I GUESS THIS IS what you get for trying to give a few disadvantaged youngsters the opportunity to do something constructive for once. I mean, I’ve always been an idealist. I see the potential in a situation. I look for the best in a person. I’m one of those people that thinks the glass is half full, not half empty.
So to me, the way I saw it my high school life video was a great opportunity not only to prove my own abilities in my chosen field, but also to provide these youngsters with a true learning experience concerning the media. More than that even, I saw myself giving them what you might call a positive life experience too, by showing them a positive role model who cared about them and their lives. I was so excited to think about one of these kids maybe using this as the launching pad for a whole new way of life, where they’d reach for something better. Larry and I used to talk about how all it takes is one person who cares to turn a person’s life around. I thought maybe I could be that person.
That’s one reason why I brought the kids over to our place. I wanted them to see how some people live. Give them a lifestyle to aspire to, beyond spending the rest of their life digging clams and shacking up with their 250-pound first cousin. If you know what I mean.
Yes, I gave James a ride in my car. And went out and bought an air freshener the next day, just to try and get the smell out of my Datsun, incidentally.
The minute he got in the car, he started in with all this what I would call suggestive talk about his various girlfriends and so forth. It’s “F” this and “F” that. This is the kind of person we’re dealing with here. I guess just because I listen to contemporary music he got the idea anything goes. I set him straight on that, or tried to. Then when we got to my place—Larry’s and mine—he walked right over to our stereo and turned it on, without asking or anything. I had an Aerosmith CD in there I remember. To give him something to identify with, you know. Although to tell you the truth, the kind of music I prefer is more along the lines of Billy Joel. I saw Christie Brinkley once, incidentally. When I was in New York City, on a Women in Media workshop, and she walked right past me, just as I was coming back to my hotel. She’s every bit as gorgeous in real life.
Anyway. He took off his shoes, right there in the middle of my living room, and started dancing, I guess you could call it. With these very sexually explicit moves. I told him, “James, you need to remember we’re here to work on the video project.” He asked me if Larry and I ever went dancing. I made a point of telling him what a wonderful marriage we had, and that we did a lot of activities together on the weekends. Dancing being one of them.
He suggested that maybe I could teach him how to dance better. He’d seen a picture I have in my front hall of me in my cheerleading uniform. He said he figured from all my cheering experience I’d be a good dancer. I explained to him that cheering is more a precision sort of thing. People don’t understand how much practice and choreography goes into a single cheer. Where dancing is more loose and free. We were the division champions, the year I was captain. Third place in the state, in spite of those awful uniforms. Maroon and yellow, can you believe it?
But I have to admit I told him I’d give him a few pointers sometime. You have to reach them on their wavelength, you know. Reporters such as myself have to show our subjects that we’re people too, if we want our subjects to open up to us. I couldn’t seem so perfect that he just wouldn’t relate. It’s a fine line.
He had a tattoo on his arm. A skull or a devil, as I recall. I remember thinking we’d have to be sure he wore something that would keep it concealed, if we had him on camera. Something like that could really give viewers the wrong impression. I wanted people to sympathize with these kids, not write them off as a bunch of hoods, even if that is what they turned out to be.
But the point of the tattoo is how I came to see it. Because after he’d been dancing around my living room, he said he was sweaty, and he took off his shirt. Which is how I came to see the tattoo.
First he took off his shirt. Then he came up behind me, while I was putting something in the microwave. He grabbed me by the arm and turned me around, hard. Then he kissed me. And then Lydia and Russell walked in with the pizza.