Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek (5 page)

Liv Pen, #2
, by Diego Nunez Castellanos | Exquisite employment of crosshatching.

Cosmo Munn
, by Ben Precup | This vision of a paranoid, techno-future thrums with the anxiety of a world in which machines rule us and well-crafted underwire bras are essential to one’s survival.

Ownage
, by Jeff Kim | A dynamic exploration of the real. Also: don’t fuck with me.

Floaterbot
, by Mark van Olmen | Vividly captures the isolation of a modern existence and how, in the future, we will take our joysticks everywhere, even into the stomachs of our personal robot slaves.

Zombie Munn
, by Doug Circle | Reminiscent of classical baroque-period paintings, if classsical baroque-period paintings featured more zombies and mysterious dead girls bobbing in pools of blood.

PiePhone
, by Kris Ayres | Finally, an app we really want.

When I was two
my mom married her second husband. He had two kids and one of them was Annie, a girl around the same age as me. She was beautiful. She had long blond hair, light eyes and was very girly and sweet. I was the polar opposite: polyester pants, striped boy long-john shirts and long, tangled, black hair. Not girly at all.

At four we went into kindergarten together. I remember she wore her favorite yellow dress with ruffly bloomers underneath and hair in two perfect pigtails. She was so excited for school and friends and learning. Then there was me—blue polyester pants, red striped sweater, hair pulled into a ponytail because it was too tangled to do anything else. The only thing we had in common, it seemed, was that I was equally excited about meeting new friends. And skin—we both had skin over our bones. So there were two things we had in common.

On the first day of school Mom drops us off at the door of the classroom and turns to leave. Annie and I walk into the class and follow the teacher’s instructions to hang our backpacks on the hooks and pick a seat at a table. I hurried over and threw my backpack somewhere and went to find a seat and maybe a new best friend! I head for one seat and almost reach it when the girl sitting next to me puts her hand on it and says, “This isn’t for you.” I turned and looked for the next open seat. There were just two left. One was at a table full of girls and the other was a table full of boys. Like most girls at this age, I hated all boys except for my brothers.

One of the girls at the all-girl table motioned for me to come sit with them. I smiled, relieved I dodged the alternative, and grabbed the seat. Before I could sit down, the girl looks at me confused and says, “No not you…
her.
” Annie was walking up behind me and took the seat at the table…and I went to sit with the boys.
This isn’t for you
—those words still make me want to throw up and cry and develop a prescription drug habit that I know won’t really help me in the long run but will bring sweet, sweet relief in the moment.

As the months went on in this class, I watched Annie make lots of friends and every teacher dote on her. Annie was always great at being loveable and pretty and smart. And I could see how much adults loved it. They loved it so much it made me not want to be like that at all. Why couldn’t adults be nice to me simply because I was a little girl who tried to do the right thing? Just because I didn’t always wear perfect dresses with the perfect matching bow didn’t mean that I wasn’t a sweet girl, too.

From very early on in my life I realized how most people are nicer to prettier people. I know that sounds horrible, but think about it. Look around. Look at how you act with attractive people. It’s like a moth to a flame. A gorgeous, beguiling, astonishingly attractive flame. Little Annie with her sweetness oozing out of her pretty pigtails was hard not to love. And little Olivia with her freckles and mismatched leggings was a little easier to overlook. I don’t think it means we’re bad people for catering to the perfect…I honestly don’t think it’s a conscious decision. But when you’ve been on the other side of it, the side that is pushed out of sight, you become very aware.

In this kindergarten class, there was a playhouse in the back corner. And because it was a small enclosed area, the teacher had a rule that only five kids were allowed to play house at a time. And to keep it fair, it was the five who got to the house first who could play in it. Playing “house” was my favorite game. I loved acting out different parts of the family and play-cooking and-cleaning. So every playtime I would race to the back corner and jump in the house. “We’ve got one!” I would yell. And the other girls would race to the house. And every day, there’d be one too many girls who wanted to play. And every day the other five girls, including Annie, would turn to me and say, “We don’t have room for you and we want to play.” So, with what little pride I had at four years old, I would hold my head high and act as if I didn’t really want to play. “Oh, I know. I didn’t want to play house. I was just holding it for you guys.” Could you just die?!

It crushed my heart every single day. I didn’t understand it. I was always nice to everyone. I swear. I ended up realizing through life, that at that age, kids looked at Annie and me as two sisters to choose from. One or the other.

And for whatever reason, I never got to be the one they wanted.

It crushed my heart every single day. I didn’t understand it. I was always nice to everyone. I swear.

I remember once Annie coming home with a birthday invitation from one of the girls in class. She handed it to my mom and asked if she could go buy a present for the birthday girl. My mom turned to me and asked if I wanted to go pick out a present, too. I told her that I actually hadn’t been invited. I remember the look on my mom’s face. Pure anger. She picked up the phone and called the girl’s mother and asked her how she could invite one sister, but not the other. That phone call earned me my own invitation to the party. But I didn’t want it. I knew it was a pity invite. And I would much rather be at home playing LEGOs with my brother than be with some girl who didn’t want me there. Yes, I was hurt. And yes it was embarrassing to see my mother so confused with the fact that I wasn’t invited. I was less confused. I knew that I just didn’t fit in.

Then, one day after I was kicked out of the playhouse yet again, I came up with a plan. A genius plan. You see, there was no baby doll in the playhouse.
Every
playhouse needs a baby doll. So that night, I took all the books and papers out of my backpack and stuffed my Cabbage Patch doll into it.

The next day playtime was called and I got up and ran to the house, just like I did every day. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to Plan B. I was hoping that maybe this day would be different. Maybe this was the day they wanted to play house with me, or at the very least be short one person and could let me stay. I stood at the front of the house, hopeful, and counted five girls walking up.

It was time for Plan B.

I went over to the hooks and grabbed my backpack and pulled out my doll. I was sitting directly in their line of sight. And then I unfolded my brilliant plan. I began playing with my baby doll by myself, making big, oversized gestures and rocking her and laughing and cooing loudly so they could hear. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them stop playing and notice me…they were whispering…it was working! I continued to play as if I didn’t see them at all. Then one of the girls walked out of the house and came over to me.

“Hi. Can we use your baby doll? We don’t have one.” Aha—she walked right into my baby-doll trap!

“Yeah, you can use it,” I responded, playing it cool. “You can use it if I can play with you guys.”

She looked at me, looked at the doll and turned back to the house. She started whispering to the other girls, then turned back around toward me.

“Okay. You can play with us,” she said. “But you have to be the dog.”

The dog?!! Seriously. The dog? Hells, yeaaahh!!!! I was gonna be the dog! I know now how pathetic and sad that was. But in that moment, I felt happy. I was playing house with them and that’s all I wanted. Bring on the dog!

Oh, and one last thing: You know about the rule, right? Oh, yeah, I didn’t know this back then, but apparently it’s a steadfast rule: When you play house, the dog has to stay outside.