Living Room, July 1982

16x20 acrylic on canvas

This is Brooke, Muffy and Buffy. Well, actually, it’s just Vicky, Joyce and Marie, and we are the coolest of cool Preppy posers in the entire western hemisphere.  We worshipped the whole upper crust-East Coast thing, but were hopelessly mired near the bottom half of Chicago’s West Side blue collar barrel.  This didn’t prevent us from vigorously going through the motions, though. All three of us went to Kroch’s and Brentano’s at the Oak Park Mall and purchased Lisa Birnbach’s seminal work, The Official Preppy Handbook.  It was a parody, of course, but we followed its words as if Moses himself had dragged the sacred text down from Mt. Sinai. Marie and I would save up our allowance (mostly bags of coins), and take the Chicago Avenue bus downtown to Saks Fifth Avenue on Michigan Avenue to purchase Izod Lacoste shirts.  They cost about $26.00 at the time and when we were short money, we’d run over to my mom’s office at the Rehab Institute of Chicago to beg for funds. At one point, we got to know the salesman’s name at Saks (Bill) because we had to carefully lay all of our change out on the countertop to count it. In this painting, we are in the middle of a sweltering hot July afternoon, but sporting jeans and (in my case) a button down top!  Marie used to calculate the value of her church wardrobe, during the homily at St. Angela…from her pearl earrings, Lacoste shirt, Lacoste belt, Lacoste Chinos, Swatch Watch, argyle socks and Sperry topsiders.  She realized this stuff, um, La-Cost La-Mucho!  Amen. She’d probably deny everything, as she’s grown into one of the greenest, most frugal friends I know.  Marie frequents resale shops and eats vegetables grown in a community garden and eschews the television and all that. Vicky has gone through many fashion styles as well.  She moved out to southern California before high school and went hardcore 80′s punk, with the Mohawk and whole shebang.  Now, she’s a rather stylish mom, with a normal hairdo…similar to that in this painting. At our 25th grade school reunion last Summer, Vicky came bearing an old copy of the Official Preppy Handbook, which she’d picked up second-hand, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  My Preppy faith had wavered a bit in recent years, during a personal crisis of upper-crusty-ness, but now I’m back.  Bill, if you’re out there, man, get ready.  I’m coming to Saks with a plastic bag full of quarters.

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