Gawky (3 page)

My mom oozed with confidence. Being tall ran in her family, and because she had also had an early growth spurt, she had perspective on my situation. She knew this time would pass and someday I would be proud of my size. She was convinced that being tall eventually would be an enviable quality and that my “girl, you'll be a woman (a little too) soon” stage was simply temporary and that good times lay ahead. Mom was five-foot-nine and proud of it, constantly having “height contests” when friends or family came over, just so she could win. Everyone would groan as she would line us all up in descending order and then say, “Oh, looks like I'm at the top again!” She was ever eager to place her cousins back to back, whipping out her tape measure to settle a dispute. In these instances I watched from the sidelines,
knowing that given the direction I was headed, I would be the undisputed winner in no time at all. With a five-foot-eleven grandmother, a six-foot-tall father, and a five-foot-ten great-aunt, my mom was always excited to hold the height contests when those particular family members were not in attendance. She wasn't a competitive person, unless it came to things that really didn't matter. It did bother me that my mother seemed to have blocked out her awkward stage or perhaps had never really had one despite her early-onset uberheight. A cheerleader in high school because “there were just no other sports offered to girls during that time,” my mother counterbalanced her extreme height with athleticism, making it an asset rather than a curse.

When I was eleven years old, I was diagnosed with scoliosis during a routine test at school (which was much less embarrassing than the time both Amanda and I were diagnosed with lice—Amanda had the good idea to tell everyone we had “fevers” to explain why we were being forcefully removed from class). I really wasn't surprised. It seemed impossible that I could grow this fast and not have some sort of medical problem along with it. I was glad it was a seemingly minor case, and I didn't have to wear one of those embarrassing back braces in addition to my mother's homemade blouses.

I found my monthly visits to the scoliosis specialists to be a complete waste of time, but Mom almost seemed to enjoy them. While the nurses would measure me, comment on how unusually tall I was, then run their hands along my
S
-shaped spine, my mother loved to tell them proudly that height ran in the family. Then, some young doctor right out of
General Hospital
would guide my mother's hands over my spine, asking her, “There, do you feel it? That's where it curves. That's what we have to look out for.” I don't think she actually felt the curve, but she sure felt that hunky doctor holding her hands.

Every time we left, the receptionist would say, “We don't need to see Margot for another few months.”

My mother would respond, “How about two weeks?”

Years later I understood that my unnecessarily frequent visits to the scoliosis doctors were simply my mom's version of
Playgirl
magazines. She could glance from afar at the accomplished, unattainable beauties and then innocently walk away as if nothing had happened. I finally figured it out when a hot dark-haired doctor finally looked her right in the eye and said, “Really, Mrs. Leitman, she's fine. The
S
in her spine has not increased at all over the years. There is absolutely no reason at all to come back here.”

As we got in the car my mom smirked to me, “Well, I wouldn't say ‘no reason at all.'”

Considering I spent most evenings rereading
Bop
magazines in bed and fantasizing about various stars from the rotating T.G.I.F. sitcom lineup on ABC, it was nice to know I wasn't alone.

My brother was also tall, but in a good way. Unlike me he was coordinated and good at sports. Also, being tall at a young age looked good on a boy and went especially well with his wiry hair and fully formed teeth that would require no braces. As he was four grades ahead of me, we were never in the same school at the same time. His friends liked to taunt me by pronouncing my name backward—“Tog-ram”— and were all eccentric, studious types like him. Greg always had perfect grades, which infuriated me, as he seemed to spend the majority of his time re-creating iconic films and books on a borrowed camcorder. My parents never invested in a family video camera because they claimed they wanted to “live in the moment.” I believe it's because they wanted minimal evidence that their daughter ever looked like a towering young Scandinavian villain with mosquito-bite boobs. Or they figured they could save some money by pretending they didn't realize that Greg had not returned that camcorder to his wealthier friend. The
one time I asked my mom about it, after Greg had the camcorder in his possession for over a year and had used it incessantly, she said, “If Greg's friend wants it back, all he has to do is ask.”

Meanwhile Greg was very busy with his moviemaking career. By the time I was nine I had played “Connie” in Greg's re-creation of
The Godfather
(Parts 1 and 2; I was not cast in Part 3, much to my dismay) and was “hired” as production assistant on his video re-creation of the epic poem
Beowulf
. Being demoted from actress to PA proved my point that no one wanted this unfortunate stage of my looks on record. Even my own brother would rather use a marionette than me, a
live
person, to play the female roles in
Beowulf
.

Instead of clamoring to fit in with my brother's staff of film-loving friends, I turned to my longtime best friend, Amanda. Amanda had a much younger brother we could boss around, and I liked that dynamic a lot better. She was the other half of my amateur pop duo, “the Jersey Girls”—so named because we lived in New Jersey and we were girls. This wasn't Short Hills/Cherry Hill type of Jersey—this was Central Jersey, bordering on the Jersey Shore. Ours was a town where an old drunk pimp named Squirrel strolled up and down Main Street every day, overly tan Italian Americans snapped gum and flexed their muscles on the boardwalk, and cool teenage girls used zinc oxide as a lipstick. Denim cutoffs were the epitome of style for men, usually accented by a ponytail and a stained white T-shirt. Many people commuted to New York City for work, including my father, as the majority of local opportunities were limited to teaching in the public schools, landscaping, or bartending at one of the bars in this small town. We all lived in the shadow of the great and powerful Jon Bon Jovi, who used the local water tower in the cover art of his latest album, aptly titled
New Jersey
. It seemed a lot of Bon Jovi's songs were written about the everyday people in our area. The first verse of “Livin' on a Prayer” seemed as if it were about our local
“Tommy and Gina.” With some minor changes. In our town it would go something like this:

       
Lisa used to work as a stripper
Now she's a waitress where she serves pork ribs to truckers
To truckers
Kevin mows lawns all day
He cries 'cause he's sunburned
Lisa whispers, Baby it's okay . . .
I've got aloe.
She says you've gotta save up to get that next tattoo
It doesn't make a difference if it's black and white or color
We've got each other and we don't need no others
To get through the day

Inspired by the local legends, Amanda and I spent most of our afternoons locking ourselves in her room and rerecording our demo on her Fisher-Price tape recorder. Amanda was very pretty, normal-size, and terribly naughty. She was tan even in the depths of winter, while I sported a pale, gaunt look even in the throes of summer. I was capable only of burning or freckling, never achieving a golden tan like Amanda's beautiful skin could. Her hair was naturally straight, whereas mine was big, and not in a fun Jersey-in-the-'80s kind of way, but more of an old-spinster-gussied-up-for-the-widowers-at-temple kind of way. At times my mother had ironed it like they did in the '60s, but I never let her finish the job, as I would panic mid-iron. Being eleven years old and having a steaming hot iron directly next to one's skull can be a terrifying experience. Even my mother's utterances of “Beauty must suffer pain” did not make it any easier. My hair was much more cut out for crimping.

I really needed Amanda by my side to get a record deal; she'd be the face, but I'd be the talent—there was a reason Laverne needed Shirley
after all. And if our demo sold, there was still time to cash in on the Debbie Gibson phase and begin touring the world wearing funky hats.

Among our roster of original songs so far were “In Love with a Star” (written about
Growing Pains
heartthrob Kirk Cameron). It had a great hook:

       
Chances are . . . I'm in love with a star

We also wrote “I Don't Even Know What Love Means,” which counteracted the main message of “In Love with a Star.” With the less brilliant lyrics:

       
You want me to tell you I love you
But I don't even know what love means

After
Laverne & Shirley
season 6, episode 113 “Not Quite New York,” I was inspired by the girls' tenacity and realized I needed to kick my songwriting up a notch. One afternoon, alone in my bedroom, suddenly the lyrics just began flowing out of me.

       
And I'd be thinking of you
Oh I just can't bear it but I know it's true
And you' d be thinking of me
Oh I know it I know it I can see
And we' d be singing this same song
Oh I know it I know it but I wish I wasn't wrong
Listen boy and listen well
I don't want them to know so don't tell
Because I am thinking of you
Oh I just can't bear it but I know it's true.

This was good. Much better than
Chances are . . . I'm in love with a star.
I was on to something with these incredible lyrics. They were vague yet specific. I could imagine a girl listening to this soon-to-be-hit on her Walkman and substituting either a cute boy from class or teen heart-throb Michael J. Fox for whom she was “thinking of.” This song had no limits. But I was more of a writer than a musician, and I wasn't sure how to go about setting it to a tune.

The pressure was too much to bear. I had to impress Amanda, and I had to be a star. So I did the unthinkable: I stole the melody from Wham!'s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” I loved George Michael so much. I loved his album
Faith
, even if it was inappropriately sexual for a girl my age. I loved his butt, and I loved that he wrote a song called “I Want Your Sex,” which caused my mom to blush and then change the channel every time it came on the radio even though I knew she loved it, too. A few years had passed since “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” set the world on fire, inspiring thousands of pale teens to don knock-off “Choose Life” T-shirts. I figured everyone in my hometown had moved on to Bon Jovi, and no one would remember poor old Wham!

It worked like a charm. A few days later, when I premiered the song in Amanda's bedroom, she thought it was pure genius.

“Margs, we should totally take this to Mr. Fervor, he's super connected in the music industry.”

Perfect. This was a great opportunity to prove to our band teacher that I wasn't just some oversize fourth-grade deadbeat who had switched from flute, to clarinet, to sitting in the audience taking notes during band class. He'd be amazed by my songwriting talent. He might call me a prodigy. And then he'd put me in touch with some of his Hollywood connections.

Amanda and I stayed after in band class the next day and showed Mr. Fervor our brilliant opus, handwritten on Mead loose-leaf paper.

“You girls wrote this all by yourselves?” asked Mr. Fervor.

We both nodded. I fought the urge to call Amanda out for taking co-credit for a song I had both slaved over
and
stolen.

“Well, do you want to sing it for me, then?” he asked.

Amanda and I enthusiastically nodded. I counted off, “One, two, three, four,” the way I'd heard Bruce Springsteen do on the many, many live concert albums my parents owned.

Amanda and I proudly sang “Thinking of You” to the tune of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” a capella. I twirled the hot-pink jelly bracelets on my wrists to distract myself from the fear of being found out. We finished the song, took a pregnant pause, and waited for Mr. Fervor's response. Then we hit the jackpot.

“Well, girls, I'd love to work with you. How'd you like to perform this song in the school and community assemblies? I'd be happy to play the accompaniment. Sound good? Sound cool, girls?” Mr. Fervor always spoke as if he were at a beat poetry slam. Amanda and I nodded furiously. “Oh and, girls, or ‘Jersey Girls,' should I say, a song this good is sure to get stolen. Believe me, I'd look into copyrighting this puppy.” Mr. Fervor had clearly been through some ups and downs in his music career, leading him to err on the side of caution.

Amanda and I left Mr. Fervor and began to jump up and down, screaming as soon as we were out of the room. A record deal was a mere assembly away! That afternoon, I followed Mr. Fervor's advice, and with my mom's help, sent the song off to the Copyright Office to claim my legal ownership of a song stolen from Wham! My mom seemed super knowledgeable in the art of copyrighting something, most likely because, as she had told me countless times, it was her father who had come up with the original formula for sugarless gum at the candy factory he had worked in. But because he didn't properly take ownership of the formula, it went to the company and we never saw a dime of the Trident/Extra/Carefree empire. She also told me repeatedly that he came up with the formula for chlorophyll gum, what Clorets were made
from. My mom was the last remaining chewer of Clorets gum and was solely responsible for keeping them in business. That being said, she was extra supportive in making sure I got what was rightfully mine from this song . . . that Wham! actually wrote.