Saturday, July 05, 2008
(was supposed to be about:) advice that never gets old.
when i was in seventh grade, there was some adolescent teasing going on at my school that i now realize bordered on--and at some points staged a full-fledged incursion into the realm of--sexual harrassment. this kid, larry burgetti
[okay, i totally googled that name before typing it, thinking i might use a psuedonym if there were any kind of web presence. because i'm afraid of him finding me? leaving a nasty comment? who knows. but, get this: google has no knowledge of larry burgetti. nor of lawrence, nor of either first name coupled with a one-t burgeti. how is this possible? even if i was mis-remembering the name, how is there a fairly normal american name that doesn't show up on the internet? did larry burgetti grow up to be the most powerful man alive? the man who can erase his name from the internet? or did i, as google suggests, really mean "lawrence burger"?]
this kid, larry, was new that year and was sophisticated in the arts of put-downs in a way we had never seen before. i'm sure i'm seeing it through the myth-making lens of memory, but he looked a little like andrew dice clay. he had sort of greasy hair and wore a black leather jacket. he was kind of little. he was sort of like a child version joe pesci.
and man, he could say the vilest things. he targeted a lot of the girls in my little school, but had the sense to stay away from the queen bees. if you were poor, though, or socially awkward, or otherwise already on the fringes, you were go for launch. and god forbid a wee proto-feminist with early acne and a bad perm should try to engage him. do not engage. abort. abort.
i thought i had him, once. we were carrying mats from one end of the gym to another, and there was a weird smell. i think there may have been more to it, but i mentioned the smell and then shot him the look i'd been on the receiving end of so many times--the superior, cool and dismissive look--and said something like, well, we all know where that smell is coming from. meaning, of course, that it was coming from him! he was, literally, smelly! i really thought i was owning it; i thought i'd stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park--but so fast, immediately, he spit back, sort of snarling and with rage: so why don't you close your legs, then, and put us all out of our misery?
i was horrified. i didn't know teasing could even go there. i mean, a joke about someone's stench can be pretty hurtful, but accuse someone of having a stinky vulva? i wasn't aware that was even on the table. that part of the body was already freaking a lot of us out, to point to someone's crotch-region as diseased (or worse, overactive) enough to produce a foul wind was shame on a level previously unthinkable. it worked; i shut up and felt my cheeks burn all the way to the other end of the gym.
and it kept happening. the other one i remember really clearly involved this insect collection that everyone in the seventh grade had to do. larry, of course, hadn't started work on his about a week before the thing was due. he sat behind me in a class and kept tossing comments my way, about what he would pay me to do the work for him, and insisting, with a slimy smile, that we were the kind of friends who helped each other out. i had learned, by this time, and i was just staying silent. this pissed him off, too, though, and he kept talking. about how it would be easy for me, this school work involving insects, because there were so many variety of bugs housed in my vagina. there was a lot of talk about them crawling around, in and out. and from the boys who could hear him, this shame-faced giggling. the girls were all staying perfectly silent; smart, afraid.
and, again: horrified. i tried to just sort of leave my body, but i couldn't get over the idea that you could just say these terrible things to people. by twelve you're already aware that the world isn't a rose garden, that people can be really mean and are so often, but bugs crawling out of my vagina? the shock and shame almost made my head explode.
i think about these things now
[omg, you know what? it's brugetti. there's a woman with that name who lived in olympia, according to cl@assmates.com. and lots of people with that name, generally, although most of them seem to live in fresno. and some kind of reference to a larry of that name married to a woman named alvera, in an obituary that names him as a survivor. i don't know why i'm sure this is the same guy, but i am. he's probably a little chubby, losing some hair, just like the rest of us. married. probably no longer the anti-christ.]
i think about these things, now, and i'm sort of scared. i never told anyone about what he said, and the idea of any girl learning that this is how it goes, people are just going to say awful things about your body, and you just have to be quiet . . . exclamation mark. yuck a hundred times. fucked up to the power of everything.
this is an excruciatingly involved way to get to the point of today's post, which was going to be about good advice. and about one of the best pieces of advice i've ever gotten, which is all but unrelated to the young-pesci-harrassment story. so i think i'll save that one for a few days, until i wake up with nothing to say again. for now, perhaps i'll close without a punchline. except to say that no one should ever be allowed to say that about another person's vagina. really, not ever.
[okay, i totally googled that name before typing it, thinking i might use a psuedonym if there were any kind of web presence. because i'm afraid of him finding me? leaving a nasty comment? who knows. but, get this: google has no knowledge of larry burgetti. nor of lawrence, nor of either first name coupled with a one-t burgeti. how is this possible? even if i was mis-remembering the name, how is there a fairly normal american name that doesn't show up on the internet? did larry burgetti grow up to be the most powerful man alive? the man who can erase his name from the internet? or did i, as google suggests, really mean "lawrence burger"?]
this kid, larry, was new that year and was sophisticated in the arts of put-downs in a way we had never seen before. i'm sure i'm seeing it through the myth-making lens of memory, but he looked a little like andrew dice clay. he had sort of greasy hair and wore a black leather jacket. he was kind of little. he was sort of like a child version joe pesci.
and man, he could say the vilest things. he targeted a lot of the girls in my little school, but had the sense to stay away from the queen bees. if you were poor, though, or socially awkward, or otherwise already on the fringes, you were go for launch. and god forbid a wee proto-feminist with early acne and a bad perm should try to engage him. do not engage. abort. abort.
i thought i had him, once. we were carrying mats from one end of the gym to another, and there was a weird smell. i think there may have been more to it, but i mentioned the smell and then shot him the look i'd been on the receiving end of so many times--the superior, cool and dismissive look--and said something like, well, we all know where that smell is coming from. meaning, of course, that it was coming from him! he was, literally, smelly! i really thought i was owning it; i thought i'd stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park--but so fast, immediately, he spit back, sort of snarling and with rage: so why don't you close your legs, then, and put us all out of our misery?
i was horrified. i didn't know teasing could even go there. i mean, a joke about someone's stench can be pretty hurtful, but accuse someone of having a stinky vulva? i wasn't aware that was even on the table. that part of the body was already freaking a lot of us out, to point to someone's crotch-region as diseased (or worse, overactive) enough to produce a foul wind was shame on a level previously unthinkable. it worked; i shut up and felt my cheeks burn all the way to the other end of the gym.
and it kept happening. the other one i remember really clearly involved this insect collection that everyone in the seventh grade had to do. larry, of course, hadn't started work on his about a week before the thing was due. he sat behind me in a class and kept tossing comments my way, about what he would pay me to do the work for him, and insisting, with a slimy smile, that we were the kind of friends who helped each other out. i had learned, by this time, and i was just staying silent. this pissed him off, too, though, and he kept talking. about how it would be easy for me, this school work involving insects, because there were so many variety of bugs housed in my vagina. there was a lot of talk about them crawling around, in and out. and from the boys who could hear him, this shame-faced giggling. the girls were all staying perfectly silent; smart, afraid.
and, again: horrified. i tried to just sort of leave my body, but i couldn't get over the idea that you could just say these terrible things to people. by twelve you're already aware that the world isn't a rose garden, that people can be really mean and are so often, but bugs crawling out of my vagina? the shock and shame almost made my head explode.
i think about these things now
[omg, you know what? it's brugetti. there's a woman with that name who lived in olympia, according to cl@assmates.com. and lots of people with that name, generally, although most of them seem to live in fresno. and some kind of reference to a larry of that name married to a woman named alvera, in an obituary that names him as a survivor. i don't know why i'm sure this is the same guy, but i am. he's probably a little chubby, losing some hair, just like the rest of us. married. probably no longer the anti-christ.]
i think about these things, now, and i'm sort of scared. i never told anyone about what he said, and the idea of any girl learning that this is how it goes, people are just going to say awful things about your body, and you just have to be quiet . . . exclamation mark. yuck a hundred times. fucked up to the power of everything.
this is an excruciatingly involved way to get to the point of today's post, which was going to be about good advice. and about one of the best pieces of advice i've ever gotten, which is all but unrelated to the young-pesci-harrassment story. so i think i'll save that one for a few days, until i wake up with nothing to say again. for now, perhaps i'll close without a punchline. except to say that no one should ever be allowed to say that about another person's vagina. really, not ever.
