I say identical, I mean: they were dead ringers. When I was really little, I couldn’t tell them apart. But later, it got easier. My mother, Jeannette, was the thinner of the two, and Loretta had a slightly crooked front tooth and a barely detectible lisp, a slight muffling of her s’s and z’s. Jeannette and Loretta were inseparable throughout their lives, the closest of confidantes who could—did!—finish each other’s sentences. They also made a habit of antagonizing one another—a merciless and mirthful sort of play-acting—but always with a wink, and often punctuated by synchronized bursts of child-like laughter.
I had also been prematurely exposed to Playboy magazine. My neighborhood friend, Becky, and I were wildly jumping on my parent’s bed after school one day, and as I tumbled to the floor in a clumsy dismount, I noticed a stack of printed matter on the floor under the bed, hidden in plain sight. Oh, how we tore through those magazines, stunned and speechless, intrigued and disgusted, bewildered as to what purpose they served, and fully aware that we, she and I, now shared a secret. I think we were 8. Becky and I then came up with what we called the “Playboy game”. Looking back, the whole scene was pretty lurid: we would take turns posing-for-the-photographer on a bed we fashioned out of old sofa cushions, down in the dank basement where my Dad had a home office. We kept our clothes on, mostly; I’ve always been competitive and so, wanting to win the game (whatever that meant) I sometimes pulled my pants or skirt down below my belly, and knotted my shirt to reveal a pale, shapeless torso. Becky, who was already kind of a bitch by then, excelled at barking orders—she dropped right into the role of prickly porn photographer.
The twins, Jeannette and Loretta, married men who were friends, and their weddings were just a few months apart. It was my father, Phil, who introduced Loretta to her eventual husband, John, whose father owned an iron works; he was an industrialist, though of the regional sort—well-off but not wealthy. Loretta and John had two sons, but Loretta longed for a daughter. So, in the absence of her own girls, Aunt Loretta treated me and my younger sister as if we were her own, giving us that little extra bit of attention we might have missed in our own crowded house. In effect, we had two mothers—doppelgangers, but with their own, distinctive personalities. Loretta was effusive with compliments, let us stay up late when we slept over, made up wonderfully silly stories, and carted us around without question or complaint. She was also adept at hiding her unhappiness, artfully carrying the burden of a mismatched marriage and continuing to live, somehow, all those years, with a gruff and unaffectionate man.
In all things, Loretta’s taste was impeccable: elegant and unpretentious. Every nice thing I owned was a gift from Loretta—so many little luxuries, the products of our many day trips to Ogunquit or Wolfeboro, upscale seaside towns in summer season New England. Loretta knew my mother would admonish her for indulging us, so she always suggested we “don’t tell her”. But secrecy was futile. How would we have hidden all those pretty outfits and the shiny sterling silver jewelry, too? And anyway, my mother only pretended to mind; she always encouraged our attachment to her twin sister.
Life at Loretta’s house, one town over, was roomy. We were a little closer to the bone at our house. Though my parents were happy together, unmistakably “in love”, my mother always seemed dissatisfied, not with my father, but with our situation, with our surroundings. From her, I picked up the habit of wanting more than we had—for starters, a bigger house with more bedrooms. I talked a lot about applying to Philips Andover Academy (the prototypical prep school, just up the road from where we lived) despite my father’s specific orders to cease and desist all attempts to raise my station. He didn’t say it like that. It was more,
“Unless yah think ya goin’ to Hahvid, you don’t need Philips Andovah. Now, would ja go upstayis and find my cah keys, I think thehya in my kahkeys.” [1]
I would always find his car keys—his glasses, his wallet—and then rush back downstairs to serve them up with a smile. It was unspoken, of course, but locating Dad’s missing personal effects became my job, and I took it seriously; somewhere in my subconscious, throughout my childhood, I was always scanning the house for those items, in case Dad lost-it while looking for them. By acting as his helper, I distinguished myself, rendered myself special, which was really all I wanted. To be special. Or, more accurately, to be recognized as special, notable in some way, worthy of attention. If that meant I had to be on high-alert for lost stuff, so be it.
Baffled might best describe Dad’s state of being in those years. (Our household itself was confused, chaotic even; neither of my parents was particularly domestically-inclined.[2]) And though he couldn’t keep track of his car keys—his glasses, his wallet—Dad was impressive in other ways. For instance: he had the seemingly supernatural ability to accurately predict the weather. Snow, and its effect on school closings, was his particular specialty. Local meteorologists could have assured us that the massive Nor’easter heading our way wouldn’t make landfall for days, but Dad seemed to have secret knowledge as to the storm’s actual path and intensity. He was even able to foresee how many days off from school we could expect. Excitedly we’d ask, “Dad! Should we even do our homework?” The second he said “nope”, we’d ditch the books and spark up the tv set, utterly confident in his decree.[3] I cannot recall one instance in which he was wrong. In fact, so accurate were his predictions—in general, about everything, not just weather—that I assumed my father possessed magical powers.
[1] “Unless you think you’re going to Harvard, you don’t need Philips Andover. Now, would you go upstairs and find my car keys, I think they’re in my khakis.”
[2] Mom, if you’re reading this, don’t freak out. To say you were never domestically-inclined is meant as a compliment. One of your many sparkling qualities is your, let’s say, non-linear approach to everything. You are a creative, damnit! And I wish you’d never had to clean or cook or go to a stupid job, that you could’ve lived like Helen Frankenthaler, maybe: your days spent in a high-ceilinged art studio painting massive canvases, drinking black coffee, forgetting the time, your hands stained by oils of all colors, souvenirs of your travels strewn about.
[3]I use word “decree” with intention: my father is a Leo, the Lion King. And even in his disarray, he always held court at home—a benevolent, bumbling ruler with a blistering wit and a natural confidence that made him popular. He is, still, to this day, everyone’s “favorite person.”
So, I suppose it makes sense that when Dad made any declaration, like, say, whether or not I was Ivy League material, I simply deferred to his judgment. I was an obedient kid, too, afraid of getting in trouble, and so I never caused any, never argued or, God forbid, fought back. But I did, eventually, rebel: At some point during my eleventh year, I stopped eating. I mean, I still ate, but my intake was wildly restricted, limited to the following five foods: hard boiled eggs, canned pineapple chunks, low fat cottage cheese, iceberg lettuce and melba toast. I lost weight fast. I never cheated, not once. This went on for over a year. Eventually, my parents had no choice but to send me to a psychiatrist, which was a financial hardship as well as an inconvenient heartache for them. After a few months of Saturday morning therapy, the psychiatrist, a heavy-set, middle-aged man, who I had just begun to trust, asked me to draw two stick figures, a male and a female. I obliged. Taking the paper from me, having a look at what I’d created, he suggested that I’d left something out: a vertical line to represent the male figure’s penis. I was 12.
By the summer of ’76, the breathlessly anticipated Bicentennial, I was a stick figure myself: Five foot five and a dress size 0. I might’ve looked unhealthy and unhappy, but the truth is, I felt great—I loved being skinny. Looking back, I was even sort of smug about it, making sure to mention to friends how difficult it had become to find clothes that were small enough for me. As if that was impressive. At other times, I was despondent, convinced that I was still fat or that I was regaining weight. I suffered from body dysmorphia; I was disoriented and disillusioned.
My parents were bewildered. They didn’t know what to do with me. So, I was sent to spend the summer with Aunt Loretta and Uncle John, at their lake house, their “camp”, in New Hampshire. For those months, I was Loretta’s daughter, in my own room, with a water view. Loretta’s mother-in-law, Gigi, a patrician, white haired Protestant powerhouse, was up at camp a lot that summer. She took a great interest in me, and somehow always worked into conversation that she thought I should go to the all-girls Ivy League institution, Smith College, sensing, I suppose, my innate sophistication, or maybe my inner lesbian (every girl has one). Anyway, in Gigi’s eyes, and Loretta’s too, I was strictly Seven Sisters. They referred to me as “handsome” and “horsey.” Now, I’d been exposed to horses from an early age, having regularly accompanied my father to the racetrack, sometimes right after Sunday mass at Saint Agnes, but I’d never actually ridden a horse. But thanks to my continued close-read of Town and Country, I knew exactly what they meant by “horsey”: country club, jodhpurs, crisp white shirt; fresh face, chin up, nose down.
At camp, Loretta had a best friend, Kitty, whose parents owned the cottage next door. She was so present in our lives that I knew her as Aunt Kitty. She was a few years younger than my mother and Loretta, a few years…cooler. She had a smart Susan Sontag face with long Joni Mitchell hair and big Pat Loud glasses. She was tall and leggy (busty, too) and tended to wear a bikini all day until cocktail hour when she changed into soft blue jeans and a well-worn cashmere crewneck sweater. Though the twins loved Kitty, they referred to her in private as “haughty”. To me, she was absolutely exquisite. That’s how she pronounced it, with the emphasis on the ex. Exquisite.
Kitty was on the lake all summer that particular year, with her two perfectly blond kids and her dreamy, swarthy, French Canadian husband, Michèle. Me-shell: that’s how Kitty pronounced it. Michèle happened to be the spitting image of the 1970s Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Mark Spitz, only better looking. He was what we used to call a “hunk”. Reflecting back, I understand why Kitty was so cool with her husband, why she seemed almost disinterested in him. Michèle was a charmer, assertively flirtatious in a studied, subtle way. The twins were clearly—simultaneously—smitten. He’d saunter into a room, all lanky, running his hands through a mop of curly, black hair, and put you instantly at ease while making himself comfortable, too—a clever conversationalist with honed listening skills and an attentive laugh. In other words, catnip for the ladies. When he spoke, Kitty would mostly stare into the mid-distance, furrow her brow and blink—so, so slowly.
That summer, I learned something thrilling about Aunt Kitty: She’s an astrologer! When I tell her how much I love horoscopes, like the ones in Teen Beat, she grins. I ask her what it means that I’m a Capricorn. “Well,” she says, “why don’t we see.”
Kitty has a loom. In fact, she has an entire art studio behind her parent’s cottage that she escapes to, alone. In there, she weaves. And she investigates the stars. There are tarot cards, gardening tools, a crystal ball, half empty glasses of iced tea, lemonade, white wine spritzer. I’m 12 going on 13. I don’t know who I love more, Kitty or Me-shell.
Maybe I’d always sensed there was something exotic and exciting going on behind the horoscopes I read in my magazines. But I couldn’t have known, would never have found out, until Aunt Kitty invited me, all 95 pounds of me, into her art studio, her transporter room, that there was an entire world of symbols and spheres, of prophecy and mystery waiting to be discovered. She sees the future. She knows who I am and what I’ll be. And it’s good, she says.
She says I can see the future, too.