A Little Bad

-from the anthology Rejected-

In the sixth grade, I was flying high. The size of my face and body had recently caught up to the gigantic size of my teeth, which was deeply exciting, and I was very busy developing my personal style.

I discovered, for instance, that wearing a long t-shirt belted at the waist with jellies shoes and no pants was an understated yet sexy outfit for any occasion that made me feel like a million bucks. I discovered, too, that wearing lilac body-spray – purchased for me by my Grandma Dorothy aboard her singles cruise to Bermuda – brought out the feminine lady in me. I also decided I would no longer be a girl who wore turtlenecks with rainbow colored hearts all over them, even though I owned a whole fleet. Because what I really needed to do was to forge new ground. And I was doing so. It was an exhilarating time. It felt like all I had to do was have my eyes open and trust my instincts.

I was a person with myriad interests and hobbies – what my dad proudly called “a well-rounded individual.” There was the world-class gymnast thing, plus soccer, plus ping pong, which I played for hours on end in the basement with my brother. Also, I planned to be a TV reporter, so I was often holed up in my room murmuring news and commentary into my tape-recorder to work on my sound. But I had one hobby that overshadowed all the others, by a long shot. And that hobby was boys.

I had been a lover of boys for years already, swooning over their dirty sneakers, their choppy handwriting, the way they panted “here!” in gym class when they wanted the ball. But it wasn’t until sixth grade that things started heating up. We were finally starting to have boy-girl parties. We were exchanging heartfelt Valentines. We were writing up and publicizing lists of the classmates we liked-liked. And with my new body-to-teeth proportions, I was in the mix.

I adored all the boys in my grade, but my main boyfriend was a diminutive, brown-haired boy named Jacob who was in the highest reading group and was, incredibly, on a TV commercial in which he played the son at a family BBQ and talked about “lean meat, heart-healthy meat.” The fact that I got to be around him and the whole lot of Ward School boys every day got me out of bed each morning with a spring in my step.

Until I did something stupid, and ruined everything for myself. I got a haircut. It went very badly.

What I got was one of those super-short skater-inspired cuts that some adorable, sassy girls and boys were getting in the late ‘80s -- chopped close to the scalp on one side of the head, cut angular and flopped-over the eye on the other. Think Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful but with an extra dose of edge and asymmetry, like the blond guy from A Flock of Seagulls.

This was no impulse haircut. I had mulled it over and had decided it was the appropriate next step. I got the cut because I had style, it was turning out, so I needed cool, non-run-of-the-mill hair to match. I got the cut because my instincts so clearly said go for it. But when I chose Mary Stuart Masterson as my hair-spiration, I didn’t take into account her smooth, glossy locks and WASP-y, naturally skater-y looks. Nor did I take into account my thick, wavy red hair and the fact that perhaps deep down I really was a turtleneck-with-rainbow-colored-hearts-all-over-it kind of girl and always would be.

By the time Frank at Supercuts spun me around in the chair and went ta-da I was beyond despondent. I’d brought in magazine pictures of MSM for him to use as a jumping off point (a tip from YM mag), but what I saw in the mirror was a person who didn’t even resemble someone of her species.

Supercuts Frank could tell I was freaking out. He grabbed my shoulders and assured me I looked “wicked cute.” His Boston accent exploded everywhere. “You hahve to trust me, Meh-reh-dith.

I didn’t trust him. Yes, Frank was a professional stylist and I was just a sixth-grader. But I knew I’d just made a colossal mistake. I’d simply gotten in over my head, not unlike the time I went on American Airlines unchaperoned to visit my Aunt Shelley in New York but had to come home after one night due to debilitating homesickness. Unlike the New York trip, though, in this scenario there was no fix.

Frank sent me off with some Vidal Sassoon mousse -- for use just on the left side of my head, he reminded me -- and I trudged through rainy Harvard Square to meet my mom’s minivan. In the car, she complimented my new hair. My mom, who for my entire childhood wore her naturally straight hair in a tight, permed dome with a radius of about half a foot around her head. I was silent and crawled into the way-back where I spent the drive home watching the windshield wipers and trying to understand how someone as smart as me could have been so wrong.

--
Shari Finerman’s birthday party was at Sammy White’s Candlepin Bowl. Shari was infamous in my grade for her mucous-y crying fits during math, but still, her party was highly anticipated because it was Boy-Girl. Normally I’d be foaming at the mouth and Nair-ing the crap out of my legs in preparation, but on this day I was shaken. I shut myself in my room and whispered soothing thoughts into my tape-recorder for a while and eventually grew calm enough to focus on the task at hand: dolling up.

I would obviously don my go-to cool ensemble, a Benetton outfit which encased me in fire-engine red from head to toe: a thick, cotton sweatshirt with “Benetton” appliquéd across the chest amidst various emblems, seals and shields, and, on the bottom, wool red and green pleated plaid pants that tapered dramatically at the ankle. This was by far my favorite outfit, in part because I’d purchased it with my own babysitting dollars since my parents were against name brand clothing because why should people be walking billboards.

Pulling the sweatshirt over my newly shorn head was a weird sensation and definitely a little disconcerting. But as I sized up my reflection in my bedroom’s full-length mirror, I felt a little tug of hope. I looked different, for sure. But… maybe not so bad? In fact, between the statement hair and the statement outfit, I rather liked what I saw. I thought about Supercuts Frank and wished he could see my whole ensemble. What a difference a few hours makes! Before leaving, I smeared Vaseline onto my eyelashes to create dewiness (a tip from YM) and the truth was… I felt pretty badass.

But not long into the party -- before the bowling even got underway -- my life as I knew it came to a screeching halt. It took only an instant.

I was at the scoring table sorting through my goodie-bag when suddenly I became aware that the boys were coming in my direction. They were approaching en masse in a kind of traveling clump formation. I didn’t have time to wonder what they were doing. All I knew was one moment they were coming and the next moment they were there. And they had something to say. Jacob spoke for them.

“Your haircut is a little bad,” he said. Then “We don’t think you’re pretty anymore.

It was just a statement. They headed off to play Centipede.

The rest of the party transpired in a blur. I did all the stuff. Bowling. Pizza. Presents. Thank god there were no sex games that day like Spin the Bottle or Truth or Dare because my mind was whirling wild on other things. Foremost among them: I was “a little bad.” I had made myself bad. Yesterday, not ugly. Today, ugly. By my own doing. “We don’t think you’re pretty anymore.” A punch in my rabbit-tooth face. But… that word “anymore.” Did Jacob’s insult possibly also contain the very mind-blowing compliment that I had been pretty… in the past? Nobody had ever called me that before.

Beginning that afternoon, right there in Sammy Whites, I started growing my hair. “Growing hair” is a funny idea if you think about it, since hair grows, as its default state, and you can either cut it or not. But my hair situation now classified as Emergency; I no longer had the luxury of thinking about hair-growth in a passive way. I had to Grow My Hair actively and with purpose.

In the days, weeks and months that followed, I focused with laser-beam intensity on Growing My Hair. There were physical things I did: pulling it, coaxing it downwards with a fine-tooth comb, brushing it twenty minutes each night before bed (a tip from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret), and yanking, twisting and clasping chunks of it into a bevy of clips and bands with the hope that by being accessory-laden, the hair would seem long, and if it seemed long, then perhaps it would be long. In addition to the physical tactics, I also worked on my hair mentally. Which just meant thinking about it a lot.

I had no one to blame but myself.

By spring, my hair had made it into a short bob. Kind of fucked up choppy bob, but it was progress. I started wearing the top section in a high, unicorn-esque ponytail, a bit like an uglier version of Pebbles. I looked okay, I thought, particularly when I sported my new Esprit short-sleeved blouse -- bought with babysitting dollars -- which was a glorious toothpaste-mint green and had the added benefit of draping in such a way as to obscure my alarming new mini-boobs.

The game plan was that my hair would level out at my chin by July and then approach mid-collar-length by August. I knew I couldn’t count on it happening exactly on that schedule, but I was hopeful, and whenever I had a chance to wish on something, like an eyelash or my twelfth-birthday candles, that was what I wished for.

Overall, it was an optimistic time. And, actually, I was content enough, because at this rate, I thought, I actually had a prayer of blending in by the time I started junior high. And a prayer, it seemed to me, was plenty good enough.