I spoke to Kelly for the first time in months last night. Since she avoided me because I wrote about our threesome with a stripper, I won’t include our conversation in this post. Sometimes friends are worth more than a short essay. Sometimes.
She sat across from me on top of a white lawn chair in a garbage filled alley in alphabet city. Her appearance has changed. Her once straightened hair is now curly because she doesn’t bother to try. American Apparel leggings and black short shorts clinging to her pale skin, she looked gorgeous but messy—very Lower East Side.
“Why do you care so much about what guys think about you?” I asked.
“I’m a nineties baby!” she wailed. “I grew up on Disney movies!”
By Disney movies, she meant the Howard Ashman/Alan Menken Disney movies—The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, and Aladdin. Each Ashman script included a girl who found love against the odds, usually love from the kind of guys we shouldn’t chase after—rich guys, abusive guys, poor troubled guys. But the love turned healthy. Love made everyone change for the good, as it made the beast a human.
Howard Ashman has left this impact on my generation, but we know nothing about his personal love life. All the boys he loved have left an impact on everybody.
