I invited her over one day under the ruse of coming over to “look at my books.” I thought that would appeal to a leopard. After a disgusting snack of dry biscuits with marmalade and black tea prepared by my faux British mother, we headed upstairs. I apologized for my mom’s terrible snack selection, explaining that I lived in a Fruit Roll-Ups- and Hi-C-free environment. “Maybe that’s why you’re growing to be so tall,” said the Newly Hot Hair Girl. I wanted to tell her to shut up and kiss me. I knew I was tall; with my gene pool there was no other option. I certainly didn’t need marmalade to aid my growth. Duh.
“Well, here are my books,” I replied, barely gesturing to the shelf, in the same way the haggard older The Price Is Right models displayed a “lovely dinette set.” I was desperate to change the subject away from my height, as I was sure that would be a turnoff for her.
“I like the color in here. Mint green. Nice.”
“Thanks. My mom painted it. She said it was a cool, calming color.” Enough small talk. Let’s get to it. In the “Roni” video, Bobby drags the boring-looking girl across the stage by the hand and says, “What we about to do, baby, you don’t need that coat, that sweater, or nothin’.” Then he towels off the sweat from his brow as she removes her cardigan to reveal her olive-green turtleneck. “This ain’t gonna hurt . . . not a bit,” he says as he stares at her rack, which is so big it still reads loud and clear through a loose-fitting turtleneck. Bobby didn’t talk about paint hues; he got down to business.
I needed to act fast. As the Newly Hot Hair Girl went to grab a book, I leaned in at the same time, knocking the book to the floor. Then, I used a move I had learned from Kirk Cameron on Growing Pains and leaned down slowly to help her pick it up. Inch by inch, we rose all the way up and then locked eyes and stared at each other. Then, I mustered up the strength, thought of Bobby and his turtleneck-wearing audience volunteer, and leaned in to kiss the Newly Hot Hair Girl moving slowly and methodically, imagining she was not the girl whose baking soda volcano erupted first during a class science experiment but instead was a sexy black backup dancer for my generation’s Elvis Presley. When I reached about one inch from her braceless face, she snapped, “What are you doing?” It was the exact same tone my brother used when he caught me snapping my pants and looking at my non-dick’s reflection in the oven. I pulled away. Silence.
Sitting in my knock-off Benetton sweatshirt in my mint-green bedroom in suburban New Jersey, I became suddenly aware that I was no Tanya, and I certainly was no Bobby. I was not even a lesbian, and I was certainly not a tender Roni. I was just a lonely, confused, oversize little girl. I was a way-too-physically-advanced-for-her-age weirdo, and I had just added one more person to the list of people who considered me a freak. I had to save what little dignity I had left.
“What? What are you talking about? I’m just getting my book. Relax.”
Relax? What a douchey thing to say to a girl I had just failed at mouth raping. If she hadn’t pulled away, this would have been my first live sexual experience ever. The Newly Hot Hair Girl went in the other room and called her mom from our tan clunky telephone, begging her to take her home early.
She waited outside on the front bench for her ride all alone. She refused the cup of tea my mother offered her and wouldn’t take a dry biscuit either. I watched from the window to make sure she got picked up okay. I didn’t want to go down and wait with her; that would make matters worse. Plus, I’d have to face my mom and explain what was going on. I didn’t want to have to tell the Queen of England that my new friend was leaving because I thought I was a lesbian because no one monitored my television intake and now I was a bit oversexed from too much Bobby Brown and too little Richard Marx. I thought it would be best to use the traditional British way of dealing with certain shameful things: ignore the situation, pretend everything is just fine, and never speak of it again.
Luckily the Newly Hot Hair Girl told no one at school. Or if she did, she was smart enough to tell only the mean girls who would whisper behind my back but never to my face. No one ever called me gay, and although the Newly Hot Hair Girl never volunteered to partner with me on school projects, she didn’t treat me as if I had the plague either. She was just scared of me enough to not want to push my buttons. It was kind of exhilarating actually, to have someone a little frightened of me.
Regarding Bobby and his crew, I had no choice . . . I immediately broke it off with Tanya. My imaginary fling with the sexiest backup dancer who ever lived had died, for real, unlike Frisco on General Hospital. MTV took the “Roni” video out of rotation and replaced it with Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance,” which was a little too overproduced for my taste. There were way too many graphics and costume changes, and the cameras used to make that video definitely were not purchased at a garage sale like Bobby’s. With “Roni” no longer on the air, I was forced to break up with Bobby as well.
And considering the way things turned out for Bobby, a widower’s life of drugs, divorce, and a terrible reality show, I’m very thankful I got out of that “relationship” when I did.
CHAPTER 4:
Big Plans to Do Good
By this time, I started to wonder whether I was going about life all wrong. Middle school was only a few months away and I looked like a flat-chested seventeen-year-old missing a few teeth. My two inane attempts at a premature love life—phone-dating a bank teller and living vicariously through Bobby Brown—had both horribly backfired. If I kept this up, I’d end up a gold-digging harlot by age thirteen, or worse. I could get teen pregnant or infected with AIDS—as I had heard could happen if one went down the wrong path.
My school was very big on educating students about the wrong path. We were subjected to terrifying assemblies where we were “scared straight” by former convicts and drug addicts. I heard all about the dangers of pot, smoking cigarettes, alcohol, and sex. Once my school even hired a haggard-looking guy to come in and tell seventy-five impressionable sixth graders about the time “I was so jacked up on heroin that I took out my own eye!” I didn’t want to become a bad girl and end up taking out my own eye. Even though the guy seemed to have somehow gotten it back in just fine.
During my sixth-grade year in particular, my school was really on a tear to curb any sort of undesirable behavior. The Simpsons had recently started airing, and it really took off, causing every other kid in my school to don a T-shirt featuring Bart Simpson riding a skateboard/Homer Simpson eating a donut/Marge Simpson looking fabulous with her blue beehive hairdo. I didn’t wear a Simpsons T-shirt, or want one. That would be soooo mainstream. I wanted to live on the outskirts of the social norms. I sported a lot of homemade blouses, made by my mom, instead. My mom was a fabulous seamstress, and I liked telling people I had “designed my own clothes,” though in reality I had just picked out the fabric at the fabric store—usually the loudest prints possible—while my mom did the rest of the work. My homemade blouses fit my extra-long torso unlike store-bought shirts, which, due to my growth spurt, abruptly became more like Jessica Hahn–esque crop tops after about one wearing.
Also, I had actually never seen The Simpsons. My brother was always using the television to tape classic movies so he could log them into his massive document that I often caught him staring at with pride. I wasn’t sure how many of these movies he actually watched, but just knowing he had them on tape was enough for Greg. Someday he would be free from chores and homework and sports practice and be able to watch every movie ever made, an ambition similar to my father’s dream of one day finally using all those tiny soaps and shampoos he’d collected from business trips over the years. So, without ever seeing an episode of The Simpsons or owning any Simpsons attire, I was unaware of how the Simpsons were influencing my school. Until one day our principal, Mr. Luskavitch, a man who was at the very least ninety years old, came to pay our class a visit.
Mr. Luskavitch was a Russian immigrant with thick glasses and an even thicker accent. He seemed remarkably out of touch with America’s youth and an
odd choice to be principal of such a young bunch. He wasn’t an intimidating man, except for his weird fingers. I had a major fear of old people with strange fingers ever since a way-too-young viewing of the movie Cloak & Dagger, in which a gloved elderly woman accompanied by Dabney Coleman chloroforms a young boy and then removes her glove to reveal she has only three fingers. Three gross fingers and two stumps, to be exact. This image haunted me so much as a child that it took me literally years to recover. It manifested as a fear that every time I used the toilet, her three-fingered wrinkly hand would rise up through the basin and pull me in. (I wasn’t too frightened of Dabney Coleman because I had also seen Nine to Five on TBS and knew he had broad range as an actor.) My phobia of the three-fingered woman developed into a temporary obsessive-compulsive disorder in which I had to flush the toilet, wash my hands, run to my room, hide under the covers, and then count to thirty in order to know I was completely safe from three-fingered murder via toilet. I performed this ritual religiously until I saw the movie Cocoon, which replaced all my fears of gloved senior citizens with a new fear of people removing their skin in the shower to reveal that they were truly aliens. It’s been explained to me dozens of times that the aliens in Cocoon were “nice aliens,” but to a little girl with a very active imagination and a pension for irrational fears, “nice aliens” are just as horrific as “shitbag aliens.”
But I digress, back to Mr. Luskavitch. His fingers were totally creepy. On par with the Cloak & Dagger villain, but not quite as creepy as unzipping one’s skin. Upon his visit to our class, he stood in front of the room and began his presentation.
“There is a very popular show on television right now, and most of you have heard of it. It’s called The Simpsons.”
The class grumbled with excitement, thinking that maybe Mr. Luskavitch had taped a few episodes on his VCR and we’d be spending our math period laughing over Maggie’s uptight demeanor versus Bart’s joie de vivre.
Mr. Luskavitch continued, “Now, there are two main characters on the show, Bart and Lisa.” He paused. I was pretty sure, judging by my schoolmates’ T-shirts, that there were more than two main characters on the show, but it wasn’t my place to nitpick, having never seen an episode and all. I loved how Mr. Luskavitch’s Russian accent really hit the t on Bart and I didn’t want to throw off his game.
“Now, everyone,” he went on, “who do you think you should try to model your behavior after? Bart or Lisa?”
Everyone in my class called out “Bart” in a failed attempt at hilarity. Mr. Luskavitch didn’t seem amused.
“Actually,” Mr. Luskavitch said, with a stern voice, reminding us of the seriousness of the situation, “you should all try to be like Lisa. Do your work, don’t talk back, engage in extracurricular activities, and obey your parents. Don’t steal. Don’t act up. Don’t copy homework. Do good deeds. Don’t be Barts. Be Lisas!” Then Mr. Luskavitch shook his crooked finger at all of us and left the room. He’d really nailed the presentation. Mr. Luskavitch left us wanting more.
As we all opened up our math textbooks, I could hear Mr. Luskavitch walk into the classroom next door and repeat his speech word for word: “There is a very popular show on television right now, most of you have heard of it. It’s called The Simpsons.”
Inspired by Mr. Luskavitch to be a Lisa and not a Bart, to do good in the world and make my parents and teachers proud, my next scheme was to become appreciated in my town by doing something good and getting oodles of attention for it. Maybe if I actually accomplished a good deed, grown-ups would have something else to make small talk with me about besides my height. I signed up to volunteer for an Earth Day beach cleanup at the scummy beach on the wrong side of the tracks. Instead of the usual “Wow, you get bigger and bigger every time I see you” from every family friend I encountered, they would say “I heard you saved a beached whale from the dangers of litter . . . amazing!”
Here, if ever, was an opportunity to paint myself a hero, to change my own destiny. Accompanying me were two boys from my school: a practically-out-of-the-closet fifth grader who loved to dance with scarves as much as I did and a bucktoothed problem child headed for juvie, whom I hovered over by at least four inches. It seemed odd that we three were the ones who volunteered for this. I wondered if the problem child was already doing community service for a secret crime he had committed. Maybe I was associating with a convict. How exciting!
The effeminate boy’s presence also confused me. Was he just trying to give back to his community? Or was he maybe, just maybe, trying to get closer to me? I had heard that a lot of cool girls had gay BFFs and maybe he was looking for an in with me. Maybe this boy thought I was a worthy candidate for fun friendship.
Or maybe these guys were also moved by Mr. Luskavitch’s motivational speech, and now they wanted to make sure they became Lisas, not Barts, too.
The beach cleanup was run by a nice, aging hippie, about my height. In my experience, most skinny adult women with long frizzy hair and high-pitched voices end up being first-grade teachers or working in a nature center. I had been pleasantly surprised when Amanda and I watched Airplane! together and saw Julie Hagerty, a skinny adult woman with lonely frizz for hair and a high-pitched voice, cast as the sexy female lead. This actress delivered her hilarious lines with a straight face, adding more to the humor of it all. She played the main stewardess, the one who had the Saturday Night Fever parody dance scene. If parody dancing was an actual career option, I wanted in. A career based on silly dancing could be just the perfect path for my lanky frame. Also, I loved how Airplane! played up the sexual tension between her and the hot, tan leading man. Someday someone would love me so much they would board a plane full of wacky passengers in an attempt to win me back. To add to my excitement, one of my father’s cool New York City friends actually started dating Julie Hagerty. Although I requested her presence at both Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, they sadly broke up before I got a chance to meet her. The kids at school were not impressed.
Thus I had a respect for Beach Cleanup Lady because I could imagine her exchanging campy dialogue with Leslie Nielsen. She was in charge of us, and even though we were on the wrong side of the tracks, she was going to keep us safe. This was the part of town where I had heard teenagers went to do bad stuff. The tail end of the ’80s, heading into the ’90s, was the perfect time to be a rebellious teen in Central Jersey. This was the side of town I imagined teenage girls wearing lowcut tank tops and ripped jeans came to smoke cigarettes and funnel beer. I didn’t quite know why anyone would go to the trouble of drinking beer through a funnel when the can or bottle is especially designed for drinking, but to each his own.
Beach Cleanup Lady told us in that screechy voice, “Children, please clean up the best you can. But if you find anything, and I mean anything that makes you feel unsafe, call for me immediately. Just yell ‘STOP!’”
With her shrill voice ringing in my ears, I began picking up the trash on the beach with tremendous effort, blowing past the short, slow-poke boys. I weaved in and out of sandy pieces of Hubba Bubba and bottle caps, looking for something dangerous so everyone would thank me for taking the offending object off our beach. Most likely the Asbury Park Press would run a front-page story on me: Hulking Heroine Shore to Please. No longer would Jon Bon Jovi be the pride and joy of our area. I would take over as being the most famous person ever to come from here. I would be revered for all eternity in the same fashion Dr. Heimlich was. I too would be a lifesaver, and my name would be synonymous with making the world a safer place.
Then, suddenly, the bucktoothed problem child started screaming for help. I dropped my trash bag and ran awkwardly with the Beach Cleanup Lady to his aid.
“What’s that?” I asked, staring down at a long glass pipe. It had a little bit of black soot around one part of it, giving it the look of some of my grandmother’s glass Cartier collectables that she had placed too closely to her Manhattan windowsill. I always wanted to pick them up and give them a once-over with the
bottom of my shirt, but I lived in constant fear of breaking anything. I had a knack for breaking only extremely valuable things, so I always felt it was best to simply leave the soot as-is on the Cartier lion sculpture.
Beach Cleanup Lady took a long, deep breath as a crowd gathered around. “Kids, I’m sorry to say, and I really hope it isn’t, but this looks like something people use to smoke drugs. This is a crack pipe. It’s what crackheads use to inhale their crack.”
I was terrified. I didn’t know people were smoking crack in my town. I thought all the people at the scared-straight school assemblies had been outsourced. Since when did we have crackheads? Why hadn’t any of them been hired to speak at our school assemblies? Why weren’t we properly utilizing our local resources? This was Earth Day, for goodness’ sake! Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen never sang about crack!
Then again . . . maybe my hometown wasn’t so boring after all. Instead of remaining frozen in fear, I got excited. I approached the rest of the beach cleanup more like a drug bust/archaeological dig. If I found a crack pipe, maybe I could present it during the next school assembly in the same way those cops a few weeks ago had shown us evidence from their drug busts. I’d stand before all my classmates in the cafetorium with the crack pipe prominently displayed in an unbreakable Lucite container and also projected onto a large screen so everyone could see what I had found. “You see, kids,” I’d say, “we can make a difference in our community. I am tired of taking a backseat to crime. Remember, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” There would be a pause before uproarious applause, then a standing ovation, then a Q and A that would go into overtime and cut into everyone’s recess. But no one would care, because they had the ear of the local hero. The person that just couldn’t turn her back on local crime. I was no longer just the tallest girl in school. I was now the person who had made a difference. I would save our noble community from the dangers of hard drugs and litter all at once.
Gawky Page 5
