Cal interrupted me as the guitar player strummed the opening riff to Kool and the Gang’s classic, "Celebration." "We’re gonna have a good time tonight," Cal spoke the lyrics, straight-faced and very, very serious.
"Let’s celebrate," I replied, imitating his uptight tone, trying not to smile.
"It’s all right," he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me onto the dance floor.
And at that moment, I really did feel like everything was going to be all right.
Cal didn’t bust the most impressive move, but he had two crucial things that most male dancers don’t have: a) rhythm and b) enthusiasm. So we danced our asses off. "I Will Survive." "Twist and Shout." "Everlasting Love." What I liked most about Cal was that he clearly had an off-the-chart IQ, but he didn’t E=MC2it in my face. He knew how to shut down his brain and have fun. I don’t know what I wanted more: to be with him or to be him.
Not thirty seconds after we left the dance floor, my dad’s eighty-nine-year-old mother, Gladdie, was hobbling toward us at a pretty impressive clip for someone with two artificial hips. She used her Wedding Walker, specially decorated for the occasion with white ribbons and silk flowers. I didn’t have a chance to warn Cal that she’s a wack-job.
"Jessie, you look bee-yoo-ti-full," hollered Gladdie.
I wasn’t sure about bee-yoo-ti-full, but I looked better than usual, which was a start. Despite its hideous cut and color, I didn’t look so bad in my dress once the seamstress built in artificial boobage. And thanks to a professional makeup job (Bethany, the Nuptials Nazi, wanted to guarantee perfect pictures), my skin looked radiant and unblemished as it has never appeared post-puberty. I’d never admit this to my sister, but I even liked how the artificial bun pinned to my head made me look older and more sophisticated.
Then Gladdie turned her attention to Cal. She let loose a long wolf whistle through her teeth. "Whatta hunka man!" she brayed. "When you two gettin’ hitched?"
Cal nearly spit his drink in her face. My face was on fire.
"Gladdie, I’m only sixteen …"
"I was only seventeen when I married your grandfather, bless his soul."
"And we just met," I explained.
"Well, you gotta meet your husband sometime. It might as well be tonight," she roared.
The thing is, I was so swoony over Cal at this point that my heart was telling me that Gladdie might be right. We had a connection, Cal and me. One that would’ve never been made if I had brought Scotty like everyone had wanted me to.
"Whoo-wee! He’s one fine speci-man," hooted Gladdie. "He really knocks my socks off!" Then she hobbled away, but not before grabbing his butt and giving it a good squeeze.
About ten minutes later, when Cal and I had finally stopped laughing, he said, "And I thought I wasn’t going to get lucky tonight," which made us laugh even harder.
Cal and I continued to have corny, Macarena-variety fun throughout the reception. Enough fun that I did something sort of stupid, but it was for a good reason. Cal kept bringing me glasses of champagne, and I conveniently placed them on another table or poured them down the bathroom sink or into the floral centerpiece instead of drinking them. But he thought I drank them all. In fact, I only had two. They made me feel light and giddy, but I pretended to be waaaaaay drunker than I was so I could test out what it was like to kiss him. That way, if our lip-lock was of the daddy longlegs variety—à la Scotty in eighth grade—I could just pretend it had never happened when he called and called and called me all summer long.
So during the cutting of the cake, when I knew all eyes would be on the beautiful bride and groom, I told Cal I wanted to get some air on the golf course. And Cal, who really was as drunk as he seemed to be, gave a thumbs-up and said, "Rock on."
We went outside. The sky was endless with stars and the air was wet with roses. Cal had caddied for his dad here a few times, he said. He knew a great spot. He started running and yelling, "Follow me!" But I couldn’t run very far or fast in my banana peel and heels and told him to wait up for me. He doubled back, picked me up, and tossed me over his shoulder. "Light as a feather," he said. I squealed like a girlie girl, in spite of myself.
Cal carried me about a tenth of a mile to a water hazard designed to look like a natural lake. Fuzzy stars rippled in the water. He took off his suit coat and put it on the grass for me to sit on. But sitting was no easy feat in my dress, so I had to lie flat on my back. Cal plopped down beside me, propped on his elbow, his hand holding his head mere inches from mine. I kept my eyes on the sky. I could still hear the band’s bass player, thumping and bumping like an irregular heartbeat.
"It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?" I said, finally.
Cal inched closer. "Yer bee-yoo-ti-full."
I laughed and looked up at the Big Dipper. "Thanks, Gladdie."
"I meannit, yer beautiful," he said softly.
I giggled and bit my lip. All this tension. All this buildup. "You don’t have to say that."
"I know," he whispered.
That’s when I finally looked at him looking at me. And we both busted out laughing. Again. When we calmed down, Cal said, "How can I kissya if we keep crackinup?"
I liked that he got it out in the open like that. So I pushed myself up so we were face to face. And then I closed my eyes. Next I felt his mouth on mine. We were kissing.
Kissing him didn’t make my skin crawl. I liked it. To be honest, I really liked it. I could taste the whiskey on his tongue, and feel the heat of his breath on my face. As our mouths got warmer and wetter, he rolled my body on top of his. His hands in my hair, against the nape of my neck, over my shoulders, on the small of my back …
Well, Cal’s below-the-belt brain must have picked up on my passion. He suddenly stopped kissing and slurred something in my ear.
"What?" I asked.
"I hafa condom."
"What?!"
Cal just smiled at me.
"Was that what I think it was?"
"Uh?"
"Were you telling me that you have a condom so I could do it with you?"
"Uhhhh …"
"So we could have sex?"
"Uhhhh …"
I pushed him away and straightened up my dress.
"We kiss once and you think you can have sex with me?"
"Uh … I thought …"
I couldn’t believe it! Who did he think I was?
Duh! He knew nothing about me. He didn’t know that I cracked 1500 on my PSATs. He didn’t know that I run a five-twenty mile. He didn’t know that I eat Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He didn’t know that I can’t get enough of the "new classics" or The Real World. He didn’t know that my best friend moved away and I hate everyone else. He didn’t know I had only recently made a brief foray into the law-breaking underworld.
No. He didn’t know any of these things. As far as he knew, I was just a ho-bag who makes a habit of screwing random guys on golf courses.
"You don’t even know me!" I shouted.
He softly stroked the inside of my arm with his fingertips.
"I know ’nuf boutya t’know I wanna know more boutya …" he mush-mouthed. He was so drunk he was looking through me.
Jesus Christ! Could he be any sleazier? Or cheesier?
I pushed away his hand and stood up.
"I know you’re supposed to be a genius and all, but you’re a real idiot if you think I’m going to fall for a line like that."
And then I quickly stomped back toward the sounds of fun going on without me, ruining my once-in-a-lifetime shot at losing my virginity at my sister’s wedding.
What a nightmare. I guess this is my penance for pushing Scotty away and inviting almost-perfect strangers into my life.
July 4th
Hope,
What better place to celebrate the birth of our nation than the Sleazeside Heights boardwalk? And what better way to spend this day of Independence than in minimum-wage slavery, serving artery-clogging confections to fatty boombalatty bennies?
I hate them. Those greasy goombas plunking down an obscene number of quarters to win prizes for their girlfriends—tacky ’80s throwbacks whose Aqua Net–shellacked bangs are surpassed in height only by the heels of the Payless pumps that are constantly caught between the wooden planks as they walk. These women cling to their men in never-ending adoration, as if they were cartoon cavemen returning from the hunt. Basking in a blinking neon glow, these outer-borough heroes stalk elusive prey like the overstuffed Squishy Bears that burst their seams and spill their mini Styrofoam guts the moment the victors sling them over their shoulders. If unsuccessful in their quest, they save face with an air-brushed T-shirt, the official sign of guido pre-engagement: Gino ’N’ Tina 4-Eva.
When they aren’t competing for prizes, or riding one of the Six Flags knockoff rides, they eat food with little or no nutritional value: saltwater taffy, frozen custard, caramel apples, cotton candy. All provided by yours truly at Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe.
God Bless America.
To think I actually lowered myself by begging Sara to persuade her dad to hire me despite his having already filled all positions with Europeans with temporary work visas. (They fly in for the summer to take advantage of the typical American teenager’s piss-poor work ethic. Only a foreigner would jump at a 100-hour, minimum-wage week. Hurrah for the land of the free! Home of the brave!) But I had to get out of the house. My mom was trying way too hard to bond with me, wanting to take me shopping or to the movies or out for lunch and—get this—girl talk. Ack. How transparent can she get? Mom doesn’t really want to spend time with me. She just doesn’t know what to do with herself now that the big day is over and Bethany has moved across the country with G-Money. No way will I ever be a bubble-jet print of my sister.
Anyway, I am not a religious person, but I pray that your job sucks less than mine. And that I actually earn enough to pay for that plane ticket. Until then, you keep right on molding the artistic geniuses of tomorrow at your camp. And I’ll do my darndest to make my contribution to the Red-White-and-Blue’s obesity epidemic—one sprinkle-covered cone at a time.
Jingoistically yours, J.
july
the twelfth
When you take a summer job in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, the self-proclaimed Home of Sunnin’ and Funnin’, it pretty much guarantees that you will have no time for either sun or fun. This is particularly frustrating because your sole duty is to serve thousands of ugly urbanites hell-bent on holiday hedonism. (Try telling a bombed-out-of-his-mind Longuylander that you’ve run out of rainbow sprinkles. It’s Armageddon.)
I come home coated in a second skin of funnel-cake grease, chocolate syrup, sea-salt spray, and sweat. My ears ring with buzzers and bells and the unz unz beat of the never-ending dance-party mega-mix blasting from Life’s a Beach, the clothing store next door that sells T-shirts with slogans like I’m Not As Think As You Drunk I Am. When I come home, I’m too disgusted with myself to go anywhere or do anything. I’m so tired that I fall asleep as soon as I make contact with the mattress, if you can believe that.
My first few weeks on the job, I bitched and moaned mightily about how catering to these tyrannical tourists guarantees that I’ll have little downtime. Not to mention that I spend every shift fending off the advances of my oversexed coworkers. At any moment, an undeodorized, hirsute Hungarian with a no-vowels, unpronounceable name will ask me if I am spoken for. (The answer is always Yes.)
I almost considered quitting, fully aware that the extra time would leave me no choice but to give in and hang out with my mom, who is more desperate than ever for company. Good thing I stuck it out long enough to enjoy my job’s brightest benefit: I have an automatic out from all forms of socialization, without being classifed as antisocial.
Practically the entire PHS student body works on the boards. I get face time with people from school without actually having to go through the hassle of hanging out with them. Manda works behind the counter at Winning Wally’s Arcade. As far as I can tell, she gets paid to flirt with all the Skee-Ball-loving skater boys who can’t handle the complicated mechanics of the change machine, and therefore have no choice but to go to her to get four quarters for a dollar—and her phone number. Scotty takes his life in his hands by working the Beer Bust game (drunken idiots + softballs + beer bottles = certain untimely death) on Funtown Pier. Burke runs the Himalaya roller coaster and drives us all to and from work in exchange for gas money. Sara does not deign to work at any of her dad’s boardwalk businesses, but she is there forty hours a week anyway if only to remind us that we’re working and she doesn’t have to.
About the only people I haven’t seen lately are those lucky enough to escape to more exotic locales for the summer.
Totally out-of-nowhere news: Bridget is staying with her dad in L.A. all summer in the hopes of becoming—get this—an actress. Unreal. Bridget is not fazed by the fact that her acting experience is limited to laughing at jokes I know she doesn’t understand.
"Bridge, you haven’t even acted in a school play," I pointed out.
"I know," she said. "But how much skill does it take to like, act in a sitcom on the WB?"
Valid point. I decided to drop it. Far be it from me to destroy her dream. I was probably more jealous that she was escaping Pineville for the summer than I was of the possibility of her fame and fortune. (Though, if I’m ever labeled Jessica Darling, Bridget’s Childhood Friend on some infotainment cheese-fest, I will kill myself.) I had no clue this was a serious goal of hers. This proves that I am stratospherically out of touch with my former best friend. I assumed that she felt the same way. That’s why weirdness-wise, Bridget’s West-Coasting doesn’t hold a candle to a request she made of me right before she left.
"Jess, I need to ask you for a favor."
Let’s see. The last time someone asked me for a favor, I nearly got expelled from school. But I found myself saying "sure" in spite of myself. I was thrown off not only by Bridget’s showbiz bombshell, but by the very sight of her standing in the middle of my bedroom. She hadn’t been up here for about two years.
"I know Burke is carpooling you guys to the boards all summer and …" She hesitated.
"What? What is it?" I was getting antsy already.
She scrunched up her pretty little nose. It’s so tiny that I doubt it’s functional. No air current could flow in and out of those microscopic nostrils. It’s purely for show. I bet it would look damn good on the big screen, though. She’s got a pug you could put in an IMAX movie without worrying about the fright factor of redwood-size nostril-hairs.
"Well, you’ll get to see him almost every day …" Another pause. Pink fireworks exploded all over her fair face and neck. She’d better get through her auditions better than this. "Could you, like, keep an eye on him for me?"
"Huh?"
"This is the first time we’ve been apart for more than like, three days since I was in seventh grade," she said, tugging her ponytail. "I’m worried that he like, might …"
"Cheat?"
"Yeah."
"Whoa."
"I know."
She nervously twisted her hair around her delicate index finger.
"Do you think there’s someone else?" I asked.
"No. I’m just, like, afraid that other girls might take this opportunity to pounce on him. And being a guy and all he won’t turn them down …"
Why me? Why not Sara? Her sleuthing skills are far superior to mine. And God forbid he actually cheats on her. I’ve always known that the B. and B. breakup would be a very, very bad one. I sure as hell don’t want to be there at ground zero. But if you’d seen Bridget there, all splotchy and jittery, you would’ve said yes, too. Attractive people are highly persuasive, just by being attractive. It’s true. There’s research to back me up.
Long story short: My part-time job is eyeballing Burke to make sure he’s not balling anyone else. And so far, so good.
If Bridget’s ill-conceived stab at fame is the stuff E! True Ho
llywood Stories are made off, then Hy is a Mysteries and Scandals in the making. She’s as MIA as my menstrual cycle. Seriously. No one has heard from her since the last day of school. I didn’t even give it a second thought until Manda and Sara asked me if I had seen or heard from her. I assumed that the three of them had been debauching without me.
At their request, I tried calling Hy at her aunt’s house last week. She simply said Hy was vacationing with her family for the summer. I asked her where they went, and she got all flustered and hurried me off the phone with the suspicious "someone’s at the front door" routine. As a phone phobic, I saw right through this. Something is up, for sure. I just don’t know what. Family problems, I bet. Kids are always sent packing somewhere secret when there are family problems. Or an unplanned pregnancy. Ooooh. What if Fly knocked her up?
Ugh. I sound like Sara.
I can’t help but think of the last thing she said: No matter what I do, don’t take it personally. Maybe she knew then that she was leaving. As much as Hy disappointed me toward the end of school, I hope whatever is going on, it’s nothing bad.
Of course, the most conspicuous absentee from my life is Marcus Flutie.
I know he’s still at Middlebury, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to see him again. The boardwalk is swarming with Marcus mirages. I fall for them every time. I catch split-second glimpses of his dreads, his slouch, and his tattoo. They last long enough for my heart to bang against my insides, like it wants me to expel it from my chest cavity. Every time I think I see Marcus, it turns out to be someone who looks nothing like him. One time the Marcus was a black guy. Another time the Marcus was a girl. It’s like I need to see Marcus so badly that I’m trying to turn him into everyone. And everyone into him.
the twentieth
Still no Marcus. No Hy either.
I’m on Bridget’s mass E-mail list, which pisses me off. You would think that after making such an annoying request, she would at least take the time to personalize her correspondence, or at least have the common sense to bcc the other people so I don’t know that she’s sending the same I-just-missed-getting-a-tampon-commercial-but-I-saw-Freddie-Prinze-Jr.-at-Trader-Vic’s message to everyone in our class.