Eventually, when I had some autonomy, I tried out for a play in the 6th grade. I got a lead role. I was the comedic relief and originally the role belonged to a man, I was very avant garde with my gender bending performance and timing. My school, a k-8 in a socal suburbia devoid of art, reveled in play season every year because they would excuse classes for one period to view the play and have a finale matinee for the parents of the actors at night. It was the only thing the school did that came close to art and frankly children do not like school, the play was good for many things, for many people. We should have had a union because we did four performances in one day and I fell behind in chemistry. All day at school I was told I was a prodigy and that I was going to be the next vanessa hudgens (Children in 2010 did not have many references) I would smile to myself and then scold myself for receiving and reveling in attention. Even the scary older boys told me I did a good job; they smelt very bizarre; like skunk.
When school receded for the day, play day, I walked home grinning to myself so idiotically the homeless man at the liquor store asked me if he knew where he could get ice and i pointed to the ice machine inside. I skipped which felt immature and contrived but great. My mother was in the living room on the phone with her boyfriend and they were talking about a fight. He believed her outfit to oktober fest was not one of class. I snuck in her room and tried on her high heels and lipstick, I wanted my finale to be remembered as tastefully beautiful, something like Olivia Newton John. Like how she had makeup on but she was not made up in Grease. Before she started to dress in leather and kiss boys. I wanted to look like her pre- danny. Or like the 1930s movie stars with protruding cupid bows I had scotch taped on my wall. I wanted to be seen as serious and simultaneously beautiful which i still can’t resolve in my adult life, and have tried to address pragmatically. I don’t think I had even had my period at that point, or that I knew what fingering was. I remember during rehearsal hearing about a girl getting fingered in the auditorium and I laughed along with other girls but I did not know what they were talking about, I may not be definitively beautiful, or definitively serious but I was not stupid, just innocuous and in need of female comradery, and apparently, from my understanding at the time, fingering was something very hilarious and even funnier than that, was hickies. I did not know the way of the world yet, or Being a girl. I was an actor first and foremost, then a girl, and then maybe, hopefully and inevitably I were to be a woman one day. I would know what everyone was talking about, and my innocuous nature would just be a failure of the past, headed by my mother or my brain. I would have a headshot where my head rested in the palms of my hands, my head tilted five degrees to the right, i would have rogue on the apples of my cheeks much like the women scotch taped to my wall. I was already halfway there, so far, I was an actor. I just needed to work on the woman part.
I had believed since my brief career as a sports star did not pan out according to my parents hopes, maybe they would find prestige in my acting chops or my essays. I would tell my mother to run lines with me the week prior, or my grandfather. They were callous, but not in the way they were with my brother, they were tenacious with him, they saw college, they saw Europe for him. They were callous in the sense that they didn’t care, they did not even find it to be annoying or a nuisance, they had complete unbridaled indifference which hurt more than the annoyance I had anticipated. Every sad song I had ever heard in my life played in my head, and I called my mom a bitch but only in my head. I screamed into a hannah montana pillow (not the milk one) I remembered this as I was getting ready for the finale matinee, I looked at myself in my mothers floor length mirror she bought from target that makes you look 10 pounds lighter. I heard duran duran from our living room, duran duran is always singing about women, and I felt not like I was a woman but I could understand how a girl becomes a woman and i believed myself to be on the right track.Her dress did not fit me or her shoes. I was a runt in sixth grade, weighing in at 68 pounds (I remember because I was teased relentlessly about this with the introduction of gym class. I think the boys were already jacking off by then. I don’t know. They thought I should have been bigger but only in certain places and I tried to appease them but failed.) This was the only thing she liked about me I think. This is the only thing she likes about me I think. I felt like almost a woman in that dress. To my mothers horror I asked her to explain to me what exactly fingering was twenty minutes before she had to drop me off to the last rehearsal. We sat in the parking lot and talked about sex, she did not sugarcoat it at all or shield me from it. She asked me if I had ever been fingered. I said dear God no that sounds so painful and so fucking (she allowed me to say curse words sometimes, like twice a year and it was never to be directed at her) disgusting I’m going to throw up. She said I cannot have sex until I am married and I told her that even if I get married I am not sure I will ever want to have sex.
I wore a ridiculous dress with a fat ugly bow wrapped around my spine. I used her chanel blush. I looked fucking ridiculous. When I showed up to our last rehearsal I got weird looks but I figured that was because I was now a woman. I was wearing makeup and I knew what sex was although part of me wished I had never asked. “That is so gross ***** got fingered.” I said to my co-star. She nodded, “She said that it hurt”. I nodded. Our rehearsal went stellar and I attribute this to my new confidence and slight creative liberties I took after reading about schools of acting off of yahoo answers. “You just have to use the computer for 30 minutes and have uncomfortable conversations with your mother and then you’re like a woman.” I told my friends. They nodded. We always tried to find answers and fill the other ones gaps of knowledge in.
Curtain call; I was nervous. In a way this was presenting me as three things: a) an ex sports star b) an actor c) a newfound woman. There was a lot on my protruding and awkward shoulders. I peaked at the crowd and saw my mother texting on her blackberry. I wanted to ground her for having horrible theater etiquette. She was embarrassing me. My friend did some chanting to prepare us but I really didn’t need it. Like I said I was an actor. The first half went well, I messed up once but I was only 12 years old. I had a monologue right before intermission, a moving one, one where i had to stand walk stage left. As i made my way over I made the fatal mistake of looking up. My mother was texting on her fucking minerature computer she called a blackberry. I could just see her thumbs typing out the word “oktoberfest”. During intermission I saw her walk outside to smoke. I followed her. “I don’t care that you have sex with your disgusting crap ass boyfriend, I do not even care that you smoke camel crushes which is very low class, but I’m doing a good job and you’re ruining my life.” (I got my first period a week later) She looked up and gave some apology. I muttered it’s ok. She offered to buy me cinnabon from the mall after but I knew she just wanted to go to the chanel counter at nordstroms. I decided my mother was not needed for acting, if anything I were a better actor when she was not there. I will let her buy me cinnabon, I will let her text on her fucking ugly motem of a cell phone, hell I will even let her wearing an ugly dress to oktoberfest and disregard my existence for some physical trainer she fell in love with. But I will not let her smoke camel crush cigarettes at the mecca which we call the theater. She cannot disregard the art of acting, the sanctuary of theater. Bitch