The Water Part
I don't remember when I started wearing make-up, not exactly. But it was during 7th grade, of that I'm pretty sure. Because my 7th grade school photo is pathetically ugly, and also without make-up, and my 8th grade school photo, while still pathetic, includes make-up.
The pathetic-ness of the photos are in my transparent and failing attempts to look like someone confident, and who fit it. Maybe a stranger wouldn't be able to see it, the painful and embarassing sadness of it all, but it screams to me from the little square photos.
The 7th grade one, my hair is pulled up on one side, something I thought daring and maybe glamorous. Except that the hair itself is stringy and hanging there, and the attempt at improvement stands out in pathetic contrast. My face is goofy, and my smile does not reveal my teeth, because I was taught early on to be ashamed of the space between my two front teeth, like my mom was. One day, she will feel bad for her 9-month-old granddaughter's similar space, although anyone else would see it as a charming enhancement.
So anyway, this is all very boring to write, but if I don't they won't give me smoking priviledges for the day, so whatever.
The 8th grade picture has make-up, but now I have a dressier, kind of preppy shirt on that belies my wrong-side-of-the-tracks reality. I wanted so much to be normal, to not be dragged down by the handicaps of a shitty life imposed upon me by others. It was so unfair. And it warped me, like leaving something nice in the moldy basement for too long; eventually, it will fade and take on the stink of the must and become something different than it originally was. Simply by osmosis. Osmosis---I couldn't even stick to things I was interested in, like science, because the reality outside the textbooks was chaos and completely unrelated, and I just couldn't pull off keeping my head in both of them.
The make-up is an embarassing background part of my self, at least my young self. Other people had things to say about it, and it was all just too confusing for me to be objective about. I didn't understand what was going on. I just knew that if I could make myself look good, why not? Guys liked me then. I had some sort of power. Finally. Again. Granted, a creepy and completely foreign power, but I existed. Existing was a vast improvement. I hadn't existed since I was like 8 years old.
I guess existing turned out to be pretty important, because I took it over being nonexistent even though the new form of existence available to me was terrifying and gross and completely compromising of all the me I had known about previously. There wasn't much, if any, room for me in this new version of reality. I sort of hoped, I guess, that if I could get someone interested enough via this new avenue, then eventually they would want to be interested in the rest of me, the real person under all the crap. It didn't happen.
*****
"Go, on."
"I am."
"No you're not. Hurry up."
"Shut up."
Terry lifted the sewer grate. It stunk down there.
"I don't see it."
"You're not even in there yet."
"Yeah, but I can tell. I don't think it's down here."
Terry moved his head back and started to lower the grate.
"What are you doing? You can't pussy out now, man. We gotta know."
Garth looked Terry in the eyes. "Seriously, man. You drew the short straw. Fair is fair."
Terry let the grate drop. "Man, you fucking stick your head down there! It's sick."
Garth didn't want to know how bad it was. He believed Terry. In fact, he could almost taste the fucking stench from where he was knelling on the pavement, but he refused to breath through his nose. Garth felt bad, because hadn't, in fact, drawn the short straw. Garth cheated.
"Dude, whatever, man. You want to leave it down there to rot, go a-fucking-head. But don't expect me to forget this."
"Come on. Can't we just say we didn't take it out in the first place? Probably nobody saw us."
"Whatever. We already went through this. They'll know it was us, it was us, and we'll take the rap."
Terry thought of his stepdad's face.
"Fine," he said. "Fuck it."
Terry lifted the sewer grate again, this time flipping it over on its back. The opening was rectangular, three feet by two. A pipe headed downward a few feet, then opened to a giant room covered with shit, boasting a flowing shit river at the bottom.
"How deep you think that is down there?"
"The sewer?"
"No. The water part."
"They said it only runs hard when it rains."
"I can see it down there. It's not raining."
"Probably just reflection from the damp. Come on, get it over with."
Terry sucked in a deep breath, realized his mistake, and jumped down into the sewer. The walls slimed and crawled and reached out to Terry's gag reflex with tiny fuzzy iron fists.
The pathetic-ness of the photos are in my transparent and failing attempts to look like someone confident, and who fit it. Maybe a stranger wouldn't be able to see it, the painful and embarassing sadness of it all, but it screams to me from the little square photos.
The 7th grade one, my hair is pulled up on one side, something I thought daring and maybe glamorous. Except that the hair itself is stringy and hanging there, and the attempt at improvement stands out in pathetic contrast. My face is goofy, and my smile does not reveal my teeth, because I was taught early on to be ashamed of the space between my two front teeth, like my mom was. One day, she will feel bad for her 9-month-old granddaughter's similar space, although anyone else would see it as a charming enhancement.
So anyway, this is all very boring to write, but if I don't they won't give me smoking priviledges for the day, so whatever.
The 8th grade picture has make-up, but now I have a dressier, kind of preppy shirt on that belies my wrong-side-of-the-tracks reality. I wanted so much to be normal, to not be dragged down by the handicaps of a shitty life imposed upon me by others. It was so unfair. And it warped me, like leaving something nice in the moldy basement for too long; eventually, it will fade and take on the stink of the must and become something different than it originally was. Simply by osmosis. Osmosis---I couldn't even stick to things I was interested in, like science, because the reality outside the textbooks was chaos and completely unrelated, and I just couldn't pull off keeping my head in both of them.
The make-up is an embarassing background part of my self, at least my young self. Other people had things to say about it, and it was all just too confusing for me to be objective about. I didn't understand what was going on. I just knew that if I could make myself look good, why not? Guys liked me then. I had some sort of power. Finally. Again. Granted, a creepy and completely foreign power, but I existed. Existing was a vast improvement. I hadn't existed since I was like 8 years old.
I guess existing turned out to be pretty important, because I took it over being nonexistent even though the new form of existence available to me was terrifying and gross and completely compromising of all the me I had known about previously. There wasn't much, if any, room for me in this new version of reality. I sort of hoped, I guess, that if I could get someone interested enough via this new avenue, then eventually they would want to be interested in the rest of me, the real person under all the crap. It didn't happen.
*****
"Go, on."
"I am."
"No you're not. Hurry up."
"Shut up."
Terry lifted the sewer grate. It stunk down there.
"I don't see it."
"You're not even in there yet."
"Yeah, but I can tell. I don't think it's down here."
Terry moved his head back and started to lower the grate.
"What are you doing? You can't pussy out now, man. We gotta know."
Garth looked Terry in the eyes. "Seriously, man. You drew the short straw. Fair is fair."
Terry let the grate drop. "Man, you fucking stick your head down there! It's sick."
Garth didn't want to know how bad it was. He believed Terry. In fact, he could almost taste the fucking stench from where he was knelling on the pavement, but he refused to breath through his nose. Garth felt bad, because hadn't, in fact, drawn the short straw. Garth cheated.
"Dude, whatever, man. You want to leave it down there to rot, go a-fucking-head. But don't expect me to forget this."
"Come on. Can't we just say we didn't take it out in the first place? Probably nobody saw us."
"Whatever. We already went through this. They'll know it was us, it was us, and we'll take the rap."
Terry thought of his stepdad's face.
"Fine," he said. "Fuck it."
Terry lifted the sewer grate again, this time flipping it over on its back. The opening was rectangular, three feet by two. A pipe headed downward a few feet, then opened to a giant room covered with shit, boasting a flowing shit river at the bottom.
"How deep you think that is down there?"
"The sewer?"
"No. The water part."
"They said it only runs hard when it rains."
"I can see it down there. It's not raining."
"Probably just reflection from the damp. Come on, get it over with."
Terry sucked in a deep breath, realized his mistake, and jumped down into the sewer. The walls slimed and crawled and reached out to Terry's gag reflex with tiny fuzzy iron fists.
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