Green Body Glove

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.