Embarrassing Abnormalities

[ This story is dedicated to my Sister. Good luck being a senior. ]

FRED'S BARBER SHOP

You are a senior in high school and have, over the course of time, developed an abnormal sense of inadequacy amongst other boys. It feels abnormal anyway.

Everything at seventeen feels abnormal.

You've never before realized how harshly a social atmosphere changes people. Three weeks ago, you had a hairdo that looked like a small ferret was napping atop your head. No one else in school had as lame a haircut as you - not even the kid who always wore a fedora.

Action had to be taken.

Now, it is Monday afternoon and you are walking desperately into Fred's Barber Shoppe (a place so quant Fred still spells "shop" in an old-fashioned manner). And you walk into Fred's with a magazine cut-out of one of the characters from the 'Friends' television program. The intention of the magazine picture is to have Fred recreate the look with your own hair. Fred has been cutting your hair since you were ten-years-old and there is a part of you that knows this might change the relationship between the two of you forever.

It probably cost $1,000 to get the 'Friends' castmember's hair to sit all spikey and gelled and you're hoping to get the same treatment for ten bucks. What makes you think ol' Fred can do this is beyond you, but you're not thinking specifics. All you know is attractive people are on 'Friends' and you want to be attractive too.

But that's the tricky thing about high school; you don't even know who you are trying to look attractive for, or more specifically, what makes someone attractive in the first place. Further proof of this cluelessness is in the fact that you are asking a sixty-five-year-old man to miraculously make you hot.

This isn't who you are. Combs are not your friend.

You enjoy a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

You prefer sweatpants to Ambercrombies.

You prefer showers taken alone.

Irregardless, you walk out of Fred's barber feeling pretty damn sexy, although sexy at seventeen translates into nothing more than being fairly certain there isn't any spinach stuck in front of your teeth. And for the rest of afternoon, you think life will suddenly turn around for you.

All the "Katie's"* in your school are going to start casually hanging on your arm in the hallways. 

All the "Pat's" are going to start cluing you in on their secret Irish Catholic cool-dude handshakes... or if secret handshakes aren't cool, they'll clue you in on that.

By the next morning, you come to understand that you contain, within yourself, an uncanny knack for completely missing whatever it is about style and social composure that ever made boththose things cool in the first place. The minute you walk through the hulking double-door entrance of the school, people begin making fun of your overly coiffed man-hunk hairdo.

The Katies laugh and the Pats point.

Hairdos never look as good the second day as they do exiting the barber.

For the first time since your high school career began, you find yourself looking forward to swim class like a terrier looks forward to a walk.

And despite having a general rule mandating a 10-foot minimum between your own nude nether regions and the nether regions of other nude boys today is different.

Today anything goes if it results in becoming lost in the crowd once again instead of suddenly being the butt of the crowd's jokes.

Anything to get that gunk out of your hair.

You played a game of chicken with the rest of your school and swerved first. You've switched your sweat pants and frilled up your hair so much that the gunk lingers through swim class and dries hard and crispy and ridiculous.

You hate yourself and your awful hair.

You slink as low to the ground as possible all day, you cannot recall anything that happened in any of your classes except for the deafening snickers of classmates.

You are so inwardly turned all day that you almost forget about your study date with Maggie after school. You've been walking home instead of to her house, and now you are six blocks out of your way.

Great. Anything to keep you outside in the public eye even longer.

As you walk over to Maggie's house with shamelessly toussled hair, all you feel like doing is apologizing to Fred the barber for being such a fancy priss.

MAGGIE

Your parents love your friend Maggie and your mother always wants to know why you aren't dating her. This irks you because frankly, you would like to know the same thing.
Part of it is that she enjoys playing the field. Not in a slutty way, but in a "no-one-is-good-enough-for-all-of-my-time-but-plenty-of-people-are-good-enough-for-some-of-my-time" sort of way. The other (bigger) part of it is that you are a prude.

A nervous, silly prude.

You finally arrive at Maggie's house. She sits on the steps of her oversized ranchhouse, waiting. You feel bad for making her wait, but love the fact that she's there and love the fact that she smiles when she sees you.

She is the sweetest person you know.

This is the only reason you would ever maintain a study date despite your hair looking like a tropical storm ripped through it.

Maggie put her long black hair in a ponytail since you last saw her earlier at school. You wish you could eradicate a bad hair day with a ponytail.

You wish you could eradicate the whole day.

Presently, Maggie remains quiet about your hair. She never said anything about it all day. This causes you to realize you are in love. Because by her not mentioning something as obviously atrocious as your rebuffed assimilation, she signifies one of two things: 1) she doesn't want to needle you about something you already know is a mistake or 2) the condor's nest you've created on top of your scalp is something Maggie might not see as wierd coming from you. And if she accepts your hair in it's current state, she'll accept anything else you are capable of throwing at her.

You love her acceptance.

You will never ask her out on a date.

The two of you set up camp in her den. Studying Shakespeare's Henry V in school, it seems a good idea to see a Hollywood adaptation of it. You and Maggie sit in her house watching Kenneth Branaugh emote, her parents out for the night. You seem to grasp the language far more than she does, which confuses you because she is much smarter than you are.

"I'm cold," says Maggie's tiny voice in front of you.

"You want my sweater?" you ask.

"Nah," she says and completely crushes your spirit, "I'll tell you what, hold me for a sec. I'll warm up soon enough."

You've dreamt of this moment like a pauper dreams of the lottery.

It was just the right amount of dull straightforwardness that you require in order to recognize the interaction as flirting.

Unless it was not flirting, which is quite possible. Maggie could stand naked in front of you and you would question the motivation behind it.

Several years later, the doctors will inform you that you are mildly retarded.

For now however, you throw your arms around her way too fast and tip your hand. You are not a very cool guy and further proof lies in the look Maggie gives you as the two of you snuggle on the couch watching Pistol and Bardolph patter at one another.

She adjusts your grip on her, and your head is above hers. Before you can control yourself, your eyes glance down the front of her shirt. Your eyes don't usually do that, but there they went. 

Glancing.
glance /glans/ v.intr. 1. cast a momentary look 2. pass quickly over a subject(s)

Yeah. What you were doing was not glancing. You were staring. Gawking.

Many seconds passed. Eleven. Twelve.

You tell yourself to stop staring.

You're embarrassing yourself. This is a violation.

You're near the scene of the Battle of Agincourt. Pay attention to the band of brothers, you pervert, not the band of boobies.

Nothing doing. You're seventeen. Not even a free Slurpee is better than this.
You wonder what could possibly break your concentration from the sight of the cleavage disappearing into the top of her "Illinois: The 'S' Is Silent, Stupid" t-shirt.
You love her ratty t-shirts and her ponytails and her kindness. You are wrapped in so much happiness that none of it registers. It's there, but it is not making it's mark in your brain.
It's consuming. It's globular. It's shapless.

You're overloading. Look at the television! Look at it!

Your attention is finally broken. But things are not more comfortable, they are, in fact, less comfortable..

Much less.

Maggie shifted. She slid down on the couch. But your hands didn't move. They were wrapped around her stomach and now...

Wait. Wait.

You can't be sure, but Maggie's shift may very well have supplanted your hands on her breasts.
You prude! You don't know if you're holding onto a breast or not?!

'Henry V' has taken a backseat. You don't hear it. You're not even aware that there is anything in this room except for your eyes, your hands and Maggie's breasts. That's it.

There must be 120 square feet of den-space around you, but it might as well be only two hands two breasts and two eyes.

You crane your neck without moving any other part of your body, you have to see for yourself.
No way! You are totally feeling Maggie up!

Did she shift on purpose? She hasn't said anything.

She apparently loves Kenneth Branaugh. You are confused. You're in a position in which you shouldn't be confused, but you are because you are an idiot.

Shouldn't there be more talking. A little discussion of the exchange that is taking place?

Is she no longer cold? You bet she isn't. You hope she isn't.

Your mind spins because she hasn't reacted at all yet. This was designed. But what if it wasn't? What if she shifted and this all happened on accident? No one will ever believe your story. She will tell her lawyers that you molested her right before King Harry went once more unto the breech. And your only excuse will be that you were too busy trying to see down her shirt to realize she shifted her boobs underneath your hands.

You're going to jail. And you will probably fail your Shakespeare test.

You've been called a prude before, even been called prude in front of Maggie. Is she taking pitty on you and your haircut? Maybe this is a misunderstanding? Can resting your hands on breasts ever be a misunderstanding? They're just resting there, they're parked.

If your hands were a car in an airport loading zone, you'd be getting towed away by now.
You're holding her in this position for a long time, saying nothing. Things have gone from educational to risque to kinda painfully awkward.

Wait. Wait, you're freaking out now. You're in the batter's box, you laid down a perfect bunt and you've stupidly started heading toward third base. Turn around, dummy. Make this right. 

Make this right.

Ugh. You're not going to make this right, are you?

Sweeping your legs out from under both of you, you cough up the following excuse:
"Man, I tell you, there's someting about good Shakespeare that makes me really have to pee."
You say this as a joke, but you didn't smile or laugh after you said it, and you're sure she believes that Henry V actually pulses your bladder.

You could have said, "excuse me" and have been done with it. Hell, even "pardon me, I'm gonna flee to the bathroom and figure out why my hands were hammocked around the very breasts I've imagined hammocking for several months now. When I come back, hopefully my head will be clear, we can pause the movie and continue on the path of righteousness that I just  interruped." 

Yup. Even that, would have been better than the pee line.

As you stare at yourself in the mirror, you think back to a time not-so-long ago when Slurpees and Spiderman were among the most important things in your life. Now Spiderman has been replaced by the delightful creature reclining on the couch two rooms away and you've opted to stand here for the evening.

You think to yourself, "My God, when will being in my own skin get easier?"

Your mind wanders back to the present and you hurry out of the bathroom. You've been in there for over five minutes and it's possible Maggie is going to assume you are masturbating in there. Awful.

You are halfway between the bathroom and the den - alone in the kitchen - when you become saddened by the truth that - cruel or not - anyone who ever called you a prude were completely correct.

Three Options at 7-11

It's almost 10 o'clock. You stayed at Maggie's several hours.

Nothing happened. 'Henry V' was a well crafted film.

You saunter into the 7-11 near your house, you just can't go home yet. Going home is the official end of your night. The end to a night where the girl of your dreams may or may not have thrown herself at you and you freaked out.

You are not Fonzie.

You are not James Dean.

You are a spaz. A spaz hoping that a Slurpee and jerky will make you feel better.

You pay for your food and find yourself unable to look the cashier in the eye for fear of him judging your eating habits and haircut.

Your total is $3.97 and you hand him four singles.

Your first option is to walk out of the store immediately without the three pennies worth of change. But if you do that, the cashier might think you to be an idiot who forgot that he had change coming to him.

Your second option is to say something along the lines of, "keep the change" as you walk out of the store, but then the cashier might think you to be an arrogant prick kid who thinks he's a big shot for bequeathing three cents on the 7-11 guy. And because you don't want to offend him, you end up waiting there with your hand held out.

But even this third option leaves a sour taste in your mouth because now, in your mind, you are sticking around and waiting... in essence demanding your measly three cents in change. Maybe the cashier enjoys putting spare change in the "leave-a-penny-take-a-penny" jar, or maybe he doesn't like counting change, you don't know. You don't know how cashiering at a conveneient store works.

You being you, you stand there assuming he believes you to be a complete freak to stand there waiting desperately for three pennies. He has also, by now, figured out that you blew it with your lady friend earlier in the night.

You don't know that he knows, but you assume he does. You make your way out of the convenient store realizing that you weren't gonna escape that transaction without being an idiot, a pompous ass, or a cheap bastard.

The store door clanks open, but before you can fully exit, the cashier calls after you, "Hey friend," he says, "you look like that guy from t.v. You look like the man in 'Friends'"

Your mouth drops so wide open that hornets fly into and build a nest.

You crinkle your nose a bit and reply, "Shakespeare makes me pee." 

You walk out and it's a month before you return for jerky and Slurpees.

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* For further explanation, see previous blog "Sweatpants & The Irish Catholics"