Kick Me Page 9

  “I don’t know. I don’t think you’ll be able to walk in them. Plus, people might get the wrong idea if you get too girlish.” My mother’s sudden backtrack threw me. I became self-conscious.

  “I just want to look funny,” I said, my conviction wavering. “I think it’s funny if I dress up all the way.” As I stood there in my parents’ bedroom, the room in which I was conceived, wearing my mother’s clothes, jewelry, and hair, trying to force her into letting me also wear her shoes, I started to feel dirty. I began to envision God standing with his arms crossed looking at me and shaking his head slowly, muttering, “Oh, you’re gonna pay for this, friend.”

  Fortunately, my mother saved the day.

  “You know what? I’ve got these old white go-go boots that might work. I’ll pull them out and you can see if they fit.”

  The plan was on.

  When Halloween night rolled around, the girls who were my next-door neighbors came over in their costumes. We had all been going out together on Halloween for years, always with the master plan of making it to the rich neighborhood eight streets down from my house. Rumor had it they gave out giant candy bars and twenty-dollar bills. Our annual plan was to skip our streets and head directly for the rich neighborhood, get the costly booty we knew they were giving out, and then work our way back through the poorer, working-class houses that made up my immediate neighborhood. Every year, however, the lure of nearby candy would prove too tempting and we would convince ourselves that we could harvest all the treats from our blue-collar neighborhood as we worked our way toward the rich section, where we would then end the night on a high note of free cash and insanely big sweets. However, our energy would always flag after about four blocks in and so we’d hobble our way home, our pillowcases filled with normal lower-income candy, where we’d watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, stuff our faces, and vow to bankrupt the rich neighborhood next Halloween. A couple of years later when we actually made it to the rich neighborhood, we were shocked to find out that half the houses were dark and empty, and the rest were giving away the exact same Smarties and “fun-sized” Snickers that my not-as-rich neighbors were handing out. Our dreams of twenty-dollar bills and enormous Hershey bars died along with our innocence that night, and it was the last time we ever went out trick-or-treating. But on this night, as I stood primping in my bedroom, fully outfitted as a girl, eagerly awaiting my unveiling to my friends, the spirit of Halloween optimism was strong in me.

  My neighbors Sharon, Mary, and Stephanie, ages eleven, ten, and eight, respectively, came into the house dressed in their standard costumes. Sharon was a bum, Mary was a cat, and Stephanie was Little Bo Peep. My mother fussed over them accordingly as I checked myself in the mirror to make sure I was looking my absolute best. An additional element had been added to my appearance now that my mother had gotten fully involved. Subscribing to my “It’s funny if I dress up all the way” theory, my mom decided that I should also add makeup to my look. As if I were a young bride being prepared for her wedding night by the doting married women in her family, my mother had spent the past half hour sitting with me in front of her mirror, showing me the proper makeup I would wear if I indeed were a girl. Lipstick, rouge, mascara, powder—I was missing nothing. And with each new application of color, my fascination with myself grew. I was looking more and more girl-like with each stroke of the brush and each pat of the puff. I was starting not to even recognize myself and so began to detach from my image in the mirror. It was getting about as close as it could to a psychotic episode for me: Act One of a Quinn Martin show, in which some crazy transvestite has a Narcissus experience, falls in love with his alter ego, and ends up killing everyone who ever made fun of him until he’s finally shot dead in a house of mirrors by Cannon or Mannix or Barnaby Jones. I didn’t know where this new phase of my obsession was going to ultimately lead me, but at that moment, I didn’t care. Right then, as the song goes, I enjoyed being a girl.

  When I finally came out and revealed the New Me to my next-door neighbors, my appearance had the intended effect.

  “Wow, Fig Newton, you really look like a girl,” marveled Stephanie.

  “Hey, Fig Newton, nice legs,” Sharon chortled. She was caught between amazement at my appearance and the overwhelming desire to make fun of me. Since her usual course of action was to get zingers off at my expense, I took her semi-stymieing as a compliment.

  Mary, my best friend, whom I also happened to be head over heels in love with, stared at me, then shook her head and laughed. “Oh, my God . . .” was all she could muster. But the look on her face said she was thrown by the accuracy of my gender change. I was very pleased and started trying to envision myself in other, more provocative outfits.

  My mom took pictures of us, and then we headed out into the night. As we went from house to house, the reaction that greeted me was exactly what I was hoping for. People thought I was a girl.

  “What are you supposed to be, young lady?” asked Mrs. Galanski down the street. “A go-go dancer?”

  “Mrs. Galanski,” Stephanie said proudly, “that’s Paul.”

  “Oh, my goodness. It is? Paul, you have such beautiful legs.”

  I had never been happier in my life. For all the times I had to suffer through the old waitresses’ mistaking me for a girl, I was now getting that same recognition strictly because I was asking for it. This night it wasn’t an insulting mistake. I was controlling my image and it felt good. And for the first time in my life, I was being considered attractive, albeit in the wrong gender. But what the hell? A compliment’s a compliment.

  The rest of the evening went off wonderfully. People assumed I was a girl, and soon I told Stephanie not to tell them I wasn’t. If they knew me in real life, it was nice to fool them. If they didn’t know me, the extra anonymity was freeing. It was like being in a different country where no one knows you and so you can act like you’re considered cool and dangerous back in your hometown, walking with a scowl and not saying thank you if you don’t feel like it and putting a pack of cigarettes on the bar in front of you even though you don’t smoke. There I was, undercover in my own neighborhood. I walked among them, my Midwestern brothers and sisters, anonymous and pulling one over on them all. My ego was being stroked and there would be no real witnesses to my subterfuge other than my next-door neighbors. It was the perfect social crime.

  That night as I lay in bed, I kept reliving the evening in my mind, trying to figure myself out. I still had the huge crush on Mary that I’d had since we were five, and, in fact, it had grown even more powerful after spending the evening with her in her form-fitting cat costume leotard, so I knew I hadn’t gone so far over to the girl side that I was losing interest in the opposite sex. But there was no denying it—I loved myself as a girl. And I knew that I couldn’t wait to get the outfit—the full outfit—back on again.

  The next day, when I returned home from school, there was a note from my mother that she had gone out shopping and after that she was going to go directly to my father’s store to do some work. She had recently started working in his office, adding up the hours on time cards and issuing paychecks to the employees. My mother had given up her career at the phone company when she married my dad, and, although she liked being a mom, she had always wanted to have a job again. And so my dad, sensing this, let her start doing these minor accounting jobs. She loved it, and I loved it because it meant more time after school that I could lie around and watch TV without being implored to go outside, practice my guitar, or do my homework. And on a day like today, I especially loved her working because it meant I could take my good old sweet time and once again get fully dressed up like a girl. Makeup and all.

  I rushed into her room and pulled out the now familiar pieces of my outfit. I had become quite adept at getting dressed and could be fully outfitted in less than three minutes’ time. However, having never applied the makeup on my own before, I settled in and vowed to do an even better job than my mother had done.

 
Once I was fully made up to my satisfaction, I started to parade around in front of my mother’s bedroom mirror as usual. However, after having enjoyed the freedom of using the entire neighborhood as my fashion runway the night before, the five-foot-square carpeted area in my mom’s bedroom now no longer seemed to be enough. And so I decided to venture out into the living room.

  It was a sunny day outside and at first I was scared that somebody could see me through the front windows. But then I remembered that our house, which was surrounded by a row of scraggly-looking hedges, was fairly obscured from the street. And besides, when the sun hit our normally dirty windows, the glare was such that you really couldn’t see in unless you got pretty close to the glass. Having a clear view of our driveway from the living room, I knew I had plenty of time to dash into the back of the house if any paperboys or neighbors looking to borrow a cup of sugar showed up. Feeling safe in this knowledge, I proceeded to begin mincing about the living room, looking at my reflection in the window of my mother’s china cabinet. As I did this, I heard a distant screech of tires and a dull thud. Since our house was so close to a major truck road, a quarry, and some railroad tracks, strange industrial noises were just part of the pastiche that made up the air around my neighborhood. I continued to mince, pretending that I was entertaining guests in our living room, laughing at unheard jokes and inviting people to sit soft. My eyes were firmly glued to the china cabinet window, trying to get a glimpse of my alter ego’s reflection as she performed her duties as the perfect hostess. I felt a pang of weirdness. While staring at myself in the mirror seemed to be about enjoying this other person I had created, and trick-or-treating had been about hiding my identity, what I was now doing in the living room started to feel like I was simply playing house with myself. Not only did it feel a little unnatural and creepy, I was starting to feel stupid. Wanting to get the buzz back, I decided that I had chosen the wrong activity to exploit my feminine side and so figured that maybe an activity that fully exploited my go-go boots would be the answer. I started to do a spastic version of the twist, trying to make my pearls swing around my neck like a Hula Hoop. Because the go-go boots had smooth plastic soles, I could really get a good swivel going on the thick green shag carpeting we had in our living room. I was busy trying to make my hair fly out to the sides and alternately hit the corners of my mouth as I danced when suddenly I heard a loud TAP TAP TAP.

  I froze. Terrified, I turned and looked toward the window. There I saw three kids from my school with their faces pressed up against the glass, staring at me. My stomach shriveled to the size of a raisin. I felt like I was going to faint. I waited for them to start laughing. But they didn’t. One of them gestured wildly for me to come to the door. Oh, no, I thought. How am I going to get out of this one? My mind spun, trying to come up with some reasonable excuses for why I was just go-go dancing by myself wearing women’s clothing, a wig, and full makeup in my living room. There were none to be had. The surrealism of the moment was undeniable, and all I could do was simply walk to the door and prepare to take my lumps. I grabbed the knob and pulled the door open, which now felt as heavy as the door on an extra-large bank safe. The three kids, one girl and two boys, stood staring at me through the screen door, shocked looks on their faces.

  I quickly went into overdrive. I made a goofy face and did a “girl” gesture, which consisted of waving my hand limp-wristed at them and doing a little bounce with my feet. Trying to be as light as possible, I said, “Oops, you caught me.” I don’t know what I was hoping to accomplish with this. Was I thinking they’d assume I was just trying to be funny? That my appearance was a muffled cry for help? Did I feel some need to be discovered so that the therapy could begin? The kids looked at me but didn’t react to my attempt to defuse the situation.

  “Your mom was just in a car accident,” the girl said, terrified to be the one delivering bad news.

  I immediately went numb. Everything popped out of my head except the image of my mother lying dead and mangled in a totaled car. “Is she all right?” I squeaked out, my throat seizing up with rising emotion.

  “I don’t know. You’d better come quick,” said one of the boys, ominously. “She’s down at the corner. It’s pretty bad.”

  And without another thought, I threw the screen door open and dashed out of the house, running full speed down to the intersection one block over. As I rounded the corner, I saw a large crowd standing around, looking concerned. Then I saw my mother’s lime green Dodge Coronet in the middle of the street, the front end smashed and steaming. Broken glass and radiator fluid were all over the asphalt. On the other side of the intersection, I saw a van that had the words A-1 Extermination on the side. Its front corner was also smashed. Then, about ten feet in front of the van, lying motionless on its back, was a five-foot-long plastic cockroach that had been on top of the van before impact.

  I ran up and saw that several people were helping my mother out of the car. She looked very shaken up but at least she was moving. The manager from my dad’s store, John, was there with his arm around her, giving her support. What I later found out was that one of the neighbors had called my dad at the store but because he was out at his warehouse picking up merchandise, John had raced over to help. I ran up through the crowd of people and said tearfully, “Mom, are you all right?” She was quite unfocused and I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or just stunned. She didn’t really look at me and just kept moving away from the car, her arm around John’s shoulder. John, however, had a very tense expression on his face and he threw a look over at me that said, “She’s fine, just don’t bother her right now.” His eyes lingered on me another few seconds and I remember thinking he was mad at me, as if the accident were my fault. I couldn’t figure it out, but it scared me. As he led my mother away, I stood there helplessly, trying not to cry but feeling the tears coming on. I looked into the car and saw a bag of groceries that had been thrown forward into the dashboard and scattered all over the floor. A couple of dinner plates that she had bought were broken in pieces among the boxes of Pop-Tarts and bathroom cleansers. The sight of the scattered groceries made me start to tear up, as I thought about my mom at the grocery store buying me all my favorite treats and now there they were all smashed and ruined. I was terrified and numb.

  It was then, as I looked up at the crowd for sympathy, that I saw for the first time that everyone was now no longer staring at the wreckage of the accident but was indeed staring at me. Faces ran the gamut from slack jaws to furrowed brows to out-and-out smirks. What’s wrong with you people? I thought. My mother was almost killed. I looked over at the girl standing next to me, hoping to find a sympathetic face. She was staring back at me, looking like she’d just smelled dog shit.

  “Oh, my God . . . what are you wearing?”

  I immediately snapped back to reality. The shock of the accident had somehow erased from my mind the fact that I was now standing in the middle of my neighborhood—in broad, non-Halloween daylight—in full drag. Some of the kids in the crowd started to laugh, which led to some of the adults starting to laugh and shake their heads in disbelief. The initial wave of humiliation I felt was quickly replaced by an anger that these people couldn’t just overlook the way I was dressed out of respect for my mother. But clearly they couldn’t. Who could? I certainly couldn’t if I was standing at the scene of a non-fatal accident and a kid ran up dressed like an airline stewardess. I’d probably laugh even if it was a fatal accident.

  Well, a chorus of hilarity went up and I headed off after my mother. When we got my mom back to our house, she was still shaken up and only wanted to sit down. She sank into the recliner in our living room with a cold compress on her head and cried about her wrecked Dodge Coronet that she liked so much. John went into the kitchen and called a doctor to come over to make sure she was all right. And I went into her bedroom and quietly changed back into my regular clothes. As I hung up my dress and put my boots back and returned my wig to its tube, I realized that I would never again dress u
p like a girl. I had been scared back into pants, concluding that somehow my desperate need to transform myself into the opposite sex had incurred the wrath of God, who then decided to fire a warning shot across my bow by almost killing my mother and embarrassing the hell out of me. It seemed like a rather drastic act for the Ruler of All Space and Time to do just because I liked the way I looked in a That Girl wig. I’d assumed He had bigger fish to fry. But, as my grandmother used to say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  Looking back, I think it was just my ego and a big dose of bad timing that got me in the end. I mean, I feel pretty certain that there is no God, but just in case there is, then I can say one thing about Him . . .

  The guy’s a real party pooper.

  ’Cause I looked damn good in that dress.

  I LEARN SOMETHING DISTURBING ABOUT GIRLS

  There’s nothing like being told you’re not allowed to know about something to really get your imagination racing. Especially when you’re a kid.

  The irony was that people were always telling us things they wanted us to know when we were in school. They were constantly trying to force us to listen to them and remember their words and concepts, warning us that everything they were teaching was for our own good and that it was information we’d definitely need to know later in life. Clearly, no one in the educational system had ever read Tom Sawyer. Their misguided attempts to “make learning fun” were never effective because learning wasn’t fun back then. They simply should have figured out what the most important subjects were that we would need later in life and then told us that they were forbidden to teach those things to us. We would have paid every penny of our allowances just to hear tales about the taboo isosceles triangle or the verboten declarative case, and the con job would have been complete. But, no, they would simply try to convince us how important these subjects were and so the only attitude we rebellious children could possibly adopt was one of total indifference. It’s because of this that I’ve always felt the school system is designed completely backward. Because when you’re in school, the last place you want to be is in school. And once you graduate and get out in the world and start learning just how much stuff you should have paid attention to when they were teaching it, school’s the only place you truly want to be. And yet by that time, you’re stuck smack-dab in the middle of the adult world, and going back to school at that point just makes you seem like kind of a . . . well . . . loser (Grandmas and divorcées not included). It’s like that grouchy guy on the porch in It’s a Wonderful Life said when Jimmy Stewart wouldn’t kiss Donna Reed: