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| gaggle of misfits |
In 1967, during the height and high of Drop City, while Clark was emulating Bucky Fuller, I was obsessed with Paul McCartney, Matt O. and gum-wrapper chains. I was a “disruptive” and frustrated seventh-grader in a girls’ school, an old Vanderbilt estate on Long Island Sound. As the carpool parents drove away, we would roll down our knee-highs and roll up our regulation seersucker skirts, talk about boys, dances, make-up, make-outs and smoke our parent’s cigs on the beach during recess. Our little gaggle of misfits poked fun at our conventions and tore at the grosgrain ribbons that were our shackles.
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| listen to "Dancing in the Street" |
On weekends, we’d gather with our boyfriends-of-the-month, eat onion dip in wreck rooms and Boogaloo to Martha & the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye and the Beatles. Tennis, swimming and sailing filled our summer days, manners were taught at dinner, but late at night we’d steal from our sweltering quilted bedrooms to smoke and kiss in the spacious fields of our rural landscape. On those late night escapades, we were mischievous and rebellious, funny and dangerous, bound by our salacious secrets.
The exhilaration and freedom I felt in the darkness –and safety- of our great outdoors fueled my courage and the passions erupting through America's suburbs paved the way for my escape.
