It is 2008, which is a very good year. I am in the seventh grade. Let’s seeeee what’s happened this year…I got my first period before softball practice a few months ago. I’m the only girl on the team who knows how to use a tampon, so each time a girl on the team gets her first period, I sit with her in the locker room and teach her how to put in a tampon. Sometimes a girl will spread her lips while I insert the tampon for her. It’s kind of like I’m a doctor in that way. When I asked my mom to teach me how to use a tampon, she told me to read the instructions that come with the box. Coach Murphy always says I’m a real team player.
I haven’t had my first kiss yet. I definitely want to have it before I turn thirteen. Sometimes at lunch people will ask me if I’ve had my first kiss and I lie and say that I had my first kiss over the summer at sleepaway camp with a boy named Sam. All of my camp friends have had their first kiss with Sam. I think it’ll be my turn next summer for sure. Sometimes I’ll even tell people that I’ve been to second base. I have boobs now, so this is what people expect of me.
I think about Sam’s puka shell necklace all the time. I’m not allowed to have a Facebook page but I have a secret AIM account. Sometimes I log on and message Sam “hi” with a little emoticon and then I log out really quickly because I’m embarrassed and it makes my vag all tingly.
Savannah calls it a pussy but I don’t think your vagina becomes a pussy until you’ve lost your virginity. So in case you get confused, vag and pussy are basically the same thing, I’m just not mature enough to have a pussy yet. When I start calling my vag a pussy then you’ll know I’ve lost it.
I started playing softball because I’m in love with Chase Utley, the second baseman on the Phillies. Chase Utley is soooooo hot. I always wear the number 26 because that’s the number he wears. I don’t play second base, I play left field. I felt bad about this for a while but Savannah says that I can connect with him in other ways and that opposites attract. This always makes me feel a lot better. Sometimes, when I’m alone in my bedroom I pull my underwear really tight and kind of tug on it while I think about Chase Utley and look at his rookie season baseball card. Chase Utley has this little patch of beard under his bottom lip that Savannah calls a flavor savor. I think about rubbing different parts of my body on it. Like how my chihuahua Taffy wriggles around on the pink shag rug in my bedroom. I love how Taffy expresses herself so freely on my pink shag rug.
My bathroom has wall paper with palm trees on it that I thought were carrots until my mom said something about the palm tree wall paper in my bathroom. There is a little window that looks out onto the driveway. I share the bathroom with my little brother. After I got my period for the first time he ran around the house with the box of tampons yelling “period lady! Period lady!” He is seven. He doesn’t know anything. The bathtub and the toilet are yellow porcelain. The yellow bathtub and yellow toilet remind me that I’m in there to pee. I hate my pee-themed bathroom.
When I’m in the shower I love to use my Garnier Fructis shampoo that makes my hair smell like green apples. Everyone always tells me how good my hair smells, that it smells like green apples. While I shampoo my hair and shave my legs with the razor I stole from my mom’s medicine cabinet, I look out of the tiny bathroom window through a gap in the shower curtain and imagine that all my crushes are looking in and watching me shower. This year I’ve had crushes on Johnny, Tommy, Billy, Jimmy, and Danny. Johnny has been in the scenario since kindergarten, the rest of them are newer. I picture Johnny, Tommy, Billy, Jimmy, and Danny watching me touch my body. This is kind of where the fantasy ends. I obviously know the possibilities of what could come after this, but I’m scared and don’t let my brain go there. I want Johnny to teach me what is possible. Johnny, Tommy, Billy, Jimmy, and Danny are all looking into my bathroom window and I don’t know what to do with them. Maybe they could do the underwear thing to me that I always do to myself. I am in seventh grade.
My favorite subject in school is English. I love to read and I am good at it. My parents tell me about how I used to go up to strangers at the grocery store and ask them to read to me. To them, this is a defining aspect of my personality. My mom says that she wonders what would have happened if she practiced math flashcards with me instead of reading to me so much. I tell her that I probably would have turned out really boring. Sometimes on the weekends after softball practice, my dad will tell me it’s time for “Daddy Math Camp,” where he tries to help me with my math homework and then he gets mad at me for not understanding my math homework so I cry and then he yells at me for crying which makes me cry more. I think I’m the only person who had ever experienced this.
I hate math class. But I hate history class even more. There’s a rumor that my history teacher, Mr. Brewer got a DUI last summer. Someone could have just made it up because of his name but I totally believe it. In elementary school I made up a rumor that our principal, Mrs. Stack only had four toes on each foot. I actually believed that she only had four toes on each foot. I could never see her pinky toe peeking out of her high heeled sandals she wore every day even in the winter. One time Mrs. Stack yelled at all of the girls in the fifth grade because Laurie McFee gave us her mom’s Mary Kay lipstick samples and we all started wearing them to school. The lipstick samples made me feel beautiful. The tubes were so small.
On my yellow bathroom sink there is a tiny porcelain bathtub filled with seashells. I put the tiny lipstick tubes in the tiny bathtub with the tiny seashells. Lipstick and seashells are the two most beautiful things I can think of. Sometimes I put one seashell and one lipstick in my pocket just in case I need to touch something beautiful. One time I wore lipstick to softball practice and everyone made fun of me. I knew I was doing the right thing.
