Playoffs: Game One

We won, we won, we won.



And you, tall-skinny-great-haired-man, know how I feel.

Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No.

His name was Matt. He was tall, gangly, tan, all hard angles--knees, elbows, chin. He had silky brown hair, and he wore it in the way that a lot of the boys were wearing their hair in the early 90's: parted in the middle, flopping down over the ears.

This was eighth grade, and Matt and I shared a homeroom in the warm English room that overlooked the soccer fields. The room was plastered with Mark Twain posters and quotes. The man in charge of that room became my Ultimate Crush, the man I wanted to love me, the type of man I wanted to be with when I grew up, my English teacher for both eighth and twelfth grade, the best English teacher in the entire world.

But my English teacher wasn't my only crush that year. There was Ryan McLean, of course, and this new one: Matt. But I liked Matt in a way that was different than the way I liked Ryan. For most of our lives, Ryan had been beautiful and popular and stunning. He was unreachable and untouchable. He was the boy the popular girls would sigh about, sing about, gossip about. He kissed all the popular girls. He never kissed me.

But Matt seemed more attainable, more realistic. For one thing, he had glasses. None of the really popular guys had glasses. They weren't marred by imperfections. Instead, they were smooth canvases of perfectness. They were golden and sparkling. They were frat boys in training. Matt, though, had flaws that took him out of that category. He was loud and goofy. He was just the right amount of awkward. And--best of all--he liked me.

I thought it might be in that way. I thought it might be more than just a friend. He was sure giving me the indication that it might be so. He pinched me, he grabbed me, he pushed me, he caught me under his arm, he kept putting his hands on me. He called me Jessie, sweetly, like I was his best pet. He and I had inside jokes, tender moments, good times. He liked to pose for my camera. He'd flex his muscles, show off his teeth, stand his hair on end, twist his body into unfathomable poses. I pressed the shutter a thousand times for his poses. I was bringing my camera to school a lot back then. It was like I knew this life wasn't going to last, that these friendships weren't long for the world, that everything was about to change.

But for awhile I was very bold. And I let myself think Hey, maybe, maybe. I let myself think about that for a good long time, and then, when I was certain I'd examined his actions from every angle, when I was certain that his actions were saying I like you, Jessie! I want you to be my girlfriend but I'm just too good and shy to ask you myself!--when I was certain of all that, that's when I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I wrote Matt a note. The note explained that I was glad he and I had become friends, that he was making eighth grade extra memorable for me, that I thought he and I could be good together. Maybe, I said, just maybe we should be boyfriend and girlfriend.

And like the squirrely eighth grade girl I was, I handed that note to one of my best friends and made her deliver it to him before lunch. In lunch, I knew, I'd have to have my answer. It would be impossible to ignore me. His table of boys sat next to my table of girls, and he would have to face me at some point, whether it was to barter for a piece of my friend's Fruit by the Foot or to shoot milk at us with a straw.

I almost vomited in the lunch line. I knew in a few short minutes I would come out into the lunch room and see him. I was almost certain my life would be over at that very moment. After all, I'd never admitted my feelings to a boy before. I'd never felt capable. I'd never felt like I had a legitimate chance of having those feelings returned to me.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to wait very long to have my answer. I came out of the lunch line clutching my tray and barreling down the aisle toward my table. I ignored Matt's table because I was afraid of seeing the looks he and his friends were sharing. Surely I would be able to tell what my answer was by those looks, and I didn't want to know anymore. No, no. I decided I should tell him I was kidding, I didn't mean it, it was an early April Fool's joke. Ha! Gotcha!

But he was merciful. Merciful Matt. He took me aside during lunch and told me he didn't mean to have made it seem one way when it was actually the other. He didn't think of me that way, he said. In fact, he liked one of my best friends. He was sorry, so sorry. He said, "You're one of my best friends, Jessie. We shouldn't ruin that, right?"

Right, I said. Sure, absolutely, great, glad you think so, I think so too, I need to go eat the rest of my sandwich now and maybe puke in the trash can but that's besides the point oh my God I am never doing this again.

I sat back down and shoved the remains of my sandwich in my mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed until that bread was a masticated piece of cud in my big fat mouth. Why? Why? Why? I couldn't stop asking myself why I'd done it, why I'd even been possessed, why I'd been crazy enough to think there could be a happy ending at the end of that road. I sat in that lunch room and listened to the buzz of everyone around me and to my friends whispering it's okay, it's okay, you can cry later and I said to myself I am never ever ever doing that again.

But I did. To varying degrees of success, of course. But those are stories for another time.

Seventy-Eight Words

Tonight I accidentally lit my hair on fire with a candle.

Tonight I ate the following: a pound of rice crackers, three milk chocolate eggs, three Brach's Fiesta Malted Eggs, two mini Snickers, a slice of sour cream coffee cake. (All of this after my dinner.)

Tonight I played two hours of The Sims 2.

Tonight I learned that The Black Donnelly's has been canceled, which means my love affair with Jonathan Tucker and the way he hardly moves his mouth when he talks will have to end. Now Mondays will cease being The Day I Spend Considerable Time Wishing I Could Put My Hands in His Hair.

Tonight I spent my time consumed with all of these things for one specific reason: I couldn't write. And I tried every trick in the book to break out of the block. I played some Martin Sexton, ate some chocolate, lit some candles. That got me seventy-eight words. Seventy-eight words that aren't good, that sound crappy, that led nowhere, that made me pace, that made me put my head down, that made me eat too much and think too much and obsess too much.

I need to snap out of it.

Heard Around the Easter Table

My Mother's Boyfriend's Possibly Gay Black-belt Son

Me: This ham is delicious.

My Cousin: Yup, great ham.

Mother's Boyfriend's Possibly Gay Black-belt Son: So, this year I got drunk on New Year's.

Me, My Cousin, My Aunt: Whaaat?

MBPGBS: Yeah, I did. We were so crazy. We were down in the basement and the parents were upstairs. We kept running around and giggling and screaming.

My Aunt: Did you find a liquor cabinet or something?

Me: Or some beer?

MBPGBS: No.

Me: What did you have then? Where did you get it?

MBPGBS: Oh, the adults gave it to us.

Everyone: Whaaat?

MBPGBS: Yeah, they gave us sparkling grape juice. Man, we were so drunk. I had a hangover later. Hey, you wanna know what else is cool? Freezing BBs and then shooting them at people.



My Grandfather

Grandpa: You want to know what Easter reminds me of?

Us: What?

Grandpa: Killing baby chickens on the farm.

Us: Oh.



My Brother

Adam: Do you want to hear the real story of that time I got lit on fire and burned my leg?

Me: Yes.

Adam's Friends: Yes.

Adam: Well, we were back at the cabin. Just me and the cousins. We had a bonfire going, but there was this stump that was bothering us. We wanted that stump out of there. So we devised a plan. A good plan. We had it all worked out.

Me: And you were unsupervised.

Adam: Oh yeah. Totally unsupervised. We had a Snapple bottle full of gasoline, so we decided we were going to douse this stump in gasoline because we'd already tried to chop it apart and that didn't work. So we started a fire on the stump but it wasn't going as good as we wanted it to, so the cousins started tossing more gasoline on it. Well, the fire started going everywhere. It was spreading into the woods.

Me: You were starting forest fires.

Adam: Well, it wasn't our intention. We just didn't like that stump. So we all started stomping it out, but that wasn't working. And the bottle had fallen on the ground by that point, and it was setting everything on fire, so I tried to kick it out of the way. But when I kicked it, it spun around and spewed gas on me. And I didn't really know what was happening. I tried to stop, drop, and roll... what a bunch of bullshit that is. You know how they always teach that? Well, it didn't work. I was still on fire. And that's when David came running out of the cabin and launched himself at me. He smothered my leg with his body and a towel. He saved my life. And that was the end of my leg hair.

Happy Birthday, Amy!

Today is my best friend's birthday.

Amy and I became best-best friends in sixth grade, when the stars aligned and all the following things happened:

1. We had the exact same schedule.
2. We were taking science from an ancient-looking man who had been my mother's science teacher. He required us to do group presentations on one of the body's main systems. Unluckily, we drew systems like reproductive and excretory, which meant we had to say words like testicle and rectum in front of the whole class. Without giggling.
3. During a game of Mum Ball, Ryan McLean threw the ball to me, and Amy and I were able to analyze that (and his love for me, as clearly indicated by said throw) for the next six months until he threw the ball to Amy and the cycle repeated itself.
4. We were taking social studies from grumbly Miss Poweski, who was always threatening to beat the class with wet noodles.
5. We shared the same arch enemies.
6. We spent countless study hall hours creating a set of code we could use in our notes to each other. We gave everyone nicknames. We gave ourselves nicknames, too. Amy was Sparkle and I was Miss Basketball. Our notes looked like this: Sparkle loves Baby Got Back! Sparkle HATES SALAD! Miss Kitty is on the prowl.
7. We couldn't go two minutes without talking to each other.

Not much has changed since then, and that's probably one of the best things about my life, one of my most prized accomplishments. I don't ever want to live in a world where I can't call this girl at 4 AM in the morning to tell her about the eighty-five small dramas that happened to me since I saw her last.

And so, in honor of Amy's twenty-sixth birthday, here is a collage of photos from her birthday celebration last night--a celebration that ended with us cutting thick wedges of chocolate Oreo cake and stuffing our faces with it in the wee hours of the morning:

One More Thing About the Students

I need to face facts: I have strange dreams. I've had dreams about celebrities (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson eating giant bricks of Swiss cheese), dreams about non-celebrity celebrities (Kevin Federline whittling me a chair from a large hunk of wood and presenting it to me as a gift, after which I exclaim, "NO, KEVIN FEDERLINE! YOU CANNOT BUY MY LOVE WITH A CHAIR!"), dreams where I'm a lesbian (with girls from grade school, with my best friend, with complete strangers), dreams where I'm pregnant (and my dad corners the father in the produce section of a local grocery store and lectures him until I run to the freezer section to cry), dreams where I'm naked with a boy (my grandparents are watching and waving), and dreams about Minnesota people (Diana saying, "Sure, I'll go to the bar with you. Come over and get me. Give me five minutes. Oh, and don't mind the giant box of sex toys that's on my couch!").

That's why it shouldn't seem strange to me when I have more of these strange dreams. Even when it's the subset of dreams that involves students, past and present. That's not new. When I was in Minnesota, I was dreaming about students all the time. But this past weekend I woke up one morning and blinked hard at the things that were still hanging in that misty just-out-of-reach dream space in my brain. I could still see things from the dream, but I didn't understand them, and I didn't understand how I transitioned into that part of the dream.

What I saw was this: one of my students from this semester, a student I don't find all that good-looking (although I did admit to myself during conferences this past week that he's got good hair, nice jeans, and an artsy air that some girls would love). My student was wearing an outfit I saw on a student in an undergraduate poetry workshop I got to sit in on when I was down in Fredonia this week for a poetry reading by Lucille Clifton.

This is what the student did: he collapsed onto a bed, and I hesitantly came down next to him. "I'm not allowed to do things like this," he told me. In my dream, this student was super religious.

"You're just on a bed," I said.

"I'm on a bed with a girl," he corrected.

"And you're probably not supposed to do this either, huh?" I asked, and proceeded to raise one of his knees so I could sneak one of my knees between his, so I could make a knee sandwich.

"No," he said. "I'm definitely not supposed to touch knees with a girl."

And then I woke up.

I blame this on student conferences. I totally do.

Student Gems, Continued.

(1.)

Male Student #1: So, what you're telling me is... I need to un-vague this?

Me: Yes, un-vague it. Un-vague it a lot.


(2.)

Male Student #2: Can I ask you a question?

Me: Yes.

Male Student #2: Did you make up the word rebuttal?

Me: Uhm, no.

Male Student #2: Really? Huh.

He's Glad He Inherited That Gene

Tonight after his twenty-five minute shower (during which he did God knows what with that detachable shower head he likes to rave about), my brother pranced into the living room wearing only a pair of plaid pajama pants. He was shirtless and slick from his shower. His skinny chest was puffed out. He stopped in front of us and started to massage his nipples.

"Gross," my mother said.

"Disgusting," I said.

"Look at this," he said. He plucked at some straggly hairs around his nipples. "Look!" He tugged and tugged and the nipple elongated, warped, shrunk back down to size. "I can make it dance." He started humming a little tune, and his nipple jigged to the tune.

"I'm going to vomit," I said.

"You know," my brother said, finally abandoning his nipple dance and collapsing next to me on the couch, "I got that from Dad. The hairy nipple gene. Hairy tits. I'm pretty happy I inherited that."

Right at that moment my mother's boyfriend's possibly-gay-black-belt-son, the eleven year old who shares a room and a bunk bed with my brother, arrived on the scene. He, too, skittered into the living room in his sleepwear--a shortie robe that revealed his knobby knees. He wanted to say goodnight to me. He did. Then he turned to my brother and said, "Good night, Adam. See you in bed."

Oh, I couldn't help it. I couldn't help laughing at the ridiculousness of it all--the shortie robe, the vaguely sexual goodnight, my brother scantily clad and picking at his nipple hair.

"Oooooh," I hissed as the possibly-gay-black-belt-son retreated to the bedroom. "It's going to be a special night."

"Oh come on now," my brother said, feigning innocence. "It's only our first date. What do I look like?"

"Hmmm," my mother said.

"A kiss," my brother said. "Maybe a kiss. It's a first date. That's all I'm giving up."

Later, I would find my brother in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror and preening. He was picking at his hair, smoothing a hand over his stubble.

"Have fuuun," I sang. I backed out of the bathroom before he could retaliate in some awful way--by rubbing his naked chest and errant hairs on me, by flicking my arm fat, by calling me Square Head (this because my brother swears that my head is a scientific anomaly--a perfectly square head--and he has done numerous tests to prove this point to me, my parents, and my friends). I backed away, thinking I'd escaped.

I hadn't. My brother called my name, and I, like a fool, turned around, turned to see what he wanted.

"Look at this," he said.

That's when he stepped out into a swatch of light falling from the bathroom lamps and raised his arm in one smooth, elegant motion. And there it was: a quasi-pelt of man hair. And as if that wasn't bad enough, my brother reached over and dragged his comb--the same comb he'd been running through his shower-damp hair moments before--through his awkward tangle of underarm hair. I made a face, but it was too late. My brother was already lowering his arm, happy with his grooming, and stepping back into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

In the Meantime

You can always tell when I've gotten a new batch of essays from my students. Things around the blog get real quiet. It's just that when I have one hundred papers sitting on my kitchen table, there are very few things that can make me want to write, to turn a phrase, to be coy and witty and charming. Student prose is lethal. It grabs at your throat, it seeps into your brain, it sucks at your very will to live. The way some students treat the English language--so carelessly! so recklessly!--can depress a person like nothing else.

So if I'm quiet right now, know that's the reason why. I'm whittling down the pile, and I have about twenty more essays to read before putting this group of papers to rest.

In the meantime, this is for Diana, who, when she heard that my father had unearthed some early photos of me, wanted to see what I looked like when I was a little girl:

Gems from Student Conferences, Day One

(1)

Student: Why did you mark this? What's wrong with this?

Me: Are you asking me why I marked the eventhough on your paper?

Student: Yes.

Me: Even though is two words.

Student: No, it's not.

Me: Yes, it is.

Student: You're kidding me.

Me: Nope.

[A few beats later] Student: I got As in high school English, you know.


(2)

Me: So what do you want to say about this paper?

Student: Well, for starters, it was juvenile.

Me: You mean the way you wrote it was juvenile?

Student: No. The assignment was.

Ryan Miller Day

This morning on the way to school my odometer hit 77700. Lucky 7s. Like I'd just won some big jackpot, like my dashboard was going to open up and spill coins into my lap. Then the radio played "Shook Me All Night Long," which is, of course, one of the best songs in the history of songs. I was already in an unparalleled mood, but these things made me feel even better. I felt like maybe karma was watching over me, ebbing, bubbling, getting ready to shower me in a wash of you so deserve this goodness.

I mean, sure I had to go to school and deal with a student who'd plagiarized his paper, and sure I had to listen to a student say, "Wait a second. There was a paper due two weeks ago? Huh?", and sure I had say to my students, "You didn't notice that Margaret Atwood repeated the word egg at least fifty times in a span of three pages? You didn't think that might be important?", and sure I had to watch them blink at me with those big doe-eyes students adopt in moments when they want to come off as sweet and simple and not entirely capable of doing a close reading of the text.

None of this bothered me. None of this bothered me because today was Stalk Ryan Miller Day. And I don't mean stalk in the creepy/scary way--you know, when people get all crazy and yell I want to have your babies, Ryan! or wait outside so they can write down his license plate number or follow him home to play mix tapes of songs they think he'll really love. No. My version of stalking involved spending too much time picking out an outfit and earrings on the off chance he might look at me or in my general direction after I'd staked my claim in the bar where he was taping an interview for a local show that helps us get to know our Sabres in a more intimate way.

I got there an hour and a half early, stood in line, was eventually joined by my girls, and we got in, we got a seat, a really decent seat. I was at his back, but anyone who wanted to eat and watch the show had to be at his back. Of course, I was glad I'd done most of my eating prior to his arrival in the restaurant because when people started screaming and when Amy, who moments before said, "I don't think I'm going to get that excited... it's not like he's Justin Timberlake...", let out a squeal that could shatter glass, my stomach flopped over on itself and forgot all about food. There he was--so tall! so skinny! skinnier than I'd imagined!--and I was thinking look at me look at me look at me because I thought maybe if he glanced at me I could give him a real soulful look, a look that told him everything he needed to know about me: that I'm not insane, that I'm not a groupie (well, at least not the type that shows up for this taping wearing a corset, the shortest skirt ever, and spike heels that could easily be used as devices of death and doom), that I'm smart and introspective and not all that unfortunate looking and sometimes funny in a hopeless oh she tries sort of way.

Ryan Miller never looked at me. Of course, how could he? I was sitting behind him, thinking about his hair and his skinny body and the jacket he was wearing. I was sitting behind him and being jealous of all the little kids who got to line up for a Q&A session. I was sitting behind him and listening to Amy say that if she had her way, she'd march right up there, waggle her eyebrows, and ask him How do you like it, Ryan? Huh? How do you like it? (Later, after we'd watched The Black Donnellys and I'd lathered myself into the usual semi-hysterical I love Jonathan Tucker state of mind, Amy went back to the glories of Ryan Miller. I bet it would be good, she said, sagely. I bet he has great legs. And thighs. Big thighs. Think of the thighs. Oh, and I did.)

Really, it was a great way to start the week. I got to sit with my girlfriends and shriek and giggle (especially when a little girl asked Ryan Miller what type of shampoo he used) and eat a pan of garlic bread and think oh wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't it be nice, oh dear God, wouldn't it be nice?

The Girl I Could've Been

When I was thirteen years old, I had a plan. I was going to move down south to North Carolina, where I would attend UNC Chapel Hill and major in journalism. I would get a swank apartment near a swank bar where the best Winston Cup racers would go after a long day at the shop. I would graduate and land a posh job at one of the best weekly racing magazines and be their go-to girl for all the "insider" news. I'd be able to crack the hard outer shells of the drivers--even the crankiest, most grizzled of them--and I'd become their best girl. They would love me because I would be the type of girl those types of guys like: in tune with their world, sassy, quirky, smart-mouthed, badass.

I saw myself wearing tall boots and a leather coat. I saw myself driving a red car, something fast, something that would blow my long hair around as I breezed through the North Carolina countryside, on my way to another driver's lakeside home, where a big group of us would sit on the porch and watch the sun set over his yacht. We would barbecue and get drunk and sing Johnny Cash songs until we could see the lights from houses across the lake winking late-night messages to us.

I saw all this because it was what I wanted more than anything. This was, after all, when I was knee-deep in the creating of my most beloved characters, Jessie and Ollie. Originally, I started writing Jessie's saga from the point after she moved to North Carolina from New York. I made her life everything I wanted mine to be. She stood up to her boss, won awards for her journalism, mouthed off (and subsequently charmed) Dale Earnhardt, and drank a lot of tequila. This was before I had the two infamous run-ins with tequila during undergrad, so I didn't yet know that tequila can turn me into a rabid she-monster, someone who ends up hanging her head out her boyfriend's truck and almost vomiting into the Niagara River, or the girl who tries to get lucky with a boy on her friend's dorm room bed while the friend has stepped across the hall to watch a music video. (Tequila and I have since made amends.)

In the story, the character Jessie befriended Brooke Gordon--Jeff Gordon's then-wife--and moved in to watch over him when Brooke went off on some sort of modeling tour. "Watch over" turned into "sleep with," and the story went on through dozens of complicated chapters that chronicled their affair and the eventual dissolution of the Gordon marriage (which, in fact, did dissolve in real life) so that Jeff would be free to be with Jessie. There were obstacles along the way, of course, and one of those obstacles was this guy who popped into my mind--an Oliver Covet. Ollie. He used to work for Jessie's father, for Jessie's race team. When I started writing about Ollie and how attractive and nice and funny he was, I realized a girl like Jessie wouldn't have lived her entire life without kissing such a man, and--poof!--they had history, and I loved the history so much that I stopped writing about Jessie's post-New York life and wrote a prequel to that first book, a prequel that was all about Jessie and Ollie's lives together.

These were the things that consumed me at thirteen. These were the lives I wanted to live. Even if I wasn't like the Jessie Roberts in the story and even if I didn't have my Ollie, I could have the life Jessie Roberts lived after she moved away. I was convinced of it. And when my parents took my brother and I on vacation to Charlotte, I was undeniably hooked. I wanted it, wanted it, wanted it.

I sent away for the literature for the UNC system. I planned and daydreamed and told everyone they should spend all the time with me they could because in a few years I was going to be long gone. After I got in a huge fight with Tammy, I would sit in homeroom each morning and seethe, Just wait. I'm going to go off and make something of myself, and I'm going to be friends with all the racers we love the most. I'm going to marry and have babies with one of them. I bet then you'll feel pretty sad you're not my friend anymore.

I eventually got over the whole idea of moving to North Carolina to become a sports journalist. I'd taken several journalism classes and ran the newspaper before realizing I actually hated writing news stories, that it was boring, that I spent most of my time dreaming up stories about characters who stumbled and were knocked around by life, and that was the stuff that was really interesting.

I haven't really regretted my decision. I haven't ever really looked back and had a big what could've been sigh over my lost swank apartment, my lost racer husband, my lost racer friends, my lost lake house and yacht. But today I did have a moment while I sat grading essays in front of the race at Bristol where I looked at a girl--a very cool, very savvy girl pit reporter--and thought, That could've been me. She has it all: the racing background (father, brother, uncle who raced), the journalism degree, the long hair that would look so good blowing in a fast red car. She probably even has a boyfriend who races. Or she will soon. It's probably only a matter of time. One of those guys must look at her and think, My God, that's one cool girl. Because she is. Because I would be too, if I'd gone that route. But I didn't.

Still, I couldn't quite keep myself from daydreaming a little bit, from drifting away from those student papers for a few minutes to imagine where I would be, what I would be doing, and who I'd be dating if I'd taken that route, if I'd stayed the girl I was when I was thirteen.

Wherein He Breezes in and Does Strange Things (Like Always)

It hasn't been a great day. Earlier I sat down with a fresh pile of essays from my students and the very first one I read was plagiarized. The student had gone to the internet, copied, pasted, slapped his name on the page, and handed it in. This was the very first paper I read. There are, like, seventy-nine to go.

That plagiarized paper didn't give me the greatest feeling about the day. In fact, I decided it was probably going to suck. I also decided there was no way to get through it (or, at least, get to the point in the night where I would be able to grade in front of the Sabres game and my future husband's slick moves) without a jug of wine. The wine rack was full of my father's merlots, so I put on some shoes and went to the liquor store. When I came back, toting three bottles of wine, my brother was sitting in the living room. He was watching Employee of the Month. He was guzzling DanActive yogurt.

"Hello," I said.

He looked at me.

"Hi," I tried again.

"Hey," he said, then turned back to Jessica Simpson's massive breasts as they took center screen.

"Nice car," I said. About a week ago, my brother went out with my mother's boyfriend and bought a car to replace the wheels he's had for the last three years. His last vehicle was a 1994 Nissan truck--tiny, silver, beat to hell. Adam got it from our uncle. He got it for $500.

After forking over the money for that truck, Adam spent a lot more to make it uniquely him. He painted the dashboard blue and orange. He bought special lights for the interior. He installed a flashing bulb for the end of his shifter. He hooked up an expensive CD player, which was promptly stolen.

Eventually the truck started to fall apart. The transmission went, so did the radiator, so did the heat. This entire winter, my brother cruised around Buffalo without a working heater in his vehicle. He wore extra coats and gloves on the drive to work. He kept blankets behind the seat in case he had a long drive ahead of him.

But now he has a new car--well, a new used car. And this afternoon it was sitting in our driveway.

"Want to take me for a ride?" I asked. What I really wanted to say was, Can I take it for a spin? because I feel I am owed it. I have been a very giving sister when it comes to my car--letting that child have my keys, letting him drive it while I am out of town, letting him take it God knows where (Hooters? The strip clubs over the bridge in Ontario?). But as much as I wanted to ask him if I could drive, I didn't. I kept it in check. I told him to take me up and down our street.

"Alright," he said in that grudging way that was not grudging at all. Really, he'd probably been sitting there for twenty minutes hoping I'd hurry up, get home, and ask him if he'd take me for a spin.



He took me a mile up the road and let me ask him standard questions: How many cylinders does this thing have? (Four) What's your gas mileage like? (30 mpg, highway) How many times have you washed it since you got it? (Two)

Then Adam decided he'd had enough of driving me, that it was time to turn around and go back to the house so he could resume watching Jessica Simpson's breasts. He was also in the mood for some leftover stir-fry.

Of course, right now the countryside is swampy with spring. Shoulders and driveways are muddy lakes. And since he'd just washed the new car, he wasn't in the mood to get anything on it. So my brother slowed down, checked his mirrors for traffic, and then proceeded to do a six point turn to get us turned around.

I couldn't help myself. I laughed. I laughed a lot.

That's when he turned to stare at me. "What?" he demanded. "Just what's so funny about that?"

Vacation Snapshots

Oh, the stories I have to tell--including one about a boy in the airport who was on his way to boot camp, a skateboarder with long, long hair who said to me, "Can you tell me the time?" and then, "Do you mind if I sit next to you for a little while?" He just about broke my heart, but that--and other things--will be revealed in time. For now, here's a quick look at some of the pictures from my spring break trip to Minnesota:

News from L'Etoile du Nord

I am in Minnesota.

I arrived in Minnesota on Wednesday night, hours and hours later than I was supposed to. My flight out of Buffalo was canceled and the only thing the airline could do was give me a shrug, a grin, and a new ticket to, well, Atlanta. From Atlanta I would get on a plane to Minneapolis, they said. Doesn't seem right that you've got to go south to go north, they said, but it'll have to do. Then they told me I had to go out to the baggage claim, find my luggage, and check in all over again, and go through another bout of security--where, it turns out, I would be subjected to special selective screening and made to stand in a box that blew bursts of stinging air at me ("Close your eyes tight!" the security guard yelled to me as the doors swung closed) to see if any chemical particles blossomed in the air off of my clothes, hair, and skin. Afterward, my carry-on was torn apart and everything in it (camera, makeup, books, tampons) were swabbed and tested for explosive residue. It was a lovely day.

Since arriving, though, I have done the following things:

1. Watched Matt puke out the door of a moving car.
2. Gossiped over black beans and rice.
3. Eaten Jell-O shots that were molded in a deviled egg holder.
4. Drank cocktails from 4:00 PM to 2:00 AM.
5. Wrote limericks about Greg, scabies, skanky ladies, and all sorts of other things.
6. Learned new slang for vagina (quinny)
7. Watched Katy use JP's earrings as tassels such.
8. Petted the cornrowed head of a Midwestern farm boy.
9. Was yelled at by a man who owned a tattoo parlor.
10. Ate spiral mac-n-cheese at 3:00 AM.
11. Kept warm underneath a blanket (decorated with goldfish dressed up as sharks).
12. Had the new day greeted by Led Zeppelin on a hi-fi.
13. Ate 1,000 cream cheese wontons at my favorite Chinese restaurant.
14. Watched a certain someone turn all the ceramic duck ornaments in Target so that they appeared to be engaged in activities that would make any of us need to go to confession.

And there's more goodness to come.

A Real Human Girl

I've said before that it took my brother an awful long time to resemble a real human boy. Adam went through an awkward phase. His awkward phase included such joys as acne in unfortunate places and--the real kicker--puffy nipples. The doctor explained that the puffy nipples were no big deal, that they were the byproduct of some sort of strange flux of hormones, that they would go away after awhile. Still, for several months, whenever my brother took off his shirt, there they were, those puffy nipples that looked like they belonged on the body of a thirteen year old girl.

There were other things, too. Incidents. The first involved a family reunion, a bag of golf clubs, a wayward swing by one of the cousins, and Adam's jaw that got knocked clear out of its socket and hung crooked from his face while the reunion and all its barbequed hamburgers were disbanded in favor of driving Adam to the emergency room. Once my family got him to the emergency room, the doctors wired Adam's jaw shut, and it stayed that way for months. He couldn't eat anything solid. We liquefied everything for him: spaghetti and meatballs, mac and cheese, beef stroganoff. He even went back to school with his jaw wired shut. We had to pack him special lunches, and he had to eat with the nurse every day to make sure he didn't choke. I remember feeding him a McDonald's french fry--a real treat--through the space in his teeth. He gummed at that thing like it was the best thing ever. Ambrosia! Heaven! A solid fry!

The other notable incident that shaped my brother's awkward period again involved a cousin, a wayward squirt of gasoline, and a bonfire. My brother had been standing too close to the edge of the flame, and when it roared up from the shot of gas, my brother's leg flared up with it. The skin and hair puckered. My brother screamed and screamed. And off he went to the emergency room one more time, where they treated him for burns, where they did the best they could with his leg. For years, his one leg was completely hairless and smooth, like a girl's or one of those cats you see--the ones who are all skin, no fur.

Adam did not have it easy. He had it worse than I did. And I have spent years watching him bumble through his awkward phase. I watched and watched and watched. Then, after I came home from Minnesota, I looked at my brother and said, "There. Finally. Almost a real human boy."

I had forgotten, though, how long it took me to look like a real human girl. Sure I've mocked myself considerably on this blog--oh, those old pictures!--but I never really sat around and thought about how long it took me to look the way I see myself in my head.

I was thinking about that a lot this weekend. When I was over at Amy and Becky's on Saturday--to celebrate Becky's 26th birthday bonanza--we stuffed ourselves full of tacos and then spread out on the living room floor. Then Amy put in a tape of her surprise birthday party from eighth grade.

Suddenly there we all were (well, not me--I was suspiciously missing from the party) on the screen. All our old friends were bouncing around in Amy's basement. They were singing. They were dancing. They were inhaling sugar as fast as they could get it clutched in their palms. Everyone was twelve, thirteen years old and wearing the best 90's apparel: scruchies and plaid shirts and boy jeans. It was really quite a sight.

"I'm HIDEOUS!" Becky shrieked.

"No, I'm HIDEOUS!" Amy shrieked.

I tried to tell them that, no, neither of them was hideous. That's just what thirteen year old girls looked like back then. We didn't wear short skirts or belly shirts. We didn't flounce around in the fashions we saw on the backs of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. We emulated Angela Chase. We had her shirts, her pants, her baggy clothes. We were exactly what thirteen year old girls who didn't have boyfriends (and wouldn't for years) looked like at that point in time. The popular girls--the ones who were rumored to have lost their virginity in sixth grade, the ones whose boyfriends were the boys we had devastating crushes on--didn't exactly look like us, but that's because they were busy being popular, and we were busy practicing our slick dance moves or fake-singing into our fists or hairbrushes. I wouldn't trade a second of that, even if someone told me I could've had Ryan McLean for my boyfriend.

But somewhere along the way, all that "hideousness" fell away. Our voices changed, we got taller, we shopped for better clothes. We got better looking. We got a handle on ourselves. For some, though, it took longer than others.

Here, for example, is me in eleventh grade:



Of note: the mullet-ish hairdo, the bloated face, the untamed eyebrows, the hideous vest. I look like I've been asleep for fifty years. I look sad and boyfriendless. I look a little bit like I might never come out of it.

But then, then, then, there was some sort of transformation, some sort of something that took place in my body over the course of a few months, something that took me from a girl with a shaggy mullet to this:



A real human girl.

(For the most part.)

(And, for those of you who are keeping score, the girl on the right is my former best friend, the girl who cried when I told her I lost my virginity.)

Being Honest

The other day I spent far too much time combing through photos of myself. I was looking through these photos to please my mother, to give her one of these photos so she could pass it on to the boy she wants me to meet and fall for. I had to look at all the pictures with a critical eye, an eye that asked Does that smile make me look fun or schizophrenic? and Does my face look even more horse-faced than usual?

After going through each of my albums and discarding possible photo choices for bad hair days, way-too-toothy smiles, and bad angles, I finally realized what a joke it all was. One photo to sum me up? One photo to convince a guy that I am fun and not completely unfortunate looking? It's too much pressure. Too much. And if I was really being honest, I would send a picture that had much less perfection in it, a picture that showed my true colors. Possibly a picture like this:



That's a picture that says a lot. It says, for instance, Dear Boys, this is what you would have to put up with if you dated me. As is evident in this photo, I like the following things: good earrings and silicone pot holders shaped like pigs. Love, Jess.

It's quite a bit more honest than some of the other pictures I chose. Quite, quite a bit.

The Hookup

This is what my mother says to me this afternoon: "Don't you want to meet our friends' attractive son? We could go out to a fish fry tomorrow night. Or maybe I could slip him your e-mail address the next time I see him. Or maybe we should print off a picture of you. Yes, maybe that's what we should do. You decide on a picture, print it out, write your name and e-mail and phone number on the back, and I'll bring it to him. That's a good idea."

I ask her if I should write my height and weight, my likes and dislikes on the back, too. "You know," I say. "Long walks on the beach, sponge candy..."

"Listen," she interrupts, "I'm just worried he's going to meet some other girl before he meets you. He's such a nice boy, Jess."

My mother sounds so sincere and a little heartbroken--as if she's imagining the friends' attractive son meeting some girl, falling for her, bringing her to the next bowling party--and that's why I say okay, okay, I'll do it. I'll find a picture. I'll write my name and e-mail and phone number on the back. I'll sit around try not to think how sort of lame that makes me seem, how desperate. My mother, after all, thinks it is a good idea. My mother also thinks that her boyfriend's gay black belt son is not gay, so her judgment can sometimes get iffy, but I want to make my mother happy. She's mostly stopped giving me the normal pep-talk, the one that involves her saying things like you're actually lucky you're single and everything will work out in its own time. Now sometimes when she looks at me I think it looks like my mother is wondering if she gave that pep-talk a little too fervently, if she's worried I'm actually starting to believe I'm lucky and that things will come my way if I just wait around all patient-like.

This attempted hookup smacks of disaster. Any attempted hookup that involves me smacks of disaster.

Katy once tried to get me interested in one of her husband's friends. He worked in some sort of meat-packing plant. He had a child. He drove a purple Grand-Am, which--if I remember correctly--had pink flames on its side. He had nine and a half fingers--a result of a tragic accident at the meat-packing plant.

Katy also tried to get me interested in another of her husband's friends. This one lived in a trailer, didn't own silverware, didn't do dishes except for once a month (if you were lucky), slept with every dirty girl and stripper in town, and got fired from a job--even the Happy Chef--every few months.

My uncle has tried. My mother has tried. My cousins have tried. My friends have tried. It has only worked once. Once.

That once was Ex-Keith. He'd seen me once at a party thrown by mutual friends. He liked what he saw, and he asked his best friend about me. His best friend asked his girlfriend, who was my best friend's sister. Then, at a baby shower thrown for my best friend's other sister--who had, consequently, been knocked up by a man who moved away with his gay lover several months later--my best friend's non-pregnant sister, the one who was dating Keith's best friend, grabbed me by the arm and towed me into their parents' bedroom. The bedroom was small and cramped. I felt a little nervous. The sister was looking at me with big eyes, telling me she had something to tell me, to ask me.

"What?" I asked. "Just what?"

Then she told me about Keith, how he thought I was cute, how he wanted to take me out. "I know it's all very overwhelming," she said, "so I thought maybe we'd all go on a date together. A double date. Very low pressure."

A week later I was sitting across from Keith at an Olive Garden in his hometown. I was eating chicken parmesan and praying I didn't get a little crazy with the knife, send a hunk of the chicken catapulting into my lap. Later that night Keith and I stood awkwardly at the foot of the sister's car while she and her boyfriend said goodbye with loud, loud kisses. I told Keith I had fun. I was shivering. I was thinking low pressure my ass. That's when Keith put his arm around me, tipped my chin up for a kiss. And that's when I realized it was all worth it, that things were going to be okay.

So maybe someone will have that kind of success with me again. Maybe someone will find me a boy who will give me his coat because it's just so cold out, it's starting to snow, and the sister and her boyfriend won't stop making out. Maybe someone will find me a boy who will take me to the bottom of a ski hill at the end of the night--just when everyone is doing their last runs before slipping out of their skis, just when everyone is doing their fanciest, most elaborate, best moves of the night. And maybe this boy will sit there with me and tell me all his best stories until it's late, until they're shutting the lights off and the whole world goes dark right there in front of us. Maybe I can have that sort of luck again. Maybe it can start this way. Maybe it can start with a picture and my name and e-mail and phone number on the back.

Maybe.

No Matter What They Say, I Still Think "Purity Balls" Sounds Dirty

I've been grading papers for the last forever. I've been grading papers so long that my brain feels like it's turned to mush. Strings of words dry up on my tongue when I try to speak. I'm spelling things wrong. My thoughts never bloom the way they're supposed to--instead, they just shrivel up in some dank corner of my brain.

Tonight I took a break from the grading to sit in the living room and eat dinner with my father. He wanted to watch the news. I said fine. I would've agreed to anything at that point. He could've said, "Jessica, I'd like to watch a video of a frog being blown up on a hot plate, and I'd like to watch it on repeat," and I would've said, "Sure, Dad. Great."

But he didn't say that. Instead, he flicked to the news, and we watched and chewed and grumbled about things we didn't like. When the anchor came back to throw it to commercial, that's when she gave us the teaser for what was coming up: a segment on purity balls.

"Purity balls?" my father asked. He made a face. He pretended to be shocked and scandalized, like purity balls was the name of some new over-the-counter erectile dysfunction medicine. Who needs Viagra when you can have Purity Balls?!

Turns out purity balls are not so much erectile dysfunction pills as they are excuses to fluff your little girls into poofy gowns, excuses to slip on their patent leathers, excuses to get your husband's tux steamed. Purity balls are really father-daughter dances for the Christian crowd. Girls wear miniature wedding dresses and sign purity pledges. No way, no how are they going to lose their virginities. Nuh-uh. These little girls don't care how cute Tommy McMurray is going to look after the homecoming game junior year. They don't care that they'll say, Okay, Tommy when Tommy says, "Let's go for a ride, you and me." They don't care that he'll put a blanket on the hood of the car and kiss them under the stars until they're so dizzy they can't tell where their bodies leave off and the night sky begins.

The teaser video showed a beautiful blond girl tippy in heeled shoes. Her golden curls cascaded down her back, bounced against the milky fabric of her white ball gown. "I made a promise to God," she said. She beamed. "I'm going to stay pure until my wedding night. My daddy's here to sign a promise to protect me and be a good male role model." And there was dear old dad: towering above his daughter, yanking on his bow tie, looking nervous about all that.

Ick, I thought to myself. Ick, ick, ick.

I tried to picture myself in one of those little-girl-dresses. I tried to picture myself flouncing around with a new purse and a new hairdo. I tried to picture myself telling my father I was so happy he was there to celebrate my virginity with me. We'd get to take our pictures in front of the purity backdrop: a swirly blue background with a wooden cross looming behind us. We'd eat mashed potatoes and carved ham from the buffet station. We'd dance to Frank Sinatra songs sung by a sweaty wedding singer wearing too much spandex. I pictured discussing the significance of the event with my father--which would mean, really, I'd be discussing sex with the man who still makes me uncomfortable if he's sitting in the same room as me when a love scene comes on. I'd be discussing it at twelve years old. Ick.

I'd like to think I would've been a savvier little girl than the ones who get cajoled into going to these purity balls. After all, when we were in high school and my friends were saying I'm not having sex until after I walk down the aisle or Blowjobs are gross, and I'll never give one or On top? Gross. I'll never be on top, I was the one saying, "Well, I'm pretty sure I'm going to give all those things a go, so good luck to you."

Even before I'd been touched by a boy, even before I'd been looked at by a boy in a way that didn't involve revulsion, I still knew things were coming, they were just around the corner, and boy were they going to be good. I'd done my tour of Sunday school. I'd promised to remain faithful and shining and golden for the Lord. I'd let priests smear ash on my head. I'd let them dash me with holy water. I'd gone through everything I was supposed to, but I could still feel reality nagging at me like a canker sore in the farthest, most unreachable part of my mouth. It was an itch that didn't go away.

So I'd like to think I would've been the little girl who would've sat her father down on the bed, put his fancy bow tie away, and told him it was okay, we didn't need to go to the ball, didn't need to make promises we couldn't and wouldn't keep. I'd like to think I would've been the little girl who would tell him there were mistakes to be made, and it was okay. Things would go wrong and I would make the wrong decisions, but all of that--all my mistakes--would be okay. They'd be stupid beautiful mistakes, and they would spin me into the stars, clear up into the chalky mist of the Milky Way, and really, that wasn't such an awful place to be.

But I would've told him we were keeping the dress.

Jess: Now with More Bang

There comes a point in a girl's life where she needs a change, something's gotta give, big things have to happen. Maybe she's going on spring break--ironically to a place that's actually colder than where she lives now--in two weeks. Maybe she's sick of looking in the mirror and thinking blah. Maybe she lets her best gay friend--the one who's always lecturing her on serum (You need serum in your hair, Jess! Serum!)--talk her into going to his hairdresser. Maybe she feels a little reckless, a little like the time she had a hair appointment before she went out with New Boy for the first time, and she says the same thing she said then: "Do what you think will make me look best."

Maybe she gets bangs. Maybe she gets really cute bangs:



I'm pretty sure after I get my eyebrows waxed next week, I am going to rule the world.