A Tribute to the Almighty "Girl Crush" : Part I in a Series

I remember the first day Monica Bryant came to school when I was in the 5th grade; it was 1995, Bill Clinton was president, and the Balkan states were a hot mess of political strife that even Sheryl Crow’s infectious pop hits couldn’t resolve. Monica stepped in wearing the coolest outfit my 11 year-old eyes had ever seen---an understated floral vest over a black v-neck dress, black leggings, and baby pink ballet flats. Her impossibly thick brown hair seemed ready to snap the band that held it in place, and she had the biggest, brownest eyes with the thickest blackest lashes I had ever seen. My god, was she really THAT naturally gorgeous? Or maybe… maybe it was Maybelline.

I immediately blushed when I saw her, like any self-conscious loser whose loser status is suddenly thrust violently upon them. I shyly brushed my stringy hair behind my ear and tugged on my cheap plastic Simba earrings. Remember Simba from “The Lion King”? Yeeeaaah. That’s about the level I was operating on at the time.

I couldn’t believe my luck when this girl with her unlimited social cachet sat next to me, ME! My GOD, she smelled like something… good*. The only scents I could place at the time were Lysol and Bonne Bell LipSmackers, and the aroma she wore was simply too sophisticated for my adolescent olfactory sense. Whatever it was, it smelled crisp and mature and made me feel juvenile and stupid, like the Solange to her Beyonce. Life wasn’t fair, and it was at this precise moment that I realized it never would be.

* I later came to discover that Monica’s signature scent was White Musk from “The Body Shop”, a signature scent that I have since cribbed and made my own. To this day, wearing it makes me feel like a sophisticated girl from Texas in a vest, which I think every woman deserves to feel like, at least once in a while.

“Hi,” she offered, smiling. “I’m Monica.”

Monica. Wooooooow, this girl was off tha hinges. I had never heard of anyone named Monica before (this was before the Lewinsky scandal, an unfortunate undoing that would forever plague all Monicas for years to come), and the name had a sort of exotic, understated sexiness to it. It made me think of that pretty stripper in that Cinemax movie I had seen one weekend prior. Goddamnit, did everything about her have to be so intimidating and hot? Why couldn’t I just go back to the old days when bloodless, unattractive new kids would awkwardly shuffle in and mumble their names, only to be instantly forgotten by their classmates and lost to the annals of school yearbooks.

“I’m Kristin,” I replied, probably farting. Oh god, I’m already losing her, I worried. I needed to keep her attention… she’s vulnerable and alone, and I could be the first person to usher her out of obscurity and into the fast-paced world of grade school interpersonal politics. Of course, I was a massive social liability, but she didn’t know that! I struggled to forge a quick bond between me and the gorgeous new girl.

“Soooo… where are you from?” I asked weakly.

“Texas. Kind of by San Antonio,” she nodded. She had not a hint of a southern accent, and if she did I’m sure I wouldn’t have found her nearly as intriguing. A Spanish accent? Muy caliente. A French accent? Ooh la la. A Russian accent? Take me to your igloo and fuck me, or whatever the fuck those Russians do… but a southern accent always left me unseasonably cold, and made the speaker seem sort of dull. Sorry to any twangy-voiced folk reading this, but I’m just kind of a dick about it.

Texas, Texas… I scanned my mental Rolodex for Texas-related nuggets of information, but all I could muster was a baffling, “So... do you have any horses?”

“No...” She frowned, obviously wondering what kind of creepy personal dude ranch scenario every Michigander assigned to their Texan countrymen. “But I have a dog named Ernie!”

“Oh dogs, I love dogs!” I lied, quickly covering up the Day-Glo kitten on my Lisa Frank folder with a more neutral school accessory--- a terrifying notebook plastered with Egyptian mummies that my Aunt had gotten me from the Smithsonian. The truth was that I despised dogs and their pushy animal presence, but I could learn to love Monica’s dog, I thought. Hell, I’d buy a fucking dog and name it Monica, it didn’t matter. Her interests were now mine, and I was willing to be her toady minion, ready to impress her at all costs. My self-esteem was dangerously low, and I was BEGGING this South Texas girl to mold me in her impeccable image.

As the day went on, Monica latched onto me and as the week progressed, we became, like… friends. Again, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I was wholly unprepared for the insight I would gain into her home life as our friendship blossomed. I knew I had truly hit the friend jackpot when I discovered that Monica lived only a couple blocks from me and, as every kid knows, friendship in one’s pre-driving state is all about LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. I mean, aren’t all friendships at that age hinged upon geographical convenience? You’re friends with the unimpressive Mormon kids next door because they live next door; you hang out with the “Horse Girl” not because you share her strange and probably sexual love for horses, but because she lives right down the street. However, Monica was somebody I actually admired, and her close proximity to me meant that I had a much higher chance of maintaining our friendship and even progressing to the next logical step: BEST friendship. We could have matching BFF heart necklaces and everything.

Of course, her house was opulent and her family had about 70 cars, all expensive and European. When I met her mother I thought I was going to have an aneurysm, it was all just too much. See, her mother was a full-blooded, thick-accented Italian contessa, straight outta Naples. Her name was Guisi (“Juuuuuuuicy,” I used to softly moan to myself, participating in a furious session of what I will only refer to as ‘God Only Knows’ alone in my room), and she was dazzling and warm and offered me biscotti---FUCKING BISCOTTI! Monica’s father dulled in comparison, but he was still very handsome---a well-tanned and statuesque American businessman who never saw much action outside of his study. And her brother, MY GOD, her brother… he was the first man I knew in real life that I had vivid and X-Rated sexual fantasies about. He was, like Monica, gorgeous and effortlessly cool. Monica, I imagined saying, I want to fuck your family.

To make things even more sexily confusing, as I grew to know her I discovered that Monica was quite funny and… weeeeeeird. She was weird in a way that I thought only ugly girls who lived in trashy houses like me could be weird. On the surface she seemed maddeningly lucky; great looks, a hot Italian mom, huge house in a well-manicured neighborhood. But as I got to know her, I began to chip away at what I found to be a poorly-spackled foundation of deviance. I mean, she had dead mice in her freezer because her brother owned a shitload of snakes, which I found out after she threw a Ziploc bag of little white rodents at me in a fit of hysteria. And her brother was this tortured musician type who gorged himself on a daily buffet of hard drugs and was constantly in trouble with the law. And Monica’s parents kept a giant closet full of Italian porno mags from the 70’s, which she showed to me in great titillation, pointing out the “mondo bushes” of the female centerfolds. And for Christ’s sake, she knew what a dildo was. Oh yes, getting to know Monica opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibility, a world in which girls weren’t made dull by their beauty (as I’d always thought they were), but complicated by it---a world where a sweet, oddball girl like Monica could remain as such, if only for a short while, because she still had yet to discover the sinister powers her beauty would later afford her.

I loved my time with her as her friend, but it was expectedly brief. Middle school was a turning point, and as we aged together we parted ways as people of our respective social standings often do. I went back to the unglamorous world of befriending the unfriendable and other human oddities, and she discovered that she could will anybody (especially guys) into doing anything… everything… she wanted. But bless her sweet Lone Star heart, she continued to be nice to me and never treated me like I was any lesser than her, even though I clearly was.

Throughout middle school and high school I would sometimes catch a glimpse of her and grow nostalgic for the good old days of throwing her brother’s iguana out of a window and daring each other to drink Piss Slurpees. I would see her with her attractive friends and grow embittered. They’ll never appreciate the way you can throw a pack of Rolos into a baby’s stroller as we pass an angry mother in the Tropic Tan parking lot, Monica! AND YOU KNOW THAT! Sure I might not ever boil a live rabbit for her, but goddamnit, I didn’t wanna ignored, Dan!

My last memory of her was junior year of high school, sitting next to her in some science class. She was dating this pockmarked, crackity whiteboy thug named Victor who had a scary reputation and an ample criminal record. He totally didn’t deserve her, the no-goodnik. As our teacher was discussing the syllabus, she leaned over to tell me about how she had smoked a ton of chronic the night before, and as she was driving her car she watched her hands on the steering wheel turn into tiny white porcelain doll hands.

“It was aaaaawwwwwwesoooooooome,” she murmured, a near-orgasmic look of recollection on her face. She still smelled like White Musk, a scent I could now skillfully place and would never forget. Her hair was dyed a skanky blond now, probably at the request of her loser boyfriend and his video ho fantasies. Looking at her made me sad, and I wanted to throw a Ziploc bag of dead mice at her head. WAKE UP, WOMAN! I wanted to scream. You are better than this.

Of course I wonder where she is now, wonder if she’s still charismatic and lovely, hope that she’s made it out alive and relatively unscathed. I wonder how creepy she would find this little essay I’ve written about her. Hopefully she wouldn’t just roll her head back, expelling the THC from her lungs, and dumbly sigh, “Kristin, god, you are soooooooooooo weeeeeeeeeeeird.” I would want her to tell me decisively that YES, I am in fact so weird, laugh, and take me back to her house where we would unwind with a box of her mother’s tiramisu and a grainy Italian porno film on her father’s old projector.

Welcome! Now please stop looking at me, eye contact makes me uncomfortable.

Here I come, wooden wheels clacking, my Ford Model T. achieving a dull roar as I careen semi-throttle into the 21st century. Yeah, that’s right---I’ve got a blog now. It’s no big deal. Your average grade schooler can create one, and probably already has due to some new public education initiative, no doubt. But I’m not your average grade schooler. Surely I possess the maturity level of one, but I have more rings around my flabby trunk than most, indicating a sage, experienced attitude and, more importantly, an undisputed 24 years on this Earth. I’VE GOT STORIES, DAMNIT! I've got knowledge out the fuckhole! I know how to pump my own gas, pay my own bills, buy my own alcohol (provided I can find a nearby liquor store that has not already prohibited its sales to me.) But do people wanna listen? Nah. A lot of times it’s because I’m unwilling to speak in public, but I still blame society for my personal problems. I have a lot to say, but do I take the initiative in getting out there and saying it? NO. I've got a lot of lofty, unrealistic goals, but do I make even half of an effort to pursue them, or perhaps level them down to an attainable degree? OF COURSE NOT.

And what have I been doing with my time on the planet? NOTHING. That’s why I created this blog, do you understand? I view having a blog as doing something productive, and that is perhaps the saddest indicator of my flat-lining ambition. Do I mind being an aimless slacker? Sometimes. Do I do anything about it? Hell no. That would be antithetical to my slacker nature. All I can hope for it that someone will read this writing some day and give me a bag of money so I can finally make something of myself, because you know what? I got dreams too, goddamnit. Ones that need to be subdued by ungodly amounts of Ambien.

And so I write. Enjoy the reads.