Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase (10 page)

Gay Paree

(Jordache Jeans, Part Three)

T
he woman who organized this trip is a dour older lady named Norma. She’s got steely gray hair and her eyes are narrowed into angry little slits, untouched by my good friend Max Factor. She holds her lips like she’s perpetually smelling Mary Jean O’Halloran’s locker. She works for the Institute for Foreign Study and she and my mother met during choir practice at the Baptist church. Mom joined that particular ministry because the pastor visited her in the hospital when she had some minor surgery when we first moved here. We’ve been in Indiana six years now and I’ve yet to figure out how one quick bedside visit can turn her from mellow, moderate Methodist to Bible-beating Baptist. Shoot,
I
visited her in the hospital . . . I don’t see her worshipping at the Holy House of Jeni.

I completely loathe the Baptist church, yet I’m forced to attend and it is sooo eerie, particularly since a lot of the members pray out loud. Like, you can hear all the bad stuff they’ve done while they’re asking God for forgiveness. Say what you will about the Methodists, but they have the good sense to keep their sins a little closer to the vest.

When we were Methodist, we talked a lot about Jesus and all the neat stuff He did for other people—it was shiny, happy Christianity. The Methodists made me feel like Jesus was my friend and, like, He’d be cool if I asked to borrow some lunch money because I forgot my purse at home or if I accidentally got my p-e-r-i-o-d on His white leather car seats. Jesus wouldn’t be all agro if I ever bailed on Him at the last minute because my crush finally asked me to the movies. And if I had cramps or a sinus headache, He’d lay a finger on my head and be all
Dude, it’s totally handled
. The Methodist Jesus would be just all right with me, exactly as the Doobie Brothers promised.

At the Baptist church, it’s nothing but hellfire and damnation and 666 and the mark of the beast. I’m all,
“You guys?
The Exorcist
? Was fiction. And Damien isn’t real either!”

My Baptist Sunday school teacher spent an entire month telling us about how the Rapture was coming and that the righteous would be spirited up to Heaven immediately and how those who didn’t believe would be left to fester on the earth. He’d show us these freaky films where all of a sudden people would just vanish, leaving nothing but running cars and spinning office chair seats.

Really? I had enough trouble worrying about Kari and Jodi. The
last
thing I needed was some fundamentalist zealot attempting to scare the wits out of me in the name of the Lord. I remember thinking,
If you’re indicative of who’s going to be in Heaven, I choose earthly festering, thanks.

What’s really ironic is the church inadvertently helped me figure out how to get Kari and Jodi off my back. We were in a pew one Sunday morning and a sad woman was standing next to me, quietly pleading for God to bring her husband back. Being a small congregation, it was common knowledge that her rotten husband had dumped her for someone younger and thinner. The more she begged God to fix everything by making her skinnier, the more I realized that He isn’t a Maytag repairman, ready to make a house call at a moment’s notice. He’s not going to come down, reach into his tool box, and wave a magic wand to make her pounds disappear. But I bet if she looked around, she’d find the tools He provided so she could help herself . . . and not so she could get that cheating bastard back, but so she could find a way to be happy in herself.

Then I had my own epiphany—the same rules applied to me. If I wanted to stop being teased, I couldn’t just pray for Him to give Kari and Jodi laryngitis. (Or get hit by a bus, no matter how much fun it was to imagine.) I had to take responsibility for myself by assuming an active role in eliminating that which was mock-able. I started showering and drying my hair before school, rather than taking a bath before bed and throwing my wet locks up into a ponytail. I put aside my fear of the dentist and finally got the chip in my tooth fixed. I asked for contact lenses for Christmas and I began studying
Seventeen
magazine for fashion tips and makeup tips.

I figured out how to reinvent myself, making my appearance work for me, not against me.

Of course, there’s a chance I may have overcompensated.

Anyway, because my mother is anxious to impress Baptist Norma, she didn’t sign the permission slip allowing me to drink alcohol while I’m in Europe . . . which is bogus. Mom had no problem when I slugged down all those sombreros
⁶⁰
at my cousin Debbie’s wedding. Not only was I in eighth grade at the time, but I went back to Auntie Virginia’s house and barfed on her green velvet couch. And once when we went to a vineyard in the Hudson River Valley, she and my dad
laughed
when they caught me swilling wine out of tasters’ abandoned cups.

I was
seven
, for Christ’s sake.

If they try to make alcohol all mystifying for me now, I’m probably going to lose my mind when I go to college.

Anyway, even though I’ve only tasted liquor twice in my life before, I’m pretty sure I know what it feels like to
need
a drink. We’ve been in Germany for eight hours and I’m ready to either get plowed or go home. Norma and the rest of the chaperones have taken to “treating” each other at every meal, picking up tabs for various food and beverages. But it’s not really treating—Norma’s got an accounting system that would put the Internal Revenue Service to shame. Each time we’ve eaten, it’s taken an extra twenty minutes to settle up because Chaperone A owes Chaperone B the German equivalent of thirty-seven cents because Chaperone A got a large coffee when Chaperone B was paying and Chaperone B had a small one when A paid, which . . .
Aarrggh!!
Do! Not! Care!! Shouldn’t we be seeing some culture and shit right now?

All of us kids have to wait on the tour bus while the grownups arm-wrestle each other over what’s really a few pennies. They finally work out the tab—for now—and we motor to our first hotel.

Correction.

We motor to the hotel where we students are staying and we find out the chaperones—you know, the ones who our parents trusted to watch over and protect us and keep us out of bars—are staying at a nicer hotel down the street.

Norma just fucked up.

And this trip suddenly got interesting.

“A pub!” Sandy shouts from our tiny bath, where she’s busy massaging a whole can of mousse into her tightly permed hair. “I want to go to a pub!”

“No, no!” I argue. “A disco! Let’s hit a disco!” So I’m not quite ready to let go of my European prince fantasy.

“How about a beer garden? Germany is famous for beer gardens.
Gehen wir zum Biergarten!”
exclaims Curtis, one of our new best friends from Houston. He’s lying on Sandy’s bed with his legs kicked up in the air, propped against the wall, darling argyle socks peeking out from under his jeans. He’s totally cute in a Michael J. Fox kind of way, all tidy and pink and shiny and tucked in.

Sandy pops out, her ringlets glistening with moisture. “Is that German for ‘order me a cold brew’?”

“Y’all, I think pubs, discos, and beer gardens are the same thing over here,” replies Steph, Curtis’s classmate and platonic
⁶¹
best friend. She idly picks at her cuticles. She’s way more organized than us and has been ready for the last twenty minutes. She’s sitting on my bed, tapping out a staccato beat with her sensible ballerina flat. “Let’s stop debating and just
go
already.”

“Steph, relax. We’ll be ready in a few,” Sandy scoffs, wiping her hands on a scratchy towel.

Curtis turns to Steph. “Honey, unclench, please.”

“I can’t help it if I think we need a plan,” Steph snaps.

Curtis sits up and shoots the cuffs on his perfectly pressed button-down shirt. “How about this—how about we venture out and hit the first place we see with a neon bottle in the window? Neon’s the international sign for ‘drinks served here.’ ”

“Everyone cool with that?” I ask and Sandy and Steph nod. “Alrighty, let me just go tell Tom and Brian the plan. Which room are they in?”

Sandy tells me, “Four doors down to the right.”

“Sweet! Hey . . . know what I just thought? Maybe if Tom gets some liquid courage tonight, he’ll make a move on me!”

Curtis snorts and lies back on the bed. “Yeah, good luck with that, darlin’.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. I paw through my luggage to find my hottest outfit.

He gives me a knowing look. “You’ll see.”

I make Curtis stand in the hallway while I put on my least modest blouse, buttoned almost low enough to see cleavage. I paint my jeans back on and slide into the pair of Nine West pumps that I swiped from my mom and then I saunter down to Tom and Brian’s room. I bang on their door and it takes them a few minutes to answer. “Hey, you guys! We’re going out for beers! Come with us!”

Brian answers the door in his pajamas. I don’t see Tom in the tiny room, so he must be in the washroom down the hall. We girls got so lucky to score an en suite bath! “I can’t,” says Brian. “My mom wouldn’t sign the permission slip.”

“Um,
dude
? Your mom is in Fort Wayne and your chaperones are in another hotel. Pretty sure you can have a brew if you want one,” I tell him.

“No, thanks.” He seems resolute. Or, like, jet-lagged or something.

“Oh-kaaay. Tomorrow then, totally,” I say with no sincerity. Like I care if
he
joins us, anyway. “What about Tom?”

“What about me?” Tom materializes right behind Brian. What, was he hiding behind the door?

“We’re going out for beer. Come with us!”

Tom shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“Oh, don’t give me that permission slip bullcrap, too. No one’s here! No one will know! What happens in Europe stays in Europe!”
⁶²

“It’s not that—it’s . . .” He hesitates. I try to look at him all understanding-like. It’s okay, handsome! You can tell me! “It’s . . . it’s just that I promised my grandmother that I’d send her post-cards every night. Also, I’m supposed to practice my clarinet.”

“Ha! That’s hilarious!” I reply, giving him a quick shove. “Get dressed and let’s go.”

Tom shifts uncomfortably against the door and glances back at Brian. “Sorry, I’ve got plans here.”

“Seriously, come on.” I tug his hand and he stands stock-still. “Wait, you’re not kidding? What are you saying?” Um, did I suddenly lose all my cute the minute we crossed the pond? How can that be? I followed every rule on my list . . . except wearing plaid. Damn.

“I can’t.” No.
No
. How are we going to share our first German kiss if your stupid lips are wrapped around a clarinet?

I decide to change tactics. Perhaps goading him will work. “Are you saying you’d rather send a
postcard
to your
grandma
than go out for drinks?”

No go on the goad. Tom shrugs sadly, says good night, and gently closes the door behind me.

I stomp down the hall in my pinchy shoes. My God, how can he not want to go out with a bunch of girls (and Curtis) whose inhibitions have been greatly lowered by first-time consumption of alcohol?

Who’d say
no
to that invitation?

What kind of huge, huge nerd doesn’t like tipsy chicks, especially on a whole ’nother continent?

Weird.