Fullerton Girls
Prose by Angela Mackintosh
We talked about leaving before our older sisters did. Wondered if the city would change once we’d left. If Michelle, the owner of Ragztop Vintage Clothing, would miss picking out funky outfits for us. The psychedelic 60s bathing suits we wore like mini dresses with patent leather boots, colorful bell bottoms and crop tops, cat eye sunglasses. We laughed so hard it shook the dust off the hat racks and she almost forgot about her breast cancer treatments. Almost.
We wondered who’d talk about us—the boys we groveled with, the ones we didn’t, the girls we did couch things with, the ones we didn’t. Where “groveled” and “couch things” meant making out and how we invented our own language because we could. We’d shnip around flailing Fullerton and wonder when we’d get the shnip out of that town (“shnip” could be used in place of almost any word). There was Tob-shnip and Em-shnip and Yumi-shnip and Ang-shnip, which was me—versions of our names shortened with a “shnip” on the end. “Have a shnippy day!” we’d sing when dropping each other off. We were not normal Fullerton girls. We were misfits, dorky and smart, and thought we were different from our status quo community.
Under stars, we’d seek out wild spaces on the town’s fringes. We’d park on Skyline Drive in Tob-shnip’s white Volkswagen Squareback, crank open the moonroof, and map constellations with our fingers while kids in neighboring cars did couch things. Sometimes we’d hike Coyote Hills, one of the last open spaces in Orange County, with a bottle of Strawberry Hill or a case of Lucky Lager, or we’d hang out in the parking lot behind The Still liquor store with other high school kids until someone screamed, “House party!” One night, while my father was in Oklahoma burying my grandfather, I was the one screaming. We rented a keg and had our friend’s band, Drowning Fish, play. Three hundred kids sardined into my house, and to my horror, high school boys rifled through my underwear drawer and walked around with my granny panties on their heads. But it didn’t matter because we were together.
Fullerton was the birthplace of the electric guitar and Fender, but when we were sick of the house parties or playing pool at Susan’s after hours, we drove forty miles to Los Angeles when no other kids from Sunny Hills dared. In the 80s, the Sunset Strip was packed with rockers we called hessians in tight leather pants and big hair passing out flyers to gigs. The energy was electric, different, and LA quickly became our beloved stomping ground. We’d sneak into The Whiskey to see bands from our hometown area—No Doubt, Donkey Show, Fishbone. One of those nights we hit the back of another car in front of us on the Sunset Strip with Milo’s mom’s car. A blonde in red stretch pants hopped out, ran around to the back of her car to find her bumper unscathed. “No big deal!” she said, and gave us a smile. She was probably late for a concert, just like us. We hopped out and ran around to the front of Milo’s mom’s car and found a dent in the bumper like someone had crumpled a coke can. Her mom didn’t even know we’d taken her Celica; we’d slipped the keys out of her purse while she was sleeping. My mom’s going to freak! Milo said. She didn’t stop biting her nails until we came up with a scheme. When we got home at four in the morning, we changed into black clothes, pulled pantyhose over our heads, and beat the crap out of her mom’s car with baseball bats. We threw beer cans on the front lawn just for good measure. The next day, her mom took the car in for vandalism appraisal and the insurance adjuster said it looked like the car had been in an accident. We weren’t that smooth, but we looked out for each other. Her mom got paid out anyway.
Most of the time we hung out at Rutabegorz, the hippie restaurant in the ever-changing downtown district of Fullerton. We’d share a hot cherry cider cold or a Yerba Buena hot, have a cup of Cockie Leeky or split the Walnut that Kissed the Chicken sandwich. Afterward, we’d walk to the Fox Fullerton, a monstrous, crumbling theater where Emily’s sister worked at the ticket booth, and we’d sit on the balcony watching an old film and sharing a stale clove cigarette. We didn’t care about our parents. We thought they didn’t care about us. We were terrible girls but in Honors, AP, and IB classes—our teachers were so tired they let us roam around like free range chickens. Nothing ever happened in flailing Fullerton anyway. Sure, there was Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, who slipped into people’s homes at night and raped women of all ages, shot men in the face—he snatched our sleep for a while, but we didn’t live in a yellow house on a corner like the news had warned against. Then there were the horrors that filled my own home—my mom ending her life with a rope in our garage, her delusions before it. If it weren’t for the girl with the platinum blonde hair and no eyebrows who befriended me in home-ec when I was thirteen, the one who told me her dad blew his head off with a shotgun, I’m sure I would’ve ended up just like my mom. We held each other up when life tamped us down. There was Emily too, who’d physically pick me up out of bed when I couldn’t face the emptiness of crowded school hallways. Her arms and legs would bend and lift, and I’d focus on the ridgelines of her face as though they were the Fullerton hills, and forget the ice-cold shower water hitting my back. We helped each other out when we couldn’t help ourselves.
The not-normal, misfit, dorky-smart girls all turned out to be extraordinary. We escaped from Fullerton and are spread out all over the United States. We connect online now.
We are each other’s hometown.
We wondered who’d talk about us—the boys we groveled with, the ones we didn’t, the girls we did couch things with, the ones we didn’t. Where “groveled” and “couch things” meant making out and how we invented our own language because we could. We’d shnip around flailing Fullerton and wonder when we’d get the shnip out of that town (“shnip” could be used in place of almost any word). There was Tob-shnip and Em-shnip and Yumi-shnip and Ang-shnip, which was me—versions of our names shortened with a “shnip” on the end. “Have a shnippy day!” we’d sing when dropping each other off. We were not normal Fullerton girls. We were misfits, dorky and smart, and thought we were different from our status quo community.
Under stars, we’d seek out wild spaces on the town’s fringes. We’d park on Skyline Drive in Tob-shnip’s white Volkswagen Squareback, crank open the moonroof, and map constellations with our fingers while kids in neighboring cars did couch things. Sometimes we’d hike Coyote Hills, one of the last open spaces in Orange County, with a bottle of Strawberry Hill or a case of Lucky Lager, or we’d hang out in the parking lot behind The Still liquor store with other high school kids until someone screamed, “House party!” One night, while my father was in Oklahoma burying my grandfather, I was the one screaming. We rented a keg and had our friend’s band, Drowning Fish, play. Three hundred kids sardined into my house, and to my horror, high school boys rifled through my underwear drawer and walked around with my granny panties on their heads. But it didn’t matter because we were together.
Fullerton was the birthplace of the electric guitar and Fender, but when we were sick of the house parties or playing pool at Susan’s after hours, we drove forty miles to Los Angeles when no other kids from Sunny Hills dared. In the 80s, the Sunset Strip was packed with rockers we called hessians in tight leather pants and big hair passing out flyers to gigs. The energy was electric, different, and LA quickly became our beloved stomping ground. We’d sneak into The Whiskey to see bands from our hometown area—No Doubt, Donkey Show, Fishbone. One of those nights we hit the back of another car in front of us on the Sunset Strip with Milo’s mom’s car. A blonde in red stretch pants hopped out, ran around to the back of her car to find her bumper unscathed. “No big deal!” she said, and gave us a smile. She was probably late for a concert, just like us. We hopped out and ran around to the front of Milo’s mom’s car and found a dent in the bumper like someone had crumpled a coke can. Her mom didn’t even know we’d taken her Celica; we’d slipped the keys out of her purse while she was sleeping. My mom’s going to freak! Milo said. She didn’t stop biting her nails until we came up with a scheme. When we got home at four in the morning, we changed into black clothes, pulled pantyhose over our heads, and beat the crap out of her mom’s car with baseball bats. We threw beer cans on the front lawn just for good measure. The next day, her mom took the car in for vandalism appraisal and the insurance adjuster said it looked like the car had been in an accident. We weren’t that smooth, but we looked out for each other. Her mom got paid out anyway.
Most of the time we hung out at Rutabegorz, the hippie restaurant in the ever-changing downtown district of Fullerton. We’d share a hot cherry cider cold or a Yerba Buena hot, have a cup of Cockie Leeky or split the Walnut that Kissed the Chicken sandwich. Afterward, we’d walk to the Fox Fullerton, a monstrous, crumbling theater where Emily’s sister worked at the ticket booth, and we’d sit on the balcony watching an old film and sharing a stale clove cigarette. We didn’t care about our parents. We thought they didn’t care about us. We were terrible girls but in Honors, AP, and IB classes—our teachers were so tired they let us roam around like free range chickens. Nothing ever happened in flailing Fullerton anyway. Sure, there was Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, who slipped into people’s homes at night and raped women of all ages, shot men in the face—he snatched our sleep for a while, but we didn’t live in a yellow house on a corner like the news had warned against. Then there were the horrors that filled my own home—my mom ending her life with a rope in our garage, her delusions before it. If it weren’t for the girl with the platinum blonde hair and no eyebrows who befriended me in home-ec when I was thirteen, the one who told me her dad blew his head off with a shotgun, I’m sure I would’ve ended up just like my mom. We held each other up when life tamped us down. There was Emily too, who’d physically pick me up out of bed when I couldn’t face the emptiness of crowded school hallways. Her arms and legs would bend and lift, and I’d focus on the ridgelines of her face as though they were the Fullerton hills, and forget the ice-cold shower water hitting my back. We helped each other out when we couldn’t help ourselves.
The not-normal, misfit, dorky-smart girls all turned out to be extraordinary. We escaped from Fullerton and are spread out all over the United States. We connect online now.
We are each other’s hometown.
About the writer
Angela Miyuki Mackintosh is a writer and graphic designer living in Los Angeles. A Pushcart Prize and Best of Net nominee (both 2019), her work has been published in Vice, Red Fez, Awakenings, The Nervous Breakdown, Eastern Iowa Review, and Writer’s Digest, among others. She is the executive editor of WOW! Women On Writing.
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