it's good to be a freak

even though I was only nine,
I knew it was not an appropriate solution.

we were out behind Adam and Ally’s pseudo-chalet house
swinging spastically at a Garfield piñata
while their mother of matching orange hair and
sleezy (though I was not yet familiar with that term) stepfather
with a cheap polo shirt stretched over his paunch
(it was difficult to determine whether her eighties blow-out or
his more-than-ample gut was more obscene), drank
red and white cans of beer and smoked cigarettes (which
I can now safely assume were probably Marlboro menthols,
the preference of trashy smokers everywhere),
neither of which seemed particularly adult or
even responsible, for that matter, activities for
the sole supervisors of fourteen obnoxious kids
to engage in, especially when a metal baseball bat
and blindfolds were being used in conjunction.

lucky for them, no one got pegged in the head. it
probably would have been as hard for them to
explain as it was after the mishap when someone
let Tommy Lee host and supervise a birthday party
for a gaggle of small children.

what actually happened was infinitely less tragic,
anyways, at least for them. I, on the other hand,
had a terrible realization forced unasked on me.

at this age, I was still at the mercy of my mother when
it came to dressing. Photographs from this stage show
me husky and all-around awkward, partly because I had
decided to cut my bangs and the growing-process was
not in any way cute (although it was worse when Emily
decided to cut hers alone in her bedroom and her little
kid hands using little kid round-blade safety scissors
kept trying to get them straight until her bangs weren’t
much more than a little fringy forehead border, but she
was only four so it was endearing), and partly because
overalls were such a prominent part in my wardrobe.

it was a great day for a birthday party, which was lucky
for the twins’ guardians because I’m not sure how they
would have entertained the lot of us confined in what would
probably have felt like a hamster cage at Petco.
when it was time to smack at a piñata, a debate always ensued,
because there had to be some way to decided who got the
coveted second hit after the birthday kid. sometimes it was
in order of age, which usually wasn’t advantageous for me given
my July birthday, but our squabble ended with height
ascending order. the parents always chose that because it seemed
fair, but it meant I always went last unless someone’s much
older brother was there, so i generally resigned myself to
the fact that I was not going to get a turn, though I always
held my breath hoping all the other kids would mess up
(the same way I do when I play Scrabble ).

I stood at the back of the line, behind J.D. Gurganus who
had just moved from Georgia so I didn’t trust him or want
to talk to him, scuffling my feet in my ritual nervous
alternating toe-taps. the grass was long, probably longer
than township ordinances allowed (Bloomfield Hills has a lot
of stipulations because its residents are classy and it is a
nice place to live and anyone who visits must recognize that
immediately, so grass must be neatly manicured at all times
or else they’ll send you a letter, and if it goes unanswered,
they’ll send the maintenance crew over to shear your lawn,
after which they will send you an absurdly high bill) and it
had been a hot summer and the Lightbody’s were poor and
couldn’t afford a sprinkler system that would ensure a green
as lush as a country club golf course, so when I felt a tingle
on the bottom of my foot, right in the soft arch part,
I immediately propped my ankle on my knee to try and
dislodge the sharp piece of grass that was surely causing
my aggravation. because I was only in fourth grade, I didn’t
immediately begin to shout WHATTHEFUCK?! as I probably
would now, but instead, silently cursed my mother for making
me wear those stupid, dorky velcro-strapped Tevas even though
I didn’t want to and now had a reason to never put them on again,
while doing a one-legged squat hop over to the “adults”.

when I tapped the stepfather on his hairy, fleshy bicep,
he chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the can before
turning to look at me to ask why I was hopping around like
a retard and could I please do that away from him. the mother’s
hair bounced as she waved her cigarette lazily to point me vaguely
back to the other annoying-but-far-away kids, and when I
whimpered a little and unvelcroed my sandal to show them the bee
that was still attached, she exhaled smoke as if to say ohhh goddd.
the stepfather belched loudly as if to say i’m just the stepfather,
this isn’t my problem, can you please deal with this so I can crack
open another brewski. the mother narrowed her heavily lined
cat eyes at him, so he groaned and leaned over to look at my foot,
affording me an overly personal view of his sweaty comb-over which
was only slightly better to look at than his sweaty, hairy asscrack.

the stepfather breathed hot and emphysemically on my ankle for
a moment and turned to the mother and asked her for a
cigarette, he knew what to do, he’d seen it somewhere that this
was how you deal with bee stings, could she please stop questioning
his authority and give him a goddamn cigarette already.
I was skeptical, she was not, and as he poured the dregs
from one of the ten beer cans littering the table onto the glass
and ripped open the end of the cigarette to shake its innards into
the puddle, I realized this was cause for concern. in my head
I tried to think, well perhaps I’m wrong, they’re adults, they
must know what they’re doing, but I was just lying to myself,
and I knew it as I watched the stepfather’s fat finger stir the beer
and tobacco bits together into some sort of nasty salve that I wanted
nowhere near my skin.

they made me sit there for a few minutes to let it soak in,
although what actually soaked in was that Ally and Adam
Lightbody probably sucked because they were being raised by psychos.
there aren’t any pictures from that party, but I will always remember
it as the day that I came to understand that when I said that my
parents were the worst, what I really meant to say was that they
were annoying because I knew they actually knew more and better
than me (I’ll grudgingly admit now that the despised overalls were
actually a little cute in their dorkiness).

I never went over to the Lightbody’s house again, because even though
I felt sorry for the twins, I didn’t feel sorry enough to subject myself to
the guilt I would inevitably feel about how much better my parents were
than theirs.