Josh called and woke me up at 8:30 AM the morning after Spider-Man 3 was released. I thought he was calling that early to apologize first thing for being the Worst Gay Best Friend Ever, which I called him on the day before in contemporary cinema class.

“You never even said you liked my new dress!” I feigned resentment. “I could get myself a real boyfriend who holds the door open for me and pays when we go out if I wanted my clothing choices to be ignored.”

“I honestly didn’t notice!” Josh tugs at my hair, “I’m sorry!”

“Worst gay best friend ever!” I joke and he laughs as Ryan, the boy that both Josh and I are lusting after, strains his neck until his veins bulge to watch the commotion. I can’t tell if he’s looking at us because he heard me say Josh is gay and now he knows we’re just friends so he’s free to date me or because he heard me say Josh is gay so now he knows we’re just friends and he can date Josh. Ryan’s hair, perfectly tousled in that popular Queer-Eye for the Straight Guy kind of way, told me it could very well go either direction.

Josh notices Ryan eavesdropping and eyes me, sending me his thought bubble; Do you think he’s gay or straight?

I send him one back in the form of a shrug; He’s hot. I hope he’s straight.

I sure as hell hoped he was straight. I had dated three guys in my whole life and they all ended up being gay just months after we stopped seeing each other. Three was a tragically pathetic number anyway in the dating realm, and it was made only more embarrassing by the fact that none of these guys actually liked girls. Yet, they all dated me during their journey to Gay Town. I like to think it’s because I have really amazing hair and they just couldn’t resist. Josh turns towards me and leans in to whisper, “I just can’t tell!”

“Me either,” I say back, then add, “But if he’s gay, you can have him.”

“Oh, thank you for your permission.”

I give him a nod, “It’s what friends are for.”

“We need a way to find out!” he slaps his recycled wood pencil onto his desk, “And time is running out, our final is on Tuesday!” Josh whines with the lilt of someone who grew up Italian, which, he likes to remind me only every four minutes that he is, “just like the Coppolas!”

I roll my eyes and open up my notebook to a blank page before sliding it over to the questionable boy down the row. “Hey, Ryan?” I ask ever so casually in a very nonchalant manner, almost like I didn’t care, “Josh, Stacy, and I are having a study group for the final,” I throw my friend Stacy’s name in to make it seem less like we are trying to tag-team him and more like we might actually study. “If you want to give me your e-mail address, I’ll let you know when it is so that you can join us?”

“Oh, cool,” He answers and Josh shoots me a look of shame as Ryan fills out his contact information, “Thanks.”

“Mmmhmm,” I answer more to Josh than to Ryan.

After class, Josh grabs my notebook from me, “He has handwriting like a girl!” he squeals, “He’s gay! He must be gay! I can actually read this! And he’s left handed!” Josh adds, “It is a known fact that’s eighty percent of all gay people are left handed. I’m even left handed,” He skips a little through the hallway while holding onto his cloth purse that he fashioned himself out of some blue fabric, “ And I act so straight!”

I take back the notebook as he hops up and down in delight, “That doesn’t prove anything. You can’t base anything on which hand is dominant.”

“Fine,” Josh finally stops bouncing, “We’ll just have to look him up on Myspace.”

The next forty minutes were spent in the school library Googling this guy’s name and his e-mail address only to come up with a baseball player and an up and coming recording artist with the same name. “There has to be something!” I say when the search results came up empty. “Usually after five minutes I at least have an address, a phone number, and an old LiveJournal account.”

Josh shakes his head, “Not even a Facebook. This guy seems to be living under a rock.”

“Maybe he’s hiding something?” I muse. “What a secretive, private, weird little feller,” I say more to myself than to Josh, “God, maybe I don’t want to date him after all. But he’s cute?”

Josh ignores me, “I’ll just e-mail him,” He shrugs.

Without thinking, I grab his hand away from the mouse, then drop it when I think about how if Josh only showers three times a week, I doubt he washes his hands regularly either, “You can’t! You can’t because he gave the address to me so he’ll think we’re stalking him, which we are, but he can’t know that!” I instinctively grab for the Purell inside my bag and smother it on. The familiar smell of rubbing alcohol comforts me.

Josh frowns, “Then, like,” he lets air escape his lips, “I just-I don’t know what else to do.”

I give in a little, “And I guess we DO need to figure out if he’s gay or not…”

Josh nods and begins to type, “I’ll make it sound not creepy. I’ll just invite him to go out to coffee with us tomorrow.”

I mimic Josh’s nods, “Make it sound like he should be our friend because we’re fun,” and as an afterthought I throw in, “And sexy.”

When Josh woke me up I at the very least expected some sort of answer regarding Ryan. “Did I wake you?” Josh wants to know.

“No, nope!” It’s obvious by the way the words croaked out of my throat that I was lying. I open one eye and clear my throat.

“You sure?”

“I don’t have class today,” I grumble as an excuse. “Did he write back?”

“Who?” Josh answers between crunches.

“Uh,” still foggy, I search for his name, “Ryan, that kid.”

“Oh, yeah, no, I don’t think he checks his e-mail.”

Crunch.

“What are you eating?”

“Doritos.”

“OK,” I curl up in my duvet and breathe in. I love the smell of my duvet. I don’t really know why. “What did you call to tell me then?” I ask.

“I saw Spider-Man 3 last night. I was calling to say that Venom was brilliant. And, I was wondering, hey, where are my super powers?” Josh is making reference to the fact that a rattlesnake bit him when he was eight and he wasn’t left with any super powers, much less even a scar. “I mean, seriously now.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You have super powers. You can eat Doritos at 8:30 in the morning and not vomit,” I argue.

“Nah, I’ve just been up all night. I saw the midnight showing and decided it wasn’t worth going to sleep.”

“Of course.”

“Anyway,” he says, “Then I was thinking about it and decided that we should be Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween, because I’m pretty sure my friend Chris is having a Halloween party, and I think it’d be original. So, I’m like, reserving you in advance. Oh, and I’m talking about the film version of them though," he tells me, knowing how I strive to be historically accurate.

"OK," I say, quickly scraping all plans I had for us to go as TomKat, even though I’d been practicing my lazy Katie Holmes side grin since about November. "On one condition though: I get to be Bonnie."

Josh thinks for a moment, crunching on his Doritos. Finally, he lets out a sigh, "Fine, I guess."


Stephanie just wants a non-gay Clyde without Dorito breath.


Obscene And Heard Archives

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Krista is pale, petite, and wearing a deadly shade of red lipstick that makes her look like she just sucked someone’s, probably her boyfriend’s, blood. I don’t judge her even though I exited the I-Vwahnt-To-Be-Alone Greta Garbo stage of my life roughly around the same time N*Sync and Britney Spears became popular. Only through conversation do I realize that we went to high school together and had graduated in the same class and had friends in common except we never even crossed paths once until now.

“I knew, like, everyone,” she says, “I can’t believe I didn’t know you.”
I shrug at her incredulity. It didn’t surprise me. I was barely at school, especially my senior year.

"I was on the school news," I offered. Referring to the in-house ‘news channel’ that offered school information like what was for lunch that day and what cheerleader was nominated for Homecoming queen.
She adjusts herself on her boyfriend's knee. John looks like Keanu Reeves except with eighty more piercings. Earlier that night, five minutes after I met him in the kitchen, I pulled him aside to tell him, "I think your fly is down."
John turns red and feels for the zipper on his jeans, "You think? There was only a fifty/fifty chance!" He's embarrassed. "A fifty/fifty chance!" he repeats then groans as he pulls his zipper up.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I was just doing what I would want someone else to do for me."
He laughs, "No, yeah, thank you for letting me know so I didn't walk around like for that the entire party." He dips his head down a little and checks out my jeans. "Your fly is fine, by the way."

"Were you the one who made fun of Stugo or something?" She asked, entwining her hand with John's.
Krista is referring to the news cast where I told student government to stop sending in tapes about upcoming fundraising events that were boring and ill produced. “At least make them interesting,” I had pleaded, “And then maybe more students will participate in Clown Day or whatever it is you want us to do so you can raise enough money to have senior prom at the zoo again.” The last remark was sarcastic since the year before I had gone to prom at the zoo and it had been disastrous. In addition to mud and stink, a Girl Scout troupe was holding their annual Sleep Over In the Zoo that night, too. Little girls in pajamas ran amok on the dance floor where juniors and seniors traipsed to the same three songs over and over again on a CD player since our DJ had canceled at last moment, taking his security deposit money with him.
“That was like, five Stugo carwashes!” I remember Melissa Pilley, our class president, shrieking in a dress without a back or much of a front that must have been held to her skin by massive amounts of double stick tape.

"Yeah. That was me."
"I never saw you again after that."
"...Yeah."
Stugo wasn’t too happy about my rant.

Krista gave me dish about everyone I never cared about. She told me that this kid I hung out with for about an entire summer was an unstable, creepy stalker who slept outside of her best friend's porch when she was in middle school.
"I thought that was just a rumor?" I ask.
She laughs, "No, it totally happened." She goes on to tell me how he had to practically trick his high school girlfriend into dating him. I can't determine who is more pathetic, him for begging or her for giving in. Then I decide in the long run it’s me, since they were at least getting laid in high school and I wasn’t.

Apparently, I was known as the school bitch, "but everyone still agreed you were funny."
Hell yeah I was.
Am.

You can't really ask for more than that I guess.


Stephanie is currently organizing an FTTW Clown Day to support her ever-increasing Rooster Sauce addiction. Won't you sponsor her?


Obscene And Heard Archives

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“What are you wearing to the concert?” Jane, my hairdresser’s assistant asks as she massages my head. She tilts my head forward and works on my neck. It is quite possibly the nicest feeling in the whole entire world, and I choose not to answer her until she’s done. The head massage is worth the price of the haircut alone. She begins to towel dry my tresses and my voice is muffled through the terry cloth.

“Uh, probably this new dress my mom bought me for my birthday,” I lie. Not about the new dress, that I do have, but I haven’t shaved my legs in about a month, and though I love Gwen Stefani, her concert wasn’t reason enough for me to bust out the four blade Gillete. Jeans and a cute top, what I already had on, seemed just fine to me.

“So cute!” Jane emphasizes the ‘cute’ like she was trying to resell the dress to me after I describe it to her with full girlie disclosure, being sure to use enough Project Runway jargon to sound like I mean it.

It’s not that I don’t like looking nice, but I never understood the twelve-year-olds, or twenty-year-olds for that matter, who glammed up for a dark concert where no one was looking at them. The theatre I understand dressing up for, or the opera, because it is more intimate, but a Britney Spears concert? Madonna? Gwen Stefani? In a big ass arena named after some website? In Arizona? I’m just not so into dressing up for pop concerts. Or the shouting that seems to be required. Or the wooing. I am a very subdued concert goer. As is my sister, so she makes for the perfect concert companion. We may not seem happy, standing with our arms folded across our chests and barely mouthing the words while our heads bob up and down ever so slightly, but we are. We really are. We would just rather listen to Gwen singing, not each other, so we won’t be shouting the words to any songs. It’s just not dignified and should be saved for car rides. We might tap our feet a little, we might sway our hands or clap when asked, but we most certainly will not dance. Not under any condition.

“Who knows what it’s like to live in the gheeeeeettttttttttttttttoooooooo?” Acorn or Akon, a rapper with a reggae vibe asks the audience. Two girls a row ahead of us begin to scream and jump up and down in their matching Juicy Couture sweat suits, a blur of bubblegum pink among the crowd. Akon begins to shout again, “If you know what it’s like to live in the ghetto, lemme hear you say, ‘I know what it’s like to live in the ghetto!’”

“I know what it’s like to live in the ghetto!” the girls scream like Acorn might hear them over everyone else. The two hug their L.A.M.B. bags, no doubt containing cherry flavored lip gloss, a dainty pink derringer, and their Sidekicks so that they can text pictures of the concert to their less privileged girlfriends sitting at home watching The Hills. One girl throws her head back and lets out a cry like someone was stealing the sweat suit right off of her back. Or killing her. “I LOVE YOU!” she finishes the scream off, “YOU ARE SO HOT!” She then continues to sing every word of some song with lyrics about not being the first to die when you are in the ghetto hanging with whatever gang you belong to. My sister and I glare at each other, engaging in a very Jim-to-Camera moment. “I hate them,” my sister shouts into my ear over the music and I nod.

Even when I was like them, I was never like then. Let me put it to you this way; my first concert was The Cher Farewell Tour. Or Comeback tour. One of those. It was as if I grew up as a little gay boy, but I didn’t mind. I like Cher. Now I am the dorky twenty-year-old with earplugs realizing that the opening act –whom I’ve never heard of – for Gwen Stefani –whom I love- is the same guy who “sings” that song on the radio that I hate and change within the first three beats. A mother and I exchange glances and I dig into my purse and give her my extra pair of pink squishy earplugs. She lights up like one of those girls on My Super Sweet Sixteen when they receive the BMW their parents said they would never buy them but we all knew they’d get. It just wouldn’t be an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen unless some spoiled little girl who didn’t have her license yet was gifted with a black SUV. The only difference between those girls and this woman is that she was ever so gracious when I gave her the earplugs and mouthed “thank you”, something I have never heard uttered on My Super Sweet Sixteen.

“I couldn’t get a girlfriend to save my life,” the rapper goes on to say. “I tried everything!”

“OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU SO EFFING MUCH!” The girls in front of us shout while their mother sits stone faced in her seat, looking quite ill. I can just smell the Republican on her. She reeks of McCaine for President donation checks. I wonder how she feels about her little girl being in love with a black man trying to save the Ghetto Lifestyle one luscious booty at a time? Her daughter screams at the top of her lungs toward the stage, “YOU ARE SO HOT!” because she’s been lonely too, and she knows what it’s been like to be lonely in the Ghetto of Life. I guess in that case, I have too. I probably shouldn’t judge the girl. After all, I listen to DMX.


They all gonna make Stephanie act a fool, they all gonna make Stephanie lose her cool.


Obscene And Heard Archives

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Hannah is getting mad because it's "late" and she needs to get home.

"OK," I say, leaning against my car, no doubt getting dirt all over me, "Just let me take one more picture."

I can tell she's mad, but she loves being the center of attention so she gives in, "One more picture."

"One more," I echo as a BMW holding two men pulls into the empty parking spot next to my car. It is so smooth and shiny and black compared to my dust caked Dodge. I want to run my hand over it just to smudge it.

"Hey girls," a man, around thirty who watches too much HBO nods to the group. It is obviously one or both of the men in the car are drunk. "What are you girls up to?" He takes a puff of his cigar. I almost laugh at his New York accent, which is so thick and distinct that it sounds fake.

Hannah is having a small panic attack quietly next to me. Like a good friend, I ignore her.

"Just hanging out," I answer, and eye them suspiciously. The driver winks at me and I shudder. They were the sleaziest looking dirt-bags on the face of the planet.

"That's cool, that's cool. My friend and I here are just looking for some people to hang out with," he nods to the camera hanging around my neck. My new DSLR Nikon D40. My relatively expensive new camera. The “perfect started DSLR” says Wired. And I listened to Wired because Jenna Fisher was on the cover. "You takin' pictures? Here, let me take a picture of you girls together." He puts his cigar back in his mouth and reaches out his hand, but I instinctively begin to clutch my camera, like a mother protecting her baby. And ain’t no one gon’ hurt my baby.

"No, that's OK," I say.

"What?" he asks, adjusting the collar on his white polo shirt so that it was popped, just like that perpetually drunk college student going to State who wishes they were at Stanford and every creepy man going through a mid-life crisis wears it. "You think I'm gonna steal your camera?"

Yes.

He doesn't wait for an answer, "Well, fo-get you! Fo-get yo camera! We're going!" He throws his arms in the air and motions to the driver, "Let's bounce!"

Let's bounce? Doesn't he know it's only cool to say that ironically?

I give him the sideways peace sign, which he probably doesn't realize means "fuck you" in the UK.

"Peace!" he shouts out the window.

"Later, dude," I reply.

Hannah is white as a ghost, "We. Almost. Just. Died."

I roll my eyes and snap a photo. It’s bad and I reposition myself to get a better angle. "No,” I say, “But we almost just had my camera stolen."


After that, Stephanie would never let Hannah borrow her camera.


Obscene And Heard Archives

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“So, whose birthday is it today?” a boy who didn’t look unlike Brandon Davis asks the table but looks directly at my gorgeous friend Michelle beside me. She and Katie giggle and point to me. My two friends told me that I was beginning to prematurely age into a forty-year-old woman, so they took me out to celebrate my birthday about three weeks early at a small Chinese bistro. Davis looks disappointed but keeps up the charade. “And how old are you?” He is still looking at Michelle.

Katie answers for me, “She’s twenty-one! We are all twenty-one!” she lies.

I shoot her a glance and she gives a small shrug that goes unnoticed since the kid, barely twenty-one himself, hasn’t even realized we are sitting at the same table as Michelle.

“I think then that a round of drinks is in order? Let me buy you all a drink.” Greasy Bear turns his direction towards me then back to my friend, “What do you want?”

I turn to Katie. I don’t drink. The only thing I can think of is wine since I spent all of last summer categorizing it for a private collector. I wonder how weird I’ll look ordering a 2005 Bordeaux -a “very good year” according to sources- with a Merlot base that pairs well with Asian cuisine because the richness of the wine balances the bold Asian flavor that I won’t even drink since I hate liquor. “Uh…”

Katie pipes up, “I think a round of Long Island Iced teas.”

I whisper in her ear, “Katie, there isn’t any tea in a Long Island iced tea.”

She whispers back through clenched teeth, “I. Know.”

Greasy Troll scampered off to the bar for us as one of his friends sat down.

“I’m Steve,” he says as he takes a swig of Bud Light. “Who’s having the birthday?” he taps the Superman birthday balloon tied to the open chair next to him.

“Me,” I say and he winks at me.

“Awesome.”

Grease Ball comes back and pulls up a chair, “Uh, girls, we have a small problem here. You are not twenty-one. You are twenty. Frank, the bartender, told me.”

Katie rolls her eyes. It was her fault. She told the whole restaurant she was here to celebrate my twentieth birthday.

“But,” he leans in close to Michelle, “I can still get you the drinks if you want.”

“Do it!” Katie spurts out and he makes his way back to the bar.

I wasn’t sure if she said it because she wanted the liquor or because she wanted the guy to leave our table. I decide not to tell her that she should always get her own drink just in case the guy slips a roofie into the glass, but I figure she doesn’t need me to turn tonight into a ‘very special episode’ of anything.

“So, what do you do?” Katie asks Steve. This is a girl’s way of asking, “So, exactly how much money do you make?”

“I’m in real estate,” Steve says. “So’s Matt,” he points to the slick boy at the bar finagling drinks for us. “We deal up north a lot? Like, in development?”

I nod and pretend I care.

“And like, we work a lot in uh, like Mormon Lake? But, enough about me. What do you ladies do?”

“Mormon Lake?” I ask, “What’s up at Mormon Lake?”

“Um,” Steve blanks, “Mormons?”

Matt comes back to the table carrying our drinks and a beer for himself, “What’s going on ladies?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what they do for a living,” Steve answers. Matt cocks his head and nods to Katie.

“You work in the nursing field,” he says, hitting it dead on, but Katie shakes her head ‘no’.

‘I’m a business major,” she lies, “At NYU.”

“She goes to school with the Olsen twins,” I help her out.

“You’re from New York?” Steve asks her.

“No, well, like, yeah. I’m from New York, but I’m here to visit Stefi.”

“She is here to visit me,” I offer.

“But I’m from New York, but I lived here,” she nods.

Steve nods back, “OK… Where in New York?”

“Hmmm?” Katie asks, then, pretends to stretch and whispers in my ear, “I don’t know places in New York.”

“If you go to NYU, say Manhattan,” I offer.

“Where in New York?” Steve asks again.

“Oh, Manhattan. I love Manhattan!” She answers.

“I know you do!” I joke in a Cuban accent. Nobody laughs.

“How funny was that tonight?” Katie asks later back at her house, still slightly “buzzed” as she said, after drinking the three Long Island iced teas that Matt bought for us since Michelle and I were both driving that night.

“Katie,” I laugh, “You are the worst fucking liar, I swear.”

She looks kind of hurt, and I wonder if she’ll remember this in the morning. “God, really? I thought they believed me.”

“They thought you were drunk,” Michelle pipes up and we turn to look at her. “What?” she shrugs, “It’s true!”

“Hmmm,” Matt looks towards me. I notice his large body is sweating profusely and that his cotton maroon button down shirt wasn’t the best choice in clothing with his apparently anxiety or drug problem. It looks like someone dumped a bucket of water on either side of his body. “You’re just a student.” He nods towards my pink fake Chanel bag. “And you’re Italian.”

“Oh,” I say, “OK.”

He turns again to Michelle, “I can’t tell what you do, but you’re beautiful.”

She just laughs uncomfortably. She doesn’t tell him she’s actually a Budweiser girl. Matt toasts his beer to Steve. “Here’s to taking the week off of work. I work in real estate with Steve,” he says to us, “It’s grueling let me tell ya.” I try to make eye contact with Katie to let her know via ESP that neither of them could possibly work in real estate because they dress like they should be selling us a family share plan from Verizon Wireless. She gives me a small nod to let me know she reads my mind.

“Can I have your business card?” she asks, “My parents are looking to buy up north.”

“Hey, what’d I just say?” Matt winks at her and wipes away sweat from his forehead. “I’m not working this week.”

“Just a card,” Katie pleads. Steve glances at Matt the way I glance at Katie whenever she get herself into some I Love Lucy trouble I don’t think she’ll get out of. Like the time she told the hot guy who worked at Barnes and Noble that she was a lesbian and dating me. I had to have a talk with her after that one.

Matt opens his fake Louie Vuitton wallet and pretends to search for a card. “I guess I am all out,” he says. “But our new cards? Are metal. They are awesome. I did this test, and like, I put the metal business cards on a table and the paper ones on another table? And, like, the metal ones were gone,” he snaps his fingers. “It just sucks ‘cause they tear up your wallet, you know?”

Steve nods, “Yeah, they tear up your wallet.”

“I’m gonna smoke,” Matt announces, standing up from the table. “Anyone else want a cig?”

“Ugh, me,” Steve grabs one from the box and stands up.

The girls and I shake our heads ‘no’.

“Hey, yo, what’s up?” It is quite obvious that he is under the influence of just about everything. “I’m Jared.” He twitches slightly as he extends his hand and we each in turn shake it.

“Whoa,” he says as he shakes Michelle’s hand, “You’re, like, beautiful.”

I get out my hand sanitizer and slather it on.

“I see you are talking to Matt and Steve?” Jared says and takes out a pill box like your grandmother might have for her blood pressure pills and dumps a few pills into his hand.

“Is that PEZ?” I ask and he laughs.

“No, it’s uh, Oxycodone. Why? You want one?”

I shake my head, “No thanks.”

“How do you know Matt and Steve?” Katie asks Jared.

“Oh,” he knocks back a few pills and swallows sans water, “I’ve been working with them at T-Mobile for about, like, two years now.”

He leans back and pulls out his phone, “So, who wants to give me their number?”

We sit silent for a moment and I answer, “Yeah…” I turn to Katie, “Go ahead, Katie. Give him your number.”

Katie looks Jared straight in the eye, “Jared, I’m gonna be honest with you,” she slurs. “I live in New York.”

Stefi would rather be a Merlot Girl than a Budweiser girl

Archives

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Please don’t come over here, please don’t come over here, please don’t come over here.

A man, twice the size of myself, is zigging around on a bicycle in front of the Shell station I’m at. And I’m nervous. It’s one AM and I had the feeling I was going to get raped tonight. I also desperately needed gas, so I took the chance. He is dressed like a homeless man trying not to look homeless. Or like a college student trying to be artsy. He slowly rides over to the pump I’m at and eyes my car up and down like he’s giving a beautiful woman the once over. That’s it. I’m toast. I silently pray to any god or demigod who will listen; Don’t let me die tonight. Not like this. My legs aren’t even shaven. I am careful to avoid eye contact as his eyes move from my car to me. I wonder if he notices that my shirt matches the color of my car? I wonder if he knows I planned that?

“Hola,” he says.

I ignore the man and instead pretend to be focused on the digital numbers telling me how much money the government is taking from me: $2.46, $14.72, $32.56, the figures move so quickly it makes me dizzy.

He clears his throat and peddles a little closer to me, “Hola!” he says louder.

Oh crap. He circles the pump and waits for me to respond, mouthing off something else in Spanish that two years in high school couldn’t help me decipher. I debate whether or not I should respond. Then decide to respond as to humanize myself. I learned that on CSI or Law and Order or maybe Oprah. I also decide to play dumb. And in a split second decision- Russian.

“Previet,” I say v Russki. He breaks and cocks his head to the side like a dog listening to their master. He tries English instead.

“Do you have money?” he wants to know. Now I’m nervous. I don’t have cash on me or any identification. My purse is at home. I have one credit card in my pocket. When he kidnaps me, steals my credit card, and takes me deep into the desert to rape me, then finally kills me, the police will have to get my dental records to identify my body, which has decomposed by this time.

I shake my head and answer him simply, “Niet, no.”

He takes another look at my car, then back at me. “None?”

Jesus, I think, it’s just a Dodge.

“Nol, pagalstah.” I give my sorriest look to show I might be sincere.

He reaches out to touch the hood of my car and I press my panic button, causing my headlights to flash and my horn to screech, which sends the man scurrying away, “Lo siento! Gracias!” he shouts as he peddles as fast as his legs can manage.

I am so frightened that I get back into my car so quickly that I don’t bother getting a receipt for the 90 dollars I spent on gas and I forget to close the fuel door. It isn’t until I am almost to my house that I realize I was listening to bad pop music the entire way home.

Stefi luckily managed to not get knocked the fuck out.

Obscene and Heard Archives

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I am not like everyone else in this class. I am not taking this Humanities 330a, Visual Culture in Literature, Drama, and Film course because the professor was rumored to have Richard Gere appeal. I am actually taking this class to learn something about culture. Personally, yes, I would like to know how Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation has shaped American culture and ruined popular democracy because I am not like the other college girls. Oh, college girls and their need to have sex with anything that will shower once a day regardless of whatever band shirt it’s wearing. It’s almost endearing.

I have never been a “sheep” and consequently, have never been Spring Fling Flower Princess or anything and I am OK with that. In the fourth grade, I was the only girl who didn't show up to school with those awful butterfly clips in my hair and that same day, was thrown out of the Pony Club my so-called “friends” and I started, but I didn't mind. I was on to bigger and better things anyway. Like Zach Morris from Saved by the Bell. Non-conforming teen detective Veronica Mars isn’t popular either, but she was prettier than anyone else over at Neptune High and she has scored her own television series. I figure it’s a tradeoff. I like to think that my own non-conforming super power is my awesome hair. The TV show comes later.

The young ladies in my class, all five hundred of them, were getting ready to fight for the kill. Anything with cleavage that actually shaved their legs that day was seen as a threat. The skirts felt vulnerable as they eyed each other through their lined and mascara caked eyes, looking much like a wide-eyed doe prancing through a forest of flowers wondering where their mother is and why they smelt gunpowder. I could see their thought bubbles, all in text message short hand, mentally challenging their opponents over the lone hot guy who “accidentally” signed up for a girly class and undoubtedly will “turn” gay by the end of the semester. “Go ahead,” their perfectly glossed lips sneered before returning to their practiced pouts, “Try me.” And then the real reason they were actually in class on time with full face make-up and styled hair before noon walked in. Our professor. Played by George Clooney, or as close as you can get in a university at 7:30 in the morning.

“OK,” Clooney says at the podium, whipping his reading glasses off and flashing us a dazzling set of perfect, white teeth that must have taken thousands of dollars in veneers because nobody is that flawless, “If there’s anything I can do to make this class more enjoyable, I’ll do it.”

“He could grope me…” The girl sitting next to me, who has decided we are now friends, whispers in my ear.

I won’t deny that the professor is crazy good looking in a movie star kind of way, but I will admit I can’t picture myself sleeping with him. Not that I could ever picture myself sleeping with anything other than the stuffed dog my Grandmother gave me when I was born. “I’m just not that kind of woman,” I like to tell people, but as my twentieth birthday fast approaches, I wonder how much longer I can keep up the Jessica Simpson approach to life.

In high school it was a lot easier to hide behind this mask of innocence and fairy tales. In high school, we are still “children”. We have parents who enforce curfews and make us eat our vegetables. College is different; there are more reasons to screw up. College has more alcohol, more parties, and the promise of a Girls Gone Wild baseball cap if we flash our breasts.

According to my peers I should now be writing essays more along the lines of Sex and the City episode recaps. “I finally had sex last night!” a girl friend of mine tells me over a giddy phone conversation.

“What?” I’m shocked. I’d known her since I was twelve, back when I had bangs and before she was slutty.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says again, “With this guy I met at the party.”

“Let me get this straight,” I sigh, “You had sex.”

“Yeah.”

“With a guy you had only just met at a party.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you drunk?” I ask.

“Well, psh, yeah. Obviously,” she tosses back as if we’re talking about how cute Jesse Metcalf was in last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives. It’s almost as if MTV’s The Real World: College has invaded her once demure little brain and the producers were telling her she’d get more camera time if she put out in a hot tub. Some people will do anything to be in a thirty-second promo.

Perhaps I am old fashioned or perhaps I am just flat out prude, but I find there’s a difference between having fun and being stupid. “You just gotta stop caring. Then your sex life will improve,” a male friend, a skinny guy who was once considered “nerdy” but now, thanks to The OC, is a hot commodity, advises. “This is what college is all about. You go to some parties, the girls get drunk and… boom! It works for me.”

“I have these things called morals,” I counter.

He teases me, “I’m… I’m not following…”

“I had a good childhood,” I explain. “My dad was nice enough to me that I have no need for random sex.”

“Boring,” He sighs. “You need to at least relax and have a little fun or else you’ll end up a forty year old crack addict like Whitney.”

These words haunted me as I sat in a car about a month later with a date. I almost laugh because the arrangement is so cliché; a car parked on a mountain over-looking the city at night with two young adults sitting in the front seat listening to dangerously mellow music- so cliché it didn’t feel cozy at all. I just felt like I was in some horror movie and big hairy werewolf played by Michael J. Fox was going to fly onto the roof of the car ruining what my date, Michael, seemed to consider a “perfect moment”. I was actually kind of sad when a werewolf didn’t crash our evening because thirty seconds in, I realized I just wanted to go home and go to bed. Alone.

I’m not slutty Meredith Grey who only ever thinks she’s worth something if she has a man in her bed. I never had this thought that I couldn’t be alone and needed to be with someone all the time until I got to college and realized I was the only student alone and not with someone all the time. Suddenly, I was the odd girl out and the third wheel. I can’t just hang out with my friends. I have to hang out with my friends their boyfriends. Or at least what they are calling their boyfriends, but I think we all know what they really are. College has no rules. Except maybe that the girl in the least amount of clothing always goes home with a guy. And sometimes also another girl. These co-eds are free to do what they want when they want with whom they want and I’ll never be like them, not matter how many times I see Animal House on DVD.

“You look really pretty tonight,” Michael said as he stroked my arm.

“Thanks,” I said, as I yanked it away to switch out CDs. I put in the most non-romantic music he had to try to change the mood, and to do this, I had to turn on the light. Well, actually, I didn’t have to, but I did.

“Hun,” Michael grumbled, “turn off the light, you’re killing the atmosphere.”

Did he seriously just call me “Hun”? As in Atilla the? Is this 1954? What am I doing here? I shouldn’t force myself into something I’m obviously not ready to do, especially not with “some guy” I’ve known since high school and didn’t have any romantic feelings towards. I shoved The Beastie Boys in and turned it up as he lunged for me. He may have put on about twenty pounds since high school, but I was angry enough to have the strength to push him off.

“Michael, stop!”

He respected me and slithered back into his original seat. “You don’t even want to make out?” he yelled over the three Jewish rappers on the stereo. I shook my head “no” to the defeated kid.

“Sorry,” I shrugged.

“Nah,” he said, adjusting his shirt, “I respect that. That’s good, I think, to have morals and whatnot.”

“Seriously?” I questioned, shocked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I mean that. Give a guy like, three more years. They’ll kill for brains and standards. You know, when you’re dating long term or whatever. Its kind of sexy if you’re into that I guess?”

I guess.

Maybe I have some deep seeded fear of having intimate relations or I’ve watched Fifteen and Pregnant too many times? Carrie Bradshaw might ask me if I’m afraid of my own sexuality and then add that media might be screwing me before any guy could. Even though “time is ticking” as a friend once told me, I’m not ready to just “get it over with”. I realize my first time won’t be perfect or probably even remotely romantic, but I’d at least want to sort of like the guy I’m with. I’m still kind of young, and I just have a feeling that finding love will take a lot longer than one night with the drunk creator of the “Boobies ‘N’ Beer” Facebook group.

Stefi is the Spring Flower Princess of FTTW

Obscene and Heard Archives

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“Here is a penis,” my psych professor says happily as he clicks his power point to a textbook drawing that clearly labels every last detail of the male genitalia. “Full frontal,” he notes before clicking away, “That’s always good. Makes things more interesting.” A few kids snicker, and the rest pretend to be serious and very concerned about the sexual organs.

I feel very much like I am back in sixth grade, except that instead of Nurse Brown giving me a talk about how the penis is inserted into the vagina to make babies and masturbation is for sinners, it’s my Jason Segel look-a-like psych professor.

Sixth grade sex-ed wasn’t nearly half as exciting as I wanted it to be since my friend Kimberly had already told me all the good stuff about sex back in first grade.

“The man puts his penis in your vagina,” she states matter-of-factly, “And then you’re pregnant. That’s how I got my sister. After my dad did that to my mom.”

“Oh…” I feel like I’ve been initiated into a secret club. I figured I was one of maybe three seven-year-olds who knew what sex was.

We’re sitting on the pink rug in her bedroom staring at a Hustler we stole from her older brother’s room. I am constantly looking over my shoulder just waiting for her mom to bust in.

“I don’t think we should be doing this…” I say.

“It’s fine,” she answers me, flipping the page to some girl on girl action.

Just then, her mom pops her head in and notices us gawking over a naked red head doing some freaky stuff to a blonde. “Ah,” she sets Kimberly’s clean clothes on her bed, “What are you two doing?”

I panic and, thinking quickly, turn the magazine to a page without a dirty picture, not realizing the trite error I was about to commit as I say calmly to Mrs. Romaine, “We were just looking at the articles.” Needless to say, my parents laughed about this for years. Every now and again, they still bring it up.

“What happens when you’re sexually aroused?” my professor asks and 50 heads look down at their notebooks or the wall or their hands. I admit I am one of them. I furiously scribble in my notebook, pretending that the definition of “arousal” is completely new to me. Arousal? What the fuck is that? I try to make my face say.

“Yeah, you guys,” he laughs at the silence, “Don’t tell me because then I’ll know you know!”

One girl gathers her courage, “Um, there’s lubrication?” she says quietly.

I am so happy she answered on the class’ behalf and took one for the team that I want to hug her.

“What’s an orgasm?” he then asks and is met with the sound of a pencil tapping against a table and a cough. “Look guys,” he sighs, “If I have to explain this than you probably have never had one.”

There’s something difficult about admitting you know about sex when you’re a virgin, nineteen, and have a good-looking man standing in front of you asking you to shout out things like “the vaginal walls part and lubrication occurs”. And here I thought I wasn’t shy.

In sixth grade I didn’t seem to be. By age twelve, I already thought that I was superior to all of the kids who still watched Barney at my school. I watched Seinfeld and considered myself much more cultured, often telling off other kids who would ask me things like, “Who is your favorite character on Fraggle Rock?”

“You should be watching Friends,” I’d say, “The story lines are far more complex.”

When the Human Growth and Development class came around, I rolled my eyes and explained to my friends that even though I was partaking, I already knew what a penis was and I could give them at least five different names for it.

My professor skips through a few slides until he reaches information about the Kinsey study. “So,” he steps back to admire his power point, “92 percent of men in the study admit to masturbating. What happened to the other eight percent?”

“Lying…” some boys mumble.

“Yeah, seriously,” my professor observes. “62 percent of females admit to masturbating. What happened to the rest of them?”

Silence.

“Yeah, lying,” he shakes his head yes and sighs, realizing we’re not going to make this as much fun as he’d like it to be. “Eleven percent of men admit to anal sex,” he points out. One kid cackles. “Anal sex. That’s always fun right?” He continues.

A faint laugh is heard from the back, and I admit, I release a small giggle, but the rest of the class sits as though they’re watching Shindler’s List.

He clicks his power point off and admits defeat, “OK, we’re done. Have a good weekend.”

Obscene and Heard Archives

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Yesterday, I had to be photographed for a local college publication because my journalist friend Brooke, who apparently ran low on people to interview, needed me for a story about being busy.

"Look," I told her when she first called, "I don't care what you quote, as long as I don't sound like an idiot."

"Deal," she tells me.

I can speak frankly to Brooke because I've known her for forever. What started as a hate/hate relationship for both parties Freshman year of high school turned into a friendship by the time we were Juniors. And by senior year, we spent hours upon hours working on our school newspaper together and wondering if we'd ever get to have sex with our Journalism teacher.

"Wait, you too?" I asked Brooke at the Mexican restaurant we were having lunch at about a year after we both graduated high school. "I thought it was just me?"

Brooke blushes, something that doesn't happen often, "I- erm, yeah, by the end of Senior year I was... it was bad."

I nod to show I understand, "Yeah... I really thought I was going to sleep with him," I say wistfully.

"Me too! I totally thought that the later we stayed-"

"The more apt it was to happen?" I question and remember all of the times Brooke and I stayed with our Journalism teacher long after the school day ended 'just to make sure the paper was perfect'. And here I thought she just loved the craft.

"Oh, totally! I think I lived in my own personal porno flick the last semester of high school," Brooke sighs.

"I just wished I did," I reply.

Brooke frowns and extends her hand across the table to my shoulder, "One day you'll have a boyfriend so that you can fantasize about having sex with the people you actually want to have sex with," she says, "I swear."

---

"I have to have this kid Brett come photograph you for the story," Brooke says when we're finished with the interview, "Is Friday good for you?"

I perk up a little. Yeah, I think to myself, I'd date a photographer. "Friday's just fine. Friday," I say, "Is perfect."

When Brett calls, he has a raspy sexy voice, like a smoker's, I think, until he tells me he would never smoke. A non-smoker! I am thrilled.

"Do you smoke?" Brett asks me over the phone.

"G0d, no!" I say, "Smoking is so gross... why?"

"Your voice," he tells me, "I just wondered. It's Scarlet Johannson-y."

I nearly die. I sound like a Kewpie doll. Sarah Vowell, I've gotten her before. Alyson Hannigan. But not Scarlet. I giggle like a maniac, "Thanks. Do you smoke?"

"Fuck no," he tells me, "Never have. Never will."

It is love. As long as he's cute.

We meet up at a shopping center for people in Arizona who want to be seen with their Coach shopping bags. I keep praying that he's a good looking photographer. He tells me he's wearing sunglasses, a dark grey t-shirt, and a giant camera, "It shouldn't be that hard to spot me," he laughs. He's right and I spot him from the back and hold my breath until he turns around. It happens in slow motion like a movie. He sees me and smiles. He's gorgeous. I could practically jump for joy I am so happy, I am almost skipping over to him.

"Hi!" I say a little too perky. He's taken aback.

"Hi!" he laughs, "So, let's get this done."

I try to be easy for Brett, doing whatever he wants me to do for the photo. I am surreptitiously hoping that he will subconsciously realize that if I am easy going and follow directions and do whatever he says to in the photo session, I will be easy to get into bed and do whatever he wants in it. Except anal.

"So you're a Sophomore?" he asks me as I try to look as sexy as I can while pretending to be reading in a yellow polo, jeans, and a pair of converse.

"Uh-huh, you?"

"Oh," he smirks and switches to a wide angle lens, "I'm an old man."

"Psh, please."

He snaps another picture and holds his camera out to me so I can see the LCD screen, "I took um, about four years off from school before going to college. You like this one?"

I strain my neck to see the photo. It's OK, but not any fault of his, my hair just looks bad, "Yeah, its cute," I say.

"I graduated a couple years ago," he tells me.

I fluff up my hair between takes, "What did you do for four years?"

"I traveled. Got married. Odd jobs," he takes out another flash from his camera bag as if he didn't just tell me he got married and it wasn't a big deal. It's then that I notice a gold ring on his finger. You're kidding me.

He takes a few more photos and shows me the one he likes the best. "I think this one," he clicks to a photo of my hair looking OK and my face registering the shock of hearing he was a married man. "Your face looks natural."

"Yeah," I smile, "That's usually how I look."

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My wisdom teeth are coming in. Or, to be more specific: my wisdom teeth have been coming in for a year and a half and I tried to ignore them (while at the same time, worry day in and day out about the state of my precious perfect bite and if it is being compromised by said new incoming teeth) but now the little fuckers are digging a hole Shawshank Redemption style through my cheek. And it hurts.

A lot.

So something needs to be done.

I am not happy about this. Mostly, the idea of having someone put me in a twilight sleep and then drill through my jaw bone to grab four teeth that no longer fit into the average sized human head -even if some badass pain killers are involved- doesn't really appeal to me.

"Does it hurt to have them removed?" I ask a family friend, Julie, who also happens to be my dentist. A stupid question, I realize, but I wanted to ask as if there could be a small chance that she could say it just feels like getting a massage.

She considers my question as she chews on her sandwich while we're at lunch. She swallows and replies with her own perfect teeth; the ones she shaped using just rubber bands and paper clips after her mother refused to get her braces as a teen, "It'll definitely ruin a good weekend," she shrugs.

Let the panicking commence.

"No, Stephanie," my friend Stacy tries to console me during Contemporary Cinema Class, "They give you Vicodin! You sleep for like, three days straight!"

"I miss three days of The Daily Show?" I half kid.

"Dude, you have TiVo," she retorts, "Plus, if you're on Vicodin you are so-o not gonna care what TV show you miss."

My friend Josh pats me on the shoulder and I shrivel at his touch. He told me he may have a cold earlier. He rolls his eyes, "I sanitized."

"OK."

"Uh, anyway," he doodles a heart around Jake Gyllenhaal's plus his own initials, JB, in his notebook, "Look, if you don't want the Vicodin..."

"Hey!" Stacy crawls over me and slaps Josh on the hand. "If anyone gets Vicodin it's me!"

Josh tries to stab her with his pencil and I shake them both off of me. "Knock it off," I say, "'Cos I already promised my mom, anyway."

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It was Jason's idea to go to Whole Foods yesterday, "My favorite store!" Jason gushes over organic turnips and beets. "Don't you love it? I just love it!" he's practically ready to burst as he skips through the produce aisles with his pre-sanitized green basket, not able to hide his uncontaminated and pesticide free glee. "Also," he says as he tastes a grape, "This is a great place to pick up guys!" he nods over to a boy checking out peaches who makes Elton John look straight.

"He's not your type," I say and steer him away towards the trail mix. "Now, look masculine and give me your purse," I plead. He begrudgingly hands over his bag: the brown and green patched one made from O'natural organic materials.

Jason is good to hang out with because he fits my basic Gay Friend criteria; he laughs at my jokes. Always. And, if I hold his purse, he can pass as my attractive and well groomed boyfriend.

"Be careful, my iPod's in there," he whines, "And hey! What do you need it for anyway? You already have a purse." I shove his bag into my fake pink Chanel and motion to my left to the back of the tall, dark, handsome motherfucking asshole who broke my heart back in the 10th grade. "Oh..." Jason says softly, "Bad break-up?"

I stop to consider this.

Truth be told, there really wasn't any break-up because we never actually went out. The boy may not have known it, but in my head, we dated for an entire semester...until he asked me if my friend Jamie would consider going out with him.

"If I give you my number, do you think you could give it to Jamie and have her call me?" he had asked. I stood flabbergasted outside of our science classroom, but didn't show it.

"Oh. Yeah. Sure!" I say, in a faux happy tone, just like Katie Holmes did when Tom Cruise asked her to marry him.

Inside, I wonder to myself; did that 45 minute talk at lunch time about the lyrics to Mandy Moore's I Wanna Be With You mean NOTHING to him?

(Him: "When she sings, "We know what I came here for/So I won't ask for more", she's just totally horny and that's hot."

Me: She loves him. Its romantic."

Him: "I would bone Mandy Moore.")

When he told me my hair was pretty was he JOKING? Did he forget that I bought him a fucking BIRTHDAY present when Jamie didn't even know it was his birthday?

"Thanks," he says, "'Cos she's so fucking hot. That'd be so awesome." Then, before he turns away he quickly adds, "Oh, and are you still gonna do the Chem homework and e-mail it like you said you would 'cos if Jamie calls me this afternoon, I'm gonna ask her to the movies tonight or something."

I nod yes and give a smile, "Yeah."

Jason tugs at my sweater, snapping me back to Whole Foods, "How can you tell if a mango is OK?"

"Um," I falter.

"C'mon, you watch Food Network religiously!" he shoves the mango into my face and I grasp it before he smacks me in the nose.

"I think a mango is just like a peach," I offer as my former high school almost sweetheart waltzes by holding a bag of natural white flour gluten free tortilla chips and I grow far more animated while the volume of my voice rises. I am practically juggling the mangos and shouting my instructions, "Just smell it. If it smells like a good mango, then it is!" Jason snatches the mangos from my hand and hold them one by one to his nose.

"You don't have to shout," he says smuggly, "I'm not fucking Marlee Matlin."

I'm not even sure Jason said the line about Marlee Matlin or if I made that up in my head. He may not have even noticed I was shouting, but all I heard was the sound of my blood pressure rising in my ears, and I had to speak over it. As Jason secures the mangos in their biodegradable plastic bags, I casually turn to get a look at the kid I knew in high school.

But it wasn't him.


Jason later complained to Stephanie that the mangoes weren't fresh at all.


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There is a boy in my History of Cinema class who stares at me. Or maybe just my hair. I’m not sure if he’s actually gay or not. One thing for sure is though, I have great hair.

He sits diagonal to me and the thing that I like best about him is, if you look very quickly, he almost looks like a young Woody Allen. Its most endearing without being attractive in any way shape or form, which is odd really, considering how much I love Woody Allen. I just never knew I had absolutely no desire to date him.

I usually ignore the stares, choosing instead to give all my attention to the giant John Wayne (great ass) as the Ringo Kid on screen. Although dead, I believe I will get more out of John Wayne than a might be gay Woody doppelganger.

Sadly, these class periods are perhaps the most interesting thing that’s happened to me all semester, except for the few bad dates I’ve had, including one boy desperate to get me to convert to Christianity (or Catholicism?). But that is perhaps more scary than interesting.

My friend set me up with a kid named Chris back in December, claiming we’d get along perfectly. “You’re practically the same person,” she told me as she handed me his number. She had dated him previously in the year and after a badly misunderstood break-up via text message, the two had become great fake friends, proving to each other that they no longer felt romantic feelings by setting each other up with their most single of friends. “We’re really more like…I don’t know, cousins or something now,” my friend Katie explained.

“What about that whole “asshole should die for breaking up with me over a text message” thing?” I ask tentatively.

“Oh that?” she waves it off, “He was just having a bad day, and plus, I mean, I did sort of cheat on him.”

“Details,” I joke.

Chris was a former drug dealer ("...I can't believe I'm telling you this...I just feel like I can tell you anything...") with a new found love for Jesus. In fact, he believes he's actually in Jesus. "We are in Christ, therefore, we are saved,” he tells me over lunch, whatever that means, after I joke with him about his former drug sinning.

"I'm Jewish," I tell him.

"Like, how Orthadox?" he'd like to know.

"Please," I shake my head, "I'm not even Kosher. But I'm not a Jew for Jesus or anything. They are crazy!"

"What's so wrong with that?"' he wants to know, stirring Splenda into his iced tea, "Jesus died for your sins too after all."

Ah crap, we haven’t even ordered yet and we’re talking religion. Most people are married forty years before discussing religion. I debate getting angry or playing dumb.

I go for playing dumb because I’m so gosh-darn good at it.

"I don't know enough about religion," I say, dismissing it with my hand. That's a semi-lie. I know what I think is enough about religion. I mean, I’ve seen Superman Returns (I wish Jesus looked like that. If he did, I’d be his follower too) and I believe that having faith and spirituality is more important than knowing all the rules. I think you should know why you believe the things you believe, but I don't think hanging out in church and eating ‘Nilla Wafers and drinking juice makes you a better person than a Jew who might go to Temple on Passover (if they feel like it. I might be speaking from personal experiences.). Especially if they are so blind to what actually makes a person good, like, caring for family, your friends, um, not doing drugs, etcetera.

"You know, my dad is a pastor?" he says, "And I work at my church."

Oops.

"Sometimes," I say, "I watch A Charlie Brown Christmas." To which he responds with a grimace.

"I’m just being honest," I say.

"It’s fine,” he shakes his head, but avoids eye contact. I know it's not, but I let it drop, choosing instead to talk about Flickr, which is my go-to topic when I'm uncomfortable or at a loss for words (this time, I was both). Every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks they're a photographer, so this topic usually goes over well. The Flickr portion of our conversation ends and there's a pause, followed by a sigh on his part.

"OK, so, here's the problem."

"Problem?"

"Yeah," he says, "OK, so the Jewish religion is based on facts and Christianity is based on grace."

"...Uh-huh."

He practically bursts then, continuing on for some time about Jesus, Peter, PaulandMary, and "Him" (which confused me because sometimes Him was "Christ" and sometimes Him was G-d? But "Christ" is G-d? From what I was trying to understand. He was confusing me, and I started spacing out and thinking about Colbert to be honest, and how I was missing him.) I suddenly felt like I had accidentally opened the door to a Bible's salesman.

"Well, in my religion we just eat a lot of bread..." I say trying to lighten what has turned into a very dark lunch, after, no joke, thirty minutes, "And, I'll be honest, but I understood maybe half of what you just said."

"Read the New Testament," he replies, "It'll help you figure things out."

Figure things out? What do I have to figure out? Plus, let’s break it down; sequels always suck as far as I'm concerned. Well, unless we're talking about Back to the Future II and III. But M:I:III? Why spoil a good thing? I think the Old Testament is just fine. You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Plus, oh hi! I'm Jewish. I'd like to know more about religion but, I'd like the over-view please. And I'd like to have it not shoved down my throat by the son of a preacher man (who, ironically, is the only one who could ever teach me)."I'll read up about it on Wikipedia," I say as a throw away sentence, hoping to shut him up so he can finish his pasta and I can leave.

"No! That won't help you like The Bible! That won't save you!"

"What?"

"You should really read it."

"I will after I finish The Electric Cool-Aide Acid Test," I lie. I haven't even read The old Bible, why would I start with the new? Really now. Don't push your religion onto me. I don't go around with pamphlets telling you why you should convert to Judaism (for the food, mostly, if you’re thinking about it). In fact, when I made a "Well, we are The Chosen Ones” joke, it didn't even get a smile.

"I just- I- That won't help you. That's... that's not going to help," he stutters.

"I'm just being honest," I tell him.

"Me too!" he exclaims.

And after all of this? He wanted to see me again.

"When are you free next?" he asked before I got into my car. "Can I call you tomorrow? Or do you want to set something up now?"

Then he hugged me three times. Eh, at least I got a free lunch.

Stephanie has been invited to stay at the commune for a few days.

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The night was still young when Sandeep called me, "It's Saturday night," he whines, and I feel the frustration in his voice. He hasn’t had a sip of alcohol in over four hours.

"It's between you and TiVoed Colbert tonight," I say, "Duke it out."

He ignores me, "See you in fifteen. Bring Rachel."

Rachel. Rachel is our mutual friend from eighth grade science class who is back in town from her Close-but-not-quite-Ivy-League university for the week. “Stop calling it that,” she tells me. “So many famous people went there, you don’t even know.”

“No, I don’t even care,” I correct her.

It takes some persuasion to get her to agree to join us, “It’s late,” she argues, “But I guess I’ll go.”

The three of us meet up at a coffee house only to find its been closed. Sandeep looks pained. “Now what?” he wants to know. And so do I.

“Let’s go to Look Out Point!” Rachel offers, an extreme suggestion coming from her, but Sandeep and I agree since we were in the mood to go to a romantic area and not make out, which, coincidentally, is also the story of my life. Once we got there however, we spent more time looking at the stars than the view. That’s when Rachel got her idea to go extreme, well, for her anyway. "You guys..." she said, "Let's go find a dark place and look at the stars." I know. Almost a little too extreme. Sandeep and I agreed, because we too are extreme people who do extreme things on Saturday nights in Arizona.

It took some driving, but we found a dark road that would be the perfect place to be raped and then strangled without a single soul knowing for months. No Trespassing the sign read in both English and Spanish at the beginning of the dirt road. "I dunno guys..." Rachel hesitated, stopping the car momentarily. She had grounds to be scared. The area did look like the setting to a bad horror film starring Paris Hilton, but we egged her on.

"No," I say from the back of the car, "It's OK, because if the cops ask, we'll say we're French and couldn’t read the sign." That was enough for her. We went a little ways and then parked the car and the three of us climbed on the hood to observe the sky. It was all fun and games until…

"What was that?" Rachel sat up.

"What?" Sandeep almost doesn’t care. I'm jumpy at the best of times, and suddenly, I hear it too. A low rumble. I sit up, alarmed.

"It's nothing-" Sandeep says, and he tries to pull us back down.

"No, no! Shhhhhhhhh," Rachel and I shush him. The rumbling now sounds like a growl.

"OK, I heard it that time, too!" Sandeep sits up.

“Time to leave,” I jump off of the hood. “Let's pack it up, Jimmy." I say as I try to practically dive back into the car. We get ourselves buckled in just in time to realize it was a plane flying overhead.

"I really thought we were gonna die," I explain. The others say nothing, embarrassed, but I know they thought it, too.

Rachel then suggests just driving around Fountain Hills, her homeland, aimlessly, like a VW commercial. We feel safer inside the car, so we agree. At one point, we come to a road that warns us of dips. The posted speed is 35 mph, but we’re feeling extreme and no one is on this long, dark road, so Sandeep and I suggest to Rachel that she drive somewhere in the 70 MPH area. Rachel, resident badass, goes forty-five. As we pass a sign warning of animal crossings I laugh, “What if there’s a cow crossing and we can’t stop?” My two friends giggle, amused at the thought of running into a cow. Realizing that forty-five isn’t half as much fun as seventy-five, she kicks her car into gear and we go over a few dips when out of nowhere, a family of javelina appear.

“Oh, shit!” I shout.

“Fuck!” Rachel screams, and manages to “lightly tap” –her words- the javelina as she tries to swerve out of the way. Unfortunately, she over corrected her wheel and we went into a 360 spin. The tires screeched and the smell of burnt rubber wafted into our noses as the three of us screamed like little girls. We ended half in the dirt, half on the road, completely bewildered.

We’re silent for a moment as we collect ourselves, but I speak first.

“That was awesome!” I say, and mean it, excited by the adventure and the fact that we didn’t die. Sandeep finally releases his hands from the door handle and laughs.

Rachel is shaking, “Oh my God! Oh my God you guys!” I cannot tell if she is laughing or crying. The three of us embrace.

“No, seriously,” I say, “That was cool, but we should probably get on the right side of the road now.”

“Did you see the expression on that javelina’s face as you hit it?” Sandeep grinned, “That shit was hilarious!”

Ah, nothing like the smell of death to make you feel so alive.

Stephanie's bottling the Smell of Death and it should be in stores this fall.

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I don’t really like to admit just how big a dork I am. I can admit the small stuff. Everyone watches The Daily Show and Colbert Report (my “power hour”), and watching CNN can be excused, and Al Franken is cool because he’s on Letterman all the time, but listening to Discovery Radio on Sirius in your car, when you could be listening to Cavino and Rich talk about “nussies” and “knobbers” on Maxim radio, or even Howard Stern on one of his 800 stations is… well it’s a tad on the Chess Club President side (but to set the record straight, I was only their secretary).

But the thing is, I really like Discovery Radio. I really like learning about rare monkeys in Africa and then, later, about the American Civil War. It is so totally my thing.

Which is why I listen to / am completely ass over head in love with Mo Rocca*.

And I shouldn’t be. He is what I dated in high school. That Elvis Costello-glasses wearing-cardigan sporting-drama nerd in the honors program is exactly what screwed me up back in the day.

But I love him.

Even if we could only ever be just friends.

That’s why I called into his Discovery Radio show. I never thought I was one of those people who call into radio stations… I never thought I would be. I never expected it to happen. I didn’t know what I was doing. “Call in now to talk to Mo!” his producer urged. And, I could blame it on lack of sleep or dehydration, but something inside of me made me pick up my cell phone and dial. Something inside me whispered “today is your day to win a When Dinosaurs Roamed America DVD.”

I expected a busy signal. I never expected him to pick up. Actually, I never expected him to not screen calls either.

“Hello?” He wants to know who’s calling.

Big. Fucking. Pause.

“Hello?”

“Um,”

“Hello?”

“Oh. Hi?”

Um. Oh. Hi. Fuck.

“Hi, and who’s calling?”

Oh shit.

“Stephanie?”

“From where?”

“Arizona?”

I have forgotten my purpose for calling, my name, my state, I think also my address and phone number. I am completely disoriented. And I am driving. I begin to think, If I crash my car and die on air… could that get me face time on ET? Probably not, but maybe Extra? They’re sorta slutty… is Mo still talking? Should I be listening? I have to concentrate. Concentrate… concentrate… MO!

“Oh yeah! What part?”

Oh fuck me.

“Phoenix? Paradise Valley area?”

This is where I black out. Just as the conversation was about over, I can vaguely recall spitting out (after a sarcastic rant about… football and Navy Seals? What?), “But, no, seriously, I love you and your show!”

“Oh, well… great! Thanks! And congratulations!”

Wait… Did I win something?

“I need your address so I can send the DVD,” his producer is now on the line with me.

I’m brazen, “Can you get Mo to send me an autograph too, please?”

Big. Fucking. Pause.

“Uh, I’ll see what I can do.”

Still waiting.

*(Q.- “Who?” you ask. A. - The dude from I Love The… whatever year and a former Daily Show correspondent… he’s also a judge on Iron Chef sometimes and does work for Leno and CBS on Sunday mornings? His book is All The Presidents’ Pets … Why am I so alone in the world?)

Stephanie likes to get her nerd on.

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"My life," Jason tells me in the car as we sip our coffee, "would make like, the best movie ever. Seriously."

We have this conversation once a week in between talking about how great his boyfriend is and how much better looking Jason is than most people. This sounds very self-involved and it is, but in return he laughs at all of my jokes and always agrees with me no matter what.

"Seriously?" I ask back, joking of course in reference to Meredith Grey as I watch the rain splatter on my windshield. And I just had my car washed.

"Seriously," he replies and flips to a Postal Service song on the iPod, asking if I'd heard it. Its three years old, but its new to him.

I grin. "No, think about it," he continues, and means it when he says, "like, its just... its really good. Like, the characters are really good."

"I like the part where you get bitten by the snake and become a super hero," I note, referring to the time in second grade when he was bitten by a rattle snake, scaring our second grade class who was convinced the kid was going to die. OK, I was really convinced the kid was going to die, which would really cramp my style since he was my reading partner in class, and until he was back from hospital I was working with Jake- the kid who pooped his pants and no one else wanted to read with.

He laughs, then swallows hard, "I hate snakes now," he shudders.

"OK," I say, "What's my name in the movie?"

He thinks for two entire seconds and giggles, "Marie Antoinette."

"Is my hair really that big?"

"Lois."

"Really?"

"Lane?"

"Yeah. Lane."

"Lane. And I'd be..."

"Clark?"

"Eh."

"Ben."

"Ben," he pauses, "Braddock."

"Oh, way to go," I note.

He lifts his vente mocha whatever and extra foam, "Here's to you Mrs. Robinson."

"Ben's an asshole in the book," I tell him and he looks hurt, as if I personally attacked him.

"Yeah? He's likeable in the movie. I mean, I liked him in the movie..." he trails off, as if he thinks his answer is wrong.

"No, yeah, but it's hard not to like Dustin Hoffman," I offer.

"Is that movie what made him famous?" Jason wants to know with a genuine interest.

"Well, it wasn't the Volkswagen commercial he did in 1960. That's for sure."

"Oh my God," Jason says, turning towards me in his seat, "Hoffman can totally play my dad!"

Stephanie has a handful of friends that have been bitten by radioactive animals. Really, just ask Weasel Boy.

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I've been hanging out with John a lot lately. And the more I hang out with him the more it makes me realize how much I need a real boyfriend. One who isn't gay.

John is what you may call my beard. He is my always on call good looking guy friend who is available for weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs. He looks great in a suit, superb in a tie, and never wears jeans. He also looks better in my Diane von Furstenberg dress than I do. He can put his arm around me like he means it and do that head tilt that all boyfriends tend to do, and sometimes he even buys me coffee. Most importantly, he laughs at all of my jokes. I have based many a friendship on that alone.

At first I thought that if I had John, this awful, horrible, girly feeling gnawing on me like a dog to a squeaky toy would go away. The one that starts in late January and stays with me until just after Spring. I think it stems from someone in my Pituitary gland, and it tells me that I need a boyfriend.

Suddenly, I am looking at anything that moves. "C'mon," the feeling says to my brain if it catches me looking at a scruffy guy in a Smith's t-shirt, "He probably doesn't even know who the Smith's are, but will that affect how he kisses? Why don't you find out?"

Its horrible and with me everywhere I go. The supermarket. The movies. School. Uncle's weddings…

I sat with my cousin Alison in the lobby of our Santa Barbara hotel. She's twenty-three and far more worldly than I'll ever be, but we both agreed, that despite the beach and the shops, we were beyond bored. I sat reading Allure when Alison nudged me, "That guy's cute," she whispered, nodding to a tall, dark haired boy walking into the lobby.

I look up and squint to save me from putting on my glasses. "Yeah," I agree, "I'd probably let him have sex with me," I joke and she laughs as my dad passes us in the lobby looking like he's on the way to the pool.

"What are you girls up to?" he asks. He doesn't wait for our answer as he spots the dark haired boy at the check-in desk with an older man, presumably his father.

"Steven!" he shouts with the excitement of a ten-year-old boy at Christmas. "I haven't seen you in ages!" He makes his way over to the counter. "Girls!," he calls after, giddy on Mai Tai, the "ultimate in vacation drinks," as he explains later, "Come say hello to your Uncle Steve and your cousin Seth!" Alison and I exchange looks and my dad continues talking, "I don't think you've seen them since you were about five, Stephanie!" he tells me. "This is so great!"

Oh yeah. Fantastic

Stephanie likes boys who have a good sense of humor, a small collection of Smiths t-shirts and who aren't related to her. Candidates can apply to needboyfriend@fttw.com.

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I’d be a good girlfriend, I decided today as I was driving and listening to the Pussycat Dolls –the ultimate guilty pleasure-.

My boyfriend and I spend our days leafing through books at Barnes and Noble and holding hands while skipping through fields of daffodils and lilies or something. We’d be so cute. Everyone would say, “There goes Stephanie with her boyfriend.” And then someone else would say, “She’s the funnier one in the couple. He’s kinda shy.” Everyone would agree.

Aside from the fact that I’m not curvaceous, busty, blonde, or, sexually active, I like to think I’m fun. I make up for my lack of looks with sass, personality, spunk, and OK, maybe some bitchiness.

I’m also really good at being celibate. Nineteen years strong now. Who, other than Hilary Duff, of course, God’s gift to America, can say that? I can absolutely guarantee you that I will not become pregnant with your baby. I will not let you be my baby daddy because I can promise you that I do not like you like you like me. I’m actually surprised you seem to like me as much as you do, because, seriously, I’m a dork. You should know this. We met in our History of America class. Remember how I was always five minutes late? But I swear, our teacher was starting at least five minutes early.

When you dump me for not giving you oral sex (because, ew.) I will not be upset, but I will write a blog about it and call you gay. Also, I’m probably gonna tell everyone I dumped you.

“He wanted me to give him road head,” I will say over my vanilla latte. The new Chunky Monkey. “So I broke up with him.”

My friends, who, by the way, are all gorgeous and had it been a nice break-up and we’d stayed friends I may have set you up with, will scoff, “That’s sick!” Michelle will probably say.

“You should have done it,” Robyn will shrug. Silence will fall upon our group. Nicole’s eyes go wide.

“You guys?” she’ll say, “What’s road head?”

We’ll laugh and I’ll compare us to Charlotte, Samantha, that one lesbian or whatever, and Carrie.

“You’re so Carrie but with Charlotte’s personality,” my friends tell me.

I know, I tell them, thank you.

It’s your loss anyway. After you dump me, I start sleeping with a much older man. And by sleeping, I mean sleeping. Hugh is old, and he doesn’t have much energy to do more than sip some prune juice while watching Murder, She Wrote reruns and using his Jazzy to scoot over to the bedroom. He doesn’t even get dressed anymore. Or shower. But, man, he’s loaded.

No really, Stephanie doesn't like you the way you like her.

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My father used to say, “Act civilized!” to both my sister and me when we were too rowdy in the backseat of the car on a road trip. For some reason, this was never as effective as the “shut the hell up, already” that he usually resorted to. From an early age, I was taught to “act civilized”. And for my first eight or so years, I just thought that “civilized” was defined as “to be bored and not talk”.

I know better now. It also means “to not leave the door open because we don’t live in a barn” and “to eat with your mouth closed because you’re not an animal.” Although, technically, we are, but I won’t get into that.

Nowadays I like to think that civilized behavior doesn’t have to end with abiding everyday civil laws, but can be extended to every day social norms as well. For example, not driving drunk is not only the law, but a consideration to the public and a well accepted social norm. By being sober, you’re being polite, being safe, and practically giving a cheerful wave as you zoom-zoom by in your five-mile-to-a-gallon cherry red Hummer with spinners. “Hello!” you seem to say in your civilized manner, “I am not drunk today!” You use your blinkers out of courtesy, you stay inside your lane, you even stop on red. You are a model citizen.

“So easy, a caveman can do it”? Please. No. The Neanderthals weren’t half the civilization we are today. The stone flint has nothing on the modern day matchstick. Why have a cave when you can have a McMansion? And OK, yeah, they had slightly bigger brains than we do, but they were also incredibly hairy with huge teeth and a heavy brow ridge. You are so much prettier than Neanderthals. And classier. No one can cut a perfectly small piece of fire roasted chicken with a knife like you can. No one can not burp in public like you can! No one can not expose themselves in the middle of the mall like you can! You wear clothes. You have a language. Hot damn. You are civilized.

Being that, civilization also takes a certain amount of superiority, as you can see. And some civilizations are more superior than others.

For example, you might say that its true that Americans speak English, but British people will tell you that only the British speak English, and that the Americans speak American. It is a very well known fact in England that every time an American mispronounces “schedule” as “skedule” a Spice Girl loses her solo career.

I myself feel I am civilized. I’m not particularly lewd or crude and I eat the European way. I am polite, I follow rules and regulations, I’m a big fan of puppies, and I’ve never killed anyone. Why I haven’t received some sort of a medal already is beyond me.

Stephanie is way classier than the Neanderthal.

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I love kids. I never used to, but something happened between high school and college and now, I think kids are adorable.

Until they start doing that thing where they sneeze into your face. I stop breathing and back away in horror, “You can handle that…” I tell my mother as she expertly maneuvers the small boy, Spencer, with just one hand. He’s wearing a colorful construction paper hat still thick and wet with more glue than glitter and now the paper is bending dangerously close to his brown hair with the extra weight, threatening a shmear of glue. It’s Christmas time again and yesterday it seemed like a good idea to agree to get up early to teach my little cousin’s pre-school class all about Chanukkah on my winter break, but I failed to remember how germy kids are.

I was never like that. I was a clean kid. Maybe too clean. Bad Seed clean. My dress was never soiled, my nails always shined like justice, and I showered every day. Sometimes twice. I was, perhaps, a parent’s dream until it came to cleaning something other than myself. Then you could forget it. I might have been sparkling fresh, but I was a lazy thing too.

“How about we sanitize before we teach the kids?” I ask my mother. She nods in agreement and extends her hands without letting me finish. “I have some Purell in my purse. It’s not a big bottle though, do you think that’s enough for fifteen kids?”

My mother takes her hands back and sighs, “Steph, you can’t sanitize someone else’s child…” Somewhere in the room, a child coughs and I tense up.

“Something needs to be done,” I struggle to breathe.

Jeffery wipes his hand along his nostrils and then grabs a yellow plastic dreidel from out of my hand and I shrivel up like a tree in Chernobyl. My hands are now covered in germs. It is all I can think about. I panic. Also, simultaneously, I have the most incessant urge to touch my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.

It turns out, kids get bored with the dreidel game. Not that I can blame them. Gambling isn’t really much fun until you’re at least seven and three quarters. I was never so into the dreidel game as much as I was into eating the chocolate coins that are used in the game.

My mother and I received children in groups of two or three and in the ten short minutes we had to teach them about Chanukah, we tried to shove as much culture into their brains as possible. It was obvious a lot of them were fed up and just wanted to get to the chocolate part. It was OK for the first three minutes, until the rules started getting involved and then it wasn’t just a fun game where you spin a top anymore.

“I’m done!” one girl, Samantha, announced, holding up a dreidel in her sticky hand.

“Me too!” her friend Jaxson giggled.

My mother shrugged, “OK, we should have girl talk then!” she suggested.

“Oh, yeah!” Jaxson exclaimed while trying to push back the pink headband in her curly blonde hair.

“Who’s your boyfriend?” my mother asked Jaxson.

“Mmmm… Ray!” she said, kicking her feet up in the air. “Is this mine?” she added, gripping the chocolate so hard her knuckles were turning white.

I nodded as we turned our attention to quiet little Samantha who stopped spinning her dreidel long enough to look up at us with her giant blue eyes.

“Who’s your boyfriend?” my mother asked.

She answered without hesitation, “Brandon. He’s really nice.” Then added quietly, “But sometimes, he hits me.”

My mother and I exchanged glances.

I lifted an eyebrow and nudged her, “Foreshadowing.”

Stephanie sanitizes like a mad woman.

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I wasn’t embarrassed like most girls when my mother told me I was finally allowed to buy a real bra at the age of eleven. I thought nothing of it when I was dragged off to an overly lit department store to be measured and strapped into womanhood by an old lady whose own womanhood was sagging well below her knobby knees. If anything, excited probably described me more accurately. I imagined that when a girl received her first bra, something magical happened. After purchasing a dainty white brassiere with the customary pink rose bud in the center I firmly believed that the rest of my existence would be all fun, football games, cheerleading, dating, kissing, and ultimately, marrying my high school Zach Morris look-a-like sweetheart right before we both skipped off to Yale on scholarship; perfection, in a dream world. I was just praying my very own seemingly useless 32 AAA cup bra would bring me some boys, popularity, and hopefully at some point, breasts.

“Any day now,” my mother would tell me when I asked her when she thought my ‘nature’ would arrive. By sixteen, my asking had all but turned into whining.

“Why isn’t my bust as big as hers?” I’d pout and my point to my younger C cup sister across the room.

My mother, barely listening to my complaints, would adjust her reading glasses and lament without looking up from her Vanity Fair, “Because I filled out the questionnaire wrong.” My first Victoria’s Secret push-up bra was the blessing I’d asked for.

“Excuse me?” I asked the sales girl, “What do you have that has the most padding? And can I have ten of them?” Working on commission, the young well-endowed college student was eager to send me home a full cup size larger.

“This one,” she picked out a hot pink number perfect for that night with Topher Grace I’d never have, “is probably my favorite.” She held it against herself, “It also comes in beige, black, white, and blue.”

“I’ll take them,” I said without hesitation and wore the white one out of the store. Sure, the very expensive bras had more than enough padding in it to make me feel like a line backer, but at least I was always ready to go long. Not to mention it also gave the illusion that I had a bust of some sort.

I’d love to say that after my purchase the boys were on me like Angelina Jolie on a black orphan, but unfortunately, I seem to only attract those pesky genuinely nice boys who don’t care about a girl's breasts or looks. You know, gay guys.

Popularity didn’t come so easily either. The very fact that I dress like a nun hindered me from ranking any higher than Drama Nerd in school. Even with padding, wearing a lacy V-neck “down to there” is out of the question. I just end up looking like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothing. I had been convinced for years that I would never grow up, and eyed the leggy, full-busted, and seemingly perfect eleven year old Jamie Bohanan with a pure hatred that I’d later come to understand was jealousy.

Boys flocked to “that slut” as my friends and I called her lovingly between bites of Lunchable in the blue and white ‘cafetorium’ that never failed to be a perfect fifty-four degrees. As she waltzed by our brown table, swishing her newly arrived hips through the air like Naomi Campbell (pre-crazy) on the catwalk, my flat-chested friends and I would try to burn holes into her skull with our eyes- while really trying to pick up fashion tips- or picture her slipping on an impeccably placed banana peel so at least she could at least feel as awkward as we did. We were too naive to realize that she probably did feel as awkward as we did, just for a different reason. When she was finally out of earshot, nine times out of ten I would be the one to lead us into a chorus of “I hate her”. She had a life none of us could have or understand, a life with more problems than we would probably ever know. Our dream was her reality, and the reason she never went to a sleepover or a pool party. When she’s famous for being beautiful and people roll their eyes when she tells Vogue she was teased as a girl, I’ll believe her, because I was there and I was probably the one she’s talking about who called her a whore.

Part of Stephanie will always pine for Zach Morris...

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There’s something fucked up about listening to Christmas music when the temperature outside is 80 degrees.

I should be used to it. I’ve grown up in Arizona all of my life. I should be used to not having seasons or owning a heavy jacket. I should be happy that Arizona recognizes the Christmas season at all.

So it might be the 80 degree weather or maybe the fact that I’m Jewish, but I can’t believe Christmas time is upon us. I’m not usually in The Holiday Spirit anyway, but this year it seems next to impossible to get into the jolly ol’ swing of things.

It was easier when I was eight because teachers at school would start gearing you up for the holidays somewhere around September. Maybe the classroom would have some lights and you’d do a nice craft activity where you’d make a few ornaments. I’ve had many moments where teachers would pull me aside because of my religion.

“Are you ok? Are you ok making an ornament? I know you’re Jewish…”

I had learnt that it is best not to make a fuss about the Jewish heritage unless it can get you out of your homework, a test, or an entire day of class.

“I’m fine! Really!” I’d say as I continued eating all of the candy designated for my gingerbread house in third grade, nearly sending myself straight into diabetic shock. “I LOVE Jesus and Santa!”

Actually, I thought it was illegal for Jews to say the name Jesus or look at a cross until I was about ten. I was fourteen before I’d utter the words to any Christmas songs, believing up until then that I would be betraying the religion for even humming Silent Night.

I suppose I’ll take this time to also clarify to Mel Gibson that the Jews didn’t kill Jesus. Jews are totally wimpy and neurotic. I should know, I’m one of them. Apart from Goldberg the “wrestler”, the most violent we ever get is probably just our excessive hand gesturing. We mostly fight with our wit and brisket recipes. Some of us do math for fun and all of our mothers want us to marry Jewish doctors. All of them. We’re almost all obsessive compulsive and we hate guilt, but we have tons of it. We probably did try to rough Jesus up a little though, for fun, but he probably just said -while gesturing- “Hey, you guys, I’m one of you!” and then they all had a good laugh about it and ate. It probably made a great story for years at Passover. “Hey Sheldon, remember when you tried to kill me? Oh man, that was funny! Pass the kugel?” Just like that.

Stephanie likes her Christmas hot. Damn Hot.

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When I finally tossed my purple high school graduation cap into the air, I said goodbye to the worst four years of my life. I said goodbye to cliques and insecurities and ripped that ’05 tassel off of my car’s rearview mirror and threw it right into the trash. High school was out; College was in. I wouldn’t miss the drama or the gossip or those terrible football games where no one scores a goal. “Life could begin now”. Or whatever it is that “they” say.

High school had been disappointing for me, to say the least. My generation was spoon-fed Amy Heckerling movies like Clueless when I was younger and, consequently fell in love with the idea of high school and the witty banter and 90210 inspired couture that supposedly came with it. When I was four, I distinctly remember pretending my cubby in pre-school was a high school locker. I couldn’t wait for high school. I was gonna be a cheerleader! Popular! Big breasted!

As it turned out, I liked reading too much to be a cheerleader and I wasn’t big breasted enough to be popular. I quickly learned that high school isn’t as much fun as Heckerling’s Sean Penn infested Ridgemont High. By the second week of my freshman year there I also seemed to have outgrown high school and the people who were stuck there with me. I spent my math classes dreaming about life outside of the windowless brick building that smells an awful lot like a jock strap.

I’d been out of high school two years and banished it out of my mind along with the time I saw my Chemistry teacher in a restaurant and Mariah Carey’s Glitter fiasco when someone reminded me of my time in the stinker.

“I’ll be in town this weekend,” my friend attending Stanford with some help from Daddy told me one weekend last year. Her father had donated so much to the university to counter her below superb grades and SAT scores I was surprised her dorm hadn’t been renamed in her honor. “We should hit up the high school.”

I gawked into my phone, “…Why?”

“Because I miss it! Don’t you?”

“No! How could you miss it?” I asked, horrified, “It was a awful!” She was a drama geek, so I couldn’t imagine high school was any better for her than it was for me; a book nerd who wrote for the school paper.

“I’m also singing at the school choir concert this Saturday,” she explains, “I asked and the choir teacher said I could come back and sing a solo as a former student!”

“As an alumna?” I ask.

“Yeah, an alumni!”

“No, alumna,” I explain. “The word ‘Alumni’ is plural.”

She is silent for a few beats. “Whatever,” she finally breaks it, “You should come!”

I’m suddenly reminded of those kids who graduated high school years before who returned to see a school play or concert and how weird I thought they were. Always lurking around campus trying to relive their glory days as the first chair trombonist.

“Why are they here?” someone, usually me, would always ask.

“Don’t they have a life?” someone would counter.

“These people need to let go!” my friend Laura tells me one night over the phone. I had just picked up my freshman sister from softball practice at my old high school and called to tell her that I had spotted an old classmate hanging out around campus. They had explained they were just “catching up” with teachers and kids who hadn’t yet graduated. “Pathetic!” Laura continues.

I agree with her, but can’t help to feel a twinge of sadness for these people who obviously aren’t making the best out of their university experience.

“I really like writing,” a kid tells our Journalism professor on the first day of college after class, “So newspaper is just something I’d really like to continue. I was the editor in chief of my high school’s…”

The professor cuts him off, “Everyone was.”

“Oh.”

Some people just can’t let go of the past.

“You have to go to your high school reunion,” my dentist, Julie, tells me over dinner. She’s a family friend and every Wednesday we go out to eat. “I went to my last one and, it had been twenty years but the same stupid jocks who got high and bumped chests as a hobby were still high and still bumping chests at the reunion!” She puts her fork down, “Have you ever seen fat, greasy, forty-year-old men bump chests? You have to! It’s wicked!”

I had never before considered going to my high school reunion. I can already tell you who gets fat, who gets skinny (if only from lipo); who is poor and who is wealthy. I can tell you who became a drug dealer, a failed muscian, a Target team member, and a porn star if only because I went to the same high school as everyone else in the world. Not the glorified high school that makes its way onto movie screens and television sets, but the gritty, disgusting, dismal, and depressing high school that forces kids to wear short shorts on cold winter days for PE and give speeches on dead presidents and bad literature. I know that in ten years, when I see these people again –if I see these people again-, everything will have stayed the same. We’ll all mingle in the same crowds, albeit this time with legal alcohol.

In twenty years some of the graduating class of 2005 will be divorced, regretting that tattoo they got on their Vegas trip, pregnant, lonely, but probably not successful. Not yet. Well, actually, I will be.

“How on earth did you do it?” someone who isn’t making fun of me in the corner of our former gym will ask.

“Oh, I paid in sweat,” I will laugh heartily. My famous fiancé will smile and hold my hand. “[We] are so happy” as quoted via a “close-source” to People Magazine. Can’t you tell by our fabulously capped teeth?

Stephanie and her fabulous fiance will be appearing the March 29th issue of the National Enquirer. In 2020.

Archives

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Please welcome Stephanie to Faster Than The World. This is a column she sent in to us a guest submission. She has since agreed to join us as a regular weekly writer. Her column will be called Obscene and Heard and will be about life in college.

“You’re breaking up with me to go out with a slut?”

As I sit in the café at Barnes and Noble on this last day of August, there is an entire world crashing down just two tables away and I can not help but listen in.

Being a young woman myself, my first reaction is a cross between enraged “girl power” and “misery loves company”. Parts of me want to stand on my table and shout a decree: “That boy!” I want to point to the greasy kid across the way who is breaking the blonde woman’s heart without an ounce of class or manners, “is scum! Sic him!” Patrons of Barnes and Noble, the less dorky ones with some meat on their bones, would stop reading their Hemingway and Better Homes and Garden to mangle this young man with his hair slicked down thick with oil under a baseball cap. His ex-girlfriend would be handed a hardcover copy of War and Peace by the good looking, though probably gay, book store employee and she would join in, slamming the book hard into his nose, instantly breaking it. His nose, not the book. Hardcover books are expensive and one would hope they could endure the slight abuse.

Unfortunately, back in reality, this poor girl does not look unlike Betty Cooper. Yet, unfortunately, her “Archie” would probably walk away unscathed tonight. “Ugh,” he grunts, “I-” the kid begins his rebuttal but Betty cuts him off, “No, I don’t even- I don’t want to know.” Now her Necco wafer thin body is facing away from the boy. She cannot look K-Fed in the eye but she is not crying, which is far better than I could have fared in this situation. My age of nineteen-years, perhaps, limits me. I see breaking up not so much as a right of passage, but rather a tragic end to what was probably a fabulous beginning. I see hours upon hours of wasted time and money. If my observations are correct, her boyfriend did not have a cent to his name that was not already spent on unfiltered cigarettes or pants that are four sizes too big, and maybe some girl on girl porn (which I imagine his favorite kind). My keen female-eye detects that he is the absolute bottom of the barrel; the kind of boy you bring home to your parents at Thanksgiving when you are raging mad at them. “Meet John, mom. He’s in a rock band!”

Then again, I did not grow up in Heather Locklear’s, Kate Hudson’s or Carmen Electra’s house, so maybe sometimes people really are attracted to The Bad Boy with a guitar…years before they get divorced. The experts say that girls marry men who are like their fathers. One can only assume their fathers showered just once a month. I myself grew up in a typical Jewish household. My father is from Jersey, but he stays clean and is only five foot six, which may explain my strange fascination with Woody Allen.

“We can still hang out,” my newfound Archie says to the side of second-rate Betty’s head and she twists her mouth, and I not sure whether she’s going to speak or keep mute.

Since I am a college student, I recognize this part of the conversation. “We can still hang out” is the equivalent of a “dude” saying, “We’re taking a break”. In a lot cases, it just means he would like to keep his options open. I always believed honesty is the best policy. These “dudes” should just put on their “man pants” and explain, “You won’t sleep with me so I’m going to date around, but I still think you’re hot so I’ll keep you on the backburner just incase this thing with your friend Michelle doesn’t work out.” It would save women from a lot of sad nights clinging to their cell phone incase their little non-boyfriends called for some coffee or to “just to talk”.

On the flip side, I understand this kid’s dilemma. He is a young guy after all and probably started college just that week or was leaving for some party school in Texas after Labor Day. Who wants to spend “The Best Years” tied down to some “chick” from their hometown? No one, unless they are the main character of a John Cusak movie. Not even Boy Meets World’s Corey and Tapanga could keep their act together through college, and they were on primetime television. The two had so much built up tension that they even fought over how Tapanga did her hair. I distinctly remember that episode. It really struck a chord with me. It taught me, at the tender age of ten, that not all relationships are perfect. Not even on television.

My Archie and Betty were no exception. These bright young things were destined for separation. Archie was far too immature and Betty seemingly deserved much more, though I might be biased since I too have breasts, albeit, small ones. I wondered what even drew her to the greasy monkey in the first place. “I mean, I won’t take you off my top eight or anything,” the boy continued. At this Myspace reference, steam actually did shoot out of Betty’s ears. “I’m sorry,” he shrugged as Betty began to gather her belongings, “You can e-mail me if you have questions or something.”

Betty laughed and then left without saying another word. Archie followed suit not long after, and I assume their lives both went on, but I am forever scarred. Lord help me, I do not ever want to date a guy who even has a top eight list. I pride myself on my taste in men (typically older, ex-presidents and movie stars I never have to worry about meeting) and wonder; is it really that easy to fall prey to some guy who can’t even figure out his own pant size?

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