Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered

by Karen Kilgariff

  We need our brains to be clear and healthy at least part of the time so we can notice and record these tiny, magical moments in our lives. A drunk brain can’t do that—it’s myopic, hard of hearing, and on a constant five-second delay. And because alcohol is a depressant, it rarely picks up on the tiny, powerful goodness around you. That’s just not how it interprets reality. The cult of booze tries to brainwash you into thinking you need it to have any fun at all, when the truth is exactly the opposite. If you’re not careful, it will kill all the fun entirely.

  The Cult of Perfect

  I grew up in the ’80s, right when supermodels got popular. Suddenly, people like Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista weren’t just amazing anonymous faces in fashion magazines, they were major celebrities. They popped up in music videos and movies and talk shows. They were extremely gorgeous and dangerously thin. They were always laughing through their big white teeth or glaring like they just missed the bus. They wore tube dresses with combat boots and everyone still got a boner. They could have haircuts that looked like a white-wine drunk went at them with safety scissors and it would become the new trend. They looked good squatting. They had it all.

  Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to be cute anymore. You had to be striking and starving. I watched this trend explode with a white-hot panic. There was no way I could compete. My butt was huge. My hips were wide. I had freckles and a big face and a space between my two front teeth. But it got worse. In sixth grade, I developed deep, red stretch marks on my inner thighs. They were disgusting and mysterious, showing up one morning out of the blue as if I’d been attacked by a panther in the night. Then I started noticing broken blood vessels behind my knees just like my grandma at the pool. My legs were so pale they looked grayish blue, so every vein and hair follicle showed. I knew I could never wear shorts or a miniskirt with no tights ever again. I was too disgusting. Finally, I had to face it: I DID NOT HAVE WHAT IT TOOK TO WALK THE RUNWAY IN MILAN, and it genuinely broke my heart. And it made me hate myself.

  I began to keep a mental list of all the things I needed to get fixed so I could one day at least be pretty. It was simple. I just needed to have my butt, thighs, and stomach surgically removed. While I was under for that, I’d ask them to throw in a quick nose job and implant some huge white teeth. I also needed full-body electrolysis, leg-extending surgery, a year-round tan, finger-fat liposuction, nail-bed enhancements, large-pore ensmallments, and of course, shy lessons.

  From age thirteen on, there was never something I didn’t loathe about me; always something to notice, wince at, cover, and then burn with shame about. I envied the popular girls at my school, and I dreamed of somehow becoming the prettiest of them all. That desire filled my head with insane, desperate ideas. If I could just stop eating for five minutes, maybe I could figure out how to be anorexic like a model. But deep down, I knew I was already too big for that to work, which would fill me with anxiety, which I would soothe with food. I was watching the beauty boat slowly pull out of port as I stood alone on the dock of permanent invisibility. I couldn’t believe it! For a while there, I really thought I had something to offer. But there was no middle ground. If I couldn’t be Cindy Crawford, I was nothing.

  The cult of perfect, deep down, is just fear. We want human connection, but we’re psychotically afraid of rejection, so our head tells us to stay home until we’re good enough. But when you get older, you learn the shittiest, most ironic life lesson: “perfection” is not a guarantee for happiness. This was never clearer to me than back when I read the shocking news that Sandra Bullock’s husband cheated on her. What?! How? Sandy is America’s sweetheart. She’s gorgeous, down to earth, legitimately funny, and genuinely talented. Her husband looked like some guy you’d see at the hot dog stand outside of Costco. And yet HE cheated on HER?? This was when my stranglehold on the dream of perfection began to loosen. So I’m supposed to suffer and sacrifice and put someone else’s demands of me before my own happiness and I’m STILL going to get my heart broken? What the fuck?

  Well, it turns out life is not a meritocracy. If you show up, even in the most perfect human form, you will get your heart broken. You just will. That’s part of the deal. No one gets out unscathed, unless they stay home. But then you just get scathed in a different way. (Is scathed a word by itself? If it is, I like it. It sounds like it burns.) You get scathed with loneliness.

  We run around making ourselves miserable and insane trying to be the Best One, when we should really be aiming to become Our True Selves. That’s how you can deprogram yourself out of this cult. Know your failures, while being painful and horrifying now, will be great stories you can laugh about in ten to fifteen years. Your imperfections aren’t a reason to hide. They’re actually the key to connecting with all the other imperfect humans around you. I stole all of this from my therapist, Michelle of the Midcentury Furniture. She’s been telling me this for as long as I’ve known her. I used to think she was full of shit, but the older I get, the more I’m willing to believe it’s true.

  Georgia on Kleptomania and Calling Your Dad

  When I was thirteen years old, I went through an awkward phase and a kleptomania phase at the same time. Most people keep those phases separate, but … (leans chair back, puts hands behind head) … I’ve always been an overachiever.

  I’d gotten this amazing jean jacket as a Hanukkah present from my grandma that I loved so much I practically wore it in the shower. It was really just a basic Levi’s jean jacket, light wash, sleeves rolled up, collar popped. It was way too big for my tiny frame (did I mention I was also going through a starving-myself phase? Yeah, I was basically triple majoring in being a fuckup). The best part was that the jacket had these two deep pockets hidden on the inside that were ideal for hiding the loot I’d steal.

  I started stealing around the same time I smoked my first cigarette. Almost overnight, puberty had changed me from a sweet, bookish girl who was eager to please and impress adults like my mom and my teachers to an adolescent misfit who wanted nothing more than to earn the title Problem Child. It’s the usual worn-out trope of “I’m not getting the attention I so desperately crave by being good, but hey, look! When I act out, I have all the attention in the world!” Super misguided, yes, but it worked.

  I went from sneaking into my mom’s bed to cuddle in the middle of the night and spraying my pillow with her perfume when I went to sleepaway camp ’cause I missed her so much to getting in screaming, crying, tantrum-level fights with her before school every morning because I wanted to stay home and watch The Price Is Right and eat cheese toast all day.

  Like smoking cigarettes, stealing stuff felt like an excellent way to rebel and show the world I was no longer that timid girl they thought they knew. Ultimately, I think I really just had such vastly low self-esteem that my desire to be someone, anyone, else found an easy home as a rebel. Plus, being a juvenile delinquent turned out to be super fun to boot! Pleasing everyone and trying to fit in and be normal had proven to not just be exhausting but impossible since at my very core I’m not really the fitting-in type. Hardstarks are weirdos at heart, but I didn’t learn to appreciate that weirdness until much later.

  The other bonus of stealing was that I was finally able to have the things I thought I was owed. The stuff we couldn’t afford on my single mother’s salary and child support from my dad which seemed like obvious basics to most kids. I had always known that my family was one of the few in my school that were broke, and I think I had become pissed off about it. Going to the grocery store meant bouncing a check ’cause my mom didn’t have the funds in her bank account, but we needed food. Hand-me-downs from various cousins (mostly boys) filled out my wardrobe, a wardrobe I caught shit for every day at school. I saw my poor mom cry over too many bills, and asking for anything—badly needed new underwear or a bra for my budding tits—was met with fretting over how we could afford it. When I discovered stealing, I found a way to provide for myself. I was angry, and I felt like the world owed me something for my y
ears of going without. I was now providing for myself in abundance-ville.

  OK, now back to my accomplice, the jean jacket. I knew that the usual way of stealing by slipping something into your purse or pocket was too obvious and a sure way to get caught. Instead, I took advantage of those two giant, hidden inner pockets that were begging to be used for nefarious business.

  Item in hand, I’d casually, slowly, imperceptibly slide my hand up inside the large sleeve of the jacket and drop the goods into the inside pocket, then slide my hand back out through the sleeve. To the naked eye, it didn’t even appear that I had moved my arm at all. Genius, right?

  * * *

  An Incomplete List of the Very Important and Necessary Things I Stole Using My Accomplice, the Jacket

  •    my first pair of G-string underwear

  •    a cassette of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers

  •    a set of tarot cards that I was then told was cursed for having been stolen so I promptly gave it away

  •    a bottle of knockoff CK One perfume from the local swap meet

  •    a bunch of Stussy and Ocean Pacific stickers from a surfer/skater store to put on my school binder

  •    fancy shampoo and conditioner from a beauty shop

  •    so many boxes of Marlboro Red cigarettes from Target

  •    countless pieces of makeup from Target

  •    the dignity of the security guard who my BFF and I outran at Target

  * * *

  The day I got caught shoplifting for the first time was the day I stopped. My best friend, Meg, was my accomplice in my budding rebellious phase, along with that jacket. We had become friends the year before when we were on the same soccer team, and we’d quickly become inseparable. She was a super-smart tomboy and she had a natural athleticism. Having a strict father meant that her rebellious phase didn’t go beyond sneaking an occasional cigarette and stealing a cheap bottle of nail polish a couple of times. In the not-too-distant future from the day in question, her parents would forbid her from being my friend anymore, not wrongly determining that I was a bad influence. We’d take very different paths in life and lose touch as soon as I started spiraling into a drug habit and skipping school, while she excelled academically and grew up to become a tenured professor. But back at thirteen years old when the playing field was more even, she was my best friend.

  Our local mall was a huge high-end beast of a thing called South Coast Plaza, where trophy wives shopped and lunched on weekdays and where I had been coming since I was a baby to ride the gorgeous antique carousel. Meg and I were popping into our favorite (aka easy-to-steal-from) retailers, on the hunt for the preteen klepto trifecta: distracted shopgirls, easy-to-pocket items, and lots of other shoppers for us to blend in with.

  We found the perfect target that day in Charlotte Russe, a cheap, trendy eyesore of a shop that blasted R&B and sold slutty clubwear. I zeroed in on a cute pair of earrings that I was much more interested in stealing than I was in wearing. I think they were gold hoops? But honestly, I don’t remember. The point was never the thing I was taking, if that makes any sense. The point was that I wanted something and I wanted even more to fulfill that want, hoping maybe it would fill that bottomless pit that was my lack of self-esteem. Maybe these earrings would be the thing that finally made me cool enough.

  The SECOND I dropped those cute but not-even-really-worth-owning earrings into my trusty secret inner jacket pocket, something was off. I just knew it. This woman was weirdly close, trailing me as I tried to act all casual and look like I was just browsing (picture a gawky, guilty kid in the throes of puberty and you can imagine how nonchalant I didn’t look). I grabbed Meg by the arm, whispering, “Go, go, go,” and pushing her out the door like I was some kind of flat-chested James Bond with (neon bands on my) braces.

  Meg got out first. I didn’t make it. The moment I passed the threshold from store to mall, a firm hand landed on my shoulder. It was the woman from the jewelry aisle. I had heard about “secret shoppers,” but I’d never spotted one in the wild. I guess that’s the point.

  She led me back into the store. Meg stood frozen with fear in the freedom of the mall. I was in big fucking trouble. We both knew it. I tried to say, “Goodbye forever,” with my face, and she responded with “I will tell your story” eyes before turning to find a pay phone to call her sister to pick her up.

  The secret shopper led me back through the crime scene into a small, windowless office in the bowels of the store. I was directed to an uncomfortable folding chair beside an ugly beige tanker desk, where I was ignored by my captor and a very pregnant employee sitting behind the desk. They discussed me as if I wasn’t there.

  Nodding at her colleague’s belly, then me, Secret Shopper asked, “You ready to have one of these?”

  Super Pregnant gave me one look. “God, I hope it’s a boy!”

  They laughed it up, and I slouched heavily and symbolically into my trusty jacket, wishing I could shrink down small enough to disappear inside the inner pockets myself, from shame as much as fear of what was to come. Something so much worse than prison. The phone call to a parent.

  A vision of my mother and her clenched-teeth anger turned my blood to ice. If I called my mom, I’d get a spanking. Even the thought was humiliating. I was thirteen—thirteen—and still getting spanked. I’d gotten my period! I smoked cigarettes! I was a fucking grown-up (in my mind, only)! I wasn’t the little girl that got punished with slaps on the butt anymore, and I guess I was hoping that my rebellious antics would have shown her I was a worthy adversary and, fuck, maybe even make her a little scared of me. Scared enough to not be totally sure how I’d react if she tried to hit me again.

  So instead, I called my dad. My parents were seven years into their totally-not-amicable divorce (more on that later), and while my mom ruled with an iron fist and a wooden spoon, my dad had a much harder time controlling me, Asher, and my sister, Leah. We got away with a lot.

  My dad had custody of us every other weekend, and when he’d inevitably exhausted all the options for entertaining three rambunctious kids (there was a lot of miniature golf and free museums in my childhood), the weekend would turn to the last-resort childhood babysitter, a rented movie. As this was the ’80s / early ’90s, any nonbasic electronic equipment was solely owned by rich people. Luckily for our electronics-deficient family, the tiny mom-and-pop video store nearby rented out VCRs along with their movies for the weekend.

  The thing I remember most fondly about this place is the small, red velvet curtained–off section in the back that held the most interesting thing in the world: pornographic videos.

  The porn room was, of course, totally off-limits to children. I imagined a world of sexy sex stuff that I wouldn’t understand until I was a grown-up. Being so intrigued by the idea of porn and sex and grown-up body parts, I convinced myself that this room held the answers to the weird questions I had about fornication, such as how on earth people had sex without crushing each other and what on earth a penis looked like. Anyway, I’m going somewhere with all this. We’ll get back to me at the slutty clubwear store in a minute.

  So one fateful Saturday-night video store trip, as my siblings and I were fighting about what to rent and Asher was throwing a tantrum at my dad in another aisle because he lost out with his choice of Top Gun to my and Leah’s choice of Dirty Dancing for the hundredth time, I saw our opportunity. I glanced over at my sister, and in unison, we turned and bolted down the aisle, and with a swish of the red velvet curtain, we were in. We’d entered the coveted porn section.

  I was turning in circles trying to take in the four walls of graphic video covers before we got caught, but it was too much! I couldn’t focus on anything! In an uncharacteristic burst of self-control, I remember forcing myself to stop and stare at just one cover so I could commit it to memory. To this day, I can perfectly recall the picture on the box and the name of the movie.


  A cute, pert coed with huge back-combed ’80s hair and a big smile stared back at me from the cover. She was proudly displaying her almost complete nakedness, but the focus of the cover was her giant scrunched white socks and her petite white Keds. The video was called Naked with Shoes On. My mind was thoroughly blown.

  Of course, we were caught in a matter of seconds by my dad and the store clerk, but our only punishment was Leah and I got our Dirty Dancing privileges revoked that night, though as we sat and watched Top Gun (boring), I’d never been more pleased with myself. Naked! With shoes ON!

  So yeah, back in that cramped clothing store office as I held the receiver in my hand (shout-out to the readers who know what a dial tone is!), there was no question.

  I also knew that my parents’ dislike of each other was at an all-time high (more on that later), so I knew my dad wouldn’t tell my mom, but that didn’t mean I was out of the emotional-punishment woods (more on that right now). Because here’s the thing—my dad has the worst of all disappointed-dad reactions: he’s a crier. He’s the kind of guy who takes on all my bad behavior as his own fault. Have you ever seen your dad cry because of something you did? Girl, it will break you.

  But being broken is better than being spanked, so I made the call, and my dad dropped everything to come bail me out.

  He cried, I cried, Secret Shopper and Super Pregnant did not cry. I apologized for being an asshole. Weeks later, a bill came in the mail for whatever charges get applied when a kid gets caught stealing some dumb earrings (stolen item’s price + security charges + penalty for being an asshole). My dad wrote the security company explaining that my assholeness was due to my behavioral issues stemming from depression and anxiety and the charges and fees should really be dismissed, please. And clearly that wasn’t a lie. If stealing at thirteen years old isn’t indicative of behavioral issues, then I don’t know what the fuck is.