So all I remember about Abby was that she had long brown hair and that as soon as I saw her, I was totally and utterly in love with her. And what I remember best about her was that she wanted nothing to do with me. It was 1997, and I was 8 years old, and this was my first time in America. My English was really, really, really bad. And I studied some English and Russian first grade. But we learned from these Soviet textbooks that were maybe from the 50s or 60s. And most of the lessons were something along the lines of, comrade, what time do you take tea? Or could you please point out the way to the Red Square? So when I enrolled in second grade at Coralville Elementary School just outside of Iowa, these lessons were pretty useless. They were especially useless when it came to wooing Abby, because there are only so many times that I could ask her out to take tea with me, and there are only so many times that I could take to get rejected. So Abby ended up being my incentive to learn English. But I didn't want to waste time. You know, there are other guys out there. So I thought, actions speak louder than words, and gifts speak louder than actions. So every morning on my way to school, I would walk by her house and I would put a chocolate bar in her mailbox. And I did this for about a week. And I didn't leave any notes, but I was like, you know, chocolates, Russian boy, take tea with me. Chocolates. She put the two together. She ignored me. She didn't do anything. So I found a confidant in Mrs. Brown, my second grade homeroom teacher, who was like the nicest Iowan woman in her mid-70s. And every two weeks, she'd give the second graders assigned seating. So one day I approached her after class and I was like, Mrs. Brown, I am in love with Abby, and you have got to put me next to her. So Mrs. Brown says, I'll see what I can do. And the next morning, I come into school and, oh, my God, I'm seated next to Abby. And I'm thinking, this is my big break. My English has gotten better. This is going to be two weeks of flirting and conversation and the start of an endless romance. We get our worksheets, and Abby's all business. And we finish the worksheet, and she turns to her friends across the room and turns her back to me. And you know what? I'm kind of okay with that. Like, I'm kind of getting over Abby because my English is getting good and I'm making friends with all the other second graders. And maybe I have accepted that things with Abby aren't going to work out. But then in the late fall, we have an in school field trip to the gym, to the school gym, because there is a performance by a string quartet that's happening in the school gym for the second graders. So all the second graders file down to the gym and we all sit in a semicircle around these string players. And we all sit, you know, cross legged on the floor and I make sure to pick a position that's right underneath the first violinist, but still really close to Abby. And then the string section starts playing and it's this really moving piece and I'm thinking, holy shit, this is it. This is the chance I've been waiting for. This is my, this is my big break. Because if I just show Abby how sensitive I am, if I'm moved by this music, she will totally fall for me. And I'm looking up at the first violinist and I'm trying so hard to force tears, and I'm trying so hard to force tears. And then the tears come and then I'm crying and then I'm weeping and then I'm sobbing and my body's shaking. I can't control the crying. Once I started crying. And I'm sitting right under the first chair violinist and you know, he's playing and he's looking down at me. And it's only now that I look back at it and I'm thinking, I must have made this guy's fucking day. He is playing to this like group of 28 year olds who are like picking their nose and like shuffling around and talking to their friends. And then there's this one who is looking up at him cathartically sobbing. Whatever effect I may have had on the violinist, Abby was stone. She totally ignored me. And you know what? Second grade came in and went and so did Abby. But I wanted to commemorate that. I wanted to give her a goodbye letter. So in May, at the end of school, I sat down and I wanted to do it with my voice. So I sat down with my mom's little tape recorder and I put on this fake like 50s crooner voice. You know, like when in the 50s songs they have like the bridge and then the guy drops his voice down an octave. So I sit down with my mom's tape recorder and I say, Abby, I loved you, but you broke my heart. And now I'm going back to Russia, and I will never see you. Goodbye. And I spent, like, two hours getting this letter just right. And the experience proves to be so therapeutic that I don't need to give her the tape. And I lose track of the tape, and I go back to Russia and I move on. And then, like a year later, I come home from school in Russia. I come home from school to our apartment, and I open the door and I hear the sound. And my heart sinks immediately because I immediately recognize the sound of my voice. And I walk to the living room, and I walk into the living room, and I see my parents hysterically laughing by the stereo. And out of the stereo speakers, I hear, abby, I love you, but you broke my heart. And I'm going back to Russia. Goodbye. And it's so loud, my parents don't even notice that I'm in the room. And they're replaying the tape. And finally, my dad looks over at me, and he looks at me, and I look at him, and he sees the betrayal in my eyes. And I look at him, and I'm speechless. And he's speechless. And he just turns off the stereo, and he's gathering himself, and I'm, like, gathering for the killer. And he looks at me and he just says, you know, your English was really good. Thank you.
Jennifer Fitzgerald (9:57)
So my story is about how I tried to be a slave and I failed at it. When I was a senior in high school, my parents offered me $300, and the terms of that deal were for me to do something nice for myself instead of going to my senior prom because they just assumed I wasn't going to go. Their reasoning being, well, honey, we just thought you wouldn't be able to get a date. And that's because you're the smart one. But your sister, she's the pretty one. I know. Mom and dad, if you ever end up listening to this, I love you. But what the fuck? I often wonder if, like, the parents of Randy Quaid or the fat sister from Wilson Phillips had that same conversation with them or if they just wisely let it go. Anyway, the $300 offer was a wake up call for me to re examine my identity. And who was I? I was a 17 year old girl who'd never had a boyfriend and I was a reasonably confident person. But the only calls I was getting from boys were from Omar and Nabil who were on the math team with me. And those were all math related calls, so maybe they weren't that far off base, right? So I decided then and there, you know what? I'm going to get a boyfriend before I graduate from high school to prove to my parents and all the other haters out there that I could do it. And I thought that if I just attacked the problem of getting a boyfriend with the same aggressiveness with which I attacked calculus problems, this would be a piece of cake. And I had watched Dirty Dancing and I'd read and I'd read Anna Karenina. So I knew that the surefire way to get a guy was to slut it up. And I did. In short order. I got my belly button pierced. I traded my very sensible JCPenney turtlenecks for these like half baby tees, and I cut a few more inches off of my jean shorts. This story takes place in West Virginia, so that last move makes much more sense in context. So I take my new slutty look to the biggest party of my senior year, right? And so I'm at this party and I'm pounding the Zimas and the wine coolers pretty hard so I can loosen up. And I'm making eye contact with every boy there and thrusting my newly pierced and naked midriff at all of them. Because when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And between the alcohol and my goal oriented aggressiveness, I was a slutty hammer. And bam. I found my nail. The captain of the wrestling team. Pretty quickly, he and I end up in the bathroom and we're making out furiously and he's pawing at me and I could hear the sounds of the Dave Matthews Band coming through the bathroom door, which coincidentally became the soundtrack to every sexual encounter I had in the late 90s. But that's another story. So this is all going on, right? He's pawing at me and we're making out. And this is by far the farthest I had ever gone with a boy. And the only thing that was in my head was mom and dad, in your face. But my victory was short lived because wrestling team captain promptly took my hand and he thrust it down his pants. And before my newfound sophistication could catch up with my mouth, I yelled out, jesus Christ, it feels like chicken parts. Yeah. And that was the end of that interlude. And that brings us to the conclusion of my senior year with still no boyfriend and nothing at all, in fact, to show for my efforts, except for this really nasty infection from my belly button piercing and no desire to ever eat chicken again. So you know what? I ditched the baby teas and I went back to my old identity as the smart girl who was also funny and who'd also just been named valedictorian. So I decided to use my high school graduation speech as an opportunity to reclaim at least part of my dignity, right? And I did. I got to that high school gymnasium that night and I gave the speech of my life. And the very next night, I went to a party and this guy came up to me. He wasn't actually this guy. He was that guy. He was a college football quarterback, impossibly good looking, and he drove this red Chrysler LeBaron convertible. I know, I know. That guy comes up to me and he says, I was at your high school graduation last night and I gotta tell you, your speech was awesome. To which I responded, cool, thanks. And I walked away thinking that that was all that guy could ever have to say to me. But it wasn't, because he followed me and he asked me, did you write that speech all by yourself? And I joked back, no. I beat up some guy on the football team and made him write it for me. And I ran away because I was, like, really incredulous and also suspicious that somebody was just messing with me, right? Like, why would that guy ever have anything to say to me? And I thought the popular girls were going to dump a bucket of pig's blood on my head any moment for thinking that this guy who looked like he walked out of the pages of Men's Health magazine could be interested in me. But he was. And at the end of the night, he asked me out. And a couple days later, he took me on my very first real date. And a few weeks after that, he became my very first real boyfriend. And that's when I learned that you don't have to be slutty to get a boyfriend. But later that summer, when he dumped me for not having sex with him, I learned that you do have to be slutty to keep a boyfriend.
