Crazy Enough (9 page)

Just like with Mr. Pool Jet and ChapStick, I knew not to tell anyone in the beginning. I told anybody and everybody I was a virgin, unless, of course, they were about to fuck me. I kept everything hidden, especially from Mom. It wasn't hard, since she was home less and less. And I didn't even want to acknowledge her existence, let alone talk to her about anything. But when she got released one day, without anybody knowing, she sneaked home while everyone was out, and found condoms and pot in my dresser drawer. She insisted we go immediately to the gynecologist. I thought the jig was up.

I was fourteen and, at this point, hated everyone, especially my mom. Whenever she came home from the hospital, she would try to mom the shit out of me, I guess to make up for lost time, but she would give absurd advice about boys, my weight, or try to ground me for talking back. It was too little, too late. Every blessed thing she did reeked of an obvious need to draw attention to herself. Every overly mom shtick she pulled on me had to be in front of an audience.

In a clothing store, I'd try to run away from her and look for boys, “I'm going to the restroom.” Then she'd wait until I was within shouting range,

“Stormy! Tell them you just got your period!!” Then, every human in the store, boys included, would suddenly burn holes in my crimson cheeks with their embarrassed-for-me stares, then, one by one, picture me bleeding and struggling with a tampon.

Friendly's is a fast food chain that has family-friendly, greasy- spoon food and ice cream. They call milkshakes “Fribbles.” It was also my mom's favorite theater of hideous and public discussion of my fertility and other cringe-worthy topics.

We would get all the way there in silence, me just staring through my running black eyeliner and cigarette smoke, stinking boots on the dash, she singing gaily along to the radio and not talking to me about anything until we got inside. The ambush would spring as soon as we were surrounded by strangers in line, waiting to be seated, or in front of the waitresses.

“Welcome to Friendly's! Can I get you girls something to drink to get started?”

“Oh, boy! Can I please have a big ginger ale with a cherry in it? Stormy, when you DO get your period, did you know you can bleed up to a tablespoon's worth a day?” She would say this out of nowhere.

“Um, thanks, Mom. Yeah, I'll have a chocolate Fribble and a hand grenade. No pin, thanks. Awesome.”

I would eventually run away or make her cry, so she would hide in her room. But every time she would come home, she'd try to mother me or ground me, and find absolutely any opportunity to talk loudly and publicly about my menstrual cycle.

She also had a strange habit of grabbing her boobs in public.
Like an actress in an old black-and-white film who would clutch at her chest to emphasize her passionate sincerity, Mom would go for that effect. Only she would straight up grab one tit and hold it. Arching her back and sighing, dramatically, “Oh, my stars above!”

She loved doing the boob clutch thing in front of any boy in her presence. I had a guy come over while she was home exactly once. She pulled him into a room, closed the door, and held him hostage for about twenty minutes. I could imagine her grabbing her tits and telling him how completely insecure I was about my weight and how this whole punky thing was such a cry for help. She went on about how I had a big, wounded heart, which she understood because, “You know, I was raped when I was ten and now I hear voices I have named ‘the Judges.' They tell me to hurt myself, but oh, my stars (grab-squeeze-hold), I am doing so much better since they found out that I am the only person in the world who has this rare illness. It is SO new and unresearched it doesn't even have a name yet! Right now they are calling it ‘mental epilepsy.' They say I'm going to be written about in a medical journal, and I said ‘A medical journal? Oh, my goodness gracious!' (grab-clutch-hold).”

Then she hugged him for an awkwardly long time, thanked him, and let him leave.

Never saw him again.

Suffice it to say, I would just run away to get laid. However, I did keep condoms in my dresser drawer with my pot. Unluckily for me, Mom got a ride home from the loony bin while no one was home and went through my stuff. Lucky for her, she found just the things to inspire some phony-baloney mother-daughter moment
.

I came home to find her on the couch next to our neighbor, Suzi2, from across the street. They were both sitting straight up, knees
together, hands folded—a serious talking-to posture. She was trying to not crack a smile as the camera in her head started rolling on this pivotal moment in her life as a mother. The Intervention.

“I found these in your room.”

Three little square condom envelopes sat on the coffee table in front of them.

“You're home,” I responded flatly, fighting the urge to pick up a nearby lamp and smash it over my own head.

“Stormy. Are you still virginal?” Both women were fighting off a full-on giggle fit. I guess they had found my stash as well.

“Yes,” I lied. “Mom, did you smoke my pot?”

“We flushed your drugs straight down the po-po,” she lied, fully snickering now.

“Great. Thanks.” I walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. Her performance continued as she shouted from the couch about how WE were bringing ME to the gynecologist to get me on the PILL.

Fast forward to where my heels were dug into the cold metal stirrups and my stomach was in my throat. We girls often find ourselves on our backs, legs cranked open, hoping for the best. During sex: “Please don't be another douche bag.” In childbirth: “Please be healthy . . .
and look like your father.” Our gynecological visits are no exception. Most of the time, in these episodes of legs akimbo, one simple hope is, whoever is dealing with us down there, is at least cool . . . and not looking like someone's creepy old uncle, like my last gynecologist did.

No problem. Act cool. Count ceiling tiles.

The creepy doctor was actually humming as he thumbed through my girl parts like a damp paperback. I was pretty sure I wanted to die. This guy will see I'm not a virgin and tell my mother.

I could just picture her making a spectacle to the horror of women and girls waiting for their own round of personal, and some
humiliating, tests, discussing her bold confrontation with her wild teenage daughter who's been using food and now sex to cover up her feelings of insecurity. “It's so hard for Stormy, but I understand. My nanny was a Satanist and she used me in some terrible rituals when I was just a baby. Oh, my heavens, it was awful. Just. Awful.” Grab-squeeze-hold.

I was up to twenty-odd ceiling tiles when I realized Dr. Creepy wasn't really talking. Does he see something weird? He's gotta know. He will totally be able to tell. Will he tell my mom? Isn't it a law or something? Shit, I'm going to have to have yet another hideous talk with my mom, and it will probably take place at Friendly's. God damn it. Every time she comes home from being locked up . . . ow! Is his whole fucking hand in me??

“So, what d'you use normally?” he finally said from between my shaking knees.

“Huh?”

“G-K-S?” He actually smirked at my open and brightly lit sexbits.

“What . . . um . . . what is . . . I don't know what . . .”

“Greasy kid stuff,” he said to my insides.

Great. My very first gynecologist is clearly a pervert, and thinks he's down with what the kids are sayin' these days. Fucking
great
.

“Oh . . . um . . . ha-ha . . . no . . . um I'm still a . . . um . . . a virgin. Yeah,” I said to the ceiling tiles.

“Uh-huh. Little pressure now.” Was he chuckling? He moved the speculum, then I heard a click and something pinched deep behind my belly button, like a ragged toenail getting caught on a wet sock.

Later in the car, headed to the drugstore with a prescription for birth control pills in my hand, and a dull aching in me, Mom and I, again, smoked in silence. Thankfully, we did not go to Friendly's. She had already put on a great performance for her girlfriend and the
cringing girls and women at the doctor's waiting room, so I guess she was satisfied.

We got to the drugstore and I got my pills. Mom got some pills, too. By the time I started taking mine, she had already taken one too many of her own, and was gone again.

I
didn't really get to notching up too many bedposts until starting around fifteen. It was a slow turn of the crank until I went full throttle slut bag. Probably because I wouldn't fuck anybody weird, or anyone I knew and certainly no one I liked. That seriously limited my pool.

Most of my trysts were with my many punk-rock acquaintances in Cambridge and Boston. If I liked someone, though, I was a disaster. There was a boy in a neighboring town I loved desperately, forever.

Bill.

Saying his name now, I can still recall the ache and how I would sigh. My first blowjob recipient, he also taught me about handjob etiquette, put hickies on my boobs, smelled
really
good, and was a fantastic kisser. But we never ever had sex.

I couldn't figure out how to get the two together, the liking
and the fucking. If I had feelings for someone, for me it was a sad guarantee that they would never like me back, no matter what I did. It was instant agony. If my heart leapt at the sight of them or the sound of their name, I knew it was hopeless. I was that chick who would call the guy maniacally until he (or better yet, his
parents
) would pick up and yell “Stop calling!” I was the girl who'd show up uninvited to parties and stare miserably at whomever it was I was obsessed with. I couldn't see it then, but when I felt anything like love for another person, I would really be just like my mom, who confounded and terrified the people she loved the most until we all scattered away from her as if she were a bad smell. I spent most of my tweens feeling like a turd in a punch bowl, but having feelings for someone turned me into an insta-leper. That, coupled with the fact that I actually
wanted
someone to love me, filled me with hot-faced shame.

I had no shame about sex though, nor anything around it; it all seemed normal and natural. My biggest problem was that I made too big a deal about it, secretly wanted it to mean more. A desperate flutter in my chest, hoping that what's-his-name or whoever was bending me over in a bathroom stall, would see something in me and think I was special. That they would see I was more than that, and try to fuck some sense into me. Then one day the flutter gave a cool thud, my heart balled into a fist and gave the world the finger.

The guy was, I think, thirtyish. He was some muckity-muck business professional with a law degree, and we were both guests at a wedding. It was a sweltering day in a deep green part of New England, and we were all partying around a pool. Everyone had
bathing suits on under their formalwear, and as soon as the word came down from the mother of the bride that the classy part of the wedding was over, people peeled off their clothes quickly. Through the wavy blur of humidity, the huge lawn was littered with discarded poufy dresses. The grass looked like it had sprung a bunch of prehistoric flowers, all pinks, blues, and multicolored, wilting in the oppressive temperature.

I was sixteen years old and in a bit of a Goth phase, short spiky blonde hair, black cat eyeliner and black everything. I wanted to be too cool for the pool, but it was superhot and the party was quickly turning into a drunken free-for-all, and getting fun, so I peeled out of my witchy-poo dress, tossed it behind me with a flourish, and walked off the diving board.

I could feel the guy staring, and once I confirmed that he was, swam under water and hid among groups of people to see if he would look for me. Once
that
was confirmed, I commenced fucking with him. Swimming around his legs, kicking water in his face, then taking off to the opposite end to glare at him. He asked a bridesmaid about me; I could tell what the topic of conversation was, because he was grinning, she was not. She shook her head at him and I could read her lips. “No. No . . . she is
not
eighteen. No.” He mouthed okay at her but kept glancing over to me to see me smile and give him the finger before I submerged among a pile of partygoers.