Gawky (33 page)

I felt great passion for my art. I took time to plan out fun dance ensembles each night and got to class early every day to warm up. I even bought a
Flashdance
sweatshirt downtown and wore it over my unitard on cold days. I looked cooler in that unitard than I ever did in my lesbian shoes.

Life was so good, so right, that I basically forgot that I ever had a life before this. Chad Decker? Who's he? Until, one late September night, when I came home from set painting for
The Pirates of Penzance
to find my AT&T answering machine with the ladybug stickers flashing its little red light.

“Hi, Margot, it's Mom. Sorry to bother you. I know you're busy with whatever it is you're always so busy with there. What is it you do there? You don't tell me anything. Anyway, I wanted to remind you to start asking around for a ride home for Thanksgiving. Call me back. Love you.”

Ah yes, home. I would have to go back there soon and revisit the past. Maybe this wasn't a clean break after all.

A few days later it was my birthday, which always made me feel
lonely, especially because it comes at the beginning of the school year. It was only October. My friendship with Adriana was great but still establishing itself, and my relationship with Jean Claude was confusing. I didn't have a defined group of friends to celebrate with, and I was worried I would spend my special day alone. On my way to modern dance, walking all alone in my wraparound dance sweater, I thought about my big-boobed neighbor Alyssa. I missed her. Even if my new friend Adriana tried to throw me a surprise party like Alyssa had, there would be barely anyone to invite. I was feeling sad and lost in my thoughts as I walked into the theatre building and bumped into Jean Claude.

“Hello, Margot,” he said, perfectly accenting the
geau
, as always.

“Hi,” I said, as I nervously tried to walk into the building without embarrassing myself by choosing the door that always remained permanently locked. Why couldn't I ever remember which door that was? Every day I'd yank at the wrong door like an idiot, almost falling over when it wouldn't budge.

“How's it going?” he asked.

“Good, I guess . . .” There was an awkward silence. We hadn't hung out in at least a week, and I was starting to think he had ditched me for “Diane.” As we shifted our feet in uncomfortable silence, I had extra time to become increasingly aware of my makeshift dance ensemble, my unitard with a skirt over it, which seemed like a fabulous idea in my dorm room, but less fabulous in front of the guy I was obsessed with. I waited for him to say something, anything.

Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I blurted, “Today's my birthday.”

Well, it was. I had never been one of those people who were indifferent to their own birthdays. Once my paternal grandmother was visiting and my dad casually asked, “Mom, isn't it your birthday?”

My grandmother looked at her watch with the tiny calendar feature and replied, “Oh yeah. That old thing?”

How laid-back to think of your own birthday as “that old thing.” I was more a walk-through-the-hallways-with-a-clump-of-balloons-I-had-bought-for-myself-in-the-school-store type of birthday celebrator. But to Jean Claude, I wanted to give the impression that I was relaxed and carefree. I also didn't want to scare him off, acting as if I expected to spend it together. I had heard acting too needy was an easy way to die alone.

“Wow, really? Well, maybe I'll stop by tonight and say hi in honor of your birthday.”

“Sure, that would be fun,” I said nervously. “Thirteenth floor.”

“Thirteenth floor? Is that really where you live? Wow, all these times I never noticed that. I've always just walked up the stairs a few flights. We have a thirteenth floor? That's unlucky. Most buildings don't—”

“I know, it's fine. I like it. Good views.”

“Okay, cool, I'll try to stop by around nine or ten. See you then.” Jean Claude walked away, and I ran down the stairs to my modern dance class feeling as high as I did when I first smoked pot with Jackie Angel. Jean Claude was coming over tonight for my birthday! Maybe he would bring me flowers or, even better, a bouquet of handmade paper flowers he had slaved over tediously because he was an artist.

When I got home to my room later that evening, I walked in the door just as my multicolored Conairphone was ringing. Finally I had achieved my lifelong dream, to have a phone in my room and to have my own line. My teal-and-pink model was exactly the mechanism I needed to celebrate my tiny victory of independence.

“Hello?” I said, out of breath, hoping it was Jean Claude.

“Happy birthday, Maaaargot!” said my mother. “Do you have someone to celebrate it with? Don't stay in that spooky cave of a room alone all night. You're nineteen now. Can you believe it? You know, nineteen's the age I met your father. No pressure!”

“Actually, Mom, I am not spending it alone.”

“Good, well, if it's a date, no lesbian shoes. No man likes a girl in combat boots. No man. And eat a piece of meat if he offers it to you, don't be rude like I know you will be at this year's Thanksgiving. I'm done making special meals for you, Margot. You can eat the side dishes or cave in and eat the turkey. Would it really be that big a deal for you to eat a piece of turkey? What would happen? Really, Margot. I'm sure you would survive. You used to love the dark meat. Your father would never say this, but it hurts him every year when you refuse to eat the turkey after he's spent so much time carving it. Do you want to hurt your father again, Margot? Did you find a ride home yet?”

“Actually, Mom, I have to get ready, but I'll see you very soon for Thanksgiving. I'll consider the dark meat. Okay? And I'll find a ride. I have to go, love you.”

I hung up the Conairphone and began setting the mood for Jean Claude's visit. I lit all my lavender candles, put on Joni Mitchell's
Blue
, and plugged in my blue Christmas lights. I swapped my leotard and tights out for some jeans and a '70s men's button-down shirt so I would look my hottest, unlocked my door, and experimented with various “sexy/mature/French girl” poses I could be in when I called for Jean Claude to “come in.”

Nine came and went, then ten . . . Maybe he was stuck in a place with no clocks and didn't realize how late it was. Or perhaps he liked me so much he was just trying not to seem too desperate. But when ten-thirty came I started to believe he was blowing me off. Even though he was probably swept away in the depths of an elaborate oil painting he was working on, it was still rude. I waited for almost all my candles to burn out and for Joni Mitchell to sing her entire album, including an extra play of “Carey” in honor of what I was supposed to be named, before finally giving up. I blew out the last of the candles, and they bellowed black smoke. With less than two hours left to my birthday,
blowing out lavender candles alone on the thirteenth floor was not the traditional make-a-wish moment I had hoped for. I should have swiped a piece of cake from the dining hall and allowed those theater dorks to sing
Happy Birthday
to me in perfect harmony.

Just then, I heard a faint knock on the door. I ran to my bed, laid down on my side, making sure my long blonde hair was tousled all to one side and called out, very casually, “Come in!”

Jean Claude entered and seemed oblivious to the remnants of the mood I had so carefully set and dismantled. The smell of lavender was now replaced by the smell of sulphur.

“Hi! Happy birthday! Want to go for a walk?”

A walk? What kind of a birthday seduction is that? Whatever, it was still my birthday, and a walk was better than being here by myself. I got up and grabbed my combat boots, then remembered my mother's advice and reached for a sexier shoe choice. I put on my purple Converse All-Stars and we headed out the door.

Outside the dorm, we walked and talked about his latest art project and my extracurricular late-night choreography until it started to rain. It came down fast, and we hadn't brought umbrellas, so Jean Claude pulled me under a blue campus safety light to keep me dry. I remembered from orientation that if you were being attacked you were supposed to blow your rape whistle, fight off your assailant, run under a blue light, and pick up the phone. Not exactly a sexy spot. But I couldn't help but feel that standing under the rape light with Jean Claude was incredibly romantic, which made me feel guilty, like the time I first discovered I was mildly attracted to Lee Harvey Oswald. The blue light in the rain made me feel like I was Molly Ringwald at the end of a John Hughes movie, and when Jean Claude kissed me under its glow, I tried to stay focused on the kiss instead of thinking about how, unlike other women who had stood beneath this light before, I didn't want this moment to end. Eventually it did end, though, and Jean Claude went back to his room for the night,
claiming he still had a lot of work to do. As disappointed as I was to be falling asleep alone, replaying the blue-light kiss over and over in my head was a pretty superb image to fall asleep to. Overall, it was a good birthday.

November came, and I was really frustrated to leave Ithaca, Adriana, Jean Claude, and my dance classes to go back to Jersey for Thanksgiving. At college I was regal and graceful, but at home I would still be the only tall half-Jewish person to ever warm a bench at a church volleyball game. Also, I had let my mother down by not finding rides home and back to school for Thanksgiving break, despite her incessant reminders. I had been too busy working on that
Pirates of Penzance
set to think about finding a ride. And also, I didn't know that many people yet. In the end I boarded a crowded, smelly Short Line Bus filled with strangers from my college and New Jersey–native Cornell students. The trip dragged on and on despite the ample supply of Beat poetry books I'd packed to pass the time.

“No complaining. You're the one who just had to go to school five hours away, despite your scholarship to Rutgers,” my mother said when she picked me up at the station inconveniently located over an hour away from our house.

Back home, my old bedroom seemed incredibly spacious compared to my thirteenth-floor sanctuary. My former domain was about the size of a double-occupancy room at school. I had never noticed the extra floor space before. The clothes left in my near-empty closet seemed so out of style to me now, and not in a cool vintage way, but in a wearing-a-banana-clip-in-1991 kind of way. I sat there taking it all in before heading out for my big homecoming plans.

Adam and I hadn't spoken since I'd blown him off with my puffed-up artsy proclamation, but I was hoping that enough time had passed and that Adam would want to be friends. I didn't really know how
that kind of stuff worked but I had admired Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine's hilarious postcoital friendship and figured Adam and I would ease right into witty banter and private jokes and catchphrases like their classic “Hel-looooo.” Besides, I had needed something fun to look forward to at home to take my mind off my mother's imminent force-feeding of dark meat, so I'd organized a group of high school friends to hang out with the night I got home, and included Adam. That way there would be other people there in case it got awkward, and he wouldn't have to talk to me unless he wanted to. For all I knew, he was over it, but he might not be. Maybe I'd given him a lifetime aversion to soy meat as it now would forever remind him of getting redumped.

Truthfully, though, I really didn't know what to expect. And it's not like there was a big plan for how to spend the evening, which didn't help. We gathered at my house, stood around a little, and decided we should drive about town and see where the night took us. We all piled into Adam's car, the mood loosened, and everyone began rattling off about their awesome new lives away at school.

“Have you guys ever tried Jägermeister?” asked Derek, excited beyond belief to share his love for the black licorice–flavored shot. Everyone mumbled in agreement at Jäger's awesomeness. I did not agree, as I had already had an overdose of black licorice every Christmas morning when I opened my stocking to discover a large pack of the British candy Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts, given to me by “Santa.”