Mosquitoland(15)

In eighth grade, I joined the Ashland Blackhawks street hockey team. The league was a fledgling operation run by a throng of kids, meatheads mostly, looking for an excuse to punch someone. I was the only girl (’twas always thus), so they only rarely punched me.

The team captain, who doubled as league referee, was this punk kid of about fifteen named Bubba Shapiro. While other teams were called for high-sticking, clipping, cross-checking, and all manner of unsportsmanlike conduct, our team got off scot-free. Bubba looked exactly as you’d expect. Big, beefy—he even had a full-fledged beard, which at his age commanded enormous respect. (Not from me so much, but, you know, the meatheads ate it up.) One day, a kid named Chris York didn’t show up for practice, and Bubba made an announcement. “Okay, guys, Chris came out at school today, so we’re gonna have to push on without him.”

I raised my hand and asked where Chris had come out of.

The meatheads laughed.

Bubba asked if I was an idiot, then said, “He’s a fudge-packer, Mim. Queer bait. Brokeback Mountaineer. He’s gay.”

Again, everyone laughed.

Again, I raised my hand.

“Sorry, but . . . what does that have to do with hockey?”

Bubba rolled his eyes and explained that gays didn’t like sports.

Well, here’s the thing: I never really liked sports, either. The only reason I joined the team was that Dad said I would need some extracurriculars on my college applications. (Malone males are notorious overachievers.) This association between sports and sexual identity continued to nag at me, until one night, while Mom was doing her makeup, I asked how I would know if I were gay.

“Tell me,” she said, putting the finishing touches on her mascara. “How do you feel about Jack Dawson?”

I blushed and smiled. My eyes, I’m sure, took on a twinkling, otherworldly property. My parents had always been sticklers for film ratings (though I suspected Dad was the driving force behind this), and since Titanic was PG-13, I’d had to wait until—you guessed it—my thirteenth birthday, at which point, Mom and I watched it exclusively and repetitively. We’d seen it twenty-nine times (exactly, not approximately). While the story and special effects were achievements in their own right, it was no secret why we loved the movie. Leo DiCaprio as the noble Jack Dawson was just too yum for his own good. (I swear I’m not one of those girls who oohs and aahs over weekly celebrity crushes, Iz, but in the case of Leo, I simply cannot help myself. I’d be lying if I told you I don’t think about that scene down by the furnaces, in that old car . . . Blimey, it’s hot in this van.) Smiling, Mom reached for the makeup tray on her vanity. She grabbed the black tube with the shiny silver ring in the middle—this was her favorite lipstick, the kind she wore only on special occasions. “Scoot in here, Mary. Let me show you a thing or two.”

For the next twenty minutes, I received my first and last makeover. I have no moral objections to makeup, you understand, it’s just . . . I know me. And makeup isn’t me. This, in addition to my edgy, hard-nosed, take-no-prisoner attitude, and I think I could have made a pretty decent lesbian. Not to pigeonhole the demographic. I’m sure there are plenty of lesbian softies out there, gobbling up tubs of ice cream and sobbing at the end of early-nineties romcoms. But when it’s all said and done, I am Madam Winslet in that old car with Leo, not the other way around. And as simple as it sounds, I think understanding who you are—and who you are not—is the most important thing of all Important Things.

So that’s the setup.

The teardown is a topic of substance and despair if ever there was one. Or as Bubba Shapiro might say—unsportsmanlike conduct. But you really only need to know two things: first, I’ve been carrying around my mother’s lipstick for a while now, occasionally using it to paint my face like some war-crazed chieftess preparing for battle; and second, it is vital that the lipstick be returned to its rightful owner.

I have to go now, because we just pulled into the motel’s parking lot.

More Reasons to follow.


Signing off,

Mary Iris DiCaprio



MOM HITCHHIKED THROUGH Europe when she was younger. I remember her talking about the hostels she stayed in, and how they were complete dumps but she didn’t care. They had stories to tell, little pieces of the people who had stayed in them before—what they wore, what they ate, what they believed. Mom said she loved staying in a place where “anything might have happened even if nothing ever did.” And she always ended her stories by saying, “Granted, they all smelled like a moth’s shoe, yeah?”

God, I wish I could have known her back then, in her hitchhiking glory days. The Young Fun Now, twenty-four/seven.

I stuff the stick figure journal in my bag and hop out of the van.

“Alrighty,” says Carl, limping from the front office of the Motel 6. Dude is a superhero. Bandaged and bruised, and not one word of complaint. I suppose the streak continues. If this guy’s not a true-blue Carl, then I don’t know a thing. He passes out keys with dangling bottle caps. Mine has the number 7 scrawled on top.

“These are your room keys,” he says. “Greyhound’s gonna drop off a new bus overnight. I set up a six thirty wake-up call for everyone tomorrow mornin’, so let’s meet back here at seven thirty on the dot. You don’t show up, I’ll assume you got another ride. I ain’t your mama. Got it?”