Gotta Love That Rock 'N' Roll

Wednesday was the last day of finals.

I went to Irving that night to see Creedence Clearwater Revival. Just John Fogherty, actually, but as far as I'm concerned that's CCR, although I heard through the grapevine that he's reuniting with the other John at Jones Beach this summer.

He was amazing. He was Elvis and James Dean and the Lovin' Spoonful rolled into one, all my childhood idols and all the songs that were burned into me forcibly and whose patterned scars I learned to love. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled all the way up to his arms. Who the hell wears a denim shirt? He looked incredibly cool in it, too. His hair was still full and wild and dark and his whole band was amazing. Renata and I made friends with the people near us and one of the guards started hitting on me. I avoided him completely. I never thought I'd hear Suzie Q, Rolling On The River, California Highway and I Heard It Through The Grapevine played live. I got excited chills every five minutes. Renata and I danced the whole time and the guy next to us pointed out that my dad was standing next to Glen Close. My mom danced with her. (Renata and I went to the balcony because we didn't like the nastiness of the first-row crowd; mom and dad went to the front because CCR used to be my mom's favorite band.) He danced John Travolta-style and modestly let his band members have fun playng around. He played about ten different guitars, all of them beautiful. His whole shirt changed color with his sweat. He wore Beatle Boots. My mom handed him a handkerchief and he thanked her and used it all night. He threw her a guitar pick. My dad tried to catch it and it bounced off his palm and the guard wouldn't let him get it because it was in the section Rolling Stone had reserved for photographers. Renata and I ran through the sprinklers on the way home and I fell asleep in my clothes and dreamed about good clean rock.

We got our finals back the next day. Mine were awful.
(Feel free to ignore this category. It's probably completely uninteresting to you.)

History paper: I mixed up world wars. Entirely my fault, I admit. Bram wrote "not relevant" next to practically every paragraph and his awful purple handwriting wrote "Rhetorical questions? V.V., I would have thought it were above you!" next to a particularly bad paragraph, a clear indication that he was not in fact buying the crap I tried to feed him. Past two AM, I thought bitterly, nothing is above me.

Spanish: There was one verb that we had to conjugate in fifty different sentences. I forgot that it had an irregular stem. I lost 33 points on that section alone. I got all 20 or so of the multiple choice questions right.

Math: 74, although it should have been 73. Ms. Daly kind of took pity on me. I have no excuse for this one, although I don't understand it. I really did know what I was doing.

Chem: 80. What I deserved.

English: B+. You just can't tie all three essay questions together in two hours, no matter how many independent essays you've read on Othello. Especially if you stop to talk to Tom O'Connor in the hallway about German plays for twenty minutes on your way back from the bathroom. I still love him, though. I guess I secretly wanted an A and I feel like I've failed Camille in some way.

I had to leave early for a doctor's appointment and nearly cried because the only class I really wanted to go to was the one I had to miss. I kept myself from flat-out crying all day. I wrote crappy poetry in the waiting room instead and threw it away on my way out.

I hate finals. I hate feeling like they're rating your intellectual success with a number, and I hate feeling like effort and effortless intelligence don't count for shit. I've decided not to dwell on them.

Fortunately, I had my first writing class at The New School afterwards. It was lovely. I let myself get lost in the stories. I made some friends and talked a lot. The teacher thought I was in college and that I talked too much.

I hate the way when I talk to my mom on the phone and break my bad news to me she gets sweet and tells me that at least it's over and I can relax all summer and not worry about it until school starts again next year. Because when I come home happy after my class she gets stone-faced and tells me that I have nothing to be happy about and that she's not happy about my results and that she doesn't want to hear me singing or talking about my friends. I tried to leave her in peace by blogging but for some reason that irritated her too, so I had to go back to my Thomas Hardy.

The next morning I put on a long skirt and a dozen necklaces and a black tank top and a fringed table-runner I'd bought for a quarter in Wisconsin and donned my converse and headed for Renata's graduation. Somehow it seemed much sadder when I was in eighth grade. Her friends aren't all leaving, which helps. My dad took about a million pictures. I talked to Andy Fish, my sometime shrink and confidante, and he changed the We <3 Donovan Hohn club's blank sign in my yearbook to say We <3 V.V. I'm going to miss him terribly.

I went to St. Mark's for a four-dollar calzone afterwards and got asked for a third time to play a harmonica gig, this time with a band. I turned it down because I can't jam in a given key to save my soul. I'm getting pretty good, though. I've learned to go from cross-harp to straight-harp without messing up the transitions, and I've gotten good at bending notes with my fingers. My sense of beat is improving, too.

I also ran into my friend Justin, who'd just come back from his college orientation (he moved away at the beginning of last year). He's got a mohawk now. I meant to give him this URL but I forgot. His smile is undefeatable.

Then I came back for the senior's May Project presentations, although I missed Harry's and a few others by accident. Matt, Chloe, DaSilva, Zack, Harry and I bought a Vermonster at Ben & Jerry's with a few other people just for the hell of it. It was delicious and disgusting.

I'm not going to say anything more about prom than that it was truly beatiful. I'd forgotten how to dance, and Harry never knew, but we embarassed ourselves all night long. I felt like a white orchid in a fine flower shop: lovely and no better or worse than anyone else. I just fit. We stopped at St. Mark's place afterwards. Nobody recognized me. Nobody offered me a gig (although the gay guy waiting for the bathroom behind me at the pizza shop said "Girl, you shouldn't be allowed to be that hot." "I break a lot of rules," I said).

I'll probably remember almost everything, but Frankie was right. What I'll remember best is how sweet and tender my date was, and how he made the mini-limo wait while he tucked me into bed afterwards and kissed me goodnight and whispered in my ear how much he loved me.

I love John Fogherty as a musician. I love Harry as a person. I love my friends, I love my sister, I love my sister's friends even though they made me spend my Saturday taking them to Lazar Park. I loved going to Prom, I loved seeing Justin, I love St. Mark's and New York and being a gypsy and being an orchid and a suit and playing the harmonica and I love the thrift-shop volunteer who gave me another free necklace and I love the books I read and I love my writing class and I love my blog and I love my own ability to love.

I'm not always happy. But the good always seems to outweigh the bad. And it's summer now and I've gone back to being myself and everything seems peaceful right now and I love my rock 'n' roll life.