“Oh, trust me,” he says, holding the door open, “they would.”
Our Hour Is Up
I somehow make it to the fourth grade without ever seeing the Peanuts comic strip. So I don’t know that I’m imitating Lucy when I put signs up all over my elementary school, advertising my services as a therapist. In puffy paint and Magic Marker, I inform my peers that every Tuesday I will station myself on the large rock that dominates the northwest quadrant of the playground and anyone who likes can come and ask me for advice. I know what you’re thinking: Why Tuesdays? Because Monday is too loaded, Friday is not loaded enough, Thursday is charged with anticipation for Friday, and Tuesday is essentially a less popular version of Wednesday. And “less popular” is exactly where I belong.
There are kids who go through elementary school having no friends whatsoever. But between parent and teacher pressure for harmony, this is actually tough to manage. It generally requires hygiene issues or the regular cutting of one’s own bangs. I am the kid just above that rung, the one with a handful of friends. Scraped together, there are just enough of them for me to suspect that if they have sought my nine-year-old wisdom at bowling parties, perhaps I can be of use to the population at large. Because I have the brain of a small child, it does not occur to me to charge for this service.
The Monday before I open this not-for-profit juggernaut, I am pulled out of class by the principal. This is beyond shocking to everyone, including the teacher, including me. At this point in my life, my greatest infraction has been forgetting my recorder on a school bus. My heart races as I try to imagine what I could possibly have done.
It seems that I did not have permission to tape posters up all over the place, and if I had asked, I would have been informed that the entire school had just been freshly repainted. Now there are bits of colored construction paper embedded in the walls. It will be years before I do the calculus on how much it costs to repaint an entire public school and where that money comes from. For now, it doesn’t seem like a very big deal. Perhaps the principal should bore someone else with her list of chores. I apologize but my real concern is that my therapeutic practice is getting off to an inauspicious start.
The good news is that word has spread that I was pulled out of class and why. This is the moment in which I learn that all publicity is good publicity. Or, well, I learn the adage. On Tuesday, when the lunch bell rings, I march past the tire swings and the monkey bars and climb up onto the rock like a Buddha in a jean jacket. At first, business is slow. It’s just me and my best pal, chatting. She is the human equivalent of the pianist’s own money in the tip jar. But soon enough, people we don’t know as well come around and she excuses herself to apply stickers to her backpack.
During my first recess, I have four customers. Their problems stem mostly from one another. One day, licensed therapists will tell them that their problems stem mostly from their parents, but that day has not yet come. For now, it’s all Suzy-is-mean-to-me and Danny-stole-my-gummy-bears. There’s a fifth customer, at the end of the hour, but he only asks me a question about the dearth of strawberry milk in the cafeteria. I can’t decide if he doesn’t understand what I’m doing here or I don’t.
A few Tuesdays into this enterprise, Jason Pakarinen leaves the enclosure around the basketball court and saunters up the concrete path that leads to my rock. I think he will turn off at any minute because Jason Pakarinen couldn’t possibly be coming to talk to me. I am not disgusted by boys like some of my friends. I am, in fact, madly in love with Jason Pakarinen. His mother and my mother are quite friendly, but this has never stopped him from pretending I don’t exist. The fact that Jason Pakarinen even has a mother is bewildering to me. What does one make a perfect boy for dinner? How does one tell him what to do? What does he dream of at night?
This is really happening. Jason Pakarinen is headed straight toward me. My clientele is expanding in marvelous directions.
“Yeah,” Jason Pakarinen begins.
This speaks to the intimate secrets he’s about to reveal—he greets me as if we’ve been conversing for hours.
“Yeah, I have a problem,” he says.
Dear God, I think, has he prepared a speech?
“Yes?” I ask, fluttering my nascent eyelashes. “How can I help you, Jason?”
“Yeah, there’s this really annoying girl giving advice on a rock.”
To his credit, this is a pretty sick burn for a fourth grader. I make a mask of my face as if unaffected, even though I am desperate to dispose of my own body.
“What do you think I should do about it?” he asks, roundhouse kicking my feelings.
“Shut up,” I tell him.
I mean it as a jab but it comes out as more of a guess. Shut up and boner occupy the deepest crevices of my insult bag. I have to dust them off before deploying them.
Jason Pakarinen laughs—cackles, really—and walks away. I watch him intently to see if he’s returning to his friends. Much to my relief, he’s headed for the boys’ room. Alas, this means that my humiliation was but an errand for him. He had to pee the whole time.
* * *
Twenty years later, I am standing behind a police barricade on Fifth Avenue because it’s the Gay Pride parade and all parades are awful at the molecular level, even ones for clean air and kittens. I am with
