His deathaversary was a week and a day ago, so it's kinda funny that he popped ino the conversation today. And now it means I have to talk about what a fucking honest bitch Jason could be.
So when I was 13, I met my best friend Amber. She was sitting on the bus we took together, in the back, all by herself, and I don't know what came over me, but I sat down next to her and said, "hey, I'm Drea. I'm going to come home with you today and we're going to be best friends" and then we were. Simple as that. I couldn't tell you what came over me to do that, I had never done anything so bold in my life, but I did, and almost thirty years later, she is still my best friend.
I have been super duper frank about the fact that there are a thousand things that make me really awesome, and a solid person to be into romantically, but that none of those things are my looks. I don't know if I'm ugly per se, but I am not beautiful. Never have been, never will be, and at 40 I am just fine with that. I maintain that people fall for me not because I'm sexy or pretty, but because I'm basic looking ENOUGH and can trick an angle sometimes that people agree to go out with me once and then they find out that I'm kind of cool to be around. My strengths are knowing who I am and what my interests are, and being passionate about them. I leaarned at a very young age that I will never be a person that is so beautiful tha people grovel at their feet for just a moment of time to bask in their glory, and Amber is the person who taught me that, though the lesson was not intentional on her part (to my knowledge. Not to insinuae anything about Amber's character here, I'm jut saying sometimes we cut people down with mild intention because kids are fucking awful. Do I think that's the case? No. But I am also smart enough to know you need to leave room for those possibilities, however sure you are they don't exist).
That's a great photo of Amber. And of course, one of us together, totally wastey faced and eating appetizers at my wedding:
RADIANT.
Amber and I grew up together in theory, but in practice, I grew up in Amber's shadow. Girls like me who aren't surface level pretty but are kind of smart and interesting do not become viable sex interests until their twenies (but I did learn, during my horny teen years, that being a straight up unabashed ho turns the tides on that, so I cashed in on ho behavior and never looked back. It's why my sex partner count is damn near the triple digits, if not there already. I stopped keeping fervent track around the 80s, and I for sure did not stop working my way through all the bodies I could with aplomb when I stopped counting), but everybody wants to fuck girls like Amber. When I say like, I do not mean in her attitude or any way she presented herself, I just mean girls like Amber who are outwardly beautiful. Amber was very flirty, too, so when people paid Amber's beauty attention, she leaned in. Love that for her, no notes. But it is definitly part of how I understood that I really wasn't ever going to offer much on the aesthetics side, so I needed to develop a personaliy and FAST. But even that didn't help if I was around Amber.
We would go out somewhere, and everybody knew Amber. She knew everybody. Everybody flirted with Amber and barely paid any attention to me, her dutiful little DUFF. It isn't like Amber did anything to perpetuate this behavior, she would introduce me to people and try and include me, but after a few minutes of conversation with whoever we were with, I faded into background obscurity until it was time to leave. And you fall into a groove with that. At school, when you're out, you just kind of let it happen. It's going to, anyway, why not take an active part in not being a meaningful part of the scenery?
At school, Amber and I didn't really run in the same circles. We were tight as fuck, but with our own lives outside of each other. In my school circle, I was always with Kristen, Jason, Christina, Kirk, Laura, Jackie, Brewster, and KC. Jason, Christina, and Kirk were a year ahead of the rest of us, but that didn't stop Jason and I from being super close. Christina was his bestie, but I was her understudy. Jason and I shared a love of musical theater and outrgeous theatrics, we were the perfect little pair. We walked around school singing duets from various musicals (Little Shop was our favorite), we were absolute fuckin' AMT/theater geeks. Jason was my confidant. I told him everything, and as much as I hate stereotyping people, Jason absolutely WAS the kind of gay that was just...absurdly blunt, bordering gleefully cruel. I think he would be referred to as "sassy" if we were describing Jason in the ways that society allows some people to be total dicks and we wash over it because reasons. In reality, Jason was just...kind of...a bitch.
There was this guy I liked...I can't even recall his name anymore, it has been decades since it mattered...but he waanted nothing to do with me, he liked Amber. And who wouldn't, right? I was used to it by the time I was complaining about it to Jason in the back of Brewster's car (his old ass station wagon hat we called The Jizz Wagon. I was never given an explanation as to why), but a girl can still complain, can't she? This is, after all, what we have different circles of friends for: so we can complain about our other friends wih reckless abandon witthout fear of them caching wind. And Jason may have been a bitch but what he wasn't was a gossip. I knew my complaining was in a safe space in a car surrounded by my friends who were also all uggos (except KC. I had a huge crush on KC) that never got to feel like they were the good looking friend. I told Jason, "I am so sick of being the ugly friend". Jason said, "it's just that you and Amber are different kinds of pretty". This was what I wanted to hear! Because the other thing we value in our friends is blind loyalty and lies. I asked Jason what kinds of pretty we are, in the hopes that I would actually come away from my venting feeling much better about myself. Jason thought about it for a minute, and then he said, "Well, Amber is the kind of pretty that's rare. She's an exotic kind of pretty" and everybody in the car verbalized their agreement that Amber was, in fact, a tremendous beauty.
We can discuss how icky it is to exoticize racialized people another time, though to make it clear, it is VERY icky.
After a few minutes of everyone in the car chorusing Jason's sentiments, I was finally able to ask Jason to dazzle me with the kind of pretty I was. Jason thought about it for a few seconds and said, "You're cunty". And everybody in the car laughed. Jason laughed. I didn't. I asked him again, "seriously, what kind of pretty am I?" and he said, "you're not! You're cunty." And everybody kept laughing and then they all agreed. I stayed pretty quiet the rest of the car ride, and the rest of the night. I stayed at Kristen's that night and didn't speak much. I am not trying to make myself a victim here, but I was fairly used to this group of friends teasing me mercilessly. I was struggling witth an eating disorder in high school. I was terrified to eat anything with fat in it. They all thought it was funny to make a stick of cheesecake that looked like butter and eat it in front of me. I thought it was mean. They made fun of my mom, and while she may be a bitch, they shouldn't have made fun of her weight. They were just mean kids, and I didn't realize it until I was older.
I never forgot Jason, and my entire friend group in the car, telling me I wasn't any kind of pretty at all, I was just cunty. I came to terms with it ages ago, my looks aren't for everyone and that's fine. But I've had a mixed relationship with that word ever since. I ended on embracing it, and a few years later the word "cunty" is solidly in the zeigeist, and isn't even a pejorative. It's a GOOD thing.
A few years ago I even bought a beanie that says CUNTY on it:
though mine says CUNTY in yellow.
The other day, Amber and I were chatting about something and she laughed over me saying something neded more punch, flavor wise, and thinking to herself that I needed to make it cunty. And I was like, yeah, I mean, funny, but here's the story of why Jason called me cunty, and it's far from funny to me. I od her the story, which she said she never knew. Which...I know I've told her that story before.
Anyway. That's how my friend Jason made me double down on my insecurities as a friend to someone pretty. Love that for me!
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