Idiot

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  To my momma.

  For loving me fully and believing in me always.

  I love you.

  CHAPTER 1

  Oh, the Places I’ve Peed

  I’m tall—six feet, to be exact. I’ve always been really tall for my age. Remember when Mary Poppins pulled that long-ass hat stand out of her Magic Bag? That’s what it was like when the doctors pulled me out of my mom’s vagina. With my full head of hair, I looked like a hat stand wearing a wig. Still do!

  By the time I was fourteen, I had outgrown my twin-size bed. So naturally, I started sleeping on the living room couch. Which meant that sleep was soon replaced with infomercial watching. I’d wake up late every morning, my hat stand–body sprawled across the couch, surrounded by Post-its scribbled with 1-800 numbers and names of useless products: the after-party mess from my late-night infomercial benders. When my mom walked into the living room in the morning, I’d leap off the couch and accost her.

  “MOM? Mom! We have to get the Hawaii Chair. We need it; you don’t understand—it’s only six easy payments of $19.99. You sit in it and it sways your butt around, and then you have abs in a MONTH. I saw the before and after! It’s real! Mom? Come back.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and sat down on an insufferable regular chair. To give her the full picture, I swayed my hips on the chair. After watching her daughter grind awkwardly for a good five minutes, she said, “Laura, you’re just gonna sit on that thing for thirty minutes and then puke.” She didn’t get me the Hawaii Chair.

  She never got me ANYTHING from infomercials. In spite of this deprivation, I did have a pretty happy childhood. I grew up in the most ideal suburb you could ever imagine: Downers Grove, Illinois—a working- /middle-class town twenty minutes outside Chicago.

  Now you might be thinking, “Ha-ha! DOWNERS Grove? Is everyone on Xanax all the time?” If we’re gonna be realistic, then yeah, probably. Maybe that’s why everyone is so nice. It’s a chill suburb. All the children play out on the street, and the community is really close. I’m pretty sure we even got on a list of the “Top Ten Places to Raise Kids” in, like, 2006 or something. And almost nothing has changed since then. It’s a lovely place where you’re born and never leave.

  Okay, that sounds more ominous than I mean. You never leave . . . in a good way! You don’t leave because it has everything you’d ever need! Take my parents, for example. They were both born a few minutes away in Oak Park, Illinois. They grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same high school. They had a love story straight from the movie Grease. My dad was a greaser, leather jacket and all. He was in a gang—well, a white, middle-class, high school gang. They just stole stuff, vandalized buildings, and smoked weed all the time. My mother, on the other hand, was a total prep. She was on the honor roll, a cheerleader, and had a reserved and sweet disposition. And when they were on opposite sides of town, they would both randomly break into the same song.

  Okay, that last detail was a lie, but the rest is completely true.

  They met at an April Fool’s party. My dad saw my mom from across the room and knew she was the one. He was sixteen and she was fifteen. That’s right, a decade and a half out of the womb and he knew she was the one. He asked her out again and again . . . and she repeatedly said no. In her defense, he had a girlfriend at the time.

  When recounting the story, my dad jokingly complains, “She made me break up with my girlfriend!” He apparently did not want to. After he did, he and my mom started going out. And that was it. They married and had my eldest sister, Tracy; my middle sister, Colleen; and me, Laura. They settled in a home thirty minutes from the houses they grew up in.

  Even though they upheld the local tradition of staying in the Chicagoland area, my parents were a bit of an anomaly in our pristine town. As just one example, in a suburb that embodied practicality, my dad bought my mother a Sebring convertible. This was in a city that has good weather for like . . . two weeks out of the year. Winters in Illinois are brutal and last forever, and my dad bought my mother a car whose main feature was a top that came off and exposed us all to the rain, sleet, and snow.

  Soon enough the fabric roof got a hole in it, and now they keep a bucket in the backseat for when it rains. (Yes, twenty years later they still have the car.) But my parents really wanted to enjoy those two weeks of nice weather per year. I love that about them.

  Downers Grove is a mostly Catholic town with strong family values. Not so much religious as culturally Catholic. By far, my family had the most . . . um . . . passionate opinions about religion. One of my dad’s favorite dinnertime musings was “FUCK ORGANIZED RELIGION! It’s bullshit. And eat another hot dog, Laura, you’re too skinny!” My family were the only atheists in town. My dad was bent on making sure we knew that church was brainwashing.

  No matter what ideals they grew up with, no matter who they were speaking to, my parents were incredibly open-minded. They were authentic. They never pressured me to get married, and they made it very clear that they would love me if I was gay. Even though we were constantly struggling financially, they made sure I never felt the pressure to get a stable nine-to-five job if I didn’t want one. I wouldn’t trade those two for the world. Well, maybe for the world, but nothing less!

  While all the other parents in town were encouraging their kids to pursue practical careers, my mom and dad didn’t blink twice when I told them at age eleven I was going to be a famous actress. “You can do it, sweetheart. We believe in you!”

  My dad would take the liberal parenting a bit further when he would also say things like “When you try acid, make sure you’re in a comfortable setting.”

  “I’m not gonna try acid, Dad.”

  “Oh come on, Laura, you gotta try acid.”

  I never did try acid. I guess it was my way of rebelling?

  * * *

  In grammar school a few other kids asked me, “When did you make your Holy Communion?”

  I had never heard of Holy Communion. I asked them what it was.

  Then they frowned and said, “You’re going to hell.”

  Nine-year-olds say the darndest things!

  That day, I went home and asked my mother, “Why are we going to hell?” She was a bit alarmed. I even insisted she teach me a prayer so that I would fit in with the other kids. But even when I tried, I just didn’t fit in with them. The small rejections made it hard for me to talk in school. I lacked any confidence once I stepped inside the classroom.

  Today, I really appreciate this aspect of how I was raised. In a town where everyone passively accepted religion as one of the defining factors of our community, my parents never forced a religion on me. My dad would say, “When you’re old enough to research different religions and make that decision for yourself, I want you to be able to do that.” And I did. I’ve been able to go my own way and find a spirituality that I fully believe in and speaks to me. Hail Satan!

  Just kidding.

  Aaaand . . . there might have been one other reason why I didn’t fit in well. I had a really morbid sense of humor. And no one wants to talk to the skinny, quiet child making creepy death jokes in the corner of the room.

  So I channeled it all at home. My favorite thing to do was write and direct horror movies. I’d grab my family’s camcorder, all the kids in the neighborhood,
and a butter knife (which is obviously a murderer’s top weapon of choice). Then I’d record these cheesy short horror movies. It was difficult to be both the villain and the director, but I made it work. Video camera in one hand and butter knife clenched in the other, the frame would show just my tiny, dubiously armed fist and my neighbor John running away, screaming as I chased him.

  So . . . you can imagine how popular I was with the church-y kids at school. Have you ever read one of those psychology textbooks where they tell you the traits of the eldest, middle, and youngest sibling? My sisters and I fit exactly. Tracy, the eldest, follows rules, is strict, and did whatever our parents told us to do. Colleen is an introverted oddball who played songs on the guitar written in French and read books for fun. I was the annoying loudmouth comedienne that everyone loved. (Right? Right?) All I ever wanted to do was make people laugh.

  When I became painfully shy and quiet at school during those years, it was VERY out of character for me. Luckily, that’s when I met Maggie, my childhood soul mate. I was in third grade, and we were in the talent show together. She was singing Karen Carpenter’s “Top of the World” at the top of her lungs. I remember she was so loud that her voice became shaky trying to handle it. My mother had been rehearsing my sisters and me in a roughly harmonized rendition of “Chapel of Love” and getting up on that stage absolutely terrified me. I knew how difficult it was to sing in front of people, and because of that, I was SO impressed by Maggie. I remember being enamored by her and thinking she was the bravest, most confident person I had ever seen. And then when she got off the stage, she punched a boy for making fun of her. That’s seriously badass.

  I approached her, told her I liked her headband, and we were attached at the hip after that. We spent every waking moment with each other—either she slept at my house, or we stayed up on the phone with each other. (I would have stayed at her house too, but we just got away with much more mischief at my house.) With her, I finally came out of my shell. We really were oddballs together. It was finally okay for my strangeness and humor to come out.

  I even loved her family. Maggie’s mom was a stay-at-home mom who went back to college in her late forties and started working again. Her dad was this slick FBI agent. He was very strict, so different from my own parents. #whatisstructure?

  The best part of Maggie’s family was her older sister. To the rest of the world, she was a high school theater nerd. To me, she was the most incredible actress I had ever seen. We went to see her high school play once. It was a comedy and she had complete command of the audience. Laughter rang out at one point and I remember thinking to myself, I want to do what she’s doing. I was eleven years old, and it was the moment I decided I wanted to be an actress.

  Being in Maggie’s atmosphere made a huge impact on my life. We loved to try to thrill each other. It became kind of a contest as to who could be the most shocking. In school, we would write each other the most fucked up notes we could think of to see who could get a bigger rise out of the other person. We knew some curse words at this point in our lives, but we didn’t exactly know how to use them. So we inserted them into sentences where they sounded good! That’s how words work, right?

  She passed me one that said: “My arm shits smell. It really fucks that we can’t go to Six Flags Great America this weekend.”

  To which I’d respond: “Can you ass me some water?”

  We were pretty legit.

  In sixth grade, Maggie’s note was intercepted by the principal. The principal read the note and then told Maggie, “You need to read this aloud to your parents.” We both looked at each other frantically. Her FBI agent dad would NOT be cool about this, to say the least.

  “Oh SHIT,” we both muttered to each other, finally using the word correctly!

  Not only did we both get so much detention, but the next day there was an assembly for just the girls in our school about the importance of being a lady. Our principal had a bold opening line: “When you say ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ or ‘bitch’ it is very unbecoming, girls.” I avoided her eye contact at all costs, while Maggie nodded along, sardonically, an air of fake concern about her. Like I said, Maggie was badass.

  Next on Maggie and Laura’s list of shocking activities? Public urination. Maggie and I would pee in public all over the place. That’s normal, right? She would go outside of a Walmart, I would go on her neighbor’s lawn, we both took turns outside of a public library, again and again until we ran out of places. Or until the neighbors started to notice spots of dead grass on their lawns.

  But as expected, our game of “Who could pee in the most shocking place?” got old quickly. Fortunately, Maggie knew how to take things up a notch.

  In sixth grade, we took a trip to Six Flags Great America and stayed at the Holiday Inn. That night we were in the hot tub, splashing each other while sitting across from an older couple who were just trying to enjoy their vacation.

  “Can you ladies stop it, please? You’re being disruptive,” the woman said.

  “Yeah, Laura,” Maggie said, “stop being disruptive.”

  I frowned and shoved her awkwardly, but quieted down. The woman sighed. I looked down at the bubbling water to avoid the old couple’s shaming glaucoma-glare. I saw Maggie roll her eyes.

  “Can we go back to the room?” I asked Maggie.

  “Nope. I want to get pruney.”

  I sighed. A moment of silence and then Maggie smiled at me with this devilish grin. I looked at her, confused. “What?” I whispered. And then . . . I felt it. Something soft and mushy in my hand. I lifted my hand out of the water—and screamed!

  It was Maggie’s shit. She had shit in the Jacuzzi. AND THE SHIT WAS IN MY HAND.

  I was so fucking shocked that I threw the shit as hard as I could, hopped out of the Jacuzzi, and jumped into the pool. The lady sitting across from me screamed. I may or may not have gotten some shit on her.

  To this day I won’t go in a Holiday Inn Jacuzzi. I hope Maggie’s not upset with me for sharing that. Maybe I should change her name. Maddie. Identity concealed! Nice, Laura.

  Maggie and I were fucking weird and adventurous and I loved it more than anything. We would striptease for each other to “The Sign” by Ace of Base. (Which really is a top striptease song, I’d say, and definitely still holds up.) We’d give each other half naked massages by candlelight and we’d go to Barnes & Noble and find the Victoria Secret catalogs in the back and tape pictures of our faces inside of them. This, in retrospect, was probably highly disturbing for the next person who opened them up. Someone in the market for Victoria Secret probably didn’t bet on seeing a smiling eleven-year-old’s face taped above some huge tits. But we didn’t care!

  We very badly wanted to grow up and be women and know things about our bodies. We were curious. In Downers Grove, not many people were interested in educating prepubescent girls about sex. So it was just me and Maggie against the world, figuring things out for ourselves. Living in a weird, amazing bubble.

  At school, Maggie and I had other friends for a while. But as she and I got more and more drawn into our own world, our other friends became convinced we were lesbians and cut us off from hanging out. I guess they thought lesbian meant . . . weird?

  But we didn’t care. If they were going to abandon us for being too strange, then I was happy to see them go. Together, it was okay to be different. To be who we were. Maggie became the star of all my horror movies, and fake-stabbing my best friend with a butter knife became my favorite pastime.

  Despite living in a comfortable middle-class town, my family never seemed to have any money. We were pretty much always broke. But in spite of all that, I never felt poor. Probably because families hide things well from the youngest child! But also because I felt safe and we always had enough to eat. And if I ever wanted expensive things, I would just steal them. Problem solved!

  My parents did a good job of making me feel like money wasn’t an issue. They made it a point for us to have experiences that normal families would
have, like going on vacation—even if they were vacations at which most people would turn up their noses. Every year my dad’s whole side of the family would go to The Golden Horse Ranch in Wisconsin. Every year, you guys. I hear some families, like, try to see different parts of the world eventually? Not us!

  This ranch was small and completely broken-down. The cabins would have mice in them, and when we’d ask the front desk for help, they would hand us a cat and say “Figure it out.” There were horses and literal barn dances and terrible beige food and tiny cabins that were too hot and always a bit moist.

  Which is all to say: it was awesome!

  I don’t think there’s anything better than being out in the wilderness with the people you love, staying out late, climbing around the forest, making the most of your ill-functioning cabin, and running around horses redolent of poop. It was also when I got to try adult things for the first time. It’s like when you’re on vacation, the rules don’t apply.

  When I was in junior high, I brought Maggie and a couple friends with me to the ranch. My sister Colleen wanted to get us drunk for the first time. She poured a shot of vodka into each of our cups of SunnyD and we gulped it down, eager to see what it felt like. In the blink of an eye we were wasted.

  In our drunken stupor, we thought that the coolest thing we could do would be to climb out the window instead of using the door. Because, you know, falling into scratchy bushes is really cool! So we did that. We stumbled over to the rec center and played drunk bingo. Well, it was technically normal bingo. But for us it was drunk bingo. I’m sure all of the senior citizens were a bit confused by our enthusiasm. Especially after Maggie yelled “BINGO!” for the fourth time.

  “I’VE ONLY CALLED THREE NUMBERS; I KNOW YOU DON’T HAVE A BINGO, MISS.”

  When we walked back to the cabin, each of us now suffering a dehydration headache, my mom was outside. Arms crossed, furious. Or was she . . . scratching her arms? Either way, she looked super mad. Oh crap, what did we do? I thought to myself. She just glared and didn’t say a word as we passed her. There was a soft buzzing noise. That’s weird. As we walked inside . . . it got louder and louder. We looked up to see an ominous black cloud across the ceiling of the cabin.