strange musings of a distracted spunk

For me, it started on the bus.

She had been in a few of my classes; almost all of them, actually, but we didn’t talk. She thought I wasn’t cool enough, because I didn’t care what other people thought of me. She was the envy of most girls in our classes because she was tall, with long blond hair, and she could eat for days without gaining a single pound. Not to mention, she was model pretty.

One day, we started talking on the bus. Did I reach out to her? Did she reach out to me? We both lived outside the town our high school was in, so we rode the same small bus. When her friend was dropped off early on in the bus ride, I became the default. It never bothered me; I just liked having someone to talk to to kill time.

Over time, we grew closer. Our conversations extended to instant messages. We chatted during drama practice and lunch. We even talked during class. By the time we got to the end of sophomore year, there was something infinitely more comfortable than it had been the year before. She was less concerned with pretenses. I still didn’t care. But I began to genuinely like her, and not just as someone to talk to. She came to my sweet sixteen and sat next to me, even though I didn’t yet consider her my closest friend. Those pictures tell a story we didn’t know was taking place.

Junior year changed everything. We both came back from summer with boyfriends. She kept hers for years, while I discarded the first, and moved onto another. Sex was now an option. We would sit in the very back seat of this small little bus, talking about what our boyfriends liked and what we liked. We talked about how we felt. We talked about the annoyances of high school. I was more than ready to leave, but she was still feeling her way through the halls. We described sex, graphically. We discussed penises, having never really seen them before. We talked about articles we’d find on how to leave our man satisfied.

I woke up one day, and she was my best friend.

I can’t imagine what other people on our bus thought, had they overheard us. We wouldn’t always sit together. Sometimes, we’d sit in the two back seats, so she could finish putting her makeup on, but when the bus became more crowded, she would move over to my seat. I don’t know that we made any attempt to be quiet. Self-consciousness had no place in our little corner of the bus. It was here where we could hash out everything on our minds; the future, the past, the present. We ran over every article of thought, like a highway to overanalyzation. There was nothing too big or too small for us, and by the time we graduated, she knew almost everything about me and I her. We understood each other. We understood why we did the things we did, and why we didn’t. She knew the most about my parents and family, and we would talk about them on the bus, sun pouring in through the unlatched open windows so we could enjoy the fresh air, despite the grit and dirt of my memories.

That bus is probably no longer in service. Yet, that bus holds a memory I don’t even have; of how we became friends. Of how ten years later, she is still the first person I turn to because she knows where I came from. It holds the teenage gossip and babbling that we thought was so important at the time, only to find out that the world largely disagrees. Except for sex. Sex is always important. The bus is inscribed with the words of our high school lives, the stories of where we were going and how did we get there, and us.

Sometimes, I wish I could find that bus, and see if there would still be the two girls in the back corner trading tips, test answers, paper topics, and friendship. Would they be as close as we are now? Would they have double-dated throughout college and visited each other, and even flown across oceans for one another? Would they still do as much for each other now as they did then?

For me, it started on the bus.

When we were younger, our mother took us to Disney World in her first act as an independent, single woman. I was twelve and my sister was nine. In a rare display of affection, I offered to give my sister a piggyback ride in the pool. As we sunk lower into the water, her arms clung to my throat, cutting off my air and circulation until I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed around, trying to pry her fingers off my neck, before I was able to finally push her off. Gasping for air, I wondered if that was her way of getting back at me, for the decapitated Barbies whose hair I couldn’t brush properly, for accidentally slamming our grandparents’ door shut on her fingers, for ignoring her whenever possible. She said she didn’t know she was doing it. I’m still not so sure.

I was never a good sister. I’m not sure that I am today. I wanted nothing to do with her, and sometimes I still don’t. I wish I could be stronger, tolerate her more, but my patience wears thin, snapping like straws of spaghetti before they’re cooked. Where I was red, blue, and aged before my time, she was black, shifting colors, and stunted. We’ve wondered if she might be mildly autistic for it took us years to explain what humor was. Her inability to process sarcasm and understand that the world is shaded more in gray than black and white makes it difficult for me to connect with her, being a deeply sarcastic person and never one to focus on stark contrasts. Her inability to keep friendships for long is something we have difficulty understanding, explaining, because the awkward, angry, hurt person she is around my parents and me is not the one she presents to the outside world. So few people realize how difficult it can be to deal with her when she has her happy face on.

When she doesn’t get her way, she takes it out on whomever is nearest; lashing out at me by telling me I think I’m perfect, I know everything, don’t I? Our mother for “refusing” to give her the money our father supplies us with. Our father for not being there, in our house, a stepfather instead in his place whom she hated for much of his appearance in our lives. Much like I would throw gum in my father’s girlfriend’s hair to antagonize her when I was ten, my sister would find ways to incinerate him to the point where he punched a hole in the wall. She has become a source of contention in both my parents’ dissolved marriage, and my mother’s remarriage. I often worry that if my parents were to ever get divorced, she will be the reason.

Her willingness to play the victim both angers and upsets me. So we got into a fight yesterday, one that left her screaming at me and me parking the car in our driveway and walking out. I told her we’re too different to ever be friends, that if I weren’t related to her, I would have nothing to do with her because I don’t associate with people who don’t take responsibility for themselves.

I’m not one to mince words. Rounded edges has never been my forte, and yet, it’s what my parents have used to get her through her childhood. I’d rather the sharp edges, so it cuts at once, and you know not to make the same mistake again. I never can tolerate how quick they are to hold her hand through everything, to reassure her that the world is not out to get her every time something doesn’t go her way. Empathy and sympathy are not emotions she understands for anyone else, yet she demands and clamors for it when the slightest thing goes wrong. It has often led to me slamming a door in her face and sobbing behind it when my world is crumbling and she wants to go to the mall.

I can’t pretend to be a good sister. I know I’m not.

This time, she didn’t cry. The red-faced anger was still there; the one that leads to tears and shouts, locked doors, “I hate you!” declarations throated from a voice that can’t quite absorb the world around her. She said, “We’re different. You’re always running away, moving onto something else. I need time to get used to things, to learn how to do things, because I’m slower. That doesn’t mean you’re better than me.”

I told her I never thought I was. Just that I wish she would stop saying, “I can’t” and start trying to say, “I can.”

How is it that she and I were made from the same cloth? Can you agree to disagree? Maybe she has changed in the last year, grown wiser to the ways of maturity. But my scars run deep. I can’t so easily accept she’s different when she’s still so unwilling to accept the damage she dispenses, wielding a baseball bat of irrationality when it strikes her fancy. I can’t be the punching bag she directs her anger at because she’s not getting what she wants at that immediate moment. I can’t be the wall between my parents, waiting to break the minute I get loose.

I’ve been home less than a week. Is it too soon to take flight?

She dropped us off at the dance studio, after telling us our father would pick us up. We hadn’t seen him in three months, not since before we left camp in August, before we came home to a household full of possessions and a broken marriage. My sister went to class in her leotard and black ballet shoes while I buried my nose in a book in the waiting room. When I next looked up, there was a brand new white car in front of the studio. He took us to see the Santa Clause, a first date of sorts with our father the weekend figure. We wouldn’t have any more Sunday mornings playing Monopoly and Life on their gray platform bed because we were now divorce kids. Our life would consist of being shuttled between houses and cities for the next eight years.

I found myself missing him while I was in Thailand, wanting to be able to tell him about what was going on and everything I had seen and experienced. I would have called but the connection was faulty. So instead, I sent him an e-mail.

Four months after he left us, he told us he was inviting a friend to come out with us. She walked out of her house, long black hair, Barbie pink lipstick, and the smell of coffee and dog clogging up the air. It was a sickly sweet smell that made me want to throw up, gag out the window for dramatic effect but the only one who would have noticed would have been my sister, and only to complain at that. Something was off; once she entered the car, it was like he forgot about us. I threw gum in her hair, kicked the back of her chair, did whatever I could to make her experience with us an unpleasant one for the first few years.

I asked him if he would be around on Saturday afternoon. It surprised me how much I wanted to see him, considering I sometimes hate him with more passion than I’ve reserved for any of the boys I’ve dated.

She came with us everywhere. He’d pick us up originally in Brooklyn, then Staten Island, where we would slowly make our way over the Verrazano bridge, over the Belt Parkway, to the Long Island Expressway, and finally his house. By the time we got to his house, all we had energy left for was grilled cheese, TGIF, and bed. When I’d wake up the next morning, she was already sitting at his kitchen table. I once asked him if she absolutely had to come to the dentist with us, since I couldn’t imagine that being a very romantic date while [sister] and I got our teeth drilled. He replied, “She has no one else but me.” I thought, But what about us?

He e-mailed me back. “I’ll be in New Jersey on Thursday and Friday nights, but I leave Saturday morning. I guess I’ll see you next Thursday.” There was no explanation needed; Saturdays are his days with her.

It never seemed to occur to him that by making her his priority, he became at best an embellisher, at worse, a liar and a cheat. I still wonder if he’ll ever admit cheating on my mom. As it is, I never could look at him again in the same light. Many of our fights, when they weren’t about him badmouthing my mother or making excuses for my sister, were about her. It seems no matter how hard I try, it’s impossible to show him his words mean nothing when his actions say everything to the contrary.

That sucker punch hit hard. The wind fell out of me and my breath ran jagged miles over my tongue.

In some ways, I wish I knew how to stop wanting him to change, wanting him to become the man I admired for so long as a child. So instead, I cry, for all the years and arguments, for my inability to ever properly articulate how I feel, for always wanting more than I’ll ever be able to have because he’ll never understand.

He always did know exactly where to make it hurt the worst. Even when he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

She brushed her hair back with a wave of insecurity. Her pink dress kept riding down, exposing a black bra. I wondered who the black strapless bra was for, underneath her informal prom dress, on a night where she was one of two dateless girls at a table full of couples.

Would I have ever dared show up at prom without a date? I recall breaking up with my high school boyfriend multiple times before prom, and even going so far as asking a friend if he’d accompany me in the case that the breakup stuck this time. The breakup didn’t, the boyfriend didn’t, and senior prom was a bit of a bust. Even the catering hall’s power thought so, as it went out halfway through our dinner.

The undeclared photographer of her table, she kept looking around, watching, waiting to see who was talking about her. I asked Princess Pointful, “Were you this insecure in high school?” Without so much as a pause, she said, “Yes.” It surprised me, to know that someone who is so aware of who she is now, was maybe almost too aware of who she was then. Though it seems that’s the nature of high school.

A girl in a lime green dress sat alone with her lime-green vested date, and frowned most of her way through dinner. He tried to make her laugh, but she was too busy watching the two tables of high-school prom goers that surrounded us. We watched her, wondering if she had just had a falling out with one of the other girls at one of those tables. Wasn’t that all high school was? Uninvitations, blocked memories, girls putting each other down. I once had a bully take my can of soda and drink the entire thing in one gulp. At least it wasn’t my lunch. I don’t care to remember much else about high school.

At yet another table behind us, more dresses slipped down, showing black bras, nude bras, and bare backs. These kids had credit cards, cell phones, their dresses skimmed their thighs and reached just below their non-existent cleavage. Princess and I talked about how we didn’t get credit cards till college, how puberty hit us at different points. For me, it was after I went to college that my chest exploded with first C-cups, and now D.

One has to wonder, what’s in store for these girls? Their prom, so different from mine, involved going out to dinner first and to a dance later. Would they go home with their dates, fingers fumbling beneath corseted backs, safety pins, and laces, underwear sliding off, pants unzipping? Or would they shuffle out of barely heeled shoes, shimmy out of low-swinging dress, plug in a USB cable and upload pictures of their table laughing and drinking non-alcoholic Mojito Breezes, wishing there was someone to slide the corsage off their wrist?

I have pictures from my own proms, junior and senior, where I took silly pictures with my then-boyfriend, as though it would be the time of my life. It wasn’t then, it wasn’t now. I don’t even know where those pictures are anymore; for all I know, they may have been thrown out during one of my many moves.

I wanted to tell the girl in the lime green dress to stop fretting. It’s just one night. Let your date make you laugh, smile a bit, whatever’s got you down is going to be all over in a matter of weeks. I wanted to tell the girl in the pink dress, stop looking around; don’t wear your insecurity on your sleeve. You’re already stronger than I was at seventeen, showing up dateless when I had a roster of guys recruited in case my boyfriend and I broke up again. I admire you. But I can’t, when you don’t even admire yourself.

How do you tell a seventeen year old girl the things you’ve learned when you’re not much older than she?

She peeked out at me, with bright brown eyes (I never knew brown eyes could be so bright), sucking on a lollipop, easily fascinated with me the way I was with her. The register held a relic of Indian heritage, but her shirt proudly broadcasted her Dora the Explorer upbringing. Maybe three or four years old, she stood on a stool, accompanying her mother on the register as though she were playing at Play-Skool store. Her curiosity was minimal, extending no further than a few brazenly open glances my way, examining the curves of my red hair, so unlike hers, black and straight, upended in pigtails. She mildly examined my pale, alabaster skin, smattered with light freckles which even at their darkest were still lighter than her own brown skin, unblemished with the marks of time. Her sense of initial wonderment left me slightly bemused. What did she think I was doing as I ordered my chicken tikka masala and naan? Who did she think I was?

I remembered then, how from the time I was three till about five, my father and I had a morning ritual, before he took me to the school for the deaf in Long Island. We would drive several blocks away from our house in Brooklyn to this small coffee shop where I loved to climb up onto the stools that were almost as tall as I was, so I could swing my legs and spin around while we waited for our food. The luncheonette was always dark, wood paneled walls with chrome and black stools, and the register upfront was the one where my father would buy a lotto ticket, the religion to which he prayed daily. It was at the counter that I would always order a scrambled egg with ketchup, french fries, and apple juice. I would also order up a custom-made drawing from Kathy, the waitress who served my plate daily.

When I was younger, I had an inexplicable fascination with unicorns; maybe it was an extension of my love for My Little Pony, or perhaps my theory that Starlite was a unicorn, but his horn was hidden behind that dazzling mane of color. I don’t remember how it came about. I just remember that Kathy would use the back of her waitress pad to draw me a unicorn, one to keep in my pocket or in my bag or wherever it is that a pre-schooler keeps her belongings. I treasured those drawings, where we would talk about what a unicorn could and couldn’t do, how they moved, and what color it should be. Sometimes Kathy would surprise me by having a purple crayon in her possession, purple being my favorite color growing up, and she’d make me a purple unicorn. It didn’t get any better than that.

I didn’t know much about Kathy, other than she always brought my breakfast, with rye toast, and made me unicorns. For several years, even after I had rejected the school of deaf in favor of the public school across the street, she was always there. When my third grade class walked to the movie theater to see Beauty and the Beast, I popped in to say hello to Kathy. She had wavy blond hair, short, and in my mind’s eye, I remember her being more trim, with multiple earrings, and a pleasant demeanor.

Several years ago, I found myself back at the breakfast joint, and Kathy was still there. She was a bit heavier, less earring’d, yet she still smiled the same easy smile she wore as she handed down my plate. My feet no longer swung off the stool; my spins were foiled by the roots my legs suddenly planted on the ground. I wouldn’t know what to do with a waitress pad unicorn anymore. My pockets were full of keys and money, memories of the life I was just really beginning to understand, shaped by my own choosing. We talked, about the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters; she remembered how I loved unicorns as a child, and indeed, when I finally went to the Cloisters, I stood transfixed by the Unicorn Tapestries.

I wonder now, who was Kathy? Was she an art student who just found herself working at the luncheonette to pay the bills? Did she take the L into Manhattan on her days off to wander around the Met and the MoMa and all the art galleries in SoHo, before coming back to sling plates and draw unicorns on pads? Was she a daughter who grew up nearby, who had no direction and chose to make this hers, chatting up the regulars and serving coffee? Did she ever dream about traveling, leaving Brooklyn and its overdrawn cawfees and dawgs for lands where a dog was cane, and eggs were l’oeufs, where she no longer wore the black apron and white shirt, but instead sat at a sidewalk cafe as someone else rolled around in black shoes and took her order? I spent every day accepting her gifts of benevolent horned unicorns, yet I never knew who she was.

The little girl tonight probably won’t remember me, and chances are, I’ll forget her too, because that’s the nature of life; we meet, we leave. But inevitably, someone will become her Kathy, a childhood memory tucked away to be drawn out in the least likely moments, thousands of miles away from the scene of the shared moments. I wonder if Kathy remembers me. Am I still the little girl with the Annie-like curls and bright blue eyes, chattering away with mispronounced s’s and dimples that beam upon the newest drawing bestowed upon her? Does she remember me more as the young woman, on the verge of adulthood, from the last time she saw me? Or maybe, I’m just a folded piece of paper, creased with time, that only comes out when someone reminds her of a unicorn.

Being the child of two teachers who were both active and easily bored meant it was unlikely that I would ever have a summer where I didn’t do anything. I’ve never known the lazy summers with vacations and playing in the front yard, running through sprinklers and riding bikes around. That’s what we did in the spring, in June, before school ended, before camp started. For eight years of my life, I was a camp baby. I attended sleepaway camp for free while my parents worked, as head counselors or the waterfront director, supervising squadrons of counselors who always seemed so much older than my innocent years.

I was precocious; there weren’t many redheaded campers with long wavy hair that knew your name and could speak intelligently with most others. Between my parents working there and being among the youngest campers to sleep in a bunk, there were few people who didn’t know who I was. It never occurred to me that the camp wasn’t mine; I walked around as though I owned it, the lacrosse field on the hill between the woods and the arts and craft cabin the ground of my childhood imprinted. The camp has since replaced a portion of the lacrosse field with a pool, and the arts and crafts cabin became a bunk, relocated to a newer building at the base of the hill.

It was that camp where I had my heart broken for the first time. I think we all go through a point in our lives where our childhood friends betray us, where the imaginary games and the shared stories and the hours of false competitions like ice skating and dancing in the space between all our beds become obsolete. Where we once made the rounds of bat mitzvahs, joining together on the stand to sing along and dance behind the DJ, forsworn in our vows to always be friends are memories that a certain song will recall but won’t be repeated. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve left my camp, after watching my bunkmates, some of whom I had shared summers with since the very beginning, slowly dissolve. We started at three, grew to seven, jumped to thirteen, before rounding out to a perfect ten. Ten girls, who only lived for the summer, to sing “Won’t you light my candle?” on the top of our lungs during rest hour, to take turns straightening each other’s hair before the big dance, to gossip about who kissed who behind the canteen.

The bonds of friendship shifted; each summer I found myself with a new bunkmate. After a while, I just stayed with the same one because I used up so little space, there was more room for all her clothes. Even back then I was low maintenance; I didn’t mind taking the last shower even though reveille had already started, for I knew I could be in and out, shampooed, conditioned, soaped, and dressed in under two minutes. To this day, I still have difficulty taking long showers after being so carefully cultivated at camp.

What I never expected though was to watch those friendships shift, from a web of ten girls who were all equally close, who lived and breathed camp and each other, to smaller groups, to the beginning of cliques which I had known but never fully experienced. What had once been a consistent group dynamic dissolved into smaller, more fragile microcosms of what had been. I had always marched to the beat of my own song, as equally happy to read a book on my own during rest hour as I was to socialize and play light as a feather, stiff as a board before lights out. My independence and precociousness garnered me friendships in the older girls, in the counselors who thought I was adorable, and in the younger girls who looked up to me because I would play with them for hours. I had no qualms about disappearing off to practice with the circus for hours, leaving the other girls behind to do whatever it was they were wont to do.

But then one day, the dynamics shifted. I saw six of the girls clinging to each other, pushing the other four of us out. I saw one spending time regularly with the bad girls; the ones you knew were doing things they shouldn’t, but you didn’t know what. It was the first time I had heard of laxatives, and the first summer where third base was regularly reached. I watched two grow more and more resentful of the other six, sticking to themselves and casting nasty glances. I watched all of it, but never participated, for even as a kid, I had enough drama going on at home to want to get involved with it socially. I figured we were a bunk, we would still come together when it came time to stand up and declare who we were and take over the camp as we always did, for we had been there the longest, children of camp employees, spoiled to oblivion. No matter what happened, we would always be there for one another, like we always had been for the last seven years.

It backfired. I came back to the cabin one day to see eight faces, streaming with tears, red in anger, huffy, disenchanted, used. I watched one of the girls, who was the newest addition to our group, who I shared a bunk space with look at me and say, “You’re not part of this.” Indeed, my group leader came out and told me I’d be best going somewhere else, as this was a bunk problem that they all needed to solve. I had just turned fourteen, had just left Brooklyn for good, and my bunk life was the only stable presence I still had. My parents were divorced, my lifestyle had changed, I had just left the only dance school I had ever known, and now I was being told I was no longer part of the group.

I count that day as the day I made my first adult decision, at fourteen. When I realized how damaged the bonds of friendship had become, how I had somehow been removed from the equation as though I were an unnecessary period after the sum had been added, I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t watch the people I had felt closest to, most stable with destroy my memories of a camp I had loved, that I can still breathe in the warm summer air, up in the mountains, the firecrackers over the lake on the fourth of July, the waterslide and the floating docks I got tossed off of, the ceramic chess sets I made for my grandfathers, the basketball curved under my fingers as I sent it to meet its netted hoop, the color wars I would never be Captain for, the boys I would never kiss behind the canteen, the counselor I would never become there, years of traditions at my fingertips. With only a week left before the end of the summer, before some of my favorite traditions of lazy Sunday and long days at the lake, the sunset that would render me immovable in my tracks as we made our way to the gym for evening activity, I left.

I don’t remember the drive home. I don’t remember if my father picked me up, or if I went home with my soon-to-be stepdad, or if I got a ride from someone else who was going down to Long Island where I would have probably stayed with my father for a few days. I don’t remember anything that happened after leaving the gym during color war sing practice and saying goodbye to tearful campers, who had impacted me so deeply, I knew I would never be the same. I heard their pleas to stay, but I was resolute in my decision. I don’t remember anything that happened between those last moments and starting high school, several weeks apart.

Years later, I still wonder. What would have happened had I stayed? Would I recall loving so deeply the air, the grounds, the sky, the mountains, the lake with its strange fish brushing my feet, the trapeze rough beneath my hands, the dining hall where the chef snuck me my favorite cornbread muffins, the girls who I loved and have now lost? Facebook tells me where they are, and I’ve even seen a few of them here and there. But after having been so deeply connected and torn apart of my own choosing, it’s strange to watch the bonds of my childhood exist where I no longer am.

A scent of barbecue in the air can easily bring me back to Tuesday night barbecues, where we sat in red chairs and chattered on and on about whatever it is young girls do.

There are no more red chairs. I just cling to hope that somewhere, my old bunks hold my name scrawled on the walls, tangled with the girls whom I shared my childhood with, commemorating something we’ve all moved beyond. Time is both immovable and fluid, but memories are not.

A field of memories, each contained in a single blade of grass would tell my story, of how I learned what friendship was, and when I made my first major decision to break ties. Of when my hearing aid surrendered to the pounding rainstorm that came without warning and left me with a waterlogged ear that would take three days to replace. Of the mornings we’d wake and find our counselors exchanged for one of the male counselors, delighting us and also slightly terrifying us because it was a boy! In our bunk!

Yet I still feel as though if I were to return, walking down the red dirt path down to the base of the hill, the same sunset would greet me, its colors softly nuzzling one another as it broke into the most unlikely shields of the rainbow, the blades of grass rising up to meet me, cushioning me with the memories of a life lived long ago.

I received a letter from my mother yesterday.

We’re not typically mushy, gooey, I miss you, I love you. We talk but I’m as cryptic with her sometimes as I am with the rest of the world. It’s no surprise that my family thinks I’m cold, emotionless, and unaffected. Hell, even my best friends think that sometimes.

But a few weeks ago, I started writing, about when I was twelve and angry at my mother for somehow having encouraged my father to leave her. Even though I knew my dad had cheated on her with a woman thirteen years my senior, I still thought it was my mom’s fault. I like to think of it as my teenage rebellion years, several years shy of my actual teenage years.

It wasn’t until we were in Disney World that year, at the New Orleans Resort more specifically that my grandfather sat me down and more or less told me to stop being a little bitch and grow up. In those exact words. To open my eyes and realize how much my mother had to sacrifice, change, lose to find a home for me and my sister after my father left her with a house newly sold and nowhere to go. I began to see things a little differently after that.

The latter half of my thirteenth year involved commuting; quite possibly the reason I swear I will never commute more than twenty nine minutes today. Having been uprooted to New Jersey in the middle of the school year, she and I were both still committed to our respective schools, in Brooklyn. She worked, while I went to class, danced, told my English teacher she was boring, and more. We would drive in, a red Chevy Blazer more our home than the new townhouse we just moved into, and talk.

I don’t much remember what we would talk about. Sometimes, we would drive in on the Belt Parkway, and find the ocean lapping onto the highway, just before we reached the exit for where I got my ears pierced for the first time, when my cousin who was a full year and a half older than my wise five years chickened out. We’d watch fog blot out the apartment buildings and rides of Coney Island, typically visible from the Verrazano Bridge and home to my mother’s childhood and unwrapped Chanukah presents in my grandparents’ closets. Sometimes, I’d nap in the fully reclined front seat, eyes shutting in the dark and opening again to see the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean.

We did this for six months. Then I started high school in New Jersey, and she transferred to a school district in Staten Island. Our conversations were more for the drive back into Staten Island on a Friday night where we’d meet my father, for the bi-weekly drop off of child custody. College came, and with that, graduate school. Yet somehow, we would inevitably find ourselves in the front seat of her car; a Chevy Blazer soon became a Honda Accord, which became a Nissan Maxima, handed over to me in favor of a Mitsubishi Eclipse, traded in for a Montero Sport. Let it be known that my impulsive nature is ingrained by my mother’s DNA.

It was during these car rides that we would talk, candidly. About her experience with my father. About her bitterness towards his family, and how he treated her. About her childhood, and how different her parents are now from when she was raised. About her job, to my schooling, to my decision to move to California impulsively, to the aftermath of D, hinted at but never fully disclosed. I am nothing if not consistent when it comes to revealing my love life to my family. The last time we had one of these car rides, absent of my sister, was probably right before I went to the airport. Where we spent the morning driving around town, running errands, finding clothes for me to wear to a new job, and just talking about all the possible changes coming my way.

We’re not Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. We don’t talk about everything. But I found myself on that night a few weeks ago inexplicably missing her so much that I cried. I had to write her, to let her know how much I loved her for letting me go, for understanding that I needed to do this for me, and that I know how scared she was when I finally told her I was going to a therapist, but that instead of trying to pinpoint where along the line I became fucked up, she just said, “Okay,” even though I know she wanted to know why. How proud I am of her for making her life one that anyone would envy, fashionable, but comfortable, happy, and content. Wishing that I could just go home for the weekend, sit next to her on our beige suede couch covered by cat hair and the scratch marks left by our eldest, clawed cat, and watch hours of The Real Housewives of the O.C. and laugh at them.

So I wrote her. I wanted a card, but Walgreens had closed ten minutes prior. I knew if I didn’t write all this out now, I’d lose the moment and it wouldn’t come back, not for a while. A piece of looseleaf paper did the trick, and I wrote it all out, careful to keep my tears from smudging the ink. The next morning, I woke up feeling detached and removed as ever, and I felt grateful that I’d had the foresight to write while the moment was still hot.

I knew she got the letter; she thanked me for it, but we didn’t talk much about it. What I didn’t expect was the letter I got in return. I won’t post the whole thing here, but it was strange receiving it at a time where I’m feeling so conflicted about my future in New York, and if I even want it beyond my degree.

“Dear DS:

I miss you so much. It’s just not the same talking on the phone. I would like to tell you that I am so proud of you. I admire your bravery and courage and always knew that you were the one who would step outside of the box and try new things regardless of where and how hard. You make every challenge look like a walk around the park. Always know that I am your greatest supporter and rooting section.”

I guess that sweetens the pot to move home a bit, eh? I don’t talk about her much, but she is one of the few women I admire, for her strength to rebuild our home when it was shattered, and to provide me with love and support, even when she didn’t understand what I was doing. I’m still terrified about moving back. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to reveal all my cards, about what I want and where I’m going. But I know that when I’m home for that wedding in July, there will inevitably be a car ride. And just like old times, we’ll fall into a comfortable routine of talking about anything and everything. Who knows. There just might be a different front seat to sit in this time.

100. I’ve been a dancer for probably longer than I could walk.
99. My parents lost me one night and found me break dancing in a night club on vacation.
98. I was two and a half.
97. I used to do gymnastics too, as well as tennis, until my parents made me pick one activity. I chose dance.
96. Several years later, I ended up doing circus stunts at my sleepaway camp. See: aerial lyra, swinging trapeze, static trapeze, and spanish web.
95. I miss it. Sometimes I look up classes and contemplate running away with the circus.
94. I was a Mr. Rogers girl through and through. Sesame Street was kinda bull, though I did enjoy Big Bird goes to China. Relatively.
93. My childhood room was covered in Rainbow Brite memorabilia. I even have a t-shirt still that says “Sharing is caring.”
92. I also loved My Little Pony and the Smurfs. There used to be a show with animals who had the body of one and the head of another, and I can’t for the life remember the name of them, but I loved that one too.
91. I lost my virginity when I was 16.
90. It was more a sort of…I wonder what this is all about than it was wanting to be with someone I loved.
89. I’m a lefty.
88. I’m one of four lefties in both sides of my family.
87. Both of my grandfathers have red hair, blue eyes, and were born lefty. They both write recreationally, but were taught to write with their right hands. My mother is the only other lefty, but she’s brunette with hazel eyes. She didn’t write; she performed.
86. I wasn’t born deaf.
85. Neither was my sister.
84. But they at least have a strong suspicion why she lost her hearing. I’m just a medical anomaly.
83. We’re the only ones in our entire families.
82. I think my mom blames herself, while my dad blames some doctor he thinks misdiagnosed me.
81. I’m technically third generation American on one side, and first generation American on the other.
80. My dad was born in Israel. It’s made for interesting dynamics.
79. I tend to get bitten by the wanderlust bug often. I’ve traveled to Israel, Spain, Chicago, moved across country, and other places, all rather impulsively. I’ve also traveled to many other places, but those were less impulsive.
78. The first time I fully understood the Holocaust was when I was in fifth grade. It shocked me to realize that I would have been one of the first killed, for my coloring and for my poor vision and poor hearing.
77. It took me another year or two to realize almost all of my paternal grandparents’ relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Including my grandfather’s baby sister.
76. If there were ever one person I’d like to meet or bring back, I’d wish for her so my grandfather would have had her in the lonely years between her death and his next sibling. He might have had a childhood then.
75. I’ve only been in love once.
74. I still am.
73. My first best friend’s name was Ilana. She had a swimming pool in her backyard, and I wrote my first book about her.
72. She moved to Florida when I was five. I saw her again when I was sixteen, on a family trip.
71. Sometimes I think I’ve led a really easy life.
70. Other times, I think I’ve been put through more than most people have, and deserve a fine karmic break for the rest of my life.
69. It still destroys me every time my parents fight. It’s become easier now on this side of the country. I’m nervous to go home because I like not being in the middle anymore.
68. I was a commitment-phobe for the longest time, because I couldn’t imagine ever feeling passionate or interested enough in one person to want to be with them for the rest of my life. I also never wanted to inflict the kind of pain on my children, should I have them, that I experienced growing up.
67. I had a german shepherd named Gingi growing up. It means red in Hebrew.
66. My grandmother calls me gingi calavasa. I still don’t know what calavasa means.
65. My family stopped teaching me Hebrew when I lost my hearing.
64. Some doctor told my parents I’d be lucky if I ever spoke English, let alone Hebrew, and should be locked away so as to not burden my parents.
63. I’m glad they didn’t listen.
62. We used to go to special gala affairs at the New York Aquarium for the League of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
61. I will always have a special fondness for the aquarium, even if it is much smaller now than I remember it being.
60. I still sleep with the teddy bear my dad brought back from Boston when I was seven.
59. But only on nights when I feel lonely and cold.
58. I’ve known Thailand since before we were born. I didn’t get much of a choice with him in terms of our friendship.
57. Our moms were each others’ bridesmaids, and we were born a month and a half apart. We’ve been more or less stuck together since then.
56. I’ve managed to sprain at least one ankle once a year, up until I was about twenty one. I’m hoping my streak is broken.
55. Once, I hobbled all over New York City with K as we wandered around, having sprained an ankle the day before.
54. I’ve also managed to step on a kickball and go flying in the air, sprain both ankles days apart, and jam a finger. All in the same summer.
54. Sometimes, I still wonder if there will ever be anything again with D.
53. My mom thought we were going to do a When Harry Met Sally.
52. So did I. We didn’t. And we won’t. But I still wonder anyway.
51. I can find traits of myself in all four of my grandparents, but more presently, in my grandfathers.
50. My paternal grandfather and I could be identical twins if we were the same age and the same gender.
49. We aren’t. So we just argue a lot.
48. I’ve fainted two times.
47. The first was when I was ten, and got a Hepatitis B vaccine.
46. The doctor gave me pretzels and M&Ms with orange juice upon my reawakening.
45. I still remember the taste of all three in my mouth. It was surprisingly pleasant.
44. I don’t recommend blacking out. Everything shrinks, and surprisingly, my hearing was the last to go, even though I could no longer see anything anymore. It was strange relying on my hearing rather than my sight. Then I woke up on the floor.
43. On the bright side, both times I fainted happened to be in a doctor’s presence. The second time, I happened to be volunteering in the ER at the local hospital.
42. I’ve been to the ER several times. Most recently for pneumonia. In the past, it’s involved sprained ankles, jammed fingers, as a volunteer EMT, and lots of x-rays.
41. The first house I lived in was a small row house in Brooklyn, in the middle of the block. We had an alley behind our house.
40. At the end of the alley, a friend of mine lived. He had a treehouse. I would often scale the chainlink fence and hop to the other side to play with him and his brother in the treehouse.
39. While we lived in said house, my sister dropped a radiator on my right foot during a game of hide and seek.
38. It didn’t break, but it was badly bruised. It still hurts when it rains. I was nine.
37. The second place we lived was a two family house across the street from a small park.
36. I never knew how small it was - my mom did the best she could to give us a proper home, despite the recent divorce she had just undergone.
35. It had two bathrooms, adjacent to one another. One black and one blue.
34. I cut my bangs once in the black bathroom, after thinking my hairstylist cut them unevenly.
33. I spent the rest of the summer with the most godawful curly bangs bouncing in front of my eyes.
32. That might explain why I didn’t cut my hair for another five years after that disastrous cut.
31. In high school, the girls sitting behind me would pull my corkscrew curls, just because they liked to watch my hair bounce. Our teacher would yell at them for disrupting the class, or at least mildly berate them.
30. I met Avocado in high school. She wasn’t my biggest fan when we first met.
29. That’s since changed. But we usually have one big fight a year.
28. The only song that can effectively make me cry is “The Trouble with Love Is,” by Kelly Clarkson.
27. I can’t explain why I can understand or hear music in ways that don’t make sense to most doctors.
26. Then again, I tend to come across as a medical mystery in all shapes and forms. When they do my autopsy, they’ll find I have three misshapen hearts, one highway of a vein connecting my body, four overclogged arteries of memories and unspoken thoughts, and one brain that segments itself between my right pinky toe, left knee, left rib cage, right clavicle, and parts in my head where it properly belongs.
25. I’ve been on and off writing a novella/novel for the last four years.
24. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere.
23. If I were to be a Disney character, I’d be a mix between Ariel and Belle, with a healthy dash of Abu thrown in. And perhaps a little bit of Rafiki.
22. One of my cousins told me tonight that she loves how I don’t ever express emotion. I laughed and thought, if she only knew about this blog.
21. Neither sides of my family adequately understand me. But at least my mom’s side tries.
20. Sometimes, I feel like I’m living a teenage rebellion now, even though I went through my rebellion phase when I was 12.
19. I volunteered with a first aid squad for two years.
18. While I was there, the guys nicknamed me jailbait. I was a bit of a tease. I ended up tied up and tossed in an empty garbage can by one of the guys who was frustrated with me, because I wouldn’t go anywhere with him. Luckily, Techny Besty pulled me back out.
17. What most of them didn’t know was I was sleeping with a 20 year old and a 26 year old when I was only seventeen. Both of them were on the squad.
16. I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to live anymore. I used to think I did. Now I feel like this country is too small, and they need to build a new city that is the perfect blend of New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
15. Sometimes I think I will never speak to GDB ever again. And then I realize that I talk to K and D, who hurt me in a way I never thought I’d recover from.
14. I taught myself how to use power point, illustrator, and photoshop in high school, because I was bored.
13. I like teaching myself how to do things. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’d often rather learn from a book than have someone else tell me how to do it.
12. I don’t think I’m sexy outside of the framework of someone else telling me I’m sexy. I think I’m cute, but I never considered myself sexy until GDB.
11. I don’t struggle from low self-esteem. But I do struggle with overanalyzing everything to death.
10. I tend to feel like a walking contradiction most days.
9. I’m strangely attracted to nerds. My house’s motto senior year was, “I date nerds.”
8. For the longest time, I thought something would eventually happen with one of my old housemates because we had so many sparks. I don’t think it will anymore. His girlfriend was one of my good friends our last year in college. If it weren’t for her, I do sometimes wonder if things would have played out differently. He’s since become a close confidant.
7. I’ve only been high once. I spent the entire time giggling at the three people attempting to paint one girl’s room, all high, as I sat on the bed in the middle falling over with laughter.
6. I learned my harshest lessons about friendship at the camp I went to for seven years. I think it’s one of the main reasons I knew myself so well by the time I got to high school. I had already experienced heartbreak at the hands of those I believed to be my friends the summer before.
5. I won’t ever want to live in the suburbs. But I’m grateful to my mom for moving us out to New Jersey so I saw how much of a world was outside of New York. I wonder if I would have developed such wanderlust if I hadn’t been so bored with New Jersey, and would have missed out on seeing so much of the world. If I do have kids, I’ll probably move to the suburbs for that very reason.
4. GDB was the first person I ever felt like I wanted to marry and start a family with. It won’t be him. But I still want that now someday. I never thought I’d ever say that.
3. I still remember most of the guys I’ve had one night stands with. Mostly because they had some special meaning, or came at a point in my life where it was needed.
2. I don’t regret anything I’ve done up to this point in my life. But I do wish things had happened differently in some cases.
1. I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I just hope to find what my reasons are.

We bonded over our mutual hatred of girls named Kims. I was only on my first Kim at that point, but it seems Kims have always been my downfall. Not because of anything I did or could have done, but because they held some sort of appeal that would attract someone I had just started seeing. Inevitably, I would always end up with the guy in the long run - whether I was better or worse for it remained to be seen. Usually worse.

She sat next to me in Algebra II, a class I excelled in, and a class she dreaded. Slowly, over time, as we bonded over the Kim-bashing, I would help her graph X and Y, while she would make me laugh with her sarcastic and droll comments. Her wit was sharp, reflected in her humanities classes, but she couldn’t wait to graduate from high school and stop with the math and science bullshit.

Her family differed from mine in every way. Blue collar, her mom in a wheelchair after an allergy to tobacco rendered her lower legs worthless, and a small house with three girls, two big dogs, a bird, and a goldfish to top it off. So unlike the one I had grown up in, with mastered education parents that soon divorced, vacations, and just two girls and one dog. We did have a goldfish, but he committed suicide not long after my sister brought him home, flopping on the ground for my dog to sniff at graciously.

She was going to be the first in her family to go to college. Her family prided themselves on their Irish heritage, and when her older sister got married, I met many of their Irish relatives as she and I twirled around on the wooden dance floor. When they called in and I was at her house, she’d tell them Twinkletoes was at the house, and they’d send regards in a deep Irish brogue. There was never any question I would be her maid of honor when she got married. We’d pass notes in class, our schedules perfectly aligned when we could, and we always signed up for projects together. A photography class led us outside shooting dandelions while we shared sex tips and commiserated about our boyfriends.

I still don’t know what ever brought us together. She wanted to get married, have children, be a mother and a wife. It was an ambition I could never foresee for me, having a future of multiple men, degrees, and travels. Marriage wasn’t even in the cards. She’d talk about how she would elope first, and then have a wedding to appease her family. She knew exactly where, and I’d listen to her, fascinated for a glimpse into another lifestyle, one I never believed I would live. As we got older, the meeting for appetizers at Applebee’s became meeting for drinks at a local bar or two, or sometimes down at Point Pleasant, where we’d watch the waves, and dance.

She became involved with a married man. I went to college. She had her heart broken. I didn’t know the meaning of heartbreak just yet. She worked a variety of jobs, jobs I always felt were beneath me, and were beneath her too. She was so smart! I’d think, why isn’t she doing anything with herself? I didn’t know then that college wasn’t for everyone; it had never been a question for me. I couldn’t understand why she would willingly stay and work in the town we went to school in, a town more known for its farms, high teenage pregnancy rates, and dysfunctional families. A slice of the south in New Jersey, we would joke, confederate flag stickers on one out of seven cars we saw driving down the road.

When I was in school, I’d try to call her once a week, but I hate the phone. I think I’d hate it even if I didn’t have to toggle a switch on my hearing aid to hear every time. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly enhance our communication. We still managed to talk semi-regularly, using my school breaks as a chance to spend a few hours together and talk about all the things that had happened while I was gone. I remember one memorable Christmas Eve, I spent the night with her and her family, and after they did their traditional mugs of hot chai tea, we all snuggled up on the couch to watch 8 Crazy Nights. It was so perfectly them, and her, to watch a movie about Chanukah on Christmas Eve, and crack jokes all the while.

She was generous, caring, giving to a fault. My whole family would often receive presents from her, when I was often terrible at remembering to buy a card, let alone a present. To make up for it, she was invited to family dinners, birthday parties, and family outings. We always managed to have a good time, though our conversations often had those pauses that I believed were natural for two people who knew each other so well, they didn’t need to fill up time with endless chatter. I didn’t think anything was wrong - I just knew her life path was so vastly different from mine. It never occurred to me that there would come a point where our friendship would diverge.

But it did, as I’m finding friendships are wont to do. I graduated from college. I was moving back to New York. I had had a crazy year, new friends, travels, relationships. She had started working night shifts in a factory and she had started seeing a coworker, someone she knew her family wouldn’t approve of. For that matter, I didn’t approve. I couldn’t understand why she would want a man who worked in a factory and spouted dreams but no reality, when she could make something of herself, when she could find someone who would treat her the way she deserved and give her a reality she could live comfortably. I always withheld my opinion, but maybe not enough.

It stopped when she called the day of my graduation party to tell me she was terribly ill and couldn’t come, when my stepdad saw her walking around the local mall earlier that same day. It stopped when I texted her on her 23rd birthday, to wish her a happy birthday, and she said, “Thanks, but I’m busy now.”

I see now I was wrong in wanting more for her. She had her dreams and her boundaries, and I couldn’t understand that her boundaries were perfectly acceptable, but not within the realm of my comfort or understanding. For all my education, I never quite learned what she learned from life. It could be argued that I’ve in fact learned more about life - for I’ve had many lessons, hard in total. But one thing she never did was judge me. Or perhaps she did. Perhaps she decided when I became a graduate student, there was nothing there for us anymore, no more common ground, that I had become too intellectual and academic for her. She once mentioned it to me that we had little to talk about, so she would save things for when we were together, so we didn’t run out of things to say.

I still type her name into google sometimes, hoping it’ll tell me where she is now. Maybe she got married, maybe she finally has a daughter to hold in her hands, to shower with attention and affection. Maybe she went back to school, having found her passion - whether in writing or art. Sometimes I think I’ll get a phone call one day, her voice as sarcastic and dry as ever, but this time with a sparkle of excitement, where she’ll tell me, “I’m getting married! Will you be my maid of honor?” And the years that we haven’t talked will just fade away, as I say, “Yes. Of course. Absolutely. Just tell me when.”

1, 2, 3, 4

Arabesque penche, step, developpe

It may have been the excess energy that kept my parents constantly running after me. It may have been the studies my mother read about hearing impairment and dance being connected. It may have just been the fluidity of my movements, inherited from both sides of my family who are not afraid to bust a move at weddings, bat mitzvahs, and anything in between.

Whatever it may be, my body often moves gracefully through the air, leaping and turning and stretching into what looks uncomfortable but sometimes feels more natural than walking. For as long as I can remember, a silent moment means pirouettes on my parents’ kitchen floor, sunlight bathing in as my cat watched me turn. Two, then three, then four. Sometimes, five. The kitchen was too small to practice fouette turns - instead, I would practice in empty classrooms, always with my leg starting out straight and curling itself under before extending again, because I do things backwards. A creative writing professor once told me to practice during our class breaks, because I always had to duck out early to make dance practice at the end of every class. He would marvel at how I never once fell over, despite tripping every time I stood up from my chair.

I can still perform parts of dances I was in before I even hit the double digits. There was a time where I was given a choice between gymnastics and dance and chose dance. I never once looked back, using my ability to count on beat as a way to lead through me times where being home was unbearable due to my parents fighting. Being called upon to remind the rest of the class of the steps or show them how to execute the movement perfectly was a routine, yet still a highlight of my day. Following my feet through music has always enabled me to take my moments of grief, frustration, and sadness and reemerge from my bitter cocoon to utter joy.

There was a time where I began to hate dance. Where my dance company drained the fun out of it, where every movement felt trite, because the beauty of it was lost to the staccato beat of hip hop that was rarely any good. That’s not to say hip hop can’t be good - but it entirely depends on the choreographers. I felt lost, angry that my lyrical movements would be lost to the pumping of the beat, unable to fully extend before being cut short. It wasn’t until we reached the very last dance of the very last performance my senior year that I realized how much I would miss dancing once I graduated from college, and it was only then my body fell into itself before developing out into an extension with a sweep of the arms and a glorious leap that required my muscles to work in tandem.

My calves are still strong with the 19 years of dance behind me. I still catch myself turning, right leg in a coupe first, up to a passe, stepping out into a developpe, falling back, unheard music playing as the notes enchant themselves to the tune of my steps. Bring me to a barre and I’ll always feel more comfortable walking on releve in pointe shoes than I will wearing pointy shoes at a noisy bar. When everything else has changed around me, dance has remained the one constant, my feet deftly moving across the floor as my body follows. There doesn’t always have to be direction, no preordained steps.

Much like my life has proven itself, through a smooth divorce and a messy aftermath, complicated relationships, turning tides and changing friends, the movements lead the way. I am only at will to follow. I may not be able to lace up the shoes or slide on the boots as often as I did in the past, but they sit on a shelf at the top of my closet, a reminder of the days where my body led my mind, where the music played from my heart out to my ears that don’t hear. I may not be dancing right now, but I will always be a dancer.

5, 6, 7, 8

Tombe, pas de bouree, glissade, grande jete