Homecoming Queen
Cold War memories from a Gen Xer.
There’s a chapter in my novel The Desert Road of Night, called The Waste Land, where the protagonists grapple with existential fears after witnessing their Cold War nightmares come to life in the made-for-TV movie The Day After. Of course, I based that chapter on my own experiences as a fourteen-year-old in 1983. But I also drew upon the experiences of another—my girlfriend—who, in 1992, after a night of watching TV with me and after something came on making reference to the fall of the Soviet Union, began a long conversation that went until sunrise.
We discovered that despite growing up differently and the age gap between us, we had the exact same fears. We had both grown up so anxious about the world around us that, in the summer of 1979, we both believed that when the space station Skylab1 was projected to crash back to Earth, it would inevitably land on us, regardless of where we were in the world. We both believed our luck was so bad that anything was possible, especially in the kind of childhood we discovered that night was our common, shared experience. It was filled with countless surprises and nonstop terror. We thought it was better for our mental health to expect the worst than to hope for the best.
We both loved the music of that era—especially anything by bands like Kraftwerk and Duran Duran—and it was during our long conversation, where she played songs by them and others like them from her worn-out cassettes, that she talked about how, after watching The Day After, she watched another movie. This one was about Nostradamus and his predictions for the New City, called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.2
I watched as the memories of those movies led her down a rabbit hole, where she went on an anxiety-induced rant, pacing in the darkness of her room, her body—her face—illuminated by the little light coming through the windows from the street lamps outside. She confessed that she had been bullied as a child for her weird facial features and eyes—“I was no homecoming queen”—then went on and on about how she used to cut herself as a way of asserting control over her life, her body, in a world filled with chaos.
She confessed that her reaction to watching those movies and the feeling it left her with—that nothing matters—“we’re just gonna die anyway”—was to lash out, rebel, and party like it was 1999.3 She did things to herself and her body that helped her forget her existential fears and the memory of being made to feel ugly in a world that could end at any moment, pushing her to seek validation through unhealthy means, resulting in significant health problems coming into the early 1990s.
I remember that night, after she talked herself into a panic over the feeling that she was going to die young, if not in 1999, then sometime soon after that. She kept saying, over and over, “I could feel it.” I remember having to calm her down—me, someone younger than her—having to promise her that nothing was going to happen in 1999. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Soviet Union was no more. The fear—the terror—of living through the Cold War was over. There would be no more surprises in the form of a bomb. A New World Order was upon us.
There was no telling of the surprises that awaited us in our future, and that is why her death, years later, was so devastating and still continues to haunt me. All I can think about, still to this day, is the terror on her face when she shared everything that lurked under that tough facade she worked so hard to project, when in fact, she lived in constant terror—the fears she had about her health and her future coming true.
So, when I wrote the chapter The Waste Land, I wanted to go back to that night and relive it. I wanted to do her memory justice. I played many of the songs she shared with me in the background. It made me want to not only write the chapter but also create something for her—like an old-school mixtape but with current sounds influenced by that Cold War era—and honor my old friend.
I wanted to honor the greatest gift she had given me—her vulnerability—by giving her, through this set, her Viking funeral, which I’m calling Homecoming Queen. And it is through this set that, by the end, I’m finally able to give her and this writing project my sendoff.
That set can be found over on SoundCloud.
Track List:
The Golden Filter - Restraint
Void Vision - Sour (Vanzetti & Sacco Remix)
Kendal - Profound Rosso
Longhair - Rhythm Activity
Marching Machines - Desolat
Cabaret Nocturne - Occult Spells
Infravision - 4am in Parga Street
White Label - I Was Afraid of the Dark
DC Sales - Sentimental Overdrive
Blaise Biada - Moon Quest
Pablo Pozzi - Last Moscow Mule
For those who would prefer an unmixed version, here’s a Spotify playlist I created comprised of tracks used in the DJ set.
In the meantime, I invite you to read the chapter, The Waste Land, and more by picking up a copy of my novel The Desert Road of Night, with the main character, Sylvia James, inspired by my old friend and others from that era, available for preorder on Amazon.
Want more? My Instagram isn’t where I write, but it’s where I share the images, music, and moments that shape the stories I tell. If you’re into the culture, the vibe, and the history behind these worlds, follow me @viktor.e.mares.
Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA. For months, it was in the news because it couldn't be re-boosted by the Space Shuttle, which wasn't ready until 1981. Skylab's orbit eventually decayed, and it disintegrated in the atmosphere on July 11, 1979, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.
The Man Who Saw Tomorrow is a 1981 documentary-style film about the predictions of French astrologer and physician Michel de Notredame, also known as Nostradamus. Orson Welles serves as both the host and narrator. The final part of the film delves into Nostradamus' alleged predictions for the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond.
There’s a reason 1999 by Prince was a popular song. It reflected the sentiment of our generation, especially since Nostradamus had predicted a great fire would come to the New City and the King of Terror would arrive in July 1999.