stepbrother Mac to help us. At eighteen, he looks old enough to buy bottles from Market Wine & Spirits, and he can procure harder liquor than Billie’s mom’s schnapps. While Mac roves the aisles at the liquor store, we wait for him
behind a hedgerow in the Salem graveyard. The night is cold as an icebox, with the kind of chill that gets into your skin and sticks there. After a half hour of waiting, I know nothing but a hot bath will be able to restore the feeling to certain body parts. Billie and I are wearing fingerless gloves and smoking Mild Sev-ens because we don’t yet know how cliché that is. In plots all around us, we can hear whistling bottle rockets, dropped flashlights, someone’s ill attempt at the ghoulish oo-haa-haa. People are tripping over their costumes, and a paranormal tour guide is leading a group toward the haunted jail, urging them to stay close because “People faint all the time.”
It occurs to me that Halloween is the perfect date to get first-time drunk. It is the single day of the year on which you can shield your flaws with a layer of latex, the way Lucy Grealy did in her memoir Autobiography of a Face. She’d survived cancer and an endless bout of surgeries to reconstruct her jaw, and yet
the only time she ever felt free was on October 31 , when she
could hide in a costume and feel confident, knowing no one knew what she looked like inside.
Externally, I’m not perfect, but I’m healthy. In fourteen years, I’ve never once fallen down stairs or caught my hand in a car door. I’ve never had stitches. I’ve never so much as twisted an ankle. It’s my insides that I need to hide. Privately, I feel disfigured. I am ashamed of my gnarled soul, which is something no surgeon can correct. Were my inner workings exposed, I feel certain they would make children stare, and adults avert their eyes. Like Lucy, I, too, want a mask, the type Dylan Thomas talks about: “to shield the glistening brain and the blunt exam-iners.” I want to get shit-faced, a term itself that connotes cam-ouflage.
Mac shows up at the gravesite with his friend Phil and a bot-
42 INITIATION | First Waste
tle of Captain Apple Jack 100 -proof brandy. When Billie asks if it will get us drunk, Mac says, “More like Exorcist possessed,” and I secretly hope he doesn’t mean projectile puking.
Now that the boys are with us, I wish I hadn’t worn a costume. It was my idea for Billie and me to come dressed as Wayne and Garth from the movie Wayne’s World. I’m Wayne. Billie got to be Garth because she’s the blonde. Our “costumes” aren’t much different from the flannel button-ups and di-aphanous T-shirts we usually wear. Even so, I have to look up at the boys from under the rim of my black Wayne’s World cap, which makes me feel silly.
Mac has a skeleton T-shirt on. Phil is in everyday clothes, but he’s looped nylon rope into a noose around his neck.
We position ourselves in a circle around an old camping lantern and the bottle of brandy. If anyone comes up through the headstones behind us, they’ll probably assume we’re con-ducting a séance. Billie in particular is staring at the bottle like she is trying to channel its energy.
Billie told Mac that we’ve never been drunk before, so he knows this is serious business. He twists off the brandy’s plastic top and apologizes for not bringing cups. He asks if we’re ready, and looks at us one at a time, waiting for a response.
Billie says, “Yeah.” Phil says, “Fuck yeah.”
I nod, and pull my leather jacket tighter around me. I’m ner-vous. My sternum is shivering the way it does when I have to give a class presentation, but I know I am prepared for this. I like the idea of getting drunk in a group of four.
Before, when I drank by myself or with Billie, I think I held back. I didn’t drink as much or as fast as I should have because I was afraid of entering new territory while I was all or mostly
alone. As a girl, after all, you are
behind a hedgerow in the Salem graveyard. The night is cold as an icebox, with the kind of chill that gets into your skin and sticks there. After a half hour of waiting, I know nothing but a hot bath will be able to restore the feeling to certain body parts. Billie and I are wearing fingerless gloves and smoking Mild Sev-ens because we don’t yet know how cliché that is. In plots all around us, we can hear whistling bottle rockets, dropped flashlights, someone’s ill attempt at the ghoulish oo-haa-haa. People are tripping over their costumes, and a paranormal tour guide is leading a group toward the haunted jail, urging them to stay close because “People faint all the time.”
It occurs to me that Halloween is the perfect date to get first-time drunk. It is the single day of the year on which you can shield your flaws with a layer of latex, the way Lucy Grealy did in her memoir Autobiography of a Face. She’d survived cancer and an endless bout of surgeries to reconstruct her jaw, and yet
the only time she ever felt free was on October 31 , when she
could hide in a costume and feel confident, knowing no one knew what she looked like inside.
Externally, I’m not perfect, but I’m healthy. In fourteen years, I’ve never once fallen down stairs or caught my hand in a car door. I’ve never had stitches. I’ve never so much as twisted an ankle. It’s my insides that I need to hide. Privately, I feel disfigured. I am ashamed of my gnarled soul, which is something no surgeon can correct. Were my inner workings exposed, I feel certain they would make children stare, and adults avert their eyes. Like Lucy, I, too, want a mask, the type Dylan Thomas talks about: “to shield the glistening brain and the blunt exam-iners.” I want to get shit-faced, a term itself that connotes cam-ouflage.
Mac shows up at the gravesite with his friend Phil and a bot-
42 INITIATION | First Waste
tle of Captain Apple Jack 100 -proof brandy. When Billie asks if it will get us drunk, Mac says, “More like Exorcist possessed,” and I secretly hope he doesn’t mean projectile puking.
Now that the boys are with us, I wish I hadn’t worn a costume. It was my idea for Billie and me to come dressed as Wayne and Garth from the movie Wayne’s World. I’m Wayne. Billie got to be Garth because she’s the blonde. Our “costumes” aren’t much different from the flannel button-ups and di-aphanous T-shirts we usually wear. Even so, I have to look up at the boys from under the rim of my black Wayne’s World cap, which makes me feel silly.
Mac has a skeleton T-shirt on. Phil is in everyday clothes, but he’s looped nylon rope into a noose around his neck.
We position ourselves in a circle around an old camping lantern and the bottle of brandy. If anyone comes up through the headstones behind us, they’ll probably assume we’re con-ducting a séance. Billie in particular is staring at the bottle like she is trying to channel its energy.
Billie told Mac that we’ve never been drunk before, so he knows this is serious business. He twists off the brandy’s plastic top and apologizes for not bringing cups. He asks if we’re ready, and looks at us one at a time, waiting for a response.
Billie says, “Yeah.” Phil says, “Fuck yeah.”
I nod, and pull my leather jacket tighter around me. I’m ner-vous. My sternum is shivering the way it does when I have to give a class presentation, but I know I am prepared for this. I like the idea of getting drunk in a group of four.
Before, when I drank by myself or with Billie, I think I held back. I didn’t drink as much or as fast as I should have because I was afraid of entering new territory while I was all or mostly
alone. As a girl, after all, you are
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