The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

by Carolyn Mackler

  Froggy Welsh the Fourth is trying to get up my shirt.

  This is the third Monday that he’s come over to my apartment after school. Every week we go a little further, and today, on September twenty-third at 3:17 P.M., he’s begun inching his fingers across my stomach and toward my bra.

  “Virginia?”

  I’m not sure whether Froggy is saying my name as a prelude to a question or whether he’s uttering it in ecstasy. As much as I wish it were the latter, I conclude that it’s the former. We’re only fifteen, after all.

  “Yeah?” I ask.

  “Is it OK if I . . . ?” Froggy rubs his nose a few times. He’s always tweaking his nose. I think it’s an anxiety thing. “Would you mind if I . . . ?”

  “I . . . errr,” I say. “I mean . . . ummm . . . yeah.”

  Not exactly the sensuous dialogue you conjure up when you imagine your first time reaching second base. But Froggy and I don’t score high on the communication front. Especially once we’ve stuck our tongues into each other’s mouths.

  I think it’s because we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend or even friends, for that matter. Until the beginning of tenth grade, Froggy and I just passed each other in the halls at school, sometimes waving, sometimes saying hi, sometimes doing nothing at all. Which is pretty much how it still is, except for this kissing aspect. I can’t say it’s what I want, but I know this is all it can ever be.

  It’s not like Froggy Welsh the Fourth is a huge catch. First of all, there’s his name. Not a nickname for Frank or Frederick or even Frog. I’m still shocked that his great-great-grandparents named a son Froggy. But what astounds me to no end is that three subsequent generations decided to follow suit.

  Froggy is medium height and slender. His ruffled blond hair crests into a cowlick. His dollop of a nose reminds me of a lamb’s snout. Especially since it’s always pinkish, probably from so much tweaking. Whenever his pubescent voice cracks, he sounds like a screeching chicken. Put his name and traits together and you’ve got a farm.

  But he’s here.

  And he’s a halfway decent kisser.

  Maybe it’s all the trombone lessons.

  Trombone is the reason we’ve been fooling around since the beginning of the school year. Froggy takes Monday-afternoon trombone lessons from a student at Juilliard. That’s this prestigious music school on the West Side of Manhattan, about fifteen blocks from my apartment. Brewster, our small private school, is on the East Side. Every Monday we ride the crosstown bus together.

  On the first Monday of the school year, Froggy slid into a seat next to me on the bus. We chatted the whole way across the park, comparing our summer breaks and complaining about Mademoiselle Kiefer, our evil French teacher. When we got off on Broadway, Froggy said he had an hour to kill before his trombone lesson. I suggested we head over to my apartment and hang out.

  I sounded innocent, but I have to admit I had ulterior motives with Froggy. Simply put, I was tired of being the only teenager in America — if not the world — who had yet to French-kiss. And along came Froggy, a halfway decent male specimen, with an hour to kill. The only trick was figuring out how to steer him from platonic-friend-who-hangs-out-and-watches-TV to lusty-guy-deflowering-my-virginal-kissing-status.

  Opportunity knocked when we stepped into the elevator of my building. As I pushed the PH button, Froggy jokingly said, “So . . . you live in the penthouse.”

  Thank you, Penthouse! The raunchy magazine that features naked vixens with basketball-sized boobs and skin oilier than a Pizza Hut pizza often gives people the wrong impression about my family’s abode. A penthouse, in real life, is just the top floor of a building.

  I shot Froggy a coy glance. “You know what they say about a girl who lives in a penthouse?”

  It was an early September afternoon, particularly muggy in the elevator. Froggy grinned as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. I felt a tremor deep in my gut, in that region south of my bellybutton.

  As soon as we got into the apartment, I poured us both a tall glass of Diet Pepsi and we retreated to my bedroom. From there, it didn’t take long — fourteen minutes, to be exact — until Froggy and I were making out.

  Here’s how it happened:

  I said that the soda was making my braces cold. As I’ve read in myriad magazines, women should always call attention to their mouths, as in licking a lollipop or sliding on lip-gloss.

  Froggy bought it hook, line, and sinker — going so far as to reach over and touch my brackets.

  Once our faces were in such close proximity, we had no choice but to giggle and nuzzle noses and kiss.

  At first, it was nice. Nibbly and soft and not too spitty. I liked the way Froggy smelled up close, sort of sweet and musky and boyish.

  But then I started worrying. Does my inexperience show? What do I do with my tongue once it’s in his mouth? Am I suctioning my lips too tightly? Should I keep my eyes open? Too weird! Or closed? Maybe. But what if HIS eyes are open and mine are closed and I make a freaky face and he sees it and laughs so hard that he bites off my tongue?

  I tried to recall make-out tips I’ve read, but then I remembered this quiz in a teen magazine where you rate your kissability on a scale of one to ten. I decided that I probably ranked about a two, maybe two and a half.

  Froggy and I kissed for the next few minutes, until he glanced at my clock and dashed into the hallway to retrieve his trombone case.

  Which brings us to today, two Mondays later, sprawled on my bedroom floor yet again. Froggy has spent the past several minutes fumbling around my shoulder blades. I don’t have the guts to inform him that this particular bra unhooks in the front.

  I’m doing my best imitation of a lover seized by passion. Eyelids heavy, faint upward curve to lips — just like women in movies who always look so orgasmic. But, truth be told, I’m having a complete panic attack. I’m worried that Froggy is going to attempt to take off my shirt. It’s OK for his hands to be rummaging inside it, but there’s no way I’m letting him see my upper arms and stomach. I don’t know where “love handles” got their name, but I have a feeling Froggy wouldn’t find mine all that endearing.

  I’m also double-checking and triple-checking whether I’ve locked my bedroom door. My workaholic parents rarely leave their offices before seven, and most nights they eat dinner out or grab something on the run. But I’d hate this to be the day they come home early, only to discover their youngest child going at it with a guy named after an amphibian.

  I’m also trying to figure out why the droopy-eyed-faintly-smiling movie stars never mention rug burn. I have a plush pink carpet, but it’s chafing my back every time my shirt slides up. I clutch both hands to the bottom of my shirt, anchoring it down. That serves the double purpose of not exposing any flabby body parts.

  “Don’t you want to . . . ?” Froggy’s voice cracks as he gestures in the direction of my boobs.

  “That’s not it.” I point to the clock on my dresser. “It’s just, you know, your trombone lesson.”

  Froggy tries to smooth back his hair, but it flops messily over his forehead. I’m tempted to run my fingers through his cowlick, but I know I shouldn’t. No affectionate girlfriend-isms, especially once the make-out session has ended.

  I escort Froggy to the front door, where he collects his backpack and trombone case from our foyer. I make a mental note to be more careful next time, to suggest that Froggy stash his stuff in my bedroom, just in case Mom or Dad or even my big brother makes a surprise visit. If there is a next time. I can never tell for sure.

  Froggy stands in the doorway, rubbing his nose and pivoting his leg from side to side, like he’s tryi
ng to burrow through the floor with his heel.

  “Well, thanks,” he says. “I’ll see you in school.”

  “Yeah.” I smile weakly and my lower lip gets snagged on my braces.

  “Yeah,” Froggy mumbles.

  I try to muster the courage to suggest we sit together at lunch sometime, but then I wimp out, say one final yeah, and close the door.

  About a year ago, before my sister joined the Peace Corps and moved to Africa, she sat me down and had a sex talk.

  “Look,” Anaïs said, flopping next to me on the couch. “I know Mom’s not going to discuss this with you and I’d shudder to think what Dad would say, so I propose we have a little sex talk.”

  It was a quiet Saturday afternoon. Mom, Dad, and our brother, Byron, were at Yankee Stadium. I’d begged to go with them since they had four field-level seats, which would have offered prime views of players’ butts in tight uniforms. But Byron made a case to bring his girlfriend du jour, a Parisian student who’d never seen a ball game before. Byron, a top debater in college, won out. Especially since my only argument was that I wanted to salivate over a certain sexy green-eyed shortstop.

  After they left, I spent an hour sulking — channel surfing, Web surfing, cupboard surfing — and basically feeling sorry for myself. Then I headed out to the street and bought the new Teen People, some Doritos, and a Snickers bar. When I got back to the apartment, I parked on the couch and devoured my magazine and my munchies until my sister interrupted me with the sex-talk business.

  I wiped my Dorito-orange fingers on a paper towel and rolled my eyes. “I know about sex, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I told Anaïs. “I’ve known for years.”

  “But do you know about guys?”

  I stared at my sister.

  “Right,” she said. Then she launched into one of her rants, something she’d been doing ever since she discovered the feminist rocker Ani DiFranco and stopped shaving her legs. “Let me guess. On your thirteenth birthday, Mom left It’s Perfectly Normal on your bed with a note that said”— Anaïs crooked her fingers like quotation marks —“‘Come to me with questions.’ But then, of course, she never has a spare minute to talk because she’s too busy helping other teenagers figure things out and, anyway, who wants sex advice from someone who considers Dad an ideal mate?”

  My jaw dropped to the floor. Mom is an adolescent psychologist. She has a booming therapy practice and often speaks at conferences on teenagers. Dad is a high-powered software executive. He’s always going on business trips to Europe and California. One time he got written up in Wired for this digital music technology that his company engineered.

  Even though they’re in their early fifties, my parents are youngish-looking and active. Mom is a workout fiend. Dad is more of the sports-fan type. On warm weekends they go golfing together at their country club out in Connecticut. That’s where Mom and Dad spend practically every weekend. We have a house in southwestern Connecticut. I used to go more when I was younger, but there’s nothing to do out there — no TV, no high-speed connection, no town within walking distance — so I usually stay in the city on weekends.

  “How did you know about It’s Perfectly Normal?” I asked. That’s the sexual health book that Mom gave me when I turned thirteen.

  “She did the same for me.” Anaïs twisted her curly dark hair into a knot on the top of her head. “But by the time she gave me It’s Perfectly Normal, I’d already gotten my period, been felt up by two boys, and read every sexuality book in her study, all of which went typically”— Anaïs made the quotation marks again —“‘unnoticed’ by Mom.”

  “Well, you know how hard Mom works,” I said. “She’s totally overwhelmed by her —”

  “Her patients? Her step-aerobics classes? Her social engagements?” Anaïs paused for a second and then sourly added, “Then again, when you’re Dr. Phyllis Shreves, you don’t have to worry about your own children because they’re obviously going to turn out perfect and normal.”

  Dr. Phyllis Shreves. That’s what Anaïs calls Mom whenever she’s pissed at her. They argued a lot during my sister’s senior year in college, about her decision to join the Peace Corps rather than go right to medical school. It always made me uncomfortable when they battled it out. I love my sister, but Mom usually knows what she’s talking about when it comes to life plans.

  I hugged a couch pillow to my stomach and attempted to change the subject. “Do you think Mom gave that book to Byron, too?”

  Anaïs snorted. Anaïs snorts about anything related to our brother, who is four years older than me, four years younger than her. Anaïs is the only person I know who snorts in reference to Byron. The rest of the world worships him, myself included. He’s incredibly handsome — supposedly the spitting image of Dad when he was in college — with tousled brown hair, maple-syrup-colored eyes, and a confident Shreves jaw. At that point, last summer, he was about to start Columbia, the Ivy League university here in New York City. Now he’s in his sophomore year, where he’s a star of the debate team, a rugby god, a total Don Juan loverboy, and a straight-A student. Byron happens to think a lot of himself, but if I were even a smidgen like him, I’d have an ego the size of Brazil.

  “I think she left Byron up to Dad. Can’t you picture it?” Anaïs lowered her voice and scratched her chin mannishly. “You need sex ed, son? Here’s a pack of condoms. Go out and get some.”

  I cracked up at my sister’s imitation of Dad, which made me start choking on the sharp point of a Dorito. Anaïs shook her hair around her bare shoulders. She always wears skimpy tank tops and short shorts, things I could never imagine wearing, not even on the hottest days of summer. The best way to garb my heavier-than-average body is to hide it beneath layers of loose clothing. When the time comes for college, I’m considering checking out campuses in the Arctic Circle, where floor-length puffy coats are probably all the rage.

  “Anyway, where were we?” Anaïs asked.

  “The sex talk,” I said, clearing my throat.

  “Right.”

  Anaïs scooped up a handful of Doritos and briefed me on lust and crushes. She emphasized the importance of knowing your body, knowing what you like, because horny teenage guys aren’t going to try to figure that out. She explained that, contrary to everything you see in movies, losing your virginity is sloppy and painful and about as fun as getting your toe amputated, so it should definitely happen with someone you care about.

  We chatted on the couch until Mom, Dad, Byron, and the French girl returned from the ball game, giddy from beer, sunburns, and a Yankee victory. Mom’s always nagging me about junk food, so I stashed the Doritos bag behind a couch cushion and buried my nose in Teen People. Anaïs retreated to her room, closed her door, and pumped an Ani album.

  Three weeks later my sister began her two-year Peace Corps stint in Burkina Faso, where she’s administering medication to impoverished West Africans.

  And now, over a year later, as I stand in the hallway and stare at the door through which Froggy has just disappeared, I remember what Anaïs told me that afternoon.

  “If you can’t talk about something with a guy, you have no business doing it with him.”

  “You mean sex?” I asked.

  “I mean anything. Making out. Second base. Third base. And, yes, home runs.”

  It made sense at the time. But now it dawns on me that it’s easy for Anaïs to give that kind of advice when she’s waify and gorgeous and people have stopped her on the sidewalk to tell her she should be a model.

  When it comes to me, however, Anaïs failed to factor in one crucial thing. She forgot about the Fat Girl Code of Conduct.

  I hear the elevator doors close, transporting Froggy down to the lobby. I head into the kitchen and splash my face with cool water. My cheeks feel feverish, so I lean into the spray for a long time. I use this sink as much as possible because the kitchen is the only room in the apartment besides mine that doesn’t have a mirror. I hate mirrors. That’s why I limit my reflection gaz
ing to twelve seconds in the morning when I deal with my shoulder-length layered hair.

  I’ve been mulling over the Fat Girl Code of Conduct a lot recently. Ever since I heard this joke on some creepy radio talk show as I was cruising the stations. Here’s how it went:

  Question: What do a fat girl and a moped have in common?

  Answer: They’re both fun to ride, as long as your friends don’t see you.

  Really hilarious. So hilarious that it made me want to throw myself down our garbage chute, if only I could squeeze through the hole.

  The strange thing is, as cruel as it was, that joke actually got me thinking. Basically, I can’t resolve two contradictory facts of life.

  Fact of Life #1: Fat girls don’t get much action.

  Fact of Life #2: I want to increase my kissability.

  It’s probably time to write a list. That’s what I do whenever I’m overwhelmed and confused. It’s not like I figure out any huge answers, but I always feel better after my thoughts are in writing.

  I dry my face with a paper towel and grab a handful of animal crackers. Once I’m in my bedroom, I switch on my computer, munch on two lions, and start writing.

  The Fat Girl Code of Conduct

  by Virginia Shreves

  1. Any sexual activity is a secret. No public displays of affection. No air-kisses blown across the cafeteria. No carefully folded notes passed in the hall. No riding the moped in public.

  2. Don’t discuss your weight with him. Let’s face it. You both know it’s there, so don’t start bemoaning your body and pressure him into lying, i.e., “What are you talking about? You don’t look fat at all.”

  3. Go further than skinny girls. Find ways to alert him to this, such as slutty comments peppered into the conversation. If you can’t sell him on your body, you’d better overcompensate with sexual perks.

  4. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever push the relationship thing. Everybody knows that guys hate discussing relationships, so make it easy on him. Same goes for dates to movies and school dances. Bottom line: Let him get the milk without having to buy the cow.