I use my thirteen-year-old body in questionable ways. I write on it in permanent marker. I push boys around with it and sometimes get pushed back. I walk it down busy streets. I lay it on dirty ground. I dress it in ill-fitting clothes. I put it in harm’s way, all the while hoping that one choice or the next will shine the perfect light on me.
Middle school is painful. My breasts are heavy, and I have no idea what to do with them. My stomach is too big, and I don’t know how to hide it. My interest in boys and my need for their attention is overwhelming and constant. My interest in girls is mostly dormant, and whenever it rears its head, I push it back into the dark.
I'm at a baseball field a few blocks from my house with two friends from school—Jason and Scott. We throw rocks at the scoreboard and kick soda cans into the woods. We make jokes about pussies and dicks and cocks. I’m not sure what a cock is, and I’m too afraid to ask, so I mostly talk about dicks and pussies and dicks going into pussies.
I am desperately in love with both of these boys—so much in love that I have written the words “cock master” on the back of my left hand to make them laugh and to keep up the illusion that I know what a cock is.
I’m wearing knee-length corduroy skate shorts and a long, striped t-shirt at least one size too big to hide my stomach. I’m wearing a sports bra underneath that smooths my breasts into a deflated mound I believe makes me look slimmer.
I can’t find girl clothes that fit my body, but I feel the need to appeal to these boys through fashion. The solution I’ve come up with is to dress in boys’ clothes and hope that they like it. In its own way, this is a romantic plan. If I’m funny and I dress cool and make jokes about everyone’s sex parts—even the ones I can’t identify with any certainty—I will become so intriguing to these boys that they won’t be able to stop themselves from kissing me.
I hope that they both fall in love with me at the same time and that their desire for me makes them so jealous and possessive that they start punching each other.
“Stop,” I’ll say. “Please, I’m not worth it.” But all three of us will know that I am.
I am two years into this plan when we are kicking the cans into the woods, my “cock master” tattoo dark and sharp from being freshly applied that morning. I feel things are heading in the right direction.
After we’ve said every sex word in every combination we can think of, we decide to walk to a gas station for snacks. Jason takes off his flannel overshirt and balls it up inside the top of his t-shirt. He then ties the bottom of the t-shirt in a tight knot above his stomach making it look as though he has enormous, misshapen breasts.
“Check it out,” he says. “I’m a chick.”
Between fits of laughter that aren't entirely sincere on my part, I steal glances of Jason’s body. His flat stomach and massive breasts make my heart skip a beat. He pulls his pants down slightly so it looks like he’s wearing hip-hugging girl pants, and a second rush rolls through me. I decide this means I must love him more than Scott, who is laughing loudly and pretending to jerk himself off.
Walking along the main road toward the gas station, Jason and his boobs elicit honks from passing cars. He gets cat-called by a middle-aged man in a pickup truck, and none of us know if it’s because they think he’s a girl or if they are angry at him for pretending to be one.
Years later, I'm able to identify that the man in the truck scared me. But when it happens, I just feel jealousy—a deep, cutting sorrow over the fact that I have never been cat-called or honked at in all of my thirteen years.
In that moment I imagine myself thin and perfectly proportioned—something I am certain will happen one day. I'm wearing a cropped t-shirt that exposes my stomach. My breasts, large and high and round, are free of confining sportswear. I am cat-called wherever I go.
I have one girl friend in eighth grade named Kristy. She is thin and beautiful. I find myself looking at her more than I think I should but am careful to make sure she doesn't notice. I tell myself I'm jealous of her figure and nothing more.
Even though I make way more dick and pussy jokes than Kristy does, she gets more attention from boys. She has kissed at least two of them, and I have kissed zero.
I take the bus to her house after school, and we go for a walk in hopes of seeing Jason on his skateboard. Jason lives in the same neighborhood as Kristy, at the end of a dead-end street where the low traffic and smooth pavement make for good skating. There are three of them at his house today—Jason and Scott, plus Scott’s older brother, Daryl. The boys are laying a piece of plywood on top of a chunk of four-by-four scrap wood to make a low ramp.
“I laid down in front of the ramp yesterday and Daryl jumped over me,” Kristy says. “I had to lay super flat, though. I’m not sure they could jump over you.”
I feel myself flush. I don’t think she means it as a dig, but sometimes I can’t tell with girls.
“They could jump over one of my legs, though, I bet,” I say hopefully.
Daryl sees us and approaches Kristy. He asks her to lie in front of the ramp again.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kristy says in mock modesty. I know she wants to be a ramp accessory because I do, too.
“Come on,” he says, nudging her. “It would be sick.”
“You can jump over me you could jump over my leg,” I say quickly.
Deafening silence.
“Or both of my legs,” I add, “if you aren’t a pussy with a tiny dick.”
Daryl scoffs at this. “Whatever. Lay down.”
I sit on the pavement with my legs stretched out, wondering if this fifteen-year-old boy might break one or both of my tibias by dropping all of his weight straight down onto my legs. The idea of this excites me. Best-case scenario, Jason and Scott will be impressed that I risked my life for this skate trick. Worst-case scenario, I get a cast on one—or both—of my legs, and I gain more support for the reputation I’m cultivating of “Girl Who is Very Cool and Interesting in Spite of Her Fatness.”
I imagine someone stopping Jason in the hallway at school.
“Holy shit,” this person might say. “Is it true that Scott’s brother broke Alicia’s legs?”
“Yes,” Jason would reply, solemnly. “And it made me realize how much I really care about her and that she’s actually pretty hot.”
I try to keep my legs as still as possible. My arms are stretched out behind me, supporting my upper body and keeping my torso tilted away from the ramp. Tiny rocks, edging the pavement, press into the flesh of my palms, but I don’t notice because I’m focused on sucking in my stomach.
The sucking does not make my legs any smaller.
“Try not to land on my cock,” I yell from the ground.
Everyone laughs, and I’m no closer to knowing what a cock is.
Daryl approaches the ramp on his board at breakneck (leg) speed, and I close my eyes. I hear the wheels of his skateboard rumble toward me. I hear the boards of the ramp rattle, and at the same moment, I feel air rush across my face. There’s a brief moment of silence before I hear the loud crack of wheels hitting the pavement beyond me.
He’s cleared my legs. I am unscathed.
I get up and wipe my hands on my pants. I see the words “cock master” barely visible now on the back of my left hand. Nobody is looking at me, but Daryl is raking in high-fives. I hope that even though my body is still intact, I’ve made some kind of progress.