Gawky (20 page)

I stood up when I reached the bottom, shouting, “It's cool, guys, it's all good. I'm fine. Really. I do stuff like this all the time.”

No one cared if I was all right. All eyes were on the bloody glass ornament massacre I had created. Not one antique had been spared. This was total annihilation. I had ruined all their Christmases forevermore.

Right then I knew I was in no position to be running with a crew as hip and coordinated as Jackie Angel's friends. Everything Jackie touched and everyone she knew was the embodiment of cool. John was no exception. Somehow, though, John and I pretended we made sense for the rest of the trip. My final night there was spent making out with John under a completed afghan while a group of Pennsylvania stoners sat around watching
Streets of Fire
. I knew they could hear us, but I liked pretending that the colorful yarn was just as good as a wall.

I was really into the heat of the moment. This was the furthest I had ever gone with a guy, and John seemed to have all the right moves. His
Dad
tattoo was uncovered, our pants were half off, and underneath the multicolored afghan, I felt a genital move toward me. It didn't come too close, but it definitely brushed my thigh, and I just knew I was milliseconds away from contracting the AIDS virus. What if it came closer? Being a high school dropout, John probably had a lot of time on his hands to gain some heavy-duty sexual experience. I had basically none, so I thought back to my school assemblies for guidance. I could hear that scary man with AIDS threaten me, “You, you, you . . . you've got AIDS.” I took both hands and pushed it away. No! No AIDS! No penis! I would not be a statistic!

Then the fear set in. Oh my God! Pre-cum! Pre-cum! Overheard conversations from the descendants of the White Lipstick Posse as well as my horse camp counselors had taught me all about pre-cum. In a large coat closet during a Bat Mitzvah at Temple Beth Ahm, Jessica Rosenstein had lectured several of us girls on the dangers of hand jobs.
“I'm just saying, the second you touch it, even though you can't see it, pre-cum just leaps onta you. It's, like, microscopic. Don't say I didn't warn you.” I was positive that AIDS had come out in John's pre-cum, and in that moment of pushing his penis away, it soaked into my bloodstream through my hands and destroyed my life.

Seconds after this thought, I heard, “Margot, time to go, girl!” Jackie Angel's hippie mom was coming to drive me to the train station to go home. There was no time to wash the AIDS off my hands; we were running late. THERE WAS NO TIME! I unfolded myself from the afghan, quickly said good-bye, and then raced upstairs—weaving among Mason jars, a disgraced, terminally ill whore on her way back to meet her parents in Jersey.

I ducked into the back of Mrs. Angel's station wagon as we headed off to the train depot, both terrified and secretly pleased with myself for having such a wild weekend. I stared at the slender hands that had just touched their first genital and feared for my life. I didn't want to say my thoughts out loud for fear of losing both Jackie Angel and her mom's respect. Theirs was the only place I could go to escape my mundane existence. If they knew I was freaking out, I could lose essential cool points with the coolest girl ever and the tallest and baddest boy I had ever met. John was the only guy who ever liked me besides Jonah Hertzberg and the weird guy who gave me T-shirts.

Just before my heart leapt out of my chest, Jackie's mom made a brief pit stop at 7-Eleven. She returned to the car with a box of Entenmann's soft-batch chocolate-chip cookies. I loved soft-batch cookies, but we never had them at home. My mom had moved on from Pecan Sandies and now stocked the house only with Lorna Doones, a cookie reserved exclusively for British hags over seventy. The Entenmann's looked and smelled especially good to me, considering I had been stoned for three days straight and just finished a hearty dry-humping session. At the same time, I was positive I would accidentally ingest AIDS via
the cookies. I didn't care anymore. I wanted to taste them so badly I was willing to become a statistic. When Mrs. Angel tossed the open box into the backseat asking in what seemed to be slow motion, “You want some?” I knew I was screwed.

I looked down at the box, tempted by chocolate and sweet satisfaction. What was she doing? She was offering me a box of the most delicious cookies in the whole entire world. The temptation was killing me; I was staring death in the face and it smelled magnificent.

Like a savage beast, I tore into the box, holding nothing back. Well, Margot, are you happy now? If there was a shot in hell that you didn't get AIDS before, you have blown your chances now. Enjoy your cookies, slutsky.

I savored every bite of the twelve soft-batch cookies I consumed in that backseat, licking the crumbs off my fingertips. I knew when I got home I would only have stale Pecan Sandies to gorge myself on. Plus, after being stoned for the past three days, they tasted extra, extra delicious. I wasn't sure if AIDS could be transmitted via pre-cum from a penis brush-off onto an unwashed hand into a soft-batch chocolate-chip cookie into the bloodstream. My teachers never mentioned it.

I never uttered a word to anyone about my inner fears—I hoped I was just being neurotic. Eventually the terror wore off and I fantasized about turning the whole experience into a possible cash cow. I contemplated writing a letter to Entenmann's telling them my story as a testimonial to how much I loved their cookies. I fantasized about getting my big break when they made a commercial of my risqué tale starring me. But alas, I never wrote that letter to Entenmann's, but instead wrote letters to John.

CHAPTER 12:

H
igh school began the day after my trip to Jackie Angel's house, and from the start it was nothing but stress. Right away there was a blood drive, which I opted out of on the off-chance I had contracted AIDS from the penis brush-off/cookie ingestion. I looked like a real jerk for refusing to give blood for sick people, but I blamed it on my vegetarian diet, claiming I had no blood to spare. Medically it made no sense but I couldn't handle the pressure of possibly infecting innocent people after eating all those possibly pre-cum–infected cookies.

Also, I was getting weird bruises all over my body. There were purple and blue marks on my upper arms and thighs, giving me a Courtney Love/punk rock look that I loved to admire in the full-length mirror in my parents' room. Bruises gave me a damaged look that really aided me when pouring my soul out into my journal alone in my upstairs bedroom. However, the bruises were for my eyes only. Considering I was into a rock 'n' roll man's look, I didn't often show
any skin. My long-sleeved butterfly-collared shirts were usually worn with a tank top underneath, paired with jeans, and usually with a scarf to accent. I had learned a little about fashion while watching Roger Daltrey in
Tommy
one afternoon on HBO and knew that less is more. So there were no rumors going around regarding my bruises about me being beaten at home and/or having an abusive boyfriend. Of course, in order to have an abusive boyfriend, one must have a boyfriend in the first place, which I did not.

But the bruises persisted, and after rocking a black tank top à la Joan Jett one afternoon at home, my parents got worried. One day I left school early so my mom could take me to the doctor. It turned out I was severely anemic. This meant that I had very low iron count in my blood, probably due to my sudden and strict vegetarianism brought on by trying to emulate Jackie Angel at camp.

When the doctor offered his diagnosis, my mom had trouble controlling her glee. For her, this was a tiny victory, as she believed I had quit eating meat just to make her life more difficult. It must have been a hassle for my mother to have to make a separate meal for me each night, but I felt like meat was something I just had to take a stand against. I wasn't sure exactly why, but it felt good to be actively protesting against something.

“So, Doctor, this means that Margot will have to reintroduce meat back into her diet, then?”

“Not necessarily,” he said, and I watched my mother's face fall. “She just needs to eat foods high in iron, like spinach and beans. Here's a list of some good vegetarian options.”

My mom scanned it, looking disappointed.

The doctor continued: “And she needs to take iron pills. But with the pills and an altered diet, the bruises should clear up quite quickly.”

We left the office mostly feeling relieved that nothing serious was wrong. Although she was uninterested in making burgers out of lentils,
she was especially happy nothing major was ailing me. I sulked a little on the car ride back knowing that without my punk rock bruises I would no longer resemble a more articulate Nancy Spungen. At home, the phone was ringing, and it was my friend Derek calling to see if I was okay. Derek was a fun guy whom I'd known for years and often paired up with on class assignments because he, too, valued the social rather than the academic aspects of working as a team. He was in the class that I was taken out of to go to the doctor's and had seemed concerned when I'd left early. Usually anytime Derek or I left a class it was to fake sick to get out of an exam. We even had prewritten cues to back each other up. For example, if I faked a headache to go to the nurse's, as I walked out the door Derek was always supposed to ask, “Wow, Margot, what's with all these headaches?” This was to reinforce that my headaches were a recurring problem, not an isolated incident, to add to their believability. So when I left early for a real doctor's appointment, Derek was taken a little aback.

“Are you okay?” he asked, prepared for the worst. “What did the doctor say?”

“It's nothing. I was diagnosed with anemia, and I'm being treated for it.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding serious. “Will you be in school tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course, it's no big deal. I'll see you then.”

“Okay,” he said. “Good-bye, then, Margot.”

It was a weird call, and it seemed overdramatic. Well, at least he cared.

But the weirdness continued. At school the next day, a lot of people welcomed me with hugs instead of ignoring my presence as usual. All through the day, people seemed to be speaking to me more slowly and, strangely, more loudly as well. I sort of enjoyed the kind attention, though it felt as if something was up and I should probably figure out what. Finally, I got to seventh period, my class with Derek. He had saved me a seat next to him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as I sat down, making very sincere eye contact with me as if to say,
I know what's really going on
.

“Fine,” I said. “I had some spinach last night and took my iron pills. I should be on the mend.”

Derek looked confused. “When do you start the real treatment?”

“That is the real treatment.”

“No, I mean . . .,” Derek leaned in real closely and whispered, “the hospital treatments.”

“Why would I go to the hospital?” I asked, now super confused.

“Because you have leukemia,” said Derek, looking around the room for eavesdroppers as he said the word
leukemia
.

“What?” I said, practically shouting. The rest of the students turned around and stared at us. “I don't have leukemia. I said I had
anemia
. It's a minor problem, an iron deficiency. Did you tell the whole school I have leukemia? Is that why everyone is being so nice to me today?”

I looked around and a few of the other students mumbled yes and nodded their heads.

“Derek, are you serious?”

Derek stared at me, silent. Clearly he had no idea what to say. Then he burst into hysterics. “I am so sorry, Margs,” he said through laughter.

I wanted to stay mad at him for creating unnecessary drama, but I couldn't help the fact that I'd loved the attention I'd received all day. How could I stay mad at Derek? He was my accomplice to many a fake illness. Now he had bestowed me with the Cadillac of fake illnesses. Watching him crack up, I couldn't keep a straight face. I started laughing too.

“I'm glad you're okay, and I'll try to clear up the rumor . . .”

I controlled my urge to tell him to wait a few more days so I could milk the schoolwide sympathy. Instead I said sarcastically, “Yes, the rumor, the one about me being terminally ill? That rumor?”

“Yes,” Derek laughed. “That rumor. I'll try to clear it up.”

I shook my head at him as we went back to our studies. I did like the way people treated me that day, but I didn't like that it was because they thought I was really, really sick. But just as the rumor died down, lucky for me, I got mono and got to miss an entire month of school.

Mononucleosis, also known as “the kissing disease,” was the be-all, end-all of high-school illnesses to get. I got it from being run-down, but no one needed to know that. Everyone would assume I had kissed someone to get it and would be speculating about who it was! Yes, I had kissed John in Pennsylvania, but no one at school, not that anyone needed to know that either. My rep was ready for some rumors about whom I had kissed. I hoped in my absence classmates would be too distracted by solving the puzzle of my secret love life to finish that stupid homecoming float. Even better than that was how bad everyone felt for me. I reveled in pretending to be asleep on the couch while my mother stroked my head, saying things like, “Poor thing, she doesn't know how sick she is.” And, the best part was, the doctors had to do a massive amount of blood tests on me while I was sick, which put a halt to my assuredness that I had contracted AIDS that fateful weekend when I came into contact with a genital at Jackie Angel's house. To add to the awesomeness of being AIDS-free, rumored to have been kissing someone, and having my mom feel sorry for me, Amy Fisher had just shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face, and I got to watch
all three
made-for-TV movies about the scandal. We're talking
The Amy Fisher Story
starring Drew Barrymore,
Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” Story
starring Alyssa Milano, and
Lethal Lolita
starring some other chick. Each one was more brilliant than the next, and it saddened me to know that one day this scandal would die down. What I didn't know is that just around the corner Tonya Harding would bash in Nancy Kerrigan's knee and I would be able to get my tabloid fix once again.