The Sunset Strip Diaries by Amy Asbury Read Free Book Online Page A

cool).
     
    I chose bad.

CHAPTER THREE
    Balls of Steel
     
    *Cue AC/DC’s Back in Black*
     
    I busted through the glass doors of Middleton in slow motion, with my hair flowi- ( needle scratches record )…wait…it was too stiff with hair spray to flow. Anyway, I strutted into the school and unveiled my new look: lots of leopard skin, short skirt, tight shirt, high heels and of course, my usual ton of makeup. My mother bought me all of the clothes. I don’t know if she realized what she was buying, but I know she regretted it. I felt powerful and sexy with my new slim figure and newly bigger boobs (my dedication to bust exercises propped my C cup boobs up into the air). My nightly sit-ups made my stomach flat and my waist small. I was wearing more form fitting clothing instead of big, baggy sweaters. Upper middle class jaws dropped all through the school. I wasn’t interested in any of the guys in my class, so I enjoyed the fact that they were suddenly turning into blubbering jackasses around me. I wanted to stamp out a cigarette in front of them like Sandy in Grease. I felt powerful, intoxicated by the attention. I was no longer a wallflower, the girl in the corner being ignored. The other girls in my class looked like children suddenly; they didn’t intimidate me anymore. They could go ahead, group up, and sing some Pet Shop Boys on the way to P.E. I could steal any of their boyfriends now. Bring it, I thought.
     
    My mom let me go through my metamorphosis, although she flat out told me that I looked like a ‘street walker’ in certain outfits. My dad angrily told me I looked like a whore. I was hurt; I thought I looked cool and fashionable, like a girl from a Mötley Crüe video. My mom tried to warn me a few times about dressing so promiscuously, but I ignored it. Pro mis cuously? What did that even mean? Please . What did she know? She wore glasses, had frizzy hair, and was not sexy. I started getting dress code violation citations at school for too much makeup and too short of skirts. My mom started to get pissed at me, but I told her the woman who wrote my citations wore ten times more makeup than me and she was out to get me.
     
    Things got very low for my mother at the end of 1987. My grandfather was diagnosed with bone cancer and had only months to live. It was very sudden. It put her into a tailspin to see her father in such a state. She was the only person he would let take care of him. He passed away that winter, right around Christmas. My mother was absolutely destroyed; she could not function. She loved her father more than anything. The sad thing is, she never snapped out of it. I don’t know if I ever saw her truly happy again.
     
    As soon as her father passed away, she had even less tolerance for my father. She seemed tired; she seemed to have given up the fight. I was selfish about the whole thing- I was just happy I could do more of what I wanted. I dressed even skimpier, and started to tape pictures to my wall. Madonna? No. Puppies in a basket? No. Duran Duran? No. I taped pictures of Stephen Pearcy grinding his microphone stand and pictures of Nikki Sixx with pin-pricked pupils and an extended tongue. I took the pictures from my new favorite magazines: Circus and Hit Parader . They were certainly not the same as Seventeen or Teen - instead of quizzes and skin care tips, I was reading about wild tours, drug abuse issues, and sexy women. Even worse than my reading about those things at fourteen was my sister reading about them at twelve. Her wall became so packed with pictures of Poison, Bon Jovi, and Cinderella, it was a collage all the way to the ceiling (she filled in hard-to-reach spaces with pictures of rockers she didn’t even like all that much, like Billy Idol).
     
    Because of my mother’s creeping depression, my sister and I were sent to my newly widowed grandmother’s house in Canoga Park each weekend. We didn’t know why we were being sent there, but we didn’t care. Instead of