Lydia’s Blog

I wouldn’t know it until much later, but one of the worst days of my adolescent life was also one of the best.

I was thirteen and in the seventh grade. It was a nasty time for me. My best friend from childhood had, at the advent of middle school, discovered that she was, indeed, black—and therefore spent her time exclusively in the company of other black kids and the few white kids that went out of their way to look like Public Enemy groupies.

Not knowing where else to turn, I’d done my best and coincidentally, most pathetic to insinuate myself into a group of popular girls, most of which had gone to my grade school. In that most volatile arena of preteenage bravado and misery, the middle school cafeteria, I held a most tenuous place at the popular girl table—where I’d mostly just overeat in silence, just grateful to be sitting where I was sitting. Sure, these people never called me on the weekends, passed me notes or spoke to me in class, but somehow, they’d found it in their hairsprayed, Skid Row-obsessed hearts to allow me to perch in reverent silence in their midst.

Until one day. It was actually rather ceremoniously announced that I would no longer be welcome in privileged seventh-grade society. I was told in no uncertain terms that my presence at the popular table would no longer be desired or appreciated.

The tacit social armistice that had been my world for months crumbled and dissolved in an instant. I was beside myself. Sure, I couldn’t get my bangs as big as Sonja’s or Joanne’s, or recite life facts about Sebastian Bach like Lauren and Caroline. I hadn’t even managed to get fingered under the bleachers at a dance like most of them, especially Sarah, who’d just days before received her first three-fingered salute from Jesse Cole (all I had was my imaginary boyfriend Mike Buck from music camp). It was a disaster, pure and simple. And right before Bat Mitzvah season.

My mind reeled as I gingerly picked up my tray and wandered off, away from the security of social prestige via association. As I scanned the cafeteria for other seating possibilities, my heart sank. Everywhere I could possibly sit would be tainted by the shame of what had just seconds ago occurred. How could I explain my sudden presence? How could I admit to having been cast out?

Of course. It was so obvious. And mortifying. I’d have to find the outcasts.

I wandered into a section in the cafeteria into which I’d only minutes earlier never dreamed of going. It was a realm of R.E.M. t-shirts and middle parts sans bangs. Plaid flannels and Doc Martens. I approached tentatively, swallowing every bit of my country-club elementary pride.

“Can I sit with you guys?”

A girl in a black T-shirt, big silver earrings and a head full of not-so-little braids looked up at me. She gave a knowing half-smile. “Okay.”
Within days, I’d become totally accepted by this table of misfits…children of divorcees and working-class drones…worlds away from the white-wine swilling Dr. and Mrs. X spawn I’d grown up with. We’d cackle over tater tots molded into ovaries and vas deferens, the dickholes at the next table who’d spent their life savings on Color Me Badd tickets, and the band director, Dr. Hopko, who had a nasty habit of getting boners during practice.

Soon after, there came parties, crushes, trips to the mall, sleepovers—for the first time in my pubescent life. Things I’d never even known I was entitled to.

Most of all there was Katie. The girl in the black with the earrings and the braids. She became my best friend. She was the queen bee of the misfits. We watched the breakfast club and ate rolls of cookie dough. We plotted ways to torture her sociopathic big sister. We’d sit in her bedroom at her Dad’s house, listening to the Beatles and discussing people we hated. We’d philosophize about Potato buds at her Mom’s house, before getting down to the business of playing with her two new kittens. We’d walk back to my place after school and eat boxes of cherry cordials, hoping to get drunk. We found a bottle of my Mom’s Tanqueray and managed to actually do it. On one of these visits, we found my Dad’s copy of Emmanuelle. The next time I knew my parents wouldn’t be home, we invited the rest of the crew for a viewing. Throughout the rest of my time in West Hartford, we all quoted it like fiends.

“Marionge, you are a nasty bitch.”

“Oh yes, then why are you waiting?”

growling lisceviously “…you are a nasty bitch.” Enter porno bass, man approaches Marionge and fucks her on a table, camera shoots from above.

I told Joe Buccheri that she liked him, and she didn’t speak to me for weeks. After that episode, I found out that this one woman’s forgiveness is the one thing in the world that I might just kill for. Luckily or unluckily…I’ve enjoyed that forgiveness several times throughout my life.

Katie and I grew up. She became Smate, and I became Smydia. I don’t know how. We got pubes, weight problems and cars. To my surprise, my prediction about orange Sour Patch Kids was actually correct: They do give you huge tits. We made out with people and eewed about it later. We counter-tormented the assholes that called us lesbos. Kate: “It’s actually an island, you hare-lipped pig-fucker.”

She and I snuck out and headed for the Olympia diner, where she’d tirelessly counsel me for hours…talking me out of my latest crash diet, and questioning the logic of allowing Aaron Packard to burn the letter A into my arm with a lighter. Well, I was in love of course. Then he asked her to his senior prom and I learned what it means to love someone you hate…even if the hate is only temporary.

Ironically, later in high school, Kate and I secured cult status with certain popular men as alternatives to the anorexic paper dolls occupying their official social level. There were parties. Lots to drink, lots to smoke. Lots of truth-or-dare and running naked through golf courses. Lots of Kate making sure I vomited in the toilet and not all over myself. Lots of the both of us protecting the other from being choked by Andy Lee’s tongue. (He likes the round ones, don’t you know.) We dressed Football, Hockey and Lacrosse stars up in my grandmothers old gowns, drove them to supermarkets, and watched them run around, freaking out entire families.

We videotaped ourselves a lot. The freshman musical. Me performing a choreography on a stationary bike to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Breaking the Girl. Us grousing and griping. Kate swinging her braids.

The day of our graduation, Kate and I drove around in my 1988 Dodge Caravan with Big Gulps in hand, pelting passerby with green and black Jujy Fruits (the rest we ate).

We went to college. I became and addict. She became a shut-in. I abandoned my voice. She dropped out. It was hard to be away from her. When I was a senior, she went away for a semester in Prague. I was so jealous. I just knew I’d never get to live in Europe for a few months.

When I’d gone to Pittsburgh to grad school, I got a call. “I’ve met an amazing guy…he lives in San Diego, and he sent me a Goonies poster.” I remember being happy for her, as well as sort of jealous. Surely it wouldn’t amount to anything. He did, after all, live in California—a world away from Boston, where she was at the time.

Then she moved to San Diego.

Then I moved to Germany.

Kate’s birthday is on July 20. Mine on July 24. Over the fifteen years of our friendship, we’ve celebrated at least ten birthdays together, including last year’s, when I was on shore leave from my life in Berlin, and she’d just moved to Brooklyn with her bulimic kitty (one of the sweet kittens from middle school) and incredible I-guess-true-love-really-is-like-matching-two-socks-in-the-laundry boyfriend, Goonies-poster John.

Her birthday is today. Mine’s on Monday. She’s in New York. I’m in (trying not to vomit in my own mouth) Stuttgart. So far away.

Still, I know that ever since I managed that terrifying walk across the cafeteria to meet her in the first place, all those years ago, I’ll somehow manage to see her soon enough, regardless of any time zones standing in the way.

And when I see her again, I’ll tell her that I love her. And that in some way, she saved me.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.