A man's got needs

I have been bombarded with more smell’0’memories recently. So many of them…

Yesterday, while walking to the train, I walked past someone and got a particular whiff of smoke that immersed me in a memory of my best friend from grade 6.

Tammy was new to our school and therefore, wildly teased and abused immediately. I’ve always had a thing for underdogs so I befriended her and actually, she was pretty cool and fun. She had a totally uncensored imagination. No shame. One of her games was to pretend to be married to a member of Duran Duran- Simon Le Bon for her and Nick Rhodes for me. The game basically consisted of us greeting Nick and Simon at the door after their hard day of New Romanticness, then we’d immediately go to bed. I would just lay there, feeling like maybe this game was a bit too weird for me, while she simulated consummating her marriage to Simon by basically bouncing up and down on the bed. When it was my turn, I often found some excuse to get out of it. Nick’s got a nose bleed or something…

She had a cubbyhole into the side of the house in her bedroom. It was cleaned and decorated with posters and just big enough for the two of us, some candles, (safety first in the 80’s!) and some Tiger Beat magazines (Do they have Cougar Beat magazines for older women?). I was sooo envious of her cubby. I wanted one real bad. I often wished I could be there alone but I could hardly boot her out of her own cubby. I will stop saying cubby now.

Her parents were very young. They still sported metal head haircuts and wore tight jeans and owned records like Balls to the Wall by Accept, which we were fond of playing often and singing along to. This was much to the annoyance of her parents but greatly amusing to her younger brother.

They had moved in with her grandmother. Her house was like it came in a time machine, directly out of the 1950’s. Architecturally and with the moldings and door handles and mint green paint and sparkly, melamine kitchen table and everything-dishes, drapes, clocks…just like a time warp.

At the back of the house was a long, mostly empty and unused room full of windows. The window ledges were the kind that are big enough to put a pillow and sit and read on. This room was like an afterthought, it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the house and no one seemed to know what to do with it, which I thought was crazy because it was so calm and serene; all the trees and flowers in the back yard through the windows, perfectly quiet but for the ticking of that 1950’s clock.

We adopted this room as our Barbie lair. We had a mansion set up for her on a mountain (window ledge) with a ski hill(pillows with white covers) and a sauna(a box with a door fashioned out of tinfoil). The most exciting Barbie accessory that Tammy introduced me too was the Barbie waterbed. Made from baggies and water but not Ziplocs because the seam would make it not sit right, rather, the super thin, soft baggies that had to be tied closed. I think they always leaked but it was worth it.

Tammy liked to play the part of Ken, which is what most girls wish their best friend wanted to do. She always made him act like he was a head injury victim with more than a slight tendency to stalk Barbie. Always peeking in her windows and asking her “How’s it going?” even though Barbie would be telling him she was going to call the police if he didn’t stop. It cracked me up everytime.

Her grandma, who also looked straight out of the ‘50s with her high-waisted, ice-cream coloured, pencil-leg pants, her dyed jet black hair in that brushed back, teased for height, helmet of hair style and her black, drawn on, arched eyebrows. She always had a cigarette. She moved and talked super slow. Not slow in a feeble, old lady way, more like, slow in a shot with a horse tranquillizer way. Her manner of standing was remarkable in that her pelvis was always the furthest think jutting out from her body and her feet turned outwards like a duck. Often, she would quietly drift in to our Barbie world to have a relaxing smoke away from her headbanger daughter and her metalhead son-in-law. Without saying anything or interrupting, she’d just smoke and watch us play.

Tammy would never censor herself or get shy when her grandmother was around. She would even throw out some light swearing like damn and jesus. Almost always, at some point, her grandma would let out a sudden, raspy, smoker of a thousand years guffaw at something Tammy had made Ken do or say. I remember one of things that made her laugh was Ken sticking his but through Barbie’s window and saying, ”Barbie, a man’s got needs!”.

Somehow, when Tammy’s grandmother smoked, it never bothered me. I can’t say I’ve come across that since, except with my own grandmother.

The whole family moved out into a big house in another part of town in some ugly suburb and Tammy started dating an older (15 years old!) boy. He was rumored to actually be a woman, which was a bizarre rumor, since I saw him and he clearly was not gender ambiguous but the rumor was a good one so it stuck. Everyone was just jealous.

The last time I saw her was about 8 years ago. She was working in a diner in our hometown with way too much make-up on and a frown. She did not want me to be there and we only briefly acknowledged each other.

I bet by now, she has kids. I’d like to think that they play her Duran Duran tapes and sing along. I’d also like to think that she’s still wacky in the head and super fun to play with and that maybe her grandma is living with her, drifting and laughing and smoking.