I craved the feeling of being wanted by a boy, being desired by anyone who would look in my direction. I would wear short skirts and tops without bras. I liked the looks and stares from boys at school, at the track meet, at the water park, at the mall, wherever. I gave the impression of the sexy, sassy teenager but, in truth, I was still a naïve young girl. I was interested in sex but didn’t know anything about my vagina or what to do with it to have an orgasm. But that didn’t stop me.
Almost a month after I turned fourteen, I had sex for the first time.
I wrote about it on a piece of paper and stuffed it into my dresser. A few days later I found myself taking a deep breath and walking downstairs to speak to my mom. She was reading on the couch and cramming greasy macaroni salad down her throat. I could smell its stench filling the living room air and see her cheeks puffed full of the fatty salad. I shuddered, vowing to run even harder so that I didn’t end up like her – but she was still my mom. I took another deep breath.
‘I have to tell you something.’
She looked up from her plate. She was tired from a long week of teaching kids. I sat facing her with my legs crossed Indian-style. I touched her hand, to feel close. I could smell the scent of her peppermint hand cream. It was better than the macaroni.
‘What is it, honey?’ she asked with a smile.
‘Please don’t be mad.’ I started slow, with an innocent, careful tone. ‘I had sex the other day.’
The house was quiet and my sister wasn’t around to hear. I hadn’t told any of my friends yet. The boy and I had already broken up and we weren’t talking at school. Maybe he didn’t like the sex, that night at the party in the tent. He had said it was his first time too. Maybe he was disappointed in me and my small breasts. Or maybe he just didn’t like me anymore. I still liked him.
She looked puzzled. She actually stopped chewing and took a deep swallow.
‘Well, when did this happen?’ Her calm tone confused me but when I took a breath to explain she switched to a wicked witch voice. Knowing when it happened didn’t seem to matter anymore.
‘No, forget it! You are just way too young to have sex!’
‘I know, but I am…and we used a condom,’ I added in panic, like I should be rewarded for being smart.
‘Well, I don’t care. You’re fourteen! You’re going to the doctor!’
The sound of that scared me but later that week I paid a visit to the gynecologist and started on birth control. I guess my mom knew she wouldn’t be able to stop me having sex and wanted me to be safe. I tried not to be too obvious about it but, like most teenagers, I would often have sex in the house. She caught me out once when she found an unflushed condom floating in the downstairs bathroom.
When I wasn’t acting upon my sexual curiosity, or flirting with boys, my time was spent running on the varsity track team. I felt a purpose when I ran. For most of my high school career I was the captain and the top runner on my team. By my senior year I had run States, Empires, Junior Olympics and I hoped for a college scholarship as a track runner. My coach cared about my grades and was more of a father than my own. He never failed to keep me focused when there was a chance of me going off the rails. He would honk the horn so loudly on Saturday mornings when he came to pick me up that it woke the entire neighborhood. The whole team would be waiting with him in the van for the captain who had slept in again. But once at the track, I was tireless and pumped for ten miles.
I thought running was my only ticket to becoming something more.
My mother and I screamed when we opened the acceptance letter from the New York Institute of Technology. I jumped on the couch and almost broke it. Then we both cried because we couldn’t believe it.
I was going to college. I was going to see something new, get the hell out of Syracuse and, just for sugar on top, I had a scholarship to run at a Division II school. I felt very important as we packed the car with tons of college supplies and goodies from Wal-Mart. It was like Christmas three months early. We drove down to Long Island a few days before my birthday, and five hours later I was free and on my own. An advertising major and a collegiate athlete.
But after just one semester I quit running.
Just getting into college was the biggest achievement of my life. Once I arrived the running didn’t seem to matter anymore. My father wasn’t there to see me run. There wasn’t anyone to win for. Running no longer felt special.
A piece of my heart caved in as I sat down at my iMac computer in my single dorm room to email my coach. I typed in the words, ‘I quit.’
Despite the hurt involved in making the decision, I immediately felt lighter and excited about the unknown future to come. That four-letter word – QUIT – was a new kind of freedom, one I had never felt before. Overnight, my scholarship was gone, but I did stay at NYIT. I stayed out of loyalty. The school gave me a chance.
Running had served me well and now, without it, I didn’t know who I was or what I stood for. Since seventh grade, running was my religion; there wasn’t anything to believe in anymore. I badly needed something to live for or at least to make me feel strong again. I needed to make myself over. I had just abandoned the one thing that had kept me safe. Now, I needed to create a new goal.
I joined a sorority and did the usual college campus drinking and partying till 4 A.M. It was great not to have to sneak around in case my coach or someone from the team caught me. Over time, not running felt normal and I could just be myself. I made it through my first year without gaining the typical freshman fifteen pounds from beer and cheese doodles. I still looked like my skinny, old runner self.
One day, I invited my friend Audrey to my dorm. I gave her my mini photo album from high school to look at, while I flipped through TV channels.
‘You know you could model,’ she said, looking up at me.
‘You think?’
‘You look like an Abercrombie model.’
Was she serious? She looked more like a model than me. She had long curly hair, and she was lean, with perfect proportions. At twenty-two, she was so much more mature. Most of all, she was tall. For the next ten minutes, I looked over the photos with her and she pointed to the ones she liked best.
Flicking through the pictures it dawned on me that I had always been posing, always making a face, a little sneaky show-off face, no matter who was in the shot: someone’s sick cat, a childhood friend, or a boy I was taking to the prom. Every photo was of me modeling before I knew what modeling was. I loved to pose, to be seen, to show off, and it started when I had a hunger to feel affection from a male, when I had a hunger to be seen, desired, wanted. When my father chose alcohol over his family.
Back home for the summer, without a father figure, scholarship, or any semblance of a plan, I felt cramped and struggled to breathe. Being home was a reminder of how much I had tried to get out in the first place. The tension was building again with each helping of my mother’s deep-fried bullshit.
The more I thought about my situation the more that conversation with Audrey came to mind. The idea that I could make it as a model wouldn’t go away. I remembered her words as my mother handed me a second helping of chilli. I pushed the bowl away as if it were poison. It hit me right there and then, that a plain, hopeless girl from Syracuse with no connections or knowledge of the modeling world should give it a try.