A social life?

I heard the actor John Goodman interviewed on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Goodman’s father died when he was two years old. His brother, thirteen years older, had already left home, but he came back as if to help their mom raise John and a younger sister. Goodman says something like, “but I just holed up in the basement and nerded out” with comic books, radio, and music.

I always prick up my ears when someone talks about losing a parent during childhood. I think this is the first time I’ve heard someone explicitly say he isolated himself. He had also been bullied. He didn’t say a lot about feeling isolated, and he didn’t describe “holing up” as self-protection, but still I felt I could relate.

I had been picked on too — maybe not quite bullied, but enough to make me want to prevent unwanted attention in the outside world. Holing up and nerding out was a self-protection strategy for me. (And then it’s always been hard for me to get attention when I want to.) My two best friends and I stayed home and listened to records, watched any TV show that featured bands we liked (or didn’t like), and ate pizza. I’m talking about the late 1970s, when my friends and I were thirteen and fourteen, so this meant the Bee Gees, the Doobie Brothers, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac… these are some of the groups I remember seeing on The Midnight Special, the weekly Friday night music show. We watched TV sitting on the floor, looking up at our giant, “portable” black-and-white Zenith.

My dad wanted me to have more of a social life. Memoir excerpt with my friend’s name changed:

Journal entry, March 1979 — My dad thinks Robyn is a bad influence because of the way we never go out and do anything but just sit around and listen to records. And her dad thinks I’m a bad influence because of the same thing. Well, we go bike riding and stuff. And I’m in the teen club play (finally). He just doesn’t understand. Oh well, we will try to think of something to do.

What he didn’t understand was that I believed socializing with people from Sullivan meant parties and drinking. And he didn’t understand that I was a wallflower partly for safety. I didn’t really understand it either; I believed I never went out because I was invisible and not attractive. I couldn’t have explained that to my dad — he wouldn’t have believed me. I also couldn’t have explained the second half of my belief, “…and I wouldn’t want to hang out with those jerks and burnouts anyway,” because he would have said, then find the people that you like. But I didn’t know how to connect with the other quiet kids.

“Are you guys going to be home all night?” asked my dad one Friday. Robyn was sleeping over, as usual. 

I looked to one side of him and then the other, as if for an answer. “Yeah,” I said. What else would we do?

“How come you two never go out and do things?” he asked.

“We do!” I said.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” He exaggerated his emphasis for comic effect, but he seemed to expect an answer.

“I dunno,” I said. Robyn and I giggled.

“Well, I think you should find more things to do,” he said, and went out.

“That was weird,” Robyn said.

On Saturday afternoon, after Robyn was gone, my dad brought it up again. “How come all you do is sit around here with Robyn and listen to records? Don’t you have anything else you want to do?”

I was reading in the checkered armchair. I looked up at him. “I dunno.”

“I think Robyn’s gotten to be a bad influence on you. You never do anything. When are you going to have a social life?”

“What do you want us to do?”

“You see too much of her. Try to make some other friends, would you?”

“Uh — okay.”

I called Robyn, stretched the handset into my bright-yellow bedroom and closed the door on the permanent flat spot in the cord. “My dad thinks we spend too much time together.”

“So does mine.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah. He thinks you’re a baaad influence.” My mouth dropped open. She went on in a sarcastic drawl. “I mean what does he want — us to go out and get stoned? Gahd, I could prob’ly go down to the beach right now and get pregnant.” It was plausible. We giggled. 

“Yeah, and I’ll go out with that old guy who wanted to take me to dinner,” I said. “Maybe my dad would like him better than you.” Robyn laughed until she snorted.