You're Not Pretty Enough (3 page)

“What?” she’ll ask, startled.

“Your daughter,” I imagined him saying, “is no longer your sweet little angel.” And my mom will look at me and cry a single, disappointed
tear like that Indian in the seventies anti-litter ad campaign who saw you throwing your trash on the freeway.

“Mom, I’m not a virgin!” I screamed, and my mother slammed on the breaks amid angry honks and pulled over to the side of the road.

“What? Who? When? Are you sure? Are you OK? Do you want to talk about it? Who?”

“Mom, it was a boy at school,” I said, crying. “He doesn’t
like me. It was only once. And I will NEVER, EVER do it again!” My mom hugged me and stroked my hair. “He wouldn’t have been able to tell,” she said, referring to my pediatrician.

That night she tucked me in. The doctor had given me a
serious STD talk, which grossed me out but also stayed with me. “You know what sucks about AIDS?” I posed. “You can’t just go out there and have a one-night stand anymore.”

“One-night stands aren’t all they are cracked up to be,” she
responded and gave me a look like she knew from experience.

A few months later, another boy and I were sexually active and exclusive throughout the remainder of my high school experience. Lucky for me, that boy built the bridge between being treated poorly by a partner and
being treated kindly and gently. He wasn’t afraid of my burgeoning sexuality, or jealous. He didn’t push or force if I didn’t want to fool around.

I’m grateful to him for that early imprint on my brain. But,
the sex was still…high school sex. It wasn’t until twenty-seven or twenty-eight that I had that “I’ll have what she’s having” moment (I know, I know:
what the fuck, right?
) and I’m grateful for that as well, because once you have
that
experience
, you can never go back.

And thank God for that.

My sole act of teenage rebellion was going to church. Adult rebellion? That’s a few chapters ahead. But teenage rebellion? Not so much.
Sure, I drank some in high school and dabbled in psychedelics, but I was a good student, came home by curfew, and rarely got in trouble.

My mom is an atheist and my dad is agnostic. They came by it honestly. My mom grew up Protestant, attending church regularly with her mother
and sister. In her late teens, she thought,
You know what? I don’t buy it.
So she stopped going, and finally my Nana stopped pushing. My Dad is Jewish. Soon after he became bar mitzvah his mother died of cancer and his visits to temple
slowed. His small congregation was populated mainly with people sixty and over, so it wasn’t very engaging for a fourteen-year-old grieving boy. My grandfather Abe didn’t push either.

I came by my teenage spiritual state dishonestly, I felt. I
was non-spiritual by proxy. My parents, on the other hand, had something to
reject.
Still, there was something missing for them in the early seventies. They were looking for like-minded people, for fellowship. And they found it at a
Unitarian Universalist church. Unitarian Universalism is similar to what we “modern spiritualists” refer to as
The Universe
,
meaning it’s all-inclusive and super vague.

“I got a sign from the Universe today!”

“What was it?”

“An e-mail alert telling me those boots I want are on sale!”

In the seventies our church attracted a friendly, middle-class liberal community—people who had and continue to have
beliefs such as “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” and “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are all a part.” I loved it there. Each Sunday I looked forward to approaching the
grounds, which one would begin to see from two miles away—green, velvety, short-cut hilly grounds in the warm months and bright orange, red, and pink leafy trees until winter. I mean, you can imagine the egg hunts. Atop the tallest hill stood the physical dwelling, which was shipped from England and
reassembled: a grand Tudor-style home that housed numerous rooms, a kitchen, and a large space with huge, knotted oak beams and hardwood floors for the sermons and dances.

My parents made friends there, and my sister and I made
friends with their children. On Sundays I went to classes with other young children, while the older kids and adults went to the sermon. Most of the class lessons came from the Bible and were selected for their entertainment value, to
get us to focus. Sometimes we’d act them out; sometimes we’d finger paint. I remember we held an impromptu production of the story of Joseph (son of Jacob) complete with props and costumes from the storage closet in our playroom.
Joseph connects the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the freeing of the Israelites in Egypt. He also had that sweet Technicolor dreamcoat.

After class we’d go down for refreshments and play and play and play while our parents socialized. On weekends sometimes they’d hold Contra
dances, and the whole family would come. The kids would watch or jiggle on the sides as our parents skipped through partnered folk dances in two lines facing each other. Sometimes there would be costumes and sometimes, as we got older,
we kids got to try it too. It was exhilarating.

After my parents divorced, my younger sister and I moved with my mom to a new town about thirty miles away, so we stopped attending. I
missed it. My dad moved to an apartment about thirty miles away too—both from the church and from us. Alas, the religious aspects didn’t stick. Religion just didn’t seem fun. But that church?
That
was fun.

It wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I noticed my
friends were doing things and talking about things that I wasn’t doing or talking about.
The horror!
My only thoughts on religion were abstract. So I started asking my friends questions about their respective faiths, and
they invited me to tag along.

“Mom,” I declared one night after school, “I’m going to church.”

“Okkkaaaayyy,” she said. “Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Okaaayyy. Well, how did this come about?”

“Well, all my friends go to church with their families on Sundays and they all see each other there, and I just want to find out about God, and you guys think you’re so cool because you had that growing up, but then you
said, ‘no thanks,’ but you never gave
me
the chance to say ‘no thanks,’ so actually that’s not very cool at all.”

My mother snickered but tried to conceal it.

“OK,” she said. “Just don’t expect a ride.”

My father agreed as well (he married two independent shiksas, incidentally), and for a little while I studied up on Judaism and talked to rabbis, but it was the historical elements that fascinated me most,
not so much the dedication ceremonies. I had a friend who was from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and he brought me to some gatherings. I disliked the missionary aspect (I
do
like the position), however, and soon moved onto Christianity. In the most general terms, the Lutherans seemed
the most laid back and socially aware and the Catholics the most unbending. Perhaps it was the particular priest in my small town’s Catholic church, Father Lee. He was cold and technical and boomed when he should have lilted.

When I was in my junior year, my friend Tina’s thirteen-year-old brother accidentally shot himself. Me and my group of friends were grief-struck and circled around the family. At the funeral Father Lee
spent seemingly endless amounts of time saying,

“He will never play football!”

“He will never see his sisters get married!”

“He will never go to prom!”

“He will never fall in love!”

I looked over at my friend and put my hands over my ears and then looked over at his mother who was sobbing. A few years later, at the rehearsal for my same friend’s wedding, Father Lee pre-chastised us about
taking Communion.

“Do NOT eat a wafer or take a sip of wine if you are not Catholic. This is the body of Christ! This is the BLOOD OF CHRIST! Do NOT reach for either of these if you are…”

“Yeah, we got it, Father,” one of the groomsman said. We all
shuffled uncomfortably, and I remember thinking,
why don’t you explain the symbolism in a way that draws us in? Makes us think?

“Well, you had better.”

Really, though, I was lazy. I’ve never fully read the Bible
or the Torah. And I have barely scratched the surface on the Muslim faith or Buddhism. Before I finished high school, I ended my quest (via organized religion, anyway). My parents asked me questions, and I’d give them my evolving
thoughts while they nodded in encouragement and let me get to the answers on my own.

Where I landed is where I still am today. I like the admittedly simple idea of a God sitting above watching over us, letting us be
ourselves, and making decisions that are best for our own personal circumstances as long as we follow The Golden Rule. If we don’t, God steps in and removes the bad element, be it weather, for example, or human. And if God doesn’t remove it, then there is a lesson to be gained or an epiphany or
another path to take. And from there, we would
learn
those lessons and implement change for the better. But that’s not reality. It is hard and scary to imagine what is coming around the corner. It sometimes feels like the
proverbial finger is on an increasingly pressurized stream coming through a hole in the dyke. But when there is hope—and somewhere there always is—that is because it comes from within us or is inspired by what is around us here on
the ground.

I knew pretty early that I liked material things and that if I wanted them, I’d need to make my own money, so at twelve I started babysitting. Besides a few odd jobs here and there I babysat consistently for
one family only: our next-door neighbors, the Cooks. Mac Cook was a tall, lanky mechanic. He was also the president of the Sly Fox Motorcycle Club, so he seemed like a badass, but he had gentle eyes and reminded me so much of Jim Croce that I couldn’t help but hum “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” when I saw him. His
wife Leslie was a barfly pixie. She was tiny and pretty—just over five feet and just under one hundred pounds—and sported frosted, perfectly feathered hair that came to her shoulders. She had an easy demeanor and a voice
that sounded like she smoked and drank every Friday night, which she did. They both did. We liked them.

They had a tow-headed two-year-old son named Cody who was all giggles and curiosity. I sat for them when they went to the local
neighborhood bar, PC’s, which has since burned down but remained for years as a charred homage to crushed dreams. Cody and I filled our evenings performing typical babysitter/kid activities: making cookies, watching TV, and me trying
to convince him he was really tired and that
it’s time to go to bed now.

We also invented a game that, looking back, I suppose spoke to the more dominant/ submissive sides of our respective personalities. It was simple, and it involved me continuously tripping him. I’d take the cushions
from the sofas and pile them on either ends of the living room. Cody would start at one end and gather up as much speed as one could with stubby legs in a fourteen-foot length space and run toward the other end of the room. I’d stick
my foot out at the appropriate time, which would trip him and send him face first into the pillows. He’d always shoot up, giggling profusely and demand “Again!” Sometimes the giggling would start before my foot even shot out, the
anticipation nearly toppling him on its own. We’d do this for at least an hour, and once we’d get our rhythm my foot would take on a life of its own, instinctively knowing when to shoot out as I watched TV.

After I put him to bed, it was time to wait for the
return
of Leslie.
Being tiny, her alcohol tolerance was low, so she always returned home earlier than her husband and
highly
intoxicated. The first time I babysat for the Cooks it was around eight when I heard Leslie stumbling
up the steps. After a couple failed attempts to unlock the front door, I got up and opened it.

“Hi doll!” she beamed. “Thanks. These keys don’t open shit!”

I looked down and saw she was jiggling the slack part of her
metal belt.

“What’d you guys do?” she slurred as she fell back on the couch, and then, “Ooooh cookies! Can I have one?” I brought her the plate, and she took one and winked at me. “This one looks perfect.”

Not knowing the protocol for getting paid for an honest night’s work but feeling it was important that I got my money before I left the house, I waited for her to hand me some cash. Instead we sat and watched
The
Dukes of Hazard
at opposite ends of the couch for a while until I got up to go to the bathroom and plan my exit. When I returned, Leslie was passed out, nearly horizontal, and her right breast had popped out of the tan suede vest that was the only piece of clothing she wore on the top half of her body. I
just stared at the small orb, not knowing what to do.

Do I try and push her boob back in?
I asked myself.

Are you kidding? This is above our pay grade; call Mom!

When she walked into the house, she took in Leslie, who was in the exact same state. Then she looked at me, and seeing that I was all wide-eyed, she let out a little laugh, which made me laugh. “Leslie,” Mom
called out. Nothing. “Leslie,” my Mom said again, this time nudging her gently. The orb shook.

“Uhhn, huh?” she responded.

“Leslie, I’m going to make some coffee.” Leslie swatted at the air breezily, as if signaling that she was just fine the way she was.

My mom brought the coffee to Leslie and propped her up so that she could drink it. Her breast thankfully slid back into its hiding place. “Thanks, hon,” Leslie said, rubbing her eyes and wrapping her hands around the
mug. Mom sent me back home because my sister was alone and followed a little while later, with my ten dollars for services rendered.