Her name was (is?) Gina and man, she duped us all. The facts are a bit hazy as it all happened nearly 20 years ago, but I’ll try and piece the story together as best as I can. We had all graduated high school (barely) and were either attending nearby community colleges or local four-year colleges. We were, like all late teens/early twentysomethings, just looking for fun.
We made our own fun back in those days, blasting punk rock out of our cars and yelling rude/idiotic things at hookers on the strip in Atlantic City, surfing, skateboarding or crashing parties of the local “normies” in the area. They were normies ‘cause none of them would have scrawled words like “Circle Jerks” or “Suicidal Tendencies” on the back of their grandad’s trenchcoats in black magic marker. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have been caught dead in their grandad’s trenchcoat.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things we weren’t radical or unique back then, but we sure as hell thought we were.
Anyhoo, at one of those normie parties, my buddy Chris hooked up with a stunning Italian gal named Gina. None of us had ever seen her before and we wondered if she had just moved to town. As it turned out she was Tom’s sister. Tom was one of my best pals. She was apparently the black sheep of the family and that’s why in all the time I had spent hanging with Tom I had never seen her or met her. He told us all to stay the hell away and that she was trouble but Chris didn’t listen—not for one second.
Our relationship with Tom became badly strained. Out of all of us, I was the one closest to him and he just barely continued speaking to me—and he ended up hating Chris as well as the rest of our crew. I was caught in the middle and felt like a sacrificial pawn (OK, so I’m exaggerating. I just wanted to use those two words in a sentence together) in this whole game.
She began playing us all against each other, spreading terrible lies about us and then saying that her dad was beating her. This was putting Chris in the middle of a big gossip barrage.
After Chris turned her onto bands like Minor Threat and 7 Seconds, she began writing fan letters to both Ian MacKaye and Kevin Seconds, explaining the “horrible” circumstances she was in, knowing these two stand-up gents would be sympathetic to her situation. She said MacKaye invited her down to Washington, D.C. to the Dischord house and of course she would bring Chris; this was going to be a huge thrill for him. She told Chris that MacKaye had invited her to live at the Dischord Records house because she needed to get away from her “abusive” dad.
Chris finally started getting wise to her games and he tried to distance himself from her. In an effort to get him back, Gina told Chris she was pregnant with his kid! Fatherhood is the last thing Chris wanted as he was getting ready to leave the state to finish out his four-year degree; he had visions of one-night stands and drunken keggers dancing in his head.
In the end, Gina slowly faded away (seems no one wanted to hang around a compulsive liar). Chris ended up getting that degree and Tom dropped his grudge against the crew of guys who had befriended his crazy sister.