Sunday Top Ten: Not the Same as Other Kinds of Clubs

In September 1986, in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, Kristy Thomas developed what is now known as "Kristy's Great Idea." And, behold: Ann M. Martin [who, as Carly recently informed me, is a totes lesbian], began the chronicles of The Baby-Sitters Club--a story which resonated so deeply with its readers that now, even though it's 2007 and many of the series' original readers, myself included, are allegedly grown-ups who ought to be hiring their own baby-sitters [First I need to learn how to take care of myself, then I can handle a little squirt who cries even more than I do], are still curiously obsessed, as indicated by last post's comment thread.

But first: because MY attention drops into Deficit when writers make esoteric references to masterpieces they assume I've read, e.g., The Brothers Karwhathaveyoukov¹, Madame Bovary², or Ulysses³, without explanation--let me give you the secret sauce, lest you stray from this post: "I got the idea on the first Tuesday afternoon of seventh grade. It was a very hot day. It was so hot that in my unair-conditioned school, Stoneybrook Middle School, the teachers had opened every single window and door and turned off all the lights." (K.Thomas, 1986.)

WOC⁴, right? I've been talking about air conditioning a lot lately? Right?

OMG, about 75% of you are totally eyeing right-hand scroll bar right now: I didn't get baby sat by no club. God, I wish I'd learned how to read great books. Where's that nice lady who always helps me with my dentures? SHIRLENE!!! Where's my Jell-O? I'm gonna scroll down here, find myself a topic I understand ....or girls making out with other girls? ... I wonder if when Riese has babies, she's just gonna be like, "My babies are so cute, I'm gonna get someone from that hands-down-totes awesome club to sit on them." Boring.

Onwards and Upwards....[P.S. I mention masturbation twice in this post, and neither of those times include Kristy Thomas.]

"Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
-Groucho Marx

Just in case there's not enough misappropriated quotation of this famous line, I'm doing it again, applying it to myself, and then spurring a Sunday Top Fifteen [to be written in two installments, because I've got so much material!] from the fine silk of its robust loins.

Here's a club I was in. It was called "the soccer team." I liked to distance myself from the other girls by dressing less preppy and wearing my sunglasses, even though the photographer'd told me 100 times not to. I slipped them on at the very last moment, like swift-armed Neo:

Michigan, 1996.

SUNDAY TOP FIFTEEN, INSTALLMENT ONE, 15-8:
CLUBS WHICH I DO CARE TO BELONG TO

15. The O Club:

Back before the Internet was invented and before Western Culture went to hell in a synthetic handbasket, it was possible to make it to the age of 12 without knowing about orgasms. Or maybe that was just me, 'cause most of my present female friends, I've learned, knew all about 'em: they were totally rubbing one out before bed while I was reading Anastasia Krupnik for the thirtieth time. So perhaps my O-Club co-members were a bit more enlightened than me. Which'd explain why they thought it was funny to create a club called "The O Club" in 8th grade, and record our first (and only) club meeting, which took place in the nook under my loft bed. Initiation included a relatively dramatic series of high-pitched moans and yells, which I thought represented the entire action referenced in our club title. But actually that would've been "The Fake O Club." We even had a membership card. See photo, left. That's our motto on the card: "Let's rock." Write that down, boys.

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14. Fight Club:

I'd clearly get my ass kicked if I was in the Actual Fight Club, though I took Self Defense when I was a Girl Scout, and I've got some lean/muscular legs that can put up a good fight. Mostly I just like saying "The first rule of ..." Apparently, I like it SO MUCH that I employ this phrase in my textual communications with complete abandon! A quick search of my Gmail archives has revealed extreme overuse. Some examples [and this's just the tip of the misappropriation iceberg]:

To [Gretel]: "Rule Number one of Marie Club: Everything she does that seems malicious or perhaps of negative intent is, in fact, almost always simply a result of her being: 1. a space-case, 2. out of it, 3. flustered, 4. on the verge of an anxiety attack, 5. drunk, 6. all of the above, as well as on tylenol cold and flu."

To [redacted female friend]: "Rules of masturbating when you live with your boyfriend: There are no rules to Fight club."

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13. Sam's Club

When our [our=my family] life fell apart in the early-to-mid-nineties, so did my Mom's hippie-organic-healthy rules about food [e.g., no yellow #5, no corn syrup]. For many months, I relished in this lax policy, subsisting on fried mozzarella patties and fried popcorn shrimp, purchased frozen in 40 lb. bags at our local Sam's Club. Mom was a member [she needed bulk foods for PTA-related events], obvs, as was everyone's Mom. That 48-pack of Pepsi helped soothe my teenage soul. And decay my teenaged bones. They didn't have a lot of healthy stuff there. If you wanted a barrel of apples, you'd just like, start an apple farm, right?

Also, they sometimes sold like, Trampolines? They'd always have something random hanging from the ceiling that cost around a bazillion dollars. If I had a trampoline right now, I'd put it in the street and jump on it. Actually I wouldn't, it's so hot out there, I was sweating like a whore in West Harlem-who happens-to-be-wearing-pants instead of a whore-outfit because her calves are covered in bruises from running into walls.

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12. The Special People's Club:

Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which the bitingly ostracized 11 year-old Dawn Weiner (Heather Matarazzo) creates "The Special People's Club" with her only friend, Ralphie, was one of my favorite films ever. When I made Ryan-C⁵ watch it in 1998 [we were doing that "trading-favorite-movies" thing you do with your best friend to "understand them fully"], at film's end, he announced: "Marie, that movie was really fucked up. I think you're mentally disturbed," and then pretended to be really scared of me all night. He meant it affectionately of course. [His favorites include Time Bandits, Fanny and Alexander, The Opposite of Sex, The Lost Boys, Buffalo '66, Brazil, Run Lola Run and Witches of Eastwick.] I watched it 500 times and decided it was my life's goal to make it a little bit easier to be thirteen, female, and alive. That's why I invented "The O Club" and got a college degree in Education. Just kidding about that last part. I have an English degree, it's really useful. I mean, they didn't even make me read Ulysses.

DAWN: I was wondering if . . . Well, I've been thinking seriously of building another clubhouse, and I wanted to know, would you be interested in being my first honorary member?
STEVE: What are you talking about?
DAWN: The "special people" club.
STEVE: Special people?
DAWN: What's the matter?
STEVE: Do you know what "special people" means?
DAWN: What?
STEVE: Special people equals retarded. Your club is for retards.

This movie, though considered controversial [Apparently the raw truth about seventh grade is harder to handle than blood/guts/violence], developed a strong passionate following, and jump-started the careers of [lesbian!] Matarrazo [Saved! The L Word], Eric Mabius [The L Word, Ugly Betty] and Brendon Sexton, III [later Oscar-snubbed for his supporting role as Warren in Empire Records, then going on to star with Oscar-winner Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry.]

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11. The No-Girls Allowed Club, all variations on the He-Man Woman Hater's Club

First of all, I'm a feminist. Second of all, most female-friendly clubs involve things I don't understand. For some reason which I cannot recall as I am no longer retarded, I actually went to Sorority Rush at University of Michigan in 2000. I was placed in a group with about 30 other rush-ees, most of whom'd been fake-baking all day and enjoyed bragging about how they'd only consumed 1200 calories a day since 1986 and now survived on pure air. Enthusiastic elder robots shuffled us from "house" to "house" for presentations of re-dubbed pop songs [changing Mandy Moore lyrics to Alpha-Chi-Omega lyrics, whatever they were, I dunno, I was too busy trying to kill myself with an index card] followed by five-minute "interviews" with random sorority members. It was unbearable. I was like, Wow that totes sucked, and went back to the dorms, eager to commiserate my misery and disgust with my friends. But they were like, What did you like better? A-E-Phi or Chi O? [To any "Greek" readers: I'm not talking about you, you're awesome. I'm talking about sorority girls who don't read this blog. Also, I'm not talking about you: my friends, because all my friends in school were Greek, except Natalie. See: I like to be the out-girl in the in-crowd, get it?]

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10. The Breakfast Club:

I've seen this movie about 100 times. I've almost got it memorized: I can even tell you which dirty words have been ignorantly extracted from the televised version [it drives me insane]. I own it. And not until just this very moment, when I was about to type out a club-related quote from The Breakfast Club, did I realize that there might be a connection between this reference to clubs in the film and the film's title. Which, BTW, is never really explained. I think they just liked the way it sounded. I sure do. OMG, this IS the explanation. Seriously, I've been watching and quoting this film since 1994 and I just now realized this. I feel like I just had a really private and special moment on this blog. You guys? I love you. JK. Don't throw that word around. I don't love ALL of you.

Claire: You know why guys like you knock everything?
Bender: Oh, this should be stunning.
Claire: 'Cause you're afraid.
Bender: Oh God, you richies are so smart, that's exactly why I'm not heavy in activities.
Claire: You're a big coward.
Brian: I'm in the math club.
Claire: You're afraid that they won't take you. You don't belong so you just have to dump all over it.
Bender: Well, it wouldn't have anything to do with you activities people being assholes, now, would it?
Claire: You wouldn't know. You don't know any of us.
Bender: Well, I don't know any lepers either but I'm not gonna run out and join one of their fuckin' clubs.
Andrew: Lets watch the mouth, huh?
Brian: I'm in the physics club.
Bender: Excuse me a sec. What are you babbling about?
Brian: Well, what I said was that I'm in the math club, the latin club and the physics club.
Bender: Hey, cherry, do you belong to the physics club?
Claire: Thats an academic club.
Bender: So?
Claire: So, academic clubs aren't the same as other kinds of clubs.
Bender: But to dorks like him, they are. What do you guys do in your club?
Brian: In physics, well, we talk about physics ... properties of physics.
Bender: So it's sort of social. Demented and sad, but social, right?

I quote that last line a lot. It applies often.

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9. Country Club

At smart-kids school, many of my classmates belonged to country clubs, and they'd take me, like I was their Little Match Girl. Like, Tennis, what's that? Why's everyone wearing white? "Tan" is a verb? Also, the summer of my fifteenth year, I visited a friend in St. Simon's Island, GA, and every day we went to the country club and laid in chairs and looked at the sun for hours, it was so weird. In St. Simon's Island, even the fifteen-year-olds were drunk, and they drove cars that looked like tanks for children. Though I imagine these clubs're probably a cesspool of vanity and sin, it's nice for a day to get all the lemonade you can drink. Also I think tennis clothes are hot, aren't they? Maybe I'm just thinking about Dana Fairbanks.

Really, though, I love "country club" as a metaphor. At Interlochen, Delp harped: "This's a country club, kiddos. Just wait til you get to the real world, it'll eat you alive." You know what, though? It totally did.

Every day we'd be made to repeat:

Delp: What do you know?
Class: Nothing.
Delp: What is this place?
Class: A Country Club.

We knew it though. We were like: More lemonade, thanks. Let's just sit on the beach and listen to poetry, fall in love with each other and then, fully in the throlls of crescendoing adolescent love, also fall in love with Raymond Carver, Mark Strand, Stephen Dunn, Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Robert Bly, Kathleen Ann Porter, Anne Sexton, Bruce Weigl, Charles Baxter, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, Stuart Dybeck...

In this photo, we almost look like we're at an actual country club, instead of about to get on school-buses to be transported to "Morp."
[That's "prom" spelled backwards, for those of you who are retarded. JK you're all smart. Smarter than me, even. 99th percentile. Go y'all. You all get in to Julliard, early decision. Congrats.]

Actually, just thinking about that now: we used to have no purpose in life besides reading books, talking about them, and then, in exchange, learning a little biology and having some awkward achy bones. That totes rules.

At Interlochen, the question was: "Does the ocean need to be listened to?"
The answer was: "Yes. Listen up: trees are falling."

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8. The Baby-Sitters Club, Obvs

I was a good babysitter. Except once I locked the kids out of the house. Luckily I lived across the street. So after Emily stopped crying, like waaa waaa I'm five and my baby-sitter just locked me out of the house, we chilled at my place. They loved me anyhow, 'cause I never figured out how to talk to adults and children and people my own age differently, so I was pretty straight with them. About boys, and crack, and SARS.

"...and for me at age eight, just before I started at Emerson and started liking boys, the queen of Girl-Land was Stacey McGill of the Ann. M Martin YA series The Baby-sitters Club. Mom scorned the Sweet Valley Twins but admired Kristy and the girls on account of their implicit entrepreneurial spirit and hence, she forgave their whitewashed fluffy mass-marketed package.

Stacey worked summers as a lifeguard, and on the painted covers of those pastel-bright paperbacks, her long tanned legs dug into the sand like they'd crept up on her from underground, like maybe she was part mermaid. The cover art for Book #8, titled Boy-Crazy Stacey, pictures our heroine, adorned in a conservative yellow sweatshirt and her trademark red lifeguard jacket, cradling a freshly rescued young girl in her arms as a hunky lifeguard, tanned and as cut as a Ken doll, bandages the girl's injured foot. His shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. That was the kind of man I wanted: the kind that'd save a little girl's life with his shirt unbuttoned. And I also wanted to be a Mermaid. I wanted to be close to women who knew how to do whatever it was that Stacey did so well to bring all the boys to the yard, which I would be doing soon, too, because I was almost eight. Who Needs Baby-Sitting when there are BOYS around?"

-[me], one of 500 bad drafts of my "book," which I'll never finish, because I'm doing this.

It'd be different now: with Outlook, AIM and a simple homepage, the girls coulda been entrepreneurs way faster, but whatevs. Their exploits formed the base for grown-up work of similar literary merit, e.g. Sex and the City. (Hello: Mary Anne/Charlotte, Stacey/Samantha, Claudia/Miranda, Kristy/Carrie) . Furthermore, they struck a special chord amongst lesbians, who like strong women that have jobs and money and obvs the stories had a homosexy feel to them. Carly shared with me an essay, written by her friend Jane, entitled "Why Mallory's Gay." [UPDATE: Jane is now recapping the BSC TV series on her blog. Check it. LOL.] Some of the evidence includes:

-When the “gang” head out in the storm with Lucca to rescue Kristy from drowning in the pouring rain, Mallory is seen wearing plastic yellow overalls, galoshes and matching hat.
-Mallory jumps at the opportunity to secure her house for a party being thrown in Kristy’s honor.
-While there is no proof to this statement, Mallory was surely uncomfortable having to be crammed in a small car with Lucca, a boy, considering she “hates boys” (this fact taken from the book Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym) in which she explains her disgust for the two aforementioned items).
-Mallory‘s clothing brings up certain questions. Consisting mainly of suspenders, shorts and button down shirts, her wardrobe is rather un-heterosexual. She is also seen to wear ties on occasion, an accessory associated with males and lesbians.
-When Kristy goes off to see her dad and the members watch her get into his car, one exclaims, “Kristy has a boyfriend?!?” Mallory’s reply is, “The world must be flat.” This is clearly a reference to the fact that Mallory is infatuated with Kristy and believes that there is a chance at a relationship...

I learned a lot about babysitting from the BSC. For example: I kept getting babysitting jobs and I never locked anyone out of the house again.

"I felt deliciously scared--and happy. We were friends again...The Baby-Sitters Club was a success. I, Kristen Amanda Thomas, had made it work, or helped to make it work. I hoped that Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and I --the Baby-Sitters Club --would stay together for a long time."
-"Kristy's Great Idea," Kristy Thomas, 1986

Stay tuned til the rest of this top fifteen comes out later this week, I know you can't hardly wait.

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¹A famous book by Dostoevsky. Often quoted by smart people.
² This is a book by Gustave Flaubert. I quoted him and talked about him in that blog entry that got erased by zoho writer.
³ There was this list of the best novels ever and this book was number one. By James Joyce. Luckily, before I could feel too bad about myself, I saw that number two was The Great Gatsby, which I have read. Also obvs read Lolita. That's two in the Top Ten alone! I'm a genius.
⁴ WOC: Weird/Of Course. Maviland (Marie+Haviland) term, created to indicate strange coincidences of massive import.
⁵ Best friend/life-saver/life-changer, we met at boarding school in 1997, and later went to Sarah Lawrence and then to Manhattan together. Since then, he's been all over the world, and I've mostly been here.