Molly Peck

Story Time Saturday (Glass)

This would have been eighth grade, possibly ninth [before I switched from private school to public school (to be with my oldest friend, who simultaneously and to my surprise switched from that public school to (a different) private school (to get farther away from me, because, it turns out, I’m a jinx, and adolescent shenanigans are no fun with a jinx around)]—nope, scratch that. More likely seventh or eighth, as I was definitely still a virgin.

The lunch period at my school came not between classes, but rather right in the middle (or almost at the end, I guess) of a class, in my case a math class, but I’m not sure which (there was a poster on the wall illustrating a rhomboisotundricateduodecahedron, which is a word I say to myself often, to this day, because it is as many syllables as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but it isn’t nonsense, but that’s no real guarantee that the class was related, because that teacher—who claimed that he actively tried not to speak in monotone but sometimes did so, and who would slap the change in his pocket as he passed by your desk and found you about to doze off—taught several classes), so that you left your book bag and your coat and whatnot in the classroom when you went to lunch, in order to not have to stop at a locker or lug it all around to the cafeteria or to the chapel for Eucharist (on Wednesdays, if you took Eucharist, you got to cut the front of the lunch line; in fact, every day of the week, girls who chose to wear a skirt or dress rather than pants, and boys who wore a sport jacket and tie also got to go to the front of the line— as a non-Christian brown-noser who likes rituals and who has always hated pants and loved to eat, this was quite a setup). The classroom would be locked during the lunch period (and it was a “nice” school), so you didn’t have to worry about anything happening to your things while you were away.

There was a boy in this class with me (whose name I have forgotten, but who in French class had chosen the name “Serge”) who sat one row behind me and one row to the left. He could see me (or could not escape seeing me) at all times; I could still only see him in my periphery if I found an excuse to turn my head to the left, toward the classroom door, but was aware of his movements so near to me. He was significantly more popular than me (I was unpopular), but not top-level popular (there was only room for like, two couples, maybe, at that elite level— people who had their own “groups”, and had since fifth grade or so), and was really pretty cute (but with maybe a too-big nose and questionable hairstyle) and was very sarcastic and self-assured. He once passed me a drawing he had done of me with horrible small downward facing blunted cones for tits (labeled, with arrows, something so dreadful that it seems I have blocked it entirely), and with the mole on my right cheek, by my jaw, massive and dark, witch-wart-like, with hairs, labeled simply “MOLE”). About half of the body-image neuroses that I carry with me still came to my attention that day (I hadn’t know, until then, that I had the wrong kind of tits, and when I get very nervous I unconsciously worry that mole with a fingernail until it bleeds, and have done so enough that it now lacks pigment and looks more like a scar—or a wart, oh irony—than a mole). Of note: the oldest friend, who switched schools, came from a family of nickname-givers and nickname-users, and I had always been (and still am) called Mole by her. I burned with shame.

I tried to tell myself (I was already getting pretty good and tricking myself into self-esteem) that Serge couldn’t have spent that much time staring at me unless some part of him liked me. Also, the mole is on the right side of my face, and in math he sat behind me to to my left. In French, he was much farther away, but to my right, and toward the front. He would have needed to look at me pretty hard, with some effort, for some time, to form such a strong opinion of the hidden-during-math side of my face (in order to mock it, but still…), I told myself. I began to create a robust fantasy life for Serge, focusing on his longing for me in the classroom. Each shift in his seat (trying to suppress his erection), rustling of papers (willing me to get up and sharpen my pencil by the door, then walk all the way to the opposite wall to empty the metal cylinder in the can by the teacher’s desk, my body lit by the bank of windows that looked out on the quad), slamming of books onto the desktop (displaying his brute animal force for me) was designed to seduce me. It was working (on me, at least).

Serge had gained the trust of the math teacher, and had recently begun to be locked in the classroom, alone, during the lunch period (which seemed to me like a blatant invitation for a rendezvous), but the door was locked from the outside, with a key, so he could neither exit nor let someone in if he wanted. One Wednesday, after Eucharist, I walked from the chapel across the quad to the row of windows (I actually had to peer into the wrong classroom before I got my bearings). There were blunt-trimmed hedges that stopped at shoulder-height, so I stood between the hedges and the windows (which started at just above waist level on the outside of the building), and knocked on the glass. I knocked a second time, and Serge came to the window and opened it (they hinged along the bottom, opening outward, stopping at about a 45 degree angle).

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

“To come in.”

“No way. This is my sanctuary.”

“I…wanted to, um…”

“What? Wanted to what? Put out?”

“Sure, I mean, yes, exactly.”

He pushed his head and shoulders through the window (the lowered pane became almost flat) and looked quickly from side to side (self-esteem tricks or no, I was not the girl you brag about), then gave me both of his hands. I got both forearms and one knee up onto the window glass before it broke. The rush from his hands around my wrists was so great (and I was staring right into his eyes, electricity pulsing up my arms, across my chest, flushing my neck and cheeks, even the tops of my ears burning) that I didn’t register the sound at all, and was completely confused by the changing surface beneath me. It was reinforced safety glass, the kind that looked like it had (and maybe actually does have ) fine wires running inside it, cross-hatch, so I didn’t fall through it so much as make it shatter in that controlled safety glass way, and bow downward under my weight like a hammock.

He released my hands (with so much energy that I landed in the hedge), shouting, “What the fuck are you doing here? Trying to break into a locked classroom?”

I was scraped up from the window glass and the branches equally, but not really hurt (physically, at least). I told the headmaster and my parents the dumbest lie (“I left my wallet in there, and really needed it.— I didn’t know there was anybody in there”), and had to pay to replace the broken pane. I wanted desperately to tell the truth (He wanted me to come in there! He wanted to make out with me!), but I knew no one would believe me, and that Serge would calmly deny it.

I never really believed that truth myself anyway. The wiser parts of me told me (even then) that, had I actually made it into the room, the humiliation would have been even more scathing.

weakmeatstrongeat asked: I'm basing this entirely on my own reaction to your photographs, so I don't know how accurate it is, but I've had a feeling that you've been down lately. Whether or not you actually are, this is me sending you a hug, digitized but lossless.

The entire month of August and first half of September were crazy busy at my work (busier and more stressful and more physically demanding than ever before in my working life—and I’m an old lady who generally takes some twisted pride in being a closet workaholic and also strong-like-ox, so that is saying a LOT), and I feel like I just haven’t recovered… acid-tummy from too much coffee, extra pounds (upper-arms looking all kinds of thick when I catch my reflection in a shop window, thighs chafing) and angry skin/icky face from carelessness with personal care routine and eating garbage-in-a-hurry and “reward” sweets… I spent my last four (FOUR!) days off, once they came, in bed, totally unmotivated and mostly asleep. I think the first two were justified (actual recovery), but the second two were self-fulfilling prophesies of slack. 

I know what I need to do to get back to myself (that would be: just get back to doing the right stuff!), but part of me is being a bratty baby and drawing out the inevitable. Lazy + Bored = more of the same?

The good news is that “down” for me is probably still exponentially more silly happy than 95% of the world, and that we only really need to worry if I post a whole lot of really flattering pictures in a row (generally, the uglier I make myself, the better I am feeling and vice-versa—I’m most comfortable sharing or making ugliness when I am not feeling any). 

I very much appreciate the top-quality lossless hug! There is barely storage for it on my mobile device.

Interesting thing (your timing, that is): I was about to attempt a two-weeks-in-one Story Time Saturday:

My mother has flying dreams: dreams of sleek wings on her strong back (slick-furred, like a dog? Like a bat!), dreams where she and Bill drive flying motorcycles and they are young and laughing above the engine roar, dreams that their little wooden sailboat is lifted from the sea by strong but benevolent winds. Of course she can fly. You know her. It makes sense.

I am flightless. It seems I only ever walk in dreams; I wonder now if I have ever dreamed of driving, or swimming, or taking a bus— surely I have, but now I can only feel slow walking. Slow walking, and discovery. My dreams are treasure dreams, good dreams that I try to stay inside or crawl back to when I first begin to wake, but they are simple dreams. I am most often in a home that I know in the dream as my grandmother’s, but there is always a forgotten door, a hidden room, a golden glowing untouched dressing room: her veiled hats are not moth-eaten and dry; her stiff wasp-waisted gowns are perfectly preserved; her tiny lilac glove fits my wide knuckly hand easily—my fingers grow long and slender inside it. In the dream house, the sticky yellowed perfume (in the tiniest promotional-seeming bottles with fragile ornamented stoppers!) neither gives me a murderous headache nor makes me retch; I invert the bottle and touch the sanded glass of the stopper behind my jaw, then trace my collarbone and the tiny pleats on my dress front. I catch my own eye in the little mirror, and drag the heel of my hand through the thinnest layer of dust on the fogged shellac of the dressing table, the same way I brush crumbs from a restaurant tablecloth and hide them in my napkin before the server appears with a crumb-scraper.