Later in the movie, when Sandy got all tarted up, I felt betrayed. I was in love with the real Sandy, who, as far as I was concerned, was perfect. That she changed to please Danny made me sad and mad and jealous and disappointed me. (I was very emotional as a five-year-old.)
I still cannot watch Grease or the “Hopelessly Devoted” scene without feeling those same emotions. Sandy, if I could climb into the screen and sit with you on those steps, I would. You stay just as perfect as you are.
Kara
(Girlfriend #1, Real Life)
We lived at my grandmother’s house from about second through fourth grades while my parents went through their divorce; my dad stayed at our house. The situation was not all that great. For one, I was convinced my grandmother’s home, a three-story row house across the street from a city park, was haunted. All night long it creaked and groaned, and on some nights it sounded like the wind was talking to you. That the house was across from a park did not help. This was not the type of park where kids could play on the monkey bars and roll around in the grass. It was a park where kids, especially kids of the chubby variety like myself, got their bikes stolen and were forbidden from entering after nightfall. My brother and I were convinced that once night came, all sorts of crimes and murders (perpetrated mostly by monsters) would occur there. The four of us—Mom, my sister, Dennis, and I—shared the third floor of the house, which had a small deck attached to it. I spent the better part of two years convinced that someone or something was on that deck at night, biding his/its time and waiting for the opportunity to enter the house and eat me.
But there were advantages, too. I hung out with my two uncles, Joey and Billy, who still lived in the house and were like big kids. And we lived close to Fernon Street, a small street a block away from my grandmom’s house on which two of my mom’s sisters and two of her cousins lived. They had children, and those kids had friends, and so on that small street, there were about twenty kids around my age, and we all became friendly.
Even after the divorce, when my dad moved to an apartment and my family and I moved back into our old house less than a mile away, I kept coming back to hang out with my friends on Fernon Street. Among them was my buddy John, who was a year younger than me. I liked John because he was always up for some mischief. And I liked John because I thought that his sister, Kara, who was my age, was the prettiest non-Sandy girl I’d ever seen.
Kara had hazel eyes and dark hair that came to her shoulders, hair that was not really straight but not really curly. Kara was skinny and she was shy. I was fat and not shy. It was a match made in heaven.
Through a complicated courtship ritual that culminated in my asking her to slow dance at a local weekly kids’ dance, Kara became my girlfriend. In sixth grade, the concept of “boyfriend/girlfriend” was nebulous, but the one nonnegotiable criterion was that at each one of those dances, which were held at a local Mummers club every Friday from 5 to 9 p.m., Kara and I would slow dance together. Otherwise, she and I spent the evening apart, talking to our friends of the same gender, coming together only when the DJ played “Love Takes Time”* or “Eternal Flame.” The dances were the prime showcase for being a couple. Afterward we hung out outside of these dances with our larger group of friends, and my primary function as boyfriend was to walk her home and give her a hug goodbye. A quick hug at her doorstep, usually with John either next to us or looking at us through the window, was nothing compared to slow dancing for three minutes a couple of times in a few hours.
At first, Kara and I danced holding each other at arms length. This is how all the new couples did it. She’d knot her hands around the back of my neck and I’d rest my hands on her sides just above her waist, desperately wondering if she could feel my hands, sweaty from nerves, on her skin through her shirt. We were so far apart that you could have driven a motorcycle between us, but I was thrilled: this was me and my girlfriend, slow dancing here.
Then, at a dance a few weeks later, when the DJ played a slow song, Kara and I met each other on the dance floor and she put her hands around the back of my neck and gave me a little tug toward her, stepping into me as she did. I slid my hands from her sides and around her back and knotted my fingers. She put her head on my chest and we hug-swayed to the song. That tug, her stepping into me, my putting my hands around her back, her head on my chest—I wanted the world to stop, to freeze, so we could stay like that for the rest of time and space and infinity.
On the walk home that night, Kara and I kissed. It was the first time I had ever kissed a girl. I had been thinking about kissing Kara for a long, long time. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that a) I really, really wanted to kiss Kara and b) I was really, really nervous about kissing Kara. But when we stopped at her door that night, she turned around and, without saying anything, kissed me. Not a peck—a real, open-mouth kiss, right there, right in the middle of the street, right in front of her parents’ house (!!!). She stopped kissing me and pulled away, said goodnight, and walked into her house. I stood there for anywhere from one minute to eight years. I could have stayed there forever.
Jennifer
(Entertainer, Mickey Mouse Club)
In sixth and seventh grades, my friend Ernie and I were big fans of The New Mickey Mouse Club. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Sixth and seventh grades? Isn’t that a little old to be a big fan of the Mickey Mouse Club?” you would be correct. But Ernie and I were not so much interested in the singing and the dancing and the skits (or so we told ourselves) as we were in two of the female Mouseketeers. For Ernie, it was Brandi, the Cajun brunette. For me, it was the bubbly blonde, Jennifer. We don’t need to analyze this one to death: Jennifer was my preteen Sandy. Now old enough to feel sexy feelings, I directed them toward Jennifer, who I thought was just the tops.
As with Sandy, there was even a defining moment in our relationship, an awakening when I realized that—holy crap!—this was the girl for me. It was a skit in which Jennifer, decked out in a formal gown, reenacted a lounge act, performing with a tuxedoed piano player, singing about all the crappy costumes she had to wear in sketches (compared with the less-crappy costumes of the other Mouseketeers). It was that skit, and her poise and her pipes, that turned me on to Jennifer. The song was called “Hate to Wear the Stupid Costume Blues,” and if pressed, I bet I could remember 90 percent of the lyrics.
. . .
I’ve said too much. I feel like this is getting a little weird. Now that we’ve established that I have a thing for blond singers, let’s just move on.
Celeste
(Entertainer, 10000 Anal Maniacs 1, Breastman’s Ultimate Orgy, Plan 69 from Outer Space, etc.)
There was a stretch in my teens during which I was masturbating about as frequently as I was urinating. Celeste had a lot to do with that.
There were more popular porn stars. Celeste was a contemporary of Jenna Jameson, who was then (and still kind of is) everyone’s favorite porn star. Another contemporary was Chasey Lain, who was immortalized in a song by those morons who did the “Do it like the animals on the Discovery Channel” song. Celeste did not have an angle or a hook. She was not known for being a specialist (e.g., anal or gang bang scenes), she was not Asian, she wasn’t even blond. Yes, her fake breasts were so large that at times of mental clarity, free from lust, one might look at them and think, “My goodness, those must be painful to carry around all day,” but that was par for the course for mid-90s porn stars.
But Celeste had . . . something. She was classy. I realize that this is a strange way to characterize someone who spent a significant portion of her workday cleaning semen out of her hair, but that’s how I felt about her. Something about Celeste’s scenes, like her breasts, felt unnatural. This isn’t to say she was blasé while effing or a bad actress—she really made a go of it in each scene and made the viewer feel a plethora of emotions, all of them originating in the genital area. But she was clearly acting.
The same could not be said of other porn stars. Compar
ed to Celeste, the other porn actresses were obviously just nymphomaniacs with severe daddy issues who figured out how to get paid to fuck. There was no art or thought behind their craft. Celeste seemed above the mindless fucking; she was more intelligent, more calculated than the rest, as if she had chosen porn not because she loved to have sex (which she did) but because it was a smart career path, one that would maximize her earnings and allow her to pursue her other, non-fucking-related interests. While other porn stars went out to clubs on the Sunset Strip and fucked Mötley Crüe and/or Mötley Crüe–type bands, one could imagine Celeste, after a hard day of filming, going home to her art collection or snuggling up in a chair to read Kant in his native German.
For these reasons, if there were a record of all the orgasms I’ve had in my life and who was responsible for those orgasms (kind of like how iTunes keeps track of how many times you’ve listened to a song), Celeste would be at the very top of that list. Perhaps someday my wife will overtake her, but she’ll have a serious uphill battle.
Amber
(Girlfriend #2, Real Life)
Amber and I had been friends since we were kids. I had harbored a crush on her from sixth through eighth grades, but I eventually moved on because she began dating my good buddy Joe, and a man had to respect boundaries. We remained good friends, even after she and Joe broke up.
The summer of the shore house, Amber and I started dating. I don’t know how this began. I am guessing there was a fair amount of the ol’ Kahlúa and Cream (on my part) and a number of Miller Lites (on hers) involved. One night, we kissed. The next night, we kissed. The next night, she was my girlfriend. This whole shore house thing was amazing.
I am grateful to Amber for three things:
Starting me on a lifetime obsession with breasts.
There is no delicate way to put this: Amber had huge boobs. Gigantic. I do not say this to be crass or to brag. (“Dude, my high school girlfriend? She was so-o-o fucking hot. She, like, coulda worked at Hooters.”) It is simply a matter of fact that Amber had some big ’uns. It ran in her family: her older cousins were similarly blessed.
Our relationship, even by Irish Catholic high school student standards, was incredibly tame. In fact, I did not ever see her boobs. Nor did I ever feel them, even on top of her shirt. If I did touch them, the contact was accidental, unintended, uninvited. That Amber was such a prude was perhaps a response to having the big boobs; the magnitude of her prudishness corresponded to the impressiveness of her bosom. That I had zero access to these boobs despite their spending an entire summer pressed against me was maddening. There they were, all the time, right before me.
Uncovering them became my singular goal that summer. Like a brilliant scientist who had contracted a strange, incurable illness, I threw myself into the boob cure. I would even joke about this with Amber, who, once we were close enough, proved she had a sense of humor about her boobs. But alas, when the summer ended, and with it our relationship (amicably, I should note), I had not touched any boobs (aside from my own).
But once our relationship was over, I could not simply turn off the breast switch. Just as a child’s development can be altered by a traumatic experience, Amber and her bosom impacted me in deep, psychological ways, instilling in me a fandom for boobies that today remains unrivaled among my peers. Some men are leg men or butt men or have proclivities toward redheads or Asian women. I am a boob man. And it’s because of Amber and that one (goddamn) chaste summer.
Introducing me to blue balls.
When we were not hanging out at our shore house, my friends and I would go out and sit on benches on the Wildwood boardwalk and take in the nighttime traffic. Toward the end of the evening, couples would venture under the boardwalk, spacing themselves appropriately, to make out before moms or dads or other rides arrived to take them home.
After one make-out session with Amber, I noticed some discomfort in my testes. This was new; I’d been hit in the nuts before and experienced that drop-to-your-knees-and-choke-on-your-tongue type of pain. But this was a deep, throbbing pain, right inside my balls. On the car ride home with Amber and her mom, I sat motionless on the backseat, wincing with every bump in the road.
After they dropped me at my corner, I waved goodbye and waited until Amber and her mom were out of sight before slowly walking bow-legged back to the house. There, I found Steve, Big Rob, and an older kid, Grinch, playing cards and drinking beer in the kitchen. I immediately went into it: Something is seriously wrong, my balls are killing me, I can barely walk, I didn’t hurt them or anything, it just started out of nowhere. Amber and I were making out under the boardwalk, but when we got into her mom’s car the pain started. And they are really, really sore.
Though I was approaching a panic attack, Grinch was laughing. When he stopped, he called me “moron” and “dickhead.” And he diagnosed me: blue balls. It’s when you get all worked up but don’t get your nut off and so your balls hurt, said Dr. Grinch. And there was nothing to do but ride it out.
I retired to the bedroom to sleep it off, begging Steve, Big Rob, and Grinch to keep it between us. For the rest of the summer, the three of them called me “BB.” I’m glad the nickname is no longer with me today.
Proving that a friend-to-girlfriend transition was possible.
This was the biggest lesson of all. Amber and I had been friends since we were eight or nine years old. For most of our friendship, I had a crush on her, a crush that did not seem reciprocal and that I did not pursue lest I compromise our friendship. And then, when we were sixteen, we started dating. This was a major breakthrough. It was, however, both a blessing and a curse.
As a kid, flirting with girls in grade school by making them laugh, I learned the hard way that just because a girl likes your jokes doesn’t mean she wants to be your girlfriend. Many a valentine was politely declined; many dates were quietly begged off. So I stopped forcing the issue, burying any crushes or feelings I had for a female friend, contenting myself with our friendship.
But Amber was a girl who laughed at my jokes, who was my good friend, and who did want to be my girlfriend. It was confusing, but thrilling. If Amber could go from being a friend to a girlfriend, then perhaps such a transition was possible with other girls, if I could figure out the proper way to handle it and then things fell into place. Right?
And then there was . . .
my aim is true
Everything I needed to know about love I learned from an Elvis Costello CD and a teenage girl. No, this is not that kind of story. It does not involve a trip to Southeast Asia or a two-year bid for corruption of a minor. But we’ll get to the girl in a minute.
The Elvis Costello CD was a greatest hits album with a green and black cover. I held it in my hands, contemplating where to put it in my new CD tower, which I was organizing so that the least-listened-to CDs were on the bottom (and so harder to reach) while the ones I listened to more frequently were on top. I had purchased this CD at the behest of Kyle, my otherwise hip-hop-worshipping buddy, who knew my tastes in music well and told me I’d love Elvis, an artist whom he also liked but whom his dad adored. I ordered the album as the eighth disc in one of those “eight CDs for a penny—and then six CDs for forty dollars each next year (but let’s not focus on that right now)” deals. I had never listened to it, but I felt bad about putting it in the bottom of the tower, which would essentially banish it from my life forever, ranking it alongside the greatest hits of Steve Miller and the Eagles and their ilk. So I popped the CD into my Discman to give it a listen and see if I could more fairly rate its place in the tower.
After my Beatles epiphany, I became a kind of music slut, falling in and out of love with all the rock ’n’ roll staples—Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream and Eric Clapton, Queen, the Doors, Van Morrison, the solo work of Paul McCartney and John Lennon—consuming music at an alarming rate as I worked my way through Classic Rock 101. But though I got obsessed with each, my obsessions were fleeting
and never came close to what I felt about the Beatles, my first love.
But saying that you love the Beatles is like saying you prefer being handed a wad of cash to being kicked in the balls. Of course you love the Beatles. Everyone loves the Beatles. It was impossible to be really intimate with the Beatles, because even if you learned everything about them, you’d still only be their 18,645,813th-most knowledgeable fan. Loving the Beatles was like having a crush on the most popular girl in school.
So as I made my way through the other classic rock bands and artists, I looked for my Next Beatles: something that would blow my mind and keep it blown, but that maybe wasn’t loved in the same way by every non-deaf person on the planet. Page and Plant; Jimi, Jerry, and Bob; Roger and Pete; Mick and Keith; Eric: all had come and gone, leaving me momentarily enraptured but, ultimately, flat. I could still enjoy them and be inspired by their music, but they were no John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Not even close.
Which brings us back to Elvis Costello and the new CD tower. When introduced to Elvis that evening, I was vulnerable. I was wayward. And by the second verse of “Watching the Detectives,” I was sure Elvis Costello was my next major crush.
He and I had major potential. Just look at him! He was a skinny, dark-haired, small, British version of me. (OK, so maybe we didn’t look that much alike.) But he wore his nerdliness proudly. His songs were filled with clever rhymes and wordplay. (All of “Everyday I Write the Book” was so witty I could barely stand it, but “When your dreamboat / Turns out to be a footnote / I’m a man on a mission / In two or three editions”? C’mon.) He was musically gifted and able to craft a melody. (I sang almost nothing but the punchy, pop-y harmonies in “Oliver’s Army” for weeks after first hearing the song.) Yet he was not just sugar-coated pop with smarty-pants rhymes. (Both “Pump It Up” and “Radio Radio” were “stand up and punch the air while you rock out” anthems.)
236 Pounds of Class Vice President Page 13
