Prior to approaching a male of higher social status in a public setting, the adolescent female prepares with extra care, decorating and perfuming herself for the occasion. She may even choose to do research.
At home that evening, I started to get myself ready for Jimmy’s party. I opened my closet and flipped through my hangers. The sight of my clothes was dismaying. My closet was an Uglification Zone — and yet, determined, I searched, hoping to find something semicool.
MOVIE SCENE
JANICE WILLS: STORY OF A YOUNG
ANTHROPOLOGIST
The overlooked heroine readies herself for an encounter with her crush. One of those “getting it together” montages ensues, with some pumped-up girl music for a soundtrack, while she flings various garments onto the floor, applies makeup, and — ta da! — emerges more dazzling than ever before.
Of course, this did not happen. Nothing looked right. I felt stupid and ill constructed: Gangly McGangles all over again. Finally I settled on my coolest jeans and a drapey blue shirt that I thought flattered me. I pinned back part of my hair the way I imagined a French woman would and put on mascara. I looked in the mirror to take in the effect: Gangly McGangles in her coolest jeans; Gangly McGangles wearing mascara….
I still had a couple hours before the party, so I went to the computer to check my email. Nothing. I thought of Jimmy, how tonight might be my chance to talk to him. I had a mission: Mission Speak to Jimmy Denton at the Party Tonight. This required, as preparation, Operation Jimmy Denton Information Gathering.
So I Googled him. I typed in “Jimmy Denton, Melva, NC” and clicked SEARCH. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. I waited, guilty, nervous at the computer, ready to close the browser window if my mom or brothers were to walk in.
But instead of merely finding name twins, I found the Jimmy Denton jackpot. There was his name a few times in the Melva Daily Star for placing in theatre competitions, and there was even a photo of him playing Stanley Kowalski in the Melva High production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
The Melva High production of the play had been edited due to parental concern over potential sexiness. Even though the changes had been slight, it seemed like a shame to me to alter the genius of Tennessee Williams. I especially respected any writer whose chosen name was a state.
The real Googling prize, though, was this: Jimmy Denton had a blog! The blogger profile matched him. His blog was called desperatemeasuresmelva.blogspot.com.
I sat reading it for the next hour and forty-five minutes.
I learned he liked tuna but hated mayonnaise, that he’d once peed his pants in the third grade and everyone had laughed at him, that he was struggling to pass calculus, that his dad had been stressed out at work recently, that his sister sometimes called him Boo Bear, which embarrassed him, that he had many thoughts on the various performances of Marlon Brando, and on Tennessee Williams, and on and on…. Part of one entry read:
The play is absolute shit right now, and I told D. so to his face. But he’s got a rock for a brain. Also talked to B. and we agreed to keep quiet about the whole thing. Now hating myself, this town, wishing I could escape. Later tonight, Dad heard that I failed the calculus test again on top of everything else that’s happened recently, and of course he blew up. Flipping out and screaming at me, telling me he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with me, why I’m so messed up that I’ve got to mess up everything around me. My dad says I’m his biggest disappointment. He’s probably right….
I sat back from the computer, feeling another twinge of guilt. Although I didn’t understand it all, the information seemed so private, so diary-like — and yet the blog had been easy enough to find. I couldn’t decide whether to feel like a) a clever crush detective or b) an Internet creeper. So many of Jimmy’s blog entries seemed angry.
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Janice?”
“Margo, I’m sorry about today at school. So dumb …”
“Listen, don’t worry about it,” Margo said. There was a pause. “I don’t think I can come tonight. I’m just not feeling good.”
“Margo! No! Please! I can’t go without you!”
I could hear her silence on the other end, imagined the words collecting themselves in her mind before she spoke.
“Well,” she said. “You’ll either have to go without me or not go.”
“But he invited us both!”
“Yeah, he did,” she said. “But, Janice, I’m not going. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel like it. I can’t go with you.”
Her voice had the kind of icy solidity that made me not want to argue further. I wondered if she was still mad at me about the stinky feet comment.
“You really can go by yourself,” Margo said, and there was a slight hitch in her voice, as if she felt sorry for me, or as if she were urging me to figure something bigger than a stupid party out. “Besides, it might be better that way.”
“Fine,” I said. “No worries. It’s research for me anyway. I’ll talk to you later, I guess.”
“Yeah, later,” Margo said. And we hung up.
I drove there in my mom’s car. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done something without Margo. And I definitely couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a true party. Maybe middle school — a skating rink party. Parties, by the time I got to high school, had morphed into something I’d felt safer avoiding — too rowdy, too free-form, too terrifying. And yet I knew I had to go to this one. Never before had a chance to interact with Jimmy been so obviously presented to me. Never before had I been asked so specifically by my crush himself. I steeled myself with thoughts of the anthropologists I’d read about, packing up supplies for long voyages down snake-infested rivers in wobbly canoes. This voyage required similar bravery.
Jimmy’s house was farther out in the county. In the darkness, I swooped down long, curving roads, passing cotton fields, barns, pastures, and every now and then, a house. I chanted facts to myself about Jimmy, our similarities — how we both liked Hamlet and old movies and couldn’t wait to escape Melva, how he felt lonely too, all these clues gathered from his blog, as if they were a mantra — as if they would make us truly become soul mates.
When I reached his address, I saw only a long gravel driveway going down a hill, and all the way up it, parked cars, many recognizable from MHS. Seventy cars? More? I couldn’t tell. I parked just off the road and started to make my way down.
I wasn’t able to see the house from where I was in the tar-dark, but I could easily follow the sounds of voices. Gravel crunched underfoot. The low thumping bass of muffled hip-hop pounded toward me. The house, when I reached the bottom of the drive, appeared dark on the inside. It was a big, blank, parents-not-home house. I heard the sound of a fire crackling in the backyard.
I walked around back. A huge bonfire. Faces I recognized vaguely. Girls with long, bare, heavily lotioned legs sat on the laps of guys holding plastic cups. There was a cluster of people dancing. A keg. People milling everywhere, faces flickering in and out of the firelight. The rough laughter of guys kidding around, the coaxing yelps of girls.
I was here on the edge of the scene. I couldn’t turn back now.
I thought of Ruth Benedict approaching the Pueblo people in New Mexico for the first time. I thought of Margaret Mead and the Dobu in New Guinea. I took a breath and prepared myself: Janice Wills, field anthropologist, about to enter the world of a true Melva High School bash.