Sloppy Firsts (18 page)

the fourteenth

I knew it was too good to be true. I really did. So I wasn’t shocked when my plans to see Hope fell through today. But I was shocked (and disgusted) by how I felt about the reason why they fell through.

Hope not only got in to the private school, but nabbed a scholarship. Huge deal.

I know that a true best friend would be happy for her. I know I shouldn’t be bothered by the fact that her new school starts two weeks earlier than the public school she would have attended, therefore null-and-voiding my visit. I know I shouldn’t be jealous because leaving Pineville may end up being the best thing that ever happened to Hope, while I’m still stuck here doing the same-old, same-old. Going nowhere. I shouldn’t be green that Hope is moving on so much better than I am.

But I am.

When I told my mom I wasn’t going to spend a week in Tennessee, she gushed, "Great! Now we can spend some quality time together!"

Needless to say, I won’t be quitting my job early after all.

I gotta go. I have to mail Hope’s present if I want her to still be there when it arrives.

the sixteenth

Matthew Michael Darling would have been twenty today.

As if I weren’t depressed enough.

I wonder if things were worse for Hope’s parents or mine. Hope told me that in a way, Heath’s death was a relief for her parents: They could stop waiting for it happen. My parents never saw it coming. How can you see something like that coming?

I’ve never been to his grave. My parents have never taken me. Can you imagine how it must have been for them? Instead of picking out stuffed animals they were picking out his burial plot. They do not talk about it. And I know not to acknowledge it.

My mom will be a zombie for the next two weeks. She pops Valiums starting today until September first—the anniversary of his death. Then she stops cold turkey. Mourning over. Supreme self-control.

My dad acts like nothing out of the ordinary is going on. He goes for his three-hour bike rides. He spends hours tinkering with the computer. Our conversations don’t go beyond him grilling me about how many miles I’ve run this week to gear up for cross-country season. Same as usual.

Sometimes I wonder what Matthew would’ve looked like. Would he be prematurely bald like my dad, or have perfect teeth like my mom? Would he have Bethany’s flawless complexion? Or would he be scrawny like me?

I see college guys with Greek letters on their chests and I wonder if he would’ve celebrated with them. Or would he have celebrated his birthdays alone? Like me.

I know I wasn’t planned because Gladdie told me so on my fourteenth birthday. In her uncensored senility, she informed me between bites of Carvel ice-cream cake that I was a "wonderful surprise" for my parents, who never thought they would "have the heart to try again." Of course, this was just a nice way of saying I was a mistake.

I think Bethany always considered me competition. A brother would have been a different deal. Maybe that’s why we’ve never gotten along. But it’s safe to say my parents were happy to have me—more so after I made it past the one-month mark. But sometimes, when they go overboard on the groundings and other assholic parental gestures, I can’t help but think they’re trying to "save" me because they couldn’t save Matthew. Maybe that’s the real reason why they’ve been particularly harsh since Heath OD’d. It’s not that they were afraid his bad habits had rubbed off on me, as I had thought. No, Heath’s death probably reminded them of their own loss, one they don’t want to experience again.

I think too goddamn much.

One thing I know for sure, if Matthew had lived, my parents would’ve been a lot more vigilant with birth control, thereby eliminating the possibility of a "wonderful surprise" like me. This knowledge comes directly from my mother, who refers to three or more kids in any family as a "litter." So I’m sort of grateful for Matthew’s death, which is an evil thing. A go-to-hell type of thing, if I believed in hell.

Right now I feel guilty to be alive. Why? Because I’m wasting it. I’ve been given this life and all I do is mope it away.

What’s worse is, I am totally aware of how ridiculous I am. It would be a lot easier if I believed I was the center of the universe, because then I wouldn’t know any betternot to make a big deal out of everything. I know how small my problems are, yet that doesn’t stop me from obsessing about them.

I have to stop doing this.

How do other people get happy? I look at people laughing and smiling and enjoying themselves and try to get inside their heads. How do Bridget, Manda, and Sara do it? Or Pepe? Oreveryone but me?

Why does everything I see bother me? Why can’t I just get over these daily wrongdoings? Why can’t I just move on and make the best of what I’ve got?

I wish I knew.

the eighteenth

Last night was catastrophic.

Cataclysmically catastrophic.

In fact, the only reason I’m writing about last night at all is because I think it’s important from a purely historical perspective. I want my descendants to know what event cinched the last strap on my straightjacket.

About halfway through my shift, Manda came charging up to my stand as fast as her platform sandals would carry her.

"Can you get a ride home tonight?"

"No. Why?"

"Well there’s a huge blowout on Carteret Ave. tonight."

"And?"

"Aaaaaaaand," she exaggerated, as though my grasp of the English language were worse than Woody’s. "We want to go."

"Webeing … ?"

"Me," she said.

"And?"

"Sara."

"And?"

"Burke."

"Did you ever think that maybe I might want to go too?"

"Puh-leeze, Jess," she said. "You never want to goanywhere ."

She was right. I never want to go anywhere. I had avoided going anywhere all summer and look how happy it had made me. I was more depressed than ever. Maybe some good old-fashioned mindless debauchery would do me some good. Liquid lubricant was just the thing to loosen up my torqued-uppedness. I was too uptight about everything. I needed to live a little.

"I want to go."

Manda looked at me, expressionless.

"To the party," I said. "I want to go to the party."

Manda thought this was the funniest thing she had ever heard in her life. She literally bent over and slapped her knees as she laughed, affording Woody and his Hungarian homeboys a golden opportunity to look down her tank top.

"Are you spoken for?" Woody asked Manda.

Manda stopped cackling and started gagging. I ignored him.

"I’ll call my parents and tell them I’m sleeping over at Sara’s," I said. "They’ll be thrilled that I’m out being social."

"You’re serious about this?" she asked, as though I were signing away my life, which, as it turned out, wasn’t too far from the truth.

"Yes," I said. "I’m ready to par-tay."

After work (or nonwork in Sara’s case), Burke drove us over to the stretch of beach where the festivities were taking place. We got there around midnight. The fiesta was clearly in its early stages, as there was an even one-to-one ratio of people to beer cans scattered on the sand. Plus, the sexes had yet to mingle. Giggly girls clung in clumps, clutching plastic cups and beer cans kindly provided by members of the opposite sex who wanted to get in their pants. Packs of guys pounded each other in the arm, pointing out the girls whose pants they wanted to get into. We may be in high school, but until everyone is wasted these shindigs are as boy–girl segregated as a kindergarten birthday party. When the sexes interface, that’s when you know things are getting really messy.

The "beat of the beach," FM 98.5, blasted a hot weather classic:

Summer summer summertime.

Time to sit back and unwind.

"Still ready to par-tay?" yelled Manda over the music.

I had no ride home. No escape.

"I desperately need a beer," I yelled back.

Manda had sent Burke off in search of alcohol. On cue, he returned to us, his arms full of cans of Milwaukee’s Best. I really hate the taste of beer. Evengood beer when it’s icy cold, and this "Beast" was neither. But I’ve learned that once you’re buzzed, the foul taste doesn’t register anymore. I cracked it open and chugged as much as I could as fast as I could.

"Whoo-hoo!" whooped Manda and Sara. "You go, girl."

I slammed my first beer before the Fresh Prince finished. He was followed by the opening guitar picking of a big Backstreet Boys hit from a couple summers back. Their reign as the undisputed crown princes of teenybopper pop was clearly over because the backlash was immediate: The crowd started booing before BSB began to harmonize. Someone quickly changed the station, but it was too late. I had already started thinking about Marcus Flutie, wondering if he wore that T-shirt at Middlebury. Wondering if anyone got the joke if he did. Wondering if he wondered about me.

I got another beer out of the nearest cooler.

Sara and Manda had barely sipped their beers but were already fronting like they had tied one on.

"Know who I miss?" asked Sara.

"Who do you miss?" asked Manda.

"I miss Hy," said Sara.

"Me, too," said Manda.

I grunted and gulped more beer. I don’t know why, but for a split second I thought Sara was going to say,Hope. I miss Hope. It’s probably because I hadn’t really given Hy’s disappearance a second thought, while I can’t for the life of me forget that Hope is gone. The thing is, if Sara had said,I miss Hope , I would have coldcocked her with my beer can.

"Hy was for real, you know?" said Manda.

"Her aunt said she wasquote going back to where she belongsunquote."

That got my attention.

"What? What does that mean?"

"I think it means she’s back in the city," Sara said.

"Why wouldn’t she tell us?" I asked.

"Maybe she was embarrassed, you know, after all the bad stuff she said about the stuck-up girls she went to school with," mused Sara. "She didn’t want to face us."

I chucked my can into the garbage and grabbed another.

The "conversations" that followed aren’t worth going into in detail.

Manda wondered if Bridget would act all stuck up when she got back from L.A. When she went off in search of Burke, I tossed that can away and grabbed another.

Between swigs of Beast, Sara bragged about losing two and a half pounds on the first day of her new lemon-water diet.

I needed to block out what was going on around me.

Another beer.

Then two more.

I was halfway through my sixth when I saw him.

Him.

Paul Parlipiano.

"JESUS CHRIST!" I screamed in Sara’s face, the way only an obnoxious boozer can. "IT’S PAUL PARLIPIANO!"

I clamped my hands over my mouth.

"OMIGOD!OMIGOD!OMIGOD! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!" screamed Sara, blowing my hair back. "YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH HIM!"

I clamped my hands overher mouth.

"SHHHHHHHHH …" I slurred. "You did not."

"I did too."

"You did not."

"I did too."

This went on in circles for a while, as drunken conversations tend to do.

"I’m just happy you’re not a lesbo," she said, finally, bringing the circle to a dead stop.

"You think I’m a lesbian?!"

"Omigod! Not me!"

"Then who? And why?"

"There has been talk, Jess," she said, "I mean, you’re aJockette, and you haven’t so much as kissed a boy since you went out with Scotty in eighth grade."

"I have too!" I said, reluctantly remembering Cal. "I just didn’t tell you about it."

"Let me guess, he lives in Canada, right?" Sara said. "Niagara Falls area. I wouldn’t know him."

A nineteen-year-old computer genius/college dropout in Seattle didn’t sound much more credible. I didn’t even know what to say. I mean,me ? Avagitarian ?

"Hey,I’m the one who defended your heterosexuality, so don’t get pissed at me," Sara said with that all-knowing tone I love to hate. "I’mthe one who pointed out to everyone how you faint dead away whenever someone so much as says the wordsPaul Parlipiano . So I did too know you were in love with him. I know it just like I knew that Manda and Burke were banging all summer, before I caught them.…"

Then she clampedher hands overher mouth.

Holy shit!

"Omigod! You can’t say anything!" begged Sara.

I was too stunned to say anything. Manda has been banging Burke all summer. Christ. It’s one thing tosuspect the worst about someone. But it’s quite another for that low-down dogginess to be confirmed by a very reliable source.

"I promised Manda I wouldn’t say anything. And if Bridget finds out …" She started to hop up and down in a panic, much like I had moments before. "Omigod! Fuck! Promise you won’t tell Bridget! Or Manda! Or anyone! Omigod! Fuck!"

I looked for Paul Parlipiano. He was so beautiful. So pure. So … everything.

"Jess! Swear you won’t say anything!"

I needed to see him.

"I really don’t want to think about this right now," I said, meaning every word with the kind of conviction that only copious amounts of alcohol can bring. "Because Paul Parlipiano and I are at the same party for the first time ever and …"

I was silenced by the sight of him. There he was, not ten feet away, sitting cross-legged in the sand, sipping his beer, carrying on what seemed to be a perfectly intelligent convo with a Trekkish geek …

YESSSSSSSSS! HE’S NOT WITH A GIRL. Paul Parlipiano is confident enough with his own popularity to hang with a herb. That makes him ever so endearing. And approachable,I thought. Or I might have said this all out loud. I’m not sure. This is where my alcoholic amnesia starts to kick in. All I know is that my beer-buzzed brain started babbling about truths that I would have never believed had I not been under the influence of mind-altering chemicals. Not that drinking is an excuse for what happened.

Okay. Itis an excuse. But it’s a lame one.

Fate brought me and Paul Parlipiano to the same suck-ass beach party.

He’s leaving for college—it’s my last chance EVER to tell him how I feel.

If I don’t tell him, I will live in agony, then die alone.

I must tell him.

"Excuse me," I said, brushing by Sara, who was still begging. "I have a life to live."

And thus began what is by far the most horrendous chain of events in my young, semitortured life.

I remember checking out my appearance in the side mirror of a car parked nearby.

I remember thinking that as long as my hair looked good, Paul Parlipiano would have no idea that I was blitzed.

I remember thinking that my hair looked good.

I remember stumbling over to Paul Parlipiano and plopping myself down in the sand between him and Trekkie.

I remember saying,Heeeeeeyyyyy and Paul Parlipiano sayingHey right back and Trekkie saying nothing before getting up and walking away.

I remember him saying,You’re on the track team. Jessica, right?

I remember bonfire flames lighting up his face.

I remember a lightning bolt shooting straight to my crotch. Sha-ZAM!

I remember telling him about how I admired his smoothness and grace as he jumped over the hurdles OneTwoThreeAIR and the time I heard him cheering for me and how I couldn’t believe it because that meant that I existed in his world if only for a short while but it meant so much to me because I respected and yes even loved him even though logic and reason told me I had no business feeling that way about him but I didn’t care no I loved him and I wanted him to know it not because I expected him to reciprocate even though I really really wanted him to but because if someone ever loved me in that pure way I would want to know about it.…

I remember him smiling an I’m-embarrassed-for-you smile.

I remember acid swirling in my stomach.

I remember him saying words I’ll never forget:You only think you love me. If you knew me, you’d know better.

Blackout.

I woke up this morning on Sara’s bedroom floor with no memory of anything after that. Unfortunately, Sara gleefully filled in the Grand Canyon–size gap in my memory.

All you really need to know is this one horrifying thing:

I puked on Paul Parlipiano’s shoes.

After I pledged my love, but before I passed out.

I, Jessica Darling, puked on Paul Parlipiano’s shoes.

the nineteenth

I puked on his shoes.

I PUKED ON PAUL PARLIPIANO’S SHOES.

I will be forever immortalized in Paul Parlipiano’s mind as The Drunk Girl Who Puked on My Shoes.

I want to die. And not being able to tell Hope makes it even worse. I know she wouldn’t approve of my boozy idiocy. And she certainly wouldn’t give me the sympathy I need right now.

the twenty-second

Tonight was my last night of work. It rained, so it was dead. I had a lot of time to mull over my mortification in new and creative ways.

Paul Parlipiano is at Columbia now. I will surely be a subject in his can-you-top-this? getting-to-know-you storytelling sessions. I imagine him in his dorm, surrounded by new friends:You think that’s bad? Right before I left for school, this drunk girl I’d never talked to before in my life pledged her undying love, then puked on my shoes. SHE PUKED ON MY SHOES!

When torturing myself in this manner became exhaustive, I worried about what to tell Bridget about Manda and Burke’s Summer of Skankitude (S.O.S.). I still don’t know the answer. I don’t want to be mixed up in this gruesome mess. Then again, it’s my own fault. I could’ve said no. Instead, I made a promise—albeit reluctantly, and to someone I’m not even that close to anymore—and I feel obligated to follow through on it.

Plus, I think Bridget has a right to know that Manda picked her boyfriend as the lucky winner in the Devirginization Sweepstakes.

I’m seriously sickened by the whole thing. I know this is sexist and totally supports the stud–whore double standard for guys and girls and all, but I’m more mad at Manda than Burke. I mean, it’s agiven that guys don’t have as much self-control as girls. They can’t help but pop insta-chubbies. But how psychologically messed up is Manda? She refuses to have sex with any of herown boyfriends, then snakes her best friend’s man? I never liked Manda much, but now I can’t look at her without wanting to hose her down with Lysol.

Maybe Burke and Manda will take the high road and tell Bridget themselves. But I think my best bet is Sara: She’s never kept a secret before. Why should this one be any different? And there still is the teensy-weensiest chance that Sara got this one wrong. Hey, you never know.

Needless to say, that occupied my mind for a while. When I got too tired to worry about it anymore, I simply stared at the Wacky for Tobacky cigarette stand located right next to mine.

"SMOKE YOUR BRAINS OUT!"

The cigarette-stand crowd never ceases to amaze me. The winners of the packs of their choice jump, holler, and high-five with unparalleled intensity, even by the boardwalk’s standards. They seem to forget that for the amount of quarters they bet, they could have purchased a carton, but I guess it was the thrill of victory that had them breaking dollar after dollar for change.

"TEEEEEBAAAAACO! TEEEEEBAAAAACO HEEEEEE-AH!" squawked the boy working the cigarette stand. Tonight he modeled a yellow plastic jacket with a picture of the now-retired phallic Joe Camel printed on the back. It could have melted off his body if the temperature rose above eighty-five degrees. The jacket came up short at his wrists, showing he was at that awkward age when certain body parts grow faster than others. He had the same pathetic smudge of a mustache that Scotty had during our eleven-day relationship. I wanted to tell Cigarette Boy that it was more sickly than sexy and that he should shave it off ASAP.

However, I didn’t tell him that, because all of a sudden, I had to know if Cigarette Boy had a girlfriend. I waited for him to start the wheel. It had all the months of the year on it, separated by the four seasons. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. It was the best cigarette odds on the boardwalk.

"Hey! At the cigarette stand!" About ten smokers turned away from the wheel to look at me. The boy did not.

"Notyou . The kid who works it," I yelled above the cacophony.

The smokers turned back to the wheel. The boy looked at me but said nothing. He’s not allowed to talk beyond the bark for customers once he’s behind the counter.

"Yes. Cigarette Boy. You. Do you have a girlfriend?"

Confusion clouded his face first. Then he started to look smug. It was the smug look of a fourteen-year-old who had an older chick obviously hot for his bod.

"I’m not making the moves on you," I said impatiently.

He slumped.

"Quick. Do you have a girlfriend?"

He nodded.

I thought about me and Scotty, Bridget and Burke, Sid and Myrna, and I grieved for this boy’s future. I didn’t want to see him several summers from then, with his Myrna tattooed on his arm, mourning his lost love, cone after chocolate cone.

Break up,I wanted to beg.Before you’re in too deep.

But I couldn’t get it out.

The spinner stopped on Fall. The winners rejoiced. The losers slapped down more quarters. They tried again. The years on the wheel whizzed by.

the twenty-third

Today is Hope’s birthday. I couldn’t contain my excitement when the phone rang. I ran to pick it up because I thought it might be her. Caller ID flashed anUnavailable warning that I ignored. Thus, the following conversation is my own fault.

"Jayssseeecahhh! Eeet’s meee!"

I almost hung up. "Who is this?"

"Eeet’s Baythahhhhneeee."

I should have known that after honeymooning in Europe for a month, my sister would adopt some bizarro affected accent.

"How aaahhhrrr yooo?"

Crackly static interrupted me before I could utter a clichéd phrase.

"Saaahhhree. Ahm own mah cehlee."

Her cellie. Of course. I bet she has them in all different colors, to coordinate with her outfits, or her cars. Apparently, the stock-market crash hasn’t cramped her style.

"Eeeeesss Mowthair thair?"

"Uh, no."

"Whaaahhht ahh peetee."

"Huh?"

"Whaaahht ahh peetee."

What a pity. Jesus Christ. This was worse than Madonna afterEvita .

"Pleeeze geev hair theees maysaaahhhg."

"Sure," I said. "If I can translate it."

"Whaaahht?"

"Nothing."

"Grahnt ahnd ah cahnnot cohm tooo veeseet forrrrh Labohrrrrrr Dayee."

I personally could care less if G-Money and my sister couldn’t make it out for Labor Day. But my mother would be crushed. It’s all I’ve heard about since the wedding.

"No way," I said. "You tell her. She’s showing a house right now but should be …"

"Nooo caaahhhn doo," she said. "Ahm own mah waaaayeee tooo theee aaahhhrrrpohhhrt. Ah hahv a flaht too [static] … Ahm brayking uhp [more static] …"

And that was it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the static was fake and she was just making phlegm-hocking noises in the phone just to stop talking to me. I mean, I know she’s got eleven years on me, but she’s that immature.

When I told my mother the news, she tried to shrug it off—My daughter, the jet-setter—but I could tell that she was upset by the way she was violently chopping vegetables for dinner.

"It’s okay to get mad," I said.

"Who me, mad?" she said, beheading lettuce. WHACK!

"You seem to have no problem getting mad at me," I said.

"That’s because you provoke me on purpose," she said, tearing its leaves, limb by limb.

"I don’t provoke you!" I retaliated. "How doI provokeyou ?" If anything it was the other way around.

"You provoke me by asking questions like, ’How do I provoke you?’," she said. "Now please stop provoking me and give me some peace and quiet."

As you wish, oh blond one.

By the way, when Hope did call, she said she loves her CD. This does wonders for my psyche. But living in this house, sometimes Hope’s phone calls aren’t enough to distract me from my self-inflicted misery.

the twenty-ninth