Ft2/pp144-374:ft2/pp144-374

When I take Benadryl for my allergies, the heavy-eyelid,sleepytime feeling I get reminds me of lying in a sleep-ing bag during slumber parties while dozing off betweenscreams and shrieks of girls being shredded by FreddyKruger in Nightmare On Elm Street, and girlfriends gos-siping about boys at school. Benadryl produces the sen-sation of being asleep and being awake simultneously,like being insulated from the world in a cocoon likesleeping sack – I remember my slumber party girlfriendsas pupae who were about to turn into teen butterflies.
We lay around in warm sacks awaiting metamorphosisso we could buy bras with bigger cup sizes. The objective of a slumber party – to stay up as late as possible – is reiterated in Freddy Kruger movies by thefact that if the characters don’t staʏ awake they’ll die.
When I pop a Benadryl mid-afternoon, I feel like nap-ping, but I usually make coffee with a similar goal inmind. My life isn’t threatened by a man in a boiler-room, but I don’t want to be lazy.
One Saturday night as seventh graders, some friends and I stayed up watching scary movies until the firstpink streaks in the sky appeared, then we dressed insweats and headed out to tp the church down the streetand to visit a 7–11 for slurpees after our mission wascompleted. I had fun throwing rolls of Charmin over thetrees in the church’s courtyard, but the chapel itself wasmuch too large to huck toilet paper over. In my mind, I’dplanned to tp the giant cross, I’d envisioned it litteredwith white streamers when church-goers arrived Sundaymorning, and the image was beautiful to me, it made afestive statement as if, for once, church was an excitingplace to go, instead of a deadly boring place that sucked ass and that all children hated. But since we couldn’tthrow the tp high enough to do the cross, we took pic-tures of ourselves making out on the church lawn infront of the cross, thereby defacing the sacred groundswith homosexuality. To prepare for the attack, we snuck bottles of Malibu and Bailey’s from the liquor cabinet, stole a jar of wholecloves off the spice rack and smoked them in rolled-uppost-it notes, then applied ‘slut’ make-up to wear on thejourney. I owe it all to Freddy Kruger.
Six of us were lying around on the floor, watching a girl walk down the upstairs hall in her dead friend’shouse, opening each door slowly, to check for clues. Iwas half watching the movie and half hating my pre-algebra teacher. She had poodle hair and a huge ass thather polyester pants barely stretched over.
“You know,” I said, “having a teacher that isn’t butt ugly really would make math class better. Fat teachersshould be illegal.” Everyone ignored me. “Why do they always do exactly what I wouldn’t do if Freddy was in the house?”my friend asked.
“I know, it’s not even scary. She’s so stupid you want “Um, does that mean you all like math?” I asked. “You like looking at Mrs. Farris’ big-ass ass?” “Stop talking about asses,” someone mumbled. Blood splattered on the camera lens.
We had seen Freddy kill one too many people. The plot was predictable, and we didn’t get surprised any-more, there was no rush or tension. The moon wasbright, and it lit the shrubbery while we gazed out windows to devise a plan.
“We could go skinny dipping,” one girl started as she looked out at the dark swimming pool.
“Oh yeah, let’s stare at each other naked,” someone “You are so lesbian,” I said. “Well then, let’s dress up like lesbians and sneak into the church,” someone said sneakily. No one disagreed,so we did.
The first time a slumber party actually turned bad waswhen this skinhead, a friend’s older sister’s boyfriend,locked me in the bathroom and told me to strip. He wasteaching me how to chop lines. He pressed me upagainst the mirrored wallpaper and I felt like there wassomeone behind me, sandwiching me in, because his reflection showed up in my peripheral vision. Hisdragon breath made me wince.
“Come on, let me feel them,” he said, forcing his “It’s three in the morning, and your girlfriend is out there sleeping. Don’t you think this is a little weird?” Iasked.
“She doesn’t care.”“I’m too young for you,” I offered. I was 13, he was 20.
I thought of my sleeping bag, covered with Snoopies and Belles, Snoopy’s twin dog girlfriend, and how itshould have had me in it, it should have been keepingme warm this very minute. Instead, a dude was pushingme really hard against a towel rack. “Ow! You’re hurting me. Let me go,” I said through “Be quiet,” he said. I could feel his hard-on on my hip “Let go or I’ll scream,” I said finally.
I wandered back down the hall and crawled into my sack, happy to be surrounded by all my sleeping girlfriends. Picturing Snoopy and his gentle female com-panion, I petted my sleeping bag’s flannel lining in thedark.
Another time two years later, I went to a super lameslumber party where the mom tried too hard by makingbowls of ‘brains’ out of cold, cooked spaghetti, and ‘eye-balls’ with frozen grapes. Theme parties were out ofstyle; to plan anything out, especially if it was supposedto be scary, was the most uncool thing ever. We watchedHalloween, and took turns in the kitchen making Englishmuffin pizzas, muffins with tomato sauce and jackcheese melted on top of them in the toaster oven.
During my solo muffin shift, I was spooning on tomatosauce while imagining it was bloody guts, and I got theidea to set one out on the porch, as a snack that wouldattract killers. The party needed a boost.
I made an extra muffin, put it out on a paper towel behind the potted petunias on my friend’s porch, andwent back inside to watch the movie. Michael Myerswandered stiffly through backyards on the screen. Oncein awhile I looked out the window to see if a man in amechanic’s suit was feasting on the pizza. “What are you looking for?” my friend asked.
“I’m just seeing if anyone’s out there,” I replied.
“You’re afraid!” they all laughed.
“I don’t think so. I’m bored. Let’s go out or some- thing. I’ve seen this movie a million times,” I said. We all got dressed and took the parents’ car up to the Haunted Forest, at the top of a street that dead-ended atthe beginning of mountainous foothills. Wrought-irongates guarded the entrance to an abandoned estatewhere an eccentric millionaire lived during Victoriantimes. There were relics, like the house’s crumbled foun-dation and random bricks scattered in the dirt, and itwas a great party spot. The moon was out, not full, but bright enough to help us get to a hill above the old house. We had some winecoolers, and a joint to smoke. Sitting around on the rocks, checking out the view, we were pretty chill untiltwo dark human shapes appeared on the trail we’d takenup, then two guys stood in front of us, kind of blockingour way down.
They made conversation with us, about where we were from, what school we went to, what we liked todrink, but they wouldn’t really leave us alone. They wereour parent’s age, bearded, gruff-like bikers. By the timethey started getting creepy, only one girl was still talkingto them, probably because she was afraid to shut up.
“Do you girls have underwear on?” one guy asked.
We all giggled nervously, and said yeah, duh, of It was weird, the other guy was silent now, but he had the most evil energy, like his silhouette in the moonlightwas darker than the other guy’s. His shadow was longeron the ground, too. The evil guy said, in a lowered voice, “If you show ’em to us, we’ll let you girls get back to your party.” So I offered to show him my underwear, but nothing else. You can’t even touch it, I said. I wanted them to goaway, and this was the quickest way. We made a deal, andI presented from under my long skirt a pair of dark pinksatin underwear, that had small ruffled fringes aroundthe seams. Small white polkadots, too, that glowed in thedark. I’d just got them at the mall a few weeks before.
They’d looked so cute in the store, but now the dotstook on this sickly appearance, as if the panties hadmeasles.
He took the underwear from me and rubbed the back of his other hand on them. We all sat quietly, waiting tosee what he’d do next. He spit in them, a big loogie thathe hocked up, not just spittle, rubbed it around, andhanded them back.
“Put ’em on,” he said firmly.
I pulled them half way on, thinking he’d never know, but he told me to lift up my skirt to make sure they werepulled all the way up. He brushed his paw up against mycrotch to make sure the spit was touching it. I was sopissed, but totally quiet. After all, I could take a showerwhen we got back.
The next day on the phone, in hushed tones behind locked bedroom doors, we talked about how twistedthose guys were, how disgusting and perverted andpathetic men could be, how desperate they must havebeen. There was no real issue of whether or not I wasalright, because he didn’t hurt me. I just kept thinkingabout how slimy the spit was, and I tried not to pictureit in the light, how it could’ve been brown and dark yel-low, like men’s loogies are, if they smoke. I pictured myunderwear, out in the middle of the road where I tossedthem out the car window, being driven over by car aftercar. They were the last possession I ever wanted near mephysically. I thought, if I saw those underwear on therack at the department store where my mom boughtthem for me, I’d rush to the bathroom. The worst partwas, I pictured the guy at home alone afterwards, think-ing of my crotch and the silence, getting busy in his loserarmchair with a can of beer in his other hand. It’s not that I was afraid to watch horror movies afterthat, but we just got out of the habit because we werealways sneaking out to get drunk instead of stayinghome in our pajamas like a bunch of pussies. As an olderteenager, I thought back to the slumber party days, andwished we had done more things at home that we’d seenin the movies, like have pillow fights in our lingerie. Butwe didn’t even have lingerie. Did polkadotted pinkpanties count? I didn’t think so. I didn’t understandwhat steps I’d missed; we went straight from watchinggory movies to getting bored with those movies to get-ting drunk or high because we were bored. But now that I wanted the innocence back, I couldn’t get it. Pillowfights were fake, idiotic, and messy. Flipping throughyearbooks was fine, but it wasn’t a Friday night activity.
Mostly, I just wanted to hang with my girlfriends, smokeweed, and not be harassed.
Now, when I watch Slumber Party Massacre, or The Last Slumber Party, and I see girls chewing gum withtheir tits bobbing up and down beneath their croppedtee shirts, and in their cleanest, whitest panties, I trip outon how they seem so carefree and cheerful while gettingtheir lives interrupted by men who can’t control them-selves. I think of a reverse chrysalis – like they’re kidswho come out of a paradisiacal state only to enter theirown personal hell. Picture a butterfly emerging from acocoon and crawling directly into a different, evil one. Ididn’t like being ensnared, but at least now I appreciatewatching it happen on screen – I feel pleasantly satisfiedfrom knowing the girls’ fates ahead of time, almost as ifI’m the killer – I know that he wants the same thing I do,to see the girls at their cutest.

Source: http://www.frozentears.co.uk/frozen_tears_2/texts/dalton.pdf