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Today’s blast from the past comes with a memory from my childhood. There’s some serious shittiness in here, so be warned.
It was 1979, and I was in some tiny community or another in rural Newfoundland. It was a rocky, hilly place, and box-shaped houses spackled on cliff tops. Outhouses teetered on long stilts over the mussel-bearded and barnacle-crusted boulders below. There wasn’t much indoor plumbing to be found, so you had to walk the plank to shit from altitude.
I was about nine years old, and was standing on the bridge of one of my relatives. I could hear the repetive whoosh of waves on the landwash. The nippers and noseeums were getting me pretty good, so I decided to go inside.
I don’t remember who all was there, but I remember hearing “Drugs in My Pocket” by The Monks. I’d never heard music like this before. I was only used to what my parents played on the record player, to the songs I sang about Jehovah in the Kingdom Hall, or to jigs and other Newfie music my dad sang while playing button-key accordion.
I tracked down this weird music I was hearing. One of my cousins was playing it on a little tape recorder. I can’t remember his name or what he looked like. I remember the pretty nun with the beautiful legs on the cover of the cassette tape, and I remember thinking my cousin looked cool and mysterious. This was because he was a teenager. I didn’t know any teenagers. I saw some on the school bus sometimes. I thought they seemed so grownup, yet nothing at all like my parents.
I don’t remember anything else about that day. I remember sometime later, maybe weeks, maybe a year or so, that my cousin, who listened to this interesting song with me, had been kicked out of his house. No one was to speak to him or about him again. “But why?” I asked. Maybe it was because there were drugs in his pocket.
No. It was because he was a “faggot.”
I didn’t really know what that meant. I figured it must mean he’d done something bad, but I didn’t exactly know what. I wondered where he would go. Would he be ok? Could I maybe be kicked out like that too? What if I was a faggot, too?
I never did find out what became of him. If any of my cousins on here know whom I’m referencing, could you let me know?
