Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (16 page)

I looked at the lifestyle before me and knew what I had to do. I was committed to making it, and there was virtually no sacrifice I wasn’t willing to make.

10

A
t this point in Suzette’s and my relationship, I finally figured out something discouraging. She wasn’t into me. It took me weeks to fully realize it, but by then I was so committed to winning this girl’s heart, there was no turning back.

Apparently, my She Digs Me meter was way off.

Why was she smiling so broadly at me at that first show? Suzette explained that she and her best friend, Wendy, had met these two guys, borrowed other people’s proof of age (thank you for that, Cousin Felicia), and come to the club to see the “girl groups” Bonnie Parker and Twisted Sister. When she walked into the club, Twisted Sister was onstage, and from a distance she thought we were just that,
girls
. Once she got up close and saw what we
really
were, she couldn’t stop smiling. I was a freak! Though she did think we were great.

Then why did she give me her phone number that night? Because she was
afraid
not to. When I asked her why she didn’t just give me a wrong number instead, she said she thought about it, but choked. What about coming to see me the following week at another club? Well, after speaking to me on the phone every day, she thought I was a nice guy (the only thing I actually had going for me) and felt bad saying no when I invited her.

What I gradually discovered in the weeks to come was, not only wasn’t Suzette interested or attracted to me,
she was repulsed by
me!
She was embarrassed to be seen with me. How freakin’ self-absorbed was I? In case you haven’t already noticed, I am a textbook narcissist.

To top things off, Suzette had no prior interest in music or bands. She didn’t own so much as one record or tape, and she had nothing to play them on if she did.

Suzette repeatedly tried pretty much everything to break up with me during those first few months, but I just wouldn’t let go. No matter what her complaint was about me, I adjusted for it. Whatever she didn’t like, I changed. When I raised my voice to her for the first time and she opened the door of my car and started to jump out while it was still moving, I swore I would never yell at her again. I still don’t.
¹
The more I realized that she didn’t want me, and the more I knew about her, the more I wanted her.

This was my theory: I was convinced I was going to make it, and I knew that any girl who was interested in me once I did would be into me for all the wrong reasons. Namely, I was a rich, famous rock star.

My thinking was, if I could win Suzette’s heart, get her to love me
for me
, I would always know she was with me for the right reasons. Not because I was in a band or had fame or money or she liked my music.
²
By starting our relationship as a total zero, whatever happened, I could never go lower than that . . . zero. I would never have to worry about why she was with me. I don’t know where I got this odd wisdom from, but I was right.

I need to give credit to Suzette’s childhood best friend Wendy Cohen-Yair, who coached me through the rocky shores of dating Suzette. I would often call Wendy for counsel when I was confused
by my girlfriend’s actions and/or didn’t know what to do. Wendy would always talk me through it, even the time Suzette finally convinced me she didn’t want to go out with me anymore. I was going to pack it in and walk away from the relationship, but Wendy assured me that Suzette was totally into me and just didn’t know how to express herself.

So I hung in there. As it turned out,
Wendy lied.
Suzette really didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. When she asked Wendy why in God’s name she told me that she did, Wendy replied, “I felt bad for him. He’s so in love with you.” Thank you for that, Wendy. Suzette thanks you now, too. I told you we were meant to be together.

I wanted my first Christmas with Suzette to be great. We had been dating now for eight months and were starting to feel like a couple. For Suzette’s sixteenth birthday I had wowed her with a white German shepherd puppy. Suzette had had a beloved white German shepherd as a child, so I got her another. She loved it. I had to top the birthday gift on our first Christmas.

Unlike in the “economical” Christmases I had grown up with, I got Suzette four or five different gifts, the capper being a new portable television for her room. Hers had broken, and since she liked to sleep with the TV on, she was frustrated not to have one anymore. I knew I was going to blow her away.

Christmas Eve came and Twisted Sister wasn’t working.
³
I couldn’t wait to finish the celebration at my parents’ house and head over to Suzette’s with my gifts. Both families were Christmas Eve celebrators, but my family celebrated much earlier in the evening. Suzette’s family were Christmas Eve traditionalists: no gift was opened before midnight. I arrived in time for the festivities. The Gargiulo Christmas tree was
packed
with more gifts than I’d ever seen before.

Suzette, now in her junior year of high school, was taking an
accelerated schedule so she could graduate a year early and go to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She had been interested in clothing design since she was a kid (a much younger kid) and was chomping at the bit to embrace her chosen career. To that end, she enrolled in the fashion-design program at the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). BOCES allows students to attend their regular school and classes in the morning, then focus on more career-oriented learning in the afternoon. Anxious to jump-start her career, Suzette attended BOCES classes daily.

Meanwhile, back at the festivities, the gift-giving was in full swing. Now, at my house, we would hand out one gift at a time, watch the recipient open it, and react accordingly. As we did, my mom would pick up the torn wrapping paper from the floor and throw it out, then we would move on to the next gift.
Very civilized.
In the Gargiulo household . . . not so much. They had so many presents, if they went at that pace, it would be the New Year by the time they finished.

I don’t recall the exact nuances of the gift exchange, but I opened my first gift from Suzette to discover an amazing, handmade “Suzette original” design top for the stage! White, off one shoulder, with a sleevelet for the exposed arm, it had long, white fringe all over it. It was stunning . . .
ly gay!
I loved it!

I opened gift after gift (Suzette had way more for me than I had for her), to find more and more wild, original designs, which she had hand made for me at her BOCES school. While the other girls were working on designs for themselves—or normal people—Suzette had dedicated her entire fall to creating outfits for me to wear with the band. They were amazing!

Can you imagine what the teachers and other girls in her class thought when they saw Suzette working on these large, superfeminine outfits for her then-unknown, six-foot-one-inch, 180-pound boyfriend? (I was skinnier then.) Suzette didn’t care what other people thought. She never has.

The pièce de résistance was a skintight, pink spandex jumpsuit, open in the front to almost my pubes, with floor-length white fringe all across the back and the arms. I had told Suzette that I had always wanted an outfit like this, and she designed and made it for me. Unbelievable! To make the effort even more amazing, Suzette
couldn’t find long enough fringe, so she and her brothers and sister hand-tied two strands together for each individual fringe, to create the length for the entire outfit! I was blown away.

As I stood in the middle of the Gargiulo living room, knee-deep in wrapping paper (the Gargiulos just let it pile up), I was humbled by the generosity of my girlfriend and her family. Most of the gifts under the tree had been for me. I shuffled through the wrapping-paper pile like a kid through fallen leaves and vowed that Christmas would be like this from now on, if I had to work all year just to afford it. It always has.

More important, and not fully realized at that moment, Suzette’s massive effort had just launched me, and ultimately Twisted Sister, to a whole new level. Sure, she may just have been preventing me from ever wearing matching outfits with her again, but she had pushed me to embrace my inner transvestite and be the best Twisted Sister I could be.
Which is all she has ever done
—selflessly help others attain greatness.

There was no looking back!

11

I
n the tristate club scene, Twisted Sister was
the
party band. No one could light up a crowd the way we could, and we quickly became in high demand, especially for holidays and special events. When they were closing the original Hammerheads (the club where Suzette and I met), the owners decided to go out big and hire Twisted for the final blowout. Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. By the end of the night, interior walls had been ripped down and plumbing fixtures torn out, along with most of the drop ceiling, by marauding fans, revved up by the band. Our security that night were some biker/black-belt friends of ours from a karate school known as ACK (American Combat Karate). Founded by martial arts legend Richard Barathy, American Combat Karate was mixed martial arts years before it became fashionable. Credit where credit is due.

At some point during the crazed night, someone maced another in the overcrowded club, it got in the eyes of one of the ACK members, and then all hell broke loose. The scene was reminiscent of the Stones at Altamont with our black-belt/biker security kicking the shit out of pretty much anybody at arm’s (or leg’s) length . . . and the band played on! People were being taken away in ambulances (some guy actually had his ear bitten off!). My lasting memory of that night is the sight of the club’s massive central-air-conditioning unit dropping out of the ceiling and onto the crowd below. Hey, they said they wanted a blowout.