Surviving the Seventies
“I grew up in the 1970s, and my friends and I felt very keenly that we had missed the 60s. We were bummed out about it.” –Jennifer Egan
We were all so young.
The thing is, you’re dead now. You’re dead, and I’m alive, so it feels wrong to tell her story or the part of the story I know. People need to be remembered. They need to be forgiven. They need to have mattered enough to be identified despite their life and death occurring before the digital quagmire was even imagined. Back then we wrote letters, answered our phones, left our phones and when your lover moved far away there was never a method to connect that made any sense, there was never a way to hear their voice. So one night when you’d had much too much wine and the loneliness wrapped around your body like barbed wire, you walked past his old house where his roommate still lived, the roommate who once said he loved you and instead of going home you knocked on that door and let yourself to be led to a bare mattress where you found something, some part of your lover and something else, some part of yourself blunted by an attempt to be the good girl and then you welcomed the darkness.
But I digress. You want to know how it felt to grow up in the seventies? It was awful. Like showing up after the party ended and all the best food was gone and there was nothing left to eat but those crudités no one wanted, and the only person was that drunk guy passed out in the La-Z-Boy. No one waited for you. No one missed you or made sure you were welcomed. The ice has melted, the booze drunk, and when that drunk guy wakes up and sees you, he will probably ask you if you want to fuck. Say “no.”
When I Google you, you’re a ghost, gone, small traces, the list of colleges we chose preserved on some website and by your name it says, “other plans.” I wish those plans had come from the joyful, brilliant part of you that scoffed at easy answers and approached all situations as a way to bring laughter and light to situations that required gravity, but you didn’t care, you were beautiful and young and so smart. The stories of your exploits with “Jo the junkie” became the story, your drug-addled, naked boyfriend punching your mathematical genius stepfather, full professor at Princeton in his own kitchen. That house could not contain you despite the multitude of rooms, your mother’s eclectic taste and ability to find beautiful things, you were a beautiful thing but your lack of fear, your anger, made her retreat. No one made sure you were safe.
photo by Morgan Sessions
I never did heroin. My older sister did, but I was too little to understand, and by the time I felt ready to join her, she had stopped, found her footing, went to therapy to understand the crimes our parents committed, and was full of her own brilliance and future. “Mouse,” she said; she called me Mouse, “Don’t.” So, I didn’t. Pulling back from that edge so many times I could not find the niche the others established, close, close enough to gaze into the abyss but not yet over, still anchored to the idea that life mattered. You didn’t do that. You ran straight towards the flame, mistaking it for something else, certain you could singe those silk wings, a punk detail, but then fly again. Why didn’t you do that? How is it fair that I have been left to negotiate life, to find a way to forgive myself, love my parents, cherish my child, and trust someone enough to say “yes?”
Five of us decided to go on the pill. We were in tenth grade and fifteen and Planned Parenthood promised anonymity. None of us considered a diaphragm because that would require an exam and there was no way we’d put our feet in stirrups and have someone go inside. We could fuck strangers but allowing a grown-up to have that sort of intimacy seemed impossible. We left with our bags and the pamphlets warning about blood clots and other things. Nothing applied to us, we were too young and pretty and despite our behavior, purely good. We told our mothers nothing. When it was finally time to ask for help, those words remained unformed, and the relief we saw in our parent's faces meant silence was the only choice. How could I ever speak about the rape, the loneliness, the self-hatred, the fear of being an adult after the things we witnessed as children?
During a discussion about our graduation, we were told by someone, one of the preppies, privileged students, that our dresses must be white, chalk white, paper white, off-white, we would be barred from walking, our flowers confiscated, yet another high school memory lost. Then you arrived, late, barefoot and laughing, in that pink dress, your blonde curls cascading down that low neckline and thought, “Yes,” how you were the best. They gave you a blank diploma, something unacceptable about your senior project, the spring term that sent rich kids off to resorts to build affordable housing. I think you learned how to shoot heroin.
You called me once when we were both living in New York City. You in that incredible apartment at One Fifth Avenue, me in a one bedroom shared with a roommate, a great address but lacking anything resembling a kitchen or a bathroom. You asked me to come with you to get something. You had a car, a fancy car that we drove to Harlem when Harlem was a war zone. You parked outside a boarded-up building, the car still running. I had seen shooting galleries before. “Don’t,” I said.
“Lock the doors,” you said. “I’ll be right back.” You were not right back. You would not let me drive despite the difficulty you had remaining conscious.
I was a month sober when you invited me to a party in your fancy co-op. The elevator opened to excess, booze, drugs, food, mean and fancy people, loud music. They wanted a part of you, but when you saw me, you left that couch and hugged me. I felt the bones of your back and saw you were letting go, disappearing without leaving a path to bring you back.
“Moll,” you said, “I wish we saw each other more.”
You moved a strand of my hair behind my ear. I was still holding you.
”We can,” I said. “I live here now.”
You smiled but there was a new darkness in your blue eyes. “No,” she said. “I have terrible friends.”
They were terrible. Eurotrash druggies who had no idea how smart you were, how funny, how kind, and complicated. They saw money and despair and they stayed until it was too late. You were back from another rehab. You had AIDS but you were healthier than I’d seen you in ages. We sat outside and I told you how my sister had been killed.
“Motherfucker,” you said. “Moll, don’t forget how loved you are. She was loved, and you are loved, and you can’t give up.”
We lost touch. I thought about you, sometimes walking through Washington Square Park I saw the windows of your old co-op and wondered if you were okay. I wanted to tell you I was sober, this time for good. You were not okay. And then my mother called.
“She died in a fire,” she said.
“In another rehab?”
“I don’t think so, darling. I’m sorry.”
What I will only remember is you laughing, running across that verdant green lawn in your pink dress, curls bouncing, and at that moment, safe. Or maybe not. We were all so young.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach