Archive

US “Skins” recap (1.02): Leave The Gun, Take the Cannoli

When it happens, this is how it happens: A girl is looking at you. She’s not gawking. But her eyes aren’t moving past you, either, attempting to gauge the sunshine out the window behind you. It’s a moment. No, not even a moment. It’s the space between seconds, the time it takes for a mouse to inhale.

You have some options. You can convince yourself you imagined it; it wouldn’t take much. You can go home and replay it, record it in your journal and conjure up a thousand what ifs. You can flex your eyebrow, write your intention on a piece of paper and slide it across her desk like a dare.

Northern Soul.

If you’re unacquainted with the way Skins music adds another narrative layer to an already textured story, you picked a fine time to start paying attention. This episode is bookended by Northern Soul – Tony Clarke‘s “Landslide” opens it; Marlena Shaw‘s “Let’s Wade in the Water” props it up and closes it out – and Tea is rocking some retro pins that make me want to kiss the Skins costume design people on the mouth. There’s the classic “Keep the Faith” badge, and that Wigan Casino all-nighter night owl where the whole shebang got started.

You could call Northern Soul a genre, I suppose. But it’s more than that. It’s the representation of something wild and free, something soulful and emotional; it’s living life forward and discovering life backward. (Have you met my friend Tea?)

As far as opening montages go, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Teenagers doing school things: tests, No. 2 pencils, eyes on your own paper – except Tea and Betty, who are engaged in some borderline nonverbal foreplay. Tea doing home things: ignoring her mom, pounding on the bathroom door, dropping E, e.e. cummings tattoo, shimmying into those striped cotton knickers Skins lesbians love so much. Northern Soul (retro fad dyke bar) things: fake ID, parting crowd, Betty and Tea circling and circling each other, measuring the distance between play and pounce. Tony Clarke over here just crooning away about crushing misery. And Tea and Betty stumbling home, licking and laughing and legitimately f–king the night into oblivion.

(You know why old rich white dudes and evangelical Christians think Skins is the most dangerous thing on TV? ‘Cause if word ever gets out that women can be proud to have awesome, casual, transformative sex – with other women, even! – there’s going to be a revolution the likes of which lingering Puritanism has never seen, and the Parents Television Council and supporting Baptist cohorts will not survive it. It’s not about morality; it’s about power. Take a good look at the history of the church and come back and tell me I’m wrong.)

Tea wakes up tangled up in Betty.

In my experience, the worst part of an all-night teenage shagathon is when you have to go to trigonometry without your homework the next day. Ha ha ha! I was so clueless about my own sexuality in high school, the only thing I ever worried about in trigonometry was passing notes to my BFF asking if she’d done blow jobs with her boyfriend the night before, and never pausing to wonder why it made me nauseous when the answer was yes. Maybe if I’d had Skins instead of 7th Heaven, eh?

Betty isn’t overly concerned with cotangent functions, though; the math she’s most worried about is how many people live in Tea’s house. Not in a “where do you people sleep?” kind of way, but in a “what kind of landmine situation are we talking about here, in terms of escape?” kind of way. Tea says it’s just her folks, offers them up in the way of salutation, and smirks a practiced smirk when Betty starts to panic. (Polka-dot dresses always take me to a Minnie Mouse place. Is that weird?)

Betty is working hard to keep it from turning into a walk of shame when Tea’s dad comes walking in the front door, home from one of his 30 jobs and exhibiting some Keith Mars-like mannerisms that make me love him immediately. He doesn’t ask, but Tea likes her inside jokes, so she tells him Betty dropped by last night to “chew some things over.” He’s confused about the day of the week, maybe. Or the season. Or Tea’s age. He goes, “You have … school?” She like, “Yeah, Dad.” He says education is important; don’t screw around with it. And Betty just shouts “SCREW!” like one of those people who got hypnotized at a magic show on vacation one time, and now when the doorbell rings they holler, “CHICKEN!” (People with whom I’m smitten #3: Betty. I’m making a list. You can play too if you want.)

Tea’s dad suddenly remembers that Betty is ol’ so-and-so’s kid from down the block, and he drags her into the kitchen under the pretense of showing her off to Tea’s mom, but really so we can know what she meant earlier when she said, “Jesus, how many people live here?!”

Answer: Mom; Dad; generic asshole brother straight out of like a Kohl’s catalog, which is a bummer because even horrible Skins siblings are usually awesome; pregnant sister; niece and nephew; and Nana with dymentia playing Solitaire and rambling with great authority about President Kennedy’s dick. Betty, it is safe to say, is three seconds from hyperventilating. Tea’s mom harps to Betty about how lazy Tea is, and Tea’s sister goes, “Aren’t you the tomboy that used to climb trees?” (Possibly my favorite line of the episode.) It’s raucous, is what what I’m saying, until the doorbell rings and Tea’s brother announces, “Hey, it’s the lesbian!”

Daisy wanders in to the tune of Tea’s mom shouting about, “You have got to talk to him about that! We don’t use the L word; you know it upsets grandma!” (You’re not alone, Nana; The L Word upsets everyone.)

Outside, Daisy says, “Are you going to tell them I’m not a lesbian any time soon?” And it reminds me so very much of Naomi saying to Emily, “Are you going to tell people you’re gay any time soon?” that I actually need a second to recover my composure. (It’s cool; Betty needs some time, too. Daisy just pointed out she’s got some hickey activity happening on her neck.)

Tea leans in for a goodbye kiss, and Betty’s brain just pops! like when you flip the switch and your light bulb is donezo. She stumbles and stutters about how Tea can’t tell anyone they slept together, and she’s calculating exactly how many people she’s going to have to kill now because you’ve got Tea who knows she’s gay, all those lezzers at Northern Soul, possibly the entire family in the kitchen, and now Tea’s best friend. As Betty sort of limps away, dumbfounded and mumbling to herself about hickeys, Tea calls out, “Scaredy cat!” Daisy goes, “Good night?” Tea says, “Eh, it was all right.” Smiles. “There was a lot of lickin’!”

Tea Marvelli, aren’t you something?

Tea’s dad hops off the front porch in his skivvies asking if she remembers their little conversation about how it would be good for the family if she went bowling and made nice with a boy, funny business optional. At first, I thought this was Tea’s dad acknowledging that she’s a lesbian, but that maybe the rest of her family isn’t really ready to hear about it. But no. It’s actually a mild prostitution/mob thing; an acquaintance-making endeavor, if you will. And Tea will. She says it’s cool, not to worry, and her dad looks shifty and reminds her not to mention Tony Soprano to her mother.

So Tea is totally out to her friends, not so much to her family. Maybe she thinks they should already know? Maybe they just can’t hear her saying it? The narrative parallels between Tea and her Nana are masterful, and it all started at the breakfast table earlier when Nana was saying a thousand things and no one was listening.

On the bus, Tea explains to Abbud and Daisy about her dad being a gangster: “He knows people who know people, and sometimes it’s good if I go on a date with a boy, so that people who know people can know more people, and then someone ends up at the bottom of the river. You know, a Tuesday.”

Cadie is feeling the Northen Soul, too, through her can headphones in the school cafeteria. Tony tries to get her attention because she’s the only person in school he hasn’t chatted up about Stanley’s virginity today. (Again: a Tuesday.) When she finally acknowledges his presence, Tony opens up six or seven notebooks on the table, all: “As you can see from the records I’ve been keeping charting the trajectory of Stanley’s penis since the age of 11, he still has not boned a woman. When I was meditating on his virginity this morning – as I do every morning, between the hours of 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., before I do my daily reading of his love horoscope, of course – it occurred to me that, perhaps, you might be interested in easing the social pressure thrust upon him by … well, me, mostly … by telling people you’re having sex with him?” Cadie agrees, because it’s sweet, and she likes that. Then she puts her headphones back on speedy quick so she doesn’t have to hear Tony drone on about how picked up Divination class so he can stare at Stanley’s penis in a crystal ball and read the tea leaves of his future sexual conquests. (That kind of talk always ruins corn dog day.)

Because the only person who loves private jokes more than Tea is Tony, he sidles up to the table where Tea is wiping chocolate off Stanley’s mouth and tells her she’s going to have to bare her breasts at next week’s halftime show because Stanley and Cadie so totally did it. Michelle halts the conversation when she launches her mouth at Tony’s mouth from 50 feet away, landing in his lap, faces stuck together like osmosis. When they pull apart, Betty is staring at Tea from across the cafeteria like corn dog day is the very last thing on her mind.

It’s some real good gazing, all longing and confusion and defiance and hope and resignation, and meanwhile Betty’s boyfriend has his head in her lap and Tea gets it (“You gotta not tell anybody about this”) and Randa and the Soul Kingdom are wailing about I’m not gonna let you / play me for / for the fool / I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you / it’s not my way.

This scene could have gone on for another two minutes and it would have been all right with me. Tony & Co. making boob jokes in the background, and maybe even a whole other Randa tune (“I Do What I Do”?) while the camera closed in on Betty and Tea working the whole thing out – from apprehension to aggression – with their eyes.

Instead – oh, hey look! It’s a member of the Parents Television Council! I don’t know why they’ve been so worked up; here’s their message, right in the middle of the second episode of the show: “There is a lot of bad stuff out there … we’re talking serious shenanigans here, like: drugs; alcohol; saying bad stuff; wrongful sex acts; tattoos; piercings below the waist area. Real bad stuff that we’ve got to avoid.”

(That’s another other reason I think the PTC hates Skins. The show makes their approach look stupid because their approach is stupid.)

Mad Mao Le Dong is one of the guest speakers, and he’d like to take this opportunity to explain the pain he’s going to rain down on Stanley if he doesn’t pay for that weed he lost in the harbor at the end of last week’s episode. Stanley is torn out of the frame in the bathroom afterward, and Tony uses it as an excuse tweak those nipples he can’t stop jabbering about. Then everyone bounces to class, talking over each other about how Stanley shouldn’t panic: “It’s not like a Skins authority figure has ever abused his power and beaten a child to death or anything, relax.”

Betty finds Tea swigging some vodka and proclaiming to the hallway at large that real life sucks. Tea says “oh” when Betty touches her shoulder, turns around to face her.

Tea: Betty. We had sex. But I’m not really looking for anything else.

Betty: Why not?

Tea: Did someone mention a boyfriend? What’s that for, show?

Betty: I have to have a boyfriend.

Tea: That sounds like pretending to me, and that’s bad stuff we have to avoid. And I don’t want a relationship.

Betty: Why not?

Tea: ‘Cause not one matches up to me.

Betty: You’re just an arrogant bitch, really, aren’t you?

Tea: [whispering] Sorry!

Betty: [whispering] Scaredy cat!

Here comes that Nana parallel! Tea’s head is done in at dinner, maybe because Betty is the first person to ever call her on her shit, and her house is just noise, noise, noise, noise, and she tries to get her mom’s attention – twice – maybe to say she’s gay, maybe just to be heard saying something, and when enough is enough is enough is enough, she bangs her hands down on the table and shouts, “For Christ’s sake!” She’s going to say it, then, you can see it in her eyes, but shit, yeah, her sister’s water breaks. (That is my favorite line of the episode.) And off everyone goes, leaving Tea at the table with Nana, alone together.

Tea retires to her bedroom where she asks Audrey Hepburn‘s most iconic Breakfast at Tiffany’s photo how it is that her parents don’t know she’s gay. Peeling back the layers of this episode is like being locked in a candy store, I swear. Northern Soul we’ve done. We’ll do the e.e. cummings thing in just a second, so hold tight for that. But here we’ve got Tea echoing the Holly Golightly sentiment she splashed all over Betty in the hallway earlier (“We don’t belong to each other. We just took up one day by the river. I don’t want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.”), right out loud like this: “For you, Audrey, I’d come back.”

I was afraid they were going to cut this masturbation scene after all that hullabaloo last week, and I’m so proud they didn’t. Nana walks in and watches Tea for a squirm-inducing moment before crawling into the wrong bed beside her. Tea doesn’t know just yet how alike she and her Nana are, but she knows they have in common the fact that no one ever hears them. Nana thinks Tea is her mother, Ruthie, and she tells her not to marry Tea’s father. Tea returns the confession: “Something’s wrong with me, Nana. I want the sex, but the girls I sleep with bore me. They’re catty, clingy, I don’t know. It never feels … enough. Is it too much to ask for someone to be interesting? I just want to feel equal. Is it too much?”

Tea’s date with the mob turns out to be a date with Tony. Tea’s dad and Tony’s dad both needed the acquaintance. They hit up the playground with a shared bottle of vodka instead of the bowling alley with two soda pops. It’s Skins-y on the merry-go-round, super Skins-y, and they take it in turns to drop their propaganda and tell the truth. Or, as much of their truths as they know. She’s a wild thing, she says, a free spirit. And you musn’t give your heart to a wild thing: a hawk with a broken wing, a wildcat with a broken leg. The more you do, the stronger they get, until they’re strong enough to run into the woods, or fly into a tree. And then to a higher tree. And then to the sky.

Tony believes her, but believes also that he’s as wild, and he’s as free. (He’s never not been the Fred, darling, so this is going to be some kind of blow.)

She takes him to Northern Soul, I think, the club from the opening. They’re alone except for that ol’ troubadour Marlena Shaw singing about wading in the water. Tea dances for him first, unabashedly, and he joins her. They circle each other, just like her and Betty, and then they’re making out against the wall, making out on the couch. Tony reaches for his zipper and that’s when Tea cracks. Cracks up, actually, because what in the hell is she doing? She’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe. “That was … terrible. Just terrible.” Tony says: “Normal girls like it.” And she laughs some more: “They must be really stupid.”

(If you’re not in love with Sofia Black D’elia‘s laugh, I don’t know what to say to you except I don’t think I can be your friend anymore.)

Tony’s kind of embarrassed about being rebuffed, but also he’s like, “Gosh, how long’s it been since I went a whole afternoon without thinking about Stanley’s wang? Progress!”

Mad Mao Le Dong is waiting for Tea when she gets home, way more sinister than I remember. He calls her a dyke and grabs her arm. Tea counts it off in her head “3 … 2 …” and Keith Mars is in his underwear again on the front lawn with his hands crossed over his chest like Popeye the Sailor Man, like he’s about to f–k a twatter up.

Tea can’t sleep, so she plods into Nana’s room and asks to sleep with her. She couldn’t look anymore innocent if she was dragging a blanket behind her. Nana says, “Did you get scared?” Tea nods, and Nana pats the bed beside her. She crawls in beside her grandmother – this free spirit, this wild thing – and pulls the covers up to her chin. Nana starts in again on American presidents, Eisenhower this time, but it’s not the same.

President Eisenhower let me down. Some kind of war hero. He can kiss my ass. (“He can kiss my ass, too, Nana.”) I told her, ‘This is a free country; no one can hurt you now. We got no ghettos here, Marta.’ Eisenhower should have helped us. He should have put a stop to it – but it was on the radio every day. I guess they thought between us and the communists we were going to tear the place down.

They even gave us a name, so every body knew what to hate – Lavender. I told her, ‘It’s a sweet flower; how can a flower hurt anyone?’ But people visited. They said that wasn’t the way Jewish people behaved. And Marta got so scared that they knew we loved each other.

I heard she married a farmer in Wisconsin. Everybody’s most particular there.

Shame on you, Mr. President! Shame on you!

When it happens, this is how it happens: A woman you’ve never not known is telling you a story you think you’ve always heard. It’s political, because it’s always political. But in a moment of uncommon lucidity, it’s personal too. More personal than anything has ever been or will ever be. And you understand, for the first time, the words inked permanently onto your skin:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

So to recap (the recap): In the last 48 hours, Tea: presumably failed a test she was too bored to take, spent the night making ecstasy-fueled love to kind of an angel, played the Golightly card, tried to come out to her parents, became an auntie (again), got caught wanking by her grandmother, solicited herself for the good of her family/the mob, almost f–ked a dude, was very nearly axe-murdered by a drug dealer, and found out her grandmother was a victim of the lavender scare. Am I forgetting anything? It’s been a full few days; she should call it a week. A month, maybe. Probability being what it is, the foundation of her world won’t be rocked again for a while. (Spoiler alert: wrong!)

Tea’s back in the cafeteria, trying to digest just … everything. Michelle sits down across from her, and can I just say how much I’m loving Michelle? Because I am. So much. This next bit with the talking with her food in her mouth? Hearts in my eyes, you guys. She asks about Tea’s date, and Tea shoves her secrets down even further. She says “just some guy” and Michelle wants to know if he tried to get in her pants. “But you explained, right?” she says, which is only the most awesomely straight-but-not-narrow thing to say.

We could talk about that some more or we could all hold our breath because Betty appears on the scene like lightning and in an instant her lips are trembling against Tea’s like the moon over water, steady, steady, steady. She pulls away after long enough for everyone in the cafeteria – her boyfriend included – to have felt the thickness of the moment. “I put my truth on you,” she says. It’s brave. Reckless. Impulsive. (Michelle likes that in a woman.)

Tony is pissed, his eyes spelling “V-a-r-j-a-k” over there as angrily as they can. I warned him, though. I warned him that he’d never be Tea’s Fred-baby.

Tea’s dad is waiting outside with Mad Mao Le Dong in his car because he thinks he was attacking Tea for being Jewish. Once again, Tea tries to seize the opportunity to explain that she’s a raging homosexual, but her dad’s mob-feelings are mangled up in a tangled up knot, and the only solution is concrete and fishes. They drive Dr. Le Dong out toward the harbor. (Hey, maybe he’ll find his weed there, floating in that bag!)

At home, Tea wanders into Nana’s room. Tony calls. He says he matched her, and she doesn’t know how to explain that yes, but no. Betty calls, too. She hangs up on him, denies her, and brandishes her iPod. There’s lavender on Nana’s dresser, a sweet flower.

When it happens, this is how it happens: A woman is singing you a song, and she’s taking you back. Back to the English mod scene of the ’70s. Back to the African American gospel and soul of the ’60s. Back and back and back and back to coded slave songs because that’s where “Let’s Wade in the Water” was born. “Singing as an expression of democratic values and community solidarity; singing as a source of inspiration and motivation; singing as an expression of protest.” Singing and singing and singing. Dancing your way toward freedom.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button