My friend Fred Stoessel joined me last week for coffee at McDonald’s. As we waited in line, I noticed a teenager in the next line whose appearance connoted way too much experience for a girl who probably isn’t yet eligible to celebrate her quinceñera. Not only has this 21st-century Lolita been around the block — she may qualify for frequent flyer miles.
In brief (literally), she wore a skimpy halter, short shorts, nose and ear piercings, and a bevy of tattoos.
At first glance, I thought she was wearing a purple sock, the tattoo on her right ankle surrounding the calf. It had the shape of a chain, with large links, causing Fred and me to wonder what happens when the wrap-around tattoo doesn’t meet. Does the tattooist simply stretch the skin, shrink the tattoo, while circumnavigating the ankle?
But that wasn’t the most noticeable feature. The stocky, short girl had what I thought was another tattoo across her back. But up close I discovered that what appeared like a skillfully placed set of tattooed tiger claws across her upper back was really fresh scratch marks, possibly inflicted by giving herself a huge hug in a Narcissus Moment, but more likely it was courtesy of someone else. She sported four symmetrical scratches, the lowest, caused by an untrimmed pinkie nail, deeper than the others.
Her Tiger-Paws macho-man companion needs a manicure.
Not only was the teen proudly displaying her new marks, she apparently had no qualms about sharing insights into the wild time she must’ve had the previous night.
Her purple badge of courage is the modern counterpart of the hickey that teens used to hide with makeup, Clearasil or a turtleneck.
Well, my musings turned to the time in my youth when I sported a hickey, and at an age younger than Lolita’s. If you’re a reader of tender years, I suggest you get parental permission before discovering how that hickey came about.
In the hermetically sealed world that was Las Vegas in the early Œ50s, information — particularly unfavorable information — traveled much faster than today’s Internet, satellites or text messaging. Somehow every adult in this berg became instantly wired to every thought, every word, every deed of its youths. No adults ever said, “Mind your own business.” More likely, they’d say, “It’s all our business. I’ll whip Junior right away.”
Las Vegas youths frequented =B3Casa de Cassidy,=B2 a log-cabin dance hall on Mills.
One Halloween our circle held a party, at which time we played “Pony Express,” a variation of “Post Office,” but with more horsing around. A girl I had a crush on drew a “special delivery” that required her to kiss someone — me. To my shock and horror, Connie came right toward me, grabbed my shoulders, and instead of planting a kiss (that would have been the first of my young life), she did a Dracula imitation, positioned her mouth against my jugular and cracked up the crowd as she pretended to suck blood from my neck. I don’t think Connie particularly cared for me, and her “drink your bluh-uhd” routine spared her having to perform the assigned osculatory deed, while still being a good sport. Still, my neck hurt from that necklear fusion.
Webster defines a hickey simply as a pimple or a blemish. A simple pimple would have gotten me out of the ensuing predicament. And the blemish applied more to my reputation than to my neck.
The following Monday, evidence of the bite grew. A couple of school kids noticed my hickey. At that age, I’d never heard the word or even imagined the concept. Yet, there was a mixture of satisfaction and embarrassment in having people notice it. “Oh, you devil” can be interpreted variously. On the one hand — er –neck, there was envy: Gee, Arthur really gets around. On the other, there was shame: What were you thinking letting a girl do that to you?
“Arthur’s hickey” was about all anyone talked about at school on Monday. My seventh-grade homeroom teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sister Pensamento Purissimo asked, “Arthur, what is that . . . thing on your neck?”
“Oh, sister, I cut myself shaving.”
“12-year-olds don’t shave. You can do better.”
“Well I think I might have run into something.” That was no lie.
The new edition of the Spanish Inquisition was worse at home, as the following day the hickey, the size of a quarter, and the reporting of it, became even more prominent.
Mom, giving that I-know-what-you’ve-been-up-to look, knew something was up, but in her mid-Victorian upbringing, people didn’t give nor receive hickeys, and even discussing “those things” was not proper.
“How do you explain that mark on your neck, Arthur Benjamin Trujillo (you know you’re in trouble when the parent takes the time to recite your full name)?”
“Well, I probably scratched my neck with the zipper, putting on all my sweaters (Mom always double-bagged all of us, even in August). Or maybe it was the cat, or an allergy.”
“You don’t have any sweaters with zippers. Try again.”
“Well, Mom, then I think it was something in the water.”
“Do you know what happens to little boys who tell lies?
As the mark faded, so did the concern over my morals and of my express lane to the nether world. And ironically, the hardest thing at the time would have been to tell the truth. Who’s going to believe that a “decent girl like Connie” made a withdrawal at my blood bank?
So that’s the story of my first and only hickey. Somehow I suspect the story about how the McDonald’s Lolita, possibly the granddaughter of someone I grew up with in the more-innocent days, drew no attention at all — except from people like Fred and me.