the time i sang back up with wanda

Posted on May 11, 2010 by meggamster| Leave a comment

Wanda needed a back up singer for this one. Strain, and you can hear me.

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Posted in Firsts, Schooling, Work Experience

the time i made pussy fun

Posted on May 11, 2010 by meggamster| 2 Comments

Originally I wanted this blog to consist of regularly posted stories about my childhood. That was when I was unemployed. Then I got a job and completely forgot about the blog and my life prior to living in Los Angeles. I’m officially unemployed again so I’m back at it, this time with some more recent stuff. I’ll regal this bad boy with stories of my youth but I might as well incorporate stuff about my current life while I’m living it.

Growing up, I was a bit obsessed with singing and recently I’ve taken it up again. I recorded my first song along with video, with the help of some lovely ladies and some studly dudes. It’s been up on the interweb for a few months now, but I might as well post it here, because it’s my blog, dammit.

Since the video, the group has been known around town by our official name; “The Blowouts”. A youtube sensation we’ve had a staggering 1600 views in 5 months and are currently featured on the site catsupplies.com. We have yet to create an official youtube page or record a second song.

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Posted in Firsts, Knowledgable Friends, Pets, Sexy Time, Uncategorized

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the time I made a white russian

Posted on October 12, 2009 by meggamster| 5 Comments

Every credible drinker has an impressive story about vomiting. Here is mine.ocean
It was spring break of sophomore year in college, and my friend Brent had access to a three-story house with an elevator on the beach in Wilmington, NC. After weeks of anticipation, a slew of eager underage college students piled into cars and went to the coast to ring in springtime. The house was amazing, equipped with a hot tub, and huge open rooms facing the Atlantic.

It was my last spring break as a teenager – I was turning 20 that summer—and it was important to go out with a bang.

The first night I tackled the business of getting wasted. Someone had ordered pizza, so I started responsibly, eating several slices to brace my stomach for what was to come. After I finished I surveyed the alcohol situation. I wanted a White Russian. Since there was no Kahlua in sight, I whipped up a mix of Starbucks mocha frappuccino, vodka, gin, half and half, and ice. I figured this resembled my drink of choice, and was proud of my collegiate problem solving skills.  I dumped the concoction into a plastic cup and began drinking it like it was kool-aid.  16kahlua About half an hour later I was sitting a top a comforter in a well-lit bedroom giggling away with my friends. Suddenly I felt it. The unmistakable tummy rumbling—the realization that something’s going to shoot out of your body, you’re just not sure where.  I excused myself and went to the bathroom and threw up. I recovered and rejoined my friends, thinking it was over. Little did I know, it was merely the beginning of the most prolific vomiting experience of my life.

An hour and one barf later, I wandered into the living room and tried to join the dance party. I figured I could handle it; who drinks barely one drink, pukes twice and then can’t rally and dance? I threw myself into some intense interpretive work, but something just wasn’t right.  There was no time to make it to the bathroom so I walked outside, slowly at first, thinking I could trick my stomach into pulling it together, and that’s when the big one hit.
night-beach-view-from I was on the third floor of the house and miraculously there was only one person on the balcony. James John. I didn’t know James that well. He wore tight jeans and flannel shirts and usually addressed me with one-word sentences or the occasional grunt. I was pretty sure he thought I was a big dummy and this situation was not going to help.

I was holding a bottle of water and as I lurched to the edge of the balcony the vomit literally shot out of my face. It was like a cannon. I had no control and I just hoped that those on the balcony below weren’t leaning into my stream.

I held my hair back with one hand and the water bottle with the other and projectile vomited like my life depended on it. Then I realized JJ was next to me. He reached out and took the water bottle out of my hand, freeing it up so I could use my hand to brace myself against the edge of the balcony while I convulsed the vomit out of myself. When I finally finished I looked up and he was standing there patiently averting his eyes and holding the bottle.  I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my shirt and he handed the bottle back to me. I went back inside. officetub
It was around midnight and I surveyed the dance party, the bar, and the kids in bathing suits writhing around in the hot tub and spilling out of the elevator. I could partake in none of it.

I threw up every hour on the hour for nine hours. Sinks, toilets, balconies, trash cans. I covered all the bases. The last two times were just bile and it was pretty evident that I had somehow poisoned myself. They happened at 5 and 6am while I was sitting on the couch watching Boogie Nights with the only other person still awake. To this day that movie makes me want to puke.
It was four years before the smell of Kahlua didn’t have a similar effect.

The next day I went on a walk with James John, and he told me I was the ultimate post-modern girl. I had no idea what it meant but figured given the events of the previous night, it was probably not a compliment.

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the time i administered a swim test

Posted on September 12, 2009 by meggamster| 3 Comments

Lifeguards are terrified of their first rescue and I was no exception. After I got certified, I spent every waking moment anticipating the ‘save’ that I’d inevitably have to one day execute.

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The day it happened I was stationed  by the deep end at the local pool (see “the time I was hit on by a special ed minor”) when a small, brown haired, five year old boy wandered up to me and asked if he could please take the deep end swim test. He had a little speech impediment and was cute as a button.

I was eighteen at the time and this other lifeguard, Ben, was lurking about 10 feet away observing me, and the little boy. Ben was a couple years older than me –  the kind of local NC guy who had an unapologetic sprawling southern accent and yelled thing like ‘whoo boy!’ while blasting the Allman Brothers during pool clean up.
float Ben and I exchanged a look, both knowing what was about to happen. I asked the boy if he was sure he wanted to take the test, praying he’d say no, but he nodded emphatically and said, ‘Yeth.” I told him to enter the pool by the wall and swim from one end of the deep end to the other. As he swam, I stood on the edge of the pool, holding my red padded flotation device.

I was relieved to see his doggie paddle was pretty strong…for about four seconds. As the kid neared the halfway point of the test, he started to lose speed, floundering and getting closer and closer to the edge of the pool. He put his head back, his face looking straight up and started splashing, insanely. I expected him to scream, but that would take too much energy. He was quiet. Then he sunk below the surface, splashing and pounding back up, gasping for air.

I stood over him, trance-like, staring down and thinking about the life-guarding book. He was currently in the “active drowning” stage and I was amazed to see he looked exactly like the hand drawn descriptions I had studied in order to pass the exam. Uncanny.

Then I heard Ben with his smooth honey accent.

“Meghan. Get in the water.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t.  My heart was beating against my head and I had no idea what to do. I was petrified and could only stare at this child.

“Meghan. Git in the water.”

I looked at Ben, desperate. He repeated himself loudly, his face turning red. Seconds passed. I couldn’t. He reached for his own float. Then he screamed,

“MEGHAN GIT IN THE GOD DAMN WATER.”

Pool for website So I did. As soon as my feet hit the pool I remembered exactly what to do. I went to the kid from behind, put the float between our bodies, scooped him up under the armpits and swam both of us to the edge. As soon as I grabbed him he stopped flailing. Kicking, splashing, nothing. He just relaxed and was like putty in my arms. I  helped him out. The whole thing took about 20 seconds.

Ben and I put a towel over him and asked if he was ok. He nodded shivering. Then the kid threw the towel off and ran to the shallow end, jumped back in and started playing with his friends. Ben just stared and me and shook his head slowly.

Finally he said, “That was a textbook rescue… once you actually got into the water.”

The next day all the lifeguards indulged in teasing/ insulting me about the rescue. No one could believe I’d waited so long to get in the water, yet they were simultaneously impressed by my “textbook” performance.

When our head lifeguard (and my brother’s best friend), Eddie (see ‘the time i got hit on by a special ed minor‘) found out, he looked up from applying tanning oil to his forearms, and gave me a withering look that I remember to this day.

I felt like shit but there was nothing I could do. I’d panicked. At least I’d gotten the kid out…

The second time was better though. The second time I jumped right in.

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the time i was followed home by my south african makeout partner

Posted on September 5, 2009 by meggamster| 3 Comments

When I was living in London, my six roommates and I decided to visit a bar near King’s Cross called “The Church.” It turned out that “near King’s Cross” was a bit of a loose statement and we had to take several buses, the tube, a ferry and an airplane just to get there.deejay The appeal was great; women drank for free from 7-9 and there was a promising flyer with a crazed looking British deejay in neon with blonde tips. We got there at 6:51.

The Church was dimly lit with a long bar and about an inch of sawdust on the floor. It was actually a converted church, with a sanctuary-esque dance floor and an eerie upstairs area where one can assume sacrifices or crucifixions occurred. I was thrilled to be there with my roommates—one of the few times we’d all gone out together, and we quickly split into small groups, covering ground all over the bar. 2006_church_in_douglas_at_night
Two hours fly by when you’re drinking for free, and before I knew it we were all scrambling to the bar to get our last watered down euro-trash coolers. Around this time I was approached by a young man who introduced himself as “Andre.” He was small, with dark hair and a cute face. Before using any words he marched up to me, threw his arm my waist, shoved his pelvis into mine and made very intense eye contact.  He told me he was from South Africa and I nodded, very confused.  His English was not fantastic, but his enthusiasm made up for it.

Before long we were dancing up a storm and when he finally planted one on me, I was ready.  He was a forceful kisser, hurt my face a little, and after a bit I found myself looking around to see if I could call one of my roommates over to distract him. Fortunately, my roommate Annie was in the corner making out with some tall dude. Turned out Andre knew this lad, so the four of us started chatting. Sort of.
Fubu01

Annie’s guy also had a bit of a language barrier. As we moved into the light I saw shock resonate on Annie’s face as she realized he  was wearing a FUBU sweatshirt. Annie preferred tight jeans and shirts and fucked up British teeth.

Andre and I hit the dance floor again, and after a few more hours of painful kissing, I was drunk and it was time to go home. My roommates gathered outside and I said goodbye to my South African. Unfortunately, Andre was not interested in saying good-bye. He said he would like to come home with me, and when I said that was not an option it didn’t seem to compute. I looked over at Annie who was standing alone. Clearly, FUBU could take ‘no’ for an answer.  Andre waited and when our bus came he got on it.
31_26_71---London-Bus-at-night--London--England_web The entire trip back every time I looked up Andre was somewhere on the mode of transportation, staring at me. I glared and shook my head back and forth mouthing the word, “noooooo,” but his little eyes pleaded. My face hurt.

When we got off the last bus or train or whatever, we walked in a herd, all of us exhausted, barely coherent.  Several small clusters of girls, and then Andre taking up the rear. My roommate Kim kept turning back yelling, “Get lost fucker,” but he’d just smile and mutter something about coming up for a coffee. I managed to scurry ahead, punch in the code and get into the door, a sudden rush of fear hitting me. This guy was physically outside my apartment building.  Then there was a scuffle and I turned around to discover he was trying to force his way into the building. Kim was behind me and with one deft movement shoved his little self out the door, slamming it between them. To his credit, he didn’t put up much of a fight. He just stood on the other side of the glass, waving, forlorn. I felt bad—maybe he was the love of my life, maybe the bruising hickey forming on my neck was the beginning of something wonderful.
Coffee cup

The next morning Olivia informed me that Andre had buzzed their apartment (she lived directly below me)—about 1000 times insisting that he be let in to ‘come up for coffee.’ Even when Olivia assured him he had the wrong apartment, he still felt he should be allowed in the building. Finally she screamed for him to go away and watched from the window as he angrily skulked down the street. I felt bad, seeing as how Kim and Olivia had to do my dirty work for me.

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the time i made some college BFF’s

Posted on September 1, 2009 by meggamster| 11 Comments

There was an article on NPR yesterday that said the most lasting friendships form during the first semester of college.  These friendships are, in large part, a result of two factors: race and proximity. We tend to glom onto people that look like us and live near us.500_1189637838_558219_51667806
I was a white girl in a dorm, at a university known for accepting more women than men, so friending was like shooting fish in a barrel.  There were a couple of false starts, but I remember meeting the ones that mattered. Here are a few that made the cut; that now, eight years and several thousand miles away, are still people I find myself wanting to report to about life.

Stephanie
It was the first or second day of college and our floor was getting together for a volleyball game. Me, and a hodge-podge of tanned freshmen were weaving through the suites looking for people to join our team. I always prided myself on my volleyball skills and I’m not sure why. I’d been cut from both the 7th and 8th grade teams and by high school it dawned on me that I’d better just give up while I was behind. Still, I was looking for a chance to redeem myself.

My rag tag group entered one of the suites and that’s when I laid eyes on Stephanie. She was standing by a closet wearing Umbros and a Hendersonville t-shirt and I remember thinking that Umbros always reminded me of playing soccer and I wondered if she played soccer. She did. She had (has) red hair and freckles and was delightfully effusive and pretty and I had a very clear thought. “That girl is much nicer than me. I will make her my friend.” We all went down to play volleyball and, for some redneck reason, I was wearing overalls.
BibOverallsJohnDeere3T2006Nov_007crop430 As soon as we started playing, I noticed my suitemate Ashlie walk by. I yelled out “Hey Ashlie, come play volleyball,” just as the ball careened across the net, hit me on the top of my head and knocked me over into the sand. I was stunned and mortified, realizing I had failed miserably at coming off as the cool “bump set spike” type I felt was at the heart of my personality. Stephanie waved politely from the other side of the net. Turned out she and I had Women’s Studies together so we got to bond over gender inequality and our professor’s lazy eye.

Sarah
Sarah was the kind of friend everyone dreams of having in college. She didn’t worry about the things I worried about and had the guts to say the things I wouldn’t. Sarah was standing out on the balcony one afternoon smoking a cigarette. She looked over at me lazily and said “Hi… I’m Sarah.” I liked her immediately.

recordHanging with Sarah was like a warm summer day.  I had a tendency to be a little frenetic and I found Sarah’s lack of urgency to be calming, inspiring even. She had a propensity for shit talking, an appreciation for wine, and a record player. A few days after we met she introduced me to her room mate.

Meredith
This was not the first time I had seen Meredith. I recognized her from the Chapel Hill soccer team that beat us to a pulp in seventh grade. And in eighth grade. And ninth and tenth. I quit after that. I remembered how she dribbled circles around us and  scored goals right in my face when I was playing sweeper.

I also noticed that despite her mad soccer skills she always managed to look pretty on the field, which I found to be incredibly insulting. As I hulked along, red faced, squinting, almost vomiting at times, Meredith just pranced around the field kicking balls in goals like it was a fucking party.  I was surprised she’d ended up on my floor and I thought, “What a small world.” She had no idea who I was.
625448_girl_playing_soccer

When I met her she was very shy, sitting in the corner folding laundry—not the soccer hotshot I expected. I was glad she didn’t throw me any ‘tude cause I was ready to give it right back to her. I later discovered she was the sweetest, most loyal person; the kind you really had to try get in a fight with. After a brief conversation, I decided to add her in my friend arsenal. Much like Steph, she struck me as a bit of an angel, and I figured it would do a bitch like me good to have some nice friends.

Claire
One morning after, what I believe was a semblance of a one-night stand; I went into Sarah’s room to report on the previous night’s events. I have no recollection of who I’d  hooked up with or what happened but I stood there (in the clothes from the night before) and yammered on about whoever this dude was and how it had changed my life. Sarah did the polite nodding and “uh huh” and giggling, but Claire just stared at me, straight-faced, unaffected, boring into my soul. After about half the story and several unsuccessful attempts to get a reaction out of her it dawned on me, “This girl thinks I’m fucking Retarded.”

brunch I hastily wrapped up my spiel and stood awkwardly in front of Sarah and Claire, my silent audience. I was a moron.

After a moment Claire looked me dead in the face and said, “Well, I’m just happy to hear someone got some ass last night. All we did was sit around here. You wanna come to brunch with us?” We went to brunch that day and many more after that.

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the time I got a black eye… with the help of my brother

Posted on August 27, 2009 by meggamster| 6 Comments

Like many young children I was totally obsessed with my older siblings. I used to sit outside my sister’s door and scream for her to open it and hug me. When she wouldn’t oblige I’d move down the hall to my brother’s room and do the same. Eventually he’d open his door, kick me, yell for my parents to come haul me away, and slam the door in my tear-stained face.
Homey the Clown As a result, the attention he did pay me was very important. We used to watch In Living Color together. After numerous episodes featuring Homey the Clown, I was ecstatic one afternoon when my brother filled a soccer sock full of gravel in an effort to replicate the “Homey Sock.”

To my utter delight, he chased me around the yard wielding this death sock like a lasso and bellowing “Homey Don’t Play Dat,” while I ran, just out of reach, screeching bloody murder. Fortunately he never succeeded in actually hitting me, as it would have undoubtedly caused brain damage.

One afternoon we were in the living room throwing a basketball back and forth. I was a gymnast and in between throws I was doing front somersaults on the couch. My brother, bored with our simple game, decided it would be more fun to throw the basketball at my head as hard as he could while I was upside down. He made this decision while I was mid-air.

The ball hit me somewhere in the stomach area throwing me off balance. I landed partially on the couch, partially on the floor, fell over and hit the side of my face on the coffee table. I burst into tears and may have blacked out.
basketball
That night my parents came home to discover I had a black eye that took up about a quarter of my face with a small gash right below my left eyeball.

The next morning my black eye had turned from black, to purple with tinges of yellow. I selected my favorite sunglasses; hot pink and black with diamond studs around the rim, and prepared for school as if nothing had happened. Even at nine years old, I’d watched enough early 90′s Lifetime movies to know that when a woman gets a black eye she wears sunglasses to cover it up.

As horrified as my parents were, there was no reason to keep me out of school. I didn’t feel bad. In fact, I was a little excited about demurely revealing my black eye when other kids asked me why I was wearing sunglasses in the classroom.

The morning passed with a flurry of attention from my fourth grade friends. By the afternoon the yellowing bruise had started to spread and it looked as if someone had vomited on my face. I was sitting alone in the hall reading (during ‘Sustained Silent Reading’) when the guidance counselor walked by.
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“Hi Mrs. Kelleher!” I said, from behind my dark lenses.
She smiled absently and then did a double take.  “Meghan? Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?”

I became bashful and was overcome with the feeling I was doing something wrong.

Mrs. Kelleher leaned in.
“Meghan. Take your sunglasses off please.”
I did. She inhaled sharply.
“Did someone hurt you?”
“I hit my head on the coffee table.”
I suddenly felt like one of those women in the Lifetime movies. I could feel her disbelief, her judgment. I felt dirty, like I was lying, like I’d done something wrong. The thing was, I wasn’t lying and I hadn’t done a damn thing except flip on the couch. But I could tell Mrs. Kelleher didn’t believe me. She thought I was hiding something.

She wanted me to come to her office to talk. But I insisted, no, I was fine. I had actually hit my head on the coffee table. Finally she let it go and I went back to reading.

At home that afternoon my brother gave me the heartfelt apology of a 13 year old not entirely sure if he almost killed his little sister. As a peace offering he let me chase him through the yard with the homey sock.

This time my parents came home from work to find their pony-tailed fourth grader with a yellowing bruise now encompassing half her face,  chasing her brother through the yard, and trying to hit him with a sock full of gravel.

At least I was laughing, not crying.

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the time i became a romantic

Posted on August 25, 2009 by meggamster| 8 Comments

I was on the playground in first grade, and girls were organizing themselves into groups to go behind this big oak tree and see Dusty’s penis. Dusty was a pudgy kid with a shaved head and an unintelligible little boy country accent. At six years old, he’d found his calling, and all the girls were reaping the benefits.

The Clearing Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the first or second group selected for viewing, so I had nothing to do but use the playground for playing. I was pissed too, standing there in my culottes and Keds, watching the oak tree beyond the clearing. Girls were coming out from behind it in droves, whispering and cackling, screaming ‘Eww’ and falling all over the place having just viewed Dusty’s junk. I wanted to see what the big deal was, but there was a very specific selection process and I had to wait my turn.

Instead, I got roped into a game of tag that encompassed a big playground structure full of platforms and balls and jungle gym stuff.  I was reticent to get involved in something else –I didn’t want to miss my chance to see what Dusty was all about—but I quickly got immersed in the task at hand, running around, screaming and tagging people.

There was this boy, Zack, on my team and he was pretty cute but I’d never really noticed him before.  The game was getting intense and somehow he and I ended up stranded on a platform at the top of this big jungle gym thing looking down at our cohorts being ravaged on the playground below. We were alone and nearing the point of surrender, not really sure what to do. firemans-pole_LO_RES

For a second, I thought I was Rapunzel. I wanted to let down my golden hair so we could both climb down it. There was only one exit from the platform—a fireman’s pole that went all the way into a sand box roughly fifteen feet below. Our enemies had noticed us at the top of the platform and were rapidly ascending the far side of the structure. I looked desperately at Zack. What were we gonna do?

He took in the situation and then, in the ultimate Prince Valiant move, snaked one arm around my waist, reached out and grabbed the fireman’s pole, pulled me close and launched us both down it.

Time stopped for an instant.

I was Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. I was in a forest wearing layered dresses and I had porcelain skin and real breasts (not socks), shoved into a bustier and long flowing hair that I could toss around, and no bedtime, or homework, or forced vegetable consumption. I was in a fairytale. I was the fairytale.

Zack and I made it down, a pile of child’s limbs thudding to a halt in the sandbox, tearing away before the other team could catch us.

Recess ended but, for me, it had just begun. I stared, starry eyed at Zack as he ran over to the water fountain wiping his muddy palms on his shorts.

I never saw Dusty’s penis. Shortly thereafter he was busted and his peep-show practice terminated. I was bummed, but a year later, I saw this other boy’s and decided it was something I was in no hurry to see again.

However, my experience with Zack, I couldn’t wait to replicate.

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the time I came home from girl scout camp and smoked some weed

Posted on August 20, 2009 by meggamster| 6 Comments

The summer after ninth grade my mother enrolled me in a counselor-in-training (CIT) program at a girls scout camp a few hours away. It was the real deal; out door cabins, mosquito netting, campfires, matching t-shirts and unbridled Bible beating.
fire it up I was a bit of an outlier—I’d had boyfriends, been drunk, and, though I hadn’t been arrested, I knew kids that had. I’d also never been a girl scout.When other trainees asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d roll my eyes and dead pan, “A porn star.” I had never seen porn and had no idea what starring in one entailed, but I figured it was something I could handle.

During the weekends, the CIT’s had the option to go home.  One particular weekend fell on my fifteenth birthday, so I went back to Hillsborough for a celebratory sleepover with friends.

I’m pretty sure my parents were out of town that weekend. The following events probably would have unfolded differently had they been home.

There were about 10 girls cackling in my living room and, at some point around 11PM, someone got on the phone with someone’s brother’s “dealer” and the next thing I knew, weed and Milwaukee’s Best were being delivered to my house.

24ozBearcloverMy friend Rebecca (see “the time I should have gotten my ass kicked”) was particularly resourceful in the paraphernalia department, and decided to construct smoking devices out of the plastic honey bear in the kitchen and some soda cans.  This involved draining all the honey out of the bear, and taking a huge knife and carving the shit out of the bear’s face and body, in order to accomplish all the necessary openings required for smoking. Then, using the same knife, she stabbed precise little holes in all the soda cans, to create a homemade pipe. Aluminum foil and rubber bands was also part of the mix.

When Rebecca finished her impressive art project, we set to the task of smoking ourselves into adolescent oblivion.

As I stared out at the solemn country darkness, I felt nostalgic, tired and free.  I loved my life and my friends, and the night was balmy and perfect. I was sitting cross-legged talking to Rebecca, Megan, and my other friend Caroline, when I actually blacked out for a second. I saw fuzzies and leaned forward and backwards and then insisted that I had miraculously just tripped on acid. My friends were not impressed by my lack of  connection to reality.
p-bucket-teardrop

Afterwards, we were all in the kitchen. Feeling a surge of responsibility, I lightheartedly tossed the can pipes, burnt aluminum, rubber bands, and decapitated, charred honey bear into the recycling bucket.

A couple of days later I was back at camp.

When I came home the next weekend, I was exhilarated. Despite my differences with the other CIT’s, I’d had a blast and couldn’t wait to get back to my new straight-laced, god loving friends.

I was doing  laundry when my mom called me into the kitchen. Something about her voice cued me into slight panic mode, and I walked in to find my parents leaning against the counter.

Staring.

A moment of silence and then my dad launched into an awkward confrontation about my “weed pipes.” He spoke in general terms of youth, drug use, the law, and I stared at him, so goddamned confused, until he rounded it all out with a reference to sorting the bottles and cans in the recycling bucket.

Then I remembered. The slo-mo euphoria, me, barefoot and smiling, lightly tossing the cans into the recycling bucket and watching them rebound of the edge and fall gracefully into the black plastic depths; the satisfaction of clearing away all the evidence.

I was horrified. My dad kept speaking. My mom stifled a smile.

I didn’t really get in trouble. My parents drove home the following points:

1-  I was too young to be smoking weed, and 2- If I was going to do it, I needed to hide it better.

Despite the lack of expected parent-syle punishment, (to their credit, I may have been grounded or something, I just don’t remember) these are lessons I took to heart. I never really got that into smoking pot and, when I did, I was irrationally paranoid to the point of jeopardizing the high.

Even now, when I start to relax under the influence, I’m invaded by the panicked delusion that I have a drug test the next day I’d forgotten about.

I apologized to my parents, went back to camp and tried to find Jesus. I am still looking.

Over the past few years, I’ve become an avid tea drinker, and whenever I see honey bears I have a fleeting urge to stab the shit out of their smiling plastic faces.  But just for a moment.

Then the urge is replaced by a soft wistfulness for teenage indiscretions gone by.

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the time i lost my virginity to myself

Posted on August 15, 2009 by meggamster| 8 Comments

In fifth grade, my best friend Lyla and I existed in a world all our own. We were brilliant together, making up games, writing songs and poetry, outsmarting teachers and crushing on boys who’d made the leap from elementary school to the bowels of junior high. We wrote a country cover of Michael Jackson’s “Hold Me” changing the lyrics from “Hold me, like the river Jordan…” to “Hold me, yo’ Mama done told me….”  Lyla taught me every word to Tupac’s “Dear Mama,” which I can recite to this day.
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One of our games involved making up weird characters with convoluted narratives, and talking in grating redneck accents while riding bikes through the woods near Lyla’s house.

I was “Daphne” who’d been abused by “Grandpappy” and was running away Heidi-style. Lyla was “Tutti-Frutti,” my best friend who was coming along for the ride.

Other times I was “Cranberry” pronounced “Cranburry”, a retirement home escapee. We’d yell thinks like, “Come on Daphne, Grandpappy’s gon’ catch you,” and, “Tutti-Frutti, put that pack back on yo’ shoulder, girl,” while pedaling ferociously through the wiles of Chapel Hill, NC.
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One day, Lyla and I were riding down the asphalt hill outside her house. We were in the throes of a particularly harrowing role-play in which Grandpappy was sure to jump out of the woods and molest me. I was riding Lyla’s brother’s  ten-speed and was having a bit of trouble steering the thing. As I pedaled down the hill I lost control, veered off to the left, and drove the bike directly into a huge oak tree.

I was thrown forward, my crotch slamming into the ‘banana’ part of the bicycle seat and tossed onto the ground, a comatose and crumpled ball of pain.

Excrutiating. Pain.
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I held my poor little self, screaming and seeing double, having no idea what had happened. Lyla, hesitant to depart from character, hovered over me drawling, “Cranburry? You gon’ be ok?’

I may have blacked out.

After several unbearable minutes, the pain subsided and I was able to crawl into the house to the bathroom.

Later, when I was upright again, I told my mom that there’d been some red spots in my underwear. She informed me that I’d started my period and gave me a HUGE 80’s-style Kerr Drugs brand maxi pad to wear.

I was an avid gymnast and that night I had practice. I stuffed the bulky pad into my leotard and went to class only to discover that, in the blinding neon light of the gym, it appeared I had a penis. I didn’t know what to do, cowering as the other 10-year-old girls, checked out my bulge.

After class, I divulged the bike story to my mom.  She seemed relieved, said I hadn’t actually started my period and, in vague and confusing terms, informed me I had popped my own cherry. I was allowed to remove the pad and, not long after, Lyla and I resumed our role-playing activities.

A year later I actually did start my period. Although not as physically painful as the tree scenario, it was an equally horrifying experience. I had no idea what the fuck was going on and was convinced that I’d unwittingly shit my pants.

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Posted in Firsts, Humiliation, Parentals, Wardrobe