2007-05-31

Social Poison

January, 1983. I was in the seventh grade, in a brand new school. I was "starting over." Catholic school had not been working out real well for me. I had been the Class Misfit, eating lunch alone on the days that I hadn't been able to successfully convince my mother that I was too sick to go to school. The ridicule I'd been subjected to Monday through Friday had started spilling over into the weekends, in the form of phone calls on Saturday nights. It was decided, since the principal - a steely-haired nun who looked for all the world like J. Paul Getty in drag - was wholly unsympathetic to my plight, that I might fare better in a bigger school.

And so here I was in public school, armed only with the knowledge (gleaned mostly from the one or two former classmates who'd still talk to me) that the kids who went here were on drugs and had bad penmanship. I was still hopeful, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I could obtain "popularity." Public school was a veritable crazy quilt of possibilities. I had a locker now, and a large-breasted lockermate who somewhat grudgingly showed me around. The "9th Grade Girls' Room," for example, was on the second floor, next to Mr. Gervasi's classroom. I would most certainly get my ass kicked if I went in there.

I was about to ask my large-breasted lockermate how one went about accurately policing bathroom activities based on grade when I noticed a skinny, bespectacled fellow wearing a bathrobe and a long striped scarf heading towards us. Our eyes met, and in that instance I recognized one of my tribe, even though up to this point I never realized that I'd belonged to a tribe. "Oh GOD," my large-breasted lockermate huffed, "That's Brian. Everyone calls him 'Poindexter.' He's SO WEIRD."

Well, that pretty much cinched it. I wanted no part of a tribe whose membership pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn't be invited to any slumber parties. Regrettably, I would spend the next two years avoiding Brian, even though it was becoming more and more obvious that I was not destined for ceaseless telephone calls, Nike sneakers festooned with "friendship pins," and awkward makeout sessions in the balcony of the Loring Hall Cinema. With seemingly no provocation whatsoever on my part, a girl named Pam decided she hated me, and to that end whipped out her three-color retractable pen and scrawled "LISA MCCOLGAN IS A LOOSAH" across my desk. At that point, though, I was well on my way to accepting my fate. If anything, I was more incensed by the licenses she was taking with the word "loser" than the fact that she thought that I was one.

By the time I got into high school, I was actually eager to find the rest of my tribe. To that end, Brian (who had quite cheerfully accepted his nickname, and had since condensed it to "Dex") and I began hanging out. "You and me, we're social poison," he said one night as we sat in his tiny bedroom, listening to Slapshot records and drinking JOLT. I accepted this as the compliment that it was.

My tribe grew over the next couple years. It would be easy to say that I simply joined the Drama Club and found all the tribe I would ever need. In point of fact that wasn't true. The clique-ishness I'd learned to abhor over the years was rampant in that circle, and while I enjoyed performing, other than Dex, my best friends had no affliliation with that club, or any other club for that matter. Razi and I sat in the back row of English class, composing ranting, free-form verse about his pet rat. Judy was surly and sarcastic and I loved her instantly. Kristin didn't even go to my school - she worked with my sister in the local bakery, and Tina came home one day and said, "There's this girl I work with. She's really WEIRD. You two should hang out." And Judy, Bob and I used to play a game we called "Auditorium Reaper," where we closed all the stage curtains, turned out all the lights, and jabbed through the curtains at one another with the long-handled dustmops that the custodians would leave backstage. I've kept up these friendships. I have to. How can you not stay friends with someone who's whacked the shit-eating fuck out of you with a long-handled dustmop?

And I still meet people in my tribe. We recognize one another almost immediately. Angel-faced girls who send me text messages so filthy I cannot bring myself to repeat them here.

Anyone with a little social poison in his or her veins is welcome in my sacred circle.

lisamcc at 10:04 p.m.

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