Getting Waisted by Monica Parker Read Free Book Online

mother had gathered a new tribe of blue-hairs that were as committed as she was to their biweekly battle of the bridge player, death-to-the-loser games.
    I began to make friends. One of them, Vally, lived in the same building we did and she didn’t have all the latest clothes either, but she had something better: big boobs, and a trail of cute boys who liked them. Vally was sweet and generous, and she took the boys, one at a time, down to the locker rooms where the suitcases and odds and ends of unused furniture were stored. Locker 308B was never locked and inside there was an ugly old, forgotten green couch where she let the boys touch her pride and joys.
    I hung around outside, entertaining those waiting their turn with a running commentary on how each boy might be doing: “It’s Mark’s turn at bat and it’s possible he’s going to get a home run.” It never occurred to any of those boys to want to feel me up except for Rodney Sarner, who was nice, but short and pimply. One afternoon he took my hand and held it, his face moving in close to mine. Oh God, I knew he was going to kiss me, but I didn’t know how to kiss so I scrunched my eyes closed until I felt his breath close to mine. I opened my eyes for a second and saw that his eyes were so close I could only see one of them, and it was smack in the center of his forehead. I panicked and stuck my tongue out at him. He let go of my hand and looked at me as if I were a freak. In fact, I was a freak. Vally told me later that she’d show me how to kiss. It felt so nice, safe, and not scary. Now I had another worry: “Oh God, I’m a lesbian.”
    I was practically sixteen and, despite my fears, it seemed I did like boys—specifically one boy. I was truly, madly, in love with Howie Bennett. Howie had dark and brooding good looks. He was smart, popular, and way out of my league, yet he was always kind and smiled in greeting as we passed in the hallway and I was smitten. He had absolutely no interest in me, but I wrote his name next to mine in every possible combination that would join us together even if it was only on paper. I cheered him on from the sidelines at track meets, even ogling him while he played street hockey. His friends began to tease him about me, but it was as if I was possessed. I dialed his phone number relentlessly; once, I was in such a dream state, I forgot to hang up. “Hello? Monica, I know it’s you. . . .” I slammed the phone down and I can still remember the flop-sweat on my palms, my heart flip-flopping like a dying goldfish, and that feeling of total mortification—but I couldn’t stop.
    I resolved to go on my first real diet. I looked at every book on diets; there weren’t many. The Drinking Man’s Diet suggested drinking a cup of safflower oil to coat the stomach and then you could drink all the alcohol you wanted; I didn’t want any. The Buttermilk Diet sounded yucky; I didn’t like buttermilk. There was a new diet drink called Metrecal and it sounded perfect for me; it came in chocolate and strawberry. If I skipped breakfast and lunch and drank a tin of Metrecal instead, they promised I would lose weight. It tasted like chalk but the pounds seemed to fly off. I was willing to sacrifice flavor and the satisfaction of real food in order to have Howie see the real me hidden underneath the fat. Howie didn’t know it yet but he was perfect for me, I just needed to figure out how to get him to see that.
    On my sixteenth birthday, my mother gave me a surprise: a huge, yellow convertible. I immediately felt anxious. Other kids might have been thrilled at the prospect of receiving a car for their birthday but I knew my mother; she always had an ulterior motive. I might have had the keys to the car, but I was to be at her beck and call—her personal chauffeur, on duty seemingly every waking hour that I was not in school. I was expected to drive her, and sometimes all her other pink- and blue-haired friends to their bridge games, the