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Coming Of Age
Part One
August 31st—11:34 am—An ambiguous location in the sky
I hate airplanes, and Mom knows that. Somewhere, around Raleigh, North Carolina, the epiphany hit me. This was her way of trying to torture me even more.
Okay, I’m being a drama queen, but you all know that already. I CHOSE to ship myself down to Fort Lauderdale to live with my previously deadbeat father.
Mom always used the threat of “I’m going to send you away to live with dad” in everyday arguments. But, alas, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with The Fight that Ended All Fights.
Enter Mom, a tragic work pants suit, and an uncovered box of condoms.
“Zoe Renee!”
I was laying face first into the massive pile of pillows adorning my 10-year-old Powerpuff Girl bedsheets.
“Yes, Mother?” I mumbled. Whenever my mom used the whole middle name card I knew I was in trouble.
“What’s this?” she demanded.
I flipped over and looked from her beet-red face to the bright yellow Trojan box in her right hand. Whoops.
“Condoms.” I told her, “People use them to prevent pregnancy. You know, so I don’t end up having a kid with a gay man at age twenty-two.”
“Why do you have a box of condoms hidden in our house?” she threw the box at me and tugged on her short hair uncomfortably. She had chosen to ignore my whole gay father remark.
“They weren’t hidden. They were in the medicine cabinet.” I quipped. After not-so-successfully attempting to lose my virginity on vacation last summer, I had ventured out to Rite Aid and bought a massive box of contraceptives—you know, for those dumbass guys that were really hot, and really unprepared.
“Are you sleeping around?” Mom sat down on my bed, undoubtedly ready for The Talk.
“They’re unopened.” I pointed out.
Here’s the thing. Being five foot one and a little chubby for seventeen, romantic opportunities in our white-bread town of Leesburg, Virginia were quite limited. One had to escape the oppression to even get looked at once.
She put her hand on my shoulder and tried to make eye contact with me, which I swiftly avoided. “Zoe, I think you’re trying to grow up too fast.”
“Mother, I think you’re a little too late to play the whole understanding, loving parent shtick.” I snapped.
So that wasn’t completely fair. Whenever mom tried to do the whole heart-to-heart thing, I pushed her away till she gave up.
“Clearly you’ve forgotten about all of the times that I’ve taken you on college tours, bought you that car, and let you have all of your loser friends over!” She stood up, taken aback.
“Oh gosh, your motherly love is so deep and overwhelming, I might just cry.” I rolled my eyes.
After that, a brawl erupted so fierce that it rivaled the whole Brangelina debacle. Obviously I don’t remember the whole spectacle—I block that stuff out minutes after it happens—but I do remember throwing the box of condoms back at her and telling her to go stuff it up her ass. Then I told her that I was going to be a sexual deviant down in Florida and that she wouldn’t have to worry about explaining her troubled daughter to her non-existent friends anymore.
I couldn’t believe she actually let me go.
Stuffed in between some fat sweaty guy and a terrifyingly manly-looking woman in row 24 coach of this Southwest Airlines plane, it occurred to me that dad sounded remarkably excited that I was coming to stay with him.
Dad and I had the kind of superficial relationship that was a far cry from most divorced kids of my generation. We spoke about once a month on the phone, sometimes less if he was dating someone. He would tell me about his new writing projects (right) and ask me about my love life (nonexistent) and I would tell him about all of my AP classes (lies) and bitch about Mom and how neurotic she was. He would come to visit me about once a year and he’d buy me a crap-ton of new clothes and makeup and we’d see a few movies. And then he was gone.
I called him right after inviting myself to stay at his house and he started raving about how he knew this day would come and how there’s this high school just five minutes from his condo, and how he would work on finding me a car, and how happy my grandmother would be to see me more often—she lived in West Palm, about 45 minutes away.
When the flight attendant began to tell everyone to put up their seats and turn off all electronic devices for landing, it finally hit me. I was going to a new city where nobody knew who I was. Was I ready? I didn’t really have a choice so I decided to jump right into my new life as the Floridian child of a forty-something year old gay man.
I hate airplanes, and Mom knows that. Somewhere, around Raleigh, North Carolina, the epiphany hit me. This was her way of trying to torture me even more.
Okay, I’m being a drama queen, but you all know that already. I CHOSE to ship myself down to Fort Lauderdale to live with my previously deadbeat father.
Mom always used the threat of “I’m going to send you away to live with dad” in everyday arguments. But, alas, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with The Fight that Ended All Fights.
Enter Mom, a tragic work pants suit, and an uncovered box of condoms.
“Zoe Renee!”
I was laying face first into the massive pile of pillows adorning my 10-year-old Powerpuff Girl bedsheets.
“Yes, Mother?” I mumbled. Whenever my mom used the whole middle name card I knew I was in trouble.
“What’s this?” she demanded.
I flipped over and looked from her beet-red face to the bright yellow Trojan box in her right hand. Whoops.
“Condoms.” I told her, “People use them to prevent pregnancy. You know, so I don’t end up having a kid with a gay man at age twenty-two.”
“Why do you have a box of condoms hidden in our house?” she threw the box at me and tugged on her short hair uncomfortably. She had chosen to ignore my whole gay father remark.
“They weren’t hidden. They were in the medicine cabinet.” I quipped. After not-so-successfully attempting to lose my virginity on vacation last summer, I had ventured out to Rite Aid and bought a massive box of contraceptives—you know, for those dumbass guys that were really hot, and really unprepared.
“Are you sleeping around?” Mom sat down on my bed, undoubtedly ready for The Talk.
“They’re unopened.” I pointed out.
Here’s the thing. Being five foot one and a little chubby for seventeen, romantic opportunities in our white-bread town of Leesburg, Virginia were quite limited. One had to escape the oppression to even get looked at once.
She put her hand on my shoulder and tried to make eye contact with me, which I swiftly avoided. “Zoe, I think you’re trying to grow up too fast.”
“Mother, I think you’re a little too late to play the whole understanding, loving parent shtick.” I snapped.
So that wasn’t completely fair. Whenever mom tried to do the whole heart-to-heart thing, I pushed her away till she gave up.
“Clearly you’ve forgotten about all of the times that I’ve taken you on college tours, bought you that car, and let you have all of your loser friends over!” She stood up, taken aback.
“Oh gosh, your motherly love is so deep and overwhelming, I might just cry.” I rolled my eyes.
After that, a brawl erupted so fierce that it rivaled the whole Brangelina debacle. Obviously I don’t remember the whole spectacle—I block that stuff out minutes after it happens—but I do remember throwing the box of condoms back at her and telling her to go stuff it up her ass. Then I told her that I was going to be a sexual deviant down in Florida and that she wouldn’t have to worry about explaining her troubled daughter to her non-existent friends anymore.
I couldn’t believe she actually let me go.
Stuffed in between some fat sweaty guy and a terrifyingly manly-looking woman in row 24 coach of this Southwest Airlines plane, it occurred to me that dad sounded remarkably excited that I was coming to stay with him.
Dad and I had the kind of superficial relationship that was a far cry from most divorced kids of my generation. We spoke about once a month on the phone, sometimes less if he was dating someone. He would tell me about his new writing projects (right) and ask me about my love life (nonexistent) and I would tell him about all of my AP classes (lies) and bitch about Mom and how neurotic she was. He would come to visit me about once a year and he’d buy me a crap-ton of new clothes and makeup and we’d see a few movies. And then he was gone.
I called him right after inviting myself to stay at his house and he started raving about how he knew this day would come and how there’s this high school just five minutes from his condo, and how he would work on finding me a car, and how happy my grandmother would be to see me more often—she lived in West Palm, about 45 minutes away.
When the flight attendant began to tell everyone to put up their seats and turn off all electronic devices for landing, it finally hit me. I was going to a new city where nobody knew who I was. Was I ready? I didn’t really have a choice so I decided to jump right into my new life as the Floridian child of a forty-something year old gay man.