When my brothers would come home from college, they would always hang out in the second living room, but that didn't stop me. I would sandwich myself in between one end of the sofa and the ottoman, and all they could see was my head pop out so I could check to see if they were watching me and wipe my brow with a beach towel. I sometimes wondered if they had any idea what I was doing, but I had grown so accustomed to sexually assaulting myself whenever necessary that my self-awareness became clouded. It never occurred to me that when I got up from one of these positions, the other people in the room would wonder why I was drenched in sweat with my jeans wedged up to my nipples, my eyes crossed, a severe case of cameltoe, and chapped lips. I didn't care. I had bigger fish to fry.
School was becoming a nuisance. It was nearly impossible to go eight hours without jerking off. I had two options to get me through the day: I could use a ruler under my desk during spelling, because our teacher was always at the front with the big ruler, or I could wait until recess to use one of the metal poles that kept the swing sets upright. I would ride the pole up and down until my neck started spasming; on multiple occasions I ended up head-butting myself into the pole.
One by one, my classmates would dismount from the swings as the bell rang, while I would still be writhing on the pole a half hour later. Eventually a hall guard or teacher would come out and yell, "Chelsea, the bell rang thirty minutes ago!"
"Shut up," I'd moan. "It's coming!"
I found myself carving out windows of time in the day and after school for me to be alone with myself. My desire to blow off birthday parties happened to correspond with a precipitous drop in invitations. I didn't notice that I had fewer friends, and frankly I didn't care. Like any person in a new relationship, I had eyes for only one person, even though the person I had eyes for only had one eye.
As soon as spring came along, bike rides took on a new meaning. I would bike for hours on the weekends, rubbing my coslopus on my banana seat. I would ride up and down our block, passing our neighbor's window with my legs extended out to the sides, avoiding any oncoming traffic at the last minute by detouring into a rain gutter. By the end of the school year, I had flipped my bicycle three times and was wearing two silver caps over the teeth I'd lost during orgasms. The vinyl on my seat had started to wear down, so I decided to tape an eraser to the tip of my seat for multiple climactic sensations. I had a basket on my bike and would run out of the house with homework to fool my mother into thinking I was on a deadline.
"My mind comes alive in the cross breeze," I would tell her.
"How are you able to do your schoolwork while you're riding a bike?"
"It is what it is, Mom. You say tomato, I say banana seat."
I would get so excited on Friday nights, knowing that my peekachu and I would be able to have the whole weekend to ourselves. I always had to watch TV while hooking up with myself, just in case anyone walked into my room, which in hindsight seems a little dissonant. Reruns of Three's Company and Growing Pains weren't exactly titillating, but I had no idea that what I was doing was titillating, since it didn't involve my father's tits. I didn't need imagery to get my party started. I just needed friction.
I decided to start sampling different clothing options and find out which materials aided what I would later find out were orgasms. One would think that sweats or leggings would be optimal, but one would be mistaken. Too easy. Shorts and skirts were off-limits, as they allowed closer to direct contact, which could result in pole burns or, even worse, me actually touching my own MINI Cooper.
I had graduated to the bed and would lie on my stomach, put the comforter over me to conceal any wrongdoing, and turn my head to the side on the pillow so I could stare straight at my TV. If my neck grew cramped, I would switch to lying on my back with the covers over me. I liked this position because, besides being much less suspicious, it worked different muscle groups.
As with any normal relationship in bloom, we experienced the highs and lows that go hand in hand with the decision to share your life with someone. We spent the summer of '83 together, which grew more challenging due to the increase in the temperature. There were many times I was tempted to walk away, but I always came back when the sun went down. In hindsight it was easier to stay in the relationship than to jump back into the dating scene. With my invisible friend, Lucy, acting as officiator, my coslopus and I had a commitment ceremony where we vowed to be faithful, even though cheating on me would have been impossible for her, considering she was attached to my groin.
It wasn't until Thanksgiving dinner in fourth grade that I was confronted about my romance. My parents had invited some family friends over, along with my five brothers and sisters. I was still in a honeymoon period with myself and didn't take a Thanksgiving dinner seriously enough to not bring my gentleman caller. I had a wooden soup spoon under the table in between my legs, over my corduroys, pursuing my usual enterprise. After several beads of sweat dripped into my pumpkin soup, my father yelled out in front of the whole table, "Chelsea! Stop what you're doing right now!"
Then my mother chimed in. "Chelsea, that is something you want to do in the privacy of your own room."
My brother Ray took this as his cue to announce, "She does it all the time!"
The idea that what I'd been doing to myself for the past year and a half had not been a secret by any stretch of the imagination came as a shock to me. I couldn't believe I'd been outed. I was mortified, sabotaged, and, worst of all, forced to spend the rest of elementary school ignoring my lover and her pitiful attempts to reconcile. Once it was established that it was not acceptable behavior, I had no desire to do it. No remorse. No breakup letter. No counseling. Just cold turkey. "Au 'voir," I told my coslopus that night before reading my newest issue of Highlights magazine, which I had started subscribing to at the age of three.
I think back with fondness on that year I spent getting to know my hot pocket. While some people and the authorities took issue with it, I considered it reasonable and fair. The way I saw it was, if you looked down and saw a brownie sundae with the works sitting in your lap, day after day after day, eventually you're going to attack it.
After I was found out, I didn't contact my clitoris for years. I deemed it untrustworthy and bizarre. I felt the same way about penises. That's why I gave my first hand job with a sock.
Years later when I moved to Los Angeles and walked in on my roommate masturbating in her bedroom the normal way, naked, I almost vomited. "First of all, ya sicko, you need to put some jeans on," I told her. "Then you need to find yourself a playground."
Chapter Two
When Life Hands You Lemons, Squeeze Them into Your Vodka
Whoever the clueless bastard was who thought up the Cabbage Patch Kid better hope I never see him face-to-face. The invention of this bizarrely appealing doll that came with a birth certificate covered in cabbages and whose muscles had completely atrophied pretty much marked the end of me fitting in with anyone but my cleaning lady. The invention of this doll, combined with my early obsession with masturbating and the ridiculous secondhand clothes I was forced to wear, prevented anyone in the third grade from wanting to be alone with me.
My parents couldn't have been more unreasonable when it came to fads or clothes that weren't purchased at a pharmacy. The first hurdle I can remember having to deal with was Barbie dolls, which were a rite of passage for every kindergartner with a half carafe of dignity. I remember explaining to my mother that I needed a Barbie and I needed one fast. Not a hand-me-down from my sister Sloane, who had given all of her Barbies lesbian haircuts in honor of Jo from The Facts of Life. I told her I needed a brand-new one with a decent outfit, something appropriate for Bora-Bora or the Jersey shore. My mother reassured me she'd head right to the store after she dropped me off at school one morning. Not surprisingly, when I returned home later that day on foot, because once again my parents had forgotten they had a daughter, my mother ran down the stairs to show me my new "Barby" with a y. Unlike Barbie with her
gloss finish, this "Barby" came with a matte finish, three bald spots, and a working vagina.
After the Barbie craze came the Atari craze, which my parents refused to participate in. My father explained to Sloane and me ad nauseam why video games polluted the mind, and if we really wanted to retain some knowledge, we should watch the stock-market channel and try to figure out what all the Dow Jones abbreviations on the ticker stood for. I wanted to tell my father to go fuck himself. If he knew so much about the stock market, why did we have air-conditioning only in our dining room? I didn't understand why he had no interest in seeing his daughter excel socially, or why my parents even bothered to have me when they already had five other children who had put them in the hole. It felt like every day there was another mountain to climb, and I just wanted that mountain to take form on the screen of our television set as an Atari video game called Asteroids.
I remember watching documentaries on African countries where children were starving and getting swarmed by flies. I recall thinking that at least their parents were by their side trying to protect them from the flies and trying to gather them food. My parents were busy living their own lives. If I saw a fly, they would just tell me to get out of the way or sarcastically suggest I call Youth and Family Services. What they didn't know was that I had been in contact with Youth and Family Services several times and was one phone call shy of sealing the deal on my emancipation.
Every time a new trend came along, I died a little inside. By the time third grade rolled around, kids started to get their wits about them, and it didn't take long to realize I was not cutting the mustard. I wasn't even cutting the mayonnaise. I knew that my parents would never fall for what was "hot" on the market. The word "hot" wasn't even in their stream of consciousness. The two of them were about as "hot" and "with it" as cerebral palsy. They had about as much empathy for my situation as I did for the stupid cat they brought home for me one day after I asked for a Smurf.
"You can learn a lot more from a cat than you're going to learn from some blue plastic action figure," my father informed me.
"Oh, for chrissake, Dad, they're not action figures. They're peaceful blue little people. They're from a village. And what am I going to learn from a cat? How to take a dump in a box and then walk back into a room like nothing happened?"
"Chelsea. Watch your goddamned mouth. You talk like a truck driver."
"Well, Dad, it's not like we're poor. Why can't you just buy me what I ask for so I can fit in with everyone else?"
"You are eight years old, and as long as you live in this house, you are under our supervision. Cats can be wonderful animals, and anyway, it will be an outdoor cat."
"It doesn't matter if it's an outdoor cat. It will still take a shadoobie in the backyard and walk right back in the house all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like, 'Hey, what'd I miss?' I'll tell you what you missed, you cat, you missed wiping your ass!"
"Chelsea, go to your room until you learn how to communicate like an adult!"
Whenever my father yelled, he would also walk toward you and, more often than not, end with a slap in your face, so I was quick to sidestep the sofa and avoid him by doing a cartwheel straight into my bedroom. Then I peered out of my door for one last comment. "There's a reason you never see anyone's house with a Beware of Cat sign. Because they're not even worth mentioning." As soon as he attempted to get up from the couch, I slammed the door and hid under my bed.
I used to look at that cat with such disgust. Even dogs have the dignity to go find a private area before dropping a deuce. Only cats think they have nothing to hide and can get away with just a couple of back kicks to alert the area that's about to be unsanitized that it's got something coming its way. And then that's it. They walk right back into the room, sometimes even have the gall to hop onto the sofa and look around like, "Hey, whose turn is it to contribute?" I decided to name the cat Poopsie Woopsie. It was the nicest way to say, "I just took a poop, whoopsie."
I used to stare at the cat and imagine how many Smurfs I could fit into it. Then I thought about painting the cat blue and throwing it in the microwave like a little Shrinky Dink. It would be the Smurf no one had. I had terrible thoughts like these throughout my childhood, and luckily I never acted on most of them. It was a Tourette's of sorts; I knew that the thoughts were bad, but I couldn't stop them from entering my mind. I just wanted some fucking Smurfs. Why did the cat have to take up the same amount of space as fifty Smurfs yet bring absolutely nothing to the table? It would just sleep and sleep for hours, like it had nowhere to be and nothing to do. My sister Sloane loved the cat and would try to trap it under her covers, but Poopsie Woopsie wanted nothing to do with Sloane and craved the lack of attention I gave to it, so we ended up spending most of our time together, with the understanding that there was going to be very little affection. Sloane always accused me of turning Poopsie Woopsie against her, but the truth was, the cat could tell that my sister was "off," and by "off" I mean Mormon.
After a while I just accepted that the cat was always in my room. Poopsie Woopsie had impeccable timing; the only time it would ever scratch my door to get out of my room was right before one of my orgasms. The cat was a dick, and he or she knew it. I don't recall if it was a boy or a girl because I never bothered to ask it.
By the time the Cabbage Patch craze came around, I knew I was screwed. If I couldn't reason with my parents about why it was important for them to buy reputable snacks for my lunches, like Snickers or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, so that I didn't have to unwrap a single Rite Aid imitation Nut Cluster in front of everyone at my lunch table, I knew that this Cabbage Patch bullshit was going to be the end of me.
One day after school, I walked into our living room, turned off General Hospital, and joined my mother on the living-room sofa. She had a half-eaten liverwurst sandwich on her lap, so I quickly threw that out the sliding glass door and watched our dog, Mutley, spring out of his doghouse like a hyena.
"Listen up. We're at a crossroads, and I need your help. Everyone at school is talking about Cabbage Patch Kids, and the word is that Toys 'R' Us is getting a new shipment tomorrow morning. So what I'm going to need from you is to get in line at Toys 'R' Us first thing tomorrow morning and get me one of those dolls. You're gonna need to be there by seven," I told her, excusing myself after settling what I had on my docket.
"Why do I need to go to the store at seven in the morning to get one of these?"
"Because they are selling like crazy, and they will run out. They keep running out all over the country! Don't you watch the news? This is go time. I know which one I want. Do you understand?"
My mom was always more reasonable than my father, but she lacked the determination and perseverance needed for the execution of such a task.
"Of course, sweetie, we can get you a doll, but I really don't see the point of getting there so early. Surely everyone else's parents aren't doing that."
"Yes they are! Everyone's parents are doing it. Mom, this is my childhood. This is the only one I get, and by the end of the week everyone is going to have one of these dolls except me, because you guys are stuck in the Dark Ages. I am trying to make the best out of my circumstances, but you and Dad just keep holding me back. This is just like what happened in nursery school when I had to repeat the year because you guys kept forgetting to take me."
"Nursery school is a waste of time," my mother would tell me when I would try to pull her out of bed. "First grade is where things really start to matter," she'd mumble as she rolled over onto a piece of cheddar cheese. My parents thought it was "too cold" throughout most of winter to get themselves dressed and wait for one of our "automobiles" to warm up. Even though I was only five, it was a safe bet to say that my whole life would be based on doing the exact opposite of what my parents did.
I took to calling our next-door neighbor Mrs. Rothstein. I was too embarrassed to ask her for rides myself, so I'd try to put on a German accent and pretend I was my mother. "Vould you mind taking Shell-sea
to school today?" I'd say. "None of ze cars vill start."
Mrs. Rothstein knew it wasn't my mother calling but was impressed by my scholarly ambition and always ended up taking me when my parents faked paralysis.
It wasn't getting an education I was interested in, but more an ardent desire to avoid taking fucking naps in the middle of the day on a godforsaken floor mat. I had no time for sleep in the middle of the day. I wanted action, and naps just reminded me of my parents and the meaningless lives they had carved out for themselves. That wasn't the life I wanted for myself, and I certainly had no plans of becoming a geisha, which would be the only other career choice that would require me to practice sleeping.
"Okay, okay, I'll get the doll, Chelsea. I just wish you weren't so dependent on material things to make you feel like you fit in."
Easy enough for someone who walked around the house all day in a floor-length skirt hoisted over her boobs with no bra to talk about not fitting in. She didn't want to fit in. That was the difference. I did. I wanted a life for myself, and the life I had in mind didn't involve either of my parents. What she really wanted was to avoid having to put on a bra and some decent shoes that were necessary to tackle the New Jersey winter.
"If this were a Latter-day Saints doll, I'm sure you'd be there with bells on and a nipple ring."
"Chelsea, don't be ridiculous. No one's getting a nipple ring."
"I want the brunette Cabbage Patch with green eyes, one dimple, and no freckles." I had freckles, and I thought they looked like a rash. "She is the one I want. Not a boy one. A girl. Check for the coslopus. Do you copy?"
I had seen a couple of boy ones at school, and they looked like something straight out of a seventies porn video with their Jew Afros. All the other girls had the blond ones with blue or brown eyes, or the brown-haired with blue eyes. I wanted green eyes. I hadn't seen one of those yet but knew they were out there. This was my chance to make my mark and get the same thing every kid craved but also show some originality. For the very first time, I would have everyone ogling something I had.