How Popular Were You (Really)?
Valley Stream North High School, Long Island, New York, 1988ish
They were all there, all the usual losers, in my suburbia of trimmed green
lawns, borders punctuated by fashionable prism and dildo shaped evergreen
bushes. The little league T-ball sluggers now heroic footballers placing
second in the county finals and dirtbag metal heads wading in the pool of
ACDC black spandex fat bottomed girls downing Big Gulp Slurpees at the 7-11.
I’m skulking past the class immortals, Aphrodite and Minerva, with their
Italian Girls Best in Da World belly shirts and their linguini legs smoking
their Camel Lites against their yellow brick wall by the gym or under the
bleachers or at their lockers, glaring at me with their UV-eyes, glaring
at the Punky Brewster freakshow nerd listening to that college radio shit
in Greenwich Gay Village Salvation Army Surplus stay away from my boyfriend
you bitch. Eat me, I say, because you could say that at the time and it was
funny and a good comeback. I wouldn’t kiss your drooling Neanderthal any
more than I’d lick a dog’s ass. Aphrodite’s neck jerks. FFFRRREEAK. They
huff and migrate in V formation to the weight room to watch the boys lift.
So I don’t get to sit at their table in the Caffetorium. They don’t get to
sit at mine. Instead, the hippie and I hide out in the library during lunch
and read the dirty parts of a paperback called Parachutes and Kisses to the
7th graders.
An invasion of the good table has been staged by the SpEds and Punk Rock
Girl. The consummation of all my adolescent lust is sitting with Noxema
Nick near Fiction A-L. He’s rail-sliding a finger-sized skateboard along
the side of his binder decorated in Bic-blue with the names of New York Hard
Core bands and poems about love and death. I slump in the chair opposite
and begin drawing cartoons of him skating headlong into a telephone pole.
Noxema puts his hand on my thigh under the table and I kick him. “You’ve
got to listen to this,” he says, sticking his walkman headphones on my head,
and I say, “The Pixies suck.” “You love it,” Noxema says as he turns the
volume up and reaches under my skirt past the band of my underwear. I throw
his headphones on the table and stomp off to the bathroom. “Vamos a jugar
por la playa,” he says. I want to write it all down on the stall walls, but
I don’t. True Luv 4 Eva’, you sons of bitches.
After school, Scott # 3 and I lock ourselves backstage in the Green Room
of the Caffetorium. It’s dark and cool and I lie down with my head in his
lap. He plays with my hair. “I am going to graduate a virgin,” he laments.
“Noxema was feeling me up in the library,” I tell him, “Probably rubbed zit
juice all over me.” Scott # 3 grins in the dark. Silence. Don’t-call-me-cute-Jenn
starts knocking and whining on the other side of the door, “Did you get my
note? Are we gonna start a band?” “You can’t even spell the name right,”
I say. “Who wants to be called The Quasimodos?” she asks. Maybe she’s right.
Scott # 3 has moved from massaging my neck to my shoulders beneath my shirt.
“Then we’ll change the name to Sacred Heart Academy,” I say, “After the Catholic
school girls. We can all wear plaid skirts and knee socks.” “Cool!” she says
and I can see the rubber part of her powda creamy chowda Keds in the light
of the crack of the door. “So stop jerking off and learn to play the bass.
Or you can’t be in my band, idiot.” She gerbils off. Scott # 3 stops rubbing
and says, “Why are you like that to her?” “What are you talking about?” I
say, and then, turning around to face him, “Why? Do you like her?” “No,”
he says, but he does. Obviously. Then he says, “She just wants to be like
you.” “Oh yeah? Who told you that?” Pause. “We all want to be like you.”
Pause. Silence.
“That’s a lot of pressure, you know? Fuck that.”
Walking home. Aphrodite and Minerva have picked up Zeus and Jupiter and the
other gods and goddesses and they’re draped over the bleachers in the same
poses they’ll strike in the future on the backyard deck, barbequing Pathmark
dogs while fat kids run wild on the Slip n’ Slide and pick the wings off
cicadas. Lazy, powerful tutti insieme, they eyeball my every step from Mt.
Etna. You’re so ugly, Frrrrreak. I keep my hand in my pocket, but give them
an upside down finger and smile an upside down subversia smile.
