For days after the nation made her acquaintance, it looked as if something terrible had happened to Monica Lewinsky, something even worse than serving as the amatory equivalent of a spittoon and then getting the “Never heard of her” treatment. Networks kept showing a black-and-white picture of Monica — wan, disoriented, and dumpy — that led one to think she’d drowned, or been killed in some car crash or wilding incident. That’s because it was the ” senseless tragedy” picture, the picture of last resort, the picture the press gets when even the paparazzi can’t bring themselves to invade a grieving family’s privacy: the high-school yearbook picture.
There is no such thing as a good one. At my high school north of Boston, every student was plunked into the same chair in a room above the gym and told to look at the same spot high up the wall. So each page of the yearbook would show 24 teens with their chins aimed at the same spot in the northeast corner of the page, like a Lacoste-shirt version of a Soviet propaganda poster.
Candid shots were worse. The yearbook staff was made up of every loner whose father owned a camera. Once they had settled on a stupid name for the whole effort — “Reveille” or “Ripples in the Pond” or “Palimpsest” — they spent most of their time photographing each other doing headstands and squashing bananas on their foreheads. But there was still enough film left over for endless shots of some wag making the V-for-cuckoldry sign behind the heads of various teachers and hall monitors, Paul G. groping Kathy M. under the lunch table, the gym teacher digging in his nose, and Pudgy T.’s bum- crack arcing out of his dungarees as he stooped to pick up his notebook.
Worse than the pictures were the biographies. In junior high, Mike F., Georgie H., and I agreed we would write each other’s yearbook entries. Georgie was the best athlete and the handsomest kid in our class, and close to the richest. Mike and I paid him due tribute in the ellipsis-laden stream- of-consciousness style popular at the time:
Wendy (“Afternoon Delight”) . . . Laurie . . . Student-Athlete Award 1976 . . . Susan (“Hold Ya Till I Die”) . . . MVP (baseball) . . . Pam (“Chevy Van” ) . . . Amy . . . Susan2 . . . MVP (football) . . . Susan3 . . .
Mike and Georgie wrote me up in the same genre, but without quite the wealth of material. Across from the picture of me in my alligator shirt, gazing skywards with a slack mouth full of braces, tongue, and drool, they had strung together such portents of greatness as they could assemble:
Riding his bike to the store . . . paper route . . . “Chris, mow the lawn!” . . . Getting picked up after school by his grandfather . . . Going to McDonald’s for a fish sandwich . . .
The write-up Mike got was the most literary of the three. Mike was still waiting for his growth spurt. That would be our leitmotif! “Inch for inch, Mike is the greatest athlete in the world,” Georgie and I wrote. “– But then you have to consider his height! His future goal is to reach five feet.” And on and on, with jokes about how Mike dwarfed the competition and would probably marry someone who was fond of shrimp.
I still feel guilty about that, a guilt assuaged only by the knowledge that what we’d done was no worse than what students routinely brought on themselves. Why did Peter M. include his nickname, which was “Piddle,” or Randy S. include his, which was “Martha”? Why all the paeans to dope smoking? (“They call Ricky the Doobin King and host of the Bong Show.”) Actually, I know why: It was the only extracurricular activity everyone at my high school shared.
Others copied down as epigraphs the lyrics to favorite rock songs. Separated from their melodies, they leapt from the page in Dadaist splendor:
Margaret K. (“Bug-Eye”) Cheerleading Jr, Sr / Math Team Sr Midnight at the oasis, Sing your camel to bed. — Maria Muldaur
“I was a free man in Paris / I felt unfettered and alive — Joni Mitchell, “ did not necessarily imply that the student in question had ever left Massachusetts. “Great spirits have always faced violent opposition from mediocre minds — Einstein,” was popular among those on the junior college track. And “I love you . . . I honestly love you — Olivia Newton- John” was a favorite of those whose high school experience of love was limited to Olivia Newton-John songs.
Which brings me back to Monica, and which is why I see the hand of the White House in the release of her yearbook photo. I smell intimidation, conspiracy, and blackmail. Why else would Monica have said nothing in the four weeks since the story broke? Why, indeed! Unless someone in the White House has got to her and said, “Deny, deny, deny — or we’ll release the whole yearbook.”
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
