I couldn't quite read what was written on my forehead. I was eyeball-hurting hung-over, it was very early in the morning and the words were backwards because I was looking at them in the '70s remodel smoky-glass bathroom mirror at my friend's house. I got up really close to the mirror, as if that would help, and deciphered the words "I GOT LAID" written in indelible black marker. My girlfriends, in a moment of inspiration, had decided to write this on my forehead after I had gone to bed. I went to bed much earlier than they did because I had to get up that next morning for summer school, a travesty in itself, especially since everyone else in my class had already graduated, but now I had to scrub black indelible marker off my forehead! Would it even come off? It did, but there was an angry red mark there afterwards for much of the day and tiny black flecks of marker for days following. I would have been angry, too, if it weren't so ridiculous. And true.
I had to go to summer school after graduation in order to actually graduate from high school. They let me walk in the ceremony but the diploma they handed me while the cameras flashed was blank. Due to extensive absences (I calculated 1 out of every 3 days through my entire high-school career), the Board of Education, in its infinite wisdom, had me enrolled in remedial classes for about half of my junior year. Now, those tests we had to take for placement or torture or whatever all placed me in the highest-possible percentile; I was clearly a smarty-pants! But they didn't seem to care about that. I think they even had me in remedial homeroom. I will never forget the day that Mr. Neely, a funny-looking little man with thick glasses and terrible coffee-cigarette breath, called me out of my seat during his Geography-for-dumb-asses class and took me to the office. He didn't say a word the whole way there; was I in trouble again? We entered the vice-principal's office and I sat down. Mr. Neely remained standing and said with incredible earnestness, "It's embarrassing for me to have Susannah in my class. It's embarrassing for the other students and it's embarrassing for her." He insisted that I be taken out of all remedial classes and I was, and promptly put in Advanced Placement everything. What a roller-coaster! No wonder I preferred smoking cigarettes in my basement room and listening to Pink Floyd to going to that madhouse. I still didn't like to go to school even after they changed my classes, except at night to drink beer in the parking lot. I was so glad when it was over, but my grades sucked so it wasn't quite over until after summer school.
One weekend during that summer of 1988 a bunch of us went up to Morgantown, West Virginia where some of our friends went to college. After a James Taylor concert and much cheap beer, I found myself in a completely unmade bed with one of our friends and decided that this would be a good time to lose my virginity. Sounds magical, doesn't it? To add to the romantic ambience, we had somehow managed to spill an entire bottle of cheap Italian dressing on our two cases of Rolling Rock beer at the outset of our trip. That oily-sweet-stinky smell seemed to be everywhere, it clung to everything, it wouldn't wash off and we all smelled like that the whole weekend! I had already decided that I didn't want to be especially crazy about whoever I had sex with for the first time, however they smelled; it was a big enough deal just getting through it. And this guy was a good friend: big and goofy and sweet. Out of my five good girlfriends ( I now call them "The West Virginia Girls" ) I was the second to lose her virginity, though I really don't feel as if I lost anything. Maybe you can imagine the drunken glee with which they must have written those words on my forehead, though "glee" is not the word I would use to describe how I felt upon seeing them there. I pledged to get them back someday, but I have yet to find the opportunity. Maybe I should try harder.