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My Weird, Wonderful Affair with Alice Cooper

I HAVE ALWAYS FELT that I was "different." It was never easy for me to get along with other people. I never had any real friends at school. I was looking for something, but I didn't know what.

Then one day I found a magazine telling all about Alice Cooper, and my life changed.

Needless to say, I had never seen anything like Alice before, and I guess that was what made me fall in love with him. He was so different.

I eagerly read everything the magazine said about him. (Actually, it was what he said about himself, answering questions.) The most important question and answer for me was this:

Question: "What do you look for in a girl?"

Answer: "A wild imagination."

If Alice was looking for a girl with a wild imagination, I was going to be that girl.

First, I had to learn all his other likes and dislikes. Alice told what he liked to do on a date. He said he liked to go to a James Bond movie at a drive-in and then go to a White Castle for hamburgers.

(But he also said his favorite foods were Mexican and Italian.)

Alice liked ping-pong and all-night poker games. He said he would like to own the whole state of California. He said he admired the Osmonds and the Jackson 5.

(That was one of the things that made me different from the other kids at school — I never could go for the Osmonds. Still, since Alice admired them, I knew I must try to get over this feeling — so that if Alice wanted to play Osmond records I would feel joy instead of ugh.)

Alice liked all kinds of clothes (he said in the magazine). He liked to dress down as well as dress up. He might wear a tee shirt and jeans, or a leather jacket and "pepsi-cola" shirt, or a white suit and dotted shirt and wool print pull­over.

Of course, what interested me most was what he wore, or didn't wear, when he was performing. Then he was truly the different Alice Cooper.

Well, okay. But how was I going to change my life-style?

I mean, how was I going to convince Alice that there was a place for me in his life?

I knew that plenty of other kids had written to Alice. When I wrote to him, how was I going to make my letter stand out — so he would answer it?

I had been living a very ordinary, normal life (although I knew I was different) because my parents are very ordinary, normal people. (Sometimes I wonder if they really and truly are my parents. Maybe they adopted me when I was only a few months old. I can't help thinking that my real parents would be different, the way I feel I am.)

My father is the assistant manager of a discount department store. This is no big deal, because the assistant manager has to get there before everyone else and leave after everyone else. He gets up around six and gets home around eight.

My mother is what is called a compulsive cleaner, which means she is always cleaning the house. This was the kind of future life I used to see waiting for me — cleaning the house and listening to my husband complain.

My parents didn't know there was such a person as Alice Cooper. If I had told them I was in love with Alice Cooper, they would have said, "Well, Norma Jean, girls your age often get crushes on other girls."

If they had seen the magazine I had saved and learned who Alice really was, they would have — but I don't know what they would have done. I can't even imagine.

So I knew I had to keep everything absolutely secret, until I had proved to Alice that I was everything he was looking for in a girl.

But to come back to the big question — how was I going to change my life-style?

It was my dear, darling, beloved Alice Cooper himself who told me how.

Of course, he didn't tell me in person, but through what I read about him. I read that he was born on February 4, 1948, "a fine, perfectly normal baby" who was named Vincent. I read that "his childhood was that of an average American boy." In high school, he was on the track team and become close friends with Mike Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith. The five of them decided to form a musical group. What would they call themselves? First, they thought of calling themselves the Earwigs, then the Spiders — and then, after they had moved to Los Angeles, they thought of the name Alice Cooper.

Mike, Glen, Dennis and Neal kept their own names, but Vincent changed his name to the name of the group. Vincent became Alice Cooper.

Although actually, I read, Alice is two people. On stage he is weird, wild, freaky and violent. Off stage he is gentle, sweet, soft-spoken and easy going.

Alice Cooper had become so real to me that I seemed to hear him speaking. This is what I seemed to hear:

Listen, Norma Jean, if I became two people — you can too. You too can lead two different lives. You can lead the Alice Cooper kind of life — which will prove that you are a girl with a wild imagination — and also you can lead yoµr regular, ordinary Norma Jean kind of life. That way, by leading your new Alice Cooper &mdah; type life SECRETLY, and your regular Norma Jean — type life OPENLY, you won't get your parents into an uproar. Okay?

"Okay, Alice," I whispered. "From now on I'm going to be two different people — Norma Jean and someone else!"

My Norma Jean life was like this:

I'd get up every morning at the same time &mdah; if I was even a minute late, my mother would start shouting, "Norma Jean? You still in bed? Get up! Get up! Get up!" I'd get washed and everything and come downstairs, and eat what my mother called a healthy, nourishing breakfast — fruit juice, cereal, two eggs and a glass of milk. Then I'd go to school. I'd try to stay awake through my morning classes, then I'd eat lunch in the school cafeteria with a bunch of kids who could have dropped dead for all I cared. I mean, I wasn't interested in them and they sure weren't interested in me. My afternoon classes were like my morning classes, maybe even worse. Then I'd go home and help my mother with the housework, which will never get finished in the next million years. Then I'd go to the supermarket for my mother and buy exciting stuff like washing machine powder and gook to mop the kitchen floor with. Then I'd eat a healthy, nourishing supper. After supper, I'd do my homework and go to bed.

Why would anyone get sick of a wild whizzeroo of a life like my Norma Jean life?

Well, I was.

But who was I going to be in my new life?

Vincent had changed his name to Alice Cooper. So Norma Jean ought to change her name for her new life. I looked at Alice's picture and whispered, "Right, Alice?"

And he seemed to whisper back, "Right!"

Vincent had changed his name to a girl's name. So shouldn't I have a boy's name for my new life?

"Right, Alice?"

"Right!"

I made a list of boys' names:

John, James, George, Richard, Michael, Henry, William, Herbert, Arthur, Martin, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Arnold, Ernest, Raymond, Robert, Norman, Charles, Leonard, Harold, Clarence, Donald, Gary, Roy, Theodore, Edward, Russell, David, Horace, Ronald, Stanley, Thomas, Alan, Louis, Warren.

I said them over and over to myself, but there wasn't one that felt right — I mean, the way Alice was just right for Vincent. I didn't feel like John or James or Peter or Arthur or any of them. And anyway, what about my new second name? Vincent was Alice Cooper. What hope did I have of finding a second name if I couldn't even find my new first name?

"Alice," I whispered to his picture, "help me!"

His huge, wonderful eyes seemed to look deep into mine. Suddenly my new name came into my head. It was just as clear as if someone had spoken it.

Clyde Armstrong.

I said it over and over:

"Clyde Armstrong! Clyde Armstrong! Clyde Armstrong! Clyde Armstrong!"

Gee, it was perfect! It was me! I could feel it! It was just as right for me as Alice Cooper was for Vincent!!

"I am Clyde Armstrong!" I said in a loud voice, because I felt like shouting it to the whole world.

"What's that?" my mother called from downstairs.

"Nothing!" I called back.

"I heard you say something," she said. "What was it?" "It was just memorizing something for school," I said. She shut up. I whispered:

"I am Clyde Armstrong. I am Clyde Armstrong. I am Clyde Armstrong. I am Clyde Armstrong. I am Clyde Armstrong."

I felt so good I wanted to sit down and write to Alice, telling him what had happened. But when I thought about it, I knew it was too soon. First, I had to make myself look like Clyde — just as a boy called Vincent had made himself look like Alice. Then I had to start living my new life as Clyde. Then I would write to Alice and tell him everything. I would send him a picture of Clyde to prove it.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw a girl called Norma Jean. Instead, I must see Clyde. How was l going to do it?

Be sure to read the rest of Norma Jean Maxwell's fascinating adventure My Weird, Wonderful Affair With Alice Cooper in the next issue of FUNTIME! Read about her double life as Norma Jean and Clyde! It's all in the February issue of FUNTIME — on sale starting December 11.