The gypsy moths were bad the year Dad caught fire. That summer, I slipped into a feverish adolescence stone cold broke and swathed in the silken threads of parasitic caterpillars. Under such conditions was my first and only cabaret act conceived, executed and, fortunately for all involved, immediately dissolved.
My best friend Tracy and I were 13, pulsing with hormones and desperate for cash. Dad paid us five cents for each buff-colored gypsy moth egg sack we scraped off the trees and we spent our afternoons and weekends combing the woods for the velvety patches. On a good day, we could earn $5 dollars apiece, enough for a slice and a Coke at Ritchie's pizza.
After we did our bit, Dad would dump the nests into an old Maxwell House coffee can, douse them with gasoline and set them alight. They crackled like bacon when they burned. That May the fire didn't stay in the can. It jumped to his sleeve and danced there eerily lifelike. He slapped at the flames, shouting, tore off his jacket and beat it into the dirt while we watched owl-eyed.
He was whole but shaken and that was the last egg-burning that spring. Come summer we were knee-deep in hairy red- and blue-spotted caterpillars raining barrel-shaped poops on our heads as they chewed their way through a salad bar of Birches, Maples and Oaks.
Worse, we were entering the high point of our social season with our coffers seriously depleted. We were too young to waitress and too old to sell lemonade. We were in crisis. No money, no movies, no ice-creams, no buying temporary tattoos or faux surfer jewelry at the Bridgewater fair. No making eyes at the mustached teen who dished out the slices at Ritchie's.
In the meantime, the caterpillars were everywhere, swinging through the trees like tiny Tarzans, clogging windshield wipers and parachuting into picnic lunches. The heat and their beady eyes made us bloodthirsty. We compiled a list: Ten Things You Can Do With Gypsy Moths If You're Really Really Bored.
- Float them across the lake on leaves.
- See how many you can get into a Dixie cup.
- Convince the boy next door they taste good.
- Drown them and try to bring them back to life.
- Train them to be a circus act.
- Roast them in a campfire.
- See if the fish will eat them.
- Make them into jewelry.
- Dip them in paint and watch them walk across paper.
- See who can throw them the farthest.
By July their ranks were thinning. Clouds of moths took their place. The grayish brown males bashed their feathery heads against the porch light each night. We rubbed the iridescent dust off the backs of the flightless females and used it as rouge.
Tracy and I were going through our own transformations. Hot lumpy breasts and spiky black hairs were pushing through our smooth carapaces. We lay awake at night, sweating and sore. Like the caterpillars, we longed to shed our skins and take flight in our new bodies.
We were dangling our feet off the boat dock when Tracy had the revelation that would free us from our mundane existence, solve our financial troubles and make us famous to boot. We would form a singing group.
Across the lake we could see the tumble-down bar and grill known as The Casino. On warm summer nights, the tinny sounds of juke-box rock-and-roll would float teasingly over the water.
"The Casino will hire us," she said solemnly and, because she was six months older, because she had shown me how to French kiss in our pup-tent and sworn me to secrecy in an ancient Indian ritual, I believed her. Never mind that we couldn't carry a tune. Never mind that we couldn't drive. We would be clothed in spangled evening dresses and mysteriously transported to The Casino where spotlights would shine on us and a mirrored ball would send rainbow flashes of light coursing around the room. It would be beautiful.
We chose our music with care. We toyed with Alice Cooper's "School's Out," which gave us a chance to hop around and showcase how well Tracy could shake her waist-length hair. Helen Reddy's "Delta Dawn" was moving and we could get some good vibrato going in "Muskrat Love." Tracy, smitten by Rod Stewart, put up a fight for "Tonight's The Night." But, in the end, we settled for Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You," having discovered it was the only song to which we knew all the lyrics.
We sang it endlessly, with every possible harmonic permutation. We sang it at the dining room table, in the car and while balancing in the table-flat lake on our Styrofoam surf boards.
"Lovin' you is easy cause you're beautiful
Makin' love with you is all I wanna do…"
We created a unique set of hand and hip movements, combined with energetic hair tossing, to go along with the words.
"No one else can make me feel" - clasp hands and press to heart.
"The colors that you bring" - release hands, sweep arms forward as if offering a gift.
"Stay with me while we grow old" - point to audience.
"And we will live each day in springtime" - hair swish right, hair swish left, hip roll.
Finally we were ready to test our act. We set chairs out on the lawn and summoned our parents. On a sultry evening, crickets chirruping and fireflies glowing, we sang and swished and bumped and took our bows to rousing applause.
The Casino lost its liquor license a week later and closed for the season. We were despondent until Tracy's older brother got a motor boat and offered to teach us to water ski. We were broke, but no longer land-bound. Skimming across the glassy surface of the lake, cupped between the low familiar mountains, we were part water, part air, gypsies on the verge of taking flight.