Gawky (15 page)

I didn't even like horses!

But the father simply said, “Ready to go, Margot?”

I grabbed my vintage suede fringed purse and slumped out the door, not making eye contact with the young mom. As I got in the car with bald Humbert Humbert, I wondered if this was how it all started with Katie's mom. Maybe all it took was a long, late-night ride home with the babysitter of his kids from his first marriage, ending in a smooch. Maybe I was going to be part of an exciting scandal and I would have a great story to impress my classmates with about the older man who totally had the major hots for me.

Much to my disappointment, he did not try to continue the cycle by having an affair with me. Instead, he said, “So Katie's mother and I won't be needing you any longer.”

I wished he had waited until the end of the ride to say that. He chose to lead with the termination, so we were left with fifteen minutes of post-firing silence. This was not my finest moment, fantasizing about a fifty-year-old bald man putting the moves on me. I wasn't even attracted to him, yet I was insulted that even I was too repulsive for this letch.

I never saw Katie again. And the next weekend I found myself back at those awful twins' house, watching Kirstie Alley and John Travolta maneuver the first year of parenting a talking baby in
Look Who's Talking
. This time I remembered to bring leftover earplugs I had from my pool club days to muffle the yaps of the Pomeranian and Beagle.

CHAPTER 8:

T
he rest of summer passed uneventfully, and I entered eighth grade hanging on to Alyssa as my closest ally. Sadly, Jonah Hertzberg was a year older and had gone off to high school without me. I tried not to replay the untimely walk-in by Katie's parents over and over in my head, but to no avail. This summer had been a total bust. I had traumatized a six-year-old and had retained absolutely no equestrian skills. I was right back where I started: depressed, stuck, and remarkably unathletic, despite my size and stature. I didn't go through some '80s movie change where I got made over and came back to school cool. In fact, nothing had changed physically about me—even my growth had slowed a bit. I was holding tight at about five foot eight and hoping that my journey of awkwardness would end there.

I tried to keep a positive attitude as school began, but the White Lipstick Posse ruled the school even more than ever, and my fashion sense was getting more and more extreme. The Black Crowes had just
emerged onto the music scene, and they were a different kind of rock. They weren't hair metal; they were more classic rock 'n' roll and they dressed the part. I immediately Manic Panicked my hair a darker color and invested in some cowboy boots to poke out under my flared jeans. I didn't care that lead singer Chris Robinson was a man. I wanted to look just like him.

Without Jonah Hertzberg around to distract me, I became more and more aware that I was a magnet for weird dudes with long, dirty hair who played guitar. There were two kinds of long-haired, guitar-playing guys—the weird dudes and the scuzzes. The basic difference was that the scuzzes always had girls (albeit trashy girls) around and the weird dudes didn't. The weird dudes were socially awkward, a little overweight, had unattractive pubescent facial hair that really should be shaved, and chain wallets. The scuz guys were left over from my brother's generation—borderline metal heads who chain-smoked, came from broken homes, and were always getting action in the school bathrooms from skanks. I do admit there were a few of these guys I found desirable; their broken homes seemed much richer with color than my parents' uncomfortably happy marriage. (I could do without hearing about their love life ever again.) But I would never think to act on my secret scuz desires for fear of catching an STD surely lurking in the inseams of their black leather jackets. But the few guys who liked me were the rejects of the scuzzes. They were too unattractive to hook up with skanks in the bathroom. They didn't come from broken homes; they were fairly decent students. These invisible, average-looking dudes, who would never be antiestablishment enough to drop out and go to vocational school, seemed to find my height desirable and my taste in music even more appealing.

Too bad I wasn't on board. Perhaps my summer with the horse camp counselors made me return to school with a newfound secret knowledge. Sure, I had minimal experience with boys, but now I knew what was out there. I knew what real teenagers were doing, and I wanted
in. Just hearing the skanky counselors' stories made me feel as if I had a step up. I had learned it was best not to share my sexual wisdom with six-year-olds, but beyond that minor bump in the road I was ready for a new year. I had no interest in these ultrasafe wannabe bad boys. But I wasn't complaining—if they wanted to pay attention to me, despite taunts of “how gross” from Jessica Rosenstein, I welcomed the attention. One overweight guitar dude would buy me black T-shirts of different hair metal bands and leave them in my locker. I had two Warrant “Cherry Pie” shirts, three Poison shirts, and countless Skid Row shirts. After all, Skid Row was the ultimate success story of our area, after Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen of course. I didn't want to wear these shirts to school, because I didn't want this guy to think I liked him. However, I would wear them after school to impress my brother's high school friends whenever I got the chance. I wonder now if even that weird guitar dude was subtly trying to have a fashion intervention with me. Maybe he was thinking that if I wore hair metal band T-shirts, at least that would get me out of my “Female Jimmy Page” look a day here and there. Regardless, I was so not into him, or anyone for that matter. I just wanted to get through the day.

Meanwhile, it seemed as if everyone else at this time was busy preparing for a religious ceremony followed by a party where they received lots of presents and had really good cake. The Catholic kids were having confirmations, where their cakes were store-bought and filled with heavy vanilla pudding and covered in a thick coat of buttercream with roses made of orange. My mother always insisted on making all my birthday cakes from scratch, following traditional British recipes resulting in a vile brown cake filled with raisins and orange peels and coated in a glaze, never a frosting. All I ever wanted was a brightly colored store-bought cake from ShopRite with H
APPY
B
IRTHDAY
M
ARGOT
written in neon tones. Enough with the raisins, Mom. I was getting more than enough fiber from her black, seed-filled bread.

I went to a few confirmations, but I didn't quite understand what was happening in the ceremonies. I loved that the girls got to wear white dresses after Labor Day though. Anything that pushed the rules of fashion seemed cool and antiestablishment to me. I'd eat at least two pieces of ShopRite sheet cake at each confirmation, thinking,
This may be your last chance, eat it while you can.
Coming home to my mom's Pecan Sandies was almost tolerable after an afternoon gorging myself on cheap sheet cake in a Catholic church.

The Jewish kids were having Bar and Bat Mitzvahs with personalized party themes such as Jonathan's All Stars, Marla's Marvelous Mall, Samantha on Broadway, or, my absolute favorite, Gary's Stock Market. Somehow I had secured an invite to Gary's Stock Market Bar Mitzvah, whose party premise was, essentially, money. He had Styrofoam glitter dollar signs as a centerpiece (no doubt made by my old BFF Amanda's mother out of her garage) and fake dollar bills with his face on it. I admired his directness. When guests entered the Temple Shalom rec room, it was decorated as if to say,
Listen guys, we all know I learned that haftorah just for the money, so let's cut to the chase and celebrate why we're all really here. You're going to give me money and I am going to collect it. Sure, we' ll rock out with inflatable neon guitars and cheap giveaway sunglasses, then play some classic Bar Mitzvah games like freeze dance and huggy bear, but beyond that, I' d really like to take you for all you're worth and pay for one to two years of college—and not a state school. I'm talking big-time, private college, far away from here. Got it
?

I was invited to about eight Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, most likely because I had gone to elementary school with a bunch of Jewish kids and they felt obligated to invite their “oldest” friends. I was never close enough with anyone to be called up to light a candle during the “special people” section of the party. This was when the Bat Mitzvah girl would stand in front of her fabulous, store-bought, raisin-free sheet
cake decorated with, say, a giant purple buttercream telephone for P
HONE
I
T
I
N AT
A
LISON
'
S
B
AT
M
ITZVAH
. Then the Bat Mitzvah girl would say something like, “I love it when we go shopping at the mall. You always know the best bargains and that's not all. Nancy, come on up and light this light, you always know what fits just right.” Then some gum-smacking girl in a puffy teal balloon dress would act as if she'd just won a surprise Academy Award and come up and light the candle, being swarmed by Jewish aunts taking photos of this special friendship that will surely last forever. Often the Bat Mitzvah girl would get sick of writing individual poems for her “special people” and toward the end would say something like, “I love you guys with all my heart, you're always there for me even when I got a C– in art”— hold for uproarious laughter because this is the funniest private joke in history—“So without further ado, Rob, Karen, Doug, Lisa, Jodi, Sara, Debbie, Carrie, Elizabeth, and all my art club pals, please come up and light this candle. I love you guys!” That's when it would really sting, when the Bar/Bat Mitzvah guy/girl would essentially pull the original black-and-white
Gilligan's Island
opening credits technique of “The movie star . . . and the rest . . . here on Gilligan's Isle,” instead of giving the Professor and Mary Anne their due. Why couldn't I be clumped into some ragtag group of “and the rest” called up to light a candle for once in my life?

I didn't have a Bat Mitzvah or a confirmation. My mother is half Catholic, half Protestant. She and her twin sister were baptized Catholic in honor of her father's side of her family, but one day he went off to work at the candy factory, slaving away as usual to master the latest recipe for chocolate turtles, when her British mother lit up a cigarette, made sure no one was on her tail, and rebaptized the twins at a nearby Protestant church. So I am pretty sure the double baptism cancels each individual baptism out, making my mom unbaptized and unable to force me to endure confirmation training.

My father was raised Jewish but is a staunch atheist. Known for his clever catchphrases like “Think about it, Margot, where do you suppose everyone fits in heaven? There's no room, it's not practical,” this man would never enroll me in accelerated Hebrew school just so I could have a big party with store-bought sheet cake and foam centerpieces. Besides, what would my Bat Mitzvah theme be anyway? “I Had a Hulking Good Time at Margot's Bat Mitzvah” or “Margot's Gargantuan Good Time”? Between my two parental figures, there was no solid religious guidance. That made me nothing. A heathen. Raised without God and with no opportunity for a big theme party with tacky dresses and cash gifts. That particular year it felt really pointless when my birthday came.

My mother and I were fighting a lot at the time, normal teenage girl/mom stuff, but nonetheless unpleasant. Her mom, my British grandmother, was dying, and the stress of dealing with that huge loss and her overdeveloped daughter entering her teen years was not a good combination. I wasn't a little girl anymore (not that I was ever little), and raising my A-student older brother had not prepared her for the wrath of a teenage girl. Everything she said to me seemed so lame, and everything I said to her came off as confrontational. One Sunday morning she came downstairs and said, “Your morals are becoming fucked up. I'm taking you to church today. And don't tell your father.” I wasn't quite sure how watching a big-boobed neighbor make out on a regular basis made my morals “fucked up,” but excited by a Thelma-and-Louise-style getaway, I went without protest. Sneaking off together, albeit to church, would surely be a true bonding opportunity and way to reconnect after a lot of nonsensical bickering. I put on a flowery dress that landed right below my knees, that unflattering length that's too long to be sexy and too short to be stylish. Realizing I was teetering on looking Amish, I debated putting on a church hat from my childhood dress-up drawer, but I thought that would draw my father's attention during the sneak-out.

I came downstairs where my mother was waiting for me, blending in, washing dishes so as not to draw attention to the world's first church sneak-out. She saw me out of the corner of her eye, finished rinsing the chipped Smurfs mug from 1983, grabbed my arm, and said, “Follow me.” We walked to the Plymouth Voyager, not stopping to say good-bye to my clearly oblivious dad, who was leafing through records for his “Sunday soundtrack,” or my brother, who was filling out applications to top-notch universities, and took off. If church wasn't the final destination of this trip, this would have been one of the most exhilarating rides of my life. My mom was speeding. Fast. I rolled down the manually operated window and let the wind flow through my hair. We were rebels, sneaking off to church to fix my “fucked-up” morals behind my atheist father's back.