The Muse (4 page)

I often wondered if my bullies thought about me and wrestled with conflict over what they did to me back then. The intelligent adult in me understood their actions were marred in fear. The inner young lady who never got to dress up for prom, go on a date, experience a first kiss, still shook and ground her teeth at the loss of it all. Now, as an adult, my life sped by, and time, my big enemy, stomped down on me, robbing me of experiences.

I dreamt of a day I would arrive at their houses and spray paint their pretty faces and clothes, toss mud at them, flatten their tires, and of course, punch each one of them square in the eye and laugh as I watched their eye turn black as mine did so many times. The ultimate would be to sneak up behind each one of them and cut off their hair just like they did to me every three months or so in class. I’d love to see how they’d deal with raggedy edges.

Actually, the ultimate revenge would be to emerge as a successful writer and show up holding my head high, my name now famous—my badge of honor, my gun, my spray painter, my scissors—and surprise the prettiness right out of each and every one of them. I, Jane Knoll, despite being bullied and attacked and treated worse than a rat in a New York City alleyway, would be somebody they’d want to know now.

I mentally carved out my dream. Of course after receiving enough hurtful rejection letters for magazine articles to wallpaper a house, this dream took a back seat. I didn’t totally abandon the idea. I just put it to rest for a while until I could figure out a way not to break into a fit of tears every time I got rejected. Without a dream, what would be left? Sweet potatoes drowning in brown sugar and melted butter? Television show marathons for the rest of my life? More visions of Larry imploding from my sad, teenage stories?

I needed this dream to wake back up. This dream would restore me to the girl I used to be. It had to.

# #

When I returned home to my empty condo that afternoon, I headed to my laptop and landed back on Eva’s Twitter account. I read through her tweets and got sucked in by her wit. She played with followers, stringing them along with short musings, clueless that the girl from the bathroom stall who knew about her mismatched shoes reveled in snooping in on her.

So, I did what any other bumbling, hormonal idiot would do and tiptoed through her profile, through her mentions, through her Twitter feed, through her followers list, through her following list, through her random images, and sank into a warm and gooey crush I couldn’t squash. I needed to learn more about her.

I stared long and hard into her deep, dark eyes and welcomed in the flutters. She sucked me into her soul with those eyes. I sat helpless and vulnerable on my stool, a victim to the beginning stages of a crush that would tempt me, dance on my heart, and prey on my romantic weaknesses in the middle of the night.

I could be anyone to her from the safety of my computer. I could turn myself into a gorgeous babe with a flirty side that twirled her heart and sent her off into the land of flutters and tingles, too. This sent me reeling.

This could be fun.

A switch clicked in me. A challenge erupted. A jolt of what could be electrified me.

I would reinvent myself and tease her about hating Old Bay seasoning. Goodbye @jktwitter. Hello new self.

Who did I want to be? Rich? Fit? A published writer? A traveler? What a fun article this could turn into for a high profile magazine—an experiment in social networking where shy girls got a chance to have some fun from behind the protective barrier of a computer screen and whether this enhanced their pathetic lives.

If anyone’s life was worth testing, it was mine. All in the name of experimental research.

Sitting on my stool, still uncomfortable in my skirt that was a dress size too small, I set out to create my brand new Twitter account; one that marketing wouldn’t recognize; one that I could bait Eva Handel with about her hating Old Bay seasoning.

I stared at the blank fields that asked for a username and password. What could I call myself? Something cool. I needed something edgy. Something that sounded sexy. Something that would pique Eva’s attention. Something daring. Something bold.

Ten minutes later, after rifling through my thesaurus for different takes on sexy, bold, edgy and cool, I decided on @CarefreeJanie.

Someone stop me. I was so original and creative I astounded myself at times.

I needed a picture.

An egghead wouldn’t do.

I clicked through some of my photo albums. I was such a dork. My hair always looked like I needed a highlight, even though I’d never had a highlight in my life. My eyebrows were far too light. I was twenty pounds too heavy.

I needed sexy, alluring, desirable.

I took advantage of the magic of the internet and searched Google images.
Why not use the tool if it handed itself to me?
If I were on a deserted island and needed to construct a raft, and wreckage of my downed plane floated past me, you bet I’d improvise and mold that wreckage into something useful. Plane wreckage, images, eh same thing—both tools in a worthy pursuit.

I scanned. Perhaps I could go with something artsy, like a book. Or something sensual, like a curvy leaf. I scanned stock photography and plugged in the words sensual, cool, edgy, sexy, daring and bold. The erotic choices stunned me. Clearly, I’d been living under a rock.

In the soft glow of my living room, I scrolled through the breasts, the thonged butts, and the voluptuous curves that ran rampant across my screen. I scanned page after page of nudity and insanity before landing on an adorable animated picture of a pretty girl partially hidden behind a Victorian fan.

In my bio, I played myself up. I was a lover of words, of risks, of playful debates. I, Victorian-fan-waving @CarefreeJanie, was someone fresh, someone fearless, and someone interesting.

Once complete, I tweeted to Eva Handel, “How can you possibly hate Old Bay seasoning?”

I waited for twenty minutes in front of my computer, staring at it, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, I closed my laptop, stood up on an exhale and pushed back, away from Twitter, away from the obsession of wondering what she’d say back, away from the ridiculous notion that she’d even care that someone named @CarefreeJanie wanted to know why she hated Old Bay seasoning.

I washed my dinner dishes slowly, caressing the handle of my scrub brush as I slid it in and out of my coffee tumbler, watching as suds piled up the sides of it and overflowed in a frothy mess down the white ceramic of my kitchen sink. I’d always enjoyed the simple pleasures of performing acts like this. They calmed me, centered me, and expanded my presence in my small kitchen nook, placing me in the path of something grander than I was in the life I led outside these walls.

My lemon colored walls, with their daisy flowers sprinkled around the border, had always cradled me in peace, blocking out the gray world that existed outside where people yelled, honked horns, and chucked each other the bird. In my small kitchen, I was safe and free to enjoy the simplicity of running water, of fresh-smelling bubbles, of green ivy leaves waving at me from the window sill.

Oh yes, my life was one big joy fest being obsessed over domesticated novelties and now possible tweets from Eva Handel.

Chapter Three

The following night was laundry night. Every Wednesday I gathered my dirty clothes and lugged them down the condo steps and out to Larry’s car. I hated doing laundry on Wednesday nights because it got in the way of my favorite show,
American Idol
.

Larry could only do laundry night on Wednesdays because he over-committed himself every other night. When I told him no way, that I’d be doing my laundry on Saturdays like the rest of the people do in the town of Elkridge, he got down on one of his scrawny knees and begged me not to leave him alone to face the cockroaches.

Of all people’s legs to land on, a cockroach had to land right smack on Larry’s leg one time out of a thousand that he’d visited the laundromat.

The ordeal went down like this: Larry sat in one of the hard, plastic orange chairs, reading Jeannette Wall’s memoir,
The Glass Castle
, when something crawled on him. He looked down at his leg and a big, fat cockroach, with antennae at least an inch long twitching and fluttering about, crawled on him. He jumped up, flung his book and ran out of the laundromat screaming. When he arrived banging at my front door, he looked as if someone had chased him for miles through the town. He panted like an overheated dog, sweating and convulsing, trying to catch his breath. “I need your help,” he said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “You need to come with me.”

Without blinking, I reached for my keys. I forgot about the boiling water on the stovetop, about the garlic bread in the oven, about the marinara sauce simmering, and followed him. If I was one thing, I was Larry’s saving grace in situations that I could handle and he couldn’t. He’d never put me in front of an obnoxious crowd or ask me to fight on his behalf. He only ran to me for help if a bug threatened him. I followed him down the exterior steps to our parking lot and straight to his waxed, cherry red Lexus.

“Where is it?” I asked him, reaching for the car keys, ready to tackle the bug with bare hands.

“At ABC Wash Center.” He handed me the keys. “I’m sure it’s long gone by now, the ugly bugger.” He shivered, wiggling with such force, his teeth rattled. “I need you to pull my clothes out of the dryer. I left them there.”

Not until I arrived at the laundromat ten minutes later did I realize I had forgotten my dinner cooking on the burner.

A year later, Larry still refused to step foot in that place without my trusty bug-swatting self by his side. Ask him to stand in front of a crowd of people and talk about the first thing that came to mind, no problem. Ask him to call the cable company and complain about poor reception, not an issue. Ask him to accompany me to a work party so I didn’t stand like a complete ass by myself, and he strolled in like he owned the company, chatting it up with the company executives about golf games and fine cigars. Ask him to walk by an ant on the sidewalk and he squealed like a girl wearing a tutu, catapulting all of his one-hundred-seventy pounds into my arms.

I loved him anyway. My sweet friend Larry.

He arrived at my front door carrying his netted laundry bag over his shoulder like a satchel of presents. I closed up my laptop, disappointed Eva hadn’t replied to my playful tweet, but still smiling for Larry.

He needed me. For that I needed to remain grateful. If Larry didn’t exist in this world, no one would care if I lived and breathed, laughed or cried. Larry needed me. This carried a greater purpose than a tweet I had only just sent twenty-four hours prior to a girl way out of my league and even out of CarefreeJanie’s league.

We spent our two-hour laundering session talking about Larry’s LGBT youth center. A group of philanthropists opened the LGBT center in an old church, and over a year’s time it had grown into a safe haven hang out for at-risk kids. The center included an expansive library of books and movies, a basketball court, an art center, and a meeting hall. Apparently, one of the kids played guitar and offered Larry lessons at the center. Poor Larry tried many new things and never quite mastered any of them. “He’s teaching me ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ He says everyone can play that.” I nodded to this and swallowed my sarcastic remark.

“So, tell me more about this new man in your life.” I folded the sleeve of my shirt over the other without taking my eye from my friend.

“Tim looks like a younger version of Pierce Bronson.” Larry caught his breath, shook his head and gathered enough control to continue. “When I tell you his eyes melted right through me the first time I met him, I’m not lying.” He blew out an exhale. He looked about ready to cave into a moment. He plucked up matching socks and folded them together, tossing them into his netted bag.

“So, is he the real deal or another heartbreak we’ll need to mend?”

Larry cranked his head towards me so quickly that he could’ve broken his neck right off of his shoulders. “No raining on my parade here. This guy is perfect for me.”