You're Not Pretty Enough (2 page)

These wrestling matches started on a random night when I was around thirteen. While I was tossing and turning, the sheet glided between my legs in a very pleasant way and I froze.
What the hell was that?
I
thought and proceeded to perform the move fifty-eight more times. So there I was night after night dry humping my bedding.

When
Purple Rain
was released, I went with two friends to the movie theater. We told our parents we were going to see
Gremlins
and bought tickets to that show but snuck into the back of an already darkened theater showing
Purple Rain.
We were not prepared. We gripped our armrests tightly, mouths hanging open as we watched Prince finger-fuck
Apollonia and the stars interpret various songs like “Sex Shooter,” and “Darling Nikki.” It was way too much for our porous minds. What was I thinking jumping from dolls bumping plastic uglies straight to Prince and the Revolution
in one move? One should complete that progression in five moves! Minimum! I went home that night completely confused and freaked out yet also excited to “hit the sheets.”

“Jenny, are you OK?” my mom asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“No, fine, just tired. I’m going up to bed.”

“How was
Gremlins
?”

I looked directly at her. “Some parts were really, really weird.”

That night, amid the sheets, I thought about the scene with
Prince and Apollonia. Instead of stopping when I reached that point of near unbearable pleasure—it felt like being tickled—I kept going.
Did I pee?
I wondered and felt the sheets, but nothing was overly wet. For a
while, I kept it my own little secret. And took lots of “naps.”

My friends and I didn’t talk about stuff like that when we were thirteen. And I didn’t talk about my own feelings until I knew what they
meant.
I think we realized we knew next to nothing about “grown-up” issues and that we were in that odd, short phase between leaving childhood behind and committing to being teens. We were scared to admit to or share anything that made us look like the weird kid. Unless we knew we weren’t alone. I always had
respect for the kids who were the first to admit they were cutters or who had bad home lives; you could almost physically see a wave of relief wash over the people who were present for a confession and for an opening to say, “I had no
idea. Me too.”

This is also the stage in life when most of us had to attend health class, that awful period where you sat through uncomfortable lectures—or in my class, overhead projector diagrams. My junior high health teacher tried
to make these lectures fun by doing things like drawing his own overhead slides to guide a particular topic. One that stands out as the most embarrassing was the slide he used to explain the ovulation process by drawing an airplane with
an egg jumping out of it yelling, “Ovulaaatttioooon!” as it pulled its parachute ripcord. He did this leisurely while he stood at the front of the class in his white polo shirt and tight, navy blue polyester shorts and raised
his hand to simulate the slow, swaying back-and-forth of an object gliding safely to the ground. All he got for his trouble was the sound of silence. Really. You could hear the crickets.

At fourteen my breasts grew from As to bountiful Cs
seemingly overnight, which amused my younger sister. Whenever I was being bossy, she retorted by sticking her fists under her T-shirt and stretching the material out to make them look like huge, lopsided breasts and saying, “Whatever!” in the brattiest tone possible. At first I’d lunge, ready to
throttle her, but that only seemed to egg her on, so I soon turned the tables. “These puppies?” I’d say, pointing to my chest. “They’re comin’ for you too.” And they did.

This transformation of my chest brought attention mainly
from skeevy old men. It later brought on the epiphany that many men are rendered powerless in the presence of big boobs, but at fourteen it only made me uncomfortable, and I tried to hide them under numerous Limited Forenza Shaker
Knit sweaters that I color coordinated with my stirrup pants. Sometimes male teachers would call me and other well-endowed girls up to their desks and ask things like, “So, how was your weekend?” while they stretched back in their
chairs, arms behind their heads, spreading their legs apart.

Health class ended the same year we completed junior high, and our teacher decided to close out the course with a talent show. It might have made more sense to put on a show with acts relevant to things we learned,
like short plays inspired by Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” but instead it was just a run-of-the-mill talent show. Still in my Prince phase, a friend and I decided we should pair up and do an interpretive dance to “When Doves Cry.” We
practiced for hours in her screened-in porch, choreographing every last move and settling on show-day outfits of royal blue satin shorts that went down to our mid-thighs, white tank tops, and overly permed hair with lace bows and lots
of makeup. We looked like clown boxers.

As we clumsily performed the routine and routinely elbowed each other accidently, our health teacher went from watching us intently to cheering us on for our creativity and heart. I don’t remember anyone winning,
but upon recalling this with a couple friends from high school recently, I could see one of the girls dusting off the cobwebs in her mind and shouting, “Oh my God, I
SAW
that show.” She didn’t sound pleased.

At sixteen I started working at a local video store. In the
mideighties, Blockbusters had sprung up nearly everywhere, but small towns like mine didn’t warrant such an investment. Instead, I worked at a store called Stop N’ Go Video, which was about seven hundred square feet and located in a
strip mall. After I got the initial and brief training, I worked my shifts alone and was responsible for closing out the cash register and securing the store. Often, my friends would visit, and we’d watch movies that were PG enough
to withstand any potential customer’s taste meter. Booooorrrring.

At least, that was until we discovered a system for the porn. We didn’t have enough space for a back room to store the X-rated box covers, so Stop N’ Go’s solution was to create a binder with either the video
boxes flattened in the laminate sleeves or the promotional fliers from the distribution companies. Patrons would have to come to the front counter and ask for “the binder” to flip through and make their selection, which was located
under the cash register.

This created countless embarrassing situations where the customer was forced to peruse such titles as
Anal Annie and Magic Dildo
or
Whore of the Worlds
at the front desk while I diverted my attention
to
anything
else, such as furiously cleaning the phone. Many times, parents of friends or even teachers would enter the store, see it was me working, spend some time looking through the “family” genre row, and then turn
to me and say, “Looks like I’ve seen everything, Jen!” before walking out. Mmm hmm. See you next time.

I also encountered several boys, some as young as thirteen, trying to rent the tapes. I’d humor them and ask for their IDs, and they’d make
up some lame excuse. But every once in a while, if I knew they were at least fifteen and terribly bookish, I’d let them flip through the binder first before asking for identification. In those rare instances, I felt justified that by
giving them what I was sure was an infrequent glimpse at a naked woman, I was somehow better preparing them to deal with the fairer sex in the future. Relax. I didn’t grow up to be a child psychologist.

My girlfriend Nikki and I, however, were the biggest viewers
of the porn. Curious after giggling over the binder ourselves, we graduated to viewing movies in the store’s VCR later at night. We learned about moves and positions in that video store by viewing the tapes and asking each other
questions to clarify our understanding. “Ew! Are we supposed to
like
that when we get older?” I asked after viewing a particularly messy escapade. “Do you do that with Dan?”

“The Pearl Necklace? No! God,
gross!”
she’d say as
she rewound the scene for the sixteenth time.

I’d try out expressions and inflections I learned, purring porn phrases at odd times to my high school boyfriend: “Yeah, you like that, don’t you?” I’d ask as I kissed him. “You’re a bad, bad boy.” He’d look at me
strangely. “Uh, yeah, I guess so,” and we’d continue to make out with me thinking all the while that the scenario would be even sexier if the pizza delivery guy showed up.

Viewing and studying women in porn became the template for
what I assumed men perceived as desirable: arched backs, slightly parted mouths, and closed-eyed moans. The fact that I’d been schooled in this area by Nina Hartley and Tracy Lords may have been undetectable by mere mortal high
school boys, but it gave me that extra swagger—something I knew would be uncorked with the right partner who respected all the parts of me…someday.

Which was not the case with my first time. When I was a sophomore, I had an unrequited crush on a senior who ran with the popular crowd
but had an outsider’s depth to him. He rarely talked to me, but some of his friends dated some of my friends, so we’d see each other at parties on the weekends, where he drank a lot and went upstairs with numerous girls.

He was thickly built, tall and muscular, and wore tight tank tops under flannel shirts. He had dark, slightly curly hair, large hazel eyes, lush lips, and face stubble that got heavier as the day wore on. He commanded
drinking games and made people laugh. But he also looked melancholy and far away sometimes. He seemed to me a boy who needed saving. And I thought he saw something special in me too. When I entered a room, he would look at me, without smiling, for ten whole seconds, and I would return the gaze until he broke it. He always broke it first. I thought we were communicating something in a secret code that only we could understand and that all of it meant passion and love.

At one of these parties, he asked me what I was doing after
school on a Tuesday.

“Nothing.”

“Want to hang out at my house?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

I told my mom that I was volunteering to decorate the basketball team’s lockers and met him in the parking lot after school. We went to his place and drank some of whatever his parents had the most of in their
liquor cabinet—I think it was vodka—and watched TV for about an hour. Then he stood up, grabbed my hand, and led me to his bedroom, which was small, sparsely decorated, and contained two twin beds. He laid me down on one of them and immediately got on top of me and began to kiss me and press his
crotch roughly down on mine.

A real-life game of Mash Your Privates!

He grabbed my hands with his and raised them over my head.

This is happening!
I thought to myself.
Oh my God,
this is happening?!

Yes! Calm down.

He tugged at my shirt and raised it over my head and tossed it on the floor. Then he took his shirt off and laid back down on me and we
continued to kiss. A minute later he leaned back and said in a quiet voice, “Take your pants off.”

I did as commanded while he put on a condom and then lay on top of me and entered. I was so “in the moment” that I couldn’t even recall my
porn training. I stared over his shoulder up at the ceiling, wincing a bit in pain and wondering when the “feel good” part was going to happen.
But still,
I thought,
it’s with him
. And in a few minutes it was over. He got off
me, looked down at a small dark red spot, and asked whether I needed a towel, and I looked down and saw that I did. He started to get dressed and so I followed suit, and then he said, “I should probably take you home; my mom’ll be
here soon.”

“OK, cool.”

He drove me back to my neighborhood but dropped me off about a quarter of a mile from my house and said, “You can walk from here, right?”

“Of course I can,” my MO at that time being to have a stiff
upper lip and project an air of not giving a shit, whether or not it was true. But that late afternoon I thought that was just the way these interactions went.

“Thanks so much for the ride.”

I got out of the car feeling at the time like I was different.
I’m a woman now,
I thought. I entered my house and drifted past my mom, who was cooking dinner, and into my sister’s room, where she was playing with her toys. “Well, hello, young lady,” I said to her. “Did you
finish your homework?”

“Did
YOU?
”

The next day at school, he hardly even talked to me. The only acknowledgement was a head tilt as he passed me in the hall and a
monotone, “What’s up?”
What’s up? I just gifted you with my virginity is what’s UP. Doesn’t that at least deserve a walk to my next class or a sharing of a cigarette out by the football field, asshole?
That’s what I wanted to say, but instead I returned the head tilt, said “Not much,” and ducked into the
nearest bathroom to cry. It sucked to know I was used. Especially when that realization was the polar opposite of the fantasy I had constructed.

Looking back I believe those soulful stares were merely
tacit recognition that for him I was a sure thing. The only truly remarkable part about the experience was that he didn’t care.

A few weeks after this, my mom took me for my annual checkup with the doctor, who was also my pediatrician from way back. She explained that
this appointment was going to be a little different than the others—that this one was going to be more of the gynecological nature.

I took all of this in and thought,
OK, so the guy who’s
examined me since I was a baby is now going to be sticking his fingers in my vagina. OK.
And then:
Oh God, he’s going to know I’m not a virgin anymore! He’s going to stick his hands in my vagina and immediately feel that
my hymen is broken and then gasp and pull out his hand in shock and look at my mom.