Gawky (7 page)

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:

B
y 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.