I was in 6th grade when I was old enough to understand the fleeting and fickle rules of fame.
Marilyn Robertson was the most popular girl in school, and it was her fouth day there. She just moved here from the Bay Area. She was pretty and she was fun. She laughed loudly. She signed her name with hearts that she colored in a seperate red pen. She had blonde hair but it was bleached, even then. By the second day, she had planned a party for the weekend and invited the key decision-makers of popularity. Destiny, Michael, Joshua, Lindsey, Mac, and some others. Everyone in class knew about the party, but not everyone was invited. I wasn't, and accepted that in the Uncle Tom way that the nerdy kids did back then.
I was entranced by Marilyn. She was pretty and thin, and seemed smarter than she acted. The boys loved her and they teased her to let her know they wanted a piece. She seemed so happy but I could tell she was playing the game. It seemed to me that Marilyn had been through this before, this creation of an image in a new place, and that maybe the last time she tried it, it didn't go so well.
She was 12 but she talked about big dicks in a note she passed to my deskmate, Robin. Robin giggled and wrote back, "Marilyn you are so bad! That's why I love you. Your best friend, Robin."
What Marilyn didn't know, and what Robin kept secret, was that I was her best friend, and we hung out all weekend every weekend since fourth grade. We just didn't tell anyone because Robin thought it would lower her retail cheerleader value. But I didn't care. It was the closest I got to popularity, an outsider who heard all the dirt, but never had to make decisions about how to keep my status. I had no status.
Marilyn walked in late on the fourth day of school. Her party was the next night, a Saturday it would be. This was the last day of her first week, before the weekend. Her boyfriend was Mikey, and yesterday they charged everyone .25 cents to watch them french.
Today when Marilyn walked in she was wearing a green, I'd call it lime green, but it wasn't lime, really--it was a lighter green, a pastel lime body suit. At the time, and in a different fabric and color, maybe in black and made of rubber, Michelle Pfeiffer would have worn it in Batman Returns as Catwoman. but here, on the fourth day of school, a 12 year old was wearing it, in a pear color and a lycra fabric. It was fitted to her entire body. You could see her child nipples, the bones in her elbows. There was an anatomy lesson to be seen for boys if they looked at her crotch.
Body Glove had been popular the summer before, for surfers and water skiiers, this year it was all about Mossimo, and baggy, baggy, baggy was the theme in the juniors department at Macy's. It was the opposite of Marilyn's outfit that kids were doing extra chores to convince their parents to buy them.
Everyone in class shot a look to Marilyn, then to her boyfriend Mikey. No one would be paying .25 for a kiss today, his reaction to this faupax was worth way more. We all waited for Mikey's approval, the usual look he'd give her when she walked in, over the past three days of their matrimony, that said he loved her.
"Oh My God, you look fugly." Mikey yelled and laughed, and the class joined in. Fugly meant fucking ugly and we loved this word. It was ok to turn on the queen only if the king had done so already. Marilyn began to cry, but she laughed, too.
"Oh my God, look everybody, she's crying." Robin poked. A tier 2 popular kid, Nathan joined in, "Oh, wah. Mommy bought me an ugly outfit and I have to wear it to school."
Marilyn ran out of the classroom, our teacher Mr. Smith told us all to be ashamed of ourselves, blah blah blah. At lunch, I was coming out of the bathroom and saw Marilyn's mother trying to hug her. Marilyn just turned and said, "Why did you buy this for me? They all hate me. I want to go to a different school."
"Sweety, you wanted it last year but we couldn't afford it. I saw it on sale and I wanted to surprise you."
***
Marilyn lived two doors down from me. On Saturday, no one came to her party, but her parents came over to my parents house with a bottle of wine and introduced themselves. Marilyn pretended she was much more evolved than me, never mentioned the outfit and I didn't either, kept calling me Seth instead of Sean--but we watched Bill and Ted's together that night and laughed our heads off, and she seemed much more calm than she had been all week.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Normal Christmas
I went home to Folsom this year for Christmas. I didn't go home the year before. Christmas had been canceled twice by Mom, who was upset with me, then rescheduled at the last minute and I said no. I spent it with my ex, and it was nice. I was sad as I usually am at Christmas time, because spending time with family reminds me of how much they are hurting, stuck in this thinking that they are sinking as they always think they have been. And I'm not strong enough not to take on the heavy emotions of others, even from 400 miles away, so I sat in front of our tree and ate and ate and ate. I had a second new dog then, and even still, I sat quietly, angrily, sadly and passed in and out of conciousness while my boyfriend watched Guys and Dolls.
This year was different because I went home. The buildup was big. Mom called everyday it seemed, excited, overly excited and I anticipated a big crash a few days before. And there was one. She called the day before to explain that it would not be a good Christmas because she wasn't able to get an epidural to relieve the pain in her back, neck and shoulders. But something different happened this time inside my body.
I didn't care.
I don't know if it was because I brought the dogs with me (two puppies is equal to one mental parent, if you ask me) or because of a crazy ah-ha moment I had when I got there (see part 2 to this story later) but I went home and just chilled out. You may have seen the videos I posted on my facebook of mom's hoarding (the baby clothes, dolls, and christmas ornaments), Dad's over-safety (tarping the bedroom floor I was staying in), or the virtual strangers mom met at the mall selling make-up at a kiosk whom she brought to the house.
It was the most insane Christmas we ever had, but it was a real chill-out experience. I didn't overeat or overdrink (i did take an ambien every night and a clonopin just before present-opening) even when Mom started crying or during the moments of entertaining Israeli exchange students who barely spoke the language or trying to make onversation with my brother who shares few common interests with me. Even at Christmas dinner (at Mimi's Restaurant, no less), it didn't bother me at all that I was eating a Patty Melt sandwich while my nephew considered vomiting his hot chocolate.
I even stayed an extra day. My dad gave me 5 hugs during the visit. That's 1.5 hugs a day, though 4 of them were within the first 3 hours.
I'm glad I skipped a year. I remember that thing Dr. Phil says, "You teach people how to treat you." And though Dr. Phil is a scary, scary man-beast, he's right. Skipping a year was hard. There were nasty emails sent to me, creepy voicemails about how I was destroying the family, but my response was always polite, positive and minimalist even when all I wanted to do was scream and cry and list all the reasons in which I was right and that I had been abused. I took the hard way, seeing a long term solution. I was like how Obama responds to racists. If my response were a color it would have been taupe, and in return this year the response to me and the interactions were mostly sky blue, though I was on a lot of drugs, so I don't really remember for sure.
This year was different because I went home. The buildup was big. Mom called everyday it seemed, excited, overly excited and I anticipated a big crash a few days before. And there was one. She called the day before to explain that it would not be a good Christmas because she wasn't able to get an epidural to relieve the pain in her back, neck and shoulders. But something different happened this time inside my body.
I didn't care.
I don't know if it was because I brought the dogs with me (two puppies is equal to one mental parent, if you ask me) or because of a crazy ah-ha moment I had when I got there (see part 2 to this story later) but I went home and just chilled out. You may have seen the videos I posted on my facebook of mom's hoarding (the baby clothes, dolls, and christmas ornaments), Dad's over-safety (tarping the bedroom floor I was staying in), or the virtual strangers mom met at the mall selling make-up at a kiosk whom she brought to the house.
It was the most insane Christmas we ever had, but it was a real chill-out experience. I didn't overeat or overdrink (i did take an ambien every night and a clonopin just before present-opening) even when Mom started crying or during the moments of entertaining Israeli exchange students who barely spoke the language or trying to make onversation with my brother who shares few common interests with me. Even at Christmas dinner (at Mimi's Restaurant, no less), it didn't bother me at all that I was eating a Patty Melt sandwich while my nephew considered vomiting his hot chocolate.
I even stayed an extra day. My dad gave me 5 hugs during the visit. That's 1.5 hugs a day, though 4 of them were within the first 3 hours.
I'm glad I skipped a year. I remember that thing Dr. Phil says, "You teach people how to treat you." And though Dr. Phil is a scary, scary man-beast, he's right. Skipping a year was hard. There were nasty emails sent to me, creepy voicemails about how I was destroying the family, but my response was always polite, positive and minimalist even when all I wanted to do was scream and cry and list all the reasons in which I was right and that I had been abused. I took the hard way, seeing a long term solution. I was like how Obama responds to racists. If my response were a color it would have been taupe, and in return this year the response to me and the interactions were mostly sky blue, though I was on a lot of drugs, so I don't really remember for sure.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Urge
I've never been as impressed by the taste or afterglow of eating a German Chocolate cake as the urge to actually have it implies.
In other words, I have spent so much time staring at sweet food, just dreaming of putting it in my mouth, twirling it around my tongue until the saliva and the grips of my teeth tear the cake matter apart, slushing the frosting between my gums, making my gums numb, like when you sit on your feet for too long and then try to walk,that when I finally eat it I don't even remember the taste. It's a kill for me, you see. The Red Velvet Cake is just prey to a food addict. It's the shiny bouncing object in the field, the bottle that says "Drink me!" in Wonderland, and I am a wolf with no willpower, I don't even have to know what that word willpower means is because I rely on instinct. Instinct tells me that sweet food belongs inside me.
And after I eat it, I get nervous. Did I eat all of it? Is there anything left so that a passer-by doesn't know the truth, that this confection is all I care about? That eating it and finishing it makes me feel like a strike force pilot who just took out the enemy, do they see that? Does this empty plate give away my secret to the waiter, that 10 years ago I was double my size and smelled like Gold Bond Medicated powder, and that I farted every time i took a step forward?
But then I get mad. I know better. I shouldn't have eaten that, because I want more. Because fucking that ice cream with my tongue didn't make me feel better. It made me worse. It made me guilty and afraid that I'm running out of time. I'll be 35 someday and then 40, and that brownie makes me fatter. Too young to be fat. I should be out regaling people with my thin-ness, not sitting alone at Le Pain Quotidien eating an Apple Pie that a stranger--not my grandmother made.
And I go for a run, and I skip dinner. And the next day I feel ignored, by myself and by people on the street, and I've been good. I starved myself for 12 hours. SO I eat a Peanut butter for breakfast. Half a can. It's natural, at least. And a slice of cheese--Pepperjack, with a side of chicken, and coffee. I've spun my wheels, and I'm hopeless, all because of that fucking cheesecake that I had to have, that frozen yogurt that I don't remember at all, but cannot forget no matter how hard I try.
Then lunch comes, and I didn't have a real breakfast, so I have to treat myself for lunch and have something normal, sustainable. A sandwich, and chips. And it's raining. And times are hard. I'll have just one cookie.
In other words, I have spent so much time staring at sweet food, just dreaming of putting it in my mouth, twirling it around my tongue until the saliva and the grips of my teeth tear the cake matter apart, slushing the frosting between my gums, making my gums numb, like when you sit on your feet for too long and then try to walk,that when I finally eat it I don't even remember the taste. It's a kill for me, you see. The Red Velvet Cake is just prey to a food addict. It's the shiny bouncing object in the field, the bottle that says "Drink me!" in Wonderland, and I am a wolf with no willpower, I don't even have to know what that word willpower means is because I rely on instinct. Instinct tells me that sweet food belongs inside me.
And after I eat it, I get nervous. Did I eat all of it? Is there anything left so that a passer-by doesn't know the truth, that this confection is all I care about? That eating it and finishing it makes me feel like a strike force pilot who just took out the enemy, do they see that? Does this empty plate give away my secret to the waiter, that 10 years ago I was double my size and smelled like Gold Bond Medicated powder, and that I farted every time i took a step forward?
But then I get mad. I know better. I shouldn't have eaten that, because I want more. Because fucking that ice cream with my tongue didn't make me feel better. It made me worse. It made me guilty and afraid that I'm running out of time. I'll be 35 someday and then 40, and that brownie makes me fatter. Too young to be fat. I should be out regaling people with my thin-ness, not sitting alone at Le Pain Quotidien eating an Apple Pie that a stranger--not my grandmother made.
And I go for a run, and I skip dinner. And the next day I feel ignored, by myself and by people on the street, and I've been good. I starved myself for 12 hours. SO I eat a Peanut butter for breakfast. Half a can. It's natural, at least. And a slice of cheese--Pepperjack, with a side of chicken, and coffee. I've spun my wheels, and I'm hopeless, all because of that fucking cheesecake that I had to have, that frozen yogurt that I don't remember at all, but cannot forget no matter how hard I try.
Then lunch comes, and I didn't have a real breakfast, so I have to treat myself for lunch and have something normal, sustainable. A sandwich, and chips. And it's raining. And times are hard. I'll have just one cookie.
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