The Scratch

by Morgan Schechter

Sophomore Year of High School I turned Sixteen, scored my drivers license, and convinced Dad to lease me my first car. (In LA, everybody leases.) The car was a black VW Jetta, which, like most of my valuables in High School, I felt compelled to name: Priscilla, Queen of the Valley. (God damn I was awesome.) Priscilla was small, but her sound system pretty much rocked. My friends and I would hop in, roll down the windows, and blast our angry white chick music as we sped out of the Valley as fast as Priscilla's wheels would carry us.

It was the late '90s in L.A., and the Sunset Strip was having a renaissance of sorts - to me the only thing hipper than "thift" shopping on Melrose (or down in Venice) after school was hanging out on the corner of Larrabee and Sunset come nightfall on the spot River Pheonix died, feeling like I was part of something dark and cool. When Seven Year Bitch came to play at the Whiskey, I didn't get tickets. But I'd be damned if I wasn't going to stand the fuck outside and try to catch a few bars of the show.

The song was The Scratch...

I want it

Give it to me

I love it

Dont give it to her

Youve gotta give it to me

I want it

I saw it first

I want it worse

...and so on.

How this song qualified as a Riot Grrrl anthem in my tiny feminazi mind is a little foggy now, but whenever it played there we all were bouncing up and down in an estrogen fueled mosh pit, bowing down to Selene Vigil like the angsty goddess we knew she was. I was sure that men were the devil - even though I'd only kissed a couple and I certainly hadn't dated any - so bands like SYB, L7, and Babes in Toyland really appealed to me in my post-Hole era. Let's be honest...there was a LOT of Tori Amos thrown in there too.

Anyway - The Scratch held a particular place in my heart because it reminded me of this girl I hated who had dated every guy I'd ever had a crush on. Ariana Mendoza. We ran in the same circle, but we weren't friends. Ariana was slutty, and everyone talked about it behind her back, but that didn't stop me from wishing I was just like her. (Sorry Ariana, it's true.)

Mine was a Catholic High School where uniforms were mandatory, so finding a way to stand out and seem edgy was challenging to say the least. I personalized my blue pleated uniform skirt and white button down shirt by dressing it up with Fishnet Stockings/Doc Marten Mary Janes/leather chokers/lots of buttons with meaningful sayings displayed on my yellow Jansport backpack. (You know...because I was super unique.) But Ariana did it better. She was allowed to dye her hair black (she even managed to get away with having some bright red streaks underneath, while I got saturday detention when I showed up to school with a failed dye job that left my hair easter-egg pink.) She also wore fishnets and Doc Marten Mary Janes, but her fishnets had HOLES in them. My Mom threw away anything she found of mine that was ripped or torn. Secretly I always wondered why the boys liked her even though she wasn't that cute...David, Nick, Mike, Tim, Angel...time and time again - I wanted them, I saw them first...and she nailed them.

What I didn't realize at the time was that Ariana understood the difference between LOOKING like a man-hating Feminazi, and ACTING like one. Thanks, Seven Year Bitch.

Let's take Nick Eagle for example. Nick was so hot. He had chin length greasy brown hair parted down the middle, his fingernails were never clean, and he had this huge scar on his abdomen from when he got his appendix out on a family trip to Poland. Fucking hardcore. Oh, what I wouldn't have given to touch that nasty scar.

My virginity, that's what. Not because I didn't want to. (Oh, I wanted to.) I just didn't quite understand how to take it to the next level. While I was threatening to kick Nick in the nuts with my steel toe boots at the school carnival, Ariana was giving him a handjob on the Zipper. While I was trying to think of something cool and smart to say (but usually just talking about the time I had explosive diarrhea in the Dead Sea and the salt water burned my asshole) Ariana was telling him about the henna tattoo she got on her left boob...and letting him see it. I once spent a beer run with Nick thinking I was playing coy, nervously sidestepping his advances, only to walk in on him in the bathroom with Ariana later that same evening. ...So much for playing coy.

Eventually I would come to learn that spelling Womyn with a "Y" only attracts other women. I would come to realize that not whoring around with the likes of Nick Eagle is probably why I've managed to stay STD-free all these years while Ariana chokes down a lifetime supply of Valtrex, and looks like she's got a bad case of the meth face. But back in the days where I'd stand outside of The Whiskey A Go Go for an entire Seven Year Bitch show in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Selene and the girls, I'd have to learn the hard way that being a prick tease just makes people think you're a lesbian while the forward (albeit less attractive) girls score all the good tail.