Tuesday
There is this other really freakish thing about me. I've never told anyone. I'd be way too humiliated.
Humiliation, by the way, is a truly terrible emotion. It's at the bottom of the pile. Much worse than fear, I bet. Since I don't have to have fear, why do you have to have humiliation? If only I could toss it wherever fear went. And while I was at it, I'd get rid of anger, hurt, compassion, and betrayal. And selfishness. Oh, and guilt. Definately guilt. It's out of there. Without all of those things, I think I could imagine maybe being happy someday.
Hey, that's it. I, Gaia Moore, have discovered the secret to happiness. People have been searching for it since the beginning of time, but it took me, a seventeen-year-old with no philosophical, medical, or psychological training, to discover the truth:
Lobotomy. You don't have to feel anything at all.
You heard it here first, folks. And a full frontal lobotomy probably costs no more than the average nose job.
Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. No wonder I'm digressing-I don't feel like putting this into words.
I'm a virgin.
No, no. It's way worse than that. I wish it were only that.
I've never had a boyfriend.
True, but nope. That doesn't convey the depth of this particular humiliation.
I've never kissed anybody.
Okay, there you have it. Can you say "loser?"
Let me try to soften this information with an excuse or two. When I was twelve, I had something approaching a boyfriend, in a preboyfriend kind of way. His name was Stephen, and he lived around the corner. He was the one with the right kind of hair (light brown, straight, no cowlicks), the right kind of bike (specialized, like you care), the right kind of jeans (Gap, at the time). His parents had the right kind of car (red Jeep, good stereo) and a very large pool. For these reasons the popular girls sought him out. I liked him because he was secretly just as weird as me. We both played chess and knee football. We concocted these elaborate fantasy games set in Camelot or a mile under the sea, long after imaginary games are socially acceptable (age four, roughly). We were nerdy enough to watch Bill Nye, the Science Guy, but cool enough not to admit that to anybody but each other.
Hold on. Wait just a second. Why am I telling you all this? Am I really so desperate that I'll try to pass off a neighbor without underarm hair as some kind of romantic conquest? This represents a new low.
But it points to something real, which is that I'm stunted. My love life got left behind with the rest of my life the autumn after my twelfth birthday. Eventually, when the moving van came, I told Stephen I hated him, just so as not to leave any threads dangling.
I usually pride myself on the fact that I don't care about being a freak or a misfit. I don't care what people think of me. But for some reason this kissing business, this lack of kissing business, bothers me, and I can't pretend it doesn't.
That's the worst thing about it, really. How much it bothers me. How much I think about it.
I'm going to be brutally honest right now, and hopefully afterward I can snap back into some more comfortable state of denial.
Ready? Okay.
Of all the terrible things that have happened in my life-my mom, my dad, the life I lost-I'm such a vain, petty, and selfish person that I am most ashamed of the fact that nobody has ever kissed me.
This thought drives me to more than the desire for a lobotomy. This drives me to something worse.
Yo, Rapunzel. Forget the ladder. There's a faster way down.
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