Sloppy Firsts (7 page)

Our convo wasn’t bad or anything. Hy’s history was fairly interesting. But the whole time I was talking to her, I was thinking about how sweet it would be when the clock read 9:27P.M ., which meant twenty minutes were up and I could end the conversation without seeming rude and I could try to get some sleep.

This is my new hobby. I watch my life depart minute by minute. I anticipate the end of everything and anything—a conversation, a class, track practice, darkness—only to be left with more clock-watching to take its place. I’m continually waiting for something better that never comes. Maybe it would help if I knew what I wanted.

Until I figure that out, I guess I’m waiting for the end of my sophomore year so summer can start, so I can wait for that to end so I can go back to school and do the waiting game for another two years until I graduate and finally escape to college, where I’m hoping to begin my "real life." Whatever that is.

I didn’t do this as much when you were here.

I really missed you tonight. I miss talking to you. Knowing that you get me. And every time I talk to someone else it just reminds me how much they don’t.

Tick-tockingly yours, J.

march

the fourth

My first spring track meet isn’t for another four weeks and already I wish the whole goddamn season were over.

Today I snuck out of the house so I could do my four-mile loop around the neighborhood all alone. When I’m out running by myself, without Kiley yelling out splits, or Paul Parlipiano distracting me with his God-like grace, my mind quiets. Clears.

Forgetting my locker combination was unsettling, sure. And I’m more than a little freaked about my non-period. But the whole Marcus incident had messed with my mind royally. I couldn’t stop thinking about him and what would happen if Sara started making her famous insinuations.You know, I think there’s something going on between—omigod!—Krispy Kreme and the Class Brainiac …

I really needed a half hour of not thinking about anything.

My father must have planted a homing device in the soles of my Sauconys because I was no farther than a half-mile from the house when I heard the whizzing wheels of his ten-speed. I should have known. My dad is always in one of two places: In front of his computer or on his bike. And when he’s not off on his solo Lance Armstrong adventures, he’s tailing me.

"Pick up the pace, Notso!" he yelled. "You think Alexis Ford runs this slow?"

Alexis Ford goes to Eastland High School. She beat me by four-tenths of a second in the 1600 meters at the freshman championships last year. My father analyzes the video of that race more than the Feds did the Zapruder film when Kennedy was shot. I’m not kidding. It usually goes like this:

"You lost the race right there," he says.

"Dad, the gun just went off. We weren’t even twenty-five meters into it."

Dad rewinds and freezes the tape. "Look right there," he says, pointing at the screen. "See how you had to go all the way into the third lane to get around that girl from Lacey? That was a waste of energy. Energy you needed for the sprint in the final straightaway. That’s why Alexis Ford beat you by four-tenths of a second."

A few weeks ago Dad spliced together an entire tape of these race-breaking moments to create a video montage I like to call "Notso Darling’s Agony of Defeat, Volume One." I’m supposed to watch and learn and never let them happen again.

"Look right there," he says. "See how your arms are swinging all over the place? See how you got boxed in?"

All his coaching is lost on me. The way I see it, there’s only one racing strategy that matters. It’s the one I run by:Get in the lead and don’t let anyone pass you.

I know that my dad is just excited to have an athlete in the family. Bethany never broke a bead of sweat in her life. And he’s relieved I’m not one of those chunky girls who lumber around the track, hoping to break an eight-minute mile. I’m actually good. That almost makes up for the Little League games and Pee-Wee Basketball tournaments he thought he would attend but never got the chance to.

He sees these father–daughter jaunts as a way for us to bond, but I resent the interruption. As soon as he starts in, the blank-slate state of my brain gets all mucked up.

It got so bad today that I had this psycho fantasy: I wished he’d hit me with his bike. I imagined him losing control for a split second, the wheel clipping my leg hard enough to make me lose balance, and me smacking the asphalt. I’d roll into a ball of pain and fury, my hands and legs a mess of blood, skin, and gravel. I’d scream, "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING RIDING SO CLOSE? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?" Maybe I’d break a leg or arm. Maybe I’d be out the whole season and my dad would feel too bad to be mad.

I got so excited by the idea of getting injured that I decided I couldn’t wait for fate. I’d carefully orchestrate the crash. Yes. I’d fake the fall, confident that he wouldn’t ride right over my body, crushing and killing me. No, just a brush, a bump, enough to make himleave me alone . My adrenaline cranked up and I started running faster at the thought of it. And that’s when my dad said, "That’s more like it, Notso!" Instead of making me feel better, like I knew he wanted it to, his praise made me feel worse. And more than ever I wanted him to hit me and end my running career altogether. I knew there were bumpy tree roots up ahead bursting out of the asphalt, so I could logically trip over them and ("That’s it. Keep it up, Notso! You’re flying!") fall into his path and he would hit me. I wouldn’t have to run anymore and hear about Alexis Ford and swinging arms and the Agony of Defeat. I knew it was now or never so I stepped on the sticky-outiest root. My arms flailed and I felt like I was falling in slow motion, all the while anticipating the sting of rubber tire treading ("No!") on my ankle, my shin, my thigh. I was waiting to scream, to yell, to vent, to blame.

But my dad instinctively swerved out of the way.

Later, when I was applying hydrogen peroxide to my bloody, banged-up knee and shredded palm, my dad stood in the doorway and lectured me about being more careful.

"You could have ended the season right there," he said.

"Yes," I sighed. "But I didn’t."

My skin still stings.

the tenth

A bunch of us went to the annual PHS talent show tonight. We needed a break from the weekend-in-Pineville monotony of hitting the multiplex, chowing at Helga’s Diner, or vegging at Scotty’s. Plus, we needed to give Hy a tasty slice of Pineville culture.

"I dare you to find a better freak show for a five-dollar admission," I said.

"Girl, I’m from the city, where the freak shows are free," she said.

"Wait and see."

At the end of the night, Hy agreed with me. Neither one of us could understand what compelled these people to willingly humiliate themselves in front of their peers.

I’ll give you a brief review.

The show opened with a band rather narcissistically named The Len Levy Four. It was fronted by none other than Len Levy, the boy who broke my eight-year-old heart. He wore about six inches of pancake makeup, as though the audience would be tricked into thinking that somehow the spotlight, or perhaps the very aura of rap/metal greatness itself, had erased the purple lesions from his face. I say this with all bitterness aside, of course.

So The Len Levy Four launched into a Rage Against the Machine rip-off song. I have to admit that the band itself was pretty tight. But Len was frightening. He’s pretty stiff and robotic in everyday life. Well, jack that up on crack and you’ve got Len’s idea of stage presence. PHS’s answer to Zack de la Rocha marched around his cohorts like a short-circuited cyborg, so fast that the spotlight couldn’t keep up with him.

Len wasn’t even halfway through the first verse when he yelled, "Pineville!" and attempted a stage dive. Talk about premature ejaculation. Everyone was still sitting in their seats. There wasn’t anyone to catch him. He landed right on his feet and just kind of stood there, stunned that he was on the ground instead of surfing the crowd.

So then he went the audience-participation route.

"Pineville!" he yelled into the microphone.

Then he held it out for the audience to respond in kind. Silence.

"Pineville!"he yelled even louder.

This time he was met with howling laughter. The song ended not long thereafter with Len Levy throwing down the mike with a deafening squeal of feedback and storming out of the auditorium.

Rock and roll.

Next up was Dori Sipowitz, a die-hard Britney Spears fan if there ever was one. Much like the genuine Lolita diva, Dori’s act was heavy on the choreography and light on the singing, relying on prerecorded vocals and lip-synching. Dori’s mother was sitting right in front of us and screamed, "Sexy, baby! Sexy, sexy, sexy!" as her daughter writhed and gyrated in a pink, sequined catsuit with a belly-baring cutout.

I don’t even need to tell you how completely sick and inappropriate that is.

She was followed by a trio of Hoochie hip-hop dancers who should’ve known better than to wear white spandex. (They put the "boom" inboom-shaka-laka-shaka-laka-shaka-laka. ) A posse of Wiggaz rapped aboutda thug life outfitted in the bangingest, bling-blingingest ghetto superstar gear available at the Ocean County Mall. There was also a juggler and a Grateful Dead cover band named Long Strange Trip.

There were a few more acts but I’ve blocked them out. No emotion is more squirmy than feeling embarrassed for someone else.

The final act was Percy Floyd, a Double-A Elvis impersonator. After thirty seconds of anticipation-building Vegas-style vamping and spotlight swirling, The Black Elvis took the stage like a tornado. Like all Elvis impersonators worth their Quaaludes and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, he chose to give homage to the jelly-bellied, sideburned, rhinestone-jumpsuited Elvis, the one who sadly lost the vote for the commemorative stamp.

The audience went nuts.

I was laughing and clapping and cheering along with the rest of the audience as The Black Elvis crooned his way through "Suspicious Minds." It was only when he whipped off his huge tinted sunglasses to wipe his brow with a red scarf that I discovered the shocking identity of The Black Elvis. I nearly fainted in the aisle—which would’ve been a nice dramatic touch.

"Holy shit!" I screamed. "I know that kid!"

"Who is he?" yelled Hy.

"He’s Pepe Le Pew!"

"Who?"

"Pepe. Pierre. This kid in my French class who has a crush on me."

Pepe must have stuffed his jumpsuit with about a dozen pillows. But fake fat aside, he was pure King. He did mock karate chops. He even had two burly "bodyguards" come out and throw a cape over him. The final touch? An announcement over the loudspeaker thatElvis had left the building.

I was so proud of him when he won.

I don’t know how I didn’t recognize him instantly. While a few hundred Wiggaz front like boyz and girlz in da hood, there are only twenty-five real black students at PHS. And there’s onlyone black kid in my French class who has a crush on me, for Christ’s sake. Maybe the reason I didn’t immediately recognize Pepe is because he’s such a gifted chameleon. I’ve been observing him lately. He’s one of the few kids at PHS who defies categorization. He wins the talent showand wrestling matches. He speaks English, French,and Ebonics. He hangs with Double-Asand Wiggaz, 404sand Dregs, Jocksand I.Q.s. I wish I felt as comfy withone clique as he seems to be with them all.

the seventeenth

Things are getting really weird.

Greg Mahoney was shot at a kegger last night. Greg is a Dreg–Hick hybrid, a burnout who blasts country music and decorates his pickup truck with a Confederate flag and anI’m A Piney, From My Head Down To My Heinie bumper sticker. (Translation: I’m proud to live off a dirt road in the middle of the woods.) Anyway, this wasn’t another tragic teenage rampage. No one had a gun. Greg found some loose bullets in his truck that, for reasons that remain unclear, he drunkenly decided to throw into the bonfire. The bullets exploded and shot up Greg’s ass.

I heard about it in homeroom from Sara, who just loves sharing gossip like this.

"Omigod! Only a total idiot would try to,quote make fuckin’ fireworksunquote ."

"That’s why he did it?"

"That’s what I heard."

"I bet there wasn’t any thinking involved at all," I said. "Greg did it because that’s what Dregs do. It’s his contribution to society."

Then I heard a voice say, "Excuse me, Miss Don’t-Get-High-and-Mighty …"

I didn’t have to look up to know who it was. And when I did look up and saw him zooming in on me from two rows over, I was proven right.

"What’syour contribution to society?" Marcus asked.

I giggled. Jesus Christ, that’s annoying.

"Omigod! Ugh. Mind your own fucking business," Sara said.

"Why don’tyou mind your own fucking business?" Marcus countered. "You weren’t at the party, were you?"

And that’s when our homeroom teacher, Rico Suave, got involved.

"What’s my rule about foul language in this room?"

"Well, if you’re going to bust me, bust her, too," he said, pointing at Sara. "She said ’fucking’ before I did."