Razor Burn

It’s 1996 and I’m about to start my last year of elementary school, at a new school, in a town to which I just moved. Some background: my mother had just separated from my dad after he had been carrying on with a woman named Colleen at local bars in town. Since my mom was cute, and still young, she didn’t have to stay single for very long; a family friend had set her up with a widower she was close with named Eddie. He ultimately became my step-father, but was first introduced to me as a lonely sea captain, who thought my mom was attractive, and would drink Diet Pepsi at our friend’s summer pool parties. They hit it off immediately, and he eventually invited us to move in with him and his teenage son Russell, just one town over. The ensuing 12 years were, in fact, the best years of my life, but they definitely didn’t start that way.

On my very first day of 5th grade, a grade that is generally the beginning of the end for most kids who have already spent their entire elementary school years together, I asked a kid named Frank Drella if the Murphy tables in the auditorium “were in-fact, tables” because I'd never seen a gymnasium that doubled as a lunch room. He laughed at me and said “yeah, they’re tables,” then told everyone else that I was an idiot, and that I “was gay” because I had a weird hoop earring (I got it because my Dad had one, so naturally I thought it was cool). As soon as I got home, I removed the hoop for a stud (because of course I had an alternate), thinking it was less obvious. But it wasn’t, it was still stupid, so I removed it altogether because I knew that I needed every opportunity to be accepted by these new kids. They didn't know I loved X-Men, and comics, and other nerdy kid stuff, or that I liked camping, and climbing trees, and being outside. They just thought I was this weird-looking kid with glasses, a hoop earring, and bad teeth, who asked terrible questions. Their first impression of me so far wasn’t great. Lucky for me, I knew how to make it worse.

Shortly after the Murphy Table incident, the most popular girl in my grade, Jill Duluth, who, to me at the time, looked an awful lot like a healthy Courtney Love, said I was cute. I found this out on my bus ride home from a girl named Ruth Christopher, who lived across from me. Naturally I was excited, but had never kissed a girl before, so I proceeded with caution. I asked other kids in my class about Jill. Everyone was like “Oh, Sean's girlfriend?” They meant Sean O’Briggs, the coolest guy in school, who also had a skate gang: “NJSK,” had JNCOs and probably also went to 311 concerts, which I didn't.

As luck would have it, I ran into Jill playing kickball around the corner at Ruth’s. They invited me to play, which I thought was an immediate slam dunk. While we we're playing, I made a tiny blunder.

“Oh, you're dating Sean, right?”

“Yeah”

“He kind of looks like a hammerhead shark”.

I don’t know why I said that. I mean he did, but definitely not worth sharing with his girlfriend.

“You’re gonna keep that between us, right”

“Sure”, she said.

The very next day and for the rest of the year, he made me run home after the final school bell to avoid getting my ass kicked by all of his friends. I definitely deserved it, at least for the remainder of the school year. I just assumed they’d forget all about it in the summer, and when we went to middle school, they’d find someone else to make fun of. Fortunately for me, I suppose, I didn’t really need to avoid Sean or his friends, because I didn’t know where any of them hung out, and where they played or skated, So I guess because I was a loser, and because I was new, I had a better chance of never encountering him out in the world, outside of school.

When it finally came to head to middle school with all of the other elementary schools in the area, everyone in my grade, excited at the prospect of going to class with their Karate, Dance, and Little League friends from neighboring towns, were already planning who they were going to sit with at lunch, and who there were going to go out with. Me, on the other hand, had ended 5th grade very much the same way I started it: friendless, eager to meet a girl, and absolutely terrified. I racked my brain all summer thinking about ways to reinvent myself. I thought I’d get a haircut, buy more adult clothes, or wear shoes instead of sneakers. I thought of hobbies I could take up, like skateboarding, running, etc. I did all this with the understanding that, if I overcome my early reputation-killing early gaffes, I’d avoid being picked last during gym, and have someone to dance with during school dances.

As luck would have it, this year the teachers were on strike for the first two weeks of middle school, so we had day-long gym periods outside led by substitute teachers until the strike ceased. It was utter chaos for those poor subs. They couldn’t keep classes together; everyone was screaming and yelling across the baseball fields; pure bedlam. It was a literal playground for hormonal pre-teens. Amidst the frenzy, I caught Robin Salle checking me out. I thought she was a babe; a sweet-smiling, shy girl, who, by all accounts, was one of the most fully developed girls in my grade. She was also kind of exotic to me. l think she was Native mixed with Mexican, so I was so in. My grandparents are Hispanic and Puerto Rican, so I figured we had some common ground. Weird how kids’ minds work.

Once classes actually began, she asked a classmate of mine, her friend Daniele Hara, to send me a note from her: “Hi, you’re cute. Will you be my boyfriend?” I immediately sent her a note back saying “Yes!,””, and got her number and address from Danielle. When I went over to her house after school one day, I met all her friends: her last boyfriend Dennis, who I thought was great, and this other guy JJ, and her best friend Nina. Dennis and I actually had Science class together so we talked about that (basically nothing to say) while Robin had a quick argument with her mom in another room, which ended with her mom saying, “Well they all can’t stay here.” We left and walked around their block a bit. Since I had never kissed anyone, I was kind of nervous to even be alone with her, so I cut our walk short and said I had to run home and eat dinner. We hugged and on the walk home I was so excited but also extremely nervous. I had never kissed anyone, let alone someone moderately popular from a new school. So much pressure. I was the new kid, who somehow just hit a home run, and didn’t know how to run the bases, literally.

The next day, full panic set in., So, I thought I’d ask for some friendly advice. I needed some inside baseball. I’d ask Dennis for some help since he was who I perceived to be an expert on Robin.

After class, I was like “Hey Dennis, you have a minute?”

“He was like, sure man, what’s up?”

“So, Dennis, you kissed Robin, right?

He was like, “Uh, yeah.”

“So how’d you kiss Robin?”

MISTAKE

His response: “I just did it...how about this, how about we talk more about this tomorrow, I’ve got another class to run to. “

The next day, I got another note from Daniele, “I think we should break up.” - Robin.

Within the first month of middle school, I’d successfully outed myself as a prude, lost out on becoming friends with anyone remotely cool, and calcified all existing resentment about me. By now I had given all my classmates a common ground: utter dislike for me. The once disparate schools’ classes now found a mutual footing with one another, spawning new relationships, and allegiances. So I got left to the sides and butt-ends of lunch tables, and pretty much never got invited to anything really outside school.

To make matters worse, on one dead hot day in September, I was wearing shorts and Doug Stanley, one of Sean O’Briggs’s NJSK friends, was sitting next to me in Social Studies. He said out loud during class, “Do you shave your legs?” (I didn’t, I just had light hair) Everyone laughed, and it became a running joke That plagued nearly every social interaction throughout my three years of middle school. Every girl I tried to kiss, every friend I tried to make, all asked whether I asked Dennis how to kiss, and if I shaved my legs. It’s brutal and hard to be new when you’re eager to make new friends, and everyone thinks you’re a swimmer who shaves his legs and doesn’t know how to kiss girls; But I got through it, mostly.

The friends I did make weren’t my first choices. I probably wasn’t theirs either. But I made friends with a girl named Lisa, who also had bad teeth, and body hair issues (her arms). She lived up the block from me and we’d watch Beavis and Butthead and call each other on the phone to watch Buffy. We huffed incense, and had fun playing in her backyard. She was my only friend for all three years of school. I unfortunately made a stupid joke about her arm hair once when a bunch of cooler kids invited us to play baseball one day. I said it to fit in; it was mean, and stupid. When she heard about it, she confronted me, and told me I was a loser. We didn’t talk for years until we were adults. I gave her a hug at Target and apologized.

Looking back, it's kind of amazing that I'm a functional adult now, who’s married, who can hold conversations, and knows when and when not to make jokes. I also surprisingly picked up skateboarding at an older age (like, I’m legitimately good), and actually have friends who want to be around me. I think if I had given up early on, I’d probably be miserable right now. Despite how hard it was growing up, for a myriad of reasons, I’m grateful I had those experiences. It was no doubt tough being the new kid on the block, with no friends, but I was relentless. I wanted to make friends, I wanted to meet girls, and I wanted to be liked generally. I didn’t get it right in middle school, or even in high school, but I kept trying. I eventually found my core group of friends, and even despite being very unpopular, I even dated a lot. It’s weird how all this works. I’m sure it’s harder growing up now where literally everything you do is recorded, and on blast. I wish I had legitimate advice for younger people. Like just the other day, I video chatted with my nephew who’s graduating, and he asked me what I did to survive school. I just told him, just try to find what it is you like to do, and pursue it relentlessly. I told him I was determined to make friends and be liked. Not popular, but just liked. I definitely didn’t succeed in school at all. But because I was outgoing, and because I kept at it, it got me through life. I mean, hell, I once broke my collarbone skating in the Lower East Side one day, just three days before my 30th birthday. My best friend Dave hailed me a cab, took me to the hospital, and called my wife to tell her I was OK. The fifth-grade me would have cried tears of joy if only he knew.