Story #11: "Philadelphia Freedom"

I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because nothing happened the whole night, or at least none of the things I told Trish on the PATCO. If you know the line in, it’s all smokestacks and dogs and little kids beating the crap out of each other with rocks until you see the Ben Franklin coming into Philly.

Last year going to the show we spent most of the ride hiding from the conductor because he saw us hopping the gate at Ferry Avenue. We were laughing so hard. This year, we had tickets so we didn’t need to jump, but since we did it last year and I’m superstitious, I told Trish we had to do it again.

Trish said she didn’t even want to come. I told her the cops could bust me in the station before I wouldn’t see my Mike.

She had the other Mike. That night we called them the Two Mikes. I said I’d thought about him every second for ten months. I said she should want to see her Mike, too, if he really was her first like she’d said.

We love the song “Philadelphia Freedom.” We’ve been singing together since fourth grade, and we made up harmonies for it. So, I started singing to get her to lighten up or laugh or something, going “Philadelphia freedom took me knee-high to a man” and she said, sure, Lauren and kept sulking about us hopping the gate or something. I asked her what her problem was, but she was being a bitch way before that.

Until that night in Philly, we were best friends. We called each other cassette-mates. Now, I hear she says we are acquaintances or something like that.

We got off at 8th & Market and went into the changing rooms at Gimbels. I’d stuffed all of our clothes and shoes into my leather shoulder bag. I always had to dress her, or she made us both look young. We were the same size, but her mom said she’s got the boobs, and I’ve got the butt. I brought tube tops for both of us. She said hers made her feel ridiculous, so I let her wear the Aerosmith shirt I was wearing.

She knew the guys thought I was hotter, not that she doesn’t look good, because guys still like her no matter what shit they say. Usually, they are different when it’s just you and them. Maybe her Mike didn’t like her as much. I have no idea. After she told me what happened, she never wanted to talk about the night much.

There’s a guy in my class, Nico, and he says I’m “ass and sass,” like he made that up. He told half our homeroom that Trish and I would be the hottest girl in the school if you could put Trish and me together into one girl. I told him if he can’t get us now, he definitely won’t be able to get us then.

I let him feel me up last year. He had no idea what he was doing. I had to make him stop so I didn’t start laughing right at him. It’s not junior high boys I’m interested in. I skipped past that.

I’m not your “get lucky babysitter, Nico,” I told him. So, then he lied to everyone about going all the way later. I didn’t care.

My brother’s girlfriend, Angelique lent us a couple pairs of her high heels and some earrings for Trish. She also snuck me a pack of KOOLs with her fake ID stuffed in there and a couple of joints for surprise. She said make sure you don’t lose it. Honestly, I probably like her more than my brother. She’s the coolest person I know, even about us liking “Philadelphia Freedom” that she said to keep to ourselves which was pretty funny. Trish and I laughed our asses off.

When we were in Gimbels and I was peeing, Trish went digging in my bag without permission and found my Mike letters. I’d wrapped them up in wax paper then aluminum foil to protect them because I was racing out of the house. I asked her why the fuck she was messing around in my bag without permission. She said if they were letters to Mike I shouldn’t have brought them.

So, we got into it, and I said she was trying to ruin everything, obviously on purpose, and I asked her if she was afraid of sleeping with her Mike again, and she said sure, Lauren, that must be what it is - “it must be that I’m jealous.”

We were going to see our Mikes in G.G.R. at J.C. Dobbs. G.G.R. is like their C.C.R. for Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Mikes joked that their name was for God’s Gift to Rock and Roll. G.G.R. The Mikes told us at their show last year we should run away with them on tour, but if we couldn’t, then we should come see them when they got back to Philly.

It was funny that they were both Mikes, but I got the better one. I got the guitar player, and he was twice as cute. She got the singer. They were like Mick and Keith or Steven and Joe. Mike said “there are Learners, Burners and Churners” and he was trying to figure which one I was, but he never told me.

My Mike heard me call Trish “Squirrel” which used to be my nickname for Trish, but he kept calling her Hamster, that annoyed her and she blamed that on me, because she said I was trying to make her sound young, which I wasn’t at all.

My Mike was twenty-one or twenty-two maybe. I don’t even know how old Trish’s Mike was. About the same probably.

They wanted to know how we got there and who we came with. We said nobody, and the Mikes said that the kids are running amok. I was a little high and we were all doing rush, and I said something about him running amok with me, and everyone laughed. Trish said her Mike could forget about that. Trish told me later I shouldn’t have said that, but I told her afterwards I still thought it was true. Cause I knew I would let him. I knew that the whole time, even before.

Trish’s whole thing about all that became a joke I wrote about in my letters to Mike. I know it seems dumb to write letters to someone when you don’t even have an address, but they were on the road, so I saved all the letters and hid them from my mom. That’s why I brought them in on the PATCO.

We got home really late last year with the first train in the morning out to Camden, and the second we got in the door, my mom called my fucking dad in Arizona, and she said I was running amok, too, which wasn’t funny, but it was funny they both said it. She said if this was thirteen, then she was going to lose her fucking mind, and she hung up on my dad.

I know she thought he’d call her back, but he didn’t, and I told her he wouldn’t if she was always such a bitch, and she called me a bitch back and smacked me. I heard her crying in her room, and I made sure she heard me, too, so she wasn’t the only one. I thought she might knock later, but she didn’t. It was a really bad night.

That night definitely stuff happened. I remember crying so hard I threw up.

This year I wanted to make sure we got to Philly early so we wouldn’t be late. Most of the afternoon we wandered around down by the waterfront. We went into 3^rd Street Jazz and Rock records and looked for G.G.R. on the bulletin board, and they were there with the show on it. It was the same bulletin board where we found them last year.

Ever since Trish found my letters in my bag at Gimbels, all I could think of was how stupid they were. I shouldn’t have said it to Trish, but I said that my letters were so dumb they were making me dizzy carrying them. I thought she’d be a friend, but instead of being cool about it, she said ten times it was a mistake to bring them, and I should hide them from my Mike.

We ended up sitting down by the river for a while, and we split a hoagie. Trish spilled oil all over my Aerosmith top, and I told her she wasn’t being careful, because she wasn’t, and she blamed me about it, and said she wanted to go home like a broken record so I asked her why she came then.

I told her she had to wear the tube top now, but I wasn’t giving her her own clothes back. She’d never go home dressed like she was. Her dad is super Catholic. He’s a hard-ass. So, I knew she’d stay and put on the tube top. She wasn’t going to fight me for her clothes, because that night I would fight her. Really. I’ve practically been in an actual fight with my mom, who said I needed to get scared straight or else.

Trish and me wandered around Market Street, and we tried to get into Roadhouse, but the bouncer said we were too young, even after we showed our ids. He said he really didn’t give a shit what the IDs had on them, we looked like we were fourteen. I was saying it’s 1976, and it’s a free country, and some shit about the Statue of Liberty, which made these other guys in the line laugh.

So, we stood across the street, and I lit up one of our joints right in front of him, and he crossed the street to come after us, and Trish ran, but I wouldn’t, and he grabbed my arm and ripped the joint out of my hand and crushed it all over the sidewalk.

Afterwards, Trish kept asking if I was alright, which was the last time she was ever even nice to me. But then it only made me madder. I was still shaking from the bouncer twisting my arm so hard when he didn’t even need to.

We were hanging in Constitution Hall Park, when Trish said out of the blue that if anyone shouldn’t want to be here it was me, and I asked her why that would be, and she started saying shit I’m not going to even going to get into, but that really pissed me off, and we started to argue and we were really getting into it, and she said she was leaving then. I told her she was jealous I got the better Mike. Sure, Lauren was saying like a broken record. I told her her tits were spilling out of the tube top, because they were, and I knew she hated that.

So, she said to give her her shit, and I told her I’d kill her if she left. I told her she was afraid of going to party in the band van. She said she wasn’t the one in the van all night. I told her Mike said that she was a Learner to get her back.

I wouldn’t give her her clothes and told her to go home looking like a hooker. She kept saying sure Lauren, sure Lauren.

Then she said she hadn’t even slept with her Mike, and that she’d lied. I went crazy when she told me she didn’t do it with him, and she’d been lying to me for a whole year for no reason. Then I asked her what she did do, and she said nothing. She kept hinting all this shit about my Mike, and I told her to spit it out, just say it, right? She said I already knew why but wouldn’t admit it, and I said I didn’t know why, and she said, okay if I really didn’t know then I’m wrong.

But she got bitch quiet. She got up and said to keep her shit and started to leave the park all of the sudden out of thin air, so I followed after and was yelling at her asking why she would say she slept with her Mike when she hadn’t.

I think it was pissing me off maybe that I’d been tricked, and I couldn’t believe she would leave me all alone. I thought we were in it together, and she said she wouldn’t have slept with either one of the Mikes in a million years, and that made me even more crazy, so I followed her back to the station. I was yelling about why she left me in the van when she said she’d promised to stay. She said I never said that, and I was a total liar, and I’d always be a total liar.

So, I pushed her like we were eight years old, and she hit the ground and started crying. Some business guy near us started walking fast, and then these two guys on skateboards asked her if she was okay. She started crying and said all this shit to them while I’m standing right there. I knew that Trish and I wouldn’t be friends after that.

I couldn’t get into the J.C. Dobbs at first because there was some bitch at the door that didn’t believe Angelique’s ID either. Like I said, there’s not a lot to tell because not a lot happened. I asked her if she could see if Mike wanted to come out to see me. She said how would she know? I didn’t understand what the big deal was. I asked her if Mike had a girlfriend. She said yeah, but you know how you know when somebody’s lying? She probably wanted him, too.

Then their manager, Billy, recognized me. He called me the Hamster instead of Squirrel which was Trish and said the guys were busy and couldn’t deal with anything because they were getting ready, but maybe they’d say a quick hi after the show.

I told him I needed to go the bathroom, so could he at least let me in for that. He said okay, but then I had to leave right away, or he’d be in deep shit.

I went into the toilets in Dobbs. The toilets smelled terrible, and the place just opened last year, and there’s already graffiti all over everything. I took the letters out of the aluminum foil and read all of them start to finish, and I was trying to figure out which ones to give to my Mike and which ones I should keep, since obviously he wouldn’t even want to see me like he said he would.

The bitch at the door banged on my stall, and said she needed to pee so I wrapped the letters back up and got out. She knew it was me in there, or maybe Billy told her to come in and kick me out.

I asked her if I could stay in the pool room on the third floor in case my Mike came up, and I don’t know why I said that, and of course she was a bitch and said no which made me feel even stupider.

Last year, Trish and I met the Mikes because we were in the street and saw them near their van, and we started joking that we’d help them move their instruments and some shit. They were laughing and saying sure, so we were dragging all of this stuff that was too heavy to carry, and we ended up just watching them and sitting in the front of the van while they stacked up all their crap.

G.G.R. lived in the back of the van when they were on the road. They had a nasty, dirty mattress back there and disgusting sheets, and I was joking about whether they ever took a bath. That’s when Mike kissed me by surprise, and he was feeling me up right away. Not like Nico, that’s why I like older guys because they’re not boys. It’s a lot different.

Maybe it was stupid, but the first time he went for it, out of the blue I told Mike about Nico. They had some rush on the dashboard, and he gave me a hit, then he had to get more guitar stuff, but he kept coming back and feeling me up every trip right in front of Trish and the other Mike. He told the other Mike I was a Burner.

I wrote about him saying that in one of his letters to me. It’s stupid, but I wrote letters that were from him to me, that’s why I didn’t want Trish to see the letters. I just needed to talk to him really bad even to give him the letters so he’d have my address or something. That’s how pathetic I was getting.

So, after I was kicked out of the club by that bitch, I went and found their party van. I don’t even know what time it was. I was so mad at Trish I was cursing out loud at her. It was near the same place as last year, but nobody was there. I looked in the van window, and I could see where we’d been in the back and the grooves in the floor, and there was that thing that goes over where the wheel is. I’d forgotten about that or remembered it differently. So, I just sat across the street and waited for my Mike to show up so I could give him the letters. I knew that would be all that it was.

I knew I shouldn’t have, but I smoked the other joint by myself.

Then I saw Billy taking a girl out to the van, and he was making sure she had everything she wanted or something. It was all so obvious. He told her to hang in the front seat. I still remember how she nodded and sat there like she was in confirmation class. She didn’t know what she was doing, but I was getting angry about everything, so when Billy left, I went up to the window and asked her if she was with Mike, and she didn’t answer.

She rolled up the window right in my face like a bitch, which made me crazy, so I went back across the street to get my bag and then I opened the back of the van, got inside and threw all my letters at her and all over everything in the front and back. There were letters everywhere. I went off. She was just staring back at me like I scared the crap out of her. I remember her ducking.

Then when I was about a block away, I just had to run back to get the letters I wrote from Mike to me. The girl wasn’t even reading my letters. I would have been reading them if another girl threw her love letters everywhere. I still think about her just sitting there.

There were three letters from Mike I needed to get out of there, and that girl was staring at me. I have no idea how old she was. I was searching everywhere right in front of her, and at first when I couldn’t find them, I thought I was going to get sick again right in the van, but then I found his letters, and I saw where I’d smacked my head on the wheel thing.

Anyway, I found them. Like I was saying, nothing even happened. I never even saw my Mike that whole night.

I ended up in a diner. I ordered coffee and I don’t even drink coffee, just for something to order, and I read the letters I’d written from Mike like I was ten years old, and I couldn’t stop reading them and reading them, over and over in the diner.

In one place I had him say that I was a Churner not a Burner. I didn’t even know what that was. They made me feel sick to my stomach, and I almost didn’t care. I’d never read anything so pathetic in my whole life.

Then the waitress said I couldn’t hang out all night, and that was the last straw, I took the letters and tore them all up and threw them all over the table. Then I got thrown out again and sat out in the parking lot where their kitchen guy couldn’t see me.

I called my mom, and she didn’t answer, but when I called Trish’s house, Trish wasn’t back yet, but it turns out Trish had called her mom from the station, and told her mom that my mom needed to come get me immediately because it was an emergency, which it wasn’t. And when I talked to Trish’s mom, she said my mom was already driving in to Philly, and she was going to Dobbs. But I had to tell Trish’s mom where I was so my mom could find me. Then I just waited there, sitting on a parking bumper until my mom drove up.

On the ride home we weren’t even out of Philly yet, and my mom kept saying I was fourteen years old, and what the fuck was I thinking. I thought she was going to pull over in traffic right in the middle of the street. Then we had one of our blowouts, but really bad, and I told her I wished for once she could be like a mom and look after her fucking kids. I went nuts yelling at her just to get her.

So she called me a bitch and said she wished I’d grow up to get me out of the house to have me out of her hair, and she said go to Arizona and live with your fucking father.

It was a terrible night, and nothing even happened. I kept telling her that over and over, but she doesn’t listen. She just was yelling and yelling and Jesus Christ.

Out of nowhere in the middle of one of her speeches, she tried to reach into the back and hit me, and then she just bust into tears. I have no idea what Trish told her mom, but I know it was really bad.

Then she wouldn’t talk, and she put on some news shit about The Bicentennial and the Liberty Bell and all of that because the 4th was coming up then, and I told my mom it was 1976, and everybody is supposed to do what they want, and she was swearing every time anybody changed lanes in front of her like a lunatic.

Then I almost bust into tears when I found the aluminum foil and the wax paper in my pocket, because I’d thrown away Mike’s apology letters, and I almost threw up again because the fact of I’d thrown them out.

Then we were coming back over the Ben, and I was looking out the window at shithole Philly, and that’s when I thought maybe I had been.