I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star by Judy Greer Read Free Book Online Page A

and quick wit, but I needed the boobs to get the ball rolling.
    That summer I turned thirteen, my parents and I were going on our summer vacation, which was always a road trip to somewhere boring—sorry, “serene.” I still don’t understand why we never went anywhere far away enough that we had to take an airplane. We never flew anywhere. Not even Disney in Orlando (is it “world” or “land”? I will never remember because MY PARENTS NEVER TOOK ME THERE!!!). We went to northern Michigan (a lot), Iowa, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and places like that. I slept in the car a lot on those trips. To this day, anytime I am in the car for an extended period of time, I get so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. Even if I’m just running errands or driving to an audition, if the traffic is particularly terrible and I’m in the car forever, I will have to pull over and close my eyes for a few minutes—it’s not safe to drive like that. My mom said that when I was really little, in my car seat, I would dress and undress my Barbies between naps. When I got older, I read, and read, and read. Thank God I never got carsick! Sometimes my parents would let me bring a cousin or friend to keep me company during our trip and probably to keep me out of their hair. But often I would just go alone.
    So, this particular year, we went to visit my mom’s cousin, who I’d never met, in Wisconsin. Her family owned a lodge, and we were going to stay there for the night on our way to a cabin on a lake in Minnesota that was owned by my father’s uncle, who I’d
also
never met. When we arrived at the lodge, I thought it was real fancy. It reminded me of where Baby and her family stayed in
Dirty Dancing
, minus the hot, oversexed dancers. There was amain building that had hotel rooms and the dining room, and then there were little cabins and clusters of buildings that had several hotel rooms in each one, like mini strip malls. They were scattered around the grounds, with trees everywhere and little paths connecting everything. I remember being so excited because I had my own room, and I
never
got my own room. I thought it was appropriate that I finally get a room of my own because I was a day away from being thirteen, practically an adult, voting was just around the corner. That night, we went to dinner in the dining room of the main building with the cousin, and I remember my parents were drinking wine and decided to stay later than I wanted to, which was fine by me because I needed to be alone anyway to say good-bye to my preteen self and hello to the new teenage me. So I went back to my room alone (another sign that I was fully grown up). I decided an evening of solitary pampering was the perfect way to celebrate this rite of passage. I mean, I had my own room, and in the movies when women had their own hotel rooms, they always took hot bubble baths, applied lots of colored lotions, wrapped their hair in a towel, turban style, and danced around lip-synching to a lady-power song. If this was how independent women were supposed to behave, I thought I should get started.
    I used the mini shampoo to make my bubble bath. This never works for long, if at all, but since no one told me I’d have my own room, I didn’t come prepared with the proper bath supplies. I didn’t come close to getting as many bubbles going as they do in the movies, but it was pampering enough. It wasn’t until I was drying off, pre-lip-synch dance, that I noticed it. One curly black hair stuck to the skin of my pelvis. One hair. At first I almost barfed, thinking it was someone else’s hair left over from the previous occupant of the tub, but when I tried to remove it with the towel, it hurt. And that was when I realized it wasn’t a stranger’spube but my own! My very own pubic hair! I got excited because I knew in my heart it was a sign. My life was turning around. I wasn’t going to be flat and ugly anymore. My hair was going to grow. I was going to start