Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries) (4 page)

Monday, November 19, 2007

 

I told Glenn Warburg today about how when it was time for me to start kindergarten, I was held back because I was born in December. So instead of going to school, I stayed home and my black nanny Ethel taught me how to read. When I finally started kindergarten I was already such an awesome reader that after just a few months they skipped me to first grade. When I got the good news, I ran to all my friends on the playground and sang “Kindergarten baby, stick your head in gravy, wash it out with bubble gum and send it to the navy!” My mother loves to tell this story. She thinks it’s hilarious what a disloyal little bitch I was.

I also told Glenn how I continued to love reading all the way until my eleventh birthday when against my mother’s wishes, my grandma bought me my first computer. A lime iBook. Pretty soon I was spending all my free time emailing friends and wasting time on various websites. If there was a word I didn’t know instead of looking it up in the dictionary I went to
answers.com
, and if I was assigned a book report, instead of actually reading the book I’d use SparkNotes. I’m pretty typical of my generation, I told him, only I never got into computer games, and pop music means nothing to me.
I said that when I want to relax I watch classic films. Preferably foreign or in black and white.

“Such a shame you stopped reading,” Glenn said leaning back in his squeaky wooden chair with his hands behind his head. His sweet blue eyes got sort of misty as he talked for ten minutes straight about how he couldn’t imagine his life without books. “Online stuff is fun,” he said, “and so is TV. But all they do is make you feel closer to everyday life. The same with most movies. Great literature does the exact opposite.”

“Makes life less fun?” I asked.

“No, no, it lifts you out of the here and now and brings you closer to the angels.”

“You’re religious?” I asked, pretty surprised.

“Not those angels,” he said, smiling at me like I was a cretin but cute. “I’m speaking metaphorically. I’m talking about transcendence. Escaping the daily and the ordinary. Leaving mortality behind.”

I told him about a kid from my class named Alan Hsia who got perfect SAT scores and is now at MIT. He told me once that when he plays the cello he leaves his body and disappears into a world where he has no problems. I was blown away by this because he’s fish-faced and zitty and unless he turns out to be gay I am pretty sure he’ll never get laid in his entire life, so for his problems to disappear is a huge deal.

“Is that what you’re talking about?” I asked.

“Yes. It doesn’t have to be literature. It can be a musical instrument. Or a great painting, a great opera or ballet, even great love. All of them can give you a feeling of transcendence. So can religion. You leave the earth behind. Death means nothing. You’re alive in the eternal present.”

“Can great TV do it?”

“No. Magazines can’t either. Or fashion. Or pop music. Nor anything on the Internet.”

“How do you know? Are you sure?”

“Yes, because they’re all evanescent. They appear then disappear in a mist. And we really wouldn’t want them to be any different. That’s their particular charm.”

I wasn’t sure I understood anymore.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” Glenn said. “These things are all wonderful. As I said, life would be much less fun without them. But fun cannot compete with transcendence. No way, no how.”

In the afternoon I had nothing to do for an hour. Instead of doing whatever online, I roamed the stacks. Glenn said I can borrow any book I want as long as it isn’t a first edition. I found a book with an amazing title:
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
by Barbara Cummings. I’ve only read 13 pages so far but it’s absolutely wonderful. It starts after a big flood. Swollen dead farm animals are floating around in the living room of an English house. Very biblical. The hero is a
girl whose cruel father makes her hate all men. I would have read more but I kept stopping to daydream about how cool it would be if I were an intellectual like Dan or Glenn and knew at least a little bit about pretty much everything. I don’t think Dan would have forgotten me so easily if I was a girl like that.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

 

Just so you all have something to be thankful for tomorrow, I am going to allow you to get to know me better by filling in stupid questionnaires.

Q.
Are you single?
A.
Almost never.

Q.
What is your favorite number?
A.
69 and sometimes 96.

Q.
Are you happy with your life right now?
A.
No, ask me again in two minutes.

Q.
Are you committed to your boyfriend/girlfriend?
A.
Help, I can’t breathe! Someone take the pillow off my face!

Q.
What is your favorite subject in school?
A.
Me. Also out of school.

Q.
Do you love to shop?
A.
Only till I drop. Then I like to sleep.

Q.
Do you have cash?
A.
Yes, ask me again in two minutes.

Q.
Are you an extrovert?
A.
If you mean a slut, the answer is yes.

Q.
Have you ever had sex with someone of your own gender?
A.
Only once. Tasted like Chicken. Of the Sea. Ha!

Q.
What would you rather be doing right now?
A.
Resting my head on Dan’s manly chest.

Q.
Can you blow a bubble?
A.
Yes, anything.

Q.
I dream about ————.
A.
When I will fall in love. Really in love.

Q.
I worry about ————.
A.
My dad dying before he buys me a car.

Q.
I wonder how come ————.
A.
Tastes on the rocks. Ha!

Q.
Do you like Bush?
A.
No, home wax.

Q.
Do you like roller coasters?
A.
I live on one.

Q.
Does your family do fun things together?
A.
Only when I was little.

Q.
Does sex mean love?
A.
No, but love definitely means sex.

Q.
Last baby you held?
A.
Never.

Q.
Last text message you received and from who?
A.
“See you tomorrow, beeeaaatch! Turkey Day! Hell yeaaaah!” From Jade.

Thanksgiving, November 22, 2007

 

I didn’t even know how much I missed Jade until this morning when I heard a car door slam and I hurried to the window and there she was, running across the lawn waving and screaming at me. We met downstairs in the middle of the staircase and gave each other the biggest hug in history. We
were so close this year that a lot of kids at school seriously thought we were lesbians. At senior prom, just to make their lives more exciting, we tongue-kissed in the middle of the dance floor. Just long enough for the cheerleaders to scream and their boyfriends to pop boners.

Since Jade’s mom is Filipino and could care less about Thanksgiving, Jade was free to celebrate the holiday with us. (Jade’s dad is a rich Iranian who lives in California.) This was perfect because at the last minute Rory’s mother, who has M.S., guilted him into flying home to East Wakefield, New Hampshire, which meant we had an open place.

Since dinner wasn’t until 3:00, Jade and I immediately escaped. Jade’s car is an ancient vomit-green Honda with corduroy seats and only a cassette player but, hey, who’s complaining? It felt so good to have wheels again! Jade used her fake I.D. to buy us some wine coolers, a pack of American Spirits and one of those freaky freezing-cold tuna fish sandwiches that I wouldn’t eat even if I was starving to death in Darfour. We drove over to the high school and hung out on the empty practice field. It felt wonderful to be there and not have homework to worry about. There were autumn leaves on all the trees.

I won’t bore you with the dirty details of Jade’s trip to Manila but she had a blast with her second cousins and fell madly in love with a cute American boy one year younger than her. His dad’s in the banking business and they had tons
of hot sex. Not with the father, with the son. Ha! Jade always falls in love when she goes on vacation. She also falls in love when she goes to the mall. Or the movies. Or the dentist. She’s pretty much in love with love. The sad part is, if the guy falls in love back, she dumps him superfast, but if he doesn’t fall in love and just uses her for sex, she hangs on until he gets bored and dumps her. This can take months sometimes because she is absolutely gorgeous. Half Filipino and half Persian. A “flippin’ A-rab” I call her, which she thinks is hysterical but her mother hates it, because Persians are not Arabs and she doesn’t want the government to show up and waterboard her.

Physically Jade is my exact opposite. Five feet tall, 93 pounds. Awesome brown skin. Shiny, short black hair. Perfect teeth. Rock-hard butt. Tight legs from two years of running track. A little brown statue. I’d kill to look like that. Her only flaw is that a boy I know who boned her said she smells funny down there. Not horrible, just different. Foreign. I didn’t like the sound of that! One Americano please! Anyway, the typical thing is, Jade says she would kill to look exactly like me. She says “I want them long legs, girl! I want that black-girl’s ass!” (She calls my butt a “thing of booty.”) In other words, the grass is always so much greener.

When it was my turn to talk, I didn’t really have any hot stories to tell, except about Dan and the box job, but I couldn’t tell it to Jade. She thinks all Dan and I have ever
done is kiss a few times and that we stopped seeing each other back in October. She has no idea about Martine either. I am not sure what Jade would say if she knew the truth, but I do know that she is a terrible gossip and would definitely tell people. Dan is 32 and a professor. Me touching his dick is very big deal. What if the story got back to Rory? What if Jade told her mom? (Kids love to tell their parents horrible stories about their friends’ behavior so that their parents will be grateful they aren’t worse.) If Jade told her mom, her mom would definitely call my mom, and my mom would definitely call Dan’s college and get him fired. She doesn’t care if I have protected sex with a committed boyfriend, but an illegal affair with an older man would make her livid.

In the end all I told Jade about was my sex with Rory. To make it more exciting I pretended that I’m scared I’m pregnant and that it’s the worst nightmare I’ve ever endured. I said I had already decided to “make like NASA and abort the emission.”

When I moved on to the subject of my new job, poor Jade tried so hard not to look bored. But she was practically falling asleep. She is the least intellectual girl on earth. I doubt she’s ever read an entire book in her life except maybe
Goodnight Moon
when she was three. As far as films are concerned, unless it’s an incredibly raunchy comedy or an action movie, forget it. She’s worse than Rory. Sometimes people ask me what on earth I see in her, and I tell
them that I love her because she’s an expert on having fun. She knows how to live. It’s true. She doesn’t worry all the time like I do.

After a while we had to pee. We did it behind an equipment shed on a pile of dirty rubber bases. While we were squatting I said “What if all the boys from school who had mad crushes on us drove by and saw us right now?” Jade laughed so hard she sprayed her new Nikes. I love that she thinks I’m hilarious. It makes me even funnier.

After we got back to my house, I watched TV and Jade answered emails. It was hard for me to concentrate because Jade is very loud. A human calamity. Her laptop blared angry rap music and beeped with constant alerts, and while she was yelling at friends through her speakerphone, text messages came in like every two seconds. My mom walked by at one point and said “It’s like a disco in here! How can you even hear yourselves think?” Jade laughed but the second my mom was gone she made a face and gave her the finger.

When it was getting close to turkey time, Jade jumped into the shower. This gave me a chance to check my email. Every single email I received today (except for spam) was from you guys. I officially have no more real friends! Just virtual ones. According to my tracking site 756 discrete visitors visited my blog yesterday. Yeehaw! I don’t really care why it’s happening, I just know I dig it. I am used to being famous only in my own mind.

One of you named munciemama22 sent me a video link with the subject line “Check it out!” Like an idiot I clicked without looking. It was one of those scary undercover videos from the anti-meat terrorists. I should have closed it right up but it was like in a horror movie when the scalpel’s about to go into the eyeball and you know you should look away but you can’t. Maybe that’s not you. But it’s totally me. I’m a glutton for punishment. But this video was way worse than a fake punctured eyeball. It was actual turkeys being slaughtered.

APPETITE SPOILER ALERT!!!

 

They grab the birds by the feet and throw them onto these moving stirrup things that catch them and carry them upside down to a machine that cuts their throats. Then they’re dropped into a pot of boiling water to melt their feathers off. If the workers who did this were actual human beings with hearts maybe it wouldn’t be so horrible but in the grainy movie I watched, you can hear the workers making sick jokes and bashing the turkeys against the machinery just for the fun of it. Also one of them pretends to fuck one of the turkeys. It’s like what the soldiers did to those poor prisoners at Abu Graihb. Why do men need to fake-fuck everything? Men and women are supposed to be the same species but it’s very hard for me to imagine a female soldier pretending to
bone a helpless victim. She might stick her thumb up and grin at the camera to prove she is badass but that’s all.

Although I’m not a huge meat eater, I do love me some turkey at Thanksgiving. Thanks a lot, munciemama22! Now every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life I’m going to have to push away memories of your heinous video! Or else eat tofurkey. Aaagh! Jade watched some of it too, and even though she screamed in all the right places, she wasn’t as upset as I was. “Just block it out,” she said. Easier said than done, right? Well, not for her. She had three huge helpings of dark meat. I could barely get down one slice of breast. Of all the images in the movie the one that freaked me out the most was of a bird that fought back so hard the blade missed its throat and it fell into the scalding water alive.

At dinner Jade and I drank sparkling apple cider and totally behaved ourselves, till Mark Aubichon suggested we go around the table and say what we were thankful for. It was hard not to laugh right there. I was fine when Mark bragged about his great job at a “high integrity” law firm and his perfect health and wonderful family and friends, but when he turned to my mom and said “Who would have thought that at the advanced age of fifty-six, I would meet a fabulous, smart, sexy lady like Diane?” I snorted cider out my nose and couldn’t stop laughing. Neither could Jade. We didn’t stop laughing for so long that it hurt my mom’s feelings. But
come on! Sexy? My mother is about as sexy as Hillary Clinton. Pretty face but cursed with cankle and tharm. Plus she wears bright jazzy dresses that look like they were made out of 1980s shower curtains.

My mom was so hurt by our rudeness that she let us leave the table early. Jade went to get wasted with some of her hardcore druggie friends by the lake. I stayed home and wrote this post. When she called a few minutes ago she asked what I was doing. I was dying to tell her. But I couldn’t. Without my anonymity I am dead meat. I am turkey. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Hahaha!