NY Girl Part I: Four Eyes and a Two Nice Legs
Whenever I claim that I was a huge dork in middle school, people dismiss my words, saying that "everyone was a big dork in middle school." While this may be true (I don't really think it is), I was a the bottom of the food chain. A straggler in the nerd herd.
My thick, plastic-framed glasses were crooked from all the times they had been smashed. My hair was perpetually too long, parted on the side with too much gel. My mom bought all of my clothes, and since we didn't have a lot of money, I usually ended up wearing the Walmart Special: ill-fitting jeans and a t-shirt with weird slogans like "I don't care." Except that instead of an "I" there was a picture of an eye.
Anyway, I was often picked on, because I was lucky enough to have my locker literally surrounded by the "cool" group of jocks. They would close my locker, make fun of me, knock my books out of my hand, push me around, and do chinaman impersonations at me (I'm not chinese of course). I never backed down and I always stood up for myself, and consequently, I was their favorite target. They could always count on me for a good laugh.
I had few friends--I was too proud to really hang out with the other social outcasts (though I did on occasion anyway), and I was too nerdy for any of the more acceptable circles. My good friends from elementary and I weren't really close again till the end of middle school. It was a miserable time.
Well, things improved tremendously in highschool. I got contacts, hit my growth spurt, started dressing myself, and insisted on bi-monthly haircuts. I started making an effort to be less annoying (which cjade had told me was something people definitely thought I was). Still, though I had outwardly changed, I retained that same hesitancy to trust in people, as well as a distinct sense of inferiority that I had picked up earlier in life. I hid this with bravado and a loud voice. I still do.
Freshman year brought a series of shortlived relationships and lessons. It was my first real foray into the complex world that is a girl's mind. Though they didn't last long, the fact that girls would give me the time of day did a lot to boost my confidence.
Near the end of sophmore year I went to a friend's birthday party. I distinctly remember being very grateful for having been invited, because the birthday girl was something of a social butterfly. She knew everyone, and everyone knew her. Any asian of note in the school district knew her.
Well, I had never been invited to too many parties so, truth be told, I was a bit at a loss as to what to do. I tried to play it cool, sitting with my drink, listening in on conversations held by people I knew only vaguely. I did my best to laugh at the right moments and not be annoying.
Sometime during the evening, I got up to refill my drink. When I returned, my seat had been taken by a random girl, so I looked around for another. The only available spot that wasn't in the middle of the room was on a couch along the side. In the middle sat a striking Chinese girl.
She sat with her legs pulled up beneath her, folded to one side. I distinctly remember this because they were beautiful legs. Long and smooth, they tapered perfectly down to a pair of delicate ankles and bare feet. She sat quietly, her hands in her lap, smiling and occasionaly saying a few words to the friend that filled the seat to her left. I carefully picked my way across the room and sat to her right. We exchanged smiles, but didn't speak.
As luck would have it, my friend Tiger (one of my few "popular" friends") came up just then. He apparently knew the girl next to me and jumpstarted the conversation between us. We basked in his social eptitude (is that a word?), laughing at his jokes and generally enjoying his conversation.
After a bit, Tiger wandered off, leaving [NYG] and I to continue talking. We spent the better part of the evening chatting. Our conversation was frequently interupted by her friends who would come up to talk to her, but she would always pick up where we left off immediately afterwards.
At the end of the night, I said good-bye and left. It didn't even occur to me to ask her for her number, because, well at the time, I just didn't do that kind of thing. Plus, even if it had occured to me, I would have been too chickenshit to do it--'cause what would a beautiful, smart, rich, popular girl like her want with a guy like me?
The next day of school, Tiger came up to me in class and asked me what I thought of NYG. He said it with a big shit-eating grin, which immediately put me on guard.
"Uh...she has great legs," I said. Because I'm dumb like that.
"Yeah she does," he replied. "She said that you were cute. You should call her, dude."
"Really? She said that?" I was flattered, as well as a bit incredulous.
"Yeah man. And she drives a BMW." He said this as if it should matter. And just like that, it did.
Later that night I got a phone call at the house. I didn't immediately recognize the voice. It turned out to be a girl named Christina from my old middle school who now went to highschool with NYG. I'm still not sure how she got my number, but she was another one of those who knew everyone, and was always getting into everyone's business. This was one of the first times she'd ever spoken to me, much less gotten into my business. Not that I minded.
She pretty much urged the same thing that Tiger had, only she was more insistent. I resisted, saying that I didn't have NYG's number. But that excuse lasted all of three seconds; Christina rattled off a pager number (yeah, we used pagers back then) and then redoubled her efforts to get me to call. I said I would.
After we hung up, I sat for a long time staring at the number I'd jotted down.
to be continued...
My thick, plastic-framed glasses were crooked from all the times they had been smashed. My hair was perpetually too long, parted on the side with too much gel. My mom bought all of my clothes, and since we didn't have a lot of money, I usually ended up wearing the Walmart Special: ill-fitting jeans and a t-shirt with weird slogans like "I don't care." Except that instead of an "I" there was a picture of an eye.
Anyway, I was often picked on, because I was lucky enough to have my locker literally surrounded by the "cool" group of jocks. They would close my locker, make fun of me, knock my books out of my hand, push me around, and do chinaman impersonations at me (I'm not chinese of course). I never backed down and I always stood up for myself, and consequently, I was their favorite target. They could always count on me for a good laugh.
I had few friends--I was too proud to really hang out with the other social outcasts (though I did on occasion anyway), and I was too nerdy for any of the more acceptable circles. My good friends from elementary and I weren't really close again till the end of middle school. It was a miserable time.
Well, things improved tremendously in highschool. I got contacts, hit my growth spurt, started dressing myself, and insisted on bi-monthly haircuts. I started making an effort to be less annoying (which cjade had told me was something people definitely thought I was). Still, though I had outwardly changed, I retained that same hesitancy to trust in people, as well as a distinct sense of inferiority that I had picked up earlier in life. I hid this with bravado and a loud voice. I still do.
Freshman year brought a series of shortlived relationships and lessons. It was my first real foray into the complex world that is a girl's mind. Though they didn't last long, the fact that girls would give me the time of day did a lot to boost my confidence.
Near the end of sophmore year I went to a friend's birthday party. I distinctly remember being very grateful for having been invited, because the birthday girl was something of a social butterfly. She knew everyone, and everyone knew her. Any asian of note in the school district knew her.
Well, I had never been invited to too many parties so, truth be told, I was a bit at a loss as to what to do. I tried to play it cool, sitting with my drink, listening in on conversations held by people I knew only vaguely. I did my best to laugh at the right moments and not be annoying.
Sometime during the evening, I got up to refill my drink. When I returned, my seat had been taken by a random girl, so I looked around for another. The only available spot that wasn't in the middle of the room was on a couch along the side. In the middle sat a striking Chinese girl.
She sat with her legs pulled up beneath her, folded to one side. I distinctly remember this because they were beautiful legs. Long and smooth, they tapered perfectly down to a pair of delicate ankles and bare feet. She sat quietly, her hands in her lap, smiling and occasionaly saying a few words to the friend that filled the seat to her left. I carefully picked my way across the room and sat to her right. We exchanged smiles, but didn't speak.
As luck would have it, my friend Tiger (one of my few "popular" friends") came up just then. He apparently knew the girl next to me and jumpstarted the conversation between us. We basked in his social eptitude (is that a word?), laughing at his jokes and generally enjoying his conversation.
After a bit, Tiger wandered off, leaving [NYG] and I to continue talking. We spent the better part of the evening chatting. Our conversation was frequently interupted by her friends who would come up to talk to her, but she would always pick up where we left off immediately afterwards.
At the end of the night, I said good-bye and left. It didn't even occur to me to ask her for her number, because, well at the time, I just didn't do that kind of thing. Plus, even if it had occured to me, I would have been too chickenshit to do it--'cause what would a beautiful, smart, rich, popular girl like her want with a guy like me?
The next day of school, Tiger came up to me in class and asked me what I thought of NYG. He said it with a big shit-eating grin, which immediately put me on guard.
"Uh...she has great legs," I said. Because I'm dumb like that.
"Yeah she does," he replied. "She said that you were cute. You should call her, dude."
"Really? She said that?" I was flattered, as well as a bit incredulous.
"Yeah man. And she drives a BMW." He said this as if it should matter. And just like that, it did.
Later that night I got a phone call at the house. I didn't immediately recognize the voice. It turned out to be a girl named Christina from my old middle school who now went to highschool with NYG. I'm still not sure how she got my number, but she was another one of those who knew everyone, and was always getting into everyone's business. This was one of the first times she'd ever spoken to me, much less gotten into my business. Not that I minded.
She pretty much urged the same thing that Tiger had, only she was more insistent. I resisted, saying that I didn't have NYG's number. But that excuse lasted all of three seconds; Christina rattled off a pager number (yeah, we used pagers back then) and then redoubled her efforts to get me to call. I said I would.
After we hung up, I sat for a long time staring at the number I'd jotted down.
to be continued...