Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries) (16 page)

Pretty soon the whole place was spinning like a merry go round and I had totally forgotten every problem I ever had and would ever have in the future. I got really loud and obnoxious and meanly funny, which no one found hilarious but me. Since I am much smarter than they are, this is not surprising.

Later I escaped and started hunting for a cute boy to kiss. I found one standing alone at the bar, holding a bottle of beer. His name is Nick Dempster and he told me he was 22 but I knew he was lying. I would say 27. He is an inch shorter than me, with longish hair parted in the middle and round glasses. He looks like young John Lennon, with bigger ears and very pretty blue eyes. Almost like a girl’s. The next thing I knew he and I were hardcore making out against a wall. Then we were walking down the street holding hands. Then we were in my Volvo and he was driving. Then
we were back at his little apartment having sex. These are like separate scenes from a movie. I have no idea what connected them. Which is weird. I wonder if he put something in my cocktail because usually when I drink I remember everything or nothing. This was somewhere in between.

Anyway, right in the middle of the sex I started thinking about Rory. I almost never think about him. Suddenly I felt terrible that I cheated on him. I started crying into the pillow. And then I started thinking about Dan and how I would never kiss him again and I started crying even harder. It was almost like I wanted to feel as bad as I could! What was pretty disgusting is that Nick Dempster never stopped pumping me the whole time I was bawling. When he finally finished I barely noticed, because I was too busy thanking god that I haven’t done anything sexual with Paul. I knew right then that I never will. It would be inexcusable.

I woke up this morning with a brain tumor headache. I opened one eye and looked around. One of the walls had an ugly abstract painting hanging on it. There was a bong tipped over on the dresser. Through the window I could see an icicle drip drip dripping in the painful sun. I rolled over and saw Nick waking up. He ran a hand through his hippie hair.

“What do you know?” he said, smiling at me. “No pterodactyl syndrome.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, you know what a pterodactyl is, don’t you?”

“Some sort of machine?”

“A giant dinosaur bird with wings fifty feet across and giant teeth.”

“Okay.”

“The pterodactyl syndrome is when I have sex with a girl for the first time and the next morning I wish a pterodactyl would come crashing through the window, grab her with its big feet and drop her in the lake somewhere.”

“This happens a lot?”

“Yeah. But not with you. The last time it didn’t happen, I ended up dating the girl for almost a year.”

“Lucky her.”

I was being sarcastic. He didn’t notice. He got up to pee and I watched him walk to the bathroom. His butt was okay but he had love handles. Definitely 27. I thought about the night before and this is when I first wondered if Nick had slipped something into my drink. For breakfast he made us milk shakes with banana and honey which he said had potassium and glucose to make hangovers vanish. I drank it in about three huge gulps then chained three cigarettes. Keep smoke alive! My hangover did not go away.

At the door he started kissing me with his banana breath and telling me how gorgeous I was. If I could have puked into his mouth I would have. I couldn’t believe how much I hated him. Walking to my car I looked up at the dead white sky and wished there was a pterodactyl up there to carry me away.

•    •    •

I’ve felt sick and sore all day. Why didn’t I just drive home once I knew there was no way I was going to have fun? I should have just curled up and read a book. I am still only of
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.
Did I really think getting wasted and boning a stranger was going to make my life better?

Right now Mark Aubichon and my mom are sitting around the kitchen table planning their wedding and laughing their happy asses off. I hear them down there. What could be more depressing?

I wish I had never given Nick Dempster my phone number. I am almost positive he slipped something in my drink.

Nothing to do tonight so I stayed home and regretted.

Your emails today have been full of hate, judgment, crude humor, accusations and insults. I know this is the price I pay for being honest. Still it’s hard to take. From now on I will delete all emails the second they turn cruel.

Just so you understand that I am not a total waste of space, I did something very cool recently. I wasn’t going to blog
about it because I was afraid if I told you when and where I did this thing, you would figure out what state I live in. But I will leave out all specifics. What I did was volunteer for Barack Obama! (I have misspelled his first name many times and not one of you corrected me. Dummies!) I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and drove really far to the place where the speech was going to be. My job was to show people to their seats. My reward for doing this was that I got to hear him speak in person close-up. When he finally arrived and the crowd began screaming, stomping on the bleachers and clapping their hands to “Yes, We Can!” my whole body shook with excitement. I trembled along with the sea of inspired people. When he finally walked across the stage I was like a deranged groupie. I started screaming and reaching out my arms to him like he was my savior. He is skinny but really gorgeous. He made a touching, awesome speech. On the news I was in front of the flag behind him and to the left. Sorry I can’t tell you which speech it was or which news. Paul was amazing to let me go do this. He was proud of my service, he said. He even paid me for the hours I missed!

Nick Dempster left a romantic message today like we are boyfriend and girlfriend. Only thing is, he got my name wrong. What a spectacular douche. I will not call him back.

Obama did awesome tonight in the biggest day of elections ever. He didn’t beat the crap out of Hillary, but he tied her and for an unknown black man that’s pretty huge. The only tragic and embarrassing thing was that I didn’t vote! You’re going to want to strangle me at how stupid I am but no one told me I had to register first! I went down to the school all proud and excited to vote for the first time and I was totally humiliated.

I yelled at my mom “Why didn’t you tell me I had to register before I could vote?!”

She said “Sweetie, it never occurred to me. You’ve never shown the slightest interest in politics.”

I said “I’m not interested in politics! I’m interested in Barack Obama!”

Joel Seidler texted me at work today, begging me to have dinner with him. I should have just said no. It was a horrible, painful night. I feel like crawling under my duvet and sleeping forever. It started off okay. I told him everything that happened since the last time we talked. Even though I knew it was pretty cruel, I told him about Nick Dempster. I did it for two reasons. One is that when you tell a male friend about slutty sex with another guy it’s a way of telling him
that you would never ever have sex with him. (If Joel and I are going to be real friends he must know this.) The second is that I thought maybe he would say something to make me feel better. Like “Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it. Every girl has stranger-sex at least once in their lives.” That sort of thing.

Instead he thought for a long time, staring darkly and blowing smoke, then said “Were you sexually abused when you were little?”

WTF? Not what I’d expected! I laughed. Sort of. More like a snort. I was thinking “Dude, what planet are you from? Get over your Jewish self.” I personally know nine girls in my high school class who have either been molested, date-raped, raped or incested. And I have always been really thrilled not to be one of them. Whenever I see grown-up versions of them on TV crying over what happened to them 20 years ago, I’m always like “Yeah, it sucked. Men are shit. I get it. Time to move on, babe.” Joel just assumed from my snorting reaction that my answer to his question was “Hell no,” so he flicked his cigarette and started to think harder, like maybe there was some other reason why I’m such a crazy bitch.

While he was thinking, I started remembering some really disturbing stuff that occurred when I was little. It’s not like its stuff I forgot about. I just never thought it was very important. It was like a dirty story you heard that happened
to somebody else. Or memories of an R-rated movie you saw by accident one night on TV when you were too little to understand it. Or something you fantasized about when you were stoned and the next day you aren’t sure if you imagined it or if it really happened. (Does this even make sense?) Anyway, while Joel was thinking, I realized these memories weren’t some cool secret. They were serious. Then the question was, Do I tell Joel or continue to keep it private? I think maybe he saw this question on my face, because he started saying “What? What? What?”

So I told him what happened. Every summer when I was little we used to rent a cabin on a lake. Our next door neighbor was named Mr. Silaggi. He was a chubby Hungarian man with a squashed button nose like Santa Claus and a thick accent. He used to sit around all day in his bathing suit and black knee socks. The summer before my parents got divorced my dad quit drinking and hid our TV in the garage. He wanted no distractions because he was going to write a book about the worst injuries in sports history. My mom had just lost my baby sister (she was born dead, two months premature). She was so depressed, she didn’t really care about no TV But I did. A lot.

Whenever I got bored, which was almost every day because there were no other kids around, my mom sent me next door to watch TV with Mr. Silaggi. Mrs. Silaggi would serve us lemonade and little folded-over Hungarian cookies
with prunes inside. Whenever Mrs. Silaggi left the house, Mr. Silaggi would put me on his lap and stick his hand in my bathing suit bottom. He would rub me and squirm around underneath. I didn’t really know what he was doing but I knew that even though it felt weird and good, it was not allowed and if I told my mom about it, she would never let me watch TV over there again. So I didn’t tell her or anyone else.

The next summer the divorce had started so my dad didn’t come with us to the lake. The first thing my mom did when we got there was get the TV out of the garage and screw the cable back in. There was no reason for me to hang out with Mr. Silaggi anymore. I remember being happy about that but scared he might be mad at me. The last time I went over there was one day when my mom asked the Silaggis to babysit. The second Mrs. Silaggi left the room, Mr. Silaggi pulled me up onto his lap. But this time when he put his hand inside my bathing suit I slapped him. Just hard enough to make him stop. When my mom got back, I told her I didn’t want to see Mr. Silaggi anymore. She asked why and I said that he had gotten mad at me for spilling my lemonade and spanked me. This freaked her out and I never had to go over there again.

For the rest of the summer whenever we walked past Mr. Silaggi’s house and he was outside hosing down his flowers or whatever, he would stare at me like he wanted to kill me.
Thinking about it now, maybe he was just afraid I was going to tell someone. I don’t know. I remember wanting to tell my mom everything but thinking that she either wouldn’t believe me or she’d think it was all my fault.

When I finished the story, Joel had tears in his eyes. He said “Please get into therapy. I think you’re going to discover that what happened with Mr. Silaggi has had a huge affect on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s affected you in ways you can’t even imagine.”

I started to argue with him but he said that if he was right then I really have no idea what I’m talking about, because, as he said, the affect is in ways I cannot imagine.

Joel drove me home. I kissed him on the cheek and jumped out. At the front door I turned around and waved, smiling like an idiot. Chipper, spunky Katie! He waved back and drove away. For some reason I didn’t go inside. I stood there, looking all around me. The whole dark world seemed cold and scary all of the sudden. I felt this terrible fear that Joel was right and that what happened to me was a way bigger deal than I thought. My heart started pounding really hard. It was like I thought Mr. Silaggi was going to jump out of the bushes any second and stab me to death. I thought maybe the sight of the moon would make me feel better, but I looked everywhere and there wasn’t one.

•    •    •

Nick Dempster just left another message. He can’t believe I won’t call him back. Mr. Cutie isn’t used to being blown off.

A lot of you girls who have been sexually abused or raped have been writing to me in the past 24 hours. You feel bad for me and want to know how I am feeling. How I am feeling is really shaky. Many of you also think I am highly fortunate to have a friend like Joel and I agree with you. Our talks are painful but I always grow from them.

After dinner I was lying in bed thinking about this weird phase I went through in third grade where I refused to take baths or wash my hair and sometimes to gross boys out, I would eat flies, ants and daddy longleg spiders. My mother said if I didn’t stop it she was going to take me to a child psychiatrist so I stopped. Now I am wondering why I wanted to treat myself so badly. I was using my body like a garbage can. Am I still doing it today? For instance, I let Nick Dempster have sex with me just because he wanted to. Why? I was sobbing into the pillow for fuck’s sake and he didn’t stop! What a terrible person he is! And what about Dan? Did we really make love or did he just molest me? I don’t really know the answers anymore.

•    •    •

All day Paul kept asking me what was wrong and I kept saying “Nothing, I am just tired.” There is no way I want to discuss this with him.