My First Love and Other Disasters

by Francine Pascal

  To my parents, Kate and William Rubin

  One

  When I think about all the time I wasted last year moaning about how gross it was to be thirteen, I could kick myself. Thirteen turned out to be fantastic. It had to be. I mean, you finally make it. You’re in the graduating class, and even if it’s only the top of a bunch of little kids, it still makes you feel really special. Yes sir, thirteen was definitely first-rate. But fourteen? Forget it. It’s the pits.

  There are so many horrendous things about being fourteen that I’d have a fit if I had to name half of them. Just think about it. One day you’re the biggest big shot in the entire middle school (among the girls anyway) and the next you’re little Miss Nobody, which is exactly what everyone else in the whole high school seems to think about freshmen. At least that’s the way they treat us.

  Another drawback is how long it takes. Growing up, I mean. Except for times like Christmas vacation and summer, it seems like the years take forever to drag by. And for the plans I’m making I absolutely have to be fifteen practically instantly. Especially seeing as how the person I happen to be madly in love with is seventeen. I’m definitely nowhere, sitting around being only fourteen, but it’s absolutely hopeless—I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it until I’m fifteen. Oh, sure, I’m getting there. But it’s going to take me two more enormous weeks. I don’t know how I’m going to stand the wait.

  I probably forgot to tell you that there’s another small problem aside from Miss Sweet Sixteen, and that is that the love of my life has absolutely no idea that I even exist. But no sweat. I’ve arranged for our beautiful meeting to take place Tuesday at Howell’s. I guess a shoe store for the orthopedically fashionable doesn’t sound like the most romantic place for an encounter, but that’s where he works on weekdays after school. The only other choice was his Saturday job—digging cesspools. Anyway I’m not worried, because I’ve worked out every single detail, so it can’t miss. Theoretically. Of course in the real world, the one where practically everything I touch bites me, not only can it miss but it’ll probably boomerang and come right back and hit me in the face.

  No doubt it’ll fail in some simple way, like I’ll trip on my shoelaces. Big deal, so what if I’m not wearing shoelaces. I can always trip on somebody else’s.

  Or worse yet, I’ll do what I did when my class went backstage at I Love My Wife last year and we met the whole cast. I was so nervous and excited I thought I’d faint. Somebody said, “Victoria, I’d like you to meet Tommy Smothers—this is Victoria Martin.” I smiled and said as sweetly as possible, “Hello, Victoria,” And everybody cracked up.

  Or what if it’s something even more horrible? Suppose I’m standing there meeting the love of my life, and I’m smiling, and I don’t know it but I have this black smudge across my nose, or worse, a crumb is stuck to my lip. Everything would be absolutely ruined. You know how it is when something like that happens, you can’t even hear what the person is saying—all you do is stare at the crumb. But I think I may have that one beat because I’m bringing my best friend with me and she’s going to be my crumb spotter, which will work out perfectly unless she starts laughing. We both do that at the most embarrassing times—crack up, I mean. But she’s much worse than I am.

  Anyway, about that dream guy of mine: After we get past that first meeting and we come to know each other, then I get right to work dumping the competition. But I don’t do that here, in New York City—I do it on Fire Island. That’s this super fabulous beach resort on Long Island where absolutely all the action is in the summertime. Anyway, he’s going to be there for the whole summer and she isn’t.

  The first part is ready to move, but the Fire Island stuff could be sticky. I’ve got to get my parents’ permission to be a mother’s helper for the summer. For my parents that’s the equivalent of asking them to let me hitchhike through Tasmania with the janitor. Still, I’m not discouraged because I know that the first time you try to get permission for anything new from your parents it always looks impossible, but if you keep at them long enough (and I’ve been at it all month long) they finally wear down.

  So let’s just say that I do get to meet him and somehow I convince my parents to allow me to go to Fire Island, then there’s one more little side thing that I have to take care of.

  There’s this other boy, Barry. He’s a complication. You see, I don’t really know him, but he likes me. Which sounds peculiar, but it’s one of those things where you can tell somebody’s got a crush on you because they always turn up wherever you go, and you catch them staring at you all the time, and crazy things like that. Anyway, I have gotten friendly with him because it just so happens that he’s a friend of Jim’s, and he has a house on Fire Island, and I understand that Jim hangs out there a lot. I haven’t figured out how to handle getting to be Barry’s just-plain-friend-not-girlfriend yet. But I will.

  Anyway, the first thing I have to pull off is the big meeting this Tuesday.

  Now that you got that all straight, let me tell you a little more about the most important part—Jimmy.

  Two

  The first time I saw Jimmy I thought, what is everybody making such a fuss about? I mean, so okay, he’s gorgeous looking, so what’s the big deal about that, and why is practically every single fresh-person (I’m getting very heavily into women’s lib lately) at Cooper High bug-eyed about him?

  Actually I figured that with all those girls dropping at his feet he had to be the most conceited, egocentric, me-me-me-type goon around. The kind I stay far away from.

  Well, that was nearly ten months ago, and it’s incredible but I think he gets better looking every day. All I have to do is catch a quick peek at him in the hall or even from halfway across the gym and I’m positively knocked out. I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with that number he does to keep his gorgeous straight silky blond hair from falling into his sexy hazel green-brown eyes. He kind of dips his head down and to the side a little and then flips it back. Two seconds later the gorgeous blond hair slides back down over his eyes again. I could watch him do that forever. In fact one time I was doing just that when he looked up and caught me, and I had to pretend I was looking for someone in the row behind him. It didn’t work so well because unfortunately, at the time, he was sitting in the last row.

  Did I tell you that he’s about six feet tall and he’s got the most sensational body I’ve ever seen in my entire life? It’s not all that different from everyone else’s—I mean, it’s got the same number of things—but on him it all seems to fit so perfectly.

  I probably sound like I’m very superficial and that all I’m interested in is his looks. That’s not true, because I know there’s a lot more to Jim than just his looks. For one thing he’s the kind of person everybody always wants to hang out with. And not just girls. Guys too. Maybe that’s because he always looks like he’s having such a good time. I suppose it’s his smile. It’s the catching kind. Makes you feel happy just to look at him.

  He’s been the president of his class for two years running, and the captain of the tennis team, so obviously I’m not the only one who thinks he’s terrific.

  One tiny little thing. He probably knows he’s something special, but he’d have to be blind or a hypocrite not to. Actually he just looks like he feels good about himself, and I don’t think that’s so bad.

  Obviously I’ve completely lost my mind over him. And like I said, he doesn’t know I’m alive. But that’s okay because Steffi (the friend I told you about) and I have decided that the situation is pretty viable (my mother’s favorite word; no matter what you talk to her about, you’ve got to figure that somehow something in it is going to be “viable.” It got so
bad, I finally had to look it up).

  Anyway, it’s still definitely viable except for that one disgusting, ugly, grungy problem. Her name is Gloria, and she’s been his girlfriend since the start of his junior year, which makes it almost a year that she’s been going more or less steady with him. And that’s not even the worst. Steffi and I did a little digging and we came up with a lot more bad news. Number one is that she’s his sister’s best friend. Number two, she lives in his apartment building. And number three is the real killer—she’s sixteen. I would sell my kid sister’s soul (and all the rest of her too) to be sixteen. But what’s the use. Nobody’s buying.

  Even Steffi admits Gloria shoots a big hole in the viability angle. Especially when you see her and Jimmy together. She’s always right there, hanging on to his arm like she was drowning. She’d better cool it or he’s going to wake up one morning with one six-foot-long arm. I hate to think what his sweaters must look like. And she’s a whiner—“Jim . . . my, I’m hungry—Jim . . . my, I’m thirsty—Jim . . . my, I’m cold—Jim . . . my, you promised . . .” She’s not as bad as my sister Nina, but for a practically adult person she’s pretty awful. And on top of that she’s also one of those really girlish types of squeamish, too-too precious, dainty things that’d faint dead away if they saw one measly little worm. You know, the kind that’s always wearing some guy’s jacket or sweater because she’s shivering, even in August. Very dependent type. You don’t see too many of them around anymore since women’s lib. She’s the last of a dying breed, and we should probably preserve her. In fact that would be a perfect solution. Have her stuffed.

  Her and Norman. Norman’s my sheepdog, and even though it’s horrendous to talk that way about your own dog, with Norman it would probably be a month before anyone noticed the difference. It seems like all he ever does is sleep or watch Nina—that’s my twelve-year-old sister—and me argue about whose turn it is to take him out.

  We’ve had Norman forever, and for a long time we thought he had some kind of psychological block against showing affection, but now we realize that the only reason he doesn’t give us those big leaping doggy greetings with all the kissing and tailwagging is simply because it takes too much energy. If he could figure a way to do it without getting up I know he would, because deep down he really loves us—except for that thing he has about us plotting to steal his food. My father says he’s paranoid, but I don’t think he’s any worse than Nina when it comes to something she loves. First thing she does is spit on it. (That definitely discourages sharing.) She’s a real winner anyway. It seems like she’s always hanging around, butting in, bugging my friends, tattling, whining, borrowing and never returning, and generally being a pain in the neck. She also looks like a troll—well, to me anyway, although she has nice greenish eyes if you can find them under her glasses. And they say she’ll have pretty teeth when the rail-road comes off. (I’m wired, too, but not with tracks—the thin kind that’s almost invisible.)

  Listen, I know Typhoid Mary was worse, but she wasn’t my sister. My mother keeps assuring me that it’s natural for siblings to think they hate each other as kids but that there’s really a deep well of love (her words) that we’ll discover when we’re older. She’s probably right—when I’m about a hundred I should start liking Nina.

  Actually, in this last year she’s made two big improvements. One is her hair. It used to hang in strings like grunge. Then she made a brilliant discovery: shampoo. The second thing is her trick belch. You know what it’s like to introduce some great guy to your sister and instead of “hello” she takes a monster breath and . . . well, that’s the second improvement. Now she only does it around the house with family and close friends. She’s still got a long way to go.

  I probably ought to count my blessings. Steffi’s brother still picks his nose and he’s nearly fourteen.

  Say I eventually do get Nina under control. That still leaves the real tough ones, Felicia and Philip Martin, terrific, fabulous, sensational people except when it comes to being my parents. The problem is so obvious to me. They take their job too seriously. I’m two seconds away from being fifteen, and they’re still hanging over me, making sure I eat a proper breakfast, wear my scarf, my boots, my gloves, my sweater, and then there are all those watch-outs—watch the knife, your fingers, the bottom step, the car door, sharp corners, strangers, drafts, and fish bones. To be absolutely fair, I think they’ve got it together a lot this past year. Four different times in the last month neither of them warned me that I was going to tip over and crack my head when I leaned back on the dining room chairs.

  I guess it’s always possible that they’ve just stopped caring about my head, but I don’t really think so. I’m an optimist and I think they were just going through a bad stage and now they’re improving. Like now, they’re actually considering the possibility of me being a mother’s helper this summer out on Fire Island. I definitely know my mother’s considering letting me take the job, because the last time we discussed it (actually it was the seventeenth time since April) she said, “We’ll see.” I know from way back that “We’ll see” usually stinks, but I read it as a giant step up from “Are you out of your mind?” and “Absolutely not!” For my mother, even just considering the possibility is a huge improvement.

  Naturally she still hassles me to do things her way, but now she’s starting to listen to my side a lot more and even tries to let me make more decisions on my own. Even so, she has a long way to go—a lot farther than my father, who’s pretty okay except when it comes to boys. It’s like he thinks they’re all out to steal his precious baby. When it comes to his darling daughters, he’s just like Norman with his food. You should see the looks he gives them—the boys, I mean. Nickie Rostivo says it feels like my father’s looking right through him. And Dad’s definitely outrageous when it comes to any boy I show just the teensiest romantic interest in. Still, mostly he’s pretty fabulous.

  Anyway, back to sensational Jimmy. I think I’ll start calling him Jim just to be different. I’m only just starting, so if I want him to notice me I’ve got to be special, which is a horrendous problem when you are as ordinary average as me. I’m sure just calling him Jim isn’t going to make him stop dead and say, “Who is that mysterious average-looking girl who is courageous enough to call me Jim when the rest of the world calls me Jimmy?” Still, it’s a start, and I need all the starts I can get.

  Naturally I’ve been doing some dumb things like calling him on the phone and giggling. It’s okay because I never say my name. I’d die if he ever found out.

  Anyway, like I said, Steffi and I have a plan of attack that’s really far out. We’re going to go into the store where Jim works part-time and pretend I need a pair of shoes. You should see the shoes. They’re great looking if you happen to have hooves. Luckily I’ve saved enough baby-sitting money so I could buy a cheap pair if I absolutely had to. I don’t expect him to fall over dead at the sight of me; but at least I’ll get to meet him.

  I’ve created the scene in my mind a hundred times, and it always comes out beautiful. I go in there and there’s nobody around but him, and he comes out and it’s one of those things like in the movies, where his eyes and my eyes meet and we stand there held to each other while the electricity crackles around us. Then finally he pulls himself away and I sit down (I’m wearing my new Victoria’s Secret nightgown) and he starts to take off my shoes and the touch of his hand on my bare foot stuns us both. (In dreams you don’t have to wear peds to try on shoes.) So then he asks me what shoes I want and I tell him and he can’t stop looking at me. Then there’s a whole boring part where he brings out the shoes and tries them on me and that whole thing, and then finally when I’m about to leave (in this one I get stuck buying a really horrendous pair of espadrilles, but I figure I can always sell them to Nina), he says he has to see me, and he’s shocked when I tell him that I go to school with him, and we plan to go out that Saturday night, and I can tell he’s got to break a date with Gloria. Anyway, that’s the
dream.

  Today is real life, and it’s that Tuesday afternoon I told you about and I’m waiting for Steffi to buzz me from the lobby, and then we’re going over to Howell’s shoe store because this is the day that Jim works there.

  My complexion looks sort of okay today. There are a lot of under-the-skin bumps that nobody else ever seems to see, but I do. Still, if nobody else can, I guess he won’t, so it doesn’t matter. I’m wearing Steffi’s new French jeans, my cousin Liz’s suede clogs (we traded—I gave her my old Adidas sneakers which always killed my little toe anyway), and this fabulous Indian shirt I gave my mother for her last birthday.

  My hair is only so-so because I didn’t have time to wash it, and it’s been almost two days since my last shampoo so it’s really disgusting. I washed my feet anyway.

  It must be three thirty because jerk-face just got home. That’s Nina.

  “You walk Norman!” I tell her first thing.

  “Is Mommy home?” she answers.

  “Walk him now!”

  “Is Mommy home?” she keeps insisting.

  “No.”

  “Up yours. I’ll walk him when I feel like it.” She’s a monster when my mother is out. If my mother ever heard the language her darling twelve-year-old uses, she’d have a fit. I’m starting to tell her a few things when the downstairs buzzer rings. That has to be Steffi. I do a last check in the mirror, grab my father’s velour jacket that fits me perfectly since my mother accidentally put it in the dryer, and race out.

  Steffi is waiting in the front of the building. For some strange reason she’s wearing her new jeans that she said she was saving for Myrl Weingard’s birthday party next week. She’s really got a fabulous figure. A lot of people can’t wear tight jeans, but she looks great in them. She even combed her hair a little different. I have to tell her how terrific it looks with a side parting. And, my God, she’s wearing eye shadow! And now that I come closer, at least half a bottle of my tea rose perfume that I left at her house last week.