Starf*cker: a Meme-oir by Matthew Rettenmund Page B

drop-dead cool girl who was kind of an unofficial queen of the alternative set. She had a Warholian otherness to her. She was not only artsy, she was artful, a gifted painter and progressive thinker. Most interestingly, as intimidatingly cool as Kelly was, she was no culture snob: She loved Taco Bell runs and was completely easy to talk to, girlish in spite of her Siouxsie Sioux packaging.
    Kelly’s homestead had become Ground Zero for the kids who were smart and creative, the square pegs who didn’t fit into round holes. They weren’t exactly geeky, but their cerebral approach to sci fi novels and midnight movies and non-Top 40 music differentiated them from the popular kids. Some of them really looked down on Andrew for being a student council/jock type. Most of them drank, dropped acid, and smoked pot, none of which was in my comfort zone. In seventh grade, my teacher Miss Jones, who had boobs all the boys stared at like dogs in those “ultimate dog tease” videos stare at treats, had announced to us that some of us would start taking drugs and she wanted us to think long and hard and decide not to. I remember thinking she was completely delusional; no one from Flushing would take drugs . I had no idea many already were. By my senior year in high school, I still wasn’t comfortable with the prevalence of drugs. Now that I’m heading toward AARP-ville, I’m still not completely blasé about the fact that people take drugs. I think I value control a little too much.
    Anyway, I insinuated myself into the Barkey crowd by signing up for the art class taught by Mr. Wolfgang, a painter who encouraged self-expression at the top of his lungs every single day. I had strong technical ability, having spent years carefully copying record sleeves and doing portraiture in pencils, a flare that caught Mr. Wolfgang’s—and Kelly’s—eye.
    Kelly slinked up to me—she was an angular beauty with the eyes of a mythical forest creature who did everything with the leisurely pace of a bored movie star or foreign princess—and offered me compliments on my drawings. But both she and Mr. Wolfgang thought I should be less literal.
    “Free your mind…get crazy!” Mr. Wolfgang would exhort over whatever soundtrack was playing that day; he let us take turns signing up to bring in albums to play, so I always brought in pop like Debbie Harry and Erasure. I didn’t dare bring in Bronski Beat yet.
    I had a breakthrough using the insurance company-branded, fine-tipped black markers of which my dad had an unlimited supply in the basement and I started drawing in a large sketchpad. Instead of trying to capture the exact pose or expression of Madonna, Greta Garbo, or Marlene Dietrich, I drew a slightly Asiatic male face, suggesting hair with a series of interlocking shapes. The left half of “his”—did I mention how transgender he appears?—face is a lion-like mask. From there, I drew without thinking. I let even the images in my mind become abstract. Clearly drunk on my appreciation for Dal í and not uninfluenced by Escher and my long love affair with D&D, the drawing eventually filled the entire page with three-dimensional doorways, checkered ballroom floors, and indefinable figures with shamelessly exposed breasts and shamefully concealed identities. It was a black-and-white horror. I called it “The Beautiful Leper”, and realized it was the first real thing I’d ever drawn.
    When I showed my work to Mr. Wolfgang, I was hoping he’d be approving, but I couldn’t have guessed how supportive he’d be—after all, tits were happening in this thing. Mr. Wolfgang showed the entire class what I’d done and told them to use me as their example. I’d poured all my angst into this thing, and it had brought me high praise. But my angst was self-refilling, so I had no trouble duplicating my effort on a daily basis, getting weirder, wilder, and more provocative. I was razzed for all the naked breasts I drew, so I created one intricate