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  My love for him was more personal than you might imagine the relationship between an awkward, anonymous East Coast preteen and a reasonably well-known middle-aged Midwestern radio personality might be. Because on my tenth birthday, my big gift was to see A Prairie Home Companion recorded live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. On that memorable night, not only did I meet Keillor in the flesh, but he even said my name on the radio, in a surprise message from my parents. (He pronounced it “Ewe-na,” which broke my heart a little, along with the fact that he looked more like an enormous human version of one of my troll dolls than Ted Danson, but my passionate yet nonsexual crush could not be extinguished.) I felt we were simply . . . simpatico. Just as Garrison had a story about his “storm home,” in which he fantasized about running away into the arms of the childless strangers who’d been assigned him in the event that snow prevented the school buses from getting kids back to their rural houses, I imagined that if things ever got bad with my family—if they stopped letting me eat an entire pound cake for breakfast, say—I could stow away to Saint Paul, Minnesota, and knock on his door and he’d swing it open with a wry smile and a tip of his signature round glasses, sighing, “Well, if it isn’t my little Ewe-na. I’d know you anywhere. Come in, child, have some cocoa, and let me play you a tune on the singing saw.”

  But until that day arrived, I was satisfied with listening to his voice every night on my cassette player. It became especially helpful when I started at a new school in seventh grade and needed extra comfort to offset my snowballing anxiety. Gary was there as I slipped between my sheets, there as I snuggled my Pound Puppy, Harold, and turned off the light. His voice massaged my soul as I snapped my sparkly retainer in place and then drifted off into hormonal dreams, which would find me finally making out with the more age-appropriate object of my affections, only to pause in order to take my retainer out halfway through. “Sorry,” I would purr in the dream, in as lusty a voice as I could manage with a mouth so full of spit, “my orthodontist says I have to wear it all the time.” The only saving grace of these dreams was that at least neither Gary nor Harold ever made an appearance.

  One fateful night, however, my prairie home companion abandoned me. Just as I was losing consciousness, the tape deck snapped off abruptly, midway through one of Garrison’s Lake Wobegon tales, leaving an eerie quiet punctuated every second by what I had never before noticed was the extremely creepy ticking sound of my Kit-Cat clock’s plastic tail. That night I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. Eventually I surrendered to wakefulness and spent the wee hours of the morning reading old Sweet Valley High novels with my knees tucked tight against my chest inside my flannel nightgown, hoping against hope that somehow my hatred of that entitled bitch Jessica Wakefield might cause me to spontaneously pass out, like a rage stroke.

  I didn’t know it then, but what I was feeling was my first grown-up fears slipping through the first cracks in my formerly impenetrable childhood self-esteem. Here I was in a strange new school, in a strange new body, feeling lost in a way that couldn’t be fixed by finding the nearest adult and asking him or her to call my mom over the PA system.

  I didn’t sleep again for weeks.

  Looking back, I placed an unfair amount of blame on Garrison Keillor for cursing me with insomnia. There were a lot of other things going on at the time that were more likely culprits, even if the Night the Boom Box Died provided a conspicuous trigger. Like the fact that I graduated from a local public elementary school where I floated along in a relatively unchallenging gifted program to a big, nearly windowless high school nicknamed the Brick Prison, where kids routinely threatened suicide when they got B’s.* Or the fact that my first assignment at said high school was to write an outline of the US Constitution, which spewed out of our cutting-edge dot matrix printer on twenty-five perforated pages. Or the fact that my two closest friends at my new school had recently, after seven months of joined-at-the-hip camaraderie, informed me that I was being voted off the island.

  “It’s not you,” Vanessa—half-Japanese and half-British, the most exotic friend I’d had to date—had said, in the gym locker room of all places, the epicenter of adolescent shame and self-loathing, as we changed out of our sweaty uniforms and back into our street clothes. “It’s us.”

  “Yeah,” piped up Jesse, a thickly accented Queens girl with crimped red hair that fell almost to her knees. “We just think you’re . . . annoying.” Their faces told me that I had always been annoying and that it was their fault for not realizing it until that moment.

  “Oh,” I said, trying to control the hot tears flooding my eyes. I pulled my dad’s old ACLU T-shirt off over my head and crossed my elbows over my puffy, uneven breast nubs. “Okay.” I forced a smile, a smile that said even I knew I was annoying; I had been in on it the whole time! That’s my whole thing, what makes me special. I’m so annoying that no one wants to associate with me!

  After Vanessa and Jesse broke up with me, I glommed on to the only other group of girls in my homeroom, a mix of Chinese and Korean Americans and one token Indian who were blanketly referred to as “the Asian Clique.” I fit right in. I vaguely remember wandering behind them in the hallways and sitting with them at lunch, inserting myself into conversations without being invited. I was so determined not to be alone that I accepted what was essentially an adjunct friendship. But even that was quickly terminated.

  They left a note in my backpack a few weeks later. It was a one-page, unsecret burn book, with quotes each of them had come up with to express how obnoxious and unwelcome my presence in the Asian Clique really was. I found it while having lunch with my mom, so I couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. I just started talking really fast, the naked despair acting like a whippet of helium that carried me home on a weird, desperate high. I twitched through another sleepless night, this time on a futon in my parents’ room despite their protests that I was too old; I needed to hear them creak and breathe to remind me that I wasn’t entirely unwanted. That I belonged somewhere. The next day at school, Marina—the Indian girl—approached me in the hallway. She had a thick, wavy triangle of hair and stick-thin arms that poked out of the gaping sleeves of her shirt like two brown Twizzlers.

  “Hi,” she said gently. “Did you get our note?”

  In the decades since she posed this question, I’ve come up with a lot of things I wish I’d said in response. Most of them are some variation on “Yeah, I did, and you can go fuck [yourself/your mother/some uncomfortable inanimate object].” In some versions I just slap her, hard, and say, with a cocked eyebrow, “There. You can go give the others their share of that.” (I modified and stole that line from the original Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills.)

  But in that moment I was just a thirteen-year-old with a glitter retainer and one eyebrow, struggling to hold on to a single shred of dignity to carry me until it was time to go home and weep into my comforter, so instead I shrugged and just whispered, “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  It was almost exactly at this point in time that I began fantasizing regularly about having action movie–style revenge battles set to popular hip-hop songs. My favorite scenario involved a public, mixed martial arts display while “Jump Around” by House of Pain blared in the background from Radio Raheem’s boom box from Do the Right Thing. During this battle I faced off with each of my ex-friends, one by one, executing gravity-defying roundhouse kicks and capoeira moves until they ran off crying or were knocked unconscious. In my fantasies I also had glowing, blemish-free skin, straight teeth, and really good hair, and my flattering Spandex bodysuit never developed sweat stains.

  My Other Top Five Fantasies, Age Thirteen

  1.I have my first kiss, following an impassioned performance of Madonna’s “Crazy for You,” preferably set at an unchaperoned party at which I am brooding attractively in a corner and wearing the sparkly purple velvet two-piece formal outfit my mother got me for Christmas that I will later realize l
ooks like something RuPaul might wear to impersonate Prince.

  2.My first kiss, as outlined above, is with Jonathan Brandis, after we bond over our shared birthday and how many times I have seen the movie Ladybugs.

  3.I run into Heather Locklear at the bodega near my house where I spend all my allowance money on expired Hostess products, and I punch her right in her perfect little face, because Billy and Allison 4eva!

  4.Circumstances conspire for me to sing an a cappella rendition of Mariah Carey’s runaway hit “Emotions” before an assembly of my peers, and in addition to hitting notes only dogs can hear, I am wearing the holy grail of sexy ’90s clothing, which is overalls over a striped boatneck top.

  5.Someday, I learn to properly insert a tampon.

  Now that I’m an adult, I’m happy to report everything is so much easier. Friends don’t have to leave notes in your bag telling you how much they hate you; they can simply show their contempt by refusing to “like” your Facebook statuses. I’m much more dexterous with my cursing, and I’ve rekindled my romance with Gary through podcasts that I listen to while doing the dishes. However, despite my relative happiness I continue in adulthood to aspire to unreachable goals.

  My Top Five Fantasies, Age Thirty-Three

  1.I have a private salon in my home, staffed entirely by sassy middle-aged women with big hair who look like they stepped out of a John Waters movie. Every morning, they shampoo, condition, and style me while we discuss the previous evening’s new TV episodes and eat scones.

  2.Lorne Michaels overhears me doing my impression of Zooey Deschanel’s Cotton commercials in line at Starbucks and decides to make me head writer for SNL, but I only work two afternoons a week, and obviously never Saturday nights because, hello, I have a child.

  3.At wedding receptions, when one of those big circles forms, I nonchalantly dance into the center and jump through my own leg.

  4.This book becomes an international bestseller. Both Louis C.K. and Barack Obama send me personal notes. I am instantly offered a Tootsie Roll endorsement campaign. Entertainment Weekly shoots a cover featuring me, Lena Dunham, and Tina Fey with the headline “Una! Lena! Tina!” and there is an invisible fan blowing our hair back, and I am in the middle, doing an openmouthed laugh, and someone has Photoshopped my teeth.

  5.I remember to mail the rent more than eight hours prior to its being due.

  I also still prefer to resolve emotional conflicts through imagined musical performances instead of confrontation. I’ve moved on from Madonna, but it’s debatable whether I’ve moved on from my adolescent yearning to be accepted. After an online magazine rejected a few of my pitches recently, I minimized my e-mail window, closed my eyes, and placed myself in a dark karaoke bar, sipping Manhattans alongside elite media types like David Remnick, Adam Moss, Jill Abramson, and Maureen Dowd. As they all watched with rapt attention, I walked slowly to the front of the room, picked up a wireless microphone, and launched into a performance of Salt-N-Pepa’s 1993 single “Shoop,” not even pausing my technically flawless Running Man when Arianna Huffington fainted from shock at my perfect rap stylings.

  These frequent daydreams have caused a new fear to take root in my gut. Maybe the truth, after all these years, is that I don’t really want revenge on anyone, not even if it means I can pretend to know capoeira. I don’t really wish I had told Marina to go fuck a cactus, because that’s not who I am. I’m not especially brave, and I’m much quicker thinking on paper than in person. When insulted, my go-to move is still to nod and smile and then either burst into tears or say something bitchy about the person to someone else. Maybe it’s not the retribution I seek, or even the chance to showcase my sweet dance moves in front of my professional idols. Maybe what I really want . . . is just the applause.

  After all, I have always wanted to be discovered in a supermarket. I mean that like “noticed by a movie scout and propelled to international fame and fortune so that I can give charming and self-deprecating interviews to Entertainment Weekly,” not like “discovered in the produce aisle sitting in an igloo made of toilet paper rolls after having gone missing.” (But honestly, at my age, I’d take either one.)

  And that really lets me off the hook, because being discovered takes absolutely no action on my part. I just have to sit back and wait for it to happen. Maybe fame will find me on the playground, as I gesture theatrically at my son in an attempt to make him stop licking a nearby tree. Maybe it will find me at the drugstore, trying to rationalize the purchase of a hundred-dollar pore-cleansing device that resembles a circular saw. There’s no way of knowing, really.

  Life is a mystery.

  PLACES I CAN NEVER GO BACK TO, AND WHY

  My friend Abby’s parents’ house, Austin, Texas

  Soiled underpants at age eight during a sleepover, balled them up, and hid them behind the living room couch.

  Drugstore, Seventh Avenue near Union Street, Brooklyn, New York

  In 1996, on a routine makeup run, was with my friend Adri when she loudly farted and then knocked over a display case of reading glasses.

  Dry cleaner’s, Flatbush Avenue and Prospect Place, Brooklyn, New York

  Dropped off dry cleaning circa 2004, couldn’t pay for it for four months, shame spiraled, gave up.

  Dry cleaner’s, Church Street and Chambers Street, New York, New York

  Dropped off dry cleaning in 2008, left it for two weeks, building burned to the ground.

  Dentist’s office, Washington Square West, New York, New York

  After my last cleaning in late 2010, my longtime dentist passed away unexpectedly. I honor his memory by not replacing him, and by filling my own cavities with gnarled remnants of (Sugar-Free!) Coffee Nips.

  Coffee shop, Fifth Avenue and Park Place, Brooklyn, New York

  Ordered decaf latte, realized I forgot my wallet, told barista I would go to an ATM, ran home and stress-watched Homeland instead.

  Death Becomes Me

  I don’t know if this is normal, but in my daily life I regularly imagine gruesome tragedies happening to me. For instance, running down the subway steps, which I always do—because you never know when the New York City subway trains are going to start approaching stealthily—makes me picture myself slipping and falling and belly-flopping onto the concrete, breaking a few teeth and maybe a collarbone. Or sometimes my heart will skip a beat for no reason and I’m convinced I’m experiencing sudden cardiac death—basically a fatal heart attack in a seemingly healthy person—which strikes 325,000 people a year and which, as soon as I read about it, I became convinced would happen to me. All the joy has long since gone from smoking anything—while I ended my affair with cigarettes almost a decade ago, I still lie in bed at night, imagining the tumor growing in my lung—and the one time I tried cocaine, in college, the line I chopped was as loose and thin as a frayed cobweb, since I was too afraid to end up gushing blood from my nose and seizing up like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction (yes, I know, that was heroin, but she thought it was coke and she was a drug addict, so you tell me, what are my odds?). I don’t ride a bike often—only once a presidential term or so—but what should be a joyride turns morbid as I whiz down a rolling hill without a helmet, remembering some news story I’ve read about a guy whose front wheel popped off and who ended up needing a face transplant.

  When I get squeamish over the imaginary bloodshed, I like to switch it up and fantasize about funerals. Sometimes it’s someone very close to me who has died, but usually it’s me. This fantasy almost invariably takes place while listening to music. I actually have a playlist named “Make Yourself Cry,” and it gets the job done—I let the swells of soft alt-rock bring tears to my eyes, and then I snap out of it, partially because killing off loved ones for emotional masturbation fodder is in incredibly poor taste and partially because I realize that everyone on the subway platform is looking at me.

  The first time I thought seriously abou
t death I was four years old. It was at what is now the Rose Planetarium, one of the buildings that make up the Museum of Natural History, on Eighty-First Street in Manhattan. The museum was—and still is—one of my favorite places. As a kid, I just got the biggest kick out of everything about it: the taxidermied animals in their hand-painted tableaus, like weird, retro snow globes; the long, ornate staircase railings with golden lions’ heads at the ends that just begged to be slid down; the cultural exhibits in which carefully crafted dummies representing Eskimos and Native Americans crouched over fires and modeled the latest seventeenth-century fashions, breasts and testes scandalously akimbo. My favorite exhibit, though, was the Hall of North American Mammals. I didn’t go, like most girls my age, for the delicate mountain goats or the adorable flying squirrel. No, I lived for the Hall of North American Mammals because that was where my beloved Alaskan musk ox lived.

  If you’re unfamiliar with the musk ox, the plaque at the museum introduces them thusly:

  A herd of musk oxen hunkers down to wait out a snowstorm. When the weather gets foul, their strategy is to stay and cope. Unlike Arctic caribou, musk oxen do not migrate seasonally. Instead, their squat, woolly bodies limit heat loss, even when temperatures plunge below −40°F (−40°C).

  Extreme shifts in climate, however, can distress musk oxen. But this too is part of their survival strategy. Study of ancient DNA reveals that over many millennia, musk ox populations have undergone repeated boom and bust cycles in response to climate fluctuations. Being able to rebound after population collapses may have helped musk oxen survive the end of the Ice Age when most other large mammals, like woolly mammoths, died out.