Who Needed “Girls Gone Wild?”

When I was 10, I learned a new word:  Lesbian.  My mom called me one.  And it was not meant the way kids call each other “gay” today, even though that isn’t nice either.  She was genuinely worried…

 

Innocence Lost and Found Part 3

In Innocence Lost and Found Part 1 and Part 2, I began describing the year I spent in a small New Jersey town when I was eight: Cool Walter who claimed me with his kiss in the woods behind the baseball diamond.  My upwardly mobile and disappointingly racist mom.  Jealous Melinda, rich Nancy.  African-American Cassandra being treated like a contagious disease in Nancy’s pool.  I got in with her mostly because I couldn’t swim, partly because I couldn’t bear to see someone’s feelings hurt, and, well, I had liked Cassandra in the first place, DUH…

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Innocence Lost and Found Part 2

If you haven’t already, I suggest you go back and read Part I of Innocence Lost and Found, in which I began describing the third-grade year I spent in an idyllic New Jersey town.  Only, it wasn’t so idyllic…