The most memorable thing about the Friday night Y-Dances to me was Wendie Miller’s perfect flip.  I don’t know why, because, to be honest, she wore that flip every single day to school. Okay, sometimes Wendie had just a simple — but thick — and also perfect ponytail.  When Friday nights rolled around in the fall and those dances became the highlight of our week, I would long to achieve the Wendie Miller “do.”

My mother had gone to beauty school, so she knew her way around the current hairstyles, but makeup was more her specialty.  She worked as assistant to George Masters, the famous makeup artist.  Together, they did people like Ann-Margaret and Jackie Kennedy.  But there I was, nearly a midget.  (Sorry, I have always called myself that, even though it is not politically correct.  Let’s pretend it’s still the 60’s.  Midget.  Shortest girl in my grade.  Except maybe Susan Slutsky, who was a touch shorter.  No, I’m not being politically incorrect again — her last name really was Slutsky.)

On a Friday afternoon, my mom got to work with the curlers, and they were so friggin tight.  This was not some gentle, warm and cozy experience.  The curlers were not delicately rolled up.  It was a form of torture.  And then the over-teasing and the setting of her masterpiece with so much hairspray that I’m surprised I didn’t end up with black lung.  By the way, the reveal wasn’t so pretty.  This was no Wendie Miller flip.  It was my extra-small head topped by tons of overly teased and sprayed hair.  Think “Tiara’s and Toddlers,” the show about little beauty pageant kids.  Think JonBenet Duke.  Big-big hair, small-small girl.  So, now I would walk into the Y-Dance faintly embarrassed by my bad-hair-day-on-purpose, but I never really had the nerve to undo it.  I was just stuck with my bad hair and my hair was stuck too.  With Aqua Net.

I let my mother and her new “beauty” career experiment on me, and ultimately she gave me two of my most bitchin’ haircuts.  The Beatles cut.  And the unforgettable and truly genius Twiggy cut.  She practiced her first shag haircut on her own longhaired cat named General Rodriguez.  I came home from school one day to find “Rod’s” hair all chopped up and asked her what was wrong.  She said there was a new hairstyle called the “shag” and she needed to try it out on him.  She also wore a flea collar around her own ankle.   Don’t ask.   And you wonder why I’m a strange one?

What was GREAT about the Y-Dances was getting to know all the kids from the other grammar schools.  We had four different grammar schools in Beverly Hills.  Now we could meet and have crushes on boys from outside our school district.  I really thought the nicest boys were two that were my size.  Is that why I liked them?  Or perhaps it was just that they both were nice to me.  Richie Greenberg and Richie Seltzer.  The two Richie’s.   Oh, and they were cute!!!!

Ricky Farber, already written about in another blog of mine, was the notoriously beautiful girl at Horace Mann school.  I remember being kind of jealous when she was asked to front Chris Head’s (a boy in our grade) band as he headlined one night at the dance.  She had a tambourine.  And I really did play tambourine.  (Did I?  I thought I did because I was a percussionist and we had to sort of play everything.)  So, why was I not considered?  Maybe it was that hideous flip.  Maybe it was that I looked like I was nine years old.

I don’t remember actually dancing at one of these dances.  I remember sitting on chairs that were up against the back wall.  Waiting.  Hoping some young dude would ask me to dance because boy, was I gonna show them then.  I danced like a little stripper.  I did.  That’s the way I danced. I felt the music and I got lost in it, and even at that age, I gyrated, practically bumping-and-grinding my way through a song.  Totally inappropriate, but authentic.  If there had been a YouTube of me dancing at that age, child predators would have been knocking down my door.  Erik Gibson really liked the way I danced and I will tell that story one day, so stay tuned.

My idol at the time was the actress Nancy Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong).  Why was she my idol?  Because she played a slut (back to that word again) and was so friggin sexy; it’s what I wanted and yearned to be.  Also, my dad was really keen on her and he was my REAL idol.  I liked everything and everyone my dad liked.  Later, in my late teens, early twenties, I would dress like Suzie Wong for Halloween and walk around saying a line from the movie: “Me Suzie, me nice gil (girl) me no Shanghai street gil.”  And, I dressed like Suzie many other days of the year.  I had lots of tight-fitting, exquisite Chinese dresses to play Nancy Kwan dress-up.

When I get my time machine, I will go back to when my mother drops me off in front of the Y.  I will go straight into the bathroom and flatten out that damn flip.  Then, I will not wait for the “girls’ choice” to ask a boy to dance.  Instead, I will get off my chair by the back wall, and just dance the night away alone.

On school nights, or maybe even on a Y dance Friday night, my mother would make calves liver. I looked in my James Beard cookbook and came up with this. I think my mother and other people soaked the liver in milk back in the day but here is what looks like a good recipe. And they recommend and so do I to buy the very best quality. Ask your butcher. Are you vegetarians cringing about now? Talk about not PC!
Sauteed Calves Liver Recipe
1 ½ pounds thinly sliced liver
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
Flour
Salt and pepper
½ chopped green onion
½ cup chopped parsley
Heat the butter and oil together. Dip the liver slices in flour and sauté them quickly allowing one minute to each side. They should be crispy brown but pinkish in the center. Salt and pepper them to taste, sprinkle them with chopped onion and parsley and serve with pan juices poured over them. My mother cooked them with onions and she sort of burned the onions and I like this dish with bacon and onions.  Now listen below to the song that Chris Head’s band played at the Y Dance.

Tags: 1960's hair, calves liver recipe, Chris Head, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, George Masters, the flip, The House of the Rising Sun, Twiggy and Beatles haircut, Y Dances in Beverly Hills

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2012 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.