A Girl's Life Online (3 page)

Fortunately, there was one teacher I felt close to—the choral director, Ms. Montarro. She loved students who cooperated with early-morning call, and I did. Our group was called the Choraleers. Twenty-five kids from the seventh and eighth grades met three or four mornings a week. We mostly sang cheesy stuff, but we were pretty good. We sang the National Anthem at Mets games, and we sang at the all-state convention and for Congress.

In school, I was probably most devoted to music. Outside school, it was swimming. In fact, by the eighth grade swimming had become the major focus of my life, and as a result the New Canaan swim team—a highly competitive, nationally known club—was a big part of our family's life. My mother was very friendly with the coach and the other parents. And my younger sister, Carrie, had started swimming, too.

I first got involved with swimming when I was a preschooler and went for lessons at the YMCA. Their system started kids out as “guppies” who wore water wings and splashed around the pool with their mothers. (I went with my nanny.) Swimming was an important safety thing in our family and my mother insisted we work through minnow, fish, flying fish, to the shark level, which was the highest, so we would all be able to handle ourselves in the water.

By the third grade I had noticed the swim team, which also worked out at the Y, and started to think that I might like to try it. Unlike other sports, which require a lot of hand-eye coordination—more than I possess—swimming is a matter of practice and commitment, two things I could manage. When I told my parents that I was interested in joining the team, they were excited that I wanted to participate in any kind of sport.

I began competing in the fourth grade, which meant I also started practicing many hours a week. The main feeling I had at those early practices was coldness. Swimmers move fastest through cold water, so the pool at the Y was always chilly. I was usually one of the last ones in, and I never got used to the cold.

The team competed mainly in regional meets, but every year we qualified for some national tournaments as well. I suppose it was exciting to travel to different meets, but the most I ever saw of any of the cities we visited would be the hotel, the pool, the airport, and, if I was lucky, a restaurant. It didn't really matter if I was in California or Florida, it all seemed the same to me.

I invested a lot of time and effort in swimming, so much that it became a big part of my identity. My parents got hooked into the swim team, too. At the pool there were always two competitions. The first was the actual swim meet. Even though we all wore swim caps and bathing suits, everyone knew each other, or at least the competition. I know I would sit there and inspect the muscles of each swimmer, how defined they were and well trained they looked. You couldn't hide any of it in a swim suit, and I had a pretty good idea about who was a serious competitor even before we got into the water.

While the swimmers competed on the pool deck and in the water, upstairs in the bleachers the parents were competing, too. They kept track of who was swimming when and what times were needed to be able to finish where. The parents were always talking with each other, trying to figure out who had done what. They wanted to know how much extra help a particular swimmer might be getting. Who had private lessons? Who had a fitness coach?

I always felt like my self-worth was determined by how well I placed. And I think the parents felt the same way—their status among the team parents depended on how well their child placed.

As I improved, I became one of the swimmers that the coaches depended on for winning times. Where once it was enough to be in the top ten, gradually I was pressured to be in the top five, four, three. All the emphasis on winning made swimming less and less enjoyable. During those moments when I had doubts about staying with the team, all the work put into swimming convinced me to continue. I shoved my doubts away and thought, If I don't swim, what will I do? I'll have no life.

When you consider the demands of swimming, choir, and school, it's obvious I didn't have a whole lot of time for friends. In fact, I had just one close friend, a girl named Karen. As far as I could tell, Karen had a perfect life. She was tall and thin. She had dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. She was a soccer player, and her team had won a regional championship. She was also very intelligent.

Karen lived in a two-million-dollar house. It wasn't as gorgeous as the house next to it, which was on the front of
Unique Homes
, but I would have traded it for our house in a second. It had so many bedrooms that her older sister was allowed to have two. The whole place was decorated like a shrine to a happy family. The walls were covered with pictures of vacations, soccer games, and holidays. I always wanted my mom to put up pictures of our family, but she said she didn't have time.

Karen's family was sort of like the Kennedys, without the politics. They were all smart, all excellent athletes. Her brother Rob attended Williams College. Her father was in the real estate development field, and her mother was a full-time homemaker. Every time I went to Karen's house, her mother was cooking something like chicken or pasta. And she would do anything for us, even run out and get a last-minute video. And I will never forget the hot fudge she made for special occasions like Karen's birthday.

It's funny; I didn't like Karen in elementary school. She was a tomboy back then. She even admitted to me that she wore boxers in fifth grade. But by middle school she was in most of my classes and it didn't take long for me to see that she was no longer a tomboy. In fact, Karen had a way with guys, and all I could think was that she had somehow learned it during her tomboy phase.

I couldn't approach guys the way Karen did. I didn't have her confidence. I knew I was not beautiful the way she was, but I also couldn't see what she saw in guys our age. The cliché about girls being more mature than boys is true. Just listen to boys talk. It's always about skateboarding or something they saw on TV. Girls talk about relationships and the future. Serious things.

I also didn't understand the idea of
dating
at our age. I mean, I thought a date was where a guy picks a girl up at her house and takes her out. How can that happen in middle school? No one has a driver's license or the money for going out to eat or to a movie.

Nevertheless, girls my age put a great deal of effort into somehow connecting with boys in a romantic and sexual way. I almost fell out of my chair in social studies class one day when I heard that a girl named Jenny had given a blow job to a boy named Adam at a local park. At first I refused to believe it. But I heard it from a reliable source, and Jenny was one of the short-skirt girls in our class. A month later she was reportedly actually having sex with another boy. I heard her talking about how she had used an orange-colored condom and how it felt to lose her virginity. I was so grossed out.

It wasn't just Jenny who was running the bases sexually. Rumors flew around school about who fingered who, and what guy managed to get his hand up which girl's shirt.

At parties we would play a game called
Never Have I Ever
. We would sit around in a circle with some type of alcohol or beverage. Someone would then say, “Never have I ever kissed someone,” and everyone who had kissed someone would have to take a sip. This game made everyone's experience level in the sex department—or at least what they confessed to—common knowledge.

My experience was nil, and I couldn't decide whether this was embarrassing or not. One spring afternoon I was sitting outside on a concrete bench waiting for a ride home from school. It was late, so there was only one other girl waiting with me. I had never talked to her before, but I knew who she was. She always wore black tops—long sleeve, short sleeve, halter—always black.

It wasn't long before she asked me if I had a boyfriend. I wasn't even wearing a bra yet, and this girl wanted to know if I had a boyfriend.

“Are you kidding me?” I laughed. “We are much, much too young to be dating.”

“What's the matter with you?” she said sarcastically. “We're not too young. Everybody's doing it. That's the way it is.”

And with that, she turned away. I felt stupid because there was obviously something going on that I didn't know about. Luckily my ride arrived and I didn't have to sit there with her any longer.

When you are thirteen, you spend most of your time trying to figure out whether you're a kid or a teenager or an adult, when you are really part of each. You feel like people are constantly judging you for the most superficial reasons. No one my age seemed to be interested in music, or books, or any of the things that mattered to me. They cared more about who had big boobs and who was still a virgin. I was beginning to feel completely alone.

B
efore I tell you about my real family, let me tell you about my idea of what the best family is supposed to be like. I'll tell you right now that I know people who are like this, so don't say I'm making it up.

They are all-American-type people from San Antonio, Texas. They enjoy hiking and camping and family road trips. I wouldn't call them religious fanatics, but they do have a strong belief in God. They even keep their family photo album in a fireproof safe.

They are a lot of other things, too. They are good to the point of being disgusting. They don't swear. They never say they hate anyone.

I have never been to their house, but I imagine that above the fireplace they have a family portrait done at Sears with one of those awful blue backgrounds. In the picture the girls are probably wearing coordinated outfits—not the same outfit, but coordinated. There are two boys to balance out the girls in the family. Everyone is intelligent and works extremely hard, so they get good grades. They are all athletes, including the parents.

The family has a lot of home-cooked meals: barbecues, Sunday dinners, Tuesday-night tacos. They go on trips with other families. The parents don't have great jobs, but they earn a respectable amount of money. I guess they are middle class. I think the ideal family would be that, because too many times in my experience the rich get away with things too easily. In a lot of ways it is better, more wholesome, to be middle class.

Even though I had my own ideas about this “ideal” family, I didn't want any part of it. All I really wanted was for my biological parents to be in love and still married.