Sweet sixteen, plus forty
Reflections on a midlife meme
I can’t tell you how many versions of this meme I’ve seen in the last two months:
I haven’t stopped thinking about it either, mostly because social media won’t let me.
And what I can’t stop thinking about, if I’m being honest, is this:
Who was I at 16 years old?
I opened my memoir, Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan, to the chapter in which I wrote about my Sweet Sixteen birthday party, and found this:
I have photos from the party: me, dressed in an oversized gray sweater covering acid-washed jeans tucked into maroon suede boots; rubber bracelets, bangles, and a single Swatch watch climbing up my right arm; my hair short, less frizzy in the winter, showing off my new, unbraided rat’s tail that would eventually grow down to the middle of my back. My friends are outfitted a little less casually in low-heeled leather pumps or flats, blue or yellow plaid shirts, spandex leggings or baggy pants. The two guys (Paul, and Marc, my friend since fifth grade) in Capezios, black pants, and pullovers shirts, their sleeves pushed up past their elbows. In one photo, everyone is dancing; in another, we’re all sitting on the floor and lined up against the wall, watching the band more passively. I can’t read the expressions on my friends’ faces—can’t tell whether they’re bored or doing something they’ve never done before or are just content, hanging out as teenagers do. But the look on my face reveals all. I’m glowing, oblivious to whether anyone else is having a good time.
(The “band” was my brothers and then-sister-in-law, and a family friend on drums.)
In 1986, I was a sophomore at Walt Whitman High School, majoring in Art and English. I was a good writer, but guidance counselors told me that the only writing-related career worth pursuing was journalism. Told me to join the Student Pen newspaper.
I disliked journalism immensely.
I wanted to go into commercial art and design album covers—every John Taylor devotee wanted to go into commercial art and design album covers.
In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded the day after my twin brother’s and my birthday. Long Island public schools were closed that day because of a snowstorm, so I watched it on TV at home.
In April, the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster happened, bringing some of the movies’ doomsday predictions to life.
Peter Gabriel’s So, Paul Simon’s Graceland, and Janet Jackson’s Control were among the top albums of the year.
And Duran Duran went from the Fab Five to a trio of Simon Le Bon and co-founders John Taylor and Nick Rhodes. In November, they released their fifth album, Notorious, with Chic hitmaker Nile Rodgers at the producer’s helm.
The Fast Times at Ridgemont High 80s were over.
At 16, I was still reeling from my parents’ separation three years earlier (especially after finding out why my father left).
I was still trying to fit in. I envied the new wave artist kids, but I wasn’t cool enough for them. Wasn’t a talented enough artist. Wasn’t existential enough. Wasn’t allowed to dye my hair black.
I also didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t play sports anymore, didn’t have cable (thus, I still wanted my MTV even though Music Television was already on the decline), didn’t excel in academics (except English classes, although I hated assigned reading), watched soap operas in secret, and wrote Duran Duran fan fiction, even though I didn’t know there was a term for it.
I wanted to be seen. To be noticed.
And yet, I also wanted to remain invisible.
I was desperate for a date, desperate for a boy I liked to give me a carnation on Valentine’s Day, desperate to know what it was like to be kissed.
And yet, I was much more comfortable doing all of that in my imagination.
In short, I really didn’t know who I was when I was 16.
Looking back forty years, I still don’t.
But I didn’t love myself back then. That I can confirm.
I hated my frizzy hair. Hated my flabby arms. Hated that my fashion choices always fell short. Hated that I wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough, talented enough, athletic enough, rich enough, or popular enough.
I wasn’t lovable enough.
I floundered in high school, but graduated as a B-student.
I did try my hand at Advertising Design and Graphic Design in college, but I couldn’t keep up with my classmates, especially when the Macintosh and desktop publishing/design were introduced.
Dropped out of college. Worked in retail and finally started to get my act together in my mid-20s, when I enrolled at UMass Dartmouth as a sophomore and majored in Psychology.
Went on to grad school, an academic career, and then wrote and self-published a novel in my 30s.
Hit the Kindle big time at age 40. Bought a Volkswagen Beetle, the car that 16-year-old me used to draw.
I finally dyed my hair black when I was 43. Resumed wearing Swatches. Dusted off my record collection, and bought all the albums I didn’t have the money to buy when I was 16.
I gave up my artistic aspirations and actualized my writerly ones—it took 25 years for me to realize that I could—without journalism.
I mean, All of You is pretty much midlife Duran Duran fan fiction.
A “boy” fell in love with me only after I learned to give myself everything I thought he was supposed to give me.
When I was 16, I wanted to live an authentic life, even if I wasn’t articulating it as such in 1986.
In other words, I became almost everything I wanted to be at 16 in my early-mid 40s.
And I loved her.
Better still, I retroactively loved 16-year-old me.
Told her she was, indeed, enough. More than enough. Just the way she was.
Was I ahead of the curve?
If anything, I was ignorant. Naïve. I thought I’d mastered midlife at 45.
However, as I’ve written about extensively, marriage came along and said “Hold my beer.”
What’s more, my 50s have been a slow, painful deconstruction and shedding of not only who I became, but also who and what I wanted to keep on being.
I was no longer an up-and-coming hotshot academic.
No longer the “pioneer Kindle bestselling author.”
No longer a Lake Union author.
No longer naturally dark-haired.
No longer thin.
No longer rich.
No longer married, except in the legal sense.
If there was one thing that I retained, the one constant in my life, it’s this:
I am a Duran Duran fan.
And this:
I am a writer.
So, in terms of the meme, do I still want to become who I was at 16?
Not really, except when it comes the the clothes.
Seriously. I want to wear scrunchy socks and cuffed jeans and rubber bracelets and plaid blazers with enormous shoulder pads and baggy black pants and granny shoes again. I want to wear neon sweater dresses with leggings and suede boots.
I could do without crimped hair, but I want my silver-gray color to look like I chose it.
And GenX wants its MTV back.
Or do I want to reinvent myself, repurposing the best of me from my 40s?
Or how about I, you know, just be 56 and love that?
Here’s what it comes down to:
In 2013, when I was making a living as a full-time author—no “side hustle,” no “alternate streams of income,” no more “day job”—and I published Friends of Mine, I knew I was doing what I’d wanted to do my entire life, and what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Be a writer, and be a Duran Duran fan.
And from 2017 to the present, after desperately trying to save that life and then grieving its loss, after spending years looking for something else to do that would bring me the same intrinsic joy and fulfillment and authenticity, after floundering, after failing over and over and over again to reclaim its sustainability while unsuccessfully finding alternate employment…
Being a full-time, sustainable author is still the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life.
And affirm that it’s enough. That I am enough. As I am. Right now.
Forty years after being 16.
Shortly after publishing All of You, I challenged my brother Mike to write Paisley Parker’s 1986 smash hit “Glossy” using the lyrics I wrote, and adding to them. He didn’t disappoint. Sixteen-year-old me would’ve loved this song. Fifty-six-year-old me loves it, too.
This is so fun but also poignant, Elisa. Thanks for this. Made me want to revisit my 16-year-old self a little. On the actual day I saw Duran Duran at Hartford Civic Center! It was also JT's 27th. My first DD concert, singing "Happy Birthday" from the rafters on a milestone passage. This week I'm seeing my 10th, but I feel like a very changed person from the city girl stuck in the suburbs and what I thought rebellion looked like.
This is, as ever, fantastic. When you first shared that quote, I thought something very different, if I applied it to myself (and modified it somewhat, of course). Maybe one of these days I'll use this Substack thing to talk about that, haha. ;) Anyway, that's enough about me--great work as always, and here's to many more years of writing and being a Duranie!