and precariously wobbly like a Jenga game. Now it was obliterated. One last move and all the pieces came crashing on the carpet. Game over.
And I feel guilty as hell, I hate me, for caring so much about my own fucking shatteredness when there are others who have had to endure so much worse still. Who am I?
Shards of my heart were scattered throughout the universe. My Tin Man self walked slowly backward into the girls’ restroom without anyone knowing I was even gone, without anyone realizing that I was tapping into a world inside myself that I didn’t know was there. It was dark and shadowy and scary as shit. The barnyard revelry continued outside in a world I had honored too much, that I had given the wrong kind of attention to. The dark abyss of my inside world was exploding so I would pay attention to it. I held on to the bathroom sink to steady myself while I shook uncontrollably. After the wave of terror passed, I reached into my pocket and felt my phone.
One of the first rituals Lisa had us do in social skills class was exchange phone numbers. That is what successfully social people do. I found Daniel in his proper alphabetical place in my phone directory, and I called him without even knowing why. We had this conversation:
“Hey, Daniel. It’s Danielle from your social skills class. Isn’t it kinda weird that our names are the male and female versions of each other?”
“Yeah. Lisa would be proud of you for starting the conversation in such a provocative way. What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing. You want to meet me at the Galleria for lunch?”
“Sure. An hour?”
“Perfect.”
I’m sort of stunned at my utter calmness on the outside while an implosion was happening on the inside. It’s amazing that a human being can be this obviously dual. I decided to walk the short distance from school to the Galleria. I managed to write all this down before I left. Just getting it all down is a relief. Some things are so awful they don’t fit anywhere inside you. They deserve to just be symbols on a page instead.
*ME-MOIR JOURNAL* 4/4
After the car wash
After I had a day to hash it all out
I met Daniel at the Galleria right on schedule. We walked around and grabbed some lunch to go and sat down by the big outdoor fountain and ate. He said the only thing going on at his house was a pool party his stepdad was throwing for church friends. When his mom remarried, the whole family had to become Catholic. He had to do a lot of perfunctory standing, kneeling, praying, admitting, denying, and withholding. He told me he thought it was one of the funniest religions around and he’d go along for the comedy factor. Every Sunday he has to wait in line for someone to place a flat piece of bread on his tongue. He makes sure his tongue is filled with saliva, and his fly is open when he goes through this ritual. Sometimes he lets out the faintest, audible little grunt. Then, once a week he begs his stepdad to take him to confession.
Sal, his stepdad, thinks Daniel is really benefiting from the conversion and loves taking him to confession. Daniel, on the other hand, uses the confessional to have “secret boners” as he says. He wants me to go with him and sit in the dark box and see what it does to me because it gets him hard every time for reasons that defy explanation. He keeps a list of made-up sins he can tell the priest so he’s always got conversation when he’s in there. The more elaborate or creative the sin, the better.
One time he told the priest he had stolen money from the school cafeteria after weeks of planning and mapping out his heist—very premeditated—and buried it behind the scoreboard on the field. He went on to say he forgot to dig it up and had been home with the flu and was worried some asshole would get to it before he did. (He had to say a litany of prayers for the theft and the recent swearing.) When Daniel went to school the next day, the maintenance crew was digging behind the scoreboard! So much for sinner/priest confidentiality.
I said that the priest may not keep secrets but at least he didn’t molest you! Daniel said he was hoping to get molested because then he could