Deirdre: A Jersey Story

Deirdre Weinberg was my second crush. "What is it with you and those Jews?" my Mother would always say. To me, Deirdre represented everything my mother WAS NOT.

"Those who do not hate their father and mother cannot be my students, and those who do not hate their brothers and sisters and bear the cross as I do will not be worthy of me." - Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Thomas.

I think I'm going to make a commitment to investigate Gnosticism.

But, then again, EVERY girl I have ever loved, "crushed on", or dated, etc... has represented what my mother was NOT.

Deirdre was four years older than me. She was my cousin Meghan's best friend. She was BEAUTIFUL. Long, curly, dirty-blonde hair. And, oh her body! She always had the body of a woman. And she was known as a royal whore who - in the words of Richard Price - "fucked niggers and nazis for breakfast." Don't worry. I have no intentions of shooting up a Holocaust museum. Why would I?

Deirdre was DANGEROUS and SEDUCTIVE. YOUTHFUL and WOMANLY at the same time. She was the 80s teen movie goddess, she was Cindy Mancini from "Can't Buy Me Love", the captain of the cheerleaders.

Deirdre was also very NICE to me. I was a little boy with a crush on her and what girl does not find that to be adorable? She always went out of her way to talk to me, to chat with me, to joke with me, to even innocently flirt with me. I will never truly say a bad word about Deirdre because Deirdre was always GOOD to me, NICE to me, KIND to me. Why? Because, well, I was a cute little boy. And all of her indulgence just made me love her MORE. And if only she knew of the sexual fantasies I had about her! Oh, her dressed up as an Egyptian Empress, me sucking on her toes, fucking her, worshipping her in some palace on the Nile basin. If only she knew of that! Maybe she would have gone for it as I got older.

Ultimately, Deirdre grew to be tragic. I, of course, was not happy about this because everyone could see the folly of her ways except for her.

Deirdre developed an addiction to tanning beds. Between that and heavy drinking she looked like she was 60 by the time she was 20.

If tanning beds are a "white girl" thing then they are also a Jersey thing. It goes along with the "motorin" activities known as "guidoing". The way kids in Iowa tip cows, kids in Jersey drink cheap beer, smoke Parliament Lights, Marlboro Lights, and Newport Lights, hang out in all-night diners and use these sort of jockish/fratboyish slang words and catch phrases. The girls like to say "Hey you!"

Tanning beds are big in Jersey because what do you see when you go out to Jenk's? You see tanned girls - who look like Deirdre - drinking Miller Lites and being treated like movie stars. Deirdre just developed an addiction (I'll be the first to admit that light hitting the skin feels good) and took it all too far, to excess, like a person with a dysmorphic disorder.

What's odd is that both Samantha and Deirdre grew up to be that particular type of girl. Two girls I had major, life-altering crushes on. Maybe because they were perceived as "cool" or "hip" I saw them contrary to my mother. Now I'm no longer interested in either one of them, of course.

I would, of course, never want Deirdre to read this. I don't see any reason why she would. I don't see how she would find this. I'm sure she remembers me, but I doubt very much if she thinks of me very often. So no harm, no foul. Just a story.