Remembering Lucid Wendy & Reform School Girls

By Rhonda Baughman

I miss Wendy.
And I didn’t even know Wendy.
My father introduced me, via picture disc vinyl, to Wendy the breast baring rock star, but meeting Plasmatics’ guitarist Richie Stotts in Jersey at a Chiller Theater Convention in 2001 was the closest I could ever come to the real thing. I’m not complaining, since that guy is one of the greatest humans I’ve met. But I still miss Wendy.
In late 1998, for a novel of mine you will never read, Logging Logorrhea: An E-Pistolary Novel, I began to research both Robin Rochelle Stille and Wendy O. Williams. This would later be ironic, or just plain suck, I’m not sure which, when I realized I had just missed both of them.
It was the early days of the internet when you could find information on just about anyone – whether they wanted you to or not. And the worker bees of imdb.com let me know both Stille and Williams had committed suicide: in 1996 and 1998, respectively.
Well, fuck.
My intentions were not entirely altruistic; I thought highly of these women and thought they could lend to the novel. I still stand by this idea.
Furthermore, and rather selfishly, I thought How could they do this?!?
Then I began to think outside my egoistic shell: Why did they do this?
Finally, the altruistic nature I do possess, albeit latently, reared its cranky head: I wish I could have gotten there sooner – maybe I could have helped.
Childish, I know.
As do those of you who have had someone close to you commit suicide – you can’t stop it any more than you can stop the rise of the apocalypse and downswing of American civilization. But … nice try.
When I met Richie he would, in his staid, true, and adorable way – discuss a few of my questions concerning Wendy. And Stille’s family and fans would contact me in 2002 to say thanks for caring enough to dedicate a book in memory of our daughter. Granted, this is another book no one will ever read (Carnal Capers in Canton, Ohio- Book Two: Logorrhea) and I am starting to detect a pattern here, but I’m okay with this.
My job is done.
Or so I thought.
And, apparently not.
Here I am in 2008 – it’s the dawn of a new age for me. I have everything I ever wanted. No, really – anything I wished for, worked for, wanted desperately – has been realized. Not many people can say that. So, I’m here to tell you something – even if you can realize that, it still won’t be enough. It’s never enough.
Great.
It’s 9:13pm on a Saturday night in late March. For entering my third decade, I’ve opened a Diet Coke with lime (since it reminds me of the Brooklyn Take-Away Spirit shoot) and a bottle of Lucid – absinthe, for those unaware 42. Marilyn Manson would be proud – and so am I … I have been given the opportunity to correct an earlier absinthian faux pas experienced at a Rhode Island NECON convention in 2004 … I was unaware the drink had to be cut. Oops. One swig and Rhonda was down for the evening. She thinks. She does not recall, actually.
Wendy would not have committed such an error.
She did not drink, did not smoke, did not do drugs, and she had a body for which I would kill the next door neighbors to possess - her workout routine and macrobiotic diet, as well as discipline, I suspect gave her the edge.
And really, I wish I needed to re-watch the film to do this review, but I don’t.
It will always have a special place in my dark, dark heart.

Reform School Girls – 1986 (Dir. Tom DeSimone)

Long after my initial obsession wore off, I would still drop the cash to pick up a battered VHS copy, the original one-sheet from the film, and a vinyl copy of the soundtrack. So much for my assumption of obsessions ever really dying. I think they just power nap for awhile and emerge refreshed and rejuvenated.
Now defunct VideoTime issued my first rental card – in early 1988. Let me do the math for you: I was nine years old. I think they thought I was just this cute, strange little kid whose grandparents would wait in the car while she picked her films out. Every day. Usually the same six fucking films at that. Now that I think of it, I may have plain scared those cashiers to death – so much so, they had the films ready behind the counter when my chubby paw produced the little tags. Hurry up; take the cash, no kid really, special free price for you today, now get the hell out. Satanic Spawn!
Okay, I made that last little part up – but really, I think I turned out okay for carting home a copy of Reform School Girls every week. I miss VideoTime, too – as much as I miss Wendy. There will never be another … of either.
The box. Remember video stores before they became mass market retail cash moo-whores filled to the top shelf with straight to DVD cases of garbage? I do. They’ve gone the way of arcades and record stores. But, there were boxes – boxes, boxes everywhere, and all the images to drink in … I guess you could say they were friends. Comfortable, we’ll never leave or betray you friends. And while I stared in awe at all those boxes, I really saved the best for last.
Some get tough. Some go insane. Some will die.
Oh god, what was it?!
The tagline for Reform School Girls.
I’m tough, I can be crazy, I won’t die, thought little badass me.
I looked at tough, toned little badass Wendy and hardcore little miss stare you down Sybil Danning – and I took them home with me.
I lost my innocence, figuratively speaking, that first night, absorbed and nervous in front of my TV/VCR. Before Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Nightmare Sisters, and Chained Heat could take it – Reform School Girls snatched it.
And I am eternally grateful.
Only years later would I cognitively realize what the word ‘exploitation’ indicated, that DeSimone came from the adult film industry, and that was an early-to-mid 30’s Wendy on the screen and soundtrack. And mighty mohawk woman covered in whip cream on the old b/w poster at Cleveland’s Agora Theater? That was Wendy, too. And I would not be the least surprised.
And maybe I didn’t want to meet her – I wanted to be her. But, if I could have met her, I may have been so tongue-tied I would not have known what to say, surely. I sometimes talk to her now, just in case she can hear me – and is listening.
Much like Marilyn Manson, she may not have been much to look at initially, but once you looked again – a little deeper - you could see ... they were beautiful.
Intelligent, fearless, politically rebellious, musically rebellious, stylistically rebellious, and just plain rebellious …
They would have made a great couple – or rather, at the very least, a great rock duo. While Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow were warbling about god can only guess – Manson and Williams could have ruled a rock dynasty dyad. An ultra-feminine man crooning maniacally next to an ultra-masculine woman smashing a television? Christ, if these two produced an offspring, I think it would be me.
And at the family reunion – would be fat as sin Pat Ast, cranky I-charge-a-kidney- at-cons Sybil Danning, where-are-you-call-me-I-know-you’re-both-still-hot Linda Carol and Sherri Stoner, and the remainder of that bevy of scantily clad women who entertained me well before I knew what a bevy of scantily clad gals was …
I know now – and Wendy led them all. And me – a member of the next generation of women to stop bothering with the pervasive, belittling socio-political atmosphere – led me to do precisely what ever the fuck it is you want to do. Over the picnic tables, amidst scantily clad attendees, we would banter and throw the dialogue from the film around:

Rhonda: Scoot over a little and pass the potato salad, please …
Wendy: You’re all wankers!
Rhonda: Yes, but if you could move just a little …
Wendy: How about I move your ass across the floor?

We could spit pineapple at each other, ride the roofs of school buses, brand each other in the shower, and tell people we’ll see them in hell …
I may not know her, yet I still miss her … but I have this feeling I’ll get to meet her on the turnaround.