Gawky (23 page)

That Saturday, I went to the Arts Center along with a cute female friend I'd known since elementary school. Lucky for me the cute girl had fabulous taste in music and was not a member of the White Lipstick Posse. After the Cecelia Rios incident I now understood that some cute, cool girls were also nice and high school would be a more enjoyable experience if I let go of the assumption that everyone was out to get me. Sure, some people were out to get me. The girl who waited at my locker every morning to ask me, “What the fuck you wearin'?” certainly was not looking to be friends. But the quasi-popular girls who kept their opinions to themselves about my flared orange pants were just fine to socialize with. This old friend of mine was short and pretty, and liked by most, so surely Mrs. Bernstein would also fall under her spell. Neither of us had tickets, so the cute girl was game to attempt to get in via Mrs. Bernstein.

We cased the joint until we found Mrs. Bernstein's entrance. We waltzed up with the confidence of high rollers walking into a casino. Mrs. Bernstein stood proudly in her yellow security jacket, eager to check tickets and enforce rules, her favorite pastime.

“Hi girls, got your tickets?” she asked, somewhat rushed, and a little less happy than we had hoped she'd be to see us.

“Mrs. Bernstein, hi! I didn't know you worked here!” said the pretty girl. I loved the way pretty girls always snuck lies in for no reason,
just because they could. I was always trapped by the truth, feeling like there was no such thing as a “little white lie” coming from a “gigantic white girl.”

“Yup, I do. Every weekend, all season. Tickets?”

“Well, that's the thing, we don't exactly have tickets and we were hoping you'd help us out,” said the cute girl as she stroked her hair, checking for split ends.

“Nope, sorry girls. No can do! Next! Tickets!” she called, eager to dismiss us. I could tell from her tone we weren't the first high school kids to try this amateur move on her tonight. I turned to go. At least we tried. Even though tonight was a bust, it was better than staying home watching
All About Eve
again with my parents.

“It's just that we couldn't afford them, we don't have a lot of money,” continued the pretty girl. I began pulling at her arm, signaling to just give up and leave.

“Yeah, well neither do I,” retorted Mrs. Bernstein. “Why do you think I'm working here? For my health? I have bills to pay, and I'm not about to get fired on account of youz two. So beat it!”

“Did she just say ‘beat it'?” mouthed the pretty girl, clearly in shock over Mrs. Bernstein's outdated lingo. This night was not going as I had planned. Listening to a substitute teacher/security guard's outdated catchphrases was not exactly how I wanted to spend my night.

“Thanks anyway, Mrs. Bernstein, see you around.” I pulled the short, pretty girl away, which was fairly easy considering I had about nine inches on her.

“I have a better idea anyway,” she said. “Let's go back to the car.”

We walked back to her mom's minivan, and the concert started. I could hear “Yer So Bad,” one of my favorite Tom Petty songs (not too overplayed, but just popular enough), opening the show. I hoped the pretty girl had a real idea. I wanted so badly to get inside. She dug around in her car and pulled out two super tampons. Oh no!
Not another super tampon! Super tampons still terrified me. They still meant to me that you had a massive amount of blood gushing out of your lady parts and that you also had a wide vagina in order to hold the enormous thing in place. Knowing full well how many times I had corrected Chad Decker that tall girls do not have larger vaginas, I always made sure to buy “regular” tampons, hoping someone would see me ring them up at the counter and learn to rethink their closed-minded views.

“Here, take this,” she said, and handed me the super tampon, which I held suspiciously. “I have a plan.” She walked back toward the Arts Center with purpose, clutching the super tampon as if it were a baton she was eager to hand off at the end of a long lady trek. I followed her lead to the opposite gate from where we had failed to break Mrs. Bernstein.

We approached a large, male security guard, who had no line and clearly hated his job. “Tickets,” he stated, visibly disturbed that we were coming in so late.

“Hi. We don't have our tickets. But our friend inside just got her period.” The macho guard visibly flinched, and the cute girl took this as an encouraging sign. She continued, “She got it real bad. And we had to go back to the car to grab super tampons so she didn't bleed all over the place.” The guard let out an audible “Ugh” at the word
tampon
. The pretty girl then brought it home: “Our friends and our tickets are inside.” The pretty girl then held out her hand to reveal a super tampon and nudged me to do the same. Now the guard had a visual of a bloody girl somewhere within the venue just waiting for her super tampon to plug up her extra-wide, blood-spurting vagina. It was more than enough to make things happen.

“Alright, alright! Just put those things away. Go in, find your friend.” The guard looked traumatized. His giant hands appeared to be trembling at the mere thought of menstruation. He wanted us as far
away from him as possible, and he wanted to forget the image of the super tampon as quickly as he could. That we had in common.

“Thanks!” she said, and gave a cute wave back to him. She grabbed my arm as we walked in to “Don't Come Around Here No More” and said, “I tried that a few weeks ago and it totally worked. So far a foolproof method.”

I tossed the super tampon in the first trash I found and went from disgusted to thrilled. The tampon scam was the coolest thing I had ever pulled off, and the biggest success I had ever achieved in terms of manipulation. The pretty girl certainly knew how to get things done, and she majorly schooled me in the art of exploitation for the sake of music. That night, we chatted up some cute long-haired boys who seemed to dig me. By going to concerts so frequently I was discovering that while at school I was an undateable, gargantuan freak, at concerts I was a rock goddess. Guys at concerts complimented my outfits rather than making fun of them. Sure, maybe it was because concerts were always dark, but still, guys seemed to respond positively and that was enough for me. I had extreme confidence in dark, loud, crowded environments filled with people I would never see again. It was the day-to-day encounters with schoolmates under fluorescent lighting that I needed to work on.

CHAPTER 14:

A
fter the tampon incident, I was inspired to come up with a concert manipulation of my own. I wanted to meet long-haired rock 'n' roll guys and have a deep connection with an inevitable time limit à la
Before Sunrise
. What I came up with was pretty close to genius, as it worked almost every time. I would sit listening to the music, blowing bubbles I had gotten with my 25 percent discount at the drugstore. Then, hot, tall, skinny stoner guys with long hair (who all looked like me without the estrogen) would follow the trail of bubbles wondering,
Who is the rock goddess responsible for this simple pleasure
? Then, like a stoned Hansel meeting his doppelganger Gretel, the guys would follow the soapy spheres to me, the source, and I would greet them, rechanneling my
Octopussy
voice, and say, “It's me; I'm blowing the bubbles.” Then they would stay and talk to me for the rest of the concert.

It was never a romantic connection, no numbers were ever swapped or awkward first kisses exchanged, but knowing that there were guys out there who enjoyed my company, albeit under a cloud of weed, kick-ass rock music, and manipulative bubble seduction, was just enough to get me through my week at school. After a concert,
going to school to find that same bitch-faced bully waiting at my locker to say “What the fuck you wearin' today?” seemed almost tolerable. Listening to the tables of upperclassmen discuss their amazing futures that were just around the corner for them next year at college while I gnawed on a hummus-and-sprout sandwich all alone in the cafeteria wasn't so bad after a deep connection the weekend before over a joint and some Santana.

A few weeks after the super-tampon success was the They Might Be Giants concert at the other local venue, the Count Basie Theatre. Not wanting to be seen with a super tampon ever again, I decided it would be best to just purchase my ticket the old-fashioned way. The Count Basie Theatre was cheaper anyway, so I only had to work a few extra hours at the drugstore to afford the ticket. They Might Be Giants were in a different category of music than my usual straight-up rock. But they were a soundtrack to the outcasts, using unusual instruments like the accordion and pushing the rules of music by doing innovative above-the-law experiments like ten-second songs. They were music for nerds, and although I was not a nerd by traditional standards, I certainly understood how it felt not to be cool. These guys were alright by me, and I had copied all my brother's They Might Be Giants CDs onto cassettes when he went away to college. This was going to be a great night.

I packed my bubbles, borrowed my mom's special suede fringed vest, and headed out for a night of nerd rock. Even though this was an indoor venue, I figured my bubbles would still flow freely through the concert hall. And it being a more intimate setting, I figured the process of bubble seduction would work at a much more rapid pace. I arrived at the venue, found my seat, and just as the show began, with “Ana Ng” pumping through the giant speakers, I took out my secret weapon of suds. I blew those bubbles like it was my job, only running out of breath as the final chord of TMBG's most rockin' song came to a close.

A long-haired boy approached. Another successful bubble seduction! He was tall and thin, but his hair was dark, therefore making it slightly less narcissistic for me to be attracted to him. Corey was a little older, lived a few towns over, and had cute dance moves. He bounced up and down, keeping his arms restrained, unlike me, who flailed them around like I was the ghost of Isadora Duncan. He had good rhythm and wasn't trying too hard, which attracted me to him. Somewhere between “Particle Man” and “Birdhouse in Your Soul” he asked me where I was from and what my name was. We hung out, danced, and talked a little bit after the show ended. Corey even kissed me in the lobby at the end of the show. It was just a quick peck—no tongue, lasting a little longer than one would kiss a relative, but still further than anyone at school had attempted—and then he left. We didn't exchange contact information; emulating those hotties in
Before Sunrise
, the night was left as just a moment shared between two teenage misfits at a concert. No need to keep it going beyond that; it was what it was, and somehow the fantasy of wondering
what if
? was more exciting to me than any reality of seeing Corey ever again.

Two days later, a card arrived for me in the mail. It was from Corey. It said something about how he couldn't stop thinking about me since the concert. Then the phone rang. It was Corey. I said, “Uh, hi! I'm holding a card from you in my hand right now. How did you get my address? How did you get my phone number?”

“Easy,” he said, in a voice that seemed much whinier than I remembered hearing when we shouted to each other over some badass accordion rock two nights before. “You told me what town you lived in and what your full name was. So, I looked up possible spellings of
Leitman
in the phone book until I arrived at one that matched your hometown.”

What? I had only a few make-out sessions with Jonah Hertzberg and a brush with a genital with Jackie Angel's friend John as my previous experience, but I knew something was very wrong here. Sure, I had an
affinity for horror movies after seeing
Chopping Mall
(tagline: “Shop till You Drop . . . Dead”) at way too early an age. I also loved the thriller genre, having seen
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
five times in the theatre, despite being under seventeen and it having an R rating. So maybe my alerts were slightly heightened, but I needed to trust my gut on this. Something wasn't right.

At the same time . . . I'd be lying to say that the thought of Corey turning into a creepy killer didn't excite me a little. How dramatic! This would truly be something to write in my journal about. Maybe this would build to him chasing me through the woods with an ax until I fell backward into a pile of muddy leaves screaming “No, no!” I thought back to the concert. True, he hadn't just asked me my name, he'd asked “What's your full name?” And I had said “Margot Leitman.” To which he probably thought,
Okay, mental note, possible spellings: L-I-T-E, L-I-G-H-T, L-I-E-T, L-E-I-T . . . I will hunt her down and I will find her
!

I'd thought at the time that in asking for my full name he was just curious about my ethnic heritage. Because of my fair skin and height, people often thought I was Scandinavian. Maybe he was just checking to see if his hunch that I was from an adorable sweater-wearing culture was right. I had no idea he was going to use my last name as a tool in his overresourcefulness at staying in touch. Why didn't he simply just ask for my contact info? I would have given it to him. As creepy as this was, I didn't have any other options for love interests. No one else was into me; at school I was still thought of as a hulking weirdo, so I had to take what I could get.