Gifted... In More Ways Than One (*Wink Wink Nudge Nudge*)

Last night I sat down and started re-reading my teenage diary again. I'd lost the diary for a long while, but then my sister Lisa recovered it about a year ago. I'd tried sitting down and working my way through it before, but weirdly enough, I had to stop reading because it was upsetting me. Not any of the events that it recalled or anything like that. Moreso the way I talked about stuff--I was a VERY neurotic kid. And it makes me unhappy to remember that.

Originally I intended to read some more of The Satanic Verses yesterday. And I succeeded for about 50 pages. But then my brain got preoccupied with worrying about my sister (she is apparently having some sort of crisis but I don't know what it is, and as she is often my center of gravity, knowing that she's going through something that I can't help her out with at all is throwing me for bit of a loop) and I was too distracted to make my way through the dense text.

So I decided to pull out my diary again and give it another shot. The diary encompasses (sporadically) the time of my life between 6th grade and about 9th or 10th grade. I made it the whole way through finally last night, and it was a strange strange experience--like a time-warp back to my awkward adolescent years... So the topic of my diary may very well be a recurring one over the next few days.

The most bizarre part of reading it was when I stumbled across an infamous event from my past, one that weirdly enough (despite it now being about 13 years after the actual event) finds its way back into my writing on occasion, and more often into my brain. And one which I hadn't even realized I'd immortalized in writing at the time--everything I'd always remembered about it was restricted to sheer memory until last night...

Let me give a little bit of background to this tale...

From primary school through freshman year of high school, I was in gifted classes. This involved being taken out of regular classes either once a week or occasionally during the day to "exert my gifted powers" among other gifted students. It was fun in primary school. It got lame as time progressed.

Anyways, I was 14 and just starting high school and I had been dragged into the high school gifted program as well. It was lame as expected. But in the fall, they scheduled a weekend trip for all us students to go to Salt Fork for a weekend murder-mystery kinda deal. We were all expecting it to be the lamest of the lame, and for the most part it was... But we were inventive children, and so on the first day there, we came up with some creative ideas of how to occupy our time...


Excerpts from my diary:

11-10

...After that we had dinner, the guys cooked pizza. Yes, we did wear our togas. Then after we changed our togas and went back to their cabin, it got heavy (it was great)! Kristen Jordan kiddingly said we should play strip poker. So of course the guys took her up on it. It was Mike, me, Terry, Nicole, and Kristen (I think) for the first game. Oh, and Jen. Jen took her pants off and Mike told her to put them back on, so she dropped out. Then I got down to my tank top, bra, leggings, and undies. I lost. Nicole looks at me and says "I'll take my top off if you take off yours." We did. When I was down to my undies and bra, Terry was down to his jockie shorts. He looked over at me and told everybody "If Lauren's quitting, so am I." I quit. Then we got Andy P___, and Clint comin in too. We started a new game. It was even better. I was sittin between Nicole and Andy P____. Joe was dealing. This time I did better, I got to keep my pants and my bra on. Andy got totally nude, but he covered himself, thank god. Then Joe (who is I think 19 or 20) told me I had a nice "set." Well, finally we had to leave because it was almost time to go on the hayride. On the way out, Joe gives me this big hug (I don't know why) and goes "I love you." We just fuckin' missed Mrs. Spencer. Gettin on the bus to go to the hayride, all the guys were whistlin at us...

after getting back to our cabins, we got back to the guys cabin. We all got sittin down to play another game but their wasn't enough room so I didn't play. (I did want to though) Terry and I (Joe and Anthony) sat around on the couch. I read tape covers and Terry complained how bored he was. Then he said we could either be bored here or go in another room and "be bored." So we stayed in the living room and played Tetris and, guess what, Mrs. Spencer came up and caught them playin Strip Poker. Everybody ran. After sittin through a very long lecture, we had to go around and tell everybody what she had said. Terry was pretending to french a cup or something. Then after freakin' out and everything we finally went to bed.

It was a great day!

* * * * *

This goofy minor event, this stepping-stone of my adolescence and sexually-realized self, was a strange one... But thankfully a lot more mild-tempered then SOME of the crap that brings females into the world of sexuality.

And yet it's one that still haunts me to this day. I've written an essay about it (which I DID in fact try to scrounge up but couldn't locate on a disk) and it's also come up (though metamorphosized a bit) in my poetry:



Strip Poker

past the garish smirks of kings and queens, past tidy piles of shirts and bras and jeans, past four-pair of high school freshmen hunched in their puberty, averted eyes and sometimes stolen looks: the squeak and squeal of the garage door rising, parents returned home early, then every movement echoes this, the clang and collision of swinging genitals, the bounce and jingle of unleashed tits as gawky bodies fumble for the right clothes, for corners to hide in, grown timid beneath the knowing glare of discarded royalty, yes, they’ve seen this all before, the way of the young, and

here is me: naked as a fist
unclenched, this blur of curves, this flash of breasts,

and yet I fail to understand the weight of my own flesh.

still I am frozen here
suspended in the scent of
almost sex, purple-nippled, goose-fleshed,
the night given shape by the
same sweet fumbling of later

back-seat rendezvous that go
not much further than this. furtive
glances, nervous lips. it is
only years later
when:

I learn just how
to clench
this fist.



But what's most unsettling about all of this event's manifestations in my life is that they all seem to somehow be tip-toeing around the truth. I don't know what this means exactly, but each time the event manifests itself in a retelling, it never seems to be quite as honest as it should be. So reading any of them, recalling the incident, all of it is very unsettling to me.

I don't regret it. And it makes for amusing dinner party stories. And it's part of who I am in a big way, part of my sexuality, part of my personality, part of my way of dealing with males. And that I wouldn't trade in for a million dollars.

But weirdly, I guess my event is probably not so unique. It all sorta comes back to this for each and every one of us: an event that has worked its way into every single adolescent's life as the stepping stone for their maturation and their sexuality, just manifested in a different disguise for each one of us...

Question of the day:
What was your stepping stone into the world of sex?

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