MEMOIR

Blaming Duran Duran

Boys, love, and dancing like Jack Sparrow on LSD. I was…a Duranie.

Hope you enjoy Blaming Duran Duran — which was originally written in 2011! For something a little different, check out my video reading of the piece. It’s long, it’s rudimentary, and I’m goofy…but I did it (and cracked myself up with my special editing “artistry” in the process), so here you go! P.S., Save the marriage proposals, I look NOTHING like this anymore. But do please scroll all the way to the bottom for me when you’re finished! :-)

Somewhere in the bowels of summer 1983, a metamorphosis began.

Fading away were the days of Barbie and Ken love trysts and latch hook kits; the dawn of sneaking plastic cups filled with fine boxed wine from the fridge was imminent. In the midst of this change, in the hollows of my cocoon, the ‘tween years arose like a passing mist in the night.

Look now, look all around, there’s no sign of life…

Tonia and I bonded at the beginning of eighth grade, spending hours on the phone confessing innocent crushes via the guess who it is by the initials game, roller skating, popcorn, and a mutual love of music videos.

But it was Duran Duran — a band — that created the electrified excitement with this new best friendship and would place itself firmly into the benchmark of my youthful memoirs as a defining bridge during those developmental years. A young friendship magnified by the enthusiasm of shared interest. Perfectly timed with the discovery of boys, Tonia was really my first confidant — so to share bubbly, girlish, innocent excitement over our newfound teen idols was only natural.

“Oh my God, he’s so cute! I am so going to marry him.”

Fact: Simon’s favorite car is an Aston Martin.

Fact: John is looking for a girl who is outgoing and has a sense of humor.

Fact: Nick’s birthday is June 8th.

Fact: Roger’s favorite color is blue.

“I can’t believe he’s dating that Janine/Claire/Julie-Anne/Tracy/etc. witch — she’s such a hag!”

Those details appeared in almost every issue of Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and Bop in the early eighties. And the scary thing is, that was thirty years ago. And I still remember. I know their birthdays. Like, I know their birthdays. I don’t know why I know this. I guess for the same reason I can still recite a Catholic mass even after not going to church for about the same length of time. I was so engrossed in reading everything I could about them when I was thirteen, that I can still tell you the names of their ex-girlfriends. Dude, either I’m some kind of freak, or that is really just messed up.

Let me be clear here. I am not a groupie, nor do I obsess about the band, and I haven’t read any “facts” on them in decades. Vogue is infinitely more appealing to me than Tiger Beat. I mean, I did grow up. Yes, I still love their music, but I’ve never even been to a Duran Duran concert. (Not that I wouldn’t want to. It just hasn’t happened that way!) Let’s face it, it was 1983. MTV was still basically uncharted territory — and they were among the pioneers. I was…thirteen.

I was…a Duranie.

Tonia and I spent the majority of our time collecting magazines, posters, and pins, obsessing over new music videos, and learning everything there was to know about the boys. There was no internet back then in the olden days, and in Malone — well, there wasn’t much to do but drive to Plattsburgh to buy a felt John Taylor fedora or bleach your rat tail and bangs with peroxide. (But let’s not talk about that.) MTV was new, so we would spend hours waiting for a video to come on…especially Save a Prayer. You know, elephants.

If Tonia wasn’t at my house and they were to be featured on Friday Night Videos, I’d race to the big phone that hung on our kitchen wall, tripping over my feet, and dial her number as fast as possible. That phone was great. It had an extra long cord; it was full of knots. We spent hours listening to our tapes, rewinding, rewinding, and rewinding yet again to write down the lyrics of all the songs so we could memorize them.

Remember when lyrics weren’t included with a record or cassette? Poor us.

Kids these days (oh my God, did I just really use the phrase “kids these days”?) don’t know what they’re missing. I mean, when you’d get to like that fifth song on the cassette to suddenly hear slight warbling…you’d hold your breath and pray that you wouldn’t hear the squeal next, which usually meant that the tape was coming out all over the place, therefore leading to the inevitable emergency manual rewind with a pencil. Good times.

I had to spend a few weeks with my father at the end of the summer. Before my trip, on a lark and out of boredom, we each started to write a little Duran Duran story. Tonia and I sat next to each other out on the lounge chairs as my Rio tape blared ad nauseam, and began our adventures. What started as a few paragraphs became longer. “Every few pages we’ll share,” she said, and the more we wrote, the more we each eagerly anticipated the continuation of our stories. When I left to go to my dad’s, we were excited about our new assignment — to mail each other new pages every few days.

I was Alexa (Alex for short) and she was Tia. Naturally, we drove Aston Martins, suffered from all sorts of dramatic ailments, and life was a spiderweb of love, desire, near deaths, and pain with the Fab Five.

Alex married Nick Rhodes, had an affair with Simon Le Bon, and eventually found her soulmate in John Taylor. She got around. (Pretty creative for a girl who wasn’t even kissing boys yet!) Tia flip-flopped between Andy and Roger.

The writings were melodramatic fantasies of thirteen-year-old girls and we wrote hundreds of handwritten pages each. And despite the love triangles, it really couldn’t have been more innocent. Hell, I think my Ken knocking up four Barbies at once was more scandalous. Whoosh.

Some people call it a one-night stand but we can call it paradise.

In reality, while I’d like to picture myself a long-legged, tanned, sophisticated blonde babe who would have been John Taylor’s jail bait Yoko Ono, I have to honestly paint the portrait of the gawky dishwater blonde kid who may have had long legs, but they were probably covered in scabs and patches of straggly hairs that the razor missed.

I was a late bloomer.

You know you’re something special and you look like you’re the best.

Late 1984—Beginning to mature out of posters and pins

As time passed, we couldn’t wait for the release of Seven and the Ragged Tiger — and Arena — and when the time came, we spent hours perfecting our “Simon’s Reflex dance,” learning new lyrics, and practicing essential Duran Duran artwork. (I said I was a late bloomer.)

Although our interests were diversifying, we swooned over Do They Know It’s Christmas? and were still there for Arcadia and Power Station — perhaps in a more subtle, less hyperactive way, but we were still listening. And we weren’t alone. We were only two small soldiers stranded in a typhoon of fans like us, ubiquitous references to Tiger Baby, suede booties, wicked basslines, and a penchant for dancing like Jack Sparrow on LSD.

I think about that time of my life and smile at the innocence of it. When I think of the bridge between my childhood and teenage years, I picture a Patrick Nagel emblazoned walkway.

People tell me I haven’t changed at all but I don’t feel the same, and I’ve bet you’ve had that feeling too — you can’t laugh all the time.

The first book I ever wrote was never published.

It remains in a tattered Seven and The Ragged Tiger folder in the same sea of assorted remnants and photographs from my youth under that bed at my mother’s house. In all its purple, bubble-lettered fan-fiction cringe-worthiness, it was a blossom of creativity, imagination, and fun — including the super secret “folded” page — for a small-town girl with stars in her eyes.

I guess I should blame Duran Duran for playing a part in my life-long aspiration to become a writer. And to think — the evidence still exists. Under a bed in Malone, New York, remains a piece of my childhood. Of our childhood.

We started high school. And we crossed the bridge. We grew up. And boys and pizza and parties — well, they were just a little more tangible than posters were.

I think I’d die, I think I’d laugh at you; I think I’d cry…what am I supposed to do, follow you?

Although I’m an old broad now, I must confess I still get giddy. I play it cool, you know. But my thirteen-year-old self still lives somewhere deep inside of me, and when I hear a song or hear the name “Duran Duran” my heart sometimes skips a beat.

Jesus, it’s like Pavlov’s Dog.

In my defense, I love the remembrances of my youth. I’m a memoirist, it’s what I write about. And in this particular case, they played a big role in the formation of one of my best and most defining friendships in high school — in addition to one of my best and most defining friendships as an adult, which is another story.

Where is my friend when I need you most? Gone away.

And then, there was that time I actually did get to meet the men of Duran Duran.

Funny story, really….

If you liked this story, you might also like my story about Richard Simmons:

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