i've only just begun

As a child, I was never scared by gory movies or by thoughts of monsters under my bed. This surprises me in retrospect because my parents never paid much attention to what I was watching on TV. In fact, now that I think about it, they encouraged me to watch things that were too sophisticated for my level of maturity. Perhaps they did this with hopes that I would develop a vocabulary and sensibility able to overcome typical childhood fears, thus, their child might require less parenting. Maybe I bored them, and they wanted more things to talk with me about. With my parents’ stamp of approval, I recall watching things like Mississippi Burning, the Golden Girls, and episodes from the Victory at Sea series all before the age of 11. This culminated into an all out private demise when on January 1, 1989, I watched The Karen Carpenter Story, a made for TV movie.

Karen Carpenter would haunt me for years.

Karen Carpenter was the famous female drummer from the group “The Carpenters.” Richard Carpenter, her controlling older brother, was the other half of the duo. (Ultimately, I place blame for Karen’s death on Richard’s quaalude addiction and his jealousy about Karen’s marriage.) The movie opened with a scene I will never forget. Karen has collapsed at home, and she is being wheeled in a hospital bed through a very bright hallway. The ghost of “alive and well Karen” - - the Karen before the fame - - is roller skating alongside the hospital bed, with pigtails in, singing. She occasionally looks at the camera and smiles a creepy smile that as an 11 year old, I never wanted to receive from a stranger.

This woman systematically starved herself to death to defy her family and her fame. I had never been exposed to something to scary. I became equally obsessed about and afraid of, Karen Carpenter. Thank God there was no internet at the time, but nonetheless I managed to find photos of her at the public library. “Ok Dad, I will be up in the children’s section.” Yea right. I was in the biography and music sections flagging books for photocopying. Her narrow, pale face contrasting the long dark hair: scared the shit out of me, but I also couldn’t get enough. I recall finding The Carpenters’ tapes, “Close to You” and “A Kind of Hush” in my Grandmother’s basement. I asked to borrow them. I brought them home with me. I played them, very quietly in my bedroom, with my ear next to the speaker, startled by just about any other noise. I can still hear the build up of the whistle in “Close to You.” It was terrifying. The next day I left those tapes on the school bus. Those tapes needed to be someone else’s problem.

This kind of thing went on for a long time.

It really was debilitating, to think about Karen Carpenter all the time. I don’t know if my parents were keyed-in, but my girlfriends knew about my obsessive/fearful relationship with Karen Carpenter. A year or two later, when I started to let go a bit of this issue, I recall being at a sleep-over at Lindsay Waterman’s house. All of my best girlfriends were there in the basement, laughing and having fun. I was trying to open a door that was jammed, to get into another part of the basement. Seizing the opportunity to get my goose, Mary Waldorf, my best friend started screaming, “Ahh!! Katie! The door won’t open because Karen Carpenter is holding on to the other side!!!” As I flew off the door and leaped on to my sleeping bag for comfort, I reciprocated screaming blood-curdling screams!

I instituted some cognitive therapy for myself and things became easier. I just didn’t seek out the information about Karen Carpenter anymore. I stopped looking for things to see and learn about her.

I starved myself of her.

Since then, once in a blue moon, someone will make a reference to her in a movie, or I will see something about her on TV. I usually do ok.

Usually. . .

Earlier this month, after many weeks of graduate school stress, I went out to celebrate the end of the semester with my friend and classmate, Jewly. She is a journalist and has also worked in the music industry for many years. Her own album, Darlin Understand will be released on January 29. Over pino grigio and vegetarian shepherd’s pie, with a bluesy voice gargling in the background, Jewly and I covered all the things women talk about over dinner: relationships, work, and the future. While talking about her debut album, she shared a funny story about the history of her drum set. Things started to get fuzzy for me. I looked at her thin and delicate facial features. I heard the words “drum set” over in my head and I kinda just went blank. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear. Her head was thrown back in laughter a little bit, here and there. But the soft whistle of “Close to You” was winding up in my brain. Grasping what was going on here, I interrupted her story and I quickly asked, “So you play the drums? You’re, you are a female drummer?” She noticed that I was upset, and replied with a cautious, “yeeess?”

I said sort of in a defeated but accusatory manner, “Oh. So. You probably like Karen Carpenter, huh? You know, she was a female drummer too?” Not allowing time for a response, I continued in a riled up mode like John Cusack in High Fidelity. “Well Jewly, she scared the shit out of me! She scared the shit out of me. And that made-for-TV movie, The Karen Carpenter Story? That comes in as a close second to the worst thing about my childhood.” Jewly looked confused. She laughed nervously. Realizing what sort of an outburst I had just had, I excused myself to the bathroom. It was an all out relapse. And I realized that Jewly being a new friend, could very well have chosen to bail on her creepy new friend Kate, upon my return from the bathroom. But she was still at the table. I apologized and told her the story. I even told her about leaving the tapes on the bus. It helped to talk about it.