Alison's Final

 The Scruffiest of Scrapbooks
     “So I googled your zine” and it I found a few descriptions of it in different zine libraries around the country and one of the descriptions called it lusty,” declared her soon to be husband, Chris. “How was it lusty? Why won’t you show it to me? You said you were pretty virginal and prudish as a teenager? How could you be lusty?”
      Inevitably, the subject of the zine comes up when she brings any potential suitor home to meet her parents. You probably have those embarrassing pictures of yourself running through the sprinkler naked as a little kid that your parents trot out when you bring your new boyfriend home during the holidays, while she has Scruffy. Once they have gotten the embarrassing story ball rolling by describing the plastic babydoll décor of her 16^th birthday party, her parents tell stories of Scruffy. It’s more mythology than fact at this point because they haven’t gone to the trouble to unearth it from the basement, cluttered with her forgotten art projects, art history textbooks and her grandmother’s old furniture. It’s been ages since anyone has bothered to dig up the earliest zines that she penned during her sophomore year of high school at age 15.
     The cover of issue one was emblazoned with childhood icon Punky Brewster, who became its default mascot in her pigtails, purple vest and bandana, accessorized ripped jeans. It was 8 ½ x 11. Large format. She had never seen a zine when she got started. She’d simply read about them in the curiously similar sounding, consonant sharing, Sassy magazine. She’d purchased a book about zines, but she didn’t realize most zinesters went with a smaller format due to photocopy prices. Hers was the ultimate form of teen rebellion- parent sponsored. For some reason her mother, who she spat and quarreled with at the first symptoms of puberty through high school graduation, agreed to run her to Kinko’s and loaned out her credit card for the cause. When it came to teenage rebellion, she was an expert. Go big or go home!
     It didn’t start out as angry and whiney. It was a positive space to share hopes, dreams and record reviews. In Scruffy, she established her identity as a self-declared feminist, subscribing to an underground, third wave feminist movement called riot grrrl that linked women’s empowerment, punk rock music and the do-it-yourself ethic. She explored the contradictions of her “revolution grrrl style” lifestyle with her desire to have a boyfriend or at least talk to a teenage boy. After the first few issues, alienation from friends and teasing at school caused a dip in grades and spats with her parents. She confined herself to her room, spending Friday evenings collaging fashion magazines, cutting and pasting, and spilling India ink all over her bedspread. Her mother was not amused.  She’d been popular in high school, dated football players. She didn’t understand the shut-in lifestyle, the piles of clothes spread all over the bedroom or the India ink.
     Upon meeting her, her husband’s brothers shared stories of dragging him home after drunken teenage blackouts that his single mother seemed oblivious to. His anger at his missing father was acted out in drunken benders in motel rooms rented out by the hour. While her rebellion was quieter, it didn’t go ignored by her own mother. Actually, it did go ignored for a little while. Her mother never looked at the zine, treating it like a private diary. She was happy as long as her daughter kept from using the words fuck or bitch, until one of her co-workers was curious and asked to see a copy, remarking, “Your daughter seems very upset with you.” What does a privileged, middle class, white suburban teenager have to be upset about? Why male white corporate oppression of course...and their mothers.
     Jump 15 years ahead. “What are you making your husband for dinner tonight?” her mother inquires, as she checks in during the commute home after a long day of work at the museum. “I have no idea. Why am I obligated to make my husband dinner? He’s perfectly capable of cooking for himself. He did it for the 36 years before I met him,” explains the newlywed, ex-zinester. Her mother seems a long ways away from the woman who marched for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and this frustrates her, which her mother can probably pick up on in the tone of her reply. She wonders how becoming a wife and a mother changes who you are and what you believe. Do you lose a piece of yourself? Do your values get lost? She tries to hold on to the identity that her years of teenage writing helped her solidify. Her rage is gone, but it doesn’t stop her from explaining to her young tour groups that her name is Ms. Alison or starting a spat with a supervisor about a docent dropping the term “homosexuality” on an elementary school tour. She still feels lost between worlds, trying to work the balancing act of being a museum professional, a feminist, a wife all while carefully contemplating the possibility of motherhood. These small, daily self-affirming incidents just don’t seem to completely do the trick. She has to embrace her past if she doesn’t want to lose herself. Upon her return home, she resolves to go to the basement and dust off her scruffy scrapbooks.