Gawky

by Margot Leitman

  However, this remake of “Give Peace a Chance” gave me hope. I’d always felt a kinship with John Lennon, not only because he was from Liverpool like my grandmother, but also because our birthdays were one day apart. I had always wished I had been born a day earlier and shared a birthday with an icon of peace and music. Instead, I shared a birthday with David Lee Roth and Saved by the Bell star Mario Lopez. Whatever . . . at least I didn’t share a birthday with Screech. Now instead of wearing out my father’s John Lennon records, I could maintain a vigil on MTV until they played this groundbreaking song. Sebastian Bach sang the best part, of course. Sandwiched between Cyndi Lauper and Randy Newman, he got to wail the line Amazon trees gone in an inhumanly high pitch that made me feel alive in a place only Jonah Hertzberg and Bobby Brown had aroused.

  One day, during lunch, the popular, hot boys were all sitting at the table behind me eating school pizza. Pretending to read my history textbook while poking at my hard-boiled egg and tuna sandwich, I overheard Chad Decker ask his dumb-faced friends, “Have you heard this new song ‘Give Peace a Chance’?” Chad was the most popular boy in school, but not for being particularly athletic, or smart, or even interesting for that matter. He just had an abundance of Champion sweatshirts and really nice eyes. I really wanted to correct him that it was not “new” and that he was a complete moron, but I decided to hunch over my hard-boiled egg and play cool.

  “Yeah, the song is like, ‘all we are saying is give peace a chance, whoooooo,’ or something like that. You may not have heard it yet,” said one of Chad Decker’s nameless peons.

  Chad Decker and his crew were so clueless and so off-key that suddenly I just had to show them how it was done. This could be the big antiwar protest I had fantasized about! Starting a “Give Peace a Chance” sing-along could be my version of a Wonder Years walkout. And I could school these dipshits in real music while I was at it.

  I felt a force take over me. My body couldn’t control itself. I had to stand up and sing, showing Chad and his boys how it was done. Maybe if I sang loudly enough, I could send out a force to help end the war. My singing would definitely cause more of an impact than those mainstream yellow ribbons everyone seemed to be donning. I was going to go for it.

  I lifted up my lanky five-foot-eight-inch frame, closed my eyes, and wailed with every ounce of pent-up rock star inside of me, “Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout Amazon trees gone, Middle East crazy beast rock ’n’ rollers sing for peace.” I paused a moment, hoping everyone would join in, then continued, even louder on the chorus, making sure all heard me. “All we are saying is give peace a chance!”

  A deafening silence followed my unannounced solo, rather than the group refrain I had hoped for. I opened my eyes to see that the entire cafeteria had stopped eating and was staring right at me, braces-filled mouths hanging open. I could feel the eyes of cool dudes trying to penetrate through my vintage black blazer. This was not Woodstock; this was not The Last Waltz; this was middle school. And apparently in my middle school, there was no room for a hulking androgynously dressed seventh-grade girl born twenty years too late. The cafeteria had previously gotten silent only when fistfights broke out. That was always scary. However, the silence my solo summoned was truly horrifying on a whole other level. Students in line for hot lunch froze holding their Styrofoam trays, janitors stopped sweeping, cool girls stopped gossiping, nerds stopped fishing through the garbage bins for their accidentally discarded retainers.

  I sat back down quickly, my cheeks on fire. What was I thinking? I was never going to get over this. My lame cafeteria protest was probably going to be featured next to my name in the middle school yearbook. No . . . my high school yearbook. I just knew people would still be talking about this years from now. Jonah Hertzberg would hear of it by next period and stop sneaking out to French-kiss me in the vacant lot. He’d ditch me to sneak out with one of Jessica Rosenstein’s clan and forget all about the antiestablishment force we had been together. Alyssa would officially join the White Lipstick Posse and abandon me. She’d stand with me at the bus stop each morning and pretend I didn’t exist. And my father would hide his records from me, calling me “a disgrace to a beautiful era.” This was the beginning of my demise into a hopeless, small-town loser. It was the most humiliating moment of my life.

  Everyone immediately moved away from me. It was so silent that when I crunched on my carrot sticks, I swear it echoed. The cafeteria aides gathered in a corner whispering and pointing at me. Jessica Rosenstein’s fashion intervention was a cakewalk compared to this. I looked around for a friendly face, but instead the silence became laughter, then conversation—about what a doofus I was for singing.

  For the rest of the day, the cool guys talked to me every chance they could. “I heard you were a great singer, can I get a private solo?”

  Chad Decker approached me at my locker. “Come on, Maggot, let’s have a sing-along.”

  This was the only time these guys ever talked to me for the entirety of middle school. I had wanted their attention for having cool taste in music, not for being a horrendously awkward cafeteria soloist. There was no way I could ever return to school after this day. There is nowhere to hide when you’re the tallest girl in school and you’re dressed like a rejected member of Jefferson Airplane. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to private school, though—this dungeon was my only option. That, or I would have to drop out of seventh grade and get a job as a Friendly’s waitress, serving overpriced ice cream to these assholes for the rest of my life.

  The next morning I pulled every trick Ferris Bueller had taught to convince my mom that I was too sick for school. I stayed home that day, listening to my father’s records, and prayed my unfortunate fifteen minutes of infamy would be over fast.

  CHAPTER 6:

  Leak-Out Pregnancy

  Two days after my horrifying one-person Gulf War cafeteria protest, I went back to school. My mental health day was quite enjoyable. I found a bunch of great albums in my dad’s record cabinet—the Doors, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Santana. I had my own classic-rock soundtrack as I ate lunch alone at our kitchen table and used all my brainpower to stop reliving the Gulf War solo protest over and over in my head. But alas, my vacay was not open-ended.

  When I returned to school, Chad Decker and the other cruel popular boys tried to hang on to torturing me about it, but like color-changing, touch-sensitive Hypercolor T-shirts, the incident quickly faded. Besides, the war ended, before many of the baseball hats, bumper stickers, and trading cards commemorating it had even been mass-marketed. I thought it was strange to have fun wartime mementos like trading cards. Albeit brief, it was still a war, after all. And I had nowhere near the same passion to trade these stupid cards with American eagles and yellow ribbons on them as I had for the Garbage Pail Kids of my younger years.

  Thankfully, the hallway discussions soon moved from what a horrible singer I was to how my classmate, B-student Teresa Carimonico, had not “gone to study abroad” but instead had a baby. It had seemed strange to me that Teresa was studying “abroad” yet no one knew exactly what country she had taken off to. And we were all wondering where she had gotten the money for her vague, possibly European semester away. Now it all made sense. I guess those elementary school assemblies had not properly scared her straight. My cafeteria solo abruptly became ancient history. While this was a lucky break, Teresa Carimonico’s story terrified me, as I had been sneaking out on a more regular basis to the vacant lot down the street to make out and play guitar with Jonah Hertzberg. Jonah Hertzberg was amazing at guitar even though he was missing a finger. I sucked at guitar, even with a full set of fingers, and used it more as an accessory.

  Surprisingly, even my make-out sessions with Jonah Hertzberg had lasted longer than the Gulf War. And still no one in school knew about us. It was for the best. We were just two weird kids born in the wrong era who had found each other. The Gulf War ended way too soon for our big plans to pen protest songs and there was no time for
us to write a hit antiwar ballad in the style of John and Yoko. War was over. It didn’t matter if we wanted it. So instead we did what we knew best—we snuck down to the vacant lot and made out and turned our discussions toward music, with frequent arguments over who was the superior guitarist: Eddie Van Halen or Eric Clapton. I voted for Eric Clapton, not because I truly knew he was better, but because my father had a lot of his records and I really admired his fashion sense. And he was hot. I didn’t care that Eric Clapton was old and damaged from years of cocaine use and not cool for young girls in the early ’90s to like. What were my contemporary alternatives? Was I supposed to pine over Milli Vanilli? Puh-leese. I’ll take an old man with a coke problem and a suede jacket anytime over some phony-baloney pop stars. Gross.

  Meanwhile, the girls in school were moving forward with boys pretty quickly. They all seemed to pair off with boyfriends and many were doing things like going to second base, and even sloppy second base (where the boy touches the girl’s boob with his mouth). This sex act seemed remarkably close to breast-feeding, a stage in parenting that my mother always publicly referred to as “one of the happiest times of her life.” The thought of Jonah Hertzberg suckling my nonexistent boob gave me about the same level of sexual excitement as the birthing video I had averted my eyes from in health class.

  I was too busy for sloppy second base anyway. I was now learning both the major and minor chords on the guitar, studying modern dance, and modeling my outfits after Stevie Nicks. No one’s mouth was anywhere near my boobs, even though, thanks to my height, my barely boobs landed at most boys’ mouth level.

  One day, I managed to get invited to an all-girls afternoon hangout at the house of the Newly Hot Hair Girl, the one I had traumatized by making a move on during my Bobby Brown phase. Time had passed and she either had forgiven me for the incident or had been so horrified that she had blocked it out the way my health teacher told us most mothers forget childbirth. Nevertheless, my invites were few and far between, so I decided to go, even though I wouldn’t have any close friends there.

  When I got to the Newly Hot Hair Girl’s house, she and her friends were in her wood-paneled den. Newly Hot Hair Girl’s den was a cool addition that was constructed onto the back end of her Cape Cod–style house. I walked in, trying to take in the room, only to interrupt a conversation discussing bra sizes. This was not my idea of a good time, but I plopped down on the shag carpet anyway, attempting to make the best of the invite-only social hour. I suspected the bra-size discussion was really some sort of bizarre competition and I definitely lost. My bra size in proportion to my height definitely worked out mathematically to a humongous loss. I was built like Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl, who was not considered a sex symbol in any culture, time period, or universe. I was getting antsy when finally the conversation shifted from bra sizes to music. The Newly Hot Hair Girl put on some cassette singles, starting with FireHouse’s “Love of a Lifetime.” This poor man’s rock ballad was a huge hit among these girls. They all gasped and screamed at the song choice, looking around the room for approval with each girly whimper. And they all sang along:

  I finally found the love of lifetime.

  A love to last my whole life through.

  I hated this pitch-it-down-the-middle style of rock, but I looked in amazement around the room as these girls tried their best to make themselves cry. I could tell by their excessive blinking and subtle pulling on their eyelids that they each coveted the attention that tearing up while singing along to FireHouse would surely beckon. To my delight, no one succeeded. Too bad no one thought to go as far as to pull out a nose hair to force tears to fall. The best anyone achieved was Nancy, who rubbed her eye so much to induce tears that she now looked as if she had contracted conjunctivitis. The song stopped with a loud snap as the cassette single ran out of tape. Silence. All the girls tried their best to look as if they were really “taking in the moment,” the way I imagined people looked at each other after a massive chant at some pretentious retreat where clueless rich people went to “find themselves.”

  “So, I thought we could go around the room and say who our love of a lifetime is,” said the Newly Hot Hair Girl. What was up with these girls always wanting to go around the room saying stuff? I’d been awake way past my bedtime at enough of my parents’ grown-up parties to see that they never stopped partying to go around the room taking polls on the “most successful appetizer at the gathering” or “who was their most influential historical figure.” They were too busy drinking Rolling Rocks and having actual organic conversations. I definitely did not want to go around the room and declare who my love of a lifetime was. I was thirteen. Hopefully I had not yet encountered the love of my lifetime yet, because it was slim pickins at Matawan Regional Middle School. But much to my chagrin, all the guests at this lame-o party seemed enthused at the idea. I could see the wheels spinning as they began nervously brainstorming their list of possible loves of a lifetime. I fiddled with the fringe on my leather belt, hoping no one would notice me, again cursing my stature and knowing that it would be impossible to go unnoticed.

  “Jessica, who’s your love of a lifetime?”

  “Oh, definitely Chad Decker,” said Jessica Rosenstein through fluorescent-pink braces. “Except he doesn’t know it yet.” The girls all laughed. Jessica Rosenstein was killing it! She didn’t have a boyfriend, so she thought outside the box. Wow. Nailed that one. What was I going to say when they came to me? I couldn’t say Jonah Hertzberg, despite the fact that we were fully fledged members of the frequent-Frenchers club. No one knew about us, and that’s what was exciting about it. And he wasn’t my love of a lifetime anyway; we didn’t even acknowledge each other in the school hallways. Ugh. Please pick me last. I need some time here.

  “Nancy, who’s your love of a lifetime?”

  Oh good. Nancy. Nancy had an actual boyfriend. She wasn’t secretly sneaking out to make out with him in the dark; Nancy actually held hands in the hallway with her boyfriend and stuff. This was true love. “Chris of course. He is totally my love of a lifetime. We’re going to get married.”

  All the girls oohed and aahed at this, completely on board with Nancy’s lifelong commitment to Chris, a thirteen-year-old guy who wore nothing but soccer T-shirts. Then, with the sharpness of a businesswoman conducting a job interview, Nancy turned to me, made severe eye contact, and said, “Who’s your love of a lifetime, Margot?”

  No! Not me! Why did I have to go next? I hadn’t had time yet to aptly prepare a witty response! All perfectly lined eyes were on me. I looked at the wood-paneled walls for inspiration. Nothing. Blank. Silence.

  I had no idea what to say. I didn’t have enough time to concoct a lie. I turned back to Nancy and said with defeat, “I don’t have a love of a lifetime.”

  Gasps came from the crowd of Electric Youth perfume–doused teens. What? How could that be? How could I already be thirteen and have not yet found my love of a lifetime? I was a shriveled-up old maid with an A cup and a mouthful of baby teeth. I fiddled with the peacock feather earrings my mom had let me borrow for the occasion as long as I “didn’t destroy them.” I sat stoically, refusing to call on the next girl and potentially humiliate her by asking her who her love of a lifetime was.

  The party had hit a low point thanks to me, when finally the Newly Hot Hair Girl said, “Are we ready for the next song?” We were desperate to change the mood and we all agreed that the best thing to do would be to put on the cassette single for Extreme’s “More Than Words.” Everyone was so busy singing along that no one noticed me sitting in silence, desperate to get home where I had unlimited access to real rock ’n’ roll and where no one questioned the fact that I had yet to meet “the one.”

  These girls were really not for me. They just didn’t get it. I’d rather spend my spare time in modern dance classes and learning to play guitar with Jonah. And their Electric Youth perfume smelled to me like a strawberry-scented pine tree car air freshener. I didn’t want that wussy smell rubbing off
on me. I longed to be allowed to wear Nag Champa organic body spray, something I had seen once in a hippie store and that seemed like a “woman’s scent.”

  And don’t forget, I had a secret lover, and nothing was more exciting or illicit at the time. I was having much more fun with Jonah Hertzberg anyway. After our jam sessions, we would make out and our bodies would get really close. I had felt something move down there, though only through clothes, and was constantly worried that something would leak out of him. I often wondered, while Jonah Hertzberg’s denim-clad groin rubbed up against mine, did my pregnant classmate Teresa Carimonico actually have intercourse? Because according to our health classes, you didn’t need to have sex to get pregnant. Our super-intense health teachers had told us a toilet seat, heavy petting, and dry humping could impregnate you. I had no choice but to believe them. And after that all-too-vivid birthing video, I certainly did not want to fall victim to pregnancy via toilet seat, or any other method for that matter.

  The week of Newly Hot Hair Girl’s party, I was aware that my period was a little late, but the constant chatter of Teresa Carimonico’s situation made me take it a little more seriously. The next day, I turned to the free cat wall calendar I had gotten from the local Chinese restaurant and counted off, only to discover that my period was in fact a whole two weeks late. Two weeks! Never mind the fact that I’d never even seen a man naked besides that awkward time I went to see The Crying Game with my parents. Never mind the fact that I’d never gone beyond second base above the shirt. Never mind all of that; I was thirteen; I was two weeks late with my period; I was a whore.