Gawky: Tales of an Extra Long Awkward Phase by Margot Leitman

Author:Margot Leitman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Essays, Humor, Form
ISBN: 9781580054799
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2013-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11:

The AIDS Cookie

High school was to begin a month after Camp Wallobee ended, and this year, starting school again was a little more tolerable knowing I had cool friends just a few hours away. A few weeks later that summer (though it felt like months), Jackie Angel invited me for a weekend in her hometown in rural Pennsylvania. To be honest, Jackie Angel’s invitation both terrified and exhilarated me. She was wild, she was older; her long dark bangs gave her a Demi Moore in Striptease vibe. And she was really into boys. I could tell guys liked Jackie Angel even though she was tall, almost as tall as I was. But it was clear that Jackie Angel was tall in a sexy way, not a gargantuan way like me. I imagined Jackie Angel could slink into a room, light up a cigarette, and strike up a conversation that would have every horny boy in the vicinity fighting for her approval.

Jackie told me she dated older guys who actually remembered the ’70s. These were borderline-men who didn’t have to stand on a few phone books to make out with her. The guys at my school all seemed to be the size of Webster compared to me. Already I had begun to fantasize about going to a battle of the bands at the local VFW where an older, tall, long-haired guitarist would notice me from afar while he strummed along to U2’s “All I Want Is You.” Instead, still the only guy who ever came close to that back home was Jonah Hertzberg, the guitar player with the Jew fro. Seeing another world at camp made me realize that options are truly limited when you’re a gigantic giraffe in a school full of Shetland ponies.

It was just as well. I was still recovering from the damage that years of elementary and middle school health classes had bestowed on me. What I had taken from these lessons was that if I came into contact with a penis, I’d immediately die of AIDS. I knew I’d have to experience contact with a genital at some point or another, but Jackie Angel’s invite made me fear it would happen sooner than I expected. Out of all my many health classes, the elementary school ones were still by far the worst. Amid all the other assemblies that tried to prevent us all from ever tasting alcohol or puffing a joint, it seemed every month of fifth grade our teachers would bring some guy into the cafetorium who actually had AIDS to scare us straight. Somehow my school never had enough pencils, milk, or substitutes, yet they had the budget for an endless supply of men with AIDS. I remember one particular guy would walk through the crowd of distracted, bad-mannered fifth graders and tap a select few on the head, saying, “You, you, you, you . . . you’ve got AIDS. Statistically, that’s how many of you have AIDS.” I almost had a full-blown asthma attack from the expectation of being tapped on the head and told I had AIDS.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.