NTKOG #191: The kind of brazen over-sharer who unabashedly digs up her late-’90s Hot Topic chokers and Spice Girls tees and gives a reading from her middle-school diary.
I am: not sure how I turned out so normal, ’cause middle-school TKOG was a borderline-psychotic biohazard.
I am not: doubting that your middle-school years were also traumatic. But were you so heinous and unliked that local news crews got involved?! Yeah. I win this one.
The Scene: My beloved Harvard Square Peet’s, palms sweating through a sheath of angsty print-outs that are all that remain of my first blog. Oh yeah, baby, I was a blogger back in ’98. Back then, Geocities was the shiz, and before I even knew there was a word for blogging, I felt the need to pour out my semi-fictional internal melodramz for anybody with AOL 97 to peruse. Assuming they could read through all the flashing GIFs and blaring MIDI files, of course.
As far as I know, no one actually read that appalling diary. So a few weeks ago, I took the matter in my own hands and emailed the organizer of Boston’s Mortified series to finally end the obscurity of MY PROUDEST WORK. Mortified, if you don’t know, is a national series of readings in which brave, foolish souls dig up prose from their tween and early-teen years and perform them to the shadenfruede-heavy shrieks of their peers.
Y'alls are lucky I don't have actual middle-school pictures of my ungainly, pretentious wannabe goth self. Hint: blue hair mascara, faux nosering and men's tuxedo shirts were thematized.
Yeah. That can only end well. So of course I had to audition.
And instead of spilling the specific details of our meeting, allow me to present, for your approval, a small section of my audition reading. For context: this is all culled, unedited, from my first blog when I was 12 years old and OMG-REALLY-FOREVER in love with a guy we’ll call Ben, who just happened to be dating my sister. Present-day annotations in red, a la Steamy’s brilliant high-school diary series.
***
November 1, 1998
Okay, so it’s official: my life sucks. The parts of the past 18 hours I haven’t spent crying, were spent in nibbling on Count Chocula and listing to NIN. (Oh, and I slept a little and read some Hamlet, but that counts as crying, because I was multi-tasking.) In actuality: reading a Beanie Baby message board. I also had a BB Geocities site. Much more popular than the blog. And the worst part is this: I keep looking for someone to explain my situation to so they can make things feel all better for me, but every time I attempt to find someone, I feel like I’m betraying him because we promised not to do anything about it for now. [...] And here I am now, crying my eyes out, pouring out my heart to a computer screen, and violating that sacred promise. Melodrama Level: Knocked-Up Nun. ENGAGED. God, I just want to die, but not with this thing unresolved.
*
November 14, 1998
Okay, so, remember Mr. So Damn Close from Halloween…the instigator of my most recent descent into madness? Yup…he strikes again. Since then, he and I have become really good friends, and I’ve learned to appreciate him in ways I never thought I would be able to bestow upon a person again. He is sweet and kind and funny and smart and all of that great stuff. Slowly, I began falling for him more and more. Slowly. Like two weeks instead of two days? And then, quite before I knew it, I was in love with this guy.
So what? you’re asking…love isn’t real. Well, that I know already, (no one accuses 12-year-old ME of being un-jaded) and it probably would have remained so, but for this one friend of mine who just had to convince me differently. He told me that I just had to tell this guy how I felt…like, my life might never reach its full extent if I didn’t, then I’d just sit around never knowing. “Where you going to grad school, TKOG?” “Fuck grad school. DID 13-year-old Ben like-me like me?! I need to know!” I had to tell him to be true to myself. It all made so much sense. So I sign online and tell this guy that I need to call him. Already, he knew that there was something sorta wrong, and he instinctively knew that I liked him. Considering how much time I spend skulking behind draperies and staring at dudes with quivering intensity at the age of 23, I’m guessing Ben was part fuckin’ super-sleuth to see through me.
So, finally, I call him and we Talk. I tell him that I don’t want to screw up this great thing that we have, but I can’t stay true to myself and not tell him how I feel. [...] So we sort of agree to wait it out and think about it. “I’m working on it,” to quote him, “We should know in 3-5 business days.” He’s funny like that. Good lord. I deserved everything that was coming to me. God knows I luv it. Ugh.
*
December 25, 1998 [context: he rejected me the day before. via AIM, obviously.]
Oh God, who was I kidding when I wrote that just a few hours ago? I’m not okay with this. My face is crumpled up like Claire Danes’ right now (A++ ’90s pop culture!) and I’m trying to stop crying. Merry fucking Christmas. *Could* that have hurt any more? Everyone likes a Friends reference! NAILED IT, DUDE.
*
Later on December 25, 1998
I’ll stop crying in a few days, I guess. Maybe part of my heart will regenerate in a few months. Just maybe. I know that I’ll love again, eventually. But even so, always, a part of me will be here, in this room, crying, being rejected, its life ending. Sorry I’m late for work this morning, dude, but my 12-year-old self was locked in my parents’ computer room, its life ending. It was like a whole big thing. And as for the rest of me, I know I’ll move on with my life, but at what cost? Every single fiber of my soul from now to eternity will always, always be aware of this event… So THAT’S why I always forget my keys! The fibers of my soul are friggin’ occupied, man. No matter what future victories come into sight, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to block out this one lasting defeat wherein I lost my first love without even knowing until it was far too late. Two days too late, to be specific.
*
January 7, 1999
I have finally come to terms with my unrequited feelings for him, though, and now, as opposed to the barrier they once were, they pose only as a stable source of comfort for me to cling to as I am tossed about by the tempest of my emotions. Mugging for that Adolescent Angst Pulitzer. I love Ben and I’m perfectly OK with this. I love him and I can live with it as long as I keep the idiotic inclination that somewhere, deep down in his soul, Ben wants me every bit as much as I want him, and one day all of our yearning will be resolved in one long sensuous self-revealing burst. SENSUOUS?! What does that mean?! Half a decade later, I gave him an inconclusive handj in a Wal*Mart parking lot. Something tells me that would have satisfied 12-year-old TKOG’s criteria. We will look deep into each other’s eyes and JUST KNOW. God, I’m looking forward to that day. Because HE DOES LOVE ME (he did not) and God, that’s a good, if not deluded, feeling. I will always love him. (I did not.) And I will always harbor this faith in my heart. And I will survive. Somehow. SOME-fucking-HOW.
The Verdict: After giving a ten-minute reading of brilliance along these lines, the organizer locked eyes with me. “Whoa. You were — just. Whoa.” Yeah, that’s middle-school me in a nutshell.
Incidentally, as magical as this excerpt is, my middle-school poetry was deemed even worse. If you live in the Boston area, you can see me reading some of it in a TWEEN SLAM POETRY THROWDOWN at the Boston Mortified June event. Thursday, June 10, at 8pm and Friday, June 11, at 10pm at Club Oberon in Cambridge. Apparently tickets sell out. Which makes me wonder what I’m getting into.
If you can’t make it, look forward to an exquisitely awkward recap on the blog.
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
This is the best thing I’ve ever read. 2666? The World According to Garp? The Black Dahlia? The Inheritance of Loss? The Night Manager? Shock Doctrine? Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? There is a God? What Came Before He Shot Her? I thought these were all good books–until I read this blog post.
That being said: I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for not posting any of the poetry. Since you gave the address of the reading I’m tempted to drive down to the States and kiss your feet in thanks–but then I’d have to hear it anyway, and it would defeat the purpose.
I’m extreemly glad that I’m not the only one who’s tween and teen self-scribblings evoke such feelings of disgust and disdain. Recently I found three (3!) large notebooks covering my thoughts age 10-18. It was sad. Sadder still, considering that what I wrote two years ago (I’ll soon be 20) makes me want to move back time and punch myself. TKOG, at least you were obsessing about ONE person. Apart from countless crushes who turned out to be jerks (“When he scrutinized me with his icy glare I knew we were destiny”-12yr old me),endless descriptions of what was for dinner and notes for the future editor of those diaries (when I’m a Nobel Prize laurate) I found out that my 10 year old self would spend hours figguring out how to bring George Clooney back into ER! Terrible!
I’m so glad that, apart from the occasional embarrassing anecdote relayed by my parents, no one actually knows what I thought or felt when I was twelve except for me.
In the UK there’s no such thing as middle school, and I’m sure the root cause of all US personality disorders can be traced back to this horrific time. Some bright spark must have said, “you know those 12-15 year-olds are bonkers. Let’s stew them in self-loathing for 3 years and see if they improve with age.”
As Muscles says, no-one but me knows this stuff!
Wow, sounds like your house was a party for a few years.
Great vocab though!
I’m so glad to see that I wasn’t the only 12 year old with a flair for the dramatic and an impressive vocabulary. Were we trying to impress our future selves with our vocabular prowess? Haha, we’ll never know. Most of my entries on my xanga [complete with x's between all the words, 'cuz I was so like, hardcore] were titled with song lyrics, and almost all had a few angled pictures of myself at the end. For good measure. You know, in case any hot male preteens read and identified with my angst, and fell in love with me, they’d know who to look for.
Oh my god, when I started my first-ever blog that people actually read, it was UNBEARABLE. I was 14, a freshman in high school, and spent the whole blog coming up with conspiracy theories and talking smack about everyone I’d ever met, using their full names. Oh god so embarrassing. I kept up the blog for ten years (though it did, thankfully, improve when I went to college) and finally made it private a few months ago. Every once in a while I’ll go through high school entries to try to figure out timelines for various events I’m reminiscing about, and then end up having to physically shut my computer to keep the shame from stinging my eyes.
Oh man. Now I’m like shivering with the pain of how grotesque a human being I was. F minus minus.
I started writing a “dear diary” when I was 7… I’m 24 now and I still have ALL of them. Sometimes I go down memory lane and recall all those years where a week was as deep as a century!
Anyway, thanx for sharing, you wrote very well to be 12!
oh my god. i’m really tempted to send you some of my fox mulder fan fiction to commiserate.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU MUST SEND ME YOUR FOX MULDER FAN FICTION! I can’t even tell you how much smutty X-Files ‘fic I wrote in middle school! So friggin’ much!
Please email this to me right now! Please please please!
oh my god- i wasn’t even cool enough to write smutty fanfic! my stories were all about how we were set up on a blind date and then got married. i turned fox mulder into a sitcom husband- for reals. i remember one thanksgiving themed story in particular where i had to bake my first turkey on my own and- gasp!- the in-laws were coming over! wacky hijinks ensued including leaving the giblets inside the turkey. . . oh god, i was SO LAME!
That was just creepy. Reading it I was transported back to my 12-year-old self, intently staring at the AIM window as the guy I was in LOVE (pinkpuffyhearts!) with told me he didn’t “like me that way.” But there was SO MUCH SEXUAL TENSION! I KNEW IT!
*flailing*
Dear, I so wish I could attend the reading. I believe we still have the photo of “Ben” in his little Harry Potter hat and Merlin outfit at the Halloween party. I believe he was shorter than both of you dear girls. “’cause middle-school TKOG was a borderline-psychotic biohazard.” Thank you, dear, for admitting this. We thought so too. A little TMI about the Walmart incident. Was this the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky era? Oh, and let’s not forget the news team covering your fiction story for the Middle School newspaper. “Parents, do you know your children are writing stories like this at school?” Dear, hell if I knew.
That was the night I fell for him! Halloween! Oh my gosh, you have a picture of the fibers of my immortal soul starting their slow descent into the perma-yearning death tempest — or however 12-year-old TKOG would have phrased it.
P.S. Dear, that is why the computer was moved into the family room from upstairs. Can you say “precocious puberty?”
“inconclusive handj”?! What does that even mean? That’s such a hilarious amount of I, TMI on the one hand, not enough I on the other. I hope in ten years you’re annotating your red annotations with blue annotations to expand on what you’re writing now.
It’s really interesting to see how much you changed and grew since you were 12… and kind of horrifying to see how much the same you are, especially being SEARINGLY EMOTIONALLY INTENSE.
I know, isn’t it awful? I keep expecting Kiss-Ducker to read this and be like, “Uh, dude, last week you told me your and some dude’s souls were yoked by destiny.” I actually still say shit like “harbor this faith in my heart” in re: romantic contretemps. But … but it’s more charming now?
Anyway, bet you $20 the phrase “searing emotional intensity” comes up in my wedding toasts, half-century birthday gala, and obituary.
It’s the same searing emotional intensity, but more self-aware and (obviously) much better written.
And at least you didn’t write “sometimes we swim around like two dolphins in the ocean of our hearts” and then IMMORTALIZE IT IN SONG.
That reminds me, dude, we should totally get biffles-4-eva rings. I propose this one: http://www.amazon.com/Tone-Diamond-Accent-Intertwined-Dolphin/dp/B002LSICJ0
That’s reassuring; it wasn’t just me reading it for the first time and thinking I saw foreshadowings of the girl who would become TKOG then.
You might not have been the only one, but the others were people who actually know me. Which feels much, much more appropriate.
Ah, one of us was unclear here (probably me). I was thinking of the way the 12YO used language rather than the emotional intensity, and after reading something like a thousand words a day of your deathless prose for 9 months, I think I may be qualified to comment on writing style?
Ah, then perhaps you should have said “the writer who would become TKOG” instead of “the girl who would become TKOG,” which, obviously, sounds like you are evaluating me in my capacity as a girl/person.
That’s fair, yes.
Although your 12-year-old self is sickly dramatic, it’s pretty impressive that you poured your feeling onto paper so well. When I was a tween, every single page of my diary said “he’s so cute!!!!” About a different boy every 4ish pages. Ugh. Seriously, you are brave to give us so much of it.
Ha ha! You may very well give me a run for my money! Looking forward to the TEEN. POETRY. SMACKDOWN. You’ll have a blast, seriously.
- your smackdown contender.
I have 6 words for you: I want to be your friend.
You, and your 12 year old self, are killing me. I love it and wish I could be in Boston when you do your readings – amazing!
All my best to you always,
Carolina
Thanks for sharing this, I’m glad my journal wasn’t the only one filled with this kind of angst and melodrama :)
This is friggin’ art. Thank you for that laugh, it did me well. I could never unload my awful, awful teenage poetry on the web like that. Gutsy. In fact, my blog from a few years ago is still online and I’d be horrified if someone read that shit, and I was 22 when I wrote it.
LOVED! (I’m sure you didn’t see that coming.) And having seen Mortified at least half a dozen times, I can tell you that pretty much EVERY 12-year-old girl is that searingly emotionally intense. It’s kind of reassuring/totally frightening.
I look forward to the poetry. I hope it has more Friends references.
Ohhhhh my gosh. I loved this. I prompty dug up my old, battered diaries from the mid 90′s and buried myself in shame! I was tempted to post excerpts here but it would embarass everyone. You couldn’t pay me enough money to relive my angsty, black nail polishy, horrible fashion sense teen years. EGADS!
Honey–we’re all traumatized by our former (at least from a chronological standpoint) selves…God love ya for that pic…it is priceless, and you are hysterical!
Consider this comment a latent year book signing ( I’m imagining neon scrawl…)
from my 13-year-old livejournal:
“I will live with my parents until they die, then I will get an apartment and live alone until I die. I’d like to get married, but I’ll spend all my life with my parents, so I’ll probably never find anyone to marry. I know who I’d like to marry, but honestly, I have to grow up and get real. because he’ll never see me that way. it hurts my heart, but it’s the truth. I need to accept the truth.
I don’t like accepting the truth, but who does?”
the next entry informs my captive audience that I have a new username: lonely_lover. Oh dear. This cannot end well.
p.s. the guy i wanted to marry was… 26? 28? yeah.
Teffer, dear, are you still living with Mom and Dad? If not we have four empty bedrooms upstairs and two cars not being used. TKOG and TKOS are NEVER coming back to the nest. Dear, I do make a wonderful grilled cheese sandwich and we have wireless Internet, cable, thousands of DVDs, CDs and books. You must love beastie pups, cats (domestic and feral), lots of drama and poor housekeeping.
She’s selling those grilled cheese sandwiches short. They are the grilled cheese sandwiches of the gods. OF THE GODS.
Dear, thank you for your support. Currently I am offering three types of wheat bread, swiss cheese and kosher turkey (optional).
Always use real butter. You can, if you like, nuke the cheese for 30 seconds on the bread so you use less butter when frying. I do like the Rachael Ray teflon frying pans. I always make an extra half sandwich for the Beasties.
I think I might fit in, if there are jobs out there for software engineers (business or real-time s/w preferred), and if you can cope with the idea of having to share kitchen space with an amateur curry chef! ;)
I have flown the parental coop (though I still live not more than a half hour away). However, your grilled cheese offer is more than tempting, as is the drama; and as a compulsive dish-washer (a skill honed, obviously, by my teenage Cinderella status) I could help out with the housekeeping.
Fucking hell. (Yeah, i’m a new reader.) I remember being insanely over dramatic about boys in junior high, but i don’t think i ever sounded as eloquent nor had such complex thoughts and i sure as hell didn’t record them. That stuff is heavy and delicious.
MOAR!!!!
Seriously. I want lots more where this shiz came from. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.