The GrandSLAM

Man, was that fun!  I got to meet Peter Sagal, who hosted the event, a bunch of Moth people, and the 9 other featured storytellers.  I told my story in front of a sold out crowd at the Park West, where something like 700 people hung on my every word.  14 of my friends and family came out to see me, and hooted and hollered for me when I got called onstage.  I even got to use a green room, which I haven't done since high school.

It was magic.

I'm tired and spaced out now, and a little sad that it's over.  Below is my story, the theme of the night was "identity crisis".  Enjoy.  YouTube clips to follow.

I woke with an urgent need to urinate.

I slipped out from my date’s bed, and tiptoed out to the open door of the bathroom, where I heard the familiar sound of a leaky faucet; a thin, but persistent stream of water falling from an old tap into an equally old basin.  Like all nearsighted people, I squinted just to make sure I was standing in the right place.  I stood fully in the open doorway, and squinted again, a little harder this time.  I then took a couple steps into the bathroom, and although I was fairly certain of my powers of deduction, squinted a third time for good measure

That’s when I saw the figure of a man standing in front of the toilet, staring at me as if I were a naked, near-sighted apparition come to haunt him. The sound of falling water, I realized too late, was in fact the sound of a man taking a wiz.  Although I'd been standing fully naked for a good thirty seconds, I instinctively covered my breasts with one hand, my privates with the other, and struck a pose like that of Botticelli’s "The Birth of Venus".  I ran back into the bedroom, still as full of urine as when I left, and jumped under the covers. "What's going on?" my date asked sleepily.  "I had to pee, and I went into the bathroom and your roommate was in there, and he saw me naked, and now I still have to pee, but I'm not going back in there," I said. He was remarkably unfazed by this turn of events and easily fell back asleep.  Somehow I was able to do the same, despite the orb of urine in my bladder.

I began spending a lot of time in the apartment where I’d been a myopic flasher, and although I did learn my lesson – I never went anywhere in that apartment without my glasses ever again, I felt awkward around the roommate, Randy. At least once a day I would remember that Randy had seen me not just naked, but naked, bent over, and squinting.  It was a hard image to shake, and it made me shy around him.  I’ve never been good with speaking up; I’ve never sent dish back in a restaurant, even if it’s not the one I ordered, I spent the fifth grade being best friends with a girl I didn’t like because I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, and I once allowed a teacher to call me by the wrong name for an entire semester rather than correct her.  This got weird at parent teacher conference day, but at least I didn’t have to be the one to let her know.  There was no way I was bringing up the naked incident.  The fact that Randy was gay didn’t make me feel better about my indiscretion – if he’d been straight, maybe I could have convinced myself that I’d given him a free show, but I had inflicted full frontal, squinty nudity on a man who wanted none of it. 

As our friendship developed, so did my nagging sense that the naked incident was going to become my tell tale heart – I wasn’t going to be able to relax and be myself around Randy until we had openly acknowledged that this had happened.  While it turned out that we had quite a bit in common: we both had cats named “Whiskers” when we were kids; the state of Indiana was a cause for anxiety to both of us; and we were both slightly lactose intolerant but refused to give up dairy; he never once mentioned the incident.   Had I really scarred him that badly? 

I was trying to get better at speaking up, and I made it my mission to clear the air with Randy; after all, if I couldn’t confront this, how was I ever going to be able to send back food at restaurants, or tell people my name, or whether or not I liked them?  We made a date to go to the Chicago Historical Society, and went to lunch at a diner afterwards.   This was, I decided, the moment. “So, Randy,” I began, twirling a French fry in a puddle of ketchup on my plate, “do you remember the time when, um, I stayed over a long time ago…”  I searched his face for some sign – some light of recognition, some indication that he knew where I was going with this.  Nothing.  “And it was the middle of the night, and I had to pee…”  I searched his face again.  Still nothing, this guy had a serious poker face.  “And I was… naked?”  I finally said.  Randy’s brow furrowed, he leaned back, and cocked his head slightly to the left.  Finally, the memory of it crawled out from deep in the files of his mind, manifesting itself first in the release of his eyebrows, then in the slackening of his jaw, and we made eye contact.   I held my breath.

“That wasn’t me,” he said, “That was my ex-boyfriend, Ron.” 

A wave of emotions cascaded over me: relief, embarrassment, confusion.   I knew I had bad eyesight, but what was especially perplexing was that Randy was white, and his ex-boyfriend, Ron, was black.  There’s something beautifully universal and post-racial about that - maybe the key to world peace is universal myopia.  There’s also something really disturbing about it.  This whole time I’d been shy around Randy because I thought he had seen me naked, when in fact it had been a completely different person.  What did this say about me?  How many other situations had I misjudged in my life?  My ability to interpret my surroundings had been cast into doubt.  I wasn’t sure I could be relied on to make judgments on situations like who was at fault in a car accident, or even tell the difference between a parked car and a dumpster.  What I took away from it is this:  in my eyes, you are all equally beautiful, and equally blurry; and for God’s sake, never call on me for eyewitness testimony, and if I’m ever accidentally naked in front of you, don’t hesitate to bring it up in conversation, because chances are I didn’t know that it was you.

Ladies Rock Camp, and other stuff

I've been writing a lot for Gapers Block lately, and I don't generally cross-post, but this was a really fun time.  I went to Ladies Rock Camp last weekend, a fundraiser for Girls Rock, a camp for girls that has chapters all over the country.  It was really fun to write this piece, so I'm posting a link here: The Ladies Rock Experience

I'm also getting geared up for Tuesday's Moth GrandSLAM.  I have a story, but I'm starting to feel unsure about it.  I have a feeling I won't be thinking about much else between now and Tuesday night.  Eep.

Getting ready for the GrandSLAM, and other things

Some really exciting stuff has been happening lately with my writing, as well as some really stressful stuff with work.  Between them, the highs in my life are getting higher, and the lows are getting lower.  It's making me feel a little bipolar.

A few weeks ago I sent Kristin and Mark (my boyfriend and his wife) copies of the stories I'd written about them, because I figured they were out there on the Internet and they were going to get wind of them eventually, and it was better if I was up front about it.  I was a little nervous - not very, about how they would react.  There's nothing bad about them in it, but you never know.

"Best case scenario," I said to my husband, "she passes it on to her publisher."
"As opposed to: she never wants to see or speak to you again?" he asked. 

As it turned out, their reaction couldn't have been more positive; Kristin friended me on facebook, sent a link to my blog post to her editor, and tweeted a link to the story out to her twitter followers.  Over two hundred people read my story entitled "Don't Stop Believin'" over the course of the next 48 hours.  By comparison, I generally get between 0-7 visitors a day.

It was an incredible high, and then I had to return to work - where my very performance has been called into question.  I saw my doctor about a skin problem I was having recently, and while I was there she checked my blood pressure: 140/100, pre-hypertension levels.  All these highs and lows are taking their toll on me.

And then I got the news that I'll be performing in next month's Moth GrandSLAM at the Park West.  This is by far the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me with my writing.  I'll be on stage with other Moth StorySLAM winners, competing for the title of GrandSLAM winner, at a venue that will be hosted by NPR's Peter Sagal of Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me.  The theme of the evening is "Identity Crisis," which is both fantastic and completely flummoxing to me.  I'm constantly in a state of identity crisis, and choosing one story is going to be hard.  Here's the material I have to work with: am I Jewish/not Jewish?  American/foreign?  New Yorker/Midwesterner?  Tattooed/not tattooed?  Employed/unemployed?  And for about 4 years of my life, when I first moved to Chicago, I was America's biggest fag hag, what does this say about my sexual identity?

I've been procrastinating, and it's not good.  This thing keeps getting bigger - people have been asking for tickets, and when I consider the size of the Park West, it makes my heart palpitate.  I've never spoken in front of that many people before.  I need to be prepared - I can't get onstage with Peter Sagal and wing it.  Below is my first attempt at an identity crisis story.  I like it, but I don't think it's GrandSLAM winning material.  It would be a shame to scrap it though, so I'm posting it here.   Enjoy.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
Summer 1993

I’m standing on the corner of Belmont and Clark, dressed in four inch platform shoes, a dress, a platinum blonde wig, false eyelashes, and copious makeup.  Accompanying me are two drag queens – one who goes by the name of Patty Melt; she easily clears seven feet with hair and heels, the other is named Jane Doe, whose back story is that she woke up in a ditch with amnesia, and hasn’t been identified.

By day Patty works at the customer service desk at Whole Foods, Jane is a bartender at a club called Foxy’s, where we are headed.  It’s a warm night, and I begin sweating under my wig.  This isn’t a sensation I’m used to, and I resist the urge to remove it.  Jane and Patty have helped me with my hair, makeup, and outfit, and between the three of us we’d spent an entire workday getting ready to go out, I don’t want to ruin it before we’ve even reached our destination. 

Jane wears a long, luscious auburn wig, a baby blue dress that falls mid-thigh, and an artificial flower in her hair.  Patty wears a blonde wig styled into a flip, and a skirt suit*.  Both of them have enhanced their cleavage with bags of birdseed.

As we stand on the corner waiting for the light to change, a car full of young men slows down, and then stops.  Loud music thumps through the body of the vehicle and into the night, the bass turned up so loud I can feel it in my chest.  The man riding shotgun to the driver rolls down his window, increasing the decibel count that spills out into the street, leans his head out of the window, and yells: “Fags!” 

He can’t possibly be talking to me, I think.  Clearly I am different than my two friends here - even with help of platform shoes I barely clear 5 feet 9 inches.  Patty and Jane tower over me, we could be featured in the Sesame Street anthem: “one of these things is not like the others”. 

I make eye contact with the name caller, stunned, a little frightened, and for some reason I silently implore him to look closer - look into my eyes, can’t he tell that I’m a real girl?  He meets my gaze, leans further out of the window, and says:  “Fags!”  There’s no question about it this time; I, a biological woman, have just been called a fag.

I’m in female drag, sure, but I’m not impersonating a woman, I’m impersonating a different woman – one who wears false eyelashes and platform shoes, one who spends hours fixing her hair before leaving the apartment, and in less time than it takes to cross a street, a perfect stranger has turned me into a drag queen, one who possibly goes by the name Victor Victoria.

This is not the first time that my identity has been called into question.  I’ve been called a dyke, a fag, white trash (which is hilarious because I grew up speaking French).  People have variously assumed that I speak fluent Spanish, that I’m Native American, and on at least three separate occasions someone has assumed that I’m pregnant.  This is how it works:  if I wear red lipstick, people think I’m Hispanic; if I grow my hair long people think I’m Native American; and if I wear overalls people think I’m pregnant.  This would be fantastic if I were an actress, I could include in my head shots: “I can play anything from a very short drag queen to an expectant mother with equal conviction.”

But the first time I remember my identity being questioned was when I was six years old.  I’d asked my mother to give my hair bangs, and just as she was about to, she was distracted by a phone call.  Impatient, I decided to take things into my own hands.  I stood on a step stool in front of the bathroom mirror, lifted a pair of scissors to my head, and cut my hair from ear to ear, resulting not so much in bangs as in a mullet.  Satisfied with my handiwork, I presented myself to my mother, who was still talking on the phone.  I did not get the reaction I expected, and ended up with a very short, very androgynous haircut.  Compounding the situation was the fact that I was a messy kid; I bathed only when forced to, never wore dresses, played with messy, dirty boys, and wouldn't play dolls with my girl friends - only stuffed animals.

My friend Annie, who wore only clean, feminine clothing, and always had bows in her hair, convinced a boy in our class who was developmentally delayed that I was a boy too; with my short hair I no longer had any recognizable female sex characteristics.  We went into the boy's bathroom together where he pulled down his pants, showed me his hairless member, and said "see?"  The deal was I was supposed to show him mine too, but somehow I was able to get out of revealing myself.  I may have simply left the bathroom before anything could be asked of me, but I distinctly remember leaving with him; we entered that bathroom as two boys, comrades, fellow penis owners, and as far as that kid knew, that's the way we exited.  I never revealed myself to the man who called me a fag either. 

*I can't remember exactly what Patty Melt was wearing - if you're reading this Patty, feel free to correct me.

I won The Moth Storyslam!!!

I took my pee story to the Moth tonight at Martyrs for the "Love Hurts" theme and won!!!!  I practiced it on Sunday in Boston, where I was visiting family, at a local storytelling series called Massmouth.  The theme was "The Beast," and I was pretty severely penalized for going off topic, I came in second to last.  I was hoping the judges would include my UTI story under the rubric of "the beast within," but they were far more literal with the theme than I'd anticipated.  When it was over, I realized I could have changed a couple lines to include phrases like "microscopic beasts," but it was too late.  No matter though, I flew home to Chicago this afternoon, got home at 5:45, left the house at 6:15 so I could make it to the Moth, and won!!!!  I'm stunned and giddy.

Urine, A Love Story

You may recognize this one, it's one I dusted off and made some improvements to, and brought with me to last night's Story Club.  Dana Norris, the woman who runs Story Club, told me I should tighten it up, get it down to 5 minutes, and bring it to the Moth later this month where the theme is "love hurts".  I haven't gone to the Moth since it first came to Chicago and was jam packed, and put my name in the hat but never got called up on stage.  The Moth is a little more intimidating that your usual reading: you only get 5 minutes, you're not allowed to bring notes onstage with you, you get judged by a panel and somebody wins, and  you have to put your name in a hat and don't know until they call your name if you're getting a chance to read.  I've been told that the Moth has slowed down since it's Chicago inaugural, and isn't quite as packed or competitive as it used to be, and have been meaning to check it out.  I'll have to spend the next couple weeks working on this, and maybe I'll get a chance to do the Moth.  Here, for your reading pleasure, is my pseudo-Valentine's day story:

Urine, A Love Story

My sister called me from Boston to ask me about the man I’d just started seeing, and during the course of our conversation I happened to mention the strange sensation I felt when I peed. A UTI veteran, (that’s urinary tract infection for those of you not in the know), she told me to go to the closest health food store and buy a bottle of Lakewood 100% cranberry juice - not cranberry juice cocktail, but 100% cranberry juice. No added water, no sugar, tart enough to turn my mouth inside out and sour enough to give me a stomach ache. She said that should help. We continued talking and when I described the strange pressure I felt on urinating she said “oh girl, if you’re feeling pressure when you pee, it’s too late for cranberry juice. You get off the phone and you go to the doctor. Now!”

I was taken aback by the tone in her voice, it was one she reserved for delivering really, really bad news, like when someone died or something valuable caught on fire. I was scared; really scared. The next time I peed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the urethra with a barbecue skewer, and when I looked into the toilet bowl it wasn’t yellow - it was red.

I considered my options: the closest emergency room was a block away, but I couldn't walk a block, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much; there wasn't a position I could stand, sit or lie down in that didn't hurt. I needed someone to drive me. My roommate had a car but she was stoned, and didn't seem terribly alarmed by my situation. The only other person I knew who had a car was the guy I had just started seeing. I calmed down as much as I could before dialing his number. I don't think he even said "hello" before I burst in with “I’m bleeding, I have to get to a doctor, NOW!”
“Where are you bleeding from?” he asked. I hesitated, we had only been seeing each other for a couple weeks, he had just gotten out of a long term relationship and wasn’t ready to commit to anything serious, but I really liked him and was trying so hard not to like him too much, and this was way too intimate a conversation to be having with him at this stage in our relationship but my urethra was on fire and I couldn't think of a pretty, alluring way to say it: “When I pee,” I blurted, “blood comes out when I pee!”

He drove me to Thorek hospital on Montrose and Broadway, a place I’d heard vague rumors about, but had never actually seen the inside of.  I walked up to the receptionist and said “I think I have a urinary tract infection, when I pee blood comes out!” She told me to take a seat and fill out some paperwork. I remained standing, not that it helped stop the pain.

At the time I was a heavy watcher of the NBC series ER, and I imagined that I’d be waiting for hours as people with shotgun and stab wounds were wheeled in on stretchers, surrounded by fast talking medics, maybe Dr. John Carter himself would be pumping furiously on their chests in an effort to save their lives, but the reality was much different - I was the only one in the ER that night, their biggest emergency was that blood was coming out of my pee hole.

I was seen by a doctor, and had to produce a sample. I never truly appreciated just what a wonderful thing it is to urinate without pain, what a wonderful, magical thing it is to pull down my pants, sit on a toilet, and let the urine flow while my mind wanders until that simple act of voiding made me do the silent scream - have you ever done the silent scream? I sat on the ER toilet with a plastic cup between my legs, eyes squinched closed and mouth wide open, silently screaming as a tiny river of red daggers stabbed their way out of me.

This was not how I’d imagined things would progress with my new man.

The doctor examined my bloody discharge, and wrote a prescription. My boyfriend - I mean the guy I was seeing, drove me to a 24 hour pharmacy to get the prescription filled, and took me back home. Back in the apartment my roommate was stoned and watching loud TV, and barely acknowledged my presence. She kept the TV on all night, turning it off somewhere around 6 a.m. At 6:30 my alarm went off. I had a temp job to get to, and I needed the money more than I needed the sleep. I took a shower, clothed myself, and in a haze made my way to an office building near Union Station. I looked like hell, but nobody seemed to notice. It was a fairly quiet day, and I passed the time drinking huge quantities of water and visiting the ladies room, where I slammed the sides of the stall with my hands and silently screamed every single time.

After an eternity of watching the clock, 5pm blessedly arrived. I made the trek back to my apartment, opened the door, and found my roommate on the couch in the same position she’d been in the night before, stoned and reclining on the sofa, watching loud TV next to the guy I was seeing. I barely said a word to either of them, closing myself into my bedroom and curling up onto the twin futon mattress on the floor. I heard a soft knock; it was the guy I was seeing. He entered the room quietly, removed his shoes, climbed under the sheets, put his arm around me, and stayed there until I fell asleep.  Neither of us could think much beyond the next morning, and if we could have seen into the future, we would have seen other apartments, roommates, and emergencies, some better and some worse than the ones we were in the thick of at that moment, but if either of us knew that we were destined, five years later, to become married, neither of us showed it.  I can’t say that that was the moment when I knew I’d be with him for the rest of my life, but something had changed.  Not long afterward, a friend of his told me that he’d stopped referring to me as “the girl I’m seeing,” and replaced that ungainly phrase with the more elegant “my girlfriend.”  I stopped trying not to like him so much, and waited to see what would happen next.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have to find the restroom.

Me On The Radio

Here's the link to today's Moth wrap-up show on Vocalo.org, I'm on starting at minute 24, and run through minute 31.

Chicago Moth Recap

"Firsts" story for the Moth StorySLAM

Tonight was the second StorySLAM at Martyr's, and although I came prepared this time and dropped my name in the hat, my name didn't get called. All is not lost though, tomorrow at 1pm Central time I get to call in my story to Vocalo along with all the other runners-up whose names didn't get called.

It was a good story too, but that's allright - next month's theme is "Blunders," and I'm sure I can think of something worth telling.

Here's the story I came prepared to tell:


The first time I had a UTI - that’s Urinary Tract Infection for those of you not in the know, I didn’t know the warning signs until it was way too late. I felt a strange pressure when I peed, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I had just started dating the man who would later - much later, become my husband, and we were just getting comfortable with each other.

I lived in a roach-infested apartment in Uptown with a roommate who spent her days smoking pot in the living room and watching TV with the volume cranked up, and I spent my days working one horrible temp job after the next, trying to make enough to cover rent and groceries.

So I was temping, I was in the beginning stages of a really tenuous relationship with a man who had just gone through a very bad breakup, and when I sat down and peed I felt a strange pressure. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it - it was like someone was touching a finger to my urethra while I was urinating, it was something I’d never felt before. It didn’t feel alarming, it just made me think: "huh, that's different."

My sister called me from Boston, and during the course of our conversation I happened to mention the strange sensation I felt when I peed. A UTI veteran, she told me to go to the closest health food store and buy a bottle of Lakewood 100% cranberry juice - not cranberry juice cocktail, but 100% cranberry juice. No added water, no sugar, tart enough to turn my mouth inside out and sour enough to give me a stomach ache. She said that should help. We continued talking and I described the strange pressure I felt on urinating, and she said “oh girl, if you’re feeling pressure when you pee, it’s too late for cranberry juice. You get off the phone and you go to the doctor. Now!”

I was taken aback by the tone in her voice, it was one she reserved for delivering really, really bad news, like when someone died or something valuable caught on fire. I was scared. Really scared. The next time I peed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the urethra with a barbecue skewer, and when I looked into the toilet bowl it wasn’t yellow - it was red.

I considered my options: the closest emergency room was a block away, but I couldn't walk a block, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much, there wasn't a position I could stand, sit or lie down in that didn't hurt. I needed someone to drive me. My roommate had a car but she was stoned, and didn't seem terribly alarmed by my situation. The only other person I knew who had a car was the guy I had just started seeing. I calmed down as much as I could before dialing his number. I don't think he even said "hello" before I burst in with “I’m bleeding, I have to get to a doctor, NOW!”
“Where are you bleeding from?” he asked. I hesitated, we had only been seeing each other for a couple weeks, this was way too intimate a conversation to be having but I couldn't think of a pretty way to say it. “When I pee,” I blurted, “blood comes out when I pee!”

We drove the block between my apartment and Thorek hospital, I walked to receptionist and said “I think I have a urinary tract infection, when I pee blood comes out!” She told me to take a seat and fill out some paperwork. I remained standing, not that it helped.

At the time I was a heavy watcher of the NBC series ER, and I imagined that I’d be waiting for hours as people with shotgun and stab wounds were wheeled in on stretchers, surrounded by fast talking medics, maybe Dr. John Carter himself would be pumping furiously on their chests in an effort to save their lives, but the reality was much different - I was the only one in the ER that night. The biggest emergency that night was that blood was coming out of me when I peed.

I was seen by a doctor, and had to produce a sample. I never truly appreciated just what a wonderful thing it is to urinate without pain, what a wonderful, magical thing it is to pull down my pants, sit on a toilet, and let the urine flow while my mind wanders until that simple act of voiding made me do the silent scream - have you ever done the silent scream? I sat on the ER toilet with a plastic cup between my legs, eyes squinched closed and mouth wide open, silently screaming as a tiny river of red daggers came out of my pee-hole.

This was not how I’d imagined things would progress with my new boyfriend.

The doctor examined my red urine, and wrote a prescription. My boyfriend - I mean, the guy I was seeing, drove me to a 24 hour pharmacy to get the prescription filled, and took me back home. Back in the apartment my roommate was watching loud TV, and barely acknowledged my presence when I returned. She kept the TV on all night, turning it off somewhere around 6 am. At 6:30 my alarm went off. I had a temp job to get to, and I needed the money more than I needed the sleep. I took a shower, clothed myself, and still in a haze made my way to an office building near Union Station. I looked like hell, but nobody seemed to notice. It was a fairly quiet day, and I passed the time drinking huge quantities of water and visiting the ladies room, where I slammed the sides of the stall with my hands and silently screamed every single time I had to pee.

After an eternity of watching the clock, 5pm blessedly arrived. I made the trek back to my apartment, opened the door, and found my roommate on the couch watching loud TV next to the guy I was seeing. I barely said a word to either of them, closing myself into my bedroom and curling up onto the twin futon mattress that I slept on. I heard a knock on the door; it was the guy I was seeing. He took his shoes off and climbed under the sheets next to me, and stayed there with me until I fell asleep.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have to pee.

School Story for The Moth

Last month The Moth came to Chicago for the first time to do a StorySLAM. I went on assignment for Gapers Block, and even came prepared with a story to tell in case my name got pulled from the hat. I didn't prepare very well though, I typed the story up that very morning, and spent the day trying to memorize it. I was so caught up in my notes that I forgot to put my name in the hat once I got to the event, and I was feeling insecure about how little time I'd invested in rehearsing. I did get a decent Gapers Block piece out of it though.

It would be a shame to leave the as yet unperformed story in its dusty little corner of my computer, so I thought I'd publish it here even if I never manage to tell it on stage:

School

I almost didn't graduate from high school because I failed gym. I'll say that again - I almost didn't graduate from high school because I failed gym. Not calculus or AP French - no, gym.

I went to a tiny Quaker boarding school in Poughkeepsie, a town about 60 miles north of New York City that might qualify as a rust-belt city, but with none of the accompanying cache. A percentage of the student body was on the fast track to success, but it was widely known as a second chance school, and several of my classmates had repeated a year upon entering, or had been given the choice between boarding school or military school.

As boarding schools go, it was pretty lax. There were no uniforms, no football team - only soccer, and it was co-ed. We had dances, but no prom - that went against the Quaker aesthetic of not making people feel bad if they don't have a date - or whatever, I can't remember exactly which tenant of Quakerism is compromised by prom night.

The PE requirement was, to say the least, relaxed. While I'd spent two seasons on the cross country team - becoming a Hudson Valley Athletic League All Star, by the way. I even got a letter, but since the cross country team didn't have jackets I never sewed it to anything.

I was never a great student, I had trouble concentrating on anything that didn't interest me, and had perfected the art of self-sabotage to the point that every semester it seemed I might fail all my classes, but by some miracle of last minute studying I passed. By the spring of my senior year I had developed a serious case of what is sometimes referred to as senior-itis, and the most athletic endeavor I could bring myself to sign up for was Outdoor Club. Yes, we had something called Outdoor Club, and it counted as PE credit. A few times a week the Outdoor Club would load up in a van, drive to some out of the way, picturesque locale in the Hudson Valley, and go for a walk.

And I failed.

I was in my Outdoor Club coach's office, if that's even what his title was, I'm not sure. It was about two weeks before graduation. My family had made arrangements to rent a car and drive up from Brooklyn to watch me graduate under the shade of a 100 year-old oak tree in a ceremony that featured the puppeteer Kevin Clash - best known for bringing Sesame Street's Elmo to life. My coach and I were having what I thought was a friendly conversation. Jack was somewhere in his fifties, he was balding with a monk's fringe of gray hair on the sides of his head, he had a pot belly and all the menacing presence of Santa Claus.

"Well," Jack said, his eyes on an attendance sheet spread out among a pile of other papers on his desk, "it looks like you've missed four sessions of Outdoor Club." It was true, I had. That spring I'd met my first real boyfriend and together we cut class and idled the hours away. By the time I was accepted to college, most of my academics, including Outdoor Club, had fallen pretty low on my list of priorities. Who cared if I wasn't out walking with Jack and the rest of the club? I was so out of here, my life was just beginning, and what kind of a gym class was Outdoor Club anyway?
"Yeah," I said.
"You know the maximum number of absences is two," he said.
"Yeah," I said. As bad of a student as I was, I never made excuses for myself, I took whatever punishment came my way as a result of my bad habits. I spent hours in what was called "special study hall", where all the under-performing kids were sent. We sat together in the dining hall under the supervision of a teacher, who sat at a table grading papers. They didn't care what we did, as long as we didn't leave the room. I spent my time writing notes to my friend Cori. I never did a lick of homework in special study hall.
"Well I'm sorry," Jack said, "but I'm not going to be able to give you a passing grade."

Suddenly the future that I was no longer going to enjoy flashed before my eyes - college, career, family, success - and in its place came a new future, an unpleasant and dark future filled with menial, backbreaking jobs, cigarette smoke and a terrible soundtrack - songs like Irene Cara's What a Feeling.

"But Jack, I..." I stammered, and the rest became in incomprehensible blur of half-choked pleas and stammered explanations, "I... can't... not... graduate... I'm ... already accepted to college..." My tears were so forceful they practically shot out of my eyes like water from a lawn sprinkler, I couldn't see anything. All I knew was that my life was ruined, and that it was all my fault.

"Okay, okay," Jack said between my outbursts, "now let's just take it easy, just settle down." His tone was soothing, listening to Jack was like listening to a bedtime story. "If you go outside right now, and go for a nice long walk," he said, "I'll just erase two of these absences, all right?"

My tears stopped. Could this really be true? Could one walk really make the difference between working in a gas station or becoming a tenured college professor? Was this even ethical, could Jack really do this? I didn't care if it was or not. "Uh, okay," I said, and left Jack's office.

I went outside and walked like I had never walked before. I walked all the way around the school campus, up the hill past the auditorium and the gym, past the boys dorms and beyond to the other side of the hill, past the main building, the science buildings, the infirmary, the girls dorms and the dining hall until I was back in front of Jack's office. When I was done circling the campus I did it again for good measure. To this day I don't know if Jack was watching me.

Two weeks later I graduated under the shade of a 100 year-old oak tree with 65 other students, in a ceremony presided over by Elmo, and never told any of my classmates how close I came to not graduating.