“The Token,” he repeats. “The only black person.”
For two seconds we’re all reminded that, at any moment, I can be shamed in this particular way—by being set apart—and whoever is with me can be shamed by association. But Dianne is an alpha girl and as such, she does not just let folks go around trying to shame her.
“Tommy, go away!” Dianne’s not offended so much as she’s bored with her older brother’s attempts to make fun of her and her friends.
I feel bad. I know Tommy’s not a racist. (Dianne’s family is probably the most progressive on the block.) He’s just being the oldest brother, and is therefore wayyyy above us, in the manner of super-smart, privileged Baby Boomer men (think indie film directors or intellectual rock stars, like, say, the guy in the band Pavement). They place themselves above other people without having any idea they’re doing it. They don’t mean to. If I had red hair, Tommy would probably be making fun of me for that.
But I also have a deeper awareness—that the exchange has touched on how people of Tommy’s particular caste (Future Obama-Voting White Guys: The Teen Years) view people of my particular caste…as the Other.
And because I’m fourteen and starting to become obsessed with boys—Future Obama-Voting White Guys in particular—I’m wondering if this means that no one is ever going to date me.
I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE PAUL picked me. I didn’t used to be attractive to men like him. And now I know why: I’m way better at wielding sexual energy these days. After years of playing it down (out of fear, in order to be taken seriously at work, or because I simply found male sexual attention more of a nuisance than flattering), I finally tapped into my sexual power, and as it turns out, I have considerable stores. It is almost as if my mother, the thousand-dollar-a-night hooker, and my dad, the hypnotic pimping Svengali, had been throwing money into a sort of sexual A-game trust fund that I suddenly decided to cash in when I hit my midthirties.
I peg the beginning of the transformation, interestingly, to the adventure of childbirth. I read somewhere that birthing, if you think about it, is actually the last stop on the sex train, and I agree. It’s the end of the line—the logical conclusion of the passionate kiss or even the flirtatious glance. And if you’ve ever gone through twenty hours of unmedicated labor and pushing, you totally know what I mean: when that baby pops out, it’s a release bigger than if the Beatles somehow came out with a brand-new album. And you are panting really hard, too.
At the risk of sounding truly weird, I would go even further. I think the actual process of carrying the growing baby inside me, and then the physical intensity of giving birth, had the consequence of rearranging all sorts of energy patterns I’d been carrying in my sexual organs up till then. Something like a balloon angioplasty, where they blow up the balloon in your artery in order to push back all the old stuff that’s accumulated in there and is blocking the flow. Maybe this is why a lot of women become a lot “hotter” after motherhood?
Just a theory.
So I pinpoint the moment of my transition—from a maiden who trills and giggles to a full-throated woman who possesses herself as a sexual being—to that Saturday night in early April 1997 that I spent in labor, in an overflow room in the Woodland Hills Kaiser hospital, swearing I was going to die if I had to endure another three-minute contraction.
Instead, a beautiful baby was born and in the process I was reborn. As someone who could finally get the guy she wanted.
I HAVE BOOBS NOW. Big ones, apparently, that fill out my cheerleading uniform in such a way that I have suddenly come to the attention of the boys. Not the boys in my grade—I am like a little sister to them, and a black little sister, at that—but the senior boys, who, at age seventeen or eighteen, have possibly grown familiar with the standard chicken-noodle-soup type of girl on offer at Wilson and are now becoming curious as to what a skinny little bowl of gumbo might taste like.
The closest I have come so far to having a boyfriend is this kid named Chris, a tall, thin, quiet runner lacking the temperament (read: not an asshole) to hang with the alpha males. Like me, Chris is an only child without a dad at home. We’ve been “flirting” (can you flirt without making eye contact or speaking?) since ninth grade, and by sophomore year I finally worked up the nerve to invite him to the girl-ask-boy formal dance. (I wore floor-length sea-foam green polyester with spaghetti straps and a matching shawl.) I consider the night a success, even though at the end, the two of us were way too frightened to kiss good night. We waved instead.
But since I got my nickname, things have been different.
It was given to me by Bobby Quinn, hockey player and best all-around dum-dum. Bobby is a cute guy with big brown eyes, puffy lips, and hair that is as pretty as any girl’s. He’s also a senior. I can only guess that he sits behind me in tenth-grade social studies because he flunked it the first time around and needs the class in order to graduate. Academically speaking, Bobby is definitely not the sharpest skate on the ice.
Soon after the term begins, Bobby starts paying attention to me, talking and joking with me and often drawing the ire of the teacher. Like I need any help with that! Talking, joking, and drawing the ire of the teacher is pretty much my major. Or it would be if you had to declare a major in high school.
Not long after that, he starts calling me at home. I’m not even sure how he got my phone number. But one day after school, I pick up my blue princess phone and hear his bored, thuggish voice.
“Hey. It’s Bobby.”
“Who?!”
“Bobby, stupid. From social studies.”
WTF? Why is Bobby Quinn calling me? “Wow, okay—”
He cuts me off. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing…” I sound like a kid. “What are you doing?!”
“Calling you.”
“[giggle]”
“So what’s going on tonight? Are there any stupid sophomore parties to go to?”
And so on…
I don’t think much of these calls. It would never occur to me that one of the most popular boys in school would like me or consider me attractive. And the truth is, he doesn’t like me or consider me attractive, at least not in a girlfriend way.
However, he definitely likes my boobs. And he definitely considers them attractive.
Which brings me around to my nickname. One day, just some random Tuesday or Wednesday, Bobby makes a silly pun on my last name, and it just…sticks. And now it is my name, at least as far as the boys are concerned. The girls never use it. In fact, they never even refer to it. So what is it? (I know you’re dying to know.)
Stack-Millan.
Clever, huh? Just like Mack-Millan, but with a side order of sexual objectification.
Bobby Quinn says it once and, like that theory where all the monkeys on an island suddenly know how to peel a banana once the hundredth monkey does (maybe because that monkey was an athlete other guys looked up to?), soon every boy in school is calling me Stack-Millan.
Or Stack for short.
Or Stacks. I guess for plural.
They yell it down the hall, toss it casually around in conversation, and use it to refer to me when talking to a third party, as in, “It wasn’t me talking, Mr. Harrington, it was Stack.” When they say it they laugh a little, but it doesn’t really seem mean-spirited. Eventually, it becomes completely normal.
And here’s the scary part: I like it. I’m flattered. Kind of tickled. A little honored, even. But mostly I’m just happy to be noticed. My new name constitutes my arrival in the minds of the boys in school. Until Bobby Quinn “made” me, I didn’t exist for them, lacking as I do feathered hair, or a twin sister, or a big house on Lake Harriet. I’ve been virtually invisible! But the whole Stack-Millan thing has been a game changer. Now the boys acknowledge me in the hall with a nod, occasionally even call me by name (Stack-Millan, what’d you get on the test?), and generally treat me like a human being. (Funny paradox that in order to be treated like a human being I had to be objectified…)
Not for a moment do I consider the name offensive. But even if I did, I probably wouldn’t act offended. Because mere weeks after Bobby Quinn ordains me as a sexually desirable girl, the unbelievable happens:
I get my first boyfriend.
THERE IS ONLY ONE PROBLEM with my new boyfriend, Scott: he has a girlfriend. Actually, it isn’t really a problem. At least for me. In fact—and this is really sad to say—it doesn’t even occur to me that this might be a problem, because as Jen famously said about Brad, I seem to be missing a sensitivity chip.
(Aside #1: Here is my important personal observation about missing sensitivity chips: If you’re missing one, you don’t know you’re missing it! Seriously. You just think you’re really, really happy. And by happy I mean having a feeling of invincibility identical to the one you get after snorting two giant rails.)
(Aside #2: Let me just take this moment, before going one word farther, to say to Scott’s girlfriend—you know who you are—that I am deeply, deeply sorry. I was selfish and uncaring, and I know I caused harm to you. I say this with the understanding that the only way to ensure that I never, ever repeat that behavior again is to take full responsibility for it, and I do. I hope you can forgive me. And if it makes you feel any better, I definitely did get what I had coming to me, and karma definitely was a bitch. So there.)
Back to my love affair.
It starts out all innocent. Under Bobby Quinn’s expert tutelage, I have now learned how to flip the flirtational puck back to a guy who shoots it toward me, so when Scott starts some low-level conversating, I am able to hit my talking points with a new confidence and flair.
Sophomores, juniors, and seniors are routinely mixed together in the English department, and Scott sits one row over and three seats back in Ms. Cameron’s Shakespeare class. One day, as the class is reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud, I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s the kid behind me, handing me a folded-up piece of paper with my name on it.
Tracy.
It’s from Scott. And here’s what he’s written inside:
You know how your fake mom is totally abusive, how you hurt so bad all the time that you’ve randomly pierced your own ears three times on one side and four times on the other just so, for one moment, the pain on the outside matches the pain on the inside, and how you think life sucks and no one loves you and you might as well just end it all?
Well, those days are over.
xo, Scott.
No, it didn’t really say that. But it might as well have. Because as I unfold that note, harp-playing cherubs drop from the sky, flowers burst into bloom, and the ulcerous throb I’ve developed over the past year in the pit of my stomach suddenly goes away.
All because he wants me.
Never mind that he’s a liar and a cheat. (He’s cheating on his girlfriend by being with me, and lying to her about it.) Or that now that he’s my boyfriend, it means I am, too. All that matters is that he likes me and that means everything is going to be okay.
PAUL’S HOTEL ROOM is probably the nicest I’ve ever stayed in. It’s on the thirty-second floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows and staggering views of English Bay. We are in Vancouver, where Paul is on a job and I am being treated like a movie star. He brought me with him, just like he said he would the day we got back together.
That makes me so happy.
We’ve been here for two days, holed up in a hotel suite, making love in a hotel bed, on hotel-bed sheets, wearing fluffy five-star bathrobes, ordering wonderful somethings every night from room service.
I love all this luxury, but not just for its own sake. What is really blowing my mind is that everything I could possibly ever want or need—within reason—is here for me. This is the feeling I’ve been looking for my whole life. A feeling I haven’t had since my dad bought me Slim Jims and Pixy Stix. I don’t say it to him, but in this one way, Paul is teaching me my true worth. Where I have always seen myself as a sort of Little Match Girl, a tattered princess who sleeps on a futon/manger on the floor, drives a fifteen-year-old car, and hoards her money because she is sure to run out someday (and soon), Paul represents a shift in my consciousness.
With him (not because of him), I am getting to experience myself as someone who is very well taken care of, rich even, who naturally attracts everything she needs. Not too long ago, I would have scoffed at this idea. I would have rejected some bright shiny version of myself as silly and bourgeois, possibly even dull. I would have looked down my raggedy hipster nose at myself, I would have called myself a sellout, I would have compared me—unfavorably—to some kind of biracial Reese Witherspoon–type character.
But now that I have had the guts to stop hating what I don’t have (and despising those who have it), I can see that it’s pretty awesome. Bright, shiny, clean, whole…these are things I’m now claiming to be, and I’m acting as if I already am. All I do is simply acknowledge what’s in front of me and allow it to be more real than the past, with its huge hurts and tragic disappointments.
This is more difficult than it sounds.
To me, struggle feels like reality. Easy feels like cheating. It feels temporary, too. And so what if it is? As I walk along the Vancouver waterfront, listening to Paul’s iPod, living a version of the life I’ve always wished I had, I’ve decided that, at least for now, I’m going to enjoy it.
SCOTT DOESN’T REALLY LOOK like my type. I am attracted to light-haired, light-eyed depressive romantics—in the tarot, they are the men signified by the Prince of Cups. Scott is more the Pentacles type: noted for their very dark, almost pitch-black hair; dark, penetrating eyes; and thick build. But he possesses the two things I like the most: a sharp mind and a sense of humor. He also has a fine singing voice and the gift of gab. Of course, the very most important thing about him is that he likes me, and he has let it be known that I can have him if I want him.
By the end of the week, we are in love.
But not with each other!
I am in love with the way he whisks me around in his mom’s forest green Pontiac, and takes me out to eat at the Brothers Deli on Fiftieth and France, and drops me off at five and picks me up at nine thirty from my job at the Southdale Mall. And he is in love with how needy I am (even though I think I’m hiding it) and how that makes me put him way high up on a pedestal, even though he’s kind of chubby, and his dad divorced his mom and lives in another state, and even though—especially even though—he was only second-string on the hockey team.
We don’t know that the feeling of falling we are experiencing is really the sensation of diving headlong into the hole inside another person. Or that the feeling of fullness is less like fulfillment than it is like Thanksgiving dinner—so much goodness at first you feel sick, and then you want a nap, and then it wears off. And then you want more.
But who’s thinking about that?
Not me. Because Scott took me to the Rose Garden and now we are making out on the top of a hill. I’ve never made out before. His tongue feels strange inside my mouth, but I pretend like I know what I am doing, because I don’t want him to know that no one has ever wanted me before him.
I’m sort of sure I like making out, but I can’t be completely certain, because all that sexual energy is a little overwhelming for me—like when, for a practical joke, Betsy and I would flip on every single knob and button in the Dodge Duster so when Betsy’s mom turned the key in the ignition the radio would go on full blast, the windshield wipers would start swiping, and the blinkers would blink their asses off, all at the same time.
There are things you just don’t know about making out until you do it, things no one could ever tell you, like what it feels like to have someone kiss your neck right below your ear or the goodness of having someone’s entire body pressed into yours. To be so enveloped by another person—now I get it; only babies get to feel this!
(Which reminds me—I’ve always thought it seems kind of unfair that you have to wait eighteen years to sleep with another person. That you get to have p
lenty of human contact up to, say, the age of two or three, and then you’re just, like, cut off until you round up your first boyfriend. No wonder teen sex is such a big deal!)
I am just becoming accustomed to the level of sensory overload in our make-out session when Scott slides his right hand under my shirt. I’ve never had someone’s hand under my shirt (but over my bra), so I’m not prepared for the strong voice that begins, almost immediately, to talk to me:
Any farther and you’ll be sorry.
“What?” (Looking around for source of voice) “I’ll be sorry? Who is this?”
This is you speaking.
“Me? I’m not speaking. I’m making out.”
Not “you” exactly. Just part of you.
(Sassy voice) “Really…Which part? Let me guess, you must be the obnoxious Tracy everyone keeps telling me about.”
You’re funny. Really. Look, you created me. So you can either listen or not. I’m part of your programming.
“Programming…”
The programming you got growing up in this medium-size city of mostly Scandinavian immigrants in a decidedly liberal but still very midwestern state.
“Oh. That programming. What do you want? I’m making out.”
You know what I want. I want what’s best for you.
“What’s best for me…” (Bored teenage expression) “And that is…?”
To not destroy your reputation, first of all.
“What reputation?”
What reputation? (Bored grown-up expression) Please. Don’t be naïve. Every girl has a reputation. Good, bad, warm, hot, boring, needy, easy, hard.
“Jesus. Leave me alone. I’m just trying to make out with a guy.”
Just making out? You know better than most fifteen-year-olds that nothing is ever as simple as “just” doing whatever it is you are thinking you’re going to do. Like your dad “just” dealt drugs. Like your grandma “just” gave you up. The word “just” is a red flag. It means you’re about to start deluding yourself.
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