The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (3 page)

Our conversations started out pretty casually at first, but they escalated quickly. And then he made the first move.

redbeard19:
what are you wearing?

SuGaLuv112:
a tank top and shorts

By then, I knew how to play the game. I had been asked the question via IM multiple times enough to know that a T-shirt, baggy jeans, and sneakers wasn’t sexy enough. With redbeard19, I was slightly seasoned, and he only helped me to get better. He taught me so much about what ideal sex was supposed to be, what I could expect from future relationships. This was the prelude to sexting. The crazy part is, nothing about this turned me on. It was a learning experience for me. I would type what guys wanted to hear, while reading Spider-Man comic books or as
Tiny Toon Adventures
played in the background, satisfied that, while most of my peers were still virgins, at age twelve, I was mastering the art of cybersex.

After that first time, I started to feel a sense of guilt. In the classroom, I was anxious, worried that eyes were on me. I started to wonder if what I did was wrong. What would my teachers think if they knew? My parents? Could people tell? Did I look different?

One day in the spring, I sat in Ms. Frank’s English class, unusually quiet. The teacher’s pet, I owned this class. She reminded the class of that often, which only escalated their hatred of me. But that day, sick and in pain, I just didn’t feel well. It was as if the butterflies inside my stomach had turned into dark moths, with razor-sharp antennas that were poking my sides and my midsection. I felt nauseous and dizzy. What was happening to me? I hadn’t even had real sex!

Ms. Frank excused me to the nurse’s office and I clutched my stomach and my throbbing head, worried about my pending diagnosis. I stopped at the restroom first to see if maybe I was experiencing a case of lunch food poisoning. And in that bathroom stall I discovered that, just like “Sally” in the Sex-Ed section of the Health textbook we had studied that winter, my body had begun to succumb to its transition to womanhood. Or as I thought at the time,
Ew gross, my vag is bleeding
.

I told the nurse I’d just gotten my period and she was super sympathetic, asking me if I wanted to go home. I did. I called my mother, who was transitioning into her new role as a stay-at-home mom and whispered my news into the phone.

“Mom, I got my pe . . .”

“What? Are you at school?”

“I don’t feel good.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I got my period.”

“Aww. My schubalubbalubba. I’m coming.”

During the car ride home, as my mom snuck peeks at me and patted my leg for comfort, I wondered if I were being punished for my “fast” behavior. In Health class, we learned that a girl’s period typically came around the time she was a teenager. I had just turned
twelve. I was in a rush to grow up, but I didn’t know if I wanted to be “grown” yet. I didn’t want to be a woman, because that meant more responsibilities and expectations, and I was way too lazy for responsibilities and expectations. But then, my mom assuaged my worries with a simple declaration that changed everything for me.

“Guess you’re a teenager now.”

To hell with being a woman, I was a
teenager
. Teenagers like the kids on
90210
and
Saved by the Bell.
Finally! That was the missing link of my identity, and this bloody punctuation served as a head start to my new identity. I was a horny teenager.

My relationship with redbeard19 progressed as scanners became more readily available and he sent me a picture. He was nervous to do so, but he felt like I should see him. I was so excited. But also nervous. By then, I’d had several online flings here and there, but he was the only one with whom I had something “real.” Also up until then, his face was an open canvas. It could change depending on what he said, or my mood. He wasn’t a fully real person to me, with real feelings and real desires. He could have been lying to me in the same way that I was lying to him. We both could have had
Tiny Toons
on our television screens, scrambling to come up with novel sex words to stimulate each other. But the picture he sent demonstrated to me two things: 1) he was pretty damn honest—he appeared just as he said he would, and 2) he was actually kind of cute.

Something about our relationship wasn’t the same after that. I felt like a fraud, and I was kind of turned off by how vulnerable he’d made himself. I stopped becoming available to him at the same time every day. I’d block him whenever I felt like prowling for new people to talk to, then unblock him when I was bored. He grew hurt and needy, and I grew disgusted and cold.

redbeard19:
what are you wearing today, baby?

SuGaLuv112:
clothes.

redbeard19:
take them off.

[
5 minutes later
]

redbeard19:
u still there?

SuGaLuv112:
sorry, was on the phone.

redbeard19:
you don’t have time for me anymore

SuGaLuv112 has signed off.

After that, I kept him blocked. By now, I was becoming a pro. Some kids had after-school sports, some had piano lessons, but “cybering” was now my after-school activity of choice. And for the most part, it felt safe. I wasn’t “doing it” for real, so I was still pure. My actions were justified because I could still wear white for my future wedding (which, as with Zack and Kelly, would probably happen in college).

Now, pictures became a priority for me. If you didn’t have a picture, I wasn’t interested. As the most beautiful and sexy girl on the internet, I had a right to be picky. Not too much later, I met the guy of my dreams online. He sent me his picture after we got into a casual conversation about music. He was twenty-two, Italian, and black. He was one of the finest guys I had ever seen in my
life
, much less online. And he had multiple pictures of himself, so I knew it was real. Or was it? Thinking back, he sent me some very polished pictures—very modelesque. But whatever—he was real to me. I know he was real because he said he was Italian and black. And when we spoke on the phone, for the first time, he sounded like he was Italian and black; a Luigi-and-Tyrone hybrid, if you will.

His voice was so freaking sexy, though. I can’t recall what
we would have talked about, what kind of engaging conversation starters came out of my twelve-year-old mouth. I just remember wondering why such a hottie like him was looking for people to talk to online. He seemed like the kind of guy who people would go out of their way to talk to. Just when I began to convince myself that this hot guy was courting me for me, he started pressing me for a picture.
Shit
. I had insisted that I didn’t have a scanner in the past, but in an effort to keep him around, so he wouldn’t get bored with me, I told him I planned to get one, just for him. So began the search. I’d have to do my best to find a picture that matched the description I gave him. He already thought I was eighteen. He thought I was African-American and light-skinned with long hair. So, thankfully, those nonspecifics gave me lots of options.

I don’t remember where or how I found the picture—but she was gorgeous. She was who I wished I looked like. She looked like she could have been mixed race. My middle school peers would be all over her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I printed her picture out and told all the guys she was my cousin. “
That’s
your cousin?! What side of the family? Where does she live?”

I sent him the picture, holding my breath. Would he believe me? Boy, did he! He was awestruck and excited, as if he’d hit the online jackpot. His interest in me grew: What did I do? Did I model? Was I dating? It felt amazing to be so beautiful. I envied the life of the real girl whose picture I stole. Did she know how lucky she had it? How easy her life was because she was so beautiful? And then the Blatalian wanted more. Maybe he was suspicious. Maybe he, too, felt like it was too good to be true. “Send me another picture,” he demanded one day.

My heart started racing. How was I going to find another picture to send him? Since I was now supposedly the proud owner of a scan
ner, I had no excuse. So I went on another online scavenger hunt, this time to try to find a girl who resembled the fake me. I found one; she was light-skinned with curly hair and posed in the shower, half-naked. She looked like she could have been partially Asian. But the initial picture I sent him was black-and-white and the new picture of the girl in the shower was in black-and-white, so I figured that he wouldn’t know the difference.

I was wrong. He confronted me on the phone. Partly amused, partly miffed.

“That’s not your real picture, is it.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You look like two completely different people.”

“People always tell me that when I curl my hair.”

“I don’t think either of these pictures are you.”

“Yes, they are.”

Not willing to argue with me about my fake identity, he pleasantly let me go. Ultimately, he stopped talking to me altogether. Lesson learned.

Eventually, the online conversations and fake adult sex no longer filled the void that my socially inactive middle school life had left wide open. My friends were being asked out. People were coupling up, and I was left with my lies and my fake personas. I needed someone to like me for me. Or at least who I pretended to be
in person
.

FAT

A
ccording to everything I read in both women’s and health magazines (those must be right, right?), I can look forward to obesity, diabetes, and horrible skin. That’s my prognosis, should I continue to indulge my food addiction. I’d like to blame it on the “new money,” i.e. money I’m now earning on my own as opposed to the money my parents have had to float me until recently—but even when I had
no
money, I still found a way to satiate my appetite for eating out. It’s probably my mom’s fault. After eighteen years of being limited to Fast Food Fridays (and sometimes Saturdays), I became obsessed with dining out. All the kids and teens on television had those hangout spots where they ate after-school junk food: The Max, The Peach Pit, The Honker Burger . . . the list goes on. Denied that as a kid, I
live
for social eating and, sometimes, solo social eating. (If people are around, people on my television screen included, that qualifies as “social eating” in my book.)

If conversation is something I dread, eating is something I look forward to. I wake up excited for breakfast, which is, hands
down, my favorite meal of the day. Sometimes, at dinner, I fantasize about what I’m going to eat for breakfast the next morning. If it’s the weekend, then I’ll spend an hour or two reading glowing Yelp reviews as I research new brunch places. That’s just my life.

Even during my financially challenged days, when my fridge was practically empty, I always had an abundance of either milk or eggs—both, on a pay week—which meant cereal, omelettes, and/or pancakes were always an option. And during those super-lazy and broke breakfast moments, when all I had were slices of bread and eggs—French toast! The homemade variety is a rare breakfast indulgence for me, as my mom treated French toast as a food of last resort, using the ends of the bread loaves she’d kept in the freezer for Thanksgiving stuffing to make hers. It was good, but I’ve definitely bitten into some freezer-burned French toast, much to my offense.

Moving to Los Angeles instigated another present-day fatty food obsession: Mexican food. Tortillas and beans and cheese—oh my! So much cheese. So many nachos. So many artery-clogging, delectable, filling foods that don’t even exist in Mexico. Whoever concocted these “Mexican” treats, I love you.

Food is my destination, my journey, my reward, my friend—if only my metabolism matched that of the skinny, crackhead-bodied girls of my high school. How lucky they were! Many of them grew up to be the women who, even when pregnant, looked as if they had only protruding Tic Tacs in their stomachs, women who consumed food regardless of starch or sugar content without gaining an ounce. If my self-esteem weren’t directly correlated to my BMI, my love affair with food would be positively nurturing. I could flaunt my love affair on Facebook and Instagram without shame, posting pictures of myself cuddled up with food. It would be a beautiful life.

But alas, in reality, I’m in a self-inflicted abusive relationship. I’m that thirsty girl who constantly checks for her “man,” wondering about his whereabouts, desperate to see him again. Ironically, if I treated my food like I did my real-life relationships, I’d eat only when hungry. With my true love, food, I embarrass myself to no end to get its attention. As a result, my weight has fluctuated my entire life. In my high school and college years, I was in the plus-or-minus-ten-pounds range. In the latter half of my twenties, I’ve been more along the lines of the plus-or-minus-thirty-pounds range. What the hell is that? Why do I deserve that? Because as we women age our hormones change? Is that it? Mother F-You Nature.

As I write this, sipping on a vanilla milkshake from The Melt, I’m currently stretching the seams of the plus-thirty end of the spectrum and it is truly disgusting. I’ve resolved many times to force myself to get a grip, exercise, and eat right. “Don’t turn into Kirstie Alley” is my personal mantra. As of late, I can last for six days maximum before I wild the fuck out. There’s always a social gathering, an event, a Red Lobster commercial to expose my thinly veiled self-promises for what they really are: pathetic lies.

I have a plethora of self-esteem-damaging stories that should have put me on the straight-and-narrow path toward weight loss. And for a brief moment, they probably did. Like the time in seventh grade when my grandfather was set to pick me up after school because my mom was going to be stuck at the school where she taught French until late that evening. Despite knowing he was fastidiously punctual, I assumed that things would be different this time. I was in a new private school in Brentwood, California. The moving parking lot known as the 405 freeway was the most practical route to get to my school. Sure, you could take the streets if stop-and-go traffic made you feel more efficient, but the 405 was typically unavoidable.
Getting to Barrington by three in the afternoon would be difficult, I reasoned.