I knew my parents would throw a fit if they saw me in fishnets, so I came up with a plan to get around them. I went shopping with a school friend who helped me pick out a low-cut V-necked sweater that exposed my nonexistent cleavage. I borrowed a tight black skirt that was way too long for me. I think it was something my friend’s older sister had outgrown. I fixed the hemline problem by rolling up the waistband, then hid the bulge under the bulky sweater. I scored a pair of black hose and doctored the runs with pale pink nail polish. And I bought a pair of cool black pumps. This became my uniform. My secret uniform.
I’d leave the house every morning in normal clothes. Then, when I got to school, I’d duck into the girls’ bathroom, dig into my knapsack, and pull out my finery. There were usually several friends willing to help me tease my long, straight hair to an acceptable height. The black eyeliner, applied with a canoe paddle, and pale pink lipstick completed the transformation. I was ready for class.
Back then the student population was divided into two groups: “surfers” and “greasers.” I liked the greasers, car-addicted, chain-smoking tough guys who swore at the slightest provocation, wore tight jeans, pointed boots, and leather jackets, and poured more oil on their hair than in their engines. I attracted the attention of the leader of the pack. Tom was fifteen-an older man by the standards of a twelve-year-old. He wore his hair slicked back with a ton of lubricant and sported a black leather jacket, his trademark. He was reputed to be epileptic; this somehow only added to his mystique. He had a pair of deep brown eyes, full sensuous lips, and a sexy macho attitude that made him the premier catch of the school. Shortly after my own transformation, he decided we had to go steady.
This seemed a very cool thing to do. It was a sure way of getting accepted by the fast crowd and proving how tough I was to boot. So I took Tom’s ring, a heavy metal number that was way too big for me. I tried the prescribed remedy of wrapping yarn around it to improve the fit, but that made it so bulky, I ended up wearing it on a chain around my neck. My steady didn’t mind. He considered it proof of his manliness that his ring hung loose on his woman’s skinny finger.
At recess he’d let me wear his leather jacket, which hit me at the knees. We’d stand together, his arm around me. Periodically, he’d plant an ostentatious kiss on my lips. He’d linger long enough so that everyone could see we were a couple. What they couldn’t know was that he’d repeatedly invited me to go out on dates-usually to Saturday matinees-and that I kept finding ever more creative excuses to decline. Quite apart from the fact that I’d never be able to carry off an actual date under my parents’ noses, I learned that I could expect to be “felt up” and “felt down.” That prospect terrified me. I knew that eventually I’d have to put out or get out. I wasn’t quite sure how to do either.
It was one of my steady’s jealous ex-girlfriends, Linda, who settled the matter once and for all. She sent out the word that she was going to knock out my lights. Tom told me he’d “take care” of her. One day, at noon recess, I went into the girls’ restroom. I’d just finished patting my hair into place when Linda burst through the door, cornered me, and threw a punch. I was agile enough to duck, or she would have knocked me out cold.
“You little bitch,” she growled. “You can’t have Tom; he’s mine. Get it?” She was leaning forward with clenched fists. It would have been funny, it was so trite-except I was scared to death. What had happened to Tom’s promise to “take care” of her? It was clearly up to me.
“Take him, he’s yours,” I told her, in as rational and assertive a tone as I could muster. She seemed surprised, but she backed off. And so I slipped out of a rumble and a sticky romantic entanglement within the space of a minute.
My career as a greaser was cut short by my family’s next move, this one to Michigan. I had just turned thirteen. I found to my dismay that the quiet suburb we now called home had no great appreciation for fishnet stockings. The kids in my new high school worshiped all things Californian. They wanted to be surfers. There was only one real “in” crowd. All the rest were wannabes. By my third day, the popular clique-operating upon the mistaken assumption that because I was from San Francisco I must be a surfer girl-took me under its wing. I was ceremoniously escorted to their table in the lunchroom and introduced all around. The girls were all dyed-in-the-wool Heathers. You know the type.
Before lunch was over, they’d set me up to join them for Cokes at a local hangout on Friday, go shopping with them on Saturday, and visit someone’s house on Sunday. The kicker came when one of the girls called me at home that night to announce that I would be going steady with one of the freckle-faced rich guys I’d met at lunch. I was stunned. I’d heard of arranged marriages, but this was ridiculous.
The next day at lunch, I deliberately chose to sit at a table of outcasts-those who’d either abandoned all hope of ever being popular or had never cared much to begin with. One girl leaned over to me and asked, “Do you realize how pissed off they’re going to be if you sit with us?” Of course I did. I actually enjoyed watching the Heathers glower at me from their privileged position. They didn’t like the idea of being rejected. Serves you damned right, I thought.
I did okay on my own terms. That year I got into gymnastics. I would have liked to try out for the women’s gymnastics team, except there wasn’t one. Instead, I became a cheerleader. Co-captain of the squad, in fact. Before I could really get into the season, however, we moved again. This time to Maryland.
I was prepared to hate the place, but I ended up loving it. The apartment complex we moved to was populated largely by families as transient as my own. They came from all over the world. In the afternoons and on weekends I’d play soccer in the central courtyard with kids from India, Chile, Argentina, and England. They were kindred spirits. Most of them had lived lives as unsettled as my own, and they had no trouble welcoming a newcomer whose tenure was uncertain. I faced the usual trauma of having to make new friends, but the transition was easier than ever before. Within two months I’d become part of a congenial crowd, with a few close friends among them.
That interlude of contentment, however, ended abruptly with yet another move, this time to New York. The announcement devastated me. I’d been so happy in Maryland. For the first time in my life I hadn’t felt like a freak. Maybe it was the feeling of having no control over my life, or maybe it was just the prospect of having to start all over again, but when I got news of our impending departure, I marched upstairs to my room, closed the door, and ripped up every book I could lay my hands on. Then I threw every fragile object I owned against the wall. When my belongings lay in ruins around me, I dropped onto my bed in a fit of sobbing.
We moved to a development on Staten Island, where we bought a large house. That, at least, made me happy. I had the whole downstairs floor to myself. It had its own entrance, which gave me more freedom than ever. The bad news was that the kids in my new high school regarded me with outright hostility. The California mystique didn’t mean spit here. The only group that would accept me were the hippies. They were not junkies or hypes or anything, just basically good kids who, like me, didn’t fit in anywhere else. I helped them organize the distribution of the High School Free Press and agitated for the abolition of the school dress code. And I smoked a little dope, something I admit without a twinge of regret or guilt. When I see a politician squirming when asked to admit he sneaked a toke as a kid, I just want to shake him and say, “Grow up, Junior.” The way I look at it, toking was just one more rite of passage.