Rabbi Shlomo was a tall man, and he had to reach down to put his hands on both of my shoulders. I gazed up at him and prepared to look humble. He began, “Amy …,” and that’s the last thing I heard. His breath was so bad, I literally couldn’t listen to a word. It took all my strength not to pass out from the stench he was sending my way. I figured out quickly that I needed to gasp for breath while he was inhaling. He was giving me heartfelt words of wisdom and I was doing Lamaze. What did he eat for breakfast? I thought. An adult diaper? A cadaver?
The speech went on for hours. It was probably only five minutes, but when you’re in the panic room of someone’s dragon mouth the clock really stops. Just as I was getting dizzy from lack of oxygen, I could tell from his body language that he was wrapping it up. Everyone applauded. I turned away, filled my lungs with fresh air, and smiled out into oblivion. It was official: I was a woman.
Now I could have a short luncheon with smoked fish and bagels and take my closest friends to Medieval Times in New Jersey. Just as God and Golda Meir intended.
When I was fourteen, I volunteered at a camp for people with special needs. Camp Anchor is still around today; it’s an amazing program that now serves more than seven hundred campers a year. People volunteer there because you can help those in need, it’s good for your soul, and it enriches your life. I did it because the boys were doing it, and I wanted to have a soccer player’s tongue in my mouth before I died.
I would like to say that I went into it wanting to help others. But let’s be real – I was a teenager who only cared about herself. Adolescence is full of awkwardness and insecurity for most people. But in my case it was also full of grand delusions. Besides wanting boys to like me, I also wanted to embody all the impossible combinations: I wanted to be both beautiful and kind, smart and selfless. My mom was a teacher for the deaf, so I’d been around kids with special needs for as long as I could remember. I thought it would be easy, and I knew how to talk to these children like adults. I’d show them love and respect and be giving of myself. I pictured teaching a little girl how to swim and was already patting myself on the back for being such a great person: Saint Amy. People would line up around the block just so I’d smile at them and once in a while give them a hug, like I was a Buddhist street monk, and they’d be eternally blessed. But mostly I was excited to ride the bus and try to fit in with the cute guys.
A lot of the cool older boys from my high school volunteered at Camp Anchor, but I only had eyes for Tyler Cheney. He had soulful brown eyes and a mess of curly hair. He was a great soccer player but also loved Phish and the Grateful Dead. (Wow – could there be any limits to how diverse this guy’s interests were?) I loved making Tyler laugh, which wasn’t hard to do because he was a complete stoner and his double-digit IQ wasn’t what made him attractive. For most of my life I have had the habit of being attracted to hot guys with the intelligence of a jack-o’-lantern and a distended belly. I always loved a belly. Tyler was no different. All I would have to do to make him laugh was quote the movie Tommy Boy. I knew it by heart, so he basically thought I was George Carlin. I think he’s in finance now and has a hedge fund or something else I can’t understand. (How come stupid people can still make money like that? I don’t know what a hedge fund is. I want a hedgehog fund. They are so cute and I think I need one. But I would probably kill it by accident. I can’t even keep a plant alive. Okay, never mind.)
Tyler sat in front of me in Spanish class and I’d stare at the back of his curly head, trying to will him to turn around and declare his love for me, something that never even came close to happening. But when I heard he was going to volunteer at Camp Anchor, well, guess what, Tyler Cheney? So was I. I’d save the shit out of some kids to be close to him.
On our first day at Camp Anchor, we waited for the bus to pick us up at an elementary school parking lot. I remember I’d laid out my first-day-of-work outfit on my bed the night before. Wait until Tyler sees me in this, I thought. A Twitter-blue T-shirt. My flannel plaid blue-and-green boxer shorts that had PENN STATE on them (and not even on the butt; this was a few years before the marketing geniuses decided to put their paws right on the spot where every dude’s and most curious women’s eyes go right away). I pulled up those shorts, did a half turn in the mirror, and hoped deeply and sadly that this would be the outfit I’d be wearing when Tyler realized I could be good for him. I knew I had a long way to go, because so far I was still just the oily-faced girl whose idea of seduction was to whisper impersonations of America’s favorite sweaty three-hundred-pound male comic in his ear. But maybe camp was the place where he would see me in a new light. If I could just make myself become more his type, I thought. I tied up my hair in one of those ballerina buns and took a hair dryer to my bangs, but within ten seconds they blew up in the summer humidity so that I bore a striking resemblance to Sammy Hagar.
I sat one row away from Tyler on the bus and was already sweating through my carefully selected outfit, sticking to the green pleather seats, which were torn up and graffitied by badasses whose parents were failing. I listened to Roxette on my Walkman and tried to seem distant and interesting, like Brenda on Beverly Hills, 90210, whom I’ve modeled myself on for most of my life. She was the queen of the impossible combinations. She seemed to have been born with an innocence (me) yet she oozed sex appeal (totally me) and she would fit right in doing something as pure as a sing-along, but only if it ended with her getting railed from behind by Dylan under the bleachers. Sweet, with a dark, dirty edge, just like fourteen-year-old me. Except none of that, and I’d never even been fingered and was deeply heinous looking at the time. But I wanted so badly to make the shoe fit, to be the kind of impossible person Brenda was. Anyway, when the bus pulled up to camp, I took a break from envisioning myself as the center of attention at the Peach Pit, peeled my legs off the seat, and got off the bus. We walked to registration en masse, while I was channeling We’re gonna be a cool, fun group all summer, right, you guys? I’m one of the guys, but you have feelings for me. You will give yourself over to me around the Fourth of July, RIGHT, TYLER?–type energy.
As I approached the registration desk where we were going to find out what group we were assigned to, I had only two wishes: 1) that Tyler and I would be assigned to the same group, and 2) that I’d get the cutest littlest kids – the five-to-eight-year-old girls, called the “Junior 3s.” The groups were divided by sex and age, and I’d seen the Junior 3s listed in the brochure when I was considering volunteering. I wanted to be their cool big sister who’d impact their lives forever. They were adorable, and I pictured us doing the annual talent show and laughing and hugging. I’d give them each a piggyback ride and Tyler would say, “Wow, you must be sore … need a massage?” And I’d say, “Sure, maybe later. I just have to make sure everyone gets a turn first.” Like a hero. And then I’d give him a massage and slip and fall on his penis and get pregnant and trap him and be on the first season of Teen Mom.
“Senior Ten!” announced the elderly woman who I thought was a man until she barked at me.
“Excuse me?” I barked back.
“You will be working with Senior Ten – that is women thirty-five and up. There is your group,” she said, pointing to a herd of ladies who looked more Golden Girls than little girls.
I was thrown off. “I didn’t know there were campers older than me,” I demurred.
The woman, who resembled my grandpa when he let his hair grow a little too long, gave me an expressionless nonreply.
“What a fun surprise,” I said.
I was a flake, and she could smell it on me. I’d come to Camp Anchor to flirt with boys and put something on my college applications, and she knew it. She saw right through my Chia Pet bangs into my shallow heart and frowned. She handed me my paperwork and sent me on my way.
I