It’s 1980, Birmingham, Alabama. I’m on my princess phone chatting with Robin, my best friend and disco partner. I just got my learner’s permit. This is just a few weeks before I got rid of the Shaun Cassidy haircut and went New Wave. The mural on my bedroom wall is a copy of a Peter Max poster. I locked myself in my room one day and painted it. My parents didn’t seem to mind, although my sudden interest in psychedelia led my dad into my closet the following week where he found my brother, Mark’s pot stash, and I had to sit through this lecture about my hippie sisters, with Mark stoned and giggling in the next room. I loved my little room. I had sex with James, Sam, Donna, Robert, and Richard in that room, listened to DEVO’s Uncontrollable Urge and the B-52s’ Give Me Back My Man, dreamed of living in California, fantasized about Parker Stevenson, read Raymond Chandler and Yukio Mishima, took my first picture, experienced my first broken heart, and had mononucleosis.
My 20th high school reunion is coming up next month, and I’ll get to stay in my room again. My dad painted over the mural a while ago, when he threw out my Hardy Boys books and transformed my cool teen pad into “the guest room.”