Going Off Script (6 page)

“What was that all about?” one of them wanted to know.

“Oh, nothing, he just wanted my opinion about some lingerie for his girlfriend,” I said. There was a collective outcry of
“Eeew!! Gross!! That’s so creepy!!”
My friends convinced me that there was nothing innocent or remotely normal about a uniformed cop taking a sixteen-year-old girl out for after-school snacks in her short shorts and seeking her advice about underwear. The next time Pervy appeared out of the blue, I breezily waved at him and kept walking, and that was the end of that. I didn’t need or want his attention, anyway; I had a boyfriend.

I was dating Lance, the 7-Eleven bad boy. Lance was one in a series of losers I gravitated toward. I was all shoot-for-the-moon when it came to pranks or outrageous behavior, but when it came to romance, I purposely aimed low. Little ventured, less lost. I boasted a perfect record of never being dumped only because I was accomplished in the art of preventive dumping. I never wanted anyone to see me hurt. My working assumption was that anyone who chose me would never want to keep me, except maybe the bottom-feeders who couldn’t get anyone else. If I sensed that a guy I liked was losing interest, I would bolt before he publicly confirmed how unworthy I was by leaving me first.

When I pulled the plug on a relationship, everyone was going to know. I was not the type to beat a quiet retreat. Even the DMV knew that. Not everyone was that perceptive. There was Sam, for example. Sam was a cute Middle Eastern boy who hung out with the Euro crowd of kids whose parents were diplomats, World Bankers, and the like. Sam and I were briefly a couple in my senior year, until I left early one night when we went clubbing, only to hear later that he had made out with one of my friends, a hot Latina named Sophia. The next day, I went to school ready to kill them both. I waited for Sam after first period and slapped the crap out of him in the hallway in front of an appreciative audience. After second period, I found him again and did the same thing. Sam offered a very sincere apology and begged my forgiveness, which our hallway audience also appreciated. I started to melt, then changed my mind.

“No! You know what? I’m going to slap you every period!” He had five more to go.

I got a hall pass during third period, and spotted Sophia through the glass of a classroom door. I started gesticulating wildly until a few kids noticed me, and my mimed message was somehow relayed across the rows of desks to Sophia. Sophia looked up to see my angry face in the window.
“I am going to kill you,”
I mouthed, slashing a hand across my throat for emphasis. I then gestured for her to come out into the hall for her murder. Sophia shook her head. I gestured more vehemently. She pretended to pay attention to the English teacher droning on about Shakespeare. I decided that if Sophia wasn’t going to come out to get killed, I was going in. I opened the door, marched up to her desk, and dragged her out of her seat. She resisted by trying to hold on to anything in her path, like desks and heads. The teacher stood frozen in shock. Things like this did not happen at a school like Walt Whitman.

Once in the hallway, we both fell to the floor, and a pathetic
girl fight ensued with hair-pulling and screaming. We scuffled until the teacher broke it up and sent me to the vice principal. I got suspended and was told to go home. I left campus, but kept coming back after each period to slap Sam, who had run out at lunch to buy me roses in hopes I would stop beating him up. I threw down the flowers and slapped him anyway. I was the crazed woman scorned, the one you see on
Dateline.
I finally forgave Sam after the seventh-period slap, and we went to prom together before I broke up with him for good. With Lance, though, what happened was much darker, and finding my way out was more complicated.

At first, things were fun. Lance’s best friend, Brandon, was the hottest guy in the world. Brandon was always sweet to me, and dating Lance felt like I was sort of shadow-dating Brandon. Just being in Brandon’s circle was motivation enough for me to pair up with Lance. Compared to the rich, preppy boys who went to Walt Whitman, though, Lance and his pals were definitely more urban than suburban. They frequented the sketchy hip-hop clubs that sprung up in warehouses on the ragged fringes of D.C., and favored an underground band called the Junkyard Boys. I thought listening to Vanilla Ice made me street. When I heard Lance blasting the Junkyard Boys from his boom box, I thought he was the epitome of cool. I became a Junkyard Boys fan, too, banking on a cool-by-association ploy that fooled no one but yours truly. Lance may not have been a threat to society, but he was just enough danger for me.

The abuse started out as a joke, just Lance being an asshole, and me being the tough-cool chick who could handle it. “You’re so ugly. You know how fucking ugly you are, right?” Lance would say, and I would laugh along with him. But the more often he said those words, the sharper they became, any pretense at humor filed off their edges until nothing but the sharp thin blade remained. No one had ever spoken to me that way before.
I acted like I knew how to take it, but I didn’t. I would laugh it off and tell Lance to fuck off, too, but then I would go home and cry. I would stare in the mirror at my swollen, red eyes, my mouthful of braces, my bad skin, and skinny, crooked body and see that Lance was absolutely right: I was ugly. The Giuliana the world saw was nothing like the beauty queen and anchorwoman who lived in my imagination. Even though, at sixteen, I was fully Americanized, the insecurity of being a foreigner, of always lagging behind in school and not quite fitting in, never left me—it lingers to this day. I still felt different, never as pretty or talented or intelligent as the other girls. Lance wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t secretly known all along.

I never told my family that I had a boyfriend. Babbo would have flipped out. I remember sitting around at dinner one night with the TV on, all of us watching
Beverly Hills 90210,
and Brenda kissed her boyfriend. My father was horrified. “He’s kissing her in high school? That’s terrible! That’s wrong! Giuliana, just so you know, you won’t be doing things like this until you are much older!” I nodded earnestly. “Yeah, I know, Dad. She’s a
puttana.
And so are the other girls on this stupid show, Donna and Kelly.” I’d been dating and kissing boys on the sly for some time by then, but I knew the wisest course was to just agree with my parents and then do whatever I wanted when they weren’t looking.

One time, my mom came home earlier than expected to find Lance and all his hoodlum friends splashing around our pool, drinking and playing loud music and being rowdy. When Mama walked out on the patio, a boy who looked like he had served time for murder happened to be jumping up and down like a crazy person on the diving board. My mom yelled at me and kicked everyone out. She would have really freaked if she knew one of those losers was my boyfriend.

Much as Lance enjoyed an audience when he was humiliating
me, the emotional abuse was worst when we were alone. Lance would rip me apart, telling me how hideous I was. He would shove me into the bathroom and yell at me to face the mirror.

“Look at you, look at your face. You see how fucking ugly you are?” he snorted, laughing at his own bad luck. “Your body’s disgusting! No one else would ever want you!” I didn’t fight back. I knew it was true. I wish I knew what makes a young girl or grown woman allow some loser who will never be half the person she is to take his own insecurities out on her. I stayed with Lance for nearly a year, letting him voice all the worst things I already thought about myself. I was a dog. Worse, I was dog vomit. I was stupid, and I was fucking ugly. I never told my friends about the abuse. Something that painful, you just block out and don’t share. Not even—especially not even—with your overprotective Italian father. Babbo was arriving home for lunch once just as a friend was dropping me off after school. One of my platonic male friends in the backseat had shouted out to him, “Mr. DePandi! I love your daughter!”

Babbo stopped on the porch.

“Whatta you say?”

“I said I LOVE YOUR DAUGHTER! She’s the best!”

“Just-
a
minute!” Babbo turned to go inside. I had a hunch what was coming.

“DRIVE! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!” I yelled at the boys.

Babbo reappeared with a baseball bat and began running at their car. They took off, and Babbo kept chasing them.

I should have told Babbo about Lance.

Instead, I found the motivation to leave only after Lance cheated on me with a private school girl and I found out. Her name was Jill, and I sent word through the girl grapevine that she needed to meet me at the 7-Eleven. I fully intended to kick her slut ass. We both showed up with our girlfriends, like it was
West Side Story
or something. Jill turned out to be this sweet little five-foot-tall thing who I probably could take down with a single Slurpee to the face. She immediately started apologizing. “I didn’t know,” she said. “He duped us both.” We decided to conquer instead of divide. “We should do something fun,” I suggested.

I pretended everything was fine, and went to Lance’s house. Of course, he wanted to make out in his bedroom. When I dangled a pair of handcuffs I had bought, just for this occasion, at an adult toy shop in Georgetown, his eyes lit up. He must have thought I was really coming out of my shell. I cuffed him to the bed and quickly stripped him, promising him I had a big surprise. Saying he was excited is an understatement. I yelled for Jill, who was waiting outside.

“Surprise, Lance, it’s your other girlfriend,” I said when she walked in. It was pretty obvious we didn’t have a threesome in mind. I leaned over him, and it was as if all the hurt and shame that had been building inside me for the past year suddenly crystallized into disgust—not with myself, for once, but for this worm splayed out now in front of me.

“You total piece of shit,” I said. “Don’t ever fuck with me again.”

Then I spit on him. Again and again. And not just “Oh, my mouth is dry” kind of spit. I’m talking deep-rooted, nasty loogies right to the face. “Jill, spit in his face,” I said.

“No, I can’t,” she protested.

“This piece of shit lied to us, used us, and treated us like garbage. The least you can do is spit in his face.” Jill, at my urging, finally mustered up the courage to spit a big fat one right between the eyes. It was brilliant.

“You cannot leave me here!” he shouted. “My parents are going to find me!”

Actually, it was his older sister.

Years later, married with a houseful of kids, he sent me a message on Facebook.

“Congratulations, Julie. I knew you could do it!” he wrote.

I did what I should have done with Lance the minute I met him: I dragged him straight to the trash.

High school ended, for me, not with the proverbial bang or whimper, but with a frantic Hail Mary pass to end all Hail Mary passes. It was the last week of school when the principal summoned me to his office.

“You have forty-five absences this year,” Dr. Marco said.

“But it’s senior year. You’re not supposed to go to class senior year!” I objected. Seriously, what handbook was he using here?

“You’re failing every subject.”

“But I proved myself!” Even I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded righteous. I could probably sweet-talk my way up to D minuses or do some makeup work over the summer.

“No, you’re not graduating,” Dr. Marco reiterated. “You can’t fail senior English and graduate.”

I was mortified. What was going on here? I’d been skating for four years, and only now they’re telling me there’s no ice? I might have been less surprised if I hadn’t made a habit out of intercepting any mail from school and burying it in the trash without bothering to open it.

“But I already have a party planned and I have my dress and everything,” I sputtered. “Please, Dr. Marco, I’ll do
anything
!” The principal sighed heavily. Whether it was pity for me or pity for the teachers who would get stuck with me for another year if I didn’t graduate, I’ll never know, but Dr. Marco sent for the English teacher to see if a treaty could be negotiated.

It was the same teacher whose class I had interrupted to jump Sophia. Who knew it was
my
class, too? Hey, I had forty-five
absences. She looked like one of those grandmotherly nannies who turns fifty shades of psycho when the parents leave and drowns the children in the bathtub. Beady eyes behind old-fashioned spectacles, mousy hair in a tight bun. She addressed Dr. Marco as if I weren’t standing right there.

“Miss DePandi has a total disregard for Shakespeare,” Psychobun declared. “She never read
Hamlet
along with the other seniors. If she wants a passing grade, she needs to recite the soliloquy in front of the class. Without a single mistake.”

Home free.

Two things I happen to excel at are juggling and memorization. I taught myself how to juggle off a cheesy tutorial tape I bought at Circuit City, and I still like to show off my moves on the red carpet or to any interviewer who’ll let me. I will challenge some star to a juggle-off while wearing a ten-thousand-dollar couture gown. They almost always agree, because really, who’s going to turn down a five-foot-ten circus seal in Valentino? Memorization, on the other hand, isn’t something I trained myself to do: It’s just a freak talent I’ve always had. I can look at a page of script once and my mind will take a picture of it. I cracked open my like-new English lit book, read the soliloquy through a couple of times, closed the book, went to class, and recited it perfectly.

Diploma accomplished.

Next stop, Miss USA.

I
was right: You didn’t have to have talent, perfect SAT scores, or the spun-sugar heart of a Disney princess. From what I could tell, as long as you weren’t a call girl, coke addict, or drag queen, you had a shot at becoming Miss USA. You could be the fugliest girl in Maryland, but as long as you had a pulse and the $1,500 entry fee, you were more than welcome to enter the state pageant.
At last,
I thought, as I sat down with my official paperwork. I went to work happily filling in the blanks. Name, gender, address, birth date, high school attended.
Done, done, done, done, done.
Citizenship.

Sound of cartoon brakes screeching inside my head.

Whaaa?

Shocking true fact: You have to be an actual American citizen to become Miss USA. Let’s be honest here. It’s not like you’re actually
representing
the country in some official capacity,
right? How many international peace talks have been brokered by nineteen-year-olds wearing rhinestone tiaras and silk sashes? This was stupid! I wanted to be Miss USA, dammit, not secretary of state.

If there was a sneaky way around this hurdle, believe me, I would have found it. After all, guile had worked its evil magic when I wanted to be a homecoming princess during my senior year at Whitman. I had simply run off a couple hundred Xerox copies of the nominating ballot and filled in my name on each one, trying to alter the handwriting, until my fingers cramped. I was great at signing my mother’s signature to fake excuse notes or report cards she never saw, but I didn’t have the patience for mass-production forgery. I stuffed the ballot box after letting myself into the front office after school with a key I’d gotten hold of in some clandestine manner several semesters earlier when I needed to do an emergency interception of interim report cards. Whitman was a huge school, and plenty of kids—my crowd included—would never be caught dead actually voting for something as lame as homecoming court. I correctly assumed that plenty of ballots would go to waste if I didn’t put them to good use. So I forged and waited. When they announced the homecoming court over the intercom, there was a noticeable pause before the final nominee’s name was read: “…and finally, Julie DePandi.” You could hear necks breaking in my classroom as each kid turned to look at me in disbelief. It was me and four straight-A, goody-two-shoes popular girls who couldn’t believe I was crashing their ball. I was not what Whitman considered queen material. “A little rough around the edges” would be putting it diplomatically. My friends were all laughing themselves sick, waiting for me to let them in on what was surely one of my infamous pranks.
“What a bunch of bullshit! What’d you do, dude?”
Forgetting momentarily that I had, in fact, rigged the vote, I was
deeply offended. Was my nomination
that
unimaginable? “What do you mean? No!” I protested. “I don’t see what’s so funny. People
love
me!!”

Needless to say, I came in a distant fifth.

Older and much wiser now, I wasn’t about to watch my Miss USA/Universe dream crash and burn on takeoff. I suppose I could have gone back to Naples and tried to make my way to the Miss Universe stage as Miss Italy, but then who would my father heckle on TV? Besides, I had already played the Italian card once on the pageant circuit. That particular fiasco had been put into motion when my sister entered the Holy Rosary Miss Pomodora contest at our church. In her pink taffeta gown, Monica was by far the prettiest one—and the obvious choice to represent tomatoes in our parish—but the catechism teacher’s little sister won instead. I vowed to avenge my family’s honor and become Miss Tomato as soon as I was old enough. When that time came, however, I changed my mind: Nope, I was going bigger. I was shooting for Miss Italia USA! That was a real pageant, held in that American mecca of pageantry, Atlantic City. I pestered my mother into buying me a gorgeous black-and-white striped silk dress at Saks. I wish I still had that dress today; I would wear it on the red carpet in a heartbeat. The only way I got Mama to agree to spend so much money on it in the first place was to assure her that I would win and pay her back with my cash prize. Little did Mama realize, the dress cost far more than the money I would receive and I knew this. My secret plan would be to wear the gown with the tags still on, avoid perspiring, then return it after the pageant for a full refund. (Yeah, I know: if there had been a Miss Tacky award, I would’ve won it.)

The gown looked fabulous, and maybe if it could have competed without me, it would have at least made runner-up. Not only did I lose, but to make matters even worse, Saks was on to me and refused to take the dress back. I confessed to Mama,
who was fuming, but was more upset over a rumor she had heard about the winner being related to the organizer. Between Miss Holy Rosary Tomato and Miss Italia USA, we developed a full-blown conspiracy theory about pageants at the lower level being corrupt. This had Mafia written all over it, we concluded. I had milked, or possibly even started, rumors in high school that I was a Mafia princess, but this latest outrage forced me to sever all imaginary ties with them now. The Cosa was no longer Nostra. This despicable organized beauty pageant crime syndicate would be exposed for all the world to see once I became Miss USA (and possibly Miss Universe). I would get the first handwritten apology ever signed by the Mafia. I would then report it on the evening news myself.

But none of that glory would be mine if I didn’t become an American.

By this time, I had spent most of my life in the United States. My accent had vanished, I could sort of hit the weird high notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and I had dressed up like Madonna for four consecutive Halloweens as a kid. I belonged to America, whether America was admitting it or not. This was home, and I truly loved it, and my life here. That said, I still felt torn about formally becoming an American citizen. Italians are fiercely proud of their heritage. I never wanted to surrender my nationality, make it somehow less a part of me. Italian was so much more than my citizenship: it was my identity.
I’m Italian
explained why I have a hot temper, why I adore fine wine, fast cars, beautiful clothes, fabulous food. Why I think
The Godfather
is the most beautiful movie of all time. (Because it’s so Italian, about family and loyalty and passion all boiling on high at the same time. And yeah, there is a lot of violence and he did kill his own brother and all, but he deserved it.) I reconciled myself to dual citizenship, relieved that at least I would not be required to formally renounce my native land unless Italy declared war
against the United States again, which seemed unlikely seeing how embarrassing that had proved the last time.

I sent for the citizenship booklet provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and studied harder than I ever had in my life. Granted, that wasn’t saying a whole lot, but I needed this. When the day of the big test came, I nervously sat across from the examiner and waited for him to start firing questions about the Constitutional Convention at me. My heart was pounding. What if I mixed up my Roosevelts or mountain ranges?

“Okay, so what is your name?” the examiner asked. I spelled it for him.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Since I was a little kid.”

“Okay, you’re good to go.”

I was dumbstruck. That was
it
? What, did the INS subcontract the screening process out to the Barbizon School of Modeling? C’mon, throw some tennis balls, I can take it.

“Wait, wait!” I practically shouted at the examiner. “Don’t you want to ask me some
real
questions?” What about the two longest rivers in the country, the thirteen original colonies, Ben Franklin’s résumé, the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment? If I didn’t use my archived knowledge of the Louisiana Purchase and the Federalist Papers right then and there, when would I ever? Where was the trick stop sign?

“Would you feel better if I asked you questions?” the puzzled examiner asked.

“Yes! I mean, no! Thank you!” I forced myself to zip it and leave before I got myself deported under some “undesirable lunatic” clause.

I was the first in my family to get U.S. citizenship, but I don’t remember it being a big deal. It wasn’t, in our culture, considered a rite of passage, like getting your period or learning to
drive. The entourage of relatives didn’t accompany me to the citizenship test or to my swearing-in ceremony in Baltimore. I drove there alone and clutched my little souvenir flag along with my fellow new Americans. I was expecting to be in a pissy mood, but once I was in that big room with all those people who were so proud, tears streaming down their faces, it made me a little weepy. It suddenly hit me that I was living in a country of incredible potential and opportunity, a country that had helped my entire family realize their dreams. First my uncles, then my parents, followed by my older siblings, who were both happily launched on their own careers by then. I looked at all these overjoyed strangers and wondered what their dreams were. We all wanted something from this, right?

My Hallmark moment was too little, too late: Karma has a way of dealing with jaded little teenage bitches who regard American citizenship as nothing but a box to check so they can enter beauty pageants. I found myself an official contestant in the Miss Maryland USA pageant, all right, but I also found myself marching and saluting while wearing a sailor hat emblazoned with the letters
USA
in puffy paint, a cheesy white T-shirt tucked into denim shorts, and white Keds in an opening number so awful I would agree to Pine-Sol injections directly into my brain if I thought it would scrub away the memory. It was nothing like the glamorous, high-production opening numbers I’d grown up watching on the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. My favorite had been a riverboat number from Miss USA. The contestants came out holding these gorgeous masks to their faces, which they revealed when their names were announced. They were surrounded by professional dancers and singers. And now I was skipping around stage in a cheap sailor hat in some DIY state pageant.

Most of the contestants were more experienced and less interested in a possible Miss Congeniality consolation title than I was.
My roommate was nice enough—I think she went on to become an adult-entertainment star, or maybe just a Hooters girl—but most were cutthroat. One girl even slashed the gowns of two other contestants. I was a little insulted she didn’t consider me worthy of sabotage. In the official pageant program, I thanked my family, my parents’ business, and my dog Curly for their support. I hadn’t even tried to rally any outside sponsorship. I went home crownless but undefeated.

Lose or not, I did learn important life lessons from the seasoned pageant girls in Miss Maryland, like how to use this special butt spray so you wouldn’t get a wedgie during the swimsuit competition. That was the least of my worries about appearing onstage in a swimsuit, though: I experienced a fluke growth spurt at the start of college, and my curved spine was more pronounced than ever. I had to get special permission to wear a one-piece in the pageant so my uneven hips and protruding shoulder blades might be less noticeable. I entered the competition again the following year and made it all the way to the semifinals that time. I choked on the supposedly idiot-proof interview question: What would you do if you were Miss Maryland?

A genius answer immediately popped into my mind about how the title would give me the access I needed to help deserving people in the community, but for some reason, when it was time to speak, the word
access
was deleted from my brain. “Well, I, uh…If I was given the title,” I stammered into the microphone, “that would give me the…
key
I need to the city and the state, and that, um, that would be great because I can go in different places and help!”

I heard shouts of
Bravissima!
from the audience—only my Italian family was cheering. The judges, meanwhile, all exchanged confused looks before quickly looking down in unison to consult the official pageant guidelines. You could practically see the giant thought bubbles appearing above their heads:

Key? What key? It says here they get a Caboodles makeup kit and a free year of tanning, but there’s nothing about any key!

I gave up my Miss USA dream after that. Being around the hard-core pageant queens had made me realize that it didn’t matter how much work you put into it; if you weren’t the prettiest, you weren’t going to win. These girls were gorgeous, and I knew I wasn’t ever going to win on looks alone. When I got to E! years later, I would actually end up judging Miss USA in 2007. Donald Trump, the pageant’s owner, addressed the judges before the show. “We’re going to find the most beautiful girl in the country tonight!” he declared. He sat right behind me in the front row and watched the entire pageant. The winner was a super cute girl I gave straight tens who went on to work online at E! as a reporter before becoming a red-carpet hostess for ABC.

I had spent my high school years daydreaming about becoming an anchorwoman, but I never sought any guidance on how to go about achieving that goal. The University of Maryland had a well-regarded journalism program, but my near-negative GPA and low SAT scores ruled out my chances of getting accepted there. Or to any other college with or without a communications department, for that matter. I was restless. I had ten years’ worth of ambition pent up inside me, and no place to unleash that energy. I wanted something to happen. I wanted my real life to begin. It was Monica, of all people, who swooped to the rescue. Since she had moved out on her own, we had switched gears from mortal enemies to devoted friends.

After finishing her studies at Boston University, Monica had gone to New York City to pursue a career in, no surprise, the fashion industry. She was instantly snapped up by the House of Versace and had quickly risen through the ranks to become a U.S. rep working out of corporate headquarters on Fifth Avenue. She was living the Carrie Bradshaw life while sharing a
one-bedroom apartment with a college friend named Larissa. Larissa had become an FBI agent, assigned to a task force investigating the Colombia drug cartel. A fair number of the drugs themselves were busy making their way up the nose of Monica’s boss, Donatella Versace. The Italian designer, by her own (much later) admission, was a coke fiend who was midway through an eighteen-year binge when I wiggled my way into her company as a temporary receptionist. When I first encountered Donatella, however, I knew nothing about the drugs and was too naive to figure it out—I assumed she was just batshit crazy. Why else would anyone have security guards block off the entire women’s room and plaster a sign on the door reading
RESERVED FOR DONATELLA
?