you'll get a raise
"Best Life Ever Week," is over. Oprah tells us how to make the most out of 2009, what kind of vibrator to buy, why she gained sixty pounds, the cure for credit card debt. In it's aftermath, we are left with just the pieces. I am not the target audience, but I don't really give a shit this. This is all for me, all for me, all for me.
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Back in the classroom, we got ready to start the DARE program. We received bright red t-shirts with black font on them (years later I traded shirts with one of my high school boyfriends, opting for a black shirt with red font.) We went to the school cafeteria where speakers came in and told us the woes of doing drugs.
We watched a cartoon about doing LSD. Apparently, if you did this drug, you would be very likely to jump out a building because you thought you could fly, or maybe you'd even kill a loved one.
It seemed terrifying. We went once a week and took some kind of pledge, swearing to remain drug free.
You see, when I was 10 years old, when i was 11- I wasnt going to drugs. I was going to go to Enterprise Village and sit in Mrs.Uhl's class and write short stories about road trips with my family.
That year our class song was "Ironic,' by Ilanis Morisette. We were allowed to listen to it in class- it was a big deal. We played it the morning that special guest speakers were coming in. Two high school students, a boy and a girl. They were there to talk to us about abstinence. I remember wondering if they had sex together, then imagining them having sex. For years I had no idea that sex actually felt good for women- I thought it was something you did to prove something or make someone happy. And they talked to us about STDs and how they were waiting until marriage and all of these things.In the 5th grade, we were not having sex. But I wondered what it would be like with the boy from Blockbuster video, with the boy from Time Warner cable in class. The things we could do at Enterprise Village.
So you see, this is where society tried to prepare us. We would graduate high school in 2003- but we would be abstinent and drug free in 1995. Brilliant.
And then comes middle school. My parents decide at some point-- while mending their own marriage, that it would be best if I went to Catholic School for the next three years. But that's another speech and another story. My mother who denounces God; my father with his four hours of meditation a day and they are sending me out to place the Body of Christ on my 11 year old tongue again. I am furious, but mildly interested. Perpetually bored.
All of the kids at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School have gone to school together since kindergarten. They have formed this bond- "my mom drives an SUV, I am devoted to Christ." And I had spent the last few years with monks straight from the Shaolin temple, with liberal teachers in public schools, the kids in my neighborhood &their mother's who were on welfare &a Jewish couple that had just arrived in the United States after living in a commune in South Africa. I look older than I am at this point, some kind of transformation is starting and something inside of me is just not having this.
And at first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks I become enemy number 1 of the girls in the 6th grade. They made fun of me a lot and I would try and stare at one object in the room, and sometimes it didnt hurt my feelings because I kind of knew- "who are these kids anyway?" but eventually they just ruined my day. I didn't care for the nuns that taught the classes and I missed Enterprise Village, I missed hearing the word "condom", how was I supposed to care so much about Noah's Ark?
At first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks, I become enemy number 1. It starts when I ask a question about Noah's Arc, and it ends a year later. In the beginning I handle being made fun of very well, part of me knows that this does not really matter, but eventually, probably fairly quickly, it just starts to ruin my day. I feel ill very morning, I have no idea how I can make it through another day.
So, I start faking sick. I fake an elaborate stomach flu for weeks, maybe months. You see, I started writing because I started lying. It was as simple as that. It was easy to find an escape. So I'd have my parents drive me to the emergency room in the middle of the night, I'd look at my grandmother's face and I'd wonder about heaven and hell. It's all I heard all day long. We'd walk over to the church. We read no novels for children, no novels for young adults.
The girls in my class actually sometimes talked about how horrifying the idea of any sexual interaction seemed. I'd overhear this, and it of course made me hate them. By now I had developed breasts- not even boobs, but I mean these same things I walk around with today. And I started getting a certain kind of male attention. If a boy in my class made fun of me, I would just stare back at him. I would hold my glare pretty firmly, I don't know what I was doing, but I was doing something.
The 6th grade is a long story, but it ends with my parents allowing me to go to public school for 7th grade. I faked sick for one year and when the summer came, I was a new person. Something happens the summer between 6th and 7th grade- I become very self-aware. I do sit ups in my room. I buy a lot of magazines. Or I guess, I had my mother buy them. I start preparing for something bigger, deciding that this is all just a stepping stone to something else. I wear low cut tank tops and I am pretty boy crazy. By the time the 7th grade starts I make a new boyfriend a week, I still really didn't have friends, I started making a few Toni Bergold &Rachel Tipton, Leigh Sams and other alliances. Prinda and Heather and this whole group. We painted our nails black, we listened to Nirvana albums and 98 Rock and wore flannel shirts with terribly short shorts. I don't remember any academic achievements in the 7th or 8th grade other than Mrs.Rapoli's art class- but ya know, we only had interest in that because of all the boys.
All those idiot boys. That's how it was then, a lot of hopelessly devoting myself to thirteen years old. And somehow, elementary school did not prepare me enough for their raging hormones. I don't know if this is a Florida thing, but all of my first sexual encounters happened in backyards. Maybe we hung out there because someone's parents we're home. But the first time I willingly decided it would be okay to let a boy stick his hand down my pants was in a shed, in his backyard. I remember having no reaction to this, really feeling nothing. And the funny thing is that I wouldnt let him kiss me, I felt that if I was actually going to have to be responsive or do something it would be too much. This was my skateboarding boyfriend, who was basically an asshole, but when I was 13, I really enjoyed this. We would listen to the album Nimrod and in 1998, this was the most profound thing I could think of. I always listened to this song on repeat, I don't even remember what it's called but the lyrics went "the world owes me so fuck you," and my parents heard it on repeat so often from beyond my bedroom door that my father could recognize Greenday playing on the radio.
And for me, the best part of all of this was that I looked older. I would look at all the other girls in the locker room during gym class, and I knew that I could go into the world and say I was 16 and get away with it. I didn't know that this almost directly translated as: trouble. I learned how to fit my body through anyone's bedroom window.
I started out high school with "Nobody broke your heart/you broke your own because you cant finish what you start," and I let that turn into fourteen year old boys. I met a boy who actually lived on a street called "Alameda" and I knew it was a sign from God, I knew it was going to be true love, it was going to last forever.
The year 2000 was coming, and I kind of wanted us all to die. The books I read did not help, and middle school had not prepared me for any of this. I did not ask where the transition was, I didn't even think of it. I met Danielle and Ilana and Stacy and Mikey and Kyle and Ian and I formed this huge world around them, around us, I was ready to let out everything. In high school, on my teenage self.
I would have said "fuck you," to The Home Shopping Network. I would have eagerly tried to give the abstinence boy a blow job. You know, in the 9th grade I told a whole lie about a blow job. It was a very elaborate, manipulative thing. The months leading up to the time I actually had sex in- you guest it- a backyard were very scandalous. But you know, I cant tell you if it was natural, if it was some organic process or if we made it that way.
Our parents brought us home books like "Go Ask Alice," and "The Best Little Girl in the World," and I don't know how they expected this to have a positive result, we read these books and we just wanted to emulate them. I wanted to run West to California; my best friends wanted to cut themselves or starve themselves. We all wanted to fuck the neighborhood, but luckily we did not.
When I started high school, it was 1999 and everyone just had just gotten instant messenger. We still talked to boys on the phone, but now we could also talk to them on the internet. I made a livejournal and if you read the original entries they are all about how I hate high school or the things I am doing after school. I desperately tried to smoke cigarettes. We desperately wanted to try everything. We eventually put Sublime on the stereo and then we started to calm down, the advent of Bright Eyes and Saves the Day and other things we could put on mix tapes or sing in unison. It was gradual. It was very gradual.
And if you're wondering why I am telling you this, why I am telling a stranger how I went from being the smartest girl in the 4th grade to wanting to dissolve next to the yellow lockers, it's because I am trying to tell you about the center, the formative years the middle ground that let's us be fine now. I sometimes meet girls who have just moved to New York City, and I watch them do the things that I did when I was 14, I watch them go through the same motions and I kind of feel like I lucked out by purchasing Nevermind 5 times on CD and cassette before I could even have a drivers license. I feel that I lucked out about being in a sense, reckless, before there were major consequences. By the time I was driving, almost all of this had flushed out of my system and I wanted to be the same girl I was at Enterprise Village. My hair might have still been pink, and I can guarantee you that my away message probably left me crying about some boy for years to come, any boy some kid on the street corner who I wanted to turn into salvation. Maybe I saw him on bike or skateboard and wanted to give him my feelings on Jesus Christ- but maybe not.
And maybe if I ever teach any grade, I'll teach middle school. I'll try and put together some pieces about how you're supposed to go from being a child to a teenager. How you go from being 5 to 18 in the 3 years. I remember all of my teachers names- I remember them a lot better than any of the boys from middle school. The ones from elementary school &high school they stick, but when I first grew breasts, when my legs got longer, there must have been a blur. Maybe if I thought it was magic, it was not and maybe if you tell some things, it just doesn't make any difference at all.
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Back in the classroom, we got ready to start the DARE program. We received bright red t-shirts with black font on them (years later I traded shirts with one of my high school boyfriends, opting for a black shirt with red font.) We went to the school cafeteria where speakers came in and told us the woes of doing drugs.
We watched a cartoon about doing LSD. Apparently, if you did this drug, you would be very likely to jump out a building because you thought you could fly, or maybe you'd even kill a loved one.
It seemed terrifying. We went once a week and took some kind of pledge, swearing to remain drug free.
You see, when I was 10 years old, when i was 11- I wasnt going to drugs. I was going to go to Enterprise Village and sit in Mrs.Uhl's class and write short stories about road trips with my family.
That year our class song was "Ironic,' by Ilanis Morisette. We were allowed to listen to it in class- it was a big deal. We played it the morning that special guest speakers were coming in. Two high school students, a boy and a girl. They were there to talk to us about abstinence. I remember wondering if they had sex together, then imagining them having sex. For years I had no idea that sex actually felt good for women- I thought it was something you did to prove something or make someone happy. And they talked to us about STDs and how they were waiting until marriage and all of these things.In the 5th grade, we were not having sex. But I wondered what it would be like with the boy from Blockbuster video, with the boy from Time Warner cable in class. The things we could do at Enterprise Village.
So you see, this is where society tried to prepare us. We would graduate high school in 2003- but we would be abstinent and drug free in 1995. Brilliant.
And then comes middle school. My parents decide at some point-- while mending their own marriage, that it would be best if I went to Catholic School for the next three years. But that's another speech and another story. My mother who denounces God; my father with his four hours of meditation a day and they are sending me out to place the Body of Christ on my 11 year old tongue again. I am furious, but mildly interested. Perpetually bored.
All of the kids at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School have gone to school together since kindergarten. They have formed this bond- "my mom drives an SUV, I am devoted to Christ." And I had spent the last few years with monks straight from the Shaolin temple, with liberal teachers in public schools, the kids in my neighborhood &their mother's who were on welfare &a Jewish couple that had just arrived in the United States after living in a commune in South Africa. I look older than I am at this point, some kind of transformation is starting and something inside of me is just not having this.
And at first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks I become enemy number 1 of the girls in the 6th grade. They made fun of me a lot and I would try and stare at one object in the room, and sometimes it didnt hurt my feelings because I kind of knew- "who are these kids anyway?" but eventually they just ruined my day. I didn't care for the nuns that taught the classes and I missed Enterprise Village, I missed hearing the word "condom", how was I supposed to care so much about Noah's Ark?
At first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks, I become enemy number 1. It starts when I ask a question about Noah's Arc, and it ends a year later. In the beginning I handle being made fun of very well, part of me knows that this does not really matter, but eventually, probably fairly quickly, it just starts to ruin my day. I feel ill very morning, I have no idea how I can make it through another day.
So, I start faking sick. I fake an elaborate stomach flu for weeks, maybe months. You see, I started writing because I started lying. It was as simple as that. It was easy to find an escape. So I'd have my parents drive me to the emergency room in the middle of the night, I'd look at my grandmother's face and I'd wonder about heaven and hell. It's all I heard all day long. We'd walk over to the church. We read no novels for children, no novels for young adults.
The girls in my class actually sometimes talked about how horrifying the idea of any sexual interaction seemed. I'd overhear this, and it of course made me hate them. By now I had developed breasts- not even boobs, but I mean these same things I walk around with today. And I started getting a certain kind of male attention. If a boy in my class made fun of me, I would just stare back at him. I would hold my glare pretty firmly, I don't know what I was doing, but I was doing something.
The 6th grade is a long story, but it ends with my parents allowing me to go to public school for 7th grade. I faked sick for one year and when the summer came, I was a new person. Something happens the summer between 6th and 7th grade- I become very self-aware. I do sit ups in my room. I buy a lot of magazines. Or I guess, I had my mother buy them. I start preparing for something bigger, deciding that this is all just a stepping stone to something else. I wear low cut tank tops and I am pretty boy crazy. By the time the 7th grade starts I make a new boyfriend a week, I still really didn't have friends, I started making a few Toni Bergold &Rachel Tipton, Leigh Sams and other alliances. Prinda and Heather and this whole group. We painted our nails black, we listened to Nirvana albums and 98 Rock and wore flannel shirts with terribly short shorts. I don't remember any academic achievements in the 7th or 8th grade other than Mrs.Rapoli's art class- but ya know, we only had interest in that because of all the boys.
All those idiot boys. That's how it was then, a lot of hopelessly devoting myself to thirteen years old. And somehow, elementary school did not prepare me enough for their raging hormones. I don't know if this is a Florida thing, but all of my first sexual encounters happened in backyards. Maybe we hung out there because someone's parents we're home. But the first time I willingly decided it would be okay to let a boy stick his hand down my pants was in a shed, in his backyard. I remember having no reaction to this, really feeling nothing. And the funny thing is that I wouldnt let him kiss me, I felt that if I was actually going to have to be responsive or do something it would be too much. This was my skateboarding boyfriend, who was basically an asshole, but when I was 13, I really enjoyed this. We would listen to the album Nimrod and in 1998, this was the most profound thing I could think of. I always listened to this song on repeat, I don't even remember what it's called but the lyrics went "the world owes me so fuck you," and my parents heard it on repeat so often from beyond my bedroom door that my father could recognize Greenday playing on the radio.
And for me, the best part of all of this was that I looked older. I would look at all the other girls in the locker room during gym class, and I knew that I could go into the world and say I was 16 and get away with it. I didn't know that this almost directly translated as: trouble. I learned how to fit my body through anyone's bedroom window.
I started out high school with "Nobody broke your heart/you broke your own because you cant finish what you start," and I let that turn into fourteen year old boys. I met a boy who actually lived on a street called "Alameda" and I knew it was a sign from God, I knew it was going to be true love, it was going to last forever.
The year 2000 was coming, and I kind of wanted us all to die. The books I read did not help, and middle school had not prepared me for any of this. I did not ask where the transition was, I didn't even think of it. I met Danielle and Ilana and Stacy and Mikey and Kyle and Ian and I formed this huge world around them, around us, I was ready to let out everything. In high school, on my teenage self.
I would have said "fuck you," to The Home Shopping Network. I would have eagerly tried to give the abstinence boy a blow job. You know, in the 9th grade I told a whole lie about a blow job. It was a very elaborate, manipulative thing. The months leading up to the time I actually had sex in- you guest it- a backyard were very scandalous. But you know, I cant tell you if it was natural, if it was some organic process or if we made it that way.
Our parents brought us home books like "Go Ask Alice," and "The Best Little Girl in the World," and I don't know how they expected this to have a positive result, we read these books and we just wanted to emulate them. I wanted to run West to California; my best friends wanted to cut themselves or starve themselves. We all wanted to fuck the neighborhood, but luckily we did not.
When I started high school, it was 1999 and everyone just had just gotten instant messenger. We still talked to boys on the phone, but now we could also talk to them on the internet. I made a livejournal and if you read the original entries they are all about how I hate high school or the things I am doing after school. I desperately tried to smoke cigarettes. We desperately wanted to try everything. We eventually put Sublime on the stereo and then we started to calm down, the advent of Bright Eyes and Saves the Day and other things we could put on mix tapes or sing in unison. It was gradual. It was very gradual.
And if you're wondering why I am telling you this, why I am telling a stranger how I went from being the smartest girl in the 4th grade to wanting to dissolve next to the yellow lockers, it's because I am trying to tell you about the center, the formative years the middle ground that let's us be fine now. I sometimes meet girls who have just moved to New York City, and I watch them do the things that I did when I was 14, I watch them go through the same motions and I kind of feel like I lucked out by purchasing Nevermind 5 times on CD and cassette before I could even have a drivers license. I feel that I lucked out about being in a sense, reckless, before there were major consequences. By the time I was driving, almost all of this had flushed out of my system and I wanted to be the same girl I was at Enterprise Village. My hair might have still been pink, and I can guarantee you that my away message probably left me crying about some boy for years to come, any boy some kid on the street corner who I wanted to turn into salvation. Maybe I saw him on bike or skateboard and wanted to give him my feelings on Jesus Christ- but maybe not.
And maybe if I ever teach any grade, I'll teach middle school. I'll try and put together some pieces about how you're supposed to go from being a child to a teenager. How you go from being 5 to 18 in the 3 years. I remember all of my teachers names- I remember them a lot better than any of the boys from middle school. The ones from elementary school &high school they stick, but when I first grew breasts, when my legs got longer, there must have been a blur. Maybe if I thought it was magic, it was not and maybe if you tell some things, it just doesn't make any difference at all.