smells like teen spirit

We walked up to our usual LA grocery store with my usual knot of anxiety (broke as we were) and I needed exactly one stick of ‘Teen Spirit’ deodorant.

The mere idea of asking my single, unemployed father who supplied me with generic aspirin for the first years of my period for a stick of name brand deodorant was abjectly appalling and I gaped at the notion of tugging his sleeve for my ask.

Middle school girls were relentless in their judgment in that if you didn’t have the name brand, ‘Skintimate’ shaved legs with gloriously expensive impending Bat Mitzvahs (that I couldn’t afford to go to) then you were out, meant to be mocked as the day is long.

It was weirdly *that big*, and I had unfortunately fallen victim to that peer-pressure mentality that if you were in Ventura County, LA, you needed… (XYZ) to be accepted as anything other than a freak. I wished very sincerely not to be labeled as a freak.

‘Teen Spirit’ deodorant it had to be.

I was thirteen, the scariest age of any human and there was no other option; I refused to continue to suffer in the locker room.

‘Could I snake one..?‘ I quietly pondered. Wouldn’t be the first time at petty shoplifting. You think my Dad bought me tampons?

(nope.)

I piled off his little two-butt Suzuki motorcycle and took my helmet off, placing it on the seat behind me with not one thought of someone grabbing it and followed him into Albertsons. My palms were sweaty and I suppressed the urge to hyperventilate: for whatever reason, today – this goddamn deodorant was everything.

As we approached the store Dad stopped at the trash can/sandy cigarette stomp-out ‘station’ and took a moment to gaze at the extinguished butts. He lit up at finding a near intact cigarette, grabbed it, rolled it to remove the hard carbon ash, then rolled it on his jeans to further remove whatever leftover human evidence. He lit it with his Bic and stopped walking, breathing the smoke harder than usual. It was that deeper pull that suggested he had been out of his usual Winston reds (or golds, depending on his artistic flow) and was momentarily thankful for that half-smoked stoge.

Within seconds he finished it, and so began my hero’s journey for pubescent necessities behind the smoke and mirrors of a quick dinner ingredient trip.

I had to play my cards just right.

My Dad had proudly told us kids that he would never accept welfare or any social service; that we were better than that. The upside was that as a starving artist his pride and integrity could remain intact, the downside being that my sister and I would subsist on toast and the occasional box of ‘Cheez-Its’ alone for weeks on end. I was pulling $5 under the table from the age of twelve on as a dishwasher and in the worst times, I woefully had to surrender my saved-up bills for lights, the phone, gas bill, or even for a date for him – the latter I considered a potential investment in my future. In the winter I had to rely on a cheap, tiny space heater to get my room to at least 60 when the gas wasn’t paid. (A difficult road to pave as a kid with sleepovers, mind you.)

This trip to the store was meant to be a quick and bottom-of-the-barrel cheap run. Dad held onto a little handbasket and zipped through the aisles a bit too fast for my emotional comfort level and I had not prepared enough to speak so quickly about my blooming needs. 

As we walked up to the checker I saw my small window appear, and blurted out “I THINK I NEED DEODORANT.”

There was a pause. It stung, and I squirmed like a worm on a hook; however, I persisted in my moment.

I grasped at an outlet of reason that could be irrevocable, suggesting my question did not come from me and thusly, not my fault. “MOM SAID.”

He answered finally. Jesus.

“Oh, I guess you’re about at that age, aren’t you?” He seemed kind but concerned, his eyes darting for the correct aisle. He damn near sprinted without so much as another word. I trailed helplessly, completely mortified. I was thirteen, dying in front of my father, dying for a $2 of (insert any scent here, but better be a goddamn purple stick of) ‘Teen Spirit.’

The aisle was torture. I eyeballed the coveted purple sticks and grabbed the first one I saw: “this one looks nice!” and I threw it in the basket.

Dad continued observing and grabbed a cheaper ‘Lady Speed Stick’ announcing that perhaps, this could work as well?

I shrugged and recommended with strange, disembodied confidence that teenage deodorant was the only one I could get and in that air of false, demanding confidence I strode to the next open lane.

Dear Lord, I fervently prayed, let this never happen again.