Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2003Fall

Faded Blue Levi Denim Fleece Jacket
Anna Lisa B. Gacusan

You know that pair of faded blue jeans with the hole right by the butt that you somehow just can’t throw away? Oh yeah, you know the one. I know you’re feeling me! We all have it, that one significant article of clothing that we just can’t give up, that we just can’t seem to part with. Even when it’s screaming out at you, “Put me out of my misery!” you pretend that you can’t hear it. How could you go through life without it? Like the tattered, smelly, old security blanket of many toddlers, you find solace, receive the comfort, and gain the confidence to make it through another day of life with this one addiction that you have.

In my high school years, my so-called “security blanket” was my faded blue Levi denim fleece jacket. Back then, it was the “in” thing to have, and everybody who was anybody had to have one. I had the honor of having three, one in gray, another in black, and of course, my old reliable faded denim blue.

In its pockets, I stored my treasures: always a beat up, half-empty box of Kool Mild’s, a lighter, and a pack of Zig Zag’s for the occasional “burning” sessions. Once, my mother had been thoughtful enough to take my jacket and wash it, but, in the end, it had only caused her pain. When she emptied out the pockets, she found my pack of Zig Zag’s. She went ballistic on me as soon as I walked through the front door that day after school. Of course, being the punk kid that I was back then, I denied every accusation that was thrown at me. I don’t think she ever believed me, though.

Back on Kauai where I come from, being a teenager is really a critical time. Either you sink or you swim. Although I can’t remember the exact date and time, or even what day of the week it was, I do remember what happened, and perhaps, I will never forget. In fact, I remember the events so well that every so often they come back to haunt me.

My girlfriend, Marla, and I were sitting in her garage smoking half of a joint and killing time before we had to go to school. She was my buddy, way back to “small-kid” time friendships. She was a year younger than I was, but ironically, she was the one who had introduced me to my first cigarette, my first joint and my first experience of the joys and thrills of alcohol.

This one morning found us particularly bored, and as we sat there getting high, we were dreading another day of school. We were contemplating the possibility of cutting school, but then she had another bright idea. She proposed that we have a few drinks before school started, just so school would be a little bit less painful. I decided that it was an excellent idea.

“Eh, try wait. I get some Schnapps stashed in da closet, brah!” and she ran into her room to get it. She walked out the front door of her house, face beaming as she held up an almost full bottle of Peppermint Schnapps. In her other hand, she carried her Levi jacket, and she stuffed the bottle into one of its front pockets as we got into her car.

By this time, I was feeling the effects of the joint and as we drove to school, I told her to stop at my house so I could check out the stash that my parents had. “Try go my house fas’ kine, I like go check’m out. Can?”

We then stopped over at my house, and I ran inside the house looking for anything containing alcohol, besides the one you put on cuts. I found a gallon of Spanada wine sitting by the sink and grabbed it on my way out the door. I jumped back into Marla’s car and showed her what I had found. “Brah, whatchu think, too big, eh? Bumbye we gon get busted, lidat!”

“Nah can, can handle. Just drink’m one time den pau,” she said.

Little did I know, as I held on to that liquor bottle, trying to shove it within the confines of my Levi jacket, that the bottle would seal our fate at the end of the day. I must have been really dense, just plain desperate, or stoned stupid not to see the obvious as the gallon of liquor protruded from my buttoned up jacket. Nonetheless, it was a great big recipe for trouble that we would surely face during the course of the day.

It was about a five-minute ride to our local high school, so we cruised with the stereo on high and the bass pounding into our bodies. Boom, boom! Bopping our heads to the beat of the music, we giggled from the joint we had earlier and probably because we were about to do some evil deeds and the thrill was getting to us. It was almost insane to think about!

Reaching our high school, we see our friends waving at us as we drive past them with the windows rolled down halfway and the dark tint hiding everything but our shaded eyes. After a couple of drive by’s, it was almost 7:45, so we decided to park the car and sneak into one of the bathrooms of the intermediate campus to do our little “chug-a-lug” business.

“Brah, we going be late fo’ class!”

Of course, Marla, being the epitome of cool, casually and so nonchalantly tells me, “No worries, brah. Just relax.” We jump out of the car and proceed with our plans.

On our way to the bathroom, my younger sister and her friends wave to us as we pass by. On this side of the campus, high school students are “big time,” so it’s really cool to wave at somebody who’s from the other side of campus when you’re an intermediate student. I’m trying to act cool and walk by with nobody noticing the bulge in the side of my jacket.

However, my sister can’t resist the obvious and says, “Whatchu get insai your jacket?”

My sister, the world’s biggest tattle, will bust my ass in a heartbeat, so I play dumb and tell her, “My books. Why?”

“No look like books! How come you neva use your back pack?” she asks.

“Cuz I neva like, dat’s why,” I tell her.

Just a couple of yards away from our destination, we say goodbye to my sister and her friends and walk down the hall and into the girls’ bathroom.

Inside the bathroom, the floor tile is a dull yellow, almost muddy brown from the abuse and wear and tear of students tramping in and out of it through the years. The walls are also faded yellow, but ironically, they are polished and you can see a dull reflection of yourself as you move around the bathroom. There are five stalls, one of which is used for handicapped students, and we choose this stall to huddle in because of its larger size.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” Marla half shrieks in a whisper, as I open up my Levi jacket to remove the bottle.

Our adrenalin is pumping as we twist off the cap and naughtily take our first sip. The warm sensation of the wine burning a slow path down to my stomach soothes me, and I start to relax. Taking a couple of shots of the Schnapps, my stomach begins to churn as the mixture of the two different liquors starts to make me feel a bit queasy. By the time the first period bell rings, we have about a fourth of the gallon left to finish and we’ve already given up on the Schnapps, preferring the wine.

This is when we make our first mistake: we panic. All of a sudden, not wanting to be tardy for class, Marla decides it is definitely time to go. Perhaps the close confines of the bathroom, or maybe the mixture of the alcohols, or maybe still, the alcohol mixed with the effects of the joint we smoked earlier that morning, lead us to panic. Suddenly, we feel claustrophobic. Shoving the bottle back into the “security” of my Levi jacket, I button it shut still thinking that somehow nobody will notice.

“Come on, brah, let’s go!” Marla tells me. We wobble our way to the door, and just as she shoves the front door open, she does an about face and heads right back in.

“Holy shit, Kawane stay outside, brah! Hide da stuff!” We scramble around the bathroom looking for a place to hide our illegal goods and realize we have totally caged ourselves in. There is nowhere to go and no place to hide.

We hear a knock on the door and the voice of the principal, and at this point, all I really want to do is faint. The effects of the joint, the wine and the Schnapps are hitting me, and I’m standing there trying to figure out how not to get busted. So, in my condition, I do the lamest thing ever imaginable and try with the best of my efforts to conceal the great big bottle of Spanada wine behind the skinny skeleton of the porcelain goddess, just hoping that maybe, just maybe, our principal will be blind and not see it. Scrambling out of the bathroom stall, I hear the knocking becoming louder, but even in my buzzed state of mind I feel the fear. I look at Marla, and I can read in her eyes that shit is definitely about to hit the fan.

Outside the bathroom door, I hear our names, “Gacusan and Bodano, get outside right now!” Sadly and sickeningly, the principal already knows us by name. We’ve been to his office enough times for him to remember us. In our inebriated condition, we silently file out of the bathroom while the principal bombards us with questions as we step out into the dark hallway.

“What are you ladies doing in there? Don’t you guys have to be getting to class on your side of the campus?” he asks us.

“Yeah, we going class, just had to go use da bathroom fast kine,” Marla says.

By this time a small audience has formed around us, and the sheer humiliation in combination with the alcohol boiling in my bloodstream adds to the flush in the color of my face. Mr. Kawane is not stupid. I mean he is the principal for a reason.

“So, you mean to tell me that if I walk into this bathroom, I ain’t gonna find anything that’s not supposed to be here?” he asks.

My eyeballs want to roll to the back of my head, and this voice inside me is screaming, “Don’t go in there, please, don’t go in there!!!” But to no avail. He walks right through the door into the girls’ bathroom. I see the intermediate students looking at us, along with my sister and her friends, and all of a sudden, I don’t think we can be defined as “cool” anymore. What we are is totally fucked!

Stepping out of the bathroom into the hallway, Mr. Kawane returns with the bottle of wine. As if confiscating evidence from a crime scene, he has a pen inserted into the finger handle of the Spanada wine bottle, almost as if he does not want to touch the bottle and contaminate the evidence. All he is missing are the latex gloves; otherwise, he could be a forensic scientist. Carrying the bottle above his head, he sloshes around the leftover liquor inside the bottle. At this point, the first period tardy bell starts ringing. I don’t know whether that bell will save us or kill us.

Before excusing the audience full of students, Mr. Kawane decides to address them and make a freak show out of us. Looking at them and then pointing at us, he says, “You guys think drinking is cool. Well, look at these girls. They ain’t so cool, now, huh? You guys bring this stuff to school and you guys will get busted!” He is on a roll now, so he raises the gallon of Spanada wine and does a full circle turn, the kind that models make on a fashion show runway, and shows the alcohol bottle to everybody within viewing distance. After completely humiliating and embarassing us, he glares at us and says just one word,

“OFFICE!”

That one word pretty much ended our day. We were suspended for a couple of days, given detention for weeks, and were forever placed on the principal’s shit list. Isn’t it funny that when things like that happen they’re not so funny at the moment? It’s only after the fact that these memories can become something we can laugh about.

That day, for me, is classic! It has burned a hole in my memory so deep and dark that I’ll bet even amnesia can’t make me forget it. After getting busted, I remember sitting in the principal’s office waiting for my mother to come and get me. I didn’t know what I was more afraid of, my mother’s wrath or the person that I was becoming or choosing to become. I sat there and knew that I would do my best not to make the same stupid mistake again.

Nonetheless, through the course of my high school years, I visited the principal’s office time and time again for other wrong doings. I got into a couple of fights, swore at a teacher, didn’t complete my detention and committed a whole bunch of other misdemeanors.

However, no other incident compares to the one of the Levi fleece jacket. That day the warmth of my faded blue Levi fleece jacket was not enough to warm the chill inside my heart. It was a scary kind of cold. It’s the chill you begin to feel when you start growing up and learning from life experiences either to become a better person or stay a child forever.

Over the years, the jacket became a passing fad and disappeared as other “in” fashions replaced the old. In the passing years, I learned to find comfort in other things, like the comfort you find when you learn more about yourself. Think about it. Why wear a fleece jacket in Hawaii anyway when it’s way too hot?