Gawky (31 page)

The next day while hanging up blue Christmas lights to give my room a calm, soothing feel, I heard a faint knock on my door. Before I could answer it, the door swung open.

“You're here!” said my new buddy Adriana, wearing both an Ithaca baseball hat and an Ithaca sweatshirt, as she let herself into my new sanctuary. “I had the most awful time finding you. I felt like real-life Nancy Drew. I forgot where you lived because I'm in a different dorm. Wow, thirteenth floor, huh? Ha! Bummer. Wow, nice blue lights. Anyway, I'm going exploring. Do you want to come? I mean if you're done decorating, I know how you're into that.” I've never had someone pursue my friendship so aggressively, a far cry from Floyd Barstow snubbing me in the Puerto Rican rainforest. I much preferred Adriana's approach.

“Sure, I'll come,” I said, half excited to see this new place and half needing to step away from my endless interior decorating. I got out of my smelly Eddie Vedder–esque clothes and put on a flowing sky-blue tank top, just in case I met any cute guys. Sky blue was my best color, while Ithaca College's school colors of navy and canary yellow made me look as if I belonged at a methadone clinic. Adriana and I walked around campus and eventually made our way to the theatre building, where we would be taking most of our classes.

“Ooh!” she said, excited at the mere sight of the building. “Let's go in there, find a room, and sing in the dark. That's the best way to really let yourself go.” Adriana was majoring in music, which was really a competitive department to get into, so she must have been good.

I had never sung in the dark, or really sung in front of anyone since my horrific “Give Peace a Chance” cafeteria solo. But Adriana made me feel like everything was fun, so I was up for giving it a try. This time there would be no Chad Decker to make my life a living hell if I sang off-key.

As we walked towards the building, we passed a few people coming out, and Adriana called to them, “Hey, are you guys theatre majors?”

I was so embarrassed; that was something my award-winning “friendliest” mom would do. I was used to trying to be invisible and was uncomfortable drawing any sort of attention to myself. But the guys smiled and said yes. One of them had a slight resemblance to Rodreigo, which immediately made me want to talk to him, despite the fact that he was wearing overalls. A familiar face was just what I needed right now. I got a little closer and was instantly attracted to him.

“Hi,” he said. “So, you're a freshman theatre major?”

“Yeah,” I gulped, wondering why Adriana was awkwardly walking backward behind this guy making weird hand signals in this guy's general direction.

“I'm Jean Claude,” said the Rodreigo-looking boy.

“Oh, cool,” I said, realizing that Adriana was signaling some form of “Go for it! I'll leave you alone,” though her gestures mostly looked as if she had been caught in a spiderweb. Regaining my composure, I asked, “Where are you from?

“France,” he said. Of course. Anyone named Jean Claude not born in France would be completely pretentious.

“France, cool! My name is French. It's Margot. But I'm not from France. I'm from New Jersey,” I said, realizing once again I had forgotten my new identity as Maggie. Well, maybe I could fix this when classes started and the teachers called my name for roll call. I could simply say, “I go by ‘Maggie,'” the way all Beckys had done throughout my youth when teachers called out “Rebecca.”

Jean Claude laughed. “Well, I am from France, and Margot is one of my favorite French names.”

After that, I watched Jean Claude walk away and fell instantly in love with him. He was foreign and witty and his overalls were covered in paint because he was an artist. And he pronounced my name “Mare-geau,” the proper French way. In that instant I decided I had no need
to reclaim myself as Maggie. In college I was going to be “Mare-geau,” accent on the second syllable. I wouldn't be Maggie, but I would be the new Margot; I would be Mare-geau. I stared at Jean Claude, hoping he would look back at me. Adriana grabbed my arm and pulled me into the theatre building, giggling the whole way about the cute guy I had just struck up a conversation with. I couldn't believe I almost wrote this place off last night.

The next day classes started. I was given this useless thing called an “e-mail address,” which everyone else had heard of before and was excited about. I thought,
Why would anyone e-mail when you can mail-mail
? Despite my near-death experience with Corey the stalker I still enjoyed the thrill of receiving a letter in the mail. My new e-mail address, along with my new complimentary rape whistle, were two things I hoped I would never have to use.

My schedule listed Acting, Modern Dance, Ancient Greek Theatre, and Writing for Theatre Majors—I was finally going to my dream
Fame
-like school. I got great feedback in acting, and even greater feedback in dance. After all these years, it turned out I was actually pretty good at modern dance, and not just because I wholeheartedly enjoyed wearing unitards with skirts over them as my daily attire. The weird thing was that unlike horseback riding, songwriting, poetry, babysitting, singing, fashion designing, volleyball, and playing the guitar, dancing was something I could do well. My ballet teacher explained to me that true dancers are notoriously clumsy because we are used to “gliding through an empty space.” This wasn't like first grade when I played catcher on my town's girls' softball team “The Peacocks” just because I liked the catcher costume. Yes, I enjoyed wearing unitards on a daily basis and not being sent home for it, but I was also really moved by dance. Something about flowing movement taught by an artistically
tormented teacher while a live drummer banged on bongos made me jump out of bed with excitement when my alarm clock went off.

Meanwhile, in Writing for Theatre Majors, I was assigned my first college paper: an analysis of a Shakespeare play. My teacher, a messy-haired guy way too relaxed not to be stoned, gave my class the following instructions:

“So, we're going to use this period as a group research time. You can look at any of the books on the shelf, or go to one of the computers and look information up on the Internet. Or whatever.”

Right away everyone scattered to the computers to go use this so-called Internet they all seemed uberfamiliar with. What the hell was the Internet?

Confused, I raised my hand.

“Uh . . . what's the Internet?” I asked, while simultaneously a classroom of artsy kids jutted their heads around in shock.

“Have you never heard of the Internet?” asked my teacher incredulously. “Whoa!”

“No. Sorry.”

“Seriously?” called out a hairy techie kid. “What have you been doing for the past few years?”

I don't know,
I thought.
Dancing in a field with a scarf? Rereading
Go Ask Alice
? Playing the same four chords on my guitar in a poor attempt to get “discovered”
?

I said nothing.

“Margot, the Internet is a place to find facts. Just go over to one of those computers by the wall, call up a search engine like Lycos or
Altavista.com
, and then type in what you'd like to learn more about,” explained my teacher, eager to be finished with me so he'd be one step closer to toking on his after-class joint.

I headed for a computer, intrigued to test out this cockamamie Internet thing. But what to type in as my very first search? Anything I needed to know about Shakespeare I could read in the hard copies of the plays my dad had given me from his college years. The yellowed pages and old-book smell were much more alluring than this boxy Intel computer shoved between a musical theatre dork and a male ballerina.

I stared at the computer screen and tried to think of something I wanted to know. I was currently reclaiming my name—perhaps this Internet could provide me some facts about the history of the name Margot. Being the self-indulgent narcissist that theatre school was encouraging me to become, I typed in my very first Internet search,
MARGOT
.

A few entries came up, all in French. I clicked on the first one. It appeared to be some sort of poem, but I wasn't sure. My French skills were truly horrific after dropping French in eleventh grade. My problems with that class began early. In the first week of high school, everyone was assigned cool French versions of their names like “Jacques” for John and “Andrée” for Andrea. I wanted a cool French name, too, like Delphine or Claudette. My French teacher (a Hungarian woman with pointy teeth and a bad perm) told me, “No! No French name for you!” Because Margot was already French, I wasn't allowed to play make-believe (my favorite game) with all the other half-baked Phish-loving twerps in my class. A few days into the school year, I stayed after class, talking her into calling me “Simone.”

The next day my teacher, who sounded like an aging Miss Piggy with a Hungarian accent, reluctantly called on me.

“Simone,
quelle heure est-il
? . . . Simone? . . . Simone?”

I knew what time it was. I even knew what time it was in French. What I didn't remember was that my name was now Simone.

“That's it! I give you a chance, Simone. You're back to Margot!”

I slouched in my chair as “Genevieve” a.k.a. Teresa Carimonico, formerly known as the pregnant seventh grader, snickered at me.

Now was my time to really embody my unusual French name. Jean Claude said it was one of his favorites and any in I could get with him would be worth it. That gave me an idea. I decided to print one of the French poems that came up during my “Margot” search, figuring I could use it later as a conversation piece with Jean Claude. I waited patiently as the dot matrix took its time creaking out its last few drops of black ink to appease my curiosity. I tore off the printout and folded on the tear strips, careful not to attempt to separate the pages, knowing that being a lefty made simple things extra difficult and I would just end up ripping it down the middle.

And then, just like that, class was over. I had used the Internet for the first time and probably the last. It wasn't very fun. Why would anyone sit in front of a computer screen when they could find the answers using real-life experience? I waltzed out of the room with my poem in hand. The class filed out with me, and my teacher left with us, probably to find a deserted grassy knoll to roll a joint.

I headed off to lunch in the dining hall, where I was still getting over having unlimited access to Lucky Charms and chickpeas. After eighteen years of living in an exclusively Kellogg's All-Bran household, I couldn't believe that Ithaca College left out unsupervised Lucky Charms for our taking anytime we wanted. And the dining hall seemed incredibly encouraging of my vegetarianism, keeping a well-stocked salad bar complete with artificial bacon bits, my favorite. My mom was probably really happy right now; she wouldn't have to make special meals for me anymore—the dining hall would take care of me now. This was much better for me, too. I had always had suspicions that the chicken-free broths that she served me came from the same pot as the chicken broth. No longer would I have to be vigilant of foreign meat substances sneaking their way into my meals. No longer would my boss at the drug
store call Vito and Vinnie at the pot/pizza parlor and ask them to slip some ham into my vegetarian calzone as his version of a hilarious joke. Now, I was in charge of my food intake. Chickpeas and Lucky Charms it would be.

I entered the dining hall and right away saw Jean Claude finishing his lunch at a table across the room. I thought about how this French poem would be a good way to strike up a conversation. I approached the table where he and his artist friends were finishing up their chicken fingers.

“Hi, Jean Claude,” I said, making my best effort at being sexy without caring.

“Oh, hello, Mare-geau,” he said, making me want to rip off my clothes.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but I was just in writing class and we used this thing called the Internet. Have you guys ever heard of it?”