school. It was for Washington, D.C.–area high schools, and it was huge. We hired this band called the Hot Nuts, and there was an admission fee and we made a lot of money. We had so much money that we all spent a week in Virginia Beach, and the fraternity paid for little bungalows and dinner every night and maybe even some spending money. I went my junior and senior year and was in a fraternity the whole way through high school. People had slow-dance parties in basements, too, and I’d also go to those. Movies didn’t mean anything to me when I was a teenager. The only time I went to movies was when I’d go to the drive-in, and I’d go there for making out. I went to movie theaters a few times, but why go to the theater? It’s cold and dark and the day is going by outside. You could be doing so many things.
I dress the same way now that I dressed then, and I wasn’t aware in high school that I had my own style. I got my clothes at Penney’s. I loved khaki pants and I liked wearing a coat and tie—it was just something I felt comfortable with. I wore three ties for a long time, two bow ties and a regular tie, but I wouldn’t tie the bow ties—they’d just be knotted at the top. I’ve always buttoned the top button of my shirt because I don’t like air on my collarbone and I don’t like anyone touching my collarbone. It makes me crazy and I don’t know why. It might’ve been one of the reasons for the ties, to protect my neck.
I met Jack Fisk at school and we became friends because we were both interested in art, but the thing I really liked about Jack is that he’s a dedicated worker. When you see the seriousness of him working and building stuff, it’s a beautiful thing. I have tremendous respect for Jack, and because I met him when we were young, those are friends that you keep longer. I probably haven’t talked to him in months, but Jack is my best friend. I remember meeting his sister Mary very well, too. She was a fox and I was always attracted to her. We dated a little bit and I made out with her and I think Jack got really upset.
Linda Styles was my girlfriend during my freshman year. Linda was petite and real dramatic and we used to make out in her basement. Her parents were nice—her father was in the navy and her mom was real sweet, and they let me smoke there. Most people didn’t mind smoking in those days. Later on Linda ended up going with this ringleader guy, and I think he was screwing her. See, I didn’t get there until I was eighteen, the summer after high school. Maybe I was slow, but I think I was pretty normal for those days. It was a different time. After Linda Styles I saw some other girls. If I had a type, I guess you could say I liked brunettes the best, and I kind of liked librarian types, you know, their outer appearance hiding smoldering heat inside. . . .
Judy Westerman was my main high school girlfriend, and I loved her so much. She sort of looked like Paula Prentiss. Was I faithful to her? No. I mean, I was and I wasn’t. I was seeing some different girls and getting further with them because Judy was a Catholic. We probably did more on the early dates than later, because she kept going to catechism and finding out more things she wasn’t allowed to do. Only one girl broke my heart and her name was Nancy Briggs. She was the girlfriend of my friend Charlie Smith, and I don’t know if he knew I loved his girlfriend. She didn’t love me, though. I was nuts for her all during the first half of my year at college in Boston, and I was just brokenhearted.
During Christmas break when I was going to college in Boston, I went down to Virginia and I was pining away, and David Keeler said, “Why don’t you just take her to lunch and see what’s going on?” So I called Nancy and we went to McDonald’s. We took our food to the car and I asked her if she loved me, and she said no, and that was it. I just sort of carried it for a long time and I’d have dreams about her. What was it about Nancy Briggs? I just loved her, and who knows why you fall in love with somebody. Nothing ever happened with her, but I just couldn’t get her out of my system. After I finished shooting Blue Velvet I was in Wilmington, and for some reason I decided, I’m going to call Nancy Briggs. Somehow I got her number and I called her up, and the second I heard her voice the pining was completely lifted. It went from a dream to reality, and the dream was the powerful thing. It’s amazing what we do in our brains. Why did I pine for all those years? Go figure . . .
Things were changing in the country at the end of the fifties, so the change I felt when we moved to Virginia was also happening in Boise. Then when Kennedy was assassinated it got really bad. I remember that day. I was setting up an art display by myself in these big glass cases in the entrance hall to the school, right next to the administration office, and I heard something about the president on the radio in there. They hadn’t said he’d died, but he was in the hospital and the buzz started. When I finished what I was doing, this woman said, “You have to go back to your class,” so I went back to class and they made the announcement and closed the school. I walked Judy home and she was sobbing so much she couldn’t talk. Kennedy was Catholic like her and she loved him so much. She lived in an apartment building on the second floor, so we walked up and went inside and her mom was in the living room. Judy walked away from me, passed her mom, turned a corner, went into her room, and didn’t come out for four days.
At the time I didn’t question who killed Kennedy, but you start looking into things. They say, Look who’s got the motive. LBJ lived in Texas and got him down there, and LBJ wanted to be president since he was three feet tall. LBJ was the most powerful senator they say there ever was, and he gave that up to be vice president? He was one twenty-five-cent bullet away from the presidency, and I think he hated Kennedy and he organized it so he could be president. That’s my theory.
In the eighth grade I liked science for some reason, so when I started ninth grade I signed up for all science classes. Now I can hardly believe it. The whole four years is booked in science! Then in ninth grade I meet Toby Keeler and he tells me his father is a painter—no, not a house painter, a fine-art painter—and, literally, boom! A bomb goes off in my head. All these things must’ve just flown together like a hydrogen bomb and that was it, that’s all I wanted to do. But I had to go to school, and high school was the worst. To go to that building for so many hours every day just seemed ridiculous. I have about three high school classroom memories, and none of them are good. I remember saying to Sam Johnson, “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” We were about to have a test, and he would tell me things and I’d try to remember them long enough to take the test. I never studied and couldn’t get out of these science classes, and I got thrown off the student council because I flunked physics and refused to go to class. Instead of going, I’d go down to the front office and beg, “Let me out of this; I don’t want to be a physicist,” and they said, “David, there are some things in life you have to do whether you like it or not.” My little brother was into electronics from an early age and that’s what he wound up going into, and I think you know what you’re going to do when you’re a kid. They should take us out of school and just let us concentrate on whatever that thing is. Holy smokes! I could’ve been painting all that time I spent in school! And I remember zip. Zip! I can’t remember a fuckin’ thing I learned in school.
The weekend after I met Toby Keeler he took me to his father’s studio, and at that point Bushnell had a studio in Georgetown that was so fucking great. He was living the art life and painting all the time. I only saw his Georgetown studio once, and the next thing I know he’s moved from Georgetown to Alexandria, where he had a whole building. I wanted a studio and Bushnell offered to rent me a room in his new place, so I talked to my father and he said, “I’ll pay half if you get a job and pay the other half.” So I got a job at Herter’s Drug Store delivering prescriptions in the store’s red-and-white jeep. It was an open jeep with a stick shift. I can’t believe I did that. I’d have to find people’s addresses and take drugs to them, and that’s a lot of responsibility. On weekends I’d sometimes work the cigar counter at Herter’s. During that period Bushnell would get models and I’d get to sit in on these things and draw, and he always had coffee going. A guy named Bill Lay went in on the room with me but he never showed up there.
Jack had started working in my room at Bushnell’s, though, and it wasn’t big enough for both of us so we moved into a studio above a shoe store. Our landlady was named Mrs. Marciette, and she didn’t have any teeth. She complained to us a lot—“I’m
