There is a running joke that they would be sleeping with me if I weren't already in a relationship, that they love my cleavage. They watch saucily when I apply lipstick. I make comments about my lack of a gag reflex and then laugh when they adjust their position on the bar stool, furtively pull at their jeans as though to make room for expansion. It is a very funny joke, like a nun wearing a red lace bra, a bit of humor that holds the subtext of our evenings taut, a stretched tendon of a joke. This idea that I would be attractive to them? Preposterous.
*
I am 12 and have just started junior high, no longer protected by the womb of the same twenty kids in my grade school class, now I was thrown into a whirling sea of kids from dozens of grade school classrooms. We are assigned everything by alphabet, homeroom, lockers, everything, and while I see familiar faces in the hallways, I don't know anyone in any of my classes. At an age where everything relies upon carefully sectioned social constructs (the popular girls, the weirdos, the dirty kids, the poor kids, the rich kids, the bullies, etc), I worry about where I am classified (a smart kid on the fringe) and am somewhat optimistic that this might be my break to make my way into the popular group. Every interaction is a potential mine field.
Matt's locker is right next to mine and he sits next to me in homeroom. He is blond, the same height as me (a rarity for boys at age 12) and has gorgeous grey eyes. He is dreamy and friendly and laughs at my jokes. Every time we pass in the hall during that first week, he brightly smiles and says "Hi Weet!" and then his gaggle of friends smile at me as well. On the first Friday, he asks if I want to go out with him. While current kids are having sex at 12, back in 1984, "going out" was pre-dating, an exclusive contract that announced publicly your intent to eventually maybe possibly kiss someone. I say yes and we exchange phone numbers, which is apparently like exchanging rings. The moment has happened. The one I've been waiting for! This was the first step into being popular.
I spend that last warm September weekend in a tizzy, dancing near our single phone, hoping every ring will be him, although I don't know what we're going to talk about that we don't talk about at school. It's my first time "going out". Since he did the asking, I'm hoping that he knows what is to be done, and I am sweating over the way to slyly get him to explain the rules of this "going out" without actually admitting that I have no idea what is going on. He doesn't call.
On Monday before homeroom, one of Matt's friends comes up to me and says "Hey, is it true that you are really going out with Matt?" His voice is a little giddy, as though he's waiting for a punch line to a much anticipated joke. I get the sinking feeling in my stomach. "No!" I say, although both of us know I am lying. "Why would I do that?" "He said you were!" Matt's friend is a bit deflated, as though I've stolen something from him, but he recovers and walks over to where a bunch of boys are standing, relays what I've said and I want to go into the girls bathroom and stay there until the end of school.
In homeroom, Matt's face is hard and mean. He sits back in his homeroom desk like he owns the entire room, sprawling his high top leather Nikes into the aisle and refusing to move them when people try to pass. The truth of what has just happened sinks in and I settle into my assigned spot next to Matt, sink into a chamber of solitude that exists in my own head, and ignore his "Psssst! Look at me! Hey! You're my girlfriend! PSSSSST! Fattie!"
Over the day, I map the social constructs easily, as the reigning popular group identifies itself to me in person, each asking if it's true, if Matt really asked me to go out with him. At the end of the day, rather than walk the gauntlet of five blocks weaving through throngs of kids going home, I go into the office, ask to use the phone and tell my mother that I'm not feeling well and ask her to pick me up from school.
*
I am 19 and it's moving day at college. I am not wearing make up because with my greasy complexion combined with the August humidity, the L'Oreal foundation that normally covers my zits just slides right off my chin. My friend asks me to come over to help her hang pictures in her new apartment and I meet the guys upstairs. The blond one, a guitar player who drives a Mustang (the guy described in the second paragraph of this post), is funny and we laugh at each others jokes. Normally, around boys, I am freaked out, trying to protect myself, reminding myself to act cool, be cool, just be aloof and distant, but in this scenario, around my friend (who always has a gaggle of boys around her, as she looks like the Lohan version of Marilyn Monroe, only her long eyelashes are real) and all of these guys, I am sexless and not even trying. Later, the funny one begs my friend for my phone number, begs her to set us up, and I refuse. For a month, I refuse. He couldn't find me attractive. I was sweaty and had my hair back in a messy ponytail and had my zitty chin out for all the world to see. There was no way. No way, I insisted to her. It took a month before he convinced me. Two months later, my friend told me that he was taking the same pretty thin girl to parties, sometimes the same day that he was making out with me in his apartment.
*
I am 35. It is Halloween and I am dressed like an 80's rocker, with major cleavage. I'm out at a karaoke bar with Mopie and J. A guy starts chatting me up casually and then admits that he feels weird because he's at karaoke all alone. Mopie is up to sing and the guy says "I said to myself 'Hey, she's pretty cute, maybe she'll let me sit by her?'"
"Yes," I say, "Mopie is gorgeous, but she's engaged."
"No, I meant you. I think you're cute and I wanted to sit by you."
Even in my drunken fog, I know that he's being earnest. I start to stutter and then blush and then he asks me if I'm seeing anyone. I tell him that I'm married, but thank him, thank you, thanks, wow, thanks for saying that, I tell him, you have no idea, none.
I sit there and think about how ridiculous it was that had I been witnessing those social cues between two strangers, I would have been able to read the signs within the first two minutes. But this guy had been putting the moves on me for half an hour, and I was blindsided by the intent. I flash back to a million such incidents and think about the running gag that I share with male friends, the one that they find me sexually attractive because ha ha, that couldn't ever be the case, ha ha. I think about the guy in college at a party who asked me for my number and I gave him the number on the raffle ticket I was holding. I think about all of the interactions that I don't even remember.
On stage, Mopie finishes her song and we all applaud. I stare into the spotlight and everything, but everything, is bright and in brilliant focus.Related Links from Elastic Waist:
