Eating Dog Shit and Shooting Pot is in the same book of memoirs. Rough drafts I need to clean up. I got some great suggestions here to mull over. Thanks. By the way-this was 40+ years ago and I don’t think Vicki ever married.
Novel Treatments / My First High School Friend
It all started in the tenth grade. I had this friend named Jan that went to the same high school. I looked up to her because she was really cool. The first day I we met, she was on the blacktop behind the school cafeteria after lunch.
She and this other girl, Janette, were exchanging clothes outside. I mean… down to the under-ware, they were stripping in front of all the students who just had lunch.
Some of the boys that smoked had their own designated smoking area near the tennis court facing the cafeteria back door. The principal had agreed on that space and they were putting out their cigarettes to come see the show. Now, my friend called herself Vicki.
That wasn’t her real name but she preferred that name over the one her parents gave her. It never occured to me why but in the sixties, teenagers decided to start a trend with nicknames.
While Vicki and Janette were stripping down, I was having a conversation with this other girl,Lana, about the Beatles new song, “I want to hold your hand”. She thought Paul McCartney’s bass guitar sounded cool. Later I found out that he had blown a speaker in the amp and the sound engineer kept it that way.
As the crowd gathered around, one of the teachers that was in charge of breaking up fights after lunch sort of trickled out to the blacktop. He ushered the girls inside. I followed because the girls didn’t have a designated smoking place and even though I was fifteen, I had started smoking at twelve.
The girls restroom always smelled of cigarettes. There was this girl in there that my mother had taught at an elementary school in the sixth grade every day during lunch. She was sort of a thug and carried a bicycle chain in her purse. I had encountered her before, and decided to be a bit sarcastic by bringing a surprise to school.
Wearing my brother’s red and blue, satin and wool, school jacket on that was reversible, I was happy there were holes in the pockets between the two reversible materials which provided a nice little hiding place. That morning, I took my daddy’s tow chain with some huge hooks on it and slid it into the middle of the jacket.
I had been able to sneak gin into the school with that jacket. Also, I sneaked in cigarettes and magazines with articles about The Beatles. I had acquired those magazines by ripping them off at the local drug store magazine counter. I also smuggled a vast number of other various things that could be taken into the classroom for me to entertain myself with.
The jacket was a bit heavy but I would think about that chain being there and felt quite tough for a young girl that didn’t weigh anymore than ninety-seven pounds.
When I went into the bathroom to get a smoke, that chain-girl was there and she was sitting on the dirty bathroom floor. It had to be dirty with the female half of twenty-five hundred students in that school running in and out: vomiting, shiting, on their period, etc but non the less, she was sitting on that floor, playing poker with two other girls. They all had a bad case of acne. I had some little bumps on my chin and forehead but not big juicy volcanoes where you just wish you had your darts in the pocket instead of a huge, heavy tow chain.
Anyway, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, smoked it and threw it into the toilet, flushed the toilet and leaned against the sink watching this girl gangsta girl play poker.
“What the hell do you want in here, Jew girl?” was her first response. She knew who I was, having recognized me from my mother’s classroom on parent/teacher meetings.
“What’s it to ya?” I answered.
She got up and pulled out that bicycle chain as a threat to beat my ass and I couldn’t help but laugh. I stuck my hand inside my pocket and pulled out my daddy’s tow chain and said, “Look! My chain is bigger than yours!”
and she just stared at that long, rusty-linked monster in my hand. She was such a big girl too, and the other pizza-faced chicks were amazed that my little structure could carry around something so big, concealed in such a way that it could be dangerous in the school.
One of the crater-faced girls gathered up the deck of cards off that nasty floor and she and the other walked out to go to class. The bicycle chain and the tow chains were put back where they came from and the chain-girl took out a cigarette and lit it. She only smoked a little and someone I hadn’t seen before ran into the bathroom and said in a panic, “That old bitchy Civics teacher is coming down the hall and y’all need to do something about the cigarettes!”
Ol’ chain girl had a lookout!
Apparently the smoke had trickled out when the other two girls left and it was a no-brainer that some student was in there smoking. Chain-girl threw her cigarette into the toilet but didn’t have time to go flush it down when the teacher came in with a sour look on her face and asked, “ Who has been smoking in here?” and I said, “Not me!” And there wasn’t anyone else in that room but chain-girl and she began looking red in the face (and those volcanoes were on the verge of eruption).
I guess the teacher thought of it as guilt coming out of her and took her to the office and left me in the bathroom.
I scrambled to my locker to get the books for my next class and saw the same teacher coming down the hall in a rapid pace to get me before I escaped to who knows where.I assumed that chain-girl snitched on me. I acted nonchalant, like I hadn’t done anything wrong, but she the old bat still grabbed me by the elbow and directed me to walk with her, locker left wide open with books falling onto the floor, to the office.
When I got there, Vicki and Janette were sitting in chairs, chain-girl was in the office already and I just sat down next to Vicki (apparently, smoking in the bathroom was a worse crime than stripping on the blacktop in front of hundreds of people).
“What are you in here for?” Vicki asked, like a true jail mate.
“A rumble in the girls’ room.” I whispered. I might as well sound cool because being in there for telling the truth or defending myself from whatever was told by chain girl wouldn’t beat Vicki’s story. I was being called in as a witness and in high school you really need a witness protection program! The gangs are generally blended into the general population and it is like insurgents hiding in a foreign country.
“What?” she asked the little girl sitting in my chair.
I pointed to my pocket and pulled the chain out by the hooks to show her. She got this funny look on her face turning into a sly grin and we became friends after that. Chain-girl got detentions and I think they expelled Janette because I never saw her again. I had to run laps around the football field for not admitting that some of that cigarette smoke belonged to me.
I discovered that Vicki was in my first period French class. We became best of friends and kept in touch for years after those High School days.
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katwr reviewed Version 2 -
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First and third paragraphs were good, but this one seemed a little weak.
“She and this other girl, Janette, were exchanging clothes outside. I mean… down to the under-ware, they were stripping in front of all the students who just had lunch.”
Instead of “other girl”—> maybe describe them both.
also under-ware—> underwear
If they were down to their underwear, they already stripped, not were stripping.
” She thought Paul McCartney’s bass guitar sounded cool. Later I found out that he had blown a speaker in the amp and the sound engineer kept it that way.”
makes me wonder if this is true?
I liked the description of the jacket.
Perhaps a longer exchange of dialog in the middle?
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KenH1957 reviewed Version 2 -
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Not a bad piece of work. It reads smoothly. I like the characters. It really sets up what’s to come. I felt like I was back in HS smokin in the boys room again. I remember Vicki, or someone just like her. This has the potential to be very interesting book. I want to know more about this girl and what becomes of her (you if this is autobiographical). I hope to read more in the future. It is a bit raw with some typos still to clean up, but overall I really like your work.
KayPaladin reviewed Version 2 -
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THe suspense is lacking because you tell what happens, then you give the lead-up. For instance, if you start the story with your protagonist in the cafeteria, then something causes the boys go over to watch (what do they see?), then the teacher arrives (a teacher – must be some kind of trouble out there!)- all the while the reader is guessing what the trouble can be, and keeps reading, eager to find out—then you show the girls changing. That would keep up the tension.
Also there are a lot of characters introduced, a lot of names to remember, including nicknames. Maybe try letting the reader get to know one or two before introducing a third so it is easier to keep everyone straight.
Dialog should only be used when its interesting enough to cause an eavesdropper to pause and continue listening. Otherwise it’s not going to keep a reader’s interest either.
The hippie era is fascinating to people. So you have a head start on reader interest from the start. Good luck with this.
Actor_Writer reviewed Version 2 -
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Very Nice! I love the outline of this story. It is truly fantastic and very origianl. The content is very well chosen as well as your choice of adjetives and verbs as well as your enormous vocabulary in general. I enjoyed the metaphors. You have alot of work ahead of you but I think this is a very good start and this totally has the potential to be an awesome book. A+++
gymchik104 reviewed Version 1 -
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I really like the title of your book “Runaway”. I’m sure there are other books with the title, but there’s something very profound about the idea behind it.
” I had been able to sneak gin into the school with that jacket and cigarettes,magazines with articles about The Beatles in them.”
and?
“The jacket was a bit heavy but I would think about that chain being there and felt quite tough for a young girl that didn’t weigh anymore than ninety-seven pounds.”
comma?
” and she just stared at that long, rusty big-linked monster in my hand. “
Maybe just she ?
Consider rephrasing, but i like the autobio idea and the plot so far about your life as a hippie.
This was obviously some background, but with some fine tuning and some more description this could be much better piece.
Happy writing,
JD
April 10, 2007
Deleted User
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I find it to be a nice story, but you have some run on sentences you know, you need to edit. So far I havn’t heard anything bout hippie times except you mention the beatles. In the first 2 lines you could add an [and after lunch she and…...! seems you are very young at writing. I am 68 and remember those days. good luck, Edit!!
CharlieMack reviewed Version 1 -
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i was let down… only because from the beginning I expected some girl on girl action. but it was okay, nothing fancy. the acne descriptions were very visual… and gross.
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